Have you folks ever seen Hospitaler_Kimichi ? Cavalry guy, either naked or dressed as a samurai, never lives longer then 30 seconds....always charges straightforward and dies first.
Maybe all this fuss was made because Vicious is a renown name around here and many people know what he can do, if it was some random noob (like the guy i mentioned above, and many others that actually do it all the time) then none would care about it. That said, i dont see any point in such gameplay, this game enforces teamwork and everyone should try to fulfill his role the best they can, ranged units by taking down their enemies the best they can, shielders by standing in the front lines and fighting, cavalry by taking care of opposition cav and archers, etc.....so just charging and dying in less then 30 secs can not really be considered as helping your team, even if you make a few lucky spam kills in the way. If its your last round or something then yeah, go kill yourself so you can leave the game in peace but if you do it for multiple rounds in a row then its pointless, youre taking a slot that someone else might use, someone who would actually participate in battle and enjoy his time.
Ofc there should be warnings before bans, in case people are unable to use common sense. I say unban Vicious and add a sentence about situations like this under the rules section.
On another note, Kesh said something like "Its my right to charge and die if i please so, rather then camping or standing in formation, or shit like that....". This whole mod is a mess atm, maps are overplayed and unbalanced and there are many people who think this way, but dear Kesh you of all people should know a thing or two about camping and shooting down helpless people. I as well sometimes rage about the number of archers in this mod, people are just used to playing this like a shooter and there is no way of changing their minds, runing around for 3 minutes only to be filled with numerous arrows from all sides is very frustrating, now when youve experienced it yourself youre also frustrated and you rather choose to just run strait and get shot then trying to do something else (which might benefit your team more) and still get shot, before you succeed. Its sad to see that 80% of people use some kind of ranged weaponry, its even more sad to see that out of 10 last survivors on the battlefield at least 7 are archers. Ive made some suggestions about things that should be changed (and i didnt cry for archery nerf at all) but it was mostly axed down, people prefer having hordes of roof camping bundle of stickss and playing a sharpshooting "battles" rather then having (nearly) full infantry/cavalry battles so.....just go with it, back to your archery and do what you do best: camp some roof and snipe down the poor runners and horses, from the opposite corner of the map, before they even engage the fight. Enjoy your cRPG archery contest.
Edit: the Kesh reply is off-topic, i clearly doubt he charges because of leeching, i think its more related to frustration of not being able to do much by standing with the team, he feels its a waste of time, and he is right. In the end youre gonna get shot anyways so why not do it right away and continue watching the movie on TV ?
+1
There is only one point is disagree (next to a small little tiny unimportant detail I will mention later): If you are frustrated by being shot early, it is NOT okay to charge straight ahead to be shot immediately. Why?
You play Warband to fight and to kill people.
The ranged spam in cRPG prevents some (pure meele build) players of doing so.
Now if they just charge straight ahead to die, they probably don't do what the idea of the game is.
Now why should they even join a server if they can't do what they want or they are supposed to do (as you listed up nicely)?
The answer is: they do it as it still brings money and XP.
Summary: they don't play properly, they are only there to earn money and XP.
That's leeching, in my opinion. It's not that severe like the no-lifer leeching on purpose of Vicious, as they basically WANT to play, but get frustrated, but it's definitely leeching. Though, I agree, those people should not be punished, but taken care of by the developers (by making the game fairer for them).
I don't know what Kimichi tries to achieve, but I bet he can only benefit of being prevented of charging headlessly every round.

And now the tiny little detail I disagree: cavalry is NOT supposed to fight enemy cav. I know that it's done this way on most maps for some reason, but in fact you will always win if your cavalry will concentrate more on enemy archers and, as soon as the big meele has started, the enemy infantry (which should be distracted at that point). This, of course, requires patience from the cav players, which most don't have.
It's the horse archers who are supposed to actively fight enemy cavalry. With their weak shooting capabilities (concerning damage, I mean) killing those (big target) horses with few HP and armour is the most effective thing they can do.