Archer/Crossbowman Athletics

[yeahchris]

I'm not ignoring that fact. In a battlefield where there is only inf and archers maybe so. Infantry isn't supposed to be anti-archer class to beging with, that's that cavalry is for.

I think you're over selling the rock-paper-scissors dynamic which supposedly exists within the game. Infantry isn't a particularly effective class against cavalry. A skilled archer can usually kill a horse that's heading in his direction, and only some infantry gets access to pikes. The real anti-cavalry class is other cavalry, who can catch up to the other cavalry and cut down their horse. So, the archer>infantry>cavalry>archer argument doesn't really hold water. Foot archers already have an advantage against infantry, as they can start attacking the infantry while they're halfway across the map, to then add onto that the possibility of the archer being able to outrun the infantry forever is just ridiculous.

Archers should have to rely on others for melee defense if they're silly enough to let infantry get into close range. They shouldn't be able to just turn about at the last possible second and outpace the competition forever. It invalidates the purpose of infantry, and foot melee. At that point we might as well all play cavalry and archers, as cavalry does better against cavalry than infantry on account of their speed, they can actually catch archers, and archers can kill infantry at a distance and outrun them forever provided they don't mess up.

That leaves infantry the task of dealing with... other infantry, who are all generally at the mercy of either cavalry or archers who have a clue what they're doing, and any infantry player who wants to deal with other infantry would be much better served switching to archer or cavalry, either of which will give a mobility, in addition to a range advantage, for the archer.

 

[Plazek]

Yea drop the X is anti Y and Y is anti Q bull****.

That might be how things work in old/simple strategy games. It is not how things work in reality or IMO mount and blade. Nor is it something to aspire to.  In mount and blade anything can take anything that is why I like it. When I am an infantryman so long as I play smart and adjust my tactics for different opponents I can win against any class. This is how it should be.

The things we should be asking are is it fun? Is it realistic? Does it make sense? etc. Saying things should or should not be done because of some percieved rock paper scissors rubbish is just silly. This is not an RTS! We are REAL people we are not slaves to the same rules AI RTS units face. It is not that simple.


PS
I am obviously not saying different weapons/equipment/classes do NOT have advantages/disadvantages over others. Just that if you have a brain/some skill you figure out ways to overcome these problems. It would be a bad idea to reinforce these things and actually make into rock paper scissors.

 

[CalenLoki]

Archers should have to rely on others for melee defense if they're silly enough to let infantry get into close range. They shouldn't be able to just turn about at the last possible second and outpace the competition forever. It invalidates the purpose of infantry, and foot melee. At that point we might as well all play cavalry and archers, as cavalry does better against cavalry than infantry on account of their speed, they can actually catch archers, and archers can kill infantry at a distance and outrun them forever provided they don't mess up.

That leaves infantry the task of dealing with... other infantry, who are all generally at the mercy of either cavalry or archers who have a clue what they're doing, and any infantry player who wants to deal with other infantry would be much better served switching to archer or cavalry, either of which will give a mobility, in addition to a range advantage, for the archer.

Infantry role is to attack/defend important location (master of the field, destroyable objects, archer's cover) not to kill enemy (unless they attack). If you think that infantry are now useless, try win fight and destroy or battle against smart enemy with no inf on your site (of course with equal skilled players)

About cav vs. cav I already posted - it's no counter, but fight with equal wining chance.

And you want infantry to be able to fight more infantry, but weaker (archers in melee). What a variation...

Yea drop the X is anti Y and Y is anti Q bull****.

That might be how things work in old/simple strategy games. It is not how things work in reality or IMO mount and blade. Nor is it something to aspire to.  In mount and blade anything can take anything that is why I like it. When I am an infantryman so long as I play smart and adjust my tactics for different opponents I can win against any class. This is how it should be.

The things we should be asking are is it fun? Is it realistic? Does it make sense? etc. Saying things should or should not be done because of some percieved rock paper scissors rubbish is just silly. This is not an RTS! We are REAL people we are not slaves to the same rules AI RTS units face. It is not that simple.


PS
I am obviously not saying different weapons/equipment/classes do NOT have advantages/disadvantages over others. Just that if you have a brain/some skill you figure out ways to overcome these problems. It would be a bad idea to reinforce these things and actually make into rock paper scissors.

r-p-s works as soft counters, which mean give some advantage, and that usually cav win vs. arch, arch vs. inf, etc. Smart and skilled player always beat newb
It works the same IRL - First War of Scottish Independence is good example.

 

[AoC]

Archers>Infantry>Cavalry>Archers is valid. Still, hard counters does not exist if players read the battlefield situation and pick the right gear.

Archers have easy task weakening infantry from range, and even up close they are not dead meat against them.
Infantry have pikes, spears or throwing axes that are able to kill charging cavalry, if the infantry know what to do.
Cavalry have speed advantage that foil archer range, and up close they are in good situation with their lances.

But still, archers should not be able to kite infantry up close - if infantry is good enought to close range, they deserve advantage.

There are multiple solutions - decreasing ranged class athletics, or changing the way how weight affect movement, or changing movement to make such behaviour risky, or change the way how archer reload their bows, or mix of those.

@Plazek: Do you know what 'soft counters' means ?

 

[yeahchris]

Archers>Infantry>Cavalry>Archers is valid. Still, hard counters does not exist if players read the battlefield situation and pick the right gear.

Archers have easy task weakening infantry from range, and even up close they are not dead meat against them.
Infantry have pikes, spears or throwing axes that are able to kill charging cavalry, if the infantry know what to do.
Cavalry have speed advantage that foil archer range, and up close they are in good situation with their lances.

But still, archers should not be able to kite infantry up close - if infantry is good enought to close range, they deserve advantage.

There are multiple solutions - decreasing ranged class athletics, or changing the way how weight affect movement, or changing movement to make such behaviour risky, or change the way how archer reload their bows, or mix of those.

@Plazek: Do you know what 'soft counters' means ?

Pikes are only useful against cavalry players who don't have brains, and charge right into it. Ultimately the "counter" for horsemen can be given to whoever ends up killing the horse, which, 9 times out of 10, is either cavalry, because they can catch up, or archers because they can do it at range. Infantry don't have jack that they can do against a cavalryman who isn't an idiot, and doesn't charge pikes head-on.

Whether infantry can be considered useless right now I didn't say. It really would depend entirely on the map. And would change depending on whether there were objectives to defend or not. Infantry would probably be a bit more useful on defense in F&D, but I don't really know because nobody really plays F&D and when they did the objectives never really came into play. Also, infantry are more useful in Village, which is why it's the most popular map.

But still, archers should not be able to kite infantry up close - if infantry is good enought to close range, they deserve advantage.

That's really all anyone is asking for; to remove foot archer's ability to outrun infantry forever so that getting within close range actually matters.

 

[AoC]

Most of the time, simple War Spear or throwing weapon is good way to kill the horse. Even good players underestimate throwing weapons (and horses are about the only target you can hit with throwing weapons).

 

[Halcyon]

That might be how things work in old/simple strategy games. It is not how things work in reality or IMO mount and blade. Nor is it something to aspire to.  In mount and blade anything can take anything that is why I like it. When I am an infantryman so long as I play smart and adjust my tactics for different opponents I can win against any class. This is how it should be.

this is how it is. nerfing athletics only takes us to this r-p-s game, which cannot happen, otherwise it wouldnt be M&B

"Archers should have to rely on others for melee defense if they're silly enough to let infantry get into close range"

why? thats the whole point, you arent supposed to let infantry get into close range, if that means running away and shooting so be it. one will always fight with what they are good at, its only natural an archer should do this, and natural that they should be able to do this too.

"- if infantry is good enough to close range, they deserve advantage."
they are good enough, can close range, and do have the advantage. dont try to nerf a class just because you cant *reach* them. and no archers cant kite forever, they only have certain amount of arrows, and are considerably weaker at melee, also there is master of field for more than just the kiting reason. If you cant get into the archers melee range, then youre just doing it wrong, i suggest you go play the game and try some more.

 

[yeahchris]

why? thats the whole point, you arent supposed to let infantry get into close range, if that means running away and shooting so be it. one will always fight with what they are good at, its only natural an archer should do this, and natural that they should be able to do this too.

I'm all for archers skirmishing, but there should be some sort of rational limit to how long an archer should be able to wait before skirmishing becomes useless. In other words, I would be happy if an archer would move back a bit between shots as I'm closing the distance. But what's happening now is that they're waiting until you're, like, four feet away, and then they turn and run, and you cannot catch them.

they are good enough, can close range, and do have the advantage. dont try to nerf a class just because you cant *reach* them. and no archers cant kite forever, they only have certain amount of arrows, and are considerably weaker at melee, also there is master of field for more than just the kiting reason. If you cant get into the archers melee range, then youre just doing it wrong, i suggest you go play the game and try some more.

Numbers don't lie mate. If an archer has higher athletics than an infantry, and is carrying less weight, he can run faster than the infantry forever. This means that the whether or not the infantry will ever catch up with the archer is entirely out of the hands of the infantryman; no amount of skill on his part is going to change the numbers. His catching up is entirely dependent on the archer screwing up somehow.

"Doing it right" doesn't affect the numbers. You can't change the speed of your character through skill, or force of will.

And yes, they only have a certain amount of arrows; usually 60.

 

[ScientiaExcelsa]

Oh my, lots of posts since my last one.  I'd just like to point out that:

dont change the argument to realism. because i hate all reelistik games. general details matter for the sake of gameplay, like the jumping, sure its a little silly the way they jump in M&B but its just something for gameplay.

...I got it to catch on! 

As for the rest of your argument, Halcyon, I say again -- it's not that archers shouldn't be more agile than infantry; the problem is that the difference in agility is too great.  Consequently, they are much too difficult to corner and kill.

 

[Harn]

That might be how things work in old/simple strategy games. It is not how things work in reality or IMO mount and blade. Nor is it something to aspire to.  In mount and blade anything can take anything that is why I like it. When I am an infantryman so long as I play smart and adjust my tactics for different opponents I can win against any class. This is how it should be.

this is how it is. nerfing athletics only takes us to this r-p-s game, which cannot happen, otherwise it wouldnt be M&B

My original post on r/p/s was read into further than I intended it to be. I didn't mean to imply that r/p/s is to hard lock each class into a specific role, but that each class should possess a clear advantage/disadvantage against each other given the proper conditions are fulfilled. Infantry in the OP's situation are being denied their reward of reversing an inferior position vs an archer. Removing the advantage of range from the archer should be rewarded, not have the archer exploit and abuse game mechanics to bring the situation full circle once more.

"Archers should have to rely on others for melee defense if they're silly enough to let infantry get into close range"

why? thats the whole point, you arent supposed to let infantry get into close range, if that means running away and shooting so be it. one will always fight with what they are good at, its only natural an archer should do this, and natural that they should be able to do this too.

You are supposed to keep enemies out of range by killing/helping kill them before they get to your position. Not wait for them to be 2 seconds away and start running. You shouldn't be able to run faster than infantry because you decide to wear nothing but a bow and 2-3 quivers of arrows. That's not balance.

there is master of field for more than just the kiting reason.

MotF works to a degree, provided the archer in the OP doesn't shoot people in the feet/break the shields during the 1-2+ minutes it would take to resolve the situation of having the flag spawn. If nobody dies and resets the MotF timer, everyone then slowly walks backwards/sideways with shields raised to reach the flag and subsequently start to cap the flag until the archer charges in during the last 15 seconds before the flag caps. Maybe the archer gets lucky and kills someone, freezing the flags for another 30 seconds, letting him run away and pelt them again. All this because 1 player is exploiting a situation.

Again, the goal of this discussion is to fix an exploit, not to make archers ineffective.

 

[Commoner]

the xbow only really takes about a second or maybe 1.5sec to reload before you can walk *not fully* you can begin walking as soon as you pull the *string* on the xbow back, i.e as soon as you start placing the bolt you can walk. its not hard to get the timing right, either way kiting is still ineffective with xbows, and shouldnt be done anyone since they at least have some melee skills.

That need to pause for 1.5 second to reload is more than enough for reasonably armored infantry to catch up to the crossbow player and force him to engage in melee which is why kiting is ineffective with crossbows, not because crossbows are in any way inehrently inferior to the bow.

and yes you can knock and arrow and begin to draw the bow while you are running, taking this option out of the game would be stupid, just the same as hiding behind a corner to begin the draw, step out and shoot. all of these can be done in real life and taking them away or making them slower will only nerf archers more.

For the sake of argument, let's throw out any reasonable doubt that gameplay and balance might actually be more important than realism in this case.

Now, take a standard medieval long bow which most people can't even draw properly to shoot. Take that bow and stick some arrows with cloth stubs into a quiver. Now put yourself maybe 30 feet away from one of your friends who's about as fit as you and give him a padded stick and tell him you'll be his slave for a month if he can beat you silly with the stick before you can hit him with 3 or 4 arrows. Now go and sprint in the opposite direction while taking out arrows from your quiver, drawing the long bow and shooting at your buddy while he sprints up to you with the words "kneel down before me slave" written all over his face. Use a stop watch just to see how much time you have left as a free man.

Now, take exactly the same situation except now, all you need to do is carry the quiver and the arrows and simply sprint away from your friend who is trying to beat you silly with the padded stick. Oh, did it take him alot longer to catch up with you that second time. Oh dear, that's a surpirse. Hmmm. I wonder why. Could it possibly be because taking arrows from your quiver, drawing the bow and shooting at your buddy was slowing you down? Nah that's impossible. That's not realistic. Come on guys, we all watched Lord of the Rings and saw Legolas doing it. Anybody should be able to do it. Right? RIGHT?

 

[Swadius 2.0]

...

Now, take a standard medieval long bow which most people can't even draw properly to shoot.

To further reinforce this, the draw weight of the longbow was not exceptionally greater than other bows meant for killing fully armored men, there are bows that meet or even exceed the longbow if particularly well made, the Eurasian ones were quite advanced in terms of bow technology.

 

[Halcyon]

i never said xbows were inferior to bows, was merely saying that you cant really kite with them, and that there is less reason to do this, since xbowmen have some melee skills. this is solely to differentiate xbowmen from archers.

first off at that distance, you dont even need to fully draw the bow to hit the target, ingame you have to do a full draw all the time.
Being able to draw the bow while running turning around and shooting does nothing against gameplay and balance.

*and yes anything legolas can do, you can do.*

 

[Swadius 2.0]

A person needs to torsion most of their body in order to fully draw a bow capable of penetrating the heavier armors.

 

[PsykoOps]

I'm not ignoring that fact. In a battlefield where there is only inf and archers maybe so. Infantry isn't supposed to be anti-archer class to beging with, that's that cavalry is for.

I think you're over selling the rock-paper-scissors dynamic which supposedly exists within the game. Infantry isn't a particularly effective class against cavalry. A skilled archer can usually kill a horse that's heading in his direction, and only some infantry gets access to pikes. The real anti-cavalry class is other cavalry, who can catch up to the other cavalry and cut down their horse. So, the archer>infantry>cavalry>archer argument doesn't really hold water. Foot archers already have an advantage against infantry, as they can start attacking the infantry while they're halfway across the map, to then add onto that the possibility of the archer being able to outrun the infantry forever is just ridiculous.

I never advocated the rock paper scissors thing, it was someone else who brought that up. Also if archers supposedly can outrun the infantry forever and "kite" then why is that I have never seen it happen? I've played fair amount and I always keep an eye on the archers. Maybe you should take into account that these are enclosed battlefields usually with objectives and that when infantry goes against archers there's 99% of the time more than just one of them. Also that halfway across map argument doesn't hold water, infantry can have shields and any half decent inf can use cover and dodge all the way up to the archers. You make it sound like archers make pincussions of inf heads.

 

[Plazek]

@ AoC I presume it means some sort of counter that is not as certain as a hard counter to be effective. Something that can be sucessful but won't if implemented poorly.

I know these advantages/disadvantages exist I said so in my post explicitly. I am just saying they should not be encouraged and that (in my opinion) bad suggestions should not be made on these percieved sterotypes for the sake of it.

ie. the people saying athletics should not be reduced for archers because archers>inf, even though archers having higher athletics makes no sense.

 

[yeahchris]

I'm not ignoring that fact. In a battlefield where there is only inf and archers maybe so. Infantry isn't supposed to be anti-archer class to beging with, that's that cavalry is for.

I think you're over selling the rock-paper-scissors dynamic which supposedly exists within the game. Infantry isn't a particularly effective class against cavalry. A skilled archer can usually kill a horse that's heading in his direction, and only some infantry gets access to pikes. The real anti-cavalry class is other cavalry, who can catch up to the other cavalry and cut down their horse. So, the archer>infantry>cavalry>archer argument doesn't really hold water. Foot archers already have an advantage against infantry, as they can start attacking the infantry while they're halfway across the map, to then add onto that the possibility of the archer being able to outrun the infantry forever is just ridiculous.

I never advocated the rock paper scissors thing, it was someone else who brought that up. Also if archers supposedly can outrun the infantry forever and "kite" then why is that I have never seen it happen? I've played fair amount and I always keep an eye on the archers. Maybe you should take into account that these are enclosed battlefields usually with objectives and that when infantry goes against archers there's 99% of the time more than just one of them. Also that halfway across map argument doesn't hold water, infantry can have shields and any half decent inf can use cover and dodge all the way up to the archers. You make it sound like archers make pincussions of inf heads.

No, oftentimes infantry do take down archers. But this is because most archers don't take advantage of the easily exploitable encumberance system we have now. Most archers wear armor and will pull a sword if you get too close. But a few will wear no armor, some carry no sword, and will exploit the hell out of the encumbrance system, and CAN outrun infantry indefinitely, provided he's not dumb and runs himself into a corner.

I have seen it done.

Also, archers can shoot under shields, and even a good shield doesn't last that long if it keeps taking arrows.

 

[mouthnhoof]

You fail to take into account that archers get crap weapons and armor also. So they have no shield unless they happen to loot one, get worse weaponry and armor and have worse stats.

You keep saying this, but it will not become true. Even if you say it 3 times, this is not hunting of the snark.
Archers/xbowmen do not get crap weapons. Most of their weapons are identical to what the infantry can get. In particular, the 1H weapons are practically the same. Armor is similar except for the highest tiers that infantry can theoretically (but hardly ever practically) get. On top of that, the "better" armor only means even lower chance to get into melee.

The simple fact is that the game is frustrating for a player who wants to melee. I am talking about team modes like "battle" and "destroy", as I expect deathmatch to be dominated by cavalry and archers. The only enemy I can engage in melee is other infantry. I would have settled for this, except that when I finally find their infantry and try to engage them, I still get back shotted and back lanced by the archers and cavalry which I cannot melee. What's worse, I'll get shotted and lanced WHILE I am meleeing someone. The ability of archers to out-run the infantry, combined with the ability to jump off roofs and walls means that even a fortified archer can just jump and run if an infantry is able to make it all the way to his position. So: no way to engage archers, no way to actively engage cavalry, very difficult to engage other infantry while the archers and cavalry are around. What then?

Lance &  Bow: Warband