Ranged to Melee Ratio

[Palurgee]

I'm certain all of us have noticed a rise in archery on cRPG, in both EU and NA servers. A lot of people have been complaining about how much ranged there is, which leads to the question: how much range do you think there should be?

[Canuck]

As many as there are people that want to play ranged

[Prpavi]

not as much as now that's for sure.

[Sandersson Jankins]

A large amount of ranged, while frustrating at times, isn't the main problem. You can always get shield skill, hide behind those with shields, hide behind terrain and structures, and wait until MoTF comes up.

The big problem is the lack of a class balance component in the autobalancer. Frequently one team will end up as mostly ranged and dominate the other team in a fashion non-conducive to fun. Of course, there is little chance of a class balance component being added, so we're pretty much doomed.

[Vodner]

If there's a ton of ranged, I'll usually spec ranged myself. It beats pushing forward and getting shot to death. I realize that this doesn't help matters.

That being said, there have only been a few occasions in the last few weeks where I felt that things were out of hand.

You can always get shield skill, hide behind those with shields, hide behind terrain and structures, and wait until MoTF comes up.

While very effective (and always my preferred method of doing things in such situations), this isn't very fun. It's effectively 4:00 of not playing the game, followed by a brief flag skirmish.

If I have to choose between winning and having fun, I'll always choose winning. That shouldn't be a choice people have to make, though.

[Apollo]

These don't look like sarcastic avatars.....

[Miwiw]

There are not as many ranged as infantry. Maybe there is less cav than ranged and inf, but the most played class is infantry (obviously cause inf has pole, 1h and 2h, ranged has xbow and archery and cav is cav ).

Canuck got it, good answer.

[Rumblood]

I initially started playing ranged because I was tired of hit and run cavalry. Then as more people acquired some form of a ranged attack (xbows, throwing), you have even more cause to have some manner of striking back. Then after they broke archers legs, I found myself forced to become ranged and cavalry. I see no end to the spiral as more and more players give up and join the dark side as well.

[Vodner]

Then after they broke archers legs, I found myself forced to become ranged and cavalry.

At level 30, you can roll an 18/18 hybrid that is both quite good at archery (150 WPF with 6 PD), and is perfectly capable of defending itself in melee (50 1h WPF with 6 PS). You even get 5 IF in the deal, and can throw in some low-end medium armor without taking a WPF hit. You can either take a 1-slot bow, two stacks of arrows, and a 1-slot 1h, or you can take a 2-slot bow, two stacks of arrows, and a 0-slot 1h (of which there are several decent choices now).

With a crossbow, things get even better. You can go 18/21, get 120 1h WPF and 130 xbow WPF, wear very good armor, and wield a 1-slot 1h.

Ranged doesn't need to kite, nor should it be able to. I do wish that there was a better way to eliminate kiting, without having to resort to gimping archer melee footwork. It's a little goofy having to melee like you're wearing gothic plate.

[Rumblood]

I never kited Saul, but thanks for the assumption. I fired until melee was in my face, using the stun from the last hit to allow me time to switch to my melee weapon. I see no reason to both be forced into light armor and be forced to wear concrete boots. I used the high athletics to dance around the heavy armored melee, avoid cavalry charges, and weave in and out of multiple opponents. Take that away and you take away the motivation to stand toe to toe. I'll just stay on the pony and retain the ability to dictate the engagement.

[Vodner]

I never kited Saul, but thanks for the assumption. I fired until melee was in my face, using the stun from the last hit to allow me time to switch to my melee weapon. I see no reason to both be forced into light armor and be forced to wear concrete boots. I used the high athletics to dance around the heavy armored melee, avoid cavalry charges, and weave in and out of multiple opponents. Take that away and you take away the motivation to stand toe to toe. I'll just stay on the pony and retain the ability to dictate the engagement.

I agree that completely gimping archer footwork is unfortunate. Also, having jumps just flat-out not work while drawing a bow (rather than cancelling the draw) makes it nearly impossible to avoid a cav charge, which is again unfortunate.

That said, without cmp putting in a lot of work to disable sprint for archers (quite a lot of work, since he would have to modify the WSE2 client, the vanilla client, the WSE2 server, and the vanilla server), it was the only solution available.

[Grumbs]

As many as there are people that want to play ranged

Although this sounds like a nice and fair answer, I don't really agree with it. I would say the majority come to M&B because it has solid melee game mechanics and if you put people in a situation where they can't really do melee or they have to wait half the time before they can start playing the server numbers will suffer.

The main problem is that the best counter to ranged is more ranged. This creates a feedback loop in the meta game. Either it needs to be less like rock/paper/scissors (buff the skill needed to shoot stuff) when it comes to ranged vs melee or it needs to be that melee and cav can use particular builds that suit killing ranged. What we could do with is a new skill people can take that makes shields lighter or perhaps buffs assassins. A horse that has great manoeuvre and armour but crap top speed thats not so good against melee but kills ranged easier. Something that allows people to make anti ranged builds that aren't either too slow or were the shield won't break too soon or be shot straight through by xbows. The shields are already really strong in melee vs melee though

TL;DR: Buff or create more ranged counters, or increase skill floor for shooting stuff

[Canuck]

Short: Ranged have rights too. I don't really think ranged is the only counter to ranged. 1h shield cav worked really well for me just last week. Something gets buffed so people play it for a while, others get tired of it so they spec to something that beats it, people get tired of being beaten by their counter and things swing in a different direction for a bit. It all just takes time.

Long:

(click to show/hide)

Some points of yours I'd agree with, Grumbs. But I think a lot of people come to the game to play ranged too. Sure the majority likes melee, but how many other medieval sniper games are there? And M&B has something in it that keeps people coming back to it that most others don't have anyway. What I mean to say is that although it does suck being shot all the time, and I'm sure it makes people rage for a while, I have no doubt it also sucks (or did before the patch) to be an unloomed/non 30+level archer not being able to kill anything or really have any fun. And I doubt all these new archers will stay archer forever.

I'll also add my experiences since the patch. I was a high agility polearm user right as the patch hit, and I was so sick of getting shot after a while I decided to respec to shielder. I ran around with 8 athletics and a huscarl to take out my rage on all the archers. And that worked out fine as long as it was just archers, but then I got tired of being 1shot by everything (ranged and melee both) and so I respecd again to 1h shield cav. Most of the maps it was so easy to take out all of the enemy archers as long as they weren't being smart and sticking with their team. So ranged is not the only counter to ranged. The counters are already there in my opinion. From what I've seen of this game all the classes kind of go in cycles. Just gotta wait for the next one and range won't be the problem.

[XyNox]

I initially started playing ranged because I was tired of hit and run cavalry. Then as more people acquired some form of a ranged attack (xbows, throwing), you have even more cause to have some manner of striking back. Then after they broke archers legs, I found myself forced to become ranged and cavalry. I see no end to the spiral as more and more players give up and join the dark side as well.

Although I despise any form of horseback warfare, I have to say I caught myself thinking the exact same thing more often than I like to.

[Adamar]

At level 30, you can roll an 18/18 hybrid that is both quite good at archery (150 WPF with 6 PD), and is perfectly capable of defending itself in melee (50 1h WPF with 6 PS). You even get 5 IF in the deal, and can throw in some low-end medium armor without taking a WPF hit. You can either take a 1-slot bow, two stacks of arrows, and a 1-slot 1h, or you can take a 2-slot bow, two stacks of arrows, and a 0-slot 1h (of which there are several decent choices now).

That's not really efficient, you need a lot of athlectics to fight, especially with 2 stacks of arrows, and 150 wpf is only good with 1 slot bows. This shouldn't be a 1 build class, nor should we be loosing skill points to athlectics, when the class is already short on those.

The main problem is that the best counter to ranged is more ranged. This creates a feedback loop in the meta game. Either it needs to be less like rock/paper/scissors (buff the skill needed to shoot stuff) when it comes to ranged vs melee or it needs to be that melee and cav can use particular builds that suit killing ranged. What we could do with is a new skill people can take that makes shields lighter or perhaps buffs assassins. A horse that has great manoeuvre and armour but crap top speed thats not so good against melee but kills ranged easier. Something that allows people to make anti ranged builds that aren't either too slow or were the shield won't break too soon or be shot straight through by xbows. The shields are already really strong in melee vs melee though

Any class can counter ranged. You're clinging to the principle that ranged shoot and others can't shoot back, while ignoring the difficulty it bears, and the many solutions presented to you by the devs. The bow shooting mechanic in the mod has been gimped, in part to make it easier for other classes to counter it. And by counter it I mean run up to the archer(not a group of them by yourself) while dodging or by raising your shield the exact moment the archer points an arrow at you, while running normaly the rest of the way, which actually works, only not always.
Even if an archer is skilled, the bow is still slow, and the reticule still unsteady. You dont have to be ranged yourself to counter ranged, but the problem with ranged often comes from the player's unwillingness to adapt to the game.
Non of this is new, but some people seem to resist the notion that the best way to fight something is to learn its ways first.