Leveling is cringe-worthy

[SmattlePattle]

I seriously doubt this game will ever support alternative play styles. The meat of the game is leading armies and conquering territory. The other stuff is secondary. I don't think you'll ever be able to build a neutral trading empire with automated agents and defense patrols like you can in an x-universe game for instance, they have a much more developed economy sim and even some elements of citybuilders like ceasar and anno series.

Its an open question. I think it should, some people are in my camp, some people aren't. TW tends to do whatever they want regardless of the community, so who knows? I think 90% of the content to do what I described is in the game, it just requires a bit of follow up. Its also a bit circular in that the meat of the game has always been being a vassal because the meat of the game has always been a vassal.

A bandit playthrough still uses the mechanics of leading troops and the combat system, but puts the focus on smaller parties, villages, hideouts, etc. You can look at Viking Conquest to see the direction on could continue to take it in, and I would argue its quite congruent with the core elements in M&B. Trade is another step further yet as when one deviates from combat focus but some of the warband (and even new BL mods) make me think there's a lot to meaningfully do. After all, they put a lot more effort into making a dynamic economy, why not utilize that dynamic system?

I am digressing, though, just because I find this topic interesting in of itself. That last paragraph didn't have much to do with this discussion.

Well with a point-assignment system you could do this. Just put all your skill points into trade etc. You could do this in warband, if you put all your points into leadership you would suck at combat to begin with but you could lead a much bigger party. This is impossible with the current system and I do think it is a result of the system itself.

You are right. I wonder though, how much are these issues due to how constrained our character creation is? Like, with the organic leveling system would it be so bad if you had the choice to do a 100leadership 0 combat skill character off the bat?

You are convincing me more, though. I suppose I'm reluctant to throw the baby out with the bath water. I do enjoy games where there's an accumulation of your actions. A half baked compromise that comes to mind would be the leveling system of warband, but perk unlocks are dependent on X or Y amount of actually using that skill? So you can set your 1-handed to 150 with skill points, but to get that shield-weight reduction perk you have to actually fight with a shield for a bit?

Just food for thought. I think you make a very good & coherent argument.

 

[xdj1nn]

Its an open question. I think it should, some people are in my camp, some people aren't. TW tends to do whatever they want regardless of the community, so who knows? I think 90% of the content to do what I described is in the game, it just requires a bit of follow up. Its also a bit circular in that the meat of the game has always been being a vassal because the meat of the game has always been a vassal.

A bandit playthrough still uses the mechanics of leading troops and the combat system, but puts the focus on smaller parties, villages, hideouts, etc. You can look at Viking Conquest to see the direction on could continue to take it in, and I would argue its quite congruent with the core elements in M&B. Trade is another step further yet as when one deviates from combat focus but some of the warband (and even new BL mods) make me think there's a lot to meaningfully do. After all, they put a lot more effort into making a dynamic economy, why not utilize that dynamic system?

I am digressing, though, just because I find this topic interesting in of itself. That last paragraph didn't have much to do with this discussion.



You are right. I wonder though, how much are these issues due to how constrained our character creation is? Like, with the organic leveling system would it be so bad if you had the choice to do a 100leadership 0 combat skill character off the bat?

You are convincing me more, though. I suppose I'm reluctant to throw the baby out with the bath water. I do enjoy games where there's an accumulation of your actions. A half baked compromise that comes to mind would be the leveling system of warband, but perk unlocks are dependent on X or Y amount of actually using that skill? So you can set your 1-handed to 150 with skill points, but to get that shield-weight reduction perk you have to actually fight with a shield for a bit?

Just food for thought. I think you make a very good & coherent argument.

of course you're all wrong, the top priority is making all Thrones Interactive! Nothing more demeaning than having your new EMPEROR unable to sit at his throne

 

[Kipsta]

I hope somebody remakes Warband's leveling system.

 

[kreamy]

You are correct, but there is a massive amount of community members who are quite masochist and enjoy really bad gameplay mechanics. Obviously, the devs should aim to the majority of the herd (making leveling more rewarding, and quicker), but (_|_) it's a long shot... If you take time to look at some of the most popular Warband mods (SOME not ALL), the difficulty increase in the game is baffling, for veterans it enhances the core gameplay loop, but it ruins for more casual players or people that are having the first contact with the game... And we're not talking about Dark Souls difficulty, we're talking about unrewarding Chinese WoW Gold Farming level of grind, I always hate that, and always tweak those mods to a more smooth experience when needed (some don't, like Pendor, others suck without it). At any rate, I do hope the devs see some sense on this, I'd even volunteer to work for them on this Challenge Reward curve, I have the skills necessary to make something really good out of it, but I can't move to Turkey hahaha

they should put a modifier in campaign options for leveling speed as well

 

[SmattlePattle]

of course you're all wrong, the top priority is making all Thrones Interactive! Nothing more demeaning than having your new EMPEROR unable to sit at his throne

Only if mine has a bidet.

 

[xdj1nn]

Only if mine has a bidet.

you italian? I'm also italian, and brazilian, both, cool! Mamma Mia!

they should put a modifier in campaign options for leveling speed as well

It could be configurable, but impossible to balance the game properly with such a option

 

[RavenMount]

It promotes grind and degenerate gameplay, that weren't present in warband. Just look at what some people report doing:

1. Blocking ny companions hits in the tournament for 1 hour. Becouse it is only wat to improve his weapon skills and lvl up him
2. Hiring only bandits and revert them to the frkn nobles.
3. Leading army as i trader all the time to lvl up leadrship
4. Jumping from roof in the cities to damage myself and lvl up medicine
5. Giving any lord in my way 1 coin to lvl up charm.

While there are many aspect of the current lvling system I find still wanting, it's post like this that kinda make me think some players just want to pull their own teeth - instead of taking it in a more gradual way.

1. Blocking ny companions hits in the tournament for 1 hour. Because it is only wat to improve his weapon skills and lvl up him
- I've never do that, and I see my companion level up just fine. It's similar to Warband how fast your companion level depend on their level. Someone like Ymira level up extreme fast because she's level 1, while you high-end companion like Matheus leveled up much more slowly. The low level companion I pick up in Bannerlord has no problem picking up skill at pace through normal play. But if someone joining me already with 3-4 skills in the 150+ and a couple in the 50+, it's understable while it's slow to see more progress.

3. Leading army as i trader all the time to lvl up leadrship
Why? I went from 0 to 60 leadership after only one war leading my army to do battles normally, I don't see why you have to go out of your way for it.

4. Jumping from roof in the cities to damage myself and lvl up medicine
Again, why. My Med level up just fine healing my injured troops in settlement.

5. Giving any lord in my way 1 coin to lvl up charm.
Again, WHY? Charm is actually of the skill I often found lvling up faster than even my combat skill. The only one it seems to be slower is steward. Doing quests, being generous, release lord and your charm shoot up like rocket.


Again, the system is far from perfect currently but what you described here is not its fault. This is because the players who I assume prefer to powerplay instead of playing normally. I won't call it "playing the wrong way" because whatever float people's boat, but if they don't get any enjoyment out of the process, it's their own fault.

 

[GitiUsir]

For me the problem is not that it gets harder to level up a skill with time but that each level up makes it harder to level up every skills. It's stupid.

This. Remove it and you can specialize in some skills.

Also some skills are easier to level up, i.e. with bow on horseback is easy to level up riding and archery, because there are a lot of hits, but with other weapons is harder. The system is designed badly. You don't need to link levels with skills, levels can revert to the old exp formula.

 

[Reiksmarshal]

Just post this for ****s and giggles, but I have played a **** tone of RPGs. It is good news that perks are in the works, hopefully leveling is part of that.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

1. Blocking ny companions hits in the tournament for 1 hour. Because it is only wat to improve his weapon skills and lvl up him
- I've never do that, and I see my companion level up just fine. It's similar to Warband how fast your companion level depend on their level. Someone like Ymira level up extreme fast because she's level 1, while you high-end companion like Matheus leveled up much more slowly. The low level companion I pick up in Bannerlord has no problem picking up skill at pace through normal play. But if someone joining me already with 3-4 skills in the 150+ and a couple in the 50+, it's understable while it's slow to see more progress.

Its really not at all similar to Warband. In Warband, no matter high high level Mattheld got, she could always get the same XP for killing something. Her progress might slow down but it never stopped. Here, you get companions who are way past their learning limit in their preferred skills so they might have 150 in polearms but a 0.0% learning rate and will never progress, so you have to give them a 1-hander which they only have 10 in but the learning rate is 2.1% . The cheese tactics become the only way to level them up.

 

[TomaSkTemplar]

with old system, weaponmaster worked with proficiency up to 700 skill based on damage and shot difficulty. It wasnt necessary to put more than 5 and you still would need 15 agility. Meaning less HP and so on.

the whole system moved to weaponmaster and proficiency based on some arbitrary values.

Compared to WB, you can ignore combat and be useful, or go into combat and become useless everywhere else.

You have diminishing returns due to proficiency requiring more input with each level.

We also have 2 starting attributes and 10 soft starting skill cap. Implying, without 2 starting attributes your starting skill cap is at MINUS 10.
At 10 attributes, your skill cap in the field will still only be 90.

1 attribute per 4 instead of 3 levels contributes to this wholly unrewarding mess.


Summarization:

leveling nerfs your exp drastically
less attributes per level
artificially lowered starting skill soft cap to 10 instead of 30.

time compression
very long healing times, AI resurrects healthy in 2 days (9 noncompressed, you, 45 noncompressed)

 

[MightyMidgit]

With the right posterity system, difficulty in leveling might not be a bad thing.

 

[drallim33]

Its an open question. I think it should, some people are in my camp, some people aren't. TW tends to do whatever they want regardless of the community, so who knows? I think 90% of the content to do what I described is in the game, it just requires a bit of follow up. Its also a bit circular in that the meat of the game has always been being a vassal because the meat of the game has always been a vassal.

Don't get me wrong, I would love if there was a deep and engaging trading layer and other systems all fleshed out. I love those types of games. I just don't think they have time. I think it will take them two years just to fill out and polish the skeleton we already have. All the perks, all the bugs, all the missing features like diplomacy, all the placeholder and missing dialogue, all the missing UI like message log, formation and siege AI, etc.

It all takes time. It's been one month since release and it's been mostly all crash fixes and performance improvements, some UI polish and minor tweaks. So 11 months to go until the one year mark. It's a very short time at the current pace. The game you're envisioning would take many years. I would love to play it but in practical terms I don't see it happening.

You are convincing me more, though. I suppose I'm reluctant to throw the baby out with the bath water.

I think a big problem is that most of these skills have no active component. Warband had learn-by-doing for combat proficiencies, and it was fine. Anyone could get good with a bow, they just couldn't use the powerful ones without strength and power draw.

With the passive skills it's learn-by doing in name only, because you're not actually doing anything. You have no control over the progression, it just ticks up at a pre-determined rate set by the developer. You would need a MUCH more diverse and fleshed out range of activities to make this system worthwhile. Like if you could hire yourself out as an engineering contractor, and just go around building siege engines and crossbows for people or something. Develop and operate the most advanced siege weapons, so that it actually made a big difference, and whoever gets you services has an advantage. But the amount of depth required to make this type of gameplay not suck is prohibitive in terms of dev time. Each little thing like this is almost a whole indie game in itself.

I think the elder scrolls system could work but you have to go ALL IN with it, there has to be a lot more ways to gain XP, a lot more uses for skills. It's viable but it would take much more time to implement, and is harder to balance. It's really hard to find the right rate of progression that feels good, it's very easy to either be too grindy or too easy/unrewarding. You have to worry about levelling exploits, so you end up fighting against the player in a weird arms race, where the player is trying to game the system and you are trying to slow down their progression. It's a lot of extra work and hassle for little to no payoff. It makes sense in a game with a massive range of options, where skill points can be too limiting (do I put my points into halberd or pollaxe? Long sword or short sword?). But in this game I just don't see the benefit.

 

[derfuchs13]

Anybody ever managed to level up enginering at a reasonable level without having conquered single handled the whole map?

 

[PhlaagoRexor]

While I cringe at the decaying learningrate I would like to point out that you can get loads of skills up to their learninglimit (5x focus and 6 attribute gives 200 learninglimit) but pushing 275 or higher is really only possible early on... can do it with smithing around level 10 even with only 7 endurance.. if you wait longer you need to smack more points into endurance to counter the decaying learningrate. I would really like to know what life was like for the Battanian Fian's when they evolve into champions and get their 260 bow skill from levels 26 to 31 because I think they need to have control attribute at 10 to make it possible to gain skillpoints that late in the game. (an even better question was how they got to 280 before the nerf)

 

[ScrotumScratcher]

I agree. It doesn't even feel rewarding either. I guess the devs were trying to avoid the character from becoming a super soldier like in Warband, but it feels so pointless when you waste your time trying to level up some skills for a few % bonuses or a useless perk.

 

[drallim33]

I suppose I'm reluctant to throw the baby out with the bath water.

So I'm trying to think what I would do to make the current system tolerable without just replacing it altogether with a better system. Bit of a TLDR.

First thing is that there are multiple redundant diminishing returns mechanisms. First there is the level up system, you get one skill point per level which raises your total skill cap by 30. But each level up requires more than 30 skill gains, so you eventually reach a hard level cap where it is impossible to increase any skill, and thus impossible to level up in order to get more skill points that would let you increase your skills.

Then in addition to that there is the global learning rate decay as you level up. Slows down your progression the higher you level goes, eventually you would slow down so much that it's effectively stopped. Basically the same as the first thing, except it's a soft cap instead of a hard cap.

And finally each skill level requires more XP than the previous level. Which serves to slow down your progression the higher your skill gets.

So there are three mechanisms that all basically do the same thing, I would pick one of these three to keep and remove the other two, they are redundant. I don't think it matter a whole lot which one would be kept, although I don't think the global learning rate decay makes much sense. My preference would be to keep the diminishing returns on individual skills, and remove the hard levelling cap and learning rate decay.

Second thing is that skill points are extremely weak and have little impact. When you level up and assign a skill point, your character does not change at all. All it does is unlock more levels for you to grind. "You now have my permission to grind this skill". This is very unsatisfying. But more importantly, the effect of them is not enough. The maximum learning rate multiplier you can get is about 11x, and that is with 10 attribute points and 5 skill points, unachievable until late game. So for most of the game your most heavily focused skills with only advance about 4x faster than your unfocussed ones.

This delta needs to be increased massively. I would increase the learning rate multiplier range by a factor of ten or more, so the maximum would go from the current 11x to more like 100x or 150x. And of course adjust the base XP rate to compensate. Now every character would still be constantly gaining XP in steward, but at a much lower rate than a fully focussed character. This would mean there is a much more meaningful difference between focussed and unfocussed skills, and you wouldn't have every single character being good at the same things just by accident.

Third thing is that I think attributes need to do something else. At the moment they are just secondary skill points, kind of redundant. You could remove them entirely and it wouldn't really make much difference. So I think they need to do something different to what they do now. I'm not sure exactly what. Maybe they could give you perk points. So you could level a skill high but if the linked attribute was low you miss out on the perks. Or maybe they just give passive bonuses or something. Just something else, at the moment they are just redundant skill points.

TL;DR

• Remove hard skill/level cap and learning rate decay, keep diminishing returns on individual skills. You only need one progression cap system not three
• Increase effect of skill points on learning rate by factor of ten, to make differences more meaningful
• Make attributes do something else, or remove them entirely, right now they are redundant

 

[ppga]

You are right. I wonder though, how much are these issues due to how constrained our character creation is? Like, with the organic leveling system would it be so bad if you had the choice to do a 100 leadership 0 combat skill character off the bat?

Well, I would choose that everytime not for role play or play style reasons but because in the current system it's a real pain to level leadership as opposed to combat skills and then I could level up combat skills quickly for easy level gain.

Those options were meaningful in warband, because when you levelled you either upped your leadership or power strike for example, or those were trade-offs you made in character creation. They are not meaningful in the current system, and I think it would be difficult to make them meaningful in the current system.

 

[Woopzilla]

My main personal problem with current leveling implementation is the presence of a hard-cap on skill gain. As others mention, it makes leveling beyond 14-16 (depending on character build) an utter chore that, contrary to the supposed intention of making one a specialist, requires minmaxing EVERY. SINGLE. SKILL.

So I'm trying to think what I would do to make the current system tolerable without just replacing it altogether with a better system. Bit of a TLDR.

First thing is that there are multiple redundant diminishing returns mechanisms. First there is the level up system, you get one skill point per level which raises your total skill cap by 30. But each level up requires more than 30 skill gains, so you eventually reach a hard level cap where it is impossible to increase any skill, and thus impossible to level up in order to get more skill points that would let you increase your skills.

Then in addition to that there is the global learning rate decay as you level up. Slows down your progression the higher you level goes, eventually you would slow down so much that it's effectively stopped. Basically the same as the first thing, except it's a soft cap instead of a hard cap.

And finally each skill level requires more XP than the previous level. Which serves to slow down your progression the higher your skill gets.

I agree with these assessments.

When I hire a companion and they have high skills in One-handed and Polearm, they often start nearly maxed out at the hard-cap. So, what do I do? I give them a Two-handed weapon because they have virtually no skill in it and are 30 to 40 skills below their cap.

This doesn't make sense at all. I really dislike how you need to level up skills you have no interest in just to level up other skills that are beyond their cap and have slowed down drastically. The system forces you to use skills you don't want to use to make it easier to increase your overall character level to gain more focus points... so you can focus on your real chosen skill.

It reminds of the bizarre Oblivion level-up system in some way, where you would deliberately choose 'main' skills (which cause you to level up) that you have no interest in using, just so that you can gain proper attribute bonuses per level up.

I know Bannerlord's system isn't nearly as broken and bizarre as in Oblivion, but if I put several points in Endurance for Riding and Athletics, I also feel compelled to level Smithing (which I never have any interest in due to its grind), because I now have a skill cap of +50 or so for it, making it a source of level ups that I must exploit if I don't want to stagnate.

Hard-caps need to be removed and leveling rates need to never drop below x1.00 rate or something. That's the least drastic and most basic change. Also, ramp up the effects of focus points and alter the effects of attributes to be more meaningful instead of being an 'alternate focus point'.

The game should never force you to use a skill you have no interest in.

 

[Tobi7043]

I have played multiple 500+ day characters and it is such a grid. I usually start to hit a wall at level 13-14 at which point I have to grind other unrelated skills which is immersion breaking. Attibute points are so few and far between, most players will probably only get 3 during a play through!

I really hope leveling and perks get more attention soon as players will lose interest. I understand this is early access, but it would be a great opportunity to start working on balancing perks and the leveling system while you still have large test base. Thanks for the great game and all your hard work!

I get that lvl with normal gameplay in a few hours, so dont know what you mean with this... Of course it should be better and it have become alot better already, the last big updates they all changed the leveling speed and how easy it is to gain levels... But really like the system actually.