Report 1691

Report #1691
Skillset: Music Skill: Compose
 Org: Glomdoring Status: Completed Aug 2017
Furies' Decision:
Tentative approval, but may reject or modify depending on coding limitations.
Problem: This is sort of quality of life and ease of use report. The idea came
to me after helping a few new bards learn how to use their songs. Bard songs are
a bit clunky to use right now mainly due to the active effects. I'll do a quick
run down of how they work to make sure everyone's up to date. Bards are best
having their passive effects in their song list and just switching out to active
effects when they wish to cast the active effect and then switch right back to
the passive effect immediately after. -------------This can be done with a bit
of coding but I was hoping to get a game side command to let us do it without
everyone having to build a song tracker into their client. You build a bit of a
song tracker to follow what stanza your on then essentially what we do is send
compose songname stanza (7/8/9) imbue crowcaw/princessfarwell etc/ to load the
effect we want then do perform songname song target to hit the target with that
song effect, then we do compose songname stanza (7/8/9) imbue windowmercy or
what ever to switch back. So your doing three commands for one effect and have
to have your system track which stanza your on. If you don't track it right
you'll sing a song with no active effect that wont do anything really other than
refresh your song timer.
[A: 9 R: 0] Solution #1: Build in a new command to compose songs. As follows
 (perform songname target songeffect) this will do a
 similar thing to what was described above. EG Perform
 songname veyils crowcaw. Will attempt to switch
 crowcaw into what ever current stanza you are on and
 attempt to play it. If you are in the wrong stanza
 group you'll simply get an error message. You are on
 the wrong stanza group to play that. "You must be on
 stanza seven eight or ninth to play that." This
 itself will cut down on the players system side
 tracking allowing them to use the commands without
 having to have a stanza tracker built in.
[A:10 R: 0] Solution #2: As above but also with a default song setting. So
 that after casting the active effect the song will
 revert back to the passive song styling. It would be
 nice and user friendly. With a toggle so people can
 choose to use this or no. Config it on or off.
Player Comments:
---[Veyils on 8/1 @ 18:41 sets as pending]
---[Shedrin on 8/18 @ 00:40 writes]:
What if active effects could just be played on their own if you're in a correct
stanza (and applying the correct lyrics). This would be a very slight buff but
offhand I don't think it'd be significant for any spec.
---[Aeldra on 8/20 @ 17:50 writes]:
I think it's something often done and often struggled with. While it can be done
through code, it's also really clunky and unwieldy, especially for younger bards
or people who're not that good at coding. Supported
---[Veyils on 8/27 @ 23:12 writes]:
Hmm that may be an easier way of doing it Shedrin I guess. Well what ever works
for implementation but your suggestions basically does the same as this but in a
different way. Like I said there is nothing stopping you doing the active effect
and switching back instantly to the passive so you never lose the passive
effects(but requires coding a bit of a system for tracking etc blah blah) Simply
letting you cast the active without having to switch in and out of song effects
sounds a decent idea to me.
---[Anelissa on 8/28 @ 14:20 writes]:
I kind of like Shed's idea (similar to how monks can use specific skills out of
form, like gahtirak'sho). I think Shed's idea is probably easier to code, and
will help a bit more for bards, since it will only be one single command which
means it will only go through one round of command denial. Sol1 your still
looking at two rounds of command denial. Sol 2 is pretty much the same thing as
Shed's idea but just adding unneeded steps IMO. Biggest question I have is will
using Shed's command result in the bard moving forward in stanza, or will it
more act like monks out of form actions (which keep you at the same stance). If
it will advance stanza, I'm for that over these 2 solutions, if it won't then
I'd rather see either Sol1 or 2. (The reason why I don't want bards to be able
to stay at a stanza if they use the out of song command is because monks have a
penalty for using out of form commands in the fact that they drop out of stance
after some time if they don't use a form (which is a static timer), where as
bards can sit in the same stanza for a long while, with the length dependent on
a variety of factors. Allowing them to use an out of stanza syntax will
essentially allow them to sit at stanza 9 forever with all passive effects, and
use their targetted skills whenever power permits, while refraining to keep the
song up every so often. *yes I know this isn't really practical since another
bard can force you out of song easily, just listing the possibilities*)