Battle is now infested by endless bundle of sticksry, though it's what I play 90% of the time. (Because I'm masochistic??) I guess I get more pleasure from killing min-maxers, cav my old friends, all kinds of ranged.. ! Killing scrubs on siege doesn't give me a lot. Battle has 1 thing and that is challenge!
Only reason I manage to survive is throwing, going medium armor/no shield is just murder. At least I can keep cav at bay, and throw shit to xbows and archers..
Why has Battle degenerated into a hardcore metagaming trollish nightmare? (for infantry)-- Skill levels in melee are much much higher.
-- This is pushing lots of players to go ranged or heavy cav. Or simply pushing melee to siege, so what we have left on battle is ranged and cav.
-- Ranged classes are still too easy. Especially xbow. (My lvl15 alt with no looms does fine with a heavy xbow)
-- Cav is too powerful, especially the bump mechanic, long 1handers with speedbonus etc..
What's the medicine? (just my opinion..)-- Make ranged harder, aka nerf them somehow. Especially xbows who have a way too easy time. Hide'n reload, point and click.
-- Cav is by nature OP compared to Inf, and is only fully utilized by a very minority of players.
They could be safely nerfed, leaving only people with brains to do well with them. 1 grain of teamwork makes them vastly more powerful i.ex. (Like, I saw Tommy and 1 more do a nice sandwich against 5 enemies yesterday.. Bumped half of them, killed 2 outright and survived.)
About a specific cav nerf, I think adjusting the maneuverability of horses would do a lot. This would make sure they travel in more predictable paths, can't turn on a dime, and will generally force them to teamwork more, aka bump trains, sandwiching, timing their charge etc.