Life is Feudal Official Forum

[JohnValentine]

So, being generally on the fringes of the Development process, mostly reporting bugs and such, I've started to hear a lot of craziness about balancing both Archers and Lancers that I'd feel amiss if not putting my personal thoughts to the public. So here we go..

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Archers

There has been a lot of talk about how powerful (overpowered) archers can be, often followed by references mostly into European medieval history (minus England) that attempt to support some process for serious nerfs to Archery in LIF.

And although I love the historical card as much as the next enthusiast, I fear the calls to nerf archery often result in suggestions that are simply.. well.. absurd. To say that Archery (and for that matter Cavalry) where not extensively used in the feudal era is to severely limit the study or samples to a few select civilizations. Which definitely would not include the great "exception" card, the Mongols, whom where arguably the most successful space grabbers through military conquest in that era.

So, Archery. Without pulling out spreadsheets and playing classic balance games, lets first look at logistics of Archery within the game that are not represented within the real world.

1. Archers can not reasonably wear many types of protection and have the range of movement or strength necessary to draw a bow and fire accurately. It's a trade off, that gets a little more sticky when we get into crossbows. However, for archers that means although you may be able to put out a lot of potential DPS, you definitely do not want to take damage and thusly need line units, defensive fortifications, or use hit and run tactics.

2. The cost of Arrows currently in LIF is 1 Feather and 1 Billet for 10 Arrows. A small civilization can easily produce an aggressive amount of arrows for little cost, mostly by using easy to amass materials.

3. The ability to carry 2000 arrows alone is an impressive feat. Add in the ability to be wearing chain, holding sword and shield, and likely a bow as well, and you've got nothing short of a miracle. In defensive fortifications, the posture would make sense to have access to an abundance of materials.. however it logistically gets a bit more grey in the field.

My Suggestion: Armor limitations have already been put on Archers. If there are any other needed nerfs to Archers, I think it's somewhere between point 2. and point 3. By increasing the economic cost of arrows or reducing the amount of arrows archers can carry without needing external supply lines, Archers on the field become situationally useful due their expense and logistics instead of defacto answers.


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Cavalry


I've heard a lot of pain about lancers and nerfs to Cav that include a wide spectrum of "damage limitations", "lance fragility", and "attack angle limitations". What I find interesting about many of the arguments brought up against lancers (and mostly lancers being used in terrain that is advantageous for lancers), is that the Horse is almost never brought up.

A combatant loaded down in plate and cavalry weaponry, generally really likes to be on his horse. Which common sense would say, you either put yourself in a position to make him ineffective, knock him off his horse, or kill his horse. The first two are well represented in the game, the last one, not so much.


My Suggestion: If nerfs to Lancers/Cavalry become factors that the development team is looking to invest into. I'd like to suggest looking at the intense amount of effort it takes to kill or maim a horse. Horses should have their own bleed effects and injuries no different than a player. Although, especially unarmored horses, should be significantly more fragile.

By reducing the tankyness of horses, Lancers will need to pick more intelligent fights or risk being dismounted far from friendly elements in slow and immobile armor. This also adds an economic burden on civilizations the rely on heavy cavalry by increasing the turnover of their horse supply.
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In conclusion; I don't want to say "this is op" or "that is op". I believe a very small fraction of the playerbase understands the mechanics well enough to reasonably make those assertions. However, feeling how the game plays, I'd like to suggest that if nerfs are needed, that development look into the merit of the above suggests to aid their balancing brainstorming.

=)

[Dragmar]

One thing I would say about archers is the mobility while shooting might need a nerf.

I see a lot of people's "answere" to the archer needs a nerf posts is to link videos of longbows penetrating plate armor in real life, etc.
But in those videos you never see anyone fully draw a longbow, then continue moving, strafing or otherwise.

A fully drawn longbow should pack one hell of a punch, and do massive damage, but I do belive moving while drawing should severly hinder the amount of force you can get out of it.

[Zohann]

Current bow animaton allows an archer to shoot every 2 sec, though the damage is small, it is actually not realistic and legoals-like. Another thing is that actually the accuracy of the bow does not degrade really much even when you aim for 10 sec, holding an arrow. I suggest the idea that archer, once he is aiming, should start losing sprint stamina, meaning, that he will have to be careful with long aiming, cause it can lead to his exhaustion and loss of maneuvrability due to low stamina, thus becoming very vulnarable for incoming attacks. Also I support the idea that he should not be able to aim while sprinting, or that it should lead to massive reduce of accuracy.

The lancer damage is pretty high and quiet suitable for now, yet there are still some physically unrealtic things like lancer being able to deliver damage at 0 speed. Drop of speed should actually lead to the cancelling of lance swing activation, but right now a lancer can just stop, you can touch the tip of his lance, staying idly at one place, and receive 30 dmg, just because youve touched the tip, even though you have a helmet and stuff. Also lance delivers damage 0.5 seconds after you push the left mouse button. This are animations bugs, which, I hope, will be fixed.

[Fhoer]

How to balance, using a bit of realism:

Archers / Crossbow:

1- Make a "Quiver", you can equip 10 arrows/bolts per slot without it. Quivers hold maximum 35 arrows/bolts put the option to "reload Quiver" when on your equipment menu. Quivers break for being used, they are made using leather and hank of linen by an Tailor lvl 15. It shall be an "Bolt quiver" and an "arrow quiver". so you don't have a guy in defense or over a horse without reequip arrows

2- A drawn bow should penalize aim (quicker) consume both staminas and if you move the damage should fall 60% and the aim be really bad, so prevent CQC longbow archers. Do you like to carefully aim before shoot? use a crossbow.

3- Crossbows should have a lever to help on reload (giving a 15% reload bonus), it should be made by a lvl 60 bowcrafter using components, you need to equip the lever in your belt, so you can have a pavise heavy crossbowman, but if people go to your direction you should equip a sword asap.

4- Heavy crossbows need a special lever to be reloaded.

((side note: the lever will help a lot, but remember, they are static and will have limited melee capabilities, use other archers, cav or shielded infantary to kill them, if you cant kill, prevent them to fight back, chase them.))

5- All arrow/bolts should have pre-made heads. eg.:
BlackSmith lvl 30 crafts "normal" heads
BlackSmith lvl 60 crafts "specialized" heads
Bowcrafters lvl 0 can make "primitive arrows/bolts" using flints to make 10 arrows/bolts, they are really weak, useful to gring, hunt and killing naked people, should be comparable as an Sling in damage.

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Cavalry:

1- Make the LowQ warhorses disobey when it gets damaged, they can try to to turn (you compensate with keyboard) slow down and depending of the damage dealt they can knock the rider down, lower quality = low discipline, quality is based on the trainer skill as limit, LowQ horses can get slightly better if the trainer have high skill, maybe after lvl 60 he gets a 10% bonus on horses with Q lower than his skill. Horses without a rider will walk around, so archers cant use as a shield.

2- Lances break easily faster

3- Horses have lower HP but they can use armor, make more variants of Armored horses, so it is a bit more expensive to be an lancer, as you don't want you Q90 warhorse to die.
Make 4 diferent armors and a tabard for the horse
Leather, chain, plate and royal, the royal already have a tabard
spirited warhorses cant use armor and the other armors are optional following the horses type, WH - leather, Hardy can use leather and chain, Heavy can use leather, chain and plated... Royal can use everyone and royal armor is a plated in status have the same stats as any other armor.
that reduce the damage, so the horse AI (in 1) will be in control.

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Knights already have a limited use, cuz you cant use knights in forests, mountains, going uphill, against walls or river crossings, even in a open field the other force can lay objects and structures to exploit this weakness

Archers have a wider roll, but they are useless without support, no infantry to defend they fall prey to lancers, no walls they get attacked by other archers, CQC archer is a bit unrealistic, so preventing him to move and dealing full damage with a long bow would balance it, they can fire close, but cant run around while they do it.


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As we are talking about horses and archers, Mounted archers:

If my suggestions be implemented in some degree i suggest mounted archers

-they cant use long bows and heavy crossbows,
-can use light crossbows or the "medium crossbow" with lever.
-aim is really bad in movement, so they need to be static to shoot.
-If the game is adjusted as i suggested Mon. Arc. need to watch out for his horse, as it will not tank a lot of damage, they can move around if get hit by foot archers, so maybe they would use heavier horses. Falling prey to light cavalry using spirited war horses to counter then, you can have spirited mounted archers, but they lose they horses after some arrows...
If implemented there should be a skill called "Mounted Archery" you need to have the tier 2 of cav. and tier 2 of arch. to unlock and level it. so you have a cost on skill, and a mounted archer will pick some intelligence to be able to fight on foot if needed.
The counters for Mounted Archer is:
Light Cav (spirited war horses)
Foot Archers (as they are big targets and longbows have greater range)
Other Mounted Horses, cuz gets what, 1-1 = 0, they don't have advantages over build, so you need to use better tatics, training and manouvers... like in real life
and they have terrain limitations

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In the MMO forget about mount and blade and chivalry, organization and discipline will be more important than individual skill in the end of the day.