Secret of Mana Weapon Variety: Bow and Boomerang

[NegaNova]

This game is amazing and seems to have a lot of parallels with the Secret of Mana,
It is for this reason that I think the developers should attempt mimicking the bow and boomerang system that SoM has.

Scrap the current bow with its instant shots, long-distance, and limited arrow supply, and instead implement the bow as a main weapon-type with its own skill tree, where the bow has an infinite number of arrows, but doesn't go too far unless a special skill is used such as long-shot or rapid-fire. Same could be done for boomerang.

 

[ark626]

This was already discussed often.
The reason for not doing this to take it plain and simple was, that this would be ridicioulus to balance.
Even some fans postet quite cool concepts about a bow as main weapon.
But this was in general declined due to the difficulty to make it balanced, smooth and not op.

 

[NegaNova]

I understand how it might be difficult to balance, but making it not OP shouldn't be too hard. It was probably the weakest weapon used in Secret of Mana... had low damage output and short-distance. I see where the difficulty is though, as you have explained.

 

[ark626]

Also you would need a complete new skillset (no 1H or 2H but Bow Skills.)
And this is also a lot of extra effort.

 

[KoBeWi]

I understand how it might be difficult to balance, but making it not OP shouldn't be too hard. It was probably the weakest weapon used in Secret of Mana... had low damage output and short-distance. I see where the difficulty is though, as you have explained.

Why would we need a very weak weapon then? It's about balancing it between OP and useless, and useless weapons are... pointless.

 

[Rdy]

Why would we need a very weak weapon then? It's about balancing it between OP and useless, and useless weapons are... pointless.

Useless weapons are worse than pointless. At a certain point they become traps for people that don't know what the best options are, and if the game is balanced around not using useless weapons, then it becomes pseudo-punishment to take that option.

 

[NegaNova]

I'm obviously not saying create a weak weapon or pointless weapon, I'm saying that creating a bow as a main weapon wouldn't be OP because the stats can be tweaked to be balanced - yes it would take a lot of work, every component of Secrets of Grindea appear to have a tonne of work put into them - my opinion is simply that the game does lack in weapon variety, and adding another skill tree outside of 1H and 2H to mimic the ranged-weapons in Secret of Mana would make Grindea more epic. It's not a personal attack, just a suggestion from the fans.

 

[KoBeWi]

It's not a personal attack, just a suggestion from the fans.

Obviously, and suggestions are always welcome here.

The thing is, bow skills were already suggested numerous times. There's even a huuuge topic, which tries to consider everything you'd think of when making bow a primary weapon: http://secretsofgrindea.com/forum/i...-ideas-to-make-the-bow-a-primary-weapon.4650/
And response from GoodStuff there sums up all topics about this that appeared to date, and quotes official dev response on this subject.

As you said, balancing them would take lot of work. But devs are already very busy doing other important stuff. Bow skill tree is far more work than the recent utility skill/skill rebalance, so that would mean pushing away new content for much longer. And if it was done later, whole game had to be rebalanced to fit with the new weapon type. Maybe some skill combos were too OP and that would mean redoing old skills again? Making a whole new skill tree for another weapon doesn't seem to worth it at this point.

There are other satisfying way to make bows/boomerangs have more use. More talents, more bow types, arrow types, items with special bow effects (there are some already). That should be enough and wouldn't escalate too quickly to break everything else.

EDIT:

my opinion is simply that the game does lack in weapon variety

But it makes up with skill variety and build potential. I wouldn't mind more "consumable" weapons tho. Boomerangs, as you suggested, but also shurikens, throwing knives, magic flintlocks etc.

 

[The G-Meister]

As you said, balancing them would take lot of work. But devs are already very busy doing other important stuff. Bow skill tree is far more work than the recent utility skill/skill rebalance, so that would mean pushing away new content for much longer. And if it was done later, whole game had to be rebalanced to fit with the new weapon type. Maybe some skill combos were too OP and that would mean redoing old skills again? Making a whole new skill tree for another weapon doesn't seem to worth it at this point.

I'll also add to this, having had a chat with some other game devs for another game about rebalancing processes. When you rely on your community to find meta builds (which I'm sure Grindea does to a extent), it takes time for those builds to be defined and redefined to a point where eventually it is the best it can be. The more complex the skill tree is (bearing in mind that a single new skill increases the number of builds exponentially and in a significant way unlike adding new talents) and the smaller the community is, the longer this process takes.

The main issue people are having with the game at the moment is the time it takes to get developed - and while I'm not saying this is a bad thing as I very much value the level of quality this game provides, what I am saying is that I don't see people complaining about lack of weapon variety as much as they ask when the next update's coming out. As such, I don't feel this is development time worth spending when there are a whole load of other visually appealing and very powerful skills at everyone's disposal (referring to the recent frontline updates).

As a final note, if you want Secret of Mana weapon variety, why not play Secret of Mana instead (or the remake that's coming out soon for that matter)? I found Grindea as a good game in it's own right regardless of the games it has been influenced by, and I will always judge it as such.