1: Unless you treat throwing like your one job that you get paid immense amounts of money for (e.g. you're a major league baseball pitcher) then your accuracy is not going to be that high. Then again, the way accuracy seems to work in Warband is that it's actually a theoretical max which--if you have high enough proficiency--you can achieve. Realistically, unless you greatly exceed the minimum requirements for a ranged weapon then you won't ever achieve that 99 accuracy. This is demonstrated in Warband through controlled tests like I performed with archers, where their differences in proficiencies/power draw are readily apparent. If accuracy functions in a similar way in Bannerlord, then I wouldn't be opposed to throwing weapons having higher maximum accuracy potential. I would not want them to be significantly more accurate in multiplayer than they are in Warband, though, which could be achieved by tweaking throwing skill on MP classes.
2: When I get a chance I'll update this line with an image to show my idea of long & medium range.
3:
I considered both bowmen and crossbowmen as archers. With that consideration, out of 6 factions 3 have archers with 2 power strike and the other three 0. Using only 2 of the archers with 0 is using the weakest.
That's neat, but crossbows were given better melee capability because they have a long reload time which they are immobile for (ergo, they're more likely to get caught in melee because they are less mobile while firing & reloading). This notion is also borne out by giving them direct access to shields.
aWhat you consider to be the same is irrelevant, because the distinction was clearly made already. This distinction was also purposefully made, as originally Vaegir & Sarranid archers were more capable in melee with higher power strike & athletics, as well as better weapon options (notably, Vaegirs had scimitars). Nords got higher power strike because they have the worst bow selection, exclusively cutting melee weapons (though they're among the best), and for thematic reasons. Some archers were deliberately nerfed harder than others, with Vaegirs seeing the biggest hit through more expensive armor, loss of quality melee weapons, and loss of athletics & power strike. This is because Vaegirs have the best bow options, ergo the strongest ranged damage potential among bow users. Crossbows only saw a loss of athletics, IIRC. The distinction, then, was made very clear: bow users are supposed to be weaker in melee because they have more potential at range. Nords, being the weakest bow users at range, get melee capability in line with crossbow users. Crossbow users are still worse than infantry & cav in melee, but are not given trash stats (their gear sucks though, but I feel this was an oversight more than anything).
You justify the use of cutting weapons because they are the "most commonly used". Then, why is the test only with heavy armor when the most common armor is lighter?
It is just using a rare case to make archers look weak. The test lacks the possible relative movement between opponents that can buff the damage. And archers are not prevented to attack the head in melee which would increase the damage too.
b To say that the test is conducted in such a way to deliberately make archers look weak is disingenuous, as both classes are tested in their best possible armor. Armor was used for the sake of consistency in testing. Otherwise, infantry would cause too much significant overkill damage which would unduly influence the accuracy of the comparison being made. The point is not that archers must take 15+ swings to kill an infantryman, the point is that an infantryman can take from one half to one fifth as many swings to achieve the same effect. What matters is not the exact numbers, but the ratio of them. Infantry can easily score one-shot kills with melee headshots & appropriate movement against all but the best helmets, but archers & crossbowmen need the planets to align to get a one-shot melee kill against any helmet. Infantry with high raw damage weapons can kill with a single body hit against an unarmored target as well, with a little movement. Archers can never achieve that on foot. Sure, this is arguably a good thing, but the problem is that the magnitude of the difference is too severe. What an infantryman can do in one swing an archer will often require four or more swings to do (remember that blunt weapons have low raw damage & their armor penetrating advantage is wasted against light- or un-armored targets). Furthermore, it is important to consider how little the damage type mechanic affects infantry relative to archers. For archers, the benefit is magnified because without it they deal mostly glancing blows. For infantry, it took 7 swings to kill with a mace and 7 swings to kill with two types of swords. I'll explain this in a later point.
Unless you play multiplayer with different options than the used where I play, heavy armor is really rare. Where I play the initial "money" goes from 1500 through 1600 to 1800, being 1800 the most common. To increase that for the next spawn it is needed to kill enemies and death is punished losing "money". This way to be able to afford heavy armor a player needs to kill a good amount of enemies with each "life". This in a server with max 200 players, maybe average of 120, means that only a few of them will have this kind of armor. Because obviously for someone to make a good K/D ratio, to be able to buy heavy armor, other people will have to die a lot.
c I did, and pretty much all native players do. If we're not rooting this discussion in native then we're both wasting our time. The most common starting gold is 1000 in Native, but you actually don't directly lose money when you die. Your money only goes down after you respawn, as you are buying gear to respawn with. Money is won from kills (which award a flat rate + a percentage of your opponent's gear cost) and for winning the round (flat rate). One player on the winning team that scores a couple of kills against opponents who used most of their starting money can have top-tier weapons and mid-tier armor in the second round on Native (depending on faction, 'cause Rhodoks still don't have mid-tier armor options
). If this same player scores a couple of kills and wins the second round, then they may be in all but the absolute best armor going into the third round. The cost difference between the best and second-best armor for most factions is severe, and while the stat difference also looks large we must take into consideration that armor increases offer diminishing returns after a certain point, dependent on your opponent's melee potential.
Referring back 2 paragraphs, where infantry required the same number of swings to kill with blunt weapons as with some cutting weapons, this is attributable to
the way damage is calculated. For the infantryman, we can see that the greater raw damage value on the swords is enough to make up for the lack of armor penetrating capability because of their power strike & proficiency, and while the mace has lower raw damage it ignores enough armor to be just as viable damage-wise as the cutting weapons. For archers we could expect the same trend to hold true, except their low power-strike reduces their melee potential to the point where many of their swings are totally ineffective glancing blows. The interesting thing to note here is that--because it ignores a hefty percentage of armor--the number of glances with the mace was much lower, meaning it landed damaging strikes more consistently. It is easy to see why infantry seldom glance while archers glance quite often, even with the same weapons. Infantry get a significantly larger boost to pre-reduction damage through their power strike and proficiency. Barring a negative speed bonus, it is unlikely for the infantryman to deal so little damage that they cannot overcome the modified armor value, ergo they consistently deal damage with each blow. For archers, their power strike bonus is smaller or zero, so their raw damage before speed bonus is closer to the raw damage listed on the weapon. With a cutting weapon, this means that armor with an armor value just a little (~10 points) above the raw damage of the weapon has a good chance to mitigate all incoming damage from an archer's melee attack. The only way to overcome this is with good speed bonuses, luck, or a blunt weapon, because armor value is also randomized between 50% and 100% of the armor's displayed value for each hit. Maces can reduce that significantly, but cutting weapons won't. It's worth pointing out that only Vaegir archers and Rhodok crossbowmen get access to blunt weapons, and they also get the only piercing weapons (though the Vaegir piercing weapon is only 19p with 70 reach, arguably the worst weapon in the game).
dNow, when we take into consideration the more readily available armor upgrades for infantry and the worse weapon availability to most archers & crossbowmen, as well as the worse melee stats for ranged classes, it becomes apparent that they do not remain competitive in melee against infantry beyond the first or second round of a map, especially if they lose. Snowballing is another problem in Warband which Bannerlord has already taken steps to address through mostly fixed class loadouts, but the downside to this is that a player can select a heavy infantry class without earning it through skillful play and--in circumstances like Warband's--be more-or-less impervious to archers in melee.
4:
To make that statement you should prove that your idea of what the damage modifiers are is the correct one. In my previous comment I explain how I understand it and its implications.
I can't prove it any more than you can, as I don't have access to Bannerlord. A more reasonable demand you could make of me in this regard is to offer examples from the information we do have, and to provide a well-reasoned explanation of them. I've already done this by calculating the approximate damage difference between bows and melee weapons (about 30-50% less damage per arrow compared to melee swings), using examples of visible damage numbers which appear to be unmodified to estimate the damage that would be dealt against the archer in question, and by using the calculated minimum health of heavy infantry (9
as a point to estimate the health total of the archer in question (~90). With this information, I would estimate that the archer in question would take 3 or 4 arrows to kill. Beyond that, I can only assume that damage of javelins relative to arrows is in line with Warband's, so it would likely take 2 javelins to kill the archer.
5: The link you provided only proves my point further. Here's the example in question, with relevant part bolded:
OurGloriousLeader said:
To OP, this thread is a perfect example of why it's difficult to discuss balance when the community is so split in how it plays. Javs are totally useless in single player yes, and vaguely useful only in public play, but at the top level throwing weapons are incredibly strong, needing if anything a nerf.
Which takes me to number 6.
6:
Were all the members of the competitive involved in that consensus? Where was that consensus made? Which percentage of the community is into competitive? Is the competitive community more important than the rest of M&B community?
aI can't speak for everyone, and it's not something that was formally agreed upon anywhere. This is an unrealistic standard to hold me to, and tacitly acknowledged as such by the very existence of statistical sampling. It is unreasonable to expect anyone to query or test an entire population if that population is not small.
As for which is more important, I feel some qualifying statements should be made before I give you my opinion on that. First, more important
for what purpose? Second,
to what degree? If the purpose is for making balancing decisions, then yes, absolutely, the competitive community's opinions are not only more important, they are most important. This is because very few people outside of the competitive community will feel as affected by minor, seemingly trivial differences in stats, or have as much experience playing the game in a structured environment where balance is paramount to ensuring the validity & meaning of outcomes. Nobody has as much reason to care about balance as competitive players do, because their enjoyment of the game is affected by it to a much greater degree than someone who spends the majority of their time playing casual MP, SP, or mods. That being said, the degree of importance attributed to a competitive player vs. a casual player's opinion should not be so drastically different that the casual player's opinion is effectively discounted. We are, after all, playing the same game. It is also not necessary for someone to have played competitively before they could have any ideas which are beneficial to the game.
Therefore, it is my opinion that the opinions of competitive players
with regards to balance should be weighted more than those of others,
but ideas from all parties should be considered so that good ideas do not go unnoticed. That's why I'm here, discussing this with you, even though I think you're not a competitive player.
Considering the OurGloriousLeader's comment I linked, I think that maybe different balance should be done not only for single and multiplayer but for the different multiplayer modes too.
Now that's an idea. Especially if multiplayer modes scale up to the point where there are two or three hundred characters running around in a battle (mostly bots, I would assume), it would be a considerable quality of life improvement to give players more throwing weapons in such a mode than they would get in a 6vs6 competitive match,
b and the effect on balance is greatly diminished considering the scale of the battle. I feel this could also easily be done with the perk system that Bannerlord will have, as perk options could be made to depend on the game mode. The "well supplied" perk could offer 2 extra javelins to a player in a 6vs6 mode, but in captains mode could boost the ammo of the player by 100% and their units by 50%, or something along those lines.
About nords passing javelins, I think it is more a problem about nord horsemen having them for free than anything else.
cI'd say it's not that they get them for free, but that anyone who picks up just one and survives the round will get a full stack at the start of the next round. This lets one cav player throw their free javelins into the ground for infantry to pick up, turning one stack of free javelins into potentially six in the second round (cav respawns with a free full stack, and up to five infantry could grab a single javelin each in the prior round). Even if the horseman had to pay the standard price of ~300 for them, he still has the potential to generate five free stacks in the following round. Persistence of gear drops is stupid in general, and throws a very large, very damaging wrench into the balancing problem.