The Ranged Problem.

[Thryn]

Make xbows do less damage but reload as fast as native.

can you think of any reasons as to why the developers might not want to go forward with this idea?

[Asheram]

can you think of any reasons as to why the developers might not want to go forward with this idea?

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It's a win win, you get the Nerf you wanted they get to shoot an Xtra bolt.

[Blackbow]

i was wrong
str archer builds are still present and dominant...

i miss the time where agi was about speed rating and accuracy and str was for damage
we had to invest in both to do balanced builds between str and agi
now str is all about accuracy and damage agi is just speed rating...

imo this is fucking retarded and make archers too powerfull ...

[Algarn]

str archer builds are still present and dominant...

Present, yes. Dominant, perhaps, until you get caught by a dedicated melee player that will wreck you. For example, I have at level 32:

- 45 body armor
- 5 wpf in 1h, with 5 PS
- 4 athl
- 65 hp

Fighting a strength archer is a free kill, unless they use the nudge and manage to kite you with their OP 4/5 athl.

now str is all about accuracy and damage agi is just speed rating...

Again get your facts straight, with 120wpf and 10PD, I can't hold my arrow for more than .5 second and have some shitty initial dispersion, meaning I can't shoot beyond 40m and score headshots most of the time; also add to that I can not shoot more than 15 arrows per minute, or an arrow every 4 seconds. The only way to make balanced archer builds more prevalent is to increase the damage of the bows, which will result in a massive accuracy loss for STR builds (and massive damage on the other hand). If it was up to me to rebalance it, I'd increase the damage (and accuracy) of all bows by 2 or 3, and sharply increase the time to draw a bow. You are accurate, you deal damage, but you got to choose between medium risk/medium reward, and high risk/high reward : the AGI builds would be able to shoot more often, to have more athletics and WPF in both melee and archery, adding to survivability (hence the "lesser risk"), while playing an archer based on strength would mean you'd deal a lot of damage and be accurate (for a short period of time, because less wpf), yet you'd be very, very slow to draw, and very vulnerable to agi-based melee characters if they get close to you, like right now.

However, suggesting an archer revamp is just out of the window, considering most people wanted this class to be nerfed into oblivion since december 2010.

[bensai]

You said it yourself:

The archer fires more than twice as fast AND can move while reloading which is a major factor outside of a controlled test. Look at your damage examples again, but compare two arrows to one bolt. The arrow wins in the 30, 50, and 70 armor catagories. Your test ignores the defining trait that separates bows and crossbows: speed/mobility versus power.

Don't forget that using a powerful bow requires a large investment of attribute AND skill points in the str department, whereas you could potentially have 10 athletics and be using a heavy xbow (14/30 build with 10 ath, 3 wm, 132 wpf in xbow @ lvl 30). Or you could be 15/24, use a heavy xbow, have 8 athletics, 5 ps, 5 wm, 4 if, have 135 xbow wpf, and 90 wpf in any melee type of your choosing. That gives you some crazy kiting ability/mobility.

However I am of the mindset the crossbows are absolutely fine where they are at, maybe a slight difficulty increase but apart from that I just think bow accuracy/wpf ratio should be made so that being a str archer (8+ PD) will take a huge huge toll on your accuracy and firerate.

[Gandalf77]

str archers cant run out from inf  so they are not able to shoot that many arrows sometimes .Xbowmen can run like fucking donkeys with their full agi builds. Try to kill them with cav, good luck with it, they can easily avoid every charge. And because of high ath and blunt weapon they can beat regular inf with 2-3 hits.

[Blackbow]

the most funny is now archers have lost their mobility and xbowers who are suposed to be a static class have more mobility than archers ...

and i also dont get why the 3 most powerfull bows have also the bigest accuracy... wich make them wait to powerfull and easy.
there is no point anymore at using something else than yew longbow or longbow .

mw yew longbow : 105 accuracy
mw longbow : 106 accuracy (dafuk its suposed to be a bow hard to bend and it's also one of the most powerfull)
mw rusbow : 105
mw composite bow : 104
mw horn bow : 104

imo longbows should be around 98 and 99 accuracy
rusbow around 100
composite and horn around 103/104 like they are now ...

most of the time i play with horn wich deal no damage, and yesterday i was like dam i need more damage, i will have to use a longbow but because my 18 str i will have shit accuracy then i realize than i was rly much more accurate with a yew longbow than my hornbow
to me it's a no sense and make str build way too accurate...

[bensai]

the most funny is now archers have lost their mobility and xbowers who are suposed to be a static class have more mobility than archers ...

and i also dont get why the 3 most powerfull bows have also the bigest accuracy... wich make them wait to powerfull and easy.
there is no point anymore at using something else than yew longbow or longbow .

mw yew longbow : 105 accuracy
mw longbow : 106 accuracy (dafuk its suposed to be a bow hard to bend)
mw rusbow : 105
mw composite bow : 104
mw horn bow : 104

imo longbows should be around 98 and 99 accuracy
rusbow around 100
composite and horn around 103/104 like they are now ...

most of the time i play with horn wich deal no damage, and yesterday i was like dam it i need more damage i will have to use a longbow but because my 18 str i will have shit accuracy then i realize than i was rly much more accurate with a yew longbow than my hornbow
to me it's a no sense and make str build way too accurate...

I agree, powerful bows should be more 'cannon' like. less accuracy for much higher damage. the shorter bows should be the less damaging sniper bows.

[Algarn]

the most funny is now archers have lost their mobility and xbowers who are suposed to be a static class have more mobility than archers ...

and i also dont get why the 3 most powerfull bows have also the bigest accuracy... wich make them wait to powerfull and easy.
there is no point anymore at using something else than yew longbow or longbow .

mw yew longbow : 105 accuracy
mw longbow : 106 accuracy (dafuk its suposed to be a bow hard to bend and it's also one of the most powerfull)
mw rusbow : 105
mw composite bow : 104
mw horn bow : 104

imo longbows should be around 98 and 99 accuracy
rusbow around 100
composite and horn around 103/104 like they are now ...

most of the time i play with horn wich deal no damage, and yesterday i was like dam i need more damage, i will have to use a longbow but because my 18 str i will have shit accuracy then i realize than i was rly much more accurate with a yew longbow than my hornbow
to me it's a no sense and make str build way too accurate...

I agree, powerful bows should be more 'cannon' like. less accuracy for much higher damage. the shorter bows should be the less damaging sniper bows.

Seriously, no.

The high accuracy values are here to compensate for the fact that the more damage your bow does, the less accurate it actually is. A horn bow will ALWAYS be more accurate than a Yew Longbow, nearly regardless of WPF.
Now, be careful for what you wish for. If you touch the accuracy values on higher end bows, STR builds will be killed off entirely, while agi builds will remain as ineffective (read : garbage) as they already are. I don't know what you're trying to achieve, but nerfing accuracy this much would basically turn longbowmen into RNG characters more than anything else, dealing the same amount of damage, but with such a low accuracy it'd be comically bad. Agi archers, on the other hand, would be able to make use of longbows, but would still be stuck into the trashcan they're already at because the damage values would be unchanged.

I'll repost this, because it seems neither of you seem to have actually read it.

Again get your facts straight, with 120wpf and 10PD, I can't hold my arrow for more than .5 second and have some shitty initial dispersion, meaning I can't shoot beyond 40m and score headshots most of the time; also add to that I can not shoot more than 15 arrows per minute, or an arrow every 4 seconds.

Tell me more about being accurate when I can't headshot people beyond 50m half of the time.

EDIT :

Here, just to prove you're completely wrong about accuracy, here is a screen comparison, even better that the Yew Longbow I'm using only does 31 damage instead of 32 because I'm too poor to buy a final LP, meaning I should be even less accurate. If you bothered to back your claims about accuracy with screenshots, that'd be great.

Horn Bow : https://imgur.com/a/SOvrq
Yew Longbow : https://imgur.com/a/bvTV0

[Grytviken]

Firstly, I'm posting this in General Discussion because I believe that it will attract more eyes and this discussion needs to be presented (or continued) in a manner that will expose itself to as much of the playerbase as possible.

I decided to test some of the capabilities of ranged builds that are attainable in cRPG. Below is the data that I collected on a character that had 59 hit points (24 strength and no Iron Flesh).

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I only tested two builds: one for crossbow, one for archery. The crossbow build was designed to meet the basic requirements of using an arbalest (16 strength) whilst the archery build focused on a strength based yew longbowman (30 strength and 12 athletics).

Important info regarding builds:

Arbalest:                        Yew Longbow Archer:

18 strength                    30 strength
184 wpf                         121 wpf

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*Note that all shots were taken from the same distance as represented by the "Reticle for Arbalest" screenshot.

On the testing parameters:

Each shot was fired at a non-moving (no speed bonus) target that wore armors at varying intervals. The armor scales as follows: 0, 30, 50, 70. These intervals were chosen to represent base damage, light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor. No ranged weapon tested utilized heirloom points. The archer utilized bodkin arrows and the arbalest used steel bolts.

Now, for damage reports:

Archer:

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Arbalest:

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Estimated Hit point calculations:

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Each segment on the health bar is ~6 hit points.

This leaves us with an estimated hit point damage of:

Archer Naked:       57+
Archer 30 Armor:  ~34
Archer 50 Armor:  ~24
Archer 70 Armor:  ~19
Arbalest Naked:       Death
Arbalest 30 Armor:  ~54
Arbalest 50 Armor:  ~42
Arbalest 70 Armor:  ~34

Arbalest: 8 bolts per minute on 184 wpf
Archer:   17 arrows per minute on 121 wpf (yew longbow)

Final note: The arbalest does not have any power draw requirements, meaning anyone who has 16+ strength can use it. Additionally, you do not need to bring bolts into battle because it comes preloaded on spawn.

The damage is alot higher when someone is moving.

Also Arbalest headshot will kill anything in 1 shot regardless of IF or Armor.

[bensai]

Seriously, no.

The high accuracy values are here to compensate for the fact that the more damage your bow does, the less accurate it actually is. A horn bow will ALWAYS be more accurate than a Yew Longbow, nearly regardless of WPF.
Now, be careful for what you wish for. If you touch the accuracy values on higher end bows, STR builds will be killed off entirely, while agi builds will remain as ineffective (read : garbage) as they already are. I don't know what you're trying to achieve, but nerfing accuracy this much would basically turn longbowmen into RNG characters more than anything else, dealing the same amount of damage, but with such a low accuracy it'd be comically bad. Agi archers, on the other hand, would be able to make use of longbows, but would still be stuck into the trashcan they're already at because the damage values would be unchanged.

I'll repost this, because it seems neither of you seem to have actually read it.

Tell me more about being accurate when I can't headshot people beyond 50m half of the time.

EDIT :

Here, just to prove you're completely wrong about accuracy, here is a screen comparison, even better that the Yew Longbow I'm using only does 31 damage instead of 32 because I'm too poor to buy a final LP, meaning I should be even less accurate. If you bothered to back your claims about accuracy with screenshots, that'd be great.

Horn Bow : https://imgur.com/a/SOvrq
Yew Longbow : https://imgur.com/a/bvTV0

I didn't make any claims about accuracy, only made a suggestion based off of my experience. Also, you say that with 10 pd and 120 wpf that you have very a very small window for "accurate" fire. I feel as though 30 strength on an archer should be as hindering as it would for an infantryman with 30 strength; as infantry with a 30/9 build, you would have 3 WM which is 100 wpf in any melee weapon. With that wpf you are are looking at getting stunlocked when you stab, have poor overall timing, etc. Also 3 athletics is going to make footwork impossible. All-in-all you are going to be a 1 trick pony: smashing people's asses in groupfights and maybe getting those lucky hits in duels.

I will do some testing with bows and stats when I get a friend on to test with me. I'll do some tests with low str longbow builds and high str horn bow builds and just see how it all looks. I'm not an archer in cRPG by any means so I'm not trying to be pretentious here, but I've been shot my archers in cRPG for 5 years and have a good feel for how strong they should be against various infantry builds.

Lastly, bows shouldn't be pinpoint accurate at more than 50m at all, doesn't that fall under the purpose of a crossbow in the game's meta? Isn't a bow historically meant for volleying and indirect fire at long range, only shooting directly when close to the target?

[Blackbow]

no algarn horn is less accurate than yew, longbow and rus believe me !
and your strengh already alow you to be far more accurate at long range than agi builds ...
your shots are straight where mine are rly curved

[Thryn]

The damage is alot higher when someone is moving.

Also Arbalest headshot will kill anything in 1 shot regardless of IF or Armor.

dmg can be a lot lower if someone is moving the opposite direction

it depends on what is going on exactly when someone is shot, but if we shoot a static target over and over we can get a pretty good understanding of what average damage output is

[Druzhina_100km]

I wrote about it 7-8 hrs ago but i want to play
I dont see EU servers. Can anybody help me?

[Grytviken]

dmg can be a lot lower if someone is moving the opposite direction

it depends on what is going on exactly when someone is shot, but if we shoot a static target over and over we can get a pretty good understanding of what average damage output is

Most of the ridiculously high damage comes from the speed and elevation damage bonuses not the base damage. Hardly anyone is not moving when they get shot.