Marksmana vs melee

[Massa]

devs seem to hate the idea that a bow might be useful

No, not at all, we just haven't really found a good way to balance them. They have always either been useless, or OP.

Just find a way to make them useful in a fight, but not useful in a chase.

[Reiber]

A structure that provides an archery platform elevated above a wall would allow marksmen to deter hostiles loitering outside their gates or near their walls very efficiently... though if the archer(s) outside outstrength them enough they might just get wounded and have to stay down.

cute idea, but how this game works it only would end up raiders sitting one tile out of range outside your walls,
since most recon/sieging is actually done with scoutalts, and 15 combat alts logged out just outside render distance, this would barely have any effect outside of some mild entertainment to the guys sitting inside the wall.

[Reiber]

i mean i get that it is difficult integrating bows in pvp, we are struggeling with making one way of fighting fun and not about water/energy logistics,
but it even sucks hard in pve, it only works somewhat better than an sword for early game cheese, but the moment you have an bronze sword, melee and unarmed character are way better, efficient and save hunting large game, and getting steel dosnt alow bows to catch up, especially not with the additional requirements for bows in comparison to swords.

taking an bow to an troll or mammoth fight just is asking to die,

and going intoo dungeons bows are just compleate crap, maybe you can oneshot the boss with an firing line, but ants are immune, and higher dungeons are far to focused around mass ,
you end up not contributing opening, just plinking of of armour, and run far to big of an risk to shoot your m8 in the back, and if you take aggro you have no way of defending yourself, aside from running.

[Filipian]

May be do marksman mainly for hunting and melee mainly for PVP? You all try to balance both MMS and UC/MC, right now melee is too op in PVP and PVE too.

I played years ago a game and there was a system that if you slash animal with sword or axe, then a quality of a hide lowered, but when you kill animal just with bow and arrows that make just a point hole in hide, then quality didn't drop

[Fostik]

Basically current game engine does not allow it to be better or at least work differently.
Render area is small and you don't have much time to shoot after you spotted the target, and though game world displayed as 3d, engine is 2d and any lying object will block projectile path.

Devs experimented both giving archery high damage, and also tried giving it high shooting rate, but it's always making it either pointless or overpowered.
On my view archery is just larp and pve mechanic, for people choosing pvp there is much more stable and predictable melee combat system.

[Filipian]

Yea, but for me we should nerf Melee in PVE (not dmg, but ql of animals) and that will make sense to level up MMS just for PVE content

[Halbertz]

nerf some stuff so other wont be so shitty in comparison

[Delamore]

taking an bow to an troll or mammoth fight just is asking to die,

and going intoo dungeons bows are just compleate crap, maybe you can oneshot the boss with an firing line, but ants are immune, and higher dungeons are far to focused around mass ,
you end up not contributing opening, just plinking of of armour, and run far to big of an risk to shoot your m8 in the back, and if you take aggro you have no way of defending yourself, aside from running.

Not sure if you actually used bow last world but it was probably the safest way to do trolls, at least mid world.
Was also ok for doing beaver and bat dungeons but was pretty cheese reliant and couldn't do anything if you got a big swarm of bats on an exit

[Reiber]

taking an bow to an troll or mammoth fight just is asking to die,

and going intoo dungeons bows are just compleate crap, maybe you can oneshot the boss with an firing line, but ants are immune, and higher dungeons are far to focused around mass ,
you end up not contributing opening, just plinking of of armour, and run far to big of an risk to shoot your m8 in the back, and if you take aggro you have no way of defending yourself, aside from running.

Not sure if you actually used bow last world but it was probably the safest way to do trolls, at least mid world.
Was also ok for doing beaver and bat dungeons but was pretty cheese reliant and couldn't do anything if you got a big swarm of bats on an exit

i didnt, but i had villagers who tryed adamantly,
beavers was okay for them, but with the retarded "kill all beavers in the same server tick" rooms, we would much rather have had an additional storm of swords or full circle,

with bats it was almost unusable, i mean, how are you supposed to cheese and flying aircraft carrier pooping out adds, in an room full of ledges,
now do it with 15 of them ,
the best strategy for those dungeons seemed to be to form an blob on an doorway, to not get surrounded and trapped, and so that SoS and FC would ideally hit multiple targets, or just rushing and blobbing around the broodmother and focus her out,

bows suck against hordes of mobile enemys , and thats all dungeons are about currently,

[Delamore]

i didnt, but i had villagers who tryed adamantly,
beavers was okay for them, but with the retarded "kill all beavers in the same server tick" rooms, we would much rather have had an additional storm of swords or full circle,

with bats it was almost unusable, i mean, how are you supposed to cheese and flying aircraft carrier pooping out adds, in an room full of ledges,
now do it with 15 of them ,
the best strategy for those dungeons seemed to be to form an blob on an doorway, to not get surrounded and trapped, and so that SoS and FC would ideally hit multiple targets, or just rushing and blobbing around the broodmother and focus her out,

bows suck against hordes of mobile enemys , and thats all dungeons are about currently,

Bow does suck for the "have everything dead at the same time" rooms, but those rooms are awful and only really late world was it even worth bothering with them unless you had a group.
I think bow shined most in beaver dungeons in small groups of like 2-3 people since you could take them down in a few shots and unlike openings if you were hopping in and out of the exit you'd keep the progress you'd made on killing a beaver.
Was mostly a case of grabbing enemies one by one and kiting or using the exit a lot, was easy to clear beaver dungeons and bat dungeons with 2 people until you ran into a bad room type or layout then you'd just have to give up on it or come back later with more people. Even later on it was pretty effective for beavers since otherwise they'd just tear up your armor, still had to do the "all dead" rooms with melee though or just skip entirely if it was a really bad one like 6 of the big ones infinitely respawning.
Never tried the bat boss with it though, don't even think we ever got to one when with bows since we'd always run into a bad room before that but did manage to get real deep into a bunch with just 2 of us. Also bat dungeons just suck in about every way, loot, layouts, the pink bats, cliffs

For trolls it was just about mining out a loop and running around it solo taking shots till it finally went down, safe, easy and mostly boring.

Not saying ranged is good but it wasn't totally worthless, at least for pve