Wotr did do the weapon head and shaft alternative damage on some weapons. I thought at first this was a novel idea, but the risk/reward of the difficulty of doing damage was way off. Again, hit and collision were the big issues with wotr so it might have been the net code, but it was pretty hard to find the right range for damage. I always had the thought too that if this were real life i could pull or extend my arms to get the axe head on target rather than swing like a robot the same way every time. That is hard to control/animate so it makes sense to extend the hitbox down the shaft a bit.
Something occurred to me when reading this point Reapy- yes it is true that in real life you could adjust your hand position to shorten or lengthen the arc of your axe swing, but not when you had already begun an attack. I say this because virtually every time we swing axes in the game, we are doing so expecting to get the axe head on target. When it doesn't it is because we misjudged the distance or our opponent moved in an unexpected way. So whilst you might quickly shift your hand position in real life if your enemy parries your axe and gets up close and we cannot do this in game (except with a Nord long axe which makes the swing a little tighter), I don't think keeping nose to nose with someone for more than a second or two is easy in Warband, so the long axe man can make space for himself by turning his body and swinging or circling around the opponent. In addition, the two handed axes in Bannerlord, as far as I can tell, all seem to have the thrust ability to hit with blunt force with the top of the blade, a useful way to hit an opponent at point blank range. A potential alternative to down attack doing a thrust could be to perform an overhead that was very tight to the body, or maybe even a figure of eight swing just in front of the player (I believe this was a technique often used in real life in shield walls).
In the incident at the end of the engine power video last year, the axe man charges towards the enemy, they both swing but the axeman hits first, fatally, but the blade seems to go around the head; indeed the shaft hits before the head is even level with the enemy- he misjudged the attack because of the speed at which they approached each other. In this instance, it seems perverse to reward the axeman with full damage; he chose an axe, with its high damage stat and weight that make it so deadly, he should suffer the consequences if the head doesn't connect with the target. The axe in question isn't even very long, and the Bannerlord animations seem to keep the weapon quite close to the body, so it seems to me like the issue of hitting with the shaft wouldn't happen accidentally a lot if the change to hit boxes was made.
For my own suggestions, I wish they could come up with a way to reduce feint spam, like the modern pro feint spam.
A more subtle suggestion would be to add an interrupt when you bump into someone that has been holding their attack for a few seconds. There was always a weird stalemate when someone has their weapon held chambered and your weapon is in the block position, you both kinda have to stand there until the attacker lets go of his attack. You can sorta slip away or twitch your block to force an attack but it is still a sort of awkward stalemate.
I think that's a neat solution, I've come across this silly situation a lot.
I'd love to see a ton of improvements to mounted combat, I'm really excited if they can do a lot there as I feel it is a really unexplored area of combat that could do with a lot of change or new mechanics.
Do you have any ideas in mind? Thinking now, one thing that might make horse archery more fun and nuanced is rewarding shooting when all four hoofs are off the ground. I've read that in real life this is when stability of the rider is greatest and so is the point at which archers shoot. Perhaps this is something best kept toggle-able in the options.
I think deep down for on foot combat I think different attack stances for different weapon types would be the biggest change to combat that would keep the combat as excellent as it is now while introducing a ton of variety and new angles to discover.
Absolutely, that could really shake things up. I wonder if a wider stance for two handed spears, with one foot angled ahead of the other, would be good for wielding a spear quickly, giving it faster thrusts but not allowing side swings that we currently have. Rather than the same old dynamic that one has facing any long two hander of blocking in four directions, you only have thrusts coming at you but if the down block had to be activated for ones that landed below your waist, and the up block for ones above, it would be a challenge to defend against- just a different challenge to that posed by other two handers. Also the thruster could have two attacks; a normal 'up' attack that did a long thrust, while the 'down' attack did a shorter range thrust, with the avatar sliding the shaft back through his forehand to quickly and comfortable shorten its reach, representing the real advantages of a spear better than the current system.
Also more love for shield use, a way to make it more actively interesting. It should still be easy to use but perhaps have some benefits for direction blocking (like was attempted to add more durability to your shield when direction blocked).
Maybe the short 'block stun' should only occur if the defender places the shield correctly.
