Our Warglblasters Are Different

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:38 am

Tussock. You are an ass. You made the following mistakes.

1) You replied to WoTCmaniac. Who is an ass and didn't know what he was even talking about in his post. I mean hell, complaining about false binary choices then claiming the only way character generation can be a fun minigame is if you can easily lose it to actual trap options? You even bothered answering that sort of shit?

2) You mistake character optimization... for the actual culture referred to as CharOp which has more to do with, again the culture associated with the old WoTC CharOp boards, and less to do with actual optimization of characters. Basically you mistake a bunch of assholes on the internet called CharOp for the action of making optimal choices in an RPG.

3) You then complain about taking 4 hours to make a character... and blame it on optimization... instead of, you know, having a system that takes four fucking hours to make a character.

Now again, this came up recently and it is very simple. Players SHOULD be able to make optimal choices. We want to avoid punishing them with misleading trap options, and in some systems like character generation we also don't REALLY want to reward them too much for the right choices. But there are limits, optimization will to some extent exist and we SHOULD always assume from a design stand point that players make optimal choices and should attempt to create a system that assists them to do so and does not punish them for doing so by dictating unpalatable race+class stereo types.

Anything less is fucking insanity.

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 4:50 pm

@tussock:
The point I was getting at with that was that I think that K (and perhaps others) is being overly reactionary towards charop. I fully understand where he's coming from (and I largely concur with what you're saying), but I think that he's going too far with the "fuck you, you aren't allowed to play that way". Going to opposite extremes is not the solution (and for several reasons).
Don't get me wrong -- I've got quite the history of railing against various aspects of charop culture. However, as has been pointed out earlier on this thread, K really is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
"Hate the player, not the game" .... or some shit like that.

@PhoneLobster
First, learn how to spell.
Second, get a clue -- you have completely failed at reading comprehension. Saying that "Genius Elf is the awesome choice for wizard and everything else is a trap or otherwise sucks a barrel of cocks" is not only binary, but also a heaping pile of bullshit. Retarded Orc is not the only non-Genius Elf choice, nor is every other option the functional equivalent thereof.
Now, if you have an ounce of intellectual integrity, you'll actually explain your problem with that assessment; as opposed to just calling me an idiot based on a strawman .... or are you devoid of even that very basic, minimal level of critical thought?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 5:08 pm

Since all of you guys are arguing about crazy bullshit:

The Races!

Races should probably either be totally selectable from lots of options, or they should be very very few in number, and gain several different abilities that all synergize with different classes/patterns.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 5:11 pm

Or you could just continue down the path of strong race/class sorting. That sort of thing gives grognard woodies. Or more accurately, since we're talking about the penises of grognards, 'bumples'.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 5:27 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Or you could just continue down the path of strong race/class sorting. That sort of thing gives grognard woodies. Or more accurately, since we're talking about the penises of grognards, 'bumples'.

Lago, as a general rule, the fact that you think something is a good idea for D&D is evidence that it's a terrible idea.

Everything you like or have ever liked is terrible.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 5:34 pm

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 7:05 pm

On that note, do either of you like the OSH hack-in-progress I put together in response to K's stated basic goal? I've added a class that isn't specifically associated with you glowing a color after shouting "Moons give me strength" and I still don't think there's any race choices that give asymmetric advantage (Possibly could be argued that Jotun wolf-shifting can be abused by the most recent class, but it's a long shot).

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 7:57 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote: Why can't we all just get along?

You'd think so. I mean, when K says that Orc Sorcerers should be playable without people shouting

...I agree unreservedly. An Orc Sorcerer should be a fine thing to be. People should not be told that they have to be a Half Elf to be a Cold Sorcerer or a Halfling to be a Storm Sorcerer. Because that's fucking stupid.

The thing is that he goes from that extremely reasonable position into straight crazy town. He is seriously out 4rrying actual 4th edition. instead of saying that the Orc should be able to get access to whatever the fuck the Half Elf can get that makes them good as Cold Sorcerers, or trying to balance some (obviously small) number of races so that they excel at the starting classes in different ways - two goals which might not be yours but are obviously achievable - he says that he is going to dumb down everything until all choices are literally equal. If I was making fun of the desire to increase balance by cutting out the interactivity of the world and the meaningfulness of choices, I'd probably make some herp derp comment about fires not being able to light up rooms. Because 4e actually went there, and I really do make fun of them for it because it is offensively stupid. But you know what? K went there too. Right in this thread he straight up said that lighting things on fire shouldn't light up the fucking room for game balance reasons.

Right there, K and 4e have voluntarily chosen to be completely indistinguishable from parody. But then K went beyond that. He straight up said that people shooting arrows at other people from relative safety like they actually do in the actual fucking real world is unfair and has to be removed from the game. That actually is distinguishable from parody. In that never in my wildest dreams would I expect to get even a chuckle from presenting that position as a joke - because it's too fucking stupid.

If I presented "Arrows can't shoot beyond melee range to balance them with swords" as a joke, I would expect people to stare at me blankly while the awkward silence was filled with crickets chirping. Because I regard that position as too stupid to be funny. And until K actually presented it in seeming seriousness, it was not something I thought anyone actually believed or even could believe.

There are several ways to get the Orc Sorcerer playable, but "remove all differences and meaning from all things" is not one of them. Fundamentally, there do have to be bad choices so that there can be good choices. The goal is to make the bad choices obvious so that people don't get trapped. I would not expect investing in ranged attacks and the ability to summon windstorms or darkness that hamper all ranged attacks to be a good life choice, and it doesn't bother me if it isn't. What offends me is when I am told that to be a good psychic warrior I have to be some sort of shiny rock man and to be a good ranger I have to be some sort of barbarous catgirl. Because I want to be a Jedi or a Cuisinart and I don't want to be a shiny rockman or furry. What offends me is when I take some obvious combination like fighting with two axes and then the game fucks me because the Axe Techniques are Strength based and the Two Weapon Techniques are Dexterity based and suddenly my character can't actually complete his fucking skill trees.

But what also offends me is when people get so blindered by the genuine need to remove trap options that that they end up sanding down all the good options or removing the interactivity from the game. And that is, unfortunately, the path K chose to walk down on this thread. And that is why we can't get along.

-Username17

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 2:35 am

PhoneLobster wrote:1) You mistake character optimization... for the actual culture referred to as CharOp which has more to do with, again the culture associated with the old WoTC CharOp boards, and less to do with actual optimization of characters. Basically you mistake a bunch of assholes on the internet called CharOp for the action of making optimal choices in an RPG.

I don't mistake them, I deliberately conflate them. I've watched people optimise RPG characters for ... all too many years. It always comes out looking like the CharOp boards. That culture is the natural emergent expression of optimisation.

2) You then complain about taking 4 hours to make a character... and blame it on optimization... instead of, you know, having a system that takes four fucking hours to make a character.

Wizard, 1st level: IDCWcS. Toughness, spellcraft, arcana, alchemy, know (bla bla), Sleepx2, randomised Cantrips. Rations, water, book, pouch, clothes, staff, crossbow, sleep scrolls, and loan the rest to whoever wants better AC. Couple minutes, at most.

But there are limits, optimization will to some extent exist and we SHOULD always assume from a design stand point that players make optimal choices and should attempt to create a system that assists them to do so and does not punish them for doing so by dictating unpalatable race+class stereo types.

You can't assume optimisation, they did that in 4e and most people failed at it and had a terrible game experience as a result. No small part of the initial skill challenge problems was that the designers assumed different priorities there, they figured everyone would take a skill focus feat or two, but no one ever did.

And yes, that's what I said. The PCs should be special. NPC Orcs can be crappy sorcerers, but not PC Orcs. That, fundamentally, is what everyone wants, and it doesn't hurt the immersion for PCs to not fit in well, on account of their crazy lifestyle.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:16 am

tussock wrote:You can't assume optimisation, they did that in 4e and most people failed at it and had a terrible game experience as a result.

No they didn't.

Padded Sumo is NOT the same as designing for optimized play. Even if they set a high monster difficulty, which they didn't, is NOT the same as designing for optimized play. And making optimization difficult for idiots... even THAT is not designing for optimized player choices.

Until you stop conflating the very concept of making of your game design choice around optimized play with the specific choices a single rather bad game made you are essentially talking out your dick hole.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 4:33 am

FrankTrollman wrote:An Orc Sorcerer should be a fine thing to be. People should not be told that they have to be a Half Elf to be a Cold Sorcerer or a Halfling to be a Storm Sorcerer. Because that's fucking stupid.

In Pathfinder you can play a Half-Orc, choose Charisma as your "human stat", put an 18 in it, and rock the shit out of a Sorcerer.
Some good things came out of the game and that's one of them.

The problem is... that whole half-breed thing.

Or maybe just make a feat that allows trueblooded Orcs to use their Strength score instead of Charisma for Sorc spells and you're good to go.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 5:45 am

PhoneLobster wrote:
tussock wrote:You can't assume optimisation, they did that in 4e and most people failed at it and had a terrible game experience as a result.
No they didn't.

Yes they did. When Tussock is saying "assumed optimization" he means that the base difficulties of skill checks and to-hit rolls are set assuming you picked up all the available bonuses along the way. If you didn't literally optimize every last point out of your skill bonuses, you were not going to succeed at a skill challenge. If you didn't optimize every last point out of your to-hit bonus, you weren't going to hit.

Now even if you met that assumption so that your success on any action was likely, action resolution still took a long fucking time. It takes a lot of successful rolls to get anything done. But that is a separate problem from the one of telling people who didn't play a Half Elf with Max Charisma and Skill Focus: Diplomacy and a skill boosting Utility Power that they are pretty much incapable of Diplomacizing.

They had to drop the skill DCs and ACs across the board in errata because people were vanishingly unlikely to succeed at individual rolls with actual characters.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 7:38 am

They had to drop the skill DCs and ACs across the board in errata because people were vanishingly unlikely to succeed at individual rolls with actual characters.

-Username17

To be absolutely, absolutely fair, Frank, the whole 'the average 4E character misses on a level-appropriate attack roll 40-50% of the time' is the kind of thing that sounds at first blush reasonable, especially when viewed through the lens of glass cannon save-or-dies.

What really made the whole to-hit situation frustrating was the system of spell charges that they used. It really, really fucking sucks to miss out on two big dailies and your best encounter attack power in a row -- but in a five-person group, this was almost guaranteed to happen to SOMEONE at least every other combat.

I think that the realization that players notice failures more than successes is, while not a unique insight, is one that's not immediately obvious. After people bitching about having a 10% chance of missing four attack rolls in a row against a boss monster I I think that the d20 success rate of level-appropriate non-tactically schtupped attack rolls for games which have you fight as often as D&D should be about, oh, 80%.

K · Post by K » Sun Mar 11, 2012 9:47 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Right there, K and 4e have voluntarily chosen to be completely indistinguishable from parody. But then K went beyond that. He straight up said that people shooting arrows at other people from relative safety like they actually do in the actual fucking real world is unfair and has to be removed from the game. That actually is distinguishable from parody. In that never in my wildest dreams would I expect to get even a chuckle from presenting that position as a joke - because it's too fucking stupid.

Have you stopped reading posts entirely?

I presented a number of ideas to reduce the power of the broken parts of ranged attacks and boost the effectiveness of melee vs. ranged battles by using an abstract positioning system and making super-long ranged attacks not very effective. If you look at the posts, I did offer several ideas where people were using ranged attacks (indirect fire, for example).

I never said remove ranged attacks. I never said that everything can be made the same or that all asymmetric power can be removed (and I even said that player action should create asymmetric power).

At worst, I said that "there should be no bad choices at chargen," and I said it many times, often in bold.

The ideas you are fighting are only in your head, and that makes your sarcastic posts a little sad.

May you should try to look over the posts like I was not a crazy person that needs to be attacked because I'm a threat to all reason, but instead is someone developing an idea and who deserves the benefit of the doubt before absolute enmity is declared.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 10:07 am

You actually did say that people shooting "out of the darkness" or "from above" shouldn't even be factor. That's not "super long range", that's like 20-30 feet. You also mentioned "indirect fire" as being an explicitly terrible option, that would in no way compare to the power of direct fire. For most people, saying that firing from a fairly short distance away becomes wildly inaccurate if the position is asymmetrical is just too bullshit to be viable.

I mean, if some warriors end up in a courtyard, with archers shooting at them from the towers above, these are all valid responses, depending on the genre of game:
* "Oh crap, I get behind cover!"
* "I pull out my own bow and return fire."
* "I run up the wall like a spider, kool-aid man my way inside, and start stabbing face."

This is not:
* "Meh, it's not like they can do any damage from up there."

K · Post by K » Sun Mar 11, 2012 10:22 am

Ice9 wrote:You actually did say that people shooting "out of the darkness" or "from above" shouldn't even be factor. That's not "super long range", that's like 20-30 feet.

You said "20-30 feet," not me.

In my idea of abstract positioning that I never got the chance to explain, that's still melee range since you can run that in a few seconds and make an attack. The zones are pretty big on open ground, and the idea is that there is a lot of chaotic stuff happening in them and people aren't in fixed positions over the whole turn. Firing into a swirling melee means you need to be pretty close to hit the things you want to hit.

My original idea is that the "people are on the other side of the river or fire high from a cliff or from the darkness deep in the woods" should be a round of shitty attacks that aren't as good as ranged or melee attacks you make in zone. That's asymmetric power right there, but it doesn't rise to the level of the Flying Archer problem, and that's the goal.

The people being shot at can leave the zone by running out of indirect fire range, return fire with their own shitty indirect fire attacks, get behind cover, or do something to enter the archer's abstract zone (water walking, teleport, being a jumping badass, whatever). You'll note that these options are a lot more forgiving than DnD's option of "probably be dead because ranged attacks are crazy good and super precise."

Start from the position that I'm not crazy and don't make assumptions. Please.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 11:34 am

K wrote: In my idea of abstract positioning that I never got the chance to explain, that's still melee range since you can run that in a few seconds and make an attack. The zones are pretty big on open ground, and the idea is that there is a lot of chaotic stuff happening in them and people aren't in fixed positions over the whole turn. Firing into a swirling melee means you need to be pretty close to hit the things you want to hit.

My original idea is that the "people are on the other side of the river or fire high from a cliff or from the darkness deep in the woods" should be a round of shitty attacks that aren't as good as ranged or melee attacks you make in zone. That's asymmetric power right there, but it doesn't rise to the level of the Flying Archer problem, and that's the goal.

The people being shot at can leave the zone by running out of indirect fire range, return fire with their own shitty indirect fire attacks, get behind cover, or do something to enter the archer's abstract zone (water walking, teleport, being a jumping badass, whatever). You'll note that these options are a lot more forgiving than DnD's option of "probably be dead because ranged attacks are crazy good and super precise."

Start from the position that I'm not crazy and don't make assumptions. Please.

This is less insane than the earlier thing where you were straight up saying that archers should not be able to attack off roofs or across rivers, but it's still fucking insane. People in a tower are at a severe disadvantage to shooting people on the outside because they are arbitrarily in a different zone? The fuck? People can move into sealed towers and start stabbing the occupants because they are in the same zone? That's contradictory and retarded.

The situation is: you have a guy with a bow who has the higher ground because he is in a fucking tower. Your answer is to have the archer do very little damage so that the swordsman can run up and brutally murder him in the face. That is stupid. It's stupid because telling an archer "Unfortunately, you have the higher ground, so your attacks suck" is stupid. It's also stupid because if one character is in a tower and another character is out of that tower, you really do need a better explanation for the character on the outside getting in than "he moved in". It's a fucking tower.

But the long and the short of it is that none of this shit even addresses the primary "problem" in which if the dumbass shitbird melee stooge can't get to the archer then it doesn't fucking matter whether the archer's damage output is "low" or "high", because his relative damage output is still "infinity".

In fact, setting archery to low damage not only fails to address the problem of melee character pant content inadequacy in any meaningful way, it also creates a new problem: lack of melee/archery synergy for mixed parties. If one character is engaging the enemy in melee combat, he is both taking damage and dealing damage. If he had a friend who is also in melee, they would be splitting enemy damage somehow and they'd be doing twice as much damage. The result would be that the party of two melee bruisers is more than twice as much as a "party" of a single melee bruiser. But now consider adding a ranged party member to the melee bruiser. By being out of melee, the archer is not taking off any heat from the first melee bruiser, all he is contributing is damage. So if the ranged attacker character is contributing only as much damage as the melee bruiser is, he is a drain on party resources compared with adding another melee bruiser instead. If, Darwin forbid, he is is contributing less damage and he isn't pulling any melee hate, he's a complete fail character.

We can see this in action in, again, 4th edition D&D. We take the Knights of the Round party: it's just four paladins and a Cleric or Warlord. They all get into melee and grind the fuck out of things. It takes a lot of "turns", but they always win because the game isn't set up to handle that much defense and that much hate sharing. They don't want to replace any of their paladins with a bow ranger or a warlock or something even though those classes do a fuck tonne more damage. Because doing that would reduce the defensive capabilities of the party by one third.

Again and still: there is no flying archer problem. There is a dumbass melee fighter problem. People asking to play characters who have no credible way to move or attack over a lava river and who are therefore completely at the mercy of even a low level archery unit with any sort of positional advantage. You can't solve that by making ranged attacks suck, because the basic setup will doom the dumbass melee fighter even if the attacks against him suck. And in any case, for game balance reasons, ranged attackers need to be offensive powerhouses because they are not contributing to soaking enemy melee attacks in standard encounters.

-Username17

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 6:51 pm

Hmm. The OSH hack I posted in this thread does have archers capable of posing a credible threat outside the combat zone they are in, but every class includes at least one special ranged attack option or method for moving from one zone to another more easily. I've tried to make sure the DMF isn't even an option.

sake · Post by **sake** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 9:13 pm

This is getting into stupid MMOG logic territory where luring a mob into a tall canyon where your archers and mages can kill it without risk is considered an bannable exploit instead just common god damn tactics, and any melee based monster should just go into automatic immortal Evade mode and instantly heal to full the second it doesn't have clear pathing and LoS with the player targeting it.

Yes, ranged attackers are going to have an advantage over melee. And... maybe that's okay. For the most part, no one really cares that flying archers/mongol archers are overpowered, because mongol archers were overpowered in real life, and generally people are fine with things that are overpowered in real life being overpowered in a game.

Only complete idiots are ever going to say "It's unfair that the dude with a gun can shoot me before I can run 30 feet in a straight line with no cover to get within range to stab him with a knife." in a game. And if running 30 feet in a straight line with no cover to get within range to stab him is that character's only option ever then the problem is with the design of the game, not that the guy with the gun is overpowered.

K · Post by K » Sun Mar 11, 2012 9:44 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
But the long and the short of it is that none of this shit even addresses the primary "problem" in which if the dumbass shitbird melee stooge can't get to the archer then it doesn't fucking matter whether the archer's damage output is "low" or "high", because his relative damage output is still "infinity".

The damage is only infinite if I was using the following assumptions:

1. The melee fighter stands there an infinite amount of time and lets the archer take shots at him, never retreating.

2. The melee fighter can't take cover or perform some other action that negates indirect ranged attacks.

3. The melee fighter can't enter the tower with any of his native abilities, making the two zones into one.

I'm not using any of those assumptions. I'm also breaking from traditional RPGs and not assuming that combat has to be modeled after artillery duels where the actors are unmoving and they take discrete attacks with long periods of inactivity and nothing ever gets in the way and no one can react to anything.

The system gets a lot more intuitive if you look at combat as a bunch of people moving around during the combat turn in a large general area and not as discrete moments of time sliced out of the continuum. This means that expecting to hit moving targets with ranged weapons when friendlies might get in the way becomes something your system should make hard because it makes little sense that you could easily do that (and anyone who has ever been in a water balloon fight with a bunch of other people can understand this model).

I think you would see the value in this idea the instant you stop looking at combats like artillery duels. All of your objections go away when looked at from a different set of assumptions.

That being said, I've wasted too much time fighting. I could literally write up the full system in less time than I've already spent here and it will answer everyone's objections better because people seem incapable of following the thread.

I won't be posting here about this idea any more since my time is better spent actually writing it up.

K · Post by K » Sun Mar 11, 2012 9:52 pm

sake wrote:This is getting into stupid MMOG logic territory where luring a mob into a tall canyon where your archers and mages can kill it without risk is considered an bannable exploit instead just common god damn tactics, and any melee based monster should just go into automatic immortal Evade mode and instantly heal to full the second it doesn't have clear pathing and LoS with the player targeting it.

Yes, ranged attackers are going to have an advantage over melee. And... maybe that's okay. For the most part, no one really cares that flying archers/mongol archers are overpowered, because mongol archers were overpowered in real life, and generally people are fine with things that are overpowered in real life being overpowered in a game. Only complete idiots are ever going to say "It's unfair that the dude with a gun can shoot me before I can run 30 feet in a straight line with no cover to get within range to stab him with a knife." in a game.

The flaw in the MMO logic is that the monster is going to sit there in the canyon and not retreat.

I mean, a situation like that that was written into a novel or made into a movie would have the monster dodge the attacks during the surprise round, taking some damage as he unsuccessfully dodged everything, and then retreating while taking some more damage.

As he left the canyon, the heroes then engage in melee to strike the killing blows.

Only in an MMO would a canyon be an insta-win, and the Flying Archer problem is based on that same kind of flawed logic that's repeated in grid-based wargaming where everyone acts like an artillery piece.

Ok, this will be the last post. For reals.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 10:43 pm

The other flaw in MMO logic is the monsters keep spawning infinitely.

In any sane world, monsters vulnerable to such tactics would get wiped out quickly once humans with superior tactics show up (cf Ridley's Sea Cow), never to be seen again.

wotmaniac · Post by **wotmaniac** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 11:15 pm

@ K:
now you're contradicting yourself.
All those assumptions that you just listed and said that you're not following .... by not following them, you have effectively fixed the so-called "problem". What gives?

Part of what you suggest seems like you're talking about some "real-time" game play .... and if you can pull that off without causing mass confusion or having the game grind to a complete halt, then more power to you.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 4:50 am

Note that he didn't even address the issue that for game balance reasons, any character who isn't splitting enemy melee attacks (ie.: archers) has to be contributing more offense than someone who is (ie.: another front liner) in order to balance a mixed party.

-Username17

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 5:52 am

K wrote:
sake wrote:This is getting into stupid MMOG logic territory where luring a mob into a tall canyon where your archers and mages can kill it without risk is considered an bannable exploit instead just common god damn tactics, and any melee based monster should just go into automatic immortal Evade mode and instantly heal to full the second it doesn't have clear pathing and LoS with the player targeting it.

Yes, ranged attackers are going to have an advantage over melee. And... maybe that's okay. For the most part, no one really cares that flying archers/mongol archers are overpowered, because mongol archers were overpowered in real life, and generally people are fine with things that are overpowered in real life being overpowered in a game. Only complete idiots are ever going to say "It's unfair that the dude with a gun can shoot me before I can run 30 feet in a straight line with no cover to get within range to stab him with a knife." in a game.
The flaw in the MMO logic is that the monster is going to sit there in the canyon and not retreat.

I mean, a situation like that that was written into a novel or made into a movie would have the monster dodge the attacks during the surprise round, taking some damage as he unsuccessfully dodged everything, and then retreating while taking some more damage.

As he left the canyon, the heroes then engage in melee to strike the killing blows.

Only in an MMO would a canyon be an insta-win, and the Flying Archer problem is based on that same kind of flawed logic that's repeated in grid-based wargaming where everyone acts like an artillery piece.

Ok, this will be the last post. For reals.

Close air support is an actual thing for a reason though. Infantry can't disengage fliers because fliers as so much faster than infantry. The guys in the sky set the pace of the battle. And by battle I mean slaughter, unless the guys on the ground have an effective anti-air weapon.

Outrunning the A-10 should not be a viable solution to the problem of "holy shit that thing has a Gau-8/A." A stinger missile can be one, however.

Game balance doesn't require that every option be equally effective in all situations.