Suggestion on Bow Balancing

[Kaemik]

So before I start this off I'm going to lay two important understandings of the groundwork of this discussion:

1. I have fully tested every bow on stats like stam drain, fire rate, total DPS, min/max damage etc. and there are only 2 highly useful bows with one additional debatably useful bows. 3 bow types were objectively inferior in every way to other bows on the list.
2. I sent the spreadsheet of these bows to the developers and was informed that current bow stats are not reflective of how they will work when bow crafting is in.

So the point of this thread is to address how we can have 6 balanced/useful bows when everything is working as it should. Currently, there are 6 bow types in-game:

Shortbow (recurve and decurve)
Longbow (recurve and decurve)
Assymetical (recurve and decurve)

Not only should all these bow types be distinct and have at least a scenario or two in which they are arguably the most useful. They should maintain that distinctness not just against another bow type crafted with the same materials, but with other bows crafted with different materials. For instance using light materials on a longbow shouldn't make it functionally the same as shortbow. So here are my suggestions on how to balance bows:

Shortbows

Currently, all bows have the same refire rate (19 shots per minute) if you fully charge your shots. This should change, and shortbows should be the primary benefactor of this change. Shortbows should continue to be the shortest range of bow, but stam efficiency (Their current strength) should be more of a function of materials than bow type. Instead, shortbows should be the lowest max damage, highest refire rate, highest DPS class of bows.

Shortbows should appeal to archers who like to play close-in to the fight, and snap-off their shots as fast as they can get them in rather than holding for good angles.

Longbows

Longbows should occupy the opposite end of the spectrum from a shortbow. Longbows should have high max range, high charge time (low refire), and very high damage per shot at the expense of potential DPS. Longbows should appeal for people who want to get off big sniper shots and potentially play a bit further back from the fight.

Asymmetrical Bows

These are a hard one to place. I did a lot of research on them to find out how they distinguish themselves from longbows and the best answer I could find was ease of shot. They are long like a longbow but the recoil is heaviest at center mass of a bow, and therefore lighter on an assymetical bow. Comparing this to potential balance and them having their own unique place in the world of MO2 bows I think the following is best. High range like a longbow, moderate refire, moderate max damage, lower DPS than a shortbow but higher than a longbow. Assymetrical bows should appeal to people who like to have the option of range but would rather keep up a constant barrage than go for big sniper shots.

Decurve vs. Recurve

So while there is a wealth of information on recurve bows you have to do some deeper digging to find out about decurves. This is because they were actually considered pretty bad and saw very little usage historically. Ironic given how dominate they are in Mortal Online. Obviously, that's a bad place to end research on how to BALANCE them though. There was an interesting tidbit on why they saw usage at all though. While being weaker overall crappier bows their one big advantage is they were under very little strain when strung. So a decurve bow could be carried already strung with little downside while other bows were frequently carried unstrung and then strung when they need to be used.

This is actually a great tidbit on how we could balance decurves while holding true to a spirit of realism. Decurves should be weaker than a recurve in every traditional method of measuring bow strength. But they should have an incredibly quick EQUIP timer. This gives them a great spot for say, that fighter who splashed 100 points into archery and just wants to be able to snap off a couple shots while he heals up to get back into melee or to nail his fleeing opponent in the back. Or the mage who is low on mana and just wants to pop off some quick shots while it regens. For these type of combatants, the quick swap time is huge since they aren't going to be staying in ranged mode very long most likely. Decurves should be bows for non-archers who splash into archery.

 

[Grisù]

Really god job in Bow Intel gathering.
For the most part your suggestion makes absolutely a good point, got some reserves on the recurve vs decurve.
I'm planning to be a full archer (since SV killed night darkness, no point for me in investing in thievery atm, for being a non-lethal Robin Hood guy) and i really appreciate your way of thinking; but I'm not going to dirt poll result with my vote since I didn't experiment the actual Archery system yet.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

What's probably going to happen is longbow will be used on foot by someone with at least ranged combat and / or has additional archery skills, someone who uses a longbow crafted to be low strength and still has ranged combat and its used to hit soft targets (AI, makes, pets, mounts, etc.), then finally mounteds will probably make use one of the non-longbow bows since they weren't usable on horseback. Probably at the max strength of the character for the most damage per shot.

This was how it was in MO1, and while I personally don't mind diversity I don't see them going to great lengths at making all the bows useful.

The melee weapons is currently reflective of that. Swords, spears, and daggers are really good while everything else is shit.

Especially mace weapons and a lot of one handed.

One thing in MO1 I'd actually liked to see change is the actual balancing of all weapons so everything is useful and does something different so people utilize different weapons.

Please make the polesword better.

 

[Kaemik]

Not really related to the subject of the topic at all but polearms, in general, may very well become better once mounts are implemented. If their intended function is countering mounted builds it would stand to reason they should feel weak right now. As if they are fully effective against foot fighters and also counter mounted builds then literally everyone who plays melee will run one.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

Just have to wait and see like everything else.

 

[Valoran]

Good post, although you seem to have left out one crucial factor: Durability (Less shots landed before breaking).

The way bows work (and will work if they don't change the system from MO1) is essentially this:


The recurve, decurve and (currently missing) flat bow work on a damage vs durability scale

With recurve having the highest damage and the lowest durability
The flat bow has a middle ground of slightly lower damage and slightly more durability
The decurve comes in last having the highest durability and the lowest damage

For this reason people often used Dense crepite spongewood recurve longbows on foot (Highest possible damage) and the smarter people used decurve bows specifically for PvE as they had several times the durability at a very small damage cost that isn't very relevant when killing animals or other AI.


Shortbows should have a faster rate of shooting than larger bows, although it starts to get quite complicated when you consider that you can make a short bow with equal strength requirement to a longbow.
Should the shortbow draw faster for no reason even though they're the same strength?
Or should it be linked to the bows strength requirement when compared to your own strength so a 100 strength bow could be drawn quicker by someone with 120 strength than it could be someone with only 100 strength?


The best damage shortbows in MO1 did have a lower strength requirement than their longbow counterparts, so if they keep that then you could scale draw speed with relative strength requirement and it would work out with short bows drawing quicker anyway.

 

[Kaemik]

Should the shortbow draw faster for no reason even though they're the same strength?

Yes, I believe so. Essentially the way I described if you went for an absolutely ridiculous strength req on a shortbow it would be an insanely high DPS bow that requires you to play pretty close-in compared to other bows and consistently land shots to really achieve your full DPS potential. Also unlike the system I tested I don't think it should take less stam to use it. Infact it should probably take more.

A longbow made with the same mats would get off super-powerful shots and incredibly high range so it's more the weapon of a dude sitting on a tower waiting for a good angle on someone so they can smack them with a huge hit.

The problem with lowering the refire rate on a shortbow too much if it's really high strength, is what differentiates the longbow from the shortbow if it's all about the mats used? It seems like there just isn't much distinction at that point where what I'm going for with this idea is 6 distinct classes of bows that do very different things from each other. Like no matter what mats you use a shortbow is distinctly a shortbow and a longbow is distinctly a longbow with very different purposes for very different styles of archers.

Decurves just being cheap crap that's good for PVE does sound like a good way to balance them though.

 

[Eldrath]

Dexterity could play a role in the fore rate. That could enable low strength archer builds without abandoning the concept of draw weight.

Not sure I like the idea of using calde gifts to enable Vela archers

 

[Kaemik]

Dexterity could play a role in the fore rate. That could enable low strength archer builds without abandoning the concept of draw weight.

Not sure I like the idea of using calde gifts to enable Vela archers

While I like the idea of dex having an effect on firing speed, or crit rate, or other ways to make Dex better for bows (And potentially more dexterous weapons like spears and daggers) I feel like it would lead to a lot of super dex stacked builds given how insanely good of a stat movement speed is. Stacking other bonuses ontop of it makes Dex SUPER good.

If Dex is to affect much other than movespeed I'd like to see it's affect on movespeed given strong enough diminishing returns that stacking it past a certain point has minimal affect on movespeed and mainly helps with those other stats.

 

[Eldrath]

While I like the idea of dex having an effect on firing speed, or crit rate, or other ways to make Dex better for bows (And potentially more dexterous weapons like spears and daggers) I feel like it would lead to a lot of super dex stacked builds given how insanely good of a stat movement speed is. Stacking other bonuses ontop of it makes Dex SUPER good.

If Dex is to affect much other than movespeed I'd like to see it's affect on movespeed given strong enough diminishing returns that stacking it past a certain point has minimal affect on movespeed and mainly helps with those other stats.

Henrik has stated multiple times that the races will be closer in speed as they were before. Which means they have changed the speed formula from 1 and probably with less emphasis on DeX.

I would rather have DeX as a determining factor for attack speed than weakdpot chance, so they could go that way.

Ultimately it depends on their character system which is not known yet.

 

[FOXxAK]

Firstly, thanks for your research.
Asymmetrical bows are used by Mounted Archers. So they have their own usage.

Recurve bows need some specific materials for them to be actually good. Currently they aren't being used since the stamina cost on them is really high compared to a Decurve.

However, once bow crafting is released, recurve bows will be different, and will be the main type as they were in MO1.

 

[Icegoten]

I don't know much about bows in real life so thanks for your information gathering.

Just from looking at this as a video game I always had in my mind that short bows were for low strength and high rate of fire, long bows were for high strength and low rate of fire, and asymmetrical bows were for mounted archers with enough strength to pull the string back but it was mainly dexterity that mattered because the person would have to keep their balance and aim while on a fast moving creature.

 

[Kaemik]

Asymmetrical bows were a favored bow of horse archers as well as being fired from a kneeling position. Shortbows were also very popular for horse archery too. However, they predate the popular use of horse archers in the area they were developed. So the low recoil was likely the primary reason for their existence.

In terms of horse archery, they should probably make longbows either unusable or take severe penalties when used from a horse. Assymetical and shortbows should both be a very viable option for a mounted archer.