Sword gripping is all sorts of silly

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Scarf Ace

Sergeant Knight at Arms
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Derpfert the Daft has been complaining that his sword handles poorly, when it's clearly all his fault. Let me tell him what he should do:

First of all, your right hand is in the lower middle of the grip. What the hell is it doing there? Move it up towards the guard!
As for your left hand, I suggest you actually try holding the sword, instead of the air beneath it. There's no pommel there, you're not holding anything!

Something's really wrong with the way this game "calculates" how weapons should be gripped. Seems like certain parameters are off by miles on almost every grip.
 
Aha yes it does look funny doesn't it. There's a very wide variety of weapons so not all will be perfect yet. Report all the ones you find if you can and they should be fixed in the future!
 
Aha yes it does look funny doesn't it. There's a very wide variety of weapons so not all will be perfect yet. Report all the ones you find if you can and they should be fixed in the future!
I think that it's universal on all grips. It looks like the right hand's location defaults to the centre of the grip, which means that the longer the grip, the dumber it looks. Quite frankly the only sword grips that aren't held in a dumb looking fashion are the really short one-handed ones, where the character basically has no room to do it wrong.
I'm not sure if the left hand is always posed identically, or if it depends on the grip length - this needs further testing.
I think the easiest way to get good results would be if the right hand location is based on the guard (i.e. just below it) while the left hand's is based on the pommel, either gripping it directly, or on the grip just above, depending on the type used.
 
@Scarf Ace I hate this stupid gripping too. All swords should be held with the right hand against the guard, which is the most natural way to hold a sword.
I already hated it in MTW II and I'm quite upset to encounter it again it Bannerlord, all the more as Warband had it right.

Also, grips of single handed swords are usually too long, which looks wrong. Even in the smith you can't reduce them to a realistic length (around 10 cm).
 
@Scarf Ace I hate this stupid gripping too. All swords should be held with the right hand against the guard, which is the most natural way to hold a sword.
I already hated it in MTW II and I'm quite upset to encounter it again it Bannerlord, all the more as Warband had it right.

Also, grips of single handed swords are usually too long, which looks wrong. Even in the smith you can't reduce them to a realistic length (around 10 cm).
Yeah, I noticed this too. Only a tiny amount of grips can be suitable sizes. They should change the parameters so you can squeeze all grips down to a good size.
Most cultures represented in this game used very compact hilts, and many of the swords don't look right if you don't take this into account, especially Sturgian/"Viking" ones.
In general, lots of standard weapons have very derpy, ugly looking proportions. They must've been made by some random intern.
 
Not sayings its by design but as a piece of trivia as funny as it looks I think there's actually historical president in treatises that show grips farther down the handle to move fingers away from the cross guard so that hands are covered better during certain techniques! I practiced a bit of hema and I found this to be practical.
 
Yeah, I noticed this too. Only a tiny amount of grips can be suitable sizes. They should change the parameters so you can squeeze all grips down to a good size.
Most cultures represented in this game used very compact hilts, and many of the swords don't look right if you don't take this into account, especially Sturgian/"Viking" ones.
In general, lots of standard weapons have very derpy, ugly looking proportions. They must've been made by some random intern.
Exactly. Some swords of the timeframe Bannerlord is based on could have really short grips, down to 7 cm. It should be possible in the smith. Currently it seems that you can't reduce the length under like 13 cm, which makes no sense.

Not sayings its by design but as a piece of trivia as funny as it looks I think there's actually historical president in treatises that show grips farther down the handle to move fingers away from the cross guard so that hands are covered better during certain techniques! I practiced a bit of hema and I found this to be practical.
It existed as particular techniques, but was definitely not the most common nor natural way to hold a sword.
 
Exactly. Some swords of the timeframe Bannerlord is based on could have really short grips, down to 7 cm. It should be possible in the smith. Currently it seems that you can't reduce the length under like 13 cm, which makes no sense.
Yeah it is really odd. It also just looks stupid, and it's not something
I personally have no issue with historical inaccuracies, this is a fictional world after all, and I think it's fine to have weapons and armour from earlier periods (such as Celtic-inspired Battanian ones), and later periods (much of the Vlandian arsenal), as they serve a good gameplay and variety purpose.
That is however in my eyes no excuse to have all these really poorly designed weapons that don't even look good. Much of it is down to using bad components. For example, many purely one-handed swords have two-handed grips. In fact, you can make a sword out of the exact same components with the same proportions, and depending on what you picked in the menu, it'll either be one-handed or hand-and-a-half. That sucks both from a common sense perspective and from an intuitiveness standpoint.

It existed as particular techniques, but was definitely not the most common nor natural way to hold a sword.
It also has to be noted that modern swords for HEMA and Buhurt and other similar activities tend to have excessively long grips, usually to fit massive gloves. Look at Regenyei's rapiers for some particularly egregious examples. Even the Feders tend to have much longer grips than surviving historical examples for reasons that are beyond me, historical grip lengths feel better and fit just fine.
 
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It also has to be noted that modern swords for HEMA and Buhurt and other similar activities tend to have excessively long grips, usually to fit massive gloves. Look at Regenyei's rapiers for some particularly egregious examples. Even the Feders tend to have much longer grips than surviving historical examples for reasons that are beyond me, historical grip lengths feel better and fit just fine.
Without a doubt modern feders should not be used as an example of this for that exact reason, extant examples of swords just didn't have grip lengths like large modern feders (speaking directly at the regenyei long ass monstrosity made for people over 6 feet tall, its more of a two handed sword really lol). Personally all of my feders and swords are far more accurate in scale since my stature is quite small. I'm more referring to artwork from treatises and other extent sources that show hands not at the cross. But this is all kinda irrelevant since the time period in which bannerlord takes place would not have "longswords" and hence would not be employing techniques that lack a shield (like protecting hands from a steep angle crossing at the crossguard because).
 
Yeah it is really odd. It also just looks stupid, and it's not something
I personally have no issue with historical inaccuracies, this is a fictional world after all, and I think it's fine to have weapons and armour from earlier periods (such as Celtic-inspired Battanian ones), and later periods (much of the Vlandian arsenal), as they serve a good gameplay and variety purpose.
That is however in my eyes no excuse to have all these really poorly designed weapons that don't even look good. Much of it is down to using bad components. For example, many purely one-handed swords have two-handed grips. In fact, you can make a sword out of the exact same components with the same proportions, and depending on what you picked in the menu, it'll either be one-handed or hand-and-a-half. That sucks both from a common sense perspective and from an intuitiveness standpoint.
Indeed, it's a problem regarding aesthetics and proportions, historical accuracy aside. Problem to which is added the technical inconsistency you mentioned.
I must say that I was happy to encounter one of my favorites swords in the smith - the sword of King Sancho IV of Castile (well it's from the late 13th century, so very inconsistent regarding the chronological borders the devs themselves set - btw they probably got the idea via the cover of Oakeshott's Records of the Medieval Sword, the most commonplace book about medieval swords. The so-called Charlemagne's Joyeuse would have been a better choice). But of course, I was compelled to reduce the length of the grip at the minimum, which screwed the round heraldric devices despite the grip still being too long.

It also has to be noted that modern swords for HEMA and Buhurt and other similar activities tend to have excessively long grips, usually to fit massive gloves. Look at Regenyei's rapiers for some particularly egregious examples. Even the Feders tend to have much longer grips than surviving historical examples for reasons that are beyond me, historical grip lengths feel better and fit just fine.
Absolutely. When ordering to makers used to deal with HEMA/Buhurt practicers or basic reenactors, I always insist on the grip length, because it's the main flaw of their swords.

But this is all kinda irrelevant since the time period in which bannerlord takes place would not have "longswords" and hence would not be employing techniques that lack a shield (like protecting hands from a steep angle crossing at the crossguard because).
There might have been a few longswords used as far as in the Viking era, but yeah that was marginal. However I totally understand the decision to implement "longswords" in the game, they are important in terms of gameplay. But to this regard, I regret that TW designed some kind of generic late medieval longsword instead of looking for earlier models, as there are conserved two-handed swords which might date as far as the 11th century. They would have been a good source of inspiration to design these Vlandian great/long/two-handed swords. It's all the more frustrating as Talewords did some historical research regarding this issue, but obviously not enough:
Vlandian arms and armour are based on that of Western Europe from the 9th to the early 12th centuries. This was a period of relatively fast evolution, and leaves us with some balancing issues. For example, there are textual references to what appear to be two-handed swords in this period, notably as wielded by Swabian mercenaries at the 1053 battle of Civitate, but as far as we know no artistic depictions or specimens. Two-handed swords were a popular weapon in Warband, so we're including them - but we're ensuring they're relatively rare, a hero's weapon rather than standard equipment.
 
A suggestion to go along with this post is to allow the silly grip when your character has low skill with the weapon and as the character evolve in combat skill evolve his grip to the right one though the issue dunno how much would demand from the animation department to implement that.
 
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