Crush through is taking skill out of the fight and giving the person who brings one of a few specific weapons free hits just because this is somehow a fun mechanic for everyone.
I'm convinced the developers never bothered to consider how frustrating it is to have a relatively short two-handed weapon (e.g. bardiche), and because you don't have a shield (which doesn't break in one hit--everyone gets one which is only useful against ranged weapons in this recent patch) it's impossible to approach someone with a longer two-handed weapon (heavy menavlion as an example) safely. When I played this patch in beta, in multiple circumstances I got crushed through by people with menavlion while trying to approach them with a shorter 2h, and blocking in the correct direction (up); in those cases, with a shorter weapon, I had no recourse to deal with that problem beyond running away and trying to find a shield. The fact that I might be able to block and not get crushed through is an unpleasant gamble, I don't have a clear choice between whether or not I should drop my block and be as evasive as possible to avoid the overhead hit, and I don't have a reliable chance at blocking.
In Warband the only weapons which had crush through could be reliably spammed against--i.e. hit again almost immediately after your attack was blocked--if you reacted quickly enough, and in the case of the maul it also had a very short range which was important in making the weapon less ridiculous to deal with. In my experience there was enough time to actually react specifically to attack instead of blocking if your opponent was attacking overhead, and readjust to a sideblock if they were attacking sideways and you initially attacked.
Edit: removed paragraph, see correction below.
Who in the community asked for this mechanic? There's a laundry list of features that you could add which would be universally appreciated, and instead a feature is implemented which arguably makes the game worse. I have no problem with people being able to toggle it on in the future, but don't make it a default setting when there's only a few official servers.
This would be less of a problem if there were already private servers and we could easily toggle on or off basic features like crush through or teamwounding. In the interim, don't force an unpleasant feature on everyone as a standard.
I'm convinced the developers never bothered to consider how frustrating it is to have a relatively short two-handed weapon (e.g. bardiche), and because you don't have a shield (which doesn't break in one hit--everyone gets one which is only useful against ranged weapons in this recent patch) it's impossible to approach someone with a longer two-handed weapon (heavy menavlion as an example) safely. When I played this patch in beta, in multiple circumstances I got crushed through by people with menavlion while trying to approach them with a shorter 2h, and blocking in the correct direction (up); in those cases, with a shorter weapon, I had no recourse to deal with that problem beyond running away and trying to find a shield. The fact that I might be able to block and not get crushed through is an unpleasant gamble, I don't have a clear choice between whether or not I should drop my block and be as evasive as possible to avoid the overhead hit, and I don't have a reliable chance at blocking.
In Warband the only weapons which had crush through could be reliably spammed against--i.e. hit again almost immediately after your attack was blocked--if you reacted quickly enough, and in the case of the maul it also had a very short range which was important in making the weapon less ridiculous to deal with. In my experience there was enough time to actually react specifically to attack instead of blocking if your opponent was attacking overhead, and readjust to a sideblock if they were attacking sideways and you initially attacked.
Edit: removed paragraph, see correction below.
Who in the community asked for this mechanic? There's a laundry list of features that you could add which would be universally appreciated, and instead a feature is implemented which arguably makes the game worse. I have no problem with people being able to toggle it on in the future, but don't make it a default setting when there's only a few official servers.
This would be less of a problem if there were already private servers and we could easily toggle on or off basic features like crush through or teamwounding. In the interim, don't force an unpleasant feature on everyone as a standard.
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