Archery......Final Conclusions

[clarioncaller]

MY BACKGROUND
I have been playing computer games for decades. Almost 20 years ago I discovered DARK AGE OF CAMELOT (a realm vs realm conflict game viewed by many as the gold standard by which all subsequent rvr games are measured. It remains so popular that a revised version on a private server was just launched(playphoenix.com) and has thousands on at any one time). DAOC changed me forever. I can no longer be satisfied for extended periods without competing against other players and having a deep crafting system. My favorite class to play is an archer. I love making my bows,my arrows,developing my skills,striking down my opponents from afar. One day I saw the GV trailer. It showed Vikings landing from a longboat and an archer shooting an arrow.hitting a defender in the throat as he was being hurled backwards to his death. That display of archery......what I thought I would experience in the game.....got me to buy the game. I love when small independent companies go for it and try to create their vision for a game( I did the same thing when I started by business which I ran successfully for over 24 years). I sought out a place to buy this game for full price, so the developer would get as much money as possible to help support them.

THE GAME
As I played the game, I saw my new archer was quite weak. Not a surprise.Hell it was a new character. I discovered that my level 5-10-15 character was expected to compete against the majority of players who were already level 100. That slowed my excitement a bit,but I pushed on. I love crafting and said I'll just go slow....make a FULL DEX character and compete directly when I felt I would not be ALWAYS be hacked to pieces by all the heavy armored players who make up the vast majority of players(perhaps 90-95%). As my character grew in levels I did not see an increase in his effectiveness. I want to help my realm.I want to feel I can contribute. I noticed other impediments to archery. The walls of many structure are too high to allow an archer to shoot close targets...standing to close to windows will close your character to stick(exposing them to certain death)....my arrows did little damage to the vast majority of players....etc etc. When I brought these and other archery related concerns up....I got several responses. Some players said archers were over powered and needed to be nerfed...some said I just need to hit the enemy in the head repeatedly....some said I need to drop my bow ,equip a dagger and fight a heavily armored player( who is nearly impervious to pierce damage unless you stab them in the back repeatedly despite having weak strength ,weak CON stats,and paper thing protective armor and lacking in mele skill or a desire to acquire them. Complaints about the games physical structures being archer unfriendly...sticking to windows were ignored, The changes I have seen in the game did not substantially improve the overall status of archery for me. In fact nerf archery seems to be the mantra of a select few. In fact my comments have been deemed highly negative.....with all the implications associated with that accusation.

MY CONCLUSIONS

My failure to successfully communicate my concerns and have them acknowledged even though this game is in alpha has forced me to make an unwanted decision. Keep playing and hope things will change or stop playing. I have not detected any signal that my voice ,my concerns, have caused those connected with this game to seriously consider that any of my concerns are valid. On the contrary I have received quite the opposite. And so...with much disappointment I leave the game. I hope by this post to reach out to those in power developing the game that they will hear one last cry to listen. For those considering playing an archer in this game...consider the experience of this player.

[Vahalla Ice]

No one listens to me so I'm going to take my ball and go home. This sums it up right?

[clarioncaller]

Why are archers in the game when they can do so little bow damage ?
Why are archers constrained to only pierce damage while mele are not ?
Why are building structures not made to accomodate archery ?
Why do developers think people will play this game with a character with very limited damage output ?
AND NO....I don't play with inferior bows. I often play with what many deem the best bow in the game(thanks to gifts from friends)
BTW when can we expect the complaints to start about catapults? They will rain long range damage on the heavys.. WHEN will the campaign to nerf them begin ? Today perhaps ?

[clarioncaller]

Originally posted by Valhalla Ice:

No one listens to me so I'm going to take my ball and go home. This sums it up right?

I play to have fun. I don't play for only other players to have fun. Seems that is the attitude of too many.

[Vahalla Ice]

I don't understand why you're complaining about Archer. You literally have it made. Most castle fights turn into shield wall blobs bashing into each other. This means you don't even need good aim, just spam at the blob and rack up damage. You get tons of nation points because when people turn and run, you can drill them in the back for massive damage. Shoot at the enemies archers to route them, you do great damage to them.

You can do arena with your archer using the OP knife, so taking archer doesn't mean you can't 1v1 arena.

PVE is made simple by being an archer, and doing pve with the knife in light armor, you take down mobs faster then anyone.

Yes, it can be annoying being archer on even ground, as if your trying to stay behind your team and shoot the enemy your shots will be blocked by teammates. But postioning goes a long way here.

Try playing the game as a medium armor melee fighter. You literally can't attack castles as going anywhere near them before the doors are down is almost instant death.

If archers did more damage it would break the game because sieges would just turn into archer wars. Its already turned into this recently as most people that play this game level up archer alts and stick them into castles for defense.

[clarioncaller]

Thanks for the comments. My presence on this forum.My presence in the game is now over.

[Phex]

I used a skill reset this weekend and went from an archer to a heavy armor guy. I was able to leave Tournaments with 80+ Points and a positive KD Ratio every time and i'm a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ player. Now i struggle to reach 20 points.

As Archer you need a bow, not even really need amor. Bows are the cheapest thing to craft ingame. If you die as heavy, People will loot you and you have to replace gear that costs 20silver up to 1 gold every death.

Just stand far away and spam arrows until you hit something. You will gain more nations points, more glory and have no costs and if you are not dumb you won't even die.

How can People im Heavy slash you to pieces anyway? You are 30 meters away from them and they have triple amount of endu drain while running.


Archer are the cheapest role to play, are pretty much save from death if not dumb, can outdamage all others in melee with a dagger if needed.

What do you want more?

Maybe you are shooting with a 50 iron bow on a guy that spended 20 Gold on gear so he can surive a little time in the frontline while 20 archers are shooting him.

[AwesomeHero]

Archer in this game is neither easymode nor is it harder than everything else. The learning curve might just be a bit steep, especially for people coming in from games where archery can easily dominate.
Bad archers are often one of the main causes of one side losing a big battle. While good archers can make life for the enemy really difficult.
You will hit heavy for only 50-60 damage ? Yes, and you can hit Light and medium for 200-350.

The name cluster for a lot of people may seem like a bad thing for archers. It is not, aim the the right spot of the nametag and you will do solid headshots.

Aim for the medium geared guys going full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with their halberds. Those guys are used to the enemy running and will be surprpised by a few shots to the face and legs.

Depending on the battle you will need to shoot at different targets.

I am by no means the dictionary of archery on this game. Far from it. But it is not that one sided against archers as many say.

On a sidenote, and please don't hate me for it - Halberd is still the weapon for special K/D ratio lovers.

[BrowneHawk]

AwesomeHero gets it.

[Bakinda]

Archers can be OP af in this game situationally. Sorry, you cant 1v1 a full heavy tank in the open field.

[Finist]

after all these whining "archers are gimp" I start collected your damage.

have a look. 621 piercing reduction, 193 headshot
https://steamcommunity.com/id/finist/screenshot/949599793489202047

very gimpy charasters

[76561198870632892]

There are 4 or 5 people across this forum speaking how archers are gimped, everytime giving some very edge case completelly ignoring the fact, that except the very edge case guys they deal 150-300 damage every shot if they have end game gear.

I saw a movie last week from another guy where he was talking ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like "while you walk your stamina regen faster and its exploit" which is a feature - but only proves he didn't know how the game works.

Same time, this guy was showing how "low" damage he had while not shooting with red power bar, or told that "tincture is op because it increases reductions by 10% for heavy", while it also been not a true as it decreases the calculated damage by 10%, so when light user gets hit for 200, it decreases 20 damage, when heavy gets hit for 50 it decreases by 5 - means it gives much more result for light armors.

Nevertheless, I have a feeling that the best thing devs could do is to decrease overall archery damage by, for example 20% and decrease heavy resistance same time. That could lead to that at least people will start playing other armors than heavy as archers 3-5 hit kill them (which means they are totally OP) if they don't stack the heavy armors - which are 100 times more expensive than archer equipement.

[Finist]

If archers start using medium armor it will solve some issues: they stop getting 200+ dmg by 2h users because their slashing reduction will be incresed, they stop doing 200 dmg per headshot and more ppl in medium armor start coming on a battlefield. More players in medium armor more dmg (in median) archers start do.

[TxOpFor]

Right now if an archer puts on a chainmail shirt his damage is reduced to 91%, if he puts on two pieces of medium armor <shirt and pants> his damage is reduced to 83%, three pieces <pants, shirt and helmet> its 76%, the damage reduction for med armor is already in the game. No change is needed. Its a trade off for light fighters...do you want to deal damage or do you want to live. There is no real penalty for heavy armor as the other player pointed out. With the right mix of potions and elixers you can circumvent most of the down sides to wearing plate.

[Jog]

@TxOpFor Can you please state all of those potions and elixirs and what would they help in total in case we are missing something? Threat me as someone who is between the community and our designers and making sure that all ends understand each other, even designers can miss something sometimes.

Also, I would like to state that, for example, there are for example less than 10k Tinctures on more than 250k of characters depots/inventories already which means only a very small percentage of the player base are using them, and they need to be stacked to be fully effective.

[TxOpFor]

I'll go back and see where the guys post is...he lists the elixers as well as the exploit to regen his stam.