Bannerlord is missing many good features from Warband and VC

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Remember the good ole days (what, just 2 to 3 months ago?) when the "Its Early Access Bro" people were shilling and running cover for this horrible mess of a game?

Its becoming more and more obvious that mods are going to finish this game, and if that is the case, just open up the code and let motivated people who actually care about this game have the thorough access they need to mod it AKA finish it.
 
Remember the good ole days (what, just 2 to 3 months ago?) when the "Its Early Access Bro" people were shilling and running cover for this horrible mess of a game?

Its becoming more and more obvious that mods are going to finish this game, and if that is the case, just open up the code and let motivated people who actually care about this game have the thorough access they need to mod it AKA finish it.
Well then they released every day patches for bugfixing, now comes nothing. maybe corona regulations in turkey hit them, but atleast make a announcement or something. it comes nothing for month. its like they couldnt handle the code and give up.
 
The game would be way more fun with all that features... and many more because those ones are basics arleady in the old games...

How the hell could TW forgot all the good things that were in Warband and VC when they started the developpment of Bannerlord....?
Everyone thought those ones would be basics of the game... But the core of Bannerlord is way less interresting than Warband and it(s DLC...........
 
I completely agree with your list, and that of many of the comments. One thing though about Mods, lets not give the devs a pass because players can mod the game. Its the devs responsibility to make a great game and much of Mount & Blade 2 is great but there is a lot lacking, skills need to be completed/working at the very least, I mean that is something that is IN THE GAME but is barely working. They need to get a real focus, share that focus with the players or face a lot of unhappy players who will tell there friends NOT to buy the game and that would be a shame. My friend who was the one to get me to buy the game plays less than I do now because of how unhappy he is with the game.
 
I want to give this thread a bump, I really hope Taleworlds absolutely does not go down the path of simply neglecting and outright abandoning all the devlogs in the past with new exciting features that as of right now, may not ever be added. As well as pull the regular old cutting features in the previous titles as many trilogies go these days.

It may SEEM like we have reached bounds with Bannerlords updated visuals, and "Economy" if you can call it that at this point. But with this recent installment Coming from someone who has logged over 150 hours in this title and well over a thousand in Warband in amazon and on steam combined and a few hundred in the first mount and blade, this title has made MARGINAL strides compared to the first installment, MINIMAL to warband and arguably Viking Conquest a title that was made by modders, is vastly superiors to Bannerlord.

Why is this?

Bannerlord is so empty. It's not fun, just Monotonous even with mods, I'm struggling to keep playing. I can't even bring myself to finish a campaign or start a real kingdom it is so boring.

The problem here is immersion. It's weight and feeling.

For instance, why must you continue to nerf things and approach the real problem. The ECONOMY. It's not a problem of crafting, nor of trade, it is just pure and utter garbage. Denars are worth nothing.

In Viking Conquest, Denars ARE worth something, things likes raiding and buying ships to attack coastal settlements felt so alive and a lucrative enterprise, but was not without risk as you had to be lighting fast lest you face a standing army or a sizable group of experienced raiders.

In Bannerlord, you have this.

Buy troop for 10 denars, keep him alive for a few battles, troop now heavy tank.
Wow, cool what next?
Do this over and over until you get enough renown to have an army and attack a city. Right then what?
Absolutely nothing.

After a few campaigns I found the problem. Its a grind, If I wanted to grind I'd play an mmo.

Literally the only good part of this title is the beginning, then once you have a sizable mercenary band it's cool for a little while, than you start seeing how boring and meaningless it all is to start a kingdom.

It's like stockholm syndrome. Except my captive is a dark dirty cave of monotony.

So how did previous titles 'fix' or rather make this less apparent.

One simple word.

Immersion.

Gear wasn't easily obtainable, but it also wasn't impossible to get high tier gear nor was it overly expensive to hide the gaping hole of garbage that is however you try to bandage your economical design.

Money meant something, so raiding and being an over-all bad person wasn't just something that you wouldn't consider.

Having a fief was something too, especially in Viking Conquest where you can have a pseudo-fief, like a permanent camp of some sort to upgrade and conduct future raids or act as a mercenary stronghold.

All in all what does Bannerlord offer thats new AND great?

Nothing. Just better graphics and better combat I guess once you use a combat overhaul mod to stop arrows from killing absolutely KITTED units.

I'm sorry for this long Rant, but please Taleworlds, at least make it easy for modders to put these things in, I'm even considering it too since I'm somewhat knowledgeable in C#.
 
I'm a 60 year old programmer. I've seen the whole thing, from programming in machine code in the late 70s where the phrase "real programmers ..." became popular, referring to the fact that a few can do it well, some can do it poorly, and many can't do it at all. This is the one thing executives never ever learned. To them, a programmer is a progammer, like a clerk, or a machine operator. And this is the fatal flaw that has brought many a company or system crashing down. Three real programmers can build anything workable in three years, and ten can do literally anything in ten years. Add one bad programmer into the mix and you will slow the whole thing down by 20%. That's how it is, because they have to clean up after their buddy as well now.

Now, twenty years ago, some executive, rebelling against the highly skilled cost of using real and good programmers, had the bright idea of hiring staff from overseas where the exchange rate made it worthwhile. To provide the labour for this method they instituted training schools which churned people off the streets and into programming for what was to them good salaries, hugely increasing the percentage of bad programmers

Sadly the results are like this: you still need at least one good programmer for every three bad ones, and the three bad ones produce as much as two good programmers, only, it is poor quality code. Buggy, long-winded, obscure, difficult to follow or maintain, brittle, inflexible, skewed, not fit for purpose. So then the good programmer has to send it back to have added supports, diversions around obstacles, sticky tape and string added to make it work. The final buggy mess is such a Heath Robinson mangle of knotted fishing-line that if you just touch it in one corner, the far corner flops down and breaks - invisibly. It takes months to apply fixes on top of and around it, and each fix makes the problem worse.

At the end of the day, you get the system for slightly less than it would have cost you using real programmers, but you don't want what you got, and can hardly use it.

Programming is a real skill and requires aptitude. It's similar to surgery. Would you like to have someone who studied hard and got good results and has a good track record do a kidney transplant on you at a high cost, or go to some place where they train people en masse to do kidney transplants at a much lower cost? Executives ignore this fact at their peril.

I'm sure you've guessed by now what I'm driving at. M&B2 is so much worse, so slow to fix, so empty and shallow and brittle after so many years, that I would bet £100 they used a completely different set of developers on as on M&B1, and if there was a real programmer on the team, they were not given the power to direct the coding.

If that above is true, and I were a Taleworlds top executive, I would 1) hire three real programmers immediately to tell me what they recommend to fix it, and go with whatever they say, (whether it's a fix, a re-write, game 3, whatever), if affordable (i.e. if better than going into administration); 2) once I have that plan, publically apologise for the mistake and say what I am going to do to fix it; and pray that people understand.
 
I'm sure you've guessed by now what I'm driving at. M&B2 is so much worse, so slow to fix, so empty and shallow and brittle after so many years, that I would bet £100 they used a completely different set of developers on as on M&B1, and if there was a real programmer on the team, they were not given the power to direct the coding.

If that above is true, and I were a Taleworlds top executive, I would 1) hire three real programmers immediately to tell me what they recommend to fix it, and go with whatever they say, (whether it's a fix, a re-write, game 3, whatever), if affordable (i.e. if better than going into administration); 2) once I have that plan, publically apologise for the mistake and say what I am going to do to fix it; and pray that people understand.

Mount and Blade 1 was programmed by the current top executive and his wife, lmao. And it was way buggier than Bannerlord currently.
 
Mount and Blade 1 was programmed by the current top executive and his wife, lmao. And it was way buggier than Bannerlord currently.

Yes, but that was over a decade ago, made with a tiny budget. And the first of its kind. Literally a pioneer, so bugs where understandable.
 
I'm a 60 year old programmer. I've seen the whole thing, from programming in machine code in the late 70s where the phrase "real programmers ..." became popular, referring to the fact that a few can do it well, some can do it poorly, and many can't do it at all. This is the one thing executives never ever learned. To them, a programmer is a progammer, like a clerk, or a machine operator. And this is the fatal flaw that has brought many a company or system crashing down. Three real programmers can build anything workable in three years, and ten can do literally anything in ten years. Add one bad programmer into the mix and you will slow the whole thing down by 20%. That's how it is, because they have to clean up after their buddy as well now.

Now, twenty years ago, some executive, rebelling against the highly skilled cost of using real and good programmers, had the bright idea of hiring staff from overseas where the exchange rate made it worthwhile. To provide the labour for this method they instituted training schools which churned people off the streets and into programming for what was to them good salaries, hugely increasing the percentage of bad programmers

Sadly the results are like this: you still need at least one good programmer for every three bad ones, and the three bad ones produce as much as two good programmers, only, it is poor quality code. Buggy, long-winded, obscure, difficult to follow or maintain, brittle, inflexible, skewed, not fit for purpose. So then the good programmer has to send it back to have added supports, diversions around obstacles, sticky tape and string added to make it work. The final buggy mess is such a Heath Robinson mangle of knotted fishing-line that if you just touch it in one corner, the far corner flops down and breaks - invisibly. It takes months to apply fixes on top of and around it, and each fix makes the problem worse.

At the end of the day, you get the system for slightly less than it would have cost you using real programmers, but you don't want what you got, and can hardly use it.

Programming is a real skill and requires aptitude. It's similar to surgery. Would you like to have someone who studied hard and got good results and has a good track record do a kidney transplant on you at a high cost, or go to some place where they train people en masse to do kidney transplants at a much lower cost? Executives ignore this fact at their peril.

I'm sure you've guessed by now what I'm driving at. M&B2 is so much worse, so slow to fix, so empty and shallow and brittle after so many years, that I would bet £100 they used a completely different set of developers on as on M&B1, and if there was a real programmer on the team, they were not given the power to direct the coding.

If that above is true, and I were a Taleworlds top executive, I would 1) hire three real programmers immediately to tell me what they recommend to fix it, and go with whatever they say, (whether it's a fix, a re-write, game 3, whatever), if affordable (i.e. if better than going into administration); 2) once I have that plan, publically apologise for the mistake and say what I am going to do to fix it; and pray that people understand.

1) The original developer from Mount and Blade studied computer science in Ankara. I am not sure what you mean with "help from oversea", but chances are, he is it :smile: .

2) He was the programmer in the original Mount and Blade, he is the lead of the project for Bannerlord. If you think that Mount and Blade was a success because of some "real programmer" developing it, well that's him leading Bannerlord right now.

People who are good at doing things (writing code, developing games, you name it) are not necessarily also good at managing people who do things. In the case of Bannerlord, it seems obvious by now that having a bigger team working on the game backfired. And given the complete lack of focus and direction that the project has, I am inclined to blame it on management, not the developers.
 
I have to agree, game has been out for 4 months and there hasn’t been a single feature rich patch. I wonder what they could have added if they didn’t spend all that time “balancing” the economy
 
In Bannerlord, you have this.

Buy troop for 10 denars, keep him alive for a few battles, troop now heavy tank.
Wow, cool what next?
[...]
All in all what does Bannerlord offer thats new AND great?
Nothing. Just better graphics and better combat I guess once you use a combat overhaul mod to stop arrows from killing absolutely KITTED units.

So do you have heavy tanks or not? :LOL:

IMHO difficulty setting plays a big difference in the battle outcome, also iron man rules does ... like playing 1st view, no banners identifying enemy/friends, use only own faction troops, etc. Those kind of things make the battles chaotic and more realistic and challenging. My only complain at the moment is that they are to short, I would love if they last a bit longer.

BTW the kingdom creating feature is missing a lot of content right now, also it would be great to add more stuff to the clans model which allow some kind of kingdom political play and for sure economy has to be tuned.

But the base to have a great game is there, just more development is needed. Let's hope that this refactoring nightmare will end soon and we will be able to get all this new stuff.
 
So do you have heavy tanks or not? :LOL:

But the base to have a great game is there, just more development is needed. Let's hope that this refactoring nightmare will end soon and we will be able to get all this new stuff.

In vanilla no, but with realstic battle mod yes.
Still not OP Javelins/Axes/Maces and Spear will wreck them, couple that with increasing wages for less elites and taking away most tier 5s from a custom units tree to leave the elites, elites.

Honestly I am very critical of this game as it is though I have left a positive review on steam and it will stay that way. You can tell the game has a foundation for something great, but it lacks direction and in some areas passion. I know the dev team has some really passioante developers (former mod authors)

And I am not at all concerned of patch frequency.
As a matter of fact. I think the dev team should take even longer, what good is a patch without some fundamental changes to the game?
I encourage the Devs to continue working and forget about the people clamoring for a patch. But hopefully it isn't 6 months to a year from now but before the end of fall hopefully!
 
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1) The original developer from Mount and Blade studied computer science in Ankara. I am not sure what you mean with "help from oversea", but chances are, he is it :smile: .

2) He was the programmer in the original Mount and Blade, he is the lead of the project for Bannerlord. If you think that Mount and Blade was a success because of some "real programmer" developing it, well that's him leading Bannerlord right now.

People who are good at doing things (writing code, developing games, you name it) are not necessarily also good at managing people who do things. In the case of Bannerlord, it seems obvious by now that having a bigger team working on the game backfired. And given the complete lack of focus and direction that the project has, I am inclined to blame it on management, not the developers.

I think his point was that even one lesser programmer can seriously add detriment to the whole project and there is something clearly wrong there. Ive heard rumors that some are literally just entry level college kids while obviously Aragon is a very talented head honcho programmer. Probably a case of a few not quite up to speed programmers combined with management errors.

Im not ready to close up shop yet and call it day -im still somewhat optimistic but its certainly diminished.
 
Ive heard rumors that some are literally just entry level college kids while obviously Aragon is a very talented head honcho programmer. Probably a case of a few not quite up to speed programmers combined with management errors.

You know the devblogs used to give interviews to all the generally nameless developers and staff? A lot of them went straight from METU to Taleworlds, circa 2014-2018. I don't think that matters though because game development everywhere relies pretty heavily on fresh blood, because it generally burns through talent at a cyclic rate.
 
1) The original developer from Mount and Blade studied computer science in Ankara. I am not sure what you mean with "help from oversea", but chances are, he is it :smile: .

2) He was the programmer in the original Mount and Blade, he is the lead of the project for Bannerlord. If you think that Mount and Blade was a success because of some "real programmer" developing it, well that's him leading Bannerlord right now.

People who are good at doing things (writing code, developing games, you name it) are not necessarily also good at managing people who do things. In the case of Bannerlord, it seems obvious by now that having a bigger team working on the game backfired. And given the complete lack of focus and direction that the project has, I am inclined to blame it on management, not the developers.
That is really very interesting!! Thank you for the info. It may well be some intermediate level of mismanagement. But I think it is more likely to be simply a lack of awareness of the need to have 'real' programmers - i.e. people with ultra aptitude and experience - directing the design and the coding, if not, ideally, doing everything. Personally I'm convinced that cheap and/or inexperienced programmers screw it up, regardless of management. While 'real' programmers can pretty much manage poor management. From my 10 years contracting and 25 years permanent experience, I have time and again seen this play out, with 100% predictable results every time, yet people, especially managers, very rarely spot the cause, nor do the junior programmers. At the end of the day the game timing is 100% consistent with far too much reliance on too many junior programmers. Maybe they had a low budget. Understand I am not criticising them at all. In fact I admire the ground-breaking concepts and efforts. I'm just trying to share a very little known fact from my experience.
 
Encyclopedia is what ruined this game for me. In Warband it was this interactive world were if I wanted to find out something I would have to ask, I didnt had to open Google chrome and see who is this or who was that, I could just ask someone, I could get information from people. Bannerlord, instead of improving upon this, decided to put Google chrome inside the game in the form of wikipedia, it's boring, its unnimersive and it takes control from the player, which is probably the biggest fault
 
Yeah encyclopedia was areally bad design choice. They really did go the exact wrong way on that. Now imagine had they had actual clues hidden in the audio banter of a tavern - thats immersion and fun detective work.

Never played Viking Conquest past mid game and was decent though i still found tedium after awhile- probably due to a total foreign aspectness of the names of that gaming world. But post Last Kingdom have a newfound interest in all things named Aethel and towns ending in ..bebbenburg and have decided to have another go.

First thing that struck me was the very beginning of the game has interesting, comprehensive plot story as well as fun new mechanic of fighting on ships. 2nd thing that caught me was all the action going on in the first village with lads racing horses and fencing in the street. Was it mind blowing immersion? No but leagues better than the opening of bannerlord which after 30 restarts i still have no idea what anyones talking about
 
Encyclopedia is what ruined this game for me. In Warband it was this interactive world were if I wanted to find out something I would have to ask, I didnt had to open Google chrome and see who is this or who was that, I could just ask someone, I could get information from people. Bannerlord, instead of improving upon this, decided to put Google chrome inside the game in the form of wikipedia, it's boring, its unnimersive and it takes control from the player, which is probably the biggest fault

Yep, it's a bad game design. There's no mystery with the companions you get, you just look up where they are and go get them. It's like reading a book that tells you what happens in the following chapters each page. There's no reason to ever talk to anybody, it's just anti immersion and anti interactive. The game has huge design problems, not sure where TW's goes from here.
 
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