Guild Wars 2

Wintersday has come and gone, and here I am with a shiny new unbreakable choir bell. ANet, you’ve given me a lovely little toy to while away the minutes while I stand around figuring what to do. I take endless pleasure in coming up with new song combinations. What I hope for is this.

More of this, please. More instruments to play with, more sounds and more notes. Fiddles maybe, accordions, guitars, drums, etc. It’s a simple mechanic that can be both very annoying and extremely enjoyable. I’d love to hear minstrels plying their art around Divinity’s Reach. I’d love to hear players trying to form up impromptu bands with songs they made up on the spot. Jeremy Soule’s music is lovely, I’ll give him that, but there’s nothing like the joy of making your own.

Personally, I’d like to see a fiddle or violin above all else, but mostly, I just hope to see more of this mechanic. More personal instruments for players, please.

I completely agree! After seeing firsthand the wondrous effects that the simple choir bell had during the Wintersday event (and presumably by coincidence also discovering a Quaggan organ in Caledon Forest, which I assume predates the bell), I think that further development of musical possibilities is a fantastic idea. It seems like this would be a pretty low-effort feature to develop, too, which gives me some hope.

However, I also want to point out that there needs to be some form of protection against abuse of these items. While this was literally a 1-in-100 incident, I had the great misfortune of experiencing a player use the choir bell to troll in Lion’s Arch by rapidly hitting the same note over and over. This cannot be filtered like other spamming methods by ignoring the player, because the bell’s notes are handled as sound effects for attacks. Mobile instruments allow players to either harass specific other players by following them around, or become public nuisances by abusing the items in high-population areas such as the bank or trading post.

Again, this was simply one troll abusing a good thing among a flood of musicians enriching the game, but if we’re going to see instruments become much more common, it’s an issue that needs addressing.

Agreed 100%

although I would just be happy with getting instrument emotes back… and the /flex. definitely /flex. Lol

Add the bell to the gem store. Not all of us were so lucky with presents ;/

The instruments need yet another tweak before they are usable.

Now their sounds are regular skills sounds, so you can’t turn them off without loosing almost all other sound effects too. And you can’t turn of annoying environmental sounds (including footsteps and other character sounds including dialogs) while playing music.

And: The use of instrumental skills should never produce the regular attack sounds (as for now, the unbreakable choir bell uses dagger attacks as base, so with every note you play, you also have the “risk” of your character aching or crying). Otherwise, every complex song played will always sound more like “beatboxing” than like the original melody.

Adding my two cents: As much as I agree that there needs to be a way to filter it out to avoid being griefed by it, I would also say an important change would be to lower the internal CD on each note. I said it before (somewhere), but the current delay between notes makes playing anything faster than a lullaby sound really bogged down. I’ve noticed that Quickness fixes this, but I don’t have 21-22 Mesmer friends to perma-TimeWarp me just to play songs properly.

(Edit to note: This doesn’t mean I’m against filtration – in fact, this change is all the more reason to make it capable of being muted – but I find this to be just as important)

I liked the actual Bell Choir event because you could play chords and the like, due to not having a delay at all, but I’d understand if that doesn’t happen for spam reasons. At least cut the delay down to its current equivalent while buffed by Quickness. 240 BPM is much better than 120 BPM.

This goes for any instrumental additions down the line, too! Please, ANet! Musically inclined individuals want their chance to shine a little brighter!

Agreed,
Can’t even imagine the possibilites. Community created events, like talentshows for in-game prizes or guild orchestras, concerts, cover bands, hell even GW2’s own bands. Would be totally awesome.

Unbreakable Choir Bells are lovely right up until you’re having a sync dance party and your D.J Bell-Ringer has a hilarious idea: RING THE HIGHEST NOTE IN QUICK SUCCESSION FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES.

My character snapped and lept off of Ministers Waypoint, cackling maniacally. He was mentally unstable and uninterrupted dance was the only thing holding him together, you see. It’s quite tragic.

But in a way it’s also hilarious. In all seriousness I agree with the OP, musical items are a delight and we could use more of them. Imagine player bands with bells, flutes, drums or bongos, accordions, saxophones(assuming they could produce these at the time)

But I’m getting ahead of myself.