And I keep on preaching the same thing over and over, from thread to thread. Perhaps one day the devs will honour it with an answer.
I think most people who are complaining about the inf vs. archer gameplay are not complaining about the "effectivity" of an archer (his damage, his accuracy, his rate of fire, whatever), they are complaining about two things:
a) kiting
b) the amount of archers
Any change which aims towards reducing the motivation of archers to run instead of fighting by improving their melee capabilities will not work, or will only be a sub-par quality solution.
Archers fight over distance, infantry fights in melee. Having archers to fight in melee almost as good as infantry would mean, that infantry would have to fight over range almost as good as archers (to keep things fair). As infantry doesn't fight over range at all, the only conclusion would be that archers should have the ranged effectivity of a stone throwing peasant. Because not fighting over range at all is almost as good as throwing stones as peasant. You get the point?
Don't try to merge two classes into one. Archers would be reduced to some infantry/archer hybrids, and the game would lose an entire class. Just keep it like in all those strategy games, like Warcraft. You have your human foot soldiers and the dwarven gunners. Just don't let the enemy Orcs get in melee range to your gunners, or they are gone. That's the balance of the game. It would be highly unfair if the melee fighter could be killed with good chances while approaching his target, and then, when he finally made it, his target has still good chances beating him in melee. I don't know about you guys, but when I play the sitting duck for a bunch of archers, but still, with some clever behaviour and a bit of luck manage to reach them, I want to be able to slaughter them. Everything else would be unbalanced.
Now to sum everything above up: archers engage over distance, that's why they should suck in melee. That's why it is okay if archers are afraid of fighting in melee.
"But how am I supposed to kill archers then as infantry?" people might ask. And it's a perfectly valid question, and we can imagine a lot of ideas from higher ATH for infantry to high item weight for bows and arrows, but to be honest, I think being faster than infantry is an important part of the archer role, so I wouldn't change this either.
I'd rather have people concentrate on following question: why should infantry always have to kill the archers?
In my eyes, the gamemode is the problem. In battle infantry DOES have to kill archers and cav, but can't unless the classes allow it, while infantry doesn't necessariliy have to "allow" archers and cav to kill them. That's where the frustration comes from. Both archers and cavalry are much more flexible in who they can engage and who they want to evade. Even if you lower their effectivity accordingly, they will always be the "acting", the "active" parts of a team, while infantry will always only remain the "reacting", the "passive" part. This is why many players complain about archers or cavalry, although both classes are not really OP. It's a "gameplay feeling" issue, not a balance issue. Point b) from above, the amount of archers, is only a reaction to point a). Change a), and b) will change as well.
If you change the goal of the game from killing everybody (which is a really plain goal) to something more interesting, like conquering the majority of all flags on the map or something like that, things would change. It would move infantry into the key role, as it is the best class for conquering and holding terrain. Archers and cavalry could only accomplish the objective of capturing a flag if the enemy infantry allows it (by not being at said flag). Which would turn infantry into the acting, the archers and cavalry into the reacting elements (it would be still fine for archers and cavalry, as they can still enjoy their higher flexibility). The two latter classes would become pure support classes, which they are supposed to be, while infantry would now truly become the main class to win battles. In (almost) any scenario possible, which contains conquering flags.
That's why I say you need to replace (yes, replace, not complement) battle mode with conquest mode. It would solve so many problems!
