Implementing restrictions would be a suboptimal solution to the ranged problem and instead we should try and incentivice ranged players to pick a different class.
Making the flags spawn after 10-30 seconds or make them spawn immidiately might be a good way to curb the power of mass ranged as a team with 10 ranged out of 20 would simply lose out to flag capping if all the archers did was staying at a distance. Infantry which would normally protect their 10 archer buddies would have to prioritze flags which would make the archers vulnerable to cav or backstabbers and since the team lacks non-archer classes as a whole, it would be harder to successfully contest flags.
As mass archer teams would constantly lose it is my hope that some players might reassess their choice of class and perhaps pick something else decreasing the number of ranged to a few dedicated ones.
Get a shield
Yeah fuck off already shields don't do jack shit. If you are chasing one or two ranged it is handy but once there are 3 ranged shooting at you from different angles the shield starts to lose its value, not to mention that shields lose their effectiveness in melee combat aswell. Btw to everyone who says something in the line of "10 shielders beat 10 archers" that is not only debateable but it is also not taking into account the fodder classes. It will not be '10 shielders vs 10 archers' but rather '10 shielders and 10 fodder vs 10 archers and 10 fodder', and in this scenario the archers simply kill the fodder of team shielder, then the shielders have to fight the archer team's fodder while taking heavy fire and if they win that engagement they will be heavily depleted and unable to chase the remaining archers.
I constantly see people suggest player cooperation, "teamplay" is the word I see the most, to beat mass ranged which I frankly find funny because they don't consider what 'teamplay' actually entails.
The best way for you to beat ranged spam on most maps would be to hide whilst waiting for flags. Ranged players obviously won't see a problem with this because while waiting they can still shoot and play their class. Do you know what melee players get to do? They get to do absolutely jack shit for 2-3minutes.
Wouldn't a shieldwall counter this?
It might be easy to do a stationary shieldwall with a couple of players but try moving that shieldwall, even on strat battles where you have some autist frantically shouting orders at you the shieldwall rarely stays in perfect formation if it has to move. Archers will spread out and shoot your flanks anyways so the shieldwall will be nullified after a while. A shieldwall is not a testudo, it's useful in the beginning when all archers are concentrated on one spot but as soon as they spread out you will get shot.
My routine on EU1 usally goes as following: I get into the shield wall, raise my shield, press T and tab out to browse hentai. If I stay tabbed for too long I will find myself dead once I tab back because Zero_Sat snuck behind our lines as camel archer and headshotted me twice, so usually I will simply have to do with some hot cRPG bitches like Pony_Princess, Xesta or Cassi. If none of them are on the server I'll zoom in on a female cav player and pretend it is a low-res centaur girl from some 90s eroge.
Poll