Ryzom

Will you do something to improve range fighting ?''

We have real ambition for range fighting, as a third form of combat - something different from melee and magic - bringing an original diversity to the game. So this is a major point here : range fighting clearly needs to be deeply reworked and improved. But for that we need to finish the other big works currently in progress - the cleaning and the outposts

I hate when my pessimistic realism is proven to be true. Ranged fighting is a skill that is utterly nonviable. It was nonviable during beta in april of 2004*, when we were generally advised not to bother wasting time testing it because it was going to be revamped. It was nonviable when they removed the bug with bullets selling as many times their value during beta. Infuriatingly enough, it was nonviable when posts in the ATS forum said "hey you know that you sped up the base for melee, removed +hitrate bricks, and forgot to do the same with ranged weapons?". It was nonviable when retail came around and it along with all manner of other crafting skills were fixed so the best mats actually made the best stuff (i.e. not backwards). It was nonviable when it was given the exact same brick that was removed during beta when they forgot to speed ranged fight.

And now, after months of the game being out as a retail product, and damn near a year after beta with not so much as word one about ranged weapons... Nevrax honestly feels that it's reasonable to ignore this skill long enough to implement the perpetually around the corner feature of outposts and code cleanup before they fix the nonviable skill?

from here
* in 2-3 weeks, the first outpost features will enter an internal test phase.
* if testing goes well, 2-3 weeks later, the first version will be introduced on the ATS.
* Then will begin the lenghty process of the finalization of the outposts, before they can go live. The features will go through internal testing and be added to the ATS progressively, while we work with the ATS players on balancing. At this point, the success of the ATS will play a major role in determining schedules.

It is going to be another month before outposts are even put on ATS for the "lengthy process of the finalization of outposts". So after a god damned year of folks saying ranged is nonviable, Nevrax is going to wait another month or three before the nonviable skill will finally be looked at... only to wait another month or six for nevrax to push something out onto live servers to fix this long time nonviable skill?

*April of 2004 is the oldest email pertaining to nevrax and testing that I have stored.

Or you could look at it another way and be glad that when they do finally get around to looking at it (and yes, it is long overdue I agree) they will not be distracted by trying to complete major stuff like outposts that pretty much everyone is waiting for, because that would be a good way to ensure that whatever they did do would probably be rushed and/or poorly thought out.

And yes, I am a ranged fighter, and I intend to continue on that path of ranged fighting and crafting. As I have said before, ranged is not actually 'broken' - what is in the game works, but it doesn't have the flexibility or usefulness of melee or magic. What it needs is for the producers and designers to really get stuck into a clear and defined plan for ranged, and then implement it.

The glass is either half empty or half full. I prefer to see mine as half full, hopefully to be filled to the brim when they do get around to sorting ranged out.

Look at it this way - when they do fix ranged, there will more than likely be a reset of that skill. Those of us with the forebearance to stick with it will be an enviable position to capitalise on the changes and become a key force on the battlefield.

lazarus wrote:The glass is either half empty or half full. I prefer to see mine as half full, hopefully to be filled to the brim when they do get around to sorting ranged out.

While you argue about if the glass is half full or half empty, I'm going to point out that you are looking at a glass that a bartender partially filled almost a year ago... but since the bartender hasn't showed up to work in six months and the six months prior to that he kept calling in saying he was stuck in traffic, it doesn't really matter if it's half full or half empty when he calls and says he's heading out to his car in a few months since his word is already shown to be hollow and worthless on the subject.