Search results for query: *

Imo the devs misunderstood what the left foot forward and right foot forward stances are for in sword fighting. Speaking as a hema longsword fencer there are two kinds of stances in fencing, the retracted stance and the extended stance. In the retracted stance swinging from the right is done from the left foot forward posture, and swinging from the left is done from the right foot forward posture. From this retracted stance when swinging the sword the rear foot passes forward to follow the sword to boost the range of the attack but also so that the body doesn't end up in a silly contorsion when the swing reaches its end position. The retracted stance gives more mobility, more attack range and possibly stronger power but also slows down attack slightly, so it can only be done from out of range. Once your in range of opponents attack you should generally speaking switch to the extended stance. In the extended stance all attacks are done from the right foot forward posture. From here all attacks are launched with snapping motion in conjunction with a lunge. Modern FIE fencing is all done from this stance because when you only need to touch to score, speed is the only that matters.

As far as in game control is concerned Instead of using strafing direction to control stance switching, what the devs should have done is having a dedicated button to allow player to switch between the retracted stance and the extended stance at any moment, and in a fluid manner, in other words make sure it works while moving/blocking/attacking. This way the player can intuitively control swing speed and reach instead of having to remember which stance the body is in.

It's a known issue that's been there since forever ago. That said, are we even sure siege towers are meant to allow your guys to climb up enemy walls? This documentary seems to think otherwise

bonerstorm said:

I'm sure it likewise isn't quite realistic but I really enjoyed the 5-pointed-star combat in KCD which relied as much on timing as attack direction and blocks. The combos were a decent game mechanic, too. And, while people hate stamina bars, there is a real limit to how much you can simulate without a away to quantify physical exhaustion - let alone discipline in formations.

Click to expand...

KCD felt like a wasted opportunity. The combat animations looked the part at the first glance and they got the cut directions right. Thats all it has unfortunately. The two thrusts are launched from weird low fenestra positions, and these are the only thrusts you can do. Thrusts don't clash and fenestra aren't really parrying guard positions either, so point on line sword play is basically non existent and it's all about the cuts. The master cuts in the game are nothing like the real life meisterhau so ultimately it felt like a fancy Street Fighter game where memorising the input is more important than logic. The target locking was the final straw that broke it for me.

Basically you can tell the devs spent lots of time recording fencing footage from 1st person view, but they ultimately don't understand fencing.. either that or they decided to sacrifice realism for gamepay design. The weird low fenestra thrusts for example are probably designed for player to be able to see them easily in first person view. Proper thrust guards like Pflug and Ochs might be too low and too high to show properly in first person view camera.

I heard Hellish Quart has good simulation of fening. Might check that out someday.

Lusitani 5th Empire said:

Yeah not worth wasting more time waiting for devs to address this.

Click to expand...

I think tasks like this belong to the modding community. The devs just need to make sure their are animation slots in the behavior files for modders to replace their customer animations with.

bonerstorm said:

One of the niggling thoughts I have is that the basic BL system is just busted and can't simulate combat that's realistic or fun. Simple things like the fact that shields turn into useless holograms the minute you lift up RMB make me worry that there's no amount of tweaking that will un-s*** this game. I worry that combat that makes even a vague amount of sense won't be possible without an engine overhaul.

Click to expand...

Yes I totally agree. The way shields work in video games in general is not ideal. I've always advocated that shields should work in the same way in melee as they currently work against ranged attacks in the game, that is they should always block attacks in their idle position if their hitbox happen to intercept an incoming attack, but active parries should be directional only. In this way, having a large shield equipped will always keep you safe from cuts coming from your left, and sometimes thrusts coming at you if you angled your character correctly, but to parry downward cuts and cuts from your right you still have to directional parry like you would when parrying with a weapon.

If I was the director of Taleworlds i'd also make attack and parry directions diagonal instead of up down left right, so you can throw left and right Oberhau and Unterhau, with an additional button for thrusts that work just like cuts, launched from the 4 diagonal directions in a point forward guard position (Left and right Ochs and Pflug). These point forward guard positions when held in place should also able to parry cuts attacking the same quadrant in medium distance, but not in face hugging distance. So for example your right Oberhau will be intercepted by my left Ochs guard. This would make thrusts sound OP, but cuts have their own advantages in that they have wider arc of attack so are more likely to hit something, whereas thrusts have to be aimed and get stuck when launched from face hugging distance.

Opposing cuts should clash, with the later launched cut defeating the earlier launched one. So in plain words my right Oberhau should be defeated by your right Oberhau if you launched yours a split second later than I launched mine. This is the basic principle behind Zornhau. Opposing thrusts should do the same, and this is known as Inquartarta in rapier fencing. You might have noticed the clash mechanic is already in the game in the form of chamber blocks, but the devs got it wrong and made it so that my left swing gets defeated by your right swing and vice versa, when in reality this almost never happens.

In addition thrust animations upon completion should stay in the extended longpoint position indefinitely, until the player clicks the attack or parry button to end the animation, this is to give the player time to walk a fully extended thrust into the opponent. This is called Flèche in epee, and is also used widely in hema tournaments. This will also make cataphract style two handed lance more viable than they currently are in the game. This position is also very vulnerable to being parried and when parried takes a long time to recover from.

Anyways I'm convinced we'll never get proper fencing mechanics in pc and console based video games because controller and mouse & keyboard control are both too limiting for the average player who simply won't have time to react to incoming attack using mouse and keyboard at the same speed they can react when physically holding a sword. But I've heard some of the VR games do have great sword fighting simulation, like Blade and Sorcery for example.

mangalore said:

Can you tell me why? Pikes are very specific things that showed up in very narrow time frames. Spears are everywhere, because they are cheap and make even badly trained milia capable to at least stand there. Given professional soldiers usually were valued for other skills than holding a spear (even the pikemen were actually more valuable in their drill for formation fighting rather than the weapon) apparently something else was valued to dominate a battlefield.
Particularly in late antiquity and early middle ages where mobility was king.

Click to expand...

"You must also be specially careful, when in the battle line, never to throw your spear, unless you have two, for in battle array on land one spear is more effective than two swords. But if the fight is on shipboard, select two spears which are not to be thrown, one with a shaft long enough to reach easily from ship to ship and one with a shorter shaft, which you will find particularly serviceable when you try to board the enemy’s ship." -- Speculum Regale (King's mirror) section XXXVII, written in circa 1250AD.

bonerstorm said:

But still... less wind-up for spear thrusts, no?

Click to expand...

Could be good in some circumstances, but could also be seen as nerf as well. Depends on what you mean by 'wind up'. Let me explain from the begining:

In the mount and blade series, the so called wind up you see the character perform when you hold down the attack button is in fact just the character transitioning from a relaxed at ease idle position into a guard position, like vom Tag, Pflug, Ochs and etc in medieval German longsword systems. This is a necessary mechanic because there's no other way to tell the character to adopt a certain guard position. And just like in the real world, the guard position that your opponent adopts in the moment helps you read his possible next move.

If you eliminate the guard transition mechanic from gameplay, what you'll then end up with is your character being always in one particular ready to attack pose, like in games like Chivalry or Mordhau where the characters are forever in vom Tag when holding longswords for example. This would be fine if you only ever want to throw downward cuts. But sometimes you also want to thrust, and when you press the thrust button in Chivalry or Mordhau, the animation that plays will see the character awkwardly transition from vom Tag to some sort of low Fenestra position first and then thrust the weapon out. This makes the thrusts slow and tedious to execute, which naturally would then make cuts OP in comparison, which doesn't make sense, so the devs of those games have to make it so that cuts also have to be preceded by wind ups animations, so that when you throw a downward cut from vom Tag you still have to watch your character pull back the sword and do a massive overexaggerated wind up before the actual cut is thrown. As a result the fighting in those games feel like drunk fights because every move is executed 2 seconds after you press the button. You never do that when fencing in real life. This is one reason why I hate Mordhau, because it takes itself too seriously trying to be a realistic combat simulator, and yet at its core they copied the control schematics from a game that was designed to be a comical and whacky take on medieval combat in the same spirit of that Monty Python and the holy grail movie.. In contrast the system in Mount and blade series feels much more like real world fencing, where the moment you release the attack button your attack is launched without delay.

Knowing that you can't really eliminate the aforementioned guard transition mechanic in this game, I'm going to then assume you simply meant making the thrust faster by the phrase 'faster wind up'. This will bring its own problem, because in real life the spear when held in a point forward position is always a threat, whether it's in motion or static, whereas in the game the spear loses collision tracer as soon as the motion stops. By making the spear move faster in game, you effectively also cut down the amount of time the thrust is being registered for. This effect is most pronounced when you use the lance in two hands on horseback, cataphract style, which you'll notice, feels more difficult than using lance in one hand on horseback. This is because the two handed lance thrust is much faster than the one handed thrust, and as a result you have a shorter window of opportunity to land your thrust with. So even though a faster thrust is meant to be an advantage, here it ends up causing disadvantage. There are ways to solve this problem, like for example, by making it so that holding the thrust without releasing it also allows you do some damage to the opponent if you run it into the opponent, or by making two handed lance also couchable on horseback. Another solution would be to make the thrust animation stay a bit longer at the finishing position, but also giving the player the option to end this animation early by clicking either the attack or block button.

Sorry for the big wall of text. i'm not the best when it comes to expalining these things, and also we're in covid shut down so i can get overly excited when i get opportunity to interact with other humans.

Clsy said:

Spear's failure is on the infantry part
the early beta version might not be best but it works
untill they pulled out a 200iq E-SPORT balancing and it just falled of the cliff

Click to expand...

Agreed. E-sport ruins games.
("but muhhhh balance!!!" shouts the E-sport coomer)

bonerstorm said:

I think that there needs to be a parry failure mechanic, because it's ridiculous that somebody with - say - a 2H axe can flawlessly parry a spear every single time. That's not a thing in reality.

Click to expand...

That would just lower the skill ceiling to the point of 'luckiest player wins the game'. From a gameplay perspective this kind of gameplay mechanics has to be avoided.

I've thought long and hard about this issue, and based on experience fencing against spears in real life, both using sword alone as well as sword and shield, I think a better solution, apart from increasing damage, would be to make it so that every attack from a spear pushes the opponent back a little, whether the opponent manages to parry the spear thrust or not. The push effect should be quite dramatic when the spear is wielded in two hands, and much less pronounced when it's wielded in one hand.

In real world terms this is to simulate the fact that when you parry spear thrusts coming at you, you always have to step back a little each parry. It's extremely hard to pull off a good parry against a spear wielded in two hands, without stepping back a little while you parry, because two handed spear thrusts have incredibly long range of extension, unlike thrusts coming from say a longsword or a rapier both of which are basically just swords held at longpoint being walked into the opponent. This is one of the main reasons why it's so hard to close distance against spearmen in real life.

Another factor to consider is that in real life you have to time your parry against thrusts, whereas in the game you can just park your sword in the block position and tank all the thrusts in that direction. This problem can be mitigated in the game by making it so that the push back effect from spears stacks, so that if you try to tank more than one spear thrust at once you'll be knocked several steps back and lose all the advantages you get from tanking the thrusts. This would make sense in real life too, as seeing two spears thrusting at you should be enough of a prompt to send you leaping backwards to safety

This is a great point but can i just quickly say, you point your spear upward on the battlefield not because it's the 'ready' position. Quite the opposite, by resting the butt of the shaft on the ground it's the most relaxing position in which you can hold a spear. You might also want to hold the spear point up when walking or running with it because it's less likely to get caught on stuff that way, but in this case you obviously have to lift up the butt of the shaft so it doesn't drag on the ground as you walk. So to recap, in order to make the point up idle animation flow with the other animations in the game, you have to make it so that the spear is also pointed upwards when the character is running or walking. I should also mention when you hold a spear/pole weapon in two hands you never put your hands so close together like in the screenshots. It just doesn't look right that way.

Also with regards to the two handed weapon resting on the shoulder in one hand idle animation, it's almost never a good idea, because it's neither relaxing, nor at the ready to strike from that position when it's only held in one hand. It might be a good idea to hold the weapon in two hands in that position, but that's just vom Tag, and you do that when you're ready to strike with your weapon. You also want your vom Tag to be held a bit higher, generally around face height, so that you have more potential energy to expend when you swing it. But generally speaking in this game the 'weapon at the ready' poses are played when you hold your attack button (LMB) without releasing it, so poses like vom Tag should only play when you're holding down the attack button, whereas the idle animations when you're not clicking any buttons should correspond to the relaxed poses.

And when it comes to idle shield poses, it's hard to say what looks right and what doesn't because what looks right for a large kite shield will look wrong for a boss grip shield. With kite shields it's actually less tiring when you hold it in a more vertical orientation and close to the body, due to how heavy the tail of the shield is it acts like a pendulum and wants to stay down, esp if the shield comes with an guige strap. With a boss gripped shield or a small heater shield, the most relaxing position will of course be holding it at the side with arm straight down, like how you would carry a suit case. But I'm not sure if the game gives different animation slots for boss grip shields and kite shields.

LawH said:

It actually works really great. Loving it

Click to expand...

Ok might try later thanks for uploading

order_without_power said:

- Make spearmen use spears as their default weapon.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Make spearmen use their spears against both infantry and cavalry, or at least make troop AI behavior easily moddable

That's a lot of very closely packed dudes crouching in awkward postures just trying to make the shields look good from the front. One cav charge and these guys are all going to get crushed, some by the charging horses, others under the body weight of their comrades. And as the crowd starts to panic stampede would lead to more death. No. This is movie fighting at its worst.

LawH said:

I doubt you're ever coming back *sniff*, but here the mod you wanted:

Mod unavailable

This mod is not currently available

www.nexusmods.com

Click to expand...

Lol did you just make the mod? I appreciate your hard work but this isn't really a fix, so much as a janky work around that can potentially cause other issues, just saying

Agreed it's the reason why i gave up on bannerlord mp

Lol they've always been doing that since launch haven't you noticed.

MadVader said:

Basically you want the game to alternate between a Mount and Blade battle simulator and a small scale combat RPG. While this is possible, I don't think it is desirable to go full RPG with dungeon crawling, while leaving your army garrisoned.
Years ago I thought about how to make traveling the map more interesting and came up with the idea to spawn temporary, generated locations (farms, dwellings, small woods, a waterfall...) in your line of sight that you can visit and some scripted event would happen there, that might involve a small-scale skirmish, exploration for loot, or even a beginning of a larger quest.
That way if you are traveling around and are bored, you will get a chance to do something different for a change. If you are busy and just want to get from A to B fast, you would ignore those locations and they will vanish once out of sight.

Click to expand...

Yeah that works too. Doesn't have to be dungeon specifically like i said, any type of interesting locations would do really, abandoned farms, old watch towers, ruined forts, bandit occupied river crossings and so on.

But scale is important. If the player is able to bring an entire army into any of these locations repeatedly then all of these locations just become generic battlefield scenes. On the other hand not allowing the player to bring anything other than companions into the location isn't preferable either because in early game companions are kinda spenno to recruit. So imo the best way is to use morale penalty to discourage but not outright stopping player from bringing extra menpower into a location like this. Either that or the script can be adjusted to stop spawning if the players party size exceeds a certainnumber

Short_n_quick said:

Okay, this has some reason to it. But also would further discourage the exploration of them after getting some troops in early game, as morale can be more fragile than later

Click to expand...

Which is why you should be leaving the bulk of your army in your base camp most of the time if you don't own a fief yet. Armies are for war and you're not a Mongol horde. In peace time when you're not on campaign, you should be adventuring around the map with a couple companions instead of 67 Vlandian crossbowmen who after extensive travelling are bound to ask questions such as "are we there yet" "why are we marching all the time" "my legs are sore" "do we really have to come along when you're just delivering a message to the local lord" and so on

Short_n_quick said:

Okay, and after some quests and initial leveling they would be still just a landmark in late game as hideouts are now? I don't visualise high levels going there to beat some looters after getting ~20 T4 units.

Click to expand...

Like I said in the original post the game should differentiate between companions and normal units. There should be morale penalties to dragging your normal army into a spooky cave or a haunted villa. They're soldiers you hired for war, not your personal slave. So ideally you should only enter these locations with a couple companions even in late game. This would be a good way for the player to start over again after a major defeat on the battlefield.