Aside from your entire reply which honestly is just tiring to go through anymore, this point keeps sticking out to me. How do you know your system is better and that others won't work? Do you have a proof of concept somewhere? Did you copy the system from another game that is similar to Bannerlord and makes it work? Or is it just your theorycrafting?
I don't know if it's a test but an attempt to apply what I've been writing for years is being applied in some other game whose context is very different.
If we take horizon forbidden west, the system of localized damage and protected hurtboxes has been expanded compared to the first game in the series.
Obviously in that game the armor system is used against your character who uses the bow and therefore has to aim either at the uncovered parts or to disassemble / destroy the protections and then hit the hurboxes.
The system has also been partially extended to humanoid enemies (you can see that they like it because it makes the gameplay deeper) just to MAKE THE FIGHT AGAINST HUMAN DEEPEST.
But I don't give a damn about that game, since hand-to-hand combat isn't directional and that armor system is only enhanced by the use of the bow.
In mount and blade it would be highly valued and not only would it make the hand-to-hand combat more technical (in the sense that the spam of inaccurate attacks by the opponent is discouraged as much as your rigid protections cover your body) but it would make the armor both realistic, and, above all, a lever for solving many balance problems between units (especially the ratio between units with ranged weapons and footed units without shields).
Furthermore, by adopting the system, you could take advantage of opportunities such as removing the delay of the attacks after releasing the key.
In addition, the blocking system of attacks could be made more precise with regard to lunges.
Specifically: the blocking system for horizontal and vertical attacks could also remain as it is.
For the lunges, on the other hand, I would suggest a more coherent system.
After all the spears only do 2 types of attack, and both are visually lunges although the game considers them as "attack from above and lunge".
In general, you could use "the animation of the block direction change", ie when, for example,you are blocking attacks from the right (holding down the right button and mouse to the right)and then switches to blocking attacks on the left (moving the mouse to the left and quickly releasing and pressing the right button again). The character's guard switches from defending the right side to defending the left one, but the ANIMATION it performs causes the weapon to still remain in guard position(vertically) during that animation.
By taking advantage of the weapon hitbox during that animation, you can make sure that if the defender's weapon hitbox makes contact with the attacker's weapon hitbox, the lunge is "blocked".
Otherwise the attack hits.
The same concept can be applied to the transition from high to low guard and vice versa.
In this case the lunges of the spears ARE NO LONGER DIRECTIONAL ATTACKS and therefore cannot be blocked by keeping the guard raised up or down, but only during the movement of the guard from one direction to another or in any case when the hitboxes of the weapons collide.
In this way a warrior armed only with a sword and without an armor with rigid protections, will find himself in difficulty against a warrior armed with a spear, because his thrusts could hit him anywhere and defend himself is possible but not easy.
Conversely, if the same warrior wears armor with protected hurtbixes (covered hurtbixes), the number of uncovered hurtboxes is very limited and therefore the spearman will have to "aim well with thrusts" in those few uncovered areas.
Uncovered areas that are not defensible in a simple way as before, because the animation to block the lunges implies that they must be INTERCEPTED.
If a warrior with a spear performs a feint simulating a lunge to the left shoulder and the defender moves his guard to the left to intercept him, then he uncovers his right shoulder, which will be immediately targeted and, if little covered, risks being hit with the lunge that follows after the fake one.
In general with THIS SYSTEM it is however possible to return to the old one.
If the various armors have hurtboxes that in the new system must remain uncovered, the developer may find it useful an option to check when desired that assigns the cover of the hurtboxes that in the new system were considered uncovered to the relative types of armor slots that in the old system covered them. . In this way you change between the old system and the new system.The only difference, not a small one, is that you would have a much wider catalog of armor parts (since only the upper limb, which is composed of the arm, elbow and forearm , would include at least 2 protections, for the arm and forearm, instead of 1 and in the case of returning to the old system the elbow would be covered either by the arm or forearm protection, at the developer's choice).
In this way a warrior armed only with a sword and without an armor with rigid protections, will find himself in difficulty against a warrior armed with a spear, because his thrusts could hit him anywhere and defend himself is possible but not easy.
Conversely, if the same warrior wears armor with protected hurtbixes (covered hurtbixes), the number of uncovered hurtboxes is very limited and therefore the spearman will have to "aim well with thrusts" in those few uncovered areas.
Uncovered areas that are not defensible in a simple way as before, because the animation to block the lunges implies that they must be INTERCEPTED.
If a warrior with a spear performs a feint simulating a lunge to the left shoulder and the defender moves his guard to the left to intercept him, then he uncovers his right shoulder, which will be immediately targeted and, if little covered, risks being hit with the lunge that follows after the fake one.
In general with THIS SYSTEM it is however possible to return to the old one.
If the various armors have hurtboxes that in the new system must remain uncovered, the developer may find it useful an option to check when desired that assigns the cover of the hurtboxes that in the new system were considered uncovered to the relative types of armor slots that in the old system covered them. . In this way you change between the old system and the new system.The only difference, not a small one, is that you would have a much wider catalog of armor parts (since only the upper limb, which is composed of the arm, elbow and forearm , would include at least 2 protections, for the arm and forearm, instead of 1 and in the case of returning to the old system the elbow would be covered either by the arm or forearm protection, at the developer's choice).
My god I really dispair when I read things like this. I mean have to ask myself why do they even have a test build? Why not try buffing the numbers and seeing how well players like or dislike it? I guess this is too much for someone at Taleworlds to figure out. They gotta get their priorities straight because figuring out who gets what offices in the new building are more important. 
