A challenge. Make Bard more Bard.

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Originally Posted by Hysterior

Bard is clearly not a bard in FFXIV
it's just an archer that cast a song ever 30sec, for the rest of the time you play as an archer, clearly

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Yeah but that's part of the problem. Especially if we see a Ranger class, Bard needs to be more Bard-like.

Great video OP, shows what a bard in the truest sense of the world should look like.

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Originally Posted by Hysterior

Bard is clearly not a bard in FFXIV
it's just an archer that cast a song ever 30sec, for the rest of the time you play as an archer, clearly

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

I hope they change BRD into more of a support tbh. Support jobs are my favourite thing to play, but a lot of the time it feels like BRD's support songs take a backseat.

And it looks more like a ranger than a BRD.

I don't mind using a bow, but I'd like music to be the primary focus of the class.

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Crazy people wanting a bard to have anything to do with music and morale. :P

If they add song for the love of christ make them sound all different not like ff11 bard god it got annoying lol.

I kinda like how Mabinogi did their Bard class, you can play ANY song you want and link it to the buffs/attacks of your choice and the music you can make is cool and fun.

I spend hours just standing around playing music to level up my instrument skill so i can play more complex tunes.

Examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MooocNNlu0g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUga4WnNTvU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMJVuKVwgHk

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Originally Posted by Nix

Instruments sound awesome, attacking stuff with a violin would be so much fun!

But let's leave out the penguins D:

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And the unicorns *shudder*

I was so happy to see Bard coming to the game.....but then was disappointed with how it turned out!! I love support jobs and i feel brd just doesn't feel right, it does need to be looked at and i hope they give us more songs and make it more Brd like.

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Originally Posted by Sophia

And the unicorns *shudder*

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Oh gawd Q_Q you are so right lol. While the idea for an instrument wielding BRD was nice, that one looked like it got pooped out of Barbie's dream world.

I'd agree that a more musically inclined bard would not be a bad thing. But People need to understand why the team decided to go this route.

Bard as it is in FFXIV is basically a straight up fusion of the FFXI ranger and bard class. As a long time FFXI player, it is very apparent to me why they thought this pairing would be a good idea.

A lot of players in FFXI had bard as a job, but few actually made bard their main job. Why? Because it was boring to play. the running joke among the player base was that people who got bard to max promptly lied about having it afterwards because no one wants to play the job. It was for pure support and pulling. And while it had its fair share of nuances, it never had the satisfaction of actively seeing its effects on the target directly. You rarely see the bard pull out its daggers to engage in combat. Bard's whole gameplay centered on running back and forth between the melees and mages playing songs in a rotation.

Ranger suffered from a different problem. As a damage dealer that required range for effective accuracy, it made the melee weapons they equipped useless other than stat bonuses. As a job, it was static. Rangers found a spot to stand and then just shot arrows from that position non-stop. The job required almost no movement at all during combat. There is already a job that plays this way: BLM. There's no reason to have another.

The answer was to combine the two jobs so that you had a ranged damage dealer that also had the capacity to enhance teammates based on location. This allowed the bards to both help other players and also feel satisfaction by actively dealing damage and using weaponskills, while also giving ranger players some incentive to stay mobile during combat.

Pure support classes are usually made out to be incredibly good due to their need of having to beat out a DD or healer for a spot in the party. But this has the side effect of them being almost a necessity in endgame content. I'm sure the FFXIV team wanted to give the player base more choice in party composition, so they allowed the bard to also take on some DD duties, and therefore have less reliance on songs. Ifrit and Mog fights do not require bards for this reason. And even garuda fights do not require bards because of their godly songs, but rather for their ranged plume control.

I for one support the team's decision to have combined these classes. And if they do add additional songs and animations and even instruments to the job... great! But I hope the underlying principle remains. The jobs are designed to be fun to play, while also allowing player choice and job variety. Don't lose that.

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Originally Posted by Nix

Oh gawd Q_Q you are so right lol. While the idea for an instrument wielding BRD was nice, that one looked like it got pooped out of Barbie's dream world.

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More like Barbie, My Little Pony and Happy Feet coliding and going supanova like This

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Originally Posted by Polive

*snip*

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I didn't use FFXI Bard as a reference for a reason otherwise I would have put a link up on the OP. However most agree that FFXIV Bard gameplay is nearly 100% identical to an Archer, and that is what draws the disappointment. As someone before said, you play a support skill, then the majority of the time you still play like a regular Archer. That is not 50/50, its more like 90(Archer)/10(Bard)

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I personally would like to hear more music for bard, and to actually see the animation of using instruments like the harp etc.