Really melee-ers?

[Gurnisson]

How many non head shots did it take to kill a non-plate character or horse?  That's the real question.  Because for most players the accuracy is not there to get head shots except by luck.  The reticle and arrow dispersion is too large.

4 on kuyaks/heraldric mails, 2-3 on archer armours (studded leather coat etc.)

[BootyBuster]

The bulk of what makes this game great and skillful is NOT Archery or cav.

It's the melee combat system.

There are no 1 hit kills on armored people. With most builds it's always 2-3 hits, depending on holds.
Archery is just aiming and shooting. FAR FAR less skill based then melee. So don't even compare the two

[Tears of Destiny]

So don't even compare the two

You just did.

[Xant]

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[Templar_Ratigan]

The bulk of what makes this game great and skillful is NOT Archery or cav.

It's the melee combat system.

There are no 1 hit kills on armored people. With most builds it's always 2-3 hits, depending on holds.
Archery is just aiming and shooting. FAR FAR less skill based then melee. So don't even compare the two

Ironically only the very best archers ever got to the top of the scoreboard. It's so easy, yet the top killers are melee players and cavalry, although I concede that you did cover cavalry.

And the melee combat system is great? Please, if I want to succeed at melee I buy a nice MW big ole two handed sword or poleaxe, grab some medium to heavy armour and have a ball.
The hand eye co-ordination skills required to be good at melee, are no different from the hand eye co-ordination skills required to be good at archery.

The problem with ranged was always popularity, but unfortunately the only options to fix this were people adapting, (fat fucking chance), or fascist patching which makes ranged a none option.

Finally ill remind you that is coming from someone who has only ever had one ranged dedicated thrower in his lineup of characters.  All the rest have been melee.

Want to know the most amusing part, I tried archery a long time ago in the ancient patches, when working firebombs walked the earth. I found it quite difficult, so I made a two hander.

Oh the blasphemy!

And yes this is just my opinion based on my experiences, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER PLAYER IN THIS MODULE, who comes here and posts.

[Overdriven]

The bulk of what makes this game great and skillful is NOT Archery or cav.

It's the melee combat system.

There are no 1 hit kills on armored people. With most builds it's always 2-3 hits, depending on holds.
Archery is just aiming and shooting. FAR FAR less skill based then melee. So don't even compare the two

It really isn't.  I've been playing with my archer, 2h and hoplite just so I can get some comparison.

He also wasn't talking about 1 hit kills on armour. On light infantry you can get 1 hit kills with a danish (18 str) easily. It's taken me 3 body shots to kill naked guys with a longbow a couple of times however.

Archery is a skill in it's own right. It's all very well shotgunning people from 10m (something archers are forced to do, also noticeable how Jambi gets the majority of kills, whilst ignoring any ranged shooting from a distance at him), but shooting at any range is a skill in it's own right, though heavily luck based with those wide crosshairs. There's nothing more satisfying than getting multiple shots (without spamming) at some far off target because you've gotten all the calculations and judgements that are going on right.

2h is also skillfull. But in a different way. Rather than calculating trajectories and shit like that, it's more reaction based. Although I'm sure the better duelists already know what they are going to do before they do it 

As I have said before, it's two entirely different skill sets, but to be properly good at either requires a lot of practice.

Relate it to WW2 shooters. Something I'm sure enough of us have played. A sniper may just be lying in some hidden corner of the map picking you off, essentially point and click, but doing it properly, successfully and without detection requires a lot of skill. Equally surviving in the thick of it with a sub-machine gun (without spraying and praying) also requires some considerable skill. It just so happens that they are two rather different skill sets. People have their preferences. It doesn't make one better/harder/whatever than the other.

[Meow]

I never really played a full blown archer for more than an hour.
Actually 80% of my time in cRPG was with Pole and 2h Axes of any kind, 10% a Heavy Throwing Axe build and the other 10% would be random respeccing which included basically every possible class - never finished a gen as one of those.

I always go back to melee in some form except for shields, the reason for that is that it's the only kind of combat in this game that gives me an adrenalin rush.
Everything else bores me out after minutes of playing.

What i do not see is how melee players are more skilled players per se.
I run a high str build and lately top the scoreboard from time to time which is kinda sad considering that all i do is placing overheads where fit.
Guess i could agree that melee is more twitch based which makes it more appealing for people who like that.

This does not make melee players superior in any way.
If i had to break it down into different game genres it would be:

Cav - Racing - make split decisions that are hard to change after the window of opportunity has passed.
Melee - Shooter - reaction and twitch based for individual skills, teamplay helps a lot, too.
Ranged - RTS - plan in advance to not get cornered, choose your position, choose the right targets and maintain combat awareness over a larger portion of the battlefield than the other classes - judging your projectile trajectory and speed right as well as leading the target would be experience i guess but that kinda goes for every class.

Sure they are all a mix of at least two of those but non of them is an inferior skill set.
Yeah, the examples lack a bit but there is no class you jump into and instantly dominate due to it's mechanics being super easy.

Now i am not someone who rages at the game but i see how it can be frustrating to get hit by ranged stuff while you try to reach them.
This is mostly a problem for pure 2h/polearm builds who do not see that bringing even the cheapest shield will help a lot.
Reducing body damage by 33% does not change it, it just makes ignoring the factor that you are doing it wrong a bit more forgiving.
I am one on of those shieldless people but hardly ever die to ranged for some reason, might be my epic 'stache.

Ranged does not get that, they are mostly low HP and low armor, if you reach them and they lack melee skill - they die.

I do not have the numbers at hand but i will go with the biggest part of the community plays some kind of melee class, now that ranged got nerfed cav is booming and will soon be the major part of all the whining.

People who still charge straight at ranged people will never be happy until ranged is removed while ranged players will adjust to the current standards and shut up because they get flamed by the melee crowd if they dare to complain.

Also i am under the impression that we have reached a point where further nerfs of any class will result in worse gameplay overall.
So i kinda hope from here on out classes and their gear will rather be buffed to a point where they are equally useful than nerfed to a point where they are all useless due to boring gameplay.

[MadJackMcMad]

The bulk of what makes this game great and skillful is NOT Archery or cav.

It's the melee combat system.

There are no 1 hit kills on armored people. With most builds it's always 2-3 hits, depending on holds.
Archery is just aiming and shooting. FAR FAR less skill based then melee. So don't even compare the two

Since rewarding 'skills' is the desirable outcome, I humbly suggest that the damage change also apply to melee.  Certainly having to hit the head will force melee to 'adapt' and become more skilful.  Which is good, no?

[CaptainQuantum]

Also i am under the impression that we have reached a point where further nerfs of any class will result in worse gameplay overall.
So i kinda hope from here on out classes and their gear will rather be buffed to a point where they are equally useful than nerfed to a point where they are all useless due to boring gameplay.

Please do I am tired of how many hits it takes to kill a strength whore; and he just begins spamming me because he can afford to with his gigantic hoard of health.

Since rewarding 'skills' is the desirable outcome, I humbly suggest that the damage change also apply to melee.  Certainly having to hit the head will force melee to 'adapt' and become more skilful.  Which is good, no?

In melee it's rather hard to always aim for the head, I generally only do it when I have a guaranteed opening from a kickslash, but if they buff the damage to head I may actually kill in 1 hit. I find it rather irritating to gain a huge speed bonus from spinning into my swing and slashing in the head doesn't kill someone, but I do not think a change to melee like this is warranted since it will directly buff 1h left-right swings without buffing any actual skill in most classes. I do think your crossbow may need some kind of accuracy buff though if they haven't already done it (I haven't tested crossbows yet).

Overall I like this change to archery, I am not sure if it was required for crossbows though since I never saw an issue with them, they would normally take 1-2 bolts to kill me which was a good amount in my 51 body armour. I like the change for archery because it makes me play archery the way I did in native, but for crossbows the idea was not to go for the head but to injure the people with body shots. Maybe the change will be good for crossbows overall because it will mean that hybridisation will be pointless, which was the origin of a lot of ranged spam (people bringing crossbows to deal with the ranged spam). Perhaps it means you should dump all your WPF into crossbows now for that extra accuracy instead of a little in 2h/1h.

Edit:

The bulk of what makes this game great and skillful is NOT Archery or cav.

It's the melee combat system.

There are no 1 hit kills on armored people. With most builds it's always 2-3 hits, depending on holds.
Archery is just aiming and shooting. FAR FAR less skill based then melee. So don't even compare the two

Although I support the "no 1 hit kills " argument, everything else is vacuous crap. To top the scoreboards in melee you don't need skills, you just need to stack strength, stick in a group and overhead. It's not hard at all, however certain parts of melee combat are skillful. For example 1 vs groups are very hard, but I do it because I get the most fun out of it. I enjoy getting an adrenaline rush and manual blocking everything and destroying them. It's not easy, but I wouldn't do it if it was, so I would say high end melee takes skill (the likes of Phase and Tor), but to get a moderate score it is not. For ranged however it takes a lot of skill to top the boards, which it should do, since ranged also have support roles aswell as their killing role. It's about as hard as 1h to top the boards, which I also think is now balanced.

[Gristle]

Also i am under the impression that we have reached a point where further nerfs of any class will result in worse gameplay overall.
So i kinda hope from here on out classes and their gear will rather be buffed to a point where they are equally useful than nerfed to a point where they are all useless due to boring gameplay.

I personally think we hit that point months ago. Back when we had that poll asking what 2 things we would want to change. All I wanted changed was throwing buffed (it was a dead class at the time) and pole stagger removed. Buffs all around would be a major improvement and a step in the right direction (but remove pole stagger).

Since rewarding 'skills' is the desirable outcome, I humbly suggest that the damage change also apply to melee.  Certainly having to hit the head will force melee to 'adapt' and become more skilful.  Which is good, no?

I've begun wearing Lordly Transitional again to really exploit the weakness of enemy archers (they hit like prepatch rocks!). I would love to put melee through the same bullshit. Things would really come full circle then, considering the armor nerf 2 big patches ago. Nerfs all around!

Edit:
On the subject of armor, has anyone thought about how head heirlooms were nerfed as a result of this patch?

[Kafein]

I never really played a full blown archer for more than an hour.
Actually 80% of my time in cRPG was with Pole and 2h Axes of any kind, 10% a Heavy Throwing Axe build and the other 10% would be random respeccing which included basically every possible class - never finished a gen as one of those.

I always go back to melee in some form except for shields, the reason for that is that it's the only kind of combat in this game that gives me an adrenalin rush.
Everything else bores me out after minutes of playing.

What i do not see is how melee players are more skilled players per se.
I run a high str build and lately top the scoreboard from time to time which is kinda sad considering that all i do is placing overheads where fit.
Guess i could agree that melee is more twitch based which makes it more appealing for people who like that.

This does not make melee players superior in any way.
If i had to break it down into different game genres it would be:

Cav - Racing - make split decisions that are hard to change after the window of opportunity has passed.
Melee - Shooter - reaction and twitch based for individual skills, teamplay helps a lot, too.
Ranged - RTS - plan in advance to not get cornered, choose your position, choose the right targets and maintain combat awareness over a larger portion of the battlefield than the other classes - judging your projectile trajectory and speed right as well as leading the target would be experience i guess but that kinda goes for every class.

Sure they are all a mix of at least two of those but non of them is an inferior skill set.
Yeah, the examples lack a bit but there is no class you jump into and instantly dominate due to it's mechanics being super easy.

Now i am not someone who rages at the game but i see how it can be frustrating to get hit by ranged stuff while you try to reach them.
This is mostly a problem for pure 2h/polearm builds who do not see that bringing even the cheapest shield will help a lot.
Reducing body damage by 33% does not change it, it just makes ignoring the factor that you are doing it wrong a bit more forgiving.
I am one on of those shieldless people but hardly ever die to ranged for some reason, might be my epic 'stache.

Ranged does not get that, they are mostly low HP and low armor, if you reach them and they lack melee skill - they die.

I do not have the numbers at hand but i will go with the biggest part of the community plays some kind of melee class, now that ranged got nerfed cav is booming and will soon be the major part of all the whining.

People who still charge straight at ranged people will never be happy until ranged is removed while ranged players will adjust to the current standards and shut up because they get flamed by the melee crowd if they dare to complain.

Also i am under the impression that we have reached a point where further nerfs of any class will result in worse gameplay overall.
So i kinda hope from here on out classes and their gear will rather be buffed to a point where they are equally useful than nerfed to a point where they are all useless due to boring gameplay.

I think most of the rage of melee towards ranged comes from those awful ranged vs melee round ends. How many times have I seen or was victim of a mere execution when I was among the last men standing. With no possible way to fight it. That's lame. Even though I have a shield, when I have to kill 3 archers when a round ends, I can say my prayers. I can manage 2 noob archers, but 1 noob and 1 decent archer is pretty much hopeless. Thing is, I would prefer fighting 3 melee anytime over 3 archers. And this is even more true with 2 enemies. And that is, I stress it, with a shield. I'm virtually the most adapted pure melee build against rangers, yet I can hardly kill one when he doesn't want it, and I die to two or more. Also note that the horse is completely useless once you have no friends to distract the enemy. In the end, being killed by ranged when you don't have a shield is totally ok for me. But ffs if you dedicate yourself to be anti-ranged, you should get an advantage over them. Yet you barely have one.

If the damage of body shots is buffed, then a shield anti-range buff is highly in order.

- Increase armor (but not HP to keep the axes effective) of all shields
- Increase the side coverage of non-round shields to match the models, or at least to be balanced
- Buff the shield bump to ranged :
 - Make it happen immediately, whenever there's an enemy shield up in a 1m (bare minimum) radius around the archer (to cope for lags and not allow high agi pixies to be immune to this)
 - Make it similar to polestagger. The current effect is barely noticeable, and there's no delay to switch to a melee weapon, which makes it useless.
 - Maybe add a nerf to athletics as soon as you enter the "area of control" of the shielder, again to prevent high agi ranged to bypass the bump with glitching.

Whenever a shielder manages to come close by an archer, the archer should have an immense situational disadvantage, which isn't the case currently. Archers can maintain their aim "through" the shield for ages, effectively blocking the shielder into a "stop, wait and be a sitting duck" status, can shoot through it by glitching on the sides, and as soon as they are "bumped", run "through" the shielder (like if people were points in space rather than 70kg humans with a proper volume) and continue to kite.

[MadJackMcMad]

In melee it's rather hard to always aim for the head, I generally only do it when I have a guaranteed opening from a kickslash, but if they buff the damage to head I may actually kill in 1 hit. I find it rather irritating to gain a huge speed bonus from spinning into my swing and slashing in the head doesn't kill someone, but I do not think a change to melee like this is warranted since it will directly buff 1h left-right swings without buffing any actual skill in most classes. I do think your crossbow may need some kind of accuracy buff though if they haven't already done it (I haven't tested crossbows yet).

It's easier than hitting the head at range.  Direction of movement, sidestepping, aiming, reloading, swinging, all abruptly change the position of the head.  As a crossbowman, I have one bolt with which to hit something smaller than my crosshairs, and moving in an unpredictable manner.  The body mass is the only part of the model which maintains a reasonable constant to aim at, and thus, a reasonable chance to hit.  Unfortunately now my Mastwork Arbalest does the same damage as a standard crossbow did last patch, and my standard crossbow hits like a hunting crossbow, and my hunting crossbow hits for roughly the same damage as a pitchfork with 0 powerstrike and 1 wpf (24p).

To put this in perspective.  Were this change to be applied to melee, you would not be able to viably use anything but the top tier weapons.  But at least you'd be able to swing more than once every ten seconds.

[CaptainQuantum]

But at least you'd be able to swing more than once every ten seconds.

This is the part why I am sceptical about adding the change to crossbows, crossbows are incredibly slow and should be heavy hitters to the body, unfortunately I don't think they can apply this change to just archery and not crossbows. For crossbows the change can only be seen as a nerf as anything above the normal crossbow probably 1 shot killed anything with a headshot anyway.

I am not sure whether they got an accuracy buff yet, but will need one from pre-patch like archery got, because they were not very accurate pre-patch. Maybe this ranged change will encourage the use of the lighter crossbows a little more. It does make the arbalest useless against a faster crossbow now though.

[Dezilagel]

From my point of view, they are very different things, but I play this game for the melee combat system, and for a few reasons:

1. Not so luck-based. You swing your weapon, you know exactly where it's going to hit and what it's going to do. With archery you have the 2003-style crosshair. Boring.

2. More room for development. The melee system has, from what I've seen, a much greater depth and much more room for improvement. Yes there are great archers, but they mostly do what all the other archers do, just better. In melee you have a lot of different styles, hell, I can recognize a lot of the top-teir melee players (in EU) just by looking at their fighting style.

3. This is probably the most important one - you are playing against someone. Not only does this allow for an almost infinite skill ceiling, but it also makes a huge difference in the excitement of gameplay for me. To become a good melee player you of course need to practice a lot, and also have some talent for it, but to keep being a good melee player you also need to be constantly improving since you're competing with all the other melee guys out there. Also, it's much more fun to be the guy who charges forward in my opinion. It's like playing Scout vs playing Engineer in tf2.

Now I could go on ranting about this for a very long time, but I'll lave you with this for now.

[BlackMilk]

Anyone who is FOR the archery nerf should try playing archery for a gen.

I did, before the nerf, and I had a hard time playing well and contributing much towards the team...let along getting actual kills.

Nerf unnecessary.

lol I once created a stf alt (back in...december iirc) and I instantly went 20-5 on eu 2 the first map. with a tatar bow and normal arrows

E: allthough I'm a TERRIBLE archer/crossbowman.