Improving Marksmanship

[Encephalon]

At the moment, Marksmanship is pretty uneven. The bow aims too slowly compared to the sling to make up for its' damage even considering arrows. I believe the problem here is that aiming is limited to the quality of the item. I disagree.. It should be limited to the item itself. A sling ought to softcap at a certain MM level in terms of the speed of aiming.. but that rate of aiming should softcap at the same rate of aiming as a bow for a skilled marksman, and a hunters bow for a master marksman.

There is a huge rift in the ability to aim with these items. A rift too large to ignore.

We also need a few other skills for archery. For example. Sure shot, which mitigates the aim loss on moving targets, based on their agility and perception and your marksman, agility, and perception.. so the rate you aim can still counter the difference in aim loss allowing you to aim even if they move. Potentially.

There should be a skill to track wild animals as well, small foragable dung piles which track nearest animals according to that particular dung. As it stands right now there is no way to search specifically for boars, bears, or deer without combing through a forest and let's face it.. That's short bus.

Hunters track dung, they track prints, and since prints aren't a likely fit for this game, I believe the dung piles would be better.

Well that's my two cents, I hope that hunting is improved soon because it's a PITA, and it should be challenging, not infuriating.

[sabinati]

just out of curiousity, what is your current marksmanship, sling q, and bow and arrow q?

[DatOneGuy]

I disagree with your softcapping, quality should matter, but the IEMM of both the bow and the ranger's bow needs to be raised, and bow's damage needs to be raised, quite a bit.

I could see bow being around 125-175 damage, ranger's bow being boosted a bit more (as it is can't evne pierce armor fully.. the hell), maybe to 350 or 400, IEMM of ranger's bow being at least 5, and IEMM of bow being at least 4.

I've said it before in several other threads the fact that there is pretty much a hardcap on ranger's bows based on quailty you can achieve which is capped by what's available in the world, we need to be able to go further. You'd need over 700 MM to kite (you're moving, enemy is moving, and you're gaining aiming bar) and that's at the MINIMUM gain, as if someone who had 3 MM was shooting a sling on a trapped fox (to give an example of hw slow it rises at that point), you'd need 6 MM to equal 1MM increase a sling would give, so consider when you're around 150~ on a sling, how much does ONE point add? Not much at all, you want a noticeable increase you need at least 5~10 points, that's 30~60 MM for a ranger's bow...

Again, this all isn't a problem as far as LP goes, but let us have the potential to get there, as it stands I don't see anyone getting past a q200 Ranger's Bow by the end of the year as that would require at least q250+ silk thread and q150+ steel, the steel is doable, but you might get to 200 with silk thread, let's say you manage to get to q250 and get a q200 ranger's bow by some work of Yevon. (It also requires branches but whatever)

So if somehow by the end of the year someone manages to even get a q200 Ranger's Bow that's still capped at 600 Marksmanship, not even close enough to kite, so with over 9 months from the beginning of the world, marksmanship is still so gimped that not a single person can actually even BEGIN to kite, much less do it effectively...

If we had an IEMM of 5 at least with a q150 bow we'd be able to kite with 750 Marksmanship.

I don't honestly see why in ranging there is so much emphasis on the bow quality, getting that much Marksmanship is fucking ridiculous anyway, that guy who has 750 Marksmanship dropped 28,162,400 LP into it, now that's not mentioning that if someone gets close enough he's pretty much dead so he 'has' to kite, meaning he has to hold more water than the other guy and somehow drink it while running and kiting (impossible since drinking cancels aiming ; so now you'd need even more aim so that you could aim fast enough between drinks)...

Furthermore:
Perception is harder to get than strength

There still are very few people with over 750 Melee and there's actual incentive to go there.

Going Melee/UA also means that strength is required, since strength is also used to break things it has a double function, perception has no alternate function on the battle field

Marksmen are glass cannons, the second that guy with even just 300 Melee (half the devotion) gets close enough to hit him it's lights out and his character is gone, Melee-ers don't have to worry about this as they stand their own and it's pretty much skill and numbers, Marksmen have no numbers so there is no chance. (Now if he wanted to be a respectable fighter as well and have 500+ Melee that's a shitload more LP to waste.



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It would be nice if Ranger's Bow was scaled back a bit, maybe 2x instead of 3x as hard to aim as a Bow, but even if that doesn't happen at LEAST raising the IEMM makes the things a marksman should be able to do... possible.

[Avu]

Ehm bows are capped mainly by the fucking ARROWS... and normal bows suck and no backpack sucks even more.

[DatOneGuy]

Yeah, chock one more up there, IEMM of arrows needs to raise, either stone should be higher than bone (as to make them actually have a use ; IEMM over damage) or more need to be added, like the modular system for arrows previously posted so that we could have better feathers for more IEMM or some shit.

[dra6o0n]

Or range itself needs a closer look at... It is at the same time exploitable, and also a good waste of time. Well it's easier to say that its overpowered and weak at the same time.

If you have a high enough quality of sling, you wouldn't bother getting that slow and weak bow since slings are capped to just strings, while bow is to branches and strings, of which branches is something not everyone can get over Q10.

I made a Q17 sling VERY easily, and with the calculation I do about 102 damage max. Now trying to make a bow that is not only better, is a bigger waste of time, but much more slower than a sling.

In the end, if someone makes a Q30 sling, imagine how powerful that would be? 180 damage max! Basically for every 10 Quality, you have 60 extra max damage! And the quality is VERY easy to attain by just booting survival and hunting foxes (since they give hides higher than your survival skill, other animals drop under that skill level).

Better yet, go foraging for Q20+ string items, and get your survival up as high as possible! Easy.

[Potjeh]

Actually, damage is raised on a square root function, like most things in H&H. 10 points of additional q at q20 will get you a lot more real damage than extra 10 points at q200. You'll never have a sling that comes close in damage to a ranger bow (well, you could theoretically, but it'd take RL years). You're right about the wooden bow, it's quite useless.

[sabinati]

you know that people are selling q300 slings (fairly cheap, even)? and your math is way off on damage, don't slings have base damage of 60? damage is base * square root (q/10) so, q40 would be 120 max damage, q90 would be 180, q160 is 240, q 250 is 300 e: potjeh beat me

[dra6o0n]

you know that people are selling q300 slings (fairly cheap, even)? and your math is way off on damage, don't slings have base damage of 60? damage is base * square root (q/10) so, q40 would be 120 max damage, q90 would be 180, q160 is 240, q 250 is 300 e: potjeh beat me

I would be happy if someone gives me a Q50 one! But i'm in a generally new area so yep, no way of trading with other players on better weapons.
There's a lack of metal too so the town can't progress until we make a mine.

[Phizuol]

Hrm, necrothread or create a dupe thread... that's the question. Well anyway, it's obvious which I chose. Here are just a few ideas I had:

System revamp
Remove IEMM, the aim bar, and the current damage formula. Shoot should work just like Sting or Chop (use initiative, attack meter, and being forced to chew through the defense bar, Perception increases damage.) Movement by the attacker or target will count as a "moving target" and give a small chance to miss (+25%?) Defense loss while moving should be removed or Marksmanship would probably be even more crazy.

New moves
Snipe - Requirements: User must not be in combat. When used an hourglass will appear for 5 seconds, but combat won't be initiated yet. If the target or attacker move in that time the attack will be cancelled. After the countdown a Shoot-like attack will occur on the target with a cost of 0 initiative but still uses attack and defense values. This is a first-strike surprise move.

Ranged Attack Gain - A new move like Jump or Flex which is just a fairly basic attack power gain ability, but can be used at range.

Item changes
Base damage - I don't really know too much about base damage balance in the game, but it should be made in line with melee weapons.

Quiver and Bow - Quivers and bows should become a single item (quiver becomes an ingredient for the dual item, or can be attached to the bow a la fishing pole and gear). When a bow is equipped the quiver will also be equipped (displayed on character but doesn't take up a slot.) Archery is the only situation where someone can't wear a backpack and IMO it's too cruel considering a marksman has to use ammo in the first place and is using a two-handed item (can't use a sack.) The quiver needs to hold a lot more ammo as well since more ammo will be used in a fight due to the defense bar.

Stone bag - Requested before, requested again. Fighting the defense bar means more ammo will be used in a fight. A lot more. IMO it should be an equipped item in your 2nd hand, not an inventory item like seed bags.

Knife belt - A combined belt + knife combo. It goes in the belt slot. Hunting with a bow a pain in the ass with the item switching. The knife belt would basically be a cutting tool for any hunter that doesn't run around with one equipped already.

Arrows - The arrow recipes should create multiple arrows. 5 per is what I had in mind. Marksmen will be chewing through them, again, because of the defense bar.

Defense and existing moves
Markspersons should still rely on Unarmed for defense. That's the price of fighting from a distance. Call down the thunder is the go-to skill for getting ranged initiative. It also limits the effective range of archery so people aren't killing each other screens away. In a 1v1 situation Snipe can be used to open the combat, and if the defender gets into melee range the archer will have to fight MM for damage, UA for defense similar to how a B12 user would have to use Melee+UA. However due to the aim bar being gone MM don't have to stand in one place all the time and can use all the other nifty combat abilities in the game.


Anyway, flame away!