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DanJW

RPG rant: Robin Hood would have been a goner

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So I was asked at work to go back to the QA department for a bit and lead a team of testers, as QA are low on experienced staff at the moment. I was pleased when the game turned out to be a high profile upcoming console RPG. It's pretty good, the script and voice acting is the funniest I have heard in quite a while.

However, to test the game properly I gave each tester a weapon to specialise in. For some reason I took bows. I don't know why. I have had a liking for bows and arrows in games for ages, since diablo and probably before. Maybe is was Robin Hood stories. Maybe it was reading Lord of the Rings (Legolas was a hell of a lot cooler before he was Orlando Bloom). Cowboys and Indians. Whatever, I like the look of them, and often attempt to make a character using a bow and arrow.

But you know what I realised today, as I replayed the same long mission for the third time? Bows suck. I have never played an RPG where they didn't. Designers always assume that the range is going to be such an advantage that they must make the stats and rate of attack as poor as possible to compensate. This of course fails to take into account the enemy AI, which is usually writen as

if (see: player)

run towards (player)

hit (player)

And then you die, because your slow rate of attack is constantly interrupted by the enemy with its fast rate of melee attack. Or magic. Or enemy archers. Or your henchman sneezing.

Yes, this is pretty realistic - a guy with a bow who suddenly finds himself in melee combat is going to have to draw a blade pretty quick or be screwed. But games always make you choose. If you want to be any good at achery you have to put fewer points into melee. And even if you put ALL of your points into archery it is still going to take four hits to kill an enemy that a meleé character could kill in one. And each of those hits will have a greater pause in between.

And what about special abilities? Sword and axe wielders get whirlwind attacks, bashes and parries, dirty fighting, all sorts. Archers always get the same crappy skills: headshot, hail of arrows, maybe a homing arrow. Magic bows can give, flaming arrrows and, uh, lighteneing arrows. Maybe ice arrows or acid arrows if you are lucky. It makes little difference, as they all suck.

I can name one game where I made an archer character that eventually became effective: neverwinter Nights expansion Pack 1: Shadows of Undrentide. It included a "prestige class" called the Arcane Archer, that supposedly combined wizard's magic with an archers skill. What it actually did was boost the damage, and added a few more special attacks, thus making the archer archetype playable. This class was pretty restrictive though, only available to multi-classed elves, and it didn't offer any variety once you had chosen it.

Just one character out of the many I have played. So why bother including archery in RPGs? Is it for the sake of completeness? The way I see it, either make archery worth playing or drop it. Most of the time the magic user will have a huge variety of ranged attacks that make the archery completely obsolete, as they never miss and do a hell of a lot more damage.

Know what I would do? - I'd make arrows deadly. I would make the aiming all important - if you miss you miss, if you hit, the target goes down or is severly incapacitated. A guy with a sword can use it to defend against another guy with a sword, but unless you have a really thick shield and supernatural reflexes, you aren't going to be able to defend a well aimed arrow. Pumping forty arrows into an orc is neither realistic nor is it exciting gameplay. It is boring. So what is the justification for making it this way?

Anyone agree? Disagree? I'm mad right now and I need you gently explain this to me, perhaps at the same time patting me on the shoulder and handing me a nice cool beer (extra points if you perform these actions while being female).

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Heheh, no it's not Fable, although the little I have seen of Fable's archery system makes me suspect that it also follows the convention of crappiness.

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In Fable you can use bows to fairly decent effect, but it's still a pain in the ass (and I have the best bow in the game I believe) and would probably result in major headaches if it was my main specialization.

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You can do that, or you can use auto targetting, or you can just fire in the direction your guy is already aiming.

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I see your point, Treesus, but if you make the main character's bows powerful, you must also make the monsters bows powerful (if the game has such monsters). Well, you don't have to, but I think it would make sense.

And getting killed by one arrow shot by a Goblin Commando or something wouldn't be very fun.

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Does that not apply to swords and stuff too? I mean it wouldn't be fun getting killed in one hit whether it's a bow or a sword or an axe or a banana or anything else.

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Been playing a bit of the old Fable lately, eh?

Alright, off topic, but ... I thought I'd mention that a guy at work got demoted from his position of salesperson because he kept asking customers whether they wanted 'to buy a bit of the auld PC Insurance'.

I just thought it was funny...

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Treesus; in Morrowind the bow is almighty. Really, it's one of the most powerful weapons there, capable of one-shot-kills from huge distances. Since it's first person, you have to aim. but the game is rather erratic here: even if you clearly shoot straight into the target, the game still rolls whether you hit or miss it. Still, not only does the bow offer a huge advantage over nigh every enemy in the game, it also gives you a tremendous rush of power, being able to snipe everything and everyone before they have a chance to react.

(needless to say it's my favourite weapon in the game)

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I agree that bows are usually frustrating wastes of time in many RPGs, but think the lameness mainly comes down to range considerations. Ok, so the damage is unrealistic too, but only in proportion to all the weapons. I.e. So a single well placed arrow could realistically drop someone, well so could a single well placed chop from a sword/axe/halberd/etc. I've played Morrowind and used the bow a bit there and I agree with Rodi that apart from the random 'to hit' roll even when you've placed it perfectly on target, the bow is definately useful if you get the drop on a distant, slow moving foe (or are just damn good at aiming!)

However, since Morrowind is a 1st person game, the range of the bow is pretty much limited only by the draw distance you've set in the graphics options and your own skill at leading targets. Games like Diablo 2 and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on the other hand are a different story. In order to have any kind of satisfyingly detailed character animations in 3rd person RPGs, the view is usually limited to seeing about 5-10 metres around your character. I mean, that's a stupidly low limitation for a specialised archer! I guess that's why such games have to make such odd efforts to increase the damage per shot factor and end up giving the bow such odd looking powers such as being able to fire shotgun style spreads of 5 parrallel arrows and so on. I mean, I can imagine magicaly aimed or charged arrows, rapid firing and so on, but how many fingers would you have to have to fire a spread of 5 simultaneous arrows? That's gotta be some freeaky looking hand!

I think to make it really work in those kind of games, there'd have to be some kind of clever, automatic camera angle change, automatic scrolling of the screen to potential targets, or the ability to spot and target enemies from a radar, way before they're actually on screen. Something like that anyway.

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You clearly need a new character class based on Cary Elwes :

07.jpg

:yep:

oh, and my thief in Neverwinter Nights had a heavy crossbow he'd use to put a couple of bolts into people before they closed for melee, I found that quite effective.. Robin Hood was also an exemplary sword and quarterstaff fighter :)

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Does that not apply to swords and stuff too? I mean it wouldn't be fun getting killed in one hit whether it's a bow or a sword or an axe or a banana or anything else.

Hm... you're right of course. I'm stupid.

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Evidently in Fable it's possible to shoot an enemy's head off with one very well placed arrow. I'm planning on re-playing it in the near future, but this time I want to be a highly stealthy thief and ace archer, with strong magic skills.

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