The true cost of a single arrow is more than 67 gold pieces.

I personally am not a huge fan of auto-attack, and would prefer it to be removed.

I am more adamant imo about bows just having "unlimited ammo" because that is ridiculous. I also think enemies should have a limited number of arrows and be forced to go into melee when they run out.

 

Chris:

Not having to carry physical arrows for regular (i.e., auto ) attacks - presumably you would still see the attack animation - would definitely solve the encumbrance problem, and requiring reagents (which are much lighter) for special attacks sounds like a good compromise (Heck, I already have to carry a ton of reagents as an archer/mage, so the more the merrier )

The only other workable alternative I see would be 1) to make physical arrows tougher (i.e., inflict a lot more damage - exact factor - 2x, 3x, etc. - to be determined through playtesting) and 2) a lot lighter (i.e., like 1/4 or 1/5 current weight) , so we would not have to carry as many. (Unless, of course, you would rather create a magical quiver to reduce their weight )

Believe me, I do NOT like having to carry around a couple thousand of arrows every time I go out adventuring, but spend a couple of hours in the forests, mines, etc. and you'll see how quickly those arrows get used up I have gotten by on a lot fewer arrows, but having to make frequent trips to town (i.e., every hour or two) to restock gets rather annoying after a while

 

I think this is all about balancing

• No auto-attack for bows
• Increase damage for arrows
• Make them lighter and recoverable from bodies (depending on quality)
• More arrows generated per recipe

But yes, bows require arrows... or i'll scream , our dear Iolo will scream too, we'll all scream, Chris

 

Yeah, I have problems with the AI archers shooting bows at me and never getting interrupted. They should play by the same rules we do. I can't shoot my arrows at NPC archers because they just interrupt me constantly, I can't even get a shot off.

 

WHAT?!? Off cause should bows use arrows, what else should they use, needles, air arrow?

Then you might ask your self what you need 400 arrows for? All arrows you miss are recoverable and most of those you hit with you can also reuse so do you really need 400 arrows to take down a target? If so there might be a balance issue with missile weaponry in the game.

 

Probably yes. I wouldn't mind too much, but I'm not very picky either.

You can't carry 400 arrows around, unless (as it is now) you need 400 arrows to produce the same output as one earthquake spell, or ten slashes of an polearm.

Give me an arrow that does 100-200 damage, can be fired only once per 30 seconds (i.e. work on DPS raising raw damage and compensating with rate of fire), doesn't require a cart to be lugged around, can be recovered (with a chance %) from corpses, and we're friends.

 

A trip every hour or two doesn't sound bad, honestly.

 

Depends on how far away you are from the nearest town which has a vendor who sells arrows Darn random encounters

 

if this was a single player game without respawning monsters and endless fighting I'd have no problems with having to use an arrow for each shot. But since that isn't the case and you have to fight the same enemies over and over and over again I'm all for getting rid of unnecessary busy work (and I also highly dislike the reagents system...).

Why not replace single arrows through filled quivers, that can be filled up again through wood working? And use reagents to fill up glyphs, that get drained when using higher powered spells and can be recharged?

 

From an easier game balance view:
Basic arrow shot shouldn't use ammo (mobs have infinite auto-attack so we should too)
Specialty shot (glyphs as currently designed) requires consumable resource (similar to magic)

From a slightly more realism based view:
All shots should require ammo (requires balancing economy side)
Different types of arrows should have different effects (damage, debuffs, armor negation, elemental effects, etc)
Specialty shot (requires redesign of glyphs) should have no consumable resource and should be doable regardless of type of arrow (similar to melee)

I'm not against auto-attack though I do wish it could be disabled, and STAY disabled until re-enabled, but if we get rid of it then we have a click fest and that isn't something I'm interested in. Rapid fire click mechanic (like Diablo) for combat gets old quick for long gaming sessions, at least in my opinion, and player based twitch combat (like most FPS) doesn't appeal to everyone and favors a very specific type of gamer and a lot of times replaces character skill with player skill.

 

We could call it the DCOOL. Every good government project needs an acronym.

 

Immersion?...chuckles. Midget me running across the overworld map....wha?
Realism? And here I thought this was a fantasy RPG?

 

Yea, just to bring up the idea into the discussion again; I've been suggesting an Attack/Defense toggle. This would switch your auto-attack to an auto-defense if you had a shield or second weapon in your off-hand. For archery, it would simply toggle off auto-attack, and might have benefits like increasing range and accuracy. Toggling off auto-attack, though, would have a lot of uses in itself, like maintaining sneak attacks and arrow preservation. For non-archers, it would have the benefit of letting someone to boost defense on the fly, which would, in turn, allow the damage of arrows to be increased.

Several other thoughts on the whole arrow use controversy:

- Its not bad gameplay-wise that an archer has to return town to get more arrows. We'll also have to return to town for repairing armor and weapons, and also for food to restore nutrition benefits, and also for depositing things in our bank or house, or selling them to get rid of them and lower encumbrance. This would all happen at the same time. You don't need a special trip for arrows; there are a lot of other reasons to return to town. And, overall, breaking up a player's grinding so he isn't spending hours and hours of real world time in the field waiting for respawning monsters is a good idea to me.

- People seem to want to bend the game mechanics to make a pure archer easy; I'm not sure why. I've been playing a mix of archer/melee; I use my bow to start off an attack with an an advantage, then switch to my sword and shield. Mages have a mix of ranged and melee; there's no reason fighters wouldn't. I've written about the fact that I think deck swapping is maybe more punitive than it should be.

- It would be better if quivers just selected what arrows you used for auto-attack by acting as a container.

- Yes, whatever rules apply to players should apply to NPCs. And there's nothing wrong with an NPC archer having a dagger as a backup either.

- The costs of a lot of these base items used in crafting need to be adjusted to make more sense. (Although it would be cool if different types of feathers gave different types of buffs to your finished arrow. For example, putting phoenix vs. hawk vs. chicken feathers on your arrow would give different benefits).

 

@Chris, surely just making arrows lighter and making more arrows crafted 'per batch' would have a similar result to giving you 'infinity arrows'?

That said, I'm actually okay with only having special arrows. I'd love to see more interesting arrows like 'fire arrows', 'explosive arrows', 'poison arrows' and if the change opens up the possibility of using these I would be a happy Archer.

 

Yes, to a greater variety of special arrows In addition to the ones which Carlin just mentioned, I wouldn't mind some 'entangle arrows' as well (i.e., that spider webbing sure does come in handy ).

 

Part of the problem with reality vs in-game number of arrow requirements. You can shoot someone with 1 good shot or 3 bad shots (that still hit) and kill them. In the game we want more action in a fight than we'd have in reality. So we want to shoot more arrows. shooting more than 5 arrows one after another wears me out and my aim starts going downhill.. I could probably shoot 15 or 20 and still hit the target. after that I probably can't pull my bow without a 15 minute break. So we suspend the reality of quiver size limitations, and ability to draw/shoot/aim, arrows get damaged (the fletching, shaft, or head) easily whether they miss or hit the target. damaged arrows should be recovered about 50% of the time unless target practicing. (where only misses can result in damaged arrows).

To auto-attack or not to auto-attack is the question. Part of the reason for the auto-attack was because the deck system was people thought the deck system would require too much attention, and you wouldn't get what you want. What I've found is a properly setup deck and draw speed results in massive cooldown reduction and no real changes to how I play games, other than occasionally waiting a bit longer for a certain ability.

removing auto-attacks for ranged though certainly has possibilities....

I always like the idea of magical quivers or bows that have unlimited/special ammo... bows essentially shoot magic... being almost like a wand... and quivers that can produce ammo.. could be limited to so many per hour/day, or unlimited.

 

I like the idea of "quivers" replacing base arrows period.
Special arrows (iron-tipped, poison, w/e) would still be crafted and consumed normally, but auto-attack arrows... seems like you shouldn't even need to worry about keeping track of those.

 

I think having unlimited auto-attack arrows would be the worst of both world's actually.

What we're saying here is that a person with NO archery skill points can have unlimited arrows as long as they hold a bow and a quiver. Yuck!

From a PVP standpoint, this is a lot like staves and wands (which I also really dislike) but we're really dumbing down the game quite a bit here aren't we? (even for PVE)

Why not have auto-attack for PVE but not PVP?

 

Well, yes and no. A person with no archery skill would *theoretically* have unlimited arrows, except:

1. The damage they do would be negligible (no archery skill)
2. Their quivers would lose durability quicker (more failure due to no archery skill)
3. Once their quiver is broken, they either need to fix or replace it, or no more arrows

So its balanced exactly the same as auto-attack with a melee weapon.

 

Make arrows a lot more powerful, limit how many can be carried with weight, and get rid of auto attack. A dedicated archer will not wear heavy metal armor, so if they choose to use more of their carry limit to carry more arrows, good on them. Auto attack only makes sense for melee as they are parrying, feinting, riposting, and looking for opportunities to strike. A well placed arrow ends conflict...quickly.

I.e. Shooting an arrow should be like casting a direct damage spell.