I am trying to get a discussion on volley going, specifically the rediculously short range that it currently has, and lets just say that other TL's reactions to the discussion are not favourable. :o I would almost say they are violently opposed to anything I have to say in this arena. I have not recieved any DEV feedback, but let's just say I am not holding out any hope.

Sorry, just thought you guys should know.

Volley as it stands is fine now anyways, IMO.

Suckiest part about NF is two armies staring at each other over the top of a 2000+ unit dead zone. I'm all for improving archers, but if it makes the game less fun, forget it. :'P

I'm wondering if any of the opposed TLs are the ones that think DW halving block and evade chances aren't enough of an advantage and want parry halved too.

No jab meant to you Larian - I think you know who I'm referring to.

Volley used to be the money-maker in keep standoffs. Now that normal bow shots are so effective, increased volley range would be a big middle-finger to all the classes already complaining about archer dominance.

After seeing how NF has played out, volley seems like a dead issue. It still has some uses, it's just not an archer's main siege tool.

I have had volley since my character had enough RP's to get it, it had its day and I am glad I got to use it. Standard bow at siege is so much more effective nowadays that the only real use for volley is when the enemy is next to a keep or tower where LOS is hindered. I have actually found it less effective over the last month or so that I have gone back to melee as my primary rather than bow. At 35 Bow and 50 Blades I still get 1K crit shots on non shield carriers - it just puts me back to where I like to fight - in your face and personal. :)

Thanks for the effort, but as usual Mythic's pendulem never works to find a happy medium.

I disagree that volley is fine.

2200 range is too short. Especially lame is the added penalty for an elevation advantage.

Storms are not penalized for range, in fact they have greater range than ANY of our bow shots, including true shot. They hit hard, more frequently and more accurately. Even after the caster is dead and released. Storms cannot be destoyed, the only counter to a storm is to have another stormlord push it away.

Caster GT/AOE's gain range from elevation, can be insta cast or otherwise un-interruptable.

Just preparing for volley pops stealth and because of all the range disadvantages puts the archer at risk more frequently than not.

Alv

Then how far do you want it to be able to shoot?

I thought spells didn't get elevation bonuses?

Originally posted by Xzzy
Then how far do you want it to be able to shoot?

I thought spells didn't get elevation bonuses?

correct, they do not. Not sure where he got this long range storm business from.

I would be happy with being able to /groundset xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx without line of sight, and keeping current range. As it stands, I cannot because of LOS.

Examp: I climbed to the top of Eras 4, got a /loc on the seige hook point, then left the area. When the Mids took the tower, they set up seige gear on top, as always, so I tried to /groundset xxxx xxxx xxxx the spot, and it tells me I cant see that target. Who needs to see the target for volly, you just lob your arrows up there. Anyway, I think that would atleast give volley a perpose. If the target is not "Inside" under a roof, you should be able to groundset the area.

That's really a problem with the way you set ground targets, not with the range of volley.

When you set a GT, you set it some relative distance away from you, not TO an exact/absolute location.

I.e. you cannot /groundset 47398 29760 and expect a ground target to drop right on that coordinate like you were doing a /faceloc or /vdestination.

What would happen is that the game would try to place a ground target 47398 units away from you in the direction you were facing.

However, when you DO set a ground target either by moving your arrow keys or with /groundset, you see something like "You place your target at 123456 123456" or something similar. The coordinates reported back to you do not fit in the ~65000 by ~65000 unit grid of most zones. I am not sure if these coordinates are absolute values or relative values either.

It would be really nice if they were in fact absolute values, but my suspicion is that you can't set a GT using that coordinate system anyway.

Maybe I'll check out setting GTs using that larger number coordinate system tonight, but, I am not overly hopeful for success in setting GTs this way.

Originally posted by Tegyd
I'm wondering if any of the opposed TLs are the ones that think DW halving block and evade chances aren't enough of an advantage and want parry halved too.

No jab meant to you Larian - I think you know who I'm referring to. I don't know who you mean but with the "I must always win with 0 skill" attitude that can only be an assassin TL :p

My guess would be that most the objections are coming from certain caster TL's more so than Assassin TL's.

Please don't even bother speculating on who says what in the TL forums. Just ground I don't think is worth the effort and can quickly degenerate to flames.

The range I am looking for is just something in the order of 3000. Basically the aimed range that a scout can nearly reach with the best stuff an elevation.

Larian,

what was the range when they first re-worked volley?

You mean the RA version of Volley? Or the first NF release on Pendragon?

RA version could do better than 4000 units.. I seem to recall having a /groundset hotkey for 6000 units to shoot into the alb pk.

3000 units might be reasonable in OF, but in NF, that's just stupid. No insult intended Larian but if anything the game needs to be getting less range, not more.

Staring at a blob of pixels 3000+ units away isn't fun for ANYONE. If the issue is that volley range is shorter than the range of someone with an elevation bonus.. I think it's much wiser for the game as a whole to address the elevation bonuses.

Today's range is 2300. With the old Volley, I could frequently set it about 3500 units out. There were some reports of setting it 4000 units out from atop the tallest hill.

This was possible because range bonuses from elevation affected Volley, too. Defending keeps like old Crauch or old Bled was a ton of fun because I could harrass the rezzers and recently rezzed WAY in the back ranks. ;)

Originally posted by Xzzy
RA version could do better than 4000 units.. I seem to recall having a /groundset hotkey for 6000 units to shoot into the alb pk.

Sauvage and Svasud could easily be reached in OF as long as you went to the highest points on either side of the BK's 6000 units I believe was the max range a GT could be set with /groundset, or was it 6500 units. I use to use Braggarts at Sauvage, 3 pages of spam when it procced, and oh my god would the roaches come pouring out the gates like someone turned on the lights :)

Honestly I don't see them changing it unless they move a couple towers that fall into the 3000 unit range from keeps and bridges.

Master volleyer here:

I need to write a new guide to volley. Ok RA volley had insane range. how insane. from the highest point behind APK in OF I haev a near 9k range it gave me ample time till kill bot and restealth before the albs could locate me.

New Volley has some advantages. When a keep is reduced to 0 Hp volley is one of the most useful tools in taking out entrenched defenders on the upper levels. Volley is also the only means we archers have at striking playes standing below the balcony at tower seiges. Volley is also very useful at hitting target behind walls at the 3 maze towers. Volley is also a great tool to use at towere next to cliffs where enemy archers can strike those on the roof. During level 10 Castle seiges defending archers who retreat into the center keeps can attack with impunity from within the keep, whereas casters have to expose themselves to enemy fire and counter volleyers to attack from the roof. Though it lost 90% of what it had going for it before, volley is still a useful tool. Just think of it this way you get what you pay for.


Trimen's Volley changes:

1. Change volley from a Active Ability to a toggle ability like Rapid Fire
a. Mimic Seige in aiming and targeting ie if a player is targeted it will lead shot so they strike at a GT radius set according to the targets movement and direction.

02. Grant 30% reduced firing time similar to Rapid fire
a. Firing at a set 1 second intervals has some imbalancing factors if the rest of these proposed changes take effect
b. Some balance factors must be added otherwise the ability will become overpowering

03. Do not reduce damage for firing at faster intervals.

04. Increase attack range to +40% {Possible to gain 50% range
bonus with TOA items}
a. Since towers and castles can be out gunned in terms of seige equipment, allowing archers the ability to return fire at catapult / Treb teams will help in defense.

05. Reduce damage against targets within a reduced keep piece by 50%.
a. Even though a tower has 0 HP a player inside a tower should still have some degree of protection
b. this is a balance factor
06. Add graphic of arrows following a ballistic flight path similar to Catapults and Trebuchets.
a. This will give away the archers position since arrows will stick in the ground learnign towards their direction
b. This is a balance factor

07. Reduce effectiveness of shields for those engaged in melee combat.
a. If a fighter is concentrating on blocking a handheld weapon he is not looking up at incoming arrows.

08. Reduce overall effectiveness of guard vs volley in realtion to shield size.
a. small shields are useless vs volley
b. medium shields should only protect the wearer
c. Large shields can protect the wear and 1 guarded player

09. Change the way in which players are hit by volley fire.
a. increase area of effect to 450 range units
b. factor probabilty of being struck via this equation:

((archery Spec/(archer level *4))*(Archer level/Target Level))+(15 if target is a seige engine).

This will give a base percentage of being hit.

EG. level 50 archer 70 total bow spec vs a level 50 player (70/200)*(50/50)+(0 not seige item)=35% chance to hit.
c. If hit then check vs other players in target area to see of all those hit, which gets the arrow

EG. 10 players in target zone and a trebuchet / There are 4 possible hits, 3 players and the treb
players are base 35% and treb is base 50% generate random numbers off base percent times 100 turning the fraction into whole numbers ie 35 for players 50 for treb.
/random 50 for treb /random 35 for players higest score gets the arrow hit.
d. This will cause players to tightly group seige weapons for player defense, allowing the very few defense seige weapons to hit multiple targets enhancing their counter seige effectiveness.
e. This will beneift Siege bow users
f. This is a balancing factor.

More to come in the future

So are you saying only one arrow out of 4 or 5 should be able to hit a target each round?

I'm thinking, since I loose 4 or 5 (can't remember how many are used up) arrows each round, each of those arrows should have the chance to hit something.

Am I reading your post wrong? I do like the idea's though :)

Not one out of 4 but a 25% per arrow shot if the player has a total bow spec equal to his level and is the same level as his opponent. Using the laws of averages firing on a single player in the targeted radius 1 out of 4 arrows will hit them, bu if there were two players standing in the radius there is a 50% chance to strike one of them, now if there were 4 or more someone is getting hit, but there is a small chance a subsequent shot will strike the same person. There is a high probablilty that if you are firing at a area where there are massed players and a seige weapon, you will hit the seige more often then you will hit a player. This sounds gimpy but this will cause players to pack seige items closely to gether to guard them from the rain of arrows. The benefit to this is that at a tower where only one Pallitone can be mounted. will be able to strike multiple seige engines at a time killing them simultaneously. This is also a change from the current system whereby a archer must raise bow skill to a certain level to attain Volley. All archers get this innately but accuracy is dependant on overall bow skill. a player with 12 bow from autotraining will nto be able to hit the broadside of a plannet let alone a player. The biggest and most otable change is that this is not a timered active ability but a persistent function. Thus you can switch to volley mode and rain steady fire on enemy positions.

Ok, that I understood and like much better than how I was reading your first post :)

I still want to be able to light my arrows on fire also, that should cause AOE damage... ok, ok, a bit much perahaps but I'm a hunter. I like dreaming.

Volley is fine as/is IMO. Archers already have enough tools and advantages in NF. There is no way in hell Mythic is going to give us any more Luvin. And I like and use Volley as it is frequently. It is of course valuable when you charge into the lower floor of a keep and all your enemies are sitting in the lord room with their FOP + storms, laying down so much AE that noone can charge up the stairs.

It is also useful for more non-conventional methods. Tonight I was running with a full group of all rangers/nightshades + 1 bard bot. Two different times, we got enemies down to a sliver of health that were nuking/shooting us from the wall and then they ran out of LOS to heal. We did /face, slid our groundtargets out into the keep, and killed them with Volley.

We were still in danger of being nuked/shot by their allies with the current range. If you extended the range on it, we could move back and volley them with little risk to ourselves, which I think would be unfair. I see no reason why volley should have a range that is different from normal bowshot range. Right now, it is approximately the same.

how bout this ...

Loose all 6 arrows(Volley 4) at one time .. current range(maybe a tad less .. 2k?) .. on a 3min timer(maybe more 5min?) ???

and for gods sake set camo timer to 5min .. please :D

I was very upset when they nerfed volley's range with NF. I used the old volley and it was great.

To be perfectly honest a range increase to volley would be great, but is that the biggest problem archers have atm?
I'm afraid if volley was increased in range how much more would the other classes scream for a nerf?

The lack of range hasn't really bothered me at this point like I thought it would. I've used it with great success at taking/defending keeps. It can be a useful weapon.

Personally I would rather see Scout's get some increase in melee skills. I would like to be able to hold my own in a melee fight.

Just my opinion though.

In it's current implementation volley is both underpowered and overpowered. let me explain.

In traditional stand off fghts volley lacks the range it did before thus a archer would rather use normal direct firing methods vs. the unreliable indirect firing method. in that sense volley is very underpowered. The overpowered aspect comes with the reduction of a tower or central keep to 0 hps. Volley in this regard is unfair due to the shooting ducks in a barrel stigma. With my design volley get nerfed where it's overpowered but get powered up where it is weakest.

50% damage when hitting targets in a 0 hp keep = balance factor. I myself have been hit by 800+ damage vollies when a large formation of scouits are volleying a tower.

If volley could out range normal fire. it will become ideal in long range conflicts. The balacing factor is that the best chance you have to hit a player is 35% normally a 50 total spec level 50 player will have a 25% chance to hit a level 50 player.

Read over my proposal closely and you will see I thought up limitations to prevent volley from being over powered, yet vastly improve it's utility.

One random note re: volley and 0% towers.

If you have a TD, be sure to activate the offensive proc before you start volleying. :)