Yes indeed. Melee had to deal with it from the dawn of Warband. You know in Native archers still shoot like M249's ? cRPG evolved in the right direction with most of the patches. And it is only now that I see we are close to something remotely fair.
Basically, melee making whining threads resulted in the ranged saying "deal with it". This is not about nerf/buff patches and the epidermic reactions that ensue. This is about the state of the game. It's only human that ranged whining gets the same stupid answer.
I made the same remark, but I think Sebastian in particular will never get this.
Ranged tend to say 'deal with it' to melee because my God will melee not shut the fuck up about it. Every patch ranged is nerfed, and every patch it is still not enough. There is always something wrong. That is why ranged think melee should just suck it up and 'deal with it'. Because melee is never happy. You can bet in another 3-4 months time there will be constant complaining about ranged once again, and trying to find 'solutions' to the ranged 'problem' that is plaguing our servers...
Rarely have I seen ranged calling for the nerfs of any other class. But for some reason melee constantly call for the nerfs of any form of ranged, cav, anything that can interrupt their uber ability to be superman. So yes, melee should just bloody deal with it because archers and ranged have had to deal with nerf after nerf after nerf, simply because melee will NEVER stop whining.
So I have to deal with the fact that if I, as infantryman, DO have to care how skilled my opponent is, to kill him with a lot more effort (melee > shooting), just to gain the same result, under much higher risk? Is it this you want to say?
Well, I think you could be right. Luck seems to play a big part in this game, so you need to be quite lucky to land headshots over medium and long range. Deal with it.
I really wanted to support the claim to revert the archery nerf, but if I see that archers still don't appreciate how incredibly togher an infantryman's life is compared to that of an archer I say you deserve all bows nerfed to 1c damage. Really. 
(A few weeks ago I created an archer alt and level him up with STF, and logged in to the battle server. On my very first round with that completely new character I shot the Nr. 2 and Nr. 4 on the scoreboard of the enemy team. All I had to do is to aim a bit higher and to lead a bit, and then I clicked. Ridiculous.)
Ok Joker enough. Go and load up a stf ranged char and post screenshots of your scores. Until you can show that you are any good at it quit whining that ranged is far easier than melee. I sincerely doubt on a full battle server that you would get anywhere near the top of the scoreboard or even mid-scoreboard. Shooting the number 2 and number 4 of the enemy team means crap all. For all we know there could have been 4 players on the enemy team.
An infantryman's life is not tougher. My hoplite has 0 trouble with ranged. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've been killed by ranged in one full generation. My archer gets killed far more than ranged than that ever does. Furthermore, I have never once had a problem chasing down ranged. Usually if I give up the chase they just keep on running so they aren't an issue. It's about playing smart. But for some reason a 2h sword seems to render a lot of you meleer's plain stupid and you just charge in hacking and slashing away and expecting to come out of it alive.
I admit my 2h is more susceptible to ranged, but even then it was still an annoyance, most of my deaths came from melee without ranged every playing a part. But still, if you stuck with your team, avoided archers and dodged if you saw them aiming at you, you could avoid the vast majority of ranged fire.
Both types of play have individual challenges. Neither is easier or harder. You can spam both, but you can also be incredibly skilled at both. The majority of players are average in both classes, but I bet the best melee and the best archers took a similar amount of time to reach the highly skilled level. People have preferences and shouldn't be punished for those preferences. This applies for cav, melee and ranged.
