Where have all the bows gone?

[genzod23]

I've been around the block a few times, played AC/EQ/Shadowbane/SWG/Horizons and a few others and in each one of those games , There's a huge percentage of the population that wants to be bowman/archers/gun users and such but here..........

I can't seem to find one person that would even consider using a bow, WTH??

I'm dumbfounded, maybe I'm missing something, seems like bows/pistols would be cool

I know they are in game, but why does no one use them, talk about them, craft them or my god even have a post about them?


Greymalken

Noob Extraordinaire , and crafter of junk that no one wants to buy

[bodywand]

Because they are horribly out of balance with the rest of the game. They are being improved with the current set of patches.. so you will probably start to see more people using them. There used to be a lot of posts about ranged weapons that went something like this: "Ranged weapons suck and this is why..".

-Fist

[nathan7]

Before patch #2 guns and bows have been, well, how to say, eh what the hell....broken. They are just now adding attack stanzas for them into game so no one ever used them. After part 1 of patch 2 they added the stanza hit rate +1 through however many there are...not sure..Im using 7 at the moment. It increases your shot rate. The gun and bow are becoming more popular and its actually fun now. Gratz to Nevrax team for the successful patch of ranged. Don't worry I have seen many crafters crafting up guns, bows, etc.....

[zumwalt]

Unlike in Beta, when the weapons actually had a distance of 500m, in live there distances (best I could make so far) is 31m, you can only get off maybe 2 shots before the creature is on you, and there reload speed is horibly slow, and the damage is lacking.

I made ammo with a damage of 75, and no matter what I shot, the highest damage it did was 50.

When I can pull out a dagger of the same quality of the bowrifle, and do more dps, why bother with the ranged weapon.

[nathan7]

Unlike in Beta, when the weapons actually had a distance of 500m, in live there distances (best I could make so far) is 31m, you can only get off maybe 2 shots before the creature is on you, and there reload speed is horibly slow, and the damage is lacking.

I made ammo with a damage of 75, and no matter what I shot, the highest damage it did was 50.

When I can pull out a dagger of the same quality of the bowrifle, and do more dps, why bother with the ranged weapon.

You obvioudly havent played with the guns and invested in the stanzas after patch 2. Not everyone is looking for quick kills and easy kills. They want to have fun. Rather it be shooting 5 yubos at once with an auto-launcher, or quick drawing with a gingo at high noon, with their life on the line. Ranged has made its improvements. Still much room for improvement, but good enough for now.

[tetra]

You obvioudly havent played with the guns and invested in the stanzas after patch 2. Not everyone is looking for quick kills and easy kills. They want to have fun. Rather it be shooting 5 yubos at once with an auto-launcher, or quick drawing with a gingo at high noon, with their life on the line. Ranged has made its improvements. Still much room for improvement, but good enough for now.

I have...

And have to say that ranged is utterly worthless at best.

[hubba1]

I haven't used ranged weapons enough to truly have an opinion on this, but I can speak to general concerns.

The big problem for ranged weapons is that magic is a good alternative.

1) magic requires no inventory space for bullets, so you can carry more spoils, resources, etc.

2) Every time you craft bullets or a gun you could have just sold off those resources or used them to craft something else, so that makes it a negative SEEMINGLY compared to magic.

3) Sap (mana) replenishes itself easily, even having self-heal sap spells again making magic a very strong alternative.

4) Armor seems to have an impact on ranged weapons use, perhaps not as strong a penalty, but since the help says it has a penalty to ranged weapon use, no one is going to want to go there.

If, and as I say to me the need is theoretical as I haven't tried ranged weapons much (my next character is going to be ranged/melee no magic though), then if needed for balance here are the obvious things to tweak.

A) Equipping a ranged weapon to replace a melee weapon and vice-versa should be MUCH FASTER than going from a Magic Amp to a gun, or from a magic amp to a melee weapon, or the reverse. This would give an advantage to ranged weapons, in that they would provide great versatility at the expense of inventory use and needing resources to provide ammo.

B) The game is going to have to make very clear what is Magically resisted and what is physically resisted. It should make it less likely that all types of ammo are physically resisted than that all magic might be resisted. Probably some of this if not all is already in-game, but the player "lore" is that it isn't. Also the hit location stanzas are supposed to have very specific effects when they critical. But since people don't use guns much and aren't too clear on how often guns critical, gun "lore" is simply never going to get to that realization. So the game has to make it self-evident (in help, during combat, etc, so much so that there can be no denial of it).

C) Perhaps a special branch of Magic that simply augments the Damage, Accuracy, Critical hit chance, or other elements of Ranged Weapons use should be created. Since most players will eventually start learning magic sooner or later, everyone seems to say the hell with Ranged weapons. But this way it will guarantee that Ranged weapons can have a definite value.

This is all by the way of suggestion. I'm not even sure any of this is really needed.

What we really have is a mindset problem, but that mindset actually is focused on efficiency and versatility, and in that regard they have a point.

It's hard to see how giving up inventory space for an unclear benefit is going to help you. How often are we out of sap (mana)? Not often. Resources are money and basically represent also our loot to be. Sacrificing that on making ammo WHEN there is no real benefit over magic, will come across as counterproductive ... you are just throwing money or loot to be away.

So IF we continue to make guns and ammo not to really have a clear advantage over magic, it's not going to win many followers. Magic is flexible, it's portable, it convenient. Guns just hurt things, period, and not much better than magic.

Any gun hit has to basically bypass any defense if it is the right type of ammo, before you are going to get any followers. If we stick with 1-3 gun shots before the gun user has to melee, then you have to make it easy for him to switch to melee and expect results. Since supposedly the gun in melee range is less effective than a melee weapon .

Personally, I don't really worry much about it. But in terms of a balance issue, certain things have to be in-game to make ranged weapons a clear alternative that is attractive. Since it seems that ranged weapons are meant to be based on the effective results of crits on certain hit locations with certain specific ammo on certain specific adversaries, then it had better be really clear when you do it right.

Without examples that guide you, without people willing to go ahead and risk points to then figure out what animal is weak to piercing ammo fired only as the left leg, we have a major problem. Without knowing for certain how often we'll get that critical, it's worse. Without knowing how often we'll simply miss, again worse. Without knowing how long that stun etc lasts, again worse. It's like trying to get a royal flush and meanwhile realizing that two of a kind will make you lose the whole pot. Might as well then go with magic and know that you can try a root, slow, slow attack, nuke, DOT, and know that it is what it is and fails because the animal resists it, period.

The feedback and the theory to ranged weapons is simply lacking in-game. I suggest that if not already clear, armor should have virtually no impact on gun use and that switching to and from ranged weapons to melee weapons should have an advantage such switches from magic amplifiers.

Finally, as long as there are limited use , self-craftable "wand" like charged items with instant casts available, there is virtually NO POINT to ranged weapons, except maybe a weak case for area of effect mortar type weapons.

Just my perspective on a theoretical level, I leave the specifics for others to discuss.

[nathan7]

Nice picture. That level 92 2 handed is rather nice, too bad you didnt invest points into the hit rate +1 and so on. Try again Tetra.

[ahoga]

Target the head (for stun) or the legs (run debuff), hit once and run while shooting.

With this strategy and hit rate stanzas, most of the mobs around your level will be dead before they reach you.

[tetra]

Nice picture. That level 92 2 handed is rather nice, too bad you didnt invest points into the hit rate +1 and so on. Try again Tetra.

You would be wrong on that claim... And since I'm at work and don't particularly feel like writing a long drawn out post to contradict your lack of knowledge, I'll just copy my post from the thread on the ats forum.

I stopped over on the test server today to see what additions had been given to the ranged tree. Rumor had it that there were some new stanzas for them to use... sadly it's just the old increased attack speed bricks from beta. During beta the brick was pretty much needed, but in FBT it was removed and melee weapons were sped up to the current speeds; however ranged weapons kept the same old rate of fire.

Ranged ammo still has the same horrible burden.
(bow/regular)Rifle and Pistol ammo still has the same obscene mat cost per hour of hunting.
Launcher and autolauncher still have the same insane obviously a misplaced decimal point burden and off the chart mat use which makes them completely nonviable.

But we get new bricks now... or brick... ranged has a new brick to increase their already obscene mat cost and lower their staying power even further.

"Hey guys... mind if I have all the explosive/bullet/jacket mats that we got tonight to last me another half hour or so?" isn't a line that goes over well since most of that is wanted by armor crafters... and armor crafters actually produce something folks consider useful.

Please fix ranged weapons... leveling it costs almost as much as leveling a crafting skill. They do piss poor damage at best, and so far the only tweaks they have had were:
1. ammo was 'fixed' to need choice mats instead of basic for good ammo, can't get 0 damage ammo anymore though which is good.
2. Clip capacity and mat use were adjusted for some ammo types, i.e. all rifles got 24/clip and (auto)launcher ammo took like 1 mat less to make
3. Dodge was "fixed"... and ranged fighters, an already marginally useful class at best, were suddenly unable to contribute anything beyond pulling and not getting exp for it cause they couldn't actually hit anything a group wants to fight.
4. Most recently the accuracy bricks were fixed and changed so that they actually affected dodge rates on mobs, this could have been due to simply having dodge adjusted however. Unfortunately, it's still not enough and requires ranged fighters to use the highest stamina draining most uber accuracy brick they have... either wear light armor or suck down stamina like a 3$ whore and annoy the mages healing it because you aren't even doing useful damage on the rare occurance that you do hit the mob...

Please at least make ranged viable... they need the ability to carry vastly more ammo shots... clips need exponentially more shots in them for the same burden (hint... try starting by adding a zero!... you can always add more when we find out it's probably not enough!). Mat use per shot needs to be exponentially lower. And for christ's sake, fix the misplaced decimal on the launcher/autolauncher ammo burden.

and for some more numbers... it takes about 3 seconds to fire my current rifle, it could have been made a bit faster but was designed for a high advisary dodge so i could hit more often. That works out to 1200 shots per hour. I can hold 40-70 clips, depending on how much starts it's journey as raw mats. Raw mats require me to remove all ammo and get the group to wait for me while I craft more... often this results in folks deciding to call it a night or something similar.

70 clips is 1680 shots of rifle ammo... just over an hour of hunting nonstop, maybe two hours of good hunting if I'm lucky.

70 clips is 70 bullet mats, 70 explosive mats, and 140 ammo jacket mats... a grand total of 280 mats for a bit over an hour of hunting.

It takes me just short of 1 minute to harvest 4-8 mats (54 seconds by my count from start of prospect to end of harvest). Harvesting 280 mats takes 35-70 minutes depending on what mode the source mode comes as. Lets put it right in the middle though, and say I get 8 half the time and 4 half the time... that winds out being 54 minutes to harvest the mats needed for just over 1 hour of hunting.

Ranged weapons do equal or less base damage than all forms of melee and they do it slower... then melee gets to tack on increased damage... and to further widen the gap you can tack on bleed, stun, or ignore armor! Ranged weapons have a max range that is nowhere near that of magic. THe ability to run while shooting, in a game where every single mob on the planet is faster than the players, is not an advantage at all. Ranged weapons have nothing to justify a cost so high that it almost approaches that of crafting, in fact they have nothing to justify a cost at all given their extremely pathetic performance, changing them to make it chew through ammo even faster than the current rediculous speed is not really an "improvement"...