I think crpg is pretty balanced right now. Perhaps throwing is a tad OP, but they also have limited ammo.
If you guys want to talk realism, I think ranged has been nerfed too much, especially bows. If you've seen Shakespeare's Henry V, you'd have heard of Agincourt. 7000 archers and 1500 men-at-arms (8500 total) beat a French army numbering from 10,000-36,000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt
Imagine the rain of arrows in that battle...
I'm so fucking sick of the people comparing events that occurred in history/real life to justify game mechanics.
People at Agincourt didn't respawn, did they? Why the fuck not? Perhaps because if someone made the argument that "oh, people at the siege of Acre didn't respawn, so we shouldn't either," I imagine that would be BAD FOR GAME BALANCE.
In much the same vein, saying "herp derp x happened in history so it MUST be fine to implement" shows someone who's only credentials are watching the history channel, yet they know nothing about balance nor game design.
The simple fact is that once projectiles reach a critical mass, it doesn't matter how good/bad the players are, it's a wall of death as soon as you step out of cover in that range players need to worry less about ff in the sense that they have a much longer effective range, and their targets are much greater when you're looking at selection. Melee users can not "swarm" the same way that seven archers can shoot at the same target -- if seven inf attempt to all swing at the same target, they'll cut themselves to shreds. So the situation being what it is, and hybrids running amok with such easy ranged skills being acquired, that critical mass is easily achieved and the ranged classes dictate the combat entirely. If ranged players want to shoot it out all day without switching to their melee weapons, then a pure melee character can do nothing about it. The issue isn't necessarily that "OMGZ RANGE NEEDS A NERF," it lies inherently and intrinsically in the fact that the critical mass of range is easily met with so many hybrids running around, resulting in part from the ease of acquiring xbows and throwables. After this mass is met, range will always dictate combat as it's effective range and volume of fire is so great that nothing else other than a higher volume of fire will defeat it. This really is not that fun of a way to play, as volume of fire matters almost as much, if not more than skill of the user; once a critical mass of projectiles being shot in one direction is reached, it's much like a shotgun blast or carpet bombing in that it really doesn't NEED to be overly accurate to be effective. Melee NEEDS to be accurate because it's effective range is so short (literally only a few feet), thus limiting your potential targets to only one or two, forcing you to swing around friendlies whether you like it or not.
Also, saying "well, throwers have limited ammo" is a pretty weak argument; throwing is so widespread at the moment that the battlefield is constantly littered with throwables, and people can easily replenish their stacks rather quickly. People keep acting like this is a major inherent built in Achilles heel to throwing yet I watch bad players run around and continuously pick up throwables and spam them at melee players until they finally land a hit or two and get a kill. If they miss, they just run and rinse and repeat. It's rather silly. Range dominates, and this shouldn't be the case whatsoever, I don't give a fuck about how "real" some people may think it is or how brilliant they think their tactics are, Mount and BLADE (not Bow) is centered around a pioneering and next-generation melee system, and has a rather sub-par range system built in yet the entire beauty of the melee system is being thrown out the window because there are such high volumes of fire *everywhere* that you're instantly targeted as soon as you pull out a 2h'er by the unwashed masses, whether they're skilled or no, with 8 of them firing at you you're going to die. It's a pretty ridiculous idea to think that the meat of the game is impossible to really play because ranged is keeping it from happening, and the fact that xbows are so easy to obtain definitely make that more of an issue.
Range should definitely have it's place and I'm sure there are people out there who love sitting back and playing a really bad version of a ranged shooter, but I'm sure they would be frustrated if they were unable to play their preferred style (ranged) because melee was not allowing them to do so.
It's an issue when 1 melee based character has absolutley NO chance against 3 archers (when you try to attack one, he will simply run while the other two shoot you. It is impossible to win, period.) yet 1 archer has a perfectly decent chance to win against 3 inf simply by shooting at them, maybe picking one off before they get there and then just being decent at melee when they arrive. Or he could even just put his bow away and run non-stop until the other archers on his team shoot the inf chasing him. The ranged players have the ability to dictate combat and choose when and where to fight, yet if those ranged players have the same mobility melee players do, where's the flip side or the other advantage of NOT being ranged?
It's an issue when a group of ranged can force it's style all day, yet a group of melee-focused characters can never force their style (besides all sitting in a room and never leaving until MotF, which all would be kicked for), only hope that the ranged players are bad enough to let skill make up the difference. Ranged players should be a supplement to engagements, not the deciding factor of "who has more ranged." This would be helped by xbows not being so easy to acquire, and some WPF requirements on throwing, perhaps even a slot reduction to make people really choose what they want to do.
