Yeah pretty much exactly what you said. Ballistas and catapults just piss me off, but I can see why they were added. They want to appeal to a casual playerbase, give someone something to do even if they suck. I'm OK with that mechanic being ballistas/catapults/horses/archery, considering that FPS games in particular have solved the casual-appeal issue with some really retarded gimmicks (TF2 critical hits for example) that affect the actual combat itself. And thankfully archery is pretty shitty in Mordhau, what with the chase mechanic (something cRPG could've really used) and slow moving, parriable projectiles, lowish damage and heal on kill often completely negating archery damage.
I think Skirmish is the best mode, outside of duel. It's just a shame it's very simple and small-scale. Like you said they've got the hard parts down, which is why it's a bit frustrating they won't do some simple tweaks to Skirmish to make it a really great game mode, much better than the TDM-like Frontline. And on some maps, like Grad, it actually already gets close to cRPG battle. If there were Grad-only servers, I'd play Skirmish a lot more. But most of the maps are way too small.
Two game modes in the works right now are King of the Hill and Push:
https://mordhau.com/forum/topic/17102/new-gamemodes-in-the-work-koth-push/Asymmetric game modes like Push could be fun, but I really think one-life game modes are where it's at. They change the pace. You can flank, you can have skirmishes on the outskirts and big battles in the middle, etc. In the respawn modes, you can flank but you'll have a new wave on your ass almost immediately, so it devolves into TDM often. Still, Frontline can be fun for an hour or so now and then, but it doesn't have the depth to keep me playing.
Cav does seem really strong, but I don't know if it's OP. I just ignore it until I get lanced in the back while in a fight with people, just like in cRPG. Fun and interactive. At least it doesn't knock you down in Mordhau. Billhook also seems like a hard counter, the alt mode will pull riders off of the horse in one hit. Of course, again, in chaotic respawn modes like Frontline there isn't really any incentive for some people to guard the main body of teammates from cav with billhooks, like there would be in cRPG battle style mode.
Sensitivity is hard-capped when you swing, increasing DPI or in-game sensitivity does nothing. For drags, slower is faster. It's actually hard to move your mouse slow enough to get the maximum effect from drags. At least I instinctively tried to move my mouse too fast away from the target for a really long time, and that just means your drag is going to be bad. Try starting a swing, and during the grunt try to drag by moving your mouse as fast as possible. Your camera's going to move like 10 degrees. Then try it slow and steady. You'll go like 90 degrees. In other words, try staying just below the sensitivity cap, and you'll have the most freedom of movement during swings. I think that's probably more difficult with high sens, because you go from this super sensitive mouse to a mouse you want to move veeeeery slowly during swinging. And the sensitivity cap is really low, so your sensitivity shouldn't be a negative at all. Great drags are really hard, mine actually sucked and never caught anyone decent until like two days ago when I figured them out better, so my offense was mostly based on accels and feints. Harder for the opponent to distinguish between an accel and a drag, though.
And for accels it doesn't matter what your sens is, as long as you can reasonable look around. This, for example, is about the hardest accel you can do:
https://youtu.be/skyY_8VC9KI?t=7A riposte overhead, where my camera's already positioned before the swing begins. Only way I could accel it harder would be by crouching. All other hard accels start with your camera already being in position when the swing starts, too. Sensitivity has no effect. If you start from neutral, i.e., aiming at the enemy, you're still only going to be moving your mouse a little for the accel after the grunt, much less than with a drag.
Protip: make use of ripostes early on. I was a retard and barely knew they existed for like 60 hours.
And re: drags:
https://youtu.be/3PcN2bbmrX8?t=25https://youtu.be/skyY_8VC9KI?t=16These are the same attack, except in the first example my drags were still shit, and my opponent would've block this epic drag even if he parried for an accel. In the second, it's both harder to read and impossible to block with the same timing as you'd block an accel. Subtle difference in how they look, but very important. That's why good drags are so difficult to master, it's literally a matter of milliseconds, so not hitting the sens cap by moving your mouse too fast is really important.
