BEAST - Bannerlord Early Access Skirmish Tournament

[TheBard]

Yep but no one is willing to do...
We could gather the 4 best archers and 2 good cav and let them play against DM/RM and look how it goes.

NoVa brought one of the best arguments for the class limit I think. He said the class limit provides consistency in matches and makes sure that melee combat, the main point of Mount and Blade, stays present. It's just sad to see how everyone has to act like archers are super OP to justify the class limit.

That was me, not NoVa, but I'd like to adress this: I don't want this game to get worse. Bannerlord as has few players and if we drive the rest out by allowing archer spam to the max, I don't think it would be the better choice.
I would also say that this will be no thing for the top teams, but rather a problem which will infest Div C and B and it will make people quit. If you constantly face 4+ archers and the rest is cav people will not want to play this mess.

We can talk the high mighty horse of the few clans managing to field so strong teams that:

I really don't know what you are seeing in archers that I'm not. I haven't played any CW in 1.5 where a team successfully pulled off the archer kiting thing. Yes they can still outrun most infantry, but what does that give them when that means they aren't supporting literally anyone in the infantry fight? Archers are borderline useless in 1.5.

but this is not the reality for everyone.
I would like to add that if the team fields archers, I adapt to it as commander. I will try to stay out of their line of fire, I will try to push them, put pressure on them or remove them completely from the battlefield. That's something I see all the strong teams doing. And if a team can defend their archer and he has a free line of sight, that archer can actually damage the opposing team quite harshly or even straight out delete the opposing infantry by headshots.
They also deal enough damage, the reason they're not taken might be that no team wants to risk their inf core being overrun since it's needed when the flag countdown comes.

However, this is the reality for around 10 teams maximum. The rest will suffer if we unlimit archers. But see for yourself after this tournament. I don't even know if my prediction comes true. We can try it, yes. We can discuss it, yes. But if my prediction comes true, I want to add something else: these people ain't coming back.

The class limit also has something I'd never imagine it would happen: Broad democratic legitimization.

 

[Ikea Knight]

well if you have the same amount of inf in the teamfight what are your other players doing? If you need more inf than them in the teamfight aren't we talking about a difference in skill?

I don't think the skill difference was that much of an issue. At least individually the teams felt really even.
I mean what we're doing right now is theorizing about a match that happened a few weeks ago.
All I did was share my personal experience. There is no way to use this match as a fact.

I guess every player should just try for them selbes and run after an archer. It's an incredibly pointless affair.

 

[Aprikosenmann]

I would also say that this will be no thing for the top teams, but rather a problem which will infest Div C and B and it will make people quit. If you constantly face 4+ archers and the rest is cav people will not want to play this mess.

That's probably true. Comparable to this is the Cav spam on random lobbys which also tilts the hell out of ppl.

 

[Ikea Knight]

haven't stuck out to me as really powerful are the battanian

Well I am in no way a top inf player but I think everybody should give the Battanian shockinfantry with the armor perk a try. While the range and damage is not as high as the voulge or menavlions it is incredibly fast in two handed mode. Together with the low weight you can get into the enemy's back really easily. I think the unit is somewhat overlooked.
I'd pick that class over Sturgia's and Aserai's units any day.

 

[TheBard]

That's probably true. Comparable to this is the Cav spam on random lobbys which also tilts the hell out of ppl.

One thing to add: There is nothing else in this game which shows the difference in skill between teams than a melee showdown. I can imagine why intermediate or casual teams might opt the "easy way out"-approach by just spamming archers since shooting is comparable easy to melee combat.

Well I am in no way a top inf player but I think everybody should give the Battanian shockinfantry with the armor perk a try. While the range and damage is not as high as the voulge or menavlions it is incredibly fast in two handed mode. Together with the low weight you can get into the enemy's back really easily. I think the unit is somewhat overlooked.
I'd pick that class over Sturgia's and Aserai's units any day.

I'd like to add that two handed options are not limited to shock inf but the battanian archers get their fair amount of crushthrough weapons as well. The Great Falx is more reliable in this matter than the two handed sword alternative for the archer. If you face an archer which is good in melee blocking this becomes quite frustrating because of the stun and the permament danger of getting a hit for 40+ damage despite blocking the strike.

So what you seem to be saying is that you didn't want to fight archers 1v1 but to all go after one archer? If each archer was running away from pursuing inf there would have been no shooting.

Why should I go for 1v1, that can take forever, if I am able to force kill archers with 2v1 or by simply ganging her/him in the most brutal and efficient matter? The denied damage potential of five or more well placed arrows (We are talking 200+ damage, i.e. 2-3 dead players on your team because of the chain reaction if the arrow doesn't misses his target) is worth the gamble of losing one infantry or losing total team hitpoints of 100 or smth. I had archer players complaint to me "I can't do a thing", well, sorry, you're playing the class which - if placed well and protected - has the highest DPS and lowest TTK imaginable if unpressured.

if consistency in matches is the aim we would only ever use one map and one faction. Also if we were all playing 6 archers all the time, that would be consistent. when cav are dismounted and when archers are in melee range we all go melee anyway so why should inf be artificially favoured?

A good archer will try to get out of melee range asap to resume shooting. Or close combat shots come into play and since there's no force field around the shield you can even headshot people which are point blank. It happened to me (main inf) so many times I stopped counting. Archers who stand and fight will do so until reinforcements arrive or risk getting mauled in melee. It would be natural imo to get the advantage out of your class, so get some distance and resume firing.
I'll make one play of thought, let's say one team goes all out on archers, say 4 archers + 2 cav/inf. The other team has no archer faction (for example sturgia) and can't retaliate that way, the natural reaction for the sturgia team would be to camp out or to push. Since pushing against 4 archers is involving risks (crossfire everywhere) some might opt to camp. We would get to a situation (especially in intermediate and casual) where people would just wait to force a flag, if they have the knowledge how to do that.
Also what should be taken into account is that you spawn everywhere on the map. It follows a system but if archers are respawned, they can instantly shoot and deal damage while infantry would have to run. A good archer will hit.

---

TL;DR
Why does Bard defend the class limit?
I've been playing a fair share of this game and the predecessor. It's not that I like these limits, what I try to achieve is protecting the intermediate + casual player base from unhinged archer spam because it might make more people quit. "TaleWorlds should adress the issue then" - oh yeah, I saw how they did that with 1.5. Archers are strong as they were before, if not stronger and that is the reason why they get pressured so hard in top tier gameplay. It requires knowledge, discipline and skill to do so, a thing which intermediate gameplay might not be able to field like top teams (like Risen Manifest, Destiny Masters, Deutschritter, Fortune, Resolute, KW etc., which field
'few archers')
I'd like to add that in the match KW L v DR 1 I abused the horse archers to the max as Khuzait and our archers dealt considerable amounts of damage. We had three archers, two on the horse and one foot archer. They're certainly not useless or underpowered, just the aforementioned points show that archers will be relentlessy pressured and removed from the battlefield if opportunity is given.
This might not be possible in intermediate or casual gameplay and archer spam could dominate Division B + C and make people quit because it's annoying and less fun than the current way of 1-2 group fights being the round deciding factor. One thing I want to also add is that an overwhelming majority voted in favor of these restrictions and I'd not like an environment where this is ignored by an 'elite approach'.

 

[Greedalicious]

I dont like the idea of a class limit. As Ive said before it fixes issues the game shouldnt have in the first place. Its not up to admins to fix the game, its up to the developers. Considering we've known archery and cavalry is massively overpowered for over a year now and nothing has changed, maybe its time to just let nature take over. Yeah the game will be less fun, but I dont think that makes a difference anymore.
If the game ends up 4 archers 2 cavalry, then thats the game. If infantry sucks, it sucks. Nothing will change, and we cant just add more and more restrictions to force the game into being something its not.
My view is pretty pessimistic but maybe this will light a fire under the balancing team and we actually see some worthwhile changes.

 

[Aeronwen]

I dont like the idea of a class limit. As Ive said before it fixes issues the game shouldnt have in the first place. Its not up to admins to fix the game, its up to the developers. Considering we've known archery and cavalry is massively overpowered for over a year now and nothing has changed, maybe its time to just let nature take over. Yeah the game will be less fun, but I dont think that makes a difference anymore.
If the game ends up 4 archers 2 cavalry, then thats the game. If infantry sucks, it sucks. Nothing will change, and we cant just add more and more restrictions to force the game into being something its not.
My view is pretty pessimistic but maybe this will light a fire under the balancing team and we actually see some worthwhile changes.

really good addition to the discussion.
imo without class limits we will see the scene develop and innovate.

 

[Aprikosenmann]

Yeah the game will be less fun, but I dont think that makes a difference anymore.

For the Players that are inactive yes, but for the active people it does.

 

[Alyss]

I am not playing in this tourney but I believe class limits will just give another reason for taleworlds to not balance the game. Yes, it's better on the short term because you can limit the bs of this game, but on the other hand, there is a company that believes the game doesn't need balancing, or that doesn't want to balance its game, and using class limits will give them another reason to not fix the game. I think that because this is an EA you can allow players to use broken strats, let them break the game as much as they want (while respecting the rules ofc). This will make every player complain about the lack of balance. As greedalicious said: it's taleworlds job to fix the game, not admins.

 

[TheBard]

Alright. Two people not playing, but telling us to sentence the game to death. Some useful input maybe?

For the Players that are inactive yes, but for the active people it does.

That's my main reason why I advocate not to unhinge the entire broken EA. I'd like to continue play matches which are fun and not a competition of shizos about who's able to tilt the opponent faster with 'tactics'.

really good addition to the discussion.
imo without class limits we will see the scene develop and innovate.

We had that stuff pre-restriction before BEAST#1. There is a ton of salt in the forums about archer/cav spam and infantry being obsolete. "If that's the game for TW, well, then that's the game." => This was basicly the reason why the restriction was implemented back then, because people refused to accept that.

 

[Greedalicious]

For the Players that are inactive yes, but for the active people it does.

But more people would be active if the game was balanced better. The game wont improve as long as the community will just bandaid fix what we dont like. Preferebly there should be an open dialogue between the community and the developers, but thats incredibly unlikely.

How will we know what is broken and what isnt unless its tested properly? If taleworld looks at the stats of the most efficient classes, or say what gets played the most in matches, they might think their game is balanced and no further work is needed.

 

[NIN3]

Hey!
Really liking the discussion here and the tournament overall. With the next patches we will introduce changes to how horse archery, crush trough and ranged combat overall works. I hope this will address at least some concerns brought up here.

Ranged Combat Accuracy Overhaul: @AVRC talked about this in the multiplayer monthly update, there will be more details soon.
Horse Archery (already in beta): Will be affected by the new Ranged Combat accuracy changes (still a bit away), but also was fixed so they use a similar inaccuracy formula like dismounted archers. Expect them to shoot quicker, but less accurately.
Crush Through (next beta patch): Made it harder for any non 2h Mace to crush through at all. The idea is to have it happen only in super rare cases for not Maces, like when jumping off from a building, or landing an overswing from a horse. If it still happens too frequently, we will adjust it further.

What Bard and Ikea Knight said definitely makes sense, and our goal is not to balance the game just so class limits are not needed in the future, although it might be a nice side effect.
Still these rules seem to be a good indicator to what the meta is at the moment and what might need changing.

Would be interesting to hear how the upcoming changes will influence this discussion. Still we have quite a way infront of us to get MP to where we would all like it to be. Not only combat but also content wise.

 

[Alyss]

Hey!
Really liking the discussion here and the tournament overall. With the next patches we will introduce changes to how horse archery, crush trough and ranged combat overall works. I hope this will address at least some concerns brought up here.

Ranged Combat Accuracy Overhaul: @AVRC talked about this in the multiplayer monthly update, there will be more details soon.
Horse Archery (already in beta): Will be affected by the new Ranged Combat accuracy changes (still a bit away), but also was fixed so they use a similar inaccuracy formula like dismounted archers. Expect them to shoot quicker, but less accurately.
Crush Through (next beta patch): Made it harder for any non 2h Mace to crush through at all. The idea is to have it happen only in super rare cases for not Maces, like when jumping off from a building, or landing an overswing from a horse. If it still happens too frequently, we will adjust it further.

What Bard and Ikea Knight said definitely makes sense, and our goal is not to balance the game just so class limits are not needed in the future, although it might be a nice side effect.
Still these rules seem to be a good indicator to what the meta is at the moment and what might need changing.

Would be interesting to hear how the upcoming changes will influence this discussion. Still we have quite a way infront of us to get MP to where we would all like it to be. Not only combat but also content wise.

If that's all we will get for the next update then class limits will stay. MP changes need to be skill based not rng or percentage-based. People won't come back for this update because even if it makes the game less bad, it doesn't make it good. You guys have to fix the abuses not think of a way to lower them: just fix them.

 

[Aeronwen]

If that's all we will get for the next update then class limits will stay. MP changes need to be skill based not rng or percentage-based. People won't come back for this update because even if it makes the game less bad, it doesn't make it good. You guys have to fix the abuses not think of a way to lower them: just fix them.

I dont really understand what you mean @Alyss - what abuses need to be fixed?

 

[Alyss]

I dont really understand what you mean @Alyss - what abuses need to be fixed?

crushthrough, footshots, bumps, spam and many more

 

[Namakan]

Hey!
Really liking the discussion here and the tournament overall. With the next patches we will introduce changes to how horse archery, crush trough and ranged combat overall works. I hope this will address at least some concerns brought up here.

Ranged Combat Accuracy Overhaul: @AVRC talked about this in the multiplayer monthly update, there will be more details soon.
Horse Archery (already in beta): Will be affected by the new Ranged Combat accuracy changes (still a bit away), but also was fixed so they use a similar inaccuracy formula like dismounted archers. Expect them to shoot quicker, but less accurately.
Crush Through (next beta patch): Made it harder for any non 2h Mace to crush through at all. The idea is to have it happen only in super rare cases for not Maces, like when jumping off from a building, or landing an overswing from a horse. If it still happens too frequently, we will adjust it further.

What Bard and Ikea Knight said definitely makes sense, and our goal is not to balance the game just so class limits are not needed in the future, although it might be a nice side effect.
Still these rules seem to be a good indicator to what the meta is at the moment and what might need changing.

Would be interesting to hear how the upcoming changes will influence this discussion. Still we have quite a way infront of us to get MP to where we would all like it to be. Not only combat but also content wise.

Anything planned regarding (normal) cavalry?

 

[NIN3]

Yeah. We adjusted the rearing radius, there was a bug that made it possibble to rear cav from behind. We also made it so pike bracing can now rear horses. Will come together with the Crush Through changes

 

[Namakan]

Yeah. We adjusted the rearing radius, there was a bug that made it possibble to rear cav from behind. We also made it so pike bracing can now rear horses. Will come together with the Crush Through changes

Good start. What about couch lances being unreliable (i.e. either dealing ~40 damage when the target is moving in the same direction or even not dealing any damage at all)? In my mind, cavalry is meant to be a trade off, having very high damage potential but also being very vulnerable through the same thing that gives them their potential - speed bonus.
For normal stabs, that formula is alright currently: The amount of time you expose yourself to ready and release a stab is reasonable for the damage you deal.
With couched lances, however, you expose yourself for far longer (and need a minimum speed to execute them at all) but the damage you deal is, most of the time (targets moving away or standing still), marginally better at best, sometimes worse.

IMO, couch damage should use the pre-1.5 calculation, but be nerfed in others ways (as suggested many times before): Cooldown, less maneuverability (horse) while active and potentially even more of a windup animation. I'm asuming you've seen people post these before, maybe you could shed some light on why they weren't used?

 

[AVRC]

Good start. What about couch lances being unreliable (i.e. either dealing ~40 damage when the target is moving in the same direction or even not dealing any damage at all)? In my mind, cavalry is meant to be a trade off, having very high damage potential but also being very vulnerable through the same thing that gives them their potential - speed bonus.
For normal stabs, that formula is alright currently: The amount of time you expose yourself to ready and release a stab is reasonable for the damage you deal.
With couched lances, however, you expose yourself for far longer (and need a minimum speed to execute them at all) but the damage you deal is, most of the time (targets moving away or standing still), marginally better at best, sometimes worse.

IMO, couch damage should use the pre-1.5 calculation, but be nerfed in others ways (as suggested many times before): Cooldown, less maneuverability (horse) while active and potentially even more of a windup animation. I'm asuming you've seen people post these before, maybe you could shed some light on why they weren't used?

Couch Lances bouncing off has been fixed, will come with an early update which will also include some damage increase.

 

[Livso]

Dont have time to read all of this but if someone already suggested it. Id say banning menavlion weapon doesnt sound bad at all, that weapon makes absolutely no sense with its crush through.

At the start i read someone suggested class limit of cav and archer to 3 saying that cav is not so good now, i dont agree with that and hope you wont change the class limit, and im saying this as a mostly cav person.