But I think many of you don't realy have an Idea what it means to start playing cRPG now, because it might not quite be the same as at the time you started playing it yourself. Think about how many new players realy joined and stayed longer then a few hours over all the time. I have to admit i don't have the real numbers for this case (link apreciated), but if I am not completely wrong the dropout rate (people quit playing it) should be ~98% in the very first few matches, followed by another peak at level 20, where another ~80% drop out. I also guess, that these numbers are growing rapidly, as the established players get a bigger and bigger advantage in personal skill, personal knowledge and also even the gear so less and less new players start to realy stay in the game. As the time you need to start killing (because killing is the most obvious goal in this game, especialy for a newb) grows, more and more players get frustrated and quit. Think about how many of you got adviced and trained by their clan personaly - most new players will never get that far. But this is not the problem of the clans or the community, I recieved a lot of help and a lot of training, spent hours practicing combat basics and duels, but I know that I am not representative for most of the new players, who just alt+f4 and never play it again.
All your tips are good, and very useful (i've read many similar advices, got similar tips ingame and it also makes sense to me) but no matter how hard you try, you will never change anything about the user experience of the 99% of the newbs who don't read anything of this before they drop out. I am now over my guessed level 20 peak and I realized that i have to reroll, i have to read all guides and realy think about how i want to build my char if i want do get anything but headbutts from this mod. But i dont want to talk more about me, i think you already get the idea what trouble i went through starting as an archer expecting to be somehow sucessful as i was in m&b, warband and f&s singleplayer and multiplayer and ending up with 24/101 at level 23 (0 kills in the first ~5 hours playtime).
This is meant to rather be more like a little personal letter to the developers of the mod (hopefuly they recieve it). And i hope i don't just tell you stuff you already know, if so just tell me and i promise you a TLDR in the size of the bible about the little faults and opportunitys for improvment i recognized in the first two days of playing the mod. But i write also a lot of bullshit...i know...my grammar is based on guessing as you have surely recognized...
The parsing of this mod realy needs a redesign imho. Even though it is quite intresting to start as a peasant and work your way up from a roleplaying point of view, from the gameplay perspective it just kills all the potential players like a chainsaw in preshool. As the main challange for a new player is not getting better gear but getting the knowledge how to use it in the first place, you should realy focus more on that aspect in designing the experience for the beginners. I know it is not easy, especialy with the focus on roleplay plus a established fanbase who will react very allergic on every little negative change on their own experience.
Instead of making new players start as a peasant, you could think about making them start as a squire, giving them their own short term goals to achieve in every match. Instead of giving them both - extremely bad gear and bad attributes at the beginning, you could focus on giving them just bad attributes but some good gear they can not choose for themselfes. Instead they pick from premade sets, like "bodyguard with shield" for example. Now give the experienced players the option to take these Squires and claim them for their personal abuse. Once claimed the squire is linked to his "knight" for the match. Optical Feedback is very important, giant arrow on everything important and a big text what he has to do, because noobs -always- know nothing and have trouble with reading. The Squire (in this case bodyguard with shield) will get rewarded with XP for every kill his master does and will get a bonus not only if his side wins, but if his "knight" is still alife. If a squire wants to become a knight himself and start collecting money and customizing equipment he has to reach a certain level the first time he plays the game. This solution would be beneficial for both the newbs and the establishment and would not require a lot of changes in the system itself. You could also expand this system and experiment what reduces the dropout rate more or less. I could also imagine achievments to work well to guide the new players (like win 100 duels, parry 5 strikes in a row etc.) idk how what the engine supports well and what not, but you get the idea.
You might think "oh thats just all that nonsense all games have, we don't need it" or "jeah it's hard, but we don't care about new players". But I think you underestimate the quality of your own work so far if you think like that. You could get a much bigger fanbase then you might think. Your mod is just -insanely- good and if you get more people to experience it, the chances this will become the new official multiplayer of m&b should be very very high. And this would like boost the quality of m&b a lot imho. You might think achievments are overused and try to avoid getting mainstream, but let me promise you, achievments and rewards are not what makes these "modern games" all feel the same, its uninnovative gameplay - and how they actualy use their achievments, most of the time just to try to artificaly improve the time a player needs to finish it. You are the complete opposite, you have all that innovation, you have all that playtime and in your case it would only improve your experience, especialy if you use them more to guide and to reward the players, who would otherwise stop playing it. And you don't even need to call it "Achievment" or "Tutorial" or whatever, theres always a way to cover it up in the roleplay, as in my excample with the squires and the knights.
I hope i gave you something to think about, keep up the good work and i would of course apreciate feedback.