After EA Taleworlds has gone out of their way to make factions in multiplayer feel as samey and generic as possible in comparison to the Closed Beta. And since it's obvious at this point that they are determined to not go back to Warband's superior system, here are some ways they can make the class system feel less milquetoast.
For starters:
Get rid of all stat boosting perks or effects on perks, who in their right mind isn't going to take a +15% melee damage on their heavy infantry? It's moronic. If you want a unit to have faster movement, bake it into the base unit and balance accordingly, don't make it a perk.
Factions need to have their differences widened and cultivated, not ground into the same samey meta mush i.e Mamluks should get Jareeds, Cataphracts shouldn't have a shield but be able to use a bow (or give the Courser a bow option that takes away the lance/spear, maybe Tabardariyya can have a sabre and shield option like the Voulgier etc. You can have balance without turning every culture into the same stale samey mush!
Non-cavalry troops should not be able to mount horses! In Captain or TDM! For that matter, what was wrong with Warband's system! It's especially stupid in captain mode when one guy with a two-hander can grab a horse in the late game and ride around slaughtering the braindead AI who get in the way of the captain trying to fight him! In Closed Beta Archers were stupidly accurate and OP but at least it prevented these ***** tactics! You'd get lazered for trying to play Single Player AI slaughter in the Beta's Captain mode.
Finally, overhauling how the AI works in captain is critical. Cavalry is useless on most maps (which btw tend to be far too closed off and chokepoint oriented on a supposedly strategic gamemode). On the few maps it is good in, cavalry "players" play singleplayer and shove their squad in a corner, using them for extra lives as they get easy hit and run kills on your stupid AI squad. However, this usually screws over their own team as the Captain meta on most maps is a spam of heavy infantry and axes and to blindly smack into the other team. If the other team isn't together or god forbid one of them went archers or an absolutely useless unit like the recruit then the match is over.
TLDR: Classes and factions almost entirely play the same, balancing sucks, captain mode AI isn't good enough to counter cheesy bull**** and Captain mode is won on the selection screen more often then by any sort of tactical brilliance.
For starters:
Get rid of all stat boosting perks or effects on perks, who in their right mind isn't going to take a +15% melee damage on their heavy infantry? It's moronic. If you want a unit to have faster movement, bake it into the base unit and balance accordingly, don't make it a perk.
Factions need to have their differences widened and cultivated, not ground into the same samey meta mush i.e Mamluks should get Jareeds, Cataphracts shouldn't have a shield but be able to use a bow (or give the Courser a bow option that takes away the lance/spear, maybe Tabardariyya can have a sabre and shield option like the Voulgier etc. You can have balance without turning every culture into the same stale samey mush!
Non-cavalry troops should not be able to mount horses! In Captain or TDM! For that matter, what was wrong with Warband's system! It's especially stupid in captain mode when one guy with a two-hander can grab a horse in the late game and ride around slaughtering the braindead AI who get in the way of the captain trying to fight him! In Closed Beta Archers were stupidly accurate and OP but at least it prevented these ***** tactics! You'd get lazered for trying to play Single Player AI slaughter in the Beta's Captain mode.
Finally, overhauling how the AI works in captain is critical. Cavalry is useless on most maps (which btw tend to be far too closed off and chokepoint oriented on a supposedly strategic gamemode). On the few maps it is good in, cavalry "players" play singleplayer and shove their squad in a corner, using them for extra lives as they get easy hit and run kills on your stupid AI squad. However, this usually screws over their own team as the Captain meta on most maps is a spam of heavy infantry and axes and to blindly smack into the other team. If the other team isn't together or god forbid one of them went archers or an absolutely useless unit like the recruit then the match is over.
TLDR: Classes and factions almost entirely play the same, balancing sucks, captain mode AI isn't good enough to counter cheesy bull**** and Captain mode is won on the selection screen more often then by any sort of tactical brilliance.
