Posted by Lortaen on December 24, 2000 at 21:21:24:
In Reply to: Perhaps your mis-understanding a bit... posted by Ansellius on December 24, 2000 at 18:12:37:
> I'm not saying that bards need to be made more powerful. I'm saying it needs to be harder to play a high level bard. I'm not saying that you think bards need to be more powerful... I'm saying that many of the people who play cf feel that the more difficult the course, the greater the reward should be to at least some degree. If you make it more difficult, without adding power, alot of people who are good roleplayers (as well as bad ones, admittedly) will feel it's not worth the trouble. > A bards role in life should be entertainment, not combat. The way the class is set up now a bard gains ranks by fighting only. Now I ask you, "Is a bard a fighter, or a performer?" The bard is a performer, and so it stands to reason that he should get his levels by performing, much the same way a warrior gains levels for fighting. A bard is a performer, but cf is not solely a performance (ie. RP) mud. While I agree that being a good performer is something I'd want from bards, I don't feel it's right to focus completely on the rp side and say that fighting doesn't matter. CF isn't set up that way. As for gaining levels by performing... a case could easily be made that tons of classes shouldn't have to kill mobs to gain levels, but it's the system we have. To set up a system to be different for every class would take a ton of ideas and work by the imms, and they have alot to do as it is. > Why not have a bard go through empowerment? It makes more sense than a priest-class doing so. Any fool can type in 'co wrath mob' and be just as good as some of the paladins out there. I find it much harder to properly play the role of the bard than the role of a religious zealot. As for empowerment... how would you set it up? Make them go for the gods of their spheres? That wouldn't make any ic sense... the spheres make sense for communers because they get their powers from the gods. If you make it unrelated to the spheres, you have bards praying for anyone, anywhere, and quite possibly really ticking off imms, unless you can find another good system. As well, who's a good judge of what makes a good bard? Being able to stick to a role and play it well, that's not hard to make sense of... being a spectacular entertainer, that's very much in the eye of the beholder. I wrote a poem for a poetry contest on CF, quite some time ago, back before Poetry disapppeared, when she was extremely involved in the workings of Troupe. The Troupe leader of the time, Shea, proclaimed my poem the best and me the winner of the contest. Poetry, in her note to all about it later in which she named the winner (which was Stellyx, and is when he got his title of Rhymer of Thera), didn't even give me an honorable mention. I don't begrudge her that, by any means, it was her choice to make and Stellyx was a good poet. I use it to illustrate the point that judging art is very subjective. Besides, as someone else said below and I said above, the Imms have enough to do without having to spend time listening to bards. > And why not have a hero-bard be almost as difficult as Liching? Thing of all the average people out in our world... of all those millions of people how many are top level performers? How many "average people" are there for every Dave Matthews or Aretha Franklin? It's DAMN hard to be that level of entertainer. Because, assuming you didn't make bards any more powerful, how many people of that skill level would feel it was worth the effort? Some would, no doubt... but hero bards would be a lot more rare than even liches, I think. And as for the "average" people, compared to the good musicians... the characters of cf aren't average people. Anyone who becomes a shaman, or anti-paladin, or druid strong enough to be known throughout the world is pretty rare already. Don't consider the pcs of cf as the whole population of Thera... average people don't fight things like trollocs. And there aren't *that* few skilled musicians in the world, either... I don't see many bards in hero range, as it is. > We don't need a bunch of half-rate bards running around just because the class is easy. The fun of playing a bard doesn't come from it's pk power, it comes from being a tale-spinning troubador... at least that's the way it should be. Why not make it difficult to be a bard? Increase the difficulty, decrease the number of moron-bards. Many of the players of cf, even good roleplayers, find pk power to be a big part of the fun of cf. It's not everything, certainly... but sitting around and happily performing isn't for everyone either. Increase the difficulty, decrease the number of moron-bards, and smart bards too. Maybe your real complaint is just that we shouldn't have all the morons we do have getting to hero? There's tons of morons of all classes running around, unfortunately.