There were no peasant crossbowmen shooting knights. EVER. Crossbows were either very expensive or VERY shit, M&B (and cRPG) has a very warped view of them: They were not very accurate, the range was shit, and they were highly unlikely to function properly for any extended time: the ONLY thing they had going for them was that you could use them with little training, in an age when every soldier who could expect to survive 35 seconds had trained his WHOLE LIFE. Archers trained since childhood, knights trained from the age they could stand, the best horsemen were practically born in the saddle. Crossbowmen as an organised force were despised by their allies and enemies alike, being used by necessity to counter the enemies crossbowmen, also being used by necessity:
Art mimics life in cRPG because of the basic laziness and will to survive of humans combined: WHY should I run over there to kill this man, when I can stand here and do it? Likewise he thinks the same, and soon we have shieldwalls replaced by musketry, then rifles, now automatic weapons: At first the ranged warfare was so innefective as to require melee combatants to shield the ranged from enemy melee, but as technology improved it became the opposite, then melee was removed from the scene altogether.
I dont understand how ANYONE who is pure melee enjoys themselves in the mod anymore: The game mechanics REWARD running away and kiting, and punish chasing.
I went 12 Gens as a pure archer, then another 6 gens as 18/18 archer with shortsword. Full loomed longbow, warbow, arrows and bodkins. I have multigen alts I made shielders, cav killers, cavalry (+3 destrier is a BEAST), Agishielders, throwers (pure and hybrid)...everything I could think of (yes Ive been a HA plenty, but never HX, or course, they are fantasy class and should be banned). I can fight reasonably well in melee, in that I can easily dispatch 50% of melee players, can kill another 30% after a few secs of working on them, and the remaining 20% destroy me. Im not too vain to admit that Im not 17, im not ever going to have the reactions to beat that 20%, they just amaze me. But I learn new things all the time, so maybe there is hope.
But the most fun I had was 18/18 archer. Sure, I could never kill ANYTHING without bodkins, because armour is so cheap that everyone stacks it on, so I got 75% of kills by stabbing players 7-10 times with a shortsword. But it was too unrewarding.
I have spent over 5000 hrs in crpg (I went off steam after the 5k mark, so I no longer have accurate count, but probably close to 7k by now). I have played every class, on every gamemode, extensively. My opinion is, I think, as valid as ANYONE elses.
NOW: The bows with leather sheaths, just LOOK at them: it is BLINDINGLY obvious that they are made to look like the sheath is attached to a horses saddle, NOT the player. Disable them on foot. Sure, many my old friends will rage, who gives a fuck, they wont leave, they are too addicted to kiting to leave, so Pop wont drop. Just spam of lazer arrows will slow down a bit. And horsebows will be back in the hands of horse archers, where they belong.
When drawing a high poundage bow (I am taking this from my own real life experience, I am amateur archer) you cannot walk and spin around, you just cannot do it without damaging your back. You also cannot jump while doing it. Well, you can try, but you will injure yourself, so, you wont.
I hate forceshields, that suck arrows out of air: Buckler is great example of this, they make me sick and ruin immersion, but worse are the sidestepping archers who cancel shield, or who time it so arrow point is inside shield, just before they are meleebumped, to cancel shield.
But WORST OF ALL in the game, worse than horse crossbowmen (Why is this still ingame, it has NO reallife comparison, crossbows light enough to be drawn by hand are not going to even go through mail, noone would ever do it since it would be a pointless waste of men), worse than the pikes that stab you in a facehug, worse than the overheads that cruise nicely thru enemy models without touching anything, worse than ALL that is the kiting.
I intensely dislike siege mode. I find it very frustrating, the spawns are bad, the spawn timers are bad, the balance is bad, the players behaviour is bad. But at least it is a fairly realistic game mode: Both teams have an objective, with multiple things to do to help/hinder their team and enemy team in completing their objective. I dont have to spend 45 seconds to 3 minutes chasing a guy who has put a paperweight on his W key while he spams his Q menu screaming I NEED HELP I NEED HELP as he runs froma 1v1, reguardless of class.
Before now I have shot players such as Blackbow twice in the back, then put my bow away and offered him a duel, my dagger vs his mace: what does he do? Run off....WHO are these ppl IRL?? Makes me sick.
I played native since it was released for beta, played mount and blade since it was a 1 euro download file. I loved it, I thought this was the best game of all time (I am old, I played on commodore 64 when it was state of the art, and computing consisted of writing your own programs on chipmunk basic (I doubt ANYONE but me remembers chipmunk...)). The lancing, the horse combat, the melee combat, the ranged combat were all so good. Then Warband :MULTIPLAYER!! AMAZING! I am a skilled FPS player, and can dominate most at tekken, MK, DoA: when I came to warband I was already owning ppl, but in native, DESPITE what loads of ppl rage about, ranged NEVER seemed overpowered to me: Sure they spam arrows really accurately, but with a shield or good dodges, you CAN get to them and kill them, or die to them in melee if they are good and lucky. But they could NOT just run indefinetly...But now, in cRPG...
Even as an agishielder you are punished for chasing archers...well, I say archers, but they are not archers. Archers take 18/18, and a melee weapon. my old friends run away.
We all have solutions to stop the kiting, but it seems "balance team" want the opposite: currently it is VERY possible to be an archer and be effective in melee, unfortunatly you will have to learn to do things like block, good footwork, better timing. Then there is strat, many players keep strat in mind when they build their chars, and this punishes pub gaming even more...
I could rant for hours about the backwardness of the mechanics and slot system currently...but instead I will stop here and put down what, IMHO, is the best fix:
Make ALL the bows 1slot. Currently the expensive bows are 2slots, but without arrows they are not a weapon, so they are, realistically, 3slot weapons. Then, redefine the slots. I take Vikingr mod as my inspiration here, Vikingr being the single most polished mod I have ever seen: Archers are VERY powerful, but the slot system is reworked: Of the 4 slots, 2 are weapon slots, 1 is a shield only slot, and the last is an ammo only slot. Archers are therefor limited to ONE stack of arrows. So are throwers. Noone can spawn with 2 shields. The pure throwers in the game can spawn with a 12 stack of javelins. Melee classes can spawn with 2 weapons, a shield, AND 1 stack of 2 or 3 throwing weapons. Ranged hits hard, injustice. But ammo is very limited. During a round, players can loot more ammo, exceeding their spawn slot limitations (obviously, 4 slots max is hardcoded I believe), so by the end of some rounds, some players have only a 1hander and 3 stacks of javelins that they have looted, and use them to punish their enemies, but all in all, the balance WORKS.
/rant
