On Bardin' prerequisites

[kazeandi]

Hello,

I can totally see why a Bard would need vocabulary or poetry appreciation.
I do not get why Bards have to have a green thumb, be masters of gardening an flower arrangement.
When did the motivator in battle turn into a hippie, and why?

All I see is senseless, unneeded, uncalled for grind to cockblock the skill at a medium level (60/125).
Worse, I see gardening as a Facebook game with terrible UI, where I stand around and occasionally run to grab some water, mostly just hitting my Next button.

Gardening is a pain and should be removed from the list of prerequisites. Performance makes sense, vocab 50 would fit just fine (even tho it's boring enough to grind), maybe Dancing max, but how it is, it bores the heck out of me, and for no good reason (but all the wrong ones).

Please consider reviewing this.

Thanks.

[Nrdr123]

The only reason I can say that would justify gardening is that since the eventual plan in game is to make all skills go up to 125(100 + 25 Bonus Levels), there will be certain skills that offer bonus levels, and for Bard one of them may be Gardening and Flower Arrangement(I'm not 100% I haven't gotten the Bard skill yet).

Another reason I put why Flower Arrangement and Gardening may be useful for the skill is that overall in the game, especially for the higher level areas/zones you will need Food and Power sources to help support you, and the best sources of that are through the actual foods, which usually require gardening to help make, or Flower Arrangement so you can get those Really really nice bundled up Flowers that give nice Power Regeneration bonuses.

So just think of it as giving you incentive or a push to actually do something you will probably be forced to do later. And hey the Bard skill is pretty good as a support skill so your job is to be the Hippie fun guy in the group that helps everyone out with your Rock n' Roll beats. So have fun and Go Get get that Green Thumb.

Plus You can always do what almost all those who garden do and just watch TV/Netflix while doing it.

[kazeandi]

I get why these skills are useful, but you can survive without them by just fighting to earn cash and then buy what you need. Works with basically everything and is a valid way to play (and the preferred for a certain type of player, like me).

I know the reason for these skills to be in the Bard queue is to make Bard inaccessible or "hard to earn", kind of like Fire Magic recipes are terribly expensive, kind of a front load investment. And that's fine with me, but these skills are not related and thematically irrelevant for the Bard. Worst of all, they're grindy, and the only way to tolerate a grind for me is to know it fits the role at least. Like Druid requires you to have a battle skill at 50, Bard could require you to have one at 70. Bard could force you to get vocab/dancing/poetry to a certain level, and that would be fine with me, because that's what bards do.

However, bards do not stand in a dirt pit with stained clothes and fingers, fiddling around with seedlings. That's not a Bard, that's a frigging farmer.

[Crissa]

Why wouldn't flower arranging be a bardly skill?

[kazeandi]

Bards don't craft bouquets, bards sing and play music to motivate their group in battle.

[Crissa]

Ahh, I see. Not combat enough for you.

Showing up with a flower in your teeth or hand I guess is too old school bard.

[Citan]

Some of the existing prerequisites will probably be replaced with different craft skills in late beta, after another 20 or so craft skills come online. For now they've been chosen because they make the difficulty curve about right. Bard is supposed to be moderately hard to level.

(This also applies to some of Battle Chemistry's leveling prerequisites.)

[INXS]

Citan the BC prereq are actually a real bad joke that became reality, i do get maybe needing to raise one or 2 skills for it but not half a dozen.

[Khaylara]

A bard should have artistic sense so why not arranging bouquets? It goes well with poetry, vocabulary and instruments. Also you can never buy high level combat bouquets (speaking from experience) so better get some skill in arranging flowers.
Side note - I don't get the gardening outrage, I'm personally not much into it but many find it relaxing, a semi-afk thing to do.

Citan - bard isn't hard to level especially now that the hardest prerequisite (PA) is much easier. It was fairly easy actually, using it as secondary ofc (horn skills)

[Crissa]

I always thought of Errol Flynn as bardic, and he was into flowers.

[Atis]

"Why do we need to grind so much?" - "You are not supposed to learn everything, pick what you like, specialize and cooperate with other specialists."

"Why do i need to level 20 skills to use 2?" - "Shut up and learn everything."



Showing up with a flower in your teeth or hand ...
... doesn't require ikebana grandmastery.


A bard should have artistic sense so why not arranging bouquets?

Should bard also be a painter, a sculptor, a calligraphist, a chef, a writer and whatever sounds like art-related? No way you can get on a windy road to bring a music to some faraway village without that art college. Hmm, but flower arranger also should have artistic sense so he must become bard 70lv first. Now that's a conundrum. What art should go first?


But srsly, can't bard hardships be actually bard-related and not some plucked from the air dependency on Art of Potato?

[kazeandi]

Make Dancing and Performing at high levels a requirement, make Bards do the vocabulary game till their fingers bleed and it's no problem.
All these are thematically connected to the class.

But Gardening? You start your career by plugging potato seedlings into the ground? Where's the Errol Flynn in that anyways, even if it was relevant?

It's okay now that we know it's a placeholder, just to make it a PITA on a comparable level. Let's not try to justify Gardening as somehow bardic - won't work.

[Crissa]

... doesn't require ikebana grandmastery.
Yes, a Japanese bard would totally have gardening (and bonzai) as pre-requisites!

[kazeandi]

No. They would know their one instrument in and out and try to master it. Japanese culture is about focus.

[Arundel]

While this is about Bard prereqs, I wanted to comment on gardening since a lot of the concern was with it. Gardening is currently mind numbing. My first 2-3 weeks I mostly gardened cause I found it fun. The problem is once we get high level in gardening we are still required to sit there basically like a zombie and click stuff to get crops/flowers. I for one just gave up as I found this skill to be far too mind numbing to repeat after getting it maxed, and most anyone I know feels the same.

I'd suggest that we be allowed to make crop boxes or something that grow over 24 hours (like with mushroom farming) once we get high enough skill (50, or 70 in gardening). This would reduce tedium while also allowing high level gardeners to get some flowers/crops. It would also be a nice reward for those who leveled this just for Bard since they could unlock the class and also have a passive source of items. One final point, something like this would feed the economy. Just look at mushrooms, before the mushroom farming was added it was somewhat impossible to find most mushrooms for sale, now there are plenty but they are not so common as to be devalued.

[kazeandi]

Update: got Gardening to 50, bought Flower Arrangement. Couldn't just start though, now I had to:
- get favor with the textile guy
- unlock textile creation
- level the skill to 9 (3 quests a 1k xp were helpful) to make the wrapping.
So in order to unlock Bard 70, I now had to learn 3 crafting skills.
All I wanted was a class to kill monsters with. You made me jump through hoops for it - and I'm not even done :/

Just which trait of the Bard justifies this grind? Not the support abilities, Psychology or Pig are better. Not the damage, most everything else was stronger, and that was before the Discord nerf.
What is it that makes you want us to work so hard for?

[Niph]

What is it that makes you want us to work so hard for?

Is this really necessary? People who worked on maxing their Poetry Appreciation didn't do it to be able to read high-level books. The grind would certainly not justify it unless there is nothing else to do.

Why not unlock bard 70 when you feel like it's worth the effort?

[kazeandi]

Poetry Appreciation at least fits. How high it has to be would depend on the sadism level of the designers, but at least it's a straightforward, intuitive route.

[Silvonis]

Update: got Gardening to 50, bought Flower Arrangement. Couldn't just start though, now I had to:
- get favor with the textile guy
- unlock textile creation
- level the skill to 9 (3 quests a 1k xp were helpful) to make the wrapping.
So in order to unlock Bard 70, I now had to learn 3 crafting skills.
All I wanted was a class to kill monsters with. You made me jump through hoops for it - and I'm not even done :/

Just which trait of the Bard justifies this grind? Not the support abilities, Psychology or Pig are better. Not the damage, most everything else was stronger, and that was before the Discord nerf.
What is it that makes you want us to work so hard for?

We've already said that the pre-reqs will change further along in development and you know that so continuing to complain about it is unnecessary and not constructive.

[kazeandi]

You guys keep ignoring my questions. Wonder why that is.

[drivendawn]

What question didn't they answer? I thought you were wonder about the skills required to get bard to 70 because they didn't fit bard as prerequisite skills. They answered that though so...

[Citan]

To repeat, again: bard is supposed to be moderately hard to level. Because we don't need 5,000,000 low-level bards in the world, so it should be something you have to work a bit for. That's how you gate things in a game where everybody can be everything: are you willing to spend a few hours to get there? If not, use Sword, it's great and it doesn't require any extra work.

As to "what about bards requires you to grow plants", well, my idea of a bard is somebody who likes nature, so I picked nature-oriented skills. Maybe it's too hard to level right now, maybe it's too easy. It's alpha, and those are prototype prereqs. Again, we'll be revising all skill's prerequisites into their final forms in late beta after more skills are online. I don't know what the final prerequisites will be for bard, of course, because we don't know which skills will make the cut. I usually toss out about half the skills that get prototyped, so we'll just have to see. There are no planned changes any time in the near future, though we can tweak the temporary settings up or down if they've proven to be too tough.

[Crissa]

I always just buy my cheesecloth and cotton stuff from someone else. o-o

[kazeandi]

What's wrong with lowbie bards? Serious question.

[drivendawn]

Nothing is wrong with lowbie bards. However I do recall talk of advanced skills and races being for the folk that want challenge.

[kazeandi]

I get the reasons for downsides to jobs. Fire had very high upfront costs. Archery's power is barely contained by making it costly. Lycan eats 3 days per month, Druid has the invasion events. Now, Bard is way more of a grind to level than any of them, while the skill uses both hands to perform, and the actual throughput is rather moderate. Okay damage, okay heal, some CC, but very immobile, extremely vulnerable to knockback. Damage has even been nerfed, which I couldn't understand, since it wasn't high to begin with.

When I leveled Fire Magic, I farmed money to buy what I needed for the 65/70er spells (cost me a kidney). That was okay for me, because I did what I like to do: combat.
Now my goal is Bard, and I have to craft, which is something I don't enjoy. All my prereqs are there now, or approaching. I did it for the same reason I main the underperforming Animal Handling: because I like the skill, even tho it lacks oomph.

I didn't find the way to unlock Bard challenging. I found it boring. It also wasn't "moderately hard to level", it was a nightmare, still is (flower arrangement 5, poetry 8, still a bit more to do).

[drivendawn]

Yeah, it gets grindy and while I am ok with that I hope it does not get worse and would rather have some of the prerequisites replaced with combat quests instead. Such as epic quests that end with a boss battle for a drop the trainer needs or named monster hunts. I really like the idea of specialized quests for this like bards having to fight and sooth a savage beast with a special instrument they got as part of the quest from a chest in a dungeon or killing an open world NM. On a side note just to help if you didn't know, sundays are poetry reading day so you can get good easy exp for lvling.

[kazeandi]

Yea there was one at 5PM EST, which is 6AM in my timezone :/

I wonder, if the skill "should be hard to level", why not do it like in old EQ? Some classes get more, some less combat XP. Problem solved. Quest to unlock 60, then 70 would be definitely better than the rather lame "craft this and that" solution.

[Tagamogi]

... Druid has the invasion events.

Druid now also has the additional requirement of needing another combat skill at 50 first. Which isn't a problem for you but a problem for someone non-combat focused who just wants to try out the skill on an alt for a bit. Other skills like necromancy and ice magic need specific boss kills which can be tough for someone who doesn't just want to be carried through the fight by a higher level player. I don't think there is anything wrong with skills having locks like that; it adds flavor and a sense of accomplishment to the game.

It's really hard to give accurate feedback on the difficulty of skill unlocks during alpha since people that have been playing awhile tend to have maxed skills just because they can already. Any established player is likely to have long maxed their gardening since it's required for so many things and is also likely to have at least some points in flower arrangement, so I'd assume poetry appreciation has been the main skill that people needed for bard and leveling just one pre-req skill is much easier than three...

[kazeandi]

The general idea is not bad. What's bad is the implementation in the case of the Bard class, but we're not moving forward here, they've already made up their mind.

[Murk]

I have the bard skill at 50 at the moment, and am working on the prequisites for later. On reason I have bard is that I took up the druid skill after getting archery and staff to the 50 druid prequisite, so having something to level with a just obtained druid skill was a good idea, so I chose Bard, and I have found that it is good fun.

We' are just going to have wait until later, when the prequisites get revisited, bard is just a bit 'hard' to level at the moment perhaps. It is worth remembering that this game as it is, wouldn't even have been started by a big games house, and I appeciate that it's really hard work. So we have something here that is really quite interesting and diffrent, but of course some things may not yet be as you might like, well...there we are. It will all be fixed up in due coarse. Hilight the problem, and then come along to Poetry recitals.

I tend to agree that not making it easy for eveyone to get every skill early on is probably a good idea, as you want a variety of skills, and certain people want to go in certain directions, and so they will persue that if they like something enough. We'll see how my Bardin' goes from here.

[kazeandi]

You might just be the type who happens to like grinding away at a crafting class (actually, on several) in order to access a combat class. There's all kinds of tastes, as many as there are players. And that'd be cool, if we had a switch to "enable PITA difficulty", where you had to lvl a random skill to 50 before you could play what you want to play.

This is a design decision and won't go away. Bugs and broken features, okay, it's an Alpha, right. But this case seems to be different and far away from my idea of fun. Which is cool, too, there's lots of interesting games out there and other things to do, too.

[Grin]

I agree with Kazeandi's general point: the best games let you play the way you enjoy. Diversity in the player base/player's preferences makes a great game world(some people prefer to craft/gather/etc. while others are more combat oriented). In my experience, the more ways you can accomplish a task, the better. Unfortunately, I hit the same wall with bard 50+ unlock prerequisites and here's my take on it:

Currently, there's not a demand for all of the tidbits needed to level Flower Arrangement, so it requires lots of different favor/skill grinds to make things yourself. I also empathize 100% about the gardening. Personally, I find it super tedious to have something like gardening be a prerequisite for a COMBAT skill. Bonus level? Sure, because it's optional...but as an actual requirement...it feels like i'm being forced to play in a way that I do not enjoy.

Ok ok ok ok ok ok. What if I really love Bard and decide to forge ahead with these tedious skill grinds...wait... um...why am I standing in a field farming...to unlock level 50+ bard? Why am I getting dirty!? Shouldn't I be trying to perfect my musical craft? Again, this is only my opinion, but as a lore buff/RPer having something make sense thematically goes a LONG way when I am required to do something I find boring/tedious.

So let's review!:

I understand that Bard is an advanced class; there should be some quirky things about it that add to the difficulty of obtaining/leveling it.

I get that there needs to be ways to add/gate progression.

I also read Citan's comments and understand that gardening/flower arrangement are most likely place holders for skills that make more sense thematically.

However, as a newer player who was super excited to test the game/level bard...it really stung that I had to choose between playing the game in a way I didn't enjoy and abandoning the class. In all of my forum delving I have never read that bard was "difficult" to obtain/level/unlock 50+". The people voicing their concerns are like Kazeandi and myself. We find it extremely boring/tedious/thematically confusing. If steps could be taken to eliminate these issues, while maintaining bard as a more "advanced" skill then no one could complain at all! How great would that be! :D

So, instead of adding to the poo poo pile, I'll make a suggestion: Add a NPC who sells Flowers/FA tidbits to people with 50+ bard. The NPC's favor requirements could be something rare, and the types of Flowers/FA tidbits could scale with favor level. On top of that, you can even make the Flowers/FA tidbits pricey to compensate for the no-gardening approach. This would be a great way to provide combat-oriented players the opportunity to level/test bard while maintaining the value of gardening! It makes sense thematically too: A bard uses his/her charm to court the owner of a flower stand/shop, but the NPC is fickle and only accepts tokens of great value! Hippy/Gardener bards get to plant flower seeds, and combat bards get to kill things and bring their heads to the flower NPC. Win-Win.

[Leodane]

Seems like languages might be a good skill block to examine for an alternative pre-req. Bards are supposed to be well-traveled communicators...language pre-reqs would seem more realistic than flower arrangement, perhaps? I'm not too well-versed (he he he) on the bard skill, so forgive me if this is already the case and I just missed it.