By:
Filters
What's new
Embers Adrift

Register a free account today to Ignite your Adventure! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate with the Embers Adrift community. Your active account will also be the same account used to purchase, download, and login to the game.

Feedback State of Archers/bowman NPC

is this feedback?
Xavure

Xavure

Well-Known Member
After gathering feedback from other players, everyone seems to be on the same page and hate how archer are functioning right now. They are a pain in ass to tank and the mechanics feels broken. We all know what you are trying to achieve here, but the fun factor is not there......it's just painful.

Since nothing is set in stone, here a few ideas that I've heard, that could help reduce the pain factor:

- Give them a cooldown or a set number of time they can go backward within one combat.
- Make the collision with us be a thing, so if we bunch up around it, the archer is kind of stuck and cannot move.
- Make them switch to melee once the players get within range or something like it. Similar to players, if we are bow user and get aggro, we usually switch to melee, cuz you cannot use the bow in close combat.

Please anyone that have better ideas/feedback for this, feel free to comment.
 
100% agree. Very frustrating mechanic right now. If each class had an ability to combat this it would be different. I'm not sure what class right now has the ability to stop archers from always walking backwards, but whatever that class is, it's the needed class in groups. Or make caltraps a consumable item that can be used from our bag (on a cool down) so we can prevent these ducking mobs from doing this so often. Our group last night were lamenting how nice the new zone was, but also constatnly bemoaning these types of mobs. And these types of mobs were a constant in that zone.
 
We had some really awkward sequences of trying to crawl the new zone and archers really screwed up tempo with what seems like a lot more moving around on their part, plus heightened social aggro range means they're drawing in more friends along the way. I think part of the problem is the rework on human aggro is night and day from before so the things we used to do like attempting to wedge an archer in the wall aren't as simple as they used to be anymore. I definitely screwed up at times trying to be stubborn with attempting to position archers and making it worse. At the same time I was spamming my Pursuit hard on all the archers we saw and we still had fits getting them under control.

I did a terrible job in general pulling and crawling that new fort. Part of that was in the chair and part of that was how drastically different humans are acting now that my brain needs a rewire.

TL;DR: I'd say leave archers as is for now and see if players adapt because we're all used to the old stupid humans.
 
Pelirow said:
We had some really awkward sequences of trying to crawl the new zone and archers really screwed up tempo with what seems like a lot more moving around on their part, plus heightened social aggro range means they're drawing in more friends along the way. I think part of the problem is the rework on human aggro is night and day from before so the things we used to do like attempting to wedge an archer in the wall aren't as simple as they used to be anymore. I definitely screwed up at times trying to be stubborn with attempting to position archers and making it worse. At the same time I was spamming my Pursuit hard on all the archers we saw and we still had fits getting them under control.

I did a terrible job in general pulling and crawling that new fort. Part of that was in the chair and part of that was how drastically different humans are acting now that my brain needs a rewire.

TL;DR: I'd say leave archers as is for now and see if players adapt because we're all used to the old stupid humans.
Click to expand...
Imo it was broken before yesterday's patch, maybe the patch made it worst, but I don't think this mechanic will appeal to lots of player, if we don't have a way to fight that effectively.
 
If archers are left the way the are two things will happen.

Players will complain and leave. Players will complain and avoid those mobs, congesting other area's and then...leave.

It's not a clever mechanic, it's defenitely not a fun mechanic and it's an issue with any humaniod archers. I understand the premise of the design, it's just not good implamentation on the part that leave the players with no options to "get better" at doing them. We have no options to learn "oh, this is what we need to do vs. these guys." mentality. Because there are no tools we can employ vs. those type of mobs. Our tank would get aggro, stay ranged so the mob wouldn't move, but then quickly lose aggro to the next person who was within melee range of the archer and hit it, so the archer would continually do this cycle non-stop. Our group last night communicated well, knew what the mobs would do and still it was the most frustrating thing about all of yesterdays game time. Everyone in the group agree, exepct Pelirow it seems, yet he was almost making it worse because he couldn't hear us in Discord. (But he did own it, that he was making it worse according to his post above.)
 
Kittik said:
Everyone in the group agree, exepct Pelirow it seems, yet he was almost making it worse because he couldn't hear us in Discord. (But he did own it, that he was making it worse according to his post above.)
Click to expand...
Every once in a while I forget I'm deaf and neglect the group chat. :cool:

At the same time, human AI getting reworked probably gave everyone a bit of a jolt, not just me. Prior to last night I'd found archers annoying but not to the point I wanted to stop playing, my groups usually did a pretty good job dealing with archers in all other locations. The main difference I saw in addition to humans developing brains was the sheer number of archers; I'd never seen so many at once and perhaps we just had bad rng from mob pops with archer after archer after archer. The sheer volume may have been more of an issue than the annoyance of dealing with archers, because if I had known there were going to be THAT many and that human aggro would be as it was I absolutely would have changed my strategy for dealing with them and talked with the group more about holding off attacks for a bit to let aggro develop.

I still think we as a group could have changed our tactics when dealing with those archers.
 
Pelirow said:
I still think we as a group could have changed our tactics when dealing with those archers.
Click to expand...
How, we were doing the only thing available to us for those mobs. Let the tank get aggro, and tank stands back. The issue is, tanks can't hold aggro at range. Especially vs. other tanks in the group, which I think we had three.
 
Kittik said:
How, we were doing the only thing available to us for those mobs. Let the tank get aggro, and tank stands back. The issue is, tanks can't hold aggro at range. Especially vs. other tanks in the group, which I think we had three.
Click to expand...
Well I don't know what you all were talking about in the discord since I saw no strategy talk in group chat to address archers, but in that situation where there's more than 1 tank, I suggest letting two tanks build up aggro first to the point the mob only ping pongs between the two of them while those tanks stay a proper distance. That way the two tanks should be able to stay at the top of the table and control where the archer goes. Everyone was going straight ham without letting aggro table setting happen.

My fault when I had aggro was thinking I could wedge the archers into that stupid ruin and getting OCD about it when it clearly wasn't working. :oops:
 
Xavure said:
- Give them a cooldown or a set number of time they can go backward within one combat.

- Make them switch to melee once the players get within range or something like it. Similar to players, if we are bow user and get aggro, we usually switch to melee, cuz you cannot use the bow in close combat.

Please anyone that have better ideas/feedback for this, feel free to comment.
Click to expand...

You might choose to stop moving backwards and switch to melee but you don't have to. I've done quite a bit of kiting on my warden. Often the secret is to sheath your weapon so you run faster.

What you may not have realised is that different ranged weapons have different 'minimum' and 'maximum' ranges. Short bows can be used in melee range but don't shoot that far, long bows have a minimum range of 5-6y. That's why mobs with these weapons constantly back away.

Maybe archer mobs are something we have to learn to 'tank' in another way.
 
Last edited:
If the idea is to have archers shake things up. Then I suggest changing it to where the archer runs for a bit after it reaches say 20% health, calls for help, then runs back to group 1 time and stays put. Or if it does reposition, have a very long delay between repositioning.

Currently its just way way to responsive with its movement that the tank cant even get threat. People cant do their short range spells because its moving all over the place out of range. Heals don't work well because people are moving all over the place LOS/Range. Its just a real mess as it currently stands.

Its definitely frustrating, as it doesn't seem like tactics work well. If anything people are trying to bug it out so it doesn't move.
 
All I'm seeing in this tread from people are excuses of what might make it better. It's a very unfun mechanic that does not add to anything to the game. Tools and methods could be given to players that could make it a combatable mechanic that would add strategy and possible turn it into a feature but instead all we're seeing here is, "it ain't that bad" "did you try x, y & z". These are bobble head excuses for a bad mechanic. Stop defending it.
 
I disagree. just because you can't do a simple [face] tank and spank doesn't mean it's broken. I don't know about defeneder but both support and strikers can use ranged weapons. So what if the tank isn't face to face with the mob, if they keep agro then others can dps. If others get agro then the tank can close and use abilities to take agro back.

I like the mechanic, makes combat more realistic. Someone who thinks they have a range advantage will always try and use that advantage.

Do you think it unfair that if you agro two spiders whilst solo that one will always go behind you? I like the mobs having something more than the usual charge in and get slaughtered AI.
 
Xavure said:
If it's a 3x archer, you're not gonna last long. There has to be a mechanic, where the tank can keep aggro, otherwise it's a back and forth circus.
Click to expand...
Indeed, so if you've got a brigand then they can CC one, tank(s) can cc or agro the others.

The problem you have to deal with is a mob that wants to keep range on the character it has agro on, deal with that. If I'm using a bow and have agro on a ranged mob I back away from the rest of the group to bring the mob into melee range of the group.
 
I understand your point of view Calk, but the Knight does not have the tools atm to keep this fun. FYI, we do not have CC, nor Ranged and we won't have a brigand in each group.
The problem is when they're moving, we're not able to use abilties to get aggro, cuz they take 1 sec or more to cast and the archer will be out of range, before that.

So the last option, is Provoke each 30 sec or so and then back to keep the archer in a good spot for other to DPS. Most of the time, you end up trying to bug the NPC into a wall or move back and forth until he die and that's the part I find silly.

I'm not for a complete overhaul of the Ranged NPC, I like the idea behind this, but imo it needs tweeking to get it to the right spot.
And this tweek might be to give players more tools to deal with, I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas.
 
I would sometime get aggro using only my ranged to attack and be able to 'stop' the mob for a few seconds, but that only lasts until a tank starts attacking with their abilities, which are all aggro generating (Knight), so then they get aggro and the mobs starts spaz walking all over the place again.

Again, we as players don't have the right tools to properly engage in this type of combat and that is what is wrong.

Yes there are all kinds of work arounds that will eventually get the mob dead, but that isn't fun or engaging, it is gaming the mechanic not learning or improving at it.
 
Kittik said:
... so then they get aggro and the mobs starts spaz walking all over the place again.
Click to expand...
Tell the knight to stand still, it's because the knight is trying to close to melee range that the mob is backing away to keep the knight above the mimimum range of its ranged weapon.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back