Based on the sounds of the OP I agree this could be bad.

I like the Idea of the original DarkFall with actual arrows, magic skills wouldn't be so bad if there were no answers but if archers had the ability to do a skilled called Elemental arrows which they can freely change out to do X amount of damage with their bows. However AOE damage with each arrow is stupid if I read correctly, it needs to be skill based and cool down balanced to not be over powered.

Hopefully the game does well I have no idea but the problem I see with archers is MultiHack/Aimbot users encountered about 3 people in DarkFall using hacks, and raybots to automatically cast on people coming up ladders on ships and such.

Hopefully DFUW is a good MMO will have to wait and see.

Originally posted by Renoaku

Based on the sounds of the OP I agree this could be bad.

I like the Idea of the original DarkFall with actual arrows, magic skills wouldn't be so bad if there were no answers but if archers had the ability to do a skilled called Elemental arrows which they can freely change out to do X amount of damage with their bows. However AOE damage with each arrow is stupid if I read correctly, it needs to be skill based and cool down balanced to not be over powered.

Hopefully the game does well I have no idea but the problem I see with archers is MultiHack/Aimbot users encountered about 3 people in DarkFall using hacks, and raybots to automatically cast on people coming up ladders on ships and such.

Hopefully DFUW is a good MMO will have to wait and see.

Actual arrows still exist, just fire your bow as usual. The addition of actual skills (which everyone BUT archers had in DF1) doesnt take away from that. You will have situations where your normal shots / single target skills will be preferred to AoEing.

The whole idea of elemental arrows wouldnt really work too well because you already have elemental weapons through enchanting / transmuting. Unless they added some sort of elemental combo system where you could stack the same element or mix 2 elements for different effects.

The skills will have cooldowns, especially the ultimate skill Salvo, which is something the OP is clearly trying to ignore and act like everyone is just going to be running around nonstop spamming AoEs as an archer.

Wanted to add that another thing that is being clearly overlooked by many when it comes to complaints about "rays" (even though Puncture is not an actual ray). The issue in Darkfall 1 was that you had a variety of rays, typically at least 1 from every school of magic allowing you to chain several rays together with no waiting between them. You could easily macro several rays and just destroy people in a few seconds if you aimed and kept your range well.

But what do we have in this case? 1 skill that is close to a ray. Thats it. At worst you might wind up with 2 rays on that person (assuming the secondary school they pick also has a ray-like skill). Youre not going to have 10 or so rays able to be spammed in succession.

Just something else to keep in mind when complaining about balance issues that existed in DF1 and trying to put them in the context of DFUW as if things are still exactly the same. As I mentioned before, we have only seen 2 of 16 schools. We dont even know what the others will be capable of in comparison to those 2 or what sort of ocunters might also be in place for some of the things being complained about.

Also, assuming they will sill have similar skill / stat effects as in DF1 that do things like reduce damage from specific types of attacks (such as AoEs): We dont know how effective such things will be yet. For all we know, focusing on maxing out your AoE defense could make getting caught in an AoE like Salvo do practically nothing to you. Perhaps some roles / schools will even be able to specialize in countering AoE damage.

first of all arrows have arc, not an unlimited linear trajectory. it is much harder to hit distant target with bows, then with magic.

2nd, arrows dont have an aoe, so this only adds to the difficult in hitting far away targets.

3rd, you can use a shield to mitigate arrow damage, you can't use a shield to mitigate magic damage.

when you take all that into account archery is very underpowered when put against magic.

stop complaning that magic got nerfed and bow got buffed. it was sorely needed. personaly i would have just shortened the range of magic to 2/3 of the range of archery, so that archery would be the long rage "weappon of choice" while magic would be the medium range "weappon of choice".