Targetting, ranged weapons and other strange stories...

[lazarus]

Last night, we had two groups in Enchanted Isle doing some stuff for a bit of fun. However, one of the things that made this decidely less fun was the issue of targetting. It seemed that pretty much anyone or anything not in your specific team is treated as 'fair game' and is targetted with the spacebar. Needless to say, this made targetting very awkward as we had to use the pointer to try and target, which when having two teams, various other mobs and whatever, is not the easiest thing in the world.

So, I have to ask - is this deliberate and if so is it going to be fixed? I see no reason for targetting another Homin outside of a PvP area and it makes life very difficult at times. The other question is does anyone know of a way to prevent this and save my (and others) sanity when multi-teaming?

Next thing I'd like to have a pop at is ranged. Yes I know, it's been done to death, but I wanted to add my views and experiences with ranged. Those that know me will know I get very single minded about things once I get started, and I decided to do the Tryker ranged crafting rite. This was done easily enough, although the amount of sp needed was IMO a little harsh. I can't remember the exact amount, but it's something like 400 craft sp just to buy the plans for the rite, never mind levelling the skills to actually make the stuff. This lead me to look at the sp required for ranged crafting, and I have to ask a question - why do ammo plans cost 40sp? The weapon plans cost 30 each and you don't get a plan with any except the pistol which you get when you first buy the skill. I just feel that with all the other issues with ranged (which I'll talk about in a minute) the fact that it costs so much to buy the various plans etc is not helping the situation. I truly feel that ranged is an area that many people would like to investigate but are put off by the sheer amount of points etc required. I come to this conclusion because every single weapon I have placed on a vendor in both Tryker and Matis has gone the next day, and the ammo sells almost faster than I can make it.

The other point about ranged weapons is just that - the range. I spent some time making weapons using various mats from choice to supreme and the range never went over 33m. Now, I appreciate I never tried every single mat and very few animal mats, but even so it's not much when you consider how simple it is to get a magic spell to cast out to nearly 50m by default. This is further turned into a kick in the teeth when ranged bandits can quite easily shoot at you seemingly from the other side of the continent. I have to say this - if you're going to have ranged bandits, give them the same limitations as us to even the playing field a little.

Next point on ranged - ammo. The damage from ammo is not too bad, but is not nearly on a par with magic. I don't like compare it to melee as I feel it is too much like comparing apples and oranges, but one feels obliged to ask why the increased damage stanza doesn't affect ranged, why slash ammo can't use bleeding and why piercing ammo can't use ignore armour etc etc.

I personally believe that ranged weapons should do more or at least equal damage to magic, simply because a) it generally has a shorter range and b) it requires the user to tote ammo about in addition to the stam/hp usage of the actions. Ranged and magic should compliment each other so well, but ranged fighters are currently treated as the red-headed stepchild of the combat skilltrees.

Oh, and why is it that there is no option to auto reload an empty weapon? Perhaps make it a skill or something, but having to click, select and wait every few shots is not my idea of fun.

Final minor point about ranged is the fact it's based on balance, ie the regen rate of your stamina. This means you have to keep your regen maxed at all times to use the best q weapon you can. I know that you should try to keep regens maxed anyway, but with the upgrades, stanzas and other stuff to buy with your fight skill points, sometimes regen has to take a back seat for a bit. Perhaps it might have been better to base the quality on the total amount of stamina, not it's regen rate?

OK, this has definately started to turn into a rant, so I'm going to stop.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome as always...

[borg9]

I am not going to comment on the range skill, weapons of ammo.... You knowledge of the subject is far greater than mine.

On the targeting issue, currently know bug, all homin seen as enemies. I have seen on the ATS patch notes that this has been addressed and is currently being tested. Its very frustrating for all players of all skill paths. All I know is that its being tested and I hope that we will see the patch containing this fix soon.

For the benefit of others and may be you .....

Create a targeting macro....

Macros found under shift+K

its a relatively simple interface an worth spending a few mins checking what it can do.

The targeting macro:

Add command

Catagory: ACTION
Action: Target the current target's target.

This can be dragged onto you hands bar or assigned to a key.

Usage:

Select the tank of the team, once they have selected the target (careful of last minute target swaps. Then activate the macro, key press or click on shortcut.

What it does is the equivelent of 'Assist' it selects that players target and allows you to attack the same target.

[xenofur]

the targetting will be fixed in one of the upcoming patches, it is alread changed on the ats

[dazman76]

the targetting will be fixed in one of the upcoming patches, it is alread changed on the ats

Now that is the second best bit of news I've had this week The best was that Iiyama have swapped out my expensive monitor for a 2nd time, once again without questions, and once again for a shiny new model

Thanks Xeno!

[boinged]

I don't agree that range should give the same damage as magic, it should be more like melee. Range isn't the same as nuking - you can get away with wearing heavy armour, you can still dodge/parry, your shooting can't be interrupted while being attacked.

You can also run forwards while shooting so the distance (or time) before a creature hits you is increased. For slow creatures like yubo, they can never catch you

Auto-reload would be great though!

The increase rate stanza makes up for not having increase damage, maybe there should be new types of ammo (armour piercing, fragmenting, explosive for ignore armour, bleed and slow respectively).

For me it is still a secondary skill to my 2H melee but I use my rifle occasionally when soloing. Not sure about pistols but I found launchers to be very destructive (although there is a big problem carrying ammo) and for the same reason - very dangerous. It would be great if we could recreate the scenes from Ryzom Trailer 9

[norvic]

My main fight skill is Ranged and it can be hard work. I would like abit more Damage but dont think it should be brought upto Nuker power that potential is there with launchers just the weight penalties nerf it.
I do strongly agree on the "range" aspect atm the skill would better be described as "long melee" and i would certainly like to see abit more range in Ranged, your point about npc range fighters seems spot on too me.
This said i intend to persevere as it is i enjoy range fighting and the associated crafting involved, maybe i am just a maschocist

[usinuk]

The other point about ranged weapons is just that - the range. I spent some time making weapons using various mats from choice to supreme and the range never went over 33m.

FYI basic range for pistols is 30m max, for rifles 40m. One of the many problems with ranged weapons is that harvested mats simply don't move the range or speed bars...you have to use animal mats.

I promised myself to not bother posting on ranged until I finish my q105 DPM summary across all melee/magic attacks and get it translated into French so that Nevrax actually reads it, but when even a occasional ranged user posts misperceptions I need to clear things up. No offense to boinged.

Range isn't the same as nuking - you can get away with wearing heavy armour, you can still dodge/parry, your shooting can't be interrupted while being attacked.

COMMON MISPERCEPTION OF RANGED #1 - HEAVY ARMOR. Can't use any dodge/parry/feint/crit offset credits with any ranged attack. This dramatically decreases the effectiveness of heavy armor as your stam/hp costs are simply unbelievable with the light ranged weapons if you use the must-haves accurate attack (they nuked ranged's accuracy pre-patch 1) and firing rate to get your DPS to about 2/3rds that of fighting using daggers (see below). A simple way to think about stam/sap costs: wearing heavy armor while using ranged is like wearing heavy armor while casting. The only difference is that nukers have better distance to start off with so that your range while nuking with heavy armor on is actually pretty close to that of ranged weapons.

You can also run forwards while shooting so the distance (or time) before a creature hits you is increased. For slow creatures like yubo, they can never catch you

COMMON MISPERCEPTION OF RANGED #2 - KITING. 95% of mobs will catch you in the first 2 shots, and you will often get turned around when shooting so that if you try kiting you'll run straight into the mob social group. A very dangerous technique that generally doesn't work, unless you cheat and go to a mountain top on Zorai (like some nukers I know).

The increase rate stanza makes up for not having increase damage

COMMON MISPERCEPTION OF RANGED #3 - FIRING RATE AND DPM. Compare pistol and rifle damage to dagger, 1h, and 2h damage. Doing this off the top of my head and not in game so my figures may not be exact - I'll correct them when I get online - but you'll get the picture.

q80 pistol 99% dmg ammo = 132 dmg
q80 dagger 99% dmg = 53 dmg x 2 = 106 dmg

Looks good, right? But...

Max hpm for pistols = 30. Max hpm for daggers = 60.

And crafting a dagger up to the low to mid 50s hpm is not all that hard, but getting a pistol to do 27-28 hpm takes some real hard core animal mats.

But lets throw hit rate 5 or 6 in. My experience with this and a 27 hpm pistol is that I fire (not hit) somewhere around 45 times per minute.

45 * 132 = 5940 max damage per minute.

But if I have similar quality (90%+ speed) daggers at 55 hpm:

55 * 106 = 5830 max damage per minute

So, roughly equal. But this is BEFORE increase damage, which costs the same as firing rate. And I know xenofur has reported issues with increase damage/accurate attack working on the second hand dagger, but at the least you're talking about pistols doing 50% more damage, and if everything was working right almost 100% more damage, than pistols using comparable stam/hp costs. And daggers you can use credit offsets with so actual stam/hp costs and downtime are far, far lower.

What this points out, incidentally, is that the only reasonable stam/hp to DPS formula for ranged weapons is when you use slow-attack launchers/autolaunchers. That brings up the issue of suicide-by-AOE-attack, mat costs, and weight, but you get the picture.

So no, increase firing rate doesn't make up at all for not having increase damage.

Maybe there should be types of ammo (armour piercing, fragmenting, explosive for ignore armour, bleed and slow respectively)

COMMON MISPERCEPTION OF RANGED #4 - AMMO WORKING ON PARTICULAR TYPES OF MOBS. I have all the different types of ammo (slashing, piercing, blunt). Certain types work much less well, but for many mobs using even the 'right' ammo still gives you a substantial armor penalty. We pay 40 sps per plan now. No need to spend an additional several hundred points for stuff that should be doing this already.

For me it is still a secondary skill to my 2H melee

This is the basic problem. Ranged is essentially unplayable as anything but a secondary skill.

It needs to be fixed to stand on its own.

Edit: fixed slight errors in numbers after I logged in - was only off by a couple of points, which tells me I need to take some time off from this game!

[flynnkd]

Ammo is the biggest complaint i have. I wieghs too much/I cant carry enough... same thing really. I can carry about an hours play worth of ammo, if I was on a big hunt with a group of friends it simply isnt long enough.

Create plans for bigger ammo clips if you want, but increase the amount of ammo you can carry...

Increasing the speed of fire only makes this worse.

Slow down the rate of fire and allow more damage would be better, slower means the ammo lasts longer.

[xenofur]

obsolete due to inattentiveness

[usinuk]

since the inc dmg stanza works only on the right hand weapon(actually all stanzas work only on the right hand weapon, confirmed as working as intended too :/)

Edited since post now gone.

The news about stanzas only working on the right hand weapon is depressing. (Edit: I only wish that part was obsolete too.)

Anyway, didn't want to start another ranged thread war here, just that once you look at the actual numbers and stam costs it really points out the issue.

Just part of the whole issue of damage, damage absorption, and hit points needing a huge rebalance post patch 1, although ranged has needed it longer than that.