Generally yes. But what is the solution here? Everyone spawns with a shield and a spear and a mele weapon and a ranged weapon? Wouldn't that beat the whole purpose of carefully picking your equipment? And wouldn't that come with it's own problems of "monotony"?

I would personally argue it was easier to track the attack animations in warband, but the game is also new and I got a lot to learn so maybe it’s thatWell, not really. Other than the fact that feints are centered around attack cancellation rather than using visual trickery (like the stab animation), there's nothing hard to read about them. Switching attack direction is much smoother animation wise, so you can follow it a little better. The problem is, people don't even get to optimize on feinting at the moment because of all the inconsistencies we have to struggle with when in melee combat, like stance advantage and billions of weapon glancing factors.
The class system in bannerlord is far more prone to uniformity than the warband system was even with perks, it's much harder to balance more than three classes and people can pick up literally anything they want in the game. Spawn as infantry, find a horse, grab the bow and the arrows of your dead teammate while you're at it you're a horse archer with more than good stats. We haven't even seen any competitive matches yet but I've seen enough to tell where the game is heading. You've turned warband faction balance issues into an issue with the equipment system, when it's clearly not it's just TaleWorlds utter neglect to balancing the multiplayer factions. Currently there are only a few selections that are viable and guess what it's better to pick an archer with a little shield on most factions because they have more armor than any of the infantry classes. Congratulations you are playing medieval overwatch. Combine that with a limited class system with really terrible choices for perks and equipment on most of the classes, you know it's like playing Custom Battle, or resuming someone elses singleplayer campaign. Some bellend made the choices for me but he doesn't even understand how to play the game.
Isn't the solution you wait for server-side mods which made in a proper programming language like C# can and will be incredibly detailed? Every server can have a different way of choosing equipment according to the mission at hand? Seriously, if I understand you guys correctly and what you want, this can't and won't be fixed by TW imo.
thisThere were classes in warband, they had unique stats and abilities and equipment options. THIS game lets archers and infantry ride horses, infantry shoot bows, and cavalry fight with two handers as well as infantry. It has less "classes" and even less equipment options. This game is inferior to Warband.
No, I agree, there is some ambiguity in the animations. For example, in certain lighting conditions I can't tell what attack is being readied when I'm facing a guy with a 2H sword. When it's being held behind the head it's hard to tell whether they're readying an overhead or a sideswing. Also some of the 1H swords can switch directions extremely fast and pretty much outfeint any 2H guy due to block delay (regardless of how good they are at blocking) if they are skilled enough.I would personally argue it was easier to track the attack animations in warband, but the game is also new and I got a lot to learn so maybe it’s that

Im sorry Callum, while I dont dislike the new system is clear no one likes it and it fails to be fun, you guys should stop being denialist and listen to the community. You know how being denialist ends up and you dont want to go that wayI also have over 1500 hours in Warband MP alone, and while I liked the customisation of Warband's item selection system, I can see that the potential of the Class system outweighs what was previously on offer.
Yep, have the community fix it
If all the competitive players abandon the official competitive matchmaking in favor of a mod, seems like TaleWorlds has mismanaged and failed at their objective in this area.
.. what is the solution?? I don't know, but neither does TaleWorlds. Like you pointed out, homogenization of classes is one solution. But classes are boring enough as is.
One thing I'd like to point out: replacing the class system (or some of your other examples that change what players can spawn as) is not a server-side mod. Such changes require a different UI, which means changes must be made to the client-side. So any mod that attempts to replace the class system with an equipment system cannot stick to just the server side.