Please tell me how.
Im not going to speculate what things are like on EU's end, but here two competent blockers can literally get locked in block duels for quite some time. I can probably count on one hand the amount of players that have competent enough footwork to maneuver swings around blocks, but maybe that's an NA problem? There is little to no incentive to take risks as most of the time chambers can be quite easily blocked as it is. Why would anyone want to remove that? With Overheads and turn speed in general dramatically decreased, pole stagger removed and many other things changed, alot of the wild, variable aspects that melee so fun and appealing to me in Native are gone/changed into something entirely different.
Chambers can change the entire rhythm and outcome of a fight sometimes and it really is one of the last great examples of it's kind when it comes to things that can abruptly alter the outcome of a melee fight. Now is that to say that there still can't be some great duels making use of advanced techniques in crpg? Of course not, but such techniques have to be supplemented with a high level of skill to even be made possible and more often than not come from players who have spent/still do spend a great deal of time practicing in native and are anything but frequent on our end. I can literally only name a couple of few players here in NA that I can honestly say, "yeah he'd mop the floor with me even in a much more level setting like native."
Gone are the days of being able to walk through three or four guys with relative ease in battle simply due to them not having quick reflexes. The slow combat speed has made even some of the greenest of players into semi-competent blockers. As an arbalest user I actually prefer running and re grouping with team mates when 2 or 3 guys run at me now as opposed to going into melee with my one hander side arm and testing whether or not they really know what they are doing with that huge pole arm or sword on their backs the way I used to be able to. The various speed changes in combat have made even sub-par fighters competent blockers. Now if the devs had this in mind when they implemented such changes then hats off to them, as they've certainly done their jobs.
I'm not advocating switching everything to native standards; hell, this is still the most fun i've ever had playing a mod and there is a reason im playing it over native to this day, But if you don't think that crpg's melee combat has become much more simplistic over time then we're going to have to agree to disagree.
