Hitting Multiple People

[John the Roleplayer]

Let me present a COMMON scenario for you.  You and your troops are involved in the siege of a castle, and assail the walls.  You find yourself on the battlements behind a handful of your own or allied troops who are engaging the enemy.  You've got 20-40 of your other troops pushing you forward from behind, so you are pressed up against those guys in the front ranks.  At some point, those guys up front are going to lower their shields momentarily while they strike, and some of them WILL take hits.  This is not a matter of "strategy", it's what happens in a fight on the walls or in close confines.

With Cleaving in the game, you can't see through the wall of bodies, and more than half of them have shields in the way, but the guy who momentarily dropped his shield to attack gets hacked to death by a two-handed axe, and you happen to be pushed up close behind him instead of some other random meatbag.  You never even see the attack, never have a clear swing of your own at the enemy, and have no way of stopping it unless you hold your own shield up the entire time.  Game over.  Gee, wasn't that fun.

Cleaving may be valid under VERY limited circumstances (requiring extremely high strength and skill) against practically UNARMORED opponents (cloth or light leather), but immediately falls into the realm of fantasy against an armored victim.  Even with a completely unprotected target, the attack should be DRASTICALLY reduced, to the point where even relatively light protection will stop it with minimal or no damage to the second target.  Killing one guy THROUGH the other is just ridiculous under ANY circumstance, and killing someone THROUGH a horse requires modern armor-piercing firearms, not a two-handed axe or sword.

small point that a shieldwall is the other standard formation where you again stand shoulder to shoulder with your buddies. standing shoulder to shoulder with your buddies just so happens to be a great idea because you get more attackers per exposed meter and therefore a stronger formation.
which is another reason this feature just isn't fun and is very counter-intuitive...

Thank you both for making these points, so I don't have to.

 

[Revverie]

But with emergent games with interconnected game systems it's hard to do that without creating several unbalanced versions of the game.

Uhm why? Is just a simple feature, in one the sword goes damages 2 in the other 1, I can't see the problem

 

[lolbash]

Let me present a COMMON scenario for you.

the guy who momentarily dropped his shield to attack gets hacked to death by a two-handed axe, and you happen to be pushed up close behind him instead of some other random meatbag.  You never even see the attack, never have a clear swing of your own at the enemy, and have no way of stopping it unless you hold your own shield up the entire time.  Game over.  Gee, wasn't that fun.

This scenario assumes that

-You do not have a shield or are not holding a shield up while going up the ladder

-that you are walking up a ladder in Bannerlord instead of climbing a ladder

-that the cleaving attack is a AOE, which requires open space to allow the axe to travel and do an AOE, which is very uncommon a siege battle

This is a terrible strawman.

against practically UNARMORED opponents (cloth or light leather), but immediately falls into the realm of fantasy

I also like how you bring up the realism argument, but then proceed to talk as if light leather armor is a common thing in medieval times, proven wrong by history nerds and multiple youtube videos.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

But with emergent games with interconnected game systems it's hard to do that without creating several unbalanced versions of the game.

Uhm why? Is just a simple feature, in one the sword goes damages 2 in the other 1, I can't see the problem

If it was as simple as that then this thread wouldn't be as long. Combat is the core mechanic and changing a few things in one place can vastly alter the game. This is why some games have hardly any gameplay settings, because they're worried about basically letting the player break their own game by straying from the default settings to something the developers haven't tried.

For instance, say you're playing a siege in SP and there's a choke point in a gate. If cleave is active, men might die twice as fast in there as they would without the mechanic. It has the potential to break siege combat if it's just an on-off switch in the settings menu with no other caveats.

 

[John the Roleplayer]

Let me present a COMMON scenario for you.

the guy who momentarily dropped his shield to attack gets hacked to death by a two-handed axe, and you happen to be pushed up close behind him instead of some other random meatbag.  You never even see the attack, never have a clear swing of your own at the enemy, and have no way of stopping it unless you hold your own shield up the entire time.  Game over.  Gee, wasn't that fun.

This scenario assumes that

-You do not have a shield or are not holding a shield up while going up the ladder

-that you are walking up a ladder in Bannerlord instead of climbing a ladder

[...]

He clearly said "on the battlements". As such his points actually apply to attacker and defender alike. It would be better to either quote the entire passage, or mark the places where you leave something out.

 

[Roccoflipside]

Friendly fire is great for that, but I hope we all know that melee friendly fire is MP-only in Warband because TaleWorlds couldn't get the AI to stop hitting each other in SP. The only real detriment in SP is that your swings will be interrupted when they hit a friendly unit, which--combined with the lack of hit detection on bodies--makes for very aggravating AI behavior. As it is, they'll swing into each others' backs endlessly, so if you kill a guy and his buddy behind him is mid-swing then you're going to eat his weapon. The game punishes you for killing someone in an uneven fight, and that makes no sense.

I'm going to hope that TaleWorlds improved AI in Bannerlord to the point where soldiers will attempt to spread themselves around their target and engage it simultaneously, but I'm going to assume that they didn't and the AI will still form angry bozo trains. Even if they do have better positioning, they're probably going to swing into each other more often than they should.

Doesn't friendly fire accomplish that in a much less goofy and uneven way? Cleave relies on the player being ganged up on so the idea that it prevents crowding is only applicable with some weapons.

Cleave is most likely going to be practically restricted to two-handed weapons, in the sense that it will be more reliable to cleave with them as opposed to one-handed weapons. Getting into an uneven fight is challenging with a one-handed weapon and shield, but it's an order of magnitude more difficult with a two-hander because you don't have an omnidirectional block. This defensive disadvantage will still be present with cleave, but the offensive power of a two-hander will be made more significant. It's still not guaranteed, and better positioning is the counter. It's not hard to avoid walking into your teammates in a group fight, so if you do then it's fair that your opponent gets an opportunity to punish your mistake.

So I just want to point out that TW's has been saying since that first gameplay video 2/3 yrs. ago that ai doesn't just follow you in a line anymore, they try to spread out and surround the player. As we haven't played it yet, we don't know how good it actually is now, but we did see them do it in that same gameplay vid. Secondly, shields are now directional block as well, so it isn't as simple to block as just holding your shield up. What happens if two guys with two handers swing at the same time from opposite directions? You're screwed at least one way, as even with a shield you'd only be able to block one swing. And if inf. formations aren't popular in multiplayer, that's cool (since arrows are way more powerful in M&B than they would be in real battle), but that's how battles work in SP.

 

[lolbash]

What happens if two guys with two handers swing at the same time from opposite directions?

You are dead either way, AOE attack or not.

 

[ArnulfFloyd]

I personally considers as combat in M&B is even one good for a videogame, also missiles in Warband are for me excellent compared to Total War games

 

[Roccoflipside]

What happens if two guys with two handers swing at the same time from opposite directions?

You are dead either way, AOE attack or not.

I feel like you're almost deliberately missing my point here. Say you're in the second row of troops, or a situation like this **** drawing. 

In WB you'd be fine whether or not your buddies successfully blocked their attack, but here your screwed if one of your guys doesn't block and you guess wrong. That's also not mentioning anyone in front of you whose attack you have to worry about with or without cleave.

 

[lolbash]

What happens if two guys with two handers swing at the same time from opposite directions?

You are dead either way, AOE attack or not.

I feel like you're almost deliberately missing my point here. Say you're in the second row of troops, or a situation like this **** drawing. 

In WB you'd be fine whether or not your buddies successfully blocked their attack, but here your screwed if one of your guys doesn't block and you guess wrong. That's also not mentioning anyone in front of you whose attack you have to worry about with or without cleave.

So use a shield and hold down the block button? If anything, people here are almost ignoring the existence of a shied. Like I said, shield walls are very effective against swarming bezerkers.

 

[Roccoflipside]

隐藏

What happens if two guys with two handers swing at the same time from opposite directions?

You are dead either way, AOE attack or not.

I feel like you're almost deliberately missing my point here. Say you're in the second row of troops, or a situation like this **** drawing. 

In WB you'd be fine whether or not your buddies successfully blocked their attack, but here your screwed if one of your guys doesn't block and you guess wrong. That's also not mentioning anyone in front of you whose attack you have to worry about with or without cleave.

So use a shield and hold down the block button? If anything, people here are almost ignoring the existence of a shied. Like I said, shield walls are very effective against swarming bezerkers.

As I reminded Orion, shields don't block everything anymore, and you have to pick a direction just like attacking. Therefore, you can't block an attack from the left at the same time as an attack from the right, and definitely not with an enemy in front of you. It almost makes infantry formations useless (slightly exaggerated), which absolutely ruins the fun for me.

 

[ArnulfFloyd]

I must says as I enjoy M&B combat system, some not blame me for this thing, but I will love combat from Bannerlord with formations

 

[lolbash]

As I reminded Orion, shields don't block everything anymore, and you have to pick a direction just like attacking. Therefore, you can't block an attack from the left at the same time as an attack from the right, and definitely not with an enemy in front of you.

This is incorrect. The developers confirmed that shields can still block from all directions, they just take more damage if you block incorrectly.

 

[Roccoflipside]

As I reminded Orion, shields don't block everything anymore, and you have to pick a direction just like attacking. Therefore, you can't block an attack from the left at the same time as an attack from the right, and definitely not with an enemy in front of you.

This is incorrect. The developers confirmed that shields can still block from all directions, they just take more damage if you block incorrectly.

If that's the case, then it's not quite as bad as I thought, but I still don't like it. However, I've just come to the conclusion that TW's seems to be making it easier to kill troops overall, which is probably an unintended side effect of increasing battle size. Unless you want to double the time it takes to have a battle, you can't double the amount of troops and not change how quickly they die. While I would be fine with longer battles as it would hopefully lead to more tactical fights, i.e. including more skirmishing and maneuvering, it could be the opposite for many people, and I guess that makes sense.

 

[lolbash]

If that's the case, then it's not quite as bad as I thought, but I still don't like it. However, I've just come to the conclusion that TW's seems to be making it easier to kill troops overall, which is probably an unintended side effect of increasing battle size. Unless you want to double the time it takes to have a battle, you can't double the amount of troops and not change how quickly they die. While I would be fine with longer battles as it would hopefully lead to more tactical fights, i.e. including more skirmishing and maneuvering, it could be the opposite for many people, and I guess that makes sense.

Its important to remember that this issue is brought up because of a clip from a captain mode video which is multiplayer. Multiplayer and singleplayer are two different beasts and are balanced differently. For example in Warband multiplayer, even if you are wearing a full plate, you will still mostly die in a couple hits because people in multiplayer almosy always prioritize weapon damage over armor.

I suspect the damage multiplier is increased for the sake of speed and game balance. Remember that in the Battanian vs Empire video there is a clip where an archer was able to kill a heavy cavalryman with one arrow to the back.

 

[ArnulfFloyd]

Longer battles and tactics seems interesting but not for a action RPG, are reasonable for a strategy game, I have played Medieval 2 and there have battles which lasts a hour because I set time to slowest but sieges take 30-40 minutes. I like battles in M&B

 

[lolbash]

Its not like the AI are just going to stare at you from across the battlefield while you are moving each unit individually. Because of the new dynamic captain mode for singleplayer you can still focus on having fun and kill enemies while your companions are busy skirmishing with horse archers and bezerker units. It will still be the same, just bigger and better.

 

[ArnulfFloyd]

@Rainbow Dash

Interesting is captain mode mentioned by you but Bannerlord will be hard than WB?

 

[lolbash]

Not sure what you are asking.

If you are trying to say

"Interesting that you mentioned captain mode but will Bannerlord be harder than Warband?"

I have to say no, the captain mode for singleplayer just allows you to give control of units to the AI. So more of a quality of life change of pace rather than an increase in difficulty.

 

[Revverie]

But with emergent games with interconnected game systems it's hard to do that without creating several unbalanced versions of the game.

Uhm why? Is just a simple feature, in one the sword goes damages 2 in the other 1, I can't see the problem

If it was as simple as that then this thread wouldn't be as long. Combat is the core mechanic and changing a few things in one place can vastly alter the game. This is why some games have hardly any gameplay settings, because they're worried about basically letting the player break their own game by straying from the default settings to something the developers haven't tried.

For instance, say you're playing a siege in SP and there's a choke point in a gate. If cleave is active, men might die twice as fast in there as they would without the mechanic. It has the potential to break siege combat if it's just an on-off switch in the settings menu with no other caveats.

Why would they die faster? Turned off= same as warband