Apparently everyone was sick of "groofers" standing on buildings after smashing ladders, shooting at infantry with no way of getting them back, prolonging rounds when they'd obviously lost. Now ladders have been removed everyone is sick of cavalry rampaging around unchecked. Cav has been further strengthened by the damage nerf to arrows, which makes horses last longer and by the slower right-left animation, which makes jump-kill harder to execute. You can feel the horse-hate on every battle server.
It seems to me that the more things are improved, the more people are unhappy. I started playing in July 2010, having finally discovered why the Native battle servers were emptying. Back then there was no wpf penalty for armour, there was no retirement. Progress was un-capped but slower. XP was gained by proximity to a kill by your team and so everyone noob rushed in a big mob. I played Zalla_Dakht, named after a recent SP character. She became a horse archer - there were only 2 on the EU servers back then. The first nerf, bringing in an armour wpf penalty (particularly for archers, and I had to sell Zalla's new Sarranid Mail Shirt I'd finally saved up enough gold for - grr!) had a dramatic effect for a few days, then everyone realised it wasn't as bad as they thought and apart from archers, went back to being tin cans.
Realising I was never going to be the HA I wanted before being very high level, I retired Zalla and ended up with Andamaglas, a 2h fighter in the style of the Irish
Gallowglass. This is when I was having the most fun. I played only on battle servers back then. I ground my way up. I remember the satisfaction of seeing my Kills overtake my Deaths and of starting to top the scores - not often, but sometimes. I had ground my way up to level 35. I was good and I felt I had earned it! There were obviously things wrong with the game back then; bringing in the Cataphract ("robot horse") and the Plated Charger unbalanced things, and soon the sidearm crossbow users were to reduce the game to a shooting match, but they were fixed. But never again would I actually have a character I enjoyed playing. Patches keep spoiling things.
The only characters I have fun with now are silly characters like Hot Chick With a Sword or Ugg the Caveman. Even then the fun doesn't last, because with each patch, the viability of a build is reduced, the choice narrows. Dying 15 times in a row without killing a single one of those optimised, Kuyak wearing death machines is boring.
Devs, there has been too much tinkering. The game is more frustrating now than it has ever been, choices are narrower than they have ever been. Amiran Dakht used to use a Shashka. It got nerfed and its animation messed with somehow (intentionally or not) I don't know why this was done - I didn't here people sneering at me for being an easymode OP Shashka user... I didn't notice loads of other people using them. The result is that Amiran has become yet another spammitar guy - a choice forced on me. I used to have an archer alt, too. Now, forget it. Unless you play archer all the time or are of the same standard as Radh or Tenne, you may as well be a practice dummy. Never before have phantom blocks and blows been such a problem. People are saying "don't bother blocking, it doesn't work, just spam". One third to a half of all infantry are now pike users anyway, because of the OP-ness of cavalry.
We are in danger of losing our way with this mod. My suggestions, for what they may be worth: strip away some of the extra stuff like faces that seem to mess up hit boxes. Less armour, not more. Get rid of the "soft" level cap - it paradoxically makes everyone a munchkin power gamer. Un-nerf archery a bit. But just step back and take a look at what crpg is now and what it used to be. Is it what you wanted?
