Quote Originally Posted by Aiselia View Post
Here's the problem: History is irrelevant. This is Final Fantasy. It's completely reasonable and logical to expect Bards to have a big focus on songs, since Bards in previous games have pretty much been all about the songs and NOT archers going "tra-la-la" in battle.
This is a rather limited way of thinking. When they told me ARC was going to become BRD, I found it odd until I remembered the bards from D&D and Leliana from Dragon Age.

What you're not realizing is that certain concepts are malleable while others are not. Yes, DRGs are known for jumping on things, WHMs are known for healing things, and BLMs are known for setting things on fire. These things are hard-coded because the concepts themselves are not malleable by any stretch of the imagination. There's not much you can do to the DRG without messing up the concept (which, incidentally, is what FFXI ended up doing when they turned it into a pet job). Likewise you're not gonna have a BLM that uses the power of the void to heal or something like that.

Certain jobs are more malleable in concept. Unlike BLM or DRG, Bards and Knights can be pretty flexible. We saw knights as hardy melee powerhouses in FF Tactics, and here our Bard is more akin to the bards that predate Final Fantasy rather than a guy with nothing but a lute. There's nothing set in stone to say BRDs have to be guys that do nothing but spam songs. Songs and lore are just part of the concept of the job and there is some leeway.

Just like Blue Mage could be a guy wearing a brown potato sack and use a rubber chicken as its weapon, but will remain a blue mage so long as they use monster magic. Certain jobs don't have this leeway.