So far I have taken note that we need to take a look at the cooldown.
Anything else?
A talented PC began to perform and the audience's feedback was "Someone in the audience throws a tube of NutriPaste at [Character], splattering garish-colored food substitute where it lands."
Another talented PC got this message from the audience: "An armored solo gives [Character] a look that suggests violence is being considered to end the performance."
These are people who have performed before and have previously always pleased the crowd. Notably, all these performances took place in the same location, but using different instruments.
This sounds like part of the original design might be getting in the way. When the new system was implemented, they talked about cover artists and stuff, and how a cover artist could 'warm up a crowd' and stuff for the main artist(s). Essentially there's a background level of 'approval'. It might be that a lot of mediocre/bad artists have set the background approval really low, and it's making it hard to pull back up.
Might be a bug related to that. I'm not sure if the approval resets on its own over time or not.
@Neon
I miss the spoofs from the old system where you could use the instrument as the actor.
Making the STAGE and CROWD commands accessible to artists using the stage could also make the cooldown period between emotes more interesting. Then the artist could fill the long pause between with ambient actions.
Branching from that, and not specific to performance: the fact that all emotes have to start with the bit's name is restrictive. Artists can't use 'The speaker of the %l blast as %n belts out an ace tune' or 'Lights flash as %n does a sudden wardrobe change.' We're always stuck with 'Joe Baka does this' or 'Joe Baka does that.' I can think of at least one way to work around this for all emotes in general. For example: pose (With a spring in %p step,) .make %p way downtown. Which would put out: With a spring in zir step, Joe Baka makes zir way downtown.
