Hi all. If we compare Bannerlord to Warband, which was made 10 years ago, we see Taleworlds has definitely improved the graphics and sieges and battle size and added a lot of depth to the game's simulation systems which is great. However, Bannerlord is missing many fun gameplay features from Warband, so it's actually gone backwards in those areas. These missing features include:
Feasts.
These big parties had benefits for gameplay and immersion. The player could hold a feast to gain popularity with lords, which involved a fun quest of gathering different food to serve your guests. Feasts made it easy to find lords/ladies to talk to by bringing them all to one place, created breaks between wars to give the player time to get things done, and made Calradia feel more like a real world and less like a 24/7 murderbowl. Feasts could be improved in Bannerlord by making factions who are losing a war not hold feasts, while powerful factions feast more often to celebrate their victories; this would assist in balancing powerful factions.
Reactive Handcrafted Companions.
While travelling, Warband's companions would sometimes tell you about the area, or ask you to make decisions, which made them really feel like
companions, instead of silent mooks who only talk when you hire them. Also, people don't get attached to randomly generated wanderers like they did to personalities like Jeremus or Rolf who were the same in every playthrough. Keeping the random wanderer system, but also adding a handful of non-random companions with reaction dialogue and decisions to make, would give players stronger characters to identify with.
Strategic command dialogue.
You could suggest to allied lords that they should travel to and attack/defend a location while you went somewhere else. This allowed the player to make strategic decisions and feel more like a ruler. It could be balanced in Bannerlord by costing a small amount of influence to suggest an action.
Deserters.
In Warband they were roaming enemies on the map, providing more opponent variety than just looters or bandits, and being more challenging to fight due to their superior equipment. In Bannerlord they are only part of one quest.
Manhunters.
Bounty hunters that chased down bandits, and also had a unique troop tree you could hire to your army by rescuing them. This feature could be tweaked for Bannerlord: allow the player or AI lords to spend money to place a bounty in a fief with serious bandit troubles, and it will make Manhunters begin spawning in the area until a certain amount of bandits are defeated, allowing the player to go do more fun things instead of having to babysit their fief.
Objective: Escape.
When you failed to sneak into an enemy town, you had to fight your way out wearing only a civilian outfit, which was exciting and made sneaking feel risky.
Prison Break quests.
One of the coolest quests in the game, breaking a lord out of the center of an enemy stronghold by yourself and escaping before the guards killed you. This quest could use the Roguery perk tree.
Edit: Taleworlds has stated that this feature will be returning.
Intrigue/Denouncement quests.
Political quests that allowed the player to roleplay as a scheming noble, and would be great for non-combat oriented builds in Bannerlord.
In-depth Courtship.
Warband's courting features created a more believable long-term relationship. Your love interest would sometimes send requests for you to come back and visit, you could talk to them to learn their interests and impress them, and even elope without approval from their family if they liked you enough. These elements could be added alongside the existing system.
Lord Duels.
If you insulted a lord's honor or competed with them for a lady's affections, they would challenge you to an arena duel.
Books.
These could be purchased and read over time to gain levels in a specific skill. This would be a good gold sink, as well as a way of leveling skills that the player doesn't often get a chance to use, such as Engineering.
Noble background.
In Warband you could choose to have a character born into a noble family, which made fitting in with the nobility easier and provided a roleplaying option. Since being from a noble family doesn't quite make sense with the tutorial clan, in Bannerlord a noble background could skip the tutorial quest but only be unlocked after completing your first playthrough.
Miscellaneous
"Ginger" hair colour was in Warband, but for some reason is missing in Bannerlord. Foods like Fruit, Chicken, Pork, Sausages, and even
Bread are gone. Also gone are sexist lords who were hostile to and harder to impress as a female character.
Sword Sisters
Unique female troops that did not occur naturally in the game world, who you could add to your army by rescuing peasant women and training them into skilled fighters.
Multi-stage sieges.
The player or AI could choose to retreat to a town's streets, or castle's keep, if they lost the walls while defending a siege. This created an intense close-quarters battle in interesting environments.
Some of these things seem small on their own, but combined, they create a major improvement in variety and immersion.
Now, I know Bannerlord is in Early Access and obviously won't be feature complete yet. The problem is that we are halfway to the Early Access Release target, and Taleworlds still hasn't said anything about these features. If Taleworlds is genuinely committed to making Bannerlord to the community's expectations, then based on various threads on these forums and elsewhere, the community clearly expects Bannerlord should have all the good features of Warband. So in that case, can we please have a confirmation that Bannerlord will be a proper sequel to Warband?