Bard's Thematic Future

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Originally Posted by Taranok

I'm personally not a fan of foe requiem, it's easy to just ignore that mana exists on non-casters (and DRK I guess). Maybe if it was reworked in some other way instead, because Foes was kinda boring to me.

2% crit buff for existing, maybe use foe for...altering the buff somehow? Boosting it? Maybe make Foe Requiem the "stance dance" mechanic of the current Bard, but having it simply alter the buff to other forms instead of the weird "These oGCDs recharge faster now!" and "Now your GCDs fire all the time!" and "Suddenly megadamage!"

There could be something done, and I feel Bard should be an "aura" type support class (whereas Dancer should be a partner-type), but I'd still like to see the gameplay refined and focused more to make more overall sense with whatever path is chosen.

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I agree. I'm all for getting rid of the cast times and seeing it re-worked in a way that flows a bit better considering the changes, but I still want it to come back and as you have stated, better refined.

As others have said I don't think that it's fair for Bards to completely lose their identity because some people want a Ranger; however, I do agree that Bards should be more support focused, and perhaps a Ranger should be introduced to split the physical ranged role into two categories:

DPS Focused Physical Ranged Jobs: Machinist & Ranger
Support Focused Physical Ranged Jobs: Dancer & Bard


But how can you give BRD more support without changing the way they play?

Simply attach a party buff to their stance songs (examples of adjustments):
1.) Mage Ballad: Additional Effect - Increases Magical Attack Power of Nearby party members by 1% everytime the Repertoire effect is triggered for a maximum increase of 5%.
2.) Army's Paeon: Additional Effect - Increases Physical Attack Power of Nearby party members by 1% everytime the Repertoire effect is triggered for a maximum increase of 5%.
3.) The Wanderer's Minuet: Additional Effect - Increases Critical Hit Chance of Nearby party members by 2% everytime the Repertoire effect is triggered for a maximum increase of 10%

So BRD can be a party buffer that has to cycle through songs while the dancer will be primarily a single target buffer but with more sustained buffs.

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Originally Posted by Suniva

And what did they do? They kept GLA -> PLD route while introducing DRK as a new job that people could pick up and play.

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I fear you're missing my point. My point is that even though the community clamored for it, they didn't do it. They kept ACN as the only class to split. People could clamor for their jobs to have glamours as well, but doesn't mean they would entertain the thought if they only wanted to do it for one or two jobs.

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Just separate the two, I feel as if that would be the path of least resistance for the development team that would satisfy both sets of the player base.

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Job glamours effectively would separate the two, and as said before, could even act as a stepping stone toward an actual separation should that be a route to consider. Glamours effectively produce 2 whole jobs in one, giving both BRD and RNG a job that feels right while not disrupting the playstyle for either group. People like the playstyle and want it for themselves whether they're on team BRD or team RNG and this is the only way to really maintain that for both. The job is busy enough on it's own that two jobs could absolutely share the playstyle with entirely different themes and still feel good to play.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

If you change current BRD into Ranger, you will have to:
—Redo the entire quest chain, because Ranger is completely different from BRD and would likely involve a completely different story,
—Retcon all the lore involved in said quest chain; and you might as well include in future publications of Encyclopedia Eorzea a “Please disregard, this is all defunct now” disclaimer for any and all references to old BRD (there are a few in there),
—Change the BRD quest NPCs’ functions and/or implement new ones entirely, since it make little sense for them to serve the same purpose with a Ranger,
—Reanimate the cutscenes in the new Ranger quest chain, since it would make no sense to see your character playing a harp when they’re a Ranger, and this happens more than just once in the BRD quest chain,
—Rework this new Ranger’s toolkit to make it more “Ranger-like”,
—Oh, and design an entirely new job (this “new Bard”) in addition to all this retconning.

How is this less work than making BRD more BRD-like, and implementing a Ranger job for a future expansion? Please explain; because, while future jobs have to have toolkits made from the ground up, they lack a lot of lower-level quests and lore one would have with an ARR job, since they tend to start 20 levels below the expansion’s level cap. So you get rid of the work needed to make level 30~50, 50~60, 60~70, and level 80 quests/quest chains. You just need to make the quests/quest chains starting from whichever level the new job starts at, and going to current level cap. You also don’t have to worry about retcons (which, a BRD > Ranger transformation is a retcon big enough that it would give the Kingdom Hearts franchise a run for its money), as the lore for a new job is a clean slate that one can put down whatever they want.

Personally, I don’t think you’re actually considering the amount of work one would need to do for this to happen. I think people who are so hellbent on having Ranger, or a Ranger-type job, in this game don’t stop to consider what BRDs want: we don’t want the job we’ve played for years to be turned into something different to satiate those who want Ranger. I don’t care if they add in Ranger as a new job in 6.0. But don’t take the job I started this game on and played as a main for over 3 years (and still play to this day), and change it into something else to please a specific subset of people. Because then, you’re forgetting about the people who played BRD to be a BRD. Why does BRD need to change for those who want Ranger? Why can’t these players be satisfied with Ranger being added in 6.0 or 7.0? Why do they want to take BRD and make it into their job?



You also can’t just give the old BRD quests to this new job, because most new jobs don’t start at level 30 anymore. Any 6.0 jobs will likely start at level 70—so, why is there a 30~70 quest chain for them again? It would make absolutely no sense, and they aren’t going to allow the job to be available at a lower level. I think they’ve set a fair enough precedent for me to say that.

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Retconning lore is not an amount of work that you can quantify with man hours unlike actually designing the actions. For the job quests, this concept would definitely require an all-new quest line for the Ranger, but where you would be putting in hours to add quests for the “Old” job quest line, you would be reusing the same quest line for Bard, everywhere that you’re adding work on Ranger, you’re taking away work from Bard and vice versa. Is it more work than creating Dancer or Gunbreaker? Yes, but not so much when you also take into consideration work also done on existing jobs like Machinist. Machinist had a lot of changes made that took a lot of time as well, assuming you don’t need to overhaul any other existing jobs come 6.0, you’re really not looking at a huge differentiation in man hours if you handle it intelligently.

The biggest mess will stem from the retconned lore, but there is no clean answer for how to correct that. Amalgamating Archer and Bard together was a huge mistake from 1.2. It never should’ve happened, but we can’t just time travel backwards and undo that, so at some point we’re going to need to make a little mess if we want to appease BOTH the Archers AND the Bards.

As for the people not wanting to abandon the job they’ve been leveling and gearing up up till now, you can just have the launch of 6.0 include all players who have currently leveled pre-rework Bard to any level have that level transfer over to new bard, and you get the luxury of keeping both Ranger and Bard.

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Originally Posted by Suniva

You're still talking about hijacking bard because of the following point:

You want there to be changes to the level 30 onward quests to keep archer tied to whatever hunter/ranger job you would like to see implemented and make bard a separate job in the game not tied to anything. You want to keep the playstyle of bard to be transferred to the ranger, but want the bard to get all the new abilities. You're basically trying to argue that those of us that have mained the class for every expansion up till now, for 6+ years, should have our jobs fundamentally changed, AGAIN, all around simply so those who have made the decision to not main the class because it doesn't play the way it wants get to now have it, simply because of the bow and arrow aesthetic. That isn't fair at all to a majority of the bard mains out there. People don't main a class for 6 years (or less depending when you came to the game, I know I'm old) wishing for it to become something different, a majority main their jobs because they enjoy how the job plays.

The more REASONABLE argument and one that wont upset a majority of the players would be to leave archer -> bard alone and have the development team create a new job of ranger. None of the new jobs that have been added (Machinist/Astrologian/Dark Knight/Gunbreaker/Dancer) are tied to a class, therefore, no quests would have to be touched below level 70 (Since as Hyomin pointed out, all new jobs get introduced 20 levels below current expansion cap, I using this as reference). They all get introduced as their jobs, we do the initial quest, get a job stone and go from there. Hell, I wouldn't mind and actually would find it funny if they made the ranger job quests be a sort of mockery against us "spoony" bards.



We have been fighting, both on English and Japanese forums, to have the bard identity restored. It is not a lost cause, we have been fighting since before Shadowbringers got released because we were concerned with how seemingly our tools got stripped from us to make room for the shiny new dancer. It isn't a lost cause to us. The Japanese forum on bard is 312 pages long and 53 of those pages are of how they are incredibly unhappy with how bard (poet they call it) functions in ShB. Many even pointing out of our 80 job quest is a mockery and a slap in the face to what it means to be a bard. So sorry, but we won't stop fighting for the job we love. Even if we have to fight on two fronts with trying to get the developers to give us some job identity back and on forums with players that want to hijack our class from us so they can get their ranger. We want to keep our job tyvm. Stop trying to take it from us.

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The thing about current Bard is that it is and always has been at least 80% archery and 20% music if not even more skewed toward archery. The entire point I want to make is that we shouldn’t have to settle for this mess that’s been created. By separating the two to have 1 dedicated archer and 1 dedicated musician, you make both player bases happy.

We can even just leave Bard alone and not even remove the musical aspects if it hurts people that much, just add in an actual musician using an instrument as their weapon using exclusively musical attacks. If you are a true fan of the Bard aesthetic, why wouldn’t you want that over trying to play tug of war with the Archer players over the current Bard?

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Originally Posted by Taranok

That would flat out break the bard storyline, shredding it to pieces. And I'm all for altering lore to fix core problems with the class, but I don't think this is the right solution. I'd sooner see Army's Paeon removed, turn Mage's Ballad into an AoE stance, and Wanderer's Minuet into a single target stance and remove the stance weaving aspect of bard outright (it leads to weird game design if nothing else and the rotation for aoe and ST just feels rough because of the stance, AOE being especially bad).

And then find a way to work the song aspect into other parts of the class instead. BRD feels at its best in WM, at its worst in AP, and merely okay in MB, and with how busy the rotation is right now, changing stances regularly doesn't feel good.

All the class needs is a constant, persistent raid-wide buff and it can maintain some level of thematic cohesion. So just make it so they passively give 1.5% crit like they did in SB (if that's what it did) and that's the constant morale boost they give, Battle Voice can handle the rest.

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Why settle for a half-assed Bard though? Why are you okay with an Archer who plays a song that slightly buffs the party and is firing arrows the other 95% of the time? My whole argument is I’m not okay with that. I’ve never been okay with that. There’s literally no reason any of us should be so obsessed with trying to make the current Bard work for both archer players and musician players when it’s always only ever been a mix of water and oil. They don’t mix together. So long as this job stays merged, it will always either not be enough of an Archer or not enough of a Bard. We need to stop pretending that you can solve this problem while leaving it the same job.

Actually, there is one way I could see you actually appeasing both sides of the arguement, but it’s an extremely time-inefficient method:

Create a Ranger Stance and a Bard Stance that are both entirely cosmetic, almost like an Egi-Glamour system but with your entire character.

You input a command, like /bardstance or /rangerstance, and what happens is this…

Your Bow changes to a Harp, every bow will also have a Harp model used for this purpose. All of your actions, and I do mean literally all of your actions, turn into music. Heavy Shot, Straight Shot, Caustic Bite, Bloodletter, Iron Jaws, Empyreal Arrow, Refulgent Arrow… literally everything becomes a song version of the same attack. They all do the same things, the differences are only cosmetic.

Under Ranger Stance, your weapon stays a bow and your song abilities currently normal on Bard are changed to archer-themed actions instead.

There you have it: An Archer and a Bard existing in the same space. You are basically designing an all new job in terms of animations and weapons, except it’s not a new job, it’s just a reskin of an existing one. THAT would make every Bard player happy because you could then just choose which style suits you with no consequences to your DPS, but it’s the least plausible solution available.

Trying to separate Bard from Ranger as two different roles is messy and doesn’t have a perfect solution either, but at the very least you do get 2 different jobs out of if that would play differently, so there’s more incentive for the designers to consider that route.

Honestly, I don’t really care what happens as long as a day comes where a genuine, to-it’s-name musician can exist in this game, and not a half-assed version that we’re all just tolerating because we don’t think Square is willing to get their hands dirty making the mess they need to make to fix this ancient design mistake.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

As for the people not wanting to abandon the job they’ve been leveling and gearing up up till now, you can just have the launch of 6.0 include all players who have currently leveled pre-rework Bard to any level have that level transfer over to new bard, and you get the luxury of keeping both Ranger and Bard.

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I’m going to ask you again, because you either missed my questions or outright ignored them: why are BRDs the ones who have to sacrifice their job for those who want Ranger? Why are we the ones who lose our job just so (general) you can have yours? Are you not satisfied with them adding Ranger as a new expansion job? Why does it have to take over and change the BRD that has existed in this game since Patch 1.20?

As for this nonsense of people “settling” for a half-assed BRD, have you been ignoring the threads and comments asking for BRD to be more BRD-like? They’re fairly rife amongst the BRD community.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I’m going to ask you again, because you either missed my questions or outright ignored them: why are BRDs the ones who have to sacrifice their job for those who want Ranger? Why are we the ones who lose our job just so (general) you can have yours? Are you not satisfied with them adding Ranger as a new expansion job? Why does it have to take over and change the BRD that has existed in this game since Patch 1.20?

As for this nonsense of people “settling” for a half-assed BRD, have you been ignoring the threads and comments asking for BRD to be more BRD-like? They’re fairly rife amongst the BRD community.

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Because it makes more sense for Ranger to stem from Archer, and also allows for Bards to actually have a Harp weapon instead of a bow. Essentially, your argument is you want to fight over the specific slot Bard currently occupies, even if everything about the Bard identity transfers to a different slot, and you have access to that slot just as you would if it weren't moved. I don't really see what's so special about THAT specific slot that it's worth arguing over.

And I am aware of the "make Bard more Bard-like" debate all around, but the reason why it's settling on mediocrity is because archetype of a battle-musician and an archer are not things that have ever been welded together nor do they mix in a way that satisfies the fantasy both camps desire. Why should we fight for a job to be a kinda-archer/kinda-bard when we can just have an Archer and Bard as two separate entities?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Retconning lore is not an amount of work that you can quantify with man hours unlike actually designing the actions. For the job quests, this concept would definitely require an all-new quest line for the Ranger, but where you would be putting in hours to add quests for the “Old” job quest line, you would be reusing the same quest line for Bard, everywhere that you’re adding work on Ranger, you’re taking away work from Bard and vice versa. Is it more work than creating Dancer or Gunbreaker? Yes, but not so much when you also take into consideration work also done on existing jobs like Machinist. Machinist had a lot of changes made that took a lot of time as well, assuming you don’t need to overhaul any other existing jobs come 6.0, you’re really not looking at a huge differentiation in man hours if you handle it intelligently.

The biggest mess will stem from the retconned lore, but there is no clean answer for how to correct that. Amalgamating Archer and Bard together was a huge mistake from 1.2. It never should’ve happened, but we can’t just time travel backwards and undo that, so at some point we’re going to need to make a little mess if we want to appease BOTH the Archers AND the Bards.

As for the people not wanting to abandon the job they’ve been leveling and gearing up up till now, you can just have the launch of 6.0 include all players who have currently leveled pre-rework Bard to any level have that level transfer over to new bard, and you get the luxury of keeping both Ranger and Bard.

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No. You are severely underestimating the work required. Despite all the changes Machinist underwent, it retained all its lore and reused several animations. Furthermore, you assume no other jobs will need substantial work themselves yet we need only look at the healers to argue quite the contrary. Not only has there been plenty of contempt towards their changes, it's likely a fourth will be added. And we know how difficult a time the dev team has had balancing healers. Regardless, it's shoehorning a bastardized version of Ranger onto a pre-existing Bard to promptly make a bastardized version of new Bard. The probability of this is precisely zero. If they had any aspirations of implementing Ranger, it would have been done by now, or even hinted at. They don't. You keep insisting people who prefer "Bard" will still have their lore if your idea did pan out. However, what about those who like the duo integration? They enjoy being both a Bard and an Archer/Ranger. That aspect is gone all because you want your version of a job. Considering the backlash the dev team would incur, it only adds to the sheer unlikeliness even if it were remotely feasible.

Put simply. It will not happen. If they add a musical themed job again, it will be entirely separate from Bard. And Ranger will inevitably exist within current Bard.

First and foremost, I'm very much on the "bards keep their bows" camp. I've always personally fantasized Rangers as crossbow wielders myself. I like the fact bards are singing archers in this game because its a very very unique aesthetic compared to the bards of other games. What I want to see back is the song buffs. My favorite part, however weak it was, about bards was their crit buff they maintained while keeping their songs up.

I like the idea of bard having weaker damage buffs, but they're all aoe, and dancer having stronger but single target buffs.

I also had the idea of Foe's returning as a Soul Voice spender in the back of my head for awhile now. Make it a 5% damage buff that consumes 10 soul voice a tick and disable its generation while active? Who knows. I like what they have now and would rather them make their utility more interesting then throw it all out and waste resources on retconning a whole job into the game.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Because it makes more sense for Ranger to stem from Archer, and also allows for Bards to actually have a Harp weapon instead of a bow. Essentially, your argument is you want to fight over the specific slot Bard currently occupies, even if everything about the Bard identity transfers to a different slot, and you have access to that slot just as you would if it weren't moved. I don't really see what's so special about THAT specific slot that it's worth arguing over.

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Unfortunately for you, the developers decided about 7 years ago to make Bard stem from Archer. Not Ranger, but Bard. Bards utilize a harp less now than they did in ARR, HW, or even SB: at least then, their support was tied to the harp weapon despite it not being a sort of main or offhand. With SB, they also got flutes.

The point of my entire argument is that individuals that want Ranger are being selfish by trying to oust Bard out of the “specific spot” it’s had since 1.20. They aren’t considering what BRD players want; they are just thinking about what they want. And apparently it’s not enough to have Ranger as a separate thing. As I said repeatedly: why are Bards the ones who have to give up their already established job (and everything along with it) to please those who want Ranger?

Clearly you must think it’s special enough to advocate for taking it away from Bard for Ranger as opposed to Ranger being a 6.0/7.0 job.

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And I am aware of the "make Bard more Bard-like" debate all around, but the reason why it's settling on mediocrity is because archetype of a battle-musician and an archer are not things that have ever been welded together nor do they mix in a way that satisfies the fantasy both camps desire. Why should we fight for a job to be a kinda-archer/kinda-bard when we can just have an Archer and Bard as two separate entities?

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I’m fairly certain the reasons why Bard lost its support has little to do with Archer+Bard incompatibility and more from the developers wanting to prevent the job from dominating as it has so often in the past. SB BRD was very praised for how “BRD-like” it felt without succumbing to this pure BRD archetype present in games like FFXI. A hybrid job is perfectly capable of existing, as BRD did up until this expansion. And, if the hybrid can exist, why is there a need to destroy it and separate it? There is no need: there’s only a desire by those who want Ranger.

If the argument for separate entities was to be made, you’re about 6 years too late for it.



Speaking for myself: I’m pleased with the hybrid design. I like BRD wielding a bow and arrow, and I don’t see said weapon being exclusive to a Ranger. So the argument about how Bards can’t be bow wielders seems weak to me. Implementing more harp/flute aspects is perfectly fine. But there’s little need to take the bow away and give it to Ranger. Especially since I think a crossbow would be far more suiting.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

For the job quests, this concept would definitely require an all-new quest line for the Ranger, but where you would be putting in hours to add quests for the “Old” job quest line, you would be reusing the same quest line for Bard, everywhere that you’re adding work on Ranger, you’re taking away work from Bard and vice versa.

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It requires far more work than you're thinking. Lets break down what DNC and GNB got this expansion:

1. Designing the theme of the Job and drawing up concept art.
2. Creating Job lore
3. Creating a brand new series of Job quests.
4. Creating a brand new set of Artifact Gear.
5. Creating, animating, and recording new skills and abilities.

Here's what would need to done if separating Bard and Ranger:

1. Designing the theme of Ranger and drawing up concept art.
2. Creating Job lore for Ranger
3. Creating a brand new series of Job quests for Ranger.
4. Creating a brand new set of Artifact Gear for Ranger.
5. Re-designing some of the Primal/Crafted Primal/UCoB/UWU weapons for Ranger because it'd be dumb as balls for the Ranger to be running around with the UWU Artemis Bow which has a harp built into it.
6. Creating and animating new skills and abilities for Ranger.
7. Drawing up new concept art for Bard, including what kind of weapons they would use.
8. Re-writing the Job lore for Bard which retcons the shit out published material.
9. Re-writing the Job quests.
10. Re-designing the Artifact gear for Bard since they're no longer using Bows.
11. Creating all new Primal/UCoB/UWU weapons because you would have a lot of pissed Bards pissed at losing access to gear they earned. Side note, SE didn't even bother making Primal/UCoB/UWU weapons for DNC and GNB because it was too much work.
12. Creating, animating, and recording new skills and abilities.

Are you seriously going to say it's not that much more work than the MCH rework and that SE just needs to plan things better? There is a lot of stuff that would need to be changed.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

The biggest mess will stem from the retconned lore, but there is no clean answer for how to correct that.

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There is an easy answer, it's called "don't rework the Job".

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Amalgamating Archer and Bard together was a huge mistake from 1.2. It never should’ve happened, but we can’t just time travel backwards and undo that, so at some point we’re going to need to make a little mess if we want to appease BOTH the Archers AND the Bards.

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Amalgamating Archer and Bard was a conscious design decision by SE. Clearly you didn't read my last post highlighting the current Bard Job Lore so let me repeat what Jehantel said in the level 35 Job quest:

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Ever since nations first quarreled, armies have fielded archers wherewith they rained death upon the enemy from afar. As the battle unfolded, however, the distinction between the lines of friend and foe would grow hazy. Yet the archer's part did not end there.
He had to stay ever alert, with arrow nocked and eyes trained upon the struggle.
Even as his comrades fell, turning the earth red with their blood, the archer could ill afford to avert his gaze, lest that moment cost another his life.
One need not have a vivid imagination to appreciate the torrent of emotions that raged within him in that moment.
Nerves near to fraying, his breast fit to burst, the archer did the only thing he could: he sang. His bow became a makeshift instrument, plucked as an accompaniment.
At first, the archer sang only to still the roiling within. But his voice chanced to carry to his comrades. It inspirited those engaged in combat, lending strength to their sword arms. And to those who lay upon the precipice of death, it granted a measure of peace.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

If you are a true fan of the Bard aesthetic, why wouldn’t you want that over trying to play tug of war with the Archer players over the current Bard?

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Because we’re a fan of the Bard aesthetic that SE created, an Archer who was overcome with emotions when looking at battles from afar and began to use their bow as an instrument. How are you not getting this.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Why settle for a half-assed Bard though? Why are you okay with an Archer who plays a song that slightly buffs the party and is firing arrows the other 95% of the time?

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We’re not, that’s why Bards are asking for SE to return some support abilities. Bringing back stuff like Foe Requiem will bring Bard back in line with the Job Lore by keeping them as an Archer who supports their allies through song.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Create a Ranger Stance and a Bard Stance that are both entirely cosmetic, almost like an Egi-Glamour system but with your entire character.

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This is an incredibly stupid solution to what shouldn’t even be an issue. Archer was never meant to go into Ranger, it was always meant to go into Bard. Why would they bother wasting time creating an entirely new set of animations just because there are people that don’t like their vision of the their Job.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Because it makes more sense for Ranger to stem from Archer, and also allows for Bards to actually have a Harp weapon instead of a bow.

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I cannot stress this enough, read the Job quests for Bard. The Job quests make it very clear why Archers became Bards.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

And I am aware of the "make Bard more Bard-like" debate all around, but the reason why it's settling on mediocrity is because archetype of a battle-musician and an archer are not things that have ever been welded together nor do they mix in a way that satisfies the fantasy both camps desire.

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Except it does satisfy people. I love the Job that SE created and you’re seriously going to tell me that I’m not satisfied with it? Stop projecting just because it doesn’t satisfy you, and stop suggesting that SE ruin a Job that many people are a fan of. SE can create a separate Ranger Job, that’s perfectly fine, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of what makes Bard unique.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

No. You are severely underestimating the work required. Despite all the changes Machinist underwent, it retained all its lore and reused several animations. Furthermore, you assume no other jobs will need substantial work themselves yet we need only look at the healers to argue quite the contrary. Not only has there been plenty of contempt towards their changes, it's likely a fourth will be added. And we know how difficult a time the dev team has had balancing healers. Regardless, it's shoehorning a bastardized version of Ranger onto a pre-existing Bard to promptly make a bastardized version of new Bard. The probability of this is precisely zero. If they had any aspirations of implementing Ranger, it would have been done by now, or even hinted at. They don't. You keep insisting people who prefer "Bard" will still have their lore if your idea did pan out. However, what about those who like the duo integration? They enjoy being both a Bard and an Archer/Ranger. That aspect is gone all because you want your version of a job. Considering the backlash the dev team would incur, it only adds to the sheer unlikeliness even if it were remotely feasible.

Put simply. It will not happen. If they add a musical themed job again, it will be entirely separate from Bard. And Ranger will inevitably exist within current Bard.

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That was also a suggestion I brought up that everyone ignored.

Leave Bard be and just add in Musician, Flautist, Minstrel, Melodist, Harmonist, or something like that. Have a true-to-it's name musician and leave Bard as an archer who maybe sings once in a while.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

That was also a suggestion I brought up that everyone ignored.

Leave Bard be and just add in Musician, Flautist, Minstrel, Melodist, Harmonist, or something like that. Have a true-to-it's name musician and leave Bard as an archer who maybe sings once in a while.

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Probably because your suggestion also involved gutting BRD and relegating it to little more than “a misnomer”. People are advocating against destroying the job. Not for it.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Probably because your suggestion also involved gutting BRD and relegating it to little more than “a misnomer”. People are advocating against destroying the job. Not for it.

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Why not have 3 jobs then? 1 Dedicated Ranger, 1 Dedicated Musician, and a Bard that flexes. Everyone wins then

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

That was also a suggestion I brought up that everyone ignored.

Leave Bard be and just add in Musician, Flautist, Minstrel, Melodist, Harmonist, or something like that. Have a true-to-it's name musician and leave Bard as an archer who maybe sings once in a while.

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I think BRD in XIV drew a lot from FFIV's Edward Chris von Muir. The famous "Spoony Bard". So, I don't see why insist on separating one from the other.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

I think BRD in XIV drew a lot from FFIV's Edward Chris von Muir. The famous "Spoony Bard". So, I don't see why insist on separating one from the other.

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Besides their Artifact Gear, I don't see anything that even remotely resemble's Edward in Bard's kit.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Unfortunately for you, the developers decided about 7 years ago to make Bard stem from Archer. Not Ranger, but Bard. Bards utilize a harp less now than they did in ARR, HW, or even SB: at least then, their support was tied to the harp weapon despite it not being a sort of main or offhand. With SB, they also got flutes.

The point of my entire argument is that individuals that want Ranger are being selfish by trying to oust Bard out of the “specific spot” it’s had since 1.20. They aren’t considering what BRD players want; they are just thinking about what they want. And apparently it’s not enough to have Ranger as a separate thing. As I said repeatedly: why are Bards the ones who have to give up their already established job (and everything along with it) to please those who want Ranger?

Clearly you must think it’s special enough to advocate for taking it away from Bard for Ranger as opposed to Ranger being a 6.0/7.0 job.

Speaking for myself: I’m pleased with the hybrid design. I like BRD wielding a bow and arrow, and I don’t see said weapon being exclusive to a Ranger. So the argument about how Bards can’t be bow wielders seems weak to me. Implementing more harp/flute aspects is perfectly fine. But there’s little need to take the bow away and give it to Ranger. Especially since I think a crossbow would be far more suiting.

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Also speaking for myself, I love the design of Bard in this game too. This is by far the most interesting Archer class I've played in any MMO, and I'd rather not see it get pointlessly destroyed and split into two classes that are likely to be designed to generic standards and with inferior mechanics and gameplay. Bard design is literally already a Ranger with songs instead of pets anyway, I feel like some of the hand-wringing over this just revolves around the fact that it's literally called Bard instead of Ranger.

(Hyomin and I have both cleared UwU as Bards as well, I'm fairly sure the developers are more inclined to listen to people who are actually passionate about the class, over someone from the outside that wants to gut it.)

On another note, to drive home the point that splitting them is actually a lot harder than what people here may think, I challenge you all to come up with exact ideas on how this should be done. Instead of the usual 'I want this to be done, I'll leave it to the devs to figure out the logistics themselves'. I spent the last two nights coming up with ideas on what could be done with current Bard, and that's a lot easier on the developers than what some of you are proposing. And yet it still requires a ton of thought.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5167612
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5168653

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

On another note, to drive home the point that splitting them is actually a lot harder than what people here may think, I challenge you all to come up with exact ideas on how this should be done. Instead of the usual 'I want this to be done, I'll leave it to the devs to figure out the logistics themselves'. I spent the last two nights coming up with ideas on what could be done with current Bard, and that's a lot easier on the developers than what some of you are proposing. And yet it still requires a ton of thought.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5167612
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5168653

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To piggy back on the ideas Saito has brainstormed, it also falls on the developers to balance any gameplay changes that are implemented. This is crucial to prevent BRD from dominating the physical ranged spot, as it has wont to do. As we are seeing in Shadowbringers, balance is not easily obtained.

However, reworking BRD to be more BRD-y is far less work than the Archer > Ranger and Bard split people are advocating for in this discussion. Even with the difficulty of attempting to make BRD more like its namesake (and not be a clunky and/or busted mess).

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Besides their Artifact Gear, I don't see anything that even remotely resemble's Edward in Bard's kit.

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Good to know you don't see it. But bard, using bows and instruments crafted as bows is one of the things that appeals to people in this game. And after this game has established much of its content as its design and being a game that likes to "bring back the themes that are popular in Final Fantasy" its difficult to be partisan with you when you want one thing, regardless of what its lost in the process.

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

Also speaking for myself, I love the design of Bard in this game too. This is by far the most interesting Archer class I've played in any MMO, and I'd rather not see it get pointlessly destroyed and split into two classes that are likely to be designed to generic standards and with inferior mechanics and gameplay. Bard design is literally already a Ranger with songs instead of pets anyway, I feel like some of the hand-wringing over this just revolves around the fact that it's literally called Bard instead of Ranger.

(Hyomin and I have both cleared UwU as Bards as well, I'm fairly sure the developers are more inclined to listen to people who are actually passionate about the class, over someone from the outside that wants to gut it.)

On another note, to drive home the point that splitting them is actually a lot harder than what people here may think, I challenge you all to come up with exact ideas on how this should be done. Instead of the usual 'I want this to be done, I'll leave it to the devs to figure out the logistics themselves'. I spent the last two nights coming up with ideas on what could be done with current Bard, and that's a lot easier on the developers than what some of you are proposing. And yet it still requires a ton of thought.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5167612
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post5168653

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Challenge accepted, see you in a few hours.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Good to know you don't see it. But bard, using bows and instruments crafted as bows is one of the things that appeals to people in this game. And after this game has established much of its content as its design and being a game that likes to "bring back the themes that are popular in Final Fantasy" its difficult to be partisan with you when you want one thing, regardless of what its lost in the process.

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What frustrates me about this statement is that it kinda sounds like this: "Wow, so you really can't see the resemblance to Edward? Well there are resemblances, but instead of explaining them to defend my point and show you what your'e missing, I'm just going to reiterate that people like a bow that is also a harp." Which by the way is only true for a handful of artifact weapons. Not all artifact weapons, just a few. 95% percent of bows are literally just bows.

I agree that it would've been a very interesting way to bridge the two archetypes... if it actually influenced anything about Bard's abilities and identity instead of just be a mild cosmetic attachment.

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

(Hyomin and I have both cleared UwU as Bards as well, I'm fairly sure the developers are more inclined to listen to people who are actually passionate about the class, over someone from the outside that wants to gut it.)

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This is unrelated and uncalled for. SE takes feedback from its entire userbase equally, and have even stated as much in the past. There is no reason to try and belittle someone or their ideas whether or not you have cleared UwU or anything else for that matter. You can be just as passionate about a job as someone else no matter if you clear endgame raids or stick to dungeons. Clearing endgame does not give you the right to call someone an outsider.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

This is unrelated and uncalled for. SE takes feedback from its entire userbase equally, and have even stated as much in the past. There is no reason to try and belittle someone or their ideas whether or not you have cleared UwU or anything else for that matter. You can be just as passionate about a job as someone else no matter if you clear endgame raids or stick to dungeons. Clearing endgame does not give you the right to call someone an outsider.

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I think the point of this quip was to point out that some of us have mained and played this job for years. Whereas there are people making suggestions to change Bard to Ranger that haven’t played the job or who decided to pick it up this expansion because now it’s closer to what they want; otherwise, they’ve ignored it through its best and its worst. However, it’s suddenly crucial that they get their ideal job, and screw those who want Bard to return to being a Bard, I guess. That’s the impression I’ve gotten from posters, anyways: in this thread and a few others.

Maybe we could just add in a new musically oriented job, leaving Bard the way it is, but we can call the new music job "Ranger" instead of Musician and the like.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I agree that it would've been a very interesting way to bridge the two archetypes... if it actually influenced anything about Bard's abilities and identity instead of just be a mild cosmetic attachment.

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Well, the attachment is what adds more complexity to BRD than it would be as a Ranger. It at this point has most if not all the abilities it could get as a ranger, with the bonus now being the harp you seem to not like, as its not integrated to the job identity/archetype instead of some cosmetic fanservice.


Unless you'd rather see them add "animals/critters" to support them because then it would definitely not tread on MCH/SMN territory with pets. And we know how they 'love' pets.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Maybe we could just add in a new musically oriented job, leaving Bard the way it is, but we can call the new music job "Ranger" instead of Musician and the like.

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Or we can make BRD more BRD-like, returning musical elements to its Archer-Bard hybrid nature, and give those who want Ranger a Ranger job worthy of the name. Your suggestion here will produce nothing more than threads like this, except the argument will be “why the fresh heck is a Ranger playing songs”.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Or we can make BRD more BRD-like, returning musical elements to its Archer-Bard hybrid nature, and give those who want Ranger a Ranger job worthy of the name. Your suggestion here will produce nothing more than threads like this, except the argument will be “why the fresh heck is a Ranger playing songs”.

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Why the fresh heck is Bard shooting arrows? I feel like there's a double standard at play here where having an Archer who maybe sings a song on occasion is something we've established is what many of you posting here want to retain, but it's not okay for us to include an instrument wielding job disconnected from Bard entirely for the players who want a musical job.

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Originally Posted by Mahrze

Well, the attachment is what adds more complexity to BRD than it would be as a Ranger. It at this point has most if not all the abilities it could get as a ranger, with the bonus now being the harp you seem to not like, as its not integrated to the job identity/archetype instead of some cosmetic fanservice.


Unless you'd rather see them add "animals/critters" to support them because then it would definitely not tread on MCH/SMN territory with pets. And we know how they 'love' pets.

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Wait, how does a glorified Christmas Ornament that hangs form like 5 bows in the game and does literally nothing else add more complexity to Bard?

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I think the point of this quip was to point out that some of us have mained and played this job for years. Whereas there are people making suggestions to change Bard to Ranger that haven’t played the job or who decided to pick it up this expansion because now it’s closer to what they want; otherwise, they’ve ignored it through its best and its worst. However, it’s suddenly crucial that they get their ideal job, and screw those who want Bard to return to being a Bard, I guess. That’s the impression I’ve gotten from posters, anyways: in this thread and a few others.

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It makes little difference. There are people who have been playing BRD since its incarnation in 1.x that haven't even attempted endgame just as there are people who clear endgame in the same year that they join.

Passion is completely unrelated to endgame progress and it was a very elitist way to try and insult someone and insinuate they are more passionate than another which is immeasurable.

When it comes to job flavor, no opinion is more valuable than another. When it comes to raiding balance, then their opinion may be more valuable in terms of that specifically. But last I checked, that isn't what this is about.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I think the point of this quip was to point out that some of us have mained and played this job for years. Whereas there are people making suggestions to change Bard to Ranger that haven’t played the job or who decided to pick it up this expansion because now it’s closer to what they want; otherwise, they’ve ignored it through its best and its worst. However, it’s suddenly crucial that they get their ideal job, and screw those who want Bard to return to being a Bard, I guess. That’s the impression I’ve gotten from posters, anyways: in this thread and a few others.

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This is what I was going for, yes.

It's hard to take this community seriously when so many people on this side of the ocean advocate for drastic measures to happen, without any consideration for the logistics that goes into designing such things. Again, if this were as trivial as people think it'd be, Summoner and Scholar would have been fully split by now. And yet... They still aren't, despite that they already existed as separate jobs from the beginning, and the developers OPENLY admitting that this was a mistake for years.

(Also, some posters in this thread would really hate DnD, which is what Ultima was inspired by, which is what ultimately inspired FF as a franchise, if not all of modern RPGs as a whole. In DnD, Bards can wield any weapon, shared un-Bard like utility magic with the pure spellcasting classes, had exclusive crowd control magic with the most famous being literally insulting someone in the wittiest way you could come up with, and instruments are treated as side equipment for flavor/skill check purposes. If anything, the concept of Bards who can't wield traditional weapons and stick purely to instruments is the highly unnatural concept that deviates from what Bards originally were in the old days.)

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Challenge accepted, see you in a few hours.

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Alright, sure. I'll even be a little lenient and give you three days to work on this. I won't accept glamour-based measures as an answer, since the original topic was about splitting Bard into two fully fledged classes.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

It makes little difference. There are people who have been playing BRD since its incarnation in 1.x that haven't even attempted endgame just as there are people who clear endgame in the same year that they join.

Passion is completely unrelated to endgame progress and it was a very elitist way to try and insult someone and insinuate they are more passionate than another which is immeasurable.

When it comes to job flavor, no opinion is more valuable than another. When it comes to raiding balance, then their opinion may be more valuable in terms of that specifically. But last I checked, that isn't what this is about.

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I’d say the opinions of those who have stuck with a job for years carries a bit more weight than opinions from someone who picked it up two months ago and decided they want it completely overhauled to satisfy their desires, or opinions from those of whom don’t even play the job.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Why the fresh heck is Bard shooting arrows? I feel like there's a double standard at play here where having an Archer who maybe sings a song on occasion is something we've established is what many of you posting here want to retain, but it's not okay for us to include an instrument wielding job disconnected from Bard entirely for the players who want a musical job.

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Because it’s an Archer-Bard hybrid. Because of its lore in this game. I suggest you go and read Beddict’s last post to you, which nicely outlined the evolution the developers gave Archer as it journeys and transitions into Bard. The job is a hybrid job.

You haven’t really been advocating for a musician-style job. At least, not in any positive way. As I pointed out prior, your suggestion for Musician involved gutting Bard, which people are advocating against. This is in addition to your Bard/Ranger split discussion a few posts back, which, again, guts the existing job. Every suggestion you make is to give you what you want; but you don’t stop to consider what others want. And it comes off, to me at least, as if you don’t care what happens to Bard or how those who want to make it more BRD-y feel so long as you get what you want. It’s selfish.

I don’t care if they want to add Musician or Ranger or whatever. But don’t destroy my job to do so. And that’s ultimately what your suggestions do, which is why I’m arguing against them.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Wait, how does a glorified Christmas Ornament that hangs form like 5 bows in the game and does literally nothing else add more complexity to Bard?

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Aight, I'll bite.

You're not mistaken that for all intents and purposes. A BRD right now has very little things to do in terms of stepping into either being a "Bard in the whole sense" or be a "True Archer/Ranger who uses the bow like a bowman should", this is stemming from making more generic comparisons about the archetypes of both "jobs".

However, BRD as it stands already checks the boxes of both "archetypes" rather well without them having to be super interwoven and show some form of artistic synergy.
Would I like for abilities to be more "in theme" with notes and other music things to really make BRD shine as a musically themed job? Yes, yes I would.
Do I have realistic expectations and know that this may not if ever happen? Yes, yes I do.
Would I like this in lieu of the lack of weapons and other items that seem like they are tacked on and offer little to no distinguishable feature/requirement for their performance? I think you see the pattern here.

The way they took Archer which was a simplified Ranger in the early days of the game and chose Bard instead of a Ranger because they had their reasons to (whichever those are) doesn't take away that this job which has plenty of potential in its design is better off built on and improved on said design than saying "screw it, make two jobs and let any and all shenanigans be dealt with in due time".

Not invalidating your desire, but I am not subscribed to "I want this to be a thing with what I have and you guys who are attaching this other thing to what I want should get another thing that makes your thing separate from mine, regardless of what comes and goes from it".


Now, I do have complaints with how SE likes to make mutually exclusive both being the new kid on the block and said new kid needs to have all the tools. Bard and Dancer shouldn't be at odds as to who gives what. They can each give out something as support to their teams. And the fact that songs get gutted in some form for the sake of letting the new kid shine with dances is a bit annoying to say the least.


A bard could easily offer support without causing a double dip with a dancer in the group. Even more so when DNC mostly buffs only one player with 0 downtime.

I am shy and bad with conveying my thoughts but here it goes. Yes, I have popped in to other bard forums. I have tried to help support all the crazy ideas out there. Why? Because I want the fighting to stop. I am a peacemaker at heart. I want everyone to be happy. But inside I have been screaming, "I want bard back! I don't want to be a ranger! I don't want to play only a harp." And Hyomin's frustrations are not that far off from my own. SE put archer and bard together and some of us love it that way.

Bard has been my main since the beginning. It was my starting job. The job I played through every msq. The job I studied to be able to join a static and be at my top performance. The job I RDed as to help with my shyness. The perspective of my short stories on my FC's discord. It is my passion. And doing the amazing ShB story as bard as it is soured the story for me a little.

This thread is called "Bard's thematic future" not ranger, not minstrel....bard. As in FF14's vision of bard. Which is a bow wielding job that once sang to to fortify the spirits of their companions. I just want to feel like a good support job again.

So I end with a thank you to all the people that are passionate about ff14's version of bard. Thank you for finding the words that I can not. Thank you for being a voice that I can find comfort in.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I’d say the opinions of those who have stuck with a job for years carries a bit more weight than opinions from someone who picked it up two months ago and decided they want it completely overhauled to satisfy their desires, or opinions from those of whom don’t even play the job.

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Do we know how long that person played BRD, though? We do not. Even a character search would be fruitless as it could be a 2nd account.

I've personally played ARC since the first days of 1.0 and can still see merit in every idea presented, there are no bad ideas here. Some more feasible than others but it is not right to rip into eachother over your differing opinions. The ARC players should be striving to find middle grounds and good, new ideas to present to SE - not getting stuck in bickering over the negative parts.

You hate every part of their idea? Okay that's fine, try to find a way to make their idea likable to you. That's how we create. That's how we provide constructive criticism. That's how we make changes.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

Do we know how long that person played BRD, though? We do not. Even a character search would be fruitless as it could be a 2nd account.

I've personally played ARC since the first days of 1.0 and can still see merit in every idea presented, there are no bad ideas here. Some more feasible than others but it is not right to rip into eachother over your differing opinions. The ARC players should be striving to find middle grounds and good, new ideas to present to SE - not getting stuck in bickering over the negative parts.

You hate every part of their idea? Okay that's fine, try to find a way to make their idea likable to you. That's how we create. That's how we provide constructive criticism. That's how we make changes.

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Normally, I would agree.

But what's being proposed here amounts to literally toppling over 6+ years worth of established lore, development effort, and class communities. Some people choose to ignore that for reasons, and there's no real middle ground for such things.

It's really not something that will ever happen, and no developer worth their salt will ever take this kind of proposal seriously, when there's already precedent in this very game that they won't do similar things for cases that are supposedly much easier to implement such ideas already.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

Do we know how long that person played BRD, though? We do not. Even a character search would be fruitless as it could be a 2nd account.

I've personally played ARC since the first days of 1.0 and can still see merit in every idea presented, there are no bad ideas here. Some more feasible than others but it is not right to rip into eachother over your differing opinions. The ARC players should be striving to find middle grounds and good, new ideas to present to SE - not getting stuck in bickering over the negative parts.

You hate every part of their idea? Okay that's fine, try to find a way to make their idea likable to you. That's how we create. That's how we provide constructive criticism. That's how we make changes.

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My arguments here are against those who advocate gutting the existing BRD in order to give them what they want. It comes off as inherently selfish to make all of these suggestions for Ranger or Musician all at the expense of the current BRD’s gameplay/design. Because it gives the impression that those making them don’t care what happens to the job or how those who play it feel so long as they get theirs. As I said to ty_taurus: I don’t care if they put in Ranger or Musician or Flautist or whatever. But don’t advocate for the destruction of my BRD to do it.

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Originally Posted by MartaDemireux

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Originally Posted by SaitoHikari

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

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I think there's less of an issue about who's opinion is worth more than to simply as a collective appreciate the good points and disregard the bad ones if said bad ones have no rhyme nor reason.


Obsessing over who's opinion has more weight due to content won't lead anyone anywhere.

Yeah I'm sorry but no, any idea of removing BRD's bow aesthetic, changing the original Archer to Bard transition and giving it to Ranger, turning Bard into a completely separate job on it's own is going to be a hard no from me fam. Other people have been saying it in far nicer ways, but this is my Bard, I've put in the time, gained an identity and history to my character on it. You want Ranger, fine. You can have Ranger. But make it your own job. I love my hybrid Bard. I love the idea of singing a song that brings out my buddies inner super saiyan, then putting an arrow between the eyes of some fool who thought he could step up to me.

The hilarious thing is I remember I used to feel the same way. When I first started playing this game in 2.0, I felt baited when I got to 30 and suddenly found out that this Legolas styled archer I was building up in my head was suddenly getting her Karaoke on. But as time has gone by I've grown to appreciate what SE did with Bard in XIV. I never would have even considered Bard as an option if it had been the first job offered to me. Heck I left Edward out of my party in IV. But instead XIV gave it a whole new aesthetic, it made me appreciate being more then just being the Pew pew archer, and made me value being a a better team player. In short SE made Bard cool to me, and because of it I started giving BRD a shot in other things. Hell I'm a Bard in my DnD campaign now, after considering it a worthless class for years.

So nah. Current Bard is fine with it's 'thematic future'. Just needs some of its 4.0 mojo back. Give me back my support suite from Stormblood, or just a few tools then expand more upon its in 6.0. You want ranger? Cool. Ask for Ranger then. I bet a really cool ranger could be built using crossbows or Greatbows, maybe even with a secondary throwing hatchet as an a secondary arm, we could use a DPS with a secondary arm. You want a pure music class? Sure, lets have that. X2's songstress could make an awesome healer or caster in this game.

But stay away from my hybrid job. Their is nothing wrong with Bard being both a baller musician and a bad ass archer at the same time.

Boy theres some heated discussion going on now, but i think it is a very needed one. If theres not a stink coming from the bards, it would be business as usual and it would just be more ping pong between ranger-bards and bard-rangers. I realize those of you who identify as Bard want to revert back to previous incarnations and build off that, especially now with Dancer showing off how well it can go. I think the Ranger half of us is primarily scared SE will give in. That the ranger half will be sacrificed for more Bard related stuff, which is perfectly fair. The Bard concept has existed longer than Archer at this point, but it still feels like there the possibility of losing what we just now have gained.

Splitting Archer off from bard doesn't mean you have to take the bow or the concepts away. It just means another ranged dps gets born. I advocated starting at 30 and possible requiring having Archer at 30 before the quests pops up just so people don't feel obligated to level bard to 70 just to continue the archer archtype, but admittedly that is a moot concern, as anyone wanting to level Dancer or Machinist are already obligated to level something that isn't that to get there. Just glamouring it away isn't a working solution. That is just a skin deep bandage and wouldn't wash away all the bard themed AF gears or the quests. This is clearly a battle of aesthetics as none of the bards are willing to just go to Dancer who does everything bard used to do, but better and none of the Rangers are willing to move to Machinist who are also physical ranged dps who shoot things. In theory they could Use those Rifle models they have lying around taunting everyone, but would this satisfy the Archer archtype?

I think both sides of the Archer need to ask for a Ranger. The bards need to sing up a storm that they are unhappy with the current bard, and the Archers need to sing equally loud that they are unhappy that their job ends at lv30.

Yes adding another class would be work. Adding any class is work, but that is what we pay them to do. That is what they have opened up a cash shop for. Its not like they have to reinvent everything all over again to fullfill another Archer type job, there is plenty of resources through the FF series to cobble together something of a Ranger. Ranger has been a semi staple class since FF3, and the basic Archer being there since FF2. Limiting it to just Bard and Bard thematics is really just limiting themselves in designs. No pets are needed. Thematically it just need to shoot arrows with doseage of outdoorsmanship, if they expand to the other Ranger related jobs throughout the series this expands much more. Hunters and Snipers from FF Tactics Advanced have enough abilities between them to field a usable Ranger and provide an AF gear set that bard would never get simply because its not bardy enough.

Simply put, Bards stand to lose nothing from just losing the Ranger side of them.

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Originally Posted by Atamis

Splitting Archer off from bard doesn't mean you have to take the bow or the concepts away. It just means another ranged dps gets born. I advocated starting at 30 and possible requiring having Archer at 30 before the quests pops up just so people don't feel obligated to level bard to 70 just to continue the archer archtype, but admittedly that is a moot concern, as anyone wanting to level Dancer or Machinist are already obligated to level something that isn't that to get there.

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If Ranger is ever added, it will not start at level 30, nor will it split off from Archer in an ARC > RNG / ARC > BRD sort of deal like ACN > SMN / SCN > SCH. The developers have repeatedly stated that they will never do another job split—that they regret splitting ACN into SMN and SCH—and new job precedent has all new jobs starting at 20 levels below level cap, not at level 30; that was in HW only, and was abandoned quickly in both SB and ShB. Making a fuss about ARC not continuing into Ranger at level 30 won’t do much, because the developers have their formulae for new content (which includes the jobs), and I think we all know that they stick to it at this point in the game’s life cycle.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

If Ranger is ever added, it will not start at level 30, nor will it split off from Archer in an ARC > RNG / ARC > BRD sort of deal like ACN > SMN / SCN > SCH.

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I realize this. This is not what i am saying. The SMN/SCH thing is that they are LINKED by their sub class of Arcanist. If you level Summoner, your arcanist level goes up and thus your Scholar also gains a level and their spaghetti code apparently does something that also links what abilities they can learn(Or so it has been cited as the reason SMN physicks suck so hard and why Aetherflow can't be changed on one or the other). What i said was simply requiring you to have archer at 30 before the quest unlocks the same way you need to be lv 60 in any DoW/M class before Dancer or Gunbreaker unlocks, its just a more restrictive unlock. It is indeed completely unnecessary and can safely be ignored.
Same with the level. I just put it there because in theory thats when it would split from Archer and someone who is new could pick it up and continue their ranger adventure. While yes there is precedent for them to start 20 levels below the current xpac, that doesn't mean its a rule. They want to roll out a new game plus mode, and what better way then to bait a few people to do it with a class they could level doing it all over again at lv30. It too can safely be ignored for the sake of mediocrity and convenience.
I for one truly didn't mind the old job unlock system requiring paladins to get CNJ to 15 before they could advance. It was just another victim of dumbing down the game to appeal to the lowest denominator.

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Originally Posted by Atamis

Same with the level. I just put it there because in theory thats when it would split from Archer and someone who is new could pick it up and continue their ranger adventure. While yes there is precedent for them to start 20 levels below the current xpac, that doesn't mean its a rule. They want to roll out a new game plus mode, and what better way then to bait a few people to do it with a class they could level doing it all over again at lv30. It too can safely be ignored for the sake of mediocrity and convenience.

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Their precedents are generally equivalent to rule when it comes to FFXIV in my opinion, especially when there has been no deviation from any of the formulae the developers use for content in 6 years. A Ranger job will be level 70 if added in 6.0, level 80 if added in 7.0, Level 90 if added in 8.0, etc.. As for New Game+, I haven’t heard anything about it offering experience. The Shadowbringers product page lists New Game+ as a feature that “will allow for replay of previously completed quests while retaining one’s current progression and job level”—the “retaining one’s current progression and job level” doesn’t really imply that players can earn experience from utilizing the feature.

As for the old cross-class system, I don’t really consider it “dumbing down” or “catering to the lowest denominator” to remove the requirement to level a separate class to level 15 just to progress further with one’s chosen class/job. And I did that for ALL the jobs that required it. It was just removing a clunky feature. Same with the cross-class > role skill system. It wasn’t exactly riveting or even challenging to level THM to 26 just so my WHM could have Swiftcast.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

I’d say the opinions of those who have stuck with a job for years carries a bit more weight than opinions from someone who picked it up two months ago and decided they want it completely overhauled to satisfy their desires, or opinions from those of whom don’t even play the job.



Because it’s an Archer-Bard hybrid. Because of its lore in this game. I suggest you go and read Beddict’s last post to you, which nicely outlined the evolution the developers gave Archer as it journeys and transitions into Bard. The job is a hybrid job.

You haven’t really been advocating for a musician-style job. At least, not in any positive way. As I pointed out prior, your suggestion for Musician involved gutting Bard, which people are advocating against. This is in addition to your Bard/Ranger split discussion a few posts back, which, again, guts the existing job. Every suggestion you make is to give you what you want; but you don’t stop to consider what others want. And it comes off, to me at least, as if you don’t care what happens to Bard or how those who want to make it more BRD-y feel so long as you get what you want. It’s selfish.

I don’t care if they want to add Musician or Ranger or whatever. But don’t destroy my job to do so. And that’s ultimately what your suggestions do, which is why I’m arguing against them.

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If all I wanted to do was fight for what I want and ONLY what I want, I wouldn't even be talking about Ranger. I would just demand Bard drop the bow and pick up literally any instrument on the face of the earth. It can be a Triangle for all I care, or maybe a Didgeridoo, as long as it has some at least vague semblance of a connection with music. But I don't want to rob the Archer from the players who want to be marksmen sniping their enemies with arrows. I want both camps to have the job they dream of: A lethal archer able to plant an arrow between the eyes of a fiend halfway across the room AND a prodigious musician using the power of their voice and their instrument alone to tear their enemies apart while occasionally supplying their allies with melodic power.

Keeping this weird Hybrid that can't really commit to either has caused a lot of grief for players who want both these styles, and has been since 1.2. If some people have come to accept it as a job then I can understand that, but the frustration will still be there because Bard's existence essentially destroys any hope of both camps being completely satisfied. So long as it exists, there will likely never be a real musician job, and the fight for it will always make Square feel obligated to include some aspects of music that Archer players didn't sign up for.

Maybe things could be different if the design went in the direction of a 50/50 split between the bow and the harp, but as of now, it has never even been close. 4.0 Bard was still only barely a musician. The songs were a great step in the right direct, but they were the stepping stones of the job, not the apex of it. The Apex of Bard is and always has been attacks of Archery like Refulgent Arrow, and now appropriately Apex Arrow. If having this unholy amalgamation of Archer/Bard will absolutely prevent a real Bard from ever existing, then at least trying to make their combination more even would be a start.