As many as there are people that want to play ranged
This
Yet in order for that to work, there should be a way to balance the archery population ingame.
Even making the ridiculous assumption that there's an effective way of countering archers (be it shields that kill archers from afar, or cav with 18PS that teleport behind archers, or hive-minds of 2h and polearms that can continuously evade shots from two directions at once on sloped terrain...), it simply does not work as a mitigating factor against the rise of the ranged population. Still assuming something counters archers (apart from more archers), winning that way isn't necessarily fun. In the case of the shielders or camping/waiting for the flags to spawn, it is rather necessarily the most boring thing ever. Choosing between winning and having fun, I'll chose having fun, which also means I'm going to quit the server at some point if it goes on. A high density of archers shouldn't have as consequence that everybody would want to play ranged too. It should push players to chose some other class which is effective and fun to play against archers. Even though the first part is "debatable", the second isn't, there's no such thing.
To avoid being shot:
1. engage in melee - as a ranged, I'm less likely to shoot you if my chances of TW are higher (zomg! I know right!! I must be the only one)
2. never run in a straight line
3. never stand in the same place for prolonged periods of time
Frankly I don't see why everyone has such a hard time avoiding ranged.
What's important is the relative difficulty of surviving ranged and melee. The average player survives when engaged in melee much longer than what the game was designed for, and this just keeps on increasing. Quite bluntly people block much better than they used to, but there's only so much you can do against projectiles. The instant someone shoots at you, it is in most cases already too late, even with a shield. There's very little room for increasing your ability to survive projectiles without hindering your playstyle (hiding somewhere and being useless just for the sake of surviving ranged just means the enemy ranged won without even killing you), because it is very dependent on both luck and your stats, and very little on your input. Surviving melee on the other hand is the opposite. Even with a wooden stick and a level 1 character a good player can survive melee for entire minutes. Applying everything you said and much much more to avoid being killed by ranged still doesn't reach the same level or certainty you won't die.
