Archery and PVP

I played around with archery tonight for the first time.

I loaded up on arrows, took my 300 skill points and maxed out on ranged, light armor, you know the drill.

Then I thought, hey why don't I goto a pvp zone like Solace Bridge and wait for someone to come along and shoot them from a nice spot where they can't really get to me? I found a lot of great positions, but this one looked best.


The only problem is, I can't hit anything from this range! (Note the blanked out icons at the bottom of the screen as I target the tour guide to judge the range.)

So I had to move much closer to be in range for when people entered the scene. (see below)

Before you ask why I didn't goto the other side which was more defensible, it turns out it doesn't really matter. (and I did do this during my many minutes of waiting for someone to show up )

Finally, someone showed up and I immediately started firing away! Yay for random attacks. But what I noticed almost immediately was that the person I was attacking didn't seem to be taking any damage. I was hitting him in the back too. He was only wearing chainmail as far as I could tell.



He immediately ran away (smart thinking) and began to mount a counter attack. Because my range was so horrible I had to follow him, which resulted in taking 51 points of falling damage.

Then it was back to the same old stupid combat mechanics as he pulled out a polearm and began hitting me from a further distance on my screen than my bow would shoot!

I ran for the portal (thank you sprint skill) and escaped to tell this tale. I'm sure he was thinking, really? As I waited all that time just to do 7 points of total damage to him, and take more damage to myself from falling than he could inflict on me.

To sum it all up, archery appears to be worse than magic. Archers, I'm sorry for you. Please accept my condolences.

I think range on archery should be expanded 3 times what it is today. I also think that archery should require some type of aiming. Lastly I think damage from archery need to be balanced, this is just silly.

 

Drocis,

How does archery work at point blank range? I still haven't tried an archer build yet, I just have experience with fighting elves, skeletons, which I noticed with this build are starting to pull away in order to shoot -- which they didn't in previous builds -- but I still can't tell the effectiveness and close-range shots.

Would like to know, if you can add info to the topic on this.

 

I can't add a lot of info here, I didn't put much time into it. Just enough to see what I needed to see. Gabriel Nightshadow or Carlin the Archer would be much better people to ask those questions to.

I will say that I've observed archers shooting NPC's and Players at close range and it seems to me that range has nothing to do with damage strength. (I could be wrong)

 

Well, I would think close range would just be hard to do at all because you're get interrupted..

Hopefully, someone else can answer , maybe I'll get back to the game and try it out.

 

The only time you should have to aim manually is if you're sniping someone.. that is at X+ distance. I say this for a couple of reasons. First off in combat it would take too much concentration on the player's part to hit a moving target.. especially if that target is coming after your hide and would be swerving back and forth making it unnecessarily difficult to hit them..

Secondly, character skill vs player skill. It's the character's skill you invest in. They should be able to do things without you.. like hit a target. This frees you up to focus on other things like not getting yourself killed trying to aim at a moving target.

That said.. there's nothing quite so satisfying as making a difficult shot. I just think manual aiming should only be available in situations where the player can afford to put all of their attention into it. The opening "first" shot or a puzzle requiring you to hit something at a distance etc.

 

I was thinking that maybe the closer a target is you get a very wide cone of fire, then the further away they are the cone gets smaller (but not like a laser pointer). This would just add a kind of mini-game to the archery skill. The cone, even far away, would still be relatively large. But if you were being attacked that cone might shrink and you could think to yourself "I can't get a clear shot!" and stuff like that.

 

I'm not going to say anything more about archers or mages.

I am however looking forward to big changes next release

 

A polearm has greater range than a bow. Nope, that's not broken.. Not at all! *rolleyes* LOL!

 

Hmm interesting. Could possibly work. I would think the character would need to animate to a proper aim upon firing if it determines you hit. That would be one of my big concerns there.. but the cone idea could simulate character skill. The higher the skill, the larger the 'cone'.. as it were..

 

Archery was woefully underpowered this release I decided to switch from melee to ranged this release and I really regret it. Even investing points in the skill tree to improve accuracy, range, and damage didn't help much A heavily armored melee warrior would often just tear you to shreds... It took a ridiculous amount of arrows to kill anything (even bears), despite using all of the glyphs in that tree

Not surprisingly, level advancement was really slow for me this release (Most melee fighters I came across were about 2X my level...)

 

I leveled up first using magic (to about level 22-25), then I grouped with someone that helped me get to 30 something. Then I put on plate mail and got a few levels doing that. Trying to level using magic or archery forever would've been really painful if you were soloing.

 

Yeah, I used both archery and magic and died many times I only got up to level 25 after about 12 hrs Very frustrating

 

This is the "I feel stupid" question -- but I never was able to get the archery to shoot. Buy and equip a bow, check. Buy arrows, check. Try to put the arrows in the 'off-hand' slot -- not possible. In fact, never could find where the arrows went. But even though they were in inventory, every time I tried to use the bow, nothing happened.

Again, I'm sure this is something that would go into the 'Player Docs'. I understand that the developers changed the default from the previous release. But boy, does it feel stupid to stalk up to a nifty position at Obsidian Keep and....stand there, unable to get off a single shot.

Ah, well. I had to leave due to 'real world necessities', which have greatly limited my presence the past several months. However, this certainly was the most frustrating release I've experienced. I wanted to try combat and levelling and going through the lunar rift...and managed only a fraction of the first. Crafting, etc. I didn't expect to be able to get to -- but going back beyond Square One on the UI/active skill was irritating.

 

You were probably out of range (it's very short). All you need to do is put the bow in your primary hand and have arrows in your inventory and be within range (remember to click on your target) and have an arrow skill pop up that you can use to actually shoot your bow (I don't know if there's an auto attack with the bow or not).

 

Yes, there is an auto attack with the bow For archery to be effective, you really need to invest the points in the skills for increased accuracy, range, and damage

 

What kind of damage were you doing with Archery, Gabriel? I had all my archery skills maxed out. Because the bow appeared as having a "VERY LOW" strength bonus, I put all my extra skill points in DEX, thanking the adding attack skill would help the bow. Does strength increase damage for the bow too? I noticed that strength modifies two categories and dex and int only modify one.

I'm still shocked that at level 35 I was hitting that guy in the back for 1 to 3 points of damage. Unreal.

 

Completely agree on the range and damage aspect. Regarding aiming, yeah that might be problematic -- not the least of which are things beyond our control such as the latency we face now.

 

I only got up to level 26, but boosted both my strength and dexterity up to 16 and I was not dealing much more damage I believe perhaps 2-3 points higher. Took a ridiculous amount of arrows to kill anything Got mauled death by bears in the forest many times...

 

That is amazing! So you're telling me that your bow was only shooting things for about 7 to 10 points of damage? OMG. Did you get to level 26 just doing that? If yes, you should get like a rare gold bow of purity or something. It should be like the best bow in the game and do 11 points of damage on every hit.

 

In that range that for normal attacks, higher for others (disabling, piercing shot, etc.) I went through thousands of arrows over 12 hrs (and died more times than I can remember) Remember, I was a hybrid ranger/mage, so I had death ray and death touch too (a real lifesaver at times) In comparison, my friend, TimeLord, who spent roughly the same amount of time using a sword, reached level 49