Guild Wars 2

I was thinking that a cool instrument would be if they had a full on piano to play. Kind of how you can spawn a drinking table or a bobblehead station. But a piano. That would be super cool.

I guess you might enjoy these, in case you didn’t know about them yet:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pipe_Organ

As long as you cannot create sheet music and/or sync with other players playing, any additional instruments are pretty much worthless. Check out how LotrO does instruments and player music. We’re a long way from that still…

I’m actually glad that there is no system like that. Having files for each song and just pressing “play” doesn’t feel like making music to me. There are already enough macro users to cover that kind of “playing music”.

Synchronizing however isn’t that big a problem. I already played together with others and it was just fine (in low populated areas). The input delay causes some problems depending on the instrument, but the new bell shows that they are working on it. The responsiveness is very nice on that one.

I would like to have an interface for midi controllers so I could use my iRig keys or similar small midi keyboards in order to control the ingame instruments. I could play music with sharps in it and play chords over the set octave boundaries. (What? One can still dream right? crossing fingers “Dear Santa/ANet Sound Team”)

Well maybe the sheet would be just rolling at sync and you’d still have to press the keys in the right order at the right time? A bit like in the choir ensemble, but obviously with a bit different interface.

It could also allow a bit of “snapping” to the right sync if pressed close enough to the right time, eliminating a lot of the skill delay related issues.

Best of both worlds?

Sounds like an idea.

But, am I mistaken or doesn’t the frame drum already have some synchronization feature of some sort…? I believe I remember having seen a video in the GW2 channel about the frame drum where they mentioned that… However, the tempo was/available tacts were kinda limiting.

The frame drum allows you to pre-record loops and play the back, but it does nothing to sync with other players’ playing.

I didn’t test whether the downbeats of my drum are synchronized with other player’s down beats if I used it next to another drum player. I just know that it doesn’t play a whole sample when you switch grooves or hit the “solo button” but sticks to the original beat instead… I don’t know whether the beat is also synchronized with other player’s beats or not, but if so, this feature is exclusive to the drum. It doesn’t synchronize with other instruments (this would be difficult since one instrument can’t know what tempo the other player is playing on his instrument).

You do know that macro “musicians” spend alot of time creating those parts and most are macros due to the limitation of not being able to play the way you would like it to sound. That and often having nobody able around to split up the song or practice is the reason its done.

The pipe organ is cool but I want my own piano.
And yes, I hold a little more respect for those who actually play it, but in a different way. I dont mind macros at all, though.
But still, a piano would be too fun.

I also don’t mind macro users in general. The usage of macros for instruments has been allowed officially.

I only have problems with a certain type of users. Maybe it is just me encountering those. But it happened to me several times, when I was playing something for friends or just the random passerby, that a macro user started pressing his “play” button right next to me in order to interrupt my play and started bragging about his high skill level (i.e. playing songs which are manually not playable regarding speed and amount of polyphony and playing them on repeat in the exact same tempo…) and then even had the gall to ask for tips directly in a most unlikeable manner.

I have lots of respect for those who put together the parts and provide these song collection websites, even though I will never use their service. Since I get requests to put together tabs quite often, I know what amount of work is behind it.

And to be on topic: I think a portable piano would be a bit unrealistic. But I could imagine an Asura synthesizer or something similar. But that would be a bit too futuristic for this game I guess… Asura technology itself is already borderline in that regard – at least it has been criticized by many in the past.