Looking back on Rangers. (Rangers being weapon locked)
Adestra
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
I know we're well past the ranger showcase but as more and more classes have come out, it's become more and more apparent to me that rangers as they currently exist really feel counterintuitive to Ashes of Creation's design and I think they miss out on the class fantasy.
To Clarify, currently rangers feel like "bow-the class" as opposed to a more hunter/nature aesthetic. Which is fine if Ashes of Creation had classes locked to a weapon... but they don't. I've been on a trend of looking for unique combinations in Ashes of creation recently to see how they might work, 2h sword wielding mage (which they even showcased in a livestream!), bow mage, PI members have gone to talk about battle clerics with maces and heavy armor instead of wands, and all of the different weapon varieties each class can carry. there are only 3 examples I can really think of that fly in the face of this incredible diversity. Everything else besides these 3 examples is truly diverse and unique and allows the user to do whatever kind of stuff they want to do.
1st, the fighter as a whole feels pretty locked into melee weapons. There are several skills that i simply cannot picture working with ranged weapons. Like how would a spellbook work with Whirlwind? for example. But in this example, fighters still have a large range available to them. If we look at the planned weapons we can see that "melee" weapons would incorporate:
- Axes - 1h/2h
- Clubs
- Daggers
- Hammers
- Lances
- Maces - 1h/2h
- Polearms/Halberds
- Spears - 1h/2h
- Swords - 1h/2h
Fighters will still have plenty of options to them to really customize and diversify their class to make fighters feel unique, and none of the fighter skills feel required to have any specific of these. Plus I'm not sure that whirlwind wouldn't work with a wand or a scepter.
2nd, the tank has 1 skill that is weapon locked and that is shield assault. that's it.
Rangers in comparison to these two have 7 skill specifically locked to bow(Weapon bow mastery, Snipe shot+upgrades, the 3 Imbued Ammo techniques, Call of the wind (no idea why this requires the bow, but it does per the wiki), Air strike) (The imbued ammo techniques don't actually specify bow as a requirement but do say "When the target is hit by your bow" in the description.)
And then have 4 more skills that are clearly bow and arrow themed, use arrows in the animations, and/or list bows and arrows in the description of the skill. (Thundering shot, Scatter shot and it's variants, Barrage, Raining Death, and you count the 3 imbued ammo techniques here if you didn't count them above),
For a total of 11! of the rangers techniques being clearly themed for 1 weapon type and that alone. In fact it would have been easier to tell you all the things the rangers can do that aren't bow and arrow themed! which is the hunts and marks (which i love and feel very thematic), the bear trap, disengage, camouflage, and the vine field. 11 skills feels crazy in comparison to all of the other classes for weapon locking.
Despite this I think some skills can be reflavored/reworked slightly to work with any weapon, Barrage, call of the wind, airstrike, thundering shot, the imbued ammo, headshot and honestly Snipe as a targeted charge up dash for melee weapons would be awesome. All of these could easily work with melee weapons let alone other ranged weapon options. A ranger with a staff cosplaying as a druid sounds awesome! and hunting with a spear is an incredibly common depiction.
I think one of Ashes of Creations biggest draws is the customization of build crafting and building something that feels unique and fits your own playstyle/personal vision for a class. One of the biggest components of that is the ability to use any weapon you want with any class, and in it's current iteration Ranger does not allow for that freedom, and currently feels more like a class dedicated to a specific weapon than anything else. This feels like a miss from intrepid given how well they've crafted everything else and how cool the hunter/nature fantasy of the ranger class feels.
TL:DR - I think the ranger class is more of the "bow and arrow" class, and having a class so rigidly attached to one specific weapon feels counter to the general design stance that they have taken of "Any class can use any weapon"
Disclaimer - I know ashes of creation is still in alpha! the game isn't even close to release yet and several things are still a work in progress! Ranger isn't done yet, I get it! I'm more hoping that this post and subsequent discussion can help guide intrepid to getting the ranger into a better overall place and get the same sort of customization that all of the other classes get to love and enjoy. This isn't coming out of hatred or anything like that for the ranger, actually quite the opposite as someone who loves the ranger in d&d and just want it to be as free as everything else.
Edit: forgot to include camouflage under the things Rangers can do without a bow, now fixed, and is a very hunter/naturey thing i like about ranger. Originally forgot to include it cause it's not directly on the skill tree on the wiki.
To Clarify, currently rangers feel like "bow-the class" as opposed to a more hunter/nature aesthetic. Which is fine if Ashes of Creation had classes locked to a weapon... but they don't. I've been on a trend of looking for unique combinations in Ashes of creation recently to see how they might work, 2h sword wielding mage (which they even showcased in a livestream!), bow mage, PI members have gone to talk about battle clerics with maces and heavy armor instead of wands, and all of the different weapon varieties each class can carry. there are only 3 examples I can really think of that fly in the face of this incredible diversity. Everything else besides these 3 examples is truly diverse and unique and allows the user to do whatever kind of stuff they want to do.
1st, the fighter as a whole feels pretty locked into melee weapons. There are several skills that i simply cannot picture working with ranged weapons. Like how would a spellbook work with Whirlwind? for example. But in this example, fighters still have a large range available to them. If we look at the planned weapons we can see that "melee" weapons would incorporate:
- Axes - 1h/2h
- Clubs
- Daggers
- Hammers
- Lances
- Maces - 1h/2h
- Polearms/Halberds
- Spears - 1h/2h
- Swords - 1h/2h
Fighters will still have plenty of options to them to really customize and diversify their class to make fighters feel unique, and none of the fighter skills feel required to have any specific of these. Plus I'm not sure that whirlwind wouldn't work with a wand or a scepter.
2nd, the tank has 1 skill that is weapon locked and that is shield assault. that's it.
Rangers in comparison to these two have 7 skill specifically locked to bow(Weapon bow mastery, Snipe shot+upgrades, the 3 Imbued Ammo techniques, Call of the wind (no idea why this requires the bow, but it does per the wiki), Air strike) (The imbued ammo techniques don't actually specify bow as a requirement but do say "When the target is hit by your bow" in the description.)
And then have 4 more skills that are clearly bow and arrow themed, use arrows in the animations, and/or list bows and arrows in the description of the skill. (Thundering shot, Scatter shot and it's variants, Barrage, Raining Death, and you count the 3 imbued ammo techniques here if you didn't count them above),
For a total of 11! of the rangers techniques being clearly themed for 1 weapon type and that alone. In fact it would have been easier to tell you all the things the rangers can do that aren't bow and arrow themed! which is the hunts and marks (which i love and feel very thematic), the bear trap, disengage, camouflage, and the vine field. 11 skills feels crazy in comparison to all of the other classes for weapon locking.
Despite this I think some skills can be reflavored/reworked slightly to work with any weapon, Barrage, call of the wind, airstrike, thundering shot, the imbued ammo, headshot and honestly Snipe as a targeted charge up dash for melee weapons would be awesome. All of these could easily work with melee weapons let alone other ranged weapon options. A ranger with a staff cosplaying as a druid sounds awesome! and hunting with a spear is an incredibly common depiction.
I think one of Ashes of Creations biggest draws is the customization of build crafting and building something that feels unique and fits your own playstyle/personal vision for a class. One of the biggest components of that is the ability to use any weapon you want with any class, and in it's current iteration Ranger does not allow for that freedom, and currently feels more like a class dedicated to a specific weapon than anything else. This feels like a miss from intrepid given how well they've crafted everything else and how cool the hunter/nature fantasy of the ranger class feels.
TL:DR - I think the ranger class is more of the "bow and arrow" class, and having a class so rigidly attached to one specific weapon feels counter to the general design stance that they have taken of "Any class can use any weapon"
Disclaimer - I know ashes of creation is still in alpha! the game isn't even close to release yet and several things are still a work in progress! Ranger isn't done yet, I get it! I'm more hoping that this post and subsequent discussion can help guide intrepid to getting the ranger into a better overall place and get the same sort of customization that all of the other classes get to love and enjoy. This isn't coming out of hatred or anything like that for the ranger, actually quite the opposite as someone who loves the ranger in d&d and just want it to be as free as everything else.
Edit: forgot to include camouflage under the things Rangers can do without a bow, now fixed, and is a very hunter/naturey thing i like about ranger. Originally forgot to include it cause it's not directly on the skill tree on the wiki.
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Comments
I see several that seem to require a ranged weapon, but a Wand or Sceptre would probably work as well as a Bow - probably even a Tome.
I did in the original post they are as follows:
Weapon Bow Mastery
Snipe shot (And it's upgrades)
Call of the Wind
Air Strike
And the "Imbue ammo" skills say when "Enemies hit by your bow attack" in the description, but don't actually list bow in the requirement so that's ones a bit confusing, but there are 3 of those.
This is all according to the wiki here: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Ranger
onto your other point, I do believe a wand may work for some of the other things like:
Barrage
Thundering Shot
Headshot
Scatter Shot
Raining Death
However multiple of those mention arrows in the description, have their animations crafted to bows, and shoot out arrow projectiles in the animation. Maybe this is just because we haven't seen a wand ranger yet (although being locked out of 4 skills, and potentially 7 is a huge reason not to try and use wand and probably why we haven't seen one yet) but they still overall *feel* like specifically bow skills not just ranger overall skills. Which is to my original point, the class feels and looks like the *bow and arrow class* (with some ranger-like abilities) and not the *ranger* class.
Fighters with spellbook. The possibilities are endless!!
I highly agree with all of this, and this is coming from someone that wants to play a ranger and most likely use bows, however! I agree locking rangers into bows and from what I've seen, we are missing a huge part of the ranger fantasy, for example having a connection with beasts, tracking, etc, a great example I could give for anyone that has read the lotr books ( doesn't really go into detail in the movies ) but the type of ranger Aragon is in the books sums it up pretty perfectly, and he mostly uses a great sword
I don't think they need to re do the skills, I think they need to add more skills, furthermore I think ranger should have been a final class and the archetype should have been archer, and ranger could have been archer/fighter or something, I think intrepid are seeing ranger to much as a marksman or archer instead of a ranger
I would also like if "Ranger" meant having skills that interact with all ranged weapons, whether they were bows, wands, orbs, and so on. And that would make "Ranger" a more fitting archetype name than "Archer" since it would be about more than bows.
Essentially, it would be the ranged weapon mirror to the Fighter, which is the melee weapon specialist.
Literally exactly my thoughts.
Now I need to reevaluate my position...
(Just kidding, great minds think alike.
They could create a class that does that.
A class that throws arrows, bolts, rocks fireballs, ninja stars (and logic, out the window).
But when people talk about ranger the mind goes to the shadowy, hooded watchmen of the woods. And frankly, there is a way bigger audience for such a class than there is for a non coherent, ranged attacks specialist with random abilities.
So you are saying that the ability to slot any weapons doesnt satisfy you, since the Ranger basically has bow animation skills only (which I doubt would change with the class augments)?
Are you saying that this class should be reworked to add abilities that would make sense to slot a melee weapon such as a sword, in addition to the existing skills?
Are you saying that such structure provides for a better ranger identity and is better from the current "play as you want but not rly", spellbook holding, orb orbiting bow attacking skills ranger and its 8 combos?
And when people hear "class" they think they know what that means, but it means something different in AoC than every other MMO out there. Intrepid doesn't seem to care about things like that.
Another MMORPG I've supported in Kickstarter is based around superheroes, and rangers in that game are just superheroes with ranged powers.
One of the great things about making your own game is that you get to make up whatever you want. You can go against a stereotype and redefine things however you want. I don't see that Ashes doing something different is a problem. We can play a Mage who carries a sword, your Tank can zap people with a wand. The last thing we need to worry about is what people are going to assume from playing other games. If they want a clone of WoW, this is the wrong game.
Your argument that there is a bigger potential audience for a stereotypical MMORPG that just does the same things as everything else is both true and irrelevant.
I am not playing with words. Everybody knows what a class is and everybody understands the 8x8 proposition, as well as what creative liberty is.
I disagree with the design, and the reasons will become clear to everybody soon enough.
Your tank zapping ppl with a wand will lose to a mage with a wand. As for the greatsword mage I see no problem. Magic works for melee weapons.
Magical weapons dont work for physical attacks. It's stupid.
You are just wrong, not everyone knows what a class is in AoC. I've been reading the forums for 7 years now (I believe this is actually the 3rd message board for this game, I may be miscounting) and I can't tell you how many times people have been horribly confused about classes in this game. They think that this game will have 64 classes, because that's what Intrepid says. And they think that means they will have 64 classes as distinct from each other as classes in a game like Elder Scrolls Online or Final Fantasy 14. And they'll start a thread asking about the details of all of these classes, and how they will be different, and so on. Until someone explains that no, there are 8 archetypes, which most other games will call classes, and classes in this game are just a base archetype with some tweaks added based on what other archetype you add on as a secondary to create a class. It's closer to a class build or talent tree or specialization in other games than distinct classes.
I still maintain that Intrepid did that on purpose; "64 classes" is a nice bait-and-switch advertising gimmick.
I've had that discussion so many times. And it will continue to happen. You are going to have many more people confused, frustrated, and angered due to that misunderstanding than someone assuming that a Ranger will be running around with a bear friend, dropping traps, and hiding in trees, and then learning that it's someone who can add poison to a wand or whatever. This is the road that Intrepid has already walked down, it's one of many things that makes the game different from other MMORPGs that people are bored with. The willingness to not conform to assumptions. And of course there is always risk when you do something different. it won't all be upside, and maybe some of it will backfire.
Plus, there is nothing that says you can't have some of that WoW/D&D/LotR woodland stuff alongside the general ranged combat stuff. There's room for both. One is the core of the archetype, the other is flavor. Like a Mage who specializes is blowing the crap out of things, but can have interesting loosely-related stuff like teleporting or having magical senses or whatever. A Rogue might be a specialist in stealth and melee damage, but can pick locks which has nothing to do with stealth combat, but gives utility and satisfies someone who expects it.
I'm not arguing that you can't have traditional "D&D Ranger" qualities, I'm just saying that you don't have to let that define the archetype and limit it.
You have 2 people on this topic saying exactly that:
One person saying that they cant play a Fighter using a spellbook (rightly so, because that would be weird).
And another person saying that the Ranger works only with bow and that archetypes should unlock more skills/weapons (which is impossible to do from a Dev standpoint).
The system wont satisfy anyone.
I'd honestly be okay with that if that was the direction they wanted to go in, but yeah as of right now it doesn't even feel like "ranged weapon master" the class it's solely limited to bows.
I personally would like to see the more hooded shadowy huntsmen of the forest similar like aragorn or the d&d ranger (which i believe is one of the major inspirations for the class) but that's more a matter of opinion and preference and either option would still be much more in line with intrepid ideology of weapon diversity. in line with you described it here You just can't do that with the ranger as it is right now, currently missing out on 4 abilities (potentially 7) including two of the rangers main mobility tools (Air Strike and Call of the Wind) and one of their main damage dealers (snipe) Is just far beyond "Slightly suboptimal" that it's going to force players hands. That is then on top of having a ton of other skills that are themed and subtexted to just the bow and arrow.
Either which way they go, whether that be ranged attack specialist or the more naturey huntsmen style they've got to do more to improve weapon diversity.
That said I am actually with Chicago when he said that Ranger/Fighter should be much more archer and weapons focused, that just makes sense when you pair what I envision as the naturey huntmens paired with the weapon master class. And yeah only minor changes are happening with subclasses, but really all it takes it a little flavoring and slight tweaking of mechanics to shift those things, and turn into more of a ranged weapons specialist. In fact I'd be totally okay if the Ranger archetype as we have it now was where Ranger/Fighter ended up (although I think that a more general ranged weapon specialist makes more sense), as long as the base archetype is just more flexible than it currently is.
Here answer this @Atama.
Dont shy away and give a true answer. Saying that people get confused by the term class and saying that ranger is free to intrepertation seem dismissive and evasive to me.
You weren't asking me, but I actually planned on awnsering this!
Honestly it'd take a lot of extra work, but If they change the projectiles to match the ranged weapon's projectiles being used it would go a LONG ways. Air Strike with giant magic orbs from a staff would look amazing, as would raining death.
As for melee weapons some skills like Air Strike, and scatter shot I don't think would work, but for others like Headshot and Barrage if you gave whatever modifier you're giving to the projectile (for instance "headshot" makes the arrow red) to the melee weapon (so you'd make the sword red) and converted it to melee range the skill would work great! I also think a augment to change "Snipe" into "pounce" and it charges just the same but becomes a targeted dash would be awesome!
These would obviously take some work but i think are feasible changes you could make to the current kit to let more weapons make use of it. This and obviously removing references to arrows and bows and instead listing "Weapon" or something similar in the tooltip.
The animation for imbue ammo though would likely need to be changed. It just directly puts different arrows on your bow. I have no idea how that would even work for any other ranged weapon, let alone a melee weapon. Which is sad cause I don't think that augmenting your current weapon to provide status conditions on hit should be something just locked to the bow, or to any weapon for that matter.
I'm not disagreeing. Being locked into a bow is a bad move. I was advocating for a generalized ranged weapon template rather than needing a bow to do every skill. Now, if they set it up so that there are an equal number of moves for different ranged weapons, that would probably work, though that might be another can of worms.
I agree with you, I'm an advocate of making it more agnostic in regards to what ranged weapons you can use.
"Don't shy away and give a true answer." What are you, a reporter trying to nail down a politician? A thread can talk about different things, and not every post has to address every single topic everyone brings up in every previous post in the thread. It may seem "dismissive and evasive" to you, but that's something you're going to have to figure out how to deal with.
An attack with a bow is different to that of a javelin, throwing axe, knife, grenade. A floaty motion without impact and a detached effect mimicking a "magical explenation at to how you hurt the enemy. Might as well play a mage.
You cant do template animations for physical attacks of weapons/tools that are so different from each other.
2) I wont have to. I will let you believe that you are contributing to the development, when you just serve word salads that nobody is hungry for.
I agree, but i also wasn't advocating for generalized attack animations. most of the current ranger skills are using the current basic attack animation or something similar (there's only so many ways to animate shooting a bow) for other weapons you'd also just use the basic attack animations paired with the funny colors you add to the effects. for stuff that's a bit more.. unique? like Air Strike and Snipe you'll probably need to adjust the current animations, and that's probably why they're locked to the bow, but I don't have another suggestion that isn't throwing away the current design which I think everyone would agree would be a huge waste of development time for intrepid. Maybe it'd be something that could consider far far into the future (like tail end of A2P3 or after release) But that would leave the class as bow-locked for a long time, and maybe that's what has to happen but it would be sad to see Intrepid completely throw away the hours and hours of good work they've thrown into lovingly crafting the current kit. Which is not what I want, I just want it to be more open to all weapon types.
but we have to see how much secondary play a role but steven said secondary archetypes may effect damage values, cooldowns, mana cost, range of abilities, ect. So might see more melee varient skills as option for mages/rangers and things like that aswell
Actually, when a system starts showing big issues you cut your loses immediatly and you build something new, using the knowledge of your mistakes.
I dont think it would be a waste of time.
We have 6 archetypes showcased so far with rogue and summoning remaining.
They can create a few more archetypes right now and see how people respond to it.
We have seen nothing from the proposed 8x8 system. We have seen nothing of the augments so it's safe to assume that besides a few possible placeholder animations, such as fighter teleporting as part of the fighter/mage combo they havent started on it.
My advice is not to pursue it. It sounds good in theory but in practice it wont deliver satisfying options.
All the work for the "flavours" will then be a waste of time.
They should add more skills to the ranger for melee combat, they should add a necromancer, since let's not forget... we turn to ashes when we die. No skeleton logic, no zombie logic. They should add a druid or shapeshifter.
They should create more detailed animations for better variety of the archetypes. Not go with generic animations and magical projectiles.
And take it from there.
I'd argue that it was just a case of historical name misappropriateion, the 'Ranger' of D&D was always a direct evolution from earlier generic 'Elf warrior' classes which were directly ripping off Legolas (who was capable in melee and ranged combat). While Aragon is far closer to a Paladin (rightious leader, healing ability, battling and turning the undead),
That said I agree with the OP that Ranger being locked into bow for all effective purposes is very inconsistent with the huge weapon flexibility which is the norm for every other archetype. I suspect that Intrepid faced a similar dilema when deciding if ranged weapons would suffer a penalty in melee and seem to have decided against it so that the Ranger can just fire pointblank with no downside and then don't 'need' melee attacks in its kit.
I am very much in favor of Ranger skill set getting some actual melee skills. Two or three more could do a lot, I could see a melee delivered hamstring attack, a knockback, maybe a finisher etc etc.
Also you need to stop diverting every thread with class discussions we have just come off a bunch of threads dealing with exactly that, use them if you want to keep that discussion going. And even if you DO think they need to add new archetypes that clearly will not come untill expansions. THAT is when MMO's of any stripe add new root class/archetypes and when we might reasonably expect to see a Druid which as a hybrid class that basically shape shifts to take on aspects of other classes are not essential to balance.
I think of a ranger as being a ranged class first and foremost.
I have been having these class/skills/weapon discussions since 2017, because it's the only weak point of the game. Everything else AoC aims at is good. I would be pointless to tell me that again.
well, look at the opposite. anyone can use a bow and pew pew from range, but the ranger will do better with a bow than other classes. anyone can wear any weapon, but some classes and builds will do better than others with certain weapons.
cant have everybody doing equally well with every weapon and every build.
I'm totally fine with rangers being better with a bow than any other class that isn't my criticism. My main issue is that as you stated, any other class can use any weapon. Mages can use swords and bows and honestly be pretty fine. Clerics can run mace and shield and do fine, they might have slightly more mana issues then if the were running a spellbook with mana vamp, but they'll do okay. Are fighters probably going to be better with two-handed weapons then tanks? Will a tank make better use of a shield then a mage? almost certainly!
My main point however is that those classes aren't severely hindered by not running their "main" or "traditional" weapon. Clerics aren't locked out of 2 of their best heals and their revive because they're running a sword and shield. Tanks are only locked out of 1 ability by not running shield and it's a small gab close. It's not their main mitigation tool or their taunt or any of their CC, you don't really lose any of the tanks core class by not running a shield. Mages aren't locked out of anything by running a great sword, and despite how weird i think the animations will be, a fighter running a wand still has their whole identity.
Ranger is currently not that way. if you put ANY weapon on a ranger that isn't a bow you're currently missing very important elements of the kit that make the ranger, the ranger. In my opinion the way the ranger currently is goes against the ideals that intrepid has laid out that any class can use any weapon. and while it's technically true that a ranger *can* use any weapon the current hit to kit means that almost no one will, and those that do will be so much worse off that I don't think they'll have any sort of success.
Which is sad to me because I think there will be a ton of diversity in all of the other classes. Currently I think Bow-Mage looks awesome and a ton of fun to try, and I think frontline cleric with mace and shield is something we've seen in both the node war and most recent livestream. I think tanks will absolutely forgo a little bit of extra mobility for the added damage a 2h weapon is likely to bring. I'm curious to try out bow fighter to see how well that works out with their melee skills and if the added range makes it even more difficult to escape them. Rangers just dont get that option currently.
I liked there different ammo types for bows in DAoC and am happy that they have something similar in ashes. Sure its different but cool enough and fits well with my fantasy for the ranger.
As far as I know we will have two weapon slots and here is what kinda concerns me. There are only 2 bows (long/short) and no melee skills a ranger has. This pretty much locks your loadout in, which is kinda boring.
I would rather see something the ranger can do in melee be it a slow/immbolize/bleed with a dagger, stagger/knockdown with a spear or maybe something defensive with sword&board. Something to round up their kit.
I dont know, havent played myself so maybe it isnt as bad as it reads, but right now ranger reads a bit one dimensional, which would be sad as its gonna be my class.