Resolved Increased shield area but same texture???

[Horatius]

So, I was looking at the perks again and noticed something which should never have been allowed in the game. The Shield Wall perk gives you 20% bigger block area against ranged.

There are 2 major issues with that;
1. The hitbox for ranged and melee differs? Why?
2. The texture stays the same but the hitbox increases. Meaning that or the texture must be wrong or the hitbox must be wrong, there is no discussion about it. Does an archer just have to guess and hope where the hitbox is, how should he know? As the visual is factually wrong.

How can this have reached the stable branch? How can you change a hitbox but not a texture? This boggles my mind.

 

[NIN3]

So, I was looking at the perks again and noticed something which should never have been allowed in the game. The Shield Wall perk gives you 20% bigger block area against ranged.

There are 2 major issues with that;
1. The hitbox for ranged and melee differs? Why?
2. The texture stays the same but the hitbox increases. Meaning that or the texture must be wrong or the hitbox must be wrong, there is no discussion about it. Does an archer just have to guess and hope where the hitbox is, how should he know? As the visual is factually wrong.

How can this have reached the stable branch? How can you change a hitbox but not a texture? This boggles my mind.

Both in Warband and in Bannerlord, the blocking area of shields for missiles is extended beyond the shields physics collider (texture as you put it). This perk increases that a little bit, but that feature already existed before.

Why are we doing it:
We can't expect a 100% directional input by the players for every incoming attack/missle. Being 100% accurate would mean that the players somehow need to be able to not only block in the correct direction, but also at the right angle with the weapon and the correct arm position. Which are things only some VR games really make players do. Or maybe QWOP lol

Instead, we assume that in real life someone holding a shield, would have a certain “radius” around where the shield is, where that someone could quickly/intuitively react and block incoming attacks. Putting that input into the responsibility of the players would add a crazy new layer to our combat gameplay and complicate it massively. I think this “wiggle room” is a fair thing to put into the hands of the game/character and not the players.

So this "force field" / "wiggle room" around your shield, simulates the minuscule adjustments your character does as a reaction to incoming threats.

Edit:
Why does the melee and ranged hitbox differ?
By nature in M&B the blocking cones need to be bigger than the actual mesh (shield, sword etc.), since we can't expect a 100% directional input by the players for every incoming attack. We are using a 4 directional combat system and not something like other games have tried and failed to pull off, where you could attack from any direction, 360 degrees.

Our weapons have blocking cones, those define the areas they are blocking incoming attacks from. Since we have different sizes of shields and weapons, we would need a custom block cone for every one of them, making it so you would have to basically relearn blocking with every new weapon you pick up. It would totally shake up the game balance as well and in the end it would actually feel less consistent. So no matter what your weapon is, or what shape your shield is, the blocking cone stays consitent inside the weapons class.

Blocking with shields already is harder than in warband (since we have directional blocking with it as well now to a degree) and there is no balance reason to punish shield users additionally and make the game unnecessarily harder in that regard.

 

[Horatius]

Both in Warband and in Bannerlord, the blocking area of shields for missiles is extended beyond the shields physics collider (texture as you put it). This perk increases that a little bit, but that feature already existed before.

Why are we doing it:
We can't expect a 100% directional input by the players for every incoming attack/missle. Being 100% accurate would mean that the players somehow need to be able to not only block in the correct direction, but also at the right angle with the weapon and the correct arm position. Which are things only some VR games really make players do. Or maybe QWOP lol

Instead, we assume that in real life someone holding a shield, would have a certain “radius” around where the shield is, where that someone could quickly/intuitively react and block incoming attacks. Putting that input into the responsibility of the players would add a crazy new layer to our combat gameplay and complicate it massively. I think this “wiggle room” is a fair thing to put into the hands of the game/character and not the players.

So this "force field" / "wiggle room" around your shield, simulates the minuscule adjustments your character does as a reaction to incoming threats.

Firstly, thanks for your elaborate explanation. These are unfortunately a bit rare but do help a lot.

I never did think about it, and I would say it is very reasonable and well thought out except for one thing. I assume that this behaviour is the same for all shields, and that this "ghost range" is consistent. The problem I have that because you use the same texture but change the "ghost hitbox" you lose that consistency. As an archer that consistency can be expected and you can shoot around it, but now there is no consistency.

So, by increasing it for ranged but not melee you create an inconsistency, because if you increase the texture area then melee doesn't quite fit but if you don't then ranged doesn't quite fit.
For me, the current situation is not an option because 2 different items have the same texture which should just never happen. There are two workable solutions I think:
1: Use a different texture to accommodate for this inconsistency and allow players to get used to it, also gives more visual variation which TW is searching for.
2: Increase the texture size, for this to happen you also must increase the melee hitbox I suspect. If this method is chosen, I would still prefer if some visual representation of this would be added..

 

[NIN3]

I assume that this behaviour is the same for all shields, and that this "ghost range" is consistent.

Yes it is consitent between the shields.

I agree with the rest, will go over the perk when I find the time!