I wholeheartedly agree with this post, this game needs more flexibility in it’s musical component. The current system limits a lot of creativity in terms of tempo and the general flow of the tune your character plays (which can also be effected by latency), in turn making some tracks sound clunky.
While midi’s are accessible, easy to use and overall can make GW2’s musical experience more appealing to the musical community. There isn’t a real barrier in the current or suggested method to prevent players from playing a ear guttering note for hours on end without having to force yourself to mute the sound in options, which is a real bummer and I’m pretty sure a few of us have experienced this first hand. I myself have muted instruments for this very reason, there’s no real reason to turn it back on either. I mean 1 track with a set octave unless you switch? That’s pretty limiting in my opinion, the same applies for midi’s. People can create a file with 5 tracks playing one horrible tune to displease other players for who knows how long the file is. This in turn can be a whole other topic on how to prevent but let’s keep on track shall we?
While I’m all for the midi suggestion can i also suggest an alternative to this? It’s a musical coding called MML (Music Macro Language) If anyone’s interested in it please feel free to wiki it. Yeah it’s an ancient thing but is it outdated by any means?
No and here’s why.
It’s flexible like a Midi, developers can easily set how much tracks, letters and octaves it may or cannot play. This means it can limit songs to play an X amount while being limited to, lets say 4 tracks. While the coding itself may look confusing (Myself being an amateur to this style of coding) there is a foundation for composers, you and me alike can indulge in and learn and create some really stellar pieces.
A great example of a game that has used this is Nexon’s Mabinogi. While the game itself was decent in my opinion, it has this musical component while limits players to only 3 tracks and a set amount of characters to work with to create said music. With this limitation it created a need for people to group up and create great musical experiences, while also making the solo playing just as great. With this limitation some pieces couldn’t be as long as the original, so composers from that game cut and toyed with the music and in turn remixed it and they could sound just as good or if not better than the original.
While it did have some downfalls, in my eyes with a bit of adjusting to fit player freedom while still having a restriction is probably one of the best idea’s for a in-game musical experience.
Archeage also used this but it was really poorly done and should be an example of how to NOT implement the MML system.
So yeah! Personally i would pretty much prefer this system rather then anything else but a midi component would work just as well, as it would fit most of our musical needs.
TLDR: MIdi’s are great but a lacks a rule type system. MML’s provide that and i would very much vouch for that. Although in the end i support both ideas.
(edited by Tiger.9204)