At this point should Bard and... I dunno, "Sniper" just be split into two jobs?

[ForteNightshade]

Ah yes, because if you basically left Bard as it is now except stopped pretending their songs are in any way bard-related and just called them something else, it'd be sooooo different. They're already just an archer. The bard portion of the class, despite the class being named bard and not archer, is so minimal it's like someone slapped a "bard" badge on an archer and called it a day. It's bard-lite, it's bard-adjacent. It's an archer cosplaying as a bard. But it's not a bard, and the elements of bard that are there are completely insubstantial and I can't believe I have to actually explain this to another human.

As I said previously. I don't entirely disagree. Bard has lost its identity in Shadowbringers. You'll be hard-pressed to find Bard (or former Bard) mains who don't agree to some degree. The solution, however, isn't to tear the job apart and create two hollow alternatives but to look back on why the job once reigned as the most popular DPS in the game. Stormblood Bard was immensely popular, thus players didn't have an issue with the Archer/Ranger aspects prior. In fact, they obviously liked the hybrid nature.

As for the other replies, it is pretty typical of how official game forums go, though. "Hey, I think this would be a good change and make more sense." "No, that could never happen. It would be lots of hard work. Ergo, unreasonable request. Also, we're waiting on them to do X, so clearly they can't do Y." Same goddamn conversation I've had on every MMO forum since the dawn of time. To be quite frank, I don't give a shit how much work it is, I think it sucks right now, and I think the soul of the game is being drained away as they go from the hardworking team that rebuilt the worst MMO ever to the team that apparently needs coddling anytime someone suggests something approaching work outside the typical patch/expansion flow we've seen. It's on them to determine what is too much work. Not me, not you. If they decide things like this aren't worth their time, that's fine, but I don't care what random forumgoers think is too much work. If you don't like the idea, that's great, but I find the "hard work" deflection so tedious.

Now you're just being childish. Several people, myself included, have provided legitimate and logical reasons why splitting any job like you've requested simply will not happen. We know they aren't going to do it since they're outright said how much they dislike branching jobs off, and would prefer to create a new job instead. Handwaving any opposing argument simply shows you weren't willing to have a conversation. At least not one where people disagree with you. Simply put, you're entitled to have your preferences and ideas you think work best. We're equally entitled to dislike them.

[HyoMinPark]

Why should it impact the lore? Didn't they remove abilities from a lot of jobs already without impacting much of the lore and simply by changing a couple job quests to use an action instead of another?
Why should it be different if they change how bard works?

Changing the abilities rewarded in a quest is one thing—though it can cause issues if the quest mentions the ability you’re about to learn, like some jobs do. However, completely re-writing Archer becoming a Bard is another. They would effectively doing a huge retcon, since the lore in the BRD quests mentions multiple times that a lot of archers become bards after their time on the front lines is over. This is saying nothing about the lore present in the Encyclopedia Eorzea series that would also have to be retconned. That is a lot of rewriting and a lot of developer work that could be better spent elsewhere in the game.

It would be far simpler to add Ranger/Sniper/whatever as a new job in 6.0 rather than rewrite ARC/BRD lore that has existed for years. (Keep in mind that ARC became BRD back in 1.0 after they added in jobs to the classes, so we’re looking at something that predated the current game’s lifespan.)