Bard's future

[Eorzean_username]

Re: this debate about splitting Bard into two Jobs:

On the surface, I agree with the basic idea that Bard is well-suited to being the game's "dot Job" with a music/tempo-themed attack logic. If they made Dancer work, they could definitely make a skeletal "true Bard" work as well. And I agree that Archer would be far better suited to developing a proper RPG "Ranger" aesthetic and kit if it was no longer burdened with the chore of having to tack on musical notes to everything it gains and does.

But in practice, there's large problems with trying to make this happen at this point.

At the core, Bard is a conceptual mess stemming from the 1.x transition team trying to be clever in a way that can only seem like a good idea when you're locked inside a small echoing room with other developers.

In terms of target audience, FFXIV is a cafeteria of a game, and its priority needs to be stocking popular products that can broadly satisfy people's fantasies. In the FF franchise, there was already a well-established "Bow Upgrade Job" (Hunter/Ranger) and a well-established "Musical Singing Job" (Bard). Fusing them together was one of those oblivious 'Wow, this will be so cool and different' 2-in-1 product ideas that falls apart in actual practice, because it doesn't really appeal properly to either target market.

...It's especially confounding when you consider that Arcanist was needlessly split into 2 distinct Jobs at nearly the same time.

Anyway, that's all in the distant past now, but it affects the present. The problem is that, unlike Summoner/Scholar, whose "Book" weapon is so bland and generic that it can conceptually fit nearly any spellcaster class concept, Bard is now locked into coming from Archer and wielding a Bow. And the story quest lore and cutscenes have locked Bard into being both an archer, and music-oriented.

When you consider that Job Quests just abruptly stopped in EW (...), and that new Jobs don't even get previous Ultimate skins any more (lol), it's not realistic to expect SE to ever invest the resources or energy necessary to completely rewrite and reframe the entire Bard questline. Nor to create an entire new set of true Harp weapons and animations for Bard. Nor to do anything beyond the bare-minimum adjustments necessary to keep it functioning by slicing up and taping the pieces back together in a slightly-different shape.

So, setting aside the ideological battle that's going back and forth here, I think the idea itself — while completely logical — is basically moot, because unlike Summoner, which could keep its entire aesthetic and equipment set, trying to "fix" Bard conceptually is basically dead before it even begins when you consider SE's current level of effort and investment in Job design.


I think that it's absolutely conceptually viable/possible to split Bard into Bard and Ranger... if you put some very heavy resource costs into it. But I can't see SE ever making the decision to pull that trigger, especially when most Bard players are relatively passive/accepting of the aesthetic and flavor of the Job that they ended up with.

So I think that any time you start trying to address the lack of a satisfying product for both "Bow Job" and "Singing Job" in FFXIV, you have to begin with the problematic starting point that Bard:

Is always going to be called "Bard"
Is always going to be wielding Longbows
Is always going to have musical graphics and concepts mixed into its attacks

...Which then puts some weird constraints on what you can do with other Jobs.

For example, Bard comes from Archer. It would make a lot more sense for that upgrade to be Ranger (??? right...), and for a different Job designed like FF4/FF5/FFT Bard or FFX-2 Songstress to take over the musical aspects.

But... then you have to sort out how to handle all the musical lore associated with Bard, what to do with its musical Job design, its musical animations, its musical attacks...

So you look at the other option: make Bard the musical Job, and to keep development costs minimized, just let it be a musician that happens to shoot people with arrows. This even makes some amount of sense when you consider that there's some evidence that historical stringed instruments did first evolve from hunting bows. Then, create a distinct Hunter/Ranger type Job that... doesn't use bows.

This gets weird, though. Now you have Archer upgrading to Bard, and not Ranger, even though both Bard and Ranger exist. And you have a Ranger class that doesn't use Bows.

Then you also have the problem of what to do with that Bow that Bard is stuck with. If you keep using it in attacks and animations, then there's a lot of friction and conceptual overlap with Ranger. And if you don't use the Bow for attacks and animations, then people will begin to complain that it's just an ornament stuck on your back during combat.

None of this is a true obstacle to making it work if you try hard enough, but it's inevitably going to cause confusion and complaints, and from SE's perspective, it would probably make for a lot of unnecessary extra effort compared to just leaving Bard as-is.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

So you look at the other option: make Bard the musical Job, and to keep development costs minimized, just let it be a musician that happens to shoot people with arrows. This even makes some amount of sense when you consider that there's some evidence that historical stringed instruments did first evolve from hunting bows. Then, create a distinct Hunter/Ranger type Job that... doesn't use bows.

This gets weird, though. Now you have Archer upgrading to Bard, and not Ranger, even though both Bard and Ranger exist. And you have a Ranger class that doesn't use Bows.

Then you also have the problem of what to do with that Bow that Bard is stuck with. If you keep using it in attacks and animations, then there's a lot of friction and conceptual overlap with Ranger. And if you don't use the Bow for attacks and animations, then people will begin to complain that it's just an ornament stuck on your back during combat.

Ranger not using bows could be solved with crossbows or throwing hatchets. Machinist's auto-crossbow is more akin to an automated handheld cannon than a regular crossbow.

Reusing pre-existing bow assets, slapping different stats on them and palette swapping them and calling it there isn't that far-fetched of an idea either as it saves modeling and animation costs, which squeenix loves doing. WHM and BLM both use staves and no one's complaining about that overlap. Both SCH and SMN share the same walk, run, sprint and battle pose animations and no one's complaining about that either.

Bard's bow already becomes a glorified ornament when they stow their bow on their back when using any musical based weaponskill or musical ability. Rift's bard acts the same way in that their weapons disappear completely when using bard actions and Rift's bard is conceptually superior and has a far greater gameplay loop than FF14's bard, but that's for another thread.

Not directing anything at you but if people were to start complaining about hypothetical Ranger sharing bows with Bard then they should begin their crusade about BLM and WHM sharing staves and SCH and SMN sharing practically everything.

[Eorzean_username]

Ranger not using bows could be solved with crossbows or throwing hatchets. Machinist's auto-crossbow is more akin to an automated handheld cannon than a regular crossbow.

That's a good point. I guess my perspective was along the lines of not 'possibility' but 'Would people looking for a Hunter/Ranger be satisfied with not having a Bow?' since the Bow is usually one of the big selling points of that archetype. I know that in most games with multiple ranged weapon types, Crossbows tend to be distinctly unpopular in terms of player preference.

Reusing pre-existing bow assets, slapping different stats on them and palette swapping them and calling it there isn't that far-fetched of an idea either as it saves modeling and animation costs, which squeenix loves doing. WHM and BLM both use staves and no one's complaining about that overlap. Both SCH and SMN share the same walk, run, sprint and battle pose animations and no one's complaining about that either.

And this... is a disturbingly-good point.

To be honest, maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. The ability to implement a Job that doesn't need any new weapon models and also doesn't even need a lot of new animations sounds like something that I could easily imagine Director Yoshida marketing to interviewers during the 7.00 hype phase. 'It was quite a burden for our team to always add new equipment and animations for every new Job. Now we can add more Jobs more easily!' Hmmm...

Not directing anything at you but if people were to start complaining about hypothetical Ranger sharing bows with Bard then they should begin their crusade about BLM and WHM sharing staves and SCH and SMN sharing practically everything.

Well, to be honest, I personally think that BLM/WHM and SCH/SMN have some of the most underwhelming and unexciting weapon designs in the game, partially because they overlap so heavily. It works better in games where each class can equip a variety of weapon types, since if you don't like your Staff this tier, at least you might end up with a Book or a Mace next tier, etc.

But that's totally separate from the broader applicability of the idea and so, yeah, I agree you've got a good point here, too. There's precedent for it, and most people don't seem that bothered by it... they just want to play the game and have fun with their rotation at first priority, as long as there's at least some cool glamours to be had.