Testing? Testing? Is this thing on? Wait, we’re live? Uh-oh. I mean, uh. . .

Howdy, retrobies! It’s your friendly neighborhood K-wizard here (no, the other one. I know who you’re thinking, but it’s not the handsome one. It’s his identical twin. I know you all get confused about that), coming to you on the devblog for the second time ever! Today’s topic: A behind the scenes peek at ranged combat updates (Hey, sounds kinda’ like last time you heard from me , huh?).

When You Least Expect It. . .

You’ve probably read the news post on inform already, but if you haven’t, you should. Last Saturday, the staff held one of our generally bi-weekly meetings to talk about our recent problems with ranged combat. Rita led the discussion with a breakdown of current ranged combat functioning and ran some numbers on where we’d be at with various possible adjustments to our present code. The meeting went on for several hours and lots of ideas were brought to the table, ranging from rolling back the code or disabling crits to complete rewrites of the ranged combat system. Perhaps one of the trickiest questions to answer, in the end, was what, exactly we were actually trying to accomplish.

What Are You Aiming At?

Numerous possible problems with ranged combat’s current setup have been identified and discussed, and at this point, not all were agreed upon. We did have a consensus around the big issues, though, and for this meeting, we focused on one issue first and foremost, with two secondary issues getting partial attention.

This meeting’s concerns were:

• Primary: Some ranged mobs, particularly lone crossbow and thunderstick bosses, are too dangerous.
• Secondary: Characters with no ranged expertise are too competitive with actually pathed ranged players. This is especially true when one compares any other game role between trained and untrained characters.
• Secondary: There are bugs. There are always bugs. There are big bugs and small bugs and the big bugs have swarms of small bugs hiding underneath. The small bugs breed. So do the big bugs.

BOOM! Headshot.

You’re already familiar with the basics of our implementation (You did read he news post by now, right? No, seriously, go read it), but to summarize and repeat, four main issues were addressed.

First and foremost, in pursuit of our primary goal, the math for NPC ranged crits was adjusted. As a result, mobs doing ranged combat do not crit for as much damage as they would otherwise. To compensate, they crit more often than they did before. Overall damage remains roughly the same through this particular change, but the damage spikes are less severe, meaning players (assuming they’re high enough level to even be fighting those mobs) are much less likely to be killed instantly during battle, and healers should actually have a chance to respond.

Secondly, in pursuit of our first secondary objective, those without any ranged combat skill training will be unable to use ranged weapons. Previously, having no or insufficient training in a ranged weapon skill would reduce the number of attacks per round one could make, in addition to other penalties, but this first part effectively didn’t apply to thundersticks, crossbows and large throwing. Those weapons only ever got one attack per round anyway. Now some training is required before one even knows how to fire ranged weapons at all.

Thirdly, in pursuit of our final secondary objective, a bug that prevented slaying skills from affecting ranged combat damage has been fixed. In effect, the bonus was being applied to the calculated damage number before this change, but it was being applied only after the damage had already been dealt, thus rendering it moot. Now, ranged combat users should notice an actual bonus from killing skills with ranks (assassination and hunter), terrain boosting skills (stalker and streetfighting) and other slaying skills (crimefighting, dragonslaying, giantslaying and angelslaying).

Finally, in pursuit of all objectives, a bug was found with the final ranged combat tert skill (all tert paths). This skill provides an increase to critical hit damage that is not affected by the usual caps, allowing pathed ranged users to get larger crits than unpathed ranged combatants are able to. Unfortunately, a bug with the way the skill was applied caused part of this bonus to be applied to everyone, regardless of training or membership in the tertiary guild. Those without the skill (players and mobs alike) were getting larger crits than was intended. The bug has been fixed, and the bonus has been removed from non-pathed players and monsters.

Setting Our Sights. . .

There’s still more to do and more to discuss. While I can’t speak for the whole staff, it seems likely that at least the following issues will be addressed at some future time:

• Ammo slots: By extension, this means discussing issues with thrown ammo and differences between thrown holders and projectile weapons.
• Skill value: In particular, ranged combat ability benefits in many ways much more strongly from stats and much less strongly from training when compared to other forms of game play. A mage or fighter who neglects training key abilities or skips pathing suffers a lot more than an archer, for example, who does it at present. Making the basic weapon skills mandatory was a good start, but there’s still more to consider.
• Choice of Affecting Stats: There remains some concern among some of the staff regarding certain stat determinations for certain weapons. Should small throwing actually be agility based? Should bows be strength based? Does intelligence really make sense for improving one’s ability with a crossbow? What changes, if any, will happen here are unclear at this time, but it’s an expected subject, and I’d be surprised if at least one or two weapon types didn’t get tweaked along the way (I’m looking at YOU, small throwing!).
• Guild stat yields: Not all ranged combat guilds (secondaries and terts) give the best stats for their ranged weapon of choice. Some of this was at player request during the last set of ranged fixes, as some players insisted they’d still need strength as a musketeer to carry their ammo, for example. Others were just because a full revamp of some guild stats was delayed for a later date. Many initial assessments about what stats would be needed have been reconsidered, and delayed mods will need to taken care of. Expect changes in this area to be forthcoming.