What wrong with ranged ??

Good ideas

 

Even with the explanations, this doesn't make sense. If I shoot something, it's aware of me. Period. Even if I miss, it has a chance of becoming aware.
Currently it seems clumsy and unrealistic.
Why is auto attack shooting at something and wasting ammunition when it's a futile action?

 

We are going to need our ranged glyphs that claim a range beyond 20 to actually hit and damage and aggro mobs that are beyond 20 please. Or take away the 30 ranged glyphs, which is a lazy way to fix this issue, for whatever reason you won't fix this. Or is this merely part of a larger system that has yet to be finished, because the way you describe it, we should assume range is even more gimped and cannot hit things beyond a 20m range..

 

That's the problem. You do! Or strike zeros.

 

Katrina, to ease at least some of the confusion, I would suggest you would do a little testing with the wolves of Ulfheim instead of DRW, apparently that's one of the places that has a different "awareness distance".

So this basically means that flatworms, if they existed in the game, would be invincible, because their "awareness limit" would be effectively zero. What you don't know can't hurt you, literally.

Oh, ban me if you wish, and I'm not usually this blunt, but my honest heartfelt personal opinion is that this "solution" is pure design idiocy. Can't really put it any milder.

 

This is the feedback forum, and we've mostly been discussing the core change and what/why we are doing this. Many, many, times there are side effects and bugs that arise from changes. The best way to handle things like this is to get a solid reproducible bug into QA so that we can track and fix issues. Some new behavior is intended and I've tried to explain what you should be expecting with the current state of things. If there is something that isn't working like I mentioned, then *please, please* let's get a bug into QA with the specific information requested to fix issues ASAP. Can someone who is seeing unintended behavior open a new bug tonight? I'll check it out early tomorrow morning. Thanks.

 

Don't be silly, the reason I'm here and posting is to get your opinion on things like this. This game is still a work in progress.

 

Can we get the "Ranged" skill for added ranged removed if it will not work past 20m any ways? Or change it to say this does nothing in game your wasting skill points?

 

I'll try for sure.

But it was not just DRW. As I said, also in Twins Foothills I was able to pull as usual, when we moved there.

And tonight I tried to solo Ruined Keep: with its wagonload of archers (I was able to "wake them up" with heavy damage FROM A DISTANCE without any kind of problem), and especially the last part with two liches, three reinforced mages and some more adds, I found no problems either. There I had to carefully kite single mobs so to remove them from the group and avoid being zerg'ed. Guess what? Carefully balancing range (and when X becomes dot), backpedaling and massive combos, it was just another checkmark in the bucket list of things to solo.

I may be persuaded that I found the only areas with unusual awareness range, as Scrambler described.

I can hit for zero damage if I'm close to max range, and the mobs goes out of range while the arrow is flying. But so far, I never had to come toe-to-toe anywhere to start hitting my ranged free attacks or skills. That's why I'm very perplexed why I cannot reproduce what everyone is complaining about.

 

So, I'm confused. I would think that, upon being struck, a mob would check for targets within its range to immediately attack, then check at double (or more) of its range for potential threats. Depending on its AI, it may either move toward it and attack, or flee. I'd even be fine if the creature immediately became aware of the attacker, although it may mean it immediately leashes. However, getting hit and pretending it didn't is a horrible mechanic

 

New patch just just now, says this is fixed, going to try it out.

 

Patch 460 seems to have "fixed" the wolves of Ulfheim: I was now able to engage the wolves with my normal range of about 30, they took damage and came after me like I would expect they should. A sensible awareness range for a creature like wolf might be about 40.

However, this does not address the fact that, as succinctly put by @Browncoat Jayson, getting hit and pretending it didn't is a horrible mechanic.

So I can hit from afar those mobs that have keen senses, but if that poor guy happens to be short-sighted, it becomes invulnerable? Oh please. This should be solved with sensible mob reactions to a situation, not with extremely weird-feeling band-aids!

Edit - that said, it does feel good to have "range" back again in "ranged".

 

Patch fix doesn't address how this is evaluated.. Fixes some oddities around it.

 

I'll be looking into this again today. Indeed one of my concerns is leashing immediately after - though that's less important.

 

It plays terribly and makes no sense. Please play it and don't just math it. My feedback is that after 20+ releases of playing ranged that it is currently the worst it's ever been. If I have a range of x I should be able to get the attention of anything at x range and do damage. I posted videos of how terrible this is and got no response. It's terrible.

 

I have zero problems after the last patch, well done!

 

I just saw the bug you entered. That should help.

 

I wanted to say a few things about development on this game.

First, thanks for all the feedback! This team is trying to make the game YOU want to play. We couldn't possibly make something like this without all your playing, participation, and giving feedback. This is truly a different kind of development - we are in full development mode, releasing monthly, over almost 3 years, for 32 releases!

Release 32 is a turning point. We have a live economy that should persist now. That means our development focus is now split between development, maintenance, and now taking care of our economy.

We will continue to make big changes. We aren't final, and that is the definition of development. We aren't at the finish line yet, and have a ways to go. We are all testing an unfinished product - for sake of building a better game - the game all of us want to play. There is NO better way to find bugs that to have 900+ concurrent players playing!

This change is a bug fix for creatures that simply wouldn't attack. At distances too great, the npc would sit there and die, unable to fight. That was the current state of ranged prior to R32. It was actively being exploited against the economy. That affects everyone. Sometimes fixes have no side effects, but sometimes they do. Question then becomes how to move forward.

Technically behind the scenes, I want to explore another option today. If it makes sense I'll see about working towards that direction. In the mean time I'll continue to read feedback and look into side effects of the current solution.

Thanks.

 

We give you the honest feedback because we believe in you and were sticking around. Archery has honestly never felt worse. Now that the exploit is fixed I dream of game play feeling natural. My skill as an archer should determine range and not some random creatures ability to enter combat. Thanks and keep going!

 

Chris and I sat down and went over what the nasty side effects are for the exploit fix.

So, I'm exploring what it takes technically to dynamically increase the awareness and leash distances when hit. This is what agra mentioned the other day. This may be a short term solution depending on the performance cost.

End result is that different ranges should work just like before, but npcs would be exploited previously should react instead of being hammered. You will still see cases where damage won't apply, but I'll change the description to log something better that '0' - but it should be limited to pathing constraints.

This is going to take a bit of time and touches quite a few things. Lots of code assumes static leash and awareness ranges.

Thanks @agra.