Survey Results

I advertised this survey in the Bard Discord, the Bard forums, and a couple of private places, and I asked that respondents be players of Bards. 21 people in total filled out the survey (including me).

The survey asked two types of questions. First, respondents rated the level of importance of different kinds of Bard development on this scale: "Not important at all" (1), "Not that important" (2), "Important" (3), "Very Important" (4), "Extremely important" (5). Then they were asked to pick their top three areas where they'd like to see development.

Here's how I described each area of development:

Bardic Lore: Includes adding new abilities, fleshing out current abilities (screams, whistle), a dynamic mojo pool based on stats/ranks, making quality of life changes like a RT-free check of mojo.
Performance: Includes making new Performance-related abilities, adding Busking, making quality of life changes like easier weather management, fleshing out singing and acting systems, voice throw.
Spells: Includes returning old spells like Chorus of Madmen and Call of the Siren, creating new spells, and quality of life changes like ease of managing harnessed mana with cyclics.
Tactics: Includes general Tactics-related abilities and Bard-specific ones.
Recall & Evoke: Includes adding many more recalls/evokes to areas and items, adding new abilities related to recall and evoke, adding event visions of the past, adding more Bard exclusivity.
Crafting & Other Lore: Includes general abilities and Bard-specific ones for Crafting, Appraisal, Scholarship, teaching, languages, etc. (Note that I combined Crafting with "other lores" because I was limited on space. I separated Crafting from Scholarship & Appraisal in the Top 3 question.)
Weapon techniques: Includes weapon maneuvers, special styles and messaging.
Reputation or social system: Includes gaining abilities related to building reputation in an area (e.g. special area access, reducing prices, underworld access, spying), more Charisma-based abilities around the area, earning titles and position within a court or society.

Area of Dev	Mean Importance
Bardic Lore	3.9
Spells	3.8
Crafting & Other Lore	3.2
Performance	3.2
Reputation	2.9
Weapon techniques	2.8
Recall & Evoke	2.8
Tactics	2.7

Area of Dev	% put in Top 3
Bardic Lore	67%
Spells	62%
Performance	43%
Crafting	33%
Reputation	29%
Weapon techniques	29%
Recall & Evoke	24%
Tactics	9.5%
Scholarship & Appraisal	5%
Other	0%

Keep in mind that the popular choice might not always be the "right" one and that sometimes people can be shown a really cool system that they didn't even know they wanted. That said, now you know what most Bards want. Although, being honest, I think we would all be happy with development on almost any of these. :)

Additional ideas from the comments

- Expand the rumor system, give political/economic effects
- Advancement options within a culture; embed within a region and gain achievements/rewards
- More lore-skillset abilities like smooth talking into private areas, negotiating in different languages as a diplomat, translating, throwing voice as a distraction
- Adding recall and evoke as abilities that contribute to world events
- More buffs/abilities related to crafting and performance
- Something powerful we can keep up 100% of the time
- Multiple elemental transforms at one time
- Second buff for WotM
- Bring back teaching any skill in combat
- More rumors
- Underground system, in concert with Thieves
- Scream concussive doesn't scale to high ranks
- Resonance is clunky and should affect all weapons on the caster
- Screams should have similar functionality to roars -- ideas include pulling from hiding, stunning, warding like Shear
- Resonance effect for ammo, e.g. sonic flare


- Navesi

The First Land Herald -- Zoluren's newspaper. https://elanthipedia.play.net/The_First_Land_Herald