The State of Immersion (or lack there-of)

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The State of Immersion: Bannerlord Edition

While playing through Bannerlord, I really feel like it's lacking a lot of the immersion and cohesion (features working in conjunction) that I find in Warband. That's not to say that I feel the game is bad, it's still good but it has so much more potential that I'm sure will come with time. Let me get straight in to it.

If any of the things I mentioned down below are already in the game, and I haven't noticed already let me know. Also reply with your own opinions or thoughts. I apologize in advance if these points have already been mentioned before or are in someway incorrect.
  • Offer of vassalage
    • In Warband, if you earned a decent amount of renown and didn't belong to a Kingdom already, there was a chance you would receive a letter offering you a place as a vassal in x Kingdom. While I doubt it was a route many players took, it was there and it added a decision for you to make, one that could completely change the direction of your playthrough. As far as I know, this doesn't exist in Bannerlord.
  • Lords defecting to your Kingdom
    • I could be wrong on this one, but it feels like Clans don't defect to your own Kingdom? In Warband it felt pretty good to see a Lord leave their Kingdom and sit in your capital, for them to ASK YOU to join your Kingdom, once again adding choices to your playthrough and allowing you to grow your Kingdom without passing a bunch of skill checks and always having to make the first move.
  • Companions, companions, companions!
    • In Warband, each companion felt, looked and behaved uniquely. Companions had their backstories, base skills and personality types that would lead them to quarrel with each other. Yet again, adding choices to which companions you choose as you don't want them all hating each other, leading them to hate being apart of your party and ultimately ditching you. Doing certain actions such as raiding or failing quests would upset some companions but not others. Right now, they just feel like named soldiers that'll go along with anything, I barely care about who I pickup as long as they can fulfill a clan role that isn't occupied already.
  • Feasts/Tournaments
    • It was a meme, but now that they're gone, I miss them. They were an easy way to introduce yourself to all of the Lords in your (or another) Kingdom, get quests and meet ladies (Dedicating a Tournament victory to them also). Tournaments would be held when feasts were on-going, and thus allowed you to fight against Lords and not just a random pool of soldiers. Tournaments were a slightly more rare occurrence than what they are in Bannerlord, I feel like there is an abundance of Tournaments going on at any given time, allowing players to quickly rack up gold and items that you couldn't otherwise get so quickly. A Tournament in Warband felt like a great opportunity to get that extra income and renown, now it just feels like what I should be doing all the time making the gameplay loop quite repetitive, especially early-game. It just feels cheap. Feasts would also be good distraction for Lords, and allows for some tactics to be had, you could strike when the enemy was most vulnerable.
  • Armour Effectiveness/Feel
    • For context, I play with all realistic settings. I couldn't help but feel like as I acquired better and better armor, that it really didn't make much of a difference. Looters were throwing pebbles at me, taking a sizable chunk of my health with some of the most top-tier pieces of armor in the game. The game feels like it caters more towards quantity rather than quality when it comes to armies. In Warband, if I had a small band of elite tier troops, you bet your ass I could take on more enemies than usual. You could feel the difference so much more in Warband as you acquired better gear or upgraded your troops to the higher tiers. Armor also feels quite same-y, when you strike someone in full plate, it feels exactly the same as when I hit someone in leather. In Warband, when you try to swing a sword at full plate, they feel tanky and clanky.
  • Personality Types / Traits
    • In Bannerlord, there is suppose to be different traits people can have, though it doesn't feel like it's integrated into anything. All of the NPCs feel exactly the same and I don't feel as though I'm treated any differently based on how much Valor/Honor/Dishonesty/any other trait I may or may not have. The trait system doesn't feel cohesive with the rest of the game at all. I never get told when I receive a trait, and there's no indicators of how making a certain choice or choosing a certain dialog option will effect my traits. I feel the system could be great once it's implemented properly. Warband had a much simpler system of an Honor Rating for the player, and the NPCs had certain personality types that would react differently based on the players honor, relation and previous actions. I feel as though the Bannerlord system has much more potential than Warbands, but right now it seems useless.
  • Marshals and Marshalship
    • I can only describe having Marshals in Warband as being cool. It added another layer to the hierarchy in the factions, giving one Lord that extra bit of power and respect over the others, allowing them to call upon all the other Lords of the realm to go on a campaign. This feels so much more immersive than "Lord x has made an army, join it if you want, if not no worries, decisions don't matter". In Warband, you were SUMMONED by your Marshal, and if you didn't follow through then there were consequences. Furthermore, being offered Marshalship felt rewarding, it also felt risky as you now had a lot of responsibility. Now it just feels like: "okay let me spend this arbitrary number (influence) to force some NPCs to follow me".
  • Tavern NPCs
    • Ransom Brokers
      • Right now, you can sell prisoners to any city, some might consider this an improvement, but personally I liked that you weren't guaranteed to be able to sell your prisoners. It made storing prisoners in dungeons an actual useful thing, so you could sell them later when a ransom broker was closer to your fief. Not always being able to sell prisoners also encourages you to venture out to the world to find them, getting you in all kinds of trouble.
    • Wandering Minstrels
      • In Warband, these fine men could teach you poems, which you could later use to help woo a certain lady. This would help alot in Bannerlord because there is literally nothing you can do to boost relations lol.
    • Book Merchants
      • Book Merchants added another layer of depth to Warband, allowing you to read books to gain permanent or passive bonuses to your attributes. These would become very useful late game.
    • Travelers
      • These NPCs helped you find all of the above NPCs, plus your companions if they were captured or lost somehow. Right now everything is readily available in your encyclopedia, as if you have telepathic knowledge of everyone's location, nothing is less immersion breaking than that. I'm sure people don't mind it, but it would be cool to at-least have a realism option for this kind of stuff.
    • Quest NPCs
      • Occasionally in Warband you would find a farmer in a city tavern looking for someone to help his village that is infested with bandits. Adding more hidden away Quest NPCs in Taverns could add a lot to immersion and encourage exploration.


I'm sure there's plenty of more things that seem missing in Bannerlord that Warband had, and maybe not all of them are good and maybe even some of the points I mentioned above aren't good for Bannerlord, but the absence of all of them combined leaves me with an experience that is nowhere near as immersive as Warband. I look forward to the improvements that will come in the upcoming patches.
 
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Couldn't have put it better into words myself, bannerlord is awesome but it's missing those little details that really added immersion to warband.

I thought TW would add even more or those things/refine them for bannerlord but instead they removed them alltogether or replaced with lame menus/all-knowing enciclopedia.

Convience is good but not to the prejudice of immersion and roleplay.

I've also felt that the damage/armor formula in warband was much better and rewarding than bannerlord's, you felt the difference in damage between weapons or in your tankness as you upgraded from a lowly leather tunic to a swadian plate for example.

I like how bannerlord feels deadlier than warband but that should come from improved ai instead of cardboard armors lol
 
The State of Immersion: Bannerlord Edition

While playing through Bannerlord, I really feel like it's lacking a lot of the immersion and cohesion (features working in conjunction) that I find in Warband. That's not to say that I feel the game is bad, it's still good but it has so much more potential that I'm sure will come with time. Let me get straight in to it.

If any of the things I mentioned down below are already in the game, and I haven't noticed already let me know. Also reply with your own opinions or thoughts. I apologize in advance if these points have already been mentioned before or are in someway incorrect.
  • Offer of vassalage
    • In Warband, if you got earned a decent amount of renown and didn't belong to a Kingdom already, there was a chance you would receive a letter offering you a place as a vassal in x Kingdom. While I doubt it was a route many players took, it was there and it added a decision for you to make, one that could completely change the direction of your playthrough. As far as I know, this doesn't exist in Bannerlord.
  • Lords defecting to your Kingdom
    • I could be wrong on this one, but it feels like Clans don't defect to your own Kingdom? In Warband it felt pretty good to see a Lord leave their Kingdom and sit in your capital, for them to ASK YOU to join your Kingdom, once again adding choices to your playthrough and allowing you to grow your Kingdom without passing a bunch of skill checks and always having to make the first move.
  • Companions, companions, companions!
    • In Warband, each companion felt, looked and behaved uniquely. Companions had their backstories, base skills and personality types that would lead them to quarrel with each other. Yet again, adding choices to which companions you choose as you don't want them all hating each other, leading them to hate being apart of your party and ultimately ditching you. Doing certain actions such as raiding or failing quests would upset some companions but not others. Right now, they just feel like named soldiers that'll go along with anything, I barely care about who I pickup as long as they can fulfill a clan role that isn't occupied already.
  • Feasts/Tournaments
    • It was a meme, but now that they're gone, I miss them. They were an easy way to introduce yourself to all of the Lords in your (or another) Kingdom, get quests and meet ladies (Dedicating a Tournament victory to them also). Tournaments would be held when feasts were on-going, and thus allowed you to fight against Lords and not just a random pool of soldiers. Tournaments were a slightly more rare occurrence than what they are in Bannerlord, I feel like there is an abundance of Tournaments going on at any given time, allowing players to quickly rack up gold and items that you couldn't otherwise get so quickly. A Tournament in Warband felt like a great opportunity to get that extra income and renown, now it just feels like what I should be doing all the time making the gameplay loop quite repetitive, especially early-game. It just feels cheap. Feasts would also be good distraction for Lords, and allows for some tactics to be had, you could strike when the enemy was most vulnerable.
  • Armour Effectiveness/Feel
    • For context, I play with all realistic settings. I couldn't help but feel like as I acquired better and better armor, that it really didn't make much of a difference. Looters were throwing pebbles at me, taking a sizable chunk of my health with some of the most top-tier pieces of armor in the game. The game feels like it caters more towards quantity rather than quality when it comes to armies. In Warband, if I had a small band of elite tier troops, you bet your ass I could take on more enemies than usual. You could feel the difference so much more in Warband as you acquired better gear or upgraded your troops to the higher tiers. Armor also feels quite same-y, when you strike someone in full plate, it feels exactly the same as when I hit someone in leather. In Warband, when you try to swing a sword at full plate, they feel tanky and clanky.
  • Personality Types / Traits
    • In Bannerlord, there is suppose to be different traits people can have, though it doesn't feel like it's integrated into anything. All of the NPCs feel exactly the same and I don't feel as though I'm treated any differently based on how much Valor/Honor/Dishonesty/any other trait I may or may not have. The trait system doesn't feel cohesive with the rest of the game at all. I never get told when I receive a trait, and there's no indicators of how making a certain choice or choosing a certain dialog option will effect my traits. I feel the system could be great once it's implemented properly. Warband had a much simpler system of an Honor Rating for the player, and the NPCs had certain personality types that would react differently based on the players honor, relation and previous actions. I feel as though the Bannerlord system has much more potential than Warbands, but right now it seems useless.
  • Marshals and Marshalship
    • I can only describe having Marshals in Warband as being cool. It added another layer to the hierarchy in the factions, giving one Lord that extra bit of power and respect over the others, allowing them to call upon all the other Lords of the realm to go on a campaign. This feels so much more immersive than "Lord x has made an army, join it if you want, if not no worries, decisions don't matter". In Warband, you were SUMMONED by your Marshal, and if you didn't follow through then there were consequences. Furthermore, being offered Marshalship felt rewarding, it also felt risky as you now had a lot of responsibility. Now it just feels like: "okay let me spend this arbitrary number (influence) to force some NPCs to follow me".
  • Tavern NPCs
    • Ransom Brokers
      • Right now, you can sell prisoners to any city, some might consider this an improvement, but personally I liked that you weren't guaranteed to be able to sell your prisoners. It made storing prisoners in dungeons an actual useful thing, so you could sell them later when a ransom broker was closer to your fief. Not always being able to sell prisoners also encourages you to venture out to the world to find them, getting you in all kinds of trouble.
    • Wandering Minstrels
      • In Warband, these fine men could teach you poems, which you could later use to help woo a certain lady. This would help alot in Bannerlord because there is literally nothing you can do to boost relations lol.
    • Book Merchants
      • Book Merchants added another layer of depth to Warband, allowing you to read books to gain permanent or passive bonuses to your attributes. These would become very useful late game.
    • Travelers
      • These NPCs helped you find all of the above NPCs, plus your companions if they were captured or lost somehow. Right now everything is readily available in your encyclopedia, as if you have telepathic knowledge of everyone's location, nothing is less immersion breaking than that. I'm sure people don't mind it, but it would be cool to at-least have a realism option for this kind of stuff.
    • Quest NPCs
      • Occasionally in Warband you would find a farmer in a city tavern looking for someone to help his village that is infested with bandits. Adding more hidden away Quest NPCs in Taverns could add a lot to immersion and encourage exploration.


I'm sure there's plenty of more things that seem missing in Bannerlord that Warband had, and maybe not all of them are good and maybe even some of the points I mentioned above aren't good for Bannerlord, but the absence of all of them combined leaves me with an experience that is nowhere near as immersive as Warband. I look forward to the improvements that will come in the upcoming patches.

Great post.
 
I disagree with this too Im sorry but letting someone be retarded and do nothing unless its your turn absolutely ****s the vassal gameplay especially since the player is rarely chosen so you have to rely on retarded AI not to mention that this with feasts would **** up the mechanic
 
I thought TW would add even more or those things/refine them for bannerlord but instead they removed them alltogether or replaced with lame menus/all-knowing enciclopedia.

Yep, I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed with the lack of smaller yet finer details

I've also felt that the damage/armor formula in warband was much better and rewarding than bannerlord's, you felt the difference in damage between weapons or in your tankness as you upgraded from a lowly leather tunic to a swadian plate for example.

Exactly how I feel.

Great post.

Thank you.

There is nothing that has made me want to shoot myself more then feasts

I'm not saying they have to be implemented the same way as they were in Warband, or even feasts directly. I believe the game needs more content and events to make the world feel more alive and involved.
 
Did warband tournaments offer something I missed or what or was it the cool feast that did nothing execpt kill the kingdom

Once again, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the way Tournaments work. They're better now. Though they are so common, it feels like a cheesy way to get gold and items. They were slightly more rare in warband which made them feel more rewarding.
 
Once again, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the way Tournaments work. They're better now. Though they are so common, it feels like a cheesy way to get gold and items. They were slightly more rare in warband which made them feel more rewarding.
Not really though there was usually 1 in every kingdom and as you did one a new one would start there was hardly a time where there was no tournament not to mention the like 4800 denars you got for basically a guaranteed fight since the AI cannot comprehend going around things which could get you decent armour immediately you could get a cracked great winged helmet for 900 denars and it was like +57 head armour and you can also get decent gear in BL its less the money since its not much its usually the reward which is much better
 
Not really though there was usually 1 in every kingdom and as you did one a new one would start there was hardly a time where there was no tournament not to mention the like 4800 denars you got for basically a guaranteed fight since the AI cannot comprehend going around things which could get you decent armour immediately you could get a cracked great winged helmet for 900 denars and it was like +57 head armour and you can also get decent gear in BL its less the money since its not much its usually the reward which is much better

They were still less common, in my opinion I preferred it that way. I'm not saying Warband was better balanced, I just felt more immersed in the gameplay. I appreciate you disagree with me though
 
They were still less common, in my opinion I preferred it that way. I'm not saying Warband was better balanced, I just felt more immersed in the gameplay. I appreciate you disagree with me though
Or you could go to Praven and have 7 tournaments for the 7 day feasts hosted each day you could re do the tournament in neither game do tournaments feel rare
 
Or you could go to Praven and have 7 tournaments for the 7 day feasts hosted each day you could re do the tournament in neither game do tournaments feel rare

I feel you're missing my original point, I enjoyed that Tournaments were generally tied to feasts as it opened up more immersive gameplay, it made it easy to meet Lords, it boosted relations, if you won you could dedicate your victory. I'm not saying I want it to be like Warband exactly. Both games have their flaws and bannerlord does a lot right that warband doesn't. Making Tournaments more immersive in some way is what I would like.
 
The game is fun because of the battles, other than that it is bland and un immersive. It fails dramatically against Viking Conquest and even vanilla Warband in this area. I can't see how people are seeing this game as immersive, I can't turn it on without 20 mods or more. There is nothing to do to but fight battles and flip menu screens.
 
I feel you're missing my original point, I enjoyed that Tournaments were generally tied to feasts as it opened up more immersive gameplay, it made it easy to meet Lords, it boosted relations, if you won you could dedicated your victory. I'm not saying I want it to be like Warband exactly. Both games have their flaws and bannerlord does a lot right that warband doesn't. Making Tournaments more immersive some way is what I would like.
And what im saying is that I didn't enjoy them in neither game and in neither do they add any immersion because it happens because of some event wow our capital is being sieged and the king is doing a tournament like nothing is happening I feel like it went like this in warband "Sir Praven has been sieged what do we do Harlaus pulls out a shotgun and shoots the guy, thinks a bit you know what im gonna enter a tournament" tournaments happening due to feasts and feasts in general added no immersion to my games just tedium especially when you have your own kingdom where they say were gonna feast unless there is an emergency even if you call a campaign they don't stop
 
And what im saying is that I didn't enjoy them in neither game and in neither do they add any immersion because it happens because of some event wow our capital is being sieged and the king is doing a tournament like nothing is happening I feel like it went like this in warband "Sir Praven has been sieged what do we do Harlaus pulls out a shotgun and shoots the guy, thinks a bit you know what im gonna enter a tournament" tournaments happening due to feasts and feasts in general added no immersion to my games just tedium especially when you have your own kingdom where they say were gonna feast unless there is an emergency even if you call a campaign they don't stop

I definitely agree that feasts had bad timing for sure and they didn't always make sense in Warband. I feel as though if it was improved upon and had better decision making behind it, it would be better than whatever Bannerlord has now though. But I've come to understand your hatred for feasts and I'll just have to live with it xD
 
I definitely agree that feasts had bad timing for sure and they didn't always make sense in Warband. I feel as though if it was improved upon and had better decision making behind it, it would be better than whatever Bannerlord has now though. But I've come to understand your hatred for feasts and I'll just have to live with it xD
It goes to a much deeper level and no matter how much ****ing better even if its better then the entire rest of the game I will always have severe hate for feasts its personal
 
A simple condition like "is the realm at war? if yes then abort all feasts" would solve all the problems i had with them in warband, just add some musicians, animations for lords drinking and talking with each other, maybe a feast hunt/tournament and some more conversations during feasts and it would be a 1000x improvement over warband's, instead we got nothing on this department :party:
 
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