Guild Wars 2

Hello bards of Tyria and hello audience!

May i have permission to ask for your attention?
I would like to suggest a way to enhance the instruments in its current way of playing without “remaking” it.
Means that all of you who can already play them don’t have to learn from scratch again!
Nothing will change for you!

I have to explain the piano so you all will understand what i have in mind:
White piano keys are called naturals.
There are seven naturals on the keyboard: C-D-E-F-G-A-B
and it repeats itself alphabetically: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A
as you can see in the graphic below:
http://www.zebrakeys.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/white-key-names.jpg

Black piano keys are called accidentals, and they are just that:
the sharps and flats of the piano.
On the keyboard, there are five black accidentals per octave.
They can be either sharp (#) or flat (b), and are named after the notes they modify:
A sharp makes a note a half step higher in pitch.
A flat makes a note a half step lower in pitch.
So if you have a natural C and a natural D the accidental between them can be called C(#) or D(b) but it is always the same key as you can see in the graphic below:
http://www.zebrakeys.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/black-key-names.jpg

Okay so what does this all have to do with our ingame instruments?

The harp:
It possesses the ability to play 3 octaves, chords and has 8 keys.
1( C) 2(D) 3(E) 4(F) 5(G) 6(A) 7(B) 8( C)

With this you can play many songs but most songs are using accidentals.
Therefore we need 5 more keys for every octave that it looks like this :
X = Accidental

,———-(X)-(X)—(X)-(X)-(X)—-,
1( C) 2(D) 3(E) 4(F) 5(G) 6(A) 7(B) 8( C)

CXDXEFXGXAXBC <— this is the new format
CDEFGABC <— this is the old one

Graphic: http://www.playpiano.com/keyboard.gif

Okay here we found a problem, we got only 8 keys and the naturals are fine as they are now! So here is my solution:
When you equip an instrument (for example as a Mesmer) your whole skillbar changes, the F1-F4 keys disappear for example.
So there is free space for the first 2 and the last 2 accidentals!
The 5th one in the middle could be placed directly above the dodge-bar.
Maybe your GUI-designer got better ideas

When first equipping an instrument (after you implemented this) pop-out a tips&info-window explaining that you can make use of the controle options to set hotkeys for the accidentals and naturals (maybe some make use of USB-audio-keyboards!)
Is it possible to set a controle key for every note on every octave? Maybe not^^

This was the first enhancement to the instruments which would be profit for new players and old players as they don’t really have to change anything at all!
If they want to play like before they still can do that but they could also improve their music!

The second enhancement is a bit tricky because i don’t know your source code for the server structure (backend):
When pressing a key you can hear a slight difference in pressing the actual key and actually hearing the acoustic feedback the key produced (0,2-0,4secs depends on lag).
The same applies to every skill you use in Guild Wars 2 because the server has to respond that your action really takes place.

So please add something like an audio buffer on the client-side that prevents this delay only for the ingame instruments.
You can’t perform any combat actions while playing them so it might work.
The note still has to be recognized by the server, nothing will change there!
Just the sound on the client side has to be played simultaneously as you press the key.

This was the second enhancement.

The third and second last enhancement is to play chords without letting keys to be set on cooldown. This happens if you press the same chord 2 or 3 times fast behind one another. I don’t know what causes this maybe you can look into this.

4th and last enhancement: more octaves for some instruments at least one more upper for the harp, maybe 1 lower for the flute to match the range of the other instruments (haven’t played the lute yet so i can’t say anything about this, i hope someone with the lute could answer to this)

Edit1:
Provide an in game track listing for players to create and store their own pieces.
(Like with the drum? I don’t know how it exactly works, someone can help here??)

Thats it on my side and i hope the audio design team would look into this thread and keep in mind: Music is the key to the soul of every Tyrian!

i totally agree here with all your points, especially point (2).

Yes pleaseeeeeeeeeeeee.

I totally agree, and i vote for point (1) on top priority, it’s really frustrating to try to play songs we love and making ourself aware that’s they are not playable.

Instruments without CD would be cool, because you will be able to play it more accurately and the song will be more realistic.

Edit1 added to the first post:
Provide an in game track listing for players to create and store their own pieces.
(Like with the drum? I don’t know how it exactly works, someone can help here??)

i think the easiest way would be to create your own key, by utilizing the same feature as utility skills. example, say i want to flat my E, click on the arrow on top of the note and choose the note you want to play. so if i want to play in the key of C minor, i would change first note to C second to D , etc. could be the easier way to do it, since you wouldnt need that much of a UI change and everyone could play in the key they wanted. instead of changing octaves, let it be another key you customize. so, first set would be, for the sake of illustration, key of C minor, second would be…B flat major…that would be my idea, i think it could work, what do you guys think?