Melee/Ranged Combat Idea

[PantherX82]

Alright, for one, I don't like Melee combat in AO. You can attack them from far away, what you guys need to do is make it so your character will run after who you choose to attack, and they will run up to them so your close enough to attack, that goes for monsters too, instead of being able to someone/something with a hammer or something from 3m away is just stupede, you should be running up to the enemy and attacking them only when your maybe inches away from them. Also, a choice to choose between auto-attacking or not, sometimes you may not want to hit back. And for ranged weapons, you should atleast when attacking an enemy, your character will run close enough to actually attack, instead of standing there helpless with a gun until you or the enemy gets in range.

Cheespell (Cheese Spell actually =P)

[Intenseheat]

The inability to attack from a decent range is grounded in reality, true, but it would give rooters too much power, seeing as how we often only get close enough to get 1 or 2 hits in before they run away, if we had to be inches away we wouldn't be able to touch them, especially fixers. As for ranged weapons... that's a bad idea. Suppose you want to try and shoot a mob before it aggros you, maybe if you're an agent you're trying to get in an AS and then root it or something. Now you underestimate your weapons range and you auto-run towards the mob and before you can react it's aggroed on you and you're in a whole new world of trouble.

Auto-attack? Click Options, then click Misc. You'll find the autoattack mobs/humans and the autotarget mobs/humans. Adjust to your liking.

[XtroXtreme]

A grapple Nano for melee clases would solve the problem with roots. The nano should just pulls target in for a short time.

[coldwarkid]

Excellent idea.

I think what Funcom have done is abstracted all of the running around and shouting that actually happens in melee into a long-ish engagement range for melee users. Fair enough, since as has been said before this isn't Quake.

However, with a grapple nano it actually makes sense to cut the melee range down to 1-2m maximum, as it adds a new tactical aspect to the game - always a good thing. The Grapple duration would have to be shorter than the root though, or roots would lose their value entirely. Effectively then, grapple has to lag about one nano behind root (ie. the Enforcer gets his first grapple about when the Trader gets his second root).

One interesting idea would be a "pet grapple" nano line for Engineers, MP's and Bureaucrats. It wouldn't stop ranged mobs shooting at you, at least until you broke line of sight, but it would make for a very handy tool to control the fight, especially for the Engineer who has no other means to do so.

Cheers,

~R~

[Naraya]

Either a grapple nano or a summon nano would be cool. Would give the melee profs some tricks :-)

[XtroXtreme]

Unfortunatly we have asked for them for a long time (or at least they where ask for a long time ago), and we never ever got any replies.

[PantherX82]

Well like I mentioned before, there should be a way to turn off auto-run or be able to turn off auto-attack.

[Bionitrous]

Gotta stop talking about a nano for melee [i]classes[i] please. Start talking about an item for melee weapons users. That's half of what's wrong with this game. Too much emphasis is done based on Professions and not enough based on skills or playstyles.

I agree with everything that's been said above except the reference to meleeing being strictly 100% a profession choice.

Is an Engineer ranged or melee profession?

Is a Doctor ranged or melee profession?

That's my point. If FunCom would use some creativity and add something like a Bola that acts like the Fixer Cluster Bullets and required 2HB AND Thrown Objects then that would help everybody out there who is currently getting owned with their Hammers and Beams regardless of what their profession is.

If they added Shuriken and other types of 'ninja-stars' that require 1HE AND Thrown Objects that offered a 0.5 second stun, then those who have swords in their hands would have an alternative way to do damage while they are waiting for a root to break.

Etc., etc.

All it takes is the two things that FunCom appears not to have Creativity when it comes to game mechanics and Competence in the programming department.

I've been through the UO development cycle and when they say they're gonna put something in the game they do it. And it's not some hack of an existing item or skill or code fragment, it's fresh and new and makes some sort of sense. Believe it or not, we've seen basically nothing new in over a year of AO that isn't simply code-reuse. Over-equipping rules were a tremendous effort of resources for questionable improvements to game play. Summoning Boss Monsters were a unique addition. Fixer NCU buffs ... but then again I think they were just a temporary summoning of an item into deck slot 0 (hence the bugs).

Not much innovation going on.

Don't expect a fix for Melee weapon users to be enlightened or forthcoming.

And yes, I do use 2HB and can't PvP very well because of the Rooters.

[_____________Borrace]

you can turn off auto attack...

check out the misc. window in the options panel.