Horses - how to improve difficulty

[Overdriven]

Tbh I think only small things should be introduced. Like the deluge horse unseating thing. That's an awesome mechanic and really surprised me when I first encountered it.

Leave the actual horse controls well alone. The people we are 'RPing' are experienced riders. With high level characters with higher level riding WASD just represents the ease with which a trained horsemen would control their horse. Adding more actual controls for a horse would simply be a pain in the arse.

[chadz]

The people we are 'RPing' are experienced fighters. With high level characters with higher WPF autoblock just represents the ease with which a trained warrior would control their swords. Adding 4 attack and block directions for a swing would simply be a pain in the arse.

[Casimir]

ahem.. wanted to change cav for 1 1/2 years and now this! *rrr.. told ya so.. rrr..

Of course over a lot of that time the balance paradigm was completely different and cavalry was a less significant problem.  In the cycle of balance if you continually moan about anything long enough it will probably come round to getting nerfed eventually. This doesn't mean you were right when you moaned and bitched for years. 

I don't understand why cavalry shouldn't be allowed to perform in anyway it likes, why should they be forced to operate in large groups any more than infantry or ranged should?  If a melee fighter wants to run around and flank enemies, take their targets at unaware and get kills by surprise attack rather than coordinated group work why shouldn't cavalry? 

If cavalry chooses to work in a coordinated group then they should be rewarded for it the same as infantry is, this doesn't mean they should be forced into it however.

[LordBerenger]

Stop bitching about cav you melee scrubs! You're just mad because you don't got the SWAG cav got.

[Lannistark]

Add penalties to maneuver and reduce horse speed in inverse proportion to weight.

[Overdriven]

The people we are 'RPing' are experienced fighters. With high level characters with higher WPF autoblock just represents the ease with which a trained warrior would control their swords. Adding 4 attack and block directions for a swing would simply be a pain in the arse.

4 attack/block directions, 4 movement directions. Seems fair as its the same for each.

[Leshma]

You may not have much of a problem with cav because (atleast the times i've spectated you) you go alone, away from the main battle and being aware of cav is easier that way. But when fighting in the main battle it is incredibly hard to watch for cav and fight multiple enemies at the same time, and when you dont watch your back cav will either bump you down or just one-hit you :/

True, but that also means that enemy cav will swarm me when they see me alone in the open. Have you ever killed 5 GKs in 10 seconds on your own? At one point I was able to kill even more cav in short period without any support and all of them were charging at me at the same time.

Thing is that we, infantry players like to think we're on duel server when we spot an enemy who is willing to fight us (curse of any player in cRPG is that you can fight better than yourself but you have to chase those who are worse), we think that world around us stopped moving. Well, it's not like that and it's often useful to back off a little bit to take a look around, sometimes that confuses the opponent allowing us to kill him easier. Unfortunately, I'm one of those retards who ignore everything when they spot the prey...

Also I play this game with sound turned off. I can't hear a damn thing yet I'm not complaining about cav that much. Only thing that I'm complaining is couch because it's possible to deal full damage at low speed and it's possible to move long and pretty heavy lance over horse head (through horse head is correct) when you're going full speed with lance pointing at the ground

Also lancer cav is super boring for me atm and I really liked it when lance was "free".

[Vibe]

4 attack/block directions, 4 movement directions. Seems fair as its the same for each.

melee no shield: 4 attacks, 4 blocks, 4 movement directions
cav lancer: 1 attack, 4 blocks (of which only one is mostly used, if ever), 4 movement directions

???

[Lord_Panos]

Make apples a throwing weapon.  Then, when a cav charges you, you throw the apple and the horse chases it and stops to eat it.

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WAAAAAAAAAAAAA CAV OP WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MAMA MAMA

[Torben]

The people we are 'RPing' are experienced fighters. With high level characters with higher WPF autoblock just represents the ease with which a trained warrior would control their swords. Adding 4 attack and block directions for a swing would simply be a pain in the arse.

so introduce a certain random movement urge into the horses that the rider must counter,  and give horses the sidestep on top to make it even harder to counter but in the same time adding complexity and  versatility by making new combat moves possible through sidestepp.  huray for good english.

[Son Of Odin]

Solution is simple. Just make every whining footman learn to be aware of his surroundings.

What if the answer is not in horse manouver?

Maybe nerf couching. But not damage, the frequency. After every couch the couch recovery time gets longer and longer. A good lancer doesn't need to use the couch many times in a round and can have couple successful ones without trying +10 times. Those who try to couch 20 times in a row and getting 5 kills are the ones we are after here because they have it easy, right? You would still need to improve your skill to have those killing couches but you couldn't "spam" it.

Something should be done to 1h cav as well but I'm not too familiar with the mechanics... They are extremely powerful nowadays and everyone cries about lancers... Duh...

[polkafranzi]

Nerf ranged.

[engurrand]

You are missing the point of this thread. chadz didn't mention a nerf at all, this is about a complete overhaul of the cav system. It's not about tweaking or balancing the current system, it's about forgetting the current system and brainstorming about a new one.

[Slamz]

Let's say horse speed is a scale from 1 to 10.

A sudden stop from speed 1-2 is fine.
A sudden stop from speed 3-5 does escalating damage to the horse.
A sudden stop from speed 6-10 does increasing damage to the horse and also throws the rider and does escalating damage to him.


Probably the biggest "no skill" thing I see cav players do is charge a player on a wall, lance him but then slam into the wall at 40 mph to no apparent ill effect.  Most skilled cav players try to avoid this anyway because you're suddenly a sitting duck for any archers but it should really be damaging to do it at all.

Horse collisions should be more dramatic too, including friendly fire.  Instead of one horse rearing another and that's the end of it, they should literally plow into each other with the rules described above for speed and damage.  Head on full speed horse collisions should be fatal to both horses and both riders.

(It would make sense for this to be the same for spearing/piking a horse.  Yes you kill the horse and quite possibly the rider but if it was a head-on spear, you still have a huge chunk of meat that's going to bowl you over.)

[Leshma]

The people we are 'RPing' are experienced fighters. With high level characters with higher WPF autoblock just represents the ease with which a trained warrior would control their swords. Adding 4 attack and block directions for a swing would simply be a pain in the arse.

You really should try Two Worlds II if you haven't already.

Btw. about riding a bike argument, that shitty MMOTPS wannabe game called APB is controlled in a same way as most driving simulators. You can play them with W,A,S,D as well. However APB driving model is probably the worst I've ever had the pleasure to try. And similar game like GTA IV has quite decent driving model. You know why?

Because it has better physics model. No additional controls, just better physics. If you want additional controls you need to make your game for different controller, not for keyboard and mouse. Steering with mouse works well in L4S but in Warband you need free aim for weapons...

W,S,A,D is the best keyboard has to offer. Additional controls only complicate things. Work on physics model instead and things will be a lot more different, both for cav and inf.

Also fixed four attack and block directions aren't enough for me anymore. I want 360 degree combat