On Bardin' prerequisites

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.

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.

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.

Why wouldn't flower arranging be a bardly skill?

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

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.

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.)

@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.

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)

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