That's probably true. Comparable to this is the Cav spam on random lobbys which also tilts the hell out of ppl.
One thing to add:
There is nothing else in this game which shows the difference in skill between teams than a melee showdown. I can imagine why intermediate or casual teams might opt the "easy way out"-approach by just spamming archers since shooting is comparable easy to melee combat.
Well I am in no way a top inf player but I think everybody should give the Battanian shockinfantry with the armor perk a try. While the range and damage is not as high as the voulge or menavlions it is incredibly fast in two handed mode. Together with the low weight you can get into the enemy's back really easily. I think the unit is somewhat overlooked.
I'd pick that class over Sturgia's and Aserai's units any day.
I'd like to add that two handed options are not limited to shock inf but the battanian archers get their fair amount of crushthrough weapons as well. The Great Falx is more reliable in this matter than the two handed sword alternative for the archer. If you face an archer which is good in melee blocking this becomes quite frustrating because of the stun and the permament danger of getting a hit for 40+ damage despite blocking the strike.
So what you seem to be saying is that you didn't want to fight archers 1v1 but to all go after one archer? If each archer was running away from pursuing inf there would have been no shooting.
Why should I go for 1v1, that can take forever, if I am able to force kill archers with 2v1 or by simply ganging her/him in the most brutal and efficient matter? The denied damage potential of five or more well placed arrows (We are talking 200+ damage, i.e. 2-3 dead players on your team because of the chain reaction if the arrow doesn't misses his target) is worth the gamble of losing one infantry or losing total team hitpoints of 100 or smth. I had archer players complaint to me "I can't do a thing", well, sorry, you're playing the class which - if placed well and protected - has the highest DPS and lowest TTK imaginable if unpressured.
if consistency in matches is the aim we would only ever use one map and one faction. Also if we were all playing 6 archers all the time, that would be consistent. when cav are dismounted and when archers are in melee range we all go melee anyway so why should inf be artificially favoured?
A good archer will try to get out of melee range asap to resume shooting. Or close combat shots come into play and since there's no force field around the shield you can even headshot people which are point blank. It happened to me (main inf) so many times I stopped counting. Archers who stand and fight will do so until reinforcements arrive or risk getting mauled in melee. It would be natural imo to get the advantage out of your class, so get some distance and resume firing.
I'll make one play of thought, let's say one team goes all out on archers, say 4 archers + 2 cav/inf. The other team has no archer faction (for example sturgia) and can't retaliate that way, the natural reaction for the sturgia team would be to camp out or to push. Since pushing against 4 archers is involving risks (crossfire everywhere) some might opt to camp. We would get to a situation (especially in intermediate and casual) where people would just wait to force a flag, if they have the knowledge how to do that.
Also what should be taken into account is that you spawn everywhere on the map. It follows a system but if archers are respawned, they can instantly shoot and deal damage while infantry would have to run. A good archer will hit.
TL;DR
Why does Bard defend the class limit?
I've been playing a fair share of this game and the predecessor. It's not that I like these limits, what I try to achieve is protecting the intermediate + casual player base from unhinged archer spam because it might make more people quit. "TaleWorlds should adress the issue then" - oh yeah, I saw how they did that with 1.5. Archers are strong as they were before, if not stronger and that is the reason why they get pressured so hard in top tier gameplay. It requires knowledge, discipline and skill to do so, a thing which intermediate gameplay might not be able to field like top teams (like Risen Manifest, Destiny Masters, Deutschritter, Fortune, Resolute, KW etc., which field
'few archers')
I'd like to add that in the match KW L v DR 1 I abused the horse archers to the max as Khuzait and our archers dealt considerable amounts of damage. We had three archers, two on the horse and one foot archer. They're certainly not useless or underpowered, just the aforementioned points show that archers will be relentlessy pressured and removed from the battlefield if opportunity is given.
This might not be possible in intermediate or casual gameplay and archer spam could dominate Division B + C and make people quit because it's annoying and less fun than the current way of 1-2 group fights being the round deciding factor. One thing I want to also add is that an overwhelming majority voted in favor of these restrictions and I'd not like an environment where this is ignored by an 'elite approach'.