Did a new character and got a short bow with dagger. I never had used bow in wicked, long distance is not my thing. But I just gave it a try.
It is awful op, I killed Warrick being lvl 3 in 6 mins or so. Playing was mindless, easy and bland.
Some ideas to nerf long distance weapons:
-Single shot would take 2-3 seconds more. You would have to take more risks and find better hit windows. The animation could include taking the arrow from a quiver or something. Increasing stamina or some enchants could decrease shooting time.
-Limited capacity for arrows. You can only shoot 2-4 arrows, then you would need to retreive these with some mele movement, retreiving arrows cause some damage on the enemy. (Idea from Sonfock on Discord)
-Short bow should feel like a secondary weapon but when equipped you lose interest on your primary weapon. No single shoot on short bow, you can only use bow spending focus on runes that should be expensive and with cooldown.
-No auto-aiming when using long distance weapons. You have to manually aim with accuracy.
-Arrows should be crafted. You need a quiver and craft your own arrows from wood and others recolected materials, better materials = better arrows. When out of ammo you can create temporal arrows spending focus but are less effective.
-Some used arrows could be recolected from killed enemies.
-The quiver would weight someting and has a limited capacity. When full it reduces half of your focus or stamina, at half capaticy reduces X percent focus or stamina, etc. The weight of the quiver changes according to ammo.
this is a good point. i think standard arrows should be “free” tho. trees do not just respawn every 5 mins and there is just so much of them in each area. but things like triple shot etc. should def. consume some type of ammo that has to be crafted!
I just added other two ideas to complement that. I get your point with wood but the idea is to make arrows somehow scarce. One piece of wood could make a good bunch of arrows tho.
When leveling I realized that low level wood like pine losts it’s value. I had several chests filled with it. Maybe in the first levels you would make basic arrows spending focus and then you need to make better arrows with materials. Focus arrows would be the very basic tier I.
Recolecting arrows from killed enemies helps also.
yeah, i love and hate this in games at the same time.
it makes sense and is logical to retrieve arrows, but lets be honest here, in most games we eventually end up never needing to craft arrows because we just pick them up again and gain some insane quintuple shot ability that only uses 1 arrow (which we re-loot 1000000 times). nice feature, but it always causes that players never need to craft arrows again.
kind of makes the whole crafting obsolete… kind of
The bow used focus before, not good, you will need to approach the enemy, like the mage does now to gain some focus, at least at the start, thats why they changed to stamina, so you can be a real archer and never have to get near your target.
I like the idea of the arrow making situation, but it could be like Enshrouded did, they had a problem with archers complaining that arrows were hard to make and took a lot of time, and it was true. So they added a infinite arrow, an ice arrow that you found after a quest, it did pitiful damage, but with a good bow and when you are high enough level you could save the good arrows for the tough fights and use the shitty ice one for the canon fodder or when you run out.
[…] thats why they changed to stamina, so you can be a real archer and never have to get near your target.
but it breaks the combat
you can just get out of enemy range and chip them to death for free
it’s not that engaging, kinda lame
hopefully greatbows wont be the same story
i really do not like the idea of needing to constantly craft to properly use a weapon and its runes. at most i can see special arrows that act as buffs, but we already have the oils for that.
shots should cost FOCUS again. it’s the best way to keep projectiles in check right now. [ignoring focus on hit x%]
It should cost focus, and a lot of it. At least with the short bow being a secondary weapon. Maybe crossbow or long bow could be different. Lets see, overall distance weapons need a lot of thinkering to make them fit on the game.
I agree that the bow is too easy and would like it to be more engaging and feel more threatening.
However, i want to remain a range player for 85% or more of the time. Which the stamina change attempted to handle.
I love the idea of auto aim off, but camera angle changes and the like could be a tough problem to solve.
Loving this thread and would be keen to see what other ideas come up. But my main reason for jumping in, is the WoW example.
I mained MM hunter from Vanilla and went petless as soon as viable in MoP. Both Arenas and Mythic (yes heroic back in the day) raiding but crap at arenas.
I get the essence of Frosty’s input however, focus builders as the stationary option is very frustrating, you get neutered too much. Especially as i believe a large portion of the fear factor needs to come from the enemy in terms of range balancing. Think how melee have to deal with NPC caster/bow. Or trying to range only against the Alecto fight in Elden Ring.
Maybe 2 focus builders
1: low dmg and mobile
2: stationary and med dmg
Spenders allow for creativity such aa quicker shot with medium damage but has to be expensive focus wise to balance the speed.
I love the idea of a long nuke (aka Aimed Shot/Sniper Shot)
Would like to see some interactions say (if not autoaim), 3 quick shots leads to buffs to spenders.
Rainbow buff (arrow type fire/ice/shadow) success hits gives a debuff which helps in Coop as well.
Forgot to emphasize your timer aspect especially the bit about the grabbing arrow from the quiver. Use attack speed from gear /buffs.
Like the RPG aspect of arrows and a limit, lets not get tooo tight on the limit (2-4 is very tight imho) closer to 10 cap maybe?
I have never been into range characters, so I don’t know much about it. The most similar I’ve played are magic builds but are different.
Slowing the shoot surely would balance I think, at least 0,5 sec. Maybe attack speed could be linked to stamina, bc of how NRFTW uses stats. The problem with the quiver and arrow crafting is that it creates a whole mechanic a bit boring and maybe not that useful.
Perhaps instead of crafting you could spend focus in a stationary animation, putting you vulnerable for a while, to charge ahead 2 or 3 shoots. Then you use those and cycle, I am just thinking in 2-4 because it’s a bit more realistic. Archers could hold a couple of arrows while shooting. But wouldn’t that be useless if auto-aim is on?
The challenge is making range builds balanced and fun avoiding a bland and lifeless playstyle without changing too much the core. Some risks are needed in order to bring the player to mele zone or you just would stay on a safe distance always.
