Selective Realism : Why Always Archery?

[Sally]

Let's have arrows do near no damage to armor because it is realistic!

But what about heavy armor reducing movement speed?

What about fireballs working under water?

What about sprinting whilst using bandages?

What about arrows being realistically slowed down in water? THAT! That we can do. Yes, let's nerf archery because it is realistic.

What about weakspot working on full body instead of just headshots, like it would be with real armor? No, we can't do that!

WEIRD.

We're told realism is the reason archery can't do this or that, yet you give a free pass to everything else. Okay, if archers are going to be helpless against armored opponents, which isn't realistic, infact, i just watched a video to check if this theory was true, and if hit in the neck of underarm, joints, lowerbody, sides, the weakspots if you will, they go straight through. In the video, he explains "The strong points are really strong, the weakpoints are really weak" So i mean, if we're going for realism here, let's have those weakspots on the full body.

"But we don't want everyone to be archers!".

So you think giving archers the capacity to fight someone in armor would lead to everyone becoming an archer? I have no idea where this weird bias comes from; but mages can do range attacks and bypass armor and more, why on earth are archers so clearly hated for no good reason when you have mages that can already do what people are so afraid of archers being able to do?

"But being a mage costs more!!" Then put in more expensive arrows that work on armor. Magic arrows. There, solved. What is your argument now?

You've smashed archery into the dirt so that it is literally near helpless versus armor, and you're telling me some archer abilities will somehow fix what is actually broken overtuned heavy armor? Archery needs a buff, and you achieve that buff via the nerfing of heavy armor or give weakspot full body potential.

You let them run at full speed, you make them invulnerable to arrows pretty much, like.. Can we get some balance please? Why can't heavy armor be hit with the realism?? Why is it always archery?

If you watched that video, archery is a threat.

In MO2? If people are in armor, and you shoot at them with a bow, they literally make a mockery out of it, they just stand there and let themselves get hit because it is so threatless. The arrows move so slowly they can just sidestep it. Like, come on guys.

Do you think medieval knights who were in armor just thought of arrows as a joke? Think they were laughing just standing around? Realism please. Stop having it all go one way for some arbitrary hatred towards archery for seemingly no good reason.

 

[Yeonan]

I think a good bow being dirt cheap and being able to carry 500 arrows is a good balance.

If you want arrows to hit harder, they'd need to limit carrying capacity to around ~64 or so like they do in mount and blade

 

[Gnidex]

They should just make crossbows that'd be optimized for use on heavily armored targets and leave bows for softer targets. That way you can balance both differently in regards to damage, draw speed, wobble while kiting and etc...

By doing something as simple as that you can then increase build/loadout options with minimal effort.

But would SV do something sensible like that? Nope, i's boats.

 

[Rahz]

"So you think giving archers the capacity to fight someone in armor would lead to everyone becoming an archer?!" No. Almost everyone in Plate Armor can and will use a bow already.
Ranged attacks arent equal. Thunderlash (which is the most flamed ecu spell) has a maximum ( not effective) range of 23m. A good archer has already shot you two times once you close the gap to 23m.
The problem is that Archery just isnt a "class" on itself. You only need 200-400 points to be super effective with it So the Meta isnt everyone is shitting on archers, its everone running around with heavy armor, high hp melee builds who also happen to be able to shoot arrows from horseback. When Archery becomes less of a option for footies, we could talk about buffing it but right now not putting your points into archery means gimping yourself. Strongest mounted build overall? MA, no doubt about it. The best way to play a mage would of course be an arcane archer, since archery just does more dps than magic. Yes a burst for 40 every 3 secs from 23m is nice, but still cant compare to Archery imo. So you are saying you want the one thing buffed that every single meta-build already uses.

 

[Jackdstripper]

Because this game is a melee combat first type game. The focus of the game is heavy armour melee fighting, everything else is secondary in effectiveness.

If you give archers the ability to seriously damage a heavy footie, you’ll effectively nerf melee, because they cant deal damage from ranged.

But the heavy footie can also pulls out a bow you say. Yes, however at that point you are forcing the meta into being archers.

Since ranged damage is such a big advantage it is very hard to balance it without rendering melee combat useless. Keep in mind that melee combat requires a high skill level, while archery only requires good aiming.

Mages have ranged damage but they are basically dead in melee range. Their damage output is capped by their mana and they are extremely vulnerable to bows.

 

[Rahz]

Because this game is a melee combat first type game. The focus of the game is heavy armour melee fighting, everything else is secondary in effectiveness.

If you give archers the ability to seriously damage a heavy footie, you’ll effectively nerf melee, because they cant deal damage from ranged.

But the heavy footie can also pulls out a bow you say. Yes, however at that point you are forcing the meta into being archers.

Since ranged damage is such a big advantage it is very hard to balance it without rendering melee combat useless. Keep in mind that melee combat requires a high skill level, while archery only requires good aiming.

Mages have ranged damage but they are basically dead in melee range. Their damage output is capped by their mana and they are extremely vulnerable to bows.

As it should be. It should be melee first.
Heavy Armor i disagree, i think even pure melee builds could be a little more diverse.
I think Archery is actually kinda okay as it is. Pure Archers are king on horseback and do a lot of damage against anything thats not heavy armor already. Magic is diverse and if you learn to crunch your primary points you can get a wide array of builds.
Maybe nerf Heavy Armor in general just a little bit. Would reduce ttk in melee and make bows a little more viable. Hardest nerfs should hit food-healing, pipes and towershields. Then the game would be on a good way.

 

[Jackdstripper]

As it should be. It should be melee first.
Heavy Armor i disagree, i think even pure melee builds could be a little more diverse.
I think Archery is actually kinda okay as it is. Pure Archers are king on horseback and do a lot of damage against anything thats not heavy armor already. Magic is diverse and if you learn to crunch your primary points you can get a wide array of builds.
Maybe nerf Heavy Armor in general just a little bit. Would reduce ttk in melee and make bows a little more viable. Hardest nerfs should hit food-healing, pipes and towershields. Then the game would be on a good way.

This brings me to my next point which is that the only real progression in this game is quality of gear. The only end game is the best materials for armour and weapons. These are metals, not woods (for bows) or cloth/reagent (for magic). They are metals for heavy melee builds.
Thats the end game that this game is made from the ground up for.
If you remove that progression there is almost nothing worth striving for. In fact back in MO1 they did nerf heavy armors a few times (by adding stam regen penalties) and all that happened is that everyone just ran around in bone armour. The effort required to get the better materials just wasn't worth it.
So then they had to revert those changes in order for people to go back to using metal armours.

Im not saying its right, but it currently is the fundamentals of this game. In order to balance archery they would have to fundamentally change the progression of the game. They would have to add Oghmium like materials for bows, and being an archer would have to come with some serious drawbacks. Just like mages have.

 

[Rahz]

This brings me to my next point which is that the only real progression in this game is quality of gear. The only end game is the best materials for armour and weapons. These are metals, not woods (for bows) or cloth/reagent (for magic). They are metals for heavy melee builds.
Thats the end game that this game is made from the ground up for.
If you remove that progression there is almost nothing worth striving for. In fact back in MO1 they did nerf heavy armors a few times (by adding stam regen penalties) and all that happened is that everyone just ran around in bone armour. The effort required to get the better materials just wasn't worth it.
So then they had to revert those changes in order for people to go back to using metal armours.

Im not saying its right, but it currently is the fundamentals of this game. In order to balance archery they would have to fundamentally change the progression of the game. They would have to add Oghmium like materials for bows, and being an archer would have to come with some serious drawbacks. Just like mages have.

Well there are a few very rare materials for light armor, but they really arent worth it
Making your mage armor with Ganoid scales and Bloodsilk doesnt give enough reward for the price and effort to farm it aince its gonna be shitty cloth armor anyway. I absolutely agree on the problem with Archery. Maybe fletching Oghmium arrows for lower range/ big bang or smthg like that could work, but i would be super hesitant because Mounted Archery is by design always willing and ready to be an incredibly oppressive meta.

 

[Hodo]

One thing I can say, is SV gave up on realism in 2010. I fought this battle back then and well I gave up because ignorant community that think Robin Hood Prince of Thieves is historically accurate.

 

[Sally]

"So you think giving archers the capacity to fight someone in armor would lead to everyone becoming an archer?!" No. Almost everyone in Plate Armor can and will use a bow already.
Ranged attacks arent equal. Thunderlash (which is the most flamed ecu spell) has a maximum ( not effective) range of 23m. A good archer has already shot you two times once you close the gap to 23m.
The problem is that Archery just isnt a "class" on itself. You only need 200-400 points to be super effective with it So the Meta isnt everyone is shitting on archers, its everone running around with heavy armor, high hp melee builds who also happen to be able to shoot arrows from horseback. When Archery becomes less of a option for footies, we could talk about buffing it but right now not putting your points into archery means gimping yourself. Strongest mounted build overall? MA, no doubt about it. The best way to play a mage would of course be an arcane archer, since archery just does more dps than magic. Yes a burst for 40 every 3 secs from 23m is nice, but still cant compare to Archery imo. So you are saying you want the one thing buffed that every single meta-build already uses.

So, you say archery isn't a class, yet the skill investment required would say otherwise.

Why you say it isn't a class is because it isn't very functional standalone. That is my exact complaint, it isn't functional and it should be. The skill investment indicate it IS a class, yet, it is so over nerfed, people literally think it isn't a class.

Also, yes, everyone using archery is 100% a problem, and i agree. You have oghmirs and thursars who are not only best in melee, but have best range damage with a bow AND are tanky.. It is broken.

Honestly, i'd have bows just scale with dex. I feel like dexterity is more of a key factor with a bow than strength, given that it is a more accuracy dependent weapon. Strength as a stat just has too much utility because of it being used for bow wielding on top of everything else.

 

[Sally]

This brings me to my next point which is that the only real progression in this game is quality of gear. The only end game is the best materials for armour and weapons. These are metals, not woods (for bows) or cloth/reagent (for magic). They are metals for heavy melee builds.
Thats the end game that this game is made from the ground up for.
If you remove that progression there is almost nothing worth striving for. In fact back in MO1 they did nerf heavy armors a few times (by adding stam regen penalties) and all that happened is that everyone just ran around in bone armour. The effort required to get the better materials just wasn't worth it.
So then they had to revert those changes in order for people to go back to using metal armours.

Im not saying its right, but it currently is the fundamentals of this game. In order to balance archery they would have to fundamentally change the progression of the game. They would have to add Oghmium like materials for bows, and being an archer would have to come with some serious drawbacks. Just like mages have.

The drawback of archery, beyond it's current terrible damage versus armor, is it's lack of utility.

You shoot a small slow moving projectile with a tiny hitbox, and that is ALL you can do.

Mages can create tornados to area deny, to obfuscate, they have big aoe explosion attacks, put up barriers.. They can even use magnetism to pull people off ledges AND heal themselves and their teammates, summon pets.. The list goes on..

They have massive utility.

An archer can only do a single thing. They shoot arrows one at a time.

Nerfing heavy armor also doesn't remove progression. Heavy armor still increases your defense, it just wouldn't increase it as a high as it currently does, because how high it currently goes makes it broken.

 

[Hodo]

So, you say archery isn't a class, yet the skill investment required would say otherwise.

Why you say it isn't a class is because it isn't very functional standalone. That is my exact complaint, it isn't functional and it should be. The skill investment indicate it IS a class, yet, it is so over nerfed, people literally think it isn't a class.

Also, yes, everyone using archery is 100% a problem, and i agree. You have oghmirs and thursars who are not only best in melee, but have best range damage with a bow AND are tanky.. It is broken.

Honestly, i'd have bows just scale with dex. I feel like dexterity is more of a key factor with a bow than strength, given that it is a more accuracy dependent weapon. Strength as a stat just has too much utility because of it being used for bow wielding on top of everything else.

No...Just no. This suggestion sounds like someone who has never used a non-compound bow in their life.

The fix is make other weapons more viable as "dex" based weapons... like daggers should be more dex based, some 1 handed swords, like the thrusting sword from MO1.. aka the rapier. Some poleswords even.

But this would require deeper coding skills then I feel SV currently are willing to invest into the game.

 

[Sally]

No...Just no. This suggestion sounds like someone who has never used a non-compound bow in their life.

The fix is make other weapons more viable as "dex" based weapons... like daggers should be more dex based, some 1 handed swords, like the thrusting sword from MO1.. aka the rapier. Some poleswords even.

But this would require deeper coding skills then I feel SV currently are willing to invest into the game.

See, you're using the realism logic selectively.

If you are muscular, you are less dexterous, your range of movement is actually limited by the muscle. I linked a video in another post of a muscle man trying to get a sticker off his back.

So if we're going for a realism argument, it goes both ways. So from a gameplay perspective, what is better design? Bows scaling with strength or dex?

I of course think it should be dex, since dex as a stat just feels more useless than strength generally, and this would help balance it out.

 

[Hodo]

See, you're using the realism logic selectively.

If you are muscular, you are less dexterous, your range of movement is actually limited by the muscle. I linked a video in another post of a muscle man trying to get a sticker off his back.

So if we're going for a realism argument, it goes both ways. So from a gameplay perspective, what is better design? Bows scaling with strength or dex?

I of course think it should be dex, since dex as a stat just feels more useless than strength generally, and this would help balance it out.

This is actually been proven false several times. Gymnast are a great example of peak fitness. And they are EXTREMELY strong, as I doubt that same muscleman in that video, can hold himself up in a perfect hand stand for any length of time, let alone walk on his hands from one end of a room to another.

Using a person who has trained to be pure strength while ignoring all other attributes is ignorant.

I would also like to point out that strength isnt always about brute mass of muscle. Case and point.. this guy is pretty small yet can do something that I doubt the actor who played the Mountain can do.

 

[Craxxers]

Bow damage being tied to strength is actually super refreshing. If they wanted to tie dex in I would suggest working dex into bow wobble, especially while moving. This could force super strong low dex chars to stand still and really focus if they want to make their hits, or need to invest more points into archery skills to help with the wobble.

 

[Sally]

This is actually been proven false several times. Gymnast are a great example of peak fitness. And they are EXTREMELY strong, as I doubt that same muscleman in that video, can hold himself up in a perfect hand stand for any length of time, let alone walk on his hands from one end of a room to another.

Using a person who has trained to be pure strength while ignoring all other attributes is ignorant.

I would also like to point out that strength isnt always about brute mass of muscle. Case and point.. this guy is pretty small yet can do something that I doubt the actor who played the Mountain can do.

Those are just feats of strength, that isn't dexterity. More muscle mass means lower range of movement, and so less dexterity.

 

[Philocypher]

Bow damage being tied to strength is actually super refreshing. If they wanted to tie dex in I would suggest working dex into bow wobble, especially while moving. This could force super strong low dex chars to stand still and really focus if they want to make their hits, or need to invest more points into archery skills to help with the wobble.

Dexterity already affects weakspot chance.

I like the idea of a weakspot being possible on any body part to a significantly reduced amount, like say a chest weakspot bypasses 40% of armor.

I also like the idea of longbows being able to weakspot, though their effectiveness should be far less. Perhaps a weakspot with a longbow caps at 20% armor ignore.

One thing that's super serious: transparency. We need to know the weakspot chance for particular weapons and particular dex amounts.

addendum: I suck at archery, I don't even have the skill trained. I don't like fighting against archers already. I'm trying to be objective. Archery is not a playstyle I'm interested in.

 

[Craxxers]

Those are just feats of strength, that isn't dexterity. More muscle mass means lower range of movement, and so less dexterity.

More muscle mass doesn't necessarily mean greater strength. You can be extremely high in both, check out Anatoly on tiktok lol, lifts way more than guys many times bigger than himself.

 

[Hodo]

Those are just feats of strength, that isn't dexterity. More muscle mass means lower range of movement, and so less dexterity.

Again... you do realize that you can be flexible and have muscle mass... Also, big muscles does not equate to stronger. As any gymnast or athlete can tell you, sometimes strength is not seen in bulk.

 

[Rahz]

So, you say archery isn't a class, yet the skill investment required would say otherwise.

Why you say it isn't a class is because it isn't very functional standalone. That is my exact complaint, it isn't functional and it should be. The skill investment indicate it IS a class, yet, it is so over nerfed, people literally think it isn't a class.

Also, yes, everyone using archery is 100% a problem, and i agree. You have oghmirs and thursars who are not only best in melee, but have best range damage with a bow AND are tanky.. It is broken.

Honestly, i'd have bows just scale with dex. I feel like dexterity is more of a key factor with a bow than strength, given that it is a more accuracy dependent weapon. Strength as a stat just has too much utility because of it being used for bow wielding on top of everything else.

No i say its not a class because you only need 200-400 primary points for it to be viable. But of course I agree. Bows should scale with Dex and pure Archers should be a thing.