Being an archer is popular. If there is a too large percentage of archers on the server the gameplay becomes shit, and people become archers to counter archers. Archery's popularity exceeds the the amount of archers the balance can handle. So to weed out a lot of the not so hardcore archers, they make the class individually underpowered, to prevent the class as a whole to be overpowered.
So if you all stop desiring to be an archer so desperately, the individual archer can be buffed.
Pretty much this. As it is now, an individual archer is pretty much useless, unless he is very skilled at his job. Yet, an individual Two-hander, or Polearm build, is very deadly, even on their own, and it does not require as much skill to be useful to your team.
I think archers were fine before, they didn't need a nerf like this. Compared to pretty much all melee builds, Archers do completely shit damage individually, the problem with ranged is when it becomes a concentrated force. I can think of a few times, pre-patch when about 7 Hospitaller archers camped a hill, and pretty much annihilated everyone since none of us had shields. Yet, with a bit of strategy, and teamwork, we beat the mass archers by just waiting it out, using natural cover, and not running into the meat grinder, because eventually, those archers that are shit at melee have to run to the flag if they want to win.
But regardless, I feel that the composition of "classes" has a lot to do with the balance of cRPG. Based on experience, I'd say 2H/Poles are the most common classes, and if that is the case, on some maps, with no strategy involved, a large amount of archers could completely murder your team. But if huscarl wielding shielders were the most prominent class, archers wouldn't be that useful at all.
It just seems that 2H/Polearm builds are so dominant in cRPG, that everyone hates range since it's their weakness, due to no shield, so they complain that archers are OP because there's nothing past footwork they can do to stop them. Maybe more people should become Shielders, archers are not a problem when you have a round Huscarl accompanied with an invisible force-field protecting you. I dunno, the balance is a real fragile thing, and I think the easiest way to balance this game would be to impose a limit on how many people can use ranged weapons per team, but I just don't see that happening, and I don't think the community would like that.
Coming from someone who has done three gens of pure 2H melee, I've raged at my fair share of archers, but they generally were just fine.
