Hero's Journey

In every game that exsists, archery has been beaten down, smashed into little peices and after selecting only a few of those little peices it is forced to behave like melee.  WHY?

Archery is a form of combat that in real life is completely unlike every other form of combat.  Just think for a moment.  An Archer "Stalks" his pray.  He selects his possition to fire from.  He waits for the perfect shot and then low and behold, he takes the perfect shot.  WHY?  Because he is an Archer.  He is not a muscle-bound, arm flexing sword swinger.  He is not a mystical magical artillery peice.  He is an artist.  He is patient.  He is an Archer.

I understand why it has been torn down leaving only the weapon in play.  It doesnt fit into a turn or attack/delay combat system.  But I have thought about it a great deal and there is one factor that can be applied to make archery more realistic and at the same time not overbalance everything else.  Time.

This system I am about to talk about is a system that I proposed to a game design group, unfortunately the game never saw the light of day, but here it is.

The Archer has a targeting reticle.  This reticle is two circles, one inside the other.  The inner circle represents the perfect shot, and yes that means a one hit kill if aimed correctly.  The outer circle represents your aim.  So if you have just stopped from a hard run and are trying to take aim, the outer circle is very large.  That means your shot might hit something inside the outer circle.  As the Archer takes time to aim, the outer circle begins to shrink at a very slow rate.  This would work much like the targeting reticles in many first person shooters.  To take the time to wait for the perfect shot, ie, the circles meet, would take a while.  At low levels somewhere in the range of 3 minutes, or at very low levels the two circles dont fully meet.  As an Archer gains skill and level the circles would meet faster and faster.

And so now everyone is saying "Oh no, you cant one hit kill.  You can't make a "perfect" shot.  Its unfair.  Its too powerful.  Its Its Its".  I say forcing an Archer to behave exactly the same as a skull smasher is not fair.  The key factor here is time.

For a beginning skull smasher how long does it take to kill a monster of equal level?  3 minutes?  maybe 4?  However long it is, that is how long it takes an Archer to line up a perfect shot.  Its all about Time.

Now for rapid firing, for example you hit a cow in a herd and now the bull is charging you, its all about the outer circle.  You could even color code the circles.  For example, when you release an arrow it takes time to reload.  So while you are reloading your targeting reticle is red.  Once the bow is loaded and drawn, it turns green to indicate that you can fire at any time.  At the same time the outer circle starts to make its trip towards the inner one.  So rapid fire would use the outer aiming circle for determining accuracy.

So can I please get a Ranger.  A character that I can stalk around in the woods.  A character that will wait in cover, taking very careful aim, and then when the moment is right releasing the arrow.  A character that stands right beside the Paladin releasing arrow after arrow, damaging the charging line.  A real Archer, an Artist.  You know, a Ranger.

While I agree that archery gets the shaft in most games, I don't agree with the kill shot/perfect shot idea.

In DaoC you can one shot people. It takes a little time. Even if it didn't, you would still be sitting in hiding, picking off people with one shot. I know, I've done it. If you had to stay there for ten minutes then I might think it fair.

 A battle is only fun if you get to participate in it. A fight is only fun if it doesn't end in 1 or 2 seconds. A challenge is only there if you have an equal chance of losing. Frankly, I'm tired of killing off my enemies in a shot (or two at times). There simply is no challenge to it.


After years of Daoc, I'm a firm believer that any game that gives one class/ability the Win button... instant kill, no chance in hell you'll survive the attack, needs to go back to design school.

While I do agree with your assesment for PvP, you stated the point that I was trying to make.  Its all about time.   "If you had to stay there for ten minutes then I might think it fair."  I am not talking about running around the woods, spotting an animal, aiming for a few seconds and then firing.  I am talking about really being able to stalk something, and more from the PvE side of things.  PvP is a whole different ball of wax. 

If someone were to use this system in PvP what would be the consequences?  People that didnt want to be stalked would have to work on observation skill, or something similar.  It would mean just running through the woods might get an arrow shot at your head, so people would have to work on a dodge skill for more then just a second thought melee combat skill.  The Ranger trying to stalk someone if PvP would have to spend a lot of time and thought on the whole thing, would have to think about angles of approach, wind, elevation, line of site, both to target and back to keep from being spotted, would have to spend time building a stalking skill, would have to spend a lot of time praticing his/her archery skill.  This is what I am talking about, having the skills and abilities in the game that actually promote roleplaying, not just as a mechanic of the game, but facilitating skill building.  Giving a player a reason to want to have all those skills.  Rewarding them for spending the time to develope and think about what their character is, who they want to be, how they want to be viewed by everyone else.

For simplicity sake, you can just turn off one hit kill when it is against another player.

When it comes to PvE though, think of the possibilities.  Ok so it takes a Ranger 5 minutes to line up that perfect shot on the bear.  Like I said before, it should be about the same amount of time for a swordsman to slay a bear.  Its the roleplaying that comes into play.  A Ranger is the master of the woods.  He can read footprints like no one else can.  He can move in the forest without making a sound, without being spotted by his prey.  He uses the terrain to his advantage.  He is constantly thinking about everything involved to make that one shot count.  Its what is really involved with BEING a Ranger.  They are loners.  They are somewhat looked down on in polite society, Why?  Because they can take the time and kill you with one arrow, that is why.  Because they dont need a team to go kill a bear.  They dont have to buy food or clothing from the local economy, they are self providing.  They are Rangers.

I am not trying to think of ways to make an archer unbalanced or unfair.  I am trying to think of a way to make an archer be something more then a class that gets lumped into the melee combat system just because someone didnt want to take the time to think of a way to balance what an archer really is so that it would fit in the game and at the same time still be an archer.  Instead, every game out there just hacks archers to peices all in the sack of balance.

Mmmm, a neat idea with the circles, but there's one large flaw in your logic. You speak as if only arrows IRL can kill with one blow: that IRL melee battles take 3-4 minutes of constant bashing/slashing. They do not. Outside of movies and games, most battles are over after the first blow.

So archers in games aren't really being subjected to anything that melee types aren't.

The difference is not the ease of the killing stroke, but the chance of being one-shotted yourself. A swordsman risks their life for the payoff that they might be able to get that one-shot in quicker than an archer could. But, of course, in games where you come back from death all the time, it doesn't seem like much of an incentive to be an archer. :P

I love the Archer class, always have, even before my MMO addiction (characters in books, movies etc) and have always rolled a Ranger first when available in games - MMOs, RGPs, FPRPGs etc. So yes, I am all for a better system for Archer-love.

But the main issue is that archery in general is problematic.

If you have any type of 'one hit kill' system in-game, it will get mastered and/or exploited. Any MMO worth its money will have collision detection of some sort, which instantly means groups developing tactics to safe block the archers, giving them time to do whatever is needed to perform a kill shot. This is mainly relavent in PvP but is just as important, seeing as PvP is as necessary an option as all out PvE imo.
So taking it in a PvP perspective, Guild A plays hours a day together, gets their tactics perfectly sorted, 3 Tanks, 6 Rangers, 2 Healers. Now, any group they come across, the majority being social gamers and not 24/7 HJaholics like them, will be blocked out, one shot killed, slaughtered, pissed off.
Then, screams will go out, Ranger class is waaay overpowered, nerfs will eventually come for game-wide sustainability.

Putting a 3min timer on a perfect shot or such is in itself problematic imo too. I cannot think of a time when I was in a group where I could stand there doing nothing for 3minutes, let alone the fact you're contributing nothing to the group.
You'd have to make the steadying thing interuptable or it's god mode, 3-5minutes of uninterupted 'settling' to wait on the circles to merge would not only be pretty much impossible but also extremely boring. And if you do find you have 3-5 minutes to settle and oneshotkill someone, it's probably because you're in a group that has developed a way to just oneshotkill anyone/thing they come across...

I am aaaaall for some way of making Rangers a viable archer class.
The main thing I can think of to help this is to make bows NOT have a @#%*^ing minimum distance to fire!
Has to be my biggest hatred with what Devs do to Rangers/Archers, make you need to be 5-15m away to be able to use a bow. This is the stupidest cop out possible in my opinion.
Guild Wars, sadly, does the best Ranger I've played so far, in that you're a true bow user (this is leaving out the "is a Ranger only a bow user?" argument, as afawk, Ranger = Archer in HJ).

So, no minimum distance!
And don't let archers use skills on the run, to stop the stupid kiting thing (I gawd damn hate kiting...). It's simple. If you want to use a skill, you stop and you aim.

Secondly, varying stances would be awesome imo.
Stance one = FPS style reticle, FPS style, standing equals wider target spread than crouching, if you stand still for 3seconds the width of where your arrow will go shrinks, allowing a more refined targetting direction. The longer you hold the mouse, the further back you draw the string, the harder the arrow hits. As you are in FPS view, you can't see your angles, so are easily interupted, plus maybe receive +15% damage due to lack of blocking etc.
Stance two = Area of Effect archery. Good for having 10 Rangers side by side, firing high, lobbed arrows down onto a marching enemy force, much like the longbowmen did back in Olde England days etc. You view in a wide 3rd person, with a big circle on the ground, the further away, the wider the circle (due to wind etc). You can then have 20 archers lobbing arrows down onto a closing force, with low accuracy.
There we have machine gun vs rifle dynamics, barrage vs kill hits.
I'm sure people can think of more stances.

As Foxy said, I too don't think a kill shot for archers and a 2min fight for meleers/casters makes sense. I think either we need to put 4 arrows in their chest just as a tank needs to do 4 or 5 'savage chops'. Allowing us to have one 'super arrow' just opens up way too many possibilities of imbalance, tactics exploitation, uber groups etc.

I think there are plenty of ways to make archers exciting and unique, offering different styles of play in the one class.
I also think most MMO Devs to date have lacked the courage to try anything new due to not wanting to overpower the archer class; and rather the opposite, the archers are usually the first class to get overwhelmingly nerfed.

I'd be very interested to hear what the Simugods are planning in regards to archery. It'll mean the difference between me heavily RP'ing a forest-bound, somewhat solo Ranger, or me spending my days as an Empa-.. Healer.

Of course, all just my opinion.

I'm fine with the idea as long as it can't be done PvP. I like battles that are long and hard in pvp. Sick sick sick of battles over in one second. :)

And actually, an arrow can kill in one shot in real life. Dear friend was US champ few years ago, and trust me, what she can do with a bow can certainly kill you in one shot.   Of course, if you put one shot bow kills in, then you need to put in one slice kills. A someone that has you from behind can kill you with one slice of the neck, eh? ;)

I don't believe anyone is saying an arrow can't one hit kill someone, that'd be a silly suggestion.
But what I was getting at is that I just don't think it'd be viable for healthy gameplay to have the ability to one-shot kill someone of equivalent level.

I only need to think of the debarcle that was the EQ2 PvP release.
The well used Necro 'bug', the pet that would one hit kill you. If an arrow could do the same, it'd be the same as this.
You're harvesting, then you sort of lag out a bit, and then you're looking at your Revive screen. This is what you'd be opening the playerbase up to. In PvP, Rangers sneaking around, sitting there prep'ing, then you drop dead.
I see zero fun in that, and HJ is about fun. That's the kind of "hardcore" crap you'd put in Vanguard. You know, stupidly over the top.

I just want archery to be as much about skill as it is standing right back somewhere and selecting someone and pressing auto-attack. I want to be able to use a bow in any situation or distance.
Man, I'd love for a Ranger to have a knack of picking herbs, knowing the terrain etc. A character that actually lives in and KNOWS the wilds.

Time will tell I guess.