Recent content by Mikal Manfriedson

HalfMetalJacket said:

I find just increasing armour values does the trick well enough. Solves a lot of other problems too.

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I am with you on that. Make armor more protective (especially vs. thrown rocks). Have some ranged dedicated AP capabilities like javelins or heavy crossbows - that's what they are made for. A storm of arrows still should hurt badly armored troops and for the Khuzait...well...it is the way they fight: horseback and archery. It is effective, yes. See reality with golden horde. But eventually they were stopped - with ways we could have implemented in the game: internal squabbling, bad recruitment far from the homelands, fickle economy. Could prevent snowballing. But what do you expect as result when you have infantry and the enemy is riding around you on horseback peppering you with arrows?! Fair? No. But reason to call for a general nerf? I do not see that either. The answer must lie elsewhere. Either in efficient counter-tactics or gameplay-mechanisms that make Khuzait play a lot more different from other factions both allowing stuff no one can do but also preventing stuff everybody else can.

Well, in that case I would like a moderator to move this into the suggestions forum and change the title to
'Suggestion: change the way the perks 'giving hands' and 'paid in promise' work

@Apocal: I see the problem that those XP-giving things are mostly located in the stewardship tree already and making this tree even more useful than others.

Well...consider me at least content with a major update like this after lots of minor hotfixes. There are things addressed, where I was looking forward to them being fixed.
- Level impact on learning rate is such a thing and it makes me happy someone listened to the community
- fixing bugs in EA is bread and butter and bugs crashing the game have priority, correct. It is a complex game so I expect bugs to happen and as we see, they are squashed one by one. Takes time but better done late than never done leaving the game in a Gothic 3 state
- Optical improvements (scenes) have been made. I am ambivalent about this. Sure this is nice, but as pointed out very often by the community, villige scenes are mostly moot when you have a shortcut button. I must admit, that I am not encouraged by the game to enter a town or village if I totally do not need to. So currently this is invested time wasted unless there will be improvements on the importance of those scenes later. I give them credit on that matter for now.
- I see an improvement in terms of diplomacy as now map assets can be traded during truce talks if I understand the patch right
- UI changes look reasonable and seem to improve QoL
- Siege behavior seems to be improved. There are some subtle things added like grant "safe passage" to leave a lost siege at a cost.
- The changes done in character development department look reasonable with the best thing that the level influence is gone now. Finally not feeling cheated when levelling up! Still, progress there is slow as we still lack some playstyles like robber baron
- Changes done to the clan management are important as well as it seems to eliminate some exploits and adds some direly requested features like setting a cap for party wages or setting stance for parties. Small improvement, but important. Hoping to see more.
- Economy still is a bit lackluster but improvments have been made, albeit smaller ones
- Kingdom and Diplomacy have gotten some work as well. Cannot say much about this as I never am a king in my games. but I acknowledge that work has been done (and appreciate it)
- Quest fixes seem reasonable. Some still are meaningful, some..meh. I think I would now abandon Inn and Out quest as I do not like the minigames (yet)
- The other stuff is a random assortment of fixes and balances and corrections - bread and butter work during EA as well.

I will not talk about multiplayer as this is something I only sometimes do - besides the kick player option. I will watch closely where this is heading. If it leads to being trolled out of the game because you are not l33t enough for the ones playing 24/7 because they do not have many other things to do, then it is a terrible thing. Lesser skilled players still should be able to play and learn together with veterans and the latter ones not hogging the game for themselves. I hope this does not happen. Also I fear as archer you will be auto-kicked often if friendlies run into your targets and catch the arrows with their backs. I am ambivalent about that. Throwing weapon nerfs are terrible in my book...but this is only my opinion.

Conclusion: Happy to see movement. Still going too slow for my taste but then I am not sitting and working at Taleworlds and do not know how fast they work, who does what and what are the internal priorities. I still want to believe that the devs work on the game because they want it to happen. We are condemned to watch but still should refrain from toxicity. Read enough toxicity the last days (see EU4 DLC launch, HoI4 DLC announcement). Sometimes I think some of us gamers just are spoiled, entitled, immature brats who fling around words without caring to hurt someone. My grandma - god rest her soul - once said: "Cannot say something good about someone? Then better shut yer trap and stay silent!" - Words of wisdom. Concerns can be voiced reasonably and civil and we should keep it like this instead of ranting and memeing. Frankly? I could understand that in the devs position I would loath visiting the forum because I would need to read a lot of nasty things. And this is maybe one reason why good suggestions are overlooked. Can't find a pearl in a proverbial dungheap, right? So I feel empathy as a human. That does not say that I am content with the project's pace as a customer - indeed I am not as I paid a good chunk of money for a game still under development and lacking in some core areas. But at least I can be that fair and acknowledge progress and be a bit happy about it.

Mikal over and out

Its a hotfix. Captain AI improved and 2 bugs squashed, if I read correctly.

So they start with zero skill and no wargear then with the AI unable to change this, huh? Would make sense.

@Tryvenyal: I agree - this is a general problem that clan members lead parties who are not suitable to the task in terms of training, ability and wargear. I guess one reason COULD be, that every male character has a civillian clothing/war clothing as default for the AI nobles. I do not know whether this is true for all women depicted in the game. Rhagea has armor and wargear, Ira as well, but are there NPCs out there lacking wargear?

I think the real problem is people who think a certain point of view is the only viable and correct. We are taught, and in some countries first-handedly experienced that dictatorship is a bad idea and yet we fail to understand the limitations of democracy as well. Democracy also means delegating the decision-making of all to elected leaders. And if we elect leaders not knowledgeable in the fields we elect them for - this is on us, ain't it? Or they will call advisors for help and we don't object, do we?

Because we can reach agreement that none can simultaneously work for one's living AND decide every petty decision made in the country on different levels. We need to be aware of the point where ideology clashes with reality, logic, science and the ability to execute said ideology to the benefit of man. (And either by letter or in spiritu)

Discussions like these tend to chase their own tails because both parties have neutrally perceived valid arguments but because of ideological reasons none would give in to a good argument from the other side because it comes from the wrong side and not because it is wrong.

I am bored about this. Could we return to the original topic? There was something about AI putting female clan members as army leaders...
- without proper wargear and/or martial training (which is bad and should be mitigated)
- with death enabled (which would also be bad for male members)
- with a kind of "dynasty system" in place to keep a clan in the game because it produces heirs that will grow up and take over. Now here is the logic: mechanic-wise you need a male and female character and the condition "married" to produce offspring in the game. I guess after some time, the female will get the condition "pregnant" and will deliver a child later. Is it a good idea for a pregnant woman to be on a battlefield? So should we have a mechanism, that will forbid pregnant women to join fights? Frankly, I have yet to come to meet a woman that would tell me fighting while pregnant is a good idea and would feel oppressed, if would forbid here participating in such activities - she wouldn't do it anyways.

That said: do we perceive any problems gamewise (clans dying out) because of the status quo and should this be fixed in whatever way? Which way would be logical for the setting?

Fleshing out the neutral factions a bit. Maybe as quest-giver or for recruiting mercs. A trade rework with the ability to have non-combattants (caravan herders for instance) that can tend to more than 1 pack animal but will not fight. Castles and their use. Diplomacy. Roleplaying aspects. Sadly, this sums up, what people have thought this game would be all about. Now paying again for making it so has a bad taste...

I guess we all SHOULD remember still, that we fell for the honey-trap early access. The criticism is more than valid and I share it wholeheartedly. But still we need to remember the conditions we agreed upon participating in EA:

- game not ready and subject to change (so in fact they have a carté blanche to tell us how they want the game to be at the beginning and do something very different later)
- paid upfront in full with almost no chance of refund

If we are to really put a change to that, we might question ourselves a bit: "Why do we buy an unfinished product in the hope it will be to our palate?". "Can we even complain, if we do not like the current state of the game?" Because we are basically buying the proverbial pig in a poke (which is commonly used as a synonym for doing something stupid, customer-wise)

A company not doing EA is forced to work quickly as resources are needed upfront and needs to provide a certain quality within a strict timeframe or otherwise the product will fail after release. By entering EA we support a company that has our trust, yes, but also relive them a bit from the pressure to deliver quickly and well. Or told in other words: Participating in EA might lead to industry shifting to delivering poorer products as the customer willingly reduces their risk of failing financially without any other drawback. As customer we should always be aware of that our purchase decisions will have an impact. Not a single purchase decision, but many done in the same spirit.

And yes, I have not forgotten, that it is also not a smart move to disgruntle customers, if you want to keep selling stuff to them. Just wanted to emphasize that the problem not only lies at the developer but also at us, the customers.

Loyal2Odin said:

You should watch some videos on couch lancing and see how 3 people get couched by 1 dude in just a few seconds.

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And THIS should by any means not be possible. But still this would not invalidate that a couching attack is deadly and still should be. It only seems that it is possible far too often in the game which disturbs multiplayer. On that, I am with you. The analysis should go the way "why is this player able to perform 3 couching attacks within that small timeframe?" and not "is couched damage too high?"

Well...this will just lead to shifting the meta to another "OP" class, rinse and repeat. One of my solutions to the problem would be:
place some capture points inside a building or make buildings at least accessible. When I am thinking about that one MP map in the Aserai village, many matches I witnessed turned around the few riders picking off stragglers left and right or jousting themselves. Now what, if players could enter a house to evade a rider? That he must unmount to engage? Having a horse in skirmish gives you a big speed boost but also a good boost to your melee capabilities because of damage scaling with speed at almost no drawback. Not being able to fit through certain areas would be a drawback that would offset things a bit without changing otherwise logical mechanisms. Imagine horses getting hurt when colliding with something (or even rearing/crashing) so you have to ride more carefully. Imagine a rider being unsaddled because he hit a low tree branch at full speed. The main problem in my opinion is, that riders can almost ignore terrain and because of that, they are too good for the other classes. Maybe one should take a look at this.

The "enter house" thing also might encourage the use of smaller weapons instead of long one-shot weapons like two-handed swords and stuff. It is a never-ending debate about those as well...

Synopsis: If the rider gets/earns himself the opportunity the execute a couched lance charge - the current mechanism is plausible and well. The problem is: he gets this opportunity far too often - and this is a map-related problem and a problem of the way horses work in the game.

I am puzzeled. A pointy stick is aimed at you at the terminal velocity of a galloping horse AND with the impulse of said horse including rider totalling 1 ton? And you are complaining, that this will take you out for good?

Isn't this the intention of heavy cav? Proposed counter: Blob together. Use spears. Brace. Get that goon off his saddle once he crashes into your formation. Try to kill his horse. (Provided he cannot maneuver around in INF like a hot knife in butter.), use cover, if you see those coming, if possible.

I think: balance has not its place here. One could question, why there are true heavy knights (horse, heavy armor, couchable lance) allowed in multiplayer skirmishes and what the map design could tell us about this. Either we have an open field engagement and then big units but also lance-wielding knights are totally viable or small skirmishes in villages or inside a fort where a mounted lancer should have no place.

Or rather: is that build (horse + couchable lance) destroying the fun in MP on current maps? And why? Should it be allowed?

But again, we seem to want to have it all at once AND please everyone...

Maybe because every trooper might be described in the code with a number which will be translated as a binary symbol combination of I and 0 which seems to be 10 bits big so: 0000000001 is Trooper #1 for the engine and 1111111111 is trooper #2048. For another one you would need to make the engine understand that there are numbers greater than "10 binary digits". Might be engine-related. But it is indeed a power of 2 which might make one guess this could be an allocation thing or something hard-coded. I mean, you must explain to the program what to do with the input it gets and if it is like "there are 2048 troopers possible" because it only accepts a 10-digit number as denominator we cannot simply make it 4096 by adding another digit because then the program will be confused. Maybe something like that. Maybe they thought when making the game years ago "well, we cannot imagine that PCs will be able to handle a larger number than roughly 2000, so we use the 10-digit solution as denominator. I do not know. Maybe I just had a bad coffee and am seeing things.

I agree. The problems come with low level gear counting as blunt weapons. I mean: are we talking a reinforced mace - maybe on a long stick for extra impulse or a random pebble or leg of a broken chair? The latter should not inflict damage to heavily armored guys in plate.