INCOMING ESSAY ON GAME DESIGN/CRITIQUE OF CHANGES
The nerf was a big part because on eu servers, the dominant 2handers are german danish and greatswords with agi heavy builds, that probably abuse the living shit out of the stab while backpedaling and spinning and you don't see it so often on NA
One thing I really like that it stopped, is some of the bullshit 360s people did with pikes, halberds, etc. sorry to people like tanken and sosarian_knight, you guys are awesome players (lol at sosarian using a great long bardiche, not so lol at tanken wanting to quit the game) but you guys are some of the best examples of abusing the animation system for unfair advantages compared to more orothodox players.
What you guys did was go 30/9 or even more extreme builds, which should punish people for not being able to establish proper range control against enemies engaging them in 1 vs 1s, good builds to be in a frontal line and supporting people, but easily overwhelmed or beaten by someone like a fast 2 hander or shielder. However with the way it was before, you could effectively, as you've done to me and many other playes countless times, start up an attack and do a 360 jump backwards, forcing glances as you spun in heavy armor with 10 if and no weapon master, and landing a perfect, extremely high damaging piercing attack regardless of distance. You were using the game mechanics to pretty much bypass the implied balance by weapon types and builds and I don't think the crpg devs were happy about this, and saw the Warband engine as being against their idea for smooth and balanced medieval gameplay.
I can understand you Tristan and Sauce in not thinking they should mess with Warband native mechanics too much, but cmp as a programmer, chadz as a task manager/also programmer and the rest of the team have really made cRPG their own baby, and cmp's amazing work as a programmer is enabling them to interpret melee combat as they would build a game, but are still stuck using Warband as their framework.
Native still exists to get all the urges out (old lancing angles baby) but I know people are too attached to their characters in cRPG to really want to give it up entirely if they like this kind of game.
So I respect the effort and design concepts the team are using, more work than I've seen in cRPG in the past few months then since the gen/exp system overhaul a year and a half ago, and think you guys are one of the most talented mod teams I've seen, even if this game has a pretty limited base of players.
But I do think, at LEAST the overhead angles, should be broaded a bit. Its as restrictive as you made lancing, which I argued at the time should've been broadened a bit, was told that it wasn't capable with old WSE, and now realize that the game is much more balanced for it and wouldn't want to change it (if anything cav needs more nerfs lol)
But the overhead nerf is really impeding some of the fluidity of the gameplay, it feels not so different from the effects of polestagger when you do an overhead. Overheading was easy enough to miss before, and you had to track your target after you released the animation to not leave yourself a big open target. This was doubly true when you added the weapon stun after connecting to the ground if you miss. The reduced turning angle of overheads, coupled with the weapon stun when colliding with the map, I think ends up too great of a nerf to melee combat, not leaving it more balanced but instead making it just less fun and WAY too much risk to overhead which is the superior attack for group fighting/support (which you people should be encouraging!)
So my evaluation, so far, is that I understand the intent behind it, agree with the concept, but think it was just a little too dramatic and would be happier with a broader turn radius for overheads.
edit: on second thought, I think the main problem is the speed which you can pivot while doing an overhead, not the radius. I think better balance will be achieved by increasing acceleration while keeping a similar restriction on the angles you can turn into, much like lancing.
I just might.
I've been M2tw lately and somehow managed to get every christian nation to go to war with me, while having 6 islamic allies.
(i'm playing as venice)
Also
they need to make a game with Europa universalis's diplomacy/policy shit, M2tw large scale battles and city/castle management and Warband's combat system.
And lets throw in 10 person online co-op as well.
Now that would be a game.
P.s. don't really care about how they change crpg at this point. I'm still gonna kill a metric fuckton of people cause cav is hard
Hit me up on Steam if you decide to give Stronghold a shot, so I can give you a referral and some pro tips. Even Thax started playing as my vassal haha.
You saw me playing cav for the first time in months on a skip the fun character since I could put my champ desti and lance on it. 18/24 8 riding pure cav build. 35 kills my very first map after 4 rounds and not playing cav in seriously 4-6 months. What a joke lmao