Can't agree more, for someone that's been playing this game since the beta, I feel captain mode was murdered, the faction balancing , the weapon nerfing, the complete destruction of the bow, crossbow and throwables enjoyment overall, removed perks that just create more problems ( removal of the spear and pike from archer/crossbow units facilitated rambo cav ).
All because the TW leadership is on their quest to make Bannerlord a medieval esports CS.GO and they think the Skimish scene should be on a golden pedestal, they bend the knee to skirmish players demands without testing it properly, if they tested it correctly they would have seen how game breaking some of this updates and nerfing would be.
The nerfing of the crossbow and bows made this units more slow, inaccurate and irresponsive, same goes for the skirmish units.
I used to love play archer class but I haven't been able to use them for months, since it only takes 1 rambo cav player and 1 guy with a shield to break my entire unit.
* Aserai still a joke, underpowered, defenseless , unprotected and outmatched in almost every aspect, The point of the Aserai faction was the ability to be fast and use their skimish units for their advantage, but since the throwing weapons got so badly nerfed the innaccuracy is unreal and the Bot A.I is not the best.
* Empire was nerfed so badly that they're now a meme, destroyed by every faction , menavs and their legios used to rival vlandia and sturgia infantry, not anymore. Menav got so nerfed that if you put 1 unit of peasants in front of menavs, the peasants will destroy the menavs, not because they're a better unit, but because for the time it takes for the bot to lift his menav and make a full swing the entire unit was wiped out.
* Battania was the only faction overall that improved but they still got their maces and hammers nerfed like crap, so it made oaths and savages with those perks slow af (Battania cav still a joke).
* Sturgia feels like the only faction that didn't get affected by all this nerfing but they used to be more powerful and deadly.
* Vlandia still good but... the peasants and the crossbows are useless now, the sergeants got nerfed and they suck compared to the khuzait spear inf (they have almost the same stats as khuzait spear but they underperform ), the volgiers and the knights are the only real threat.
* And the finally the power house, Khuzait, the most OP faction right now, and not for the reason you think... (no one is using those horse archers, they suck), they use lancers instead, one rambo lancer with glaive can wipe out 1-2 units of archers/skirmish by himself, can also destroy the entire enemy cav and if his good enough he can wipe out the infantry too.
Spear infantry and rabble are so good compared all the other factions underperforming infantrys (pls don't nerf them, they're great as they are, fix the other factions to somehow match khuzait).
I had more fun playing the game during the beta and the first 2 months after release than right now.
I used to love how shooting the bow and the crossbow felt, it was responsive, fun and easy to use ... the throwing weapons used to feel accurate compared to Warband. People that didn't really use this weapons on Warband started using them since they're easy to use and there was not much skill necessary, right now you have to be legolas to land a shot , and making everything unnecessarily hard, slow and unresponsive will only drive people away.
And after all this nerfing to the weapons and to the factions, what's really killing the mode is the lack of fixes to the existing problems, also the players are getting bored of playing the same maps over and over.
But I do believe all this problems will be fixed when the players have their private servers, since they can make their own fixes/nerfing and create new maps.