Balancing Range without nerfing damage (Mini textwall warning)

[Vodner]

If even a 24/12 melee can catch up to an archer, while dodging effectively, things will be broken.

No, that would be perfectly fair. What is unfair is that the archer will likely glance with his sidearm once engaged in melee. He should be at a disadvantage in melee versus a dedicated melee player, but he shouldn't just be flat-out boned. This is one of the few things Native did well with regards to melee/ranged balance - archers moved slower and didn't hit as hard in melee, but they were still capable of taking out people in melee if they landed solid blows.

[Konrax]

Anyone else?

[Teeth]

Aside from BALANCE, it is realistic given the exact breathing required to fire a bow / or xbow / throwing weapon, which usually has to be steady.

They weren't exactly taking sniper shots at a kilometer distance, you know?

[Konrax]

They weren't exactly taking sniper shots at a kilometer distance, you know?

Even from 15 feet your breathing will effect the accuracy of your shot with a bow and xbow. Throwing not so much.

[Cyclopsided]

I'm going to say right now, there are some good points in this thread but a whole lot of awful ones.
I hope you understand the way the player base works as min-maxing have-to-have-best-build players. Thus the best way to have people stop being kiting archers is...

THEY WAY TO FIX KITING ARCHERS IS MAKE STRENGTH BUILD ARCHERY BETTER THAN AGI KITING ARCHERY AT KILLIN' THEM DUDES.
 Currently, strength archery has 0 zero benefits over agility stacking 6 PD archery. But, what about the damage? surely strength archery does tons more currently?! It doesn't. Shik and I did some archery testing and damage comparisons between his 30/15 10 PD archer and my 18/27 Agi archer. He only does more damage than me at distances less than 20 M, and he only does barely more damage.
I'll say that again. His 10 PD longbow barely out damages my 6 PD longbow at close range, but at 20M + distance our damage is equivalent. You wouldn't know which one of us hit you if we didn't tell you.

(click to show/hide)

I do believe it is the modified air friction values making his damage drop off so quickly. Which is dumb.

Okay, so Strength archery is... equivalent damage at pretty much all ranges archers shoot from.
Except he Is slower. He is inaccurate (horribly inaccurate). His bow draws slower. He is worse at everything involving archery compared to my build.
In fact, the ONLY benefit his 10 PD build has is that he has a few more hitpoints from his strength!
Garbage. I would never do  an archer over 6 PD under any circumstance under this system. OF COURSE everyone is a kiting agility archer. Seriously guys, looking at the situation all wrong . The solution is to encourage people to not be kiting awfuls, not by heavily nerfing them, but by making something other than it viable.


I believe the solution to this is a minor nerf in damage for agility archers ( ME. I WANT TO NERF ME.) but keep the super accuracy agility archers have.
The next part is to buff the damage output of strength archers to where they should be in damage. A 10 PD longbow should be an inaccurate but high damaging cannon. Not an inaccurate same-damage-as-me.

(click to show/hide)

This could possibly be done by a decrease in base damage of the top half of the bow list (you can't nerf the base damage of anything under nomad. They already glance...), but an increase to the damage increase from power draw.

Fix.

[Ikaguia]

totally agreed with marathon.
also, why would someone with an arm almost 2x stronger draw the bow almost 2x slower?

[Tears of Destiny]

Marathon speaks the truth.

[GuiKa]

I'm going to say right now, there are some good points in this thread but a whole lot of awful ones.
I hope you understand the way the player base works as min-maxing have-to-have-best-build players. Thus the best way to have people stop being kiting archers is...

THEY WAY TO FIX KITING ARCHERS IS MAKE STRENGTH BUILD ARCHERY BETTER THAN AGI KITING ARCHERY AT KILLIN' THEM DUDES.
 Currently, strength archery has 0 zero benefits over agility stacking 6 PD archery. But, what about the damage? surely strength archery does tons more currently?! It doesn't. Shik and I did some archery testing and damage comparisons between his 30/15 10 PD archer and my 18/27 Agi archer. He only does more damage than me at distances less than 20 M, and he only does barely more damage.
I'll say that again. His 10 PD longbow barely out damages my 6 PD longbow at close range, but at 20M + distance our damage is equivalent. You wouldn't know which one of us hit you if we didn't tell you.

(click to show/hide)

I do believe it is the modified air friction values making his damage drop off so quickly. Which is dumb.

Okay, so Strength archery is... equivalent damage at pretty much all ranges archers shoot from.
Except he Is slower. He is inaccurate (horribly inaccurate). His bow draws slower. He is worse at everything involving archery compared to my build.
In fact, the ONLY benefit his 10 PD build has is that he has a few more hitpoints from his strength!
Garbage. I would never do  an archer over 6 PD under any circumstance under this system. OF COURSE everyone is a kiting agility archer. Seriously guys, looking at the situation all wrong . The solution is to encourage people to not be kiting awfuls, not by heavily nerfing them, but by making something other than it viable.


I believe the solution to this is a minor nerf in damage for agility archers ( ME. I WANT TO NERF ME.) but keep the super accuracy agility archers have.
The next part is to buff the damage output of strength archers to where they should be in damage. A 10 PD longbow should be an inaccurate but high damaging cannon. Not an inaccurate same-damage-as-me.

(click to show/hide)

This could possibly be done by a decrease in base damage of the top half of the bow list (you can't nerf the base damage of anything under nomad. They already glance...), but an increase to the damage increase from power draw.

Fix.

[Jarlek]

Making archers have to choose between damage or accuracy? Ok.

6 PD shouldn't 2hit people.

[Joker86]

I don't say this would fix the problems we have with archery at the moment, but it would definitely fix the internal class balance. So yes, of course, why not?

[Cyclopsided]

*In response to seeing the individual thread made before this got merged back into original topic*
Wait, somebody actually read my posts?
Nobody ever replies, so I assume people just skip it and say "tl;dr"
<3

Oh, and this isn't the only thing wrong with the internal balance of archery. The internal bow balance at a glance LOOKS logical, base damage values of cheap/fast firing bows doing less.
The thing is, they actually do even LESS than that. Lower base damage will not compound like higher base damages with % increases.
 Power draw is a percent increase to damage, AND has a limiter of percent increase to bow req. +4.
 For example, a 1 PD bow will only receive the damage benefits of up to 5 PD. So it actually has a cumulatively less bonus to damage from other bows. To receive the end damage to put it in line with how bad it should be (still would be a cheap shitty bow), a 1 PD bow should have a slightly higher base damage. Just like 2 points more damage on Bow and short bow, 1 more for nomad. That should balance it.

They would still be peasanty weapons, but they shouldn't glance on light-medium armor anymore. They'd still glance on heavy and plate though. At least you could kill someone then.

[Tydeus]

*In response to seeing the individual thread made before this got merged back into original topic*
Wait, somebody actually read my posts?
Nobody ever replies, so I assume people just skip it and say "tl;dr"
<3

Oh, and this isn't the only thing wrong with the internal balance of archery. The internal bow balance at a glance LOOKS logical, base damage values of cheap/fast firing bows doing less.
The thing is, they actually do even LESS than that. Lower base damage will not compound like higher base damages with % increases.
 Power draw is a percent increase to damage, AND has a limiter of percent increase to bow req. +4.
 For example, a 1 PD bow will only receive the damage benefits of up to 5 PD. So it actually has a cumulatively less bonus to damage from other bows. To receive the end damage to put it in line with how bad it should be (still would be a cheap shitty bow), a 1 PD bow should have a slightly higher base damage. Just like 2 points more damage on Bow and short bow, 1 more for nomad. That should balance it.

They would still be peasanty weapons, but they shouldn't glance on light-medium armor anymore. They'd still glance on heavy and plate though. At least you could kill someone then.

Trying to balance for all bows being viable is unrealistic. I agree with shik in that the Long Bow, Rus Bow, Yumi, Horn Bow and Tatar Bow should all have roughly the same viability (depending on builds, of course). This isn't too far off from where we are right now, I think. Likely only minor adjustments would need to be made to fix this as currently the the Horn Bow and the Rus Bow are both widely used, with the Yumi finding frequent use among HAs. Long Bow, I believe, will fix itself when str archery gets fixed. Tatar Bow seems balanced as it is right now. I think people don't use it because anyone that would even consider it, already has enough accuracy and speed from wpf that they can sacrifice what you gain from the Tatar, for the Horn Bow's damage, and not lose effectiveness. Just buff Tatar's damage to being 1 less than the Horn.

Right now, the Long Bow and the Rus Bow fit two slightly different niches, with one of them being mostly inefficient, but they each have a uniqueness between them that the Horn and Tatar bows lack. Could change them so that they aren't simply seen as upgrades of one another. Increase the Horn bows damage and slow the bow down, slightly increase the Tatar Bow's damage and leave the speed and accuracy as they are.

[Cyclopsided]

It i not unrealistic, I just proposed something that would make two of the bows going from not viable at killing people to viable at killing people. They wouldn't be good like the other ones per se, But there is no logical argument against making them usable.

[Torost]

If you want real archers(2slot archery+2stacks of arrows) to atleast try to fight and spec for melee.. you have to give them atleast the choice of 1slot 1 hander weapons that are usable. Fighting with the 0slot weapons is just silly. They are only for blocking and killing peasants.

But more likely, archers will still run, and just be harder to kill off once caught with improved melee opertunites.

STR archery have very little benefits over AGI archery.

Im a slow ,inaccurate STR archer.. old habbits .. dont like 1slot archery,headshotting or kiting.
I sorta like the inaccuracy, and danger of running slower than many infantry. But wish I could pull out a real weapon (1hander) when people come close. My light armor and lack of points towards melee (0) would be a good enough handicap vs dedicated infantry.

This whole balancing thing gets even harder.. since a 1slot crossbowuser can do the same thing a STRarcher can.. just use all points in meleeskills, room for real meleeweapons and wear heavy armor.

You might argue that STRarchers are silly for using such a stupid build, valid point.
Not adapting ,and just QQing on forums... is quite common in crpg...

Some of us play for fun.. an we like to play a certain way.. not purely resultoriented...

Instead of marginally different speed,accuracy and dmg stats for the bows. I would want niche bows. Fast bow, Hard hitting bow, Accurate bow, Cheap bow.

[Thomek]

0-slot weapon with 24 str req should be invented!