Is a New Bow Tree Really Needed?

[Marshal_Lannes]

Count me in the group that would like to see a new universal bow tree open to all classes. I would like to see a situation where with modest investment (say around 8 points) a melee character could gain some proficiency with a bow where it would be at least be a viable option for some quests. And while in the fantasy genre most ranged characters are full-blown "rangers" in the Legolas sense, historically there are countless examples of warriors who had skill with both sword/spear and bow.

[fatherpirate]

I think we have a 'light beer' issue with trees
taste great or less filling :-P

in other words - players will need to choose
BALANCE or UNIQUE CLASSES
you can not have both and add new content

When you add new content to one class that throw balance out of whack
so you have to make all kinds of changes all over the place to rebalance.
Then you add something else, BAM have to fix everything else again.
This is a losing battle.

This game needs to take ONE of two paths and I really don't care which as
long as they choose one and stick with it.

BALANCE
get rid of ALL class trees, go with generic universal trees
easy to balance, everyone gets the same advantage for the
same points at the same time.

Any class should be equally solo-able and fulfill
several roles (not all) equally well.

UNIQUE
Stop making universal trees.
Fix and or update class trees
STOP trying to make all classes 'jack of all trades'
make sure each class is BEST at something important
Classes do NOT have to be balanced but DO have to be unique.

Clerics should NOT tank or melee as well as a fighter, but way better than
a mage at it. Rangers should not be better at tanking than a fighter but better
at range combat.

and so forth.

ONE OR THE OTHER
Both and you get a hot mess.

[donblas]

Clerics, Fighters, Paladins, Rogues and others may be able to tap into this tree and have very different play styles than what is currently available.

.

I already have pure cleric, fighter, paladin, rogue, wizard, warlock, monk etc arcane archers.

They are of course, horrible in terms of APs available (and effectiveness), but I like experimenting! I'm a mad scientist - well scientist might be going a bit far.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with, and I guess that there's no way one will be able to do do arcane archer (including the elf tree bits necessary to get it), a class tree and the bow tree considering the APs available. One hopes that the new bow tree won't make non-ranger arcane archers even more irrelevant,

[LT218]

Game designers and digital artists are not software systems engineers and shouldn't be digging around in the code (or the hardware stacks) trying to fix lag.

That's like saying "We don't have enough ICU nurses, put the hospital administration staff on the schedule"

You are correct, designers and artists are not system engineers, professional DBAs, etc.

SSG needs to reallocate payroll budget and hire people that can actually fixing the problems that are wrecking their game and causing them to bleed long-term customers.

A better version of your analogy would be, "We bought an old hospital with a bunch of ICU rooms that need the plumbing, electrical wiring, and medical hardware updated but we didn't hire any certified electricians, plumbers, or IT system admins. But hey, we hired a lot of hospitality workers and gift shop cashiers so send all your critically ill patients our way!"

[Carpone]

The more universal trees, the better. Too many classes only have one useful or optimal tree. I would much rather have options to tap into a universal tree, than hoping a secondary or tertiary class tree gets revamped.

Perhaps we'll get a run speed enhancement available to every build. I always thought it was a huge oversight for a class like Ranger not to have access to a run speed enhancement like Rogues have. Longstrider only has a niche use for new players, and for hardcore.

Also, I suspect we'll see terrain mastery implemented similar to favored enemy. So non-bow builds could dip into the tree for some additional ranged/melee damage depending on the terrain, and it would stack with favored enemy.

Having Dimension Door available as an SLA will be cool. Yeah, some of us have a stockpile of scrolls. But the more people that have access to Dimension Door, the better.

[LurkingVeteran]

Count me in the group that would like to see a new universal bow tree open to all classes. I would like to see a situation where with modest investment (say around 8 points) a melee character could gain some proficiency with a bow where it would be at least be a viable option for some quests. And while in the fantasy genre most ranged characters are full-blown "rangers" in the Legolas sense, historically there are countless examples of warriors who had skill with both sword/spear and bow.

I think this would be good for gameplay also. The problem is you need enhancements and gear supporting both, which quickly grows difficult. Vistani had a nice idea with allowing MP to be used for RP, which solves part of the problem. The second is different main stats (extra accuracy?) etc. There has to be a way to make this work.

[LightBear]

besides the already discussed issues, I have some different issue with ranged combat

RANGE - stars, daggers, hammers, darts should be SHORT ranged and damage based on STR
but they are insanely long ranged. combat range needs to be important.

Very long range - Compound longbows (should be considered an exotic weapon and have point blank built in)
Long range - Great Crossbow, long bow
Medium range - short bow, heavy repeater, heavy crossbow
short range - Light repeater, light crossbow, Inq. duel crossbow pistols
Very short range - darts, daggers, other throw weapons

Spells have ranges, range weapons should too.

Range has to do with the amount of force applied to the shot object and nothing to do with size of the firing mechanism.
At best, larger limbs on the (x)bow make it easier to leverage the tension onto the string when pulling it backwards.

Other then that I do agree that unlimited range is kinda silly, tho makes for interesting gameplay.
Oh, and seeing that out characters have enough str to carry a city, throwing a dart into orbit with such str is just as likely.

[fatherpirate]

Range has to do with the amount of force applied to the shot object and nothing to do with size of the firing mechanism.
At best, larger limbs on the (x)bow make it easier to leverage the tension onto the string when pulling it backwards.

Other then that I do agree that unlimited range is kinda silly, tho makes for interesting gameplay.
Oh, and seeing that out characters have enough str to carry a city, throwing a dart into orbit with such str is just as likely.

Most of this is silly banter anyways, you can float
to the ground softly with a magic spell.

There is one 'still silly' consideration-
even if you could throw an axe --- 200 yards,
it would be exceptionally hard to hit a man sized target
at that range. A person at 200 yards is TINY.
It is very very hard even with a bow and there you
have the advantage of a sight and a long arrow to aim with
and the ability to aim in general.
with an axe, you just fling it and hope your in the correct general direction...lol

[Coffey]

Count me in the group that would like to see a new universal bow tree open to all classes. I would like to see a situation where with modest investment (say around 8 points) a melee character could gain some proficiency with a bow where it would be at least be a viable option for some quests. And while in the fantasy genre most ranged characters are full-blown "rangers" in the Legolas sense, historically there are countless examples of warriors who had skill with both sword/spear and bow.

The more i think about it Rangers and Fighters will have the best chance at breaking free from the unrealistic restraint of a single weapon type with help from a Bow universal tree because there are so many Feats needed to be in place to make it happen. The main enhancement trees of both classes already allow for some really fun builds along side the existing universal trees we have to play with now.

Im also looking forward to all the new possibilities!

[Bjond]

If bows firing at rates comparable to crossbows and thrown weapons would be terrible for game performance, I immediately jump to the conclusion that current firing rates of crossbows and thrown weapons are terrible for game performance.

Bows cap @ 86/m.
Thrown caps @ 86/m.
Xbow doesn't cap that I can tell, but outside NHB base is about 77'ish/m with NHB taking it up to 110'ish.

So, bow & thrown are identical for rate of fire and xbow is similar. BTW, my Xbow tests were just cursory checks on basic and NHB rate. I was a bit more thorough on Bow & Thrown. Thrown is ridiculously easy to cap: whirling + 30 BAB does it. You don't even need any ranged alacrity gear or feats. This is why I no longer bother with Blinding Speed or any other forms of ranged alacrity on my ranged character. It doesn't do anything.

My testing showed that 1 extra projectile is consumed for each round by doubleshot or extra chance (shuriken is NOT doubleshot), but I didn't test to see if that translated to more projectiles in the air. My bet is that it does not. If it it does, that is a prime candidate for optimization. There's no good reason for extra physical projectiles on the screen when they're occupying nearly the same space. This change would have an enormous impact on the physics engine, which if currently over-taxed, would translate to much better client performance.

Extra hits from a single projectile shouldn't impact game performance at all. Damage should be a cheap calculation with the overhead damage scroll costing more than the hit. However, flying projectiles that have some kind of physics are computationally intensive. Not only that, my bet is they're trusting the client on those calculations, which means that aspect of the game is highly hackable; ie. if you cared enough, you could probably easily make all your projectiles have a huge hit box that hits everything. Worse, if not trusting the client, that's punishing lag due to physics for every projectile in the air server-wide.

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BTW, my best advice is to first make things do what they say they do. Document in-game. Character sheet data should have critical importance and be 100% accurate in every detail. If a particular style has rate caps -- be it ranged or melee -- then show the current rate and cap for that character on the sheet. Hidden caveats only increase distrust and frustration.

Dropping frames isn't the only way to speed things up, but if it's all you have, you can layer it in tiers: enough haste and you can punt reloads and/or aims entirely and repeat the launching frames if that pitched too much (which kind of makes sense if the ammo is automagically replenishing itself anyway). If you drop one too many in one round, add another back later in a subsequent to match the expected rate. For a high rate-of-fire style, it's the average over time that matters. And, above all, make sure active abilities take immediate effect -- it makes the player feel in control and binds attention to the world rather than punting it to the UI to ponder if it's lag or a broken skill.

Also, perhaps let your item-designers know that adding ranged alacrity to a bow is rude. It's like adding a line that says "lol, suckers!"