Arrow penetration/disabling of knight shields.

As it stands right now it seems like archers are a little underpowered, especially in things like team deathmatch. A simple change that would make them more balanced is giving them the ability to penetrate knight shields, either at full bow charge or at overload bow charge. This would allow archers a chance at taking down knights that are in the open. Currently knights are completely invicible to archers unless they are swining their sword and thats seems a little overpowered and frustrating to me.

What is the point of an archer if there has to be a knight on knight fight already happening to be able to hit knights?

The way I envision the system working is:
1) Archer charges bow to the max.
2) Archer fires arrow at enemy shield.
3) Arrow hits shield causing the knight to unblock.
4) Knight cannot unblock for about a second to two seconds.
5) Second archer or same archer fires a second arrow, hitting theknight for 3 damage, but not killing him.
6) Repeat process until knight is dead unless he has been killed already by a third arrow.

In that way, it doesn't make it overpowered, it just gives archers a way to kill knights by themselves. It also gives archers a way to do teamwork. One archer can break the shield while another has their bow ready to shoot the knight after shield penetration

 

This discussion has been mentioned plenty of times before and will most likely be locked, but i will explain to you why things are the way they are. As of right now in TDM Both archer and knight can simply stay away from each other as long as they want simply because the only objective is to kill each other. In fact a good archer technically has more of an advantage because of his grapple and ranged capabilities. Its an agreed upon fact that the best archers are superior to the best knights in TDM and in some cases CTF and TTH, however things change when knights have bombs, if the knight can surprise the archer he might have a good enough chance of killing the archer before he can get away. essentially bombs are the only things that give knights a way to kill the best archers of the game.

Now saying this i would think knight and archer are relatively balanced, both classes work well with each other and have their own strengths that make them unique and useful in their own ways, i think what you were concerned with is that you were seeing lots of new archers get destroyed by good knights, this makes sense because it takes a larger understanding of the game to be better at archer than it does at knight, basically its easier to play knight for the first time than it is to play archer.

 

SUPPORT

 

Perhaps having to being super skilled at being an archer is not considered balance. If someone can't just pick up a character and use them in a logical way then there's a problem. As an archer it's not very easy to do anything from an archer's nest besides kill people who are already in duels. Then the people you kill can complain that they were in a duel and you shouldn't have killed them. Also, there's no evidence that the "best" archer is better than the "best" knight because you can't measure what "best" means.

Perhaps the best archer is just way better at the game than the "best knight". I'm just tired of the KAG community brushing off anyone who wants to make a change that makes sense or to create more balance and more fun. I'm also tired as an archer having to wait for a knight to get close to me to shoot them, completely contrary to what an archer is, and then having to charge my bow and shoot them before they stab me once and kill me. Basically knights get to decide the speed of the battle on their own terms whereas archers have to cater to knights' timing.

Knights have so much going for them: glider, slider, overly protective shield, tons of health, whereas archers have: a grappling hook, a bow (that has limited ammo, unlike any other weapons), the ability to derp-climb trees.

--- Double Post Merged, Jun 25, 2015, Original Post Date: Jun 25, 2015 ---

Why should one of the classes in a game with only 3 classes have to be a support only character that can't do anything themselves? You can't have specialist classes when there are very limited classes to choose from.

 

I assure you we know what we are talking about, some of us here have been playing this game for years, and have close to or more than 1000 hours in it. When we say that things are the way they are for a reason were telling you the truth, if an archer could just hit a knight with his shield up from any distance what is the point of even having a shield? In the end it comes down to balance and the game is as balanced as it can be right now.

 

Yes, my suggestion is to employ a complex WoT-like armor penetration physics model, and you would have to properly use the thickness of your shield. Obviously including different types of ammo, that is piercing, regular, HE arrows. I think such an unpredictable system would help balance out the gameplay and also make the game lighter and more fun to play.

 

i laughed with this

The three classes are dedicated to one thing each:

BUILDER: BUILDS (CLAIMS AND PROTECTS TERRAIN) (DEFENSIVE)
KNIGHT: FIGHTS (ATTACKS AND DEFEND TERRAIN) (OFFENSIVE)
ARCHER: SUPPORTS (IN COMBAT OR DEFENSE; HAS MULTIPLE WEAPONS:)

Archer can do a lot of things; it's like a special class which requires a lot of skill and it can burn , stun and move real quick, also he can use bombarrows to open a flag or demolish a tower. It's just not as basic as the knight, but it's a very complete class that doesn't neet anything more than a little bit skill to move fast and control ranges. Hope I helped

 

archer is a support class

 

It's true, have been on TDM once with some Archer mains and been made a fool of.
They backpedal and stomp and it reminds me of a border collie chasing a chicken.

So good archers are OP as of now, what happens if we add a mechanic that allows archers to shoot through knights like paper.
Good archers become gods, and everyone hates them for turning them into pasta from camping in towers.

 

Basically knight is way easier to be good at imo. It's all about timing and decision making.

Archer is all about accuracy, speed, and extreme decision making. If you make the wrong decision then you are more likely to end up dead. I'm not very accurate and I'm used to being tanky. I am a semi good archer, nothing special. I feel that it's a much more difficult class that yields less results... That's why I stick with knight and builder

 

One on one or 2v2 maybe, but in a CTF match or when TDM becomes a cluster-cuss you really don't notice archers because of all the spam that kills them easy. Take a knight like mewaffles and archers can't touch him. if a knight wants to you just hold shield and can block all the damage of an archer, back up when you see them charging a triple. So the only thing you can do is go for the stomp shot combo that is easily blocked then you're too close and jab jab dead.

 

Exactly. As long as knights don't do stupid things they are completely invicible to archers and that poses a big problem.

I think I understand where your argument is coming from. I'm sure you've seen times in the developement of the game where classes were unbalanced. And now that they're somewhat balanced you don't want to see a change that throws that balance off again. At least the idea could be attempted to see if it works or not perhaps.

The thing is, shield penetration doesn't have to make archers "overpowered".

The way I envision the system working is:
1) Archer charges bow to the max
2) Archer fires arrow at enemy shield
3) Arrow hits shield causing the knight to unblock
4) Knight cannot unblock for about a second to two seconds
5) Second archer or same archer fires a second arrow, hitting theknight for 3 damage, but not killing him.
6) Repeat process until knight is dead unless he has been killed already by a third arrow.

In that way, it doesn't make it overpowered, it just gives archers a way to kill knights by themselves. It also gives archers a way to do teamwork. One archer can break the shield while another has their bow ready to shoot the knight after shield penetration. So in a way, I didn't really mean penetration, I meant disabling.

I'll be adding this to my original post.

 

Well i thought you were talking about arrows just blatantly going right through shields like they were not even there, in the process dealing 1 damage to the knight, it seems you were actually talking about it making him lower his shield. The very first build that came out for the silent beta had this, and it was quite broken, no one liked it at all, even the archers agreed it was overpowered.

At first the silent beta had a set of stages in terms of balance, for a short time archers shots would lower knights shields, this was considered overpowered and hence scrapped. archers at once point even had a knife that was practically useless due to lag, the knife would be able to back stab as well dealing 3 hearts but this rarely happened, hence again this was scrapped. Archers i believe at this point received a rapid triple shot that would shoot one at a time, shooting 3 consecutive shots. This was the first thing archers really had that could kill knights and was on the cusp between balanced and overpowered so it stayed for a long time. after this archers received a grappling hook which is arguably their best advantage overall, with this the archer class can stay away from knights as much as they want as long as the terrain allows. then way way way down the line archers got nerfed in the form of their triple shot being taken away, i cant really go on details too much on why this happened but i feel it was needed. Now archers are more of a ranged cqc class, with their new shotgun overcharge.

Overall i feel archers are relatively well balanced with knights, both classes can just stay away from each other as long as the terrain allows it with the exception of the archer having limited ammo, i see no downside in the archer class. knights also had their fair share of a roller coaster ride when it came to changing the class but it ended up good in the end. I dont mean to come off as not understanding your point, but i really feel if the archer class could do what your suggeting it would be vastly overpowered to the knight class. Im absolutely sure that most people here would agree as well.

 

I understand I still wanna push for some archer change because I wanna use the archer as my main but he's not useful enough

 

The problem with archers is that it's a spamming class and when you have a shit ton of long range high damage output dealing glass cannons then it becomes a lot more difficult for the knight to do anything.