Roles balance in Field battles

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Sharana
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Sharana » 07 Jan 2017, 14:35

As expected Life will be Lance and Bow for quite some time.

348. The MMO (the countless big open and treeless spaces on the map) highlighted something that was known for quite some time, but was "hidded" in the YO map where there is just no open place for such battles - cavalry and archers rule the battlefield and make the infantry obsolete. Many players don't want to adapt to the new meta as their appeal in the LiF combat was melee which simply isn't suited for the MMO and such melee fights happens very very rarely. Do you consider that a problem? Also is it realistic to expect some kind of either combat effectiveness reduction or economic demand to sustain and field cavalry during wars? Like more expensive warhorses (that need expensive saddle and armor), the need to feed the horses and so on?
  • Answer: I think it is too early to say anything certain about such a balance. Archers and cavalry has its weaknesses too. Northern territories are covered with woods, sieges are not really a good place for cavalry, we might boost Combat preparations to make it easier and faster to deploy anti-cavalry pike walls and mantles to cover infantry from archers. But again, it is too early to judge.
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Toren
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Toren » 08 Jan 2017, 06:06

That's unfortunate. Well, as long as it is all better balanced out by release, I guess it doesn't matter. Just hope that the main reason a lot of us play (the melee combat) is viable in the end.


Sharana
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Sharana » 08 Jan 2017, 16:14

Toren wrote:That's unfortunate. Well, as long as it is all better balanced out by release, I guess it doesn't matter. Just hope that the main reason a lot of us play (the melee combat) is viable in the end.


Well I have severe doubts that even in balanced game you are supposed to fight a field battle against cav and archers using boar spear, 2h sword or 2h maul (as the majority uses this weapons for melee).
The MMO is not deadmatch arena game, melee only can't be as viable as the same melee players would like to. Covering those big distances you will be riding a horse, won't run on foot for hour. The enemy will do the same, so unless both sides wish to fight melee and dismount the horses it simply can't be melee fight when only 1 of the sides wants it. If you reach the enemy castle you need tons of archers if you plan to do something, with mainly infantry you are totally useless and that's simply normal logic, not bad balance :)
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Linbaba
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Linbaba » 08 Jan 2017, 17:03

Sharana wrote:
Toren wrote:That's unfortunate. Well, as long as it is all better balanced out by release, I guess it doesn't matter. Just hope that the main reason a lot of us play (the melee combat) is viable in the end.


Well I have severe doubts that even in balanced game you are supposed to fight a field battle against cav and archers using boar spear, 2h sword or 2h maul (as the majority uses this weapons for melee).
The MMO is not deadmatch arena game, melee only can't be as viable as the same melee players would like to. Covering those big distances you will be riding a horse, won't run on foot for hour. The enemy will do the same, so unless both sides wish to fight melee and dismount the horses it simply can't be melee fight when only 1 of the sides wants it. If you reach the enemy castle you need tons of archers if you plan to do something, with mainly infantry you are totally useless and that's simply normal logic, not bad balance :)



there's a million and one links to this kind of info, it's easy to get.


https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-comp ... ieval-army


No one ever saw an army of horsemen and archers, ever, except maybe the Mongols and American Indians.

Except that the Mongols were a very specific case, were basically only active towards the very end of the medieval times and the American Indians didn't really fight Christopher Columbus and his sick raiders until the the middle ages were finished.

for info :
middle ages 5th to 15th century
mongols : 13th and 14th
Christopher columbus discovers "America" in 1492


You can't defend the position that says that historically armies were composed of bowmen / archers and horsemen with little to no melee fighters, it's simply not true.

And from a gaming and strategy point of view, it also makes no sense at all.

From the beginning of organised warfare up until today, there has pretty much always been a balance, within the ranks of an army, between different roles and types of fighters.

And the constant has also pretty much always been a predominance of infantry / melee fighters (we could consider that modern foot soldiers are melee even if they use guns but if you prefer not to, then this statement holds at least until the arrival of gunpowder)

There's an easy way to check if you are interested in the reality of medieval battles, there's wikipedia, there's all kinds of forums, and youtube also has a number of movie samples that are regarded as being historically accurate.


Sharana
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Sharana » 08 Jan 2017, 17:22

Balance that is mainly based on economics, not on actual combat performance. It's much cheaper to have peasant on foot then knight on a horse.
Besides there were tons of pikemans as that's easy to use weapon, in LiF you can count them on the fingers of 1 hand even in larger scale battles. Or the medieval foot soldiers were facing cav without battle line, with boar spears, 2h swords and mauls and flanged maces as that's what LiF melees use and don't want to change as that's working just fine for melee only fight.

On the topic of horse archers that's the case only because of the very wrong ingame mechanics encouraging such use. Why does one use horse archers instead of regular foot archers? Because they use the horse as meat shield to hide from enemy arrows showing up only to shoot themself. Then if they see infantry rushing them they just jump on the horse and retreat back to dismount and keep shooting on the advancing melees (the jump back on the horse and repeat). Then lastly in order to relocate to the flanks fast and shoot the enemy from different angles which is perfectly viable in the LiF's scale of fights where 30 vs 30 is big.

This stupid use of horse archers makes the cav to account for such big amount, if that's fixed in some way then you won't have so much cav. Other then that even in LiF it's hard to provide horses for 60 fighters in the guild and keep the supply rolling to sustain combat losses, that's hard to imagine. Yet the majority of the "daily" PvP one can expect is to intercept enemy raiding party (all mounted ofc for the mobility) which means going mounted ofc to catch them and fight them. That's 10-20 vs 10-20 scale of skirmishes, how do you propose doing that on foot or with 5 cav and 15 on foot in the mentioned scale?

The other big thing making the infantry unusable in mass are the archers that break the tower shields in seconds. For example when you see a shield wall of 4 guys with tower shields in tight formation and other melees behind them pushing 5 archers you would expect that to work don't you? Well not in LiF, because in about 20-30 seconds the shields were down (broken) and that group just ran in different direction after the shields were gone and they started getting hit by arrows and were helpless.

PS: When I open the wikipedia as you suggested I see this:
The rising costs of war
In the medieval period, the mounted warrior held sway for an extended time. Typically heavily armoured, well motivated and mounted on powerful, specially bred horses, the mounted knight represented a formidable force, which was used to effect against more lightly armoured troops. Since only the noble classes could afford the expense of knightly warfare, the supremacy of the mounted cavalryman was associated with the hierarchical structure of medieval times, particularly feudalism. As the period progressed, however, the dominance of the cavalry elite began to slowly break down. The Black Death in the 14th century swept through Europe, devastating the population and resulting in serious manpower shortages. This encouraged more economical use of available manpower, and the infantryman was much cheaper to outfit and maintain than the aristocratic knight. The Crusade era also saw a rise in the importance of infantry, and required large numbers of men and material to be organized for distant battlefields. Such expeditions were part of the growing number of sieges, disputes and campaigns throughout the 13th and 14th centuries that greatly increased the cost of warfare for medieval regimes. The relative inexpensiveness of the infantryman, combined with a shortage of manpower, provided incentives for expanding their use

...

Infantry versus cavalry
Tactically there were only two ways for infantry to beat cavalry in an open field battle: firepower and mass. Firepower could be provided by swarms of missiles. Mass could be provided by a tightly packed phalanx of men. Such tactics were long-established; the Romans used missile troops such as slingers, and the core infantry learned to deal with swarming enemy cavalrymen by forming a hollow square fenced with a solid hedge of iron pila (large javelins). Alexander the Great combined both methods in his clashes with the Asiatic horseman of Persia and India, screening his central infantry phalanx with slingers, archers and javelin-men, before unleashing his cavalry against the enemy. Both mass and firepower could be aided by a good tactical position, such as on a hill or on rough terrain, where enemy cavalry would have trouble maneuvering. These ancient lessons were relearned in the Medieval period; in the Crusades, in the continued operations of forces like the Flemish footman and particularly the Swiss pikeman and the English longbowman.

...
The infantry revolution and the decline of cavalry
Some Medieval specialists elaborated on the idea of an infantry revolution happening early in the 14th century, when in some relevant battles, like Courtrai (1302), Bannockburn (1314) or Halmyros (1311), heavy cavalry was routed by infantry; however, it can be pointed out that in all those battles infantry was entrenched or positioned in rough terrain unsuited for cavalry, like in other battles of the 14th and 15th century in which cavalry was defeated. In fact infantry had been victorious in earlier times in similar situations, for instance at the battle of Legnano in 1176, but in open ground infantry still had the worst, as shown for instance at the battle of Patay (1429) and the battle of Formigny (1450) in which the vaunted English longbowmen were easily run down; however, the experience of battles like Courtrai and Bannockburn meant that the myth of the invincible knight disappeared, which was in itself important for transforming medieval warfare.
More substance has the case for the "return of Heavy Infantry" as Carey has named it. Pikemen, unlike other infantry, could stand in the open against heavy cavalry. While requiring drill and discipline, individual training requirements were much lower than those for archers or knights, and the switch from heavily armoured knight to footsoldier made possible the expansion in the size of armies from the late 15th century onwards as infantry could be trained more quickly and could be hired in great numbers. But that change was slow.


No mentions of fighting cav with 2h swords, mauls and boar spears :)
And that's the "melee experience" big part of the players are looking for.
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Linbaba
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Linbaba » 08 Jan 2017, 18:38

I'm not questioning why things are the way they are in the game, I wanted focusing on what the dev team may have as objectives for this game, and basing my arguments on the real world (though I could just as well have used video games as an example).

Every type of fighter (in the real world and in fiction) has strong points and weak points that differ from other types of fighters.

Having one type that is stronger than all others and is never weaker, that's a problem, from all angles.

That's basically what I'm saying.


Relevant to the game : if me and my guild go to war and the only thing I see is bowmen, I will QQ and rage and rant until my skin peals off my fingers !

It might even be a strong enough reason for me to leave the game, personally, seeing as I don't like playing ranged classes to begin with, whatever the game.


Toren
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Toren » 08 Jan 2017, 21:50

All I'm trying to point out is that from a player skill perspective, lancers and ranged fighting are way too easy compared to melee. Melee has way more (frequently broken) in depth mechanics, while lancing and ranged are incredibly simple. Like I said a while ago, I myself am a lancer, but after the last patch combat patch it became so easy that being a lancer wasn't a real skill set anymore. Most people can lance effectively now within an hour of training. Same thing with ranged weapons. Alongside a mount/dismount speed debuff (or whatever to make hopping on a horse and running less prevalent), making these classes require more player skill than melee would make them respectable combat skills, rather than the simple solution to winning fights.

As far as the economic limitations go, we haven't really seen a proof of any economic balance in any aspect of the game. As far as end tier combat goes, naphtha pots and poisons will be mass produced without any issue once people get to herb gardens. Warhorses will be mass produced whether or not they become more complicated to make. Everything that isn't completely dependent on wood or high quality metal will be able to be mass produced from what we have seen for in game mechanics currently permit, especially once herb gardens and massive farms get set up.

I'd rather have the PvP aspect of the game balanced around individual player skill than around an economy system that isn't even in the game yet.


Gruber
 
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Gruber » 09 Jan 2017, 11:04

Where is Melee broken, beside the bad netcode and the poor first person view?

Lancers and ranged is not that op. Arrows are not that fast that you cant evade them on long range, same for lancers. You can have a big advantage on lancers when you use the enviorment right.

Speaking about realism. It was a bad idea to move a melee group without shields over an open field against archer or cav. Any kind of a shield was a good option against archers, no shields would result in heavy casulties. Cav was very effektiv against melee only groups on an open field. Even a Speer Wall cant stop the heavy impact. But remember cav was kamikaze when they crush in a organized formations. They will take a lot of lifes with them, but it was very unlikely to get out alive. In europe cav mostly consists of men from the upper class. Men who have the money to buy heavy armor and "waste" a horse in battle. You dont send those men on a suicide mission. Cav usualy came to use when the battle was won already.

In RL the big problems were. You cant carry big amounts of arrows to "waste" them and there were not enough horse available for every men. A horse ready to battle was rare and nothing to waste.

In LiF, breeding horses should take a lot longer, like 4 weeks. And you should not be able to carry 100 arrows and more so easy.


Lord_Sitruc
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Lord_Sitruc » 09 Jan 2017, 15:04

So Just going to spitball a few things here that I had as ideas and see what you guys think.

I think something that would make cavalry more interesting is if the horses didn't regen health naturally. I think it would be more interesting if the healers had to put a heal on them like you have to do to people.
I think that little change will make warhorses much more valuable and more limited, it would also reduce the use of horses as shields and quick getaways by archers as they could only use it for a short time or risk losing their horse. This would also increase the value of armored heavy warhorses causing cavalry to be a bigger investment of points.

I think they should make a new item "quiver" that is required to equip more then one arrow in a stack at a time. Make it take time to load the quivers, and make them heavyish so you only want to carry a few of them on you at a time. This might not reduce the archer spam but it will probably help lead to melee combat after the arrows are spend or force people to plan logistics to keep the arrows flowing which I think would be a nice addition.

Ahh last but not least, do something with formations. They have this awesome mechanic and have hidden it so far down into the weeds that nobody uses it. move it to where people can get it and give it a buff. If a well formed unit using formations got a bonus against being knocked over by cavalry and increased resistance against forward incoming arrows. I bet infantry units would be popping out of the ground like daisies


Toren
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Re: Roles balance in Field battles

Post by Toren » 10 Jan 2017, 02:52

Lord_Sitruc wrote:So Just going to spitball a few things here that I had as ideas and see what you guys think.

I think something that would make cavalry more interesting is if the horses didn't regen health naturally. I think it would be more interesting if the healers had to put a heal on them like you have to do to people.
I think that little change will make warhorses much more valuable and more limited, it would also reduce the use of horses as shields and quick getaways by archers as they could only use it for a short time or risk losing their horse. This would also increase the value of armored heavy warhorses causing cavalry to be a bigger investment of points.

I think they should make a new item "quiver" that is required to equip more then one arrow in a stack at a time. Make it take time to load the quivers, and make them heavyish so you only want to carry a few of them on you at a time. This might not reduce the archer spam but it will probably help lead to melee combat after the arrows are spend or force people to plan logistics to keep the arrows flowing which I think would be a nice addition.

Ahh last but not least, do something with formations. They have this awesome mechanic and have hidden it so far down into the weeds that nobody uses it. move it to where people can get it and give it a buff. If a well formed unit using formations got a bonus against being knocked over by cavalry and increased resistance against forward incoming arrows. I bet infantry units would be popping out of the ground like daisies


As far as the heavy warhorse goes, I can't really see it ever becoming useful unless melee cavalry becomes a thing. As it stands, the only way to fight effectively on horseback is lancing, and running lancing and heavy warhorses effectively is fairly difficult and underwhelming. Maybe some nice changes to how horseback damage works along with some horseback friendly swords would change this, but I don't think its being worked on right now.

I like the quiver idea, but every archer in this game finds a way around melee combat if they can, and they probably would find ways around new restrictions as well. I personally don't have any good ideas on how to make it valuable for archers to stand and fight when they are closed in on by melee so I can't really contribute here.

Formations have always bothered me. Right now the only way formations are really valuable is with archers/crossbowmen from a stationary position. Moving a wall formation across a field will just result in everyone being slowed down because of how difficult it is to stay in formation, and these formations just get chewed up by archers/naphtha pots/ cavalry, which is what they theoretically should help against. I think formations just need an overhaul in general, as well as a re positioning on the skill tree as you pointed out.

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