Bow is impossible to progress with once you get into the mid-late 50's

[Krowtic]

Title says it all, and i’m assuming it is the same for musket… The whole point of an MMORPG is to create a character, and choose your class or in this case weapon(s). But i’m level 58 now, and i’m running into alot of quests that I can’t do, becuase it is impossible as an archer. The monsters are faster then you, some have aimbot skills that you can only dodge so many times before they finally hit.

The respawn time is ridiculous, it gets a little better than it was in restless shore, but our only damage comes from charged shots which for some reason takes 2 seconds longer then it should. There is rarely an option to ranged a mob from far away to kill them, and most mobs are group of 3+ at end game, It’s hard to do any damage when our only ability is a shitty hop back that lags the game whenever it is used(atleast on my end.) In most MMO’s bows are the king of kiting.

There is no kiting in this game cause for some reason the monsters are about 50% faster then you, And then once you finally dodge all their ability’s your stamina is gone, you are slowed to the point where you can escape, and your damage is subpar. It’s fun for pvp, except your best bet is just firing into groups, and attacking siege weapons. I’ve been at level 58 for like 8 hours cause I can’t complete any quests.

Worst part about it, is i’ve spent almost 200 hours, and did fine for most of the game, then I get to the levels and area’s that are important, and it feels like a chore to even try and progress further. It’d be different if i just sucked, but it is a 1vs1 weapon vs 3+ at nearly every pull in a quest.

TL;DR: Looks like AGS didn’t test every weapon and it’s viability at late game. Bow(and i’m sure musket) feel like they are supposed to be secondary weapons and not main weapons. Which shouldn’t be the case in an MMORPG where your main weapon is basically your class in this game.

[gloth]

imagine a game where you have to find people to group with to progress. weird. if you want to solo everything, don’t pick glass cannons.

[GrailQuest]

I gave up trying to main ranged dps weapons.
Now I only pull them out when I’m farming low level mobs for mats or happen to be in a low level area.

Really sad that most ranged dps weapons are really support weapons when you have something holding aggro AND holding the mob still long enough for your aim to actually be useful.

[Krowtic]

Imagine a game where there are only 2000 players, and you got to hope that you find someone on the same quest. If there was 50k+ people on the server, i’d agree. Ontop of it most other weapons have no problem soloing the quests, but I shouldn’t have to go buy a new weapon, gear and farm the azoth to respec, and then go level up the weapon to level 20, to be able to do it. And if it said that it was a group quest I wouldn’t be posting about how bow isn’t viable solo, whenever I get a quest that says it needs a group, I find one. But since I spent over 150 hours learning how to use bow, i’m not gonna drop it and spend another 150 hours learning a new weapon. If it is an MMO, every “class” should be viable in what is considered solo content, some may be worse than others but it shouldn’t be near impossible. I’ve never played an MMO where a non-group quest needed a group. In this game i’ve ran into a ton of them, some of them even main story quests, that other’s that have already done it can’t help you with. I like the game, but I feel like they didn’t think about the questing/leveling aspect of it.

[Lodum]

It’s that way for basically every weapon. Questing above level 50 content is an infuriating waste of time. Gear and character relative power basically stops scaling around level 40. Meanwhile, the relative power of the NPC’s increase exponentially.

Most people level 50-60 doing town board quests in Everfall.

[gloth]

MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online. It’s not “solo until you want to play with others” The biggest fail of the last 15 years has been allowing people to solo all the time. There are plenty of single player games you can play if you don’t like having to make friends or even gasp talk to strangers.

[Lodum]

People have been making that argument for 20 years, and it is no more valid today than it was then. There is a difference between content that is designed for group play, and content that is designed for solo play. Get it in your thick skull that many people play differently than you. If I want to group, I’ll join a group for an expedition for an elite area farming group.

Going through 50 levels in the game as a solo quester against NORMAL mobs, and then smacking into a brick wall because AGS doesn’t know how to balance character progression with NORMAL mobs is just bad game design plain and simple.

Go copy and paste your tired argument somewhere else.

[Krowtic]

I wouldn’t call 2000 players massive, if they woulda had like 10 shards, and each shard held 2000 players, and they had some hub area’s, it’d be massive. But that’s beside the point. The fact of the matter is a bunch of “Non-Group” quests, require a group, and it’s nearly impossible to find groups for a quest. If it was considered an elite quest that said it recommended 5 players, i’d be like, Okay I understand. But one of the biggest reasons it’s even impossible, is because they got respawn timers set up so fast, cause they are assuming hundreds of players are gonna be doing that quest at the same time. When it’s been more like, nobody is doing that quest except for you.

[dezet]

@Krowtic

I wouldn’t call 2000 players massive

Thats just your oppinion, just as this whole thread.
I cant argue about questing, because I am still only level 40, but even for me killing level 60 enemies is pretty easy as long as its not the instant moving ghosts.

[Orangejuicepremium]

Mate, you have to be one of the most arrogant and entitled person I have seen in quite a while.
This person is frustrated because he can’t use his main weapon for a large part of the content. I think that is quite understandable and no reason to be all passive aggressive about it.

I too struggle a lot with higher level content that can easily be soloed by people using melee weapons. I think if they would reduced the spawn rates of some of the mobs and would make it easier to kite them, it would contribute a lot to the enjoyment of the game for people that main a ranged weapon.

[gloth]

Imagine that, another person playing a glass cannon that doesn’t want to get hit. I also play Dex and have Dex melee weapons that I secondary so that I can finish something off after doing the majority of my damage with the range item. Or if you want to play Bo and musket, a trap build will let you do even more damage. So there are options, you just don’t want to use the options available.

You’ll have to excuse me for acting the way I do. I’ve been playing games for 20 plus years hearing how people can’t do something but are unwilling to change their ways in a game that wasn’t designed by them to do what they want to achieve in the end. But tell me again how the game is unfair.

[FluffyBunnyFeet]

As a bow main, I completely disagree, as I have no problems in late game as a bow user.

[Nephty]

I was actually having this conversation with some friends a few times over the past week or so. Regardless of weapon, one should be able to do solo content hands down. Devs have to take into account that not every player will have someone to play with at all times. For the content that requires/recommends a group, all of it should be stated as such.

As for the bow and other ranged weapons; it became apparent to me that the game favors melee weapons to a degree in its overall design. I’ve mained bow the whole game, even back in the last two betas. I absolutely love using it. However the game includes mobs that move faster than players and can catch up to me regardless of what distance I aggroed them, enemies that respawn way too fast (Pablo Nunez + nearby mobs are a prime example), and the perks/abilities geared towards the kiting playstyle are subpar. Most of the slows it provides are only applicable under weird conditions like shooting a foe with 100% heath slows them for 2s. Once those seconds are up that mob will sprint towards me while still having more than 70% of its health most likely. There’s even the more lackluster final perk which requires you to shoot at the target’s leg/foot in order to slow them, for yet again…2 seconds. If you are focused on shooting their feet you can never actually deal proper damage the whole time your trying to kite them. Granted there are conditions in place to help regen abilities and stamina within the skirmishers tree, along with some haste options. But again the those conditions and the amounts granted aren’t synced or polished well enough to match the game’s favoring of a melee armor clad player, that is likely to have better CC, inherent survivability, and attacks that will usually hit more than one target. So they won’t have to deal with running around for 5mins trying to kite and kill off every aggroed mob, just to return to their questing destination and find that some of the mobs are already respawning.

I fought Pablo Nunez and the mobs within the little pit area 3 times on my own, and this was without dying. They all simply kept respawning by the time I killed them all. FYI you can’t get to him without at least aggroing two other mobs, and the third usually gets aggroed at some point too if you enter the pit and try to fight the others. For ranged players it impossible to do without aggroing all 4 of them, because, as it was pointed out kiting isn’t really a thing in this game. Mobs are too close, aggro from too far, move too fast, etc, in order for a ranged player to viably take out select targets while avoiding unwanted fights. And bow doesn’t have the tools to actually deal enough dps while “kiting” to actually handle more than two mobs at best. Which sucks cause theres a movement speed passive that only kicks in where 3 or more enemies are within 3m of your character. Theres literally nothing to keep these enemies at such a distance, therefore the passive is useless. Ultimately I only finished that quest because I had a friend rocking heavy armor and a war hammer to come help me…he managed to get through the quest on his own a few days prior.

Also, I should note that most of my attention was focused on the Skirmisher’s tree during my first 30-40 levels. But I felt myself becoming a bit irritated with the mobs ganging up on me, so I actually started using my hatchet more and swapped some of my bow skills for more things within the hunter line since thats where all of the bow’s damage is outside of DoTs. I ended up maxing out my hatchet before my bow, literally because of the amount of content I couldn’t get through, and having to conserve arrows of course. One of my biggest plights with bow is Evade shot actually being an animation lock that doesn’t matter when enemies like bears, gators, and some others have the speed and attack range to hit me while jumping back. Please just give us some Iframes while the ability is being used. The name is misleading, and I in fact have a better chance of avoiding all damage if I just time a normal dodge first and then use evade shot to create more distance after. Maybe the devs didn’t intend for the ability to be used as a counter for something that has already closed the distance. But again, if thats the case then they definitely need to change the name and adjust enemy movement speed and attack range maybe.

Regardless of possible adjustments needed for bow and some other ranged weapons, the main issues I find are with the mobs themselves. Overtuned respawn timers, everyone of them having multiple grit actions including ranged and mages, them moving too fast, there not being enough ways for players to cross through areas without aggroing most mobs; whether its a distancing issue, too many mobs, or aggro range. Another thing that could help is mobs not resetting just because I’m shooting them from a different level of verticality. It would allow for ranged players to actually find vantage points and reward them from playing more strategically to fit the ranged style.