Suggestion - Bard Quest that does bard things

[MetrotownSimon]

So far I've only done a few of the Bard quests and so far profoundly disappointed and not very hopeful it's gonna get better.

I get that they are trying hard to forcibly link Bards and Archers (why?).
But when you have the Perform action, and you send performers (i.e., Bards) to go kill things to advance... ? DUH.

I suggest doing something with all the stories and songs that are mentioned. Teach the player Bard a story or song, then send them off to cities and town and camps to perform them and inspire people.
Use the Perform action and have them play a (relatively simple) sequence to actually perform a song.

This way you can also introduce some lore-discovery into the game along the way.

[Enkidoh]

Except you're misunderstanding what the BRD Job is here in FFXIV - you are not actually the 'performer' type BRD who sings songs and dances in bars and taverns for gil. You're just an ARC who has a few songs they sing in battle to raise morale with your comrades, but the bow is still your primary focus, the songs are an enhancement of that.

The Perform function is not actually a battle ability but merely cosmetic fluff for enjoyment's sake, it has no bearing on battle at all (like glamour, essentially).

[KageTokage]

Bards and archers are not "forcibly linked" in XIV's lore.

If you pay attention to the dialogue in the first few quests, they specify that the bards of old were archers who used their songs to raise the morale of Gridania's armies, but eventually fell into obscurity following their conflict with Ala Mhigo, with some of the battle-hardened bards taking up the more modern image of simply being traveling performers during the times of peace.

The 30-50 quests focus strongly on trying to get bards involved in Gridania's military squadrons again by convincing your job trainer to abandon his past woes and take up the bow again.

[MetrotownSimon]

Well mileage may vary but my impression is the rationale for linking ARC to singing was flimsy from the start. Surely any other combatant could also sing.
And the point of the post was that so far the quests really don't involve any singing at all. You just go kill something, which any class can do. How about a quest that actually gets you go use your song to raise morale instead of just fighting, and typically fighting solo. Whose morale are you raising during these quests IF you even bother to use your bard song? Your chocobo?

[KageTokage]

I'm not really sure where the whole "bards as archers" thing started, but XIV certainly isn't the first game to make them an off-shoot of an Archer class (Ragnarok Online is the one that springs to mind for me), and it's common for bards to have access to bows as a weapon even in games that don't use a class progression system.

Preliminary research shows no connections between bards and archers, so I'm also a smidge confused about it.