Ranged Fighting

[sidusar]

Well I did steal the idea of a sniping position from you

I like it a lot because it fits in with my ideas of making ranged good against nukers but poor against melees. The main problem is that to make ranged good against nukers it needs more than 50 meter range. But having that kind of range all the time would also mean a ranger can easily kill a melee while running away. Having to be in a sniper position in which you can't move, dodge or parry would make a ranger a sitting duck to melees.

In fact, maybe autolaunchers and launchers should get a similar option. Seems to me both those weapons would benefit from being mounted on a standard. And this would also allow us to actually 'entrench' ourselves in a position.

Other ideas from this thread I really like:

- Gun loading it's ammo automaticly when equipped. Specially for pistols and rifles, I think you should be able to switch to them quickly, and having to reload the ammo every switch is annoying.

- Launchers causing a gas cloud where they explode, similar to the clouds from forage sources and dead yelks. This would force the targets to move away from the point of impact and thus would be great at breaking those entrenched positions I had in mind.

- 'Dummy ammo' for (auto)launchers that doesn't actually explode but then ofcourse does pathetic damage too. This ammo could also take up a lot less bulk and weight than real launcher ammo, so that you can actually carry a fair amount. This way you can train the skills pretty decently (as long as you have a group to leech from ofcourse, but that goes for a lot of skills).

[ghyselsj]

I have been toying with ranged a bit, but never enough to make it past lvl 40 so far. So even though I'm still a newbie at ranged compared to you guys, allow me to have some input.

Now then, I was thinking of some sort of "rock-paper-scissors" system for melee/ranged/ele.

The Mage:
Pro: Extreme damage at medium-long range. Excellent vs Warriors since they have to run up to them.
Con: Lightly armored and low on HP. Casts are easily interrupted by physical damage. Weak to Rangers due to fast shots which can interrupt. Cannot dodge or parry while casting.

The Warrior:
Pro: Medium-Heavy (1H/2H) damage at very close range. Excellent vs Rangers since their armor absorbs much of their bullet damage. Heavily armored and very high on HP. Can always dodge or parry.
Con: Must run up to enemies. Weak to Mages due to their heavy damage.

The Ranger:
Pro: Medium damage at close-long (pistol/rifle/launcher) range. Excellent vs Mages since they don't have to run in as much as Warriors and can interrupt them unlike other Mages. Averagely armored and medium-high on HP. Can dodge or parry at all times. Can run while firing.
Con: Limited on ammo. Weak vs Warriors due to the Ranger's physical damage being negated a lot by Heavy Armor and the Ranger himself only wearing Medium Armor (most cases at least).

In this triangle system, rangers would only need a bit of adaptation so their shots are about 1.5-2 times as fast as a warrior's swings (not for launchers of course) so they have more interrupt chances.

Launchers, well... I haven't played with those yet, so I wouldn't know for sure, but I'd classify them somewhere between a mage and a ranger. Heavy damage, long range, but even more limited on ammo than other weapons. Allowing a bit more than 12 rounds per bag would be a must I (and many other apparently) think. The comparison to mages comes to mind... although they can nuke infinitely, they generally have sap and HP for a limited amount of nukes. However, with healers around, they have in effect an unlimited amount of attacks. I'm not saying ammo should be unlimited, but with only 12 shots, you are useless after 1-2 minutes of continuous fire. Nukers are useless even faster because the cast much faster, but they can be "reloaded", so to speak, in seconds. Launcher users can get their stam healed, but are then still useless unless they brought their mektoubs, have friends who can afford not to fight for the, lets say, 10 seconds, in the best case, it takes to exchange some ammo, or are HO and defending an outpost they own.

Basically, add some speed to pistols, range to rifles, and fix the launcher ammo, and you get these 3 types of rangers:

Pistoleer:
Pro: Shoots very fast making it excellent for disrupting mages.
Con: Has low range so the ranger will have to risk getting hit by the mage a few times before getting in fire range. Has low damage too so not very effective vs medium or heavy armor.

Rifleman:
Pro: Long range (max range rifle should be 50m) so they can hit mages without being hit in most cases (most mages don't use 50m spells). Better damage than pistol.
Con: Lower fire rate (meaning less interrupt chances/effective interrupts), ammo a little heavier/bulkier.

Artilleryman:
Pro: Extreme range, High damage, Area effect.
Con: Slow fire rate, low interrupt chance, heavy/bulky ammo (but less bulky than it is now).



All of this is basiclly made up on the spot, and as said, I'm not too familiar with ranged weapons, so if I'm wrong somewhere, please correct me

Greets,

[kashius]

While this rock/paper/scissors type system would work as far as pros and cons there would still be the problem of numbers. Because of the relative difficulty to level range as compared to melee/magic there are and would be far less rangers in battles. So much like it is now, Melee will not have enough support from rangers and Mages will still be at the top of the food chain as the only support they need is a healer.

All in all good ideas to make a rock/paper/scissors system. Main thing is getting more rangers into the mix so that there are some scissors around.

-Kash-

[norvic]

Very valid point from Kash, i am sure there are melee and elementalists out there who craft thier own gear but the majority just aqquire the sword or amp for their lvl and off they go. This does not hold true for ranged as there are not people out there digging and crafting ammo and selling it cheap, and it would need to be cheap as the ammo usage needed to lvl against the sale of mob mats aqquired simply doesnt add up.

This basically means atm for lvl 250 ranged you need to also get 250 harvest and 250 craft to support your ammo usage. In my book that makes a lvl 84 ranger a better Homin than your average AoD anyday but it aint gonna get them far,

So atm you need to get three times the levels to be the weakest(?) class which in view of the time and effort involved seriously upsets the rock/paper/scissors type of balance.

Stick with it Rangers be different, be the best, the satisfaction and fun are worth the effort.........or maybe i am just certifiable

[final60]

This might take away from the realism, but what implications might taking away the need for bullets alltogether have?
I'm currently 180 2handed, crafting ql230 rifles.

[kashius]

I guess it wouldn't be all that terrible if they did that. I don't think that the ammo market is all that huge, as mainly ammo is made for whoever is going to use it (right?). If they did this, dual pistols could be a possibility, and that would be cool. I don't know how they would rework the actual system of guns to make up for it. Although I'm not really sure they would need to.

-Kash-

[walls124]

How about another simple solution? (know the elementals will flak me for this )

Nerf the mages range alittle. And make most range weapons just reach alittle further than that. Perhaps I don't know the range af mages. But I really feel that I have to fire from my max range on my launcher to be reasonable safe, and then I am not even sure if I am safe there

Must admit getting High heavy range lvl really require dedication

Watryk The Artilleryman

[norvic]

I dont think the answer to tweaking ranged really lies along the route of Dumbing down by removing ammo or having an ammo regen "spell" although i see the point this would make it alot more accesable.

Most people doing range enjoy the fact that its abit hard and a challenge and I definitely think the answer to trying to even up the eternal R/P/S triangle would be by tweaking its effectiveness and activating the modifiers to add more interesting variations.

Attention to both these areas would make Range Fighting more attractive to both Fighter and Crafter types and make the effort involved more worthwhile.

[sidusar]

Nerf the mages range alittle. And make most range weapons just reach alittle further than that.

That's possible too. But it's always better to improve one class than to nerve another.

Increasing the range of guns makes ranged combat more powerfull while leaving magic as powerfull as at is, decreasing the range of spells makes magic more weak while leaving ranged as weak as it is.

All in all good ideas to make a rock/paper/scissors system. Main thing is getting more rangers into the mix so that there are some scissors around.

I'm not so sure there'd be a shortage of rangers if ranged was really made effective against elemental. For a while there would be ofcourse, because a lot have levelled melee and elemental and not many have levelled ranged.

But currently elemental rules. It's the easiest skill to train fast and the best skill for doing damage. We have more AoDs than anything else. If ranged really became effective at taking elemental mages down, wouldn't a lot of PvPers suddenly get to training their ranged skill?

Yeah, it would still take a lot more effort to train ranged than to train elemental, but I don't really see anything wrong with that. Not all skills should be the same. The people who can put in the effort for ranged would likely also be the ones who are most present in PvP events, so that should balance out a bit.

Also, it's pretty much impossible to buy ammo now, but if ranged really became usefull there'd probably be more of a market for it. So far, up to level 150, I've found that I have to craft more ammo to gain a level in ammo crafting than I have to shoot up to gain a ranged level, so one crafter can supply multiple rangers. Then it might become possible to train just ranged.

Taking away the need for ammo would only serve to make ranged more boring. I'd rather it be a usefull skill that's harder to train than other combat skills, than an easy to train skill that offers nothing special.

Take launchers and autolaunchers for example, they're even harder to train than pistol or rifle because you're stuck with the AoE. I like the idea of creating non-AoE ammo for these to train with. But I'd like it even more if there won't be any of this ammo, and instead the launcher and autolauncer are made totally overpowered. We need skills that are three times as hard to train as others, but offer a suitable power to those that do take the effort to train them. My main dislike of elemental is that the most powerfull skill is also the fastest to train.

[g00st]

How about another simple solution? (know the elementals will flak me for this )

Nerf the mages range alittle. And make most range weapons just reach alittle further than that. Perhaps I don't know the range af mages. But I really feel that I have to fire from my max range on my launcher to be reasonable safe, and then I am not even sure if I am safe there

Must admit getting High heavy range lvl really require dedication

Watryk The Artilleryman

actually the range thing is totally a cool point!! why not make the range 100m, we can set the draw distance to 250m, seems at the current moment 100m range bowrifle (silly non electric bowrifle users are bad ) would be pretty awesome....not in terms of doing anything remotely magi grinding like strength but just really cool maybe and worth the craft or buy ammo....nevrax try it out on some non live server see what its like go go go!!!!!.....