Bard does not make sense as a job

[Aiselia]

certain concepts are malleable while others are not.

Practically every Bard in the Final Fantasy series has been about playing songs, not shooting with a bow and doing damage.

The concept of Bard in the Final Fantasy universe was as malleable as any other class. Dragoons have historical background too, but would you have defended the change if Dragoons had instead become Chocobo-back infantry with guns and not jumping at all or wielding spears?

There is as much set in stone that says Dragoons MUST be spear-wielding jumpy guys as there is to say that Bards must be heavy on support, low on attack, with songs that are their entire identity and generally the extent of their usefulness.

The only reason you think Dragoons are "hard-coded" as concepts is because you're literally only thinking of past iterations in the Final Fantasy series. Which is the exact reason why people expect bards to be harp-players, not bow-shooters.

Oh, and this "classes are malleable" thing? How many people excited about summoners do you think were expecting to summon multiple different massive monsters to do huge and heavy attacks, but got pets that are a very minor portion of their damage while they just make people sick for the bulk of it?

[Duelle]

The only reason you think Dragoons are "hard-coded" as concepts is because you're literally only thinking of past iterations in the Final Fantasy series. Which is the exact reason why people expect bards to be harp-players, not bow-shooters.

Unlike dragoons, bards have a much broader definition and a number of interpretations, and those with the frame of reference saw the approach taken in this game made sense. Not to mention that this is one of a handful of RPG series that have a jump-oriented lance wielder, so the number of analogues of what we know as dragoon is obviously going to be limited.

Sure, Edward was not shooting bows, but as I said, other examples of bards popped into my head. If you're limiting yourself to the "it's final fantasy" thing, that's not fault of the developers or class design. This is not even getting into the whole "support won't work in a game designed around the trinity" bit, and that would prevent the Edward-like bard from existing in this game.

Oh, and this "classes are malleable" thing? How many people excited about summoners do you think were expecting to summon multiple different massive monsters to do huge and heavy attacks, but got pets that are a very minor portion of their damage while they just make people sick for the bulk of it?

You mean those that refused to accept that summoner as it was in the console RPGs would not work in an MMORPG? The same people who conveniently forgot that barring a few exceptions, summoner was basically a black mage with more expensive spells and prettier particle effects and artwork to accompany their nukes? I'd say those who were disappointed with SMN set themselves up for it if they were expecting it to be like in the console games. That'd leave FFXI's SMN, but that mess of a job was so fundamentally flawed that I'm glad it didn't work its way here.

[Shirobi]

Unlike dragoons, bards have a much broader definition and a number of interpretations, and those with the frame of reference saw the approach taken in this game made sense. Not to mention that this is one of a handful of RPG series that have a jump-oriented lance wielder, so the number of analogues of what we know as dragoon is obviously going to be limited.

Bard in a fantasy situation has a pretty set in stone, genre wide reputation as a song singing, dagger using rogue type. As far as "dragoon" goes, the only place it really exists as some sort of lancer is the FF series. So no. Flawed analogy. While you can no doubt find some other type of dragoon out there somewhere bearing resemblance to the FF one, its quite likely inspired by it.

I can gurantee you with 110% certainty there are many, many MANY more instance of dagger singy guy bards than jumpy lancer dragoons in games and fantasy.

As far as FFXI's summoner goes, I see you either did not play the game much past CoP or you have a very flawed view of what smn was truly capable of, especially multiple summoners. There was nothing wrong with FFXI's summoner in the least. It merely needed proper gearing, like every job.

[Shirobi]

Clearly you haven't done or didn't bother to read the Bard quest line. "The first bards on the battlefield WERE archers, that's what this is based off of, rousing your comrades IN battle, not during little breaks, not during just the marching, Bards were used IN battle, to sing songs and raise the spirits, to spur the troops" pretty much sums it up, in THIS game that's the history of the Bard and that's what Cassandaria is on about.

The "traditional" versions of classes/job can be more though of as a base product to build off of at this point. If EVERY Bard (insert class here) was exactly the same in EVERY game ever it would be incredibly boring and generic.

Granted your post was intended as humor and I did get a chuckle out of it, I could not disagree more with that final part. Bards have been singing theif types in fantasy rpgs since such things existed, and never once have they ever been boring or generic. Its part of the fun having familiar classes all rpgers can instantly recognize.


When you change established fundamentals of a class too much, it comes off as "Hey look! Our "insert name of class here" is a special snowflake! Look how unique we are!"

[Shirobi]

[QUOTE=Duelle;3335416]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.

Bards in D&D are not archers. They have never been archers.

In what edition are D&D bards remotely archers? Im gonna guess if they are, its in some garbage fith+ "edition" that I, thankfully, have never been subjected to.

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.


Bards that predate FF in fantasy were song singing performers. Bards that predate RPGs in the real world... were song singing performers.

At no point did archery enter the picture.

Honestly, where are so many of you getting this alien idea that bards in real life or fantasy games have always been archers? Such nonsense.

[Aiselia]

Unlike dragoons, bards have a much broader definition and a number of interpretations

Funny thing, I just googled Dragoon. Ignoring the Final Fantasy archetype, I came across:

In Legend of Dragoon, Dragoons were winged warriors that harnessed the spirits of Dragons. They didn't jump because they could fly. 6/7 of the dragoons do not use a spear.
In Dragon Saga, Dragoons appear to come from Paladins and use "dragon energy". Their weapons are 1H swords and shields.
In Starcraft, Dragoons are four-legged assault walkers.
In real life, Dragoons were mounted infantry that used guns.

Literally the only time Dragoons were represented as spear-wielding jumpy guys were in FF games or other SE games that were based off the FF style (Bravely Default, for example).

So no, it looks like Dragoon also has multiple interpretations.

[Kuwagami]

There's not much you can do to the DRG without messing up the concept.

Still waiting on breath techniques though But there is hope that they could come in 4.0, being taught by some ancient dragon because we made peace in 3.5 or something and now they can teach us how to become FF dragoons, instead of dancing between goons and templars.

How many people excited about summoners do you think were expecting to summon multiple different massive monsters to do huge and heavy attacks, but got pets that are a very minor portion of their damage while they just make people sick for the bulk of it?

FFxiv's SMN is an invoker, not an evoker. While less spectacular on useless flashy fluff, they still fulfill the role they're supposed to have. No matter what players expected (though it took an entire expansion cycle for them to get to that. 2.X's SMN wasn't THAT clear on the invoker stuff)


As for the bard, well, now it's an archer. Maybe one day they'll have more songs than archery stuff, but that's unlikely. Nothing we can really do about it.

edit : well, maybe it would already make a bit more sense (visually speaking at least) if all lv30+ bows had a little harp mounted on them like the 2.0 relic had.

[Duelle]

In what edition are D&D bards remotely archers? Im gonna guess if they are, its in some garbage fith+ "edition" that I, thankfully, have never been subjected to.

Bards in D&D were built off the rogue archetype, which did include, swords, daggers, and bows. They had access to bows and you could build a bard that used them; weapons and songcraft are not mutually exclusive.

Bards that predate FF in fantasy were song singing performers. Bards that predate RPGs in the real world... were song singing performers.

At no point did archery enter the picture.

I never said anything about real life bards. My focus was on fantasy bards, which again were not limited to just singing songs. I guess you could bring up the bard from The Bards Tale, but that guy was also ridiculously overpowered (able to summon minions through songs, use songs for effects, good at combat, decent at landing tavern wenches). I'll also point to more modern bards (Leliana from Dragon Age used a bow, and Kana from Pillars of Eternity used the equivalent of a shotgun). The whole "bard uses a bow" thing isn't something SE just made up.

This is off-topic so I'm gonna put it here:

There was nothing wrong with FFXI's summoner in the least. It merely needed proper gearing, like every job.

Actually no. For one because it had access to too many summons. In trying to mimic the console FF summoners, you ended up with utility and skills that were a lot weaker because reasons and spread all over the place. The funniest part of this is that Tanaka talked about how SMN getting buffs at full power would be overpowered, then went and gave that to SCH, despite having a similar limitation (SMN with the bloodpact timer and SCH with strategems).

Gear doesn't fix the fact that avatars also had incredibly shitty scaling (and really, the +pet stats were a band-aid on a bullet hole). Consider that SMNs were basically chopped liver until the lv70 blood pacts were introduced (because horribly sucking from lv1-69 outside of a 2-hour ability is good design, right?). Consider that the job was only useful for Astral Flow and even that didn't make them a good choice compared to your standard TP burn WAR, SAM or DRK. The only reason SMN was even relevant after WotG was because of Alexander and Perfect Defense (AKA an ability that allows people to cheese mechanics).

That's not even getting into garbage design decisions like spirits (which could have been something like elemental stances that gave you access to a handful of spells, allowing you to do something while waiting on the blood pact timer), or how poorly designed perpetuation was, or how laughable avatar favors were in trying to encourage SMNs to keep avatars out. It was a mess.

Still waiting on breath techniques though But there is hope that they could come in 4.0, being taught by some ancient dragon because we made peace in 3.5 or something and now they can teach us how to become FF dragoons, instead of dancing between goons and templars.

Well, assuming they're sticking to BotD (which IMO needs improvements), they could probably throw in a breath attack that consumes the BotD buff. So you'd have Wheeling Thrust/Fang & Claw to maintain BotD, Geirskogull to weave in and then breath attack as a "finisher".

[Cassandaria]

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.

Historically, "black magic" had little to do with throwing fireballs from your fingertips and creating massive explosions with your mind. But that doesn't matter, because that's how it's established in Final Fantasy.

Historically, dragoons were mounted infantry and had absolutely nothing to do with jumping over skyscrapers to stab dragons in the face. But that doesn't matter, because that's how it's established in Final Fantasy.

And with your own example, did you bother to pay attention to the Bard story line? I was simply making the statement that the bard story and the history of the bard IN GAME is pretty much the same as the history of historical bards in our world. Just because a bard does not sing and only sing does not make them less a bard. Within the mythos of the game, the lore provided, the story presented, as you stated, Bards are Bards because they are archers who rouse their companions with songs to lift their spirits.

[Aiselia]

the history of historical bards in our world.

So, out of curiosity, could you point me to something that states that bards had anything to do with combat? Everything I find, including wikipedia and the encyclopedia, seems to point towards bards as being more towards something you keep around the home to sing of your exploits, not to use in combat.

Oh sure, music is employed in combat, but that doesn't mean they used bards. That music also seems to not be related to being archers too, as they'd play the music in the heat of battle on instruments that prevent them from fighting, after you get past the point of shooting walls of wood at your enemy's charging forces. Singing was done by soldiers, not bards.