C'mon CODOG... say or do something!

[binnsr]

there is a key for what you're looking for .. it's set to ` (the one on the ~ key) by default..

[MysticTheurge]

there is a key for what you're looking for .. it's set to ` (the one on the ~ key) by default..

Oh, really?

Well that explains why mine appeared to not be set (I map ` to push-to-talk).

[Cupcake]

Oh, really?

Well that explains why mine appeared to not be set (I map ` to push-to-talk).

yup that could be why.

[tihocan]

Just poking again in this thread about my pet peeve, the discrepancy between greatsword/falchion and greataxe/maul in 2H fighting:

Are you going to give specific directives to the animators so that the 5th attack animation can alleviate this issue? It sounds like it would be the ideal time to get it fixed

[maddong]

Just poking again in this thread about my pet peeve, the discrepancy between greatsword/falchion and greataxe/maul in 2H fighting:

Are you going to give specific directives to the animators so that the 5th attack animation can alleviate this issue? It sounds like it would be the ideal time to get it fixed

I think 5th attack was already coded in beta.

[GlassCannon]

Arcing shots would have to be a stance, too, and the ranger could turn the bow sideways like a real archer does to aim at precice distance measurements while calculating the tension and release direction on the bow.

As for improved precise shot: I always want to hit EVERYTHING. If I could cover the screen in shots every time I fired and hit everything in sight, I would gladly take that option for every quest.

I like rangers, and I like to use ranged combat. The problem is Ranged Combat is good DPS only for lvl 1-3. After lvl 5 it gets noticeably slower and once you hit lvl 8 you need to go strictly melee to keep up with the other classes(and heaven forbid you have a DEX/Casting build... or you won't keep up at all).

There's a thing called Real Life Physics I call into question for a moment: A person can cleave a man in two with a well placed swing. Using a Poleaxe against Fullplate you can accomplish the same thing with a high STR and a decent DEX to aim the swing(and throw your weight into the swing correctly for maximum damage). With a good bow, you can easily punch right through a person's vitals, causing an obscene level of internal damage(usually instant or near instant death), whether they are wearing 1/2" thick Steel Fullplate or not. Given those examples and various physics experiments, then balancing for a high accuracy rating and given the fact that a very dextrous person fires a bow quite easily on the run(no SoTR, and no penalty), bow fighting should deal comparable damage to melee, if not in some cases MORE than melee, unless the subject has no vitals, in which case bow fighting would be best done with specialized arrows to cause maximum damage to the target. In the case of a skeleton, a melee person would bash it into powder while the ranged person would dislocate pieces of said skeleton, crippling it on every strike. Zombies would clearly be a ranger's bane, as they have no vitals and must be decomposed in totality, resulting in the ranger aiming to 'chop limbs off' with repeated shots progressively removing portions of thighs, shoulders, and necks. If the bow is made of balsa wood and strung with hay, this cannot be the case and the ranger had best find a good melee weapon.

This is a decent Masterwork Bow:


And this is what in DDO we would call "a bow made by a primitive and uneducated race":


Remember, they have been developing magical technology for over 30,000 years. Bows are no exception.

[Kerr]

It's already been discussed and ranged combat will NEVER deal as much or more as melee damage simply for balancing purposes and to avoid high 'cheese' factor. Stop bothering the Devs for something that is never going to happen for good reasons.

[Partymaker]

IS there a way to hit a key to 'target closest opponent' or even 'target furtherest opponent' (Further would be nice, since this is Ranged and you have tanks to deal with the close stuff). I've had the "can't switch away from the bow no matter how many times I click on the 'sword-n-board NOW button' on the quickbar" issue, which is potentially deadly.

Hi Gray

Yeah, you can go in options, key mapping and change a setting to cycle through available target.

I always wanted to find a setting that would allow me to move my left hand on the keyboard as less as possible. Having a gaming mouse with 8 buttons, here are the change I made...

Jump = Switched it from the backspace button to the Mouse Wheel. I only need to click on it, so it doesn't affect my zooming options at all.

Auto run = Switched it from the keyboard to the side button of my mouse (the one supposed to be "Forward" when on the Net. Click to run, click to stop. It's so easy )

Now, I use the directionnal arrows just left of the numbers on the keyboard. So I can always let my left hand there to move quite easily and I changed two other things on the numerical pad on the right...

1 = Target next interactable object
0 = Target next ennemy target

So I can keep my right hand on the mouse and change my facing, swing, jump or run easily and I can keep my left hand on the directionnal arrows to move and only have to use one finger to reach the 0 or the 1, depending on what I'm trying to target, objects or ennemies.

The perfect setting for me at least

[Spookydodger]

Also, please draw some light to some of the positive aspects of ranged combat in the game that you _wouldn't_ want to see changed. Specific dungeon locations that you found to be really cool or fun give our level designers some feedback on situations to create that are fun for ranged combatants.

I think one of the funnest places for ranged combat in the game is in 3-barrel cove, in the Guard Duty quest. You can get up on top of the ... **** deck... and rain down missiles upon the enemy, especially as they fight your comrades.

I always thought that there should be a castle-siege mission, ala Kobold Assault and its kin mission (Gladewatch Outpost? Archer Point Defense? I get them mixed up). However, there would be walls with ramparts that could be occupied. Parts of the walls would be destructable (at least by the enemy) and the defenders could sit up on top of the walls and fight them off, trying to prevent them from destroying the walls and gain entry. Throw in a few giants that could be the heavy artillerly.

If flying creatures could actually fly, that would be a blast, too. Making fly-by attacks that needed ranged attacks in order to effectively deal with.

Imagine this as a raid... oohhhh...

Ok, so maybe I'm thinking too much of age-of-conan's siege system. But I so love this game and wish that it had all that stuff.

A note about negative aspects of ranged combat

I know that ranged combat is nearly impossible for most people to pull off effectively because it really requires so super-mario style jumping and some 3d-spatial sense. However, aside from spell-casting types and some uber-twink paladin/rogue/fighter builds, well-built rangers with decent ranged combat are among the few that can solo some quests.

These same facets can be employed in groups, but most people don't know how to use them while both
A) being effective
B) Not reducing the effectiveness of their teammates (by dragging mobs all over the place or, worse, creating new and unfortunate situations by combining the existing encounter with other encounters.

Most of the skills necessary to do this are target selection, circular manuevering, and obstacle navigation on non-linear, perpendicular-to-facing paths. If you can quickly grab the agro of a mob, kite it away from your teammates, and still keep it in the combat area to be dealt with as needed, then ranged builds can be hugely important as forms of crowd control. Nothing really stops agro-kiting except turreted ranged mobs.

This play style is necessary because of the lack of firepower compared to either casters or true-melee fighters. Couple this with vague hitting mechanics and it can be very difficult to play a ranger, leaving the ranks of impressive ranged builds to a precious few. Can it be fixed while maintaining balance and performance? Perhaps increasing base damage with a feat, or more critical enhancements will do it. Taking queues from prestige classes, too, can help. Even in PnP DND, ranged builds are not as effective as melee builds until you start adding some interesting feats and prestige abilities. That really might be the salvation of the bow user.

Oh, by the way... there really needs to be a point to using great-crossbows other than the occassional weird effect. The damage output, even with massive shots, can never be close to useful compared to even throwing lumps of coal from Festivus.

[MysticTheurge]

**** deck

Did it honestly censor that?

Who says ****. It's a kiddie word. It's not like anyone runs around going "OMG This game is the ****!" or "You guys suck, you're utter ****!"

[parvo]

If it were April fool's day, I'd have fun with all of you. The current plan is to keep monster missiles and player missiles seperate. It is fun to be able to dodge, duck, and roll out of the way of monster missiles. For now we are just changing player missiles. There is an off chance that some of the monsters might be using player missiles (which would be unfortunate and need to get fixed). Those of you playing on Risia, keep your eyes peeled and I've been searching our data tree for this kind of data to no avail so far.

I hope this puts your minds a little at ease.

Codog

I was hoping the speed of enemy missiles would match ours. It's also fun to use teamwork and a shield blocker. A lot of players don't even know that's possible...

[Boulderun]

Regarding a targetting question I saw earlier:

One trick I use for ranged targetting is to hit Select Nearest Target, then Select Previous Target (tilde then X on my keymap). This generally selects the target farthest away from you.

It makes IPS a lot more usable, but it's far from perfect. Often the farthest target will not be on the targetting line you want; sometimes you won't even know where the target is. The only way to really improve the usability is to make it work untargetted, and we know that will never happen.

[Spookydodger]

Regarding a targetting question I saw earlier:

One trick I use for ranged targetting is to hit Select Nearest Target, then Select Previous Target (tilde then X on my keymap). This generally selects the target farthest away from you.

It makes IPS a lot more usable, but it's far from perfect. Often the farthest target will not be on the targetting line you want; sometimes you won't even know where the target is. The only way to really improve the usability is to make it work untargetted, and we know that will never happen.

That's an interesting trick. Does it select things behind you, as well? The closest target usually selects that which is in your line of sight. Generally speaking I wind up hitting tab a few times to get a target further back, which can sometimes be troublesome.

I sort of wish that IPS would work in a straight line. For that matter, lightning bolt should work that way, too. As it is, the first target that lightning bolt strikes stops the bolt, when in reality it's supposed to go in a straight line unless blocked by a solid object.

Any chance that we can get these effects to work this way? It would not only make Rangers more useful (in the same way as cleave, great cleave, and glancing blow don't require targeting), and would make spells like lightning bolt at least more usable compared to other spells like fireball?

[GrayOldDruid]

there is a key for what you're looking for .. it's set to ` (the one on the ~ key) by default..

Woohoo!! I keymapped it a bit different... I use the mouse and arrow keys for movement, so having the 'next target' key on the other side of the keyboard was a bit daft.

I have the jump and 'next target' keys neatly situated around the right side shift button. Even my Sorcerer benefited from the 'next target' button. Thanks for that pointer.... okay, maybe I should have read the manual or looked at key mapping a bit closer, but.... my bad... %)

This actually helped a great deal with my damage. Went to Sorrowdusk and had no problem dropping the inhabitants with three to four shots (think the fourth shot zoomed past their fading corpse, actually) - and all landed before they got to me. Think I dropped a few with one or two shots. Soloing would have been bad, since there were more than one and now the AI will pull the nearby monsters with the one that got hit - which is logical, nobody, even a monster is going to stand by while his buddy bleeds and runs into battle alone. But even when in full combat with everyone whacking away, the 'next target' button was great, selecting the target and letting all those 40+6+5+4 red numbers pop through. (arrow crit, str,pure good and sneak attack - I think)

[Mad_Bombardier]

Did it honestly censor that?

Who says ****. It's a kiddie word. It's not like anyone runs around going "OMG This game is the ****!" or "You guys suck, you're utter ****!"

/giggles But, you can still say, "poo." /giggles again.

[Codog]

Ranged combat issues.

1. "Dungeon scripting". The great thing I was looking forward to in DDO was the fact mobs will (aka should have) been spawned such that I could shoot them from a distance and kill them as they attempt to reach me. Guess what... that doesn't happen. Half of the time they spawn in right next to you. So what is the point of having range?

2. "Game limitation." Again the great thing I was looking forward to in DDO was the fact that I could shoot spawned mobs from a distance. Well, proof of concept died. Go out in Gianthold for a prime example of this. Walk around, see that huge tent there in the distance? If you get a bit closer suddenly you'll have a giant running right at you that you never saw before. How the heck can you not see the giant standing right IN FRONT of the tent, BLOCKING the tent from sight? Again, this is a game engine issue that I find COMPLETELY annoying.

3. "Camera in foliage." I really really wish anything between the camera and your character was transparent. I mean seriously, why am I getting blinded by a leaf that isn't anywhere near my character's field of vision?

4. "Rage lasts for minutes many shot lasts for 20 seconds." Rage has a cool down of 1 minute and can be dismissed. Manyshot has a cooldown of 2 minutes. Emm... yeah, this is balanced. Right. Assuming a CON modifier of +10, rage lasts 13 rounds in PnP (or 78 seconds.) Why the huge fear of many shot lasting longer?

5. "You CAN'T swap weapons when shooting." Esp. prevalent with a bow (probably crossbows as well) As soon as any mob gets in your face it takes 6 seconds to change weapons. 6 seconds of you standing there going "Please kill me. I won't hurt you." I do not spam my shot, and I wait for the animation to be completed before shooting again. Once I see a mob running towards me I stop shooting my bow. It takes 3 seconds to actually swap out a weapon. If you have ANY shot in your cue at all, it will take SIX seconds. By this point that is 2 - 3 free attacks on you. I have shot mobs that were right in front of me, then hit my button to change to sword/board 5 times, each with half second delays for each change weapon request. Then I hit my attack button. End result, weapon NEVER changes, and I shoot my bow. This is complete and UTTER.... well, you get the point I'm certain.

6. "I'm not a twitch player and the targeting is messed up." We can no longer target mobs that we can not see. Given how the game is currently acting I was annoyed with this change. Now I can't even target mobs that I can see. I have to freaking mouse click on them to target them even though I see them clear as day. This makes me lose 6-8 seconds because I play via keyboard, not Twitchy Fingers McShooty. Those 6-8 seconds easily means my death at times.

7. "Then and now." Supposedly back in beta, the rate of fire was much higher to the point everyone was shooting stuff dead before it got to them. When you have an entire party geared for shooting, that will happen. Also back then all you had was freaking WATERWORKS. That was IT!!! Kobolds do not last, plain and simple. What do we have now? How many MORE dungeons have been added? Why are you stuck on the same mentality to calm things down at the lvl 1-3 which becomes "ranged combat doesn't do much at all" at levels 5+. You have penalized players such to where to have much fun with any ranged build you must have uber weapons and a tricked out build.

8. "There is no attack progression." Every single shot is at the LOWEST possible chance to hit. WHY??? What is the brilliant idea in that? Does shooting things suddenly mean they have a lower AC? No it does not. Shooting things mean they have two chances (normally) to avoid being hit. A) Server must say target is in path of the arrow. B) We must roll to hit them. We've all see just how well pathing has been working now for such a long time. (and thank you for putting in fixes, we really do appreciate it.) But the second part... as melee's stand still they get higher attack bonuses as a GIMIC to get them to stand still. What does ranged combat get? NOTHING. Ranged combat has the worst chances to hit and the worst attack rate. Why bother continuing on something that is ALWAYS penalized?

9. "Ammunition space" If you follow a melees, they typically will have a weapon for each and every enemy. (aka the greater banes). Well, so will a lot of ranged people. Melee's get one spot in their bag per weapon. Ranged get one spot in their bag per weapon IN ADDITION TO however many stacks of ammunition they desire/require to finish a quest. In other words, melee people get more bag space than ranged people. This additional loss of space also translates to additional weight to be carried. (No, I have no issues with weight gain from arrow. Just pointing out another difference between melee and ranged.)

10. "A high base attack character still shoots slower than most all mobs." By this I mean not a pure rogue or cleric speced for shooting, but say the ranger class. A high level ranger shooting its bow will still shoot slower than low level mobs in swipped signet. Do you have any idea at all how discouraging and dishearting this is?


Ranged Combat joys

1. "improved precise shot" Long hallways. All of those beautiful numbers that flash up on the screen when mobs are just so nicely lined up.

2. "Wide open area with targets." The times that I can just pick and choose my targets that I want to die. Not the spawns right on top of me. The way things should be.

3. "The ability to kill something at is it coming to get me." Sadly, they normally aren't alone. (yeah, I have to deal.)

4. "The ability to shoot into combat with friendlies and never hurting them." yeah, I know it was part of the decision for non griefing, but thank you! I always hated making that roll in table top.

5. "slayer arrows" man.. I wish we could get a hold of more of these. I mean I understand the need for limitation, but still.. with the large number of mobs we have it would be nice.

6. There is no compensation for wind, traps that are physical, or explosions. Meaning we can shoot through the stuff and not worry.

7. We have infinite shooting distance.

8. I never have to worry about my string breaking on my bows, nor do I have to worry about the weather ruining my strings.


Ranged desires.

1. "They can stun, so why can't we?" Make Stunning Blow or the sap wacking feat work with ranged combat. Enemy NPC archers can do this, I want to do this as well.

2. Make Improved Precise Shot a stance. This will give ranged people more tactical options. There are times we don't want to hit everything in sight and just the one. Madstone with saving the Seerer from the giant skeletal arcane being one such place. I would think our characters would be smart and talented enough to not shoot someone they don't want to. Players like options, yes we do.

3. Allow us to make trip attempt with ranged as well. This may require a feat or so, but man.. that would be great and give us more options for tactical play.

4. Auto arching. NPCs auto arch to shoot over obstacles, yet all we have is straight line. I miss ye old scorched earth (if you remember that game) of being able to arch shots. Sure we'd loose some infinite shooting distance when we target, but I can deal with that.



I will be trying out my 5th and final ranged build with the hopes mod 6 will restore some hope, if it doesn't... I give up. I am not a twitch player, I target. I have some very nice gear and everything. I gave up on a lot of ranged stuff when Mod 3 hit because it broke so much of ranged based attacks. I'm praying things get fixed.

+500 XP

Great post! I can assure you and some of your other friends here that the game systems design lead has read your posts. We had some great conversation about ranged combat based on some of these ideas and comments. We really appreciate your feedback.

This is a great example of what we were looking for.

Best wishes,

Codog

[Spectralist]

2. "Game limitation." Again the great thing I was looking forward to in DDO was the fact that I could shoot spawned mobs from a distance. Well, proof of concept died. Go out in Gianthold for a prime example of this. Walk around, see that huge tent there in the distance? If you get a bit closer suddenly you'll have a giant running right at you that you never saw before. How the heck can you not see the giant standing right IN FRONT of the tent, BLOCKING the tent from sight? Again, this is a game engine issue that I find COMPLETELY annoying.

Generally this isn't the enemy spawning next to you, it's just that the max view distance for mobs is ridiculously short. You can often hit them from much further away if you manually aim at where you know them to be even though you cant see them. Not that that isn't rather asinine anyway, but all we need for that is an increased maximum viewing distance.

[Codog]

The only way to really improve the usability is to make it work untargetted, and we know that will never happen.

We know that for sure? Really?

[MysticTheurge]

We know that for sure? Really?

Codog ftw!

[QuantumFX]

Codog: Is there any chance at making Improved Precise Shot toggleable? Being able to shoot through multiple attackers is nice but there's sometimes when you only want to hit what you have targetted in the focus orb. Also, is there any chance to have a melee version of Precise shot? I was thinking you could make the Combat Reflexes feat do this since AoO's arent in DDO.