''rant'' about realistic difficulty.

[CrazyElf]

I think you might be right there. The word realistic makes me think of the real-world suits of armour that basically made people invincible on the battlefield, whereas the intention in the game is to show that it is a high difficulty level.

Now, I know some of you want heavier armour to provide a lot more protection than it currently does, but I feel that is a different debate entirely. My question here is do you think changing the word realistic to something else would be preferable?

I very strongly think so - because the game does claim to have a degree of historical accuracy.

Generally speaking in modded games where armor is buffed:

1. Battles tend to last a few minutes longer because both sides have armor - I personally like the pacing. One thing I noticed from Total War is that the best mods (I played Darthmod for Shogun 2 and Third Age Total War for Medieval 2) tended to slow down the pace of battles so the game was not just 2 blobs, but required more strategy.
2. Because the pace of battle is more realistic, your quality of leadership as a commander and the orders you give have a bigger impact.
3. Getting higher tier troops is far more important - the difference in power between a recruit and a tier 5/6 is much bigger because of the effects of armor
4. Lords are harder to kill and cannot be "sniped" the way they can be in the current game
5. Blunt weapons become a lot more important because of higher tier enemies
6. Archers become more realistic - right now in the base game they are incredibly powerful and I tend to spam archers - often 2:1 archer to melee. In more realistic mods, a balanced force is a better composition.
7. Balance wise, the complaints about the Khuzait being overpowered are less prominent - in field battles their main advantage is that horse archers are extremely deadly against armor

In fights, it means that if you are engaged in combat, you can "recover" from a mistake, versus in the base game, it will take out a lot of your hp or outright kill you.

My recommendation would be for the developers to reach out to the modders of mods like Realistic Battle Mods and collaborate - I'm sure they would be willing to help.

 

[Alfonso_M]

I very strongly think so - because the game does claim to have a degree of historical accuracy.

Generally speaking in modded games where armor is buffed:

1. Battles tend to last a few minutes longer because both sides have armor - I personally like the pacing. One thing I noticed from Total War is that the best mods (I played Darthmod for Shogun 2 and Third Age Total War for Medieval 2) tended to slow down the pace of battles so the game was not just 2 blobs, but required more strategy.
2. Because the pace of battle is more realistic, your quality of leadership as a commander and the orders you give have a bigger impact.
3. Getting higher tier troops is far more important - the difference in power between a recruit and a tier 5/6 is much bigger because of the effects of armor
4. Lords are harder to kill and cannot be "sniped" the way they can be in the current game
5. Blunt weapons become a lot more important because of higher tier enemies
6. Archers become more realistic - right now in the base game they are incredibly powerful and I tend to spam archers - often 2:1 archer to melee. In more realistic mods, a balanced force is a better composition.
7. Balance wise, the complaints about the Khuzait being overpowered are less prominent - in field battles their main advantage is that horse archers are extremely deadly against armor

In fights, it means that if you are engaged in combat, you can "recover" from a mistake, versus in the base game, it will take out a lot of your hp or outright kill you.

My recommendation would be for the developers to reach out to the modders of mods like Realistic Battle Mods and collaborate - I'm sure they would be willing to help.

+1

 

[Bannerman Man]

I can't find where I read it, but does that mean 100 armor is capped to block 66% blunt? I really dislike armor asymptotes...

It's technically an asymptote, but as you can see in the image Apocal posted (blue line in the graph on the right), the curve isn't too bad for armor values that you would see in vanilla. The formula for how much blunt damage is absorbed is [1 - (100/(100+ArmorValue))] and I think the highest armor value you can achieve without perks or mods is 77, so that would block 1-(100/177) = 43.5% of blunt damage. Here's what the graph looks like (if you want to rescale the x-axis, hold shift and click and drag left or right near the x-axis).

 

[five bucks]

I hate games were you have to hack or shoot 20 times on/in the unprotected head to kill an enemy because he/she is "high tier".

Well, nobody's saying that an unprotected head should need 20 hits to kill.
But armor definitely needs to be better. There's no point in picking the "increased headshot damage" perks when you can oneshot most enemies even when they're wearing a helmet.

As armor is very diverse and of very different quality and adds a lot of factors to combat, and because of the fact that video games never ever being able till now to realistically depict armor, I did not expect armor to be incorporated in the "realism".

Warband's depiction of armor was far, far more realistic- and satisfying, and fun- than Bannerlord's.

In Warband, if you were wearing high tier chain/plate and being shot at by a group of 20 forest bandits, you would take 0-1 damage per arrow. Armor was useful and worth its cost. You weren't invulnerable, but you could actually ride into a group of archers and have fun killing them without being turned into a pincushion immediately. Your armored melee units were an equally good choice to archers.

Now, I don't think Bannerlord's best armor needs to reduce weak arrows to 0-1 damage (especially since we don't have plate) but something like 3 damage/weak arrow might be better, which is 34 hits for the worst archer to kill someone wearing the best padded lamellar/coat-of-plate armor. That's sensible.

Mods for Bannerlord have already accomplished it already. It isn't difficult, and it should be a part of the vanilla game, because it would improve the game in so many ways. Better armor would improve troop balance, improve tactical variety, improve the length of battles so the player has time to execute tactics, and would make lords/companions die less often on the battlefield.

As armor has none of it's real world disadvantages and is much too present on the battlefield, it cannot have ingame all the advantages that it had in actual combat, because that would not be "realistic", too.

Realism should be included in games wherever it is fun, and not included where it is not fun. Again, Warband's system for armor worked just fine, and was more fun than the way Bannerlord is now.

make ranged weapons shoot slower and less accurate

The fire rate and accuracy is actually quite good, the damage through armor is the real issue here.

Also +1 to @CrazyElf 's post.

 

[mujadaddy]

It's technically an asymptote, but as you can see in the image Apocal posted (blue line in the graph on the right), the curve isn't too bad for armor values that you would see in vanilla. The formula for how much blunt damage is absorbed is [1 - (100/(100+ArmorValue))] and I think the highest armor value you can achieve without perks or mods is 77, so that would block 1-(100/177) = 43.5% of blunt damage. Here's what the graph looks like (if you want to rescale the x-axis, hold shift and click and drag left or right near the x-axis).

Very nice graph. So it *is* an asymptote, but toward 100% as armor->infinity. Not as bad as I was afraid of: used to play a game where the armor value was actually the % of blocked damage, top end armor was super valuable...

EDIT: Which really means that all armor could stand to double or even triple their values...

 

[Medivhtratos]

That would mean that the problem lies in the strike/throw/missile magnitude calculation Modell? Or maybe the weapon dmg and the magnitude Modell?

Does this curve also take crits(head shots/strikes) into account @Bannerman Man

 

[Sidhwen_Khorest]

i thought it would count for everyone. but it only seems to count for me and my troops.

Just a note on this point, my understanding is that "Realistic" is always turned on for enemy troops, so going up or down in difficulty doesn't effect how much damage they take. If you are playing underneath realistic then you are essentially cheating, while the enemy still takes full damage.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Does this curve also take crits(head shots/strikes) into account @Bannerman Man

No. If the troop is struck in the head or neck then the damage inflicted is doubled (multiplied by 2) and if the troop is struck in the legs the damage inflicted is reduced by 20% (multiplied by 0.8 ). It appears that getting struck anywhere else does not affect the damage dealt. This multiplier is applied to the damage after the armor reduction calculations have already been factored in.

 

[Fantomen]

Realistic in the sense of you and your allies not cheating by taking less damage, not realistic in the sense of the game being realistic in general (armour, AI and so on).

I think the naming of those settings are fine for what they do, armour and other balancing needing more work is another discussion.

 

[CrazyElf]

Realistic in the sense of you and your allies not cheating by taking less damage, not realistic in the sense of the game being realistic in general (armour, AI and so on).

I think the naming of those settings are fine for what they do, armour and other balancing needing more work is another discussion.

It also works both ways - you take less damage, but you deal less damage as well to enemies, especially when they have higher tier armor.

So the net effect is no change in difficulty, but that combat is well, more realistic, reflective of warfare during that era.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

even in warband was same deal , only some mods fixed it and felt good wearing full plate with peasents doin 1 damage to u , am no expert but i think full set of arnor should protect u from weak weapons slashes

Nah I was just playing vanilla warband and in the entry level good armor (heraldic with tabar I think) and basic war horse peasants, farmers and looters could only damage me if I rode hard into a over head swing or perfect stab, normal swings and rocks were all 0'ing off. It was incredible! It's truly rewarding to use my hard earned raid money to buy armor and go back to raid again and not even have to worry about them! I only had like 44 HP too, so it really mattered! Sea raiders and deserters could damage me better, but it was still decent protection!

^This is what armor progression should feel like! You gear up and yeah actual troops and lord can still put serious dent in you, but you're virtually immune to low tier trash!

Now, I know some of you want heavier armour to provide a lot more protection than it currently does, but I feel that is a different debate entirely. My question here is do you think changing the word realistic to something else would be preferable?

I think "equal", "reduced" and "easy" would convey what the settings actually do more accurately. You're just taking damage at an equal rate using the exact formula as the NPC units, so equal would be a good name.

As for heavy armor's protection, I think it's good to point out that most player are fine with tier 5-6 units still doing good damage to us in max armor, it's more that lower tier units doing almost as much makes it feel un-rewarding and annoying. Having to be overly cautious to all units leads to overall degenerate and abusive playing style where we basically never give the AI bots a chance in the 1st place.

 

[VicbossOG]

Personally I don't think you should be able to ride into a swarm of 30 angry peasants wearing heavy armour and reasonably expect to come out of that fight alive. They're peasants with garbage weapons, doesn't mean they can't kill a knight with their hammers and pitchforks. If you get hit 3 or 4 times with a blacksmith hammer when you're riding on a horse increasing the speed and thus the damage you're taking from it, there is going to be damage done to your heavy armour. Rocks don't do that much damage when you have heavy armour anyways, they could do a little less but mostly they're just annoying because they interrupt your action which I personally don't think should happen unless you are wearing lighter armour.

 

[five bucks]

Personally I don't think you should be able to ride into a swarm of 30 angry peasants wearing heavy armour and reasonably expect to come out of that fight alive. They're peasants with garbage weapons, doesn't mean they can't kill a knight with their hammers and pitchforks. If you get hit 3 or 4 times with a blacksmith hammer when you're riding on a horse increasing the speed and thus the damage you're taking from it, there is going to be damage done to your heavy armour.

I agree (if you're talking about sitting there long enough for each of them to hit you 3-4 times-- if you just charge right through them, though, then no), but that's a bit of an extreme example.
Blunt weapons like blacksmith hammers should do good damage to armor, sure, but they do way too much as it is right now to be balanced or for armor or tier to be meaningful. A T1 Vlandian recruit with a blacksmith hammer can currently kill a T5 Imperial Legionary in like 4 hits to the body, which means a Legionary can only kill about 3 recruits if that before dying. It's unsatisfying as hell.

Armor needs to be a bit better against blunt damage and much better against ranged damage.

Rocks don't do that much damage when you have heavy armour anyways, they could do a little less

Way less please. Right now looter pebbles kill even the best heavy padded armor in the game in 11 hits. It should take them 100 (it took ~200 hits for rocks or weak bows to kill a plate armored troop/player in Warband). As Ananda says, it's not rewarding if you work your ass off for the best armor in the game just for it to be easily killed by a small cluster of the weakest enemies in the game. Leaving aside how unrealistic and stupid it is.