Reply To: First feedbacks after last update (new skills and injuries)

[Wargasm]

le_souriceau wrote:

I generaly liked new update, but some points. Mostly about weapon balance.

1) After introduction of warbow (and changed point-blank mechanics) crossbows more or less useless, especially on later stages of game, when you have decent marksmen and must hit fast/far/hard to survive. Bow speciality perk gives warbow immense advantage over crossbow to push things more.

2) Same thing – I myself found swords inferior to other melee choices for specialist. Yes, they have their pros and can be used for some fancy agility build (not my thing), but… Most of end-game challenges leaves them lacking in so needed power.

3) New long axe is generaly FAR more usefull choice for 2d line (SPLIT SHIELDS!) over billhook with it sitiational pull ability. This comes to extent where billhook is almost irrevelent weapon.

For me main pain/horror/imbalance of the game – large orc warbands (with lot of warriors/warchief). In order to defeat them somewhat reliably you must abandon most of variety and fun in warband-building – use very strict perk configuration, practise “recruit eugenics”, savescamming and heavy calculated abuse of game mechanics and AI.

Every time when I trying play with fun, diversed and more or less random band of average joes, they simply farking annihilated by orcs. But boring “powerplay”, munchkins band have some success. This is sad. My be I just bad commander :/

1) Crossbows are still more devastating at damaging well-armoured opponents, but now it’s hard to continue doing this without remaining in a vulnerable position; now, therefore, I tend to have crossbowmen who are also well-armoured 2-handed melee fighters, and/or who use the Footwork perk to withdraw from the throng after an initial charge, and/or who use the new Adrenaline perk to get first shot at their opponents after moving into position. Sometimes I now use throwing weapons instead of crossbows, just because these seem like a more realistic weapon for an also-melee-fighter to have. I’ve certainly been making more use than before of archers, which is pleasing to me, since I like bows and archery.

2) I kind of agree in regard to standard swords, but rare named swords with over 100% effectiveness against armour make me want to change my mind and allow my melee mass to keep slashing away with a fatigue cost of only 16 per round, so that they can wear as much heavy armour as they like and carry a massive shield and an equally massive back-up while hardly ever being in danger of exhaustion.

3) 101% agreed. I love longaxes and I’ve never been big on billhooks (since, e.g., their pull-in skill takes away the advantage of being able to attack an opponent who can’t attack you).

4) I also agree about orc bands with many warriors/warlords forcing you to use a particular strategy (i.e. Battle Forged, lots of rare/named heavy armour, and weapon speciality for hammers and axes) and making it unfeasible to use more experimental builds. One of my campaigns has mostly high-level mercenaries all in brown leather/gambesons but with over 100 hit-points and around 75 resolve, and they fought a bunch of orc warriors and sort of won (the remaining 4 orcs moved off to the edges of the battlefield despite being at confident morale) but half of the 12 were killed and the band needed to be rebuilt. Basically, it’s inevitable that orc warriors/warlords will be able to smash your shields and use knock back to take higher ground and surround you; so, unless you have lots of heavy armour, you will receive devastating damage when you’re hit (which will happen eventually, despite their amazing capacity for repeated misses against surrounded, unshielded opponents at a height disadvantage) and you won’t be able to go the distance.