Dear balancers.

[San]

You're correct. My bad about that.

http://forum.melee.org/announcements/0-3-0-1/

Back when Spathovaklion had its speed raised to 99, ranged was getting buffed, and players were rejoicing. Truly the best times back then.

[Inglorious]

What needs to be done is simply a realization among balancers that:

* Try to get a feel for how easy it is to actually play infantry in a Range/Cav scenario

San is a living breathing example of a balancer that can vouch for infantry vs. ranged/cavalry can be easily done.

I don't think it's me with my Ninja build

So, the ninja build with low armor and low HP is fine, but only as long as you're not getting hunted by cavalry and ranged. Hmm...

I seriously believe players will come back and respec to infantry, if the game was more shifted in favor of it, and we will once again see player numbers increase.

Well, here's the thing I don't think players who're playing infantry smart generally run into the problems I think you're seeing. Solo missions by lone wolfs to "ninja" easy targets going bad due to no support class players around you is not the fault of ranged/cavalry.

In NA when groups naturally form up during a round, there's atleast 1-2 pole arms in the mix that have the ability to stop cavalry. It's up to them to do so, or more really everyone to "be aware" of their present location. That, or carry your own spear and don't stand in the open. Use terrain to mess cavalry approaches. Put a wall, pillar, rock between you and him, or if you're ballsy behind you and dodge the hit making him run into the wall and rear.

The number of people playing ranged is what I see a problem. Too many people playing cs:go maybe. However. Not putting yourself in a position to get shot works the best if you don't want to carry a shield.

I complain alot about ranged, but it's not something I think needs to be balanced. Other than that stupid horn/nomad bow that everyone uses. Seemingly hits just as hard as a long bow, fly's faster, and has slight to no drop within 150 meters. And on horseback, they are hilariously accurate. There's no way someone all the way across at the desert oasis map spawn point should land 3 shots on me, while he's moving, and I'm moving on a courser with 10 riding the perimeter at our spawn point.

And the EU cavalry doesn't seem that hard to take on. Last time I ventured into EU servers I claimed top of the charts just by killing cavalry. I remembered reading somewhere that you'll hardly see an EU cavalry do a head-to-head with anyone who knows they're there, especially cav VS cav. My own personal findings: delightfully true! I especially enjoy when you force them to head-to-head. They don't know how to cross 

[jtobiasm]

Thomek never fails to bring a laugh, complains about ranged but is a thrower.

And this guy is suppose to be an admin

Also this is the icing on the cake

* Try to get a feel for how easy it is to actually play infantry in a Range/Cav scenario

Yet he is a mid table player.

[Thomek]

I'm usually within top 3 on EU battle..

This is not about buffing ME. This is about EU1 migrating to EU2 and players leaving.

[Okkam]

The best thing what Thomek did was introducing and advertising of ninja-style and ninja gameplay in 2010. This was good and interesting way of self limiting.
Now Thomek want buff this self-limiting way. And this decision looks strange at least. Especially for a guy who is admin for last 3 years.

[Thomek]

Ok, have fun on 30 player EU1.

I'll stop kicking this dead horse.

[San]

If you're top 3, that only leaves 2 other spaces for ranged and cav. I want to focus on HA before looking at cav as a whole again, which I think is alright outside of buffing the Sumpter again and increasing the Courser/Palfrey price difference. I think people are still unsatisfied with internal bow balance, but I don't really know anything about foot archers. Best to have the experts make a topic.

[korppis]

Imo battle already died few years ago.

Biggest reason is that people learnt to play. Back when majority of players were bad, it didn't matter so much how many archers there were.. they couldn't hit you every single time. When round started people just went all over the place and there was small fights here and there. It was a lot less about ganking and just plain chaotic.

Nowdays that archers have everything from their thongs to dagger loomed, over 3 years of training, 360 awareness and faster than light arrows, they won't miss so much. There's no hope in flanking so it's all about wearing as much armor as possible and staying in the big blob of a team just to stay alive untill it collides with the other big blob, after which it's one big gank fest.

Honestly I don't see that ever being fixed. I doubt any hardcore epic level archer will give up his bow, or any hardcore heavy armor melee gankers going for light armor and weak weapon just for fun. Although it could be fun to see people being more casual again instead of always going for best and easiest gear and playstyle. If I were new to the mod now, I would just give up for sure.

[Jack1]

Here are my thoughts:

In terms of maps we need more of the old ATS style maps were there are choke points ranged can't shoot into and more objects blocking views other than foliage. Just about every map has a spot or two were you can view 60% of the map let alone 100% of what's within 50 meters. As loris said you can't sneak up on them anymore so the next best thing is to put them into situations were they get limited shots off.

In terms of internal ground ranged balance I never saw any problems ranged dueling people when I used a long bow. The only thing that was a problem was the HAs using pinpoint accurate bows(nomad, tater). Same reason that most tops coring ranged(non HA) use either longbow or rus bow.

In terms of internal melee it should be polearms>1h>2h in group fights and 2h>1h>polearms in dueling. while balance is good in group combat there is a problem that polearms are also the best dueling weapons. They have the longest 4D weapon (long voulge right swing vs Danish stab), the highest damage(awlpike stab vs Morningstar swing) and the fastest speed (from a decent hitting weapon, long axe vs bastard sword( polearm animations make up for the speed difference))

In terms of str vs agi, str is at a large advantage if they have weapons specially made for the situations(long spear in groupfights) but are at a huge disadvantage when they do not( long spear in 1v1)

The only thing that I can't make a good decision on is str vs agi archers.





In the end my opinion is that one of four things need to happen for ranged:

1. Change the maps to obstruct vision with more obstacles.
2. Nerf archers accuracy so that they can only count on getting a shot when shooting into groups or at point blank.
3. Make the area of bumping a person who has a ranged weapon drawn larger.
Make it so that any time you cancel a shot via close proximity enemy or a reload on a crossbow anytime you receive damage
4. Increase the time it takes to switch out your ranged weapon. Thus making a ranged player shoot less or shoot more and take a hit while changing weapons.

For internal melee balance one of two things need to happen.

1. Make polearms a specialty weapon class. Make any dueling polearms other than spears much slower than they are at the moment but give them a slight length and damage buff.
2. Make any 2 hander have his power increased over 9000.

[Kaido]

The true is after all the complaining everyone does and me too about (my old friendcav/my old friendcher),the game was made that way..If it was made for melee battles only it would be a different game.

Also the 'circle' of this game goes: im 2h ill say "my old friendcher/cavmy old friend/shieldmy old friend", if i was an archer i would say "fucking 2h heroes,cavshitlords,1h noobs",if cav "noob2h/1h/arch"
and all going on same class everyone complain about other classes all the time while when he is in that class he still complain about the others.

That's cRPG logic,you can't change that and it will migrate when banerlord/crpg standalone come.Deal with it 

[BlindGuy]

Ok, have fun on 30 player EU1.

I'll stop kicking this dead horse.

Rarely will you get a full 30 on eu1 these days bro. Mod really is dieded.

[Kaido]

Rarely will you get a full 30 on eu1 these days bro. Mod really is dieded.

It's school season deal with it..

[DonNicko]

Just make expensive armors more invulnerable, because even with 8 athletics but milanese plate, archer can easily outruns me and shoot all of the time. And if I'm not dead yet when I reech them they can kill me with stab of 1h. I always QQ about armor. Make them more expensive if you want but more invulnerable)

[Templar_Steevee]

EU_cRPG_1   18   Battle   Yes
gg

[Sandersson Jankins]

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.

Agreed with the first portion completely. Classes are fairly balanced in my opinion currently, but the mod would heavily benefit from some sort of class-balancing between teams. Of course, I've got no knowledge of how difficult (or even possible) this would be to implement.

I don't feel that ranged should have any increased time to draw a side-arm. Anything promoting a ranged player fighting in melee instead of turning tail and running away to kite is a great thing.