What I'd change about Archery

[Sheffie 1,120]

How to make archery more interesting, without destroying the game balance?

 

1. I think it'd be more realistic, more dramatic, and overall more fun, to increase the damage done by the arrows that do hit, and maintain the overall balance by increasing the miss chance. To me, that sounds more like hunting with a real bow.
   • An alternative balancing option would be for unarmoured or lightly armoured targets to take more damage, and for armoured targets to take reduced damage almost all the time (and full damage occasionally).
2. Occasionally I notice that a hit earns a lot more skillgain (maybe 10x more than most shots), and this is very exciting and rewarding when it happens. I'd like to see more of this.
   • Let us get a moment of inspiration while shooting, and let this shot always hit the target, not glance, and do 5x damage. (That might sound like too much, but we're talking about a once-an-hour event.)
3. Currently arrows that miss fall somewhere on a line between you and the target. While it's certainly convenient to pick up an arrow that lands at your feet, and amusing in a self-deprecating way, I think it'd be better for arrows to land somewhere between 80 and 120% of the distance to the target. Failing that, have them land at 50-100% of the range. I don't want to see a spread from left-right because that just makes arrows harder to recover.
4. Let us paint arrows. Give us both a "paint wood" option and a "paint" option that dyes the feathers. This will let players customize their own arrows and also make them much easier to find.
5. Leave the existing arrow types as they are, but add a new type of arrow (perhaps "fine arrow"?) that requires feathers to craft. These arrows should be crafted at higher quality than regular arrows would be (for the same skill and material QL), and should improve at double the rate.
6. Allow me to take my arrows from the body of a creature that dies on someone else's deed.

 

For context, I'm just past the point where I can not gain bow or archery skill using an archery target. I'm still short of 50 archery, but I've spent quite a while wandering the hills alternately shooting and swinging a sword at things, and I think I'm starting to get a feel for it.

I have a high quality bow with Nimbleness but only 30-40 QL arrows.

 

If people with more experience of higher skill level archery, and/or higher quality arrows, would provide some feedback from their perspective, I'd really appreciate that.

Edited November 20, 2022 by Sheffie

[Trash 189]

1. No thanks, archery does plenty of damage as it is and failing to hit something will also make it dumb to grind.
2. Keep the difficulty right and you will grind it fast
3. You will miss less if u keep the difficulty lower, don't expect to much from 50 skill, there are a bunch of factors.
4. how will that work with bsbs/crates?
5. I don't see why not.

[Madnath 3,113]

1. Basically what Trash said, I feel the damage is fine, if anything the glance rates are what needs some adjusting since it's kinda painful to try and endlessly ping a croc forever. It makes sense it's harder to pierce them, but with arrows being how they are currently, I think it just adds an extra "eugh" factor.

2. Sounds both fun and painful. I'd say "no thanks" based on there already being enough damage modifiers that it sounds already way too much regardless of skill/arrow level.

3. I can get behind this, making it more predictable and easier to know where the arrows will be.

4. I think painting the wood sounds kinda pointless, but all in for allowing us to dye the feathers. I floated the idea in GL that you should simply be able to instant dye arrow feathers a bright red by simply having a cochineal active and hitting an option to dye them. Maybe just in stacks of 10 to 20 at a time. Arrows that have that done to them should have the feather end appear larger too. Just generally giving us more ways to make arrows visible on the ground would go a long way.

5. Sure, I don't see why not. I'm not sure how well adopted it'd be since arrows are already silly to imp given you can just slam them into a BSB and get them back to a log imp, which is already x2 imp gain. Feathers kinda suck to gather in large amounts unless you have a chicken farm for some reason. In reality double the QL gain rate would just be flat for all imp actions, or x4 for log imping if it stacks atop of the current system. If it's the former, people likely wont bother because they get the same benefit from war arrows without the feather requirement. If it's the latter then people might adopt it if arrows are made easier to find, but I wouldn't imagine it being widely done unless it doesn't use an entire feather item in the crafting recipe.

 

Edit - if anything is going to do more damage I'd argue it should come from BT since it doesn't really add much to grind 10K BT on it. "all bows on nonepic servers have 1/5 damage enchant effectiveness so they max out at 6% damage or so" t. Silakka

Edited November 18, 2022 by Madnath

[Karlton 10]

Archery is already very effective at killing if you invest the time of fletching, bowyery, and archery skill. It's used a lot in PvP, to an extent. But for "hunting", you can just walk up to a deer and slaughter it with an axe. There is no hunting, it's just fighting creatures that don't try to flee, even after being attacked. That's why archery isn't worth the time to use for "hunting". You might use it to kill or move a creature that's on a steep slope, and that's about it. There just isn't really many PvE situations where archery pays off and I hope that changes.

[Korhaka 32]

72 archery here, been pushing it up a fair bit over the past few days and it has always been my main combat skill. I think if anything the biggest pain points for archery are the 40-50 or so area as it as you still miss (and lose) a fair few arrows - perhaps I should have been using hunting arrows instead rather than going "I am 45 now, I must be good enough for war arrows!". 1-40 is tedious but easy enough to just keep shooting a target all day long so maybe it could be improved as well but arrow shafts are cheap to spam craft a bunch of too.

 

Maybe archery would benefit from more information though, I had nothing to go by for when I should have been using hunting or war arrows. Something for killing heavily armoured enemies without the tedious glancing would be nice. Killing a scorpion earlier was 20 glances, 10 penetrations.

 

If you want realistic bow hunting, play Unreal World. Yes I know its not realistic that you shoot a horse with 4 arrows and it stands there then dies. But do you really want it to be a case of shooting it once and then track it for the next 3 hours to find where it died? Sure that would be pretty cool, but it would also be a complete change to Wurm PvE combat.

[bigtree 102]

Creatures should either run or charge when shot with arrows. Just standing there waiting to die kind of runes the challenge of range combat. But in the mean time I'll be using a long bow.

 

 

Here are some more thought about archery... 

 

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by bigtree

[Archaed 2,280]

9 hours ago, bigtree said:

Creatures should either run or charge when shot with arrows. Just standing there waiting to die kind of runes the challenge of range combat. But in the mean time I'll be using a long bow.

 

They do, but there's a "sweet spot" that's basically out of the creatures vision, longbows work with this on creatures with limited range, thus why you can pepper trolls but not a wolf or hellhound.

[DannyUK 212]

I agree with increasing the damage in archery, that was what put me off going down that road to begin with along with people telling me archery is not so good. Started off on Xanadu few years ago and began grinding it until I was put off by the damage, i've never gone back to it since, I use huge axe now which is much better. I do like archery in other games though, mostly go with bow and arrow, if it was improved I may try archery again.

[Firecat 864]

@Sheffie- the main issue is that you need to get your skill higher still, sub 50 archery and bow skill is awful really, focus on your bow skill. Forget archery, that sorts itself out.

 

If you grind your bow skill to 90 at a minimum, use a reasonably good quality bow (85+ql), enchanted with nimbleness, and use high quality arrows (70+) you'll find that actually it does do rather reasonable damage. mix in bloodthirst on to your bow as well, you're going to do just fine.

 

For PvP at least please leave archery alone.

 

"Let us get a moment of inspiration while shooting, and let this shot always hit the target, not glance, and do 5x damage."   

^ This would be a bit overpowered. You can already crit players / creatures (if it's not been toiled with) which helps, 5x damage is a bit absurd.

 

Everything else is reasonably covered by Trash's explanations.

 

Also, it seems a little stupid but I'll mention it anyway - you can put FB/FA/RT on arrows if you care about damage, not that it's very relevant on PVE, but it is a thing, for skilling at least it is pointless and I don't see a reason outside of using it on PvP. But yeah, it works. You're gonna get all of your damage from higher skill and better equipment.

 

 

Edited November 19, 2022 by Firecat
add

[Pnutp 293]

I think it is important to understand, this Is predominantly a PvP used skill and there is nothing wrong with it. As much as it would be good to have it’s uses in PvE, you need to understand the difficulty’s and the uses it carries in servers which don’t really get much love. 
 

When it comes to hit chance and glance rate, you have to take into account firing at a scorpion is always going to have high glance, so is shooting at a barded horse. 
 

Please do not play with one of the only PvP mechanics that is not broken and actually has its rewards for skilling 90+. It’s going to be difficult with 50 skill, and so it should be 😃 
 

Try hitting that fleeing horse as it runs of into the distance, with archery being your only option of PvP on servers already in need of much TLC

[Nomadikhan 2,195]

35 minutes ago, Pnutp said:

I think it is important to understand, this Is predominantly a PvP used skill and there is nothing wrong with it. As much as it would be good to have it’s uses in PvE, you need to understand the difficulty’s and the uses it carries in servers which don’t really get much love. 
 

When it comes to hit chance and glance rate, you have to take into account firing at a scorpion is always going to have high glance, so is shooting at a barded horse. 
 

Please do not play with one of the only PvP mechanics that is not broken and actually has its rewards for skilling 90+. It’s going to be difficult with 50 skill, and so it should be 😃 
 

Try hitting that fleeing horse as it runs of into the distance, with archery being your only option of PvP on servers already in need of much TLC

Or like other skills and mechanics, alter it on pve only for a better overall experience between server types

Edited November 19, 2022 by Nomadikhan

[bigtree 102]

8 hours ago, Archaed said:

They do, but there's a "sweet spot" that's basically out of the creatures vision, longbows work with this on creatures with limited range, thus why you can pepper trolls but not a wolf or hellhound.

 

Right, so is it your opinion that this 'sweet spot' makes sense? So if a creature is getting hit by arrows but can't see where they are coming from its most reusable course of action is to "stand still to death".

Edited November 19, 2022 by bigtree

[DADLER 170]

-1

 

Archery is just fine how it is. Keep archery archery

[Rockmodd 103]

Archery seems fine to me but fletching needs to be looked at. The missing 4x quality gain from all the tools except log is an actual broken game mechanic, its been broken for years, its been brought up in multiple threads and yet its still broken....

[Joemog 732]

I think considering amount of PVP there is saying its fine is crazy

[Sheffie 1,120]

2 hours ago, Joemog said:

I think considering amount of PVP there is saying its fine is crazy

 

I don't want to unbalance PVP, and if the consensus there is that archery is one of the few things that's working ... then I'd leave it alone

[bigtree 102]

On 11/19/2022 at 5:49 PM, Sheffie said:

 

I don't want to unbalance PVP, and if the consensus there is that archery is one of the few things that's working ... then I'd leave it alone

 

I definitely wouldn't call it a consensus. As its been said many people don't use archery in PvE because of the overhead. I think there are some simple ways to improve archery, without making it 'easier' so that more people would be interested. Some of the ideas would likely be easy to implement with little to no risk of effecting balance in either PvP or PvE.

[TheTrickster 2,279]

If Archery were to be more realistic (which to me would make it more interesting, challenging and rewarding), then there are things that would need to change, but I think most other people wouldn't like them.

1. Damage done  - should be a function of the draw strength and the arrow type. Draw strength itself would be based on body strength, and perhaps bow ql.  Bow type is not much of a factor there, and the ql of the arrow should not have a big effect on damage once the target is hit.  Damage done to unarmoured targets should be higher than it is now (but see below).
2. Accuracy - very much a function of arrow ql, but also bow ql, archery skill and for rapid or consecutive shooting body strength.    A GOOD archery shot should be more difficult.  And accuracy should fall off very quickly with range and with rapidity of shooting.    When archery skill allows additional options, both shoot quickly and shoot accurately should be available (quickly reduces accuracy, accurately takes longer).
3. Range - draw strength and arrow type.  There should not be a minimum range for any of these except for maybe at 0 tiles (i.e. on the same tile).  
4. Rate of fire - should be a function of the bow type, body strength and archery skill.
5. Arrow types - I get the current naming is for archery neophytes, but it could use some TLC.  Rather than a difficulty/damage trade off, the arrow type to use should be based on the target.
   1. The "war arrow" should be called a bodkin arrow - which are specifically designed to defeat armour, but at the cost to the damage done to the target compared to the broadhead.  Lower base damage but much lower glancing off armour.
   2. The "hunting arrow" should be called a broadhead - which is NOT designed to defeat but armour but IS designed to cause massive bleedy damage. Higher base damage but much higher glancing of armour.
   3. The current description of the "hunting arrow" -  A straight pointy arrow head without barbs - should actually be a target arrow.  They can punch into a target without causing a lot of damage to it, and without risking breaking the arrow shaft or head to remove from a target.  Lowest base damage, high glance and high change to break on anything except a target.  Basically unable to damage an armoured target.
6. Bow type.  Currently, the different bows are really just different sizes.  That's fine, but really there should be the different types  - simple bow (basically what these all are currently; a self-bow with no complex curvature); recurve bow (two curves on each arm when strung); laminated bow (multiple layers of usually-different wood laminated together); composite (made with different materials, wood, bone, horn sinew).  That gives quite a big selection (without even considering that recurve, laminated and composite are entirely different aspects and can be combined or not).  12 bows in all, not allowing for complex interplay of types.  Each effecting accuracy, durability, ease of use, portability.

I have probably forgotten a bunch of stuff.

 

EDIT:  Wherever I say "should" take it as "in my opinion" and "your mileage may vary".

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by TheTrickster

[TheTrickster 2,279]

I think one of the biggest problems for archery is the lack of aiming.  Just select your target and off you go.   That problem is not unique to archery though.

[TheTrickster 2,279]

On 11/20/2022 at 8:49 AM, Sheffie said:

 

I don't want to unbalance PVP, and if the consensus there is that archery is one of the few things that's working ... then I'd leave it alone

I wonder if there is a bit of a reaction against changing archery because those who use it in PvP see it as currently effective, but in their case it is because they have put in the work to get it there and don't see why a shorter path to said effectiveness should be offered.  I can't really fault that, but in PvE having to grind plural skills in order to usefully access the only form of hunting that feels like hunting is a huge negative.  I don't think people want it OP, just, as I say, effective.

 

 

[Cipacadrinho 390]

Archery is ###### because of how much micro it takes to prep because the arrows break and are lost anyways not to mention if you want to re-use them you have to pick them up from floor and corpses over and over again.

 

The problem is if that was not the case then archery would become the primary way to deal with mobs and would make weaponsmiting and various types of armorsmithing alot less needed.

 

The solution would be that for pve only you could have a priest get a spell that can be casted on a bow or an arrow to make it so it shoots as many arrows as the power of the cast (like a 62 power cast would allow for 62 shots etc.) but like 30% of the damage dealt would also reflect (similar to aosp) into the shooter's armor and bow so that you would need to heal and repair armor and bow just like you would if you were melee.

 

The benefit for this would be that people can grind to 70+ archery fairly easy without having to micro manage hundreds or thousands of arrow heads that go into arrow shaft that then break after you shoot them once what a fun skill!

[TheTrickster 2,279]

18 hours ago, Cipacadrinho said:

Archery is ###### because of how much micro it takes to prep because the arrows break and are lost anyways not to mention if you want to re-use them you have to pick them up from floor and corpses over and over again.

 

The problem is if that was not the case then archery would become the primary way to deal with mobs and would make weaponsmiting and various types of armorsmithing alot less needed.

 

The solution would be that for pve only you could have a priest get a spell that can be casted on a bow or an arrow to make it so it shoots as many arrows as the power of the cast (like a 62 power cast would allow for 62 shots etc.) but like 30% of the damage dealt would also reflect (similar to aosp) into the shooter's armor and bow so that you would need to heal and repair armor and bow just like you would if you were melee.

 

The benefit for this would be that people can grind to 70+ archery fairly easy without having to micro manage hundreds or thousands of arrow heads that go into arrow shaft that then break after you shoot them once what a fun skill!

Yes and no.

 

 Yes, part of the problem is the sheer amount of micro-management and multiple skills needed, and the fact that the current mechanism in attempting to be balanced and not OP is wasteful (lots of time to get good arrows but lots of good arrows broken lost etc ver quicky).

 No, the best solution is NOT to add more mechanisms on top of the existing system, particularly mechanisms that require priest.

 

A better solution is to find a better way to balance power so archery is more worth using without being overpowered.  Eliminate the silly arrow-breaking and other artificial bottlenecks and instead use the rate of fire, difficulty of a good shot (difficulty rapidly increasing with distance) and actual reactions from mobs.  If you injure a bull, boar or wolf, really how likely is it that it will just stand there or wander about a bit?  They should either flee or charge.  You might only get a shot or two off before you have to either stand your ground and fight or give chase and fight.  

Edited March 3, 2023 by TheTrickster

[Rauros 232]

NO, please, no chase: H&H already proved it's a truly annoying feature in a game, especially if your gain from a single prey is minimal.
Archery works fine, players still think Wurm is an easy game and going around shooting stuff with 30ql arrows should be enough to make archery good, instead Wurm beign what it is, have a couple elements most players ignore that can help quite a lot with archery even in pvp.

In reality, archers i've seen in rifts were deadly and powerful in pve, they do a lot of damage and they can do that safely from mobs most of the times, so they can use truly basic armors, and have not to worry about armor, shield and weapon to take damage.

The only annoying part is actually gathering the arrows, that do not make piles easy enough to be gathered, or better to be seen easily, else you can just make better ql arrows with oak and they will break very little.

Gotta know tricks if you want to be a nice archer, the only thing that may be asked is to arrows to be easier to find and gathered on ground.