As always, buff marksmanship. (and fix animal AI)

[eliminator]

1) to fix pve, let bows completely ignore animal's armor.
2) to fix pvp, add various poisons (slow/d.o.t./weakness/armorpen) to be applied to arrow's point, potency = quality. no lore breaking stuff like jumps, pins and stuns.
3) add small melee damage to bow, to use it in a pinch as blunt weapon.

[Sevenless]

1) to fix pve, let bows completely ignore animal's armor.
2) to fix pvp, add various poisons (slow/d.o.t./weakness/armorpen) to be applied to arrow's point, potency = quality. no lore breaking stuff like jumps, pins and stuns.
3) add small melee damage to bow, to use it in a pinch as blunt weapon.

1) Animal armor was specifically added to prevent early game exploiting using MM to kill ridiculous animals day 1.
2) Support archery could very easily turn 2v1 situations to guaranteed downing for the 1 person if slows are added. I agree that this is the most likely way to make it relevant without breaking it, but honestly the melee combat system is in one of the best spots it ever has been for haven. There's no guarentee messing with it to try and squeeze in something 95% of the playerbase is used to ignoring won't ruin the whole balance.
3) You can carry a melee weapon on your belt, at that point not just swapping before they catch you is a choice you're making.

[jorb]

Yeah, this is a non-trivial problem. Easy to make it OP or terrible, but hard to find a sweetspot. That being said, I have to believe that a better paradigm could be possible.

Will try to give it some thought, at least.

[Kaios]

One consideration I have thought a little bit about would be merging Unarmed Combat and Melee Combat in to one "Close Combat" skill, and Marksmanship could rather be Ranged Combat (or remain Marksmanship, whatever). The usefulness of both Unarmed and Melee Combat in late-game combat far outweighs the usefulness of Marksmanship and to me the choice is always to either go straight UA or a combination of both Unarmed and MC. I do not ever consider Marksmanship because it has very little usefulness in the majority of close combat encounters, which are 99% of the encounters you will have.

However, if the skills relegated to Melee Combat could be intertwined with Unarmed Combat in some way to create one Close Combat skill, I think this could open a lot more possibility to play around with ranged combat in other ways. For example, one possible scenario might be that both fighters in a situation have points in Close Combat and Ranged Combat and so they poke at each other a bit with bows while kiting or building IP but also have the capability to handle when the fight moves to a closer proximity. Decks could be geared towards what type of combat you prefer and so there would maneuvers for ranged combat that impact it positively and your close combat negatively, and in opposite fashion for Close Combat. As there is an allowance for switching decks in combat you could prepare decks for both and swap between them as necessary.

Perhaps you do not even need to merge unarmed and melee combat to create that dynamic, but it would at least make it simpler. Either way I think both ranged and close combat should be able to handle each other in various ways if one were to specialize only in one or the other, but of course each would also have their own advantages and disadvantages against the other type.

[SnuggleSnail]

if ur gonna do some stuff to marksmanship good in PVP, pls consider that ping exists


It really doesn't seem unreasonable to make marksmanship really good for PVE hunting, so the plebs can have an easier time killing stuff while they're still learning and getting comfortable. Every mob in the game is easily killable the second a competent player gets a Q8 anvil anyway

[Archiplex]

Yeah, this is a non-trivial problem. Easy to make it OP or terrible, but hard to find a sweetspot. That being said, I have to believe that a better paradigm could be possible.

Will try to give it some thought, at least.

my vote is still towards turning it into a part of the current combat system, as having that as a balance mechanism also means finding a way to deal with the current boar spear cheese (which i presume isn't intended), so you can tackle two things in one move.

plus i still want to see people using a shield + sling like come on that's cool. and it also deals with ping concerns by making it more accessable- i do agree that accepting ranged combat being the answer for early game pve hunting being fine too (its fun anyways), but i would like to see a future in it for pvp in some way, and not like how it used to exist. i still remember the raid on r'lyeh where i took down 3 of the raiders on my alt in one shot and people realized how busted it was

[eliminator]

1) Animal armor was specifically added to prevent early game exploiting using MM to kill ridiculous animals day 1.

Well, archery cannot kill big animals 2 weeks in without wasting lots of arrows, and easy melee kills were possible since when, day 2? 3?

2) Support archery could very easily turn 2v1 situations to guaranteed downing for the 1 person if slows are added. I agree that this is the most likely way to make it relevant without breaking it, but honestly the melee combat system is in one of the best spots it ever has been for haven. There's no guarentee messing with it to try and squeeze in something 95% of the playerbase is used to ignoring won't ruin the whole balance.

I think that everything can be tested and balanced. If only there was a way to test controversial stuff before letting it go live?.. like, some kind of public server where you can test.

3) You can carry a melee weapon on your belt, at that point not just swapping before they catch you is a choice you're making.

As afterthought well yea, i guess equipment cooldowns are here for that reason.

[Amberlight99]

One consideration I have thought a little bit about would be merging Unarmed Combat and Melee Combat in to one "Close Combat" skill, and Marksmanship could rather be Ranged Combat (or remain Marksmanship, whatever). The usefulness of both Unarmed and Melee Combat in late-game combat far outweighs the usefulness of Marksmanship and to me the choice is always to either go straight UA or a combination of both Unarmed and MC. I do not ever consider Marksmanship because it has very little usefulness in the majority of close combat encounters, which are 99% of the encounters you will have.

However, if the skills relegated to Melee Combat could be intertwined with Unarmed Combat in some way to create one Close Combat skill, I think this could open a lot more possibility to play around with ranged combat in other ways. For example, one possible scenario might be that both fighters in a situation have points in Close Combat and Ranged Combat and so they poke at each other a bit with bows while kiting or building IP but also have the capability to handle when the fight moves to a closer proximity. Decks could be geared towards what type of combat you prefer and so there would maneuvers for ranged combat that impact it positively and your close combat negatively, and in opposite fashion for Close Combat. As there is an allowance for switching decks in combat you could prepare decks for both and swap between them as necessary.

Perhaps you do not even need to merge unarmed and melee combat to create that dynamic, but it would at least make it simpler. Either way I think both ranged and close combat should be able to handle each other in various ways if one were to specialize only in one or the other, but of course each would also have their own advantages and disadvantages against the other type.

I think this solution takes away from the variety and strategy involved in choosing between melee weapons and no weapons when deciding what you will invest your build into without fixing the issue with MM

This issue is not that people are spending so many points trying to do both Melee and Unarmed that they can't afford to then use Marksmanship, if that were the case, we would already see these kinds of builds you are talking about, where someone decides to invest entirely into Unarmed and MM, neglecting Melee to be a shoot them until I can punch them kind of build. The issue does not lie within the other two combat skills, but in MM itself. It currently is not useful, so what you will wind up doing by merging Melee and Unarmed is just make it cheaper to be strong in close combat, without really giving any reason to put that leftover LP into MM skills.

Yeah, this is a non-trivial problem. Easy to make it OP or terrible, but hard to find a sweetspot. That being said, I have to believe that a better paradigm could be possible.

Will try to give it some thought, at least.

my vote is still towards turning it into a part of the current combat system, as having that as a balance mechanism also means finding a way to deal with the current boar spear cheese (which i presume isn't intended), so you can tackle two things in one move.

plus i still want to see people using a shield + sling like come on that's cool. and it also deals with ping concerns by making it more accessable- i do agree that accepting ranged combat being the answer for early game pve hunting being fine too (its fun anyways), but i would like to see a future in it for pvp in some way, and not like how it used to exist. i still remember the raid on r'lyeh where i took down 3 of the raiders on my alt in one shot and people realized how busted it was

I think your goal is one to aim for, both in allowing for merging ranged and melee builds (such as shield and sling) as well as simply making MM useful. I think in the end a good stepping stone should be to see ranged weapons as a support equipment to the existing combat system, in being something you can use in raids, down a cliff, or while someone is running at you, but in the end, if they want to get into melee with you (save defending from a siege) they can and will.

[Kaios]

I think this solution takes away from the variety and strategy involved in choosing between melee weapons and no weapons when deciding what you will invest your build into without fixing the issue with MM

Your damage with cleave, etc. on a high opening won't change regardless of what your Melee Combat is anyways. You could have 1 MC and 5000 Unarmed to get the openings and you'll still want to have a weapon for the kills. You're not going to kill much with punches alone. The best use you get out of raising melee combat right now would be to use Parry as your maneuver, and that's really the only reason I personally have that would make me want to raise it at all. I guess Quick Barrage spam isn't too bad either in some cases.

The point being there already is no reason to raise melee combat except for very niche cases.

[fuffens1]

Yeah, this is a non-trivial problem. Easy to make it OP or terrible, but hard to find a sweetspot. That being said, I have to believe that a better paradigm could be possible.

Will try to give it some thought, at least.

Thank you, some thought into this is all i can ask for.

Again i would like to point out that, to me, the core issue is not the archery system. Sure i would like it to be more integrated into the PvP haven has to offer. The core issue however is the fact that animals are way to simple and easy to cheese.

I dont know shit about coding so take this with a grain of salt. But how hard can it be to make sure that when an animal feels threatened (aggressive, cause thats why animals attack. they dont walk around angry.) and it realises that its in real danger and cant defend itself (like with a guy safely attacking it from a boat) it will just turn around, flee and not slow down until its time to lick wounds? I think animals should be more aggressive if they know they can defend themselves. But if they cant do that they should just bolt like a normal animal would. Just remove the re-aggro shit. Cant be that hard right? Right?

This way (hopefully) there would be a reason to have a hunter that can damage and bloody the animal (if it did any damage) without getting to close, peace with it, and start tracking again. Or if you wanna be more effective, you have one hunter with a spear or sword and shield ready to tank for the archer who is doing most of the damage while the guy in melee is focusing on defense.

Also the reason you guys added armor on animals was to make bears, moose etc to be more exclusive and hard to get right? Well let me tell ya, its not harder right now for the same reasons its never been hard. da boat strat

Just pains me bro...