ranged weapons and playbalance

[mortification]

I've been thinking about ranged weapons and how to playbalance them in case of a sequel. The issue is pretty complicated and I can see why they went with the apporach that they did.

It seems like in almost every CRPG ranged weapons are problematic, either too powerful or useless. This is compounded by the issue of real-time versus some sort of turn-bases system.

IMHO the goal of playbalancing should be the following: for characters specialized in the Bow (like Rangers & Archers) the bow should be just as powerful at high levels as the single-shot offensive spells. For general fighters, bows should be somewhat useful but not as good as spells or hack-n-slash. Finally, for other characters bows should be unusable.

Then you've got other ranged weapons, such as slings and other loadable missle weapons (which should be treated in the same class as bows) and thrown weapons. Now IHMO thrown weapons should balance out as follows: Fighters who specialize in thrown weapons (like Barbarians) should have very powerful attacks at high level, maybe even better than melee, but with the constant wory of running out of axes/swords/whatever to throw. Characters that specialize in darts and daggers should have a useful attack but not overpowered (except maybe for one class like the Ninja that uses shurikens or something). Other characters should be able to use thorwn weapons but to minimal effect (i. e. for spell disruption and other purposes only).

Some examples of other games' approaches to range-weapon balancing:

Might and Magic - in most of these games the Archer character is prety powerful, but only because they specilaize in magic as well. In the later games all characters can use bows, so in the early game they are ridiciulously powerful. In mid-game they are only powerful for archers (who get multishot) and in late game they are not anywhere near as useful as spells. Hence most people ignore Archers as a must-have class and simply use the bows as a crutch to get the spellcasters and tanks up to par. The latter MM games offer a choice between real-time or completely turn-based (and you can walk one step each turn if you want). This makes using ranged weapons as easy as spells or melee and hence they are useful.

Daiblo 2 - This one is interesting, as the Bow specialist (Amazon) can get really powerful and comparable to the other characters even at high level. Since it is completely real-time, a lot of effort was put into play balance for ranged attacks. You also have the thrown weapon specialists (Amazons and Barbarians) who aren't so great right now but are suppoed to get better in the expansion.

Ultima Series - in most of these (esp. U7 and before) the ranged attacks are pretty well balanced, mainly again because the play is turn-based for combat. This gives you time to select weapons, target and attack, etc. Bow specilaists (Bards mainly) can get very powerful. Good playbalance throughout the game, especially in U1 - U7.

Baldur's Gate 1&2 - Bows and thrown weapons are manly useful here for spell disruption, although sometimes the rangers who specialize in bow can get pretty good with magical equipment. Good playbalance throughout the game, although a bit weak towards the end.

To sum all of this up it seems like proper playbalancing of ranged weapons requires the following:

1. Characters who specialize in the weapon and hence get really good at using it.
2. Better and multiple attacks at higher levels.
3. Good magical equipment for ranged characters.
4. Some method of pausing/turn-based so that you can utilize the ranged weapons more deliberately, like you do spells and melee.

So how could you improve ranged weapons in the W&W sequel? Well, for one thing, you could adjust the "adaptive time-phasing" system so that you could actually have time to utilize ranged characters properly. I think that simply adding a "pause and set battle orders" key would be fine for this. Also, the Scout skill could be utilized to adjust the visual radius/clipping so that good scouts could see monsters farther away, hence giving ou more time to shoot. A good ranger should be able to get off at least 2-3 shots before a monster closes to melee range.

Another factor is reload time and initiative or weapon speed. IMHO you'd be best served by making about 2 bowshots = 1 spell = 3 dagger/shortsword swings. This means that the pause feature does not unbalance the game in terms of allowing you to nuke everyone from a distance with spells. As an example, if you've got 3 tanks, a bow guy, and 2 mages, you should be able to get off 2-3 bow shots and 2 spells total before the monsters close to melee (depending on skill).

You must also have rewards for choosing a ranged character. This means special magic equipment that is useful only to them, and special abilities or bonuses such as multishot and increased accuracy/damage that really keep pace with the spells at high level.

Finally there should be some consideration for thrown weapons as a viable option with some incentive to choose them over swords. Perhaps you could get 5-6 darts or daggers off at range, and maybe there could be a "stun" or "shock" skill that the thrown weapons disrupt spellcasting/ranged attacks for a short period. Also, if the Barbarian wants to take the cance and hurl his sword at the onrushing foe, it seems reasonable that if it hits (which requires a lot of skill to do), the monster explodes into giblets (but if he misses he better know kung-fu). Maybe this is where the elephant-snorkel-dart-spray concept (another post) comes in.

Don't forget that to make it fair, the monsters need to be able to shoot back efectively as well. This would make enemy archers really tough, and the dagger-throwing rogue guys actually tough instead of pansies. Adds a lot of strategy to the game.

Comments or suggestions welcome. Really would be great to see ranged weapons properly implemented in the sequel. Anybody know of a good CRPG with great ranged weapon playbalance?

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[Wyvern]

Wow- mort! What a wonderfully analytical mind you have!!

Very interesting subject! I really felt that the bow and thrown weapons were not well developed in W&W - perhaps they meant to but that hardly helps us players!

I personally felt (without all your great detail attention) that bow and thrown attacks should work faster than spells but less quickly than swords/etc. My own limited experience with bow/thrown weapons in M&M was just to avoid them and concentrate on swords (for my front guys) and magic. Of course by the time I had played through and through again, all my characters could do considerable magic, but I always kept the first two set to use their weapons.

Not certain that I had added much to your very thorough examination of the subject but really appreciate that you are sharing this with posters here!!!

Wyv

(nasty note below)



[This message has been edited by Wyvern (edited 05-14-2001).]

[mortification]

Gee, thanks for reading the post and the kind words

Actually I'd like to do some spreadsheet work on trying to figure out the best way to further incorporate the ranged weapons into the W&W system/engine, which is one of the better stat-based role-playing systems that I've seen. I did this with MM6-8, where I hit up against the wall of having to try and browse through the source and data files to get access to the hard numbers. For example, in the MM games "recovery speed" is very important (basically the time it takes to complete an action such as an attack). But, there is no documnetation as to how long (either frames of animation or milliseconds) that any particular attacks take. So what does an Amulet or Recovery (decreases recovery time) really do? Double your speed? Or merely increase by, say, 20%? No one but the programmers will probably ever know.

I ended up making a "mod" for the MM games in the sense that I messed around with changing some of the values for various items in the game just to see what would happen. It's very unbalancing, for example, for a Halberd to have the same weapon speed as the dagger. The point of the Halberd is big damage but slow, whereas the dagger is fast but pesky.

I've also done probably way too much hex-editing of save game files and made a few simple "trainers" for some other games. Nothing fancy, just enough to play around with the variables a bit and see what happens. Kind of ruins the fun though.

Where I'm headed with this is if we could get enough access to the information about how the data is stored for W&W, _we_ could make our own "mod" of the game and fix some of these bugs. You'd be suprised how easy it is; most modern games are programmed with variability in mind. So, for example, we could most likely change the weapon speed for the Bow to make it shoot much faster, and hence more usable even within the limits of the current game engine. We could also boost up the damage of arrows, etc.

Another fun thing would be to add items and other things to the game. With MM6 I was able to add some items of my own, plus some new character classes (as replacements for the defaults). This could be really fun for W&W since given enough info, you could literally make a whole new story from scratch.

One thing to figure out is how the developers/programmers would feel about this. New World is pretty cool about things as long as you don't try to exploit the game for money. They will sometimes even tell you how to change things. I sure wouldn't want to irritate anyone associated with W&W and make it less likely for a sequel.

Anyway, just some food for thought. I've found in the past that if you get 3 or 4 motivated people together you can really do some cool mod-making and enhance the game experience quite a bit.

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[Wyvern]

Mort - oooo!! That would be great!!

I've done some hex-editing but it is all very basic stuff - mostly sticking in inventory items that players have lost or were unable to get. Just playing with those sections of the save game I have made some observation on how information on items are stored, but I have not been really exploring this and certainly have not documented what I have "sort of" learned.
Don't know how many other posters are that familiar and comfortable using hex-editing. Perhaps if you start a thread which clearly states that in the topic/subject they will show themselves.
If there is someway I could help (don't go relying on my hexedit skills! ) - do let me know! I think this would be a worthwhile project and would be happy to do what I can!

Wyv

[Ryanamur]

Wooooooooooaw, That would be totally cool!

Great idea.

[Wyvern]

Topside!

Wyv

[Balgin]

Sounds good so far. BTW, a well thought out argument Mort (personally in the BG series I used ranged weapons purely for spell disruption)and I agree with most of it. Keep us informed as to what happens (if you're doing any work on Evil Islands let me know, it's got the whole Dark Stone "no money available but sky high prices" problem in multiplayer (although not in the single player game)).

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Balgin, the Dwarf

[Olderbone]

It seems I'm about two months late here I was actually planning to ask in a new topic if there was any interest in information about hex-editing characters. I am working up a nowhere-near-complete but still fairly comprehensive list of locations and their significance. This includes, of course, at least some information about how items are stored. I haven't yet attempted to actually look beyond the ROSTER.DAT or savegame files, and it appears that some aspects of item definition are not included in inventory records, and are therefore beyond the scope of my information. Considering the relatively small size and tremendous compressibility of the data in question, I plan on including some example material. What should I do with this? E-mail it to the webmaster?

[Olderbone]

lol Alllllrighty then

Actually, I _am_ interested in any progres or status information re: mods. I suspect that we are probably duplicating effort unnecessarily here.

[Wyvern]

Welcome to the board, OlderBone!!!

I will look for the thread on MODS and bump it up if it hasn't already been pushed to the first page.

Wyv