The New Changes

[Lanseril]

As a data point: I've reached wave 17 on normal 3 separate times in the past two days since the patch. In contrast, it's only happened once in the entire week before that. It may be harder to solo now, but servers that pull together properly are *still* getting it done as a team -- nerfs or not.

People have definitely been more mindful of teamwork since the patch. I've seen a lot less ramboing on later waves, and a lot more organized retreats, base-building, and shieldwalling. This is the kind of gameplay that had originally drawn me to NI; if I had wanted to mow down bots solo, I'd stick to single player.

It's not all good, since there are still lots of class balance and item discrepancy issues to iron out. At the end of the day though, I'm having a lot of fun with the new teamwork and my new skirmisher, so I've been liking this patch.

[Barristan]

Sorry this is a long post.

FYI, I agree with everything click said above.

I have been enjoying the new patch quite a bit as well. I have not had the kind of time I would like to get used to the new changes as I have had a lot of family stuff to do. However there seems to be a big emphasis on working together. Rambo used to work really well but hit a wall at knights and teamwork had to kick in, in hard mode all you really needed was city map, a couple of snipers and a couple of commandos and you could go a very long way: Adding extra players actually made it more difficult not less. The same was sort of true of the later normal levels.

Balancing things out and keeping the skills lower has significant benefits for progression through the enemies. The devs now have far more tools at their disposal to make the game more fun. Keeping the nord and swadian gear seperate also gives the devs more power to balance the game so these changes will be long term pluses. The new classes will also make working together significantly more beneficial as many are so specialized that having the work together will create a combined arms force capable of significantly progressing through waves.

Previously there was little incentive to work together until knights hit and then the tools at one's disposal for going further, short of barrels and res tomes were much more limited than they are now. Sharpshooters and pole arm specialists make keeping the front line alive more workable and that is definatly a good thing.

There are goals for the individual and goals for the team. The individual wants to smash every wave and wants to be empowered enough to do this. If the dev team goes too far in the direction of the individual the only answer is to add so many Nords that no group can get through without the barrel or the tome, essentially restricting progress to the very rich and not the talented. If they go this way there will be super fast snipers that kite everything, crossbows that are OP and reload instantly, commandos that charge in and annihilate everyone but get killed by horses and Skirmishers that feel underpowered until they are behind a barricade that no one wants to stand behind. Essentially, the game was close to being broken and if it had continued without these radical changes, it would have been and I think we can all see it.

Now that commando and nord gear is seperate, the ability to buff their gear separately to the Nords can make the shield wall tactic work a good deal better. Buffing our shields and not the enemy at the same time will have good long term benefits. As to hard mode, it is too early to tell as hard is definatly a work in progress and I have not spent enough time there since the patch to make any informed comments.

What is somewhat missing and I can only speak for the commandos at the moment, but it might be true of other classes also, is the sense of major progression. Before the patch, the difference between recruit to first tier and so on was obvious and highly sort after. Recruit was still worth playing but the goal was obvious and so were the benefits. When you strutted out onto the field after reaching fourth tier the sense of achievement was truly palpable. Perhaps the gap between these two points has been narrowed too much? I think the devs are aware of this and I am looking forward to a happy middle ground being reached. I think it is possible to feel like a champion and still have to fight as a team player at the same time and think reaching that balancing point will make this mod even better than it already is.

Keeping sense of progression while also keeping balance is really difficult, many games fail at it (looking directly at oblivion now), in other it really works. The dev team is talented enough to get us into the latter so we ought to provide good feedback as players and support them in this effort. Raging and winging will accomplish nothing.

On that note: why you break the mod co-worm, y u hate freedom 

[Barristan]

^^^^^

Don't know what server you are on but the snipers on the Aus servers still get most of the kills. Anything without a shield is still pretty much mince meat.

[Blondin]

Good to see constructive critisism and post.

I would just note that it seems to me you are all speaking of difficulty in normal mod, tbh I don't care of normal mod, except for my fellow partner and all the noobies out there (I said that it may be too hard for them), but  imo normal mod should not be balanced with/for tier 4 class, nope tier 4 class are meant to play hard mod, to have a challenge in hard mod and entertainment in normal mod. The only reason for high tier class to play normal mod is to help low tier and fun, there is nothing to gain in normal once you reached hard mod.
I played yestrrday and sadly, hard servers were empty, I tried with 3/4 guys to play and kill some nords, but meh it was a fail, we used teamwork, we were good, but we never see wave 4, even first wave with pikemen was sufficient to kill us all... And don't say to me that we need teamwork, we used it, barricade, healer, and legendary weapon (are u sure pick is a leg?) but nope we didn't see wave 4...
The point is that there is no more ppl playing hard mod, and if you need atleast a team of 8/10 players to enjoy hard mod, then the risk is that nobody wilk enjoy anymore.
I stop my rant here, once again I thank you for the work and I'm happy with the direction the mod is taking, but I wait for next patch to play hard mod

Btw, all bots are in strange white gear on hard mod, must be a bug...

[MrGuarnere]

Light highlander boots and highlander armor are wayyyy better than the best boots and armor you can get.  Lot cheaper too. 

You know is purely because Hyper is Scottish

[Jay_Nova]

Where I'd disagree with Jay is rate of fire and damage with bow fire as a sniper, I'm fine with that as is but as I posted way back, the range reduction is more a pain, hey the name's sniper, which I would argue implies some range.

I'd be good with that direction too.  Just seems to me either rate of fire, power, speed of arrow (range) needs to be increased.  Range would be good to counter the aim-bot NPCs.  If there is a nord ranger in the distance, we have to aim straight up to get a rainbow shot to hit them.  While they can get a head shot after head shot.

This might seem silly, but what about an alternate firing mechanism to balance that?  Like a long distance shot that uses 2x the amount of arrows and takes longer to draw but is a much improved straight shot.  That way we'd have to think twice about spamming arrows long distance but it would still remain a possibility.

[Illithar]

Damn messed up quoting Jay;

"I'd be good with that direction too.  Just seems to me either rate of fire, power, speed of arrow (range) needs to be increased.  Range would be good to counter the aim-bot NPCs.  If there is a nord ranger in the distance, we have to aim straight up to get a rainbow shot to hit them.  While they can get a head shot after head shot.

This might seem silly, but what about an alternate firing mechanism to balance that?  Like a long distance shot that uses 2x the amount of arrows and takes longer to draw but is a much improved straight shot.  That way we'd have to think twice about spamming arrows long distance but it would still remain a possibility."

That's a good suggestion from Jay and probably better that what I'd been thinking. I was going to suggest that say Long Bow and other similar are slow rate of fire but long range and aimable and you’d switch to a comp bow (like Khergit) for close in fighting and for a higher rate of fire.

If you want history, and I’ve read way to much of this stuff, from memory the Mongol Horse archers fired at an incredible rate not equaled until something like WW1 yet retained penetration power because of the composite nature of their bows.  But they weren’t snipers.

The x-bow is an entirely different animal of course.

But what Jay said probably makes more sense.

And I second what Kormin said about maybe unmuting Nimeuh in a few days. Your prerogative of course but he is a long time regular player and while I don’t agree with a lot that he said or indeed how he said it, as I said to him, hey, it’s a game, don’t get too excited.

[Sphinx]

I think people who don't like the changes are just used to play every game the OP way and like to have it easy. As soon as we increase the difficulty level, making the game a bit more challenging, people complain about it. Well the good thing is the majority of people aren't complainers and enjoy that challenge. There will always be people whining, because they just can't stand not being OP anymore

[AEF_Dongal]

All in all good patch, with obvious fine tweaking to come. Id like to see xbowman get some love (4ath @ sharpshooter vs 6ath @ commando,sniper vs 8ath for skirmisher), and xbows (more xbows are on the way yay!) not that i play one ofc....

[Illithar]

Hey Sphinx, since your post immediately followed mine wasn’t sure if it was just a general statement about people complaining, or mine specifically, or indeed Nimeuh, who I’d suggested the eventual unmuting thereof.

(Just in case) I don’t think you’ll find a post of mine complaining and indeed I’m generally in favor of the recent changes. Here Jay, and myself are offering constructive criticism, feedback and tweaking suggestions.

I didn’t really like the previous patch as I think it made the fighters overpowered with the armor buff and I also understand why higher level archers could look op’d when they could kite a round solo.

But a lot of people loved the previous buffing and I never bothered posting against it.

Overall the game needed rebalanced. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn't point out how we think it could be improved or tweaked.

But overall, and I’m not ass kissing, the Devs do seem to have a sense of humor and tolerance and support this way more than many high priced commercial games. For instance, I used to love the Total War series (well Rome and Medieval II) but haven’t been able to stomach the series since the disaster that was Empire. Wasn’t that keen on going musket anyhow.