Suicide Bandits During Quest

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hruza

Knight at Arms
During guest to hunt down 2-3 groups of bandits in vicinity, bandit AI is switched to "do not run from player" mode, making whole guest almost trivial.

Does it irritate somebody else how devs sometimes try to make it trivial for player to finish the quest? Because more I play more this quest is irritating me. It's A, immersion breaking and B, quests should pose at last some challenge, they shouldn't be about mechanical clicking. If devs want to give player free relations then why bother with the quest to begin with. Bandit parties are not too difficult to catch so player don't need this sort of help. Besides it's an example of a bad design, if devs think that guest is too difficult, they should change the quest and it's structure, not dumb down AI in such a blatant way.

Also in general I see a tendency to "hold player by hand" during quests, when compared to Warband, something that is becoming common all across comp. game industry. Quests should stimulate some brain activity in player, he might be given hints but they should not be in a form of "do this, then do that". Let us figure things a bit on our own.

P.S.: does somebody know how to turn off / mod off this behavior during this quest?
 
It is because of steppe bandits. Their parties are almost always faster than player parties, unless you optimize for speed. Desert bandits used to be a problem as well but they fixed, disabled or limited upgrades for bandit parties at some point, so they never become 100% mounted like steppe bandits.

Edit: I woukd ay the real culprit is the reduction in quest radius introduced in early autumn last year. It isn't hard to run bandits down but unless your party is much faster, they'll be outside of the radius and not count towards the goal. Maybe they changed it, I'd have to fire it up and check again, but if not, the quest is in exercise in frustration.
 
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Nope, this doesn’t bother me. I actually wish it was easier to send companions on this. But when I’m trying to help my villages out and having my large party with me, I don’t want to try and run down parties of 15 with 110 troops.
 
It is because of steppe bandits. Their parties are almost always faster than player parties, unless you optimize for speed. Desert bandits used to be a problem as well but they fixed, disabled or limited upgrades for bandit parties at some point, so they never become 100% mounted like steppe bandits.

I can see how desert and steppe bandits can be a problem to early party without horses. But then you can just hunt looters instead. They are in abundance everywhere. In the worst case scenario, you can just drive some in to the quest radius.

Besides, if you want to consistently play in the steppe regions of the map, you probably should run mounted party. It's horse archers territory.

Edit: I woukd ay the real culprit is the reduction in quest radius introduced in early autumn last year. It isn't hard to run bandits down but unless your party is much faster, they'll be outside of the radius and not count towards the goal. Maybe they changed it, I'd have to fire it up and check again, but if not, the quest is in exercise in frustration.

As of right now radius seems to be fairly generous to me. But then I don't remember having problems with it in the past so I have newer payed attention how big it was before. You can always drive them back, as long as you are faster. If you are not and you are not able to catch bandit parties, then you probably shouldn't take that quest. It would be like taking caravan escort quest without having enough soldiers to defend the caravan.
 
It doesn't bother me either. Even with my fast khuzait army those 12-ish bandit groups are a hassle to chase down because of how much bigger my party is. I use those quests as an opportunity to clean the area off bandits and help the economy a bit.
 
During guest to hunt down 2-3 groups of bandits in vicinity, bandit AI is switched to "do not run from player" mode, making whole guest almost trivial.

Does it irritate somebody else how devs sometimes try to make it trivial for player to finish the quest? Because more I play more this quest is irritating me. It's A, immersion breaking and B, quests should pose at last some challenge, they shouldn't be about mechanical clicking. If devs want to give player free relations then why bother with the quest to begin with. Bandit parties are not too difficult to catch so player don't need this sort of help. Besides it's an example of a bad design, if devs think that guest is too difficult, they should change the quest and it's structure, not dumb down AI in such a blatant way.
I have seen in other posts people complaining about not being able to catch bandit parties...
This is what happens when you consider only "one majority" of players...
Also in general I see a tendency to "hold player by hand" during quests, when compared to Warband, something that is becoming common all across comp. game industry. Quests should stimulate some brain activity in player, he might be given hints but they should not be in a form of "do this, then do that". Let us figure things a bit on our own.
Not only in quests, tutorials (sometimes even forced) are also really painful for me.
What is the point to develop mechanics if you don't let people discover them by themselves...
P.S.: does somebody know how to turn off / mod off this behavior during this quest?
Don't think there are any.
 
During guest to hunt down 2-3 groups of bandits in vicinity, bandit AI is switched to "do not run from player" mode, making whole guest almost trivial.

Does it irritate somebody else how devs sometimes try to make it trivial for player to finish the quest?
Nope, it is a major improvement and a necessary step to make that quest even remotely worth doing. I never bothered with it before, particularly later, where you need to hunt down 8 parties.

Even now it is still an annoying quest because it only counts if no-one escape. Given that the AI (cav) is hopeless at pursuit it pretty much force you to do half the killing in person.

So, by all means I can only encourage TW to "hold my hand" all they want if it helps make stuff actually worth doing. There are still plenty of quest left that I would never bother wasting time on.
 
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Nope, it is a major improvement and a necessary step to make that quest even remotely worth doing. I never bothered with it before, particularly later, where you need to hunt down 8 parties.

Even now it is still an annoying quest because it only counts if no-one escape. Given that the AI (cav) is hopeless at pursuit it pretty much force you to do half the killing in person.

So, by all means I can only encourage TW to "hold my hand" all they want if it helps make stuff actually worth doing. There are still plenty of quest left that I would never bother wasting time on.

Yep. I won’t say it’s a frustration since it’s such a small thing. But it’s annoying. I end up autoresolving since I don’t want to sit through more than one fight with a band of looters because my high tier troops didn’t run down everyone that flees.
 
I am no fan of hand-holding in games (I was deeply disappointed when Ken Levine said, "I realized we made System Shock 2 too hard"), but I like that the bandits don't constantly run away in this one. It doesn't add anything to the game when they drag out a grindy busy-work quest like this even more than it already is.

A better solution would be to redesign the quest to not be a grindy busy-work quest, of course. I'm the king, so why should I have to personally do fetcher quests and the like?
 
Ah yes because chasing the bandits half the map is much more entertaining gameplay.
I personally really like this feature - it is especially helpful early on, cause you can farm bandits more quickly since they dont run.
 
Nope, it is a major improvement and a necessary step to make that quest even remotely worth doing. I never bothered with it before, particularly later, where you need to hunt down 8 parties.

Even now it is still an annoying quest because it only counts if no-one escape. Given that the AI (cav) is hopeless at pursuit it pretty much force you to do half the killing in person.

So, by all means I can only encourage TW to "hold my hand" all they want if it helps make stuff actually worth doing. There are still plenty of quest left that I would never bother wasting time on.

How do you train your men if you have problem catching bandit parties?

...cause you can farm bandits more quickly since they dont run.

That actually sums up everything that is wrong with this "feature".

I have seen in other posts people complaining about not being able to catch bandit parties...
This is what happens when you consider only "one majority" of players...

Not only in quests, tutorials (sometimes even forced) are also really painful for me.
What is the point to develop mechanics if you don't let people discover them by themselves...

Don't think there are any.

Everytime I see new game that holds player by hand even more then the last one, I always remember film "Idiocracy". That comedy might have been prophetic after all.

I am long time player of Battle Brothers and I have noticed on forums how many new players have a problem with the game because they are so used to principle of if game throws at you enemy, it must be scaled to the player. There of course is scaling in the game, but not one that saves you from picking wrong fights. It frustrates some players because they try to load and refight those fight not realizing that they shouldn't have picked it in the first place. They complain that there is no way to win that fight not realizing that's not a bug. There are fights that you can't win by design. And you're not supposed to. Knowing what fight to pick and what not and when is actually large part of been successful in that game.

I might be too old fashioned for this, growing up during golden age of computer games like Fallout (original) or Baldur's Gate.

I was deeply disappointed when Ken Levine said, "I realized we made System Shock 2 too hard"

"Hard" was what made that game so great and successful. All time clastic.

A better solution would be to redesign the quest to not be a grindy busy-work quest, of course. I'm the king, so why should I have to personally do fetcher quests and the like?

Yes, that's what I think. If you need to blatantly dumb down AI during a quest because you think it's too hard, then that guest is probably not designed well.
 
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How do you train your men if you have problem catching bandit parties?

The short answer is that I don´t.

The marginally longer answer is that atm the best course of action is simply to go straight to hunting lords (merc) as soon as possible.

The only thing you really need to do before this is a world tour to find/unlock companions. Obviously, you should hunt down any targets of opportunity you encounter but actually sticking around some place inorder to hunt bandits is a waste of time.

Move, fight, recruit. Repeat until you have enough archers/horsearchers to steamroll everything. (add in some trading along the way)

Most quest are essentially just a waste of time that you might do if it doesnt involve a detour or you need to improve relationship with your own villages.
 
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Quests are actually useful for recruting, since the villages will give you higher tier and more recruits
only if you ever return to them again.

I.e. it is primarily relevant for the small subsection of the map that you eventually plan to settle down on.
 
You don't train your men by chasing down enemies on the world map. You train them by having them fight battles, and this quest helps make that process faster.
I think you might be missing the point Hruza was trying to make.

As I understand him he is essentially arguing that you would be chasing down looters anyway and, for that reason, the way the quest works actually just makes doing, what you would have been doing anyway, easier. Hence the dumping down/holding the players hand.

I do not agree with the premise that you should actively spend time on hunting looters. Instead I argue that you should go from point A to point B and kill whatever you happen to encounter along the way.


In my view, the improvement or handholding (depending on your point of view) just takes the quest from dont touch to situational.
 
You don't train your men by chasing down enemies on the world map. You train them by having them fight battles, and this quest helps make that process faster.

...you mean process of chasing them down. So yes, you do need to chase down enemies on the world map to train your men. That's the point.

And if you want make that process faster, why not just cheat yourself 10x speed? It's effectively the same thing. This quest is not frequent enough to make training faster anyway.

I think you might be missing the point Hruza was trying to make.

As I understand him he is essentially arguing that you would be chasing down looters anyway and, for that reason, the way the quest works actually just makes doing, what you would have been doing anyway, easier. Hence the dumping down/holding the players hand.

Exactly.

I do not agree with the premise that you should actively spend time on hunting looters. Instead I argue that you should go from point A to point B and kill whatever you happen to encounter along the way.

If bandits running out from invisible quest area is an issue, it can be solved by just flagging every group that enters it as a valid quest target. That way player can't just kill random bandits on the other side of the map on one hand and on the other he doesn't have to worry about not catching them inside the quest zone.
 
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...you mean process of chasing them down. So yes, you do need to chase down enemies on the world map to train your men. That's the point.

And if you want make that process faster, why not just cheat yourself 10x speed? It's effectively the same thing. This quest is not frequent enough to make training faster anyway.
Your logic is flawed because you're taking this whole "hand-holding" business into its extreme, while it's not even there yet. The dumbed down pathfinding only happens in the quest, and as you said yourself, the quest is not even that frequent.

This is just one of the QoL things that makes the game more convenient for the player, which is a good thing in general. Why would you make the game unnecessarily inconvenient? Because inconvenience = difficulty and thus skills?
 
I don't see the problem. It's one of those smaller grind missions where you just do it for the renown, rewards and other stuff. It's meant to be fairly straightforward and easy to get done with. Also pairs well with those village missions that asks for labourers. So even has a bit of synergy.

But it's not meant to be a big deal and not something the player should have to invest a ton of energy and time with every time.
 
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