Credit to u/dropbbbear on r/mountandblade (I DID NOT MAKE THIS LIST, I COPY PASTED IT WITH HIS CONSENT)
Bannerlord has made some great improvements to the Mount&Blade series in terms of graphics, field battles, moddability and overall polish, and I'm very thankful to Taleworlds for that. But in terms of stuff to do and immersion, it actually feels heavily lacking compared to M&B: Warband (from 10 years ago) and M&B: Viking Conquest Reforged (from 6 years ago). That isn't good for a sequel.
To be fair, Bannerlord is only half of the way through Early Access, so missing content makes sense. But what's worrying is Taleworlds' complete silence on what content the game will actually have at the end of Early Access.
So, this is a list of WB/VC features Bannerlord doesn't have
which have not been mentioned on Taleworlds' roadmap, meaning they may have been forgotten about, and aren't coming back unless people ask for them. Some of these features are small, but combined they made WB and VC more immersive and entertaining than just killing looters and map-painting.
WARBAND MISSING FEATURES
- Feasts: Parties the player and AI lords could hold for other lords. They helped slow down factions who were conquering large parts of the map too quickly by giving them something to do other than be at war 24/7. They gave the player another way of gaining relation with lords and ladies, gathered them all in one place for convenient talking/flirting, and feasting had a related quest where you gathered food from all around the map to make your feast impress the other lords. Feasts made Calradia feel more like a real world, and gave us Harlaus butter memes.
- Lord strategic dialogue: The AI can often be quite stupid while on campaign. In Warband, you could actually tell lords to go somewhere and attack or defend it, which helped mitigate AI stupidity.
- Manhunters: They spawned in Warband to hunt down bandits when their numbers started getting too high. In Bannerlord, this system could be tweaked: allow the player to spend money to put a Bounty on bandits in the area of one of their villages, and Manhunters would begin spawning there and hunting any threats to your village's prosperity, allowing you to go do more important/interesting things.
- Quests: Exciting quests like the Prison Break quest where you rescued a lord from captivity and fought your way through the dungeons to freedom, or the Tax Collector quest where you gathered money from a town for a lord which might result in a riot, and many more.
- Handcrafted companions: Think Jeremus, Ymira, etc. These companions had in-depth backstories and reactions to world locations, interacted with each other, and they had personalities you could get attached to. You could also make companions into vassals for your kingdom, which was useful if you had angered too many existing nobles.
- Village improvement options: Build manors, messenger posts, schools, etc. This allowed the player to focus on building up a specific village to improve their strategic options in that area.
- Courtship: Ladies had likes and dislikes, you could learn poems suited to their personality from poets and hear gossip, there were romance quests. Rather than just trying to roll the correct RNG on a skill check, Warband courtship was more like trying to build a relationship with a person.
- Dueling lords: You could challenge a lord to a duel (or be challenged by them) if they insulted your honor or competed with you for a lover. This would give more intrigue to the player in their interactions with lords and ladies and add a fun extra challenge.
- Deserters on the map: These guys were more interesting to fight than looters and bandits because they had better, military-grade equipment.
- Tournament Armor/Weapons: All fighters in a tournament recieved gear of equal quality in Warband. In Bannerlord, gear quality is variable, so you can get a weapon in the tournament that is almost totally useless against some armors.
- Books: You could buy these and read them to level skills. This would be a good gold sink, and also be a realistic way of letting the player level skills that are difficult to do in the early game; for example, read a book about siege engines to level your Engineering skill, without having to start a whole siege.
- Lord personalities affecting behaviour: For example, warlike lords would constantly start fights with other factions, and calculating lords would leave allies to fend for themselves in fights. This influenced the player's choice in vassals and added another layer of strategic depth.
- More battle maps: Bannerlord seriously lacks variety in field battle scenes.
- Permanent message log: The current message log resets after an event, leading you sometimes to wonder what the hell just happened?
- Follow option: You could auto-follow caravans or lords without actually getting locked into their party, which made the mid-game a lot less tedious.
- Actual redheads: It's pretty silly that Bannerlord has a whole Celtic faction, but no real gingers. Is red hair bugged? I know DCC Mod adds in red hair.
- Miscellaneous small things: Some lords being sexist (would be less likely to give you fiefs and they could insult you for being a woman, but you could duel them to defend your honor), more food variety (eg. sausages/chicken), Sargoth being in the north instead of the south, greater variety in equipment between cultures (eg: right now Aserai use a lot of Sturgian armor), and last but not least, "It's almost harvesting season!" These all added to immersion in Warband's medieval world.
VIKING CONQUEST: REFORGED
- Ship travel and ship battles: This added an entire new dimension to combat and travel on the world map. It would make infantry-focused factions more viable if they could quickly make a boat to travel by river, like they did in real life. In fact, it seems like some Bannerlord factions like Sturgia are already designed as if boats were in the game; Sturgia's territory is cut in half, making it difficult for them to efficiently move their forces around.
- Ambush attacks: This added further immersion and strategy to overworld combat, and would be a great use for the Scouting, Tactics and Roguery skill trees.
- Hunting boar and deer: A fun diversion, and another way for the player to find food while on campaign, or make money, or gain relation with other lords by going out hunting together during a feast. Sneak up on the boar, and then either catch it before it escapes, or kill it before it gores you!
- Minigames: Working as a farmer, miner, or lumberjack, which added a way of making money that wasn't just fighting or trading.
- Setting camp: In VC, your camp could provide basic fortifications if you were attacked in the field, and also provided a morale bonus for resting.
- Dog companion: A doggo friend who could even help in battle. This was teased for Bannerlord literally 5 years ago, and is unused in game files, but hasn't been mentioned since.
- Robbing lords: You could take good equipment from captive lords for a large relationship penalty.
- Custom start, custom end goals: You could choose to start as a king/noble to skip the earlygame grind, and you could set smaller victory goals such as making a certain amount of money or being a powerful warlord. This allowed the player more roleplaying freedom in choosing their own path, rather than the current endgame which is always to become a lord, start a family, and own all the cities.
