Guns and bows are both hitscan. The m1 is a fake projectile, and the damage is calculated as soon as the weapon fires, not when it hits you.
sources: personal testing and confirmation from meta
apparently the forum is out of storage space so i canāt actually put the screenshot here?? so hereās a link to it https://imgur.com/a/6T4KhmB
Well, thatās incredibly stupid and shouldnāt work like that at all. That just severely limits what content can be added for ranged weapons. Whatās the point of having it appear as if the projectiles actually travel if all thatāll do is fool people into thinking they can dodge it and fool people using it into thinking they have to lead their shots? Thatās just dumb, they should change that.
So I guess changing projectile weapons to not use hitscan projectiles that are faked to look like they actually travel through the air should be added to the list of gameplay changes, Jesus what a weird and unnecessary way to program them. Did always strike me as weird how bows behaved in retrospect but I thought it was bad server performance, which isnāt a great look for your gameplay.
There we go. I never knew that was the case, I mean they hid it well, but that would definitely cause a heap of issues for projectile weapons. Donāt know why they did that if they were perfectly capable of giving so much other content real projectiles.
The M1s used to be actual projectiles in World of Magic until people realised how absurdly useless they were once people got access to leap spells as it was impossible to hit someone unless they stood still completely
They already do. Bows take longer to travel but do more damage, and longer travel time means youāre more able to prevent the damage through blocking or parrying if you get shot at during an attack.
Delayed hitscan vs instant hitscan
Sure, however you canāt dodge them, you canāt make them home, you canāt make them bounce or ricochet (well you sort of can make them ricochet but if every attack is an automatic hit ricochets just compound that imbalanced behavior), you canāt make any real alterations to their flight path in real time, they have issues where they can hit through the environment as was shown in that testing, and any weapon with slow projectile speed will just feel buggy and weird when you can hit a target even after theyāve dodged far far away from your projectileās flight path. Any difference in feeling with ranged weapons is an illusion, and to be honest these issues have already been bugging me without me knowing. I always felt like bows felt weird and just buggy to use and now I know why.
If an opponent dodging oneās attacks is such an issue then there are a number of solutions. Faster base projectile speeds, slight homing on projectiles, better hit detection in general for all projectiles, a lot of hard complicated work fixing the gameās serious server latency optimization issues, and/or better damage or attack/reload speed. Those are the ones off the top of my head but tens of thousands of far smarter people have worked tirelessly in the game development industry to solve similar issues or this exact one in action shooters and run and gun games. The answer is usually just putting more effort in. Like Iām doing by editing this message like a dozen times lol. I donāt think delaying a guaranteed hit feels different as much as it just feels buggy and like bad performance or hit detection, so that as a solution to it being hard to land hits with small projectiles is just a bad one. I mean Iāve been leading my shots literally this whole time in PVP, no wonder I was missing so often god damn it.
Apologies for double dipping on replies when I already wrote two paragraphs but I inherently knew as I was designing these ranged weapons that such an issue has to have a way to be resolved. Pistols/multi pistols have ricochet, rifles have wider more indescriminate attacks, marksman rifles have very fast projectiles and/or great homing, hand cannons have bounces and small explosions as well as just decently large projectiles, automatic weapons have a ton of projectiles, and aiming exists to make everything easier to hit with that all together making it where not being able to hit with projectiles is at that point a skill issue.
From a design standpoint bows and greatbows can be given a niche to make them easier to hit with as well. Perhaps a mix of higher attack rates, homing, and skills often firing multiple projectiles at once as is already the case with rain of arrows. Might be controversial but with arrows being slower they could just be given better m1 damage than guns that are easier to hit with.
Bro still unless there hitboxes are made teir 3 scaling 1 blast size they aināt going to hit anyone not in endlag which only lasts 1-5 seconds
You aināt fartman or dudeman
Small projectiles will always need to be used to punish end lag or predictable movement, so reward the player for their skill and timing with good damage and give then good tools to hit with through well designed skills (AKA all the skills I made above). Higher skill gameplay for higher reward in combat isnāt a bad thing. On the flip side rewarding fully nullifying skill with overpowered size and damage scaling so you donāt have to aim or hit more than 5 or 6 times in the span if 10 seconds is (warlord/conjuror/savant).
You would have to heavily increase damage to make up for that like 150-250 a m1
Increasing damage is only one avenue. I outlined a bunch of methods above. Having real projectiles opens so many awesome possibilities for ranged weapons while only having hit scan kills creativity IE the only rare gun skill in the game being piercing shot 2 for pistols with guns having the least skills of all weapon types individually. If the mechanics of ranged weapons work well enough, if aiming is useful enough, if the skills are good enough, and/or if the base stats of such small projectiles are strong enough then there will be no shortage of people willing to put up with missing due to skill issue to play this. I know I would. If youāre so concerned about missing with them working like that, that says more about your aim than how theyāre designed truth be told. Mages already have to lead their shots with projectiles as a reminder. Granted theyāre bigger, but theyāre also slower.
Yes but hitscan allows for semi easy balancing and are far more fun overall compared to rice sized and toothpick damaging projectiles
I suppose making all projectiles hit scan does make it easier to balance sure but again WAY less fun and extremely stifling for content. On the subject of fun, how is having less variety in attacks fun? Thatās an opinionated statement. I mean if you donāt like dealing with missing attacks then donāt use them or make your skills all easier to hit ones, problem solved.
In order for it to be fun gun/bow need to be reduced to like 1/0.5 seconds even then
Hate to use this argument when my intention is not to insult but I donāt know man, that sounds like a genuine, 100% actual skill issue. Everything already presented should be more than good enough to compensate for small projectile sizes including the designs of the skills themselves.
Still there is 2 options for what youāre suggesting
Both do not sound good
Point about the first one, it already feels unfair dodging and having a projectile land anyway because everything is hit scan but doesnāt look likeit. It just feels like bad server pwrformance.
Point about the second one, damage is not the only thing that could be changed, why would you think that?
Likeā¦ bruh.
And even then, gun and bow m1s can simply remain situational and just be used for punishing immobility and end lag because when does anybody even use m1s in combat in the first place? Itās only used on fighting styles when up close to poise break at the expense of taking damage and is basically never used with everything else.
To fast bullets basically hitscan
Increasing size of hitbox is unfair
Hit dection would require a partial rework of AO hitboxes
Homing and damage have already been stated