Ranged means "from far away"


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Shoals Surfer

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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 11:19

Ranged means "from far away"

We need to have a discussion about ranged attacks. Ranged attacks SHOULD work best from a medium or long distance, not from a very short distance. In my opinion. That's why they're called "ranged."

I propose a simple idea which will heavily nerf ranged but which will add a great deal of complexity.

Simply give ranged attacks a high delay when an enemy is next to the player.

Give ranged attacks a higher delay when an enemy is next to the player and has a successful attack.

It would give the player a reason to switch to a melee weapon rather than just crossbow-tabbing.

Otherwise, tho, it doesn't affect "ranged gameplay" at RANGE, which is what the weapon is for.

What do you think? Im not sure how much delay would be appropriate, but I think it would be a good idea.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 11:48

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

"let's make kiting even more tediously optimal than it already is, it sounds like a good idea"
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 11:56

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

I respect you a lot, because you're usually really insightful. But here, I fail to see the association between kiting and using ranged weapons to shoot orcs in the face. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten me why crossbows should work better than shortblades in melee range?
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 12:00

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

The association is that making ranged weapons more realistic will not make them better from a gameplay perspective - it will make people step back, blink about or whatever instead so that they can use their weapons. That isn't fun or even very tactical, it just means that you should keep your distance at all times. Of course this is already present to an extent because both Swiftness and bows exist (to name an example), but encouraging this kind of behaviour even more seems out of place. The nerfs to kiting (such as the stealth reduction with Swiftness) should continue and it shouldn't be indirectly buffed like this. In other words, the current ranged system does not need kiting to be in all fights. Your proposed ranged system does not prevent ranged being good in nearly all fights, but it puts in a tedious complication for the player to achieve this.

I hope this is more comprehensible.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 13:38

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

I fail to see why making "keep a distance at all times" is a bad, weird, negative aspect of ranged weapons. How about we just add another skill "poke a goblin in a face with a crossbow bolt" instead of having ranged weapons at all?
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 13:49

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Between

shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt

and

cast Swiftness
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
walk four steps back
shoot a bolt
walk four steps back
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
walk four steps back
recast Swiftness
walk four steps back
shoot a bolt

I want the former. Swiftness is just an example, scblink, blink, speedy races, speed mutations, boots of running, Haste, arrows of dispersal etc. all serve the same function. This has nothing to do with a preference for mindless games, because I don't have that - but you can't tell me that the latter has any sort of tactical finesse involved. Instead, it is tedious, as my second post in this thread explains in more detail. As galehar said gameplay > realism, for nearly everything, and definitely in this case. Tactics become more complicated when you choose which enemy to kill first, when you have Portal Projectile, when you position yourself according to the monsters around you, etc. etc., but definitely not when simply kiting.

Your arguments seem to be "tactics/complexity" and "realism/it's called "ranged"". I have given my opinion on the tactical aspect and remain unconvinced in regards to that, and realism is not a design goal.

Instead of encouraging players to take up risk-free kiting strategies (which your proposed change would do), we should make kiting risky and/or impossible or only useful in rare situations.

edit: not that I want arrows of dispersal to be nerfed, they are a bad example because their is an interesting decision involved with spending a consumable; but all my other examples are valid and don't cover the full spectrum of non-consumable kiting opportunities
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 14:00

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

sardonica wrote:I fail to see why making "keep a distance at all times" is a bad, weird, negative aspect of ranged weapons. How about we just add another skill "poke a goblin in a face with a crossbow bolt" instead of having ranged weapons at all?


If you want to play ranged and your best weapon is a Holy Longbow and the only weapon you meaningfully leveled was Bows because it only made sense to, why should you be shoehorned into a fast species or a specific spellcasting schools because of an arbitrarily range limit? Why should you have to switch from the only holy weapon you have to kill the Executioner next to you, that you are not going to maintain distance from? Unless, that is, you expect everyone to be hasting and cblinking at the same time
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 14:20

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

twelwe wrote:
sardonica wrote:I fail to see why making "keep a distance at all times" is a bad, weird, negative aspect of ranged weapons. How about we just add another skill "poke a goblin in a face with a crossbow bolt" instead of having ranged weapons at all?


If you want to play ranged and your best weapon is a Holy Longbow and the only weapon you meaningfully leveled was Bows because it only made sense to, why should you be shoehorned into a fast species or a specific spellcasting schools because of an arbitrarily range limit? Why should you have to switch from the only holy weapon you have to kill the Executioner next to you, that you are not going to maintain distance from? Unless, that is, you expect everyone to be hasting and cblinking at the same time


I want it to never make sense just to meaningfully level Bows.

If Bows are good for ranged AND close-up, just change their name from "Bows" to "Melee weapons with lots of charges you can pick up off the floor, which also can kill things far away." They aren't Bows.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 14:27

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

All else being equal, ranged weapons are innately better than melee weapons because they are ranged.

Rather than making over-complicated changes that make ranged weapons bad against adjacent opponents it would probably make more sense to just nerf them so that it would be optimal to use a melee weapon to do greater damage when you can.

As a guess I'd say that with equal skill investment a ranged weapon should do around half the damage per turn of a 2-handed melee weapon - but that's just a guess.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 14:37

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

sardonica wrote:I want it to never make sense just to meaningfully level Bows.

And what you're proposing doesn't meet this goal. It encourages kiting, not taking up a melee skill.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 15:33

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

sardonica wrote:If Bows are good for ranged AND close-up, just change their name from "Bows" to "Melee weapons with lots of charges you can pick up off the floor, which also can kill things far away." They aren't Bows.


How is it not a bow? Would getting shot with an arrow hurt less from only four feet away than from forty? You're making a really bizarre semantic argument here.

If ranged combat needs a nerf, Jeremiah's suggestion is better: trading raw damage output for the benefit of not having to stand next to the thing you're killing.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 17:28

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

nicolae wrote:
How is it not a bow? Would getting shot with an arrow hurt less from only four feet away than from forty?


Actually, it would hurt more since it wouldn't have more force and momentum from four feet away that'd it'd lose from traveling another thirty-six due to air friction and, if applicable, wind. Yay for physics!

Of course, from four feet or forty feet it'd still kill you just as much. And don't take that as a suggestion for ranged to do more damage in melee or less damage at ranged.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 17:40

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Astute replys. This is why bowmen have traditionally engaged their opponents from 4 feet or less, because Physics!

Lol oh wait, no.

Bowmen cannot string a bow and attack when they're being engaged by a guy with pointy metal thrusting it in their face.

Yes, I agree that maybe my initial solution is not ideal. However, there is a solution to ranged which doesn't treat it like some sort of perverse melee weapon with options.
(p.s. this is stupid some dev please make it not stupid) - minmay

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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 17:50

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

You still haven't given a reason why that isn't exactly how we should treat ranged, except "ranged should be from range" - which simply doesn't work well from a gameplay perspective. A ranged nerf needs to look completely different (probably to damage in general).
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 18:01

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

cerebovssquire wrote:You still haven't given a reason why that isn't exactly how we should treat ranged, except "ranged should be from range" - which simply doesn't work well from a gameplay perspective. A ranged nerf needs to look completely different (probably to damage in general).


That's what I've been trying to get at. I'm not very clever at designing things, but I'm trying to solicit opinions about how to make Ranged act like Ranged, Melee to act like Melee, and Magic to act like Magic. Right now, Ranged acts like "Melee but with consumables," and I'm trying to brainstorm idea to make it work differently.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 18:21

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

I'm sure if the devs apply the unique passive abilities to melee weapons (swing strike for axes, etc), it will be a much better solution for differentiating melee and ranged combat than the proposal in the OP.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 19:21

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

sardonica wrote:Astute replys. This is why bowmen have traditionally engaged their opponents from 4 feet or less, because Physics!

Lol oh wait, no.

Bowmen cannot string a bow and attack when they're being engaged by a guy with pointy metal thrusting it in their face.

Yes, I agree that maybe my initial solution is not ideal. However, there is a solution to ranged which doesn't treat it like some sort of perverse melee weapon with options.

Point blank executions shots can be quite devastating in real life. They're just harder to pull off if the target isn't incapacitated, caught unaware, not resisting, etc (and with a weapon that requires prep time). The crucial difference is crawl is turn based, and permits only one action at a time. Real life uses continuous real time (well, assuming time isn't quantized on some small enough scale), and allows multiple events to progress simultaneously (though of course what's simultaneous depends on the observer). This means the fundamental physics of how time passes and how events occur is radically differs between the crawl-verse and our universe. This means the theory of relativity breaks down in crawl, barring major revision. Frankly, it's not surprising that fundamental differences in the basic laws of a universe result in changes to way things interact within it. (Yay Physics!).

The only example I can think of a game when ranged attacks don't work at melee range is turn bases strategies like fire emblem, advance wars, etc. It looked something like this:
  Code:
melee   bows/spells/artillery/etc
.....      ..#..
..#..      .#.#.
.#@#.      #.@.#
..#..      .#.#.
.....      ..#..

This worked in game because you were managing a squad or army of units. So positioning mattered- you didn't want your ranged attacks to be left helpless in melee and vice versa. In the rare event you had a swords/bow-person this did force you to switch weapons (although this was trivial without a skill system or having to waste a turn to do it). This didn't encourage kiting- mainly because there were easier ways to deal with it (mostly by using units intelligently in conjunction with one another), and because several factors would have made it unfeasible (limited size of maps, the need to hold on to valuable territory or terrain, a limited number of turns to complete a mission, etc).

It's rather a different thing in crawl. If the choice is "take a step back and fire" vs "invest a ton of xp in a second skill so you can swap weapons instead, then attack" you're going to choose kiting every time. Penalizing point blank ranged attacks doesn't make the game better.
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 19:50

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

OK, thanks. So the only difference between ranged and Melee attacks in crawl is that ranged attacks take some quantifiable cost in terms of ammo. I won't complain - I've got several streaks with hunters...
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Post Sunday, 13th May 2012, 22:22

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

sardonica wrote:Astute replys. This is why bowmen have traditionally engaged their opponents from 4 feet or less, because Physics!

Lol oh wait, no.

Bowmen cannot string a bow and attack when they're being engaged by a guy with pointy metal thrusting it in their face.

Yes, I agree that maybe my initial solution is not ideal. However, there is a solution to ranged which doesn't treat it like some sort of perverse melee weapon with options.


You're getting desperate with your argument now

crawl is a video game, and is not adherent to the laws of physics. In real life, I cannot wave my hands and make butterflies appear, but in crawl this is easily doable. In real life, matter cannot come from nowhere, but in crawl acquirement scrolls exist for that exact purpose. In real life, you hunt in the wild, but in crawl you can hunt game living their natural lives in a 4x4 stone room from a doorway - stone rooms being the natural habitat for many animals in the game. God help you if you try to debate these points too.
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Post Monday, 14th May 2012, 03:01

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

mageykun wrote:
sardonica wrote:Astute replys. This is why bowmen have traditionally engaged their opponents from 4 feet or less, because Physics!

Lol oh wait, no.

Bowmen cannot string a bow and attack when they're being engaged by a guy with pointy metal thrusting it in their face.

Yes, I agree that maybe my initial solution is not ideal. However, there is a solution to ranged which doesn't treat it like some sort of perverse melee weapon with options.

Point blank executions shots can be quite devastating in real life. They're just harder to pull off if the target isn't incapacitated, caught unaware, not resisting, etc (and with a weapon that requires prep time). The crucial difference is crawl is turn based, and permits only one action at a time. Real life uses continuous real time (well, assuming time isn't quantized on some small enough scale), and allows multiple events to progress simultaneously (though of course what's simultaneous depends on the observer). This means the fundamental physics of how time passes and how events occur is radically differs between the crawl-verse and our universe. This means the theory of relativity breaks down in crawl, barring major revision. Frankly, it's not surprising that fundamental differences in the basic laws of a universe result in changes to way things interact within it. (Yay Physics!).

The only example I can think of a game when ranged attacks don't work at melee range is turn bases strategies like fire emblem, advance wars, etc. It looked something like this:
  Code:
melee   bows/spells/artillery/etc
.....      ..#..
..#..      .#.#.
.#@#.      #.@.#
..#..      .#.#.
.....      ..#..

This worked in game because you were managing a squad or army of units. So positioning mattered- you didn't want your ranged attacks to be left helpless in melee and vice versa. In the rare event you had a swords/bow-person this did force you to switch weapons (although this was trivial without a skill system or having to waste a turn to do it). This didn't encourage kiting- mainly because there were easier ways to deal with it (mostly by using units intelligently in conjunction with one another), and because several factors would have made it unfeasible (limited size of maps, the need to hold on to valuable territory or terrain, a limited number of turns to complete a mission, etc).

It's rather a different thing in crawl. If the choice is "take a step back and fire" vs "invest a ton of xp in a second skill so you can swap weapons instead, then attack" you're going to choose kiting every time. Penalizing point blank ranged attacks doesn't make the game better.


Thanks. I do see your point. How about just penalizing the swap between ranged and melee weapons, to emulate the stringing of the bow and give a tactical choice... Do I run around with my bow and get a chance for a first shot, or risk coming round a corner and not having my best weapon out?
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Post Monday, 14th May 2012, 03:36

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

If swapping between two kinds of melee weapon is never penalized, then why penalize swapping between ranged and melee weapons? I really don't see switching from a bow to an axe as more troublesome than from a spear to an axe, for an example.
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Post Monday, 14th May 2012, 06:45

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

pratamawirya wrote:If swapping between two kinds of melee weapon is never penalized, then why penalize swapping between ranged and melee weapons? I really don't see switching from a bow to an axe as more troublesome than from a spear to an axe, for an example.


Well, Melee weapons and ranged weapons are in entirely different categories. If they're the same, let's just eliminate "ranged" and melee" and just have one category, "Weapons"
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Post Monday, 14th May 2012, 09:06

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

sardonica wrote:Bowmen cannot string a bow and attack when they're being engaged by a guy with pointy metal thrusting it in their face.

You should see The Avengers.

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Post Monday, 14th May 2012, 09:18

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Wow, a circular thread.

What I don't see here is the most important thing that needs identifying before game changes can be seen as 'required': a problem. What is the problem with point-blank ranged attacks? These work fine in real life as well. If I fire a gun, or a bow, into your face at point-blank range, it could actually do even more damage than at distance. So I don't see how 'realism' even enters this argument.

On the other hand, other posters have pointed out several reasons why a point-blank penalty would encourage degenerate gameplay. So this change would add nothing whilst introducing a new problem. Therefore it's a bad change.

Let me also explain how I interpret most roguelike games: the display (even in tiles mode) is a representation of the environment; it is not to scale. A single tile actually represents an indeterminate amount of space, typically the size of a smallish room. This is how shops are able to exist on a single tile. It's also why you get hungry from running around a small few rooms: the distances and time spans spent doing so are much greater than they appear from the diagrammatic representation you're seeing. Therefore it's not necessarily point blank when you fire into a neighbouring tile. Think of melee as that you are both meeting near the edges of the territory. The physics and mechanics of the game tend to make more sense when you think about it this way (although, yeah, it's a game and not everything can possibly make sense all the time, whatever your frame of reference).

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Post Monday, 14th May 2012, 14:03

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Grimm wrote:
sardonica wrote:Bowmen cannot string a bow and attack when they're being engaged by a guy with pointy metal thrusting it in their face.

You should see The Avengers.


I was totally going to come here today and say this, but didn't earlier because I've been mulling over this concept for a while.

Quite a while.

I've been playing DrTm with Bows a lot lately and I've been sort of surprised when monsters come up to me and I'm still using my bow on them (when it's not worth transmuting) and I realize that Centaurs, who use bows, come up to you and use melee instead of still shooting you (possibly to conserve ammo, but I dunno). AI doesn't seem to judge on what the superior attack mode is depending on distance.

While observing this, I wondered about whether there should be attack penalties or bonuses or defense penalties or bonuses depending on defender distance from the ranged attacker. Unfortunately, it does not work in favor of the argument made in this thread.

Damage done would conceivably diminish with distance as velocity decreases (conceivably adjusted based on ammo type and launcher type; steel ammo and xbows would likely never be penalized).
At a distance, given travel time (even considering short range as we're in a dungeon), a dextrous target would have a miniscule advantage to dodge or block an incoming ranged attack than one at point blank range.

Accuracy would be diminishing at longer ranges, extended by the type of weapon, Granted, movement at short ranges might counteract any point blank bonus. I could see an accuracy penalty or a dodge bonus at point blank range, but then I could see that for all distances.

Which means it evens out, which is why I never started a thread like this.

As mumra says, the display is a representation of what's going on, you are not necessarily touching anyone you are adjacent to; they are simply within a range arbitrarily defined as "adjacent" where non-reaching melee attacks can conceivably connect.
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Post Monday, 14th May 2012, 17:20

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

If you want ranged weapons to not work as well in melee, you could re-use the armour penalty roll when something intelligent is within melee range.

What I mean is this: you know how sometimes "Your armour prevents you from hitting the foo" or "your shield prevents you from hitting the foo," right? Well, suppose if an enemy with a melee weapon is in melee range, you have a small, but not insignificant chance of getting a "your enemy's (weapon) prevents you from firing" once in a while.

Bam! instant slight nerf to ranged in melee without it being a major problem. This would mean that you could run/blink/backpedal if able, but you're not doing less damage up close, if you choose to, or have to, keep firing.
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Post Tuesday, 15th May 2012, 11:11

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

I'm sorry but there is something I don't understand here.

Between

shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt

and

cast Swiftness
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
walk four steps back
shoot a bolt
walk four steps back
shoot a bolt
shoot a bolt
walk four steps back
recast Swiftness
walk four steps back
shoot a bolt


This is not an indirect buff to kiting. Simply because kiting would be more necessary does not make it a BUFF. Simply a requirement. sardonica's point is that shooting at range is basicly risk free but shooting up close takes the same risk as shooting from far (aka 0). So, you should be FORCED to kite to keep shooting effectively. In other words, sardonica's point is that you should take a cost to shooting at closer range, in terms of the turns spent kiting, the resources necessary to do so, the space required to keep moving and whatever else is there. Needing to keep doing this might make some people take up a Melee skill. It might be more tedious, it might not be a meaningful cost but it is certainly not a buff. Being forced to spend resources to do something as compared to when it was optional to do that thing will never be a buff.

It just annoyed me is all.

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Post Tuesday, 15th May 2012, 13:32

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Going back to the abstraction of space, the weapon delay system tends to help with that abstraction. The reason that you don't bring a bow or crossbow to a sword fight in real life is not that you can't effectively shoot the guy with the sword when he's up in your face (because you can)...but because you won't get a second shot before he has taken three or four swings at you. And that's how it ends up working out in Crawl until weapon skills get very high and delay is reduced a lot. If my VM is using a sling against a crimson imp (EDIT: when my VM is using a sling against a crimson imp) and I have at most Slings 2 at that stage, that imp is usually getting two attacks in the time it takes me to fire once. Artificially forcing me to kite the monster in order to get the full effectiveness of the weapon adds unnecessary complexity to something that is already taken care of to some extent.

If an adjustment must be made, reduce effective ranged weapon skill when the shooter starts its move with an adjacent opponent. That would reduce to-hit and damage and increase delay.
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Post Tuesday, 15th May 2012, 15:26

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Throwing one out there (pun intended): Penalize reaching weapons by giving them a slight accuracy penalty against adjacent enemies.
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Post Tuesday, 15th May 2012, 15:59

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Guys, it really doesn't matter what the penalty is. As soon as a player becomes spoiled to that fact that it's not optimal to fire adjacent, they're going to adjust behavior. And as several people have explained quite clearly, kiting is a more attractive option than swapping. And we really don't need to encourage that. (Exception: if the penalty is negligible, people will ignore it and fire at point blank anyways. Of course, if the penalty is negligible, why bother having it?).

I have to say murma nailed it. These are problematic solutions for something that hasn't been shown to be broken. Unless someone comes up with some solid gameplay reasons that point blank firing is bad, I don't see the point in having this conversation. (For reference: realism isn't gameplay related. And player/monster symmetry isn't important. Just because 'taurs swap to melee doesn't mean we should have to. If it makes you feel better, we're just better than them, like DE master archers).

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Post Tuesday, 15th May 2012, 21:45

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Ripplez wrote:I'm sorry but there is something I don't understand here

This is not an indirect buff to kiting. Simply because kiting would be more necessary does not make it a BUFF. Simply a requirement. sardonica's point is that shooting at range is basicly risk free but shooting up close takes the same risk as shooting from far (aka 0). So, you should be FORCED to kite to keep shooting effectively. In other words, sardonica's point is that you should take a cost to shooting at closer range, in terms of the turns spent kiting, the resources necessary to do so, the space required to keep moving and whatever else is there. Needing to keep doing this might make some people take up a Melee skill. It might be more tedious, it might not be a meaningful cost but it is certainly not a buff. Being forced to spend resources to do something as compared to when it was optional to do that thing will never be a buff.

It just annoyed me is all.



When I say "indirect buff" I mean indirect. It doesn't make kiting better, but it makes not kiting a lot worse; and therefore, kiting becomes a lot better seen relatively to not kiting.

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Post Wednesday, 16th May 2012, 05:47

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

This proposal would represent a very substantial nerf to ranged combat. You might want to have a strong backup melee weapon if bows didn't work at point blank. This might mean more consumables used or it might mean XP diverted to training a melee skill. In either case, ranged combat (with longbow, at least!) needs to be "pulled back"a bit, and I think that the flavor of this proposal is very nice. Physics and Avengers and whatnot aside, restricting ranged to be ranged would be intuitive for a newbie. Certainly, the fact that a ranged weapon at point blank is often stronger than a melee weapon is not so intuitive.

cerebovssquire wrote:When I say "indirect buff" I mean indirect. It doesn't make kiting better, but it makes not kiting a lot worse; and therefore, kiting becomes a lot better seen relatively to not kiting.


This makes perfect sense. But that a proposed change to a non-kiting element of the game indirectly improves kiting may not always be a reason enough to reject the proposal. For example, I like that ranged sticky flame was nerfed, even though it indirectly improved kiting. In any case, I very very much doubt that all ranged builds would suddenly become kite-happy. Now that all polearms are polearms of kiting -- a change that I love, despite the indirect but enormous boost to kiting -- could it really be so terrible? Surely the impact of reaching on kiting is far larger than the impact of "no point blank" would be?

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Post Saturday, 19th May 2012, 15:30

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Smock, you nailed it.
Certainly, the fact that a ranged weapon at point blank is often stronger than a melee weapon is not so intuitive.


I have always thought it very strange that ranged weapons were just as good next to the opponent and for a long time (as an unspoiled player) I thought that ranged weapons MUST work better at range. As y'know, that's common sense.

I really like the 'foo interupts your attack' with bows, or a chance to fire past them due to them dodging out of the way. As Smock said, we already have a lot of indirect kiting boosts, why not make ranged attack actually mean ranged?
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Post Saturday, 19th May 2012, 16:27

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Bim wrote:I have always thought it very strange that ranged weapons were just as good next to the opponent and for a long time (as an unspoiled player) I thought that ranged weapons MUST work better at range. As y'know, that's common sense.

The weapons already work better at range againts melee opponents, simply because they can't fight back.

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Bim

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Post Saturday, 19th May 2012, 17:59

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Yes:
The weapons already work better at range againts melee opponents, simply because they can't fight back.


However, it's still seems completely unintuitive that ranged weapons don't have a built in penalty at close range. A lot of other videos game have it (apart from guns) and although that shouldn't be a test of if it should be in crawl, it does seem to be a mostly accepted standard.

I feel that a delay at close range would be enough of a penalty without encouraging too much kiting, as prat pointed out, you'll want to stay back anyway (just like with conj) so if anything, it should add to tactical game play.
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Post Saturday, 19th May 2012, 18:36

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Speaking about ranged and melee weapons, if we think about it, they're actually not that different when used at close range. If you get attacked when you're preparing to shoot your bow, your shot is halted. If you get attacked when you're about to swing your axe, well... your axe swing is halted too. Adding "special close range delay" only to ranged weapons and not melee ones would be a bit strange/unnatural, then. Wouldn't it?
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Post Saturday, 19th May 2012, 19:54

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Not to mention, only the sling really wouldn't be able to be used well in close combat when you think about it. You have to load the rock, spin that thing around to get momentum, and then release it. A bow you just draw and fire. Throwing weapon you just throw it (which would be a very similar to a swinging motion in close range). Crossbows are a point and click interface. Once you have a needle loaded, you theoretically wouldn't even need your hands to fire a blowgun, though aiming with your mouth alone would be hard. But even then, that would be a rather quick motion too.

And I don't see a reason to special case the sling to be the only close-range penalized weapon.
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Abyss Ambulator

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Post Saturday, 19th May 2012, 20:15

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

tl;dr: Gameplay trumps realism, and melee isn't realistic either, so can we please agree that this thread was a bad idea and stop discussing it now
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Post Saturday, 19th May 2012, 20:23

Re: Ranged means "from far away"

Blade wrote:tl;dr: Gameplay trumps realism, and melee isn't realistic either, so can we please agree that this thread was a bad idea and stop discussing it now

Yes.

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