Fixed spear issue, when?

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Terco_Viejo:

Look, even the basics of how a fallback order works is broken (or doesn't work as you would expect, imho). Taleworlds has been aware of this since I brought it to their attention in August in alfa-beta period 2019 here. Below is an updated video test of how fallback works in Warband vs Bannerlord.



I also want to bring this post here, talking about formations. I believe it is a video that TW should watch!
 
This is something I wrote about the spear bracing mechanic back when it was released, I still think most of my suggestions were pretty spot on.

Suggested Buffs:
Remove the speed threshold:By playing on some tdm I quickly saw a perfect counter for pikes when you're a cav player.Simply slowing down below the speed threshold(double-tapping S) allows you to run your horse into the pike without taking any damage and run over the pikeman.Having such a simple action completly counter the dedicated anti-cav weapon seems a bit silly and will probably make bracing redudant in higher levels of play.

Making it damage players:Removing the speed threshold means you'd be also able to damage players.Of course the damage dealt to a player running into a pike vs a horse running into a pike should be waaaaay smaler- in the 10-20 damage range.The main reason I'm suggesting this change is to make pikes viable in formations.I know it's supossed to be anti-cav, but a single inf player being able to run into a pike wall of 10+ pepole and killing everyone as he takes no damage seems a bit silly.

Always rear the horse:Again, I'm uncertain whenever this is a bug or not but if it isn't it just creates inconsistent gameplay.Upon running into a braced weapons the horse should always be stopped for consistency sake.

Suggested Nerfs:
Deployment animation:
This would prevent bracing from being abused for taking cheap shots at incoming inf players and cavalry.It doesn't need to be long, 1-2 seconds of animation so that enemies have the chance to react or to punish the pikeman if he is too late to react.

Stun upon hit:Upon succesfuly hitting someone with a braced weapon the pikeman should be unable to brace again for 2-3 seconds. This is to balance out removing the speed threshold, as without a cooldown the pikeman could simply spam the mechanic.This would also make sense realism wise and add weight to the weapon-as in real battles pikes sometimes even broke after a succesful hit.

Reducing turnrate:You can be facing one direction with a pike and do a instant 180 to kill a cavalry coming from behind leaving him with no time to react.Pikemen right now can completly disregard chokepoints and formations and just do 360's and making the entire arena around them a safe zone.The reduced turnrate should allow enemy inf players to just walk around the pike if he's trying to keep them at bay with it, while pikeman vs cav would become about who can outmanuver eachother.Also again-realism and weight doing instant spins when holding a 2m weapon in front of you isn't very realistic nor does it feel like the weapon has any weight.

Intented consequences of these changes:
Making inf vs cav more skill based
-as it is right now pikes only punish clueless cav players and are a non-factor to even slightly competent ones.
Using pikes in formations and chokepoints-pikes right now are little more than your personal tool to scare off cav.These changes hopefuly will disencourage solo play and make them more objective and team based tools.
Making the weapons feel better and more consistent-these changes would make pikes feel like an actual weapon and not just a middle finger to enemy cav.
 
This is something I wrote about the spear bracing mechanic back when it was released, I still think most of my suggestions were pretty spot on.

Suggested Buffs:
Remove the speed threshold:By playing on some tdm I quickly saw a perfect counter for pikes when you're a cav player.Simply slowing down below the speed threshold(double-tapping S) allows you to run your horse into the pike without taking any damage and run over the pikeman.Having such a simple action completly counter the dedicated anti-cav weapon seems a bit silly and will probably make bracing redudant in higher levels of play.

Making it damage players:Removing the speed threshold means you'd be also able to damage players.Of course the damage dealt to a player running into a pike vs a horse running into a pike should be waaaaay smaler- in the 10-20 damage range.The main reason I'm suggesting this change is to make pikes viable in formations.I know it's supossed to be anti-cav, but a single inf player being able to run into a pike wall of 10+ pepole and killing everyone as he takes no damage seems a bit silly.

Always rear the horse:Again, I'm uncertain whenever this is a bug or not but if it isn't it just creates inconsistent gameplay.Upon running into a braced weapons the horse should always be stopped for consistency sake.

Suggested Nerfs:
Deployment animation:
This would prevent bracing from being abused for taking cheap shots at incoming inf players and cavalry.It doesn't need to be long, 1-2 seconds of animation so that enemies have the chance to react or to punish the pikeman if he is too late to react.

Stun upon hit:Upon succesfuly hitting someone with a braced weapon the pikeman should be unable to brace again for 2-3 seconds. This is to balance out removing the speed threshold, as without a cooldown the pikeman could simply spam the mechanic.This would also make sense realism wise and add weight to the weapon-as in real battles pikes sometimes even broke after a succesful hit.

Reducing turnrate:You can be facing one direction with a pike and do a instant 180 to kill a cavalry coming from behind leaving him with no time to react.Pikemen right now can completly disregard chokepoints and formations and just do 360's and making the entire arena around them a safe zone.The reduced turnrate should allow enemy inf players to just walk around the pike if he's trying to keep them at bay with it, while pikeman vs cav would become about who can outmanuver eachother.Also again-realism and weight doing instant spins when holding a 2m weapon in front of you isn't very realistic nor does it feel like the weapon has any weight.

Intented consequences of these changes:
Making inf vs cav more skill based
-as it is right now pikes only punish clueless cav players and are a non-factor to even slightly competent ones.
Using pikes in formations and chokepoints-pikes right now are little more than your personal tool to scare off cav.These changes hopefuly will disencourage solo play and make them more objective and team based tools.
Making the weapons feel better and more consistent-these changes would make pikes feel like an actual weapon and not just a middle finger to enemy cav.
Agreed generally, but I'd go further.

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.

Maybe that would be a natural feature of reducing the attack wind-up time, but as it stands I'd rather have annoying parry fails than keep watching the AI just block spear attacks without breaking a sweat until they're up in biting range.
 
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
 
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.

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

Your ideas are absolutely much better than mine. They would be consistent and also not introduce luckery as a game mechanic.

But still... less wind-up for spear thrusts, no?
 
Agreed. E-sport ruins games.
("but muhhhh balance!!!" shouts the E-sport coomer)
It's even worse than that. IDK if you're aware... but you know how cavalry just blasts through tightly-packed spear infantry right now with no effect?

THEY DID THAT ON PURPOSE. And they did it TWO YEARS AGO.

Apparently frontal cavalry charges against a tight phalanx of spears being suicide "wasn't fun" for the devs so they just introduced a big ol' derp into the infantry AI so there's no effective counter to heavy cav whatsoever - except for heavy cav's general inability to hit the broad side of a barn or charge in formation... which results in lone riders blasting through shieldwalls like tissue paper while both dealing and receiving zero damage.
 
But still... less wind-up for spear thrusts, no?
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.
 
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Spears really needed to be able to keep enemies at bay with their thrusts and do passive damage to anything touching the tip of it + not getting stuck on friendlies when used in formation for it to be atleast close to realistic effective.

Maybe blocking while wielding spears/pikes (on foot of course) should present it pointing forward creating a kinda of "barrier" that anything rushing at it would get passive damage and be pushed back.

TW may think hollywood flashy fights with swords acting like lightsabers cutting effortless through anything is cool and badass but to me it's just silly and completely removes anything resembling realism and strategy from the fights making them boring zerg rushes..
 
Can't TW solve it by adding two effects?

1) If attacked and damaged by a spear, you will be pushed back.
(This effect is already in the game. You can just apply it to the spear.)

It doesn't work if it's blocked with a shield or a weapon.

2) The spear is not disturbed by nearby allies.

I think this will improve the problem of infantry using the spearwall.
 
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:
*SNIP*
Nah dude I appreciate it. Samesies. In fact, I'm down for more Schoolhouse Calradia.

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.

What do you think?
It doesn't work if it's blocked with a shield or a weapon.
This is where I NOPE. If you can get past the effective range of a spear into practically biting distance by holding down block, then 1H/2H sword will always win with even without shields. I'm not remotely as knowledgeable as @h1zchan but I can't imagine that it's very easy to parry spear thrusts with a 2H warhammer.
 
The problem with spears is embedded in the animations, this is evident because not even the player can use them effectively.
I can resume the issue in two things:
- Slow and imprecise thrusts
- Limited range of motion
You will never fix AI group behavior and combat effectiveness either unless this is addressed by the root.
 
agreed, spears/pikes are terrible right now when they should absolutely dominate the battlefield...
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.
 
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.
"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.
 
Given professional soldiers usually were valued for other skills than holding a spear
apparently something else was valued to dominate a battlefield.

Roman+mg42+team_5b920f_6295411.jpg
 
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.
Because both were the most effective infantry weapons throughout history before the widespread adoption of guns.

It was suicide for anyone to charge into a cohesive spearwall/pike phalanx except for the most heavily armored cavalry that were able to use their higher mobility to exploit weakspots in the formation, attack from the rear/flanks or feign retreat to make the enemy break their own formation in pursuit (how the normans eventually won at hastings after charging and failing all day against the well cohesive saxon shieldwall)

You guessed just right, spears/pikes + formations were the winning formula, the long shaft kept the enemy at bay making the one with a longer shaft be able to hit the enemy while the later couldn't get close enough to hit back without being impaled.

Swords were just side arms and status symbols (think modern soldiers carrying pistols alongside their rifles in modern warfare for "oh ****" situations) with the rare exception of the Roman legions for the short time they used the gladius as their main weapon before going back to spears.
 
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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.
A quick google search of "King of Weapon", Spear will be the answer. Like what you've said, its easier to manufacture but, its one of the hardest to defend. The reason why it always appears in every era is simply because its very effective and cheap.
 
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