57 réponses à ce sujet

[Loc'n'lol]

Sago_mulch wrote...

archery isn't very spartan tbh,
biowear said they were gunna make me fight like a spartan in dragonage
2, not a persian

Time to pull out the javelins, then ?

DragonOfWhiteThunder wrote...
with Lethality

Only
adds to melee critical chance.

Modifié par _Loc_N_lol_, 14 juillet 2010 - 07:58 .

[Siven80]

Gotta agree to improve archery.



In DAO it was really boring. Arrow of slaying was ok for taking out mages, but other that that it was just auto attack dmg. And even that wasnt great till very late game.



DAA atleast improved it.......by adding an extremely Overpowered talent. Thats one way to fix it i guess.



Also agree they need to tweak the stat system so we get more balanced attributes rather than stacking all into one attribute like the current DA does.

[Daewan]

Sago_mulch wrote...

archery isn't very spartan tbh, biowear said they were gunna make me fight like a spartan in dragonage 2, not a persian

*ggggg*  Ancient Greeks had archers, including Sparta and Athens.  It was not their main missile weapon, but they had them.  In mass warfare, they depended more on their slingers and their javelins, but for minor conflicts a bow was considered adequate.  They also used bows for daily hunting.

[atheelogos]

Telum101 wrote...

As the title pretty much says it all, it would be really cool if the archery in DA2 was improved, or at least revised to be more interesting.

My favourite combat style in RPGs is generally an archer build then a few skills in melee to keep enemies away from me. I didn't have much fun in DA:O with this though, because unless you were fighting the high dragon, the only use an archer ever had was one less weak enemy in a battle due to Arrow of Slaying.

Of course, just asking to revise the combat is a bit of a stretch, but here are some suggestions that I don't think are too out of reach:

-2 skill trees, dedicated entirely to crossbows or bows - X-bows would focus more on heavy hitting but slower attacks, and at a shorter range, while bows are able to shoot further and faster.
-More 'ammo' types with various effects - Bleeding, Fatigue, Extra range, Explosives, Armour piercing etc.
-Multiple shot abilities - allowing the character to 'load' maybe 3 or so arrows and fire them quickly at multiple or single targets.
-Melee moves - Slamming someone over the head with the bow for a stun, or slicing their throat with the string would not only be hilarious, but effective.
-Accuracy tweaking - In addition to being affected by stats, the accuracy of ranged attacks should depend on the distance from the target and the size of it (How does someone miss the high dragon?!?!).
-Moving and shooting - Similar to Leliana in the sacred ashes trailer when she was strafing around the dragon taking pop shots at it (Perhaps this could be a sustained ability, where it enables you to move while shooting but with a substantial loss of accuracy?)


I'm aware some of these might not work out easily, but they're just suggestions to make archers more of a valid choice, and if it's too late to implement in DA2, it would still be great to see some of these features in any future releases, or even added via mods.

Feel free to discuss the above ideas, or add your own to the list.

I hear ya. When I first started out I found it to be underpowered. To many games do that. Oblivion for example. But if you level your archer right you'll actually find that they are seriously overpowered. Not that I'm complaining of couse I love god-like characters just as much as the other person, as long as you earn it, but its way to tricky. They really need to improve the mechanics, and I'm guessing they've already been hard at work on it.:happy:
Oh and if you need sum help check the link out.dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Archery:_An_Efficient_Approach

[atheelogos]

Tooneyman wrote...

I'm sorry the archery in DA:O is horrible. Horrible I could never find arrows and when I did. I would run out two quick. Give the enemies more arrows to drop so I can be a sticking archer as long as I want. Not some hack and slasher!

and they are way too expensive to buy

[soteria]

I'd have to agree, Awakening was definitely a step in the right direction, but the archery still felt pretty lifeless and underpowered.

Wait, what? How can you say that Archery was underpowered in Awakening? I'm pretty sure an archer with high dexterity is the most powerful character in the expansion. Accuracy was a bandaid fix because it failed to address the underlying problems, but I don't understand how anyone can call it "underpowered."

[DragonOfWhiteThunder]

_Loc_N_lol_ wrote...

DragonOfWhiteThunder wrote...
with Lethality

Only
adds to melee critical chance.

Hence Song of Courage. Lethality is simply to use Cunning in place of Strength for improving your damage, but it's really Song of Courage that makes the build.

...Honestly, I forgot Lethality improved melee critical chance entirely...

[Narreneth]

DragonOfWhiteThunder wrote...

I actually played an archery rogue in Origins, and absolutely loved it. Arrow of Slaying may only down one enemy, but downing a mage with it, or sniping away and using Combat Stealth to vanish after is amazing. And with Lethality and Song of Courage you have an archer that will practically never miss, is terribly hard to hit, can do massive damage while scoring frequent critical hits with either bow or back up blade, and is Cunning enough to be your silver-tongued, lock-picking, trap-disabling dashing adventurer. Archery is just fine in DA:O, I think.

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine?

[DragonOfWhiteThunder]

Narreneth wrote...

DragonOfWhiteThunder wrote...

I actually played an archery rogue in Origins, and absolutely loved it. Arrow of Slaying may only down one enemy, but downing a mage with it, or sniping away and using Combat Stealth to vanish after is amazing. And with Lethality and Song of Courage you have an archer that will practically never miss, is terribly hard to hit, can do massive damage while scoring frequent critical hits with either bow or back up blade, and is Cunning enough to be your silver-tongued, lock-picking, trap-disabling dashing adventurer. Archery is just fine in DA:O, I think.

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine?

It's what I do.

[atheelogos]

soteria wrote...

I'd have to agree, Awakening was definitely a step in the right direction, but the archery still felt pretty lifeless and underpowered.

Wait, what? How can you say that Archery was underpowered in Awakening? I'm pretty sure an archer with high dexterity is the most powerful character in the expansion. Accuracy was a bandaid fix because it failed to address the underlying problems, but I don't understand how anyone can call it "underpowered."

this

[soteria]

Although I think Bioware does understand some of our complaints with archery, little to nothing was fixed about it in Awakening. The Accuracy sustain grants a point of damage per point of dexterity in addition to large attack, crit%, and crit damage bonuses. As I stated previously in this thread, an archer in Awakening is amazingly powerful. The problem is that the huge increase in killing power failed to address the underlying issues.

The first and most important issue, as I see it, is that archery is boring. I know a lot of players who love archers would disagree with me on that, but I'll explain. I think archery is boring for two reasons: the animations lack any kind of variety, and the specials themselves are very lackluster.

The problem with the animations is, for one thing, watching your archer fire shot after shot in the exact same way just isn't very entertaining. Compare that to the melee weapon styles that have a few different swing animations and special "killing blows." Not only are the animations boring, but they're long. Especially if you're using Rapid Shot/Rapid Aim, they just take way too long to fire off. Waiting two or three seconds to use every single ability isn't fun even if those abilities were all worth using.

The specials are mostly either too slow, too weak, or both. Crippling Shot is about as useful as the DW talent Cripple--except it takes longer to use, does less damage, and worst of all is just boring to use. Pinning Shot is an interesting case, as the tooltip doesn't bother to tell you that damage taken will interrupt the pinning effect. Even when you know about that effect, it can be hard to cancel your next attack in time to let Pinning Shot stick. It would be great if it worked like the the WoW ability Gouge, cancelling your auto-attack on use. Shattering Shot is more useful than it looks, since it also knocks normal enemies down. Too bad the cast time feels approximately the same duration as the knockdown, right? Oh, and it doesn't work on everything, unlike the similar abilities other weapon styles get.

Critical Shot takes so long to fire that you don't really gain damage from using it. Honestly, much the same could be said about Arrow of Slaying. The hard truth about AoS is that in the cases where it would actually deal high damage, you probably could have killed that enemy with normal attacks in about the same time (see). That leaves Scattershot, which is a great ability for the player, but ends up being extremely annoying in the hands of the computer. Altogether, that means archers only get one or two buttons that are worth pushing every fight. If we compare that to any other build in the game, I think it becomes clear why I think archery is rather boring.

The second major issue with archery is its poor synergy with pretty much everything. Haste causes shot time to increase, weapon buffs don't apply, poisons don't apply, bows with runes don't exist, and almost every specialization for both rogues and warriors has a huge bias toward melee.

Magical arrows, while a nice touch as a consumable, are entirely inadequate when compared to the alternatives melee can use. Their damage is comparable to that of the elemental weapon coatings, true, but arrows can't be crafted. Additionally, melee can apply multiple coatings to a weapon, whereas archers can only have a single arrow type active. Arrows also simply lack the utility, variety, and damage of poisons.

The final gripe I have with archery is that it doesn't follow Bioware's own (fairly sound) ability design guidelines. From the toolset wiki:

Ability Design Notes
When creating an ability in Dragon Age: Origins, we generally stick to the following guidelines

* Keep it useful.
Some constant benefits (such as an increase in Attack or Defense) stay useful for the duration of the game as the progression of the related properties are slow. For other effects, such as damage, a constant value would mean that the ability will become progressively worse through the game as damage needed to drop enemies increases from level to level. In such cases, the ability should be tied in some fashion to a Spellpower (for spells) or another relevant trait (such as cunning for rogues) to ensure they stay useful throughout the game.

* No repetition.
Each ability in Dragon Age: Origins is unique. No incremental abilities such as 'fireball I, fireball II, etc.'. Skills are exempt from this rule. Remember that the Damage Types dramatically alter the actual effect of an ability (such as lightning always draining stamina alongside doing damage), so having similar damaging abilities in different trees is usually fine.

* Thematic matching.
Abilities within the same chain should follow a common theme.

* Avoid binary abilities. Design hit heavy.
Avoid abilities that are hit-or-miss. Generally, abilities should hit whenever possible and use target side mitigation of effects (resistance checks, damage mitigation) instead of 'hit or miss' mechanics. Melee abilities may use the normal attack resolution routines but should always perform their attacks at a bonus. Use rank based mitigation and resistances to allow for very powerful effects that do not trivialize boss battles.

* Use meaningful effects
Abilities should always be worth it. Don't do minor effects (+1 attack). The player should always be able to see the effect of the ability in game (not necessarily visually, but at least through increased damage, etc.). The first ability in a chain should, whenever possible, be active. The fourth ability in a chain should always have the biggest 'bang-for-the-buck' factor. Abilities lower in the chain should have shorter cooldowns. Do not allow instant death on bosses and elite bosses.

* Avoid 'zero-sum' abilities
When possible, avoid 'zero-sum' abilities that trade a penalty for a benefit (e.g. increase defense but decrease attack). There are a number of these abilities that are valid (such as aim), but balancing them and keeping them useful is hard and requires a lot of work. This obviously does not apply to drastic abilities such as blood magic.

* No emulation of defining class capabilities
Never ever grant a basic class capability from one class to another class via abilities. This means no invisibility or magical unlock spells for mages, as these are defining capabilities of the rogue class. No weapon talents for mages. No magic spells or large, targeted area of effects for warriors or rogues. Items might blur this line if the cost is balanced properly (e.g. grenades).

Note the number of times they deviated from those guidelines in designing archery. Aim is "zero-sum" and grants effects that don't scale late into the game (I'm looking at the damage and armor penetration). The abilities that have an effect other than damage are binary, and the bottom two talent branches definitely don't have a theme that I can see, although they could if you swapped a couple of the talents around.

I don't want to say that archery is unplayable or so underpowered that any archer is doomed to failure, but I do strongly feel that ranged combat got shorted, and I hope to see improvements in DA2. Of course, I understand it's hard to balance, especially since changes to PC archers affect enemy archers as well. Hopefully, though, Bioware can make archery fun.

Modifié par soteria, 20 juillet 2010 - 07:05 .

[Loc'n'lol]

soteria wrote...
[...]

*clap clap*

[Tirigon]

Custodire wrote...

And lifetime to train an archer? Maybe if you were competing in the Olympics.

Or if you were defeating the Best knights in the world with your longbows.

[Tirigon]

Seriously, all BioWare had to do to make Archery amazing is employing Dennis Lee (The Maker of the "Combat Tweaks" mod) for DA2.



With Combat Tweaks Archery is totally improved and amazingly strong.

[soteria]

The Combat Tweaks mod in general makes a lot of good changes. The sad thing to notice is all the little bugs it fixes, but that's another story entirely. Thing is, as long as they try to keep players and enemies symmetrical, balance is going to be problematic, because what feels like the right strength for a player ability isn't always appropriate for the enemy, and vice versa.

[Wishpig]

Agreed! Very rarely do I see OP's suggesting ideas to the devs that strike me as very note-worthy. This is one of those rare cases. I'm a fan of ranged classes... hell I would say I play ranged DPS based classes more then any other. But DA:O's archery sucked. Not only because in terms of damage it was mah, but because IT WAS SO BORING! Man, your ideas, espically the running/shooting, option sound fun.

I would also like to see some arrow killing moves. Two arrows through the eyes please

[DA Trap Star]

Archery was awesome with Poison/Bombs, besides that it was pretty boring. But throwing a shock bomb combo'ed with Scattershot never got old lol.

[Tirigon]

soteria wrote...

The Combat Tweaks mod in general makes a lot of good changes. The sad thing to notice is all the little bugs it fixes, but that's another story entirely. Thing is, as long as they try to keep players and enemies symmetrical, balance is going to be problematic, because what feels like the right strength for a player ability isn't always appropriate for the enemy, and vice versa.

Ooooh yes......

Especially Fireball, Crushing prison, Chainlightning and Scattershot are insane party killers.

[iTomes]

well the best party-killer is still "walking bomb". nothing beats that^^

[Tirigon]

iTomes wrote...

well the best party-killer is still "walking bomb". nothing beats that^^

But it´s not used by enemies, at least.

[Mdfitz]

i thought it was fine it worked for me my rouge is an archer right and just doms and leliana is always an archer when i use her and the work fine

[V-time]

Archery was if i remember correctly first intended as a simple support option to which ever melee style you choosed in the end but thankfully it evolved. Now there is a need for crafting special arrows (in a reliable way) or enchanting bows etc. basically the same stuff you can do with melee weapons. Furthermore it would be nice to have some sort of Specialization intended for Archer rather than general support ones. If Backstabbing worked with Archery the Assasin spec would be viable but thats a different story (plus miserable range on MoD for an Archer at least).



As for some posters please realize that the OP talks about Origins not Awakening which as stated correctly introduced some really overpowered Talent which apart from breaking the game also stole your customization options if you wanted to be an efficent Archer by having you go for pure Dex.

[HighMoon]

Agreed. I want to be able to poison my arrows god damn it!

[Carmen_Willow]

I can't speak to the stats, etc., but I did want to add one thing. In DA, archery does seem boring. It is slow, and seemingly limited, and even if you "aimed" your shots miss...



I started playing Oblivion while I wait for the next DA DLC or DA 2. At first, I HATED archery in Oblivion, but now that I've practiced....well, one of the most satisfying things in O is to sneak up on an enemy and take them out with an arrow, then sneak to another position and take out another bad guy before they even know you're arround. The "letting go" of the arrow and the satisfying "thwack" as it hits home, is truly fun.



I'd love to see something similar when it comes to archery in DA. That, and let me poison the arrows for gosh sake!