Let's not repeat the BG Bow Follies

[PsychoBlonde]

One thing I'd like to see in this game is the ability to have both ranged and melee attacks on any character class. But let's not have the situation from Baldur's Gate where using a bow meant:

 

Faster attacks

Doing more damage (and possibly hitting more often as well)

Taking less damage

The ability to concentrate damage on the Really Dangerous Dude you wanted to go down PRONTO

Kiting around melee mobs with stupid gobs of health that did stupid gobs of damage until they keeled over from sheer exhaustion

Maybe even cheesing out aggro distance

 

Compared to pretty much every other weapon type in Baldur's Gate, the bow was HUGELY superior in EVERY respect, until quite late in the game when you started getting items to let your melee fighters a.) not take so much freakin damage and b.) make like 500000 attacks a minute and c.) actually close with the monsters in a reasonable period of time. (Not to mention the casters with Protection From Normal Missiles.) Also, groups of mobs with bows (bandits) would DESTROY your party all out of proportion of how physically tough they were.

 

Please, let's not have this again. Let's have melee characters that can close reasonably well, do good damage, have decent defenses, and actually TAKE SOME HITS. I'm all for bows. Just not as the be-all, end-all of combat up until level 7.

[Monte Carlo]

Hmmm. A bit of a self-licking lollipop, this point. Bows were properly nerfed in BG2. And Obz are balance-obsessed. Can't see it being a problem.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I can't imagine Obsidian would reproduce that specific aspect of BG.

 

That said, I really liked BG's bows, but then I don't consider a combat encounter successfully overcome unless no one in my party took damage.

[IEfan]

IDK dude. You were better of putting all on ranged weapons since shooting concentrated fire with them was like, well a machine gun in BG2. The tactics OP described above were really daily. There were no bad sactions from dropping shields so you could just quickly go to inventory on at least one hero, put shield or second weapon back on and attack the enemy - thus enemy concentrated on Tank (that is, if he was still alive after approaching the party) and everybody else just kept shooting until he was dead. You could abuse stuff like this since the scripting/pathfinding/enemies were slow and simple too (though realistically speaking, the enemy's action is logical - somebody is approachign with a melee weapon.) Alternatively, the guy enemy attacks just runs back and forth until the enemy is dead from missile fire.

 

Same problems with IWD series as well. And by switching, I mean that you could just pick FROM inventory and put weapons back and forth during battle without much loses in time, you just had to be quick. There are no penalties for this switching ofc, unlike for armor which can't be put off or on during battles anymore.

Edited September 18, 2012 by IEfan

[PsychoBlonde]

Hmmm. A bit of a self-licking lollipop, this point. Bows were properly nerfed in BG2. And Obz are balance-obsessed. Can't see it being a problem.

 

Bows were "nerfed" in BG2 (and BG lategame, actually) because of the prevalence of casters who could make themselves flat-out immune AND the increasing power of other methods, not because the bows themselves were functionally balanced with other methods. They were still pretty durn powerful in most situations.

[Crosmando]

Yeah I loved putting all my points into dexterity and getting a good bow, at first it's hard but later it's like hunting bunnies with a bazooka, the AI didn't help much either

[Shadenuat]

Let's instead repeat the BG idea of that, if you miss ranged weapons in several encounters, you're dead meat, because life is tough, screw you.

And to make things fair, give melee and ranged weapons equal amount of love by creating meaningful encounters for them.

[PsychoBlonde]

And to make things fair, give melee and ranged weapons equal amount of love by creating meaningful encounters for them.

 

I would indeed prefer for the game to encourage you to switch between ranged and close tactics. And a variety of other tactics as well.

[Kilroy_Was_Here]

Since we now know that firearms of some kind will be included, what will the differences be between them and the standard bow/crossbow?