My struggle with ironflesh.

[Rumblood]

I dont mind xbowman so much, cause they see you and aim, you dodge around and then they either hit or miss. Then its into a melee fight where you have an advantage. The xbowman trades some melee capability to allow him to take that shot first, but the back up plan is fighting after the shot for 99% of xbowman.

This is simply a misrepresentation of the use of xbows in the server. These guys find a tree or building or hill they can hide behind and shoot at roughly the same Damage Per Second as an archer. Takes slightly longer to load, but punches with a lot more damage. They don't shoot one shot and then run into melee. They shoot until forced to melee, and since xbows don't take as much of an investment, they also have some melee stats to back them up. Even against an archer, they have and use the obstacle they find to their advantage and so only have disadvantage there in the open field (in which they are rarely found ).

If you want to reduce ranged on the servers, the method has been proposed several times. It has simply not been implemented for reasons ranging from "it isn't realistic" to who knows what bias.

Method #1 - Implement minimum WPF requirements per xbow.
Method #2 - Implement a requirement like Power Draw for xbows.

Currently you don't have to make a hard choice between your melee skills or your ranged ability where xbows are concerned. This makes it a very easy choice to take one. Don't make it an easy choice and you will reduce the amount of ranged on the servers.

[Kafein]

With the current ranged "balance" I see no point really in engaging in melee as long as there are other possibilities to gain another chance to take a shot. If dedicated melee was less faceroll-autokill against archers, they probably could be arsed to run less. But devs did not seem to have that option in mind when nerfing archers for the bazillionth time.

Well you are using a very wrong perspective here. Archers shouldn't have to want to get into melee to find themselves into it. Otherwise that would mean archers have some sort of advantage in melee over more melee oriented builds, which would be ridiculous and unbalanced. The main problem is that if archers choose not to melee, they won't, unless chased by someone significantly faster than them, probably carrying a shield as well and willing to risk being shot or attacked by the rest of the archer's team, which is not a common breed.

[Molly]

Great. So I cannot use a 1slot weapon together with a Long Bow/Arrows.. amazing suggestion.
NO.

As far as I am concerned, make quiver 0 slot but restrict archers to only 1 quiver. Gives them the chance to pack a longbow and a decent 2 slot weapon... if this would mean they all stop running! 

[Tydeus]

As far as I am concerned, make quiver 0 slot but restrict archers to only 1 quiver. Gives them the chance to pack a longbow and a decent 2 slot weapon... if this would mean they all stop running! 

Awful, a better idea would be to increase the number of 1 slot weapons. Not that this is a great alternative to simply buffing 1h cut damage so 1h is more appealing for archers.

[[ptx]]

Increase quiver size, limit to 1 quiver?

[Tydeus]

Increase quiver size, limit to 1 quiver?

No, this limits player choice and customization. Of course, by "player" I am referring to archers. So moot point, right?

[[ptx]]

Then simply increase quiver size? Having a single quiver of less than 20 arrows is kind of too few to really do much, which is why many archers get 2 quivers and are thus limited to a 0 slot melee weapon...

[CrazyCracka420]

All they really need to do is balance the teams better.  Archery isn't OP by itself, when one team is stacked with archers and all it takes is for one to hit you and you stop moving for a full second.  If you get hit by one projectile, and you have 6 archers shooting at you, you're pretty much screwed.

Also changing battle to some objective based (on top of killing the whole enemy team) would make archers less powerful in groups.

And making it so that you can't be a pocket xbow user would be good too.  You should need a skill requirement for each xbow (besides strength).  It should be similar to Power Draw, and you should also have a WPF drop for each point in that skill. 

These are all common sense suggestions to dealing with "the problem" of ranged without actually nerfing the class (they're already nerfed farther than they should be IMO)

[Tydeus]

Or you can drop the 2 slot bow and not use bodkins. Instead, everyone stubbornly expects to be able to have the best of both worlds. Sorry, that simply isn't balanced.

[[ptx]]

Naw, i'll rather stick to places, where the melee can't reach me, then, with my 0 slot melee weap.

Way to miss the point, bro.

[Miwiw]

Or you can drop the 2 slot bow and not use bodkins. Instead, everyone stubbornly expects to be able to have the best of both worlds. Sorry, that simply isn't balanced.

So, Archers aren't allowed to use a 2 slot bow + bodkins, but a 2hander can ofc pick any weapon he wants, same with any other class, heh? That's not very friendly and kinda racist.

[Rumblood]

In addition to the xbow requirements change, they really could open the chamber window so that with awareness and a bit of really good timing, about 10-20% of incoming missiles could be swatted away (not blocked).

In other words, add skill based solutions. It is too bad that the strength crutching lobby was able to have athletics reduced to its current state. Dodging arrows used to be (and for really high athletics still is) a skill based method of dealing with ranged.

[Elindor]

Looking at muffin's original post....the real issue is really the team balancer.

If the balancer could classify someone as "ranged" somehow and "cav" somehow (maybe by your build, although in most cases it wouldn't notice xbow users)...and just balance the numbers of each on each  team. 

That seems to be what muffin was asking for unless im mistaken.
Not saying thats curenttly doable, but it seems to be what he is asking for.

[BlueKnight]

Or you can drop the 2 slot bow and not use bodkins. Instead, everyone stubbornly expects to be able to have the best of both worlds. Sorry, that simply isn't balanced.

So archer with 1h melee weapon, with 1wpf, with his 3-6PS (depending if high level or not) is found 'OP' by you? Anybody complaining about archers killing him in melee just deserves to die... I would prefer archers to have 1 quiver with like +50% arrows, each loom woud add +2 arrows to the quiver and MW is +3 arrows, basic stats of bows +1 to damage and +1 to damage with each next loom so all in all they keep the damage from looming that we have now but have like 4-5 less arrows and have normal 1-slot melee weapon. Imho archer running away is mainly a problem because he can't fight with his 0slot shiet (it's suicide).

Melee is beautiful part of the mod and like 70% play this game only cuz of melee and I don't see why archer would have to have shitty archery possibilities (horn bow does really low damage) if he wanted to use melee.

Imho changing quiver size and looming system with bows would be buff to archers but slight nerf to archery (because like 4-5 less arrows).
Archer who is shooting and fighting great will be finally better than archer who just shoots great. Also less arrows is less QQ for melee and fighting ability will be (I believe) more fun for archers themselves.

To all who say these 4-5 less arrows is 2 few, it depends on the size of the battle whether it is 20vs20 or 50vs50, once archers have enough arrows and once not enough but it's similar with melee. Melee unit's influence is greater during 20vs20 than 50vs50 and imho it's the proper way like it should be.

Also there will be lower difference between unloomed archer's damage and loomed archer's damage (3 not 4) while keeping damage of loomed archer same as it's now. Less pain for unloomed archers. (Unloomed archer sux dix)

Important thing is that there wouldn't be any 0 slot weapon that you could block with. 0 slot weapons would be only those that you can't block with, ex. daggers etc. Then, there might be some my old friends who decide to take zillion arrows (2 bags of like 28 arrows each) but it's their choice and they wouldn't be able to block (except chambering with fists or that 0slot dagger). I think it would be fair. Ofc weight of 1 bag of arrows would have to be adjusted or could stay like this that we have now.

Also these 4-5 less arrows (from 1 +3quiver than 2 +3quivers now) would mean that archers have to be a bit more accurate and pay more attention while shooting (cuz of less shots available)

Agree or don't agree, I was planning to start new topic in suggestions corner but ptx already mentioned the 1 quiver thing so I decided to type it here.

If the balancer could classify someone as "ranged" somehow and "cav" somehow (maybe by your build, although in most cases it wouldn't notice xbow users)...and just balance the numbers of each on each  team. 

80+ wpf in 1 class would count somebody as a player of that class and it means that actually HA would be counted as archers not cav, so second thing that would be counted would be riding. Only wpf and riding is what would count and therefore we would perfectly see what class somebody is. Now we only need a formula to keep it all even. Riding above 4 would be classified as cav. 4 and below can't be counted as cav... it would be pitiful.

[Zlisch_The_Butcher]

Of course you can get kills in melee as an archer. If you face an enemy with light-medium armor there is a somewhat fair chance of winning the fight. You still might need 4 - 6 hits while he needs just one or two but at least you wont glance as much.

Yeah, when wearing my light armor I can get onehit by archers headshotting me with their axes...