You basically voted yes. Making bows and crossbows unable to be used from horseback basically means HX and HA are no more. therefore it basically removed all mounted ranged. Giving HA/HX worse stats than foot ranged will only made them completely useless.
The hate on HA/HX is completely retarded. You guys just want them to be a completely useless class so that no one will use it anymore. cRPG community is just a bunch of selfish fucks. Its their playstyle dude, Deal with it
since cRPG forum is called forum.melee, lets nerf all ranged to the ground since everyone is melee.
- I am a polearmer who doesn't hate HA as much as you do
Now if you might stop your rant and the insults against me, I would like to clarify a few things:
I don't know if you read past the line you marked in bold, but I did not suggest to remove those weapons from horse archers. I rather suggested making a second set of ranged weapons specially for mounted ranged. I admit I did not write that, but I actually thought about making those weapons equally viable compared to the infantry archer weapons, just with a different focus, e.g. on firing speed and perhaps in exchange slightly less accuracy or damage.
My point was only to force ranged cav into immobility while shooting. I do not think this would make them uneffective at all, since foot archers aren't as well, and my suggestion would just turn ranged cavalry into foot archers which are slightly less effective but have the ability to get into better shooting positions and displace much easier and faster.
The other point is: I don't really hate mounted ranged or ranged in general (in difference to many others members here, granted). I just see the problems certain classes are causing in this game. Older forum users might roll with their eyes now, but my (in the meantime widely known) opinion is, that it's the game mode's fault. It's almost always infantry, which is complaining about the other classes, and as I have to admit, from their point of view, rightfully so.
Battle mode means you have to win by killing off the entire enemy team. This requires you to be able to basically be the "hunter" all the time. Which has two conditions: a) you are able to pick targets you are actually capable of hunting and b) you can prevent becoming the prey by evading "your" hunters.
Both cavalry and archers are capable of those things in different extents (cavalry is better at evading its hunters, while archers are better in picking weak targets), but infantry literally SUCKS at both things. Neither can they run away fast nor can they force someone into a fight most of the time. This renders them the only passive class in the game, whereas the other classes are active. While cavalry and archers can be "fighting" a few seconds after spawning already, most of the time infantry is just running over the battlefield. And once they finally start attacking an enemy, the fight is actually "interactive", which means enemies are usually blocking and counterattacking, which isn't the case most of the time when you are lancing or shooting. It could be that you attack and end up as the loser, and to land a blow you actually require your enemy to make a mistake by missing a block. The other classes do not rely so much on a direct failure, since they can attack unaware targets most of the time.
Summary: battle mode with killing all enemies doesn't work for infantry. It causes massive problems. And the differences between infantry on one side and cavalry and archers on the other side are most obvious in the case of ranged cavalry, because it combines the advantages of both without their disadvantages. It is THE perfect hunting class in a hunting game mode. In my eyes no buff/nerf or stat tweak at all could change that, because it's a problem of gameplay mechanics, and not of balancing weapon or character stats. You can't nerf HAs/HXs or buff infantry in a way that suddenly infantry will be able to hunt down HAs/HXs. Won't happen. The increased flexibility of cav and archers grants them increased fun on the battlefield and enhances their gameplay greatly, while infantry is more or less everybody's moron on the battlefield, desperately running after targets, trying to not get shot or trampled from all directions. They are a bit like the a little bit retarded kids from the neighbourship, which are only happy to play with each other (infantry vs. infantry clash in the middle), while the other kids are dodging them and making fun of them.
You have to change the damn game mode. If you had a conquest mode with several flags on the map which spawn right from the beginning, enabling the team to either win by capturing the majority of all flags or by exterminating the enemy team, things would be different. Infantry is good at taking and holding ground, and now this would allow them to actually win the game that way! Their passivity would be relativized, since they don't have to run after faster and more flexible classes. In fact the other classes had to adjust according to which flag the enemy infantry has decided to take and defend. A horse archer could win the map by killing the enemies, but infantry could win the map by not getting killed. And this time this is something infantry is actually good at. Just take a look at how "passive" infantry is in siege mode!
I have been advertising a true, single spawn multi flag conquest mode for a really long time now, and while many players seem to agree, most of them actually still prefer the round based team deathmatch, which battle mode actually is. Perhaps the devs should have bothered with creating a first prototype and testing how everything works out, but I guess with M:BG and everything this is a lost hope.
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