Lacking goals for late game

[Dabos37]

I have started a new campaign in 1.5.6, this time with some special rules to try to make the game harder and do not use any cheat/exploit which could make the game less challenging. For example:

- I am not using smithing
- I am not getting the broken “having going” perk
- I am not assaulting a besieged enemy fief if there is a stronger enemy army coming close to break the siege.
- Same for enemy parties, I do not attack an enemy lord party if there is another one close which could join the battle if we would play with the same AI rules and time would not stop in player’s battles.
- Of course, I did not use any save game if I lose a battle or made a mistake.

The result: currently at day 600, playing as SE vassal, I have the strongest clan in terms of money, influence and amount of fiefs (I am just behind rule clan in tier, my clan is still tier 5). When Rhagaea dies (she is close to 50 years old), I will be elected as new SE king, and Khuzaits are pretty weak in my current campaign (because I have been fighting them since the beginning), and my son is just 3 year old, while my MC is close to 30 years old... Now, the only thing I can do is just war, war, and war, while I am really far to be able to play as my son.

Aside from making the game more challenging, improving defensive AI in sieges for making getting fiefs more challenging, and adding more features, I think that 84 days per year is simply ridiculously high. Late game is currently pretty boring, anything happens aside from wars, and waiting close to 2K days for playing as my son is simply insane.

This is for me one of the biggest issues in Bannerlord, there is not really any incentive for long campaigns, while its best feature (generational gameplay IMO) is totally wasted because we are rarely able to actually enjoy it, and it is a feature which we can only enjoy in pretty long campaigns.

 

[Shun]

What would you imagine as an end game goal for a PC that is already king besides war and total domination?

 

[Julio-Claudian]

I don't think 84 days a year is too high at all, it's just that there is no way to pass the time apart from traversing the map or waiting in settlements, and waiting in settlements prevents you from actually doing anything so you have to just stare at the screen or stop paying attention to the game lol. If you could manage settlements, send messengers and orders, train troops, just walk around the town or whatever whilst time passed it might be less boring. Having a third and fourth time speed option also makes a big difference.

What would you imagine as an end game goal for a PC that is already king besides war and total domination?

Maintaining your position, kingdom management, diplomacy, dealing with conspiracies, avoiding civil wars, making decisions which affect the world.

 

[Worlok]

This is for me one of the biggest issues in Bannerlord, there is not really any incentive for long campaigns, while its best feature (generational gameplay IMO) is totally wasted because we are rarely able to actually enjoy it, and it is a feature which we can only enjoy in pretty long campaigns.

+1
Despite all the additional mechanics TW tried to implement, the game is just a battle simulator. I personally would recommend to slow down the war pace. Maybe make recruiting harder and resource dependent. Rebuilding of parties should take lot longer. The recruits are not clones after all. Villages are raided people killed where does those new recruits all come from
Unfortunately there is nothing meaningful to do in peace time. Yet, I think the majority of the players likes this fast pace and the other game mechanics are not interesting for them.

So there's nothing left for me to do, just hope someone will someday create a game with similar battle mechanic with proper economy, technology and kingdom management/world diplomacy.

 

[Earth Dragon]

+1
Despite all the additional mechanics TW tried to implement, the game is just a battle simulator. I personally would recommend to slow down the war pace. Maybe make recruiting harder and resource dependent. Rebuilding of parties should take lot longer. The recruits are not clones after all. Villages are raided people killed where does those new recruits all come from
Unfortunately there is nothing meaningful to do in peace time. Yet, I think the majority of the players likes this fast pace and the other game mechanics are not interesting for them.

So there's nothing left for me to do, just hope someone will someday create a game with similar battle mechanic with proper economy, technology and kingdom management/world diplomacy.

It’s hilarious you post this, only because a handful of people were griping that’s rebuilding a party should be easier after a lose hahaha

 

[Worlok]

It’s hilarious you post this, only because a handful of people were griping that’s rebuilding a party should be easier after a lose hahaha

That was meant in the context "how to make the game to be in sync with clan dynasty timing" - what takes at least 40-100 years. Most of the players never get there (I guess those are the ones you are reffering to).
I also added, that the lack of any other activity as fighting battles would make the game very boring with this slower recruitment.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

I'm hopeful that their supposed political swaying feature they are working on with help add some actual political gameplay. I just need something else to to keep me busy while moving from fight to fight. Will be great to have another use for influence other than voting and army building.

 

[Dabos37]

New features will help for sure, but I think it is mostly about balancing. The problem is that there are people who love challenging games, while other ones prefer an easy game, and enjoy being able to become king pretty fast and steamrolling the AI.

Aside from reducing days per year, I would love to see an Ironman mode where things would get really challenging. Not just about save games, but about making things really hard and making worth having to play long campaigns. Currently we can just do everything within the first 1000 days, and except if you want to paint the whole map with your banner, there is not anything else we can do because the game pacing is wrong. Wars and getting fiefs happen too fast while getting older too slow.

I am going to give a try to peacemaker mod in my next campaign, which allows us to set days per year, and set 28 days per year as default if you use this mod.

Pacemaker

Pacemaker can speed (or slow) the progression of campaign time through multiple powerful methods which may be freely mixed to your tastes. It was designed to help promote dynastic simulation mechanics

www.nexusmods.com

I do totally agree with mod description:


“Ever find it odd that, no matter how long you play the game, you never seem to get anywhere near, say, death by old age? Or even manage to watch your children fully come of age and live their adult lives as princes and princesses vying to succeed you?

This phenomenon is due to one simple reason: in vanilla, not enough years can reasonably pass in a single campaign to actually experience these things”

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Absolutely in accordance with the OP's line. The dynasty system, for me, is one of the mechanics as a flagship in this game and I also think that given what we have seen is totally wasted (actually). It's funny, because one of the first threads I created when I arrived at the forum was Offspring: it's a matter of time .

It's really ironic that just as the game despite the joke-meme considering it fast paced, but at the end of the day the pace of time is extremely slow.

We have already talked in different threads about this, for me buying expensive armor as the final goal of the game is not funny. For me and for many others that I have been reading, the late game is about investing in settlement projects, war mechanics and diplomacy.

 

[Flesson19]

I've suggested if things can be down to just mix up for the boring part of late game, form army, attack, rinse and repeat, now rebellions at an early stage is a start but more features like that can help, heck I am up for anything that break up the monotonie of late game. To tell the truth I don't have any great ideas but up for anything since when you own half the map it just gets boring fast, the best part of the game is the first 1,000 days. I know it's a war/domination game but adding a few features to mix it up could help alter the way end game feels.

 

[Dabos37]

Yes, the question is, how is possible that the first 1000 days in this game are pretty damn fun but after that, the game feels really empty and boring? The answer is simple, just think about playing a Crusader Kings 3 campaign, where you would have to play just with one character, start as a count, then become Duke, then become king and have the strongest kingdom, all of this while your character is still 30 years old or so and there is not any risk of your current kingdom getting divided or having a civil war... Just think how much boring this game would be.

Luckly Bannerlord has a pretty enjoyable combat system which is not perfect but it is addictive, so the game feels enjoyable the first 600-1000 days, but after some point, the campaign feels lackluster, empty, repetitive and zero challenging.

Paradox has found a pretty good balance between player progression feeling and campaign challenge, where the game has tons of dynamic events and you are constant facing new challenges. Bannerlord completely lacks this feeling, even when this game already has features which could make campaigns much more dynamic and enjoyable. The main problem here is that devs are making the game more and more and more static after every patch, where the player has not to face much drawbacks and the player snowballing is always bigger and bigger.

Aging&death is for sure one of the biggest challenges that devs have had in this game, it has brought tons of bugs and issues, and all the invested effort to make it work, is sadly wasted for 80-90% of the campaigns we play. On the other hand, I do not totally blame devs for this, and part of the issue is related to players feedback. For example:

- People complaining about companions and family members dying, instead of asking for a more dynamic game where replacements availability gets increased (I do agree with we have not much control about how to keep alive companions alive currently, especially in sieges, but this is a different matter).
- People asking for keeping armor after a character death, instead of asking for cheaper equipment (with more realistic prices) and having to buy a new one for new companions.
- People disagreeing about making the time past faster because they want to play everything with the main character (instead of just setting off aging&death feature).

Then we also have some bad TW decisions like:

- Making leveling system ridiculously slow, instead of making the game much more dynamic where characters grown and die much faster (setting less days per year), and we constantly have to face characters dying and having to rebuild them, while we still keep a progression feeling due to clan tier, getting new territory, etc (similar to what we have in Crusader kings).

Instead of making a great dynamic game, TW and some players have preferred a static game where the player has more and more, and rarely loses something, where the player is able to become insanely strong in some few days, and where any kind of challenging feeling disappear after day 300 or so.

If devs want to keep the current time pace and 84 days per year, wars and battles should be drastically reduced and siege times drastically increased. Otherwise, the war pacing and time pacing will continue being pretty inconsistent as now.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

I know it's easier said than done; however why not both?

I mean, why not have two experiences? Every campaign is proposed to the player conditioned by difficulty levels; why not an option of time, "fast paced" and "slow paced" ?

There will be people who will want a fast experience and carry out speedrun games conquering calradia in less than 10 years. Personally always envisioned Bannerlord with the dynastic system as a family marathon; "the power of the clan" was announced in the devblogs. I envisioned my first character as the first of a long line of characters that would thrive throughout the 200 years of lore that separate Bannerlord from Warband. Starting from the bottom and rising up the pyramid of power over time, positioning different family members in strategic positions, using advanced diplomacy, arranging marriages with other clans, etc.

Far from the reality of the game are these dreams of mine, I'm afraid ??.

---
Why no family trees yet?

Extended Family mod

 

[Dabos37]

I know it's easier said than done; however why not both?

I mean, why not have two experiences? Every campaign is proposed to the player conditioned by difficulty levels; why not an option of time, "fast paced" and "slow paced" ?

There will be people who will want a fast experience and carry out speedrun games conquering calradia in less than 10 years. Personally always envisioned Bannerlord with the dynastic system as a family marathon; "the power of the clan" was announced in the devblogs. I envisioned my first character as the first of a long line of characters that would thrive throughout the 200 years of lore that separate Bannerlord from Warband. Starting from the bottom and rising up the pyramid of power over time, positioning different family members in strategic positions, using advanced diplomacy, arranging marriages with other clans, etc.

Far from the reality of the game are these dreams of mine, I'm afraid ??.

Yes, adding an option for this would be ok, but soon or later, TW would be balancing the game around “default” pacing.

As I see it, you simply cannot appeal to everyone, and devs have already added an option for disabling aging&death for people who love to conquer the world playing as a single dude. Now we are still missing a lot of game potential because TW still want to please these people liking to do everything with a single character, which is silly and a nonsense for me. Aging pace and war pace are totally inconsistent, and this brings a lot of issues like lords fighting 8263728 battles per year, and having to reduce death chance to 0,00001%, just because for some reason devs want to waste one of the most interesting features of the game (generational gameplay and permanent death).

 

[Moton]

+1
Despite all the additional mechanics TW tried to implement, the game is just a battle simulator. I personally would recommend to slow down the war pace. Maybe make recruiting harder and resource dependent. Rebuilding of parties should take lot longer. The recruits are not clones after all. Villages are raided people killed where does those new recruits all come from
Unfortunately there is nothing meaningful to do in peace time. Yet, I think the majority of the players likes this fast pace and the other game mechanics are not interesting for them.

So there's nothing left for me to do, just hope someone will someday create a game with similar battle mechanic with proper economy, technology and kingdom management/world diplomacy.

I actually dont think people like this. Companies think that a majority of players want fast paced gameplay but I dont think that's the case, especially when it comes to singleplaying players. I mean EA games once thought people dont want singleplayer games and yet some of the most sold games the last 10 years have been singleplayer only games.

Having a fast paced game with no depth in a singleplayer environment is a sure way to bore people the hell out after a couple of hours.

 

[Dabos37]

I actually dont think people like this. Companies think that a majority of players want fast paced gameplay but I dont think that's the case, especially when it comes to singleplaying players. I mean EA games once thought people dont want singleplayer games and yet some of the most sold games the last 10 years have been singleplayer only games.

Having a fast paced game with no depth in a singleplayer environment is a sure way to bore people the hell out after a couple of hours.

I think that a fasted paced campaign would be more enjoyable, in terms of characters dying after 800-1000 days (talking about the time for a 18 years old character and do not taking into account previous ages). Now they die after 2600 days (assuming that MC dies about 50 years old or so. 2600 days = 30 years in game, which is just an insane amount of days), but I would also like if war pace would get slower.

The option we have:

- Faster aging pace while keep the same war pace
- Same aging pace and slower war pace
- A bit faster aging pace and a bit slower war pace
- Keep the game as it is now, where lords have to fight an insane amount of battles per year, where we can destroy a whole faction in two years, where we can conquer like +5 fiefs per year, and having to reduce death chance to 0,5% or so because the game is simply awfully balanced.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

There will be people who will want a fast experience and carry out speedrun games conquering calradia in less than 10 years. Personally always envisioned Bannerlord with the dynastic system as a family marathon; "the power of the clan" was announced in the devblogs. I envisioned my first character as the first of a long line of characters that would thrive throughout the 200 years of lore that separate Bannerlord from Warband. Starting from the bottom and rising up the pyramid of power over time, positioning different family members in strategic positions, using advanced diplomacy, arranging marriages with other clans, etc.

This is what I was always expecting too. Even though it's my 'favourite' game, or the only game I currently have any interest in, I haven't started a campaign in weeks because I'm bored of playing short campaigns with no challenge after a certain point.

I actually dont think people like this. Companies think that a majority of players want fast paced gameplay but I dont think that's the case, especially when it comes to singleplaying players. I mean EA games once thought people dont want singleplayer games and yet some of the most sold games the last 10 years have been singleplayer only games.

Having a fast paced game with no depth in a singleplayer environment is a sure way to bore people the hell out after a couple of hours.

I think it's that companies think people don't want deep strategy games with complex features, or at least that there aren't enough people who want that to warrant catering a game to that group. I don't think it's really untrue tbh. It seems to have worked for TotalWar, even though I see so many long-time players of that series saying they're done with it it seems to be more popular than ever. Expanding the audience is the #1 goal of companies these days it seems.

 

[Moton]

I think that a fasted paced campaign would be more enjoyable, in terms of characters dying after 800-1000 days (talking about the time for a 18 years old character and do not taking into account previous ages). Now they die after 2600 days (assuming that MC dies about 50 years old or so. 2600 days = 30 years in game, which is just an insane amount of days), but I would also like if war pace would get slower.

The option we have:

- Faster aging pace while keep the same war pace
- Same aging pace and slower war pace
- A bit faster aging pace and a bit slower war pace
- Keep the game as it is now, where lords have to fight an insane amount of battles per year, where we can destroy a whole faction in two years, where we can conquer like +5 fiefs per year, and having to reduce death chance to 0,5% or so because the game is simply awfully balanced.

Im not talking about how fast time passes when I'm saying fast paced gameplay. I can agree that time can flow faster but faster days doesen't mean fast paced gameplay itself.

I think it's that companies think people don't want deep strategy games with complex features, or at least that there aren't enough people who want that to warrant catering a game to that group. I don't think it's really untrue tbh. It seems to have worked for TotalWar, even though I see so many long-time players of that series saying they're done with it it seems to be more popular than ever. Expanding the audience is the #1 goal of companies these days it seems.

Maybe that's true but games like Total war as you said, Crusader kings and such are very popular. Those are games with extremely slow gameplay. Altho none of them are as popular as battle royale type or FPS titles but Bannerlord will never become like any of those.

Bannerlord feels like a game that wants to be something it cant and it kindof loses itself on the way and lands on some kind of strange middle ground.

 

[BoBB]

There're a couple of mods out there that might address this issue...if they work. They do seem very promising but I can't get them to work for 1.5.4:

They are:

>More settlement actions https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2483
>Rulership - petitioners https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2562

 

[Apocal]

Maybe that's true but games like Total war as you said, Crusader kings and such are very popular.

That's a terrible example to support your point that complicated games can still be popular because Bannerlord is currently ahead of Crusader Kings 3 in terms of active players.

 

[Magello]

The dynasty system can be cool, however, is there really a point outside of the player character? I mean I don't hate or love any other noble. I don't have a rival or really a friend. They all feel like the same person in a way. TW talked about it before I think but they need to make the other nobles have more personality. They do have little difference but make you want to say how much you hate them, or how good of a friend they are.

This I really think is a big part of making the dynasty system, which I think is a big part of the "late game", is giving everyone else more character so I care they died. Make the dishonorable who hate you be relentless in raiding your villages, sabotaging your businesses, and destroying your caravans. Have the honorable ones who are your friends help patrol a fief you have in a more hostile zone.