After a 1.5.10 Play-through, here are my thoughts

[stevepine]

The main problem as I see it is a lack of a 'motivating feeling of progression' at certain key stages of the game - and, of course, this is mainly due to a pure lack of content. But it's more than that of course. Below are the main weaknesses I felt during my 1.5.10 playthrough:

1) Castles and towns are FAR too easy to get - leaders positively throw them at you as soon as you join a Kingdom / faction. In warband, getting a village felt special, let alone your own castle, and never mind a town!

If you don't have to do much for something... well then, it feels cheap and meaningless, doesn't it?

In this play through (very early on) I got given a whole town and I didn't even notice it for quite a while! I thought "Oh look, they've given me a town straight away! What the hell? I've only been a vassal for 5 minutes!"

2) Once you do get a castle - you can upgrade it , but there is no actual reason to spend much time inside it. Said this 1000 times before: castles and villages are crying out for functionality.

3) The damn main quest timer MUST go (even if only to make the main quest tolerable)

4) Once you join a faction, that's it, you're in. Finito!
Would be so nice to work your way up the ranks of the nobility, Can you imagine if factions had ranks and a variety of titles to earn? Not just mercenary, then lord.

5) I didn't feel that inspired to try and get my own kingdom - I mean why? It really doesn't feel THAT different to just being signed up to a faction - Just that you get your own colours. Having your own kingdom needs tonnes more features to it - to make it feel different. To really give you that feeling of power... of really being a ruler.

6) Starting your own kingdom feels too damn hard and incredibly, unbelievably expensive - both of which put me off even wanting to try.

7) Wars still lack and NEED Casus Belli - wars seem to start and stop totally randomly - on a whim.

8 ) 'Law speakers' is SUCH a pain in the ***! I spent real-life DAYS grinding my way up to charm lvl 101 which feels like some type of cruel and rare psychological punishment.

I could go on.... but I think those are my main thoughts on Bannerlord (1.5.10) - The game is better in many cosmetic ways.... but it's the same old problems really, isn't it?

 

[stevehoos]

Yep, full conversion mods or I won't waste my time with this game. Just not enough content.

 

[Rbtparker13]

The main problem as I see it is a lack of a 'motivating feeling of progression' at certain key stages of the game - and, of course, this is mainly due to a pure lack of content. But it's more than that of course. Below are the main weaknesses I felt during my 1.5.10 playthrough:

1) Castles and towns are too easy to get - leaders positively throw them at you as soon as you join a Kingdom / faction. In warband, getting a village felt special, let alone your own castle, and never mind a town! If you don't have to do much for something... well then, it feels cheap and meaningless.

Honestly the scale of this game seems to be working against it. What's one town when every clan in the kingdom can have multiple of them.

Wouldn't be a problem if the Ai actually used them correctly. Once the player gets an town then it's game over for the rest of the kingdom in terms of having influence and ever getting a new fief.

3) The damn main quest timer MUST go (even if only to make the main quest tolerable)

I almost ran into a soft timer. Almost all the people who I needed to talk to died. Most from old age. I think a good solution to this would just make the quest-involved people immortal or at least longer lasting until they give their spiel

4) Once you join a faction, that's it, you're in. Would be so nice to work your way up the ranks of the nobility, Can you imagine if factions had ranks and a variety of titles to earn? Not just mercenary, then lord.

It be pretty cool if you go from "minor lord" who just manages the villages of the "true nobility" and you can work your way up. From managing villages and being a standing stone to being, I don't know, a marshall

5) I didn't feel that inspired to try and get my own kingdom - I mean why? It really doesn't feel THAT different to just being signed up to a faction - Just that you get your own colours. Having your own kingdom needs tonnes more features to it - to make it feel different. To really give you that feeling of power... of really being a ruler.

Same, why be a ruler when you can be a powerful vassal. A well establish kingdom can defend you, you don't have to deal with clans. Just good times
.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

1) Castles and towns are FAR too easy to get - leaders positively throw them at you as soon as you join a Kingdom / faction. In warband, getting a village felt special, let alone your own castle, and never mind a town!

Yeah I just can't play as a vassal anymore. The power gamer in me want to get leadership perks, but I just can't do it, it's like the game is on rails once you join a faction. Sure, if you join a bad one you might not get much fiefs, although I don't know if there's really a bad one in recent versions. Of course if you seriously want you faction to take over the map you'll eventually get mad because they declare too many wars and peace at bad times and ruin you plans so they can't really make more progress, but it's still both too easy and not rewarding enough. Being a faction ruler is almost the same, just with the middle step of also hunting down and out-talking (and paying) clans to join you. I just don't like it.
.
The way it occurred to me to describe it is, what good is getting X more parties I can't control if they create Xx10 enemy parties because they declare wars all the time? You just make this big paper tiger but you can't actually make them do anything intelligent and even an army just piling on fodder troops that slow you down on the map. Your 1 party of top tier troops can probably kill any enemy on the map without another 500 derpydoos tagging along.

The only way I like to play is as a solo non-ruler Clan.

 

[Grank]

4) Once you join a faction, that's it, you're in. Finito!
Would be so nice to work your way up the ranks of the nobility, Can you imagine if factions had ranks and a variety of titles to earn? Not just mercenary, then lord.

Yes. All nobles are functionally at the same level of hierarchy despite clan tiers existing. The influence and clan tier systems can be used in entertaining ways, like political intrigue. This already somewhat exists in the kingdom policy, but still very weak (reduces 0.x influence per day for x tier clans/ruler). It would be amazing to be a minor lord under a duke's command, not always directly under the king. Building friendships and committing betrayal would be very interesting with that.

I vaguely remember seeing a mod that kinda adds to the feudal system, but I'm not sure. I don't play with mods yet because testing.

 

[Rbtparker13]

Yes. All nobles are functionally at the same level of hierarchy despite clan tiers existing. The influence and clan tier systems can be used in entertaining ways, like political intrigue. This already somewhat exists in the kingdom policy, but still very weak (reduces 0.x influence per day for x tier clans/ruler). It would be amazing to be a minor lord under a duke's command, not always directly under the king. Building friendships and committing betrayal would be very interesting with that.

I vaguely remember seeing a mod that kinda adds to the feudal system, but I'm not sure. I don't play with mods yet because testing.

And there could be a limit on how many dukes or higher lords there are in a kingdom. So you would have to befriend fellow minor lords and other dukes to usurp your dukes title.

Wow this is sounding more like Crusader Kings than anything

 

[Antaeus]

The only way I like to play is as a solo non-ruler Clan.

They have made it more of a challenge to capture rebel cities as an independent now... taking a city manned by 4 or 500 with your 80 or 100 is a decent challenge.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

They have made it more of a challenge to capture rebel cities as an independent now... taking a city manned by 4 or 500 with your 80 or 100 is a decent challenge.

Oh yeah?


Okay it WAS harder then in previous versions, I admit it. The real difficulty though was how completely starved and messed up Omar and many other towns are the start of the game! I couldn't get it to stabilize fast enough, need so much food that I couldn't put enough garrison in it to get the loyalty to start coming up fats enough and I couldn't cart food in fast enough either! I had to let it go and move on. The second rebellion I took over later n Lagata turned out okay because I had more high tier troop to put in the garrison ASAP to have high security without too much food, and I brought a tunz of food with me, but I still barely got the orchards done before the loyalty would have go too low to build.

Also Lageta has that secret hole on the wall so I can just go in there and snipe everyone

 

[a_ver_est]

The main problem as I see it is a lack of a 'motivating feeling of progression' at certain key stages of the game - and, of course, this is mainly due to a pure lack of content. But it's more than that of course. Below are the main weaknesses I felt during my 1.5.10 playthrough:

1) Castles and towns are FAR too easy to get - leaders positively throw them at you as soon as you join a Kingdom / faction. In warband, getting a village felt special, let alone your own castle, and never mind a town!

If you don't have to do much for something... well then, it feels cheap and meaningless, doesn't it?

it is even worse, they give me a castle being a small tier 2 clan with about 40 men party, I give the castle away as soon as I get it because I couldn't afford the wages of the garrison...

 

[Dabos37]

The current bigger issue I find every time I reach late game and get bored, it is more related to poor and wasted features in game. Yes, we need more content, I do agree with that, but 75% of the current issue comes from TW balancing poorly the current features and making them almost inexistent. For example:

- Smithing: it is like a non existent feature which players usually dodge if they do not want to exploit the game.
- Aging&death: The best new announced feature for Bannerlord in my opinion, but sadly totally wasted due to wrong age pacing. Waiting about 2K in game days for playing as my son is simply ridiculous. In 2K days my game is usually over because I already get bored of playing that campaign.
- Breaking out prisoners: Seriously, why should I pay money for rescuing lords? It was great when in Warband we received this quest from lords’ family and get a reward for that and it feels much more immersive. In Bannerlord we mostly “enjoy” this feature for leveling up Roguery in early game.
- Main character, family members and companions customization: This has got improved after removing taking into account the character’s level for leveling up skills. But equipment customization for characters is horrible because high tier equipment is ridiculous overpriced. Our family members and companions are always behind T5-T6 troops due to equipment. It is pretty damn enjoyable to create a bodyguard elite group composed of companions in Warband, but not enjoyable in Bannerlord due to overpriced equipment.
- Player’s progression: As mentioned in this thread, it is quite easy to get settlements, which makes them feel cheap and meaningless. Same happens with marriages, you can marry a princess in the very first days when we are just a beggar with clan tier 1. The player’s clan strength is not taken into account at all, and marrying a princes also feels cheap and meaningless.
- Battle difficulty: Due to some pretty OP units like elite archers, winning battles with easy in the highest difficulty is pretty common. Plus the AI needs to get better in order to make battles harder. Being able to defeat 5 strong lords in a row without having to rest, replace losses, etc, between every battle, makes the battles feel repetitive, too easy, and less enjoyable.
- War pacing: while aging&death pace is too slow, the war pace is insanely fast. In late game it is really hard to find time to enjoy anything different to endless wars and battles, battles, sieges, battles, and more sieges. Yes, we have not much to do aside from wars, but even with the current low content, it is really hard to find time to enjoy anything different to battles.

So yes, I want more content for sure, but what I really want is more balancing which would allow me to enjoy all the current content.

 

[relam10]

My actual state is I wont plan to play vanilla Bannerlord ever.

Just waiting for Total conversion mods.

I feel sometimes they are laughing in our face.

You create a better engine, thats ok... and then?

You have tons of successful mods to inspire, you even have a community talking about the problems and solutions 24/7, the community that will buy your games, and you took almost 1 decade and more than 1 year on EA.

The result is a warband with better graphics, less rpg and less enyoyable since core mechanics are broken and lack of meaning.

And the only gamechanger mechanics such as make towns into castles.... abandoned for their complexity . Anyways, castles are useless so... would be bad anyways.

Is sad, but I simply cant trust them anymore. So I can just cheer modders to create more incredible mods such as PoP.

 

[Death2Tyrants]

4) Once you join a faction, that's it, you're in. Finito!
Would be so nice to work your way up the ranks of the nobility, Can you imagine if factions had ranks and a variety of titles to earn? Not just mercenary, then lord.

Indeed! I suggested as much in my post, True Feudal System.

They have made it more of a challenge to capture rebel cities as an independent now... taking a city manned by 4 or 500 with your 80 or 100 is a decent challenge.

Still EZPZ. You just wait for the AI to fail at their siege attempt and then it's ripe for the plucking. I captured Poros with less than 50 men.

 

[Lord Grindelvald]

You create a better engine, thats ok... and then?

We didnt gravitate towards Warband because it had such killer looks (because it absolutely didnt), we played it because of the RPG/Gameplay elements.

I think they lost sight of what really matters. Gameplay? Or graphics?

 

[kreamy]

My actual state is I wont plan to play vanilla Bannerlord ever.

Just waiting for Total conversion mods.

I feel sometimes they are laughing in our face.

You create a better engine, thats ok... and then?

You have tons of successful mods to inspire, you even have a community talking about the problems and solutions 24/7, the community that will buy your games, and you took almost 1 decade and more than 1 year on EA.

The result is a warband with better graphics, less rpg and less enyoyable since core mechanics are broken and lack of meaning.

And the only gamechanger mechanics such as make towns into castles.... abandoned for their complexity . Anyways, castles are useless so... would be bad anyways.

Is sad, but I simply cant trust them anymore. So I can just cheer modders to create more incredible mods such as PoP.

best signature

 

[Gladius Maximus]

8 ) 'Law speakers' is SUCH a pain in the ***! I spent real-life DAYS grinding my way up to charm lvl 101 which feels like some type of cruel and rare psychological punishment.

It would atleast be tolerable if the daily loss was reduced to something like 0,2 influence instead losing 1 influence daily

 

[Askorti]

Would be so nice to work your way up the ranks of the nobility, Can you imagine if factions had ranks and a variety of titles to earn? Not just mercenary, then lord.

I think it would be nice if they started with the very action of becoming a noble in the first place, just like in Warband. Being a "noble" from the very get go in Bannerlord is a humongous wasted opportunity.

 

[Bjorn The Dead]

Why not put the special units of factions to the castles, so they can only be recruitable from there and how much you can recruit could be depend on the relation with the lord of that castle. This can give both incentive of getting good relation with lords and visiting castles at least in the campaign map.

 

[Rbtparker13]

Why not put the special units of factions to the castles, so they can only be recruitable from there and how much you can recruit could be depend on the relation with the lord of that castle. This can give both incentive of getting good relation with lords and visiting castles at least in the campaign map.

Or create your own faction of knights like in prophecy of Pendor. That actually be a great reason to visit castles.

Useful money sink too

 

[Killer Kitten]

I almost ran into a soft timer. Almost all the people who I needed to talk to died. Most from old age. I think a good solution to this would just make the quest-involved people immortal or at least longer lasting until they give their spiel

Or just, "From my father (mother) I was told..." Yuddie, yuddie, yuddie

 

[Killer Kitten]

Honestly, what I think the devs were thinking a lot about the type of game they wanted to make and not the type of game their players wanted to play. Now, neither of these approaches are wrong. As Henry Ford once said, "If I asked a farmer what he wanted, he'd have told me a faster horse." So yes, a lot times devs do have to use what they want as a framework. But with so many mods to Warband and VC, I was really surprised there wasn't a lot of looking at those mods and saying, "Hey, I wanted to it this way, but I like how this mod did it."