Quote Originally Posted by Eorzean_username View Post
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.