The 'Consolization' of Mount and Blade and Bannerlord

[vonbalt]

idk why you find those disheartening. kingdoms go to war when they're strong, their enemies are weak and think they can win the war. the "border incidents" are just the declared reason to gather support. just like the weapons of mass destructions, "spreading freedom" or "fighting terrorism".
they're just cutting the BS.

village building needs to be brought back though.

multiplayer stuff can be easily solved with private servers.

the game is still being developed. dialogues will be written and will get fleshed out. warband's missing features are simple so they're easy to add. but they nees to finish the basic game (all AIs, performance, balance, scenes, equipment, etc) before that.

Because they had those internal discussions years ago as Mexxico pointed out and decided to streamline the game instead of going into a bolder direction, maybe it was aiming for those sweet console sales or just wanting to make the game more "accessible" to attract a larger audience no matter the platform, similar to the way Bethesda went with the Elder Scrolls series with each newer game being more dumbed down than the last but they sell amazingly well because of the shinny improved graphics while the rest of the game suffers.

I enjoyed Daggerfall and Morrowind in vanilla, Oblivion i used maybe a dozen or so mods to improve areas i found lacking in the game, Skyrim i have 412 mods installed (just counted) to make it truly enjoyable to me like the ones before it (most of them are balancing or adding places/features mentioned in lore but absent in-game)

And about those features you just said yourself why i found them disheartening, it's too simplified from what it could be and yeah many features from warband were simple or barebones but they were there in vanilla and mods could build upon them, in bannerlord i hoped we would get basically an warband 2 in how warband took everything from classic, added some cool new features and improved graphics, combat and map.

Bannerlord is a good game but it's lacking in many fronts and far from what it could really become, i had high hopes during the start of the EA but it's being developed so slow and cautiously, they don't dare to add anything truly grand beyond bugfixes and small features here and there.

 

[Mad Vader]

It really makes sense that they focus on new players and don't want them to be confused by interesting features. The old players are literally dying by now, so why bother with them if the final release would outlive them anyway.

@vonbalt I always read your name as Von Bait and expect a troll post, only to be disappointed each time

Maybe they just add an auto aim system like GTA or RDR did? Of course they´ll remove the manual aiming for mouse and keyboard players too

Top banter.

 

[D0c1]

streamline the game instead of going into a bolder direction

that's the thing. is it being streamlined? i can count one dropped feature (village building) or two if you consider making villages into castles a separate feature.

it's the little things that made warband great and there's still room for them to be added. personally, i believe they'll be added later on but if we have to pester the devs for them to be added, we will.

similar to the way Bethesda went with the Elder Scrolls series with each newer game being more dumbed down than the last but they sell amazingly well because of the shinny improved graphics while the rest of the game suffers.

bethesda had deep features (spell crafting) that they cut from their later installments. i can't remember a feature as deep being present in warband.
bethesda is using super old engine to make maximum money out of their titles. taleworlds made a new engine and is making it as moddable as it can along the way.

it's too simplified from what it could be and yeah many features from warband were simple or barebones but they were there in vanilla and mods could build upon them, in bannerlord i hoped we would get basically an warband 2 in how warband took everything from classic, added some cool new features and improved graphics, combat and map.

we should compare bannerlord to taleworlds earlier titles. not what could have been.
warband's features are simple enough to add. if they got added, we'll have the warband 2.0 that we all want on our hands. as i said above, they have to finish the basic game before adding those features because otherwise, bannerlord will be atrocious. we'll pester them to do it if needs be.

Bannerlord is a good game but it's lacking in many fronts and far from what it could really become, i had high hopes during the start of the EA but it's being developed so slow and cautiously, they don't dare to add anything truly grand beyond bugfixes and small features here and there

taleworlds have always been slow and i personally think that them working from home is making them even slower. i don't believe caution has anything to do with them being slow.

i didn't expect them fixing bugs and improving performance for close to a year after early access start too. but as long as they don't think that their game is finished, they can take their time finishing it.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Wish they would just keep consoles separate from the PC version because every time a game tries to do both consoles and PC, it usually ends up a set of compromises that don't satisfy anymore. I mean a $500 PS/5 isn't going to come close to being as capable as my $3500 monstrous PC gaming rig and what I am looking for is a game that nearly brings my $3500 gaming rig to its knees, not something that works well on a $500 console. I mean I am fine with there being a console version of the game, just don't dump down the capabilities of the game just to get it working on a console, especially when I only care about the single player sandbox experience anyway.

 

[kreamy]

Wish they would just keep consoles separate from the PC version because every time a game tries to do both consoles and PC, it usually ends up a set of compromises that don't satisfy anymore. I mean a $500 PS/5 isn't going to come close to being as capable as my $3500 monstrous PC gaming rig and what I am looking for is a game that nearly brings my $3500 gaming rig to its knees, not something that works well on a $500 console. I mean I am fine with there being a console version of the game, just don't dump down the capabilities of the game just to get it working on a console, especially when I only care about the single player sandbox experience anyway.

You couldnt build a PS5 PC comparable for $500 dollars though.... PS5 more like $1500 pc -- That and PS5 uses technology thats not mainstream on pc yet...

 

[Midnitewolf]

It's neither about consoles nor about people being dumb.

The problem is that the game already is quite complex, almost everything that happens in the game is based on world events rather than simulation and AI cheats. If a clan has money or not depends on what's happening in the game for example. Some features would make the game so complex that the AI couldn't handle it anymore.

I hate to say it but they made a lot of things overly complex and those things are kind of ruining the game. Production for example and its effects on not only availability but also its after effects on the economy and loot after battles. The game didn't need some complex production formula to make the game fun and I honestly feel it would be a better game if they would have just coded merchant inventories to have specific items show up at specific prices maybe with the towns prosperity level taken into account what price or how rare an item should be. Instead they have some crazy formula that starts at zero and ramps up production as the game plays which is also highly dependent on the prosperity of the city. This is why it takes 300-500 days for the better armors and weapons to start showing up in game and also why we have crazy pricing issues with good helmets costing more than it would cost you to barter for an entire town and why we can't have good loot drop because it would have a crazy sell price that would imbalance the game economy.

The thing I have to wonder however is how many features like the growing of a village to a castle to a town, had to be scrapped because it became too complex due to an already way too complex economic and production simulation being in place?

 

[Midnitewolf]

You couldnt build a PS5 PC comparable for $500 dollars though.... PS5 more like $1500 pc -- That and PS5 uses technology thats not mainstream on pc yet...

From a raw gaming power standpoint, you could build a gaming PC under $1000, probably even as low as $800 that would give you the same gaming performance as a console, well if you could buy GPUs at MSRP anyway.

However, that isn't what I am talking about. There is nothing wrong with consoles, I absolutely think they have their place but what often happens is that developers will dumb down their game to run on a console leaving the PC gamer with an inferior product. For example, taking cost out of the equation, the PS/5 is probably 1/3 the performance of my gaming rig which often lead the game being 1/3 the game I could be getting if they weren't trying to accommodate the console players by making one version of the game for both consoles and PC. I don't really care if they make a stripped down version of Bannerlord for console players, I just want my badassery PC version capable of making my $3500 PC groan under the weight of running it all maxed out.

I guess my point is don't strip down the PC version to accommodate consoles. Instead build a console version with all the limitations that comes with consoles in tandem with an unlimited PC version capable of taking on anything PCs will throw at it.

The bigger problem though is the players. If the devs were to actually put out two versions, one dumbed down for consoles and one ramped up for PCs, the console players start complaining that they didn't get a full featured game and that they were left out and yadda, yadda, yadda. They can't accept that their $500 investment has limitations and that their version of the game is going to have limitations as well. Often because of this outrage from console players, developers often cave to this line of thought, especially since consoles are a bigger market anymore, and start using console performance as the baseline for PC performance as well. This is why so many PC gamers tend to cringe the second anyone mentioned consoles because the PC gamer ultimately seems to suffer for consoles being included as a target market.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a good example of the negatives with adding a console version in my opinion. The vast majority of PC players love the game even with its warts but there is tons of negative press surrounding the game mostly due to last gen console players who had unrealistic expectations that the game would offer AAA performance on 7 year old hardware. Hell even current gen console players aren't happy because the game was obviously designed to run its best on fairly high powered, current generation PCs and to even look further at the new, upcoming currently unreleased hardware that will push the boundaries even further. If they would have just stuck to a PC only release, I bet Cyberpunk 2077 would have made game of the year.

 

[MostBlunted]

Cyberpunk 2077 is a good example of the negatives with adding a console version in my opinion. The vast majority of PC players love the game even with its warts but there is tons of negative press surrounding the game mostly due to last gen console players who had unrealistic expectations that the game would offer AAA performance on 7 year old hardware.

Cyberpunk is even on a good PC ****. Sure, it looks better, still the AI / open world stuff sucks...and I didn´t buy Bannerlord because of it´s graphics alone.

Even on my rig NPC people just vanish into thin air if I turn around....

MY PC:

Ryzen 7 3800 XT - 4,2 GHZ (overclocked)
32 GB DDR4 3200 MHZ
Nvidia 3080 ASUS TUF
2 x 1 TB M2 SSD
1 x 1 TB SSD
......

 

[Berzerker Jay]

I see too many PC games going cheese so they can be the exact same for console as PC. We pay more for graphics cards and all that so we can play better, more complex games. Honestly, I've accidentally bought a few of these games, but I don't make a habit of it and when I make the mistake I make an effort to remember and not support the developer in the future.

Honestly, it's real cheese. Make another version for console, more simplistic, but do it to my PC experience at your game's peril -- I'd buy a console if I wanted console-level simplicity. Hell, why not make it so simple it can be played on smartphones....

 

[Berzerker Jay]

Please don't become CDProjekt Red, Taleworlds....

 

[Apocal]

If they would have just stuck to a PC only release, I bet Cyberpunk 2077 would have made game of the year.

This is the worst example you could've picked.