Thoughts on 4.0 Archery Nerf and Class Counters

[Kaoklai]

lol @ talking about teamwork and class balance in a game where the only objective of the primary game-mode is simply to murder the other team.  Melee sticking together and ranged crossfiring melee in loose groups is as far as teamwork has gone or will go 95% of the time.  You'd think that after 4 years people would stop talking like this wasn't the case.  And it's not going to change because you trotted out this tired argument.  People don't have the motivation via meaningful in-game objectives or the means of easy public communication for teamwork to occur.  Maybe things would be different with a better reward system combined with a game mode like Conquest as it was originally proposed (not the 30 minute siege we have now). 

If you think archery is too weak, just come out and say it instead of entertaining this fantasy of a cRPG that has never existed. 

[Templar_Steevee]

But you should remember, that there is a few archers that are great in pew pew and if thay have good day, they can kill a lot, same as "masters" of other weapon kinds.
you can't just make an opinion about whole class because of one unie. Afaik Algarn have hi lvl

[Teeth]

poor teamwork is the issue

This argument has been reiterated through the existence of this mod and surprisingly hasn't ever had any effect on balance. If super efficient teamwork didn't magically drop from the sky during the last 4 years, it isn't going to happen now. Pub players don't communicate which creates issues.

Imagine a round where there are 5 archers left on a slight hill versus 10 melee players. Would the melee players win if they all charged at the same time, most likely. What actually happens though is that the melee players do not want to charge alone, have no proper way of coördinating and they get killed one by one. If they charge, the archer they charge runs away while the others shoot him. If they stay the archers surround until they get different angles. The archer teamwork is intuitive, the melee teamwork isn't. Why are those archers left near the end of the round, broken teamwork? Perhaps, but you cannot change that, cav does not want to risk their horse charging archers, crossbows have safer targets, other archers were too busy being chased. Or perhaps even because the autobalancer put significantly more ranged on one team.

Bottomline is, these situations aren't fun, and it's nice if there would be some options that do not expect some ideallistic measure of teamwork that has been surprisingly absent for 4 years already. Two or three good archers sticking together at the flanks is consistently good and can clutch rounds like few other types of playstyles can, precisely because the individual reaction of each player is that they'd rather not attack that alone. That said, I don't really have an idea what the current state of archery is, but I simply disagree with the nature of the argument put forth, especially in such a cocksure manner.

[Keshian]

But you should remember, that there is a few archers that are great in pew pew and if thay have good day, they can kill a lot, same as "masters" of other weapon kinds.
you can't just make an opinion about whole class because of one unie. Afaik Algarn have hi lvl

THIS 10000 times.  I've been trying to tell tydeus this over and over again as he is "testing" archery.  basically he is saying since he can still do really well then archery not UP.  Its the worst kind of fuzzy logic.  His playstyle is different from any archer i have ever seen since he is trying so hard to prove his point - he spends half of every round running and doing melee  (he is very good meleer) and thinks thats how most archers will play - even if it means his team loses and he doesn't support them he is willing to run the entire length of the map just to scrape a few more points on.  All he is proving is how op high agility melee is, but he doesnt care ebcause he already decided in his head archery needs to be nerfed.  Worst kind of item balancer, wish anyone else would make the decision on the item balance team.

[MURDERTRON]

You have to remember that all of this talk of teamwork is coming from a guy who has a camoflage banner and takes pot shots at people every 15 seconds while his team is busy fighting, then when he's the last one left, he doesn't even go for the flags.  Oh yeah, he's an admin, too.

[Jeade]

I'm not reliving some bleary-eye'd past cRPG where everyone formed neatly into shieldwalls and archers fired in syncopated volleys.
That's not the "teamwork" I'm going for here.

The teamwork I'm suggesting goes hand-in-hand with classes naturally countering each other instead of making each melee class its own army, viable for any situation.
I wouldn't say I'm brilliant, but I tend to duck behind shielders when archers are shooting in my direction. That much should be intuitive.
Of course cav doesn't like to risk their horses by charging at archers, but that should be part of the job. Hit them from behind. Support your team by charging enemy melee so your shielders can get to them faster.
Two-handers don't like to risk their lives by charging at archers, but that's the obvious risk involved as two-hander; ranged (of any kind) can hit you.
Similarly, archers don't like to be nerfed into the ground, and that's reasonable too.

So, no, I don't believe super coordinated teamwork has ever existed in pub matches, but by focusing on class counters, you'd have a much more favorable situation for all classes.
As it is currently, archers are being nerfed consistently to make them less and less valuable in their own respect so non-ranged has less to worry about.

And yes, there are some hard-hitting, accurate as fuck archers out there that can consistently top the scoreboard, but they are not representative of the whole.
San is not representative of all one-handers either (thank god).

[HappyPhantom]

But you should remember, that there is a few archers that are great in pew pew and if thay have good day, they can kill a lot, same as "masters" of other weapon kinds.
you can't just make an opinion about whole class because of one unie. Afaik Algarn have hi lvl

Agree.

Not every archer is high-level archer, been playing for years, with sub-80 ping.

I think patch has imbalanced the game for archers that don't fit the above, which can't equally be said of melee.

The point was to make the game n00b friendly wasn't it? I think you've probably done that for melee, but maybe not for people who want to be ranged.

Nicely said Jeade.

RIP teamwork. RIP class balance and counters.

All hail egocentric pre-pubescent males 2h master race.

[Thryn]

the most teamwork ive seen recently is krems grouping up and chat spamming their own spawn


that's about all i expect in a public server

[Jona]

egocentric pre-pubescent males

The sad part is that within this community it is probably the post-pubescents that are doing so much QQing.

[Huscarlton_Banks]

I'm not an archer main, but here was my experience with 4.0:

(click to show/hide)

Level 34
15/27
5 PD
9 WM
9 Riding
4 HA
2 PS
198 archery WPF

Equipment:
Cloth, so no WPF penalty
+3 Horn Bow (would switch to +3 shortbow if I had it available)
+3 Arrows (Because I'm a cheap bastard, and I mostly built this to shoot cloth trolls, armored horse feet/unarmored horse bodies/heads)
+0 Donkey/+3 Courser

On chest shots vs ~47-50 armor (Lamellar vest, leather gloves):

While I was on foot, ~11-14 damage.
While I was holding still on my mount, ~7-8 damage.

On chest shots vs ~65 armor (Rus scale, scale gauntlets):

While I was on foot, ~5 damage.
While I was holding still on my mount, ~3 damage.

The autobalance issue where one team may have nearly all of the ranged/cavalry players puts a damper on using teamwork as a reliable solution to ranged that can kite.

HA and 30+ AGI stack archers/throwers/crossbowmen are outside of the norm, but anything that can produce a threat while being completely unreachable based on random chance via map, team class composition, and weather can be considered a bad game mechanic in PvP, with greater threats/greater chances of being unreachable being worse for balance.

Something like a naked 12/XX long spear user or a naked 15/XX pike user falls into this category as well, but those builds don't have 3000+ effective reach, can actually be blocked without a shield, and they're not as easy to abuse with two+ coordinated players of a similar build.

In NA battle, body armor + gloves still tend to hover around the ~60 or lower range, so Short/Nomad/Tatar/Horn with ~4-5 PD still deal enough damage where you'll be able to rack up a lot of points (not kills), so you can still get valor that way.

In EU battle/shiny strat average armor levels (65++) are high enough that lower PD isn't viable since arm/leg hits will get nullified, but there's no neat solution to making Short/Nomad/Tatar bow good for that without breaking other things.

Bow difficulties in general would have to be shifted upwards (I guess that'd make 11+ PD cannons a thing), or foot speed would have to be capped/nerfed as long as you had a bow equipped.

For the most part, I guess players have to get used to the idea that 15/18 STR + blatantly stacking as much AGI as possible isn't the best way to do things anymore.

I think a small ammo count buff or a separate ammo/ranged balance in general for strategus/siege could be warranted though.

[Jeade]

If the issue is kiting, cap the run speed. If a character has a point in PD, cap athletics at 6. Problem solved.
Don't destroy archery for everyone.

Arrow count desperately needs to be restored to what it was pre-patch unless the goal is forcing archers to be strength stacking PD builds with three slots of arrows and 35 weight.
People don't like things that kill them, and archers will just spec into higher PD builds to hit harder.
Whenever a nerf hits archery, archer playstyle changes. The last one caused everyone to use shortbows and nomad bows in their best attempt to circumvent the nerf.
All that did was bring about a bunch of machine-gunning archers with closed reticles that could hold a shot for three seconds and accurately headshot at 3000+ range.
If we went back before that nomad bow patch, probably a year or so ago, things would almost certainly be better than they are now.

There isn't an easy fix to archery, nor is there one that will make everyone happy, solely because of the playstyle.
Archery has been getting nerfed since the mod's release, or at least since 2011, and continuing to nerf them will only drive archery out of the mod.
Sometimes nerfing a little harder isn't always the best choice if you're looking for the best balance.
Instead of trying to fix the archery problem, find the best compromise instead.

Don't fulfill the wetdreams of a 2h utopia cRPG.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Nice shit post teeth, nice shit post Kaoklai very predictable very well done indeed.

1) I was working with Algarn when he was pulling those numbers the other day and he wasn't shooting people down, he was pulling out his 1h and stabbing mother fuckers. So not only is the argument flawed from the perspective of pointing to one of the better archers that's ever played the game it's also completely baseless because most of those kills were from melee.

2) Neither kills nor score really connote effectiveness with archery.  I tested out a build using the bow with barbed arrows and having a shite load of wpf so as I could rapid fire highly accurate low damage shots. I then just wondered around with the melee staying just outside of easy kill range and watched, once I saw someone that had been hit a few times I stole the kill. Go me, I'm really useful. I hope more archers start doing this so the rage threads can spawn about archers stealing kills.

3) HA has high survivability so long as they do their best to keep themselves safe. However, they are easy to bring down with range and once dehorsed are totally fucked. Recently I've had a whole lot of very high agi cav just case me around and shut me down and when I try and get into position to support the melee I get driven off by range and throwing. No one has any statistics on the amount of times HA players actually make it to the rounds end vs get killed during the round, but frankly I got blown away more often than I make it to the end by a huge amount, and it's totally map dependant.

TL:DR

The argument that a class should exist because you don't like it and it has occasionally annoyed you in the past is bullshit. There are an insane volume of counters to HA.

[Thalion_Menelvagor]

My personal opinion is that there are a lot of two-hand hero-wannabe's in their mother's basement with orange fingers eating cheetos and drinking Mountain Dew who cry like little babies having their bottoms spanked if they get killed by an archer without getting to swing their massive penis-compensation device (2h weapon) at someone.  And before anyone points it out, yes I am a 2h player.  I just prefer tea and scones to Cheeto's and I get up in the morning and shave my neckbeard and do my best to go out and earn a damn living during the day as there is no basement at my mom's house.

Seriously though. I've played this mod now for a couple years I think (honestly, I don't exactly remember when this hazy dream began) but archery has always been an annoying threat. Well, of course it is an annoying threat to have people shooting at you from a distance. I just assume that if I have no shield and I just go running after archers I am probably going to die. That's what I think would happen in a realistic scenario. But then again, this is a video game mod where everyone wants to be happy and it is impossible to make everyone happy.

I think putting some limitations to the kiting and skirmishing might be a way to go. I it would help running down archers, forcing them  to use their own melee as a screen more possibly. Damage never bothered me. It hurts to get shot full of arrows. Try not to run around out in the open like a hero and maybe you won't get shot as much. 

[Molly]

I had this discussion with Algarn like 2 days ago on the server...

I said and still say that too many archer on the server kill the game. At least I am certain that this is true for EU1.
Before the patch we had at times 50% archers per team and on top of that few crossbow players. A melee oriented player joins, plays 3 rounds simply being shot to pieces and leaves for Siege where ranged mostly isn't as dominating as on Battle and he can actually enjoy some sword fighting. Consequently there were 15-20 people playing Battle and 60+ playing Siege.
That was a direct reaction to the amount of range players.

So I am sorry but everything done to discourage new players - and old players alike - from picking up a bow and become an archer is done for the good of the mod. Simple as that.

[Tagora]

If you're 2h and don't have the perks of decent armor then you're going to get fucked by archers still.  I also think it's pretty idiotic that people complain about 2h crutch and shit.  Go to native duel and come back and tell me that 2h is spastic in crpg.  I could use a laugh.  It's also pretty pathetic that someone could complain about feinting in 2014.  You haven't learned to block yet?

I wear an insane amount of armor w/ 8 IF and yet if there's two or more archers shooting at me I'm fucked.  Obviously if it's just one then yeah, I can run up to him, and catch him eventually.  I'm only familiar with the nerfs through forums so I don't understand the "totality" of the issue but if I'm not mistaken archery was given an accuracy buff while some quivers were nerfed.  To me, that sounds like a rational trade-off not necessarily beneficial but not game breaking like a few people are making it out to be.  I could honestly care less if it's reverted or not.  Archery is always going to be an annoying thing for me.  I'm happy just so long as the ratio of cavalry to infantry to range is relatively reasonable.  I also think that it's kind of irrational to assume that archers should be considered in anything outside of a support role.  People who think that it should be relatively just as easy for an archer to score as high as melee/cav are being totally unrealistic.  I feel like a player who goes into archery goes in for the same reasons someone chooses a pike or a thrower.  You're not Legolas, bitch.  You have a specific purpose, part of which is to make builds like mine wear tons of armor, which effectively nerfs my class and further negates the supposed "2h hero" fallacy.

Not much sympathy here.  I leave it up to the item balancers to work this one out. (lol)