There is no counter-play against kick-slash

[The_Great_White]

I agree but with slightly less salt, the reliance on gimmicks is due to an imperfect melee system. Several people in the BL scene have now said to me that you need kicks because otherwise you can't force kills in melee; sounds like a reason to improve the melee to me, not continue to rely on kicks. If they fix kicks it will just move to something else like javving around shields, 2h hit and run spam, etc etc, so kicks must be balanced at the same time as melee is improved. Some tweaks that would help inf become more reliable at forcing kills:

-shorten the arcs of swings and make them more forward-facing
-reduce the return hit timing from blocks to encourage positioning and pressure
-add a slight turncap to encourage positioning
-combat movement speed needs tweaked, it's better than before but not perfect. Not sure of the specifics, would love to experiment more a la combat testing (or private testing servers if they were allowed)

Wanna throw in my 2 cents as an infantry enthusiast aswell by adding a few points:

Looking at this picture from some Warband tutorial video, what's left in bannerlord? In my opinion only feints.

Chambers are not reliable at all, they need to be fixed.

Holds could work but instead of warband, where you had enough reaction time to actually block a hit from an opponent while holding, here it's just too much of a risk to do it, so most people are feinting like crazy (usually the right swing feint)

This is not a "warband was better at everything" opinion, I very much like the directional shield blocking and the shield stun, but I think the system above was one part that made the melee fight in warband so interesting and created (probably as an accident) such a depth of skills you needed to learn to become a good infantry, where nowadays there is only kicks and feints

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

Wanna throw in my 2 cents as an infantry enthusiast aswell by adding a few points:

Looking at this picture from some Warband tutorial video, what's left in bannerlord? In my opinion only feints.

Chambers are not reliable at all, they need to be fixed.

Holds could work but instead of warband, where you had enough reaction time to actually block a hit from an opponent while holding, here it's just too much of a risk to do it, so most people are feinting like crazy (usually the right swing feint)

This is not a "warband was better at everything" opinion, I very much like the directional shield blocking and the shield stun, but I think the system above was one part that made the melee fight in warband so interesting and created (probably as an accident) such a depth of skills you needed to learn to become a good infantry, where nowadays there is only kicks and feints

Agree and this comes down to some fundamentals that still aren't right e.g. you can still get slightly too close, almost inside, people, which combined with the right swing makes chambers and holds infeasible, the feints are really unclear due to RMB still not completely overwriting LMB and I still maintain feints remove some frames from attack windups, etc.

The only big update to this kind of thing were the community combat parameters, which was a great change, but it's incomplete and needs further tweaking.

 

[Greedalicious]

Holding doesnt really work because it slows down your attack, giving the defender plenty of time to block.
Feinting works because of how the blocking works, or well, doesnt work.

Kicks are fine, fix the client-side issue where the kick doesn't connect visually but you still get kicked, and it's all good.
IMO kicks are adding a bit of interesting alternative to melee fights, other than just swinging your weapon and feinting(pretty boring).
We also need chambering so melee gets more skill-based and more interesting.

So kicks are not fine. Is the desync issue proven to be the cause of the ghost kicks?
Kicks dont add much interesting to melee because its as much used as right mouse block. In the game that shall not be named, seing someone get kicked in a 1v1 was great because it means the kicker did something risky and it paid off, and the defender made a mistake and got punished. Even if desyincing is the issue, and its fixed, kicking is still in a bad state. It feels awkward, you have to prepare your attack beforehand if you want a reliable hit afterward which just telegraphs it stupidly, it doesnt overwrite your actions properly so again it looks stupid, and most of the time you cant get punished for kicking, as you can just block whatever the enemy throws at you should you miss.

Yes, diffenent heights in Multiplayer make balance quite messy, especially for different classes.

I like the different height options, I'd like to see more to it aswell since it actually has ingame effects. I've swung when I'd normally hit a teammate, but because I'm a big boy and my teammate was short, I killed the enemy.

 

[TheBard]

Rubbish. People know offensive kicks have to go and will accept it when everything is tuned so that it doesn't turn combat into dry shield clubbing. It's not gonna change jack **** about competitive standings. The people who play this game competitively are the ones who are, you know, actually playing the game. They adapt. They won't drop off because of one mechanic, and former Warband vets aren't going to get magically catapulted to the top through the sheer power of their egos either.

+1
Play the game and complaint or shut up. This is getting really annoying to get lectured on how the combat and game works or should work by ppl who claim to grasp the entirety of kicking after five minutes on the duel server. Somehow have the feeling you nailed down the unspoken, secret wish behind it x)

The only big update to this kind of thing were the community combat parameters, which was a great change, but it's incomplete and needs further tweaking.

Some of these changes are actually at fault for a couple of problems the game faces right now, but that's something you'd probably not like to hear.

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

+1
Play the game and complaint or shut up. This is getting really annoying to get lectured on how the combat and game works or should work by ppl who claim to grasp the entirety of kicking after five minutes on the duel server. Somehow have the feeling you nailed down the unspoken, secret wish behind it x)

I know you're not just referring to me, but worth remembering I played this game for nearly a year prior to release with consistent feedback and suggestions some of which still address ongoing problems today. The BL competitive scene does not have a monopoly on feedback regarding gameplay, especially since it grew up during the inarguably broken kickslash period. Using just that community to defend it is like the classic survivorship bias example.

This isn't to not give credit for keeping the scene alive and actually getting the devs to listen and make changes, but at the same time get over yourselves (and there's plenty of getting over ourselves that Warband vets need too I'm sure).

Some of these changes are actually at fault for the situation we are facing right now, but that's something you'd probably not like to hear.

I wouldn't claim that the community patch was perfect, and would be happy to hear it.

 

[CTH.]

It's not only about dueling, kicking can be as annoying in every situation. 1vX is crippled by that very mechanic, especially footwork, by an undefendable offensive move. Especially if you play heavier slower inf, if you have 2 or more players rushing to kick you, there's a high chance of them to land it and stunlock you even if you're insane at footwork and blocking. That's one of the most frustrating things for now. The fact that you don't need to predict where the player goes if you want to land and the fact that you can land on someone backing (warband had it perfect on the kick I gotta agree on this even tho I prefer Bannerlord now).

 

[The_Great_White]

Holding doesnt really work because it slows down your attack, giving the defender plenty of time to block.

Forogt about that, true!

 

[TheBard]

I know you're not just referring to me, but worth remembering I played this game for nearly a year prior to release with consistent feedback and suggestions some of which still address ongoing problems today. The BL competitive scene does not have a monopoly on feedback regarding gameplay, especially since it grew up during the inarguably broken kickslash period. Using just that community to defend it is like the classic survivorship bias example.

This isn't to not give credit for keeping the scene alive and actually getting the devs to listen and make changes, but at the same time get over yourselves (and there's plenty of getting over ourselves that Warband vets need too I'm sure).

It's not monopoly status or anything as survivor bias, it's simply the fact that we kept playing the game after considerable changes were introduced compared to beta while you were not and you now claim to have all the wisdom which you clearly have not if I look at what you guys write in the forums or suggest. Pacemaker nailed it down quite accurate in his post.

Nobody denied you were giving feedback in the past. I am not going to do that either. But if full front attacks like Shema did (haha, you mastered broken game and are afraid of it being taken awaya!) are still the go-to mechanic, then, well...

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

It's not monopoly status or anything as survivor bias, it's simply the fact that we kept playing the game after considerable changes were introduced compared to beta while you were not and you now claim to have all the wisdom which you clearly have not if I look at what you guys write in the forums or suggest. Pacemaker nailed it down quite accurate in his post.

It is a monopoly when you constantly reply to people who post well meaning or informed feedback with "play the game" just because it's suggesting something you don't like e.g. nerfing kicks or changes to melee, just because they don't show up to some DM pickup or whatever. It's insular and just adds to the impression the comp community wants to keep its broken toys. On top of that, there's clearly some denial going on when some of you continue to pretend there isn't a kick meta developing, which is primarily what I refer to when talking about survivorship bias. It's probably not a kick meta to you, considering you played actual matches when people could trivially kick people moving away from them, but that's a pretty low bar to the rest of us.

Nobody denied you were giving feedback in the past. I am not going to do that either. But if full front attacks like Shema did (haha, you mastered broken game and are afraid of it being taken awaya!) are still the go-to mechanic, then, well...

@Shemaforash 's an ass and we won't be working with him any more, but he is also an experienced player and has valid feedback which honestly is probably more representative of other WB players than I am. He just isn't part of the diplomatic corp (that's me).

Also, still want to hear what problems the community patch caused!

 

[Shemaforash]

Rubbish. People know offensive kicks have to go and will accept it when everything is tuned so that it doesn't turn combat into dry shield clubbing. It's not gonna change jack **** about competitive standings. The people who play this game competitively are the ones who are, you know, actually playing the game. They adapt. They won't drop off because of one mechanic, and former Warband vets aren't going to get magically catapulted to the top through the sheer power of their egos either.

It's honorable of you to defend misinformed villains, you write yourself you're not targeted yet you come to their defense. My response is to the poll numbers showing a close no and yes. Nice little tangent about warband veterans.

+1
Play the game and complaint or shut up. This is getting really annoying to get lectured on how the combat and game works or should work by ppl who claim to grasp the entirety of kicking after five minutes on the duel server. Somehow have the feeling you nailed down the unspoken, secret wish behind it x)


Some of these changes are actually at fault for a couple of problems the game faces right now, but that's something you'd probably not like to hear.

We played the game and we noticed it's crap, now a year later it's still crap. So what's your problem?

It's not monopoly status or anything as survivor bias, it's simply the fact that we kept playing the game after considerable changes were introduced compared to beta while you were not and you now claim to have all the wisdom which you clearly have not if I look at what you guys write in the forums or suggest. Pacemaker nailed it down quite accurate in his post.

Nobody denied you were giving feedback in the past. I am not going to do that either. But if full front attacks like Shema did (haha, you mastered broken game and are afraid of it being taken awaya!) are still the go-to mechanic, then, well...

Batty going ham. What are you on about If you voted no you're one of them spamming kick no wonder you taking all this so personally ?‍

 

[Forsee]

It's not only about dueling, kicking can be as annoying in every situation. 1vX is crippled by that very mechanic, especially footwork, by an undefendable offensive move. Especially if you play heavier slower inf, if you have 2 or more players rushing to kick you, there's a high chance of them to land it and stunlock you even if you're insane at footwork and blocking. That's one of the most frustrating things for now. The fact that you don't need to predict where the player goes if you want to land and the fact that you can land on someone backing (warband had it perfect on the kick I gotta agree on this even tho I prefer Bannerlord now).

2 inf should always be able to kill 1 guy, not being able to kick that guy will just lead to necessity of breaking his shield, which is gonna be more stupid than kicking, cause 20s smorc spam hitting won't improve 2v1 gameplay.
Right now still you have a chance to handle 1v2 even against good enemies, yes it is hard, but if you keep yourself in a position where only 1 enemy can reach you and agressively fient-spam him, not letting him kick you, you have a chance.
Imo 1v2 balance is fine, 2 players should have a great advantage, this is a basics of MnB

What about duels, you guys should also complain on sword right swing being op, it hits you, dealing damage and preventing your attack. Kicking is a natural part of bl gameplay and for being good 1v1 you should learn kicking and avoiding kicks. Footwork was a key infantry skill in both bannerlord and warband

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

2 inf should always be able to kill 1 guy, not being able to kick that guy will just lead to necessity of breaking his shield, which is gonna be more stupid than kicking, cause 20s smorc spam hitting won't improve 2v1 gameplay.
Right now still you have a chance to handle 1v2 even against good enemies, yes it is hard, but if you keep yourself in a position where only 1 enemy can reach you and agressively fient-spam him, not letting him kick you, you have a chance.
Imo 1v2 balance is fine, 2 players should have a great advantage, this is a basics of MnB

2v1 is already easier due to much more limited shield coverage and giant swing arcs that reach around opponents. Is anybody seriously concerned about surviving too long in inf fights without kicks? Laughable honestly. If someone stays alive long enough their shield is broken good on them (some shields could probably do with slight health nerfs just for 1v1s though).

 

[Firunien]

I agree but with slightly less salt, the reliance on gimmicks is due to an imperfect melee system. Several people in the BL scene have now said to me that you need kicks because otherwise you can't force kills in melee; sounds like a reason to improve the melee to me, not continue to rely on kicks. If they fix kicks it will just move to something else like javving around shields, 2h hit and run spam, etc etc, so kicks must be balanced at the same time as melee is improved. Some tweaks that would help inf become more reliable at forcing kills:

-shorten the arcs of swings and make them more forward-facing
-reduce the return hit timing from blocks to encourage positioning and pressure
-add a slight turncap to encourage positioning
-combat movement speed needs tweaked, it's better than before but not perfect. Not sure of the specifics, would love to experiment more a la combat testing (or private testing servers if they were allowed)

Its the same as in Warband without kicks, just smash the turtles shield, in Warband you have no option at all to force a kill. You die quicker then in BL, thats becaue of not having the class system and therefore no heavy armour. Have you played Warband at all ? Bannerlord infantry combat is much fun, if it gets to it.

Funny how bannerlord competitive has been revolving around making the gameplay as dirty as possible and avoid clean melee. Crush throughs, jav spams, kick spams, how is the state of comp now? Cav and archers meta I heard, spam cav knockdowns into shot by archer?
oh well

Well, devs want all classes played more or less evenly, imo archers and cav should be specialist classes and not the backbone of every fight. But the devs dont want to change that, they like it that way because it looks more interesting on stream or whatever the reason might be.

Imagine defending an absolutely broken kick
Desperation in new gen competitive players when they want to keep what's broken to sustain their crap skill gap cause they spent 700 hours in early access

I defend it from beeing called totally broken because i simply dont feel like its totally broken when used against me, its mostly people whining about it who rarely play the game. What are you even doing here ? xD

Agree and this comes down to some fundamentals that still aren't right e.g. you can still get slightly too close, almost inside, people, which combined with the right swing makes chambers and holds infeasible, the feints are really unclear due to RMB still not completely overwriting LMB and I still maintain feints remove some frames from attack windups, etc.

The only big update to this kind of thing were the community combat parameters, which was a great change, but it's incomplete and needs further tweaking.

Yeah remember when in Warband the left hiltspam had to be positioned carefully right ? The reason for chambering beeing so hard is totally different, its more about the different character sizes and the angle you have to hit, the exact opposing angle to be exact(doesnt really help the upper swing isnt centered x) ).
What do you mean by feints remove some frames from attack windup ? I mean its faster because your weapon is closer to the right position so it will be faster, or do you mean something else ?

It is a monopoly when you constantly reply to people who post well meaning or informed feedback with "play the game" just because it's suggesting something you don't like e.g. nerfing kicks or changes to melee, just because they don't show up to some DM pickup or whatever. It's insular and just adds to the impression the comp community wants to keep its broken toys. On top of that, there's clearly some denial going on when some of you continue to pretend there isn't a kick meta developing, which is primarily what I refer to when talking about survivorship bias. It's probably not a kick meta to you, considering you played actual matches when people could trivially kick people moving away from them, but that's a pretty low bar to the rest of us.

@Shemaforash 's an ass and we won't be working with him any more, but he is also an experienced player and has valid feedback which honestly is probably more representative of other WB players than I am. He just isn't part of the diplomatic corp (that's me).

Also, still want to hear what problems the community patch caused!

If you mean by kick-meta that its a tool to deal with people shielding up and backpaddeling, yes ok we are in a kick meta and thats good. I still agree to tune the kick by making the window longer where you can be punished for an attempt, same as many others. And of course the competitive community has a better take at things, not a monopoly, we obviously have a better time at defending against kicks, its not as broken as you think is all i am saying. A good infantry will trash you with kicks, but thats skill difference most of the time.

 

[CTH.]

2 inf should always be able to kill 1 guy, not being able to kick that guy will just lead to necessity of breaking his shield, which is gonna be more stupid than kicking, cause 20s smorc spam hitting won't improve 2v1 gameplay.
Right now still you have a chance to handle 1v2 even against good enemies, yes it is hard, but if you keep yourself in a position where only 1 enemy can reach you and agressively fient-spam him, not letting him kick you, you have a chance.
Imo 1v2 balance is fine, 2 players should have a great advantage, this is a basics of MnB

What about duels, you guys should also complain on sword right swing being op, it hits you, dealing damage and preventing your attack. Kicking is a natural part of bl gameplay and for being good 1v1 you should learn kicking and avoiding kicks. Footwork was a key infantry skill in both bannerlord and warband

I rarely play shield bc I always found it a waste of enjoyment ie not using blocks so I was mostly talking about this POV. Anyways if you have a decent coordination/timing it shouldnt take too long to kill someone with a shield, especially if he's just a RMB holder and with the openings around the shield in BL. Or maybe what needed to be done is nerf shield HP (or make swings do more damage to shields).
And yes I agree it should always be tough to survive a 1vX against good oponents and unlikely to win. But the E mashing can sometimes lead to instant delete of the 1 which is pretty ridiculous.

 

[Forsee]

2v1 is already easier due to much more limited shield coverage and giant swing arcs that reach around opponents. Is anybody seriously concerned about surviving too long in inf fights without kicks? Laughable honestly. If someone stays alive long enough their shield is broken good on them (some shields could probably do with slight health nerfs just for 1v1s though).

You can survive long enough even without a shield, while your enemies are not kicking you.
By saying long enough I don't mean the whole round, but usually 10-15s is just enough for someone to come and help you.
2 infantry should be able to kill 1 guy fast enough if he gets in a bad position and kicks are just great for that and I do think this how it should work

 

[Greedalicious]

2 inf should always be able to kill 1 guy, not being able to kick that guy will just lead to necessity of breaking his shield, which is gonna be more stupid than kicking, cause 20s smorc spam hitting won't improve 2v1 gameplay.
Right now still you have a chance to handle 1v2 even against good enemies, yes it is hard, but if you keep yourself in a position where only 1 enemy can reach you and agressively fient-spam him, not letting him kick you, you have a chance.
Imo 1v2 balance is fine, 2 players should have a great advantage, this is a basics of MnB

What about duels, you guys should also complain on sword right swing being op, it hits you, dealing damage and preventing your attack. Kicking is a natural part of bl gameplay and for being good 1v1 you should learn kicking and avoiding kicks. Footwork was a key infantry skill in both bannerlord and warband

2 people should not be able to kill 1 guy if the 1 guy is a better player than both of them combined. The lonely player is at a massive disadvantage, but he should always have a chance of beating them, but because of his skill as a player, not because a choice he made before the round even started.

Theres plenty of ways for the 2 players to win the fight without having to kick.
- Spamming different directions to prevent him from fighting back, if he walks backwards the likelyhood of one swing going past his shield is high.
- Reduce the health of shields significantly to prevent him from just shielding up.
- Add shield breaking power to axes (I dont know if this is actually a thing, it doesnt feel like it atleast, although the game says it does)


You mention positions where only 1 enemy can reach, that also depends heavily on the movement speed of the classes, so depending on the matchup, your positioning could be freely given to you by the game.

 

[Firunien]

- Add shield breaking power to axes (I dont know if this is actually a thing, it doesnt feel like it atleast, although the game says it does)

There is bonus against shields

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

Its the same as in Warband without kicks, just smash the turtles shield, in Warband you have no option at all to force a kill. You die quicker then in BL, thats becaue of not having the class system and therefore no heavy armour. Have you played Warband at all ? Bannerlord infantry combat is much fun, if it gets to it.

Yeah people routinely survived 1vX in Warband, said nobody ever. People just had to learn proper positioning and correct timings, and they killed people quickly. You can number the amount of actual 1vX melee clutches in competitive games on one hand probably. Literally talking nonsense.

Yeah remember when in Warband the left hiltspam had to be positioned carefully right ? The reason for chambering beeing so hard is totally different, its more about the different character sizes and the angle you have to hit, the exact opposing angle to be exact(doesnt really help the upper swing isnt centered x) ).
What do you mean by feints remove some frames from attack windup ? I mean its faster because your weapon is closer to the right position so it will be faster, or do you mean something else ?

Yes, left hiltspam needed to be positioned carefully? Do you think it didn't lol? Of course now it's replaced with the much more refined and classy right swing, truly a masterfully designed and balanced melee option.

Chambers suck because they overdesigned how chambers work, yes we know.

If you mean by kick-meta that its a tool to deal with people shielding up and backpaddeling, yes ok we are in a kick meta and thats good. I still agree to tune the kick by making the window longer where you can be punished for an attempt, same as many others. And of course the competitive community has a better take at things, not a monopoly, we obviously have a better time at defending against kicks, its not as broken as you think is all i am saying. A good infantry will trash you with kicks, but thats skill difference most of the time.

Kick-meta isn't even about punishing back pedalling, which is less of an issue now although still happens in cases of huge movement speed disparity (its own issue). Kick-meta rn is actively punishing people who try to melee by actually pressuring and pushing people, which is why everyone's "footwork" is literally just strafing away from the opponent then trying to come back in with a hit, then strafing away again. If two people actually lock in a fight they both try to kick almost immediately.

Sure, you can get good at it, but I'm not arguing it's not skilled, I'm arguing it's bad game design and actively ruining the game.

 

[Greedalicious]

There is bonus against shields

Good to know, that should be heavily increased in my opinion

 

[OurGloriousLeader]

You can survive long enough even without a shield, while your enemies are not kicking you.
By saying long enough I don't mean the whole round, but usually 10-15s is just enough for someone to come and help you.
2 infantry should be able to kill 1 guy fast enough if he gets in a bad position and kicks are just great for that and I do think this how it should work

Kicks are not necessary for a fast kill, and they actively discourage melee.