Hejhej,
first of all i want to say thanks and a huge thumbs up to u chadz and the other people, who are spending so much time and work on this great mod.
I love it!
This is going to be a long thread, so probably noone is going to read it, but if anybody does, i would love to hear your thoughts about it:-)
I know its a bit early to make a valid judgement on the changes, but i have played it now for several hours and made up my mind enough to wanna share some thoughts.
I have a char in gen 11, a dedicated archer, and one in gen 4 who is cav atm, but i played nearly all classes for at least one gen except for HA, pure pike-builds or other astonishingly effective builds like TinCan with club:D
Things, that in my opinion would have needed a patch:
-wipe the crush of certain weapons (Barmace...) -done
-nerf sidesword - totally overdone
-nerf lolstab range
-nerf strongbow a bit in dmg
-nerf hybrids and i mean hybrids like those 2h running around with danish greatsword and throwing lances or a sniper xbow; or also these pole-guys who have a greatsword for general melee, a longaxe to crush shields, a pike against cav and maybe some darts or even throwing axes against archers)
Maybe there was more, but these are the main points I can think of now. But generally I dont think that the gameplay was badly unbalanced pre-patch, at least not unbalanced enough that it would have needed these massive changes. You could see people of all classes ruling the scoreboard, lot of cav, lot of inf (1H as well as 2H), some archers and less, but some HA, not to talk about dedicated xbowers. Of course everybody was whining about something, the no shielders about the archers, the archers about the cav and onehitting xbows or throwers, the cav about ha and archers... but whining doesn't neccessarily indicates unbalance.
Generally i think the multiple slot system was a great idea to achieve the last point, just that it was overdone a little. The ideal thing would be to allow hybrids but make sure they have to make a compromise. I will now write some thoughts about each class, trying to do it as objective as i can:D
1H shield:
making the huscarl and the board shield two slots is great, buffing the board shield too, the huscarl wouldn't have needed a nerf in its hitbox (some users felt it had) and stats.
I think one big problem of 1h shielders is to deal with cav so every shielder had his pike in his backpack or tons of throwing axes to get rid of them. A good balancing would have been to force them to make the decision, if they want a very good shield with nothing really to attack cav, or trade it for a less good shield and protection and a medium tier long weapon against cav, like the awlpike, some spear, a lighter xbow or some throwing stuff. This is pretty much done by the patch, not sheatable pike and heavy lance is great, but maybe i would have drawn the line there, make the bamboo spear sheatable. I mean its shit, almost nobody uses it, and that will just stay that way. If it would be sheatable, everybody would have to decide whether using a shorter spear or pike like awlpike with more dmg or the less damaging but a little longer bamboo.
I know its unrealistic to sheat a bamboo spear, but the main goal of a game should be the fun playing it, meaning the balancing, and not allways to achieve realism!
Cav:
making heavy lance two slot and non sheatable great, nerfing the heavy lance a bit in dmg ok, the speed was ok as it was. The nerf was overdone. I think its ok, that a couched lance can onehit almost everything, because its quite risky, if your target is aware of you. More or less skilled 1H and 2H can jump stab u or with a little footwork bring your horse down by hitting from the side. Anyone with a spear can just stab right into your horse, because the couched lance has a quite shorter range than a thrusted spear. But that u can also onehitkill most people with only one stab, which is due to the speed bonus on damage, could have needed a little nerf by lowering the lance damage.
The idea of limiting stabs to the front just takes all the fun of being a pole cav and is thus nonsense in my opinion and also not needed for balancing.
By making poles more slots the cav is forced to make the decision of going pure pole with the disadvantage of having no shield for protection, but a damn well skilled melee weapon, or if he goes 1H Shield with less wpf in pole as well as in 1h but a protection against arrows. For preventing these pure pole guys from being just as good in melee as on horse, u could have made some really powerful melee polearms even take three slots, so they would have to use a medium tier pole. Same with very strong 2H.
The pure 1h cav was ok in my opinion, but i never played it myself, so please add your thoughts
Archery:
this is the hardest one, because thats what i have played most of the time:D
in whole, i think archery did quite well pre-patch, with some minor changes it would have been balanced pls continue reading before rage flaming me for subjectivity
making the war and longbow two slot, great! But why changing the stats to pierce dmg for longbow and a dmg buff for the warbow? Also why this accuracy buff? A slight nerf of the strongbow being almost equal to the warbow pre-patch would have justified the the two slot for the others. You had to decide whether using a very accurate very slow very damaging longbow, a little less accurate little less slow but still powerful warbow (both two slots and pd 6), or a faster but with pd 6 also quite accurate but less damaging strongbow (1slot, pd 5)
everybody is complaining in the forums that archery was buffed. I am not sure how they come to this conclusion, maybe just because of the warbow buff. The masterwork warbow gained two dmg with the patch, but the bodkin lost 1 pierce dmg, so probably the increased accuracy makes the difference In other ways archery too got nerfed:
if I want to go as pure archer now, meaning taking a Long or Warbow plus 2 stacks of masterwork bodkin and no melee weapon at all, i will have four less arrows than i had pre- patch even with a melee weapon
If i don't want to play without melee weapon, i would only have 17 arrows with a good bow, still having invested all wpf in archery and close to nothing in any melee skill( in my case usually 6wpf in pole with the LHSM) So what am i then? I suck in archery cause i cant shoot, and i suck in melee, because i have no proficiency and I still can only use a 1H
if I decide to use a worse bow with one slot, still needing lots of wpf in archery and making significant less dmg(with the slight strongbow nerf) i can take still barely enough arrows using two stacks plus a 1H or ridiculously few arrows for an archer with a more powerful melee weapon, but still the disadvantage of having no proficiency there
I used the LHSM pre patch and im totally ok with nerfing it by two slots, unbalancing it and slowering it, maybe it was a too powerful weapon being used by a dedicated archer, although the disadvantage of no proficiency there to a dedicated melee guy was obvious.I didn't do that bad in melee. But i would have loved to see, that some less powerful 2H and poles also would have only taken one slot. And here again, the most powerful pole and 2H could have 3 slots to avoid for example the strongbow man running around with a flamberge
also, i would have liked to see the amount of arrows being increased, not decreased. I dont know, make it 23 or something. Forcing an archer to rely on team members in such away by taking him the ability of defending himself in melee, will kill him or making him roof camping on every unaccessible place he can find, which i never liked to do pre-patch btw. Personally I love to do melee, and even if I lose most of the melee fights as an archer, at least it was some kind of a fight in some cases. For archers like me, this takes a quite essential part out of the fun being an archer.
The argument, that people with these purer classes in general will have to use more teamplay, meaning the poleguy will be your best friend cause he will protect u from cav, is a nice idea, but i don't think its really gonna work in the game how it is, at least not on public servers. Therefor the rounds are too short, the battlefield is too chaotic, a lot of maps wont let this happen. Also, pure archers and xbow men will be much more depending on pike or inf, than the other way round, which will lead to them to be fucked in the most cases, cause they cant even block the attacks without any melee weapon. What will happen is, that clan members who are used to play with each other, being able to communicate over ts and so on will be even more powerful compared to the casual player than they already were before.
2H and Pole:
two slots are fine, I would have loved to see the most powerful of them taking even 3 slots and the low tier ones maybe one slot, for reasons i already explained earlier. For that, it would maybe have been neccessary to draw a clearer line between 1-, 2- and 3 slot weapons, but only those, which are sheatable, would take 3 slots ,thus not the pike and heavylance and whatelse is out there.
maybe it would have been possible to make one of the very light xbows be usable in one slot including regular bolts, again to not wipe hybrids but nerf them significantly. This could also be interesting for 1h Huscarls, while less dedicated 1H players could use medium tear xbow with any bolts. Also even the 3slot weapon user could have one stack of any throwing stuff. Maybe also the 3 slotters would need a buff for balancing, but i dont know for sure.
LOLstab got nerfed, great, but why overdone again? Just a nerf of range would have done it and maybe a slight one of dmg, but making it almost useless as many users feel, plus giving it to the pole and switching it to a LOLpolestab doesnt make much sense in my opinion.
Also concerning the hybrid guys who have a weapon for every occasion. Why not let them be, but force them to use low tier weapons ( a medium 2 slotted sword, and a low tier 1 slotted axe for shield crushing, plus one stack of low tier throwing for example). Why wipe them out totally.
The diversity in this game is an essential part of it in my opinion.
Xbow:
the dedicated xbowers are facing very similar problems as the archers, so increase the ammo, for that a pure xbowman can take a 1h or a low tier 2H or pole (if 1 slot weapons of these kind would exist). Atm i only know of the spiked mace to like that, since the taken slots are not shown on the website snd for example i lost my goedendag and cant buy a new one for some reason.
HA ans Throwing:
well, damn annoying and I get killed by them a hell of a lot, but in my opinion they were ok with the poled cav not getting nerfed too hard. But i dont have any experience of playing one, so cant say much about it.
About throwing I know even less, sryys:-(
Genral stuff:
Animations: why did the animations need a change? Lots of commentary about this topic already. The animations were just fine as they were, now the gameplay doesn't feel smooth at all.
Defend the village: or defend the x5 forever. Why this new game mod, where 45 grindgreedy players pawn 45 bots designed by the server admin, meaning naked peasents in lot of cases to have an infinite x5 feast. Its very easy to abuse, undermines the whole idea of the game and gets boring like hell after three rounds, but probably still will be played just for the LOLgrind. Wipe it to hell, anyway,when Strategus comes back on, nobody will give a fuck about defending villages from naked brainless zombies. Some will probably hate me for that, but thats kinda ok.
Te xp system and database wipe: The two main aspects why i play this mod are the great opportunity for individualisation of your character granted by the mass of different weapons and the diversity of possible builds on the one hand, and the reward you get for investing time in this game by the heirloom and xp bonus system on the other.. This is what makes the game so addictive and keeps up the motivation to play it, whether addiction is a good thing or not for your real life, but definetely it is out of the perspective of the game.
Of course all these high gen players have an advantage to the casual player who has maybe just started to play it or isn't able or doesn't want to spend so much time on gaming, but the advantage is not due to the three more damage his weapon makes or the 3 more armor of the heirloomed gear, it is due to the time he invested developing his ow personal skill in the game. Because that is another great aspect of it, that you actually need some skill to be good at it, compared to lots of other games. So the gap between an experienced player and one who is not, will always be there, no matter of the slight advantage of having heirloomes or not.
So all the people crying for a Wipe to get on an equal level with the experienced players...its an illusion. You would wonder how they pawn us just the same with a fork on peasent wars. Basically this is how life works, the more time you invest in something, will you usually make better at it than someone who does less. So you have a real life, invest time in it and it makes u happy, let the ones who invest more time in playing this game be happy for pawning us on the battle field:-)
But anyway, as you can see in native mode, wiping xp and heirloom bonus doesn't change anything in this none existing equilibrium, it is even more like the opposite, because good players will have good gear after a round or two while bad players actually play with bad gear, because they cant afford anything else. In CRPG, after playing one or two gens everybody should be able to use high end tier stuff.
I still think that the system could need a change, meaning basically a cap. Like I see it, the pre-patch system had one problematic issue, resulting in two major problems. The issue beeing, that at some point (maybe in not so far future) some players would reach an incredibly high generation. One resulting problem would be that these players could retire so fast, that they could spit out masterworks in maybe three days, or even less, since retiring goes faster and faster. For the player himself there is a natural cap, because he can equip only a certain amount of gear, which, I will say it again, is not op compared to players with normal stuff in my opinion. The problem occurs, when we look at strategus, where heirlooms maybe a valid currency to pay. Also, if it would be possible to trade heirlooms with other players or even sell them for gold, they could just equip their whole clan with heirlooms, and then maybe some friends and so on. The Servers could be flooded by looms, making the idea of it useless again, which is to reward people for investing time.
The other problem, which might occur, is thta at some point we would really have some op chars running around, not due to masterworks or lordly gear, but due to the additional amount of attribute points and skill points they gain over the casual player, when they make their final build. The thing is, that it doesnt even make sense to loom all your gear and then stop retiring and go for the final build, because with the xp bonus on each retirement u will reach lets say lvl 38 in much shorter time, if you first make lets say 20 more retirements, and then start ur final build, instead of starting Your final build immediately after heirlooming all the stuff You need. I hope I made the point clear.
So what does the new new xp system do? First change was a xp cap at 1450xp. I think that you wanted to solve the problems deccribed above by it. And somehow it does, because it will take a hell of a lot of time to heirloom all your used gear, and it will make reaching higher lvls than probably 34 nearls impossible, at leats if you dont count on still playing warband when your children have put you into an old peoples home. But two other things go with it: First thing is, you take away the possibility of tying out different types of builds for high gen players in a comfortable period of time, which is also another essential reward for spending alot of time on the game and is just fun - diversity. Secondly you take away the possibility to reach a lvl like 38, which some high gen players i spoke to were aiming for, away. Already pre patch it would have been so hard to reach alvl like this that realistically only a few players would have reached it probably. But it was possible. Making something difficult can be a high motivater, but making somtehing impossible can demotivate alot. So I think putting a xp cap at maybe 250 %(3000Xp at x1 prepatch) or even a little higher would have done the same thing without the negative side effects. The second change was setting the xp bonus to 3% instead of 10%. I really cant imagine what was the goal by doing that. What it does, it makes grinding more difficult for everyone, not balancing anything I can think of, not solving any problem there was prepatch. Or does it?
Instead it makes the gap between people who made 15+ gen prepatch and players who started just now or couldnt spend so much time even bigger, because those players now will need 10x the time to get to the cap than the others did prepatch. Is this intended?
This RPG is the only RPG I now of where leveling up/retiring is easier at a higher lvl/gen than on lower ones. Why not change that in a way like for example Kinngrimm suggested in this thread (,http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,4652.0.html) giving the new and a life having players a little buff instead?
So a full wipe or even a wipe every few months how it was suggested in some forum threads, will take away one of the highest motivators to play the game, at least for me. Also it would be a punch to the face for many who take an essential role in this community, because they are active, and I don't mean in playing but in writing guides, calculating gameplay mechanics and so on.
Of course they should be asked themselves, i only make assumptions, but I could imagine many rage quitting
Ok, thats it for now with my thoughts, I hope i didn't bore You too much if You made it till the end and please excuse my english. I am looking forward to the flames, the rage and to Your thoughts, especially concerning the classes I haven't played enough to make right assumptions.
Peace, StuLLe
