Declining server population & combat rant.

[Kyaaa]

I'm going to tell you all why most people (including me and my friends) tend to stop playing this game somewhere around the mid-late game.
Let's just get one of the obvious reasons out of the way. Yes, the quality grind is shit. However, from my experience at least, I get bored of the game because of how late game combat plays out.

You have this great system as far as unarmed goes, which feels tactical and fun as fuck, and it's pretty damn useful for early/mid level PvP. That all gets thrown to the wayside though once melee weapons start to become a thing. Melee isn't tactical, it isn't fun, it's just Chop and Sting one hit kills. Look at unarmed. There's so many abilities to play with, but once melee becomes available, unarmed becomes completely secondary.

Then we get to the subject of Marksmanship. Does anybody want to tell me why, after all these years, this skill is still absolute dog shit in PvP? When an entire combat skill is made irrelevant just by some guy zig zagging towards you, it should be clearly apparent that something is wrong.
None of these things seem hard to balance, and yet they have been left in such extremely unbalanced ways for years.


Overpowered - Melee
Balanced - Unarmed
Underpowered - Ranged

Nobody is going to stick around for lategame when the next reset happens, purely because of how poor the combat gets after the initial unarmed phase is over.


Anyway, I have a few question for the devs.

Is Marksmanship ever going to be anything more than just a glorified PvE skill? Will you ever actually be able to hit a moving target?
Will melee ever not clearly overshadow the other two combat abilities in every single way?
Will there ever be a time when you can concentrate on 1 combat skill while ignoring the others and have that ONE combat skill be on equal footing with the others?


Oh and just to clarify, I usually stop playing while I have a character alive and well, so this isn't a case of "waah some nasty guy with a sword killed me and now I'm gonna quit!". More often than not, I'm running with a pure unarmed / marksmanship guy, and I'll realize just how inferior these combat types are (especially MM) to Melee. And here's the thing, it's not like making a sword or a b12 is that hard to make, certainly not to the extent that they should render melee to be far superior to the other two options.

[DDDsDD999]

Then we get to the subject of Marksmanship. Does anybody want to tell me why, after all these years, this skill is still absolute dog shit in PvP? When an entire combat skill is made irrelevant just by some guy zig zagging towards you, it should be clearly apparent that something is wrong.

Because it's unfun as fuck and is still situationally broken.

imo just go back to old haven combat, it was better than the current one.

[xTrainx]

Is Marksmanship ever going to be anything more than just a glorified PvE skill? Will you ever actually be able to hit a moving target?
.

LOL, have you actually tried actual marksman combat?

[stya]

Is Marksmanship ever going to be anything more than just a glorified PvE skill? Will you ever actually be able to hit a moving target?
.

LOL, have you actually tried actual marksman combat?

Prob only tried low MM combat, just like melee is shitty unless you get enough agility and UA/MC.

[venatorvenator]

Until some months ago marksmanship couldn't even kill anyone, it just knocked out. I don't know if that's still the case, but the absence of the ranger bow, more arrow types, and viable spear builds are a strong argument for more marksmanship love. It's like devs only care about melee.

[LadyGoo]

Combat for spear could change dramatically, if there would be one-handed spear type. As an example, Roman warriors:



After using the spear, they could just pick up their short gladius swords and fight. The problem with haven is that you have to spend too much time on clicking on the inventory and weapon slots, while every second is precious. Alike a combat deck, there should be battle equipment decks you could change during the fight by pressing a button (Shovel client can switch combat card decks by f1, f2 and etc.). That would make archers, halberders and spearmen to become an actual class.

[venatorvenator]

Or they could be able to actually kill people with arrows. That'd be good too.

[abt79]

Very high marksmanship makes short range archery a possibility, but I really think that they should add a wooden watchtower that allows archers to shoot at invaders over walls

[LadyGoo]

Or they could be able to actually kill people with arrows. That'd be good too.

People can do that already.

a few days ago i hopped onto skype to see the squad was under attack by a great archer who was oneshoting us left and right, due to a bug he was not able to kill us

According to this post, the archer has been able to knock down people with his arrows.

[boreial]

actually LadyGoo, in the Roman Warrior picture you used, that is actually a Pilum, a specific type of weapon designed to be thrown at the enemies shield, and the shaft then bends down leaving the haft to drag the ground, leaving the shield useless and the target open.

Weapons geek
Boreial