Ooh I've never thought of having a home in M&B games, but it would totally make sense! One huge gaping hole that I felt in warband was how we never see the characters going about their lives. Towns are dead, and we only get to see our troops in battles. We need to be able to set camp in fields/settlement exteriors to have a place where we can walk around, see the troops you lead, train skills with them, boost morale, and COMMUNICATE.
Combat-wise... I can't really feel it much different from something like Skyrim.
You can have a tiny sword swung very fast by a skinny man, and a bastard sword swung two handed by a beast of a guy. But guess what? An everyday bandit will block both of them all the same, no sweat.
When you have a quick weapon, you should be able to overwhelm slow enemies or less skilled ones by attacking open areas. Got a huge weapon? They should cause a stagger with the amount varying according to the weight of the weapon, length, stats of the striker and the defender.
I love this series of games and don't regret supporting the devs one bit. But if these things aren't improved upon, I would have a hard time really enjoying this game since it really isn't much more than a graphics patched and modded warband(altho gameplay is currently lacking/with unimplemented features).