I had honestly thought Composer had been forgotten since such a major feature like Copy/Paste was still broken after over a year.  Yet the latest patch (April 20, 2022) had minor changes to Composer, which gives some hope that it will be fixed but also shows that a priority list is needed so the critical errors that make Composer un-usable are fixed before more pretty features are added.

Bugs - In order of severity:

1. Lag: The main game graphics takes absolute precedence over any web interface windows.  Lowering graphics settings will give you a perfectly smooth Composer interface.

This is the number one problem with many interfaces in BDO! Actively recording the screen using FRAPS often removes the lag and using Alt+Tab to change focus off the game also allows animations to play without lag.  The easy solution is to make all web-interface features open in an external browser (whether Steam overlay or system default) and accessible through the BDO website, but this should only be a workaround until the actual issue is resolved!

 - Example of Lag in Composer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wb52C49xI4

- Example of Lag in Black Spirit's Adventure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKCdgou81mA

2. Copy/Paste: Fixed May 31, 2022

This has been a problem for over a year! Copy and pasting notes with various durations scrambles their location both in relation to other notes and also in pitch.  Copy/Paste should copy notes' relative locations, durations, velocities and features and paste accurately as available in the target track. Also, the start of the pasted notes should always be visible in the current view.

3. Velocity irregularities:

Note loudness should increase linearly relative to 'velocity'.  Currently, there is a very small increase from 0 to 30, a slow increase from 30 to 99, and at 100 loudness doubles and remains constant all the way to 127.

For some insturments this is fixed (Jun 22, 2022): the basic piano for instance now has a nice even transition between loudness settings but most Florchestra insturments exibit this problem very dramatically.  For the Florchestra Piano, the notes below 100 velocity sound like the 'soft' pedal is pressed (muted tonality and half volume) while 100+ the notes suddenly become very sharp and loud.

Also consider that 'loudness' is slightly different from ‘volume’ and ‘velocity’ doesn’t make sense as a term to describe either for some instruments (like flute).

4. Fix instrument features:

Piano Sustain Pedal is indistinguishable from Sustain. 'Sustain Pedal' should remove all dampening (making note duration long regardless of the placed duration)

5. Correct meter options

The 6/8 meter option is implemented as 6/4.  The first number is the number of beats in a measure. The second number is the note value used to count the beats in a measure.  Since Composer doesn't use score notation, 3/4 and 6/8 would be identical if implemented correctly.

Suggestions - in order of value added to the creation process:

6. MIDI Instrument record:

Allowing MIDI instrument input to be recorded in game would greatly increase the access to custom music and allow musicians to showcase their creativity and talent naturally by simply playing a real instrument.  It is also the most commonly requested feature for Composer on the forums.

Here's a potential example for a use case:

The player adds an instrument track in Composer and hits a 'record midi' button.

Composer records the midi input starting with the first note and ending with the last.

The player hits a 'stop record' button.

Composer gives a popup dialog with options to play the recorded midi (standard web audio player with a timing display) and text boxes for choosing the start and stop of the midi to be saved into Composer.

The player plays the recording and adjusts the start and stop times to remove any unwanted parts from the beginning and end of the song then hits an ‘OK’ button.

If the selected range exceeds the maximum allowed note count, Composer gives a popup warning and reduces the stop time to match the maximum note count and allow the player to verify the start-stop times again.

The selected section of the MIDI recording is then saved and embedded in the current instrument track and displayed as a single, long box with unique coloring. This note-like block could be moved to better match the timings of other tracks or copied to other instrument tracks.

Allowing more than one recording per track would be great, but if data storage would be an issue then only allowing one per track is understandable.

7. Extend the value range of notes (again):

Smaller values (like 1/128) would be very valuable at low BPMs or writing grace notes and trills.

Larger values (like 1/2, 3/4 and 1) are extremely common. It's even common for notes to span multiple measures.

7.1 Add an option to manually set values:

Especially useful for when writing triplets, arpeggiated chords or using uncommon meters.

8. Why is the note count limit so small?

Proposal: uncap the music skill and expand the note limit to something like the following:

'F' = 1200, 'D' = 2400, 'C' = 4800, 'B' = 9600, 'A' = 19200 + performances, 'S' = 38400 + performances. (performances would be songs that include recorded MIDI segments as per #6)

I've also heard that there is/was a 100 measure limit?  This would be annoying and redundant with the note limits. Also, the number of measures shouldn't matter at all for the size of a file.

9. Add a way to end a song early:

Using movement keys or 'R' could give a popup asking if the player wants to stop the song.  It is OK if it takes a few seconds.  Could end the song abruptly or with a fade-out.  This would allow our character to react to a fight that started earlier than anticipated or continue adventuring with the party without being locked into a 1 to 5 minute song with no way to escape.

10. Extend the BPM range:

1 is extreme as a minimum, 200 is mediocre as a maximum.  I've seen scores with BPM as high as 280. Also, with the current limits to value ranges some songs require doubling or tripling the BPM so arpeggiated chords or properly timed triplets can be created, but this severely limits the effective maximum BPM of the song.  Therefore, without manual control over note values having a maximum BPM of 800 or more would not be unwarranted.

11. Allow BPM changes mid song:

Many musical scores change BPM during the song, usually based on measure. Songs can also be made more emotive using slight BPM changes.

12. Add repeat bars:

This is a notation that is used in many musical scores. They designate a range of measures to be looped for a set number of times (defaulting to one repeat).  A limit of 4 or 5 on the maximum times a section is repeated should be ok and repeated measures should only count against the note limit once.

13. Manual meter options:

There are every combination of meters in music from 2/12 to 13/8 to 8/32 and everything else. This would be best implemented with manual note values

14. Queuing songs:

Because of the severely small limits to song size, many songs have to be written in multiple parts.  The ability to even just prepare the next song during a performance and start it manually with no start-stop animation (unless switching instruments) would be a huge improvement.  Even better would be the ability to set up a playlist of songs to perform in order like performing in a concert.

15. Maintain selection when changing view:

Scrolling left, right, up or down shouldn't deselect notes.  This will become more critical when Copy/Paste is fixed as large batches of notes may need to be moved many measures in either direction.

16. Composite selection:

Ability to add and subtract from the current selection.  The common standard is to hold Alt when selecting to subtract from the current selection and to hold Shift when selecting to add to the current selection.

17. Change track instrument / duplicate track in different instrument:

Less critical after copy/paste is fixed, but currently the only way to see what a song you wrote sounds like on a different instrument is to recreate the entire song note by note.  The first song I tried to write I started with Piano, but several hours of struggling against the interface later I resolved that it would sound better with Harp, but with no effective way to do this I abandoned the project.

18. Temp Save UIX:

Auto save on every change to a temp file that is auto-opened when opening a new composer window (lessens frustration when accidentally exiting Composer).  This is what I expected from the temp save feature.  Having the TempFile listed in the songs list is OK, but it is troublesome to find when there are more than a handful of songs in the list.

19. Esc/close UIX:

Have Esc only exit the most recent popup so Composer doesn't close when trying to close a note properties window.  It took me quite a while to find and get used to the way to close the note properties popup without closing Composer or deleting/adding a random note.  Windows and many other programs and games have trained us to use Esc as a fast way to exit popups and windows to return to the program.  With Composer, Esc instead closes the program causing any unsaved work to be lost.

20. More features for applicable instruments:

 - A piano has a 'soft' pedal that mutes notes a bit and causes a slightly different sound beyond just half volume

 - Staccato - Slightly shorter duration notes so there's a pause before the next note.

 - trill - fast alternation between two nearby notes for a duration.

 - Tenuto - Slightly louder and longer duration notes.

21. Separate features into natural groups based on how they are activated on the instrument:

This would allow more than one effect to be applied to a note:

 - With a piano, the sustain pedal and the soft pedal can be used at the same time to create a muted sound that rings for a while. And these can also be used with Staccato or trills, since these are patterns the musician hammers with the piano keys.

 - With Violin, finger techniques like 'slide up' could be performed with bow techniques like Tremolo.

22. Separate some features into note specific features and meter level features:

 - Note Specific - completely local to the note and independent of any other note played at the same time. Pianos often have a third pedal that allows the 'Sustain pedal' effect to be applied only to certain notes and not to others played over the top.  Violin's 'slide up' is specific to a single string, so other strings played at the same time are not affected by it.

 - Meter level - These effects could be shown like notes in the measure area (just above and outside of the area where notes are placed). These would apply to every note played by that instrument in the specified duration. This would be true of features like a 'soft pedal' for the Piano or Tremolo for the Violin.

Note: for greater creativity, features in the Meter level could also be available at the note specific level. This would allow creating accompaniment pieces where more than one of the same instruments are playing at the same time.  A similar effect could be done simply by allowing more than one track of the same instrument to be created in a song.

23. Color coding for notes:

This could be a great tool for keeping track of interleaved melodies or seperate scores of an accompaniment piece.

24. An option to rotate the notation field:

Having most of the interface rotated 90 degrees so the flow of notes goes from top to bottom instead of left to right has good utility.  Some find it a more natural orientation for composing songs since this is the way a real piano is viewed when playing. And it provides much easier access to more note pitches at a time due to monitors having more space left to right than up and down. https://ibb.co/r2TYGB9 (example and suggestion previously posted by OneXPlays)

25. More wind instruments:

Brass instruments like French horn or Tuba or reed instruments like saxophone or bassoon would be great additions to the BDO orchestra.

Additional input, ideas and perspectives and alternate priority orders are welcome.  Please also include reasons and arguments for such for completeness and persuasion.

My real profile: nbanyan

Well formulated feedback!

My greatest frustrations are as follows,

Dynamics

Seemingly arbitrary values where some instruments change samples, i,e 0-99, 100-120, 121-127

Well, basically they are using 1 function to change two values, one is velocity (loudness) and the other one at set points dictate which music sample is being played.
Either make the different sounds different techniques or make the linear scaling be independant of which sample you want.
It's impossible to for example use the 0-99 kick sound with the 121 velocity snare sound, as one will be too quiet and/or the other too loud. It's very dynamically limiting.

Why not have 1 value be 0-42, another 43-83 and the last 88-127 with scaling loudness or each value in a 1,2,3 in a repeating loop to 127 having a different sample with linear loudness increase.

I don't know anything about MIDI functionality or programming but there must be a better solution that is less limiting.

On the topic of velocity I'd like to add how time consuming it can be to manually edit and type out the velocity of each note potentiallly thousands of times each composition. Ability to paint out velocity would be great.

I will say the Marni's instruments solve the issue partly by giving you about 15 different techniques to choose from, but to some extent it's still there. For example most noticeably with the harsher waveforms like sawtooth the velocity isn't just tied to velocity but also filter cut off. So it's very difficult to get a loud not harsh sound. But it's seeming linear unlike florchestra/beginner instruments.

Lag / Workflow

(I don't know if it's related to the lag you were referring to but it seems to function in the same way)

Once a file gets to a certain size, ≈ 20+ to 60+ kB There's an unberable input delay ranging from 0.5 -2+ seconds it's almost like your actions get queued if you successively place a couple of notes within a short amount of time at that file size.

Color coding (like you suggested) would be very useful as it can get chaotic and be a reall mess to keep track of, and it will get even worse with the addition of synths since you will be layering different waveforms to create different sounds. 

Hotkeys, ability to for example hotkey the 'Edit Mode' / 'Select Mode' and the different quantization options to different buttons.
Would be great QoL and save potential disaster as each time you move your mouse top right to change between the modes you are a cm or two away from accidentally closing the composer. Closing the composer really ought to have a prompt, and one that can't be accepted by pressing space/enter.

(This is especially important given how the temp file usually saves with a couple of kB missing leaving your composition butchered)

Dotted note selection and in 'Note Attribute' selection as well as placement.
Let us place 8th notes while in the 16th grid and so on. 

(Not related to Composer but the Music Album)

Music Album discoverabiliity, perhaps being able to designate your composition to belong to a certain genre. The UI is also rather unfriendly and shows little information at one time without having to scroll far down.

More intuitive Ensemble function UI, show the other participants what instruments have been selected to simplify the proceess.
Ideally also highlight the song the Party leader has selected at the top of the list to further smoothen the sometimes frustrating experience of trying to organize an ensemble. 

Maybe even have the ensemble request be a prompt to download that piece of music if you don't have it already.

Music performance

Volume slider, the ability to adjust volume of nearby music performed, Ideally easily acessible and not attatched to the options menu or overall volume.

I have to preface this with me being uncertain and ignorant about the topic i'm about to discuss.

Latency based individual instrument delay.

Is it possible to turn the musical performance into 1 audio source? instead of each player, playing their individual music part, possibly slightly delayed turning into it being partially off beat.

Also creates a very weird sound stage which not only based on reverb,delay and pre delay values but also the relative position each player has to one and another.

@BDO Thanks for fixing Copy/Paste in the May 31, 2022 Patch.

Please address the web interface (Coherant UI?) lag issue in the next patches!  At the very least, allow us to use Composer within the BDO website itself! Currently the lag makes common tasks that should take seconds to take minutes in Composer.

My real profile: nbanyan

The velocity inconsistancies have been resolved on some basic insturments (like piano), but the problem remains a huge issue especially with Florchestra insturments.  I will need to do some testing and make a more extensive recording showcasing the issue.  For now I recommend not using Florchestra insturments if the song uses substantial changes in volume.

The web interface/Coherant UI lag is fixed! (at least for me)

If you still experience lag with the web interfaces like Composer and Black Spirit's Adventure, let it be known. (and send PA bug reports with detailed system info)

Update: The lag returned for me and then I tried lowering the game's graphics settings.  Bit of a facepalm moment, but Composer has a beautifully smooth operation at lower graphics settings.  I would like the game to dynamically apply lower graphics settings if any open web interfaces have less than 45 FPS (or at least an option for it).

Seems like a lot to do. I'd like to be able to import midi. That way, anyone could use software that is specifically made for this and they can spend their time on more important aspects of the game. I would like them to fix it to where you don't accidentally lose all your progress with an auto-save feature every 2 minutes. It won't actually save but it will create a recovery file. The recovery file would always be there until you confirm to delete it because I accidentally closed out of the composer without warning and lost almost an entire song.