<<It took 7 load times. So we have 28 seconds of load times and 7 full aims. 28+35=63 seconds.>>

These numbers don't make sense. In order to get that load time all 7 dual loads would have to be 4 seconds long, which is hard for me to believe since the competition bows have a 66.6% chance at 2 seconds, and a 33.3% at 4 under dual load. Your short bow numbers look artificially inflated, or you just ran the test on 1 or 2 mobs.

The other option is a defensive boost for smaller/lighter weapons.

The idea being that holding smaller weapon makes you more agile to block/evade.

I'd imagine small edged would have defensive boosts for Block/Evade, Medium Edged neutral. Large Edged would receive a slight penalty.

Short bows/Crossbows would have a boost to evasion/block, long bows neutral, and composite bows a slight penatly.

That way damage stays with heavier weapons and not everything is about damage.

Maybe this is already in place, though.

<<I just want to make sure I'm understanding you. Do you mean that my short bow numbers look too good or that it should take even longer to kill? If the latter, doesn't that make shortbow damage even worse?>>

No, your dps time is calculated at a 100% 4 seconds per load, which isn't going to happen as dual loading the short bow will yield a 2 second round time 66% of the time, so your time to kill is inflated. Can you run the test on like 20 mobs again?

<<The game dual loads(the command fire arrow would single load and perform the same attack), aims and fires in one attack that gives me a 12-13 second RT. The last second is when the shots actually hit. A short bow might have 6-7 and a long bow 9-10. Comp bow still maintains it's power, but in a PvP fight, a short or long bow might take the lead because of the quicker attacks.>>

I think you'd be hard pressed to find people that would find that an attractive option.

Balancing out TM could be as simple as introducing a 4-5 second hard round time when targeting is initiated (after the prep phase); this would bring it in line with bows in use, though it would still enjoy key advantages (being able to parry, shield penalty, etc).

What if did something like the following?


Sling: 9.5 DPS, reduced aim time -1, 0 shield penalty, occasional kneeling on hit
Staff Sling: 10 DPS, can parry with the staff, occasional kneeling on hit

Shortbow: 10 DPS, +recover/crit, 0 shield penalty
Longbow: 11 DPS, 1 shield penalty
Compbow: 12 DPS, 1.25 shield penalty

LCrossbow: 11 DPS, 0 shield penalty, occasional knock to sitting on hit
HCrossbow: 12 DPS, 0 shield penalty, occasional knock back/down


* Note - I'll likely have to "convert" old repeater crossbows to the new stat metrics. Much like swappable melee weapons, they won't have quite as much power as their single-shot counterparts. But given the increased fire rate they'll still come out ahead.


DPS is largely on account of harder hits penetrating armor better. Against unarmored targets they'd reach parity.

I'll re-evaluate powershot's numbers. It was intended to land a bonused hit/damage again enemies without the need for as long an aim time.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

<What if did something like the following?
<Sling: 9.5 DPS, reduced aim time -1, 0... cont'd>

That makes sense. A short bow and crossbow would be much easier to maneuver with.

Adding a maneuverability dimension to weapons instead of "everything should be equal DPS" is good.

Staff sling should maybe be 10.5 considering round time is 4 seconds.

I hate to say no to a good thing but the kneeling on hit could cause some extra complications around balance.

If any should get chance to knock back, it should be HC (maybe LC) but not the repeaters

No, the shield penalty is there to offset the damage (obviously). Otherwise why would you choose a short bow?

I've rolled some changes to bow calculations into Test. Please let me know what you think. Shortbows should see higher damage across the board.

Note - some of the change was to the bow templates. You'll need to get new bows (sold in the engineering society crates) to test this with. Thanks!

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

Technically mages should be holding TM Foci to help power spells (and not fiddling with bows)... but since TM Foci don't exist yet, I've just hardcoded a placeholder so TM isn't a completely useless mechanic for the time being.

Mechanically it would be tricky to penalize bows/tm when used simultaneously. Haven't decided if that is something I want to do yet.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

<<Mechanically it would be tricky to penalize bows/tm when used simultaneously. Haven't decided if that is something I want to do yet.>>

I don't really think you should. I see why people would hate the double dipping concept, but I think more so, I hate limitations in DR. That's a big part of what I think makes the world so interesting and full of variety.

I do however like Pendus' idea of dropping shortbow aim time. I like little mechanical feats and differences, that become hard to really equate to each other. In some situations, the speed of the aim, may be more beneficial than the power. Other potential mechanics could be like, bows that have no 1 second fire RT or severely lowered draw RT(like mana bows), or just other interesting mechanical feats. I'm sure there are many ideas in the minds of the community.

I just think DPS calcs and comparisons is just one simplistic way to rate value. Unfortunately because of templates, DR is pretty much governed by them, and it can stagnate the variety of what is "good". And mechanical differences help make it more interesting. Although, I can see some things being really hard to balance or equate.



~Van

>>No, the shield penalty is there to offset the damage (obviously). Otherwise why would you choose a short bow?

I understand the point. With a tiered penalty It would be hard for me to find a reason to not use short bow.

There would be no reason that I could see to use anything but short bow in PvE (as long as you aren't a Ranger/Barb), and I mostly ignore Bow in PvP as it is. I would switch back to using a short bow in PvP for sure since the shield penalty is what keeps me away.

My biggest complaint with bows is the shield penalty, if you gave me a choice of using one with a no/minimal shield penalty with less damage and a normal/increased penalty with better damage, I will pick the one with less penalties every time. You can make up for loss of damage with buffs.

Kodius can do whatever he wants with Bows and I will more than likely continue to enjoy them, I just think the tiered shield penalty will mean more to players than bumping damage in another way for short bows.

If you want TM to act more like a weapon and not be able to double dip, why not just make it so that weapon attacks break the target?

I can be targeting a fireball at you, but if I decide to shoot my bow, throw my hammer, slice my sword, etc. then it breaks the target and I have to re-target my spell. Then the mage can still do mana management (or debilitating brawling moves?) while targeting the spell, but just can't attack.

They could still attack while casting AOE spells perhaps, but AOE spells are weak against a single target anyway, and it would give AOE spells a niche and a reason to be used over single target spells.

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Ok. I've made another round of changes to bow damage over in DRT. Mathmatically they should all be doing the same DPS on moderately armored enemies now.


>>After playing with the bows provided in Test I think short bow feels a lot better, but the generic comp bow seemed weaker than it should by how it appraised. It was the only heavy draw bow out of the 4 and it didn't perform any better than the longbow if not a little worse. This was against Juvie Wyverns with 813 Bows/buffed with Khri Steady (full 20%)/100 Agility/80 Strength/with old capped ammo

That is exactly what I wanted to hear. I had only buffed shortbow, so as to get a baseline score. Please try again now.

>> Shortbow aim times

I considered this and briefly added it to test. But shortbow and longbows overlap in load times by about 50% without significantly changing stats. Changing the AIM time would have been too large a change. It may still be an option for the low draw strength shortbows if balancing them proves impossible.

>> Sling aim times

These really aren't possible to balance perfectly balance the DPS for heavily armored enemies (which 80% critters don't fall into). We also forget that elemental damaging slingstones might bypass much of the armor. So I have reduced their AIM time by 1 second. They are a much faster, but still damaging option. Perhaps good for applying explosive/disabling shells with or something.


>> Crossbows

We'll just have to see how these turn out once I get to them. Load times will likely drop somewhat to keep things balanced.



Thank you for all the testing!

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

So I did some more PvE under the same conditions as my last post, and I like how bows feel as a whole a lot more now. I'll probably keep using my reduced load short bow now, and longbow is noticeably more powerful than the regular short bow now.

The comp bow was doing better than the longbow this time, but not by much and isn't really noticeable if you aren't collecting the numbers. I'm going to make my way out to dillos since they are more armored, or maybe try xala'shar, to see if I can see more of a difference between the two.

I ran some more tests too. All 3 bow types are within 1% of each other's DPS against a medium armored enemy.

What may be happening is the excess damage from the composite bow is lost, so on that particular critter/skill level you don't notice the boost. In other situation it might kill 1-hit quicker and be more noticeable or something.

I also adjusted the elemental arrows physical stats down 1 level to balance out how much DPS they were capable of doing.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

Since plat was synced, and our resident crafting Gnome was kind enough to make a new battle longbow for me I went ahead and did a few more tests to check out the update.


Barb, 100 strength, 90 agility, 975 bow, underhunting in dillos

You are certain that the desert armadillo is healthy.
You are certain that it is somewhat weaker than you are.
You are certain that it is not quite as agile as you are.
You estimate that it is about as disciplined as you are.
You are certain that it is not quite as quick to react as you are.
You think it is likely that it is not quite as conditioned as you are.
Taking stock of its offensive abilities, and defending with a silversteel ceremonial shield trimmed in blackened moonsilver and a maple battle longbow, you are certain that the desert armadillo is a slightly less skilled opponent.
Taking stock of its defensive abilities, and attacking with a maple battle longbow, you are certain that the desert armadillo is something that you could tear to shreds.

[Roundtime: 5 seconds]


I ran each test with 50 dillos. All were performed with the new battle longbow, and all times were assumed to use the minimum range in full aim at 5 seconds (the actual times would be slightly higher since the range can go up to 7 seconds I believe, I just didn't want to count each aim).

Anyhow, using eagle and single shots I was killing them in 4 shots at 36 seconds, with dual load I was killing them in 3 at 33 seconds. I think you might of gone a little too hard on dual load, Kodius.

Considering this is underhunting, over 30 seconds to kill one still seems pretty excessive. The biggest issue is that bows are still massively underpowered relative to... just about everything else; as an example I averaged 30 seconds killing the same mob with 797 brawling. 797. Brawling.

I'm not a heavy bow user, so I don't have a lot to add here. I just wanted to say that I really like the idea of differentiating the bows and crossbows with the different DPS and penalties. I'm not sure that those are exactly the right numbers or penalties to use, but I would like to have more options for my weapon choices.