Bard songs

[Ivan]

Taking magery away would literally kill bards, wands are their only source of healing other than gheals and gheals alone won't cut it in PVM or PVP. It'd render bards close to useless and even in a group it'd be significantly weaker, perhaps even weak enough to make having bard in a group worse option than having another fighter/caster.

Mages cannot actually use earthquake precasted and other aoe spells are simply too small or close to useless, so you'd always rather have a mage casting ellies than casting any of the aoe spells or any other spells for that matter. (Dragon hunting is exception as always.)

As long as only thing that changes is manacost for songs and the allied damage for songs, I think it's not going to matter too much in terms of the characters strength overall.

[Glarundis]

I also want to add wood types to actually make a difference as opposed to how it is now, where only a single wood type appears to make a difference and add wood types to the magic instrument creation function. I need to look into that bit there might already be a way to transfer wood types to magical instruments but I don't think so.

Now that's what's a welcome addition

[GM Oden]

Ya skills for bards are not in the works. I'm just pointing out they are in the wrong base class.

I had this discussion with someone on icq earlier, IF the mana usage change is given a biased unfavorable turn out, I mean not given an honest go, I, and some of you here asked me for this, do not want to ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be asked about party specific songs again, you've got to give a little to gain what I feel will be a game changer for bards when it comes to being partied.

[Dioner]

Currently using AoE damage songs and debuffs require just some coordination between the hunting party to use them properly. In my opinion this brings a interesting aspect to PvE and to PvP aswell.

I'm talking here only about the plan to change AoE damage/debuff songs. I'd rather see them work as they've worked on Pang so far.

I'll give more feedback about these and other changes once I get back home.

[GM Oden]

Here is what is going to go down, I'm putting in these changes and they're going to go through testing. Testing will be handled by some players who have bards currently and will be honest about feedback.

I feel that much of the community of bard players here think I'm going to screw up the goose that lays the golden egg. That is not my intention at all, my intention with everything Ultima Online which will be 21 years old this year is to simplify and streamline the more tedious aspects of Pangaea while keeping things balanced.

Mana was chosen as I felt stamina would really suck to use.

And all I'll say beyond this point I've said it before, if what players want is the same old same old, what you need then is a maintainer not a scripter. Someone to run the shard and brings nothing more to the table than an Internet connection and a spare PC and I'm not that person. I like to try things out even if I'm told it won't work, my whole aim is to make everything about Pangaea a little bit less tedious.

There's nothing hard core about this shard, there never has been and I played back in the 2003s and/or 2004s, what many perceive as hard is tedium. Anyway I'm off topic, I'm just pointing out there's no reason not to try this out if it means the bard class is a little more player friendly.

[Dioner]

I think I might've been too rough about being against all the changes you're planning. Now I can see that it was most likely just "natural reaction" when you're trying to keep a tight grip of something that you feel secure and already familiar with.

Changes are for our own good and we/I should accept that. We shouldn't be just stuck in our old ways because that would only kill the development of the shard and without development, the game would eventually become utterly boring.

For example getting rid of the .lastsong would be a great thing since it actually feels pretty inflexible and outdated.

The main reason I was against AoE songs not hurting allies was most likely just to keep the gameplay and usage of them "hard/hardcore" but I don't find it necessary to keep them that way.

When making songs use mana I actually see it might work very well with the them not hurting/debuffing allies. Kind of +/-0 situation but it could improve the gameplay of the class to the right way.

Ofcourse nothing cannot be said to be certain without proper testing. Like Oden told, everything can be fine tuned to find the golden middle way.

Therefore I'd be happy to help you with the testing.

PS. I actually changed my vote now that I thought these changes clearly through.

[GM Oden]

So overall changes:

- Bard songs broken into three categories, Strings, Percussion and Woodwind, this will make discovering the best instrument type a tad easier but still keep a little mystique with category types that have multiple instruments.

- Flute is going to be changed graphically to use the actual flute graphic and its corresponding sound.

- Wood types which don't appear to play a role save for one wood type will have their wood types enhanced and be completely situational, not necessarily boost for songs but instead give different or additional effects to songs.

- As aforementioned, bard song titles will change

- If I can manage a tooltip lite system, instruments will clearly denote what type of instrument they are. But this may be a future update.

- In this move over I'm planning to to add two additional wood types that will likely not bring anything new to the table initially but at some point will give us room to expand on any shortcomings we feel a bard system rewrite may introduce so I'm not just looking to push something out and say "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" I'm giving us room for expansion and growth. We need more living space!

[Zendrick]

Even something as simple as item Id or armslore could
Be used to ID the instrument category.

[Glarundis]

- Wood types which don't appear to play a role save for one wood type will have their wood types enhanced and be completely situational, not necessarily boost for songs but instead give different or additional effects to songs.

Like I said before, this is simply that I will welcome with open arms regardless of the final decision on the other bard changes.
Also, I'm hoping there will be the possibility to have wooden magical instruments, otherwise people still won't use those (unless the additional effects are really useful in certain situations). I tested all the wooden types on buff songs and they were all garbage

Even something as simple as item Id or armslore could
Be used to ID the instrument category.

Woodwind- Flute
Percussion- Tamborine, tamborine with ribbon, Drums
Strings- Lute, Harp, Standing Harp

[GM Oden]

The idea is to add wood types to magical instruments as well. Although in the future I have an idea for crafted instruments which may sting the hunting market a little but it'd give a bone to bowyers who I feel need it.

And Ya, ding ding ding, you nailed it glar, it's a much simpler system to just base songs of instrument types, my only wish is that we don't have at least one more woodwind instrument but I'm not going to add a custom instrument type. This was actually an idea I stole from EQ but as a Trumpet player should have come to my mind a lot sooner.

The tooltip idea is intended to remove a lot of the annoyance for things that should be common knowledge, I like item id as an appraisal and identify magical properties but for basic things they should be revealed some way that is easy and the easiest way is through tooltips.

As for mana changes to songs I only ask you keep an open mind and know that my intention is not to weaken the class but improve it while firmly placing bards in the caster class instead of one foot in the fighter camp and the other in the caster. It should also improve Meditation gains as bards will be using Meditation a bit more than they do now. And I'm not adverse to boosting meditation if it needs to be to 85 but we will see if it needs to be.