The imbalance of ranged weapons in infinity engine games

[forgottenlor]

I hope this game will be able to avoid one of the imbalances of the infinity engine games that derived from Dungeons and Dragons. I'd forgotten it to be honest till I recently replayed both Icewind Dale (I) and Throne of Bhaal. Ranged weapons, and especially bows are grossly overpowered at low levels in these games and equally grossly underpowered at high levels. In Throne of Bhaal I almost never bothered to fire a bow except to pull an enemy out of cover or to soften up a monster I had kited. Either way I didn't really use it as intended. At the start of Icewind dale, concentrating fire on a monster with ranged weapons=instant kill. Likewise monsters with bows are extremely dangerous opponents for low level characters, and relatively weak opponents later on. I think the mechanic is all wrong.  Case in point: a first level character fires two arrows in a round at a monster. At Level 7-8 the same character can maybe fire 3 times. A first level mage has one magic missle, at level 9 he has five. I point this out because I think magic missles scale well with the monster toughness in levles 1-10, while arrows clearly do not.

 

There are two obvious solutions. The first is to scale the bow's damage potential in the hands of a competant wielder better, the other is to scale monsters and characters more like Fallout, so that they are not so fragile to begin with and not 10X as powerful later on.

 

 

[rjshae]

A big part of that problem was a flaw in the AD&D rules. That was fixed in version 3 of D&D.

 

A first level mage has one magic missle, at level 9 he has five.

 

Magic missile spells never miss. I'll take one magic missile that never misses over two arrows that may or may not hit anyday.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Not a problem in Pathfinder or 3e. In those systems, ranged weapons deal less damage than other 2handed weapons, but can be used froma distance to make up for that shortcoming. I have little dount that PE will have viable ranged combat.

[jamoecw]

read some history of a time when slings, bows and crossbows were regularly used as a primary weapon for militaries and you'll find that not all ranged weapons are accurately portrayed in DnD of any edition.  now throw in the early DnD power curve, where 1st level characters sometimes weren't given a name as they might not survive the first encounter, and 5th level characters could take on whole dungeons solo.  then boost the power of low level characters so they don't die quite so easy, and nerf high level characters so combat isn't such a cake walk, and you should start to find the issue with 2nd edition ADnD in a computerized combat heavy environment.

 

DnD has expanded its options up until 4th edition, 3rd edition started to get refined via pathfinder.  options are much harder to do in a computer environment, and thus while DnD has been getting refined it has been moving towards being clever to gain an advantage over good dice rolls.  learning from DnD is great, even using DnD terms to describe the game is great, but using it for a cRPG leads to balance issues.  as P:E isn't DnD we don't know if it will have balance issues like the other IE games that were built on DnD rule sets.

 

of course they could have altered the number of opponents you faced, so if you faced 15 mice or something that were balanced for CR1 then you would do most of your fighting in melee, as you wouldn't be able to kill them all before they got to you, at which point the drawbacks of bows would play out.

[Kjaamor]

Agreed, but can't believe that you mentioned IWD and ToB above the first BG. In that (vanilla, non-tutu), level one archers are far, FAR better than level 5 swordsmen.

 

BG1 with a group containing five dedicated bow users (with crushing+slashing melee options) = a breeze.

[Walsingham]

I'm not sure what your point is. I don't have any problem with finding something useful at low levels, and less useful at high levels.

 

It's not as if it's illogical, even. Bows store energy to a fixed value that is then released to do damage. Ditto crossbows. Assuming your character can exert more force than the available materials can store - which makes sense given they can punch dragons to death - then the bow is going to seem correspondingly weaker.

[Jarmo]

I would like to see bow effectiveness increase with levels, going from something like 20lb draw shortbows or self bows to 200 lb draw longbows or composites. 10x power difference from the weakest to heaviest. The heaviest requiring strength and spending talents on, probably made of super-expensive or magical materials. Also a significant increase in firing speed.

 

Overall, in comparison to 2-handed melee weapon, I'd like to see archer make maintain a balance of doing... maybe half as much damage in a given time, throughout the game. The lesser damage offset by not having to spend time running about .

 

And no 1 character doing any DA stunts like fire a volley of 20 arrows or anything stupid like that.

[mstark]

Reminds me of my recently started replay of BG2. My main character is an Archer (never played anything that used a bow/xbow before) and I dropped full proficiency into longbows. I'm running around critical-/one-hitting near enough everything. I'm not even particularly min/maxed, aside from the weapon proficiency and decent dex.

 

Fun times.

 

In Project Eternity I'm assuming we'll start at level 1, instead of 7/8, so maybe we won't be given the same chance to min/max proficiencies at character creation.

Edited August 28, 2013 by mstark

[Kjaamor]

I'm not sure what your point is. I don't have any problem with finding something useful at low levels, and less useful at high levels.

 

It's not as if it's illogical, even. Bows store energy to a fixed value that is then released to do damage. Ditto crossbows. Assuming your character can exert more force than the available materials can store - which makes sense given they can punch dragons to death - then the bow is going to seem correspondingly weaker.

 

Well aside from anything else, it does prevent having to reload every time anyone other than your tank accidentally reveals a bunch of mobs with bows.

 

While I don't disagree with certain things being more useful at certain levels than others, the fact remains that in BGI the bows were absurdly overpowered to the point where the game was unbalanced. This is noticeable if you roll an archer. If you use a party of them, it's hilarious.

 

I would be astonished, mind, if bows were similarly overpowered in P:E.

[TrashMan]

I want to see redicolous power curves done away with, then there will be no problems balancing low and high levels.

 

Also, with shields properly blocking bows, and bows not being super-accurate, you can avoid it becomeing over-powered.

Edited August 28, 2013 by TrashMan

[Gfted1]

I want to be able to one shot the BBEG at the bottom of the Endless Paths with an arrow to the eye.

[Jarmo]

Reminds me of one of my most fun experiences in either Oblivion or Skyrim.

Was hunting this boss vampire in a cave system.

 

One hit sneak attack into the back of the skull with a magic arrow fired from a fine bow!

No chance to blah blah blah plot exposition cutscene and then megabuff and fight.

Just lying there face in the mud, never saw me coming.

 

Good times. One of the most satisfying boss fights I've ever had.

[1varangian]

Implementing line of sight properly would help the ranged overpoweredness a lot. You could keep the fragile mage types safe. Move behind a tree. Stay behind the companion with a large shield. Also enemy spellcasters could avoid line of sight of PC archers with the proper AI.

 

Line of sight in general would be a good tactical consideration for spells as well as ranged combat. Terrain should matter in tactics a lot. Not to mention you could have fun spells like a force shield that would give full cover against archers in a 90 degree angle.

Edited August 28, 2013 by 1varangian

[forgottenlor]

I'm not sure what your point is. I don't have any problem with finding something useful at low levels, and less useful at high levels.

 

It's not as if it's illogical, even. Bows store energy to a fixed value that is then released to do damage. Ditto crossbows. Assuming your character can exert more force than the available materials can store - which makes sense given they can punch dragons to death - then the bow is going to seem correspondingly weaker.

Well, its not a problem if you know going into it that a character focusing on bows is going to kick ass at level 1 and be utter pathetic at level 18. It just eliminates some character concepts and that's not good.

 

Agreed, but can't believe that you mentioned IWD and ToB above the first BG. In that (vanilla, non-tutu), level one archers are far, FAR better than level 5 swordsmen.

 

BG1 with a group containing five dedicated bow users (with crushing+slashing melee options) = a breeze.

 

 

 

I didn't mention it because I actually haven't played through it recently. I played through it three times, once after it came out, once when Tales of the Sword Coast came out, and again maybe six years ago.

[forgottenlor]

Not a problem in Pathfinder or 3e. In those systems, ranged weapons deal less damage than other 2handed weapons, but can be used froma distance to make up for that shortcoming. I have little dount that PE will have viable ranged combat.

Its not as big a problem in Pathfinder or 3.5 because of the number of shooting feats. However ranged weapons still seem more powerful in those games because you can one shot kill monsters on low levels, providing everyone has a ranged weapon. Also a low levle character can be killed quickly by multiple monster archers. This becomes much less possible for parties at higher levels unless everyone is investing in archery feats.

[crackwise]

I think to balance things and also make ranged attacks more realistic, there should be a penalty incurred to the ranged attacker, proportionate to the movement speed of the target (if it has moved while archer has taken aim). This makes sense, since in reality shooting moving targets are harder.

 

Perhaps a good player tactic to overcome this could be to lock the enemy in one position at a specific orientation (e.g. by spells or attacking from a specific direction with melee)  leaving their flanks without the shields open to bombarding them with arrows.

 

Another thing to consider is the size of the target. It should not be the same difficulty to shoot a fast moving little rat (like those in PS Torment : P ) and some slow moving ogre.

 

 

Additional note:   Just remembered that Jagged Alliance 2 actually imposes such a penalty to the shooter if the target has moved.  So I think it can be possible to implement such a thing.

Edited August 28, 2013 by crackwise

[Lephys]

And no 1 character doing any DA stunts like fire a volley of 20 arrows or anything stupid like that.

What if it's really just 1 actual arrow, and the other 19 are soul-powered ethereal clone arrows? 8D

 

For reallies, though... what if the combat mechanics support things such as shield-disarms (breaking the opponent's shield arm and/or the straps/rigging by which the shield is held?), or possibly even (though more iffy) armor, ehh... disablement? What I mean is, you actually smash some big orc's torso so as to cause his breastplate to come partially detached.

 

Basically (you people probably have better ideas and examples than I to handle the details), things that would enable/increase ranged weapons' effectiveness. Like Trashman said, a shield's gonna stop a lot of arrows, as opposed to lessening their damage or something. So, shield up, bow ineffective. Shield down, though, and bow is now quite effective (or much more so than it previously was).

 

Like I said, partially dis-armoring people is a bit iffy of an idea. But, I figure that kind of stuff had to happen in war/battle, right? Even without armor "durability," you've still got "Oh no, my pauldron's come off" and such. Granted, you're probably pretty wounded from that blow. But... *shrug*. Like I said... iffy. I was just thinking that, mechanically, you're opening up larger holes in armor, thereby allowing professional bow-aimers a greater chance to hit flesh and not armor.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Lephys

[TrashMan]

Well, its not a problem if you know going into it that a character focusing on bows is going to kick ass at level 1 and be utter pathetic at level 18. It just eliminates some character concepts and that's not good.

 

 

I don't consider criplingly over-specalized characters a good concept to begin with.

 

If you dumped everything into archery and have nothing else, then a guy in full plate with a tower shield should wipe the floor with you. Unless you got something up your sleeve.

 

Like a tanglefoot bag - trap him, get behind him and shoot him in the back.

 

Characters that focuse on one weapon to the exclusion of everything else are something that should occasionaly bite a player in the ass.

[Osvir]

Some wishes of what I'd like to see ranged weaponry do (Long-range weaponry):

- 1. Friendly Fire (On Harder Difficulties) & Misfire
As noted ^only on harder difficulties but I want to take Spell's into consideration here. 5 Magic Missiles gets fired off, who is to say that one or two aren't misfired at an ally close to the target or backfires back to the Wizard? As for Friendly Fire, also on harder difficulties, but then positioning becomes way more important and clutch moments where your Archer just narrowly fires between two of your "tanks" and hits the target just when you need it becomes more frequent and possible.

- 2. Environmental Penalty
Is it raining? Snowing? A big forest? An overly humid swamp? What can affect the efficiency of the Archer's mind and eyes? A close-ranged warrior can swing his sword around and clash in close quarters even though they might get slightly "worn down", but an archer and/or long-ranged fighter should get more penalized. Basically, anything that affects a close-ranged quarters (in combat) for anything that has anything to do with Sight/Reaction/Weight etc. etc. should double for Archers/Bow-users (Concept: Blindness makes your Fighters see worse = Blindness makes Archers/Bow-users see x2 worse than Fighters). A simple trigger/script such as "Is the Unit holding a Bow? If yes, x2 Sword sight penalty" should suffice (but with prettier words and less concept-like ofc).

- 3. Aimed Shots/GUI Shots
The Player could get some sort of GUI for the Archer, get a popular "Throw grenade" (seen in many FPS games but also some in League of Legends) transparent blue line from the Archer to the enemy and be able to manipulate it somewhat and the Archer will always fire with that angle in mind. Making the angle go over your allies so that 1. (Friendly Fire) does not occur could penalize the attack speed, whilst having a straight line could fire arrows faster but at the risk of damaging your allies (Friendly Fire). 

- 4. Archer Stance/"No Auto-Aim"/Turn Animation
Can't shoot and walk at the same time e.g:

1. Move/Position your unit
2. Short down-time
3. Shoot
4. Short down-time
5. Shoot
6. Now, I want to move the unit so I click somewhere and [short down-time] occurs.
7. Unit moves.
8. Short down-time.
9. Shoot.

etc. etc.

In BG and IWD we have an "auto-aim" animation. Even if I have my back towards the opponent, the unit/character instantly turns around and shoots an arrow. The title of this section was partially "Turn Animation". Have the unit turn towards the target before shooting instead of doing some sort of Legolas "hax" turn and shoot instantly, though that could be something that scales with Leveling up of course (a.k.a. "Turn faster" or "Shoot faster after turning").

[forgottenlor]

 

Well, its not a problem if you know going into it that a character focusing on bows is going to kick ass at level 1 and be utter pathetic at level 18. It just eliminates some character concepts and that's not good.

 

 

I don't consider criplingly over-specalized characters a good concept to begin with.

 

If you dumped everything into archery and have nothing else, then a guy in full plate with a tower shield should wipe the floor with you. Unless you got something up your sleeve.

 

Like a tanglefoot bag - trap him, get behind him and shoot him in the back.

 

Characters that focuse on one weapon to the exclusion of everything else are something that should occasionaly bite a player in the ass.

 

Well perhaps you are correct, but that's the way it worked with melee weapons in IE games. You normally were much more effective in melee if you have 5 dots in one melee weapon, rather than being proficient (one dot) in 5 different weapons. This is also consistant with most party oriented roleplaying games I have played. Especially with a 6 member party you can normally cover a good number of available weapons. Most party based games force a character to specialize in one or two combat stlyes to be effective. Of course most single player RPGS work differently, and there your one character can do everything.

[Kjaamor]

Call me simple, but I've always felt that in High Fantasy RPGs, the obvious solution is to just to make bows less accurate than melee weapons - especially if getting hit interrupts actions/spells.

[Failion]

The best way to implement ranged weapons and make them relevant is make a character that chooses to some specialization in them be useful throughout the entire game. Able to make a crossbow shot that briefly stuns a enemy or bow shot that lowers their movement speed. More tactical uses use then what they had infinity engine dnd games.

[Lephys]

I also like the whole "your attack chance is going to start sucking really badly if you're trying to fire arrows at a target 5-10 feet away, especially if he's engaging you" idea. Which, of course, kinda ties into the whole "this melee combatant is going to rip you a new one" notion.

 

I do think there's a bit more leeway in a game (with tactical combat to boot) for allowing ranged-weapon focus to be a bit more prevalent than in reality, but I think it should still rely on the ability to at least keep SOME distance from the foe. If someone charges your archer, and he can't kill them before they reach him, then he's either going to need to slow their approach, and/or disable them and gain more distance, or just play run away until someone else can engage them or otherwise stop them from nullifying the whole "ranged" aspect of his weaponry. And, there's always the OPTION of simply pulling out a melee weapon.

 

Now, how you do that, out of all those options, is up to you. Maybe you build an archer-character who NEVER switches weapons, and you give him as many kicks/disarms/melee attacks as possible, and you just have him specialize in trying to disarm/temporarily-disable the opponent who tries to engage him at melee range, then he runs away a bit and resumes his arrow barrage. Or maybe you simply keep him out of melee range of everyone at the cost of his lack of contribution to your team's offense, until he can get clear shots away from danger, again. Maybe he's SO useful when he CAN stand still and target people with his bow that it makes up for the time you have to spend keeping him away from danger?

 

I think those are sound choices. But, I really don't want the game to just say "Well, it literally makes no difference that someone's shield-bashing you in the face and chopping into your arm, and cutting your bowstring, because you can just stand there and continue 'ranged' attacking them at point-blank range, with naught but a lesser defensive capability than a melee-capable character."

 

And, you know... a party of only ranged combatants (who never even so much as draw a melee weapon for a few seconds) should be QUITE difficult to pull off (if not just-plain infeasible). It's really hard to accurately peg that without knowing the specifics of how class abilities and soul powers are going to factor into the mix there. But, the more adamant you are about using only ranged attacks with more and more characters, the more you should have to deal with the problems of melee engagement.

[TrashMan]

 

 

I don't consider criplingly over-specalized characters a good concept to begin with.

 

If you dumped everything into archery and have nothing else, then a guy in full plate with a tower shield should wipe the floor with you. Unless you got something up your sleeve.

 

Like a tanglefoot bag - trap him, get behind him and shoot him in the back.

 

Characters that focuse on one weapon to the exclusion of everything else are something that should occasionaly bite a player in the ass.

 

Well perhaps you are correct, but that's the way it worked with melee weapons in IE games. You normally were much more effective in melee if you have 5 dots in one melee weapon, rather than being proficient (one dot) in 5 different weapons. This is also consistant with most party oriented roleplaying games I have played. Especially with a 6 member party you can normally cover a good number of available weapons. Most party based games force a character to specialize in one or two combat stlyes to be effective. Of course most single player RPGS work differently, and there your one character can do everything.

 

 

Well, IE games weren't perfect.

 

A fighter did start with being proficient in most weapons, that's why when his chosen weapon proved uneffective (like when attacking a enemy that's highly resistant to a specific damage type), he had a fallback - he could swith to a different weapon and still be effective.

 

Archer were usually built to use only arrows AND NOTHING ELSE. No fallback. No diversity.

 

Specialization is good, over-specialization isn't.

 

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

On a NWN Persistent World I played on, the creator felt bows were disproportionately powerful in the hardcore rules, low-level environment that the server hosted. Instead of tampering with ranged weapons, he controlled ammunition. Quivers were limited to 20 arrows a stack to simulate real world volumes. Arrows were also given a bit of extra weight to simulate the cumbersome nature of having many arrows slung around the shoulder. Their prices at vendors were also increased slightly. Arrows and bolts now had an expense that was reasonable, but still felt.

 

To offset these changes, he used a mod that allowed recovery of arrows from fallen foes. Missed arrows were not recoverable. Arrows which struck an opponent at a 15% chance to become lodged or broken. Otherwise, all arrows which struck were recoverable from the corpse. This system worked extremely well. It created realistic and tangible hinderences to bow usage that kept their relative power level maintained, while supporting the gritty character of the server.