I've always thought it was silly to 'nerf ranged into da ground' to make it an undesirable class. It makes playing melee so much more interesting and thought provoking, I think anyway.
No it does not. Maybe if there're few archers on the whole map shooting different targets but when there are so many archers that only you get aimed by at least 4 when fighting melee enemy, that's not fun at all.
I've exiled to siege to enjoy melee and don't get mad because I'm constantly shot by ranged. But today there were so many archers on siege that even me, who can handle ranged fest, had to GTX.
Bring a shield argument is bullshit because shield doesn't help much and if I wanted to play a shielder, I would make one. Playing a shielder is completely different from being shieldless infantry, don't force us to be shielders just because this game attracts so many Counter Strike players.
Edit: I would like to quote certain NA archer who was playing siege with us on EU2 one day. He said that if NA guys knew how bad ranged fest are EU servers, they wouldn't complain. So, it's obviously not the same for both communities and because of that I kinda feel bad for asking to nerf ranged. But there is no other choice. Maybe limiting ranged per server, but not sure is that doable at this point.