Some Love for Bards? Could it be true?

[Luke Carjacker]

Quoting from the UO Herald Producer's Letter from April 2, 2010 (today):

"In addition, we’re turning our attention to Bards. I’m not mentioning WHY we are, but let’s just say there are some tales will need to be told with a bit of style, and the there will be some things done best with a “well encouraged” group."

Could it be true? Someone is actually thinking of us? I can hardly contain the excitement. New gear, new skills, new usefulness in the game? I'm a little afraid that they are going to implement a way for bards to tell stories in game (well, I know some people want this so it's cool too I guess), but the fact that they mention they are working on this in their main update letter has me all giddy.

We can only hope.

 

[Fink]

Attention does not equal Love, sadly.

I'm cautiously optimistic but after seven imbuing nerfs I wouldn't be surprised if all the anti-bard complaints had more dev impact than anything we may have requested.

 

[Poo]

ya, ill echo what fink has said.

turning their attention to bards does not allways equal getting some nice stuff.

it could mean nerfs.

remember..... there is such a thing as bad attention.

 

[Luke Carjacker]

Yeah, I can understand why you guys are taking a pessimistic view towards this. I guess there have been two major changes to bard skills since the beginning of time (or the beginning of UO, whichever is earlier).

One was dropping enticement for discord, which was definitely a positive change because enticement was useless; you could accomplish the exact same thing by double clicking a target in war mode while discord is extremely useful.

The other big change was making bard skills difficulty based, which is perhaps the biggest nerf in the history of the world (or the history of UO, whichever came first). One day, you could provoke any two monsters 100% of the time at 100/100 skill, next day you didn't have enough skill to even make an attempt.

So yeah, I could see why it might be a shoving more poop down our throats, but really with so few bards around these days, why would they even bother? It's gotta be something to encourage more people to be bards right? Please?

 

[Poo]

well, if i HAD to guess what they where gonna do id say it would be one of the following 2 possibilities.

or maybe both.

1) is to make the disco only effect the damage the bard does OR the party members he is in party with, which has been something that has been asked for for a while

2) i lost my train of though.

hahahhahaha

but with them saying "party" and "group play" catch phrases ill bet it will be something like, if you have 2 bards in a party you get a bonus.
3 bards, even more of a bonus.

kinda like spellweaving, the more ya have the more strength in your spells.

that is my guess.

man i hope its not a nerf.
hehe.

 

[Viquire]

maybe they'll make it so everyone in party can get bonuses for traveling with a troubadour and we can all free up our templates by 360 points and become bush necro warriors that sing.

 

[Zalan]

Discord is going to be reverted back to Enticement Skill!!!!!





Okay thats a bad joke..........

 

[Poo]

i actually use to really like enticment.

i use to lure gaurds out of GZ and kill them, hahahaha

 

[Garm The Green]

They'll make bard gains the same as tamer gains.

1 per animal.

We've got too good at learning the most boring grind in the game?

In all seriousness, when does this update drop?

 

[Garm The Green]

"we're altering bard to become archers instead"

 

[Luke Carjacker]

I'm gonna throw a guess out there. It's something that has been asked for in the past as well. I'm going to guess that they are adding a way to buff friendlies. Kind of like discord, except positive effect. Now, I don't think they will be adding a whole new skill (not like anyone would spend 120 skill points on this anyways), but maybe tack it onto discord or peace. I think there's logic behind each skill benefiting friendly members (I mean, why should peace negative affect party members).

My second guess would be some sort of skill mod equipment for bards. I mean, everyone else gets Faster Casting, Swing Speed Increase, Fast Cast Recovery, Defense Chance Increase, etc., so why can't bards get some sort of equipment that shortens the cool down timer?

 

[Muu Bin]

I'm gonna throw a guess out there. It's something that has been asked for in the past as well. I'm going to guess that they are adding a way to buff friendlies. Kind of like discord, except positive effect. Now, I don't think they will be adding a whole new skill (not like anyone would spend 120 skill points on this anyways), but maybe tack it onto discord or peace. I think there's logic behind each skill benefiting friendly members (I mean, why should peace negative affect party members).

This "might" be accomplished possibly by creating bard-type spells in a song book of sorts. Each song would depend on which bard skills you had and what skill level you were at. For example, if you were looking at a buff similar to the bless spell, it might need provo + peace at a certain level (along with music of course). The number of songs would be limited in their scope I would imagine.

After saying this, this kind of system would probably take too much work and would never get off the ground. Likely what we will see is something close to what Poo suggested - a spellweaving kind of buff when bards are in a group.

 

[Lefty]

The key words Bards Tale can be a clue.

Bards Tale was an old RPG game and the bard had songs/spells that did certain effects.

But what I am thinking maybe more items such along the lines of the fire horn.

 

[Poo]

since they added that 'healing winds' spell to gargs, im interested to see if they add the same kinda 'song' to bards.

so that you can get some sort of 'mass heal' off of playing music while your party mates fight baddies.

and of course there would be the reverse of that, an area effect song, kinda like what some of the peerlesses have.
every baddy within a certain tile amount gets sick kinda thing.

..... or..... sleeps (yet another garg spell allready in game)

i think the brick work has allready been layed for some of those, would be a easy transition to make them work for bards.

 

[Brytt Heathard]

I agree with Luke Carjacker. I read that post and the first thing I think of is some kind of group buff that will become key when trying to down the biggest of the bad baddies.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Maybe they'll combine Music into the other skills to give more template options.

 

[Garm The Green]

Maybe they'll let bards drive flying pink dodge vipers that give an AOE effect of +30dci & +30hci.

Sorry, my imagination got the better of me.

 

[Old Man of UO]

I've been trying to get a response on the note about Bards in the Producer's Letter thread: http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=188597

NO response, not even another comment from other players. SAD, SAD situation for us Bards. Post these questions there, maybe get a little attention?

 

[Demoquin84]

D&D Bard could be looked at. They have music abilites which are tied to the Perform skill. With so much Perform you could fascinate (sleep?), Aid other players, (bless?), and so on.

 

[maroite]

Attention does not equal Love, sadly.

I'm cautiously optimistic but after seven imbuing nerfs I wouldn't be surprised if all the anti-bard complaints had more dev impact than anything we may have requested.

Could go the way of the tamer. Make Bards even more completely useless in boss fights...

You know, seeing how UO is just always filled to server capacity with players ready to go to the group content! rolleyes: