Launchers and autolaunchers... calling out the inexperienced trolls

[svayvti]

Not super low levels because of course you don't want horrid exp.

I found launchers most effective on herds of mixed ranking. Herds of social aggro with one or two sprightlies in it to focus the blast on, eliminating enough adds in AoE. This seems exactly the way it SHOULD be used. Good practice and because of the mix of high and low level mobs in a herd most people who want to level find these herds an obstacle.

Still I take on one herd and I'm out of ammo. The only issue I've seen with Launchers is the weight and mat use of ammo. The damage was absolutely fine from my experience.

[lyrah68]

(to other readers...LONG reply)

I did not attack you, have not attacked you. You were the one that took an attacking tone. I admitted my lack of experience, that is appology enough.

I stated that **at the time that I did use ranged*** they were grossly over powered, I have no idea, nor any desire to have any idea about what they do now. When I saw that they were not a financial viable way of operating, I abandoned them (much like any class that had spells that used a component in EQ some of the components cost upwards of hundreds or even thousands of k of in game cash. No matter what the benefit of these spells, I could not see me ever gaining enough game cash to justify ***ever*** using them. Same thing goes with the guns, cost versus benefit was and remain skewed beyond reason).

I am rather sure that the moaning of ONE class of players normally ends in the nerfing of other classes RATHER than the empowering of the moaning class. How do I come to this thought? Easy enough, six years of playing EQ and following the whinings of "ballance us" from each class. The results of which was the nerfing into near unplayable of several classes, and the inevitable forcing of grouping.

I have played other games and watched their forums as well. And whenever ONE group of players whined about being too weak or commented on either a successful tactic or successful spell or skill, it was nerfed in a following patch. EQ is far from the only game to liberally use the nerf bat.

The whiners MAY have had a valid issue or concern. They may have had the best of intentions (the road to H*ll being paved with good intentions and all). But the results were the same. They were NOT empowered but such actions, but the rest of the player base was punished.

*looks at the Tryker comment and blinks* Hmm I wonder how you came to that point of view from what I wrote...whatever. I never said that ranged did not need tweeking...please re read all my posts on this thread, after you have calmed down (try one valerian *a natural supliment that acts to ease pain similar to walnuts or asprin, and calm the nerves), or have taken your medication.

The con system was part of what I mentioned to point out that YES this game DOES need tweeking, from top to bottom...INCLUDING YOUR HOLY RANGED WEAPONS.

My point about versitility was simply that you can do like I did with EQ and beat your head against a brick wall...which may or may not work out for you, I didn't have all that great results, five or six years wasted and a heck of a head ache are about all I got...or you can evolve and figure out how to fit into the game as it exists. (come to think of it, I did evolve in EQ, when I found playing a mage unpalitable, I rolled up a druid, which I found much more playable. I could have moaned and whined...until verant nerfed the boards to the point where even speaking ILL of the game was enough to gain you a few days out of game...and continued playing the mage, but I chose the lesser of two evils and joined the Druid conga line)

You can either wait out the "fixing of ranged" which I haven't heard anything about plans to fix it, but then I don't haunt the dev chats or read German and my French is rusty at best (but then 16 years since having a class or using a skill will make you rather rusty at anything). Or you can evolve and transform the game for yourself, but changing your point of view.

I have little doubt that you will remain stubborn, having had a lot of experience with hide bound people I recognize one when I see one. But I do invite you to open your mind and try something new, it is not so terrifying as you might think, you might even enjoy yourself.

From this point on I will no longer reply to you. You are antagonistic and trolling. If you truly wanted to stay on topic and try to logically explain your point...you would have. But you are more interested in being right to the point of refusing appologies and aknoweldgements of ignorance, and attacking anyone you THINK is trying to contradict your point. I would go so far as to say you are paranoid and jumping at shadows.

I stand behind my stance that regardless of the value or lack of value of your point, you would serve it MUCH better by getting off your high and mighty horse and using logic instead of attacking those that you wrongly perceive as attacking you. You are LOOKING for a fight...and you get what you look for, whether that is what those you pick a fight with were intending or not.

Since one of the quotes I decided to pull in my original post was yours, I'll assume that your justification for why ranged combat and launchers/autolaunchers especially should remain nonvaible due to their insanely overpowered abilities is because

1. You have so much experience and are such an expert on the subject of ranged weapons because you haven't used ranged weapons in a very long time and somehow missed an old patch where they changed ranged weapons so that the ammo was no longer backwards in that basic mats made great ammo and choice mats made ammo with 0 damage... All those posts from people posting current numbers with choice/excellent/surpeme mat ammo are obviously lies since ammo did "GROSSLY overpowered" amounts of damage before it was changed

2. You are sure that fixing the amazingly nonviable ranged weapons that are obviously meant only for raids where you would be better off trying to punch mobs to death, would mean the death of every other class and involve nerfing everything down to their level... because obviously the "please fix damage/mat consumption/burden on ammo" is the same as "please make melee weapons/mage amps use thousands of mats or break after a single mob or two"

3. You are not the person who I called out as attacking me, that particular person is the only one to have come out and attack me without saying anything at all about the thread.

4. Cerest commented towards me because my thread was inflamitory and I clicked the "report this post" button on post number 2 where I was attacked and someone tried to threadcrap in the thread. Of course you seem to find it easier to attack me again and try to claim that I'm calling you a troll or something, rather than participate in the thread... not really supprising considering the last time you said that fixing ranged would be unbalancing, you did the same thing when your post was pointed out as being clueless and uninformed.

5. It's ok that ranged weapons are borked because some of the tryker ranged weapons look like beauty supplies.

6. It's great that ranged weapons are borked because folks that want to use ranged weapons to kill things should just suck it up and be a melee or a mage, because getting back to your earlier point... it's obvious that those "please fix the burden/mat use/damage on ranged weapons" requests from folks are really just hidden "please nerf the everliving hell out of melee/magic so it too is not really viable at best"... an idea similar to this came up in one of the threads I read on the german forum... when people asked if he actually used ranged and pointed out how silly the comment was, he never returned.. wonder if you will?

7. Because the con system isn't as gradiated as you would like, it's fine that ranged weapons are not really viable at best, all the way to utterly worthless and unusable depending on the weapon. After all, changing a few decimal points and moving some numbers is obviously an order of magnitude more work than redoing the entire con system to suit your needs and desires .


So now that we have the basis of your point down... do you actually want to try commenting on why with your obviously vast amounts of experience, ranged weapons like launchers and autolaunchers are "NOT meant for normal game play" because "it would be HIGHLY unballancing for it to weigh the same as other MUCH less powerful ammo.". Or why you think "understand this item and its ammo, it is meant for invasions, where you need to wipe out HUGE numbers of mobs, SO you would have one player, near the stables (have the ammo ON the packer IN the stables, you can still reach into the packer with it SAFELY in the stables and have all IT can carry on it), you load up and BLAM(think thermo nuclear explosion), then when needed reach into packer and yank more ammo out, reload, and BLAM away again." when the DPS is far lower than melee and magic, and the mat use is exponentially higher than either of them?

or are you just going to spew out more uses of your CAPS LOCK KEY in an attempt to make it look like you HAVE A POINT... when it's really clueless and uninformed rambling by someone who hasn't used ranged weapons in so long that they didn't even notice that the mats were switched to no longer work backwards on ammo a long time ago?

[uncus]

Gotta bump this so it doesn't go off the first page, it's too much fun reading tetra's diatribes against any who may disagree with him!

[tongue in cheek]
The only way to make ranged combat effective would be to:

• Increase ranges on all ranged weapons to sight and slightly beyond...you know where you can target things over that rise but they don't yet appear on your screen.
  In RL, Snipers can hit what they could not see with their naked eye.
• Increase the damage per second to 2x what any other weapon of the same level and quality in the game will do - remember, some melee-types use a weapon in BOTH hands. In RL, guns are used because they do so much more dps than swords or pikes.
• Slow mobs so that there is no way for them to reach you before you can fire off a full clip at them. In RL, guns can fire so much more quickly than animals can run.
• Increase all ammo stacks to 99 and reduce their weight and bulk so that you can carry 100 clips in your bag. In RL, the XM8 [the combat rifle in development for the US] carries a 3 clip stack of 90 rounds, and the weight is about 1-2lbs per stack.
• Make all ammo use 2 mats per 30 round clip [or stack of 99 to be consistant]
  In RL, it takes much less brass, lead, and gunpowder to make a cartridge than the amount of steel in a sword.

I guarantee if these changes could be implemented then everyone would use ranged weapons. Why should there be benefits/rewards and downsides/risks associated with any activities? Why, come to think of it, we should all be able to kill any mob with no risk to ourselves regardless [not irregardless, there's no such word!!!] of the mob's level, our level, our equipment's level, or even what weapon we use...maybe kitins should be able to do some minimal damage, but only if we take our armor off to let them and only during raids. And we should get a full stack of mats on each harvest so we don't have to waste time harvesting before we craft. And there should be no degrades when crafting since that hurts our self esteem. No risk, all rewards - That's what makes a game fun![/tongue in cheek]

[cerest]

This thread had degenerated. If it gets any lower it will be closed.

[Mekos]

Please Cerest, let this tread continue. The entertainment value is exceptionally high. And to be fair, the Topic does accurately state what to expect from the discourse.