Kiting stuff, keep it here!

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by this logic should shielding be nerfed too? it seems the easiest tactic is getting easier and easier while the one aspect of the game that takes a degree of skill and fast thinking is the subject of discrimination.

You might have noticed that you cannot pull 1 shielder + 1 slasher ragnar run, but on TFD you could pull it off with 2 snipers/pikeman. Shieldwalls need a bit of coordination and more people, to be effective as kiting. Again, calling kiting a skillful activity is misrepresentation - it is more skillful than being in shieldwall, but only a bit more (mostly because firing/slashing from shieldwall takes about 30 seconds to master).

on the subject of first defence being an easy map...well, so it should be. we are but 16 Swadians fighting against an enormous amount of Nords. it is only logical to pick a location that evens out the odds. futhremore, first defence was one of the few maps that were completable in what i consider a fair amount of time (2 hours being generous). it was also a map that could cater for all roles. on the subject of nord spawns,well, once again it is logical for the nords to come from the castle walls and not from within the swadians castle.

i can understand that there were some issues with nord pathing on that map. however, totally ruining the map because people became good playing on it was in my opinion not the solution. it is a grind game, the idea is to grind your way up until a point where gear and skill allow for quicker and/or easier completion. by removing kitting and forcing the shieldwall the mod has decreased it's playability by 50%

We are 16 swadians fighting a lot of lemmings who cannot hold blocking rythm, are challenged by stairs and cannot use ranged or melee weapons effectivly. TFD didn't cater to all classes, it catered to pikeman and snipers. You could play the map effectively with other classes, but just throwing few cades here and there with ranged spam from pikeman/sniper was enough to do ragnar run. You didn't even need a single SHC. Ofcourse, if your cades somehow did fail, it could just turn into a kiting run. For nord spawn points, nords could use other entrances into the castle, instead of always piling on single one (this could be impossible to do though, warband AI is horrible).
Map wasn't ruined because players become too good at playing it, map was horribly unbalanced and needed a change (you really don't have to put in 300 hours playing a single map to realize whats the optimal way to play it, it takes about 10 minutes).

As for kiting, it's still perfectly possible to kite, only maps aren't designed to make it super-easy. Most probably you won't do prince/ragnar solo run on new maps, but it's still perfectly possible to solo up to juggernauts on most maps. As I've said before, I'm for kiting staying in as long as it's harder and not more profitable than teamplay.

click touched on what the shield wall has become...easy, simple, and depending on your sway boring. legend rebutted clicks argument with some strong points about what the shield wall should be like, and to an extent what it was like. I remember the days when names such as ragnash, benschie, AEGIS_Peter, ON Eisenhorn and legend where the norm on a server and they exemplified what legend has spoken about above on the shield wall. they provided an example for other players on how to play the mod. since then it is an exception to see them playing and there is little to no one left exhibiting this exemplary play style in game. the bleak reality of what the shield wall tactic has become is as click has outlined previously. i recall discussions on the game when the devs took a firm stance against the shieldwall claiming that is was an easy way to get loot and thus the then subject of discrimination. it is because of this that i now don't understand why it is the shieldwall that is being accommodated for rather than the kite which provides a more challenging and diverse play style when compared to the current shieldwalls.

Kiting isn't anymore diverse play style than shieldwall, you still run the same circle on the same map doing things for which you could probably make macro for. As for kiting being more challenging, when I see 1 shielder + 1 slasher do ragnar/odin run I'll admitt it's easier than kiting.
Shieldwalls currently pretty much require no skill to operate effectively. To increase skill necessary you would need to nerf ranged rate of fire a lot (and increase damage a lot, to reward precise shots rather than spam) and have specialized ammo types (cutting and piercing arrows/bolts with different stats), give several specialized types of shields (high resistance, low health shields for blocking swords, high health, low resistance for blocking bots with axes), increase melee headhit bonus (to reward precise hits rather than spam). Ofcourse, this would need enormous amounts of work and would be near-impossible to balance, but one can hope.