First things first, I find M&B to be THE BEST medieval combat game out there, with the most physics based mechanics, and the most skilled combat. I have been playing M&B for around a year or two now, and CRPG for around 2-3 months. Despite the high level of physics in the mechanics and the overall good state of balance between weapons, armor, etc....I have noticed something over time that is not 100% well balanced for gameplay and also coincidentally it is not physics accurate either.
1 - The Issue
I find that as weapon weight (and generally damage) increase, this tends to decrease the weapon's speed rating, and might even make them "imbalanced" which from what Ive gathered just makes it so that once you get to a certain point in a swing with those weapons, you have to finish the swing - so it makes feinting with imbalanced weapons more difficult. It seems that a reduced weapon speed may make you swing slightly slower than that of a faster weapon, but ultimately does not seem to have the impact that one would think when it comes to the much heavier weapons.
When facing someone with a poleaxe or great axe, they can generally swing, parry, then quickly swing again at almost the same rate as someone with lets say a bastard sword or longsword - both much lighter and faster weapons. It seems although the swing might be slightly slower, there is no "recovery" time associated with wielding such a large, weighty, sometimes imbalanced, weapon.
2 - The Solution?
It seems that perhaps weapon speed is doing its job in most cases, however, where it seems to be breaking down is in the heavier, longer, more powerful weapons. The speed difference between a quick 1 hander and a longsword seem accurate, as do those between a longsword and a greatsword. Where things seem to be not scaling properly is when it comes to things such as poleaxes, great axes, bardiches, flambergs, etc - weapons with exceeding length/weight/dmg to them.
And what seems inaccurate about them is not their speed but their RECOVERY TIME.
The more weight a weapon has in its percussion zone, the more dmg it can inflict, but it also is going to be more unwieldy because of the added INERTIA involved. If someone swings a large poleaxe across their body, it is going to take a bit of effort and time to get that weapon back under control and in a position where it is poised to create another attack or parry maneuver. It seems the game is taking weight into account but not distribution of weight. A heavy weapon like that has its weight at the end of it, away from your body, meaning its going to take more strength and time to "wrangle in".
** Perhaps weapons over a certain length or weight need to have an additional penalty applied to them, or maybe this penalty is made across the board and of course it scales in such a way that naturally heavier and more weight imbalanced weapons have more and more of a "recovery time" due to inertia that adds even split seconds of time between their actions.
3 - The Results
This sort of change is NOT in the hopes of making it so that heavy 2handed weapon users are at a loss. It is NOT the intent that they should have 1 swing and then be eaten alive by those with quicker weapons. The hope would be for a small tweak across the board that would make these heavy, imbalanced, longer and more damaging weapons more of a choice with a slightly more significant trade off to them. If you have a greataxe and you hit someone, that person is dead - flat out. The trade off to that should be that you have to be careful and calculated with that swing, make it count - because its somewhat of a commitment when you swing because of the inertia in the swing of a long and end heavy weapon will make it somewhat hard to turn and then recover with another swing or parry.
I feel this would be better for GAME PLAY BALANCE as well as being more physics accurate (which in and of itself is not important to gameplay, but I usually find a basis of physics makes for good gameplay a lot of the time).
Using those weapons would still be a great choice, but a choice that has more pro vs con like any other weapon. The pro of a longsword is it is fast and agile, the con is it is shorter than other 2h swords and does less dmg. The pro of a heavy long weapon is range and pure damage output, and the con should be this increased "recovery time" between actions made with that weapon. It is there in the mechanics right now, but I don't think it scales properly past a certain point in the weight and speed rates.
4 - Alt Idea
Another idea which I won't flush out much, is to have a "short term fatigue bar" like Mortal Online has. This would be more influenced by heavier weapons of course and would cut down on spam across the board. It should be balanced so that it isn't a noticeable change from now unless one is spamming a heavy weapon or super spamming a light weapon. Perhaps strength and athletics could add a bit to your fatigue bar.
Im sure stuff like this has been posted, but I couldnt find anything quite like what I was thinking.
