Devs: please consider making Bard songs distinctive

[Whistleberry]

For as long as Bards have been available (all twelve years of DDO? I forget), teammates of Bards have no idea what song's being played, BECAUSE THEY"RE ALL THE SAME. And since that time there have been untold megabytes of unique-situation audio for NPCs, specific areas of dungeons, spell-effect whooshes, etc, etc. etc, ad nauseum. Why, in Babbage's name, can't the devs arrange for the mere handful of different Bard songs to have recognizably different audio tunes?

[Graskitch]

For as long as Bards have been available (all twelve years of DDO? I forget), teammates of Bards have no idea what song's being played, BECAUSE THEY"RE ALL THE SAME. And since that time there have been untold megabytes of unique-situation audio for NPCs, specific areas of dungeons, spell-effect whooshes, etc, etc. etc, ad nauseum. Why, in Babbage's name, can't the devs arrange for the mere handful of different Bard songs to have recognizably different audio tunes?

SSG has other pressing issues that they need to resolve after yesterday's update, but I am all for this. I would really like to be able to customize bard songs, and not only to be distinctive for each different song, but to be able to have instrumental variations (for example, holding the mad lute or moonhowl axe changes how the song sounds).

There are a few variations of the bard songs in-game, but yes, I definitely agree that each of them should be distinctive.

[Wylf]

Some songs don't even have any sound files associated with the. Song of Heroism does nothing, for example. You get the fun lute playing animation, but no sound. Was rather disappointing.

[glmfw1]

There are definitely different tunes, but they are very similar (and some are probably shared with other songs - not a bard atm, so not able to check).
It would definitely help to have different tunes for every song, with the style of the music relating to the song being played.
If the Devs could provide details on the file format, length, audio quality etc required for the song clips, it's possible that some of the players may be able to make relevant music clips that could be used, which could speed things up a lot.

[Stingae]

If the Devs could provide details on the file format, length, audio quality etc required for the song clips, it's possible that some of the players may be able to make relevant music clips that could be used, which could speed things up a lot.

This! My bard sooo wants to play Bonniebew's version of the mytherty inferno theme tune.

[Valerianus]

this would be really cool

[Memnir]

This is a request that has been made since before the game even launched. Scores of requests have been made over the years, including the '05 betas, to give Bards more variety in songs, all for naught. I know that in the '05 closed beta forums, a former Dev said that there were several things working against that happening - but I don't know if those reasons were elaborated upon or if it was left at that. I recall that between the VoN and Titan raids, a forumite was trying to dig into the sound files to hack in something else, to no avail. Requests for new instruments have fallen on deaf (haha) ears.

But hey - at least Bards can move around as they play now and the songs are shorter. That's just as good, right?

[Valerianus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n63UbX5kzAc

[balvix]

I vote for the beginning to crazy train and the final countdown to be 2 of them.

[unbongwah]

Just remember:
https://media.giphy.com/media/aWfKsJus6IGAw/giphy.gif

[Tyrande]

For as long as Bards have been available (all twelve years of DDO? I forget), teammates of Bards have no idea what song's being played, BECAUSE THEY"RE ALL THE SAME. And [...]

Hopefully some LOTRO devs that got transferred to the DDO side can shed a light on this as to why DDO can't have the music implementation that LOTRO has.

In LOTRO, you can customize your music by putting in score files; so your bard can play whatever...

It was told earlier (2006?) that the audio subsystem was very different and it was not important enough...but now if they charge for it?

[Memnir]

https://i.imgur.com/NlinvE3.jpg

Dammit.