Just nerf ranged damage by 30%

[Dabos37]

Hello, Actually I think everybody is taking this matter from wrong side. I do not actually think we need a big Nerf for bows in general only a distance correction can do the job. But people think that bows are overpowered because how human manipulate the system. If you hire 300 fian champions ofc it would be very powerful for a mixed armies. But how would you think if AI would hire 300 cavalary ( where they need their charge capacity from warband) to counter you. Actually this can be solved by defining a army composition restrictions. There should be huge disadvantages for single type armies. For example in my latest game I had 300 horse-archer army where I nearly wiped everything. But the only cause for this is that AI does not counter me with 300 Archers! Normally AI is hiring according to a mixed formula! But human does not have this so we are manipulating the system. So I would prefer an AI improvement.(where it is imposible ) or army composition restrictions. So an army should consists Archer + Cavalary ( Light, Archer, Heavy) + Infantry. In warband everybody was crying that mount+blade is too powerful now same is happening for archers. But the thing is AI improvement effects archers mainly and actually reversed everything in favor of archers. Also another good idea is to make archers train harder ( I agree with it but it would not help), but still we are talking about a game where is all about grinding and human will wait 1 more month to have their archers if he is sure that it would break the balance in favor of him.

- Find a hard battle in your campaign.
- Enable cheats to add and test units playing the same battle.
- Test 200 Fian Campions against the strong AI army.
- Now play the same battle, but at this time pick 200 Banner Knights or 200 Legionaries.

Then you are going to see that archers are pretty OP and it is not about adding caps, it is about archers and xbows completely overperforming other kind of units.

 

[Apocal]

- Find a hard battle in your campaign.
- Enable cheats to add and test units playing the same battle.
- Test 200 Fian Campions against the strong AI army.
- Now play the same battle, but at this time pick 200 Banner Knights or 200 Legionaries.

Then you are going to see that archers are pretty OP and it is not about adding caps, it is about archers and xbows completely overperforming other kind of units.

He doesn't need to use Fian Champions to see that. Even normal archers will outperform Banner Knights and (probably) Legionaries.

 

[black_bulldog]

Joking aside, it's not a question of difficulty but of how badly the damage-protection relationship is working... We don't know how we can make you guys see this as a major problem to tackle as a high priority; there are hundreds of threads repeatedly talking about it ad nauseam.

Threads like this one: Armour. Why it doesn't work and how to make it work

I assume you guys have heard about the Realistic Battle mod and other similar mods where the damage-protection relationship has been comprehensively reworked. Well these mods, for a VAST™ majority are essential. You guys cannot delegate this to the mods as well, you must tackle the problem at its root by default in Native.

There are too many fundamental problems with the game that would fall under "the basics" which to this day (1 year + >6 months / no mention to MP *crickets*) its performance is bordering on disastrous, one of them as I say is the formula of damage-protection (weapons damage- armor protection/ what protect more than what).

We are in such a dreadful situation in this matter that one can only hope™ that you will "at least" reach the same level as Warband in this respect.

I really wish you could convey this to the team, plenty of players would thank you for it.

Either Callum is being completely oblivious or Taleworlds just doesn't care or doesn't agree with people on the forums. I honestly don't think they will ever look at armor damage calculations besides making a few small tweaks. If they felt like it was something that needed to be addressed they would've done so a long time ago. It's so frustrating to have to use a mod to make battles semi-enjoyable.

 

[Dabos37]

He doesn't need to use Fian Champions to see that. Even normal archers will outperform Banner Knights and (probably) Legionaries.

Yes, that's true, it was just to make it even more evident.

 

[Yertyl]

You are basically saying employing tactics over an opponent who doesn't, makes you win. The horror. Shields' blocking cones (I think that's what its' called by TW) is already ridiculous, protecting far more than their physical existence like some magic items. The game has already a bias aganist bows in that manner, I don't agree there's a need to nerf archers, maybe it should be a bit harder to train archers which is realistic.

No, I am saying the opposite: Both cavalry and archers inherently have more tactical options, but they will also win just fine with far less management than infantry.
I encourage you to try this yourself in a custom battle, as I just did. Example: Vlandia mirror,100 hardened crossbowmen against 100 swordmen.
Playing the crossbowmen, I put them in loose formation, long line, that's it. Win 96 -- 4
Playing the swordsmen, I also barely managed to win: 90 -- 52, but it involved a lot more management. Going shieldwall, repositioning, repositioning again so that they are in a perfect line, going forward, charging, making sure you you aim exactly at the middle, dropping shield wall at the last possible second.
But as soon as enemy archers get even a small opening into the shield wall, or if you have a few non-shielded infantry units (I tried this too), infantry die like flies and will lose.
Basically, in an infantry vs archer battle the infantry will only win if they do everything right, and the archers will only lose if they do everything wrong. Same as in cavalry vs infantry.
As it is, infantry is just worse in every way compared to the alternatives.

EDIT: Obvious but important problem: Infantry that is in shield wall will get demolished by other infantry. Infantry that is not in shield wall will get even more demolished by archers. In a simple 1 line against 1 line engagement, you can micro when you drop the shield wall, but in most larger battles you are fighting waves of both infantry and archers -- which makes formation micro impossible, and you will take heavy losses no matter what.
With archers, on the other hand, you can almost always just put them in a loose long line and they will get 80% of the kills.

 

[CrazyElf]

Have you tried playing the game with reduced difficulty settings or are you finding that ranged damage is still too high after lowering the settings?

View attachment 162030

We also want it so that it is harder to kill enemy targets with armor. Armor buffing needs to work both ways - it should be harder to kill enemies at higher tiers too. The goal of buffing armor is not to lower the difficulty - it is to make the game more reflective of realistic battle. So both the enemy will find it harder to kill your units with higher tier armor and you will find it harder to kill enemies with heavy armor.


A buff to armor across the board is needed judging by the feedback.

For most people, I recommend taking a look at Realistic Battle Mod. For the dev team, I'd recommend looking at the code closely for this mod and then reaching out to the modders (who are willing to help).

Realistic Battle Mod

This mod makes combat more realistic and improves AI. Armor and damage is reworked according to experimental data and physics. Units try to survive. AI uses proper formations and new custom culturally

www.nexusmods.com

Personally I'd say a 60% nerf to ranged damage is needed against armored units - maybe more.

 

[Dabos37]

@Callum @Dejan @Duh_TaleWorlds

I think this video shows by itself all my concerns about ranged units making the game too easy. Keep in mind that I am playing at the highest difficulty and I supposedly was facing a slightly stronger army than mine. 66% of enemy units were shielded (usual battles in the campaign are against 50% shielded units or so due to enemy two-handed units, recruits, and ranged units).



Now you can see other T5 units against exactly the same army:





This issue has been present in the game and ruining it for me since the release. Every time you recruit anything different to archers or xbows, you feel like you are building an underperforming army because ranged units outperform everyone with ease. Please help to report this issue internally and fixing it once and for all.



EDIT: Before someone comes here to say: "you are using infantry wrongly because the enemy is flanking you and blablablablablabla...."

 

[Yertyl]

@Callum @Dejan @Duh_TaleWorlds

I think this video shows by itself all my concerns about ranged units making the game too easy. Keep in mind that I am playing at the highest difficulty and I supposedly was facing a slightly stronger army than mine. 66% of enemy units were shielded (usual battles in the campaign are against 50% shielded units or so due to enemy two-handed units, recruits, and ranged units).



Now you can see other T5 units against exactly the same army:





This issue has been present in the game and ruining it for me since the release. Every time you recruit anything different to archers or xbows, you feel like you are building an underperforming army because ranged units outperform everyone with ease. Please help to report this issue internally and fixing it once and for all.



EDIT: Before someone comes here to say: "you are using infantry wrongly because the enemy is flanking you and blablablablablabla...."

Yeah that demonstrates it pretty nicely, thanks for uploading. I did quite a few of these tests. If against shielded infantry crossbowmen (who are supposed to be countered by them) do as well as line breakers (who are supposed to be a counter), you have a pretty obvious balance issue.

 

[Reiksmarshal]

It is not range that is the problem, I have thoroughly tested this in depth. Range damage is perfect where it is based on current player and NPC hit points. The problem is armor rating, raising the armor rating mitigates this issue and resolves other weapon issues as well like OP polearms that one shot recruit and lords alike even if the lord is wearing the best armor in the game. Decreasing range damage does not resolve the root of the problem and only kicks the can down the road.

What needs to happen is armor values need to practically be doubled and armor properties need to function properly. For example iron helmets protect against head crit damage, mail has a bonus against slash attacks, coat of plates and lamellar have a bonus against pierce attacks i.e. range, etc.

 

[Dabos37]

It is not range that is the problem, I have thoroughly tested this in depth. Range damage is perfect where it is based on current player and NPC hit points. The problem is armor rating, raising the armor rating mitigates this issue and resolves other weapon issues as well like OP polearms that one shot recruit and lords alike even if the lords is wearing the best armor in the game. Decreasing range damage does not resolve the root of the problem and only kicks the can down the road.

What needs to happen is armor values need to practically be doubled and armor properties need to function properly. For example iron helmets protect against head crit damage, mail has a bonus against slash attacks, coat of plates and lamellar have a bonus against pierce attacks i.e. range, etc.

As I always say: I do not know the best way to fix this issue, I just would like to see it fixed. I am ok if armor protection gets improved, shield protection and formations get improved, or archers/xbows get nerfed. Seriously, everything is ok for me, but TW, please fix this awful thing we have been reporting since ages ago.

 

[BigFat]

As I always say: I do not know the best way to fix this issue, I just would like to see it fixed.

Agreed. I always loved infantry heavy armies in warband but they're just not satisfying to use in bannerlord. I waste so much time just recruiting and training new ones because they drop dead constantly on their path to t5.

 

[AndrewArt]

Have you tried playing the game with reduced difficulty settings or are you finding that ranged damage is still too high after lowering the settings?

View attachment 162030

@Callum How about an option to reduce damage all around the board? I'm sure even such an option would solve most complaints. I don't want an option to reduce damage to my own troops, game is easy as it is. But an option to reduce damage all across the board (reduced to 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% for ALL troops, ally and enemy) would be pretty good. Players would be able to choose their own pace of battle. Like others said, nobody is asking about reducing ranged damage because AI is too OP, but because the PLAYER is OP (Player isn't forced to have %melee troops, cavalry etc. He can get 100% ranged troops and own the AI). When I play I have to handicap myself and not upgrade into any ranged troops just because I know it would make battles very easy.

Ranged troops upgrade really easily too. They don't have any danger of dying in battle. It's way easier to raise elite ranged troops than melee troops, by a huge margin. From a gameplay perspective ranged troops are just way too effective in comparison to melee troops, that's all, and we want an option to make battles last slightly longer (by reducing damage/buffing armor) so that ranged troops don't feel as effective in comparison to melee troops. Even if you nerf both ranged and melee damage, the ranged troops will feel the nerf more because they have the ranged advantage, so it's a good thing either way I'd say, so if you really, really are against buffing armor, I would like to experiment with such an option at least.

The truth is that it is an issue and it's been an issue since the beginning of EA, when I found out that recruiting only crossbowmen lets me defeat armies twice my size 2 times in a row at least. It's actually impossible to do that with an army of only infantry. Plus, getting tier 5 infantry is hard, while getting t5 crossbowmen is the easiest thing.

 

[The Sign of 33]

No, I am saying the opposite: Both cavalry and archers inherently have more tactical options, but they will also win just fine with far less management than infantry.
I encourage you to try this yourself in a custom battle, as I just did. Example: Vlandia mirror,100 hardened crossbowmen against 100 swordmen.
Playing the crossbowmen, I put them in loose formation, long line, that's it. Win 96 -- 4
Playing the swordsmen, I also barely managed to win: 90 -- 52, but it involved a lot more management. Going shieldwall, repositioning, repositioning again so that they are in a perfect line, going forward, charging, making sure you you aim exactly at the middle, dropping shield wall at the last possible second.
But as soon as enemy archers get even a small opening into the shield wall, or if you have a few non-shielded infantry units (I tried this too), infantry die like flies and will lose.
Basically, in an infantry vs archer battle the infantry will only win if they do everything right, and the archers will only lose if they do everything wrong. Same as in cavalry vs infantry.
As it is, infantry is just worse in every way compared to the alternatives.

EDIT: Obvious but important problem: Infantry that is in shield wall will get demolished by other infantry. Infantry that is not in shield wall will get even more demolished by archers. In a simple 1 line against 1 line engagement, you can micro when you drop the shield wall, but in most larger battles you are fighting waves of both infantry and archers -- which makes formation micro impossible, and you will take heavy losses no matter what.
With archers, on the other hand, you can almost always just put them in a loose long line and they will get 80% of the kills.

It's totally natural for an archer unit to require little management, I have never seen anyone complain about that until now. About the "small openings", if we are talking realism, you have no chance commanding a melee unit aganist the similar numbers of archers or even worse, crossbows in an open field, even with that "glorious shieldwall" arrows and bolts will pierce the shields along with the arms that hold them. Shield units by their own isn't meant to "counter" the ranged units to the point they just have to push them in shieldwall from a great distance and kill them all when they get to them. Now, THAT would be stupid. I got an headache when people come up with custom battles where the AI melee unit resort to throw weapons in the worst spot ever. We always said the combat A.I. was crap from day one. What you are showing me is bad A.I. with unfavourable conditions aganist infantry where the infantry loses *insert surprised pikachu face*. There is a reason why most armies employed cavalry because you NEED cavalry. It's not "unrealistic" to lose your "infantry only army" to an "archers only" army in similar numbers.

 

[Callum]

Either Callum is being completely oblivious or Taleworlds just doesn't care or doesn't agree with people on the forums. I honestly don't think they will ever look at armor damage calculations besides making a few small tweaks. If they felt like it was something that needed to be addressed they would've done so a long time ago. It's so frustrating to have to use a mod to make battles semi-enjoyable.

We'll be bringing it up again at the next player feedback meeting and seeing what our stance on this is.

@Callum How about an option to reduce damage all around the board? I'm sure even such an option would solve most complaints.

Sounds like a nice idea.

 

[caledoni]

A 'reduce all' damage slider interests me greatly

 

[Dabos37]

I am not a fan of the “reduce all damage” slider, mostly because it will brings new issues for sure, for example melee cavalry charges being weaker, etc. So, what will happen is that devs will continue working for balancing the default damage slider, and won’t care much about modified damage sliders (it will be impossible to have a decent balancing for all slider at the same time).

Anyway, I think this thread is about OP archers/xbows and these units are clearly overperforming, and while I do not disagree with improving armor (just a bit, I actually dislike armor in Warband which I find pretty unrealistic), I think that some effort should be specifically invested on balancing archers/xbows units.

 

[AndrewArt]

I am not a fan of the “reduce all damage” slider, mostly because it will brings new issues for sure, for example melee cavalry charges being weaker, etc.

Well that is the point, making infantry closer to cavalry and archers. Keep in mind that cavalry will also take more hits to be killed, so overall there will be more cavalry charges, and overall longer lasting battles which some players did express they wished for in the past. All in all it is just an option which I am curious about. I never experimented with such, so I am mostly curious if it can create a more enjoyable/different feeling to the game.

How I imagine things... If a crossbow bolt deals ~50 damage to a high tier unit from a distance, then instead of 2-shotting a high tier troop he will be 4-shotted instead.
If a cavalry lance would one-shot someone, cavalry would have to two-shot him, but cavalry and their horses are also more durable, making cavalry more of a supporting/disrupting unit, as they make sense to be.
Melee death balls fights would last a little bit longer (2x as long) so looters and other troops won't instantly run after clashing and dying in a couple of seconds and then their morale being dropped. This will also allow the player to fight for longer on foot before the enemies inevitably run, so it won't feel like you just run in for a few seconds and then the battle is over. More than this, players have access to grinding for better melee skill/perks and crafting very strong weapons, so in battles they (and their companions) might be the only ones one-shotting troops, which would be really cool and make companions feel more significant/useful in battle (I would finally start using companions again).
And everyone's favorite: looter rocks dealing half the damage.

I know it's not all that simple, and some gameplay aspects will change, some for the better and some for the worse depending on how you look at it, but an option is an option and it can't hurt.

Of course we still need some AI improvements (cavalry etc). We also need some improvement to the armor formula. And we will probably get such things too. But at this point I'm not expecting huge changes/buffs, especially armor-wise, but tiny improvements. So I thought that maybe such an option could be a good addition to satisfy some of the player's needs for slower-paced battles and nerfing ranged inherently.

I don't see how such an option would require separate balancing, because it would be just a feature to slow down battles a bit. And personally I am all up for not one-shotting everyone from the get-go. There are melee weapons that deal over 100 damage and you don't even need weapon skill/perks to be able to one-shot npcs, so for me and my infantry play-style it would be a nice option overall.

And if all fails and you don't enjoy it/think it's balanced, just don't use it. Just like the "easy difficulty" which I never ever use but it's still there (and is really unbalanced you could say, in your favor), it's easy to ignore the options you don't want. The more options the better.

 

[Dabos37]

Yes, reducing all damage overall could be a good thing, but what I am trying to say is that devs will probably forget this slider and will focus on balancing on the default damage slider. Otherwise they would have to find a good balancing for every slider which could be a pain.

On the other hand, if most of the people (at least forum player base) want to see overall damage getting reduced, what is the point for TW ignoring this? One reason could be time and amount of work, but if having to work on this new slider, why do not just reduce damage for everyone if it is what most of people are asking for?

If pretty high damage is just for making the game harder, I think there are other ways to achieve this. Plus, enemy armored units would also be harder to kill (but yes, overall it would be easier for the player).

 

[Noschkov]

We'll be bringing it up again at the next player feedback meeting and seeing what our stance on this is.


Sounds like a nice idea.

Could you share when this next meeting is? So we have a rough idea when to expect anything in this area like with the modding meeting some weeks ago.

 

[Maximum997]

In every single playthrough I plan on going melee heavy, I end up with massed ranged units anyways, since they are just so much, much more effective. It's boring, and does not feel very medieval, even if it truly is realistic.

It is true.

And melee units are garbage not only bevouse they are just worse in fights:

BUT melee infantry has more problems:

1) Battles become endless kite game. Enemy runs away from you, you chase him. And it never ends, becouse archers are faster. And it is so fkn boring.
But when you have tons of archers - enemy forced to atack you.
2) Battles just dont want to end, becouse this few horse archers dont want to surrender. And again melee infantry sucks in this situation.
3) If your PC cant run 2500 vs 2500 you will face reinforcment system. And it sucks. Melee infantry is just AWFUL in such battles.
Becouse they are doomed to go into enemy spawn (becouse enemy with more archers will just camp spawn) and die surrounded by enemy reinforcements. And if you are not mounted - you will die with them
4) Khuzaits