cRPG update and new ideas. Need feedback.

[Asheram]

melee does have ranged it's called a xbow, sure it's not as good as archery or throwing esp if you put no wpf into it but you only need str no skill points needed.

[Asheram]

Bolts are 0 slot where as arrows are 1 slot, I use xbow on Asheram who has all wpf in polearm. You can use a 2 slot xbow with a 2 slot weapon.

[njames89]

I use only 38 wpf in Crossbow and it is deadly at mid range. Still allows me enough 2h wpf to be very effective in melee.

[Asheram]

Don't get me wrong I don't think archery needs a buff. Furry and Lurker are good @ melee and I would bet they have no points in melee.

[XyNox]

This is a non argument. There are archers in NA that destroy. It is currently 100% viable. Sexy Furry, Elder Luker, Sellka, Lucky. All of them have no problem using archery to contribute to their team massively.

It does not need a buff at all.

I dont mean to be blunt but this ^ actually is a non argument. Claiming that something is the case by presenting a singular case where it happens is an informal fallacy. If there would be a player that could rape everybody with a hatchet, we would not assume that hatchet is OP would we ?

If you (having played every possible archer build under the sun) can't come up with better than this, how can you expect anyone in charge of balance to do it? If anyone balance-wise is still alive they probably rely on long-time archers like you to propose a new mechanic, not just tell them to scrap the existing one and come up with something 'more appropriate'.


As for your list; if archers did more damage across the board, were more accurate, able to fire faster after drawing without the agi-dump and also retain full melee potential and footwork, don't you think that a majority of melee focused players would question why anyone would ever not play archer? There are then no downsides to playing that class.

It's easy to take pure melee for granted as being too good at everything, but forget that pure melee has zero ranged potential and that this is a hard limit placed on the class and no amount of player skill can ever make a pure melee character a threat at ranged. Even with all the nerfs, a pure ranged character still has melee potential and player skill can absolutely make up for the mechanical nerfs applied to that character. This is one of the reasons why archery has suffered, it needs to be balanced taking into account the very best players of the class with the very best gear because the skill ceiling and skill potential for archers is so much higher than other classes, as our community has shrunk and become 'older' the top archers could effectively break a server if not limited in some way.

If you want archery to be viable I don't know why you'd lobby for changes that if it they ever make it into the game, would lead to such an almighty reactionary nerf to appease the community, that you'd even wish archery was as viable as it is now.

If I could go through my entire post-history in this forum and the chatlogs of almost a year worth of irc balance discussions, I could probably put together a 20k-word wall of text just by quoting myself regarding the points you raised above. Since that would be a massive undertaking, I can just ask you to believe me on this. You know me Hesky, I main archer in this game since day one for about 5 or 6 years now and with no intention to brag, quite some people consider(ed) me top class. I dare say I know what I am talking about and with all my experience I can clearly tell you that your assessment does not hold true to the reality of things.

Actually, if I am not mistaken, wasnt it you yourself who, in some range balance thread was posting something along the lines of "the only way to play archery succesfully is to be significantly better at melee than all the other pure-melee players around" ?

Obviously I am in no way stating that archers should have "full melee potential" while having buffed ranged abilities as well. First and foremost I was addressing the melee capabilities of archers or their access to hybritizion. Right now, archers compared to other classes get the hardest time accessing to mobility as well as armour/tankyness as well as melee stats as well as slot restrictions.
- High STR/IF plate can tank a rediculous amount of shots and close the gap ( even more so with all the city maps and close range maps in general we have these days )
- Shielders can just hold rmb
- Heavy cav got their received range damage severly lowered and can just charge with little risk
- High WPF chars can literaly outspam you
- High ATH chars can easily s-key you
- xbows can easily outburst you and when you follow them while reloading, they will have the stronger melee build+armour most likely

Wouldnt it be enough if archers would only be restricted in terms of slots+armour or mobility+WPF instead of placing restriction on every single stat that plays a vital role in this game ? Is it really too much to ask to retain at least half of the infantry cababilities while playing a ranged class ? Even if the armour restriction got removed altogether for example, the archer you face would still be an opponent with a 0 or 1 slot weapon with no shield, lower melee WPF than a 30 STR build and average PS at best. Now I wont suggest to remove armour weight restriction altogether since plated archers running around everywhere would just feel silly.

As always with these ranged discussions, you could go back and forth about these points. People will usually bring up complaints about any ranged buff that can be reduced to "but they can shoot", without ever analyzing the current state of ranged power the individual ranged classes have, granted they integrate minumum melee capabilities in their builds. My melee alt is a higher generation that my main these days because for quite some time now walking up to your enemy and slashing him to death is pretty much easier, simpler, safer and more rewarding than trying cope with the gazillion archery nerfs that make the class completely unfun and unflexible.

And as always, if you want to prove me wrong, make an archer and we will meet in EU3.

[njames89]

If you can't perform as archer just practice and work at getting better. The class does not need a buff. You would have to be mad or a bad archer to think that.

Now horse archery could use a buff.

[XyNox]

Alright, our amounts of experience for different classes differ too much apparently, we can just agree not to agree here. Just to address one thing though:

What I do object to is the potential for overbuffing archery by implementing every change in the above list, since in the long term you'll only kill your own class. Change too many things too quickly and if people don't like it, the class will be punished hard in the next patch.

It was really just a list, even if only 50% of the things got put live and then even only with 50% of the described effect, it would still be a useful change. Additionally, the old balancers who listened to every butthurt kid rushing to forum are gone. I am not sure how Dupre handles things but one can only hope that the days where general QQ would automatically induce a nerf are gone.

[Jona]

I dont mean to be blunt but this ^ actually is a non argument. Claiming that something is the case by presenting a singular case where it happens is an informal fallacy. If there would be a player that could rape everybody with a hatchet, we would not assume that hatchet is OP would we ?

It's a pretty legitimate argument, while yours seems to be a bit flawed. If someone was wrecking everyone else on the server with a hatchet, is the hatchet OP? Well, first we must ask ourselves a simple question: would they be wrecking everyone even harder if they were using a better weapon? Odds are, the answer would be yes, or at the very least if they were literally killing every single enemy without getting hit once while using the hatchet, then they could only hope to tie that perfection with a 'better' weapon... but that is very likely not going to be the case. So therefore, we can only conclude that the player is OP and needs a nerf, not the hatchet.

The same, however, cannot be said for the aforementioned NA archers. While they are fairly adept at melee fighting, falling in somewhere around the average crpg skill level if not perhaps a little higher, they are far better archers than they are melee fighters. Does this mean archery is OP? Not at all... it merely shows that someone who is good with a hatchet can be even better with a stronger weapon, in this case a bow.

[witchkun]

- wipe
- return to pre-high level patch - where 30-32 level is standard, 34-36 max
- remove slot restrictions
- one day a week allow to use ladders

+over9000, yes ,plz MAKE CRPG GREATE AGAIN! remove this shitty 200wpf or 100+ in everything builds, they r ruining the game
and rescale players levels accordintly if wipe is not accepted

and slot restrictions is a good thing leave it

[Gurgumul]

Everyone (except archers ofc) just admit that you don't want archery buff because archery is annoying as shit and the less archers, the better.

[XyNox]

It's a pretty legitimate argument, while yours seems to be a bit flawed. If someone was wrecking everyone else on the server with a hatchet, is the hatchet OP? Well, first we must ask ourselves a simple question: would they be wrecking everyone even harder if they were using a better weapon? Odds are, the answer would be yes, or at the very least if they were literally killing every single enemy without getting hit once while using the hatchet, then they could only hope to tie that perfection with a 'better' weapon... but that is very likely not going to be the case. So therefore, we can only conclude that the player is OP and needs a nerf, not the hatchet.

The same, however, cannot be said for the aforementioned NA archers. While they are fairly adept at melee fighting, falling in somewhere around the average crpg skill level if not perhaps a little higher, they are far better archers than they are melee fighters. Does this mean archery is OP? Not at all... it merely shows that someone who is good with a hatchet can be even better with a stronger weapon, in this case a bow.

Your reasoning would hold true if it wouldnt be built on the premise that archery skill and melee skill are interchangable/connected, which is evidently not the case. There is no reason to assume that somebody who is good at leading shots and estimating projectile drop is automatically worse/better/equally capable of blocking, footwork and all the other melee centric skillsets and vice versa.

As illogical it is to assume that melee item X is proven to be good, solely because player Y is doing good with it ( which was my initial claim, which you also confirmed ), as illogical it is to assume that class X is proven to be good, solely because player Y is doing good with it. Obviously there are far more factors to consider when analizing the situation such as the playerskill behind the user of said weapon/class, the team class-composition, average playerskill per team, willingness to work together etc.

So no, as much as saying "player X is good with hatchet, hatchet thereby is good weapon" is a non-argument, by the same token the situation doesnt change when making the same argument with "archer" instead of "hatchet". That would be a faulty generalization par excellence.

Also, I cannot confirm this as I pretty much never visit NA but it seems that your conclusion about the melee skills of those mentioned NA archers is drawn after observing how they perfrom in melee with archer builds instead of playing with a full melee build themselves. Can you say with certainty that those players would still perform "a little higher than average" in melee even with a full melee build of their own or are you just extrapolating your expectations ?

[Algarn]

I'll obviously defend archery, but hear me out on this one. I was on EU1 against XyNox, 20 players were playing around that time, and I won most of the fights against he and other archers, or got him/them killed at the very least. Why ? Because even if I was playing a patheticly bad lvl 32 shielder with 3 shield only, my body armor was high enough that his arrows just took around 15-20% per shot, and I wasn't using a plate or anything, just a norman mail and scale gauntlets +3. He basically had to be protected by an entire team, or he'd get wiped in a 1v1 even against mediocre players considering how low his melee ability was.

I'll say it here, I don't think archers should be better than infantrymen, but consider the following : if archers can't move fast (apart from stupid 10 athl builds), don't deal damages unless they're hitting the head (won't ever kill in 1 hit, and will miss most of the time thanks to hit-reg, ping, and MLG dancing), can't get more than 50 body armor (+3 looms) without becoming inaccurate, and can't fight in melee, what are they made for ?

No, archers (and crossbowmen) shouldn't have insane mobility like in the past, where bullshit builds like 18/30 were dominating, no they shouldn't be able to wear plates without consequences, yet they should be able to do two things : shooting accurately, and fighting back. Make shooting longer to do, yet much more damaging (3 bolts to kill a melee player is bullshit, lets be honest), and make them able to hold their ground a bit against mediocre players, I just can't bear those memories when I was getting killed by 2h scrubs in plate since I was barely able to even damage them (with 10PD), or even worse, to be able to do any damage with my melee weapon (30 STR, 5PS + MW grosses messer).
How to do it then ? How to make archery require skill, and make them somewhat better at melee so they fight back instead of running away/kiting, even from fights they should be able to win if they were playing a normal melee character ?

-> Make PD have no penalties at all (on accuracy and damage) above a certain threshold (it'd depend of the max level), and make the PD penalties decrease the more you put PD.
-> Make PD like the horse archery skill : 1 point per 6 STR, and compensate for it by putting the damage bonus/ accuracy penalty to 28% and 28 WPF (at 1PD). This should allow people to go for more power strike and IF, and could make horse archers able to carry a melee weapon instead of relying on lame tactics.
-> Remove entirely the effect of WPF on damage (this should also be done for melee builds), so it depends only on the speed multiplier and PS/PT/PD and weapon damage
-> Implement PD requirements on crossbows, slow their reload time and make them extremely damaging, no one should take more than two bolts to kill.
-> Make the accuracy for bows decent rather early, so that you are accurate, yet slow if you don't have 150+ archery WPF. This means hybridization is possible by putting some melee wpf, I dare to say that shielder archers would be do able, as long as you stick with 1 slot bows.
-> Make ATHL bonus scale down if you hold any ranged weapon in your hands. IIRC, each ATHL point gives a flat 3% increase. I say that above 5, it should go down by 0.75 per point to limit the speed archers can run at while their bow is equipped. (EX : at 6 ATHL, while holding a sword, you have a 18% increase, while you'd have only a 17.25% with a bow. The difference would go up the more agi focused the build is and negate kiting abusers).

This is only do able if the average level is reduced, and if the player counts go back up as before, or this will put archery back in its OP state like at the beginning. Pls Dupre. I want to play cRPG again, I'm like a drug addict waiting desperately some kind of fix.

[Asheram]

I was on na1 closing in on sexxy furry with 3 shield only and shield raised I am level 37 with 7if and wearing mw light kuyak armor and was about 4-5ft away from him when he shot me twice with no headshot and I died with my shield raised and he had no guards.

[Kadeth]

If what we see on the servers everyday isn't direct evidence of how effective a class is, then what is? I don't know what's going on in EU, but any NA (or Aus) player will be able to confirm that there are many archers frequently topping the scoreboard and frequently getting head shots.
 
Recently on NA I witnessed a number of players rolling anti-archer builds specifically because of how deadly some archers are. Similarly on the Aus servers, half the server would rage quit when a few particular players joined the server because they were just so good. It's not an isolated thing - I'm probably the only person in this community that is retarded enough to have spent hundreds of hours playing on NA, Aus and CHN servers, and one thing very consistent across all communities is archery domination. It's currently a very powerful class that is capable of one shotting people without engaging them. Forgive me for failing to see why it needs to be made more powerful.

[McKli_PL]

I'm probably the only person in this community that is retarded enough to have spent hundreds of hours playing on NA, Aus/Eu and CHN servers, and one thing very consistent across all communities is archery domination.

nah mate ur not only addicted to crpg here playing on every server/area with archery is not so simple to judge if its OP as fuck or bit even nerfed, good archer can counter every class: melee,cav or other range BUT every class can counter them (im talking about real archers not pleb with bows running and doing shit anyway) also the specific problem is not the class problem rather the players playing as archers and in 90% of them are very expierienced players, well i was saying in past that most of archers are able to adapt every mechanic of crpg very fast : movement,blocking/atacking,shooting, dodging procetiles, map controling, focusing targets, crucial timmings, hitreg and alot more yet most of melee players/cav from past or till now are just fucking TOOLS, playing same tactics, doing same blunders, falling into same traps but we freaking can't  buff archery because like Hesky mentioned every tiny/little/small buff will be crucial for good archers for raping even more other classes  and we cant loose more ppl even if archery is bit nerfed
(it is) but good archers can adapt better than the other tools