Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog 8 - Engine Power [VIDEO]

</br> Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/9

 

[Chompster]

Custom units would be nice, though, as long as they were balanced in some way. Some metric involving average cost of equipment and their level would have to be devised, maybe with some built-in bias between cavalry/infantry/ranged troops. For instance, axes on cavalry and archers would be treated like swords while axes on infantry would increase their value more than swords would. Shields could be cheap for infantry and cavalry but expensive for archers. Stuff like that, to make sure the player doesn't make cheesy and overpowered units on the cheap. Maybe tie it in to the Trainer skill (or its Bannerlord equivalent).

Not a fan of these irregular made up prices of items for units. Items should cost the exact same for every unit. So a (certain type of)shield should cost the exact same for infantry as it does for archers. Balance should be added through training and the overall value of the soldier(how much they earn)

If the player wants to make a cheesy and overpowered unit then he should be able to(it's singleplayer after all, why do you care how others play?) but it would cost him significantly and it would take much longer to  train the unit to be effective.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

It would be automatically balanced anyway (assuming they've got the same skill system as native) because you'd have to spread the skills out over all of them. Polearm crossbowmen might seem overpowered and cheesy but they'd be useless in attacking sieges and terrible against most infantry. Same as giving every weapon under the sun to cavalry, which will have to have points in riding anyway.

 

[Chompster]

Exactly.

Thats the kind of balance it needs. Not different prices for the same items just because you're getting it for someone else.

 

[Orion]

Exactly.

Thats the kind of balance it needs. Not different prices for the same items just because you're getting it for someone else.

@jacobhinds, you seem to have misinterpreted me. I'm more worried about a whole line of nord huscarl-type units than a bunch of whacky hybrids. They wouldn't be "automatically balanced" because of skill diversity because they would have a narrow set of skills and equipment that compliments them. The problem with this is that you get a unit that doesn't need to be high level and doesn't need to have a lot of expensive equipment to excel. In Warband, for instance, Nords are good with a shield, an axe, and mid-tier body armor. They don't need horses, ranged weapons, two-handed weapons, boots, helmets are a plus but not required, and gloves are unnecessary. For skills they need ironflesh, power strike, and athletics. The shield skill is a plus but not necessary. They don't need power draw, power throw, riding, or horse archery. They need only one weapon proficiency. The capacity for min-maxing is huge with a unit like this. A horse archer, on the other hand, needs a bow, melee weapon, arrows, body armor, possibly boots, and a horse, plus the skills power draw, possibly some power strike and ironflesh, riding, and horse archery, and they need archery proficiency and some one-handed proficiency. The required equipment and array of skills/proficiencies is significantly more varied, so they probably wouldn't have top-tier equipment and high-level skills.

In short, as a unit's skills and equipment become more diverse it becomes less efficient overall. A unit with a narrow set of skills and a small array of equipment will have the capacity to be equally or more efficient with a lower cost.

Low cost/high efficiency is easily exploitable and potentially gamebreaking.

If the player wants to make a cheesy and overpowered unit then he should be able to(it's singleplayer after all, why do you care how others play?) but it would cost him significantly and it would take much longer to  train the unit to be effective.

OK, so you agree they should cost more and/or take longer to level up for being stronger. What I'm saying is that certain types of equipment are naturally stronger than others given certain supporting skills. An infantryman will be more efficient with an axe than a sword, but an archer with lower melee skills and proficiency won't receive much of a benefit. For the infantryman, a 400 denar axe is a stronger choice than 1000 denar sword, but clearly their costs aren't representative of this. That's why I think certain types of equipment would need different prices weighted by the unit's skills. Think of how power strike effects damage on axes compared to swords. Axes have higher base damage and a multiplier against shields. The % increase of damage from power strike (another multiplier) will yield greater absolute increases on axes than swords. Thus, axes benefit more from power strike than swords do. Why, then, should axes be cheaper than swords for units with high power strike? It's clearly a better choice, but axes are all cheaper than equivalent swords.

What does that mean? English is not my mother language but it looks like you are associating "to be zero population centers in the given time period and for everyone to be erstwhile nomads just looking for a place to settle down." to "Mount & Blade isn't a 4X and shouldn't try to be one"  I didn't get that can you explain further? What does that have to do with CO-OP campaign?
What I meant was there other players could be part of your party, or maybe lead their own troops, but not against each other.
Anyways, they did not give any information regarding that right?

I was responding to (V)ELK0R. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Do not look here]

Then maybe penalty for "growing tall" could solve that? Skills-to-cost instead of level-to-cost, made in such way that six points in single skill makes weekly wages higher than three in two? With some exponential growth (nothing too sharp, of course), so that dropping part of specialization in favour of single points in lesser skills would also be preferable to Swiss Army knife load out.

With assumption that our little custom army gains equipment through looting the corpses - in similar way one can presume in WB already, unless knights are ultimate a-holes for not sharing with me where are all the cheap armours at - the equipment share of wages/upgrading/creating/buying should be minimal anyway. And I actually think that the fact that axe was more cost-effective than sword is precisely why it was popular weapon, so I can't really see why we should think about adding fake balance to it - should it multiply the price of our single soldier while its cost is miniscule comparing to, let's say, chainmail we want to equip him with as well? I know that enjoyable gameplay and accuracy fight against each other on many occasions, but punishing cheap and effective load out with higher prices because it's cheap and effective doesn't sound reasonable to me.

What I'm trying to say is that, although results may be different, player should pay for skills of soldier and his equipment, because that's kind of everything in-game character can measure - and even this is vague at best. Adding to it some percentages based by average damage output or something like that would feel artificial and awkward. To me, that is.

EDIT: also, rebalancing the STR and alike item requirements so that it's not like current "everyone above lvl 5 and their dog can wield it" situation, which would also solve part of the problem, or at least push it to the tier where you expect madly good soldiers.

 

[(V)ELK0R]

Personally I would love a true sandbox start campaign option. I have no idea why you are opposed to more options. If you have issues with 4x games that's fine you wouldn't have to start with this mode.

 

[Orion]

Personally I would love a true sandbox start campaign option. I have no idea why you are opposed to more options. If you have issues with 4x games that's fine you wouldn't have to start with this mode.

I'm not opposed to options. I am opposed to wastes of development time on gimmicky extras. Such a campaign as you describe would require a new map, new AI features to analyze regions of the map when deciding where to establish settlements and how to path with no points of reference, mechanics for improving and upgrading settlements and some way for the AI to decide which settlements are better as cities or castles, and a special economic system that is tweaked to adapt so as not to fluctuate wildly as the game progresses from emptiness to low-production villages to high-production cities. These probably aren't applicable to the standard campaign, and so wouldn't offer any benefit to it. It would be development time spent solely for the sake of an unnecessary extra. Why not spend that same time improving combat or campaign AI? What about multiplayer? Or more (complex) quests?

Then maybe penalty for "growing tall" could solve that? Skills-to-cost instead of level-to-cost, made in such way that six points in single skill makes weekly wages higher than three in two? With some exponential growth (nothing too sharp, of course), so that dropping part of specialization in favour of single points in lesser skills would also be preferable to Swiss Army knife load out.

That would achieve the same goal and is more intuitive. At the very least it's something that could be easily and briefly explained in a tooltip in-game.

 

[The Norseman]

Been a while since the last dev update, anything coming soon?

 

[Wild Card]

Well one can only hope 

 

[(V)ELK0R]

I would still favor fun and entertaining content such as this over graphics.

 

[Orion]

So would I, which is why none of the things I mentioned were graphical in nature.

 

[Matiss_Veinbergs]

Graphics are only for greedy monster pc owners, who want to have a game that will make them lag and them ***** about optimization proplems.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Yeah, because the only reason to make a game more pleasing to the eye is to slow down the computer.
I've mentioned this before but the graphics/gameplay dichotomy is complete BS. They have separate teams for each and having one of them do well doesn't automatically make the other terrible, or vice versa.

 

[Matiss_Veinbergs]

As ling as i dont get headaches or nasue from looking at screen, i dont f****** care about graphics quality. I can play a game with triangular shapes everywhere and single colout graphics all day, and i dont mind. As long as game is good gameplay wise.

 

[Stromming]

All I will say on this matter is: Don't sacrifice gameplay quality / features for better graphics.

 

[DanAngleland]

All I will say on this matter is: Don't sacrifice gameplay quality / features for better graphics.

As Jacobhinds said two posts above yours:  They have separate teams for each and having one of them do well doesn't automatically make the other terrible, or vice versa.

Besides, graphics play a part in enhancing gameplay, or at least they have the potential to do so (for instance, in making hits 'feel' more significant, or immersing the player more in the game world). However graphics can also serve a game poorly, if for example new effects change the much loved atmosphere of a game. Technically advanced graphics don't always make a game more enjoyable, but from what we've seen so far I am enthusiastic about Bannerlord.

 

[Tatari_okan]

I don't like very good graphics which makes sky fuse with land, people with plants to make you feel you are blind as a bat.

 

[Stromming]

All I will say on this matter is: Don't sacrifice gameplay quality / features for better graphics.

As Jacobhinds said two posts above yours:  They have separate teams for each and having one of them do well doesn't automatically make the other terrible, or vice versa.

Besides, graphics play a part in enhancing gameplay, or at least they have the potential to do so (for instance, in making hits 'feel' more significant, or immersing the player more in the game world). However graphics can also serve a game poorly, if for example new effects change the much loved atmosphere of a game. Technically advanced graphics don't always make a game more enjoyable, but from what we've seen so far I am enthusiastic about Bannerlord.

Yeah but once you are satisfied with graphics, the other team can help the gameplay team or whatever. No need to focus too much on graphics, even if it has its own team.

 

[hirovard]

All I will say on this matter is: Don't sacrifice gameplay quality / features for better graphics.

As Jacobhinds said two posts above yours:  They have separate teams for each and having one of them do well doesn't automatically make the other terrible, or vice versa.

Besides, graphics play a part in enhancing gameplay, or at least they have the potential to do so (for instance, in making hits 'feel' more significant, or immersing the player more in the game world). However graphics can also serve a game poorly, if for example new effects change the much loved atmosphere of a game. Technically advanced graphics don't always make a game more enjoyable, but from what we've seen so far I am enthusiastic about Bannerlord.

Yeah but once you are satisfied with graphics, the other team can help the gameplay team or whatever. No need to focus too much on graphics, even if it has its own team.

Im sorry if you feel that you want to keep playing the game on your potato but those of us that have much newer machines shouldn't be made to suffer because you either, a) refuse to upgrade to something a little newer or b) are trying to partake in a hobby that isn't for those that cannot afford it.

The graphical department staff would more than likely be trained to do the job they do, which would be graphical side of the game. They may not necessarily have the skills or training to do coding for non graphical features. Just like how the coding department may not have the skills to make graphical stuff to the same quality as the graphical artists.

 

[kraggrim]

Well, it all comes out of the same budget. You can hire fewer or less-skilled coders so as to  free up money for artists, or vice versa. Dunno what it's like at Taleworlds but my impression of the games industry is that devs don't really have a lot of job security.

And c'mon,  I think "suffer" is a little dramatic eh.