Leveling and why it sucks

[Reiksmarshal]

So after the last update I had to remove a mod I was using called experience multiplier, after removing it I can't believe how bad leveling still is in vanilla and can't stand it. The way it scales and especially how learning rate decrease for all skills is ridiculous and needs some tuning. Not that it matters but here is what I would suggest:

1. Each attribute group learning rate should be independent and only go down as those skill are leveled, leveling vigor skills should not affect learning rate of endurance skills etc.

2. The beginning is balanced nice but falls apart at about level 12-15 and the grind is near impossible. 10 years into a game and my character barely has the skills of a recruit in a FEW skills only.

3. Make Attributes do something other than learning rate. Make vigor increase damage by 1% for each level and top out at 10% for example.

4. Balance experience gains from level12+, gets too hard at the high levels. I have 705 hours in this game and I have never maxed out or even come close to maxing out a skill. Maybe 200 at best!

Otherwise can't play this game without x5 experience multiplier

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

The" level up = skill learning down" is the worst part to me. You get punished for participating in the game since every action gives exp to level, regardless of how you specked your char. You fight enemies and boom you're level 20 no matter where you put your points, good luck learning the passive skills.
You get more fp and attributes, but we want the skills we already chose to go up fast, not even more skills that are also too slow now....why would we want that?!

You're right on about splitting the categories and having attributes do something... if they MUST have attributes and categories.

I'm all for just ditching attributes and letting fp run the show and remove the level up penalty and balance each skill appropriately.

Your character dies, so there's no reason to think "oh no the player will get to powerful" you could play till100 years old and not get 1/2 the stuff.
Most of it is just "neat-o" anyways.

I'm wondering if they have something in mind for attributes though, since the child education (so far) seems to be more about attributes and less FP and even less about skills..... I sure hope so because a character doing well (or anything) is entirely about skills and not about the attributes or fp themselves at all.

 

[Mikal Manfriedson]

Yeah, the level up skill learning down feature must go - the rest seems to work as intended. I mean currently I am not really happy at levelling just because I know it will be harder to get my skills up. And the stat point every 4 levels? Sheesh...not really worth it. Grind for one measly focus point that becomes more and more inefficient as it only serves to keep skills open while the rest go the road to neverland?
Also, learning limit should not bar us from progression but after learning limit there should be a reduction like XPx0.5 so progress still is possible but significantly slower than someone apt at the skill.

Bring back the books for further focus point like
'The worth of all things' -> 1 focus point in trade + decrease trade penalty by 5% for goods, weapons and animals for buy and sell
'The art of war' -> 1 focus point in leadership + 1 Focus point in Tactics
'De artium medicae' -> 1 Focus point to medicine + 3% increase in healing rate +1% death aversion

See where this is going?

 

[AndrewArt]

I agree with you guys. The learning down feature is really, really bad. I would love if they balanced each skill tree appropriately after they set a proper balanced exp requirement for every skill from 1 to 300, and then make learning rate cap at 10x (as an example) for each skill if you have 10 attributes/5 focus points. Even this is a very simple and effective solution. I just don't want my learning rate to go down, easy as that.

Whatever the devs choose to do, the current system is just very lacking and it's simply not enjoyable, which is why many people tweak it to begin with. I don't want to use mods yet, at least until steam workshop is a thing, so I am pushing for them to solve the issues that are in native bannerlord so they make a good game and not rely on mods to do so for them.

Also, they should implement death in battles and let us be punished if we play badly. If I lose to a bunch of looters I should have a chance to be killed, just so it balances the leveling system with some risk (once they do fix this system). Dying in battle will be the thing that will keep characters from reaching max skills in everything, and this is how it should honestly be. Some will save-scum, it's a singleplayer game so that's fine. Some will die and accept it - then you have the heir system and you start over again. And some will play very tactically, carefully, and avoid death, and create a legendary character. And he will feel very, very happy about it and feel like he achieved something. He did that. And that is fun.

-Thank you for making this post as well, maybe this will motivate the developers to do something about this issue finally, since it feels like I've spoken on these issue for months now but really no action from the developers... But seeing how it is of multiple people's concern, I do have hope now that they will do something about it eventually.

Plenty of solutions have been given, there are plenty of options to make this character progression system better, so I am hoping they will do so.

 

[Brentimus Maximus]

I'm going to have to mostly agree here. Leveling up is not very rewarding, its a grind for moderate gains and getting to the next level takes too long given all of my activity.

 

[Lag'ier Barlida]

You know what's worse?
Your heir is weaker than your lvl1 first character, that means the first character is already the easiest/best/most "enjoyable" character for character build

 

[Delinard]

You know what's worse?
Your heir is weaker than your lvl1 first character, that means the first character is already the easiest/best/most "enjoyable" character for character build

Is it possible to play as your brother? At least you can have fun with a really good character for few years in the end lol.

 

[FlowDream]

There is many threads of level system, but tw seems can not see it, emm...

 

[shikaka]

While I agree with the above, I have a completely different problem with the levelling system.

As a tabletop GM, I used quite a few systems which are similar to this. The system I used most which is similar to this is "basic roleplay", which is the system of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu and Elric! games.
I admit that it has some good ideas, but after some times I realized why I don't like it:

1: since players improve stuff what they use, if they act as a group, they end up the same after a time. A good example is the last pulp Call of Cthulhu campaign. After a while even the nun and the surgeon character, who started with absolutely zero skill had 60-70% shotgun and dodge skill. The gangster, who started with 50, managed to increase it to 80% in the meantime.
This is not good!

2: (this is actually more relevant to Bannerlord than it first seems) Players need opportunities to actually use the skills they want. If every game is combat focused, they will not be able to level up, let's say law and library use. So, the GM has to:
- know before starting what the players want to level up (quite possible that they don't know for sure)
- and invent extra scenes, in which they can use the skill they want to level
- this actually results in a quite artificial and not satisfying pacing of the game
The only other solution is to accept that players don't really have agency on what they want to level up.


#2 is actually valid for Bannerlord, and it is actually not easy to fix. If the players need to use the skills to level them up, they need
- more opportunities to use non-combat skills. Currently, quite a few skills are shorthanded with training opportunities.
- meaningful choices in so that they cannot level up everything (eg. should I use my persuasion which could use some improvement, or should I use bribing, which doesn't improve anything, but has a 100% chance if I pay enough)

 

[Mitty]

I wonder if Taleworlds are just down right incompetent at this point, at least the people in charge of the decisions, such things should be so obvious to them IF they played their own game at least a little. Or maybe it's an issue of taste. In any case so many poor choices are made regarding gameplay that without mods it's just not worth playing.
I doubt even at release it would be corrected as it seems it's the deciding people who take all the bad decisions. From what I've seen some devs that really like playing the game have better ideas, I hope their voice could be heard more

 

[shikaka]

I wonder if Taleworlds are just down right incompetent at this point, at least the people in charge of the decisions, such things should be so obvious to them IF they played their own game at least a little. Or maybe it's an issue of taste. In any case so many poor choices are made regarding gameplay that without mods it's just not worth playing.
I doubt even at release it would be corrected as it seems it's the deciding people who take all the bad decisions. From what I've seen some devs that really like playing the game have better ideas, I hope their voice could be heard more

I don't think they are incompetent, rather the opposite.
Taleworlds was the first, and maybe the only company to this day, who could come up with enjoyable mounted combat in a video game.
The melee is also the best available. Enjoyable, and passably realistic (ok, you will not be able to go full realism with this. For example imagine programming realistic grapple moves. Not possible at all I think).
As a bonus, the Mount and blade games have the most enjoyable archery too.

So, this is quite a feat, quite big A+ companies couldn't do the same.


Why people are a bit disappointed I think is that while Bannerlord will be the best medieval combat simulator soon (I think at this specific moment Warband is better, but not by much, if all things are considered), players expected it to be something more than that.
Me too, but when I want to be honest, I cannot support my ideal Bannerlord (which is a crusader kings-total war-warband hybrid) with Taleworlds promises.

Currently Talewords is fixing the combat, which is their main focus. And they might, or might not add new features on top of it, or change existing ones.

One could say that they were not communicating their vision of the full game efficiently, but they are not incompetent.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

I wonder if Taleworlds are just down right incompetent at this point, at least the people in charge of the decisions, such things should be so obvious to them IF they played their own game at least a little. Or maybe it's an issue of taste. In any case so many poor choices are made regarding gameplay that without mods it's just not worth playing.
I doubt even at release it would be corrected as it seems it's the deciding people who take all the bad decisions. From what I've seen some devs that really like playing the game have better ideas, I hope their voice could be heard more

You understand how these type of comments make your point less meaningful right? Buried somewhere in this torrent of pointless abuse is a fair argument that I actually sort of agree with. If you could make this same argument while baring in mind TW employees are human beings it would help dramatically.

If someone came into your place of work and said these things about you; how would you feel and why should you have to put up with it?

 

[Sparticulous]

Leveling rebalanced fixes the leveling issues

 

[black_bulldog]

You understand how these type of comments make your point less meaningful right? Buried somewhere in this torrent of pointless abuse is a fair argument that I actually sort of agree with. If you could make this same argument while baring in mind TW employees are human beings it would help dramatically.

If someone came into your place of work and said these things about you; how would you feel?

If you think this is abuse you've lived a very sheltered life, this is just frustration. I made a comment some time ago that I found several aspects of this game, including leveling, to be so painfully slow that they're grindy to the levels of an mmo and a dev who responded was actually surprised. It's that kind of disconnect that is causing problems for TW. It's frustrating to be in a 1 way conversation especially when they specifically ask for player feedback during the ea and when we ask questions all we get is radio static. TW are their own worst enemies.

Leveling rebalanced fixes the leveling issues

I have no issues with mods, in fact I love modding games. But there some who don't like it and a core component of a game like leveling shouldn't be something that should have to be modded just to make it playable without putting in 50+ hours.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

If you think this is abuse you've lived a very sheltered life, this is just frustration. I made a comment some time ago that I found several aspects of this game, including leveling, to be so painfully slow that they're grindy to the levels of an mmo and a dev who responded was actually surprised. It's that kind of disconnect that is causing problems for TW. It's frustrating to be in a 1 way conversation especially when they specifically ask for player feedback during the ea and when we ask questions all we get is radio static. TW are their own worst enemies.


I have no issues with mods, in fact I love modding games. But there some who don't like it and a core component of a game like leveling shouldn't be something that should have to be modded just to make it playable without putting in 50+ hours.

No it's about civility. There is just no need for taunting the staff; it adds nothing to the conversation. Regardless why does everything have to be black and white on this forum? The leveling is slow; that's it. It's functional, it serves a purpose and it is clear it's not finished. Why do we have to instantly go to hurling abuse?

 

[Lag'ier Barlida]

Is it possible to play as your brother? At least you can have fun with a really good character for few years in the end lol.

Afair it's possible, but your brother is weaker than your first character a bit if you carefully build your guy.

My point is the heir system could be the juice to give lvl system a surprise, that your next generation have more attribute/focus points so that they could reach high skills easier and faster, it fit the game design that "the later the better, the later the more enjoyable", but atm it's just a QoL nightmare.

 

[black_bulldog]

No it's about civility. There is just no need for taunting the staff; it adds nothing to the conversation. Regardless why does everything have to be black and white on this forum? The leveling is slow; that's it. It's functional, it serves a purpose and it is clear it's not finished. Why do we have to instantly go to hurling abuse?

This is about people giving feedback. I get that you don't like how they do it, but regardless it is feedback. TW is free to do with said feedback as they see fit. If a TW employee or the moderators feel someone is out of line then they can give a warning.
Yes leveling is functional it's just a lot of people on these forums feel it's unnecessarily slow especially on certain skills and it's remain unchanged for months.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

This is about people giving feedback. I get that you don't like how they do it, but regardless it is feedback. TW is free to do with said feedback as they see fit. If a TW employee or the moderators feel someone is out of line then they can give a warning.
Yes leveling is functional it's just a lot of people on these forums feel it's unnecessarily slow especially on certain skills and it's remain unchanged for months.

Why does someone need to throw insults into their feedback? Why would that encourage TW to take that feedback on board? Why can't people just act like adults?

I'm sorry but it's rubbish - if you can't offer feedback without threatening or insulting the people who you want to read it; then you don't deserve to have it taken on board. This just goes for life in general by the way - this isn't TW or online specific. Treat people how you would wish others would treat you. It's not a difficult concept and this forum forgets it way too often.

His point was fine - the dev's active on this forum should have their voices heard. They have a great grasp on the community feedback; but this isn't the way to show it... it does more damage then good.

 

[AndrewArt]

This is about people giving feedback. I get that you don't like how they do it, but regardless it is feedback. TW is free to do with said feedback as they see fit. If a TW employee or the moderators feel someone is out of line then they can give a warning.
Yes leveling is functional it's just a lot of people on these forums feel it's unnecessarily slow especially on certain skills and it's remain unchanged for months.

slow, inconsistent, and bad design decisions that make leveling slower in every skill the more you level up... I am honestly surprised that they haven't done anything about it for so long. I just wish for this feedback to be heard so that they can finally do something about it and improve gameplay. If it was just "slow" I wouldn't mind it as much, but with the inconsistency and that level-up thingy it's just too much. I don't mind a game that is grindy, but there is good grindy and then there is bad grindy, which is what we have here...

 

[Magello]

I really feel it is because TW clearly has an idea for what the player wants/should do. Problem is, the base doesn't seem to agree. I wanted multiple ways to handle missions, conquer fiefs, and role play.

But I think TW is making a medieval combat sim with lots of quick bloody battles. The rest, trading, looting, and whatnot are just added distractions.