On Bardin' prerequisites

[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!

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.