Vanilla damage model is just so bad

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Arkyll

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Just tried native again after playing a heavily modded campaign with the RBM mod and holy crap the damage model is so bad. Easily inferior to Warbands.

Units are simultaneously squishy and spongey at the same damn time.

High tier units die way too easily and low tier units are too tanky.
It feels like low tier trash and expensive high tier troops take about as much punishment. So often I hack into a looter only for him to brush off the hit like it was nothing. I feel like my high quality blade should one shot arguably the worst unit in the game. At the same time though, well armoured soldiers feel too easy to kill. Even at the start with simple weaponry it only takes a few hits to take one of the toughest soldiers down. The damage is all over the place, and damage reduction for armour is clearly not substantial enough.
On the whole, your weapon often doesn't the amount of damage you expect it to.

The game is simultaneously too easy and too hard and frustrating because of this.

One on the one hand, tournaments are a breeze because you are never threatened by anyone, and it makes battles frustrating because at any moment you could get taken out of the fight in a single hit (possibly from across the map) and be forced to watch smooth-brained bots bash eachother for the remaining 5 minutes.

I am actually beginning to miss those degenerate tournament champions who can hack at me faster than I can parry and strike, and I miss being forced to run away from those top tier troops with armour you can barely put a dent in.
There is also never a stage where you get to become a tank yourself for putting in all these hours into your campaign.
You are slightly less squishy after spending 500,000 on a peice of Armour harder to find than the ark of the covenant.

On vanilla I have found it a necessity to reduce damage to player for me to actually enjoy the game. This shouldnt be the case.
Armour and damage are what put me off the game on release and it is still a problem for me and many other players a year later.
 
I feel as if I'm the only one that hasn't bothered to touch any mods at all.

The most staunch defenders of this game and on this forum will use every slick and slide imaginable to convince how this game isn't bad. whilst all using their sugar-coated mods to escape them from the reality that is the state of this game.

I bet you for everyone that is the above, they couldn't even put 1/5 of the time they play if there wasn't any mods.

if mods are needed to actually enjoy and fix the core gameplay, then that is not the appraisal of Taleworld's, it's the appraisal of the modder. a game is NOT good if it needs MOD's to be GOOD.

holy crap the damage model is so bad. Easily inferior to Warbands.
the biggest offender of this is the damage model. it's bad. it's really bad. and that's one of the many aspects of the vanilla's butchered loop.
 
Yes it is. Better just use mods, i wouldn't count on this ever being fixed. Realistic battles mod takes it a bit too far in my opinion, but it's still better than vanilla.
 
Honestly tl;dr

Vanilla damage model ****ing sucks
The armour feels so arbitrary at times

Your units either get 1 tapped by archers a mile away or you're sitting there while some guy tanks 20 blunt hits

At least in Warband armour did what its only purpose is supposed to do and protected you
 
I don't use any mods and I agree the damage is bananas and high/low tier troops are too similar in actually effectiveness. A Dev did say that they plan to make them more differant in power and also that armor is going to be changed. That was awhile ago now though (can't remember which thread) so let hope it didn't end up being too complicated :razz:

Horse archery and horse archers forever.
 
Damage balance is also a question of taste and gaming pace.
Some people may need a slow pace and strategical battle while others may desire quick and intense battles.
The question is to decide where to put the line to satisfy as much people as possible.
Mods will allow further customization, for more specific needs (more realistic, "superman" mode, etc...).
 
Damage balance is also a question of taste and gaming pace.
Some people may need a slow pace and strategical battle while others may desire quick and intense battles.
The question is to decide where to put the line to satisfy as much people as possible.
Mods will allow further customization, for more specific needs (more realistic, "superman" mode, etc...).
This is true. Back in Warband days, mods had different feels to armor. Gekokujo and L'aigle were more squishy compared to ACOK or Pendor, but they were designed to be more "recruit a lot lose a lot" kind of mod, which wasn't a bad feel in any way. This is also how I see Bannerlord. It's certainly more squishy but I wouldn't call it broken. I simply see it as another "recruit a lot lose a lot" kind of games, and with how easy it is to upgrade troops (even the cavs), I have no problem with that. I just finished a rough war with the Southern Empire and I only lost 60 men for the whole of it. I got like 160k for it, and now I'm using that money to recruit, upgrade and buy horses.
 
JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)

I will see posts like yours for years to come and I know for sure.
And the reason behind these posts is that they tell the truth but do not highlight the causes of the problem but only the symptoms (obviously not required, but the risk is not to immediately highlight the cause).
I have highlighted the cause for some time (and not only on this game) and the solution is as clear as it is "laborious".

The current armor system is not a REALISTIC system of "covering the hurtboxes" because in reality an incomplete armor does not cover every part of the body.
So in reality where you are not covered you suffer heavy wounds and where you are almost nothing (it depends on the type of armor and weapon, but if we assume that the armor is plate or chainmail certainly no stab wounds appear. ).

In the game, however, the current system covers all the hurtboxes and associates them with a numerical value that reduces the damage suffered.
Obviously the player will try to buy the equipment to cover them all and would have no reason to leave any uncovered.
But if we had armor that gave very high protection in game we would have a character who, even if he was hit, would have to receive many hits to die and such hits, although the damage location is present, are irrelevant to where they are inflicted, given the great armor value that is generally worn on us.

So the post I wrote suggests an armor system that increases such hurtboxes (and therefore the armor pieces) but "some are not coverable and are smaller than others".
and with the premise that:
the armor value must be much higher than the current one (but depending on the type of armor)
These results are obtained:
A) if a character is not very covered then it is easy to hit him and seriously injure him.
B) if a character is covered enough and you hit him where he is wearing pieces of heavy armor, he will suffer very little damage, while hitting him in open areas will inflict a lot of damage.
C) if he is heavily covered up, there are those "uncovered hurtboxes" that I mentioned earlier and called "joint hurtboxes" that can be affected.
They obviously require better aim to hit.

Furthermore, this system solves many problems related to the relationship with units armed with ranged weapons.

In fact, in the vanilla game a character with full armor and a 2-handed sword (no shield therefore) could not approach an archer without having a bad end before reaching him.
(which also happens to heavy cavalry).
With the changes expressed above instead a heavily protected soldier would have 2 different situations in front of him:
1) at a great distance being hit depends on the probability that the arrow hits a hurtboxes and this probability depends on the area that such uncovered hurtboxes offer compared to the total area in which the arrow flies (the projection of the arrow cone on the plane containing the axis of vertical symmetry of the soldier in full armor).
therefore the more the arrow has a broad cone, the more the total area increases and therefore the ratio of the area of the hurtboxes and the total area becomes smaller and therefore a lower probability.

In the case of several soldiers from a distance, then we can assume that the projection of the arrow cone is completely covered by one of the soldiers, so the probability of a soldier being hit is equal to the ratio between his own uncovered areas and his total area offered.

2)On the other hand, from proximity everything depends on the archer's aim in knowing how to hit those small and uncovered hurtboxes while the soldier moves a bit in a zig zag.

So in summary:
distance is a question of "realistic" probability
proximity depends on the archer's aim and the unpredictability of the soldier's movements.
 
RBM takes the damage too far with heavy equipment for my taste, but it does feel infinitely better than native overall.

On the topic of battle duration, you can have quick battles with more balanced damage values as well. The time units spend killing low tier trash being reduced and compensating for the time needed to kill more elite units. The one occasion where a battle might be longer is when there are a lot of higher tier troops, which is a good thing because it makes the battle stand out.

I modded Warband by buffing armour and spears so that units could take a few more hits., well guess what? It didn't result in 20 minute battles, in fact they were 2 minutes longer than native for the same numbers, max.
 
Supposedly, devs are working on some kind of fix for this?! I can't remember correctly. But with the amount of threads and complains about the current state of armor I would assume so. I guess we will have to wait and see, as there is no communication from devs.
 
I don't use any mods and I'm fine with the damage model. Though to be fair, I'm good at doing battles.

what a stupid response: "Im GoOd aT dOiNg BatTLES" - LOL. This doesn't speak to the criticism made by the OP, its literally just a knee jerk fanboy response that doesn't even make any sense.

Saying you're good at battles in Bannerlord is like saying your good at children's coloring books. I just don't understand the brains of people who post garbage like this.
 
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Yes it is bad and you can see the code side by side, it's inferior to warband in every way.

And to those saying it's fine, do you think it's fine that the best armor the game has to offer will only mitigate around 40% damage? that's like receiving 100 damage naked but "only" 60 damage with the best armor, you'll still die in two-three hits maximum and so will your veteran troops falling like flies.

Also, do you think it's fine that blunt ignores 100% of your armor? that's exactly it, naked or clad head to toe in maille and lamellar a blunt weapon will hit you just the same.

 
what a stupid response: "Im GoOd aT dOiNg BatTLES" - LOL. This doesn't speak to the criticism made by the OP, its literally just a knee jerk fanboy response that doesn't even make any sense.

Saying you're good at battles in Bannerlord is like saying your good at coloring books. I just don't understand the brains of people who post garbage like this.
Actually, coloring books is a true passion for a lot of persons and different levels exist.
At some point it needs a lot of patience, concentration and dexterity...
But i guess it is not what you actually meant with your very kind post...
 
Damage balance is also a question of taste and gaming pace.
Some people may need a slow pace and strategical battle while others may desire quick and intense battles.
The question is to decide where to put the line to satisfy as much people as possible.
Mods will allow further customization, for more specific needs (more realistic, "superman" mode, etc...).
Maybe they could have realistic and arcade (current) mode like warthunder have, so both parties would be happy?
 
Maybe they could have realistic and arcade (current) mode like warthunder have, so both parties would be happy?
I don't know that game so I can't tell how efficient is this option, but it seems like a possible solution.
We know that they are developping the game for multiple platform (unfortunatelly...) and this kind of option could allow to satisfy a wider range of players.
Obviously on console the experience will be arcade and on PC we could have the choice between realistic and arcade.
 
JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)

I will see posts like yours for years to come and I know for sure.
And the reason behind these posts is that they tell the truth but do not highlight the causes of the problem but only the symptoms (obviously not required, but the risk is not to immediately highlight the cause).
I have highlighted the cause for some time (and not only on this game) and the solution is as clear as it is "laborious".

The current armor system is not a REALISTIC system of "covering the hurtboxes" because in reality an incomplete armor does not cover every part of the body.
So in reality where you are not covered you suffer heavy wounds and where you are almost nothing (it depends on the type of armor and weapon, but if we assume that the armor is plate or chainmail certainly no stab wounds appear. ).

In the game, however, the current system covers all the hurtboxes and associates them with a numerical value that reduces the damage suffered.
Obviously the player will try to buy the equipment to cover them all and would have no reason to leave any uncovered.
But if we had armor that gave very high protection in game we would have a character who, even if he was hit, would have to receive many hits to die and such hits, although the damage location is present, are irrelevant to where they are inflicted, given the great armor value that is generally worn on us.

So the post I wrote suggests an armor system that increases such hurtboxes (and therefore the armor pieces) but "some are not coverable and are smaller than others".
and with the premise that:
the armor value must be much higher than the current one (but depending on the type of armor)
These results are obtained:
A) if a character is not very covered then it is easy to hit him and seriously injure him.
B) if a character is covered enough and you hit him where he is wearing pieces of heavy armor, he will suffer very little damage, while hitting him in open areas will inflict a lot of damage.
C) if he is heavily covered up, there are those "uncovered hurtboxes" that I mentioned earlier and called "joint hurtboxes" that can be affected.
They obviously require better aim to hit.

Furthermore, this system solves many problems related to the relationship with units armed with ranged weapons.

In fact, in the vanilla game a character with full armor and a 2-handed sword (no shield therefore) could not approach an archer without having a bad end before reaching him.
(which also happens to heavy cavalry).
With the changes expressed above instead a heavily protected soldier would have 2 different situations in front of him:
1) at a great distance being hit depends on the probability that the arrow hits a hurtboxes and this probability depends on the area that such uncovered hurtboxes offer compared to the total area in which the arrow flies (the projection of the arrow cone on the plane containing the axis of vertical symmetry of the soldier in full armor).
therefore the more the arrow has a broad cone, the more the total area increases and therefore the ratio of the area of the hurtboxes and the total area becomes smaller and therefore a lower probability.

In the case of several soldiers from a distance, then we can assume that the projection of the arrow cone is completely covered by one of the soldiers, so the probability of a soldier being hit is equal to the ratio between his own uncovered areas and his total area offered.

2)On the other hand, from proximity everything depends on the archer's aim in knowing how to hit those small and uncovered hurtboxes while the soldier moves a bit in a zig zag.

So in summary:
distance is a question of "realistic" probability
proximity depends on the archer's aim and the unpredictability of the soldier's movements.
Your suggestion is correct, however implementation would require making entire combat system bit more complex (for example at least more direction of cuts just like IRL or in Jedi Academy or Kingdom Come). Again I support that aswell because I find Mount and Blade very symplistic and just servicable, however this already would cause uproar with conservative WB inherited playerbase. Once this is done, hitboxes for stuff like face, armpits etc could be added, however hitboxes would have to be reworked because currently they are inflated bubbles that overlap which makes stuff like angle based armor bouncing impossible (we know this because we attempted this) and sometimes puts hitboxes on wrong places (just try to find neck hitbox by shooting your soldiers, its much lower than you expect).

All of this would require company that is not afraid of "complex" and that welcome challange. Which if you spent some time on this forum, you already know is not the case of TW.
 
Hitboxes won´t come, no matter how good they would be. Don´t get me wrong, i like the suggestion, but also see what needs to be done.
Thats just to much effort in the current phase of the EA(think of all the armors they have added since release). I think that they will change some values in the armoreffectiveness and add a soaking factor based on the material or "appearance" of the armor. It would make more sense to the "appearance", since this number is also a big indicator for the high prices of high end armor. The material is just for the "sound" as far as i was informed....(for whatever reason)
 
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