Enhance Archery:

[Emdash]

I still haven't gotten the time to play w/ new wobz, but I doubt it's a big deal. I wanna talk about archery alil tho since we are making it 'more skill based(?)'

The inability to get ground hits when people are moving spastically is pretty annoying, and I think it runs contrary to the idea of archery actually being about something other than griefing horses haha. On ground, especially. The damage is a thing, too. I would like to see possible body weak spots at a low rate. It would be nice to see arrows have MORE chance to interrupt mages than other things. Kinda ass backwards, but archery is generally a counter to mage. Games w/ interrupts (like GW1) had nice attacks to shut down mages and even lock out their attacks if hit during cast time. I'm not asking for that, just that arrow = more chance to interrupt mage.

MAIN SUGGESTION, however, is to round out the hitbox. I don't know what the 'right size' is, but I really think it has to be something to make it so that just moving around like a dumb ass isn't an effective way to dodge arrows. Making arrows really fast takes away from a core mechanic in the game IMO, and even that I dunno if it would fix the problem. I feel like people might even have a bigger hit box vs melee than they do vs arrows. What I would do is round out the hit box (imagine everyone in a bubble of a certain size based on height/wt class) and just make it so the arrow 'appears' on the part of the body that is most consistent with where it hit, if it was a near miss, but still in the hit box.

But yea lag and everything else... you used to be able to get kills as MA, sorta at least, at least hit people haha. I'm all for making archery harder and have more possible pt investment, but I want foot archery especially to be viable! I LUV ARCHERY.

It feels like the next natural step after working on 'balancing archery,' would be to make archery more effective. I'd like to see archery MORE EFFECTIVE against players, players in armor, etc, and LESS effective against mobs, pets, and mounts. - shrug -

 

[Jatix]

I'd like to see weakspots completely removed, or at least reworked. As an RNG mechanic that can almost completely ignore armor, it just feels like complete cheese. Generally, I like as little RNG involved in games like this as possible. Yes, it takes skill to weakspot someone down. but theres still RNG involved.

To me archery still takes a lot of skill without weakspots as a thing. A good archer landing more headshots still does more damage than a bad one missing all his shots, or only getting body shots.

And if armor penetration is an issue, that can be fixed with arrow making or something.

'Rework' can mean different options. But to me I'd like something that removes the RNG, or makes it a much lower % armor ignored. Like at 100 marksman, all headshots weakspot ignoring 10-20% of the armor value. Instead of RNG 80% ignored.

 

[Elijah]

It feels like the next natural step after working on 'balancing archery,' would be to make archery more effective. I'd like to see archery MORE EFFECTIVE against players, players in armor, etc, and LESS effective against mobs, pets, and mounts. - shrug -

I agree with this. Now that archery is mostly implemented, and not every single footie is also an archer, there should be a way to increase damage by like 10-20% when someone chooses to go full archer. Kind of like aggressive stance, but for bows. A reward for people that sacrifice other primaries to go heavily into archery because they love archery.

I might not know what I'm saying here though. Could be that when we can finally craft arrows you'll be able to make longbow arrows that hit for like 140 damage.

 

[Emdash]

I do think archery weak spots are much less egregious than other ones. They are more like +20s or something. I don't mind RNG per se because as a basketball fan, it's like shooting. You can't depend on it 100%, but 'good shooting' does matter. A string of misses or makes can change the tide, but over the course, you'd expect it to even out.

Def respect the no less rng PoV, but yea, I have no idea how else to do weak spots. Armor piercing arrows would be interesting, but I dunno how it would work. Good v some things bad v others? Weak spot is prol a bad system (esp on archery where it's a head shot, and head shot already gives a good buff,) but in some ways it kind of 'makes sense' to me, and it's relatively simple. I don't mind it as a place holder, and I dunno how honestly to make a weak spot work w/ 'skill' per se, unless you are just using armor piercing arrows, but why wouldn't you at least have them, even if they were ineffective vs non plate, you'd just switch off. I dunno. I'd have to think more about it.

The dmg w/ archer I think is just too low base, like I said, I personally believe making the hitbox more forgiving is the most important thing, but assuming that, shorties hitting for 10-15 is OK to me. Def need to work on long bow nonsense. I was letting my friend lvl marks and I made some firmwood bows. Made some LBs, too, because they had way more dura, and I was v surprised at how high the weak spot rate was. Sure, not lb arrows... but still it's like wat?

I agree w/ what Hodo said in another thread, I THINK (untested, but seen) long bows are doing good dmg... at least the 121+ ones, prol too much. Shorties and such, not so much.

Still let me 100% say I love archery and I love the arrow speed, arc, all that. It's fun. I even like that it takes a sec to put away your bow so you gotta be wary or you get derped (altho it sucks a lot when getting off a mount and trying to pull out your melee wep.)

 

[Eventide]

It's interesting you say the damage is too low seeing as a lot of people say archery damage is too high. The current meta is archery over pretty much everything else. The main issue with archery is it's str-based for damage.. so everybody except mages can use a bow, and even Alvarin mages could use one if they sacrifice a few stat points elsewhere because of the -20str requirement from clades. That's why the recent changes happened.

I think what needs to happen is archery be dex-based for damage and get rid of weak spot chance for them.. that should be just rolled into headshots to reward good aiming. A new primary to increase bow damage would be nice too so bows are even more skill-based so not everyone can just pick one up. I also think that archery should have bladed bows (those are a thing) and make it so if in a tough spot you can melee with it and of course sacrifice some of the ranged damage because of it. So short bows could be bladed and less range. Long bows have high range and damage but should have a lot more sway too.

I will agree though there's a lot of balance issues in the game with all weapons really where the base is too low but then specialized is way too high. Short bows do little damage while long bows can obliterate someone. Melee weapons are similar. Magic is also similar where it absolutely sucks until you get it basically completely maxed out then it's fairly good. Magic you literally start out with outburst doing like 5 damage.. but once you have mental offense maxed you're doing like 30+ and that's your best spell until you luck into finding something better from a drop or buy it from the market.. and even then the best spell does like 60-70.. The point being I shouldn't have to skill into it to increase the damage that much. All weapons should be similar. You should get better at wielding them but it's not like that makes the weapon do like 200% more damage suddenly.

That said, I do think archery honestly is the best part of the game. Like you said, the arrow speed, arc, stamina usage, strength requirements, etc all make sense. It just needs a few more things to make it so you actually have to spec into it. The new sway helps a lot since with just archery maxed you can reduce the sway by 40% only. So you have to actually sacrifice some primaries if you want to get rid of that sway up to 95%. I think the 95% is a little too high though but we'll see what they do with it.

 

[Jatix]

I will agree though there's a lot of balance issues in the game with all weapons really where the base is too low but then specialized is way too high. Short bows do little damage while long bows can obliterate someone. Melee weapons are similar. Magic is also similar where it absolutely sucks until you get it basically completely maxed out then it's fairly good. Magic you literally start out with outburst doing like 5 damage.. but once you have mental offense maxed you're doing like 30+ and that's your best spell until you luck into finding something better from a drop or buy it from the market.. and even then the best spell does like 60-70.. The point being I shouldn't have to skill into it to increase the damage that much. All weapons should be similar. You should get better at wielding them but it's not like that makes the weapon do like 200% more damage suddenly.

Whats annoying with this games balance is that theres a lot of things that are 'out of the meta' that are so close to being good. Or at least so close to being good in some scenarios. But they just arent there, or are bad too often to be worth it. Like shortbows, do shoot faster than a same strength longbow. And longbow arrows cant weakspot. So if you are using a low str bow to run around and get good stam, and can get headshots to weakspot, a shortbow COULD be better damage. But I just feel like they arent quite there. I haven't tested bows since before they added aiming technique, but generally shortbows have always just felt worse. I just wish SV would take a little more risk and try to balance things more. The yare obv worried something will become op, but theres already so many 'op' things in the game. Theres no real harm in trying to make other things good also. This gmae prides itself on how many 'options' there are, but 95% of them are just worse.

 

[Emdash]

It's interesting you say the damage is too low seeing as a lot of people say archery damage is too high. The current meta is archery over pretty much everything else. The main issue with archery is it's str-based for damage.. so everybody except mages can use a bow, and even Alvarin mages could use one if they sacrifice a few stat points elsewhere because of the -20str requirement from clades. That's why the recent changes happened.

I think what needs to happen is archery be dex-based for damage and get rid of weak spot chance for them.. that should be just rolled into headshots to reward good aiming. A new primary to increase bow damage would be nice too so bows are even more skill-based so not everyone can just pick one up. I also think that archery should have bladed bows (those are a thing) and make it so if in a tough spot you can melee with it and of course sacrifice some of the ranged damage because of it. So short bows could be bladed and less range. Long bows have high range and damage but should have a lot more sway too.

I will agree though there's a lot of balance issues in the game with all weapons really where the base is too low but then specialized is way too high. Short bows do little damage while long bows can obliterate someone. Melee weapons are similar. Magic is also similar where it absolutely sucks until you get it basically completely maxed out then it's fairly good. Magic you literally start out with outburst doing like 5 damage.. but once you have mental offense maxed you're doing like 30+ and that's your best spell until you luck into finding something better from a drop or buy it from the market.. and even then the best spell does like 60-70.. The point being I shouldn't have to skill into it to increase the damage that much. All weapons should be similar. You should get better at wielding them but it's not like that makes the weapon do like 200% more damage suddenly.

That said, I do think archery honestly is the best part of the game. Like you said, the arrow speed, arc, stamina usage, strength requirements, etc all make sense. It just needs a few more things to make it so you actually have to spec into it. The new sway helps a lot since with just archery maxed you can reduce the sway by 40% only. So you have to actually sacrifice some primaries if you want to get rid of that sway up to 95%. I think the 95% is a little too high though but we'll see what they do with it.

you're talkin about longbows.... (Harrison Ford voice)

It's all off, tho, longbows are still prol OP even after the patch, to anything lore related, all bows bang, even with low skill. Crepite shortie is something any class almost any age can use. (cap wise) I won't get into 'bow crafting,' which is jokishly simple.

I've been OK at head shotting horses, as said before, but head shotting people who are moving is not easy and it might even go beyond what you would say 'human ability' is. I'm sure there is some savant that could do it, but I don't think (s)he's playing MO. But yea archery works because it's relatively simple, it takes advantage the game engine and doesn't have wonk physics, you can't 'arrow morph' tho, so hit boxes are small. As I said I'm good w/ 10-15s. And yea long bows shouldn't be smashing people as hard OR, if they did, it should stay high str on the ground, but you should have to spec archer. If you need a hard spec to shoot a shortie off a mount, you should prol need a hard spec to get maximum use out of a long bow, as they are. I M O.

 

[bbihah]

I'd like to see weakspots completely removed, or at least reworked. As an RNG mechanic that can almost completely ignore armor, it just feels like complete cheese. Generally, I like as little RNG involved in games like this as possible. Yes, it takes skill to weakspot someone down. but theres still RNG involved.

To me archery still takes a lot of skill without weakspots as a thing. A good archer landing more headshots still does more damage than a bad one missing all his shots, or only getting body shots.

And if armor penetration is an issue, that can be fixed with arrow making or something.

'Rework' can mean different options. But to me I'd like something that removes the RNG, or makes it a much lower % armor ignored. Like at 100 marksman, all headshots weakspot ignoring 10-20% of the armor value. Instead of RNG 80% ignored.

How about increasing damage each time a hit lands on the same hitbox? capping out at about 2x damage?
Doesn't make armor irrelevant, doesn't make arrow types and fletchery down the line irrelevant or weaker either.

Rewards good and consistent aim.

Reset on misses/wrong hitbox, rewards good marksmanship as well as risky close quarters bowyery(easier to hit the same hitbox). Still fills a perfectly good function in PVE.

People might start default aiming for easy targets like legs etc, but head still has that native damage bonus on it and would still be the tastier target, heck there could a higher stacking damage bonus on head hits.

 

[Emdash]

How about increasing damage each time a hit lands on the same hitbox? capping out at about 2x damage?
Doesn't make armor irrelevant, doesn't make arrow types and fletchery down the line irrelevant or weaker either.

Rewards good and consistent aim.

That's a very interesting idea. It's at least a start. Def not something I would have thought of, but it makes sense to me. I'd play a game w/ that mechanic.