Ranged is slowly killing people off. Sure it's "part of the game" but when you close with an archer, they turn and run, get ahead, pew, run, pew. Or even worse they're on a horse. Or they're a thrower. It's just infuriating to get plinked at constantly.
You find someone, they'll run away until there's at least one more person in their group than your group.
Also agi is crazy op what the hell.
I personally always thought throwing was incredibly weak although a ton of fun (mind you, I joined cRPG in mid 2013). The reason why people started complaining about it in the first place was because of the introduction of throwing lances, which basically made a 1 hit kill shot against many opponents who were engaged in combat without having to worry about teamhitting or being accurate. But throwing weapons like axes were vastly underpowered. It felt amazing when I finally got my MW Throwing axes to spam people with only to realize I had trouble countering practically everything and eventually was appalled by the atrocious performance I was giving, which was even worse than before. I still enjoyed javelins and jarids, but I never touched axes again. And when I finally switched to Throwing lances they quickly implemented that "supossed" balance that made them even better just because of being able to weild 6 of them. The long windup for easy aiming, the HIGH damage, not having to worry about hit and run tactics... Absurd, if you ask me. Also, throwing is pretty much useless in DTV too, so there goes grinding.
However, yes, I've always thought HA and archers were ridiculous in cRPG. In native, at least, everyone seems to be agile enough to catch them so they can't just leave you behind only to find another spot to pick you off from. And HA and HX with heavy horses are simply no fun. Probably because being fast and annoying and uncounterable by most classes isn't fun.
As for the mod dying, I still think it's both age and boredom, not broken patches or unbalanced items/builds. For a newbie like myself, it's not exciting to grind for items and try to reach goals when everyone else around leaves, having met those goals ages ago, because I can't get to try them out. And really, how can you blame them? They've exhausted the "replay value" of the mod by trying basically everything. Plus, feeling a part of the community: It takes (or used to take) so long to start from scratch and get to know both players and items so that you don't die right away. It's nothing like Native. For the first few months I was completely lost, playing with stupid and broken builds, with no direction as to what I was supossed to learn. And then when you enter a clan to hopefully get more involved, its playerbase dies within the span of a month. So you end up joining a HUGE clan that has good intentions but 0 personality, playing with teammates that play individually and not as a "clan", until you jump onto another clan that dies in no time as well. Like an eternal and painful game of Frogger, except you level up in between. Yay?
You could also play Strat, which was also about clan stacking but at least was fun. Or instead, you lurk the forums 24/7 complaining about how the mod was better in 20XX, and that it needs to be reverted for it to grow back. Or being a know-it-all despite not having played the mod in ages. And I mean no offense, but just let it go. It's a mod, not a lifestyle.
Sorry for this TL;DR speech. I completely understand if you don't feel like reading it, but I do this to avoid posting a lot because I know it'll bother people. Also 100% personal opinion and experience.