For anyone who has played world of warcraft, did you enjoy it more when bows needed arrows and had ammo types or after when it ws unlimited and had no ammo types?
Me personally i didnt like like buying ammo and the thought of running out of ammo.
I remember thinking if i made my own MMO, there wouldnt be ammo but id have a story behind it, like once they did have ammo but it wasnt good for war as archers would run out of ammo, so mages enchanted all bows and guns to generate their own ammo when fired.
But i do like the idea of ammo types, like little runes that add fire damage or ice or just bettter quality of arrows with magic.
This would seperate the bad players and the good willing to put in more effort to get rare ammo types.
Your thoughts.
I loved Fletching on my Ranger in early EQ, I also loved Research on my Wizard and collecting and trading Runes with other Wizards like they were baseball cards.
To me it was a big let down when the made this "easier" for the hack abd slashers. Yes, their game got "better", at the expense of the game I was playing.
I know that the devs have expressed an interest in maintaining the need to manage inventory without making it to cumbersome. With that said, EQ1 required players to carry ammunition and it had a weight; and weight played a very big role for classes like monks, as well as having negative effects on movement when you became encumered. I think they may do away with or greatly reduce the weight of ammunition but still require players to carry it, at least until the player obtains some special ability/item.
I also liked fletching in EQ, and I think ammo adds to realism.
However, it always felt wrong to shoot dozens of arrows at some mob, and not being able to recover at least some of them. Either automatically when the mob dies, or as actual loot on the mob. Also, higher quality arrows could have a higher chance to be recovered.
Having the bow use ammo could easily lead to the user having different damage types stemming from different arrow types. Fire, ice, poison, disease, even blunt. Perhaps even differences in range vs damage. Longer range with lower damage or shorter range higher damage. Give the players options I say.
Many games resolve this by giving archer unlimited ammount of normal arrows and a way to make limited special ones - which is usually a great solution. However in a game like Pantheon i'd rather see something like this: give archer (or all the classes) ability to craft arrows between fights, add summoner a spell to summon bunch of arrows and add spell (buff) to wizard that allows archer to fire maical arrows for a duration.
It's possible to have "ammo" and ammo types without making them something expendable. A ranger might have access to all sorts of arrow enchantments without specifically requiring fire arrows or ice arrows etc., as we already know they have arrow coating(s):
Arrow Coating: Wild Hyacinth
For X duration, your ranged attacks will apply Y effect on your target.
The general issue with expendable ammo stacks being that it is an unfair burden for one class to be so taxed just to be able to perform a good portion of their base/core functions.
Iksar said:The general issue with expendable ammo stacks being that it is an unfair burden for one class to be so taxed just to be able to perform a good portion of their base/core functions.
I get that a lot of people don't like it, but my arguement would be that it was such a class defining trait though, to make your own bows and arrows for rangers, that it would be almost sacreligious to not have it. The down time that 'everyone' wants to socialize is a good time to spend working on fletching skills. I used to do that all the time with my ranger in EQ. It also gave me an opportunity to hand them out to other group members who also used them.
Plus this also provides a money sink for the economy.
No one has said that allowing missile weapons to fire unlimited quantities of ammunition is a modern degradation of basic concepts - that if we don't want to micromanage ammunition we should go play WoW - and there are hundreds of games like this we don't need Panthon to simply be another easy to play no-challenge MMO? I am shocked - literally shocked not to see this.
Many games long before EQ - in fact before the internet - required characters that engaged in ranged combat to carry bolts, arrows or the like - and when they ran out you couldn't use your missile weapon. Made perfect sense then and makes perfect sense now. As long as the restrictions aren't too limiting.
Thus ammunition should stack to fairly high amounts so it doesn't use up too many inventory slots, and the wieght and encmbrance rules shouldn't mean that if you carry 300 arrows you can't pick up any loot.
This is a tough one and it requires I think attention to many different areas in the classes design to balance them out. In games like these, ranged ability is king. Casters have limitations of mana which constrains them to how much they can do or take on. A ranged class needs to have a balance to them as well. It can be in many forms, and what is best or even good is really a matter of deep discussion and balancing.
You could use weight allowances combined with a limited supply of ammunition to help balance this, but that has its own issues and encompasses more than just this issue (though I am a huge fan of weight restrictions).
An easy solution I think would be to force ammunition to only an ammunition pouch where there are limits on how much you can have in a pouch (also allowing you ro increase the amount through skill/crafting/etc...). You could combine this with a weight restriction system (making the ammunition much heavier to where it is not practical to carry it outside of the ammuinition pouch). That would solve some issues in terms of you picking up ammunition as loot, or crafting. You can still carry it, but it would be like carrying around a ton of copper which would have negative effects such as reduced movement speed, loss of any avoidance or AC bonuses, reduction in attack ablity, etc....
There is also the route of making ranged physical damage so low that it doesn't matter (allowing you to use unlimited ammo), but I think that has some issues as well and keep in mind that in activities like kiting, time is irrelevant, the ability to keep doing damage and staying out of reach means you can kill anything. At least with casters, mana limits this.
Anyway, this is a tricky one and would require a lot of consideration or it could be abused.
DracoKalen said:Well if they go with ammo there should be an increase in power in the bow.
Which is then why there has to be a limit on how much a ranged player can carry so you can keep similar balance that casters have with mana pools.
This goes over from another thread, but this is my point.
If you think something should be a certain way, reason it as to why.
If you want more power to something, why is that and are you considering what that may imbalance?
Explain and reason why you think a feature is best, not only in how "cool" you think it will be, but why it is needed and why you think it won't have a negative effect.
everett said:I get that a lot of people don't like it, but my arguement would be that it was such a class defining trait though, to make your own bows and arrows for rangers, that it would be almost sacreligious to not have it. The down time that 'everyone' wants to socialize is a good time to spend working on fletching skills. I used to do that all the time with my ranger in EQ. It also gave me an opportunity to hand them out to other group members who also used them.
Plus this also provides a money sink for the economy.
It's still an unnecessary/unfair tax upon a specific class to engage in half or more of their core function/abilities.
If it went that route then every class should follow the same design with a taxing resource, however tedious and unfun to gameplay they may be. Rogues needing to craft all their potions/poisons/powders for their abilities, all melee classes needing to continually sharpen/hone their weapons, casters needing reagents for most of their spells, etc. (I would not like any of this and don't advocate it)
For immersion purpose, I prefer ranged weapons to need ammunitions. On the other side I think that very active gameplays (IE : not autoshooting every 3-7 seconds) require too much ammunition for a player to carry freely and not need something like a wagon carrying arrows for a raid night. For this purpose, and because RPG are not based around "one shotting blows", I opt for a bit of conveniency in stacking/destacking arrows.
Active useable stacks could be picked out of "stacked and tied together ammunitions" that would require less encumberance to allow a player to continuously play, even if it's far from realism, that remains a game overall.
Well, I think if making more arrows is trivial, like a Ranger can just summon them, then making you carry around basic arrows is pointless. Form over function. However, I would think that any kind of special arrows that require effort and ability and materials to make or find etc, should be limited and be carried around. Basically I think if the bow with normal arrows is going to be no different than a regular equipped weapon, than regular arrows should just auto replenish. I get the argument against it but I think it is just making stuff difficult for no reason. Now, if you won't be able to just summon them, or easy 1 click make more, and each arrow is significant in its value, then yeah, limited arrows. This obviously requires that the bow attacks probably be more powerful and special but limited, like high aggro and no melee range bow attacks etc.
But what does finite ammo add and how do you balance that both within ammo typings as well as between different classes?
If ammo is so cheap/plentiful then what is the point really, what would that really add beyond the occasional "crap, half my class is blocked out now. Out of ammo."
If there is a baseline more or less free ammo and then more exotic or expensive arrows, how do you balance that cost? If they do more damage then does the ranger suffer lower average DPS than other DPS classes unless they are using expensive ammo? Or is it the opposite where they outperform others when using them, effectively "paying to win" the DPS game.
It doesn't feel good having those special ammos when they feel too good to use: "When is the right time? What if they are wasted?" So many players in RPGs end up just hoarding them until almost forced to by raids, much like how in most MMOs use of consumables are reserved for "only" the most difficult of encounters. A constant loss aversion loop. That doesn't sound nearly as enjoyable gameplay-wise as allowing the ranger to perform those enchantments/arrow coatings or feats as just part of their class via abilities.
Iksar said:
But what does finite ammo add and how do you balance that both within ammo typings as well as between different classes?
Finite ammo is similar to finite mana. The point is to limit the ability to indefinitely do damage (which is important in enduranced based fights). Kiting will likely happen, so… allowing a class to have an indefinite supply of ammo creates a huge problem in this area of balance (ie casters have a mana pool, so are limited on how much they can do).
Iksar said:
If ammo is so cheap/plentiful then what is the point really, what would that really add beyond the occasional "crap, half my class is blocked out now. Out of ammo."
Exactly, but ½ your class has the ability to do something else, which is a benefit. The negative is that this benefit has limitations. This is the concept of a true hybrid, there is a give and take. In EQ, people claimed the hybrids were horrible, and while there were issues with some (rangers having a horrible ranged mechanic that didn’t work very well, rogues abilities being designed for content that was not working or being actively developed), most were proper in that their power was in their versatility, their utility of design. They were not the best at anything, but they had the tools of many classes. This naturally became an issue as people complained and hybrids became king as they were made to compete within range of a primary class.
Iksar said:
If there is a baseline more or less free ammo and then more exotic or expensive arrows, how do you balance that cost? If they do more damage then does the ranger suffer lower average DPS than other DPS classes unless they are using expensive ammo? Or is it the opposite where they outperform others when using them, effectively "paying to win" the DPS game.
No matter what they decide, free ammo is a mistake as it has no limitation. As for damage, I think their damage should not compete as a DPS class (I would prefer no role as DPS, but hey… we already went down that rabbit hole) or you run into problems due to their ranged/melee ability. For every benefit, there has to be a negative to balance it out.
The PTW reference doesn’t make sense to me. If a mage uses a higher DPS spell that uses more mana, are they “paying to win”? Is a warrior that uses a 2handed damage sword over a 1h with shield “paying to win” by using the other weapon?
Iksar said:
It doesn't feel good having those special ammos when they feel too good to use: "When is the right time? What if they are wasted?" So many players in RPGs end up just hoarding them until almost forced to by raids, much like how in most MMOs use of consumables are reserved for "only" the most difficult of encounters. A constant loss aversion loop. That doesn't sound nearly as enjoyable gameplay-wise as allowing the ranger to perform those enchantments/arrow coatings or feats as just part of their class via abilities.
Isn’t that the point of situational tools? Figuring out when the right time to use something is kind of the entire point of playing an cRPG. You aren’t simply running around play acting, you are simulating a role in a world with all the decisions that would come with such a role. That means, figuring out when a certain weapon, tool, etc… might be best used.
If people hoard them because they either don’t know when to use them or they have to manage their inventory as to when they use the, then maybe they should pick a class where they can simply spam an attack with a weapon and not be concerned about all that stuff?
Dumbing down the game because people think it would not be fun to have to manage play or think about playing the character is not a good development strategy in my opinion. In fact, I find the having to choose when, how, why and manage an inventory of limited ammunition to be in the exact spirit of cRPGs. That is fun, very enjoyable in my opinion.
I fully support requiring ammo and reagents. "Infinite" ammo has really only become normal in modern games where arcade style combat is used. I'd rather bow using classes become more powerful, but still require ammo, than to have unlimited ammo and have bowing be used all the time.
For people that object to having to carry arrows, I think the issue truly comes down to class design and gameplay philosophy. If VR wants to dumb down ranged combat so players can exclusively stand back and use their bow for 100% of their damage than I understand why the need for infinite ammo exist.
However, I see a bow as an accessory and a tool used for specific encounters. It should not be an exclusive weapon, but rather one used in certain situations to deal considerable damage to certain types of armored enemies. I think designing the game to take advantage of the bow in certain situations would make more meaningful combat.
I think many of us here on the forum are fans of requiring ammunition for ranged weapons.
Pros:
- It allows for additional damage types or effects based on ammunition selection
- It makes for some very interesting interaction between the crafting and adventuring spheres.
Cons:
- Inventory space is a concern for characters that use ammunition.
- Classes that use a lot of ammunition (like Ranger) may feel penalized because they "have" to have ammunition to get full use of their abilities.
- The quantity of ammunition required in game scenarios is rather large. There's a reason that EQ2 had quivers that held thousands of arrows at 200 per stack.
WWNS (What would Neph suggest):
- Ammo is a modifier, rather than a quantity. In other words, you have to buy and equip "a quiver of arrows" or "a brace of throwing knives", but there's not a limited quantity.
- Basic ammunition can be purchased from NPC vendors. Better ammunition, especially with special effects like longer range, different damage types, explosions, or etc. is crafted.
- Resource requirements to craft an ammo pack are high, on par with a finished item such as a weapon or piece of armor (because after all, they're infinite).
- Players are encouraged to seek out and use different types of ammunition in different situations.
- Rangers can get a special function which can allow them to equip up to four ammunition packs at once and switch between them in combat. Other classes only get to use whatever they have equipped at the time.
- Spell components for wizards, summoners, shamans, clerics, and druids work the same general way.
- Seeking out spell components is a part of caster gameplay, in the same way that seeking out ammunition is a part of physical dps gameplay.