Helped me also a lot and if someone thinks he can feint-spam you, there are also other options you have as well. Can't say the echo chamber would find out about that, since they don't play the game. All these people claiming they'd block this and that and this... I'd like to actually see it then, if block delay is removed.
What I want to say is that block delay may be a turnoff for those who want to super feint spam all the time (I found it annoying in Warband as well to be honest...) but it's not as horrible as described sometimes in this forum. I agree that you can abuse animation, but what makes me think is that there are people who are able to consistently block most if not all hits on a duel server. And I know that these people are most likely not cheating. They're just good and dominate duel servers, where you can ***** most about the block delay.
What I want to stress is that I am not a fanboy, there's a considerable amount of combat I'd like to see changed and I also want the "block delay" being lowered (the exact amount of lowering the block delay can be discussed with me openly), but not completely removed, but I'd like to maintain one point: some people simply will not accept that a sequel can be different. They will want Warband 2 and will not shut up until it's delivered, even if it never gets delivered. However, it's usual for games to do that and for communities to split along these lines with some preferring the prequel.
What is very sad is that TW is moving very slow on MP improvement, balancing, changes and new content, since it's direly needed. You get bored by three (atm just two) skirmish maps, you get fed up with archer spam and cav spam. Skirmish queue is nearly empty sadly due to this and this is not due to block delay alone and those who are still playing frequently and daily are usually affiliated with some sort of team trying to prove their worth against other teams. With class limits skirmish can be a lot of fun actually. But that should be a quick fix, not a permanent solution. Many are also preparing for the upcoming tournament and I fear the worst might happen after that tournament if not a new tournament is started immediately after... And that's sad.
Btw, before the fanboy or casual argument is thrown in my face again: I joined this franchise 2010, played competitive for years, tried mods, yadda yadda yadda. I just quit 2018, when I finally had enough of it.
I've seen you making this "echo chamber" and "warband 2.0" argument on loads of threads now, so I think it's worth actually responding to at this point.
What is an echo chamber? A closed community that repeats the same ideas to each other and reinforces their belief in them. How was Bannerlord developed? In a closed community that constantly repeated the same ideas to each other for 8 years. I genuinely believe that a lot of Bannerlord's problems can be attributed to how closed the development process was and how little community input there was. Systems like the class system clearly came to exist as a result of this echo chamber.
I would block this and that, I can do it in Warband where the block delay is minimal:
My blocking videos are all from a time when I wasn't particularly good at multi-person blocking either.
Why does that matter?
It's not just pure reactions to block against multiple players at once, because even with the minimal block delay in Warband you cannot consistently react fast enough to block for a prolonged period of time against several incoming attacks. It requires predictive blocking and pre-blocking. This means you need to look at their movement and angling to predict which direction they'll use, you need to block immediately and adjust in a split-second if you guess wrong. This is impossible in Bannerlord not only because it has a larger flat block delay, but primarily because of the variable block delay. The weapon takes longer to travel across your body to block and you cannot always reliably control where you're moving in 1vX because you are forced to move away from where the enemies are. This means it is basically impossible to properly utilise the stance system whilst defending in 1vX, a problem which is exacerbated by the fact that stances do not switch instantly upon pressing A or D so you cannot even tap the corresponding movement key along with the corresponding block to overcome the block delay. It also means that if you guess wrong and pre-block to the left, but the attack is actually coming from the right, you have much less time to adjust to the correct block because there is a larger block delay for the extra travel time/depending on your stance/depending on your weapon + the larger flat block delay.
This makes a skill-based 1vX impossible. I say skill-based, because it is still possible to win against multiple players if they are considerably worse or if you have a shield, or if you use the movement problems to kite hard with a long weapon, but it is not possible to directly confront multiple skilled players without a shield and win through mechanical prowess.
A common misconception is that those skill-based 1vX moments were only accessible to some "veteran" "elite" Warband group and nobody else had anything like that. While a 1vX that I do might look different to a 1vX that a siege player with 200 hours pulls off, the feeling when you play better than your normal level, or when you successfully take out multiple enemies alone is very satisfying. In Bannerlord a 1vX frustrates me, because I know I'm pressing my right click fast enough that the block would go up in Warband, but that the only reason it isn't in BL is because the variable block delay stops it from working. I'm sure in some of those cases I actually didn't press it fast enough, and that I would have died in Warband too, but it provides a permanent excuse and a permanent nag in your head whilst you play. It always feels like if your block didn't go up in time it must have been the block delay. In my case that is genuinely the case more often than not, but even in those cases where I probably didn't press it in time the feeling that I was cheated by the game is still there because I know the block delay exists. I know I'm not alone in that feeling, but I won't try to claim some arbitrary percentage of people agrees with me.
It is not hard to block normal attacks in Bannerlord. That is not the issue. The issue with block delay in duel stems from the fact that attack direction switching is faster than block direction switching. You can out-feint the block delay. Seriously. It's not easy to do and isn't really a skill because you can only really set it up in a controlled environment, but the fact it exist at all is a severe demonstration of the issue.
I don't know why the argument that block delay helps players with high ping exists. I find it FAR easier to play with 220 ping in Warband than with 100 ping in Bannerlord. Before I get called out for that being nonsense, here's some proof:
Playing with high ping in Bannerlord means the flat block delay gets stacked with the variable block delay, which gets stacked with your stance, which gets stacked with your weapon which gets stacked with the ping delay. It feels awful playing with that ping and I seriously believe it wouldn't even be possible to block a basic attack with 200 ping in Bannerlord, whilst in Warband you can block consistently up to about 250.
I agree with you that MP is lacking a lot of other content too, and that it is severely contributing to the problem, but the most pressing issue is and should always be the combat. Thousands of people spent hundreds-thousands of hours playing the same duel maps with the same weapon in Warband because the combat was satisfying, reliable, intuitive and most importantly consistent/predictable. Bannerlord has failed to achieve the same. That is not a fringe opinion, as the likes of Tork insisted it was for the duration of the beta and for the period immediately following release, because the total collapse of the MP playerbase has demonstrated beyond any doubt that the combat in Bannerlord is of a poor quality. Yes, we cannot attribute the problem entirely to the combat, there are many other issues contributing as well (classes, balancing, netcode, crashes, gamemodes, lack of maps etc.), but the combat has failed. It has failed because its extra "accessibility" did not attract swathes of SP players or totally new players as TW hoped and because it did not attract the Warband population, who now either play Warband infrequently or do not play the series at all.
I hope that TW invest their now limitless resources into improving the game and manage to bring it back in a No Mans Sky-like miracle, I seriously hope that they manage that, but I don't think they will. I don't think they will change the fundamental problems with the combat, or create an interesting class/gear system, and I think that by the time they do add maps, gamemodes and other MP features the population will be so low that it won't matter. Imo you should move on now and not get too attached. The feedback is all here, it's actually all on the beta section from a year ago too, because the problems have existed since the start and have been pointed out since the start. It's just a matter of TW implementing it.
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