The Minstrel Personality Plays a Flat Note

FoolishOptimist · April 2022

I was genuinely very hyped for this personality and have the crowns ready to purchase. The dream of waltzing down the road all merrily with my flute, or marching along to the beat of war drums was soon to be realised!

I’ll admit to being deeply disappointed while previewing the pack in the crown store.

The personality re-skins existing instruments with a notably more flashy look, but they’re nothing new. While there are a number of idle emotions that you can select, there’s no change to the walking, jogging or sprinting animations.

I wasn’t entirely expecting such an animation to have sound, as that would potentially be frustrating to other players, but even letting us walk while holding our instruments would probably have been enough to convince me to make the purchase.

The Minstrel Personality fails to live up to its name and I feel it’s more of an emote pack than a fleshed out personality, and as such I won’t be making the purchase.

What are your thoughts?

saar · April 2022

appropriate username

I do feel that 2000 crowns is a bit much for what it is, and there is a growing trend of personalities being underwhelming or charged out the butt (see, Maniacal Jester). In contrast Treasure Hunter was 1000 crowns with several animations and the torch has utility outside of just RP.

OnnuK · April 2022

I agree this personality does not feel as I imagined. It is really an emote collection with slightly changes. "Idle" status should be someting more suitable. for me it is not worth.

TiaFrye · April 2022

'Not as I imagined ' is what I usually see from people who were disappointed in this personality. Fair, considering it was datamined back in Greymoor.

Considering the number of altered animations for me the price is fair. New animations, especially for the lute, are amazing accuracy whise. Idle is as lively as Maniacal one but with less ticks and more calm. I appreciate that, because I was using jester and honesty not a fan of him playing with daggers all the time. But these two stand out a lot from others.

For each is their own, I suppose.

Starlight_Knight · April 2022

i brought it because its the closest i'll ever get to being a real bard.. #disapointed

meekmiko · April 2022

I was really reaaaally hoping your character would always have the lute out, like they do with the /idle2.
That was the one thing I really wanted out of the personality.

Finally finding out after all this time that it doesn't is just highly disappointing.

j'uan · April 2022

meekmiko wrote: »

I was really reaaaally hoping your character would always have the lute out, like they do with the /idle2.
That was the one thing I really wanted out of the personality.

Finally finding out after all this time that it doesn't is just highly disappointing.

If you want your character to always have the lute in his hands you can use the "Custom idle animation" addon. Just for this addon I bought the personality. Now sometimes my character has the lute in his hands and sometimes he plays it

FoolishOptimist · April 2022

j'uan wrote: »

If you want your character to always have the lute in his hands you can use the "Custom idle animation" addon. Just for this addon I bought the personality. Now sometimes my character has the lute in his hands and sometimes he plays it

Not everyone plays on PC with access to add ons, and ZoS shouldn’t make a habit of outsourcing solutions to the community.

SantieClaws · April 2022

This one thought maybe the bum note was intentional? Live music is not always flawless ...

The price was indeed high but there has obviously been a lot of work put into this.

Khajiit does not recognise all of the lute tunes though. Maybe someone could help with this?

The new drum emote was especially good.

This one and her fellow performers were using the personality last evening to greet some of the new kittens arriving on KR.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

j'uan · April 2022

FoolishOptimist wrote: »

j'uan wrote: »

If you want your character to always have the lute in his hands you can use the "Custom idle animation" addon. Just for this addon I bought the personality. Now sometimes my character has the lute in his hands and sometimes he plays it

Not everyone plays on PC with access to add ons, and ZoS shouldn’t make a habit of outsourcing solutions to the community.

However, it may be helpful to others.

LesserCircle · April 2022

I actually like it and I was worried that we would be always walking with our lute, I want more subtle idle animations on new personalities and this delievers that perfectly. The instruments are secondary for me, I know I'm in the minority tho.

Jaimeh · April 2022

I thought that if they ever made a bard personality, it should look like this:

But since it doesn't involve walking with a swagger, playing a lute and humming, I don't think I'll be getting it

Aztrias · April 2022

The personality seem to be suffering from hiccups, paranoia and delusions

the personality in itself looks ok but suddenly after awhile it gets startled and starts nodding, pointing and looking wildly from side to side(when you are in an empty room it makes the character looks crazy)
I was expecting more swagger and less follower of Sheogorath.

meekmiko · April 2022

FoolishOptimist wrote: »

j'uan wrote: »

If you want your character to always have the lute in his hands you can use the "Custom idle animation" addon. Just for this addon I bought the personality. Now sometimes my character has the lute in his hands and sometimes he plays it

Not everyone plays on PC with access to add ons, and ZoS shouldn’t make a habit of outsourcing solutions to the community.

That and the fact that if we just wanted to use it as a glorified Emote then they could've just released an Emotes Pack that updated the Lute, Flute, and Drum animations..

Nothing about this personality portrays a Bard from the idle stance. They just stand there kinda stiffly and look left and right and rinse and repeat. It just looks weird and like Aztrias said it makes them look crazy.

AcadianPaladin · April 2022

This thread pretty much confirms what I could glean from previewing it. Did not buy. Not trying to be cheap here but as far as a personality goes, I've yet to find one that suits my elf as well as 'Cheerful'.

I'd rather see the vanilla lute, drum, flute emotes updated to prettier instruments as just part of improving and keeping the game up to date. Oh, and as part of improving the game in general, your companion should dance their racial dance whenever you play an instrument.

Ilsabet · April 2022

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Oh, and as part of improving the game in general, your companion should dance their racial dance whenever you play an instrument.

Okay now I'm picturing Bastian doing that goofy-as-hell Imperial dance and I'm not sure whether that would be blessed or cursed.

Gaebriel0410 · April 2022

I love it, the best thing about this personality for me is that it can be used on non-bard characters too. I think the default stance is so, so so much better than the regular idle stance, and the head and eye movement instantly makes characters feel more alive, it single handedly gets rid of the dead stare that ESO characters suffered from.

I expected a niche personality but was very pleasantly surprised that I could actually use it as my new default one, my character has never looked so alive.

Also note that it Does change the walk, very subtly! When walking, male characters slightly lurch forward, which has annoyed me since forever haha. The bard personality slightly changes the character's posture to be more upright, and walking instantly looks way more natural. As a roleplayer I do a lot of walking haha, so this was instantly noticeable to me!

For me the only downside to this personality is that it's available for only 2 weeks, I think every player should always have the choice of purchasing this, it's That good.

Araneae6537 · January 2023

Does anyone have a link to the animations? I did several searches but could find nothing but stills online, which is really strange as there are usually YouTube postings of personalities, mounts, etc., so one can see the full range before deciding on buying.