Love the game, but think I found a serious flaw

Combat system
#1

First of all, I’ve been following the progress of Kingdom Come Deliverance since 2010, when there was a leaked youtube video showing a village and few mentions of historical rpg. This is the kind of games I’ve always wanted to play since I was a child (even better if they were in Ancient History times: Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, Cartaghinians, Celtic tribes, etc).

I want to make clear also that I’ve never finished the game, only did a few quests until level 10-13 while testing gameplay, mechanics, AI and so on. Seriously, I’ve never felt as immersed in a videogame for many many years, but the game has serious inconsistencies/flaws in terms of balancing (other bugs taken out of consideration and understandable for their first game, even 20-30 fps drops in populated areas/battles, which I still hope that they would fix).

I really wish to be mistaken, but just wondering if anyone felt the same. I don’t have any sort of armour, just wearing black trousers and a black cover for the head (default t-shirt on). I was scouting a cuman/bandit camp (scout quest) and one cuman captain (heavily armoured) saw me on a bridge. We started to shoot some arrows to each other few cms to each other and his arrows are barely doing any damage to me, despite not wearing armour… He shooted me around 8 arrows, I shooted him 12 and he surrendered… What the hell??? It was bloody ridiculous, I should be dead in 2/3 arrows… Can anyone try the same situation and confirm it? Archers are a joke, they should be deadly and scary despite wearing full plate armour, if they have the proper bow and arrows to penetrate it.

In addition, how is it possible to kill a bandit in plate armour only through stabs if swords (e.g. short sword, in this case) shouldn’t be able to penetrate this kind of armours? Should you be kind of forced to use an axe or mace for that, or you just can finish the game with a single sword and light armour and not bother about other type of weapons (just there due to aesthetics)?

Warhorse should be supported for their courage in releasing the game despite all odds, and I hope that they can still manage to fix the game and get it to its full potential, which is simply breathtaking if done right. My overall impression is sensational, but these inconsistencies have killed its credibility. Any chance to fix it or is just the stamina design decision (Slack/Slash constantly until your enemy is tired and you kill it by insistence, not by doing damage in critical parts as it was said during Warhorse videos) that is making some non-sense?

Please, take it as constructive criticism from a supporter but disappointed fan. Cheers!

2 Likes
Combat in 1.5
Documentary
#2

Warhorse doesn’t read this forum. I think if your message is really a piece of constructive criticism, you better send it to support@kingdomcomerpg.com.
This is the best way to ensure they read it.

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#3

Not true :slight_smile: But yes, email is the best way how to contact us.

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#4

If you guys upgrade the respond to read ratio it would be perfect :wink::+1:

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#5

How about the remote possibility that they wanted to make A GAME rather than an accurate killing simulator?

Honestly. If I roam the countryside and run into some heavily armoured cumans I’d be really pissed if the simulator is so accurate that they are true marksmen and always kill with their first shot.

Plate armour is not a single metal enclosure. If it were You couldn’t move as the bendability of the metal would be grossly insuficient.
So imagine yourself actually knowing how armour is worn and where the weak points are. Hey presto. It makes sense.

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#6

Understand and agree to a degree. Henry is a bit of a tank even for Cuman boss archers. So, I think some tweaking would be beneficial

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#7

Might be possible now the flood has abated. .

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#8

Blockquote[quote=“SirLoin, post:5, topic:56936”]
So imagine yourself actually knowing how armour is worn and where the weak points are
[/quote]

Not as a peasant… Id have to be a blacksmith or something to… oh hang on… forget I said anything.

#9

Thanks for the replies, specially to Jan Rucker WH, so we know they are wise and keep an eye on the forum and mods that are released :slight_smile: I only wanted to check if other people felt the same, I’m not as arrogant to send Warhorse an email from my in-depth technical ignorance about how to further improve the game haha

Please, don’t get me wrong. The game is a masterpiece: the amount of historical and artistical detail (environment, clothing, building, etc), the design philosophy, the combat… I’m still astonished but how much work it involved (watched all your videos, Vavra’s presentations, etc) and I’m not disappointed at all with the game release. You’re a small team which has created an unique game in a shallow gaming industry, not only changing the general pattern with huge courage and success, but telling other developers that there are enough people interested in playing historically accurate and adult games without dragons and rainbow fake colouring/graphics. I hope this is the start of a historical rpg genre in its own, so other developers stop being lazy and selling refurbished and "streamlined"shallow sagas all over.

Taking that into consideration and all my appreciation, there’s always room for improvement, balancing and polishing, but your honest and transparent approach keeps my confident for future games, hopefully.

Well, I love history but also want to play a GAME (irony) which is not only fun but complex, specially if the engine and Warhorse new assets allow that depth, and they were specifying that they will reflect it in their combat mechanics/balancing. You don’t have to overexaggerate, there are always different middle points between things, not everything has to be an extreme or the other. You don’t have to be scared of more complexity which enriches the gameplay, like thinking twice what armour and weapon you should use depending on the enemy and strategy or deal with the consequences (e.g. like not wearing any sort of armour for reducing noise and speed when scouting a camp, but you take the risk of getting killed quite easily if found by 2/3 arrows or attacked with some weapons for a few slashes, like bleeding). The difference between not wearing armour or wearing it should be further increased by the specificity of the weapon damage towards the type or armour protection against that weaponry and its condition state, instead of only your stamina level (not only, but it seems it matters too much and gets unbalanced). It’s an exploit against archers to walk towards them without armour, kill them with the sword and run in case armoured soldiers arrive (which you can still more or less easily kill without armour because of the rush attacks stamina issue). The problem is that the arrow damage is so low and stamina regeneration is that fast that you barely get any damage, so it doesn’t look credible.

If you are overpowered even naked, where’s the point of wearing armour at some point if you’re not realistically penalised? Even when you’re fully armoured and you’re like a tank, you should still feel vulnerable to some arrows and other weapons, like there would be an extremely small margin that the arrow might overcome your protection if it’s not in proper shape, the archer and its equipment is sensational (high level archers) so you can be killed in 1-2 arrows in 3-5% chances, for instance. In my humble opinion, this damage variability and uncertainty would keep the game alive for mid-late game, so you never get too cocky and feel that you can always die if not careful. Story-wise, you’re a total novice and the son of a blacksmith, you can’t be the best soldier in the area after that small time, and in fact it’s actually the opposite that Warhorse tried to create in comparison to the “You’re the chosen one, You’re unique and saviour…” from other RPGs that makes some of us die inside :smiley:

I think the biggest issue is to have the damage so heavily dependent on stamina level. You defeat the enemies by exhausting them like slack/slash mechanic, not by focusing with the correct weapon on their weak zones (e.g. stabbing an enemy with short sword in the body with plate armour and killing it because he was tired… As far as I’m concerned, you can’t stab a full plate armour with a sword in Middle Ages, that’s why you use the sword grip and other tricks/combos to cause damage and so on, and this was reflected in one of the promotional videos with a sword duel between armoured knights at its end… No, the bandit/deserter was wearing full and good quality plate armour, he was from a big fight encounter on a road and there was no mere sign of worn armour, as I looted it afterwards; You’re not a trained knight for knowing all these specificities). It makes sense that you get more damage while your stamina is very low, but also that your attack damage is marginal if you attack without stamina (slower speed animation or low damage, so you must regenerate stamina in order to kill the enemy). It would bring more combat variability, strategy and randomness, so the importance of heavy armours will be critical when fighting several enemies at the same time.

Hopefully, you will add more depth and complexity, and rebalance some inconsistencies with the Hardcore Mode :slight_smile: Cheers and keep up the great work, Warhorse!

1 Like
#10

no thats pretty damn true lol. this is one of the rare instances where someone from wh responds directly . ive only been watching the forums since the day of release not the entire time. if you guys are always watching over your forums it makes me think wh was ducking like 70% of all the posts having problems with something lol. for a while thats all these forums were.

#11

They wouldn’t have been ‘ducking anything’: during that time they kept working to improve the game.

If I was in a game team Id often be on the forums (at least reading); if my time was precious I might only be able to read some stuff…
At the end of the day I might even go home and have a life…

The whingyness of the forums after release (its one thing to complain/register a bug- but it is another thing to whinge) was horrendous.
The crowd was so without manners/courtesy/respect.
Some were legitimate posters, simply registering difficulties and asking for help; but a few handfuls of people were so bad it was embarassing.
Most other companies would simply ban a few accounts or limit posts (like Microsofts heavy handed forza forums); but Warhorse didnt ban anybody from complaining.
A couple of forum threads got closed but nothing too serious.

Personally I am happy the team distanced themselves (not posting) as it probably protected them from the worst of the internet.

2 Likes
#12

The energy positive and negative has faded. Glad @DrFusselpulli is going to start something up again. The feedback might not always be focused but those that remain are pretty hardcore fans

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#13

first of all I haven’t played this game for months but when this game got released me and many other people addressed this problem to WH and they replied they said they gonna fix it, but since I see this post am guessing they haven’t fixed it yet.

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#14

I didn’t know that this was previously reported, didn’t check the forum that much the first months… Glad to confirm other people felt the same, though. Well, they had bigger problems (they were almost bankrupt and possibly pressured by private donor and the publisher for releasing it, which was a mistake but we don’t know all internal struggles; I believe they didn’t have any other choice, but they managed to get it solid with v.1.4.3 and it’s probably the version they wanted to release if they had 2 more months, as said in the release documentary…) than balancing in terms of stability, quest bugs and so on, so it was wise to focus first on fixing game breaking things as their first priority. Now, it should come optimisation, game balancing, adding missing content that they had to cut, etc. They need to fix it, it would be a shame to get almost everything right and miss the last but defining step.

In the meantime, there are splendid mods overhauls that enhance the balancing, I’m currently testing to merge several ones and get it closer to what I thought it would be, with all my technical ignorance about the engine and its tons of KCD created variables (the amount of detail is breathtaking, very tricky to get the proper balance).

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#15

Stamina needs to be removed from the game until it can be fixed.
I feel like I’m playing Halo 3 with Master Chief’s recharging energy shield. It takes like 10 slashes with a longsword to kill Henry when he’s naked.

#16

Longswords weren’t in Halo

#17

Halo had arming swords (with lasers). They actually hurt people and cut through clothes and stuff.

#18

Not in kcd dude. You’re not so good at this.

#19

So if I gather correctly, you only played a few quests, got “shooted” 8 times with a bow and didn’t die and then immediately took to the forums to write 5 paragraphs about “a serious flaw”? Interesting.

2 Likes
#20

Well, that’s what I call “reading through lines” to bring some shit for the sake of bringing shit, mixing things without any single argument… :smiley: “Very elaborated” try anyway, but for your information, I restarted the game 4 times and did the same things for the first 10-13 levels (I got far more arrows on my naked body :smile: ) before writing these posts, while testing Vanilla and different overhauls mods that enhance AI and balancing difficulty, in order to get an opinion (stopped playing during the first big battle, as it’s not optimised, FPS are bouncing constantly below 30 FPS and it’s very far from a pleasant experience). I’m disappointed with the combat balancing, even the overhauls mods have this issue (if you want to do something productive, don’t hesitate to dig into the tons of variables they have created and join us into the modding community), and it’s very difficult to fix it while keeping the balance, and as it seems, I’m not the only one thinking the same. It’s still my impression, you don’t have to like it and I couldn’t care less if you don’t. I prefer to wait a bit longer to fully enjoy this splendid game in a better state and keep the interest in the story, but feel free to post your opinion while adding something constructive to the topic, or keep your shit together :wink: Cheers!

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