Leifr Eiríksson said:
I am a little perturbed with the lack of responses. Are people really satisfied with the status quo? Surely there must be some vocal supporters and opponents?
Well seeing as you ask, here's my view.
Spears unable to block.
I think the issue here is quite simply that the pro-sword lobby is much bigger than the pro-spear lobby and made much more noise on the forum back when this was first mooted. Frankly the argument boiled down to the fact that the average sword fan seemed to believe that they were practically entitled to a kill, and a quick kill, if they got into a one on one with a spearman. I recall people mentioning that fighting spearmen was simply boring*.
I disagree with this but accept that "gameplay" is indeed a very important consideration. I haven't lost any sleep over the spear nerf but a couple of things really do stand out as being outrageously disadvantageous for spearmen.
a) Why can spears only thrust in one spot? If possible, let spears have a high or low stab at the very least. This will mean swordsmen will have to actually open their eyes to block a spear thrust.
b) Why oh why do I have to lower my shield to switch to seax? I get that blocking was removed because fighting spearmen was taking too long and as stated I accept that, but when I want to switch to seax I have to give away a free hit too!
Turning the argument on its head, I actually think that blocking with swords is overdone and should also be nerfed! In the game, our 3lite swordsman can hold off any number of spears, even seemingly simultaneous thrusts, just by holding the downblock button in his sleep. This same swordsman can fight for ages against another swordsman who has a shield. The man with the shield should have a massive advantage. I don't know if this is because the level of skill displayed by the majority of Vikingr players is just so high or what skill level the gameplay should be designed around. Regardless, swords of this period were not designed for fencing and the man with the shield should be able to win pretty easily.
* Note - fighting endless waves of people (wearing nothing but a shirt) with swords, all making a bee-line for me because I'm using a spear and hence a cheap kill, is pretty boring for me too but that's another matter.
Archery
I would vote against bowstrings breaking. I don't believe it would have been that commonplace amongst people who knew how to look after their gear and would just end up being intensely frustrating.
I mentioned a while ago my suggestion would be to simply limit the time the bow can be held drawn, say about three seconds or something.
I used to think making archers remain stationary whilst shooting would be a good idea too but then some youtube videos were presented showing someone doing acrobatics whilst shooting which has got me thinking. For my own part, I could never shoot my bow with any accuracy whilst moving but I am not particularly skilled at it, and my bow is much longer than the recurve (or whatever) type shown in the videos. Also, I don't know how powerful the acrobat's bow was. I haven't made my mind up on this yet.
There was also a suggestion a while back about giving people the ability to block with a bow (right after we've removed that ability from spears and dane axes). No, just no. For close work, you're better off taking your bow and placing it on the ground. With any luck you can come back and collect it later.
Edited for grammar/spelling - hope I got them all.