Archery: Why is it useless?

[jorb]

Why is archery useless in PvP? What reasonable changes could be made to make it more relevant?

[rhzk]

Instant notarget shooting!

[Fostik]

Why?
1. Was too debuffed in this world
2. Useless for PvE, so people will not even spend their LP for marksmanship hoping to try archery combat one day.
3. Unable to use in fight, because everyone is running, everything is moving.
4. Actually there are no game mechanic to make bow usable. I mean, if you are an archer - what are your profit? Will you collect highest q bones in hunting? What will you do in dungeon? Everyting is against bows.

How to fix?
Simply make archery a defensive weapon: give a possibility to visit tower roofs or build archery posts, so on sieges noobs will have a possibility shoot enemies.
So attackers will require archers in siege to defend their melee fighters.
Attacked will have a chance to defend their base with bow.
I think archery outpost is very interesting idea in H&H
OR
Rebalance the debuffs. Everyone know that bows at w9 start was freaking OP, and at w10 became totally useless - try to balance something in the middle of it.
And yeah, arrows must fly through party members

[Dixel]

This was gathered from the Discord Hedgehugs channel after some discussion:
(the why is pointed out very neatly on the post above this one, so no need to repeat it)

to fix it:
Make a 5th color for archery.
Increase bow damg so it's balanced with other weapons.
Add/re-add legacy silk string bow.
Have moves to increase/decrease archery color.
Archery moves that make openings on melee colors and melee moves that make openings on archery color, preferably favouring coordination between melee and archery. So some melee moves could do big openings for archery for a companion to shot at him, and likewise, some archery moves that do big openings for melee.
Overall, TEST BALANCE BETWEEN ALL WEAPONS before releasing anything.
(maybe making a BattleRoyale(or team based battles) type of mini game on Valhalla (also stats should be normalized for everyone on valhalla, so it is a fair fight for everyone), where you can test and tweak the balance before the final release, and get input from users on what is OP and what is nerfed....)

[azrid]

It can't be useful as long as archery has a completely different combat system from ua and melee.
Its hard to balance 2 systems that don't clash well together.
One option is to bring archery into the combat system being used on the battlefield.
For example if you use take aim as an archer it would create openings to do damage.
I think using the same combat system for different weaponry makes it easier to balance.
Range of weapons should play a bigger role in combat too. A b12, cutblade and spear are much longer than a regular hand axe or one handed sword. This also leaves room to add more weapons that will have meaningful effects beyond penetration and damage number.

[shubla]

It can't be useful as long as archery has a completely different combat system from ua and melee.
Its hard to balance 2 systems that don't clash well together.

I agree.
Archery has no future in pvp if it is not merged into the ua/melee combat system.
Currently it is useless because it does not deal that much damage, and it makes you very weak if you stop to aim somebody, when you probably are not going to even hit him.

Solution:
Every hearthling is like lars andersen! - Allow us to shoot while moving and stuff, Multi target shooting!
Things that were mentioned above would work. Make opening specific for archery. Archery could also increase openings of other types, but not deal damage to them. Also there should be some way to limit a hearthling to specify in one type of combat (melee/uac or archery) not both. (Maybe add large cooldown if you change from bow to some other weapon in middle of a fight or something)

Also crossbows should be added! They would make much more damage than the bow that we have now, but it would be easier to use. Of course, you would have to be stationary for some time when loading it.

[NOOBY93]

Archery moves that make openings on melee colors

This is a bad idea and I don't think anyone said it in the hedgehugs discord channel.

[shubla]

Archery moves that make openings on melee colors

This is a bad idea and I don't think anyone said it in the hedgehugs discord channel.

Why is it a bad idea?

[DDDsDD999]

There's no counterplay to an archer. They shoot you and do damage. You can raise or lower the damage, and it'll just flip-flop between useful stupidly overpowered and useless.

[NOOBY93]

Archery moves that make openings on melee colors

This is a bad idea and I don't think anyone said it in the hedgehugs discord channel.

Why is it a bad idea?

So the idea behind adding a new color specifically for arrows is that now the defender can pay attention and take care of what arrows are doing to him, while the attackers can coordinate to maximize damage output - the UA bro could decide between trying to go for the UA assault or helping raise the arrow opening for the bowman to land a big shot. This would raise the coordination/skill cap from "nothing" to "something" when it comes to bows.

Having arrows be able to increase melee openings would simply be the same situation of bows being OP and uncounterable - the strategy would always be the same, the melee players would do their standard assault, and occasionally the defender would get ass blasted by an arrow he couldn't do anything about and get instagibbed by a cleave during his artful cooldown or whatever. I guess allowing bows to increase melee openings would further homogenize strategy.