A-EftP - Are archers viable in mid to late game?

[Propaganda]

If I recall correctly I think I saw a few posts stating archers do not scale well into late game.

 

If I make a pure archer (with locking picking) would I be OK or will the character feel gimped?

[Kreador]

It depends what difficulty you're playing on. I've enjoyed games with an archer all the way through, but I only play on Normal. The damage an archer can do does not increase at end game as significantly as a dual-weilding melee character or a spell caster. However, with a little care in what equipment and skills you pick, your archer can easily get 4 or 5 actions per round late game.

[Randomizer]

The range weapons for bows do less damage per level than swords and thrown weapons of the best type are limited and heavy.

 

On normal an archer is useful because you don't have to shift position as much to reach targets. On torment difficulty that lower damage means monsters aren't getting killed fast enough.

[Aoslare]

Archers are PLAYABLE. They are not useless.

 

However, they do become LESS EFFECTIVE in numerical terms vs both melee fighters and spellcasters.

 

On Torment, archers will be a liability. On Normal they will be fine.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

What Slarty said. They're playable even on torment, and I'm sure at some point some lunatic with too much time and skill on their hands will beat the game on torment with a singleton dedicated archer (if this hasn't happened already). They stack up pretty well against pole and sword & shield fighters (especially since an archer has no reason not to use a shield), but they fall significantly behind casters and dual wielders. The higher the difficulty, the more this matters.

[Propaganda]

Thanks everyone.

 

I am currently playing on hard as I don't have the time/patience for torment currently.

 

If we had five character I would go with a dedicated archer; however, having two tanks helps protect the spell casters - something I find useful. (and still fun)

[Kreador]

You might want to give bows to your casters. Even with no skill points, they can be fairly useful early in the game when you need to conserve spell points and only need to do a little damage to finish something off.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Kreador

You might want to give bows to your casters. Even with no skill points, they can be fairly useful early in the game when you need to conserve spell points and only need to do a little damage to finish something off.

In fact, you should give longbows to everyone you can, even if you never expect them to be used: the 5% accuracy bonus listed on their stats applies to melee attacks and spells as well.

[Kinsume]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Kreador

You might want to give bows to your casters. Even with no skill points, they can be fairly useful early in the game when you need to conserve spell points and only need to do a little damage to finish something off.

In fact, you should give longbows to everyone you can, even if you never expect them to be used: the 5% accuracy bonus listed on their stats applies to melee attacks and spells as well.

That seems like it'd be a bug. It's completely illogical for a guy using melee weapons to get an accuracy bonus from the bow they have equipped. Vice versa with an archer getting a bonus from a shield that is equipped.

[Lilith]

It's not so much a bug as an engine limitation: there's no specific "+X% to missile accuracy" or "+X% to melee accuracy" property. It is a little odd, admittedly.

[Kinsume]

It's a pity that archers don't scale too well. I haven't tried a dedicated archer but I know that my priest with a bow and nothing boosting its damage at all can still hit harder than my tank does with his sword. I can only imagine how effective a dedicated archer would be.

 

While they don't match a dual wielder's dps on a single target, they do get to shoot multiple times at different opponents. However that isn't really as useful in Torment where killing speed is what really matters.

 

I just hope in the future remakes sword/board and poles get some love or that dual wielding is taken down a notch because as it stands it completely outshines all other dps options.

[Danny the Fool]

Originally Posted By: Kinsume

However that isn't really as useful in Torment where killing speed is what really matters.

Well, the game is not balanced for torment...

Of course you could also argue that you're taking some of the torment out of torment by choosing characters that work very well on that difficulty.

[Kinsume]

With how underpowered sword/board, pole and archery are in comparison to dual wielding, there isn't really another option for Torment. And of course you're right, the game isn't balanced for Torment, however the fact remains that dual wielding is vastly superior in every way compared to other dps classes, with no downside regardless of the difficulty you play on.

[Pemptus]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

It's not so much a bug as an engine limitation: there's no specific "+X% to missile accuracy" or "+X% to melee accuracy" property. It is a little odd, admittedly.

It's these kind of things that make me not want to buy the game. Come on now, Jeff has been making stat-heavy rpgs for HOW long? How do incredibly basic bugs and "limitations" like this still crop up?

[Lilith]

Eh. To the optimising crowd, finding and exploiting those little engine quirks is half the fun. Everyone else isn't likely to notice or care unless they happen to check the forums.

[Pemptus]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Eh. To the optimising crowd, finding and exploiting those little engine quirks is half the fun. Everyone else isn't likely to notice or care unless they happen to check the forums.

I get you. It would be fun for me as well, except it doesn't make any sort of sense.

[TriRodent]

At this point early in the (hard) game I've got a reasonably dedicated archer (one point in melee to help open disciplines & to help when monsters close in & one in priest for help healing when needed). Would it be better to keep him on this path (strong archer) or to start to branch out (probably) into the melee direction? If so, opinions on how soon to start pumping up the other & how far to take archery would be appreciated.

 

Originally Posted By: Pemptus

Originally Posted By: Lilith

It's not so much a bug as an engine limitation: there's no specific "+X% to missile accuracy" or "+X% to melee accuracy" property. It is a little odd, admittedly.

 

It's these kind of things that make me not want to buy the game. Come on now, Jeff has been making stat-heavy rpgs for HOW long? How do incredibly basic bugs and "limitations" like this still crop up?

 

I bought a new truck a couple of months ago. One of the things I noticed when checking it out was the the defrost on the windshield worked really well. However I couldn't turn that completely off & direct the heat only to my feet, the defrost is essentially a permanent option/part of the setting. It never crossed my mind to reject the entire truck because of such a stupid little thing. In your world though apparently it is a valid reason to not buy something because the auto company has had 100 years to figure it out....

 

I'm getting 40+ hours of great entertainment for roughly an hour's worth of my labor (& that 40 is if I only play this once & never again, highly unlikely). If that kind of return isn't enough to make you overlook a couple tiny issues then I really don't know what else to say, it just boggles the mind.

[Vempele]

Originally Posted By: Pemptus

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Eh. To the optimising crowd, finding and exploiting those little engine quirks is half the fun. Everyone else isn't likely to notice or care unless they happen to check the forums.

I get you. It would be fun for me as well, except it doesn't make any sort of sense.

The bowstring is actually a magic item, you just need a bow to wear it because there's no string slot. If you could wield a guitar instead, you'd get a 30% accuracy bonus.

[Kreador]

Originally Posted By: Vempele

The bowstring is actually a magic item, you just need a bow to wear it because there's no string slot. If you could wield a guitar instead, you'd get a 30% accuracy bonus.

Hmmmm. So maybe if you kill that gypsy and steal her guitar... ;-)

Click to reveal..

For the humor impaired, those are jokes. Kill the gypsy at your own risk.

[Pemptus]

Sorry, car analogies don't work. This isn't a car, it's a game. Also, the defrost function is for defrosting. Bows aren't for hitting better with swords. Bad mechanics ahoy!

Well, unless the bow was magic or something, but it's not.

 

I love Avernum (1-3 anyway), I really do, but the lack of differentiating between melee and ranged accuracy in this version is pretty major, don't you think? It also speaks of a lack of care in design, which isn't encouraging.

 

Originally Posted By: TriRodent

I'm getting 40+ hours of great entertainment for roughly an hour's worth of my labor (& that 40 is if I only play this once & never again, highly unlikely). If that kind of return isn't enough to make you overlook a couple tiny issues then I really don't know what else to say, it just boggles the mind.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'll probably still buy the game, I'm well aware of the price-funhours ratio. I whine because I care so damn much. <3

[Kinsume]

If I recall correctly, this is the 3rd? remake of the same game. If the engine thats being used is really the thing holding it back, then why not use another engine? Now I understand Jeff is basically a one man team when it comes to coding, but surely there are similar engines out that could be used right?

[Kendroxide]

Originally Posted By: Kinsume

If I recall correctly, this is the 3rd? remake of the same game. If the engine thats being used is really the thing holding it back, then why not use another engine? Now I understand Jeff is basically a one man team when it comes to coding, but surely there are similar engines out that could be used right?

It would be neat if Jeff was able to use an infinity engine for his next game, though I doubt that could ever happen.

[Kreador]

The specific game engine has been modified and changed markedly since the first version of the game, Exile, came out. What we're talking about here is a minor quirk that has little to no effect on the actual playability of the game.

[The Reverend]

In my hard playthrough I found my dedicated archer useful in the mid-to-late game, although not as useful as my dual-wielder, mage, and priest. But during the early part of the game (which I found to be the hardest part), the archer was probably the most useful character. I also liked having character variety so I stuck with the archer all the way through.

 

If you play with the setting where action order is determined by each individual character's stats (rather than the default setting which just uses party order), the archer will almost always get the very first action of the combat (since if you build them properly they will have a lot of dexterity). With adrenline rush this means you can fire off four shots before any of the enemies get to act - potentially enough to kill off that pesky enemy spell caster before they get to haste the rest of the enemies.

[ShieTar]

@Lilith: Are you realy sure about this limitation? I mean, the stat descriptions for Str and Dex clearly says that they raise Melee and Range accuracy, respectively.

And there even are two different traits. "Surehand" and "Deadeye" I think? Do you mean that if I took both traits I would get 10% accuracy on every attack, instead of 5%?

[Randomizer]

Jeff didn't always check that each thing that raises/lowers to hit chance works only for a specific attack type. There was a bug in v1.0.0 that Demonslayer's bonus versus demons worked for spells as well as melee attacks. So little quirks like a longbow helping for all attacks is easily understood.

[Kinsume]

Ideally bugs like these should be removed to get rid of the temptation of players abusing them, but lets face it gaming is rarely ideal. Pretty much every game in existence has some bug or glitch that is capable of being exploited, it is entirely up to the player if they wish to use them or not. While I would prefer to see things like these fixed, I wouldn't exactly lose any sleep over it if they weren't.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Quote:

I love Avernum (1-3 anyway), I really do, but the lack of differentiating between melee and ranged accuracy in this version is pretty major, don't you think?

I don't, in fact. I think it pretty exactly meets my definition of "minor." When I think of major problems in games, I think of bugs that crash the game or corrupt save files, cause music or graphics to not function, serious play balance inequities, or clunky and unpleasant control schemes. The thing we're discussing is a deviation from the ideal, but not a serious one compared to the set of potential and actual problems found in games. Moreover, if the fact that longbows give a small bonus to melee accuracy is the sort of issue that downgrades your prospects of purchase from a definitely to a probably in and of itself, I can't imagine there are many games that meet your standards.