The Infantry Problem 2

[Winter]

Sigh

Rude.  Don't post a thread asking for people's opinions if you are going to act exasperated and don't want to take the time to read all of their positions and respond to them (although maybe I am assuming something that isn't there in that line). Thank you for asking for clarification on given points in the following lines, though.

Anyways, some notable points that deserve responses:

What about the people who do not have access to the best craftables or legendary armours. They are usually forgotten about and left to their destiny.
I have seen infantry based character forced to use ranged weaponry just so they are useful. A single infantry character wouldn't last long in the open.

Your arguments have been built around your personal experience as an infantry that has a bit of a silver spoon from the VM armory.  Kaasovic brings up a good point that whatever high tier commandos are feeling, low tier ones must be feeling even worse. Balance should not be based around legendary items. This is a mistake I have made many times and it has been a long standing point of regret for me.

Not saying that inf is useless in the current state but actually getting in the battle and fighting isn't enjoyable on inf vs the higher tier enemies.

I understand that you have to have some challenge and inf should not be invincible but as it is now I think inf simply lacks survivability. If there isn't a spam healer I'm very likely to get killed before I can swing once on my zwei or legio or rg and even the juggernaut. I don't have full sets of best in slot gear but I've played with them. It was disappointing, the nords still kill you quite quickly. If you play careful you can get some hits in but in general fighting higher tier enemies as inf is almost not worth it. Even has legio i have to hit some enemies 5x+ (With Ragnars Wrath...) and in that time there are 10+ nords around me that try to hit me.

As inf you are very dependant on the team, you need a spam healer when you are shielding in some harder waves. You need others to hit while you shield. If you are zwei you kinda need a shielder near you or you might get hit by the nord behind the one you are hitting. With 4 coordinated inf (2 shielders 2 slashers for example) you can charge into most waves and succeed (wave 14 hard is a different story but even there an inf charge can succeed). Teamplay like this rarely happens in public games though. 

Leandero's first sentence is very important to this conversation.  Classes should all be fun and engaging to use.  Regardless of importance, standing there with the chat bar up is neither.  However, his last sentence does bring up a point that I am interested in.  I wonder how much of this is not because of stat problems but rather because of lack of coordination and teamplay.

Right now with Full Plate Knight Helm SoK and DWP I can kill up to Prince wave
If I can kill it with melee then I think that's OP

Pikeman/Archer with decent items can do normal to Prince easily. I'm pretty sure Warden with SS bow or MP with CTS is enough to do it, so I don't see the problem here.

This is a strong rebuttal to your position that you can solo to the Prince on your infantry and therefore infantry is balanced... every other class can solo to and kill the Prince, as well as the final boss of Hard mode (and sometimes Ragnarok, although this generally requires two or three players), given patience and skill.  Does the fact that the melee class is melee mean that the fact it can achieve worse results than ranged classes by using melee make it balanced?

So I didn't play NI for several months (almost a year), only came back yesterday. It seems to me that the problem with infantry is still the same as it was a year ago. Wealthy ranged players + barricades simply make infantry classes useless. I bet the reason for this is the huge amount of super high tier gear that's available to most people nowadays. When I started playing 3 years ago most people I was playing with had just average equipment and normal cades which actually forced us to form a shield wall in order to survive. I do realise that there are a lot fewer people playing nowadays too. I'm pretty sure that resetting everything to 0 would fix everything that's wrong with this mod right now (I understand it's not going to happen )

P.S. Fighting in a shield wall and the infantry action as a whole was the reason I loved this mod so much. Been playing Mount & Blade since 2008-2009, and I still haven't seen a mod that does that better than NI.

It is reminiscent of the last time (that I can remember - think back to when the stair glitches were a thing) infantry fell out of favor.  That time it was fixed by map changes making it so barricades could not easily replace shielders.  I wonder if a non-stat based fix would be best in this situation as well.  As I have brought up in the past, the original Starcraft is praised as a balancing masterpiece and all of its maintenance (adjusting to meta switches and keeping the game fresh) was done through diligent map makers long after Blizzard stopped doing any stat changes.  I don't agree that a wipe would be the best fix, however, as it comes with a whole host of other issues.  I'm glad you already understand it isn't going to happen

Commando crafted has same stats as Xbow legendary which is the other tank class
Buffing Infantry for hard and rag also means buffing it on normal
As stands I can take 3-4 hits from top bots there and have taking 1 hit from Prince no shield a few times
I would end up playing god mode on normal instead of beginner
I don't think that's what you want and if it is then you won't get it

I don't see the problem with this at all. You are an inf hero, as I said before other classes have their own strengths. God mode would be taking no damage at all from all the enemies. As it is now you often instantly die to 2h enemies if you try to hit one as you get hit by multiple enemies at once in 1 swing. 

This is another decent rebuttal.  Again, no one is arguing that infantry isn't OP, therefore it is UP.  They believe infantry is underused due to class imbalance and are giving their reasons for believing so along with possible fixes.  There is no reason to be dismissive of their claims, especially when they have taken the time to type well-written paragraphs using proper grammar and spelling.  Responding with stuff like "Guess you haven't done a rag mode sense you came back Parvel.  Any time pretty much that you try and kill Thor without shielding you wipe" is completely unwarranted and assumes much about Pavel.  Just because you disagree on something does not automatically mean he hasn't even played Ragnarok mode and has no idea what he is talking about.

Please take the time to respond to people's individual points and rebuttals if you want to run a thread like this.  Responding with strawmen and sarcasm like "So from what I can tell the Problem with Infantry is that they are not OP enough" is not helpful to anyone and is insulting to the people that took the time to respond to you.

I am not trying to be mean or say I think you are a bad person, I just don't like the direction this thread has been going in some of the recent posts and I feel that as the original poster and an admin, you have the responsibility of holding yourself to a higher standard. I hope this criticism is received well and this thread can successfully achieve something.