Hello there, do you have the time to talk about the spears?
Well, it does feel a bit better than in Warband. I'll give you that. But it's still unusable if your opponent knows how to block on a less-than-average level. Let's discuss this.
So this is what happened:
I tried out using the spear in multiplayer, in team deathmatch. Needless to say, it wasn't usable. You could get some kills, but most were stabbed at unsuspecting cavalrymen charging through, and the only times I could kill anyone in a 1v1 scenario was when there were new players who would go for simple up-down feints. Anyone who knew a bit what they were doing, just walked up to me, easily blocking anything and just spammed me to death with a proper weapon until I just couldn't block after an extended period of time, or my spear got stuck somewhere or I tried thrusting from a reasonable distance and it did maybe 9 damage and didn't stun the attacker. When I played with something actually usable like a sword or axe, it was easy to get a lot of kills. This makes it clear it's not about player skill.
What is the problem?
Is it good for some weapon to be completely useless compared to other weapons? Is it good that it's the most used weapon in history before firearms were invented? Ok so here's pinpointed what I feel like the actual issue is:
- The spear bounces off way too easily, and way too far from you. Try to think of it this way. If you were holding a knife in front of you, and you were really close to someone in front of them, would you have to try to swing your arm back and forth relentlessly to make the knife penetrate them? No. It would be enough to just push forward with your body slowly and the blade would sink into them. In swings it's completely reasonable to have the bouncing effect for bad impact. Afterall, you wouldn't be able to cut wood for example, if you didn't put enough motion into your swing. For this reason the distance required for a stab with good damage should be made way shorter. An exception would be extra long pikes. But for short and medium length spears should be reduced. Also the way they get stuck behind you is just dumb and at best useless, fun killing "realism".
- The way you can only stab in two directions. Yes it kinda makes sense, but it just doesn't work in Bannerlord where all other weapons can hit from four directions. What I'm suggesting is side stabs for spears. Left side stab animation when using a spear 1-handed would be as follows:
It'd be similar to a low stab while stabbing two handed. But the character would have his right hand in front and left in back, while holding the spear on the left side of him. And of course he would stab with his right hand, a bit from left to right. The right stab would be pretty similar to the normal low stab, but with the arm a bit more extended out to the right. (I'm probably going to add a very simple picture showing this off as a link at some point).
This would make a big difference as you could actually fight someone with a spear. Other than just try to cheese backstabs on someone.
- They just don't do enough damage and are too slow at the moment. A regular short spear in multiplayer does like 25 pierce damage (as in stats). The maximum amount you can do against a footman with a spear is an absolute maximum of something around 70 damage. That sounds pretty good, but it isn't. And here's why:
You need to run at the enemy while he's running at you, you need to hit him straight in the head with a clean thrust from the exact right distance, and then he needs to be wearing pretty much no armor. Some random 1-handed sword does at least 100+ damage in such perfect scenarios, instakilling people with no armor. Add in that a 1-hander has it much easier hitting someone with force and in the head due to the fact that he's swinging in a wide arc, and you start to see the problem.
So tell me what you think.
Well, it does feel a bit better than in Warband. I'll give you that. But it's still unusable if your opponent knows how to block on a less-than-average level. Let's discuss this.
So this is what happened:
I tried out using the spear in multiplayer, in team deathmatch. Needless to say, it wasn't usable. You could get some kills, but most were stabbed at unsuspecting cavalrymen charging through, and the only times I could kill anyone in a 1v1 scenario was when there were new players who would go for simple up-down feints. Anyone who knew a bit what they were doing, just walked up to me, easily blocking anything and just spammed me to death with a proper weapon until I just couldn't block after an extended period of time, or my spear got stuck somewhere or I tried thrusting from a reasonable distance and it did maybe 9 damage and didn't stun the attacker. When I played with something actually usable like a sword or axe, it was easy to get a lot of kills. This makes it clear it's not about player skill.
What is the problem?
Is it good for some weapon to be completely useless compared to other weapons? Is it good that it's the most used weapon in history before firearms were invented? Ok so here's pinpointed what I feel like the actual issue is:
- The spear bounces off way too easily, and way too far from you. Try to think of it this way. If you were holding a knife in front of you, and you were really close to someone in front of them, would you have to try to swing your arm back and forth relentlessly to make the knife penetrate them? No. It would be enough to just push forward with your body slowly and the blade would sink into them. In swings it's completely reasonable to have the bouncing effect for bad impact. Afterall, you wouldn't be able to cut wood for example, if you didn't put enough motion into your swing. For this reason the distance required for a stab with good damage should be made way shorter. An exception would be extra long pikes. But for short and medium length spears should be reduced. Also the way they get stuck behind you is just dumb and at best useless, fun killing "realism".
- The way you can only stab in two directions. Yes it kinda makes sense, but it just doesn't work in Bannerlord where all other weapons can hit from four directions. What I'm suggesting is side stabs for spears. Left side stab animation when using a spear 1-handed would be as follows:
It'd be similar to a low stab while stabbing two handed. But the character would have his right hand in front and left in back, while holding the spear on the left side of him. And of course he would stab with his right hand, a bit from left to right. The right stab would be pretty similar to the normal low stab, but with the arm a bit more extended out to the right. (I'm probably going to add a very simple picture showing this off as a link at some point).
This would make a big difference as you could actually fight someone with a spear. Other than just try to cheese backstabs on someone.
- They just don't do enough damage and are too slow at the moment. A regular short spear in multiplayer does like 25 pierce damage (as in stats). The maximum amount you can do against a footman with a spear is an absolute maximum of something around 70 damage. That sounds pretty good, but it isn't. And here's why:
You need to run at the enemy while he's running at you, you need to hit him straight in the head with a clean thrust from the exact right distance, and then he needs to be wearing pretty much no armor. Some random 1-handed sword does at least 100+ damage in such perfect scenarios, instakilling people with no armor. Add in that a 1-hander has it much easier hitting someone with force and in the head due to the fact that he's swinging in a wide arc, and you start to see the problem.
So tell me what you think.