[Feedback Request] Alpha Two Ranger Archetype Update Shown in December Livestream

Prefacing this with the reminder that I'm still probably negatively biased against anything that makes me feel like it will make another BDO, I don't play Ranger, and by his own admission, the person in my group that does play Ranger tends to give more superficial feedback (so this has nothing to do with his).

It looks okay. Nothing too fancy, but that's not what I'm hoping for when I check in on a showcase of what is still fundamentally an indie MMORPG.

A lot of what I'd comment on is stuff that would only be showcased in next LiveStream (Raid/Group PvP) or a more 'challenging' PvE/PvX showcase. It's hard to infer much from what was shown beyond the basics without making a ton of assumptions. Therefore everything past this point is making those assumptions, and should just be ignored whenever the assumption's wrong, ofc.

Assumption #1: Since Snipe and Headshot are functionally 'Tab Targeted' abilities, they could miss a highly evasive character such as an Evasion Tank.
I don't know what to make of this, on the one hand if we're keeping the 'Evasion Tank' concept, this somewhat has to be true, because even with 'Everyone has a CC Cleanse if they want', a group of Rangers right now would still achieve massive Area Denial and damage at the same time. If Evasive Characters can just rush them down anyway without instantly dying, great, if not, Ranger Wars?
If buffing Evasion can get you through even these skills, then I'm interested, but concerned about the 'battles of statistics' that are likely to pop up based on the fact that healing doesn't miss. That's the standard for the genre, though, so mostly, it comes off as, in a very roundabout way, less of a commitment to any form of Hybrid Combat.

Assumption #2: Since Disengage isn't required to actually be a Disengage and Air Strike has huge range and Air Control, Fighters have even more than this.
When I say 'even more' I include 'having much shorter cooldowns', but this isn't often 'enough'. Ranger now has the most CC we've technically seen so far, like if you took every Carry in Predecessor and made one character that could do all of it. SkillTrees notwithstanding, I foresee a lot of spec into CC resistance. I kind of like this approach depending on how much Evasion is weighted. Can you cleanse a Mark off someone? Does it count primarily as a Debuff? Based on my L2 understanding, it will.

Assumption #3: 'Boss' combat mobility requirements will be lower, or we'll be expected to maintain 'perimeters'.
Even considering the fact that some of this CC 'shouldn't even be working' (obv it had to be shown off, I understand this), it's hard to imagine a situation where 'the reason you didn't just bring a lot of Rangers to help you steal a boss kill' isn't just 'well people will stay Green so the Rangers can't CC them at critical moments'. I'm interested to know from some future showcase which direction the team generally wants to go, with this.

Assumption #4: Attack Speed is meta/capped/not even a buildable stat mostly.
Balance is obviously not in place yet, but the counterplay to that rate of fire from the Ranger definitely seems more like a 'character skill' which brings us back to the Evasion/Block Chance component. But I still have 'fears' based on games that easily let you ramp your attack speed higher than your animations could even keep up with, and while that's not technically 'Animation Canceling', it has similar problems, in my opinion, to having it. I'd therefore assume it's not a thing at all.

So, with all those assumptions made, everything looks absolutely fantastic. Literally everything. I believe in that Winter Riverlands. I absolutely loved the spiders, and the ravens, despite them being so squishy (for context in case you somehow don't already have this data, for me, even the most normal mob in my preferred games is at least as strong as the Named/Elite Spider).

The skills are about what I'd expect to see from Ranger in Ashes. Not my thing, either as a player or as a game experience, but that's why I don't want to throw out too much feedback. I don't like Ashes combat much yet, but this stream definitely stayed true to what I understand Ashes combat to be and didn't feel like a drop in quality relative to that. So while I don't expect to love it, I also don't expect any pain points beyond the generality of 'it's not my style of gameplay'.

In case my group's Ranger doesn't get around to expanding on it, his feedback was basically:
"Gatdamn, the short bow is fast"
"Okay, the Marks concept definitely leans into that animal spirit blessing/aid which I want from my Ranger/Druid"
"The imbue effects are very useful"
"Ranger definitely looks fun".

In a way, this stream helped put me at ease, because there's a lot you can infer from it about my archetype. I was afraid the Rogue would suck, but given the sheer output of the Ranger, I can already tell I won't have to be disappointed. I love playing speedy, evasive melee users and since Rogues (and Fighters) are meant to counter groups of well positioned Rangers, their gap closers will definitely be crazy, to keep up with the Ranger's disengages and overall output. I believe Ranger gets 2 skills for repositioning, so it'll be interesting to see the Rogue's by comparison.

You can also tell because of the CC cleanse I will get plenty of CC to do my job properly, to prevent a solo Ranger from escaping. And since rushing toward Rangers to do my job would put me in tons of risk, it's pretty clear the Rogue will have to be plenty evasive too. Otherwise it's not worth my time. In short, if you analyze things carefully, it's clear I get to do what I always love doing in games: eat ranged users for breakfast.

My one concern is Rogues ending up too 'sticky' due to all the CC and gap closing and then having to suffer through a continuous set of nerfs due to people whining. If that happens, then we'll all have to suffer through a Ranger dominated meta which is only fun for Rangers. Not to mention all of the readjusting I'd have to do.

First of all, great showcase! I really like the winter version of biomes, it’s very immersive. Ranger animations were also stellar across the board, and you did a great job of showing off everything about the class. The idea of someone who can carefully plan their hunt and then do a ton of damage all at once because of their planning is very fitting for the concept of a Ranger, and it’s reasonably well executed. Big props to the animation and art teams!

Now for the problems. Wow, you really made ranged Khaimera, huh? I didn’t even know that was possible. To explain a bit, Khaimera was the unquestioned top tier of a MOBA called Paragon, who excelled at everything and had no real counter due to his excellent gap closing ability and massive regeneration. Even in the successor game, Predecessor, he still doesn’t have a true counter because of his CC cleanse ability. So here we have someone with an excellent engage *and* disengage game who can burst you into nothingness in one Lightning Reload sequence, and cleanse their way out of any consequences. That seems pretty wild, and giving everyone CC cleanse also leads to a frustrating game where you have to keep adding more CC options to everyone to keep up with the cleanses…

That said, maybe I am assuming a lot here, so I have a question. We’ve seen skills like Javelin from the Tank in past showcases that allow you to disrupt opponents by pulling them. Can you do this to a Ranger mid-Air Strike? Is Javelin purely a tab target skill that ignores verticality like that? Plus, if you do this, can the Ranger immediately CC cleanse upon touching the ground? It seems important to know whether Air Strike or high damage skills with a long channel like Snipe can be interrupted and put on cooldown with Tab Target.

Finally, does the cleanse only remove currently impacting CC, or does it also grant brief immunity? For example, if the Ranger is rooted, pops Call of the Wild, and then has another stun immediately landed on them like the Tank’s charging stun, would that land?

I guess I ended up also "needing to make assumptions to give feedback", so for now all I can say is that I'm tentatively optimistic, but that definitely looks like a Ranger! Good job to the visual design teams, good luck with your balance passes!

So after watching the stream I remain impressed with how far the showcases have come. I think the team did an excellent job of being focused while still being friendly and comfortable as the team often is with each other. It was very easy to follow, however, I found some parts... 'unexpected'.

The core premise of the Ranger we were given 'your lead Ranger' was that in other games lead Ranger has played Ranger tended to feel weak or limited, and that the Ranger we are presented with is a Ranger that strives to not have the problems they had in other games. This is unexpected to me because I have played many MMO's and try to keep up on ones that I do not play as I appreciate studying game design in other games. I cannot think of a single game where Ranger is 'weak' or 'bad' or 'limited' other than BDO. Rangers, in MY experience, are almost always 'top tier'. The ones that are 'mid' (with the exception of BDO's) BECOME mid because they started top tier and were severely over-tuned.

So I am not saying that 'lead Ranger is wrong' but I will say that this feels odd or limited in experience to say.

The reason for that is because being able to attack from range at all is a huge bonus. You are already safe. You already usually have a head start in the damage department against your opponent. Put some CC and 'fairly good mobility' on top of that and it's already a winning composition.

The Ranger in this has lot mobility but can't usually do a lot of damage at the same time (air strike excluded). This makes this archetype a 'binary' character, not a glass cannon. These are different concepts. A binary character is one that has an explicit win condition but cannot usually 'work towards it' at the same time as they can 'stay safe'. A glass cannon on the other hand is literally a high risk, high reward build. They CAN work towards their goal at the same time as they 'try to stay safe' but doing both at once lowers their effective output or survivability as a trade off.

So yes, I believe that the 'lead Ranger' has made some very honest upfront claims. I believe them when they say that this Ranger will not have any of the things that make Rangers normally feel unfun. I believe it looks fun, when they are winning. But I also think that they need to more firmly put Ranger in the position of 'glass cannon'.

In it's current form I feel like Ranger will not have as much fun when they are losing or not working towards their win, but that when opponents are fighting them and the Ranger is losing or not working towards winning that the opponents are probably NOT having fun. And that is the crux of 'aiming to balance for fun'. Think about fun wider.

Also the speed on this bow is immersion breaking and that the sound design direction for it is currently irritating and could use less conspicuous change of course. For a GOOD example of what is both not irritating sound design and what counts as fast but not immersion breaking. The character will go 'max speed' at about 28 seconds in. I recognize you want short bow and long bow to have a speed difference but I feel this should be closer to what the gap between the two should feel like. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6W70UI0vNI

I will reserve my judgement regarding balance as you noted you are not interested in that feedback presently. However, I feel like the cone on these abilities has some definitive player feel issues, not just balance ones. The fact that the ability spread is so wide may seem like a problem for the people being attacked, but in my opinion it looks like it would much more hinder the Ranger instead. The spread lacks precision and can damage people you do not intend. And it looks like for some of these abilities a wider spread is actually making them wait longer on an ability they may not feel the need in most cases to have that much 'range' (particularly that ability that required a line up for a straight shot.)

Additionally, I will express that I thought the decal system was great. It made me consider that if you allow rng/bards to exchange damage for buffs/debuffs on the abilities, that this would be what I'd expect mobile support players to want in a class. If this isn't a consideration, maybe consider it.

The show case was probably my favorite so far.

When I watched this showcase for the first time, I remember feeling "I don't want to play this." It wasn't really clear why exactly, though. It's not that different from TL's Longbow, which I quite enjoyed. As a result, I had to sit down and watch the whole thing again as I prepared to write this...

One thing I noted right away, is that I hated the attack speed. It's unimmersively fast. I just sortof assumed that this was the shortbow, and I'm definitely a longbow type of gal, so I gave it a pass.

That said, my first real feeling as we got into the abilities was "This class feels 'designed around spam', which is no good to a sniper." Barrage certainly reinforced this, but hey, that ability's kindof 'required' right?

I remember my first time watching through this thinking that I know I like conceptually being able to debuff people, but the marks just didn't seem to interest me at all. I'm still not completely sure why, but...

On a personal level, I dislike the way marks are added to shots. While I understand the intent with having a mark be activated while your shot is starting up so that it doesn't cost you any time, I think I personally prefer them to be a zero-animation-time ability that applies to your NEXT shot. Literally just press the button 'before' instead of 'during'. I prefer when I'm shooting, for my focus to be on the shot. (Even if I'm in Tab-Target mode.) The 'setup' for a special shot... just goes before it, ya know?

Maybe it's more a matter of wanting to choose my shot type and execute it, not start the breath required, then having to fiddle to modify it. "Bind Arrow" or "Piercing Shot" feels better than "'Standard Ability!" "Mark Modifier!". If you do the mode choice first, at least it just feels like "choosing the arrow or breath type for the shot".

I was disappointed by scattershot slightly. I loved the concept, but I totally expected the 'charge to narrow the cone' to allow me to focus on exactly the area I choose to. I was very disappointed when it seemed to actually be a binary 'wide' or 'narrow'. You implied during the Rain of Death section that that might just be an animation thing though, so I'll just hope I'm wrong. It'd be amazing to be able to decide exactly how much to concentrate or dilute my cone, but I'm wondering, from Rain of Death, if that's even what's going on.

Moving on, Air Strike is spectacular *_*. Air Striking up cliffs *_*. That said, I didn't expect the root. I'm not complaining, I guess? I don't feel like I really need it in that space, and intuitively, I'd expect it to end up somewhere else. My team has pointed out the safety of the ability in certain situations might be a little broken, though. I'll leave discussions of that to them.

Thundering Shot isn't really my style, personally. It feels strange, more like a mage type ability, to me. Arrows don't really do that, I guess?

One thing I really didn't like visually about it, though, is the arcing path that the arrows took when fired from above. They definitely made a 'homing spell' type arc that no actual arrow would, or even could ever take. I hope the team can smooth that out into more realistic arrow arcs when firing from the high ground in the future.

Otherwise, I really appreciate the shot color changing when I have imbues active. It makes it very easy to notice when I've run out.

That all said, I really hate the idea of 'everyone has a CC cleanse' because of what it means about how much CC you're going to flood the game with. I feel like I'd much rather not overflow with hard or 'firm' CC in that sense. You can solve the problem of "too much CC to still be fun" by letting everyone break out of CCs, but I'd really rather you solve it by reducing how many there are, and letting them be meaningful instead.