Dear balancers.

[Thomek]

It's time to wake up and realize infantry is the bread and butter of cRPG.

You need to work on balance to facilitate infantry being able to have a good time on battle. Right now this is not the case.

Squeezed between the power of cav and ranged elements, it's getting exceedingly impossible to have a good fight. In EU people are flocking to siege, because they are sick of functioning like ranged and cav fodder.

I've been playing this mod for 4 years, and rarely has gameplay on battle been as lame as it is currently on EU1.

Both ranged and cav needs further nerfs. Perhaps we will loose some ranged players, but we will regain more melee players in return I'm certain.

Being shot and bumped to death every round is NOT good gameplay. Both the relative numbers and the power of those classes needs to be kept down!

Just make a decision: This is mainly a melee game. Other classes feed on melee, thus melee must have priority, and more power.

Cause right now it seems the goal is some kind of fairness, the result which is massive unfairness IN PRACTICE against melee.

I'd prefer an honest 2h/pole/shielder hero any day for the vulture-like gameplay which is ranged and cav. I think a lot of players agree.

[Algarn]

I disagree, even if melee is the main thing of crpg, cavs and archers play a huge role when it comes to teamplay and its balance. It's a way to kill people the infantry cannot kill, and it's still counterable. Every time I eat arrows, it's because I play like a solo hero without shield, or because I'm charging blindly into an archer nest. It learns me to stay at my place, instead of playing like if I was a level 50 hero that kills everything in one hit and that cannot die.

Even cavs, that I hate so much, contribute to that, and a battlefield without archers, crossbowmen, throwers or horsemen would be terrible. That's why melee only servers never worked : people play because they want to see the whole possibility to make an unique build/class on any characte, and not to be restricted to three classes (polearms, 2h and 1h).

[Digglez]

i wouldnt mind the ranged & cav so much if it werent for the completely blind balancing that doesnt take builds into consideration.

More often than not, I am AGAINST the team that autobalance just put EVERY SINGLE RANGED AND CAV PLAYER on.  And nearly just is bad is BEING on THAT team, the ranged have killed any and everyone before I get to them so I'm left standing around doing nothing or running from corpse to corpse aimlessly.

I also think it is game breaking and poor balance that someone can stow a bow & arrow and draw a sidearm in less than 1 second.  Stowing a weapon, especially one without a sheath/scabbard needs to take far far longer than it currently does.  Insta-stow & sidearm draw negates the value of sneak attack or chasing down ranged players just to have them conjure a sidearm instantly and play rope-e-dope while the multiple other ranged just plink away at you.

[Macropus]

I agree that infantry is the basis of this game, I don't however see an overwhelming amount of ranged or cavalry, it seems not bad at the moment tbh. Also note that your (and mine since I respeced to agi ninja again) playstyle's natural counters are ranged and (to a less extent) cavalry.
Maybe I just didn't notice it because of being burdened by respecing choice too much though. 

More often than not, I am AGAINST the team that autobalance just put EVERY SINGLE RANGED AND CAV PLAYER on.

That doesn't mean balance is just bad, it means balance is biased towards you personally. How would you explain that?

I also think it is game breaking and poor balance that someone can stow a bow & arrow and draw a sidearm in less than 1 second.  Stowing a weapon, especially one without a sheath/scabbard needs to take far far longer than it currently does.  Insta-stow & sidearm draw negates the value of sneak attack or chasing down ranged players just to have them conjure a sidearm instantly and play rope-e-dope while the multiple other ranged just plink away at you.

You can almost always land 2 hits if you get someone by surprise, seems enough to kill most ranged.

[MURDERTRON]

Unfortunately, there are other aspects to balancing than just relative class strength.  These factors are mostly map design, but then there's also auto balance and a few other things.  However, since we arent going to get an entire set of replacement maps, it will always be easier to balance the classes than create new content.

One factor, outside of map design is high level characters.  I've said it before, high level characters are exponentially more powerful than a level 30.  My level 34 character is crazy fast and does crazy damage.  It can't take a lot of hits, but whatever.  Jack's 24/24 build is insanely powerful, he's faster than most and has that 1-hit lethality.  It's one downfall is he only has 4WM,  but he's good enough to work around that most of the time.  Then you have Aldo, who should be on another level at 37, but he has kind of a garbage build.  High level Archers are now just as strong as level 30 infantry, but can also shoot a bow.  Or they go for pure builds, and have around 200wpf which is just insane.

Another layer on top of that is we can pretty much assume that every item people wear now +3.

We need to start balancing around our current reality, not balancing around where things were 2 years ago.  Oh, and also not balance around whatever pissed Tydeus off this week.

[Lennu]

Thomek, like you said you've been playing this for 4 years now. But I consider you to be an average melee fighter. And I don't say this to insult you, but to point out that in melee there so many skilled players. A new player (lets say he has been around for 2 months) will still get crushed by you anyway.

On melee it's insanely hard to get anything done. Not because melee is weak, but because your opponents in that melee fight are so fucking strong. A simple 1 kill every now and then is really hard to archive in melee as a new player. You might simply die because you went to close to an enemy  All it takes is 3 swings after all. And unless the manual blocking is welded to your spine, taking those 3 hits from a skilled player is probably the only thing you did that round.

So altho archery has been nerfed to ground, and cavalry costs a fortune. So as ineffective as those 2 classes might be in the hands of a newbie, a new player can still archieve more by playing ranged/cav, and that way have a lot more rewarding gameplay experience, than in melee.
Landing a few shots on enemies before you died, or killing an afk peasant at the the enemy spawn as cav is way more rewarding than having someone shove a German Poleaxe up your rectum in melee 

A good example can be found here: http://forum.melee.org/beginner's-help-and-guides/i'm-terrible-at-pvp-melee-combat/
He describes himself as " terrible at PvP melee combat" and well.... he is  Not because he isn't realizing some obvious techniques or mechanics in melee, but simply because the opponents he has to face in melee combat are sooooo much ahead of him.


Now, obvious fix for this problem would be: get more new players  This way there will be plenty of different skill level players to fight against. A new player will eventually run into another new player, get a 1v1 kill in melee and actually think "wow, I think I handled that pretty well".
Getting new players happens by promoting C-rpg to the outside world. Like via here http://forum.melee.org/general-discussion/promote-the-mod-to-mod-sites/


But overall I do agree with you Thomek. Melee fighters should be the majority on the battle field. But cav and range should still provide an impact aswell.

[San]

I think that melee should be able to combat whatever you throw at them with the right equipment, even as a low level or without specialization such as shields and cav rearing. 0-1 difficulty shields in particular I feel need another significant buff. Low tier equipment, including cav and ranged, don't need to be as good as the best out there, but they should be useful. New players can only hope to compete with the most expensive stuff that they can't even afford. I also think that the base wpf should increase to 70-80 while easing the scaling a bit. It would give new players a few better options.

Without WSE updates, the game is limited on how much it could be changed for new and updated features. Other issues stem from animations that need to be tweaked over stats and WSE and non-WSE functions.

Most of my own proposals are based around internal balance and weapon diversity. These are the current topics on the forum: http://i.imgur.com/C5GB8dO.png. Closed threads means that there are enough yes and no votes. Many threads are stuck in limbo at the moment and more balancers are needed. "Item Balancer" has only recently been changed to simply "Balancer" so maybe that means a little more than just item tweaks (which was the position's original purpose afaik).

[AwesomeHail]

imo some meta weps need to be toned down/animation speeds (e.g polearm uphead, long axe spammability)

[Thomek]

Lennu ofc that cav and ranged are a bit easier to get kills with and probably a little more newbie friendly, but problem is that the hard core play those classes too!

Also, I believe infantry melee is the way to hook people. Not cav or ranged, which at least I find much more boring to play.

Basically what I'm asking for is not theoretical item balance, but sticking the finger in the ground and see whats happening on the servers.

It's hard to put down in numbers, but there should be a will, a vision of what good gameplay is, that in the end translates into item balance.

In my opinion good gameplay must be anchored in happy infantry.

[Dolphin]

I got tired of dying as 1h no shield, i retired and made a xbow having more fun cause i can kill cav and archers with ease now

But boring playing against melee as i have to "cook" them with a bolt before being able to defeat them.
To achieve good cooking i need to camp alot which is quite borring 8 sec reload time.

I would love to be able to jump back into being 1h swashbuckler again, if i just didnt keep on getting shoot or trampled.

I say #BuffAthletics !

[San]

Lennu ofc that cav and ranged are a bit easier to get kills with and probably a little more newbie friendly, but problem is that the hard core play those classes too!

Also, I believe infantry melee is the way to hook people. Not cav or ranged, which at least I find much more boring to play.

Basically what I'm asking for is not theoretical item balance, but sticking the finger in the ground and see whats happening on the servers.

It's hard to put down in numbers, but there should be a will, a vision of what good gameplay is, that in the end translates into item balance.

In my opinion good gameplay must be anchored in happy infantry.

Even if it's hard to put down in numbers, what stats do you propose?

[Thomek]

And then all hell breaks loose right?

I think you have to look at items specific to classes then.

For ranged: Bows and arrows (reduce damage plain and simple. Yes, tincans will profit the most.)

For cav: Horses (Maneuverability. Will force cavplayers to think before charging in, and make it harder to change their minds.)

For horse ranged: Near total nerf. IDK how, but one way would be to make horse bows, make all other bows unusable on horse, then nerfing the horse bows.

Don't forget the long 1handers like cavalry sword, that have their high cut abused with the speedbonus since forever. Compensate a bit in speed for example.

[Lichen]

Both ranged and cav needs further nerfs.

Being shot and bumped to death every round is NOT good gameplay. Both the relative numbers and the power of those classes needs to be kept down!

Just make a decision: This is mainly a melee game. Other classes feed on melee, thus melee must have priority, and more power.

Cause right now it seems the goal is some kind of fairness, the result which is massive unfairness IN PRACTICE against melee.

Hmm well I keep saying make crossbow bolts cut damage and only bolts that cost more than the steel ones currently do as pierce damage. Also if you are wonder why so many ranged it's because they USED to be melee but got tired of it because it's tedious playing against other good players and every fight can turn into a 5 minute duel that you just want to be over. So people just 'bypass' that hassle with ranged which takes away all the endless pro dueling with every other player. So yeah players are too good and that's part of the problem.

[Algarn]

Hmm well I keep saying make crossbow bolts cut damage and only bolts that cost more than the steel ones currently do as pierce damage. Also if you are wonder why so many ranged it's because they USED to be melee but got tired of it because it's tedious playing against other good players and every fight can turn into a 5 minute duel that you just want to be over. So people just 'bypass' that hassle with ranged which takes away all the endless pro dueling with every other player. So yeah players are too good and that's part of the problem.

I actually got a better K/D both generally and on website than I was used to have with archery since I swited on melee. The terrible thing is I play melee (triple hybrid) for a month now, and played archery 2.5 years, and crossbow 1/0.75 year. It's not that hard to gank, if you find ganking people being hard, then, just try a little bit harder : I don't even have to block more than 2 times in a row if I make the good choices. Plus ranged doesn't make people play it (I mean, experienced melee players), they just try it out and mostly respec their character since they got a bad K/D for most of them.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

It's a bit complicated to make battles infantry melee-centric without breaking cavalry/ranged entirely as classes if changes are only done via modifying things like item stats.

As long as long non-obscured terrain exists (even worse if it happens to be on a hill/stairs), ranged will dominate shield-less infantry.

As long as infantry do not coordinate and group up tightly so that they outnumber enemy cavalry by at least 3:1 per engagement, cavalry will dominate infantry in any scene that doesn't have a ton of logs/rocks impeding free movement.

As long as foot archers don't have a fortified position, cavalry will dominate them 1:1.

Something like HA/HX is even more complicated, since infantry (especially shieldless) are just helpless against them in an open map as long as they don't take dumb risks, and they're basically only countered by multiple ranged in fortified positions.