For bow users, please don't turn arrow making maintenance into an exercise of frustration...

[sojournerx]

A) wood is incredibly scarce... which is frankly stupid, considering the 'aesthetic' of the beginning zone is a bloody forest area. Increase wood spawns.
B) Make the process of making arrows far less annoying i.e. increase the amount of arrows produced from one set of fletching / wooden shafts / arrow tips. And when I say increase it, that should be a multiplier. Make it give 100 arrows per 1 fletching / shafts / arrow tips.

Other games take a similar approach as you lot, and frankly it's just as insipid and stupid as yours is. Don't put mundane, irritating gates like this in the way of your players exploring and having fun. There's enough banality in life that we don't want to see that stupid shit in a game, either dudes. Get out of the way of your player base and the fun parts of the game.

 

[Undone]

Hi @sojournerx welcome to Embers Adrift and thank you for the feedback. Crafting recipes are still in flux so feedback like this is vitally important. However, in the future might I suggest a more constructive tone for your feedback? We do our best to listen and act on player feedback so that we maintain a healthy working relationship with our community. Coming out of the gate with "which is frankly stupid" & "we don't want to see that stupid shit in game" just makes things a bit more difficult and confrontational.

edit: I also want to reiterate that I again appreciate the fact that you time to make a post in the first place. I get where you are coming from and your enthusiasm is great - but we also have to do our best to maintain a positive and productive community. In other words: send us all the critique you can muster, just keep it constructive and forward looking so we can work together to make the game better

 

[sojournerx]

Hi @sojournerx welcome to Embers Adrift and thank you for the feedback. Crafting recipes are still in flux so feedback like this is vitally important. However, in the future might I suggest a more constructive tone for your feedback? We do our best to listen and act on player feedback so that we maintain a healthy working relationship with our community. Coming out of the gate with "which is frankly stupid" & "we don't want to see that stupid shit in game" just makes things a bit more difficult and confrontational.

edit: I also want to reiterate that I again appreciate the fact that you time to make a post in the first place. I get where you are coming from and your enthusiasm is great - but we also have to do our best to maintain a positive and productive community. In other words: send us all the critique you can muster, just keep it constructive and forward looking so we can work together to make the game better

Fair enough, @Undone. I apologize for the unnecessarily harsh tone, and I'll be mindful going forward. I have seen this never addressed in other games, where archery and / or bow users get summarily ignored and dismissed and I didn't want to see this happen here. Feedback stands: please do not gate the fun parts by funnelling players to time sinks that do not add anything of value to the game experience (in this case, having to hunt for seemingly rare spawns like the wood and then have the actual recipe return so few completed arrows).

Maybe there could be a recipe added for an 'endless quiver' that would require 1 arrow for infinite return? You could make the components for the highest dps arrows require rare drops from monsters or spawns out in the world. The quiver itself could maybe involve some kind of detailed quest. Just please don't do the aforementioned above in the previous paragraph.

 

[Dalton]

Are we not able to purchase arrows anymore? Having to always rely on someone else making our ammo feels like a oversight.

 

[Randy Magnum]

You can still buy arrows, but here was one instance where the crafted item blew away the merchant one. It changed some with last patch though. Previously I really liked finding the sweet spot arrow out of all the different mats you could use with the awesome stats (which Raven never posted lol), but that aspect is gone now with the reduction to materials - which I like overall, its only detriment is what happened to arrows.
So now that the fun part is gone, we are still left with needing 3 crafting professions to make an arrow: Forester, hunter/prospector (for tip material), and weaponcrafter. Now that the choices of materials is reduced greatly, maybe you can reduce the professions needed to make an arrow (like remove the tip portion so you only have forestry, and then make the arrow recipe store bought so anyone can do it - this will also slow down weaponsmith leveling since its too easy to level making arrows) or give the recipe to forestry instead of weaponsmith.

edit: wood does seem to me to be the scarcest resource at the moment but I don't know if thats due to just bad timing or not.

 

[Dalton]

I feel an arrow should fall under a weapon-smith 100%. As it is a weapon and not a provision.

 

[AdricLives]

Arrows can be purchased, but like in most cases the ammo with "extra" stats is going to be crafted. You can as a forester/weaponsmith make your own arrows/bolts because arrow/bolt tips can be purchased, although these tips will decrease the "extra" stats again because player crafted is best, but most importantly it is possible as a solo player to craft your own arrows without help from anyone else. Regards to the amount produced it does scale up with level, so you start with 20 per combine up to 40 per combine. And similarly logs being converted to wooden shafts is 1 -> 2 depending on level. So specifically in terms of wood production, a single log can get you anywhere between 40 and 80 arrows depending on your crafting skill.

So I don't think we are too far off the values you are looking for. Also archer is not an enforced limitation, that is to say every striker specialization can still use every striker weapon. There is no Role or Specilization which forces you to use ranged with ammo, but I understand many enjoy that style of play and often use Bows exclusively for this reason.

 

[sojournerx]

There is no gate for melee weapon users though, nor presumably for magic users. So I don't understand implementing a seemingly punitive, non fun time sink for bow users? I don't think people realize just how many arrows get used up, nor how quickly you go through them, in a dungeon run for instance.

 

[Dalton]

I think once theres an economy more established and such. Arrows will not be hard to come by. How many arrows can you currently hold in your arrow slot? If its a few hundred then I could see them lasting a long time before restocking. In wow though for exsample. In a day if playing and doing dungeons as a hunter I can go through 2K arrows. But the combat is much quicker and can use 1-2 arrows a second.

 

[AdricLives]

As for why ranged is gated and melee is not. The ammo is part of the consideration on balancing weapons. Aggro is reduced at range, evades cone/aoe attacks, and offer superior pulling ability. Ranged would be vastly superior without some additional requirement.

 

[Dalton]

Understandable. Hopefully there are some interesting arrows able to be crafted in late game.

 

[sojournerx]

So is bow considered a pulling weapon and not a primary? As in you don't consider it a proper weapon that can be utilized strictly as a main weapon? Were there plans to implement some sort of skill tree beyond the bare bones in there now, or?

 

[AdricLives]

It is a primary weapon which offers advantages to its use which also includes utility purposes. There's no plans for anything like a skill tree, we have some ideas around allowing certain skills to be more specific to your character build, but nothing set it stone yet.

 

[sojournerx]

It is a primary weapon which offers advantages to its use which also includes utility purposes. There's no plans for anything like a skill tree, we have some ideas around allowing certain skills to be more specific to your character build, but nothing set it stone yet.

Ok, well that's good to know that you as devs at least consider it a primary weapon that can be used exclusively as such. I found that when I was making arrows it wasn't returning very many but as was pointed out, the higher level you go the more efficient it becomes and I am still not that high in forestry. Hopefully I don't have to set aside significant time to deal with the tedium of arrow making, just to explore and hunt.

 

[Pelirow]

Ok, well that's good to know that you as devs at least consider it a primary weapon that can be used exclusively as such. I found that when I was making arrows it wasn't returning very many but as was pointed out, the higher level you go the more efficient it becomes and I am still not that high in forestry. Hopefully I don't have to set aside significant time to deal with the tedium of arrow making, just to explore and hunt.

It will be a lot like levelling your actual character at first: a struggle and a bit frustrating but once you hit that point where the arrow crafting is plentiful, it'll likely be an afterthought. It is indeed a bit of a time sink, and I can see the perspective of it being punitive, but archers have arguably the biggest combat movement and aggro reduction advantage in Embers, lowest risk pulling potential, avoid most of the aoes melee have to suffer, and generally in a group are able to put themselves in the safest position to avoid getting killed and that's a big deal in a game where the mobs are hard to kill. Also don't forget this is a game driven towards community interaction: ask around in global every now and then and I'd be surprised if you didn't eventually have a number of folks happy to help you out with arrows until it's not as tedious for you.

Also, there is no magic in this game, so technically, magic users are BY FAR the most heavily gated players in the game.

 

[sojournerx]

It will be a lot like levelling your actual character at first: a struggle and a bit frustrating but once you hit that point where the arrow crafting is plentiful, it'll likely be an afterthought. It is indeed a bit of a time sink, and I can see the perspective of it being punitive, but archers have arguably the biggest combat movement and aggro reduction advantage in Embers, lowest risk pulling potential, avoid most of the aoes melee have to suffer, and generally in a group are able to put themselves in the safest position to avoid getting killed and that's a big deal in a game where the mobs are hard to kill. Also don't forget this is a game driven towards community interaction: ask around in global every now and then and I'd be surprised if you didn't eventually have a number of folks happy to help you out with arrows until it's not as tedious for you.

Also, there is no magic in this game, so technically, magic users are BY FAR the most heavily gated players in the game.

Well I haven't been able to get to a high enough level to experience all these alleged difficulty curves levelling out, so that remains to be seen how much of a time sink arrow creation and maintenance will be. I know it's an ancient game but in EQ the endless quiver skill never hurt the balance. They even had a bracer that summoned arrows! So I don't buy that having an endless quiver type of item would ruin things irreparably.

I appreciate the response though. I don't know if they've indicated when or even if they will have the servers up persistently, because it's a bit frustrating to not have the ability to jump in and test things when you want.. hopefully soon.

 

[Pelirow]

I appreciate the response though. I don't know if they've indicated when or even if they will have the servers up persistently, because it's a bit frustrating to not have the ability to jump in and test things when you want.. hopefully soon.

Well, with Wednesday nights and Friday noon to Sunday midnight it's nearly 3 days worth of testing, 2.5 days persistently, so that's a fairly healthy amount of time.

After the current features implemented in this recent fresh server are ironed out, the next step is adding the Ember essence system which, IIRC, is the last vertical slice of core gameplay yet to be implemented outside of Questing/NPCs, the latter of which SHS does want to keep somewhat close to the vest. So, after the ember essence and associated reagent upgrade systems are up and running, who knows if we might see more server time to enable testers to actually make it into the 25-50 range to test out the curve. SHS seems content with the current volume of available testing though.

 

[Rev]

There is wood all over the place. Certain areas of each zone have more than other areas, you just learn over time where to look to find the most. Once you get to Meadows you will be getting 4 types of wood and it is plentiful. I usually make 800 or more bolts/arrows at a time. You get multiple shafts per wood already and I think it's about 22 arrows per combine.

 

[Elloa]

I think that arrows crafting allow for the possibility of making interesting ammo, with some additional bonus, which will then allow players to peronalise their arrows shooting, in the same fashion reagent enhance some abilities.
Atleast that was the reason I started weaponsmithing last cycle of testing, and i was super excited when I crafted those wonderful arrows with plenty of stats.