hey guys thought i might interject here with my thoughts
so one change that prof has been messing with (probably been implemented by now, i haven't checked changelogs recently) is reducing movement speed bonus for ranged. good change, you probably won't see xbows and other ranged doing +/- 2 bars of health based on you running towards or away from them. this will hopefully result in ranged dishing out a more predictable level of damage, allowing balance to be more approachable. A+ prof, ur doing Tammo's work.
also, i'd like to remind people that my OP was about how you can be a crossbowman without tons of investment. i never really argued about what levels of damage i think ranged should do, i just thought that crossbow should require more dedication to be successful just like the other classes. it seems that making it require PD is too aids to touch at this point, so i guess the only thing you can do is balance requirements and wpf to make people put in points to use the class (and yes ik that messing with wpf will effect the glorious xbow calculations devised by taleworlds, fun stuff).
as it stands, i think that xbow does too much damage. however, i haven't said the amount of damage that i'd like it to do. also please keep in mind that when im speaking about xbow, im talking about the arbalest. i did quite a bit of testing with other crossbows with professor earlier but i cannot rightly remember every little detail so im forgoing those items in this post. i think arbalest should not have the ability to 2-3 shot a tincan. i wore 80 armor against an arbs in one of these tests, and i think that a crossbow dealing that much damage is a tad extreme. in my mind, balance for a weapon like arbs should be something like: 1 shot nakeds, 80%-1 shot light armor, 2-3 shot 50 armors, 3-4 shot tincans. i think this helps to balance arbs damage in a way without making it useless. when desire says "8 shots to the chest is ridiculous" she is right. we need to find a middle ground between armor doing little against arbs and completely nullifying its damage. also, headshots with arbs should be 1 shot, but all the other crossbows shouldn't (the goal being to highlight player choice in choosing high damage/low reload vs low damage/high reload).
now now, ik what many would say. "just nerf damage" and yes, i suppose that could work. but if it's nerfed in this fashion, you come much closer to desire's fear of destroying the class and alienating crossbow players. that's not the only reason why this shouldn't happen, because there is a much scarier damage dealing class currently called throwing. i didn't talk about throwing in the OP b/c, remember, this was about how crossbows could choose the class with less points invested than other classes. however, after you get your power throw going, you can deal ungodly damage. it is hilarious how powerful you can be with throwing atm, so if any ranged class was to be hit with the straight NERF hammer, it would have to be throwing (but b4 that happens there needs to be more testing and discussion).
finally i'd like to talk about my observations with armor against the classes we haven't been talking about: melee. as it stands, you can deal insane damage through plate with melee weapons. i tested some things with professor while we checked out his ranged damage modifier patch, and i was able to get him to 1 and 2 shot me with a corseque through 80 body armor and 66 head armor. maybe you can curtail some of this damage with a change to melee speed modifiers, but i am much more hesitant to touch those because melee requires footwork at even average skill levels and a change in this area may punish skilled play. also, i was oddly 1 shot by gallonigher on na1 last night through heavy armor, so i'm getting the feeling that maybe we can, to quote ricky, get two birds stoned at once with a solid change to another mechanic instead of grinding out tests on melee and ranged. now that we have a developer test server, i'd like to ask for (if it's not too much trouble) testing with armor soak. do i know what armor soak is? no not really, but i have heard plumbo scream about it in a post someone, so maybe we can test some stuff out and see about making plate tankier. i talked about this with desire but she seemed hesitant to change it because she thought that the impact on ranged wouldn't be nearly as detrimental as the effect on melee classes, resulting in imbalance. idk, im still skeptical because, as it stands, i can get pretty hardcore damage by playing melee. i two shot sitvek with a longsword yesterday, so i don't think tuning down melee dmg with a change like this is a bad thing. however, this brings up another points: the oversaturation of plate in the servers.
it's hard to test things because people are running around in ultra heavy armor all of the time. plate was balanced so that if you wore it, you'd effectively nerf your gold income. that's the price you'd pay for tincanning it up, but now that gold income has skyrocketed, we see a resulting increase in heavy armor usage. so, in order to change this so that we see a resurgence in lower tiered armors, the income of players would have to be reduced back to traditional crpg levels (something that the balance team and devs are completely aware of btw).
so in my mind, this is an understandable route that crpg balancing might go:
1) change gold to stop market hyperinflation and the use of so much plate/heavy armor; make repairs great again
2) test out armor soak and see if it's possible to nerf everything by buffing armor and if that solves a host of current problems (tammo bless development server)
3) further test throwing because that shit's the most OP. also, nerf rocks because that is a peasant gimmick and should not be viable (5 blunt instead of 15 maybe)
stop ragging on desire, thats my job u buffoons
Poll