Bard's Thematic Future

[ty_taurus]

On another note, if trying to salvage Bard is THAT much of a lost cause for people... why not just abandon it entirely?

Let's just gut Bard's music completely...
Battle Voice = Gone
Warden's Paeon = Gone
Nature's Minne = Gone
Troubadour = Changed to Palisade
Mage's Ballad = Changed to Owl's Eye
Army's Paeon = Changed to Hawk's Eye
Wonderer's Minuet = Changed to Eagle's Eye

We can just get a new Ranged or Caster DPS called "Minstrel," "Musician," "Flautist," or something like that. They use a Harp or Flute or some instrument as a weapon and music exclusively musical attacks:

Battle Voice, Nature's Minne, and Warden's Paeon can all be transitioned here, or perhaps everything is completely different.

Bard will just be an incredibly misleading name choice that has literally nothing to do with music.

[MartaDemireux]

Job stones got introduced in 1.2 was it? The class advancement back in the day meant the end job result was a bard if you went archer. So I won't dispute that there may be legacy folks that wanted a ranger/hunter type job, but SE gave us bard instead, and a lot of players do enjoy it for what it is. The new jobs that get introduced now aren't really tied to any particular class. They just get added in, and people can pick up and play. So yes, there is no reason for bard to be hijacked. Anyone that argues the case is being, I feel, inherently selfish and forgetting that there are a lot of players that do in fact enjoy the bard job for what it is and are fighting hard for it to get some of its job identity back.

So please, stop trying to transform bard into a ranger and hurting all of the players out there that actually enjoy it for what it is currently and instead try making requests for a new job to be added, the ranger/hunter class you all want. I'm all for you making petitions and requests, just please be mindful that not everyone that has mained and played the job for 6 years want to go through ANOTHER transformation come next xpack.

The transformation is just one of many ideas. Bards should be about music first and foremost, which simply is no longer the case. I don't necessarily want a Ranger despite my transformation idea. I want Bard to be a Bard, even if they using bows. I want Bard's gameplay to stay in the game whether it's current Bard with more songs, or on Ranger.

Really, this is why I say the best route would be a job glamour system. It's the least amount of work and least likely to contradict lore.

To reiterate: job glamour wouldn't change anything but animations. ARC could naturally evolve into RNG with bow animations, and BRD could change all the animations to songs and keep their quests which try to show music and archery going hand in hand. Both would have the exact same gameplay and button presses. All the work that is needed would be developing animations, the command toggle to swap between RNG and BRD animations, and some RNG themed quests.

[HyoMinPark]

Furthermore, it's literally about the same amount of work as adding in 1 new job.

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.

[Suniva]

Ranger adopts the identity current Bard has, so most of what Ranger would consist of would be inherited from what we already have, so it wouldn't be any different from the usual changes each job goes through in an expansion. The big thing would be adding in the job quests, but while Bard would be added as the real new class between the two, it would just inherit the current Bard job quests, so it wouldn't be adding more work at all. You'd still be updating 1 existing set of abilities, adding in 1 new set of abilities for a new job, and creating 1 set of job quests. The only thing extra would be that you'd need to make quests starting from level 30, not level 70, but that's really not that much work.

Bard would essentially be 1 of the 2 new jobs, having a completely different weapon type and ability set, and it could absolutely be a DPS unit. It could be another support-heavy DPS like Dancer as a foil to it (For example, it could have its major support not stack with Dancer, so having both would be suboptimal as is having 2 Dancers). It could also be another Caster. Just look at the clip of Deuce's abilities. Yeah, she has support, but they take a back seat to her fantastic damaging abilities.

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.

On another note, if trying to salvage Bard is THAT much of a lost cause for people... why not just abandon it entirely?

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.

[Suniva]

SNIP

Have you considered what you're truly requesting though? If they give one job a set of spell glamours, then inevitably, other players will want THEIR jobs to have spell glamours as well and now what you are arguing to be a solution that is the least amount of work for ONE job now becomes something they have to somehow provide for ALL other jobs. They won't do something like this for one job while ignoring the rest, it simply wouldn't be fair. It's an interesting idea, but it's one that is unlikely to happen.

[Taranok]

On another note, if trying to salvage Bard is THAT much of a lost cause for people... why not just abandon it entirely?

Let's just gut Bard's music completely...
Battle Voice = Gone
Warden's Paeon = Gone
Nature's Minne = Gone
Troubadour = Changed to Palisade
Mage's Ballad = Changed to Owl's Eye
Army's Paeon = Changed to Hawk's Eye
Wonderer's Minuet = Changed to Eagle's Eye

We can just get a new Ranged or Caster DPS called "Minstrel," "Musician," "Flautist," or something like that. They use a Harp or Flute or some instrument as a weapon and music exclusively musical attacks:

Battle Voice, Nature's Minne, and Warden's Paeon can all be transitioned here, or perhaps everything is completely different.

Bard will just be an incredibly misleading name choice that has literally nothing to do with music.

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.

[Suniva]

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.

It was 2% within 20 yards, which was nice. It felt like I was "singing" a song to "inspire" my party. Ya know, being a bard and stuff. Also, Foe's. For the love of all that is good and holy give me back Foe's. Can do without the cast bar, but give it back to us in SOME way shape or form so I line up with SE's own description of the class.

"The word "bard" ordinarily puts folk in mind of those itinerant minstrels, fair of voice and nimble of finger, who earn their coin performing in taverns and the halls of great lords. Few know, however, that bards in fact trace their origins back to the bowmen of eld, who sang in the heat of battle to fortify the spirits of their companions. - Having our songs inspire party with crit.
In time, their impassioned songs came to hold sway over the hearts of men, inspiring their comrades to great feats and granting peace unto those who lay upon the precipice of death." - Giving us Foe back

That's what I would like to see and how I interrupt SE's own description of the class.

[MartaDemireux]

Have you considered what you're truly requesting though? If they give one job a set of spell glamours, then inevitably, other players will want THEIR jobs to have spell glamours as well and now what you are arguing to be a solution that is the least amount of work for ONE job now becomes something they have to somehow provide for ALL other jobs. They won't do something like this for one job while ignoring the rest, it simply wouldn't be fair. It's an interesting idea, but it's one that is unlikely to happen.

I really don't think that would become an issue. All the jobs aside from BRD and WHM have very clear identities. I would even support a GEO (or something similar) job glamour for CNJ/WHM due to the recent changes to Aero and Stone - that is the only other case of a clear disconnect between class and job. This is about having whole job identities preserved instead of hacking two together. Every other job is very much in line with their own identities.

And it's not unlike SE to offer some things to just one or two jobs. In order to unlock instruments, you need to level BRD - no other job has even a similar equivalent and we don't see people asking for one. ACN remains the only multi-job class despite people wanting other jobs to split (once upon a time people were clamoring for GLA to split into DRK/PLD for example to echo Cecil).

I don't think I can be convinced this would ever be an issue.

[Taranok]

It was 2% within 20 yards, which was nice. It felt like I was "singing" a song to "inspire" my party. Ya know, being a bard and stuff. Also, Foe's. For the love of all that is good and holy give me back Foe's. Can do without the cast bar, but give it back to us in SOME way shape or form so I line up with SE's own description of the class.

"The word "bard" ordinarily puts folk in mind of those itinerant minstrels, fair of voice and nimble of finger, who earn their coin performing in taverns and the halls of great lords. Few know, however, that bards in fact trace their origins back to the bowmen of eld, who sang in the heat of battle to fortify the spirits of their companions. - Having our songs inspire party with crit.
In time, their impassioned songs came to hold sway over the hearts of men, inspiring their comrades to great feats and granting peace unto those who lay upon the precipice of death." - Giving us Foe back

That's what I would like to see and how I interrupt SE's own description of the class.

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.

[Suniva]

I don't think I can be convinced this would ever be an issue.

Then there is no further reason for you and I to debate the issue. I wish you the best of luck in garnering support for your endeavor.

ACN remains the only multi-job class

Much to their regret, they have stated many, MANY times that they are not happy with how arcanists split and every expansion we see them doing more and more to try and separate the two jobs that came from it.

(once upon a time people were clamoring for GLA to split into DRK/PLD for example to echo Cecil).

And what did they do? They kept GLA -> PLD route while introducing DRK as a new job that people could pick up and play. That is why many are putting forth the suggestion of adding in the ranger job so that way bard players can have their bard and those wishing for a hunter/ranger type class could have their idea of a bow & arrow type class being more focused on damaged fulfilled. If there is enough demand for a ranger type class, then I feel it would ultimately be better in the long run to add in that job rather than upsetting both sets of players because one wants to play the class one way vs the other way.

I even suggested at one point that we get a hunter/bard stance that way the two types of player bases could be satisfied, by having the abilities function in different way dependent on which stance we were in, but that was criticized with valid concerns and I have since withdrawn from that idea. It seems like the best solution (and one that is more or less agreed on on these forums as far as I can tell) is rather than trying to make the one job cater to two different play styles, would be to split them up.

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.