Ammunition

[600lbpanther]

So, really, what it comes down to there is, what's more important: Having bows be just as feasible a main/focus weapon as any other in the list, or simulating bows and ammo down to a T?

 

I am not quite sure that simulating bows and ammo down to a T was the original intent of the author.  However, maybe I am the one misunderstanding the original intent of the author so this next sentence isn't meant in a hostile way but, rather, an observation (which could be fundamentally flawed).

 

The way I read the quoted sentence strikes me as a Straw Man argument (i.e. the misrepresentation of the author's position and subsequent invalidation due to how ridiculous it seems).

 

Like most of the topics on here there seems to be multiple, viable solutions based on the playstyle of that player.

Personally, I like a nice balance between 100% management and 0% management:

 

Like:

• Rare arrows being limited and having to be managed.
• Normal / Non-Rare Magic Arrows coming in batches of 50.
• Being able to carry multiple batches of arrows.
• Special quivers with stats but not useable with rare arrows.

Don't Like:

• Recovering arrows because it seems like work.
• Quivers that never run out of arrows.
• Normal / Non-Rare Magic Arrows that come in batches less than 50.
• Being unable to carry multiple batches of arrows.

 

In Summary:  It would be nice to have options in controlling the level of investment players have in regards to arrow management.  "Recovery of Arrows" or "Unlimited / Limited Arrow Quiver" options would seem to be a good start in helping to bring together a solution that affords people of varying playstyles the options they desire.

Edited March 13, 2014 by 600lbpanther

[Suburban-Fox]

Don't mind the IE method of abstracting it into carrying lots of quivers full and swapping them out. RPGs abstract a lot of things - normally you wouldn't keep all of your possessions on you 100% of the time (a heavy backpack containing that magic harness you just picked up is going to weigh you down horrible in a fight!), so we kind of assume things like: you drop your pack when entering a battle, you keep stuff you're not immediately using in a wagon, etc, so it's not inconceivable to have a few hundred arrows stashed in various archery baskets amongst your possessions, and when you run out you simply grab a dozen more and put them into your quiver.

 

However, few archers shoot all of their arrows and then forget about them and just go and buy more. Arrows cost money, doncha know!! :D  (I personally hate it when I lose an arrow, and will spend hours searching for it until I find it!!) So at the very least, it'd be nice to be able to get some back from dead monsters. Maybe the game could remember how many you shot AT the target, destroy a random number (assuming they got lost or were destroyed in the fight) and let you recover the rest from the corpse, assuming those are the ones you reasonably managed to recover. I think that would be a fairly elegant, suitably abstract and not too cumbersome way to allow archers to recover their arrows. Of course, magic arrows would either be destroyed or turn into normal arrows.

 

As for different types of arrows...in Baldur's Gate, you could equip three different types, and switch between them. Maybe a similar mechanic could be used here.

 

Oh, and I have one final request regarding archery in general: if possible, please at least give us the option to have arrow quivers (assuming they are going to appear on our avatars) on the right hip, not just on the back. Pulling arrows from over the shoulder is slow and uncomfortable, and looks silly, IMO. I realise others may disagree and want the Legolas style animation. Maybe it can be over the shoulder for elves, but on the right hip for humans, or sth.

[Lephys]

I am not quite sure that simulating bows and ammo down to a T was the original intent of the author.  However, maybe I am the one misunderstanding the original intent of the author so this next sentence isn't meant in a hostile way but, rather, an observation (which could be fundamentally flawed).

 

The way I read the quoted sentence strikes me as a Straw Man argument (i.e. the misrepresentation of the author's position and subsequent invalidation due to how ridiculous it seems).

I fear you've misunderstood me. I had no intention of my post (bits of which you quoted and are addressing now) being a direct response to the OP. I was merely trying to address all that's been brought up thus far in regard to the handling of potent/special ammo.

 

Simulating ammo to a T is clearly one of the extremes. The ceiling, if you will. It was merely for reference in observation of what gets affected when you stray nearer or farther from it.

 

That being said, I'm pretty much on board with the rest of your post.

[Jarrakul]

I like the OP's ideas, because I think they strike a good balance between limiting the use of powerful arrows and allowing players to actually use their good arrows. My one concern is with the arrow retrieval thing. I love it thematically, but in practice I'd be happier if they just automatically came back at the end of the encounter. To me, retrieving arrows is kind of like going to the bathroom. I'm happier just assuming my character does it and getting on with the fun parts of the game.

 

I also like having infinite normal arrows, for much the same reason. I can assume my archer stocks up occasionally, so having to do it myself is just kind of a pain.

 

And for funsies, in support of arrow retrieval in general, I give you a quote that I hope all of you will recognize, which I feel explains why arrow retrieval is thematically awesome.

"'Arrow!' said the bowman. 'Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!'"

[forgottenlor]

My favourite solution from a gameplay solution (though not a logical one) is from a game I just started a few weeks ago, the roguelike Tales of the Maj'eyal. Basically you have a quiver. A quiver has 5-12 arrows (or bolts or whatnot) and you can fire all those off, but afterword you need to take one action to fill your quiver with one arrow. So if the quiver has 12 arrows you can fully reload it using 12 rounds. Archers (or those specializing with ranged attacks) can reload the quiver quicker.  Both the quiver and bow can be enchanted. This of course means there are no super powered one shot arrows, but I find the system enjoyable.

[khalil]

Here's my opinion.

Low level + nothing arrows might as well be free or unlimited or whatever. From a realism perspective, they're sticks with bits of dead bird glued on, not that hard to get. From a balance perspective, making the base arrows actual items just means that archers have to carry a backpack full of arrows and the player has to go play inventory roulette every time he wants his archer to pick up something.

While making special save or die arrows limited use is understandable, there's no fundamental difference between infinite mundane arrows and limited mundane arrows other than the second one results in a large amount of inventory clutter.

It's the same thing with durability. If maces have a chance to break in the middle of combat, it does not result in interesting and tense moments. It results in the party fighter having a backpack full of spare maces.

tl;dr

If an item is cheap enough that the only thing limiting how many the player can have is how many inventory slots the interface has, just give him an infinite amount. It's the same thing, but with less time wasted on trying to get one of your 50 potions of minor healing from the party fighter to the party mage.

[zain3000]

My favourite solution from a gameplay solution (though not a logical one) is from a game I just started a few weeks ago, the roguelike Tales of the Maj'eyal. Basically you have a quiver. A quiver has 5-12 arrows (or bolts or whatnot) and you can fire all those off, but afterword you need to take one action to fill your quiver with one arrow. So if the quiver has 12 arrows you can fully reload it using 12 rounds. Archers (or those specializing with ranged attacks) can reload the quiver quicker.  Both the quiver and bow can be enchanted. This of course means there are no super powered one shot arrows, but I find the system enjoyable.

 

This system would work quite well in a turn-based game, but seeing as how PoE is RTwP the system might not be as applicable.

 

Here is my suggestion based on all the idea so far (adding on from my previous post):

 

1) Archers (or any class for that matter) have a quiver of unlimited normal arrows.

2) Upgrades can be placed in quiver slots to improve normal arrows (make all arrows +1, etc)

3) As archers level up they can learn skills that grant them a limited quantity of special arrows per engagement (e.g. 10 fire arrows)

 

This way archers can simply carry around a small number of quiver upgrades instead of a massive amount of various arrow types. Quiver upgrades can be general and apply to all enemy types wheras the archer-specific skills can target specific enemies (such as a skill that grants 10 holy water arrows - useful against undead).

 

I understand the aversion a lot of folks have to the "unlimited quiver" but I don't think that carrying around 20 stacks of arrows is the way to go.

 

On a related note, I love the idea of arrow retrieval but think it would be more suitable to a game where management of resources was an integral aspect of the gameplay (Fallout, Wasteland, etc..).

[Ffordesoon]

To be honest, I actually liked how Skyrim did it. I know that's not something you're necessarily supposed to say in a community of hardcore RPG fans, but screw it, a good idea is a good idea.

 

If you didn't play Skyrim, the magic was tied to the bows instead of the arrows, and you could make arrows out of a variety of materials which scaled in damage in the same way +1 and +2 arrows do in BG. Each type of arrow stacked infinitely, but with a minuscule amount of weight added each time. There was also a chance to recover arrows after you used them.

 

All this added a pleasing amount of complexity and depth to ranged combat prep without becoming a burden or an annoyance, I think. I'm not saying PoE should copy-paste Skyrim 's system wholesale, but it's a good starting point, at least.

[forgottenlor]

 

My favourite solution from a gameplay solution (though not a logical one) is from a game I just started a few weeks ago, the roguelike Tales of the Maj'eyal. Basically you have a quiver. A quiver has 5-12 arrows (or bolts or whatnot) and you can fire all those off, but afterword you need to take one action to fill your quiver with one arrow. So if the quiver has 12 arrows you can fully reload it using 12 rounds. Archers (or those specializing with ranged attacks) can reload the quiver quicker.  Both the quiver and bow can be enchanted. This of course means there are no super powered one shot arrows, but I find the system enjoyable.

 

This system would work quite well in a turn-based game, but seeing as how PoE is RTwP the system might not be as applicable.

 

I actually think it would. You would have to fill your quiver. This could be an action button that begins filling your quiver. If uninterrupted your archer fills his/her quiver till its full. You could pause at any time though to take a new action using however many arrows are in your quiver.

[forgottenlor]

To be honest, I actually liked how Skyrim did it. I know that's not something you're necessarily supposed to say in a community of hardcore RPG fans, but screw it, a good idea is a good idea.

 

If you didn't play Skyrim, the magic was tied to the bows instead of the arrows, and you could make arrows out of a variety of materials which scaled in damage in the same way +1 and +2 arrows do in BG. Each type of arrow stacked infinitely, but with a minuscule amount of weight added each time. There was also a chance to recover arrows after you used them.

 

All this added a pleasing amount of complexity and depth to ranged combat prep without becoming a burden or an annoyance, I think. I'm not saying PoE should copy-paste Skyrim 's system wholesale, but it's a good starting point, at least.

The biggest problem, I think is the weight issue.

[Jarrakul]

To be honest, I actually liked how Skyrim did it. I know that's not something you're necessarily supposed to say in a community of hardcore RPG fans, but screw it, a good idea is a good idea.

 

If you didn't play Skyrim, the magic was tied to the bows instead of the arrows, and you could make arrows out of a variety of materials which scaled in damage in the same way +1 and +2 arrows do in BG. Each type of arrow stacked infinitely, but with a minuscule amount of weight added each time. There was also a chance to recover arrows after you used them.

 

All this added a pleasing amount of complexity and depth to ranged combat prep without becoming a burden or an annoyance, I think. I'm not saying PoE should copy-paste Skyrim 's system wholesale, but it's a good starting point, at least.

 

Skyrim is allowed to have good ideas. We don't want Eternity to be very much like Skyrim, but that does not mean eschewing everything that Skyrim did ("there are swords in Skyrim, so there should be no swords in PE").

 

Having said that, I'm not especially a fan of Skyrim's arrow system. I feel like it just came down to "mass up a bunch of arrows, and then shoot the strongest ones." Which works, but is not demonstrably more interesting than not tracking arrows at all (Dragon Age-style), at least to my mind.

 

Plus, I want my Black Arrow.

[khalil]

It's exactly as interesting as tracking arrows in BG was. This is because tracking arrows is boring no matter what game you are doing it in.

[Jarrakul]

Yes, tracking arrows in BG was awful. No argument there. But with a 100% automated retrieval system (and a good arrow UI), arrows become encounter powers. Which means they now have an entirely different dynamic than "save until the biggest guy, then unload the best arrows." In theory, it should be a vastly more interesting dynamic, although you never really know until you try with game mechanics.

[Lephys]

Having said that, I'm not especially a fan of Skyrim's arrow system. I feel like it just came down to "mass up a bunch of arrows, and then shoot the strongest ones." Which works, but is not demonstrably more interesting than not tracking arrows at all (Dragon Age-style), at least to my mind.

Well, and the other thing is, you didn't even have a quiver in Skyrim, right? And you just "paused" into the inventory screen and selected a different arrow, mid combat, and started firing a different type of arrow all of the sudden.

 

If the system keeps up with everything in a more simulationist manner, and it fits okay into the gameplay, then awesome. But, it would be a bit silly to insist that each and every arrow be accounted for, only to maintain the giant abstraction that is automagical quiver re-filling/arrow switching. Thus, if that's deemed useful enough, I'd rather the system just abstract the physical arrow quantities.

 

It's not really switching to "unlimited"; your ammo usage is still limited, just not by physical counts in your inventory. It's simply limited in a different way. The only thing I'd consider being truly unlimited would be your basic arrow, just so a character with 10 levels worth of points spent on bows and bow-related talents and abilities doesn't suddenly become completely useless just because he's fired basic arrows so many times.

 

But, yeah, the actual aspect of purchasing arrows, just to have something to fire, and taking them all with you, and refilling your quiver mid-combat, etc., is about as interesting to me as the aspect of making sure your character brought enough undergarments, and having them go to a merchant stall and pay 2 silver every time they go back to town to have all their clothing washed.

[khalil]

I don't see why management of individual arrows has to be such a big thing. While the black arrow should be special, the hobbit never went into bard's 100+ ordinary arrows for the same reason games shouldn't: no-one cares about them.

[Jarrakul]

I don't see why management of individual arrows has to be such a big thing. While the black arrow should be special, the hobbit never went into bard's 100+ ordinary arrows for the same reason games shouldn't: no-one cares about them.

 

Totally with you. To reiterate my initial position, I'm in support of unlimited normal arrows and some sort of encounter-based limitation on special arrows. Automated retrieval is my favorite option, but I'm not picky as long as it's not needlessly annoying.

[Suburban-Fox]

Here's my opinion.

Low level + nothing arrows might as well be free or unlimited or whatever. From a realism perspective, they're sticks with bits of dead bird glued on, not that hard to get. From a balance perspective, making the base arrows actual items just means that archers have to carry a backpack full of arrows and the player has to go play inventory roulette every time he wants his archer to pick up something.

 

As an archer irl, I can tell you that there is just a little bit more to it than that. I recently visited the local re-enactor's market, and found that proper medieval war arrows were selling for about £10-20 EACH.

 

A proper arrow is a bit more than a "stick with feathers glued to it" (for a start, I don't think they were glued but tied on with linen thread). The "stick" has to be properly carved so that it's perfectly straight, with no kinks or knots, otherwise it won't fly properly. Each one needs three fletches, each of which have to be cut and trimmed properly so that they stabilise the arrow. Then it needs a head, which has to be forged by a blacksmith. The head has to be the right shape, and it has to be hard enough. Making arrows is quite a precise art, and not something one can simply churn out in a matter of minutes. Even if you can go into the woods, find some sticks (which, incidentally, is not guaranteed that you'll even be able to find an abundance of sticks that are of the right wood type no matter where you are - what about if the only wood you can find is soft brittle wood?), carve them into a perfect shaft and attach feathers to them, there's still the heads that need to be attached, and where are you going to find perfectly forged bodkin heads in the forest? Finally, you've got to pay a fletcher for the time he's had to spend putting your arrows together, unless you make them yourself, in which case you've got to spend time putting them together.

 

For that reason, I'm against unlimited arrows, because it trivialises them. It completely ignores the cost, and the work, required to make them. This is the kind of mechanic I'd expect to see in an action RPG like Diablo, or WoW, or Dragon Age, but not in a proper roleplaying game. I wouldn't want to go the other extreme either, and have the character only able to carry 12 then have to spend almost everything he made on buying another 12 (because 12 arrows will be just about enough to kill one monster), but the cost of arrows can't simply be completely ignored in any RPG that wants to have even the slightest level of believability.

 

Otherwise, next Call of Duty game, they might as well just give you infinite ammunition. After all, bullets are just bits of metal with a bit of gunpowder, and cost virtually nothing to make, right? ;-)

[khalil]

As an archer irl, I can tell you that there is just a little bit more to it than that. I recently visited the local re-enactor's market, and found that proper medieval war arrows were selling for about £10-20 EACH.

 

A proper arrow is a bit more than a "stick with feathers glued to it"

You are correct. Arrows are complex.

They were still made by dark ages peasants who certainly couldn't afford anything nice.

I haven't played cod, but I will say that the Cow Mangler 2000 doesn't make other rockets suck.

[Ffordesoon]

@Suburban-Fox:

 

All of that is more or less irrelevant. Plain arrows in real life may not be trivial, but we're talking about arrows in a cRPG inspired by the Infinity Engine games. In which, from a pure mechanical perspective, they absolutely were trivial.

 

To be fair to you, this may be a difference between vanilla BG and BGEE of which I'm unaware, but in BGEE, you can buy a stack of twenty arrows for one gold piece. Gold pieces are the only unit of currency in Baldur's Gate, and it's rare you have less than a hundred gold pieces even in the early game. Which, assuming space wasn't an issue, would buy two thousand normal arrows.

 

Now, I would agree that if you're going to charge players for arrows, even in stacks of twenty, they absolutely shouldn't be the no-brainer purchase they are in BG. But I believe that because finite ammunition has to mean something mechanically, else why make it finite? I do not believe that because real human beings work very hard on individual arrows and players will damn well respect their monumental achievement if I have anything to say about it. That way lies didactic madness and an economy stacked against the player.

 

Fact is, video games are mechanical abstractions of reality. Prices of items should be based on their marginal utility to the player, not on whether a fletcher who doesn't exist can make a living wage.

[Eurhetemec]

I don't see why management of individual arrows has to be such a big thing. While the black arrow should be special, the hobbit never went into bard's 100+ ordinary arrows for the same reason games shouldn't: no-one cares about them.

 

This is the right attitude, I think.

If people want to obsessively micro-manage a dozen different ammo types of varying scarcity (but all limited), that's probably something that should be a mod or the like, rather than built into a game aiming at the sort of audience PoEternity is. It's not a great deal of fun, it does consume a great deal of time, and if one forgets about it, even briefly, one can see all of an ammo type quickly wasted (which isn't about skill, but simply about whether the UI makes you aware of it or not). I respect that some people love inventory management more than they love life, but I don't think it's the default state, even for people who like old-school RPGs (and I've been playing CRPGs since the 1980s, thanks!).

 

I'd like to see "default" ammo be either unlimited, or regenerating out of combat (as the archer makes more arrows and/or picks them out of corpses and so on).

 

Special ammo should be extremely rare and limited - i.e. you shouldn't be carrying 22 exploding arrows - more like 2. It should have a big impact and be exciting to use as a result, not just "Oh, just switch to fire arrows here..." or the like.

[Frenzy-kun]

The thing about % chance based ammunition recovery is that it doesn't really achieve anything in terms of mechanics or balance. At the end of the day, there is very little functional difference between having 90 non-recoverable arrows, and having 60 arrows that can be recovered 50% of the time. In both cases you'll on average have 90 arrows to use. So you may as well just give 90 non-recoverable arrows and be done with it.

So all you've really achieved by adding recoverability is to add some randomness, and the possibility that players can get either screwed or rewarded by RNG.

 

If you're doing it for increased flavour/realism, that's fine, and does make a lot of sense especially for things like throwing axes and daggers. But functionally, it's basically no different than an availability increase or price drop.

I disagree with this. Having 60 arrows makes sense as you say, but having one, no. Having one means you have only one attack per combat. I think the author refers to this situation. Something that is really unique. You can have one arrow that can be recovered 90% of the times. The result will be totally different that using 10 arrows of the same type because in the first situation you cannot hit the enemy 10 times, just once. It's the difference between an object with 100 charges and another with one daily use for 100 days.

[khalil]

I disagree with this. Having 60 arrows makes sense as you say, but having one, no. Having one means you have only one attack per combat. I think the author refers to this situation. Something that is really unique. You can have one arrow that can be recovered 90% of the times. The result will be totally different that using 10 arrows of the same type because in the first situation you cannot hit the enemy 10 times, just once. It's the difference between an object with 100 charges and another with one daily use for 100 days.

Have you played the IE games? I never had less than 50 arrows at any one time.

[Frenzy-kun]

 

I disagree with this. Having 60 arrows makes sense as you say, but having one, no. Having one means you have only one attack per combat. I think the author refers to this situation. Something that is really unique. You can have one arrow that can be recovered 90% of the times. The result will be totally different that using 10 arrows of the same type because in the first situation you cannot hit the enemy 10 times, just once. It's the difference between an object with 100 charges and another with one daily use for 100 days.

Have you played the IE games? I never had less than 50 arrows at any one time.

 

The  author is talking about a hypotetical situation where there is only one arrow and can be recovered. Not talking about IE.

[Suburban-Fox]

@Suburban-Fox:

 

All of that is more or less irrelevant. Plain arrows in real life may not be trivial, but we're talking about arrows in a cRPG inspired by the Infinity Engine games. In which, from a pure mechanical perspective, they absolutely were trivial.

 

To be fair to you, this may be a difference between vanilla BG and BGEE of which I'm unaware, but in BGEE, you can buy a stack of twenty arrows for one gold piece. Gold pieces are the only unit of currency in Baldur's Gate, and it's rare you have less than a hundred gold pieces even in the early game. Which, assuming space wasn't an issue, would buy two thousand normal arrows.

 

Now, I would agree that if you're going to charge players for arrows, even in stacks of twenty, they absolutely shouldn't be the no-brainer purchase they are in BG. But I believe that because finite ammunition has to mean something mechanically, else why make it finite? I do not believe that because real human beings work very hard on individual arrows and players will damn well respect their monumental achievement if I have anything to say about it. That way lies didactic madness and an economy stacked against the player.

 

Fact is, video games are mechanical abstractions of reality. Prices of items should be based on their marginal utility to the player, not on whether a fletcher who doesn't exist can make a living wage.

 

They may have cost the lowest form of currency available to you in Baldur's Gate, but that wasn't the lowest currency in D&D. To most commoners, a gold coin is quite rare (it's supposed to be anyway), so one crown for a quiver of two dozen arrows is probably a reasonable price - except some other things may also need to be tweaked - for example, two dozen arrows shouldn't cost the same as a single pint of beer! XD

 

But anyway, my point is that if arrows cost nothing, they don't matter. You can loose off a thousand, and keep loosing them off until you're bored - why not? They magically reappear in your quiver without you having to do anything anyway.

 

I'm okay with charging a relatively low cost for a quiver of lots (I'd rather they cost a bit more, however, to make it at least an issue at the start - you know, before you do the first dungeon and emerge rich enough to buy the city you just saved! :D ), but not with them being totally free. Such a mechanic would assume you always have access to a supply of ready-made arrows, but that might not always be the case, and in some situations you might have to prepare for the fact that you might run out of arrows, or be unable to recover those spent. Infinite arrows would prevent anything like this from ever being an issue.

 

Also, the fact that you had 100 quivers of arrows in your inventory was also significant - it meant that there were 100 inventory slots that couldn't be used for anything else. It still meant that they were a resource that needed to be tracked. RPGs of the Baldur's Gate variety are about much more than simply rushing from one fight to the next and ignoring everything else that happens in between fights.

 

A possible solution would be the Mount and Blade approach - you can buy a quiver of 30, which means you can use up to 30 in a fight (to get more, you'd have to either equip two quivers or pull another one out of your backpack - something that wasn't easy to do in the middle of a fight!). After the fight, they re-appear, to simulate the fact that you went around the battlefield gathering them up. That might work, but it would also raise a potential issue: what if you retreat from combat? I'm sure the dragon isn't going to wait politely while you wander around his lair gathering up your arrows, so in that situation, you couldn't conceivably have them back. That's why I think recovering them from corpses would be a fairly elegant solution, if they did want to do the whole "recovering arrows" thing.

[Jarrakul]

@Suburban-Fox, from a realism standpoint, you're totally right. From a gameplay standpoint, I could not disagree more. In real life arrows are expensive, but they kill people. Generally in one or two shots if you don't miss. In games, they do not. In real life, if you kill one guy a month, you are one of the most prolific killers around. In games, you kill multiple people every day. In real life, sometimes your perfectly good sword breaks off in the first enemy you kill and you need to buy a new one. In games this does not happen. Games do not live in the same reality as real life. Trying to apply the same rules simply does not make for a fun game (for most people anyway; some folks are simulationist to the point that they want to see their character go to the bathroom). Hence, I think normal arrows should be unlimited. Because micromanaging them isn't fun, and doesn't make the game more interesting. It does make the game more realistic, but realistic is not the same thing as fun.

 

As for arrow-retrieval, I think it should be automatic for much the same reasons. 98% of the time, you'd have a chance to recover your arrows anyway. The remaining 2% is not worth bothering about, because it provides additional aggravation after every fight just so that it can be even more aggravating 2% of the time.