ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The shooter egos are pretty under whelming so my thought is to remove arrow drops and simply add the ammo egos to the shooter egos. The super ammo types (annihilation and the hit one) would need to be seriously toned down.

I think this would make finding new bows and slings more exciting. For people that still want to be able to swap damage types on the fly they still have the 'x' button Also it takes just as long to swap a bow from inventory as it does to equip an ammo stack, so carrying around a spare bow or two shouldn't be that much of a problem.

Welcome back, edge2054!

I think most people will agree that ammo for shooters needs updated, and that they've needed updated for a while. There are a few options available, and I think we just need to find a good one and go with it.

A thing to keep in mind is that there are very few archer or slinger winners. Different ammo does actually give versatility to the class, which I think they need very much. Carrying around a couple bows may not be a big deal for archers (who boost strength), but carrying around extra slings as a slinger would be problematic.

So, here are my suggestions (which won't require much work to implement ):

(1) Remove stacks of ammo. Instead, have a single "Quiver of Arrows" or "Sack of Shots" item that has a finite number of charges (arrows or shots) and have the item weigh 1 encumbrance. This is functionally similar to the current ammo, except it weighs less, and it can't be used as a cheesy way to get lots of money or farportal energy.

(2) Have ammo add to the base damage of the shooter (instead of replacing it), or average the base damage of the shooter and the ammo. Actually, I like the latter option.

And that's it. A couple more ammo egos might be nice, too, such as a magical quiver that slowly regenerates ammo .

Hmm, there was actually a reasonable discussion about arrows here:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=26977

Another idea for quivers: make them have infinite ammo. Perhaps still give quivers an energy value (corresponding to "effectiveness") which is consumed when fired but regenerated every turn. For example, you have a quiver of fire arrows of accuracy. At 100/100 energy, 100% of the bonus from the ammo is applied. Each shot consumes 5 energy, and 1 energy is gained every turn. At 50/100 energy, then only 50% of the bonus is applied. The justification for decreased effectiveness is perhaps it takes longer to get the ammo after you've used a bunch of them, or maybe the acid, fire, slime, etc. is running low so the arrow egos are less effective.

Well, here are my thoughts.

First of all, the "default ammo" shouldn't be tied to a weapon, it should be contained in a quiver/sack (there may be a separate slot for it, though may be it simply can be contained in the inventory), with which archers/slingers start the game, while other characters who do not start with a ranged weapon may obtain it in a corresponding shop. Of course, without having at least default ammo it's impossible to use ranged weapons. The default ammo is infinite, but it's not that effective: it gets the work done, but it is kinda inferior when fighting serious opponents, so at one point or another player would like to use ammunition which has ego(s). Such ammo is stored in stacks (so, instead of finding 176 arrows of whatever, player will find just a single item), which have various properties on the analogy of infusions and runes. These properties are:

1. Egos which the ammo has. Well, I guess it's self-explanatory.
2. Material of the ammo, which is used to calculate the damage.
3. The quantity of ammo in stack (100+ for one ego, way less for other types). When the ammo in stack is depleted...
4. ...a certain amount of turns shall pass before the player can use it again. In other words, stacks have recharge time. While the stack is recharging, player will use default ammo, but he may not switch to another stack, because when a stack placed in the quiver, it starts recharging, so the change is not instant.

That's all, I guess. Feedback is appreciated. Also, I wrote this post late in the night, so I may revisit it later.

I like the idea of quivers, and having them recharge over time. Here's my implementation of it, which may be a bit too complex.

Give the quiver an energy capacity based on material level (about 100 to 500) and corresponding energy regeneration rate (1 to 5). Have each arrow have a cost, from 0 for a plain elm arrow, to about 20 or 30 for an elemental dragonbone arrow. This would lead to something like:

Hardened Leather Quiver (300/300)
Holds Slime Covered Elven Wood Arrows, costing 15 energy per shot. Regenerates 3 energy per turn.

limiting shots to about 22 in a row, or

Drakeskin Leather Quiver (500/500)
Holds Dragonbone arrows, costing 4 energy per shot. Regenerates 5 energy per turn.

effectively allowing infinite shots.

The quiver idea isn't a bad one but it seems to me it's just replacing one thing with something very similar. Maybe I should have called this thread, not enough variety in shooter egos or shooter egos suck because that's really what I'm getting at.

Also every time I've sat down in IRC and tried to brain storm new bow egos with Sus we always hit a brick wall and I think the overlap with arrows is the main issue. Merging arrows into the respective shooters would allow a player to always shoot icy or slimy or whatever ammo they liked but would require giving up the respecitve prefix or suffix just as melee users do now (no quick elemental daggers for instance). As long as they're two sides of the same coin ammo will be pigeon holed into the 'elemental' effects and shooters will be left with very few egos and very little variety of their own (because half of their effects have to come from another item).

Swapping and switching ammo also isn't a mechanic I've found very fun. Besides the micro I want to hoard my good ammo for tough fights but then when the tough fights come along I either forget about it or don't feel I have time to use it (costs a turn to equip after all). Sounds like quivers would be end up being something similar if it wasn't handled carefully (maybe a default ammo and then a quiver slot you could switch freely between without losing a turn would work well).

So.... here's a secondary suggestion that's come from my rambling. Allowing players to switch between firing default ammo and slotted ammo some how without spending an action (or opening a window) would make arrows as they are more usable, at least for me. Something like A for Ammo slot so you could use either default ammo slot or quiver slot.

edge2054 wrote:So.... here's a secondary suggestion that's come from my rambling. Allowing players to switch between firing default ammo and slotted ammo some how without spending an action (or opening a window) would make arrows as they are more usable, at least for me. Something like A for Ammo slot so you could use either default ammo slot or quiver slot.

I like this idea (and there's definitely some overlap between this thread and the thread I linked to above). Here's how I would implement it:

Have multiple "Quiver" slots in your equipment, and you can toggle which ammo you want to use via a checkbox. This provides easy, instantaneous switching between ammo types. "Default Ammo" should also be an option. If we wanted to get really fancy, we could have the number of quiver slots scale with a stat (probably Dex) or with an archery talent. I'd probably just have a fixed number of quiver slots, though. Also, as edge2054 suggested, quick toggling of ammo types via a keyboard command, such as "A", would be awesome.

I vote remove arrows completely.

Bows then can have launcher egos and projectile egos. Projectile egos use energy of the bow, and each player who gains the shoot talent, also gains the sustainable talent called "Energy Shoot" (or something?!). Discuss cooldowns and usage speed (I would suggest instant, and a 10 turn cooldown)

The launcher egos always applies, which can be stuff like accuracy, extra damage, firing speed, extra energy etc.

Not too sure if the projectile or launcher should get the projectile speed ego... I'm thinking launcher.

Projectile egos only apply while the energy shot sustain is on. This is your standard projectile egos, but now stronger egos can cost a lot more energy, making them run out of energy quicker.

I second the vote for complete removal of arrows. I love playing archers (I won tome2 a few times with them), and I think that this will streamline them nicely.

If we're saying ammo should be removed then I'd maybe suggest removing the Slinger class as well and consolidating it into Archers instead. Then only your weapon choice and investment in a couple of talents would effect your subtype, but giving the ability to dabble in both.

Merging Archers and Slingers isn't a bad idea. Maybe move them to the warrior meta-class or come up with some other archer sub-types (a stealth based archer would be nice, something sniperish.)

Grey wrote:[...]I'd maybe suggest removing the Slinger class as well and consolidating it into Archers instead

edge2054 wrote:Merging Archers and Slingers isn't a bad idea. Maybe move them to the warrior meta-class or come up with some other archer sub-types (a stealth based archer would be nice, something sniperish.)

Well, I think there ought to be more than one archery class. One could merge slingers and archers, then come up with a new class, but I would just say differentiate the slingers and archers that we currently have even more.

Design-wise, I think bows are comparable to two-handed melee weapons. Slings are comparable to a one-handed melee weapon with a shield. I also like how bows scale off Str (and Dex), and slings scale off Cun (and Dex). I think we all agree, though, that more should be done to distinguish each class.

By the way, neither class has any advanced trees (that have high level requirements). So, let's create an advanced tree for each class! I already have a few ideas, but I'm trying to get another project finished(-ish). In other words, everybody else, please suggest away!

Agree with the total removal of arrows, and agree with moving the egos to bows. I don't see why bows can't just have constant effects, instead of some sort of complicated power/energy system, when none of the other weapon effects work that way (not even poisons, if I'm not mistaken). Bows could probably use a general nerf, though.

The only serious issue I foresee with this move is the need for a higher drop rate on bows/slings, but the current arrow and sling bullet drops could just be replaced by the respective weapon.

Even WoW got rid of arrows (finally)
... I repeat:
Even WoW got rid of arrows!


Surely, that has to mean something.

I couldn't care less what WoW did.