Ranged

[Wolfsblood]

Hello Community,

Amid all the hate range threads and playing non-shielder melee I have come to understand the reasoning behind all the hate on range (btw my main is ranged). It is rather annoying to have to deal with ha/hx at the end of rounds, being headshot by an arby at the beginning of a round and being pew pew'd by archers before you can slice them from head to dick/cave their skulls in. However as an archer I cannot say that archery/xbows need a nerf. What they need is for their "skill floor" to be dropped. (meaning beginning difficulty of the class)

As it is, compared to inf, it is relatively easy to pick up a bow or xbow and become proficient at hitting targets consistently in a short amount of time. I would say a maximum of 75 (brain dead 12 year old) hours to become proficient at xbow bundle of sticksry with a little more time than that towards archery. Compare that to melee where 100 hours is necessary just to be able to block well enough to stay alive for a few minutes let alone learning how to use proper footwork, feint, chamber ect.

When you look at stats like that its no wonder there are so many ranged players. Its quick to get good at, coupled with the ability to deal damage from afar safe from most enemies.

So what I have been thinking on is the best way to lower the "skill floor" so that the archers that are actually good stay good and the people who pick up the class for fun or rage have to actually work to be good.

The only thing I can think of is to remove the cross hair from the game. This way in order to get good one will actually have to put in their time to get good. To learn the arrow drop from their bow, To learn how far to lead a moving target.

Yes with this solution, I'm sure that even the best archers/xbowers will need time to adapt to this change but in the end they will eventually be able to and still be as good as they are while eliminated those who are not dedicated to these classes.

Also, while I know that anyone with half a brain knows that cross hairs are client side and just deleting them wont keep my old friends from adding new ones this is where i believe the dev black list for mods would be fantastic but, I'm not holding my breath on that.

P.s. Please keep as objective as possible and reduce flaming to a bare minimum. I understand tensions are high between lobbyists but hate and flame will not get us anywhere in this discussion.

P.P.s. Please comment and add as to why this is a good/bad idea and if you have something better please tell me what it is.

TLDR: remove cross hair from game to lower skill ceiling of ranged.

Disclaimer: In no way is this idea original. I give credit to those who have though of this before me. the only reason I made this topic is because I believe this option has not been taken perused enough.

[Rebelyell]

and seg will mod it in
like he mod out fog
and I saw some ruskies yesterday shooting through trees and bushes
GG

[Tore]

They tired that in Vikingr and people could just mod crosshairs back in so, no it wont work

[Wolfsblood]

Hey thanks for reading the whole thing, its not like I didnt already say that the devs would have to do their mod blacklist thingy in order to make sure that no one modded in crosshairs 

[Phantasmal]

Or you could just decrease base damage of ranged weapons and multiply the ranged headshot damage, forcing ranged players to aim for the head in order to obtain the best results. The crosshair is useless while shooting in third person too, because it does not line up with the actual projectile path.

[Wolfsblood]

crosshair is still pretty useful in third person, u just have to adjust for the misalignment which is only about half an inch higher than first person.

also, what files do i have to remove in order to have no crosshair, i want to see what it'd would be like if this was implemented

[Micah]

Removing crosshair wouldnt work .. its way to easy to get a x-hair mod or simply  pin a little marker on the display ... (like you mentioned)

Anyhow , i dont dislike the idea to try to increase skill ceiling for ranged in some reasonable manner ... yet, one would have t o first come up with a great idea for it.
As an HA player on one of my major alt characters, i already try to increase the challenge for me in some occasions. And i really like the class, but not for having an advantage, but just for the style.
- i go with low armor and light horse - i really dislike heavy HA-style - its really gay .. particulary, because those HAs tend to aim for the horses instead for the rider in most cases
- I try to let have melee-players their fights (unless they are attacking me) - this actually often collides with my intents to help my team
- i dont go for low armored non-ranged players
- primarly go for enemy ranged classes
- try to only shoot riders, and not the horses of enemy cav - aswell, as i priorize ranged and shielded enemy cav over unshielded enemy cav (unless they are attacking me)

only in very rare cases, i would do one of those things - and i do believe that thats more of a selfrestrictive codex than most non-ranged class players can say ...

On the other hand, i believe, that the real solution for the general ranged/non-ranged problem can only be found in an meta gameplay shift towards teamplay ...
I really cant hear all this whining anymore from all those melee players, that fail to protect their ranged, and afterwards start crying about HA and archery being unbalanced ...
yet, i doubt this will happen, because the legitimized open discrimination against ranged class players is to much advanced and engrained in this community, to ever allow teamwork between them. Aswell as i cant see how any improvement in general teamwork could be happening ,  after seeing, how commander-chat worked out until now ...

Afterall, hf whining

[San]

Only non-stats thing I could think of is a better limit on how long you can hold before your accuracy deteriorates. It will make it quite difficult/skill-based, though, since you have to line up your shot pretty quickly or while you're drawing. Archers would get less time, while classes designed to hold like xbow could have a longer set time limit after one begins to aim (I'll leave the xbow experts to this, my guess is like 4 seconds) before the accuracy starts to decrease.

Throwing is already inaccurate so they don't need this. They're frustrating for a melee player since they're the most agile + high damage, but I could see how a pure thrower could have trouble against other ranged players while a throwing hybrid sacrifices a lot, especially speed.

I just think that there should be some prediction based elements on the melee side of things, and currently decently long hold times for bows and indefinitely long hold times for xbows are the most detrimental. Better timing introduces an added risk to ranged: keep the hold longer to obtain a better grasp of your opponent's movements at the cost of overall accuracy. Good ranged would be able to grasp movements quickly, while good infantry would be able to lead and pressure ranged into shooting with timed dodges that take into account the time limit. I think other aspects such as missile speed is an internal balance issue, and even if they're slowed down, dodging is inherently flawed if there is no prediction or mindgames involved.