Playing archer STF for a few days and...

[gazda]

whatever makes archers form up and act realisticly, im for it

[Grumpy_Nic]

I'll make a 12/27 STF kiting my old friendcher without melee weapon. Cant wait to get home.

[Overdriven]

Destriers are the new behemoths of battlefields! Yeah, they are pretty awesome, especially loomd.

Loomed destriers are evil. I sometimes feel like my arrows bounce off of them.

[BlueKnight]

(click to show/hide)

I feel like an epileptic squirrel, constantly looking around for impending doom that is cavalry. It's like putting points in PD gives you a red bullseye on your back that only people with Riding skill can see.

Now I see why archers max out their ath. I think it's time for some new features in the game, like deployable stakes. Maybe we'd get some better mentality for archers, making them less epileptic maybe.

What do you guys think? I'm not making a suggestion, rather I'm lifting issues and hinting at possible solutions.

Bjord... try full str build and then cav will be the real pain in ass for you... with 0 athl it's rly hard to avoid couches etc. Also when 1 cav bumps you down you are doomed. Not to mention that you are easy target for gangbangers and archers...

The solution for str build is siege imho. I know there are quite a few str builds doing pretty well during battles but for me siege is the place where I can tank a bit more.

Anyway... I have just changed the subject. Athl is the really important thing that will help you on the field of battle.

[Teeth]

Try using an unloomed Destrier when GK is on. All these gay ass  Champion Arabian Warhorses have higher maneuver and higher speed than you, as soon as one targets you, you are screwed, you can't escape. Destrier dies in 3-5 arrows.

[Gimest]

And I keep on preaching the same thing over and over, from thread to thread. Perhaps one day the devs will honour it with an answer.



I think most people who are complaining about the inf vs. archer gameplay are not complaining about the "effectivity" of an archer (his damage, his accuracy, his rate of fire, whatever), they are complaining about two things:

a) kiting
b) the amount of archers

Any change which aims towards reducing the motivation of archers to run instead of fighting by improving their melee capabilities will not work, or will only be a sub-par quality solution.

Archers fight over distance, infantry fights in melee. Having archers to fight in melee almost as good as infantry would mean, that infantry would have to fight over range almost as good as archers (to keep things fair). As infantry doesn't fight over range at all, the only conclusion would be that archers should have the ranged effectivity of a stone throwing peasant. Because not fighting over range at all is almost as good as throwing stones as peasant. You get the point?

Don't try to merge two classes into one. Archers would be reduced to some infantry/archer hybrids, and the game would lose an entire class. Just keep it like in all those strategy games, like Warcraft. You have your human foot soldiers and the dwarven gunners. Just don't let the enemy Orcs get in melee range to your gunners, or they are gone. That's the balance of the game. It would be highly unfair if the melee fighter could be killed with good chances while approaching his target, and then, when he finally made it, his target has still good chances beating him in melee. I don't know about you guys, but when I play the sitting duck for a bunch of archers, but still, with some clever behaviour and a bit of luck manage to reach them, I want to be able to slaughter them. Everything else would be unbalanced.

Now to sum everything above up: archers engage over distance, that's why they should suck in melee. That's why it is okay if archers are afraid of fighting in melee.

"But how am I supposed to kill archers then as infantry?" people might ask. And it's a perfectly valid question, and we can imagine a lot of ideas from higher ATH for infantry to high item weight for bows and arrows, but to be honest, I think being faster than infantry is an important part of the archer role, so I wouldn't change this either.

I'd rather have people concentrate on following question: why should infantry always have to kill the archers?

In my eyes, the gamemode is the problem. In battle infantry DOES have to kill archers and cav, but can't unless the classes allow it, while infantry doesn't necessariliy have to "allow" archers and cav to kill them. That's where the frustration comes from. Both archers and cavalry are much more flexible in who they can engage and who they want to evade. Even if you lower their effectivity accordingly, they will always be the "acting", the "active" parts of a team, while infantry will always only remain the "reacting", the "passive" part. This is why many players complain about archers or cavalry, although both classes are not really OP. It's a "gameplay feeling" issue, not a balance issue. Point b) from above, the amount of archers, is only a reaction to point a). Change a), and b) will change as well.

If you change the goal of the game from killing everybody (which is a really plain goal) to something more interesting, like conquering the majority of all flags on the map or something like that, things would change. It would move infantry into the key role, as it is the best class for conquering and holding terrain. Archers and cavalry could only accomplish the objective of capturing a flag if the enemy infantry allows it (by not being at said flag). Which would turn infantry into the acting, the archers and cavalry into the reacting elements (it would be still fine for archers and cavalry, as they can still enjoy their higher flexibility). The two latter classes would become pure support classes, which they are supposed to be, while infantry would now truly become the main class to win battles. In (almost) any scenario possible, which contains conquering flags.

That's why I say you need to replace (yes, replace, not complement) battle mode with conquest mode. It would solve so many problems!

And now if we can get someone to do it good, ah the feeling of great battlefield where u would really need teamwork and tactics to  accomplish something. Mayby like 3 flags/areas teams can hold, and every minute each team gets point's for the amount of area's they hold. This kinda mode could have a big role for engineers, wich would be nice addition to playing styles. Only that it would need alot of new map designing :/

[Cepeshi]

Conquest mode? Like, progressive achievement based gameplay? (capture this, capture that, destroy this?).

Domination mode could be quite fun, all start on x1, every base you hold gives you extra multi. That would be epic (but also easily farmable by big clans)

[Templar_Steevee]

IMO if u want to reduce amount of archers you only have to do one thing: narf a little bit rus bow.
That bow is too op compared to horn and long bow. In archery all is ok atm and most of whining is because or rus bow archers. They are shooting almost as fast as horn bow and hits almost hard as long bow.
I'm sure that many ppl will hate me for this post, but i don't care.

I'm going to use my longbow even if i'll have to swing with it to kill someone 

[Tears of Destiny]

IMO if u want to reduce amount of archers you only have to do one thing: narf a little bit rus bow.

I don't think so, that will simply reduce the amount of Rus users (Not me though, I've always used the Rus bow regardless due to tradition/looks, even when it was one of the worst bows back when the Hornbow was god, or the Longbow was the only way to do pierce  ), and promote other bows to be used. Nobody will quit playing archer because you nerf one thing out of an entire category, they will simply use an alternative out of the same category.