[1026] Does anyone else think the archers should be more powerful?

see now we are making progress instead of mindlessly arguing over Knight vs Archer

 

This. I want it back.

 

That is probably the best description of Beta Archers I've ever heard.

I, too, miss the sniping-heavy Archers of the olden days. I've gotten kind of addicted to the grappling hook, unfortunately, and I don't think I'd be able to live without it anymore, especially considering how ridiculously mobile Knights are.

 

If you took away the grappling hook, knights would be at least as mobile, if not more, as archers (excluding tree climbing). With wall climbing and bombjumping, a knight can get over most castles, whereas an archer would just have to hope for a strategically placed tree. And if archers aren't mobile, they're basically = to an arrow cannon (or whatever it's called). Stick it in your base, spam arrows at knights below. I think we should keep the grappling hook, or at least make some alternative (higher jumping?) so that they keep their acrobatic skill.

 

The problem i had with the classic archers was that they would group up and be completely unstoppable, they didn't even have to be "good" archers. All that was needed was the brain function to understand how to sync up with the other archers. The TOP TIER of archer was the actual classic archer where people like @Fellere825, @Rayne, and Contrary (RIP faggot) would knock arrows and bounce on top of shielding knights, and plug them in the face the second they stopped shielding. Everyone couldn't do it easily but once mastered it made me rage quit. I wouldn't mind assist kills @Geti (code that shit ).

Also one thing that most of you seem to misunderstand is that the Archer isnt meant to take on knights 1v1, EVER. take that how you will but it's just the truth of the matter. Archers where made to be able to WRECK siege and harass everyone else. Archers also have the most effective explosive in the game (for some reason @Geti), and with this are literally walking missile launchers as bomb arrows do not do damage to blocks... they erase them. Water ammo is UNBLOCKABLE (again, for some reason @Geti ), and highly spammable, Fire ammo is kinda eh.. and wonky but when it works its fucking horrible. you can also fucking Legolas with special ammo, besides Legolas being UNBLOCKABLE at close range (do i even have to say it @Geti ). Playing this game properly isn't about having the best score or the best K/D, but about how much you've helped your team win. Archers have the greatest chance of all the classes to affect the outcome of a game. Most of you are so busy screaming "y nit kil n 1 slas?" that you have missed this completely.

> "OH!? You used the last of your stone to reseal your flag?"
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>"OH!? You have a huge wood structure?"
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>"OH!? my team cant seem to mob up and kill this god tier Shark king? even though he has a broken mouse and cant slash, jab or even shield now 80% of the time!?"
>
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>
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>
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>*sigh
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> *stomp *stomp *stomp
>

>MFW

 

that brought a tear to my eye arcrave..... well said, hopefully anyone that doesnt get it will see what arcrave put here.

 

This is another reason why archer is hard to pick up I think, without feedback on how well you're doing from the game, it can be hard to tell if you're doing the right thing. When learning, you need those little "+1 score!" moments to reward proper play. Right now, learning archer is just climbing a hill of punishment.

 

Just add the alpha archer's bow accuracy, arrow speed (and arrow size, no industrial size branches for arrows k thx) and arrow range and I'll be happy. As I said, the best things about the alpha archer were the above mentioned and that's it.

 

Bow accuracy? The only time there's any deviation is with legolas shots. quarter/half/full charges are perfectly accurate and don't deviate whatsoever.

Legolas shots also line up perfectly at somewhere around a 50~40' angle at range.

 

I've always found the alpha archer's accuracy to be better than the beta one. Then again, when beta was introduced knights became faster, even more mobile, gained the arrow slash ability and that bloody shield box seems to have doubled in size making it even more difficult to shoot past shields than in alpha while the arrow range and speed dropped significantly, so those are also factors to take into account.

In the alpha I was able to shoot past a knight's shield with perfect accuracy when slightly above ground and at a decent distance, but in beta? No chance. Mind you, that might be more due to the improved mobility and speed (plus the damn shield box) than the actual bow accuracy.

I can't even do half of the skill shots I performed in alpha, why? Because beta archery is significantly weaker than alpha archery. Now don't get me wrong, the alpha archer is shit in every other department when compared with the beta archer; as Geti stated he's slow, clunky and has the survival chances of a bloody retarded deer with three legs but the archery felt spot on and that's what made it enjoyable to play the class (at least for me).

 

Yeah, minor tweaks are what's needed, not sweeping changes. The biggest thing is the hitbox of the knight's shield.

Nobody will agree with the removal of arrow slashing at this point, since it's practically required against good archers. But the shield hitboxes should really be more accurate.

@Geti is this possibru?

 

Seconding this, this is probably the most important change that needs to happen.

 

I fancy myself a game design enthusiast, so I can't resist chiming in.

A lot of people clearly feel that something is wrong with the balance of the archer class, so it's not wholly evident that archer is just fine the way it is. A significant number of (usually more advanced) players also seem to think that archer is either just fine, or almost just fine. Looking at the overall sentiment of the community as a whole (and in some cases the verbatim opinion of expert archers like @Trumbles), it's a safe bet that what the game needs is not any drastic or even very significant changes in archer's favour, but just a little extra oomph.

For starters, the game absolutely needs to do a better job of rewarding productive behaviour -- kill assists, building destruction, maybe defending against capture, etc. Archers are best suited to these tasks and they are the least rewarded productive activities. Reward good behaviour and you will see more and better archers.

After investing ~100 hours into Archer, I have to agree with @Trumbles and others who say that the archer is actually quite balanced and nowhere near as underpowered as some others make it out to be. Every skill or trick available to the archer right now feels pretty much just right in terms of balance to me. What feels wrong is that the archer -- clearly intended to be the most utilitarian class, a la "it's a support class!" -- is comparable to the knight in terms of how many tricks it has up its sleeve. From this, I conclude that another minor trick up its sleeve would be sufficient to placate those who have played enough archer to understand the class and still feel something is off. I'm not quite sure what it should be, exactly, but we can make some educated assumptions based on the strengths and weaknesses of archers...

Archers are fast and agile, but comparatively weak and flimsy; they die easily in straight up combat, and deal less damage over more time. This is one of the major characterisations and balancing points of the class, and should not be mitigated; to do so would be to undermine the class completely. We should stay away from things that make the archer significantly more deadly or resilient to damage. This is the pitfall that almost every suggestion to buff archer I've seen has fallen into, and it is fatally erroneous. Archer does not need more combat capability; a sufficiently skilled archer is more than capable of dealing with knights of a reasonably lower skill level in combat, and that is how it should be.

I submit for your consideration and discussion the following brainstorm:

• Parachute -- Every single person who has watched me play KAG has commented, "Oh, that looks like real-time Worms! That's awesome!" While this is clearly an exaggerated analysis of the game, I confess that I chose archer because I loved swinging and slinging on the ninja rope back in the days of Worms Armageddon, which also featured a parachute that ninja-ropers made ample and creative use of. I feel like some added air maneuverability / survivability, if carefully limited (we don't want archers gliding over the whole map without a care), would be an excellent addition to the class. I am on the fence about whether I think it should be more or less effective than the knight's shield gliding; archer feels like it should have better air superiority than the knight, who currently reigns supreme in that field with bomb jumping, chicken gliding, shield gliding, (surviving a) catapulting, etc., but we must be cautious to avoid overpowering the archer. Archers lack a spacebar skill at the moment; this is the most obvious gap to be filled. Many suggestions have been put forth, but most of them have been combat-related and therefore dumb. This would finally grant a (noncombat) spacebar action to archers, and is my personal pet fantasy.
  
  
• Crouching Removes Minimap Blip -- I don't know if this was brought up on the forums before, but @PandemicCommander talked to me about this, and I think it's a solid idea; the lack of blood / Wilhelm Scream still gives away the fact that you aren't really dead, so it's not going to fool anyone mid-combat, but it would be a great way to help the archer do what it does best -- avoid front-line combat -- when games get densely populated. It's not offensive, not hugely defensive (it doesn't stop anyone from killing you), and it's tricksy; perfect for archer, I think.

• Detonate Bomb Arrows -- Another spacebar suggestion; one of the stupidest things in the game right now is building a giant ladder tower with a paltry amount of starting resources and having all your knights chicken-glide across the map as soon as the game starts. The problem with ladders is they don't take hits from arrows, and therefore an archer cannot go and blow that shit up; it's up to your knights or builders to get past the enemy lines to deal with the threat, which sucks because it requires significant investment to get knights and builders behind enemy lines, and negligible investment to build or rebuild a Tower of Dick. If the archer could detonate bomb arrows with spacebar, this would allow an archer to take out these structures with a few well timed shots; a reasonable counter-investment, I think, and one that plays nicely with the archer's established skillset. This wouldn't add much in the way of combat capability to the archer (which is a good thing) because prematurely detonating bombs isn't really that useful in combat -- and who wastes bomb arrows on combat anyway?

• Spacebar Makes You Invisible -- Nah, I'm just messing with ya.

I would love to hear some more from the community on this; tweaks, comments, criticism, other ideas entirely; the rampant cries of "archer is weak!" are indicative of something awry, so let's make an assessment and address it properly.

 

"Detonate Bomb Arrows" is the coolest idea for space-bar ive heard.

 

Well the strategy I use is just slash around with a knight up to 150 coins and then buy 3 bomb arrows and crush things. Archer was, is and prolly will be a support class. You don't get kills, score and coins with archers, cause they mostly just ruin buildings.
What I'd fix, is that a knight in a full plate armor can be faster than archer in water by just slashing around in water and kill him.

 

I think most people want to play their preferred class for most of the game; if you look at similar class-based games, this tends to be unwaveringly the case. It is certainly valid and strategically sound to swap classes when another class would be circumstantially better suited, but you will find that most players do not want to do this; we design games for players to have fun, so when a sizeable amount of them (in this case, those who feel/say that archer is lacking something) are perturbed, it's pertinent to address their concerns.

Agreed; this is why it is important not to focus on the combat skills of the archer, but rather their utility and mobility, as I've attempted and encouraged others to do.

I think you might find that many seasoned players would disagree with you on this point, including myself (though I am far from "seasoned"). What's more, this would be indicative of poor game design; clearly, a noteworthy amount of players are not satisfied with this.

I think that would be misguided; archers have near equal or superior mobility across every other type of terrain; water provides an interesting obstacle for archers to overcome, and you will note that on all maps with water, there are platforms of land for archers to grapple between, if not a path that completely circumvents the water trap; falling into the water ought to be a death sentence for archers. In shallow water it isn't even that bad; you can grapple along the bottom to pull your way out faster than a knight. Speaking as an archer, this is not a pressing concern.

 

@qstrahl Regarding the water mobility, archers are thrice screwed with slower arrows, slower movement and slower grapple firing. If there's to be a fix, I'd say speed up the grapple in water a bit, wont change anything in shallow, just let archers not get stuck in deep. I'm fine for archers having better and worse terrain, but maps can get bombed into oceans way too easily.

 

I could see the case for that, but with regard to:

... I might argue that this is where builders come in; classes need not be completely self-sufficient in all scenarios.

Also worth noting is that the knockback on archers' arrows is usually more than sufficient to keep pursuing knights at bay in water, provided you're firing from the surface.