Since open maps dont provide cover or protection against ranged or cav. The solution is simple, just add a big village or city in the middle of the map and it will become playable. Do this with all open maps. SOLVED!
I have to agree with this, but to add on...
Open maps would be great if there was more cover for infantry to use, especially closer to the spawn and near the middle of the map. This way, there's at least one way to avoid total decimation from the horde of ranged / cav / ranged cav that gets stacked on one team.
Oh yeah, about that balance system that comes with the game, it would be neat to see a limit on how much cav can be on one team at a time. The fact that all of the horses are on one team, spawn at the same time as the other team (let's not even touch on bump lancing, couching and bump slashing) but can get to the other team's spawn before they can even find a tree to hide behind, and it almost always works like that. Team one has one or two horses, but forty or so infantry, maybe ten or fifteen archers; however, team two spawns with thirty horseman, ten infantry and twenty archers.
Who do you think is going to win here? If the infantry based team can't even take cover behind anything, then what'll the odds be that they win? Even if they all bring shields, they're going to get couch lanced. If they all bring pikes, they're going to (still) get couch lanced and shot to shit by the massive number of horse xbow and horse archer we've come to deal with recently.
Whenever I play on the community server, it's to get away from the cavalry on NA 1, but even when there's only ten or so people online, at least one person will decide that they need to bring a horse with their xbow and greatsword.
/rant