Re: ranged needs to be fixed.
Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 11:44 pm
Firstly, I'd to bless Aylwyne for the link to the Ballistic Mystix website and all the people over there for their hard work. Google officially sucks now.
So the ranged thing. *sigh* I would like to see it as a valuable and viable single class which it most definitely is not right now. If nothing else, you MUST become a crafter simply to keep yourself in ammo. No other class is like this. Crafters, Harvies and Casters and even Melee can straight class, but ranged fighter is simply too expensive and too un-refined to single class.
Ammo should be limited in some ways. A person can only carry so much and every bullet you carry is another few ounces of weight made just for killing. That said, clip sizes should be larger. Weight shouldn't neccessarily be decreased, but the whole weights-system for ammo should be reviewed with input from people who have actual weapons experience. Clip sizes shold be increased if you are going to use them. I would cite actual examples for various weapons, but google it yourself and see for yourself. 50+ mags for pistols are readily available and rifles get insane....
Range should definitely be increased. "What about Caster ranges" you say? Maybe magic is only a controllable force within 50 meters of a person no matter how powerful they are. Maybe the planets magic-field causes spells to dissipate if they get outside a casters control range. Maybe magic is not the issue here and shouldn't really factor in. Mages wil still do more damage, I think letting ranged hit farther than them is a viable and fair benefit for Ranged fighters. Pistols out to around 35-40 meters, but rifles etc out to something like 200+ meters. They ARE rifle after all....
Damage: I don't think damage should be increased that much if at all. My personal take on the various weapons available is that the limits imposed by ammo-weight would be sufficient if reviewed and tweaked further. Launchers should not be the weapon of choice all the time. Some folks like to snipe and others kinda dig being a pistoleer, yada yada yada.
Skills: With the previous paragraph in mind, I think that, like caster spells, different weapon types should be skills that you do not gain until you hit a certain level. And I do think they should be free. You start with Pistol and Rifle of your race and gain access to the other weapons as you prgress. You get options to buy other races weapon cert when you visit those lands for like 5sp or something. And then there are the actual weapon-skills. Quick-shot or Panic-shot or other things that give you modifers to various things or in certain situations. Shooting a pistol at 25 meters is nothing like pulling the trigger at 6 feet. But I would rather see the whole thing as base skills with bricks for mods rather than trying to do the whole stnadard range-modifiers thing. Easier to implement with the current system I believe. I am not going to post a huge list of possible skills, everyone can imagine the things they would like to be able to do based on movies, games and any real-world experiences they might have.
IMO, ranged is very unpolished if not downright un-implemented. You have access to its basics, but there is no advanced game for it at all. Complaining about it is appropriate because they have yet to truly implement it. Melee has so many different skills, Bleeding, Ignore Armor, various extra credits and so on. Ranged has almost nothing.
And please stop comparing Ranged and Elementals. They are two different classes. They share no common skill base. People have compared Melee and Caster and generally find them near-balance in regards to situational roles for each class. Ranged needs to be compared with Melee first and brought into balance there, then tweaked so it balances with Elemental, not brought up to Elemental and then tweaked to its own sister-class. Ranged being so weak actually hurts Melee classes too, since their sister-skill tree is of little benefit to them, unlike Casters who benefit from both sides of their skill tree should they choose to pursue it. The only real reason to build any ranged right now, unless you are simply psychotically masochistic, is to have extra points to spend on your stats so you can spend your Melee points on your real skills.
So the ranged thing. *sigh* I would like to see it as a valuable and viable single class which it most definitely is not right now. If nothing else, you MUST become a crafter simply to keep yourself in ammo. No other class is like this. Crafters, Harvies and Casters and even Melee can straight class, but ranged fighter is simply too expensive and too un-refined to single class.
Ammo should be limited in some ways. A person can only carry so much and every bullet you carry is another few ounces of weight made just for killing. That said, clip sizes should be larger. Weight shouldn't neccessarily be decreased, but the whole weights-system for ammo should be reviewed with input from people who have actual weapons experience. Clip sizes shold be increased if you are going to use them. I would cite actual examples for various weapons, but google it yourself and see for yourself. 50+ mags for pistols are readily available and rifles get insane....
Range should definitely be increased. "What about Caster ranges" you say? Maybe magic is only a controllable force within 50 meters of a person no matter how powerful they are. Maybe the planets magic-field causes spells to dissipate if they get outside a casters control range. Maybe magic is not the issue here and shouldn't really factor in. Mages wil still do more damage, I think letting ranged hit farther than them is a viable and fair benefit for Ranged fighters. Pistols out to around 35-40 meters, but rifles etc out to something like 200+ meters. They ARE rifle after all....
Damage: I don't think damage should be increased that much if at all. My personal take on the various weapons available is that the limits imposed by ammo-weight would be sufficient if reviewed and tweaked further. Launchers should not be the weapon of choice all the time. Some folks like to snipe and others kinda dig being a pistoleer, yada yada yada.
Skills: With the previous paragraph in mind, I think that, like caster spells, different weapon types should be skills that you do not gain until you hit a certain level. And I do think they should be free. You start with Pistol and Rifle of your race and gain access to the other weapons as you prgress. You get options to buy other races weapon cert when you visit those lands for like 5sp or something. And then there are the actual weapon-skills. Quick-shot or Panic-shot or other things that give you modifers to various things or in certain situations. Shooting a pistol at 25 meters is nothing like pulling the trigger at 6 feet. But I would rather see the whole thing as base skills with bricks for mods rather than trying to do the whole stnadard range-modifiers thing. Easier to implement with the current system I believe. I am not going to post a huge list of possible skills, everyone can imagine the things they would like to be able to do based on movies, games and any real-world experiences they might have.
IMO, ranged is very unpolished if not downright un-implemented. You have access to its basics, but there is no advanced game for it at all. Complaining about it is appropriate because they have yet to truly implement it. Melee has so many different skills, Bleeding, Ignore Armor, various extra credits and so on. Ranged has almost nothing.
And please stop comparing Ranged and Elementals. They are two different classes. They share no common skill base. People have compared Melee and Caster and generally find them near-balance in regards to situational roles for each class. Ranged needs to be compared with Melee first and brought into balance there, then tweaked so it balances with Elemental, not brought up to Elemental and then tweaked to its own sister-class. Ranged being so weak actually hurts Melee classes too, since their sister-skill tree is of little benefit to them, unlike Casters who benefit from both sides of their skill tree should they choose to pursue it. The only real reason to build any ranged right now, unless you are simply psychotically masochistic, is to have extra points to spend on your stats so you can spend your Melee points on your real skills.
). I used my q70 Choice Li'Shoy-ton Rifle of Range -- I'm L35 in Ranged Fight -- I made all the Choice Shoy-Ton Ammo of Piercing with the same mats ( 2 Choice Dung Resin, 1 Choice Perfling Bark, 1 Choice Koorin Oil ).