MP Delay on release of attacks

[Noudelle]

The major reason why the combat in Bannerlord feels so unresponsive is the delay between the release of an attack, and your character actually attacking.
It's not a delay in that there's a certain amount of time between the release of the attack, and the start of the animation. But rather the animation itself has a period where your character winds up the attack before swinging/thrusting. Here's a video comparing Bannerlord to Warband.
Sorry about the bad camera angles.



This is completely wrong. There is no reason why attacks would need a second wind up after being initiated.
But it goes deeper.
Attack delay is by itself infuriating enough, but not only does it exist, what's worse is that this delay's length can vary depending on the amount of time an attack is held.
If an attack is not held, there will be a "short" delay.
If an attack is held, there will be a longer delay.



It was impossible for me to tell how much longer exactly the delay is in percentages, but as you could see in the video, this additional delay is consistent and quite substantial, even though it might not look like it in combat.

If you're wondering how I calculated the length of each animation:
- The slowed-down clips are played at 25% speed.
- Each clip starts at the release of an attack
- I tried to match both clips of the same attacks as best I could, but this was hard to do with some animations. Still, the held attacks are consistently longer than when not held which is all I wanted to see.
- The numbers are the length of each clip, not the length of the animation itself.

Please fix.

 

[Al_Mansur]

Along with the premade class system, this is the worst flaw of the game imo. I must add that the swing delay is all the more disastrous as M&B combat system was already intrinsically flawed when it came to responsiveness, simply because delivering an attack by holding then releasing the button would never be as satisfying as doing it by one click (like in Kingdom Come for example). Holding the button... Releasing it... wham... vs click BAM! Passive vs active. This is unfortunately something we have to make do with, but reducing the delay to a minimum - even shorter than in Warband, perhaps at the depends of realism but sometimes gameplay has to overcome immersion - would have probably made the combat much more enjoyable.

 

[Antrix32]

Doesn't a following swing come out much faster if its chained after the initial swing? They seem to have added a "stance" system. Heres the thread on it

https://www.reddit.com/r/mountandblade/comments/fumtl8

 

[Noudelle]

Doesn't a following swing come out much faster if its chained after the initial swing? They seem to have added a "stance" system. Heres the thread on it

Chain attacks are in general not any faster than standard attacks. In fact they can be slower sometimes, like with the Menavlion.
As for the stance system, it doesn't really have an impact on attack delay as far as we know.

 

[Mynes]

This explains why hits end up being imprecise and gives the player less control as to where the hits will land. Blocking also feels delayed and somehow feels 'sticky' when changing directions. Good thread.

 

[E V O C A T I]

Yes, stabs/thrusts are quite annoying to use in Bannerlord.

 

[RCC_God]

Yes, stabs/thrusts are quite annoying to use in Bannerlord.

I totally noticed this! As a duelist stabs where your bread and butter to end a fight because of reach and speed, and they where honestly OP. They needed a nerf but this bad? Like they aren’t usable now especially since they glance so much

 

[Diavolo]

I agree. If they fixed this arbitrary delay the combat system would be so much better. (And more intuitive for new players to get into) The character and the player should be thinking the same thing, a player struggling to get the character to do what they want is poor game design.

Also about stabs, they should be the quickest attack in the game. At least short sword/dagger stabs and stabs with spears held with 2 hands should be lightning fast.

 

[๖Kern]

The worst thing is, it is, again, a design choice made by TaleWorlds.

 

[Hans 77]

Taleworlds please consider getting rid of this delay. The combat will run and feel a lot smoother with seamless transitions from windup/hold > attack swing.

 

[Killfacer]

Yeah this is a major contributor to the sluggishness of the melee fighting in Bannerlord and will be a permanent cap on the competitive element of the game. Even looking beyond the competitive element it makes the fighting feel poor.

 

[Diavolo]

The worst thing is, it is, again, a design choice made by TaleWorlds.

This is my biggest worry with the game so far. That there are not that many features and so on right now is not an issue because they will develop more of what they already have and fix bugs.

However, you cannot big fix stupid game design. And looking at the game design from m&b/warband, they honestly have kept 100% of the **** things from warband, and then added even more ****. (Attack delay after release, tied essential recruitment for even the king to relations with local crime bosses, a skill system which is intended for having companions with different specialities but makes it impossible to train their speciality, multiplayer "classes" with little flexibility and if you die more than you kill you no longer can afford a non-trash class on most factions making what they are claiming the class system fixes: snowballing 1000 times worse. To name a few)

Single player things can be fixed by mods, but multiplayer is worse as it will fragment the users a lot if the "real game" is in one specific mod.

 

[Caius_III]

This thread is so important.

Doesn't a following swing come out much faster if its chained after the initial swing? They seem to have added a "stance" system. Heres the thread on it

Also, this is quite funny because, during the beta, OGL asked me If I had an advantage because I'm switching attack/block direction with the keyboard keys and not using the mouse direction option. Which means that, when I'm moving left, I'm blocking left, when I'm moving right, I'm blocking right,... which means that in Bannerlord I'm always in the right stance.

The thing is, I feel like it doesn't change anything at all and stances are just useless, it might aswell just add to the delays between attacks/blocks,...

 

[flavberg]

I was waiting for this to be reposted again, thank you, Noudelle.

Absolute crime to offer a game that is based on fast reactions a way to make actions unresponsive. Moreover, held hits don't even count as strong attacks to do more damage from what I've seen.

As someone who plays a lot of Skirmish and being mostly main cav, I can visibly tell how this mechanic is just ****ing up new players when they want to release a stab to stop me, for example. The timing just isn't intuitive because of it. This needs to be addressed at once.

 

[Lord Bryggan]

The delay is the most horrible thing in the game. I pretty much gave up on blocking and just spam now, relying on footwork. I was wondering if they did it to make it more 'noob friendly'? By taking out skill and timing, the new players are just as good as the Warband veterans.

 

[NightC2win]

+100 THIS IS RUINING THE GAME! I knew I could feel it ! I played Warband and others for thousands of hours and this bannerlord feels SO sluggish and unresponsive! Thank you OP you should be commended, you should be on the dev team to help this fix this. We need real players that know how the combat feels and should feel and know how custom loadouts work not this game we have now that is dumbed down, sluggish and unresponsive.

 

[NightC2win]

Along with the premade class system, this is the worst flaw of the game imo. I must add that the swing delay is all the more disastrous as M&B combat system was already intrinsically flawed when it came to responsiveness, simply because delivering an attack by holding then releasing the button would never be as satisfying as doing it by one click (like in Kingdom Come for example). Holding the button... Releasing it... wham... vs click BAM! Passive vs active. This is unfortunately something we have to make do with, but reducing the delay to a minimum - even shorter than in Warband, perhaps at the depends of realism but sometimes gameplay has to overcome immersion - would have probably made the combat much more enjoyable.

100% on the money. The class system is really bad and big flaw, but this is a fundemental problem with the actual game mechanics, the actual core of the game. Needs to be fixed.

 

[Hans 77]

Again, I must reiterate, I don't mind that weapon swing speeds and feints are slower than Warband's (I've accepted this), but the incongruity between my inputs and my character's actions is what I take major issue with.

 

[Dialectic]

I'm a scrub and a casual, so I dunno if my input matters. I don't intend on playing much multiplayer just like I didn't play it much with Warband. I only played one skirmish match and I immediately noticed two things: I didn't like the UI with the class selection, and the feeling of delay or sluggishness or lag with regard to attacks and blocking. I can't recall if it's just changing block directions or if it's just generally raising block from neutral, but it felt *awful* and I'm not going back into multiplayer to deal with how unfun it feels.

I was never good at warband and on top of that I didn't enjoy the multiplayer so I didn't play it. I was bad at Chiv but I played it a bit because the system was fun. I started out awful at Mordhau but the online was polished and felt fantastic, thus it was a lot of fun even though I died a ton. Eventually I "got gud" at mordhau but after 500ish hours I had had enough.

So I assume my opinion doesn't matter much here as I'm not invested in Bannerlord multiplayer at all, but I'll say that if the intention was to get people like me (i.e., general audience casuals) to enjoy the multiplayer then they failed. Sluggishness, delays, lag between input and character response will almost always be awful.

 

[RCC_God]

I'm a scrub and a casual, so I dunno if my input matters. I don't intend on playing much multiplayer just like I didn't play it much with Warband. I only played one skirmish match and I immediately noticed two things: I didn't like the UI with the class selection, and the feeling of delay or sluggishness or lag with regard to attacks and blocking. I can't recall if it's just changing block directions or if it's just generally raising block from neutral, but it felt *awful* and I'm not going back into multiplayer to deal with how unfun it feels.

I was never good at warband and on top of that I didn't enjoy the multiplayer so I didn't play it. I was bad at Chiv but I played it a bit because the system was fun. I started out awful at Mordhau but the online was polished and felt fantastic, thus it was a lot of fun even though I died a ton. Eventually I "got gud" at mordhau but after 500ish hours I had had enough.

So I assume my opinion doesn't matter much here as I'm not invested in Bannerlord multiplayer at all, but I'll say that if the intention was to get people like me (i.e., general audience casuals) to enjoy the multiplayer then they failed. Sluggishness, delays, lag between input and character response will almost always be awful.

I think it’s great getting new player feedback! And yeah it’s not based on warband, combat just feels unresponsive and floaty!