@Park:

You should have an archery tournament where it is not 5v5 but more of an accuracy competition.

You could use voluneteers as human targets. You could have 8 people stand out in a field and the archers have X/shots per round etc. You could also do it where you have the targets “moving” and also a time based contest… like 8 targets to shoot at - as soon as all of them are dead your time is over, lowest time wins.

Well, that wouldn’t really work. If the targets move in a predictable fashion, any archer would get them all one shot each. It’s isn’t like human aim where every little twitch in the arm can change where the arrow lands and if your eye is slightly wrongly placed, who knows where it will go. The arrows always go the direction you aim, your “arm” doesn’t twitch and your “eye” is always in perfect position. A few simple calculations about how far up you need to aim and a little bit of timing is all you need to hit those targets. Especially now that you have all the time in the world to aim.
What makes archery hard in Chivalry is that what you are aiming at are players with random movement hellbent on brutally murder you. You don’t have a lot of time and if you miss, it can be game over for you.
So the kind of archer competition you are suggesting is not good at all. It’s way to simple, easy and no high skill is involved.

HoA. I think you’ve forgot to write down a tiny important detail. That is, where the balls will this tournament be? Europe? US? Australia? Atlantis?

These are some good ideas. I personally haven’t had problems with the draw animation. I usually don’t go for risky close range shots because I’m quite the beast with the stabbing dagger. ;)

But I do see why it can be a bother for some people. But also, the Archers main weakness is close range unless you choose to use the other specific close-medium ranged weapons like the Javelins or the Short Bow. The whole Archer class changes depending on what weapon you choose and each weapon comes with a sizable negative. Bows have decent damage and versatility but needs to be drawn which slows you down, Crossbows have decent damage and long range but needs to be reloaded awkwardly, Javelins have really high damage and a decent melee option but have limited ammo and slow rate of fire. And lastly, Slingshots are very much a harass weapon that sacrifices damage for speed, high rate of fire and unlimited ammo if you choose to use pellet ammo.

In short, the Archer class changes almost completely depending on what weapon you choose. I wouldn’t mind if the Bow animation was tweaked as long these changes doesn’t remove the negatives these weapons should have.

First off: Great cast! You guys did great and focused on the battles, making it very enjoyable to watch. Also, hi HeighofAbsurdity!

So, what can I say about the match?
Holy. Fuck.
This is the best match I’ve ever seen in Chivalry. Both teams did great! Like, both teams clashed together, lots of intense battles and smart play from both of them. But even with that said, Vq did the best play on attacking. They almost completely focus on the objective, not even bothering winning the encounters every now and again. And the last Objective, they did the smart thing of going for the hardest one first, making the other two easier to complete. Not saying that Int did bad, they did excellent, but Vq outsmarted them.
The Archers, OH THE ARCHERS! Those two, Russian and Moose. Holy hell, they are the reason why I fear archers. Even in close combat they shouldn’t be underestimated. It was really intense to see them fight. Once one of them was down, the other one pretty much had free reign to shoot. It is kinda both teams fault that no one really went with a shield. A lot of lives could have been saved.
The melee fights where intense. Speeding/slowing slashes, feints, look-down overheads, every trick in the book was used. Really enjoyable to watch.

Also. Knil. Holy fucking hell, those triples.

Overall, GREAT MATCH, GREAT CAST!

Oh, and by the way Nick. Next time: Go shift+tab, press profile, enable Offline. That way, there will be no steam popups in the recording. Just a tip mate. :)

Good match! It was very enjoyable to watch! Good cast too!

There’s not much I can say about the match. Both teams did very good, but Vq was just more experienced and stuck together more. You could see that they really knew what they where doing. KoC did good too, but they here out matched by Vq in several places. Tho I really like that knife play.
The first objective is the easiest one on the map and because KoC took too much time on that, they could not get passed the second one. Vq had the win in the bag because even if KoC would have taken down the king almost immediately after that, Vq would still have won.
The map, Hillside, is one of my favorite maps in the game. Very open, lots of room for flanking and running around. If the defending team doesn’t have both sides and the hill in view, they can be quickly overrun. Archer are however, not as effective on the second objective. There is a lot of room for the melee classes to run around and due to the limited amount of places to hide, counter archering can be easy.
The Fire Pot play by Vq was excellent. It did a lot of free damage on the King and flushed him out nicely.

And that’s about it. Good cast and great match!

Lets face it. The Buckler is inferior to every shield in the game. It sacrifices a lot of defense for a weak positive, which is that it doesn’t cut down on your speed. The Heater Shield is much more useful with barely any negatives, making it more than enough a better choice in almost every situation.

So, how should the Buckler be changed? Well, recently there was a topic about this in this General forum. This topic was about how shields are wrongly presented in almost every melee focus game on the market, including Chivlary. http://www.chivalrythegame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9763
The basics of that topic are that shields are not only used for blocking. They are used to fight with, just as much as your weapon. This doesn’t apply with every shield off course, shields come in all kinds of variations. A Kite Shield is far to wrongly shaped to be used in that fashion and Tower Shield is basically a block of steel, good luck swinging that around. The Heater Shield was historically made from the Kite Shield to be smaller and later developed to be used to block lances and other pole arms. This is the nature of strap shields, shields that are bound to your arm and are there to protect you from projectiles and weapons.
However, this is not the case with the Buckler. The Buckler is a round shield held on by your fist that is positioned behind the boss(the knob on the shield) and is almost pathetically small. The biggest ones being no larger than 45 cm(18 in) and the smallest ones being 15 cm(6 in), this shield is no where near capable to block projectiles is effectively as strap shields. So how come that is’s so widely know in history? A shield like this wouldn’t useful at all. Well, that is because the Buckler isn’t a shield. The Buckler is a companion-weapon.
The Buckler was often used together with the sword to form a deadly combo feared in the 15-17th centuries. The Buckler was not only used to block other weapons, but also to punch, smack and do all other nasty stuff to fight the enemy. Much like how the Highlands from Scotland and Rodeleros from Spain used them, these shields where weapons and only fools underestimated them.

So, my change to the Buckler is this: Make the Buckler a shield that can be used as a second weapon. It’s already inferior to the other shields, so remake it to a second-hand weapon. It still blocks like a shield, but it will be smaller. It can do a variations of attacks together with the main-hand weapon, not only the shield bash. Much like how the Viking Shield is used in the video in the topic above, but be smaller and quicker.

Now, I ask you people. What do you think of this? Do you think this would be a acceptable change?

That was pretty enjoyable! No matter if you followed my critics or not, this time you did better camera work. You went ahead and watched the archers and what they where shooting at several times and that was a very good idea. Gives a nice view of the battle. You did a great cast!

Maybe I should comment on the match.

I don’t think that either team had any great ideas on how to push the first objective. The first problem is that getting through that massive choke point and the second one is to defend the pyre. If you lost most of your teammates during the push, it’s going to be very hard to protect it from the defending team. Their spawn is closer.
I think that both of the teams could have used a Archer when pushing instead of all melee class. Taking out key targets, like the enemy Archer, is almost crucial in TO. Especially on such a long choke point.
The lack of shields didn’t help either. Knights should use their Kite or Tower Shields while the Vanguards equip good ranged options. Like that play with the Smoke Pot. Very clever, rendering the defending Archer near useless.
Stuarts idea by sending one MAA through the Castle flank(left side flank) to the Pyre might have worked, but the defending team will have a easy time predicting it when they notice one of the attackers are missing a key member.

Overall, it was a very tense match. That time where they almost lit the pyre really kept me on my toes.

Fantastic! I’ll watch it later and give my thoughts on it.

I don’t have these problems. The server browser works even better for me and the only lag I feel are because of the server I’m playing on.

I don’t see any real problem with it. This game is brutal, fast paced, have great level design and plenty of game modes to play. It’s combat system isn’t as complex as War of the Roses, but it offers a very tight and versatile one. This game does indeed not have mounted combat, but that’s a decision made by the developers because it wouldn’t really fit this game. The games ascetics isn’t as pretty and grand as War of the Roses, but it’s more gritty for a reason. I’ve noticed that the arrows feel very different too, but it’s not bad by any stretch. The armor customization is indeed lacking. A lot. The only thing we have now are Veteran Helmets.

So, yeah. It’s a pretty fair review as far I can see.