Should we remove pin point accuracy from bows?

[Tydeus]

Steevee: just look at who are the "balance team" atm, and Xynox as item advisor, and give up all hope. Common sense, historical accuracy and game balance have been thrown to the dogs long ago, best to shake head, grimace and think to yourself what could have been.

Most long time players that I talk to think cRPG's current problem is that it's too balanced (understandable). Yet here you are stating the exact opposite. To be honest BlindGuy, I'm not sure we could ever satisfy you, even if (however unrealistic) that was our sole objective. Hell, I'm not even sure you know what it is you want.

[Rico]

I hope to show some of the people who intuitively voted against pinpoint accuracy why they were wrong. In essence, pinpoint accuracy as well as high missile speed on low-tier bows reduces (!) the danger archers are for infantry and cavalry, and adds diversity to the archery class without breaking balance. This seems counter-intuitive at first, but it is plausible once you understood it. Please read my text.

It's really hard to keep this short. I don't want to bore you, but I don't want to seem rude either. Forgive me if anything I write either bores or offends you.

With level 35, 18/27 and 185 archery wpf, my build is considered agi-centric and squishy compared to the usual 18/24 "max athletics max powerstrike some ironflesh"-version other archers of my level usually pick. I get pinpoint accuracy with Nomad Bow and Tatar Bow only, and need at least 2 headshots and 1 body shot to kill a Kuyak hero with a helmet like Chapel de Fer. Even with pinpoint accuracy, this is hard to pull of, and I feel like I deserve the kill. Other bows do not have pinpoint accuracy with my build, the crosshair is rather wide.

I think the current system allowing high-agi archers to obtain pinpoint accuracy with low-tier bows is good. I also consider the high missile speed an important, well balanced feature of low-tier bows. These are the reasons for my opinion:

• When your build is optimized for pinpoint accuracy on low tier bows, you usually either have low PS, low Athl, or both, and not more than 6 PD. You sacrifice a lot of benefits to obtain it.
• I mentioned that killing aware enemies with medium body armor and heavy helmets is very hard, even with max accuracy and fast arrows. Recall the Kuyak/Chapel de Fer observation.
• You cannot simply make pinpoint accurate and fast low-tier bows stronger by skilling more PD. This is because effective PD is capped at bow requirement+4. They will stay weak, no matter what.
• High accuracy and high missile speed are an advantage of archers with low-tier bows against archers with high-tier bows. If archers were airplanes and other players were ground targets, high-tier bow archers would be bombers and low-tier bow archers would be combat fighters. In other words, Nomad Bow and Tatar Bow need to keep their current missile speed and accuracy in order to serve as a counter against those archers who preferably shoot infantry and cavalry. Accurate and fast low-tier bows create an internal balance within the archery class, and they allow prioritizing on hunting enemy archers instead of shooting infantry and cavalry. Archers with low-tier bows hope to keep enemy archers with high-tier bows busy or kill them, to reduce the pressure of ranged enemies on allied infantry and cavalry. This would not work without pinpoint accuracy, because headshots would not hit over medium and long distances, and enemy archers would not need to dodge but can keep shooting inf and cav. This would not work without high missile speed either, because enemy archers would have too much time for good footwork to consider low-tier bow archers dangerous.

I think the poll in the opening post is not representative. It is distorted at the expense of pinpoint accuracy because:

• Some people didn't consider that currently, accurate and fast low-tier bows help to counter high-tier bows and make archers generally less dangerous to infantry or cavalry.
• Some people didn't know that not all bows can obtain pinpoint accuracy, but it is limited to the very weak ones.
• Some people overestimate the power of low-tier bows and ignore that the need to hit more than twice into the head of medium and heavily armored opponents makes them a really unfeasible weapon against most of the infantry and cavalry.
• Some archers only use high-tier bows and find archers with low-tier bows annoying, thus they vote for the removal of pinpoint accuracy because they want to shoot infantry and cavalry without being bothered. Their fraction is bigger than the fraction of archers who only use low-tier bows and want to keep killing high-tier bow archers without being bothered, because the phenomenon of fast and accurate low-tier bows is new, the playstyle is unknown to some, and consequently, there are much less pure low-tier bow archers than pure high-tier bow archers.

In my opinion, the council did a good job when they increased accuracy and missile speed of low-tier bows. I completely agree with everything Xynox wrote for the reasons listed above. The only thing that is wrong right now are the upkeep prices. Tatar Bow and Nomad Bow should be more expensive, because they are just as useable as Long Bow, Rus Bow and Horn Bow, with the exception that the variety of targets is limited to weakly-armored opponents, especially enemy ranged. In particular, the Nomad Bow is way to cheap for what it does. If I could decide, I would give the Tatar Bow the same price as the Bow, and the Nomad Bow an upkeep of 450 gold so that it is in between the Bow and the Horn Bow. The Nomad Bow should be more expensive than the Tatar Bow, because it is even better at placing accurate headshots against enemy archers than the Tatar Bow.

Sankyu for reading. I hope I convinced you.

[Hoppster]

To be honest BlindGuy, I'm not sure we could ever satisfy you

Honey, i've been trying for years 

As for OP; i've not played archer very much, so i can't say much from a my old friendchers perspective. but from a medium/heavy armoured melee perspective nomad/ tatar bow users arent really a major threat unless there in a group. It might be annoying for you stevvee coz they can machine gun u with your longbow. but i quite like the fact that the archers that can't really hurt me on their own are going arond killing the archers that can hurt me on their own. id say with there much smaller effective range and lack of power those bows should be more acurate and faster than the bigger bows

As tydeus said the games pretty balanced atm. Not perfect but as good as ive known it to be

[DKNhz]

I can imagine some archers are pissed because of the agi archers with their fast and accurate bows. But these builds are designed to hunt other archers. It's like a no-shield-onehander crying about a horse archer or heavy cav hunting him. It is a natural counter, and you are supposed to rage about that. Deal with it.

Dat.

[Grumbs]

(click to show/hide)

I hope to show some of the people who intuitively voted against pinpoint accuracy why they were wrong. In essence, pinpoint accuracy as well as high missile speed on low-tier bows reduces (!) the danger archers are for infantry and cavalry, and adds diversity to the archery class without breaking balance. This seems counter-intuitive at first, but it is plausible once you understood it. Please read my text.

It's really hard to keep this short. I don't want to bore you, but I don't want to seem rude either. Forgive me if anything I write either bores or offends you.

With level 35, 18/27 and 185 archery wpf, my build is considered agi-centric and squishy compared to the usual 18/24 "max athletics max powerstrike some ironflesh"-version other archers of my level usually pick. I get pinpoint accuracy with Nomad Bow and Tatar Bow only, and need at least 2 headshots and 1 body shot to kill a Kuyak hero with a helmet like Chapel de Fer. Even with pinpoint accuracy, this is hard to pull of, and I feel like I deserve the kill. Other bows do not have pinpoint accuracy with my build, the crosshair is rather wide.

I think the current system allowing high-agi archers to obtain pinpoint accuracy with low-tier bows is good. I also consider the high missile speed an important, well balanced feature of low-tier bows. These are the reasons for my opinion:

• When your build is optimized for pinpoint accuracy on low tier bows, you usually either have low PS, low Athl, or both, and not more than 6 PD. You sacrifice a lot of benefits to obtain it.
• I mentioned that killing aware enemies with medium body armor and heavy helmets is very hard, even with max accuracy and fast arrows. Recall the Kuyak/Chapel de Fer observation.
• You cannot simply make pinpoint accurate and fast low-tier bows stronger by skilling more PD. This is because effective PD is capped at bow requirement+4. They will stay weak, no matter what.
• High accuracy and high missile speed are an advantage of archers with low-tier bows against archers with high-tier bows. If archers were airplanes and other players were ground targets, high-tier bow archers would be bombers and low-tier bow archers would be combat fighters. In other words, Nomad Bow and Tatar Bow need to keep their current missile speed and accuracy in order to serve as a counter against those archers who preferably shoot infantry and cavalry. Accurate and fast low-tier bows create an internal balance within the archery class, and they allow prioritizing on hunting enemy archers instead of shooting infantry and cavalry. Archers with low-tier bows hope to keep enemy archers with high-tier bows busy or kill them, to reduce the pressure of ranged enemies on allied infantry and cavalry. This would not work without pinpoint accuracy, because headshots would not hit over medium and long distances, and enemy archers would not need to dodge but can keep shooting inf and cav. This would not work without high missile speed either, because enemy archers would have too much time for good footwork to consider low-tier bow archers dangerous.

I think the poll in the opening post is not representative. It is distorted at the expense of pinpoint accuracy because:

• Some people didn't consider that currently, accurate and fast low-tier bows help to counter high-tier bows and make archers generally less dangerous to infantry or cavalry.
• Some people didn't know that not all bows can obtain pinpoint accuracy, but it is limited to the very weak ones.
• Some people overestimate the power of low-tier bows and ignore that the need to hit more than twice into the head of medium and heavily armored opponents makes them a really unfeasible weapon against most of the infantry and cavalry.
• Some archers only use high-tier bows and find archers with low-tier bows annoying, thus they vote for the removal of pinpoint accuracy because they want to shoot infantry and cavalry without being bothered. Their fraction is bigger than the fraction of archers who only use low-tier bows and want to keep killing high-tier bow archers without being bothered, because the phenomenon of fast and accurate low-tier bows is new, the playstyle is unknown to some, and consequently, there are much less pure low-tier bow archers than pure high-tier bow archers.

In my opinion, the council did a good job when they increased accuracy and missile speed of low-tier bows. I completely agree with everything Xynox wrote for the reasons listed above. The only thing that is wrong right now are the upkeep prices. Tatar Bow and Nomad Bow should be more expensive, because they are just as useable as Long Bow, Rus Bow and Horn Bow, with the exception that the variety of targets is limited to weakly-armored opponents, especially enemy ranged. In particular, the Nomad Bow is way to cheap for what it does. If I could decide, I would give the Tatar Bow the same price as the Bow, and the Nomad Bow an upkeep of 450 gold so that it is in between the Bow and the Horn Bow. The Nomad Bow should be more expensive than the Tatar Bow, because it is even better at placing accurate headshots against enemy archers than the Tatar Bow.

Sankyu for reading. I hope I convinced you.

Using ranged to counter ranged is a really sloppy way to balance. That shouldn't be a necessity in the first place because the lower PD bows are still very effective at killing infantry, for the same reasons they may be better at killing ranged. Its still pierce, there is hardly any prediction required and they still hit through armour perfectly fine. Longbows might do more damage, but they won't hit people as often and take longer to draw a shot.

Ideally what we need is to have more weaknesses in the ranged classes that can be exploited by different classes. You shouldn't have to have ranged going after ranged, its backwards balancing and creates a feedback loop that exacerbates any ranged issues. No one should be playing ranged to shoot other ranged. People should be going cav or shielder. That creates a more varied and balanceable game.

I'd suggest just making melee and cav better at killing ranged. The 0 slot weapons are way too good, 1 handers have too much weight so aren't stunned as much as before. You shouldn't have a 2 hander by taking 1 stack of arrows. You shouldn't have as much armour. You shouldn't have PS or be able to split WPF between melee and ranged. Low armour should have more downsides, or heavier armour should be better and exclusively used by melee. Ranged are just too versatile of a class and too easy to do well with. Especially xbowers with decent armour and 1 hander

Stuff like that will create natural balance that doesn't simply add more ranged to the game.

[Gnjus]

Seriously.......people like Xynox becoming "Item Advisers" ? People like Casper Baggelund becoming admins ? What's next ? Panos & Blind Guy the Overlords ? Corsair the Main Balancer ? This mod had turned into a god damn freak show........

[Algarn]

To anyone thinking that nomad bows and tatar bows aren't deadly, I can say from my point of view, that they are a realy threat when the guy using them knows what he does. Simple as that. If you drop instant headshots with pin point accuracy to a target with less then 50 body armor with a tatar bow, you'll kill him faster than with the rus/long bow on this point, since he won't be that able to dodge, because you draw quickly the bow, the arrow is almost instant, and you can, afaik, hold the bow drawn for years. It's simply too easy to use, and even if I do agree with the reload time, and partially high accuracy, a weaker archer (ex: 4PD) shouldn't be able to hold the bow for years compared to a "strong archer" (ex: 6/7PD or more), and missile speed SHOULD come from PD, which is for me how much you can draw the string of the bow. As we can't do things like that, nomad bows, designed for horse archers, and physically "light" archers, should see their missile speed lowered. Hunting archers with high rate of fire and high accuracy should be enough, no need to have such instant missile speed.

Also, note that I didn't mention damages. Damages become high when you use bodkin arrows, or tatar on light armored targets or with less than 45 body armor, and of course, with PD bonus maxed or almost maxed.



Also, to Grumbs, archery is a sacrifice of PD, and wpf in archery, and so is using an armor for my part, mail armors bring A LOT of disavantages, because you move slowly compared to other archers, you draw the bow slowly (doesn't matter if this is high or low tier bow, you're simpoly slower, since the wpf reduction is not linear with the armor), and do not forget that an archer already got low wpf in melee (got 40 atm, for 129 wpf in archery), and you can easily spam an archer with low wpf and an armor. Play with a heavy stuff at your own risk, you will be protected, but won't dodge cavs, arrows, and you'll loose the ability to flee effectively from a fight with your bow and arrows on you.

[Templar_Steevee]

I support Algarn.
Reducing missile speed will only force archers using those tiny bows to learn to shoot, not only laser shooting.
Their ability of spamming arrows with perfect accuracy will stay the same, so archers using those bows will still be suprior to long bow users (to be honest i love shooting low tier bow users and don't afraid them )

[Mr.K.]

Having played with Yumi on horseback for a while now it feels much more realistic for me than something like a nomad bow. I think all bows should feel similar.

Faster draw speed is key against other archers anyway, that should be enough of an advantage for the lower tier bows, they don't need the sniper like accuracy and lightning speed arrows as well. No bow should be able to hit the same spot every time from 200 meters like Nomad can do now. Also the prices in no way reflect the efficiency of the bow. Tatar bow costs three times as much as nomad and is arguably worse. Maybe increase the damage slightly on the lower tier bows or make them just a tad faster, but get the missile speeds to the same level as Yumi and Long Bow. They would still hit at long ranges if you know how to aim and they would still be better against enemy archers.

I also agree with the 0 slot weapons being too good, especially for xbows.

[Tomas_Miles_again]

Would it be possible to make a predefined weapon sway path with WSE2? For example a left to right and up to down sway which is deterministic and thus can be compensated by the player?

[Tydeus]

(click to show/hide)

I hope to show some of the people who intuitively voted against pinpoint accuracy why they were wrong. In essence, pinpoint accuracy as well as high missile speed on low-tier bows reduces (!) the danger archers are for infantry and cavalry, and adds diversity to the archery class without breaking balance. This seems counter-intuitive at first, but it is plausible once you understood it. Please read my text.

It's really hard to keep this short. I don't want to bore you, but I don't want to seem rude either. Forgive me if anything I write either bores or offends you.

With level 35, 18/27 and 185 archery wpf, my build is considered agi-centric and squishy compared to the usual 18/24 "max athletics max powerstrike some ironflesh"-version other archers of my level usually pick. I get pinpoint accuracy with Nomad Bow and Tatar Bow only, and need at least 2 headshots and 1 body shot to kill a Kuyak hero with a helmet like Chapel de Fer. Even with pinpoint accuracy, this is hard to pull of, and I feel like I deserve the kill. Other bows do not have pinpoint accuracy with my build, the crosshair is rather wide.

I think the current system allowing high-agi archers to obtain pinpoint accuracy with low-tier bows is good. I also consider the high missile speed an important, well balanced feature of low-tier bows. These are the reasons for my opinion:

• When your build is optimized for pinpoint accuracy on low tier bows, you usually either have low PS, low Athl, or both, and not more than 6 PD. You sacrifice a lot of benefits to obtain it.
• I mentioned that killing aware enemies with medium body armor and heavy helmets is very hard, even with max accuracy and fast arrows. Recall the Kuyak/Chapel de Fer observation.
• You cannot simply make pinpoint accurate and fast low-tier bows stronger by skilling more PD. This is because effective PD is capped at bow requirement+4. They will stay weak, no matter what.
• High accuracy and high missile speed are an advantage of archers with low-tier bows against archers with high-tier bows. If archers were airplanes and other players were ground targets, high-tier bow archers would be bombers and low-tier bow archers would be combat fighters. In other words, Nomad Bow and Tatar Bow need to keep their current missile speed and accuracy in order to serve as a counter against those archers who preferably shoot infantry and cavalry. Accurate and fast low-tier bows create an internal balance within the archery class, and they allow prioritizing on hunting enemy archers instead of shooting infantry and cavalry. Archers with low-tier bows hope to keep enemy archers with high-tier bows busy or kill them, to reduce the pressure of ranged enemies on allied infantry and cavalry. This would not work without pinpoint accuracy, because headshots would not hit over medium and long distances, and enemy archers would not need to dodge but can keep shooting inf and cav. This would not work without high missile speed either, because enemy archers would have too much time for good footwork to consider low-tier bow archers dangerous.

I think the poll in the opening post is not representative. It is distorted at the expense of pinpoint accuracy because:

• Some people didn't consider that currently, accurate and fast low-tier bows help to counter high-tier bows and make archers generally less dangerous to infantry or cavalry.
• Some people didn't know that not all bows can obtain pinpoint accuracy, but it is limited to the very weak ones.
• Some people overestimate the power of low-tier bows and ignore that the need to hit more than twice into the head of medium and heavily armored opponents makes them a really unfeasible weapon against most of the infantry and cavalry.
• Some archers only use high-tier bows and find archers with low-tier bows annoying, thus they vote for the removal of pinpoint accuracy because they want to shoot infantry and cavalry without being bothered. Their fraction is bigger than the fraction of archers who only use low-tier bows and want to keep killing high-tier bow archers without being bothered, because the phenomenon of fast and accurate low-tier bows is new, the playstyle is unknown to some, and consequently, there are much less pure low-tier bow archers than pure high-tier bow archers.

In my opinion, the council did a good job when they increased accuracy and missile speed of low-tier bows. I completely agree with everything Xynox wrote for the reasons listed above. The only thing that is wrong right now are the upkeep prices. Tatar Bow and Nomad Bow should be more expensive, because they are just as useable as Long Bow, Rus Bow and Horn Bow, with the exception that the variety of targets is limited to weakly-armored opponents, especially enemy ranged. In particular, the Nomad Bow is way to cheap for what it does. If I could decide, I would give the Tatar Bow the same price as the Bow, and the Nomad Bow an upkeep of 450 gold so that it is in between the Bow and the Horn Bow. The Nomad Bow should be more expensive than the Tatar Bow, because it is even better at placing accurate headshots against enemy archers than the Tatar Bow.

Sankyu for reading. I hope I convinced you.

This guy understands.

It's not that the nomad and tatar aren't deadly, it's that they're only good against low-medium armor values, and who generally has the lowest armor values? Fellow ranged. That being said, I do think there's room to lower projectile speed slightly, but only by one or two points on the weapon itself.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

*Ignore the "armor" row at the very top.

If a Long Bow or a Rus Bow is too hard for you to consistently land shots with, then use a 1s bow, otherwise you're probably much better off with one of those two bows (particularly for EU, where everyone stacks higher amounts of armor.)

Edit: All cut damage values are 1-2 points higher than they actually should be, since these numbers are tested with a 12c Tatar arrow, rather than the current 10c.

[BlindGuy]

Most long time players that I talk to think cRPG's current problem is that it's too balanced (understandable). Yet here you are stating the exact opposite. To be honest BlindGuy, I'm not sure we could ever satisfy you, even if (however unrealistic) that was our sole objective. Hell, I'm not even sure you know what it is you want.

Mate we could revert to some rules. RULE ONE, common sense rule. yumi is massive and 1 slot, bow is tiny and 2 slot. Sort your fucking life out Tydeus.

[Tydeus]

Mate we could revert to some rules. RULE ONE, common sense rule. yumi is massive and 1 slot, bow is tiny and 2 slot. Sort your fucking life out Tydeus.

You are one classy cat. How you manage to transition so quickly from items to this type of personal insult is completely beyond me.

If we're talking about balance, which was a word you used first, models (specifically in the case of bows) are completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters for bow balance are the item stats. We can talk about realism as long as we want, but at the end of the day, balance trumps all. The previous issue with bows, before I reworked their stats, was that only three bows were ever getting used. So things were changed for the sake of variety, something most people in this community tend to think of as being rather important.

[Prinz_Karl]

I understand that you steevee have a very good build but holy shit, I didn't know archers were THIS accurate. I don't know who is responsible for this but come on, archers accuracy shouldn't exceed actual historical accuracy or this game mode just looks ridiculous.


Also don't forget that archers are unliked because of their incompatibility in multiplayer game. Usually they aren't that good and not doing that much kills but if they do it's horribly annoying for the guy getting shot, as he has no real counter. Archers and especially horseachers shouldn't wonder why they are hated.

[Templar_Steevee]

I sacrifice melee abilities to be accurate like this, my lvl 35 char have 2 ps and 1 wpf in 1h, so that's fair IMO. It's squished foot archer char.
You should also remember that all bows I used were MW.