Balance Patch: design insights + full changelog

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This feature existed since warband so I'm suspecting it's intended.
Makes me suspect they partially reused the MB (warband) engine for bannerlord, can't imagine a developer actually going "we should really implement that horses cannot go up normally but need to go backwards".
Also think that it was a bug in Warband but not significant enough to be fixed, was cause for some good fun tho.

Would also explain why they developed their own engine as they already partially had one, otherwise the reason why they use their own engine still is unknown. Development wouldn't have taken a decade if they used a comercially available engine, probably.
 
Improbable, since they are even written in different languages. I think they had to code it from scratch. In any case let's just wait and see if they will clear this out for us.
I just cant accept a possible fact that it would be a deliberate design decision to only allow horses to climb backwards. There is just no way. They do a lot of 'funny' things around here at TW, but this is too far.
 
@NIN3 there have been signals from the community since the start of EA about cavalry running rampant in siege and getting in places where they obviously don't belong. A fine example of this is cavalry running up stairs backwards, ending up in places where it shouldn't. Some players are perfecting this feature and claim exploits are ok until the devs fix them.

Will you please once and for all fix cavalry so it cant get up stairs any more?
Im not defending it as it should be fixed, but in taleworlds defence...
122.jpg

pretty funny anyway
 
Will you please once and for all fix cavalry so it cant get up stairs any more?
This occurs due to how our horse physics work. The physics of a horse are represented by a capsule that is parallel to the ground. The horse also has a pivot point that is located near the hip of the horse. When the terrain (or stairs in this case) is steep, the horse's capsule aligns with the ground, but up to a certain angle. Think of the pivot point as a sensor that determines the horse capsule angle - if the ground directly beneath the pivot point is flat (0 degrees), the capsule will be too. As such, when you move backwards with the horse, that pivot point is closer to the stairs and it can as such detect the angle of the stairs and the capsule of the horse aligns parallelly to the stairs. As such, the capsule doesn't crash into the stairs and the horse can move up which isn't the case when you go with the horse's head forward.

Here's some Paint magic to explain it better.

c33601e79d652759600f0ab65d1590e1.png


At the moment, we have no plans to change how this system works. If you run into issues with MP maps where using the horses gives too big of an advantage or can give you access to areas that shouldn't be accessible - please post it in the maps section and we'll make sure to have a look.
Can confirm, the worst offender is fen Altai where the attacking team cav can get to F through the stairs and behind G from there, giving them access to the balistas at F and G, that even the defenders can't reach unless the spawn has been moved far back enough. This makes it really hard for defenders to hold F in particular.
We're aware of jumping with the horse from the roof to get to that ballista that should only be reachable by defenders and @Boraltay already fixed it internally. It should go live within the next few patches.
 
This occurs due to how our horse physics work. The physics of a horse are represented by a capsule that is parallel to the ground. The horse also has a pivot point that is located near the hip of the horse. When the terrain (or stairs in this case) is steep, the horse's capsule aligns with the ground, but up to a certain angle. Think of the pivot point as a sensor that determines the horse capsule angle - if the ground directly beneath the pivot point is flat (0 degrees), the capsule will be too. As such, when you move backwards with the horse, that pivot point is closer to the stairs and it can as such detect the angle of the stairs and the capsule of the horse aligns parallelly to the stairs. As such, the capsule doesn't crash into the stairs and the horse can move up which isn't the case when you go with the horse's head forward.

Here's some Paint magic to explain it better.

c33601e79d652759600f0ab65d1590e1.png


At the moment, we have no plans to change how this system works. If you run into issues with MP maps where using the horses gives too big of an advantage or can give you access to areas that shouldn't be accessible - please post it in the maps section and we'll make sure to have a look.

We're aware of jumping with the horse from the roof to get to that ballista that should only be reachable by defenders and @Boraltay already fixed it internally. It should go live within the next few patches.
Certainly I have already spoken out here in a serious and constructive way among other threads, but now all that remains is the meme effect that I know you like and appreciate so much. The horses and stairs thing is a meme ****fest in sieges, no need to point out any spots in any map... just enjoy this video ?:iamamoron: :

 
Im not defending it as it should be fixed, but in taleworlds defence...
122.jpg

pretty funny anyway
As you point out, horses can climb shallow, wide stairs. In my opinion, the stairs in bannerlord don't fit that description.

This occurs due to how our horse physics work. The physics of a horse are represented by a capsule that is parallel to the ground. The horse also has a pivot point that is located near the hip of the horse. When the terrain (or stairs in this case) is steep, the horse's capsule aligns with the ground, but up to a certain angle. Think of the pivot point as a sensor that determines the horse capsule angle - if the ground directly beneath the pivot point is flat (0 degrees), the capsule will be too. As such, when you move backwards with the horse, that pivot point is closer to the stairs and it can as such detect the angle of the stairs and the capsule of the horse aligns parallelly to the stairs. As such, the capsule doesn't crash into the stairs and the horse can move up which isn't the case when you go with the horse's head forward.

Here's some Paint magic to explain it better.

c33601e79d652759600f0ab65d1590e1.png


At the moment, we have no plans to change how this system works. If you run into issues with MP maps where using the horses gives too big of an advantage or can give you access to areas that shouldn't be accessible - please post it in the maps section and we'll make sure to have a look.

We're aware of jumping with the horse from the roof to get to that ballista that should only be reachable by defenders and @Boraltay already fixed it internally. It should go live within the next few patches.
Thanks for the reply. Although im quite shocked about the content of it. I understand that from the model physics perspective its plausible. What i cant wrap my head around is that you believe this is a good game design point of view and plan to leave it as it is. Seriously think about it, you basicly are saying :
According to our physics its ok like this, even if it means horses are very likely to get up stairs backwards, and are much less likely to do it forward. ?
 
Hey guys, thanks for update but there seems to be huge bug with berserker atm. Perk blood rage is bugged. Enemies can't do any damage to berserker. Only arrows work but melee weapons do not work at all.
@NIN3
This is not a bug its a power of frenzied bersekr rage they just shrug out wounds on body like its a mosqito bites thats why they are so feared by
 
Certainly I have already spoken out here in a serious and constructive way among other threads, but now all that remains is the meme effect that I know you like and appreciate so much. The horses and stairs thing is a meme ****fest in sieges, no need to point out any spots in any map... just enjoy this video ?:iamamoron: :


Good music in that video bro.
 
Thanks for the reply. Although im quite shocked about the content of it. I understand that from the model physics perspective its plausible. What i cant wrap my head around is that you believe this is a good game design point of view and plan to leave it as it is. Seriously think about it, you basicly are saying :
According to our physics its ok like this, even if it means horses are very likely to get up stairs backwards, and are much less likely to do it forward. ?
No, @Dejan never said it was good game design nor that it is intended game design. It just a consequence of the chosen game design which suits 95% of all cases and that is deemed enough to not need a revamp as of this moment. If you always try to program the perfect solution the program never gets done and you are developing for over a decade....
 
No, @Dejan never said it was good game design nor that it is intended game design. It just a consequence of the chosen game design which suits 95% of all cases and that is deemed enough to not need a revamp as of this moment. If you always try to program the perfect solution the program never gets done and you are developing for over a decade....
Fair enough, he never said it's good game design. But his explanation insinuates that it is acceptable.

To me, the abundance of cavalry in places where they don't belong is extremely annoying. If you want to pretend that its fine to have cavalry reaching nearly every place in the map, go ahead.
 
To me, the abundance of cavalry in places where they don't belong is extremely annoying. If you want to pretend that its fine to have cavalry reaching nearly every place in the map, go ahead.
It might not be fine, but acceptable for the moment, since it's not a game-breaking feature, they have a lot more serious problems to focus on. For example the perks reset bug that hasn't been fixed for a week now.
 
This occurs due to how our horse physics work. The physics of a horse are represented by a capsule that is parallel to the ground. The horse also has a pivot point that is located near the hip of the horse. When the terrain (or stairs in this case) is steep, the horse's capsule aligns with the ground, but up to a certain angle. Think of the pivot point as a sensor that determines the horse capsule angle - if the ground directly beneath the pivot point is flat (0 degrees), the capsule will be too. As such, when you move backwards with the horse, that pivot point is closer to the stairs and it can as such detect the angle of the stairs and the capsule of the horse aligns parallelly to the stairs. As such, the capsule doesn't crash into the stairs and the horse can move up which isn't the case when you go with the horse's head forward.

Here's some Paint magic to explain it better.

c33601e79d652759600f0ab65d1590e1.png


At the moment, we have no plans to change how this system works. If you run into issues with MP maps where using the horses gives too big of an advantage or can give you access to areas that shouldn't be accessible - please post it in the maps section and we'll make sure to have a look.

We're aware of jumping with the horse from the roof to get to that ballista that should only be reachable by defenders and @Boraltay already fixed it internally. It should go live within the next few patches.
You guys have AI barriers though, right? Like in warband? So you can block horses from going up stairs while still allowing players through?

I think just throwing some of those on the steeper stairs to areas where clearly horses shouldn't be going would solve people's complaints. You might need to rebalance the scene though if it was dependent on attackers being able to get horses on point in those locations...
 
You guys have AI barriers though, right? Like in warband? So you can block horses from going up stairs while still allowing players through?

I think just throwing some of those on the steeper stairs to areas where clearly horses shouldn't be going would solve people's complaints. You might need to rebalance the scene though if it was dependent on attackers being able to get horses on point in those locations...
Exactly, someone had to say it. Now everything has to be accessible... ?:iamamoron:

cuNIF.jpg

Sarcasm apart, I wonder if this kind of barriers could be defined with conditional scripts "IF agent is mounted = you shall not pass".
 
Exactly, someone had to say it. Now everything has to be accessible... ?:iamamoron:

cuNIF.jpg

Sarcasm apart, I wonder if this kind of barriers could be defined with conditional scripts "IF agent is mounted = you shall not pass".
not as an ground texture (Sarcasm) but probably they could develop an invisible wall "IF agent is mounted = you shall not pass" as an bandaid fix for that
 
wIp9D.png

This class has seen many changes in the past and is also seeing a lot with this set of changes. In Mount&Blade cavalry will always be a high impact troop and it's not our goal to change that, but rather make this impact scale with the player's skill. You will see a lot of nerfs but also buffs in the changelog for this troop type as a result of that.
Light cavs now use their cultures Long Spears on default, making them less reliant on infantry spear drops. The Line Breaker upgrades for light cav dont grant Lances anymore though, leaving those exclusively to heavy cavalry. Instead thses perks grant newly created cavalry spears.
Heavy Cavalry now have lances en lowered, but also all horse hitpoints have been increased. This will not make mounts more fragile overall, but rather punish you more for staying inside melee fights. Basically be more aware of cutting weapons and getting stuck in melee encounters now. Actually also still be aware of Heavy Infantry with the Cavalry Breaker perks, but maybe a bit less than before, since their bonus damage coming with the speed bonus have been halved. The raw extra damage to horses stayed at +100% though, so dont get stuck in! Undoubtedly they will still be able to punish you, especially by stopping you in your tracks, But deal less ridiculous damage with their spears on high speeds.

Also noteworthy is the change to couch lance, that now disengages more easily if your mount loses speed. And talking about speed, all horses have been slightly made slower.

Again I realize this was a skirmish-focused patch but its worth noting this has somewhat backfired for Captain.

The game immediately returned to a Solocav delaying fest. Cavalry players again use heavy cavalry, park them, and due to the higher horse hitpoints and decreased ability of anyone to damage cavalry they are much more able to delay the game ad nauseum.

I'm not sure if we considered the newish "glancing" mechanics when we made these changes. It is now much more difficult to score a *good* hit on a horseman that will actually deal damage and rear, and your reward for putting yourself in a dangerous position to do so is now much less. Combine that with Cavalry-Killing-Specific perks being nerfed, which were to begin with necessary because of how hard it is to kill cavalry, and Cavalry are on their way to once again to becoming weird little skateboard tanks.

Full Disclaimer: I play this game for the sweet sweet sounds of dying horses.
 
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Improved Armor still feels like the superior option for Savage over the Rhomphalia even after removing the Falx's bastard sword property. I still wonder if it'd be worth it to do the following:

Falx replaced with Rhomphalia
Rhomphalia replaced with Heavy Falx
-A stronger version of the Falx that was originally on the Fiann in the earliest versions of Bannerlord Multiplayer. Deals more damage than both the Falx and Rhomphalia, but is shorter. Can be one-handed with a shield

Thinking this would make the perk choices more meaningful. As it currently stands, choosing Rhomphalia means that you'll not only have 3 armor vs the Falx's 12, but you'll also be grabbing a slower melee weapon that deals less damage. Making the Rhomphalia a default weapon while having a stronger Falx be the perk could allow the fast and versatile weapon be a "glass cannon" option, where you can swing and kill real fast, but you'll also die just as fast. A higher damage falx being tied to having only 3 points of armor could also be worth bringing back the bastard sword property.
 
As stated in the comments, this seems very much like a balance patch mainly for skirmish. Are there bigger plans regarding Captain mode balance (apart from restricting/removing ramboing, which has been mentioned earlier)?
The main issues I see are:

1. Abusing AI in multiple ways with your captain, including ramboing (this one is the biggest). This category includes the exploit in which a captain with a shield will go sit in front of a fight with a shield and block 99-100% of all arrows which would otherwise be shot at his troops. Another example is a shock infantry captain looting a shield and a horse and riding ahead of his troops, taking all the arrows while his troops advance at enemy archers.
This is simply game breaking cheesing and should not be possible. Two massive fixes would be a) The ability to command troops to fire at a target, or make them ignore the enemy captain more easily and b) Not allowing players to loot equipment or horses in Captain mode.

2. Archers are really, really terrible if the enemy knows that shield infantry and cav exist. Now the only way you can do well with archers is to somehow be able to get a crossfire or flank going on, which usually means you need to be far off on your own somewhere on the side of a fight where you will get destroyed by a lone rambo cav and your melee infantry will be outnumbered in the melee OR most of the enemy team is shock infantry with no cavalry and have bad positioning. Right now shields have a 100% chance of blocking everything coming at them from the front. It makes archers useless if there aren't at least 2-3 squads of them on your team who can manouver perfectly while kiting and flanking, which will become useless when one rambo cav will interrupt their shooting and kill half the squad in one life. There needs to be a way for archers to actually have an impact.

3. Skirmishers have very many similar problems as archers, but actually do even worse since unlike archers, It's horribly difficult to utilize their ranged weapons effectively when you actually get a chance. They are also pretty terrible in melee compared to the proper melee classes. They need to be made faster so you could harrass and kite with them effectively. Now they are so slow that this will happen 99% of the time:
First off, you go close enough (max 15 meters away) to the enemy so your troops will hit them with most projectiles. Then if they are shield infantry, nothing happens since the javelins don't really do any damage to the shields. If the enemy chases you, the skirmishers are so marginally faster that you don't have time to turn around and get a good volley of javelins on the enemy anymore. Possibly only some few single javelins lobbed somewhere over them.
A good role for them would be a fast flanking class, who would do really hard damage on short range with limited ammo. They could either run at the enemy, get a few volleys at the enemy shields and destroy many of them and then retreat, having made the enemies more vulnerable to allied archers and also melee combatants or flank around and punish carelessly positioned enemies with huge damage from short range. After their ammo is used, they would fight as super-light infantry, keeping the focus on their ranged damage capabilities.

So in other terms, archers are long range, sustained damage with low mobility and high ammo. Skirmishers would be the opposite with very short range, burst-damage with very high mobility and very limited ammo. Javelins should be rebalanced to not deal about 15-50 damage on hit depending on armor, but more like 100, and have "bonus against shields". This big damage increase is balanced simply by having limited amounts of ammo and the obvious fact that bots (and the player) will definitely not hit 100% of the time.

4. All of the above put together, making the two main "tactics" of Captain a) Cheesing by using rambo cav and other AI abuse and b) infantry blobs.

Sorry for the long text, I have no life. Cheers!
 
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