Chivalry Noob Guide for Archers

Some years ago I was dreaming about an online FPS that involved medieval combat, including melee weapons as well as ranged ones, soldiers trying to get into a castle and others trying to defend it by all means necessary. Kind of like in Mount & Blade but with real players working together.

Now I found something very similar to this idea in ‘Chivalry – Medieval Warfare’. The game features a small amount of maps and game modes, as well as four different basic classes with a variety of weapons that can be unlocked by killing enemies. The tutorial is great and introduces all the classes, but still I decided to mainly focus on the only ranged class available and while there are both bows and crossbows in this game and I’m very well aware of the major difference between these two, all ranged combatants are always referred to as ‘archers’. I will now attempt to give you a brief summary of my experiences as a crossbowman in ‘Chivalry’.

 

Yep, I’m a crossbowman, alright. They are the weakest unit in the entire game in regards to their defence. They can be one-hit-killed even without head-shots, so it is essential to stay unnoticed, move around a lot and be aware of one’s surroundings. Bow users are just as vulnerable to attacks, but their great advantage is that they can move around while notching a new arrow (aka ‘reloading’), whereas the crossbowmen must stand absolutely still for the one or two seconds it takes to reload their crossbow. They also lose sight of their surroundings during this time, since they have to look down, so during the reloading process they are an easy target for any class. Best way to act for a crossbowman is to aim, crouch, fire at a target, then run for cover and reload. If an enemy is coming for you and is already closer than 15 metres, reloading becomes pointless and one should try to block all hits with the sidearm (short sword or dagger) and retreat, hoping for some team member to stop by and help out. Just turning and running away works only if an enemy knight or archer pursues you, since both the vanguard and the man-at-arms class have a jump attack that lets them kill an escaping target easily.

The great advantage of crossbowmen over bow users is their increased damage and range. Their bolts fly further before dropping/arching and they can therefore stay further behind the battle line, avoiding melee combat and bow men alike.

There is one more small detail making a crossbowman’s life unpleasant and I’m not yet sure whether it’s a bug or an intended feature. If a crossbowman gets hit by a ranged weapon (arrow, bolt or throwing weapons), there’s a certain chance of losing the already notched bolt in their own weapon, causing the character to automatically reload (which, as stated before, makes them completely vulnerable). It doesn’t happen all the time, but veteran fighters will use this to their advantage when approaching a ranged combatant, throwing their knives or axes at them, thereby stunning them into utter uselessness just to finish them off in close combat.

Speaking of melee, the ranged fighters are (obviously) quite useless in close combat. Their short swords or daggers have a much smaller range than any other weapon in the game, so exact timing and a whole lot of luck are required to take down any enemy. Best way of fighting in close combat is to support other ‘proper’ melee fighters by flanking enemies and casually stabbing at them.

You have probably noticed by now that the way of the archer is not the most honourable one and indeed basically any other class user hates archers. Few rounds go by without anyone complaining about ranged fighters and their noob way of fighting. Interestingly enough, some users claim all archers are over-powered and should be downgraded during the next patch of the game while others are sure that archers are way too weak for the game and should be removed because they don’t pose a threat but rather a nuisance. As an archer, one is constantly the target of insults, team kills and general hatred, while trying to cope with the classes actual problems (especially on laggy servers aiming is downright impossible while blindly slashing at enemies still works).

 

A good feature to help out troubled archers is the enabled kick vote option. One can initiate a vote to exclude any given player from the current game and all players will see a small pop-up indicating the player’s team kills in percentage as well as their idle time. This helps a lot to decide whether the user in question was misbehaving and is a burden to its team or whether the initiator of the kick vote was just frustrated or even confused him with someone else.

 

The bad thing about this type of kick vote is that people just glance at the percentage of team damage said player has committed so far and then decide about their fate. Let me use an example that happened to me not too long ago: I entered an ongoing game, ran forward close to the battle line and shot a few bolts at some enemy archers without hitting anything. Then I noticed multiple enemy melees pushing through our lines to the right, so I aimed at them, waiting for my own comrades to either step away or perish so that I had free line of sight. When this was the case, one of our own knights stepped in front of me, facing towards me and not the enemy, crouching down so as to be exactly in my way when aiming. This happened quite fast, so my one and only shot at the advancing troops hit him instead. Knights don’t die from a single shot to the chest and though I was sorry for the team damage, I decided not to apologise for it, since it was clearly his fault for trying to block me. However, once the enemies were down, he initiated a kick vote against me and then immediately started slashing at me with his sword. Since my team damage was stated at 100% at this point, I was kicked so quickly I couldn’t even explain my situation.

 

This was not an isolated incident. Melee troops often attack archers from their own team, claiming poor excuses like ‘They were standing in my way!’ or ‘He shot at me once!’. However, in a game where team damage is not only always enabled but an essential part of fighting and approaching opponents more tactical, the ill logic of their behaviour becomes obvious.

 

A unique gadget crossbowmen possess to benefit the team is their shield. It’s too heavy to carry around much, but one can place it anywhere and then hide behind it to reload and recover from wounds. Especially in the game mode ‘Protect the King’, this item becomes invaluable, shielding the king from enemy archers. Sadly, the crossbowman’s shield is also one of the most buggy items in the game, often crashing into nothingness when touched, so one mustn’t come too close when hiding behind it.

 

All in all, I’m sure there are lots of features that could be improved about the archer class in ‘Chivalry’, though the greatest downside of the game is still the other users’ inability to work together and appreciate class diversity.

Break

I'm rather fed up with certain things regarding YouTube, LPing and other matters, so I will take some time off.

Thumbnails

A while ago I wrote a lengthy article here about my struggles to become a YouTube partner. When I was done with that several-pages-long piece of work, I realised that it was wholely about me whining and held no entertaining content whatsoever, so I deleted it again. Plus I actually did gain partnership shortly after. However, becoming a partner granted me only few of the promised advantages, the most important of them being: individual thumbails.
Seriously, people: this was the main reason for me to become a partner and it was absolutely worth it! Creating interesting, personalised thumbnails for each video has become one of my new favourite things related to my LPing career. It's so satisfying to have a little piece of art smile back at you, advertising for your videos instead of the random convoluted piles of mess YouTube offers non-partners as thumbnails. It looks a lot more professional (though the content of the videos certainly didn't improve) and attracts viewers much more efficiently than any exciting title ever could.
However, as Spiderman's uncle said: with great power comes great responsibility. Theoretically I could create any thumbnail I wanted. Of course, what comes to mind first are half-naked women pushing their various humps into the viewers face. Research has shown that YouTube viewers do indeed instinctively click on these videos more often than on others. And in fact I have done just that... twice now. Once for a Thief 2 episode named 'Hookers' because of a supposed hooker I knocked unconscious and then once more for my Gothic Erotica video, where I featured the in-game picture of a half-naked lady. So you see that - though I had the opportunity - I used this cheap trick only on videos where the thumbnail accurately descripted the content of the video... and not just to generate views and distract from my lack of humour/entertainment/general purpose in life. Don't want to point fingers here, but since you're all familiar with YouTube there's a good chance you know who I'm talking about. Gosh, how I dislike that guy. Goes to show that the path to the dark side is way easier to travel.
Another tricky thing about thumbnails is that you can't just march off into the depths of the Internet, grab any picture you like, drag it back home and then alter it for your purposes in order to create some fancy thumbnail. Generally speaking, EVERY picture is protected by copyright. Using it without the explicit permission of the owner is actually a crime. There are some ways around this problem, however. Of course you could just ask an artsy friend to draw all the thumbnails for you or give you permission to use their work and attribute them in the video for it. If you have an artsy friend, of course. And if they are willing to work for your benefit just like that. OR you could check out the huge database of royalty-free images available at various websites (wikimedia is my personal favourite so far). You still have to check every image you find there for its specific copyright status, but most of them are free to download, alter, distribute etc without having to credit anyone or being worried that the NSA sells your criminal arse to the local authorities. Or, in turn, uploads your private pictures on their website without your consent...

Risen 2 Rises!

Good news everybody!

Nevermind that last blog entry! Turns out the simplest solution was the most effective one: just deleting and re-installing the game fixed the corrupted files. Huzzah!

Risen 2 Is Going Down

Just a heads-up: there is a definite possibility that I have to abandon my Risen 2 LP. 

This is quite a bummer, given that I think I was close to the end and I would have liked to see this project finished properly, but I can't get the game to work anymore. All save files appear to be corrupted, leaving the game frozen during loading screens and forcing me to crash down to desktop or even shut down my PC manually at times.
I will try out a few more approaches and keep you posted on my progress.

Lent

Though I'm not a Christian, I have always been fascinated with the time of Lent. I thought it was an impressive way of demonstrating one's willpower and discipline to avoid eating something as delicious and elemental as meat.

Naturally, I tried it myself at some point. I have to add, though, that I initially started to fasten in order to impress a girl I liked and that happened to be a vegetarian. I managed to make it through all 40 days without a single bite of meat... and guess what? That girl became my girlfriend eventually. But that's a different story.

Two years later, I tried the same stunt again, but admittedly failed. I was a student at that time and I remember it to be a particularly stressful day. I was running about the city, trying to fetch important signatures on even more important papers and was growing more and more desperate by the minute. When I noticed a certain gnawing feeling in my stomach, I decided to quickly head for a popular fast-food restaurant and grab a burger, as I had done so often before when having little time. I didn't even think about it at that time and noticed only hours later that I had eaten meat and thereby broken my pledge.

So the year after, I actually wanted to figure out how long I could survive without meat. You have to know that coloured bears are carnivorous and I just love the taste of meat, so this was quite a challenge for me. Starting at New Year's Eve, I ate only fruits and vegetables, but mostly weird instant crap that was probably mainly plastic. I'm proud to say that I lasted 7 long months as a vegetarian before finally whispering 'Bring me meat!' to the people taking care of me during these dark times.

Back to the topic, this settled the question of how long I could stay without meat, so there wasn't really any point in trying again every Lent from now on. So instead, I chose to stay away from something else that I liked to do way too much but that was probably not all that healthy for me: playing video games. This was particularly tricky, because I had already started my YouTube career, so I settled for this compromise: I could play a video game (namely 'Thief Gold'), but only if I did a recording of it and uploaded it. Other than that: no video games.
I managed to get through this time, too, though it was quite boring, to be honest. I remember that I read a lot more than usual and watched any movie I own thrice.

How could I overcome this success during the next Lent, you ask? This time, I challenged myself to not lie anymore. Of course, this is impossible, with all the little lies we express everyday without even noticing. So the task was this: no intentional lies. If I knew the truth, I had to either speak it or be silent.
This was a really tough one and I'd advise any of you to try it just for a day. I made it almost through the entire duration of Lent, but then... well... let's just say losing this challenge against myself was the lesser evil.

And that leads us to this year's Lent, which is already over. This time, I settled for something unspectacular, but that was increasingly bothering me. I was not allowed to drink any soft drinks, like cola and lemonades. I managed this one with ease, so I have to come up with something more challenging for next year. Any ideas are welcome, so let's hear it!

Amsterdam, Mate!

This year, I spent my birthday in Amsterdam. I didn't expect too much of the trip and prepared as much as any other tourist would: by staring at the city map on Google for a while and quickly checking whether there are any weird laws one should abide by.
And I must tell you I was really surprised by the beauty of the city. I don't know much about architecture, but even to me the uniqueness of this city was remarkable. Especially the Red Light District at 'De Wallen' had so much more to offer than half-naked women behind glass doors. Tons of old churches, bridges, the canals, house boats, slim buildings, crooked houses, thousands of bicycles and all those spiral staircases... I truly enjoyed my stay. 
The one thing that pleased me the most, though, were the people. Not necessarily just the Dutch people, but also all the tourists. Coming from a spot where there are solely Caucasian folks running around speaking the same (native) language, it was oh-so refreshing for me to hear this multitude of different languages, accents and dialects. Not to mention all the different skin colours, ethnicities, traditional clothings and general behaviour of people who grew up in a completely different culture than me. Such a grand city! I recommend it to anyone who likes to travel and has an open mind when it comes to disputable topics like soft drugs and prostitution.