Recent content by Kraven

As someone who always turns his companions into this little elite unit that all uses the same weapons and armor, the ability to choose their skills would be lovely.

I would honestly start focusing more on immersion, politics, day to day army management, etc..
Like have small events that semi randomly triggers like.
"Two of your knights have gotten in a brawl over something, what do you do?"
you then get some options like "knock them out" which is tied to strength, higher strength, greater success.
or try to have them solve it with you as a mediator, would rely on persuasion, etc..
Depending on your choice and level of success, combined with random "personalities" tied to the people involved you would get bonuses and penalties depending on it.
Or one of your soldiers could boldly address your fighting stance and that he noticed a flaw in it, that he would like to practice with you, deny him and you could a morale boost for being confident, accept and you gain some proficiency points to spend.
Etc. All of these handled through menus.
Events would range from small brawls, to sometimes even having your men turn on you if the morale is bad or they haven't been paid and it leading to an actual battle where you are unprepared and not in your armor.
To random adventurers joining you or one of your soldiers have shown exceptional skill and you can promote him to an actual companion and he will get a random name.

As for politics? I would like to see sort of "courts" where people can vote for who will be the permanent owner of a city (will be assigned to a warden until court), ability to through these courts and what not influence the political standing and settings of the kingdom, etc.

A last thing I would love to see is companions having "limited" amounts of lives, that slowly replenishes over time, so they become kill able, but very unlikely to die, mostly cause they can become such insane power houses that they trivialize the game and partly cause it would be cool to get new randomly generated companions and sometimes losing your favorite battle brother.

(Example each hero has 5 lives and replenishes one every ingame month)

So good to see you back working on Silverstag.
I have been away from Warband for a long time, playing other games, dealing with real life and so on, today I decided to see if Silverstag was back in development cause otherwise there was no point for me to install Warband again, so Damn, very happy to see you back working on this!

Its random who's arrows/bolts/throwing weapons they replenish, I have experienced some battles where I never get a refill and others where I get a refill 4-5 times.

Windyplains said:

That isn't the sort of achievement I'd be interested in adding.  I am of the opinion they should inspire you to try other methods of playing the game or taking different avenues in your play through.

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It is quite obvious so far how I feel about achievements in general.
Now if you were to add achievements I would suggest making them player skill based, not tied to specific playstyles.
Should certain playstyles make certain achievements easier to achieve? No doubt, but I do feel that most playstyles except for the absolute most focused should be able to achieve majority of the achievements if they were to be implemented.
However say leadership focused achievements are obviously harder to achieve on a personal combat focused character, but should still be doable with enough player skill involved and vice verse.
Example: An achievement to me should not be "Gain X number of points in Y skill" or "Do X amount of damage in a single attack" and so on, as these are limited by character build.
Instead they should be "Take out X amount of enemies in Y amount of time" or "Win a battle with with X amount of disadvantage prior to tactic bonuses", these however are made easier by character build, but still possible on any character if the player can compensate for their characters lack of skill in a specific field.
I would even say in some cases decrease rewards of achievements the higher renown/character level, cause those things will in many cases make it easier to gain these achievements, in addition to this on the achievement page I would suggest adding notes on achieved achievements saying "Achieved at X level with a character having Y <Insert relevant skills>", to encourage the player to try and better themselves as players instead of merely their character, to compensate for the shortcomings of their character.

sirballington said:

Problem with that is all three questions are completely subjective, hence the need to gather feedback from both sides (in favor and opposes) for a modder to make the decision to add or remove.

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I do entirely agree and I am not saying he should ignore input from anyone else, on the contrary I think its amazing he asks the community about the future of the mod, how we would like to see it develop. (I did that myself during my modding days)
I was merely trying to be helpful, also those questions can be answered objectively except for the more enjoyable one.
Example suitable music for a game/mod enhances immersion objectively, which makes adding new music for example a good decision in of itself, the subjectivity comes from the type of music, not whether the existence of fitting music enhancing immersion or not.

However its still a good little guideline to go by, as it makes one think a bit more about the suggestion/idea/etc in question and perhaps in some cases cause one to think of improvements to it so you end with a better end result.

well looking past my previous point, I would also say I find achievements a kind of boring way to reward a player, however I understand the need for them in some games.
It's an easy way to prolong enjoyment of a game for a big part of the playerbase, cause it seems to be quite commonplace to enjoy achievement hunting these days.
However my personal opinion is, I would rather have 1-3 truly interesting new mechanics and goals in game, than a hundred or more achievements.
Mechanics and goals enhances the actual gameplay, where as I find achievements rather lackluster.
Now I have no issue with anyone who enjoys achievements, not in the slightest, but I would still favor a focus on mechanics, even optional mechanics than achievements.

During my time modding I would ask myself three things before adding something "Does this make it more enjoyable? Does this add to the games mechanics? Does this improve immersion?"
Usually I would say if you can't say yes to two out of three? Then I would not add it. There are exceptions, but just thought I would add that.

I would honestly rather see you focus on gameplay than achievements, personally I find achievements to break immersion if they have pop ups and I dislike when it takes time away from developing something more interesting.

I would like to see the option of having a character from foreign lands, someone who just arrived in Calradia, this type of start would start the player out with gear more suitable for their background.
In addition to that I would like to see companions done away with as they are, but instead have companions tied into a more vanilla like event character creation, so the set of companions one would get would entirely depend on those events.
Using the vanilla answers.
Low level: 1-8
Mid level: 9-16
High level: 17-20

Father was: (All companions gained from this are siblings)
Noble: Gains a squire companion, low level, mostly focusing on charisma and some basic sword training.
Merchant: Gains a merchant companions, mid level, high inventory management and trade skills.
Warrior: Gains a warrior companion, high level, heavy focus on all types of combat
Hunter: Gains a hunting partner, High level, high tracking, pathfinding and archery skills.
Nomad: Gains a guard companion, mid level, medium polearm and sword training, excellent riding skill.
Thief: Gain a bandit companion, mid level, decent fighting skills with most weapons, excellent looting kill.

Early life: (all companions gained from this are childhood friends)
Page: Gains a squire companion, low level, mostly focusing on charisma and some basic sword training.
Apprentice: Gains a engineer companion, low level, engineer and trade skills.
Assistant: Gains a "Doctor" companion, medium level, first aid, surgery and wound treatment.
Urchin: Gains a mercenary companion, medium level, over all decent fighting skills.
Steppe Child: Gains a scout companion, medium level, High tracking, path finding and spotting skill.

Etc getting my point I hope, definitely open to cooking up more of this if something like this would be interesting.

I disagree strongly with the whole morale penalty for veteran troops, on the contrary it makes more sense that having veterans would increase morale.
I mean think about it like this, would fighting alongside some rookie make you feel more comfortable or fighting alongside a hardened veteran who you know are a strong and capable fighter?

Hence the suggestion earlier with increasing prices massively for veteran units, but giving them an AoE bonus that boosts everyone around them, this raises their value without making the unit itself any stronger, but due to the massive price increase it simple would not be worth keeping too many of them around, not to mention adds a slightly tactical element to battles where the player should try to take out veterans in battle cause they work as force multipliers due to boosting the efficiency of everyone near them.

A much simpler in my opinion to limit veterans is increase their cost quite a lot, but give them a morale/skill boost boost to all troops near them and no other increase in power.
This would make them simply too expensive to maintain large numbers of, but would make them very useful to have in smaller numbers.

EDIT: In addition to that been thinking about "hero" units, essentially named randomly generated units (not companions) that has 1 of X amount of skillsets and gear set ups, that you can get by talking to the bards and asking them if they heard of any people of note, followed by a small quest and giving up this one hero recruit you would earn a max number of depending on your title within a kingdom and have lords pick some of them up as well.
But yeah make a small questline to get each of them, to earn their trust.
I would even go as far and say, do away with companions the way they are, honestly they are way way way too strong late game and as much as I adore having my own little personal guard of companions, I think a system like that would be a lot more immersive and balanced.
Say a freelancer can have 3, a mercenary of a kingdom 5, a lord 8 and a king 12 currently active Hero units as max, any hero units used as captain/steward would not count against this limit.

EDIT2: keep in mind cause they are not companions, they can die.

EDIT3: Another option is tie number of them to renown and add a bonus when a lord and king.

I would like to see gladiator matches sort of deal.
Prisoners vs professional gladiators (Player, companions, lords), essentially a new form of tournament that would be triggered when a city had enough prisoners and they needed to get rid of them.
Politically it would be a reason for lords to gather, financially it would grant income to the one planning the tournament (lord planning it) and the surviving gladiators would be granted prize money and renown depending on the levels and number of prisoners.
The professional gladiators (Lords, companions, special NPC's and player) should be vastly outnumbered to gain any decent amount of money and renown.

Then I would like to see as an extension of this some very powerful NPC's, champions of the arena sort of types, that would challenge lord, companions and the player should they win enough of these gladiator matches, (a slowly increasing chance for every victory and how spectacular a victory that this would be triggered), each of these champions should have unique armor/weapons that would be granted upon victory to the player.

This reminds me, I need to watch the film gladiator again... Off I go!

MrGrendel said:

I like the idea that if you spend a lot of time in "your" city, familiarity helps you retake it if it's captured. On the other hand, I suppose knowledge should also slowly drop over time then.

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Have knowledge drop by a bit whenever a new building is built, seems the most immersive route to go in my opinion.

Well the changes looks good so far, I will wait for the 0.25 cinematic version before I play properly.
I over all quite like the changes to the nords, though I haven't played with them enough to give any in depth criticism/praise.
The fief exchange thing I haven't gotten a chance to look into, but I absolutely adore the shield bash mechanics, though like others I would like to see shield skill affect shield bash, maybe increase the "staggering time" the higher the shield skill to give a feel of the user knowing how to properly place a good shield bash.
Another option could be to just straight up increasing shield bash chance based on the skill, but I don't know, I worry with more ways to increase shield bash chance, it might become a bit too easy to use.
Might want to decrease shield bash chances against targets carrying a shield of their own, maybe decrease stagger time the greater the targets armor as well.
I realize many of these changes will take a lot of work and I understand if they are not going to be added, but figured I would give my 2 cents.

EDIT: Also Silverstag got my vote on the straw poll.

Yes but you said you were a lone bannerman right? Not part of the khergit faction, so that is what gives you the penalty.