Post by Azherae on 2024-08-01 08:19:13
Fantastic stream. Loved everything about the presentation.
I just enjoy watching the team looking like they're really, really having fun, and the Daragal adventure was basically perfect, if very slightly short (makes sense, given that y'all seemed to skip some parts for brevity). I can also easily visualize all the options that appear when the area is cleansed (i.e. for a short period there is none of this going on), Corrupted (this place would look awesome and terrifying if overrun by Corruption and corrupted mobs) or just endangered or something (let's say bandits or Sladeborn took over the whole area instead).
Please reference my group's Bard opinions on Bardliness, for mine, and assume I'm doubling up on all her praise, for your report. But I am therefore going to skip to the one thing that I found troubling.
When I made that Bard Desires Compilation thread my feeling was that it's really hard to get everything people want in a Bard into Ashes. I know some abilities weren't shown and are still being worked on, ofc, but something about this version seems off. Not even 'lacking' because then I'd just assume it was unfinished, but for what Ashes is, as a whole concept, it seems 'off'. The 'choice' isn't there. I saw no abilities that a Bard would reasonably choose not to spec into. I saw only a few light options for 'which Augments to apply to those abilities' that aren't going to end up being really easily pigeonholed for meta performance, i.e. there's not much reason not to go Minstrel, even with the fact that Heals and even HoTs can crit.
I'm used to this, it's not as if BRD/SMN, BRD/RNG, or BRD/THF were ever an option one would take in FFXI, and I also accepted/theorize that trying to make the outlier combinations work is a labor of love that the good Dr. Bucky will spend many hours on as we go forward.
But something's missin', and support almost always wants to have all of their options to do supporting with, or they'll end up constantly in 're-spec before heading out' mode. The choices of Augment Schools for Bard tentatively given, combined with the fact that not all four could be given, causes my feeling of unease relative to the current implementation to be amplified.
But, all that said, I still absolutely believe in the team's ability to do this in the end, and this glorious Bard and Bard showcase have only cemented that further. I guess I'm just thinking that it sounds like this is going to take much longer to get right than I thought, since I was hoping things were further along.
Because of that, I can't really give a lot of more specific feedback because I expect that either the strong-support type Bards will be happy and the others will be less so, which is what I (probably biasedly) feel like we're already seeing in this thread...
Or this form will get wrangled apart and put back together a few times before it's considered ready, in which case, feedback right now from me, a person who never ever goes anywhere near Bard class personally, isn't as helpful.
Good luck to all, regardless of which way it goes, and of course, I'll be even happier if I'm entirely wrong and neither of those things need to happen, and somehow the missing pieces make the Tricksters and Tellswords ecstatic to perform.
I just enjoy watching the team looking like they're really, really having fun, and the Daragal adventure was basically perfect, if very slightly short (makes sense, given that y'all seemed to skip some parts for brevity). I can also easily visualize all the options that appear when the area is cleansed (i.e. for a short period there is none of this going on), Corrupted (this place would look awesome and terrifying if overrun by Corruption and corrupted mobs) or just endangered or something (let's say bandits or Sladeborn took over the whole area instead).
Please reference my group's Bard opinions on Bardliness, for mine, and assume I'm doubling up on all her praise, for your report. But I am therefore going to skip to the one thing that I found troubling.
When I made that Bard Desires Compilation thread my feeling was that it's really hard to get everything people want in a Bard into Ashes. I know some abilities weren't shown and are still being worked on, ofc, but something about this version seems off. Not even 'lacking' because then I'd just assume it was unfinished, but for what Ashes is, as a whole concept, it seems 'off'. The 'choice' isn't there. I saw no abilities that a Bard would reasonably choose not to spec into. I saw only a few light options for 'which Augments to apply to those abilities' that aren't going to end up being really easily pigeonholed for meta performance, i.e. there's not much reason not to go Minstrel, even with the fact that Heals and even HoTs can crit.
I'm used to this, it's not as if BRD/SMN, BRD/RNG, or BRD/THF were ever an option one would take in FFXI, and I also accepted/theorize that trying to make the outlier combinations work is a labor of love that the good Dr. Bucky will spend many hours on as we go forward.
But something's missin', and support almost always wants to have all of their options to do supporting with, or they'll end up constantly in 're-spec before heading out' mode. The choices of Augment Schools for Bard tentatively given, combined with the fact that not all four could be given, causes my feeling of unease relative to the current implementation to be amplified.
But, all that said, I still absolutely believe in the team's ability to do this in the end, and this glorious Bard and Bard showcase have only cemented that further. I guess I'm just thinking that it sounds like this is going to take much longer to get right than I thought, since I was hoping things were further along.
Because of that, I can't really give a lot of more specific feedback because I expect that either the strong-support type Bards will be happy and the others will be less so, which is what I (probably biasedly) feel like we're already seeing in this thread...
Or this form will get wrangled apart and put back together a few times before it's considered ready, in which case, feedback right now from me, a person who never ever goes anywhere near Bard class personally, isn't as helpful.
Good luck to all, regardless of which way it goes, and of course, I'll be even happier if I'm entirely wrong and neither of those things need to happen, and somehow the missing pieces make the Tricksters and Tellswords ecstatic to perform.