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Which leveling system do you prefer Warband or Bannerlord?
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Shaggy_711
Recruit
I really don't understand why we have attributes AND focus points. With those and character levels it feels like an MMO, in all the wrong ways. I agree, just give us the skills and fix the damn perks.
I think they just lifted the idea of attributes as a skill limiter from Warband, but they really don't fit this system. At least in Warband, they gave some bonuses on their own. Here they do nothing but limit your skill growth, which is already limited by the shrinking learning rate and the increasing xp per skill point.
Additionally, with the way they laid out the skills on a 3-up grid, its going to make it awkward if mods want to add new skills in the future. Where will they fit? Can you add a 4th or 5th skill to an attribute? What would that look like? Warband skills had more flexibility by letting modders add new skills or reassign existing ones to a different attribute.
Yeah I've had issues with the skill system as well. The attributes don't do enough and there are skills that, unless you take them at character creation, you will likely never use until you absolutely need it (by then it's far too late). But I do like that they are trying something new with Bannerlord. I just feel like it wasn't tested well.
Sure... First, don't take the refining perks, make a companion get them. (Steel, fine steel and thamaskene)
Second,smelt every weapon you get from looters and the like. Everything.
Don't refine unless you absolutely need, except for charcoal. Everyone in your party refines charcoal and gets the perk for it. EVERYONE. Mark every village that produces hardwood. Otherwise, smelt. Everyone in you party helped smelting.
Always go for the highest damage weapon you can craft. Whatever it is.
Mix and match parts till you get the absolutely highest damage. (Usually two handed swords or cutting polearms) Forge that, don't care about the difficulty, it's irrelevant.Get a ton of Smithing points and unlocks. Sell the weapon for an unreasonable price and buy some stuff.
At some point, if you're lucky with the unlocks, you'll able to craft crap weapons that can bankrupt a whole city. Go around the world bankrupting the universe and turning all of the world's wood to charcoal.
If you need to give a boost to a companion's smithing, just craft a stack of your cheat weapons and give it to him/her to smelt. Watch their skill skyrocket.
Use you companions to slave away refining charcoal and smelting, occasionally refining some high end metal you need. Don't try to refine that crude iron stockpile into something useful, it's a fool's errand. Just sell most of it and go hunt weapons that you can smelt. Refining is just a time and money black hole, except for very limited purposes.
Rather fast, you should get capped at 300+. Craft a few good weapons for you and your friends, enjoy that you're a 1000 times richer than your king, accept that you'll never get half of the (mostly irrelevant and useless) unlocks and forget about it.
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I like the idea of Bannerlord's leveling system, but as it is now it's unintuitive and took me a good 30 minutes to figure out wth was going my first character. Also I don't know how, but it feels more grindy than Warbands leveling. 
Having perks is not a bad idea, but as others have said you have to level up everything else just to to get the highest perks in a skill. It also seems that killing higher level troops makes no difference in how fast you gain xp. Add in the fact that a fair amount of perks are bland, make no sense with the skills they're in, or are just plain broken it makes the game worse. I see potential there but as is it's just a cluster ***k. Also I hate how in the character creation it forces you to get skill you might not want just so you can get ones you do want, for example why would I really want skill points for bow and crossbow? It's a holdover from Warband and the starting skills it kind of made sense in that game but Imho in this game it's a just dumb.
Having perks is not a bad idea, but as others have said you have to level up everything else just to to get the highest perks in a skill. It also seems that killing higher level troops makes no difference in how fast you gain xp. Add in the fact that a fair amount of perks are bland, make no sense with the skills they're in, or are just plain broken it makes the game worse. I see potential there but as is it's just a cluster ***k. Also I hate how in the character creation it forces you to get skill you might not want just so you can get ones you do want, for example why would I really want skill points for bow and crossbow? It's a holdover from Warband and the starting skills it kind of made sense in that game but Imho in this game it's a just dumb.
I like the idea of Bannerlord's leveling system, but as it is now it's unintuitive and took me a good 30 minutes to figure out wth was going my first character. Also I don't know how, but it feels more grindy than Warbands leveling.
Yes. This seems to divide lots of people. I'm sure we will get an overhauling mod or something for this sooner or later. I'd much prefer warbands system with certain tweaks over this.
ElCrisp
Sergeant at Arms
The character system in Banner Lord has yet to be implemented in any real sense. 80% of the perks dont function. Many skills are so hard to train you could practically never level them high. Nothing of the substance of this game is finished. We are playing a tech demo to find crashes. This fact doesnt bother me by the way. But there is marginal benift in comparing a completely unfinished and untested system vs one from a completed game.
Doesnt matter if in early access warband the skill system was mostly finished that is not the case with this game so don't compare it as such.
Doesnt matter if in early access warband the skill system was mostly finished that is not the case with this game so don't compare it as such.
Earth Dragon
Sergeant
The bear bones of Bannerlord is a VASTLY superior way to do level ups. The idea that combat, and pretty much only combat, is what drives you to level up in general in most games is dated, silly, and in desperate need for a new standard.
Once the kinks get works out, I'm a bigger fan of this system. Much of what they seem to be working on is figuring out the economy and crashes right now. The biggest issue I currently have is range skills not mirroring the melee skills, meaning, they don't give more generic buffs early, like the HP buffs, for having familiarization with that weapon. That needs to be the case with EVERY skill, for if no other reason, to not make you feel like you need to min max at character creation to avoid dead skills you don't plan on using.
Right now, if my character got two pips of 2-handed weps at creations and I decided not to go that route, it wouldn't matter. I could still do some minor training for the garrison buff and HP. But if I get 2 pips in Crossbow but end up using a bow, those points are pretty much lost to the player nether. This could easily not be the case with a few addiotional perks and some reshuffling. More all encompassing perks should be the standard for the 1 of the 2 options for both 25 and 50 in all categories.
Other then the above, the system is solid once they figure out experience rates!
Once the kinks get works out, I'm a bigger fan of this system. Much of what they seem to be working on is figuring out the economy and crashes right now. The biggest issue I currently have is range skills not mirroring the melee skills, meaning, they don't give more generic buffs early, like the HP buffs, for having familiarization with that weapon. That needs to be the case with EVERY skill, for if no other reason, to not make you feel like you need to min max at character creation to avoid dead skills you don't plan on using.
Right now, if my character got two pips of 2-handed weps at creations and I decided not to go that route, it wouldn't matter. I could still do some minor training for the garrison buff and HP. But if I get 2 pips in Crossbow but end up using a bow, those points are pretty much lost to the player nether. This could easily not be the case with a few addiotional perks and some reshuffling. More all encompassing perks should be the standard for the 1 of the 2 options for both 25 and 50 in all categories.
Other then the above, the system is solid once they figure out experience rates!
A new problem/observation I have in a game going longer then past ones is that attribute points past the first few become far less useful.
Particularly at level 20, the learning rate increase from that new attribute is so small it can't help with anything and I'm already past the learning limit (green cap) for the skills I actually use. I would really like to have high bow skill but 1 more control doesn't even match my learning limit and barely increases the learning rate.
Particularly at level 20, the learning rate increase from that new attribute is so small it can't help with anything and I'm already past the learning limit (green cap) for the skills I actually use. I would really like to have high bow skill but 1 more control doesn't even match my learning limit and barely increases the learning rate.
Having played above a thousand hours with MB I (MB, WB and three hours With Fire and Sword) and passed a hundred with MB II, I find that MBII has the better potential, but as most others also say, that it needs a workthru. I miss the effects that Borcha and Jeremus had in WB. Some kind of skill in logistics making moving larger companies easier. And even with 100 in morale I haven´t got beyond 18 in leadership yet (should raise an army). The speed of raising skills is somewhat flawed/puzzling. Perks are fine, but maybe a wider array? I find MB the better for feeling the battle, even though I want to place my army more like Total War (I can´t find any way to rotate) and perks to be a little more Fallout (without the searching).
Kipsta
At this point I absolutely 100% hope someone will remake the Warband character development experience. You could just focus on doing whatever you wanted as long as you killed dudes on the battlefield for experience without having to face weird trade-offs constantly. Choosing to do weird stuff just to get skill points like hiring hundreds of recruits and getting them killed for the only purpose of gaining medicine skill. It's sadly just that kind of system where you do stuff for the sake of grinding skill points. The only skills I 100% agree on using this system are weapon skills, duh, and trade.
Shaggy_711
Recruit
Yup, I can understand why they wanted to implement a system like that. But it just feels like an MMO grind.
People are mostly misunderstanding the question, maybe even the creator of this thread might not understand what he/her is asking.I like the idea of Bannerlord's leveling system, but as it is now it's unintuitive and took me a good 30 minutes to figure out wth was going my first character. Also I don't know how, but it feels more grindy than Warbands leveling.
The leveling system? Good.
The leveling rate? Garbage
The UX/UI? The fly on the garbage.
The Reward vs Challenge curve? Seemingly non-existent.
So, the leveling system needs a change? Not really, what it needs is a re-balance, a tweaked xp gain rate, better UX/UI (to explain wtf is going on), and the implementation of skill xp as quest rewards, and/or bonus xp points for certain skills after beating the odds (tournaments could reward xp towards combat skills, winning hard battles should give tons of leadership + tactics, so on so forth).
To me, they are aiming for "intuitive" leveling, but they didn't tweak it properly, and as of now it's counter-intuitive, slow, and basically a punishment, not a feature (game design theory wise).
It can be fixed, but if people stick to pleading for nerfs instead of focusing on the core issues, I don't think those fixes will come any time soon. I mean, Mexxico is more worried about caravans giving money, while your Character doesn't even work as intended.
Faster leveling and other changes you listed would help, but the problem goes much deeper. To level up a character to max you have to level everything up and that's kind of counter intuitive. Why have all that rp character building at the beginning because it doesn't matter how your character starts because he/she will become so elite at the end it won't matter. This is a bastardize leveling system of Warband's and Imho they should've either tweaked the old system but left it mostly intact or just scraped it and made a new one. I guess I've played too many rpg's in the past that the system seems really strange to me and just feels "off" somehow.
you simply, atm, cannot level anything that reaches skill cap properly, you'll die of old-age in-game before that is even possible. So no, you're wrong. What must change is that fully focused skills should cap at 300, not 200. You made a wild guess here, clearly you didn't try to level everything up
Also, the flaw isn't with how the leveling works, it's how it was implemented. As I've said, the rate is too low, and the caps **** you up.
Nakh
Sergeant
Bannerlord leveling system make me squeeze all SP to develop my character further, even from skills I never plan to use in actual gameplay. Like leveling up crossbows or two-handers while I plan to use only one-handers and bows. SP need to be claimed to move level cap little further. This is a chore. This is even worse on companions, which is don't get enough leveling points to rise single important skill if I don't squeeze all that I can from useless ones.
I'm not sure how to fix it. Maybe make minimal skill leveling multiplier 0.25 instead of 0, so players can continue to develop skills they actually like to use?
I'm not sure how to fix it. Maybe make minimal skill leveling multiplier 0.25 instead of 0, so players can continue to develop skills they actually like to use?
Earth Dragon
Sergeant
First, adjust what having 1 point in an attribute means. Currently, it gives you a base of 0, with 0 giving you -10. Shift that to 0 giving you 0 and 1 giving you 10. This, out the gate, gives 10 more skill limit in each category.
Second, adjust how you get XP for many of the skills. Each troop is assigned a weapons category. When upgrading to a solider of that type, you get a point. Shieldwall troops - 1-handed, Skirmishers - Throwing, Crossbowmen - Crossbow, etc. Taking damage, including in the Arena and Tournaments, gives XP to medicine. Hire troops gives 1 + 1 XP per tier vs 1 xp flat. This includes rescuing captives. There are a dozen subtle adjustments that would stop making the game feel like a chore and everything just levels naturally regardless of what you are choosing to do. The base game, as stands, is very anti-power gaming. It doesn't allow for min/mix level grinding (just do whatever gives you the most XP to make whatever kind of character you want. Unfortunately, with how character creation works in conjunction with deadend skill perks, it encourages this type of min maxing on creation.
So third, the skill perks need adjusting. In particular for the player, all skill perks need to be viable at all times. While NOT the scout, those perks should give you a buff. And while not the scout, all party members should be getting half XP in that category. As I said in my last post, range skills need to mirror melee skills and give useful buffs when not using that weapon, and if you combo that with the last paragraph where you get mild XP from leveling those troops, you can achieve those skills without firing the weapon often. This is why those 25 and 50 skill level perks should involve buffing the troops. I really like the thought of having a 25 level Crossbow perk that allows you to equipment 10% of Tier 0 (Peasents) and Tier 1 troops in your garrisons with crossbows. This gives an example of an all encompassing perk that can understandably be leveled into without firing a shot. You are familiar enough with crossbows to have a few on hand because it's not overly difficult to find troops that can operate them.
These three (mostly) easy to do adjustments of slightly modifying the base skill cap, broadening the way to get XP in categories and improving the curve if needed, while giving incentive to level all skills with solid, all build compatible perks.
Finally, for detractors who would claim that you shouldn't have to learn other skills to improve your capability in the ones you prefer to use, I assume you've not played many sports. Every player in every position raises his ability when having a better understanding of the other positions and developing basic skills in those positions. Understanding and developing a little skill as a goal keeper increases my overall ability perform in a scoring position or as a defensivemen. Many intermediate athletes stall out on their development due to not understanding this concept.
This is a much better leveling concept in comparison to getting all my skills in all categories based on how many orcs I've killed in my life combo'd with how many letters I've delivered or what ever silly tasks I've agreed to complete.
Saying "totally wrong" does not prove you correct, you are arguing a preference not proving mechanics behind cellular respiration. You can level, you just have to pick and chose what you are going to level specifically and the system is currently capped, whether it stays like that or not I don't know but it is preference, not a thing you can call people wrong for. You can however disagree with what I am saying. The system is not broken as of right now after the patches, but it definitely is not going to cater to every single persons preference, as demonstrated.
I like the new system much more, it allows to have actually different playstyles. E.g. Trading in warband was an afterthought, because you HAD to be a warlord anyway in order to get any reasonable amounts of XP. Now you can just learn trading by... trading. It makes much more sense and enables you to play as pure trader, something completely unviable previously. It's just more fun all in all.
The intricacies of the new system definitely have to be figured out, but fundamentally I think it's much better by leagues.
The intricacies of the new system definitely have to be figured out, but fundamentally I think it's much better by leagues.
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