I think some of the statements here about infantry being too braindead are definitely true.
First of all I have to quote myself, to save me some typing work:
I just want to state that in my eyes balance needs to take both into consideration: the average player, who uses his possibilities in by his average level. If the average player of a certain class uses less teamwork than the players of other classes, you have to balance accordingly, or the gameplay on the servers will suffer from it.
But you also have to take into consideration the maximum possible performance of other players. You must not allow some "nerds" to become absolutely dominant and unkillable, and you also have to take care that all classes have about the same skill ceiling and efficiency. Otherwise all good player who want to maximize their performance would change to that one particular class.
You are probably right that most infantry players play less intelligently (?) than they should. But you can't just accept it, shrug and see how only cavalry and archers decide the outcome of a battle and the infantry being downgraded to the "lemming grunts" and "cannonfodder".
That's why I think that the argument "if the class would use more teamplay they wouldn't have that problem" is not valid. And thus there needs to be done something about. In my eyes nerfing/buffing the effectivity of a certain class does not work well, because it also affect the skill ceiling. I rather prefer solutions that change the behaviour of players. For example some kind of command system with rewards, that would make infantry stick together more, allowing them to deal better with archers and cavalry.
This is my basic point of view. Yes, it's definitely the infantry's own fault to a certain degree that playing this class was a pain in the ass for such a long time. But I think it would be wrong to say: "Their own fault, let them deal with it", because the entire gameplay on the servers suffers if a class is underrepresented, and be it only by skill and not by numbers. And I think we agree on this, as this thread is about this matter.
I also agree that for my taste there is too much cav and 2hd/halberd infantry now on the servers, and too few archers, crossbowmen and throwers. And the "quality" of most pikemen/spearmen could be... better...
I think the basic problem is that players get simply thrown into this game and not be taken by the hand. A good community can make up for this, but what we have is the cRPG community, so forget about this solution.
So we need something that helps new players to get into the game, not only concerning the mechanics, but also the behaviour. Currently players are left totally alone and either get wrong impressions (this game is about rushing and spamming) or develop bad habits. There are several possibilities to prevent this:
- more explanations on the character page, especially around the skills, so that we have less crappy builds. Realizing that your build is crappy and having to give up 50% XP or suffering with it until you hit lvl 31 can be demotivating and can force people to GTX.
- having a nice youtube channel with short, entertaining tutorial videos, from downloading the mod file over creating your fist char, logging into the page to choosing your character. Once a video has finished it shows the links to other videos, for example
"Downloading and installing the mod"
||
V
"Creating a character and logging in to the character page"
||
V
"Deciding which class you want to play"
|| ||
V V
"Being an archer" "Being a spearman"
And then you explain not only how you build your character, but also what is expected from you on the battlefield. (Spearmen: stay at the flanks at protect against cavalry. Archers: first priority target at the beginning of each round are the horses of cavalry)
Warning signs on the account creation side could tell new players that they will suck and have no fun at all if they don't watch the videos, as cRPG is totally different from any other module in Warband. I think this could already help.
You also need to offer more videos with some more sophisticated tactics (e.g. bottlenecks, the right hillcamp, etc.) which are entertaining and easy to find, you more or less have to "stumble" upon them on the cRPG pages, instead of having to actively search for them in forums or youtube. You know what I mean? We must catch the "uninterested", the more "casual" players.
- implementing a nice command system, which offers real rewards for following orders. This way you motivate players to follow tactics, even if they don't believe in the advantages it offers. Sooner or later they will realize it, and become valuable team members. Notice that all this doesn't go against the idea of casual players who only play from time to time.
- perhaps you can implement some "tasks" for peasants to give them massive benefits. For example if you put your first WPF into polearms, and you kill a horse, you get 500 gold reward from level 1 to let's say 15 or 20 (Only one task can be fullfilled per character). This idea is very spontaneous and not well thought out, but I hope you know what I mean.
Make players get used to the right behaviour from the beginning!If the developers followed this path, they could perhaps break through that vicious circle of nerfing and nerfing.
