Pro kiting I see. Archers who complain a lot are mostly just unable to adapt the new style to play. Have a look at EU 1 for example. I see a new generation of archers with a decent melee weapon + 1 stack of arrows. That's what I've been doing for a while now with my archer alt (lvl 31, you can easily have ps 6. very viable in melee especially with 2h weapons). You have no reason to run away from a fight once you drop your bow and start slashing with your sword or axe. To me the recent increase of this style is an improvement to the metagame of crpg.
I'm pro people playing in a logical fashion. If you're a lightly armored archer with a 0 slot hand axe and a plated 2h hero is getting into melee range, I wouldn't expect the archer to stand his ground...
Hell sometimes I run away from a large infantry mob if I go down the wrong alley or get dismounted in the wrong place. I'm certainly not a "scared" player, I have no issues marching into certain death to try and take out as many people as I can before dying. But at the same time, if I can live to fight another day (aka find the bulk of my teammates to fight with) then I will certainly do that.
I don't see kiting as a problem, I see the moronic teammates of mine who have 8 guys chasing 1 archer (when there's still a lot of enemies alive) as the problem. I don't think there was ever a "problem" with archers "kiting". Nobodies forcing you to march up the hill that the enemy archers are camping on, that's your decision.
What I would suggest for people who are afraid of being kited by archers, protect your own archers who can reach out and touch the enemy archers. Or only do it in certain situations.
There's logical solutions to everyone's "problems" but people are too stubborn to actually adapt to the conditions on the battlefield (my wall analogy) so they, and the devs, would rather nerf classes than expect people to adapt (as real armies had to do as well).
I'm sure people in the middle ages complained about archers and ranged as well, they certainly have the advantage when they are at a distance you can't hit them with melee, but once you close the gap, they are at the disadvantage. I just don't ever see the justification for the nerfs in c-rpg when the problem wasnt' the classes being nerfed, but the stubborn/ignorant players who choose to keep running into the wall instead of finding a way around it.
*DISCLAIMER* I'm a 1h/shield/polearm cavalry player and have been for technically 13 gens, but 16 in reality. So I'm not a big fan of archers, they fuck up my courser. But just because I personally "don't like them" isn't a justification for making their whole class into a gimped class.