Dev Blog 31/08/17

DanAngleland said:

adrakken said:

Another major gaming event.

Another major gaming event containing nothing just about everyone is waiting for.

Another major gaming event leaving a feeling of massive disappointment.

Click to expand...

A lot of people have been asking to see multiplayer, and here we have had our first look at it. The general press and forum reaction has been quite positive about Gamescom. I think you are in the minority if you feel a massive disappointment (also if you were waiting for a release date, they said in the preceding blog that they would not be announcing one at the event).

Click to expand...

Personally I don't feel a massive disappointment, at least they showed some gameplay, even if it looked they cooked it just for the event. However, there was no sense of good progress with the SP campaign - which is a giant effort compared to some Corporal mode, and Taleworlds studiously avoiding the subject of calendars is a poor sign.

Just popping by to thanks to Callum for putting in all your hard work, I'm impressed with you as a community manager. Great job

Question: will we be able to join an other lords army as a simple soldier and then work up our ways through the ranks? A way to start small and slowly prove ourselfs as warrior?
( like the "freelancer" mod for warband offered.)
Like the seargant mode,just even more basic,like recruit mode?

ponc said:

Question: will we be able to join an other lords army as a simple soldier and then work up our ways through the ranks? A way to start small and slowly prove ourselfs as warrior?
( like the "freelancer" mod for warband offered.)
Like the seargant mode,just even more basic,like recruit mode?

Click to expand...

It is confirmed that you might join a lord's army as a low ranking captain or sargeant of sorts and then work your way up to comand your own force. You do command progressively larger contigents of men. Specifically being a low ranking soldier on the very begining doesn't seem to be an option... and that's good, I guess. Just being in a line with a bunch of other soldiers and trying to go trough simple movement and formation orders until you charge or are charged sounds quite boring comparing to leading a detachement of men.

Question:

When you start playing single player in Warband, you chose your character's background. Honestly, that didn't affect much except you being noble or not, Or what your gender is and when weapons you tend to be better at. In this, will your background be more prominent and affect more than last time?

Hi there! Great job you guys are doing so far! I have some questions concerning the campaign design for the coming interview. I'm very curious about these aspects in the game...

- I have always wondered why there are just a very limited amount of roads in the campaigns of Mount&Blade games, why is that? Whenever I see a map without any roads I always have the feeling that there is something missing. I mean, there are mods like Gekokujo that add them succesfully, giving a speed bonus to parties which travel by them... Of course it may be overcrowded if roads were added between all of the villages, but wouldn't it be interesting to have them between some city clusters? Would already make a lot of difference to the eye alone...

- Concerning the skill system, it was said in some interviews that skills will be developed by your actions... Now for the player I can understand how this can work, but how will this work for your companions if they are always together in the same party? Will you have to give them personal assignments?

- Lastly, will there be a battlefield preview for normal battles as well? I only saw this planning phase in sieges so far, but I think it would be a great strategical asset to have some idea of the battlefield. Choosing your ground and all...

I would love a entire thursday devblog be dedicated to ''the most requested feature ever'' - Yavuz.
Also known as same party co-op, if they are deciding to not include this in the release of the game there need to be a thorough going through of why.

10/10 for these weekly devdiaries, finally real community interraction!

I can believe that Armagan said that co-op was the most requested feature ever, but same party co-op? It is the poor relation of full co-op, and the lack of enthusiasm for it in the many discussions of the subject on this forum reflect that.

DanAngleland said:

I can believe that Armagan said that co-op was the most requested feature ever, but same party co-op? It is the poor relation of full co-op, and the lack of enthusiasm for it in the many discussions of the subject on this forum reflect that.

Click to expand...

I still don't understand why people want a co-op campaign really. Having tried to orchestrate co-op and versus campaigns in some total war titles I can tell you it leaves people unfulfilled and the campaigns are never finished. That and it crashes alot.

Do we really want this for Bannerlord? A game mode that will not mesh well with the design of the single player aspect of the game? Does anyone have the time for co-op campaigns other than the very youngest of us? Am I tired of seeing posts requesting co-op?

I'm not interested in having such a mode either, and I'm really doubtful that the people who want it most will find it anywhere near as fulfilling as they imagine. That goes for a lot of features in games I suppose, but I think this is the type of feature where it is particularly the case.

more infos about SP in next dev blog !

Bergil said:

I still don't understand why people want a co-op campaign really. Having tried to orchestrate co-op and versus campaigns in some total war titles I can tell you it leaves people unfulfilled and the campaigns are never finished. That and it crashes alot.

Do we really want this for Bannerlord? A game mode that will not mesh well with the design of the single player aspect of the game? Does anyone have the time for co-op campaigns other than the very youngest of us? Am I tired of seeing posts requesting co-op?

Click to expand...

Exactly. Even the poll on the Turkish forums shows that more than half the people were either undecided or downright disappointed in the gamescon showing.

I am well past worried that Taleworlds has lost its way and are going to try to make Bannerlord appeal to the masses.

adrakken said:

DanAngleland said:

A lot of people have been asking to see multiplayer, and here we have had our first look at it. The general press and forum reaction has been quite positive about Gamescom. I think you are in the minority if you feel a massive disappointment.

Click to expand...

Thanks for playing but that wont work on me or others as every blog for the past 8 months have had far more people asking for some kind of release date, early access information than for multiplayer...

Please do not start dismissing people for the sake of trying to control the narrative...they need to give something because these blog posts are getting fewer and fewer replies due to disappointment levels getting higher and higher...or have you not noticed that since Blog 14 there has been a massive drop in posts? Or that Steam is filled with people wanting something.

You guys can pretend all you want but there is no way Taleworlds is going to release this polished from day one. This game needs a beta test and the sooner modders can get their hands on the game and tools the sooner we will start getting mods. Which, BTW, encase you havent noticed, is the bread and butter of M&B. Sooner the mods come, the faster sales will be pushed also.

In other words, there is zero reason why Taleworlds should NOT be pushing an early access. No doubt this is going to warrant the typical early access kills games nonsense that has been shot down and beaten like the dead horse it is. Taleworlds isnt a startup and M&B is an established franchise with a rabid fanbase...it already has the edge on the MANY companies and games that have seen massive sales and support via early access.

Click to expand...

Where to start....talking about controlling the narrative when you snidely imply I'm trying to con people (when I've atually used straightforward reasoning to counter your statement) with "Thanks for playing but that wont work on me or others", then you start listing various things as if I have contradicted them- which I haven't. You said the gaming event was a disappointment- the general reaction on the forum has been modestly positive, as it has in the media, though not particularly enthusiastic. That's what I said and it is objectively true. Yes we have wanted, and still want, info on when we will get to play the game, but they told us that wouldn't be happening at Gamescom and hey presto, as much as you want to control the narrative with your blanket statement that is has been a huge disappointment, people have been modestly positive about Gamescom and have talked about what they saw there.

Telling me I am 'pretending' regarding early access...it is firstly completely disingenuous to lump that into your reply as it wasn't part of your post or mine, and secondly if you had seen any of my posts on the matter of early access you would have seen that I am in favour of it and have argued for it. What's more, Taleworlds themselves have said on a number of occasions that they want to do it! The only people against, it that I have seen, are people for whom the words 'early access' are portents of a doomed game.

Modders are not the be all and end all of M&B, even the rough around the edges M&B and Warband. Bannerlord is supposed to be a refined and expanded M&B, one with fewer flaws and fleshed out features, so that mods will not be as fundamental to its success- though they will also be easier to make and have greater potential, since less is hardcoded in Bannerlord than in Warband/M&B. I haven't found a full conversion mod that I played as much as Native since Battle for Sicily for .808, and that was 10 years ago. Not everyone thinks that mods are the best that the game has to offer. That's why we want Bannerlord; mods aren't really enough for most people, we need the shortcomings of native addressed because mods haven't done that satisfactorily.

EDIT:

Regarding blog responses; on the one hand I wouldn't argue that people aren't jaded and fed up with the long waits for little info or the lack of any inkling of when we might get to play the game, but on the other hand I can't definitively say that is reflected in blog replies, at least not in the last year or so- if there was a drop off in enthusiasm, I would say it came when Blog 9 took about six months to arrive after the great Engine Power blog.

Take a look at all of them; the first few blogs got no more than 33 replies each (first two less than 20); this is surely down to the high frequency of blogs at that time. There is a general trend for blogs that had a long gap after them to have a lot of replies, because there hasn't been anywhere newer for people who like to post in blog threads to post. You have to take into account also that there is an element of randomness; after the first week or so that a blog thread has been open, there are an increasing amount of posts that are not blog specific, people just popped in to either have a look at the blog then talk about whatever general Bannerlord stuff was on their mind or else they saw the thread at the top of the board (because someone else had posted in it) and decided to post in there. Conversations take off for a bit, just as they did in the main Bannerlord thread, then it goes quiet again. It's just pot luck as to which thread 'benefits' from this effect. Then of course some people might see a large thread, decide it might be the most interesting to read through, and eventually find something to comment on.

You cite blog 14 as a drop off point; it has 64 pages of posts and blog 15 has 24. But blog 15 came ten months after 14, whilst blog 16 was just three months after 15. Now of course we have weekly blogs, and both the fact that the frequency is high and they are not yet revealing new game features and screenshots, which is undoubtedly what is of most interest to the community, means there aren't many posts.

About the blog commenters demographics... I find it significantly poor in quality since the days of the BL megathread. Only a few regulars left, and a smattering of random forum recruits who happen to be here at the moment. People have lost interest, important people like modders.
As for your Nativist mod interest, I hope you are aware it's a minority. Recognizable minority, like the people you know who will never try different food, but still not many - bear in mind that most of the people have a few favorite complete conversion mods that they play exclusively.

I've though of more questions;
- will troops' gear change in the season? I.e. Cloaks in winter
- will it be possible to create reforms of any kind within a kingdom?

Rodrigo Ribaldo said:

As for your Nativist mod interest, I hope you are aware it's a minority. Recognizable minority, like the people you know who will never try different food, but still not many - bear in mind that most of the people have a few favorite complete conversion mods that they play exclusively.

Click to expand...

I doubt that's verifiable.

Frankly, nearly all of your post above is unverifiable, pure speculation and such.  But a quick perusal of Warband mods shows the same names in the same mods, over and over again.  Not a hard and fast rule but pretty standard.

What Brutus said - I've been reading random posts on popular mod boards for a long time, and people tend to get into a mod, like it enough to learn it, then play it a lot. There are sometimes people in the general sections that ask for something like Native, because getting into new stuff is a hassle for them, despite the glaringly superior gameplay and looks of finished conversion mods. I'd say this kind of mental laziness is not too common.
Only the explanation behind the Nativist motivation is a speculation here and it's a bit biased because I like offensive explanations. 

Edit: I normally dislike mods because they tend to be unfinished and badly balanced, but you can be sure that popular active mods are worth your while and modders put in the hard work and listen to the community.

DanAngleland said:

"Bannerlord is supposed to be a refined and expanded M&B, one with fewer flaws and fleshed out features, so that mods will not be as fundamental to its success."

Click to expand...

That is probably the best most complete explanation you can get in just one sentence as to why this game is taking so long. Also is probably the only one that makes all this waiting acceptable, from my self-entitled point of view. I guess Armagan wants a gaming masterpiece that also supports a lot of modding, not a masterpiece platform for mods.

We can't know if the extra time they take is related to perfectionism or poor planning or, indeed, anything starting with p.

A day may come when Taleworlds announces the release date, and keyboard warriors across the world drool over their weapons, and old multiplayer bonds are reforged with new memes, but it is not this day!
Today is the day when Callum is forced to post again.