The last few weeks I go around the forum, always telling the same story:
The poor teamplay on the servers is the reason for most, if not all balancing problems in cRPG.
The game doesn't tell people that they need to play in a team, sticking to the role they have chosen for themselves (Caution! This requires discipline!), nor does it help people who discovered this by themselves with granting a command or at least a usable communication feature, besides those voice commands which are nothing but annoying.
First of all:
Cavalry is underpowered. Heavily underpowered. But retarded, brainless lemming players still manage to make it OP, congratulations on that! Armoured horses get one-hit-killed sometimes, upkeep is too high to make medium/heavy cav a sustainable class, and the attack angles for lances got cut drastically. And still cavalry is probably the easiest class to play at the moment, although it is UP.
Folks that complain about cavalry killing them sounds to me like folks complaining about infantry killing them, but refusing to use the right mouse button to block.
The right mouse button from my example concerning cavalry is teamplay.
This game is NOT fucking Counter Strike, it is NOT fucking Unreal Tournament, and it is definitely NOT the fucking "American Idol"-franchise game, only there to offer you a stage for your uber-skills to get admired by the others.
It is NOT a duelling game, where it's about you killing another player. That would be a duel. It is about you and your mates trying to kill a certain number of enemies. That's a battle! This changes things completely! Suddenly the plain simple mechanics of attacking and defending get complemented by a whole new dimension, called tactics! While I call attacking (slashing/shooting/throwing/backstabbing) and defending (blocking/hiding/running/dodging) the "micro-game", there is a big picture, which I call the "macro-game". It's how the battle is going on.
If you fight one enemy after another on your own, you're best off with an allrounder build. But as soon as you have mates playing with you, you can concentrate yourself on a certain aspect, relying on your teammates to make up for the weakness you develop from this, maximizing the overall performance of your team. And there we are in the macro-game.
The more effective you are in one aspect, the heavier the weaknesses are you grow in other aspects, given that balance is working. And to be honest, the most effective and most specialized class in killing enemies still is infantry. Neither ranged nor cavalry can reach this effectivity. But as said above, the weaknesses must be of the same extend. That's why the different infantry-subclasses (shielders, two handed infs, spearmen/pikemen) need to play together, to reach their maximum effectivity.
The other classes depend less on this. There is no big difference for an archer whether he is supported by a crossbowman or a thrower. All that counts for him is that he has cover, and some teammates around, protecting him.
Cavalry needs even less teamplay. Lancers, 1hd+2hd cavalry and horse archers/xbows/throwers can't really maximize each other's effectivity. All they need is someone distracting the enemy.
This leads to the most important, but also most tragic - as most ignored - insight in cRPG:
50% of playing infantry well is playing in a team. Seriously. There is nothing to discuss about, I just told you everything above.
90% of all players don't know this fact. They play this game like Counter Strike. Spawn, run towards the enemy, try to kill him or get killed, wait till the end of the round, rinse and repeat. Perhaps stick to your teammates, so they can help you if you get in trouble. Which still is no teamplay.
"But I play cRPG just for fun, I don't want to care about tactics and shit. I just want to have some relaxed fun." some people might want to say. Fuck you, I say. Your own fault. You are probably the kind of players that complains about World of Warcraft being completely unsuitable for filling out your 15 free minutes of lunch break, huh? If you want relaxed fun of the Counter Strike kind, then go on duel server, or perhaps siege server. But battle is a battle, it's about two (small) armies, armies always contain the idea of tactics and fighting together (not next to each other). Also infantry is the only class that is really dependant on each other. Of course you are free to ignore those facts, but then shut the fuck up with nerf cries. You can't play chess if you don't know what castling is, or capturing a pawn en passant. And playing chess "just for fun" and expecting to enjoy it is as stupid as can be. There are games with less depth, more suitable for relaxed gaming, and there are games with more depth, which require some induction. cRPG is one of latter.
I have to clarify that I am infantry myself, NOT cavalry (although I used to be, and it was easy as pie), and a notorious infantry fanboy. I think it's the only proper way to engage and kill an enemy, I hate ranged bundle of stickss and those cowardy horse fuckers, all infantrymen are my brothers, but I fear my family has a bad gene pool, as most of my brothers are less well-off. They want to fight, but they only use their left hand for it, and then complain about losing. I feel with them, but it's their own fault.
Playing infantry in cRPG doesn't mean only to learn how to attack and to block, but also how to behave. Often enough it requires discipline and stepping back in favour of your teammates. Unless people don't learn how, things won't change, and we will always have balancing issues.
I already made some suggestions several times before, but they got ignored mainly. Describing the cRPG as a heavily tactical game in the download description would already help a lot, as it would change the expectations of the new players, which would have heavy impact on their entire perception of the game and the course of their career. Good tutorial videos for new players would further reinforce this effect and improve the "education" (= "training" in military means) of new players to skilled and valuable team members.
I know games where almost every player follows some certain rules of behaviour, without the game doing anything to tell him how, and still players do it, because they see the other doing it, and they see it working. My favourite example is Global Agenda. Play it, and do a Dome Defense Raid. (postapocalyptic robots attacking a human dome city). Everyone knows you need a main tank, who places himself into a certain corner of the room to tank the boss, and an offtank who jumps in when the boss fires his main laser. You also need a main healer, who concentrates on healing the tanks with direct heals, and a group healer who heals the rest with heals over time buffs. You also need recons, who are expected to bring their shatter bombs and deconstructor fields, and robotics, who build support stations and sentry turrets. One energy station for example has to be placed next to the main tank, so that he never runs out of power. All this is never mentioned by the game itself, not at any point, not with a single word, and still, when setting up groups people just ask "Who is main tank? Who is offtank?" and so on. Everyone knows what's to do. So don't tell me I expect too much. Just take a look at the chat in the city channel in this game, and you know it's a bunch of retards and trolls, exactly like the cRPG community, but still they are capable of learning certain behaviours. Because it wins them raids and missions, improving their characters.
End of my rage post.
tl;dr version:
90% of infantry are retards, because they don't have the idea to use tactics, or even refuse to! So infantry loses all rights to demand nerfs of other classes.
If all spear- and pikemen would play properly with the other classes and vice versa, all cavalry players on the server would not score more than four or five kills... overall!
