Will Bards be able to choose what type of Perform skill they use?

[Ravenlute]

I see guitars or mandolins in many games but will someone choosing to skill up their Perform skill be able to choose different styles as well such as singing, wind instruments, dancing, etc.?

Will Bards be able to choose from these different Performance styles when they use their Bardic Performance abilities or will they be pigeonholed into only one style?

[Valkenr]

Way to early for a clear answer on this. This is likely to be in the Open Enrollment, but I wouldn't count on it for early enrollment.

[Harrison]

To me, it seems like it'd be easiest to just have one Perform skill, and then have the skill change thematically depending on what kind of instrument you have equipped (and having no instrument equipped has you singing).

[Richter Bones]

It might be easier to bundle the types of instruments together such as woodwind, percussion, brass, and string. For vocal have separate performance for informational, entertain, and persuade. For dance there is a wide range of different types, but you could categorize them as ballroom, couples, and folk.

[Ravenlute]

Different Bardic abilities required different performance styles as well.

Countersong needed Keyboard, Prcussion, Wind, String or Sing

Distraction needed Act, Comedy, Dance or Oratory.

[Valandur]

If there were somewhere that I would judge it worthwhile to spend some money in animation/emotes it would be in the area of Bardic performance. Most games have 1 or 2 very short animation clips per instrument type, to me this seems a bit lame given the role/classes description and value in medieval society. IIRC, both DAOC and Vanguard had decent Bard animations, although they were too short.

I would urge a song creation system, perhaps one that starts off using Vanguards method as an example and building from there.

Given the Devs desire for meaningful player interaction, I think adding rich Bard animations would only enhance the players feeling of immersion within the game world.

[Hardin Steele]

LotRO has a nice "Minstrel" class option where you can make your own music. It would be nice for a group to be able to party up to play different elements of one song so an actual band could play a real tune (there are some great madrigal pieces that could be imported. It would be pretty important to keep most modern era music out of the game. Although saying that, there is this one camp in LotRO near Weathertop ....a minstrel is often there and he plays a tune from the group Boston...it is very well done and quite beautiful. You can tell a lot of work went into that particular tune. I am a fan of a bard/minstrel class who could play in a tavern or a town square. It would add a fantastic element of period realism, and if the music was written well and performed well it would be worth having concerts or performances regularly.