Why is Bannerlord MP dead? Dev priorities need a shift.

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This has been addressed a thousand times before, but I am frustrated and going to express them all again. These are all issues from the start of development to now. Fundamental issues.

Stance- Why is this a feature? Warband didn't need stances, Chivalry and Mordhau didn't need stances either. This introduces a new level of complexity for absolutely no reason and needs to be removed. Four attacks you can do whatever you want with and four blocks that allowed you to break the game in whatever way you wanted was enough for Warband, and that model of having a few, consistently reliable attacks seeped into Chivalry and Mordhau. I don't know where Dev's got the impression that there weren't thousands of hours of stuff to master in Warband, but this, in particular, was a braindead choice. It feels like RNG and adds people who know how to punish it to break past any defense, but the major draw of high-level Warband is you died if you made a mistake.

Kick- Literally... Make it slow and hard to land like war band and give a free punishment if you land it but easy to punish if you don't. I don't know what was so complex to port kicking from Warband into Bannerlord or why there's some dogged persistence into not tweaking it to exactly what it was in Warband. Watching high-level duels of Bannerlord is a clown fiesta because of kick spam and abuse of stances that results in even high-level fights to be major RNG fests. Kicking was not a huge issue in Warband and mostly punished laziness from the other player or lack of awareness, which was a good, fun way to add variety to fighting. Slow it down, make it need to be more precise, and result in a free hit afterward.

Blocking- The animations are not crisp or reliable, nor will it ever truly feel the same when an enemy can combo past your blocks or do some weird **** to break your block. As a core concept, in Warband, in the flowchart of duels, and why Warband combat was so satisfying was because if you were patient, you could kill anyone. There needs to be that satisfaction of blocking instantly and hearing that thing that comes with thousands of hours of mastery and relying on your skill just isn't there in bannerlord, not to mention the animations are simply ugly. Not the charming ugliness or functional ugly of Warband but simply ugly for no reason.

Feinting- While many considered this as a huge issue in Warband, it added a lot of fun skill ceiling and excitement to high-level Warband fighting. Where is this? Where is the draw of Bannerlord that is going to build a long-lasting community that is passionate and loves the combat? All the animations look the same, combo-ing is broken and there are exploits that are far worse than anything you could exploit in Warband.

Game modes can be solved by mods. New features for SP and MP can be slowly spoon-fed.

But these are CORE issues that needed to be solved, not given a foresight or given minimal attention if Bannerlord multiplayer is ever to succeed. It doesn't matter if anyone can see their deaths or not (funny change to cater to carebear mentality btw) if nobody is playing your game because the core mechanical loop is not rewarding. It's not. Shoring up the mechanics and making sure the game is actually fun comes before all the extra bull****, all the extra game modes people are crying for, or any small balance tweaks.

The class system can be fixed, the extra **** can be done later. There's no reason for these four fundamental mechanics to not be the first things fixed in all of these patches and updates.

Performance upgrades are important too because you shouldn't have to have a GTX 3060 to play a game that looks like minecraft.
 
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These issues aren't as important as you think they are. BL's success relies on SP more than anything, and people don't play SP for the combat mechanics, they play it for roleplay and map painting, which can be further expanded via mods.
 
The issue is they don’t give a **** about multiplayer because everyone rejected and hated their terrible class system and refuse to release private servers because they want to punish us for our genuine feedback about their terrible system. They know once they release private servers people will be free to mod the game as they like and remove their terrible game modes, and they want to cling onto the game modes since they put a lot of time and effort into them and don’t want to see that go to waste. They’d rather kill the game than let people have fun on it and it be successful.

The combat is horrid I agree but not nearly as important.
 
Yeah these are not the core problems of MP in the slightest. They are major problems for competitive maybe.

There is currently no casual player base to serve as a foundation for a competitive one, the casuals don't complain about the fighting mechanics so there the problem doesn't lay. No, casual needs bigger better modes with more cool features and maps. Also stable servers is issue nr 1.
 
Yeah, how about the fact that it's not a priority for them, which they stated quite openly quite a while ago? They said not to expect private servers until the end of the EA.
SP priority modding tools ✅ PRIORITY MAX
MP priority custom servers ❌ NOT EVEN ON FULL RELEASE BOZO

They are not making sense, they go full priority on SP modding tools but for MP? Nothing
In both SP and MP the modding is the max priority for the community, somehow it isn't in MP?
 
Custom servers are not released due to the skins, people can just easily mod these.

But I agree with the op, bannerlord mp should be better than this, considering warband is a decade old, at the time, it was acceptable, but bannerlord??? Why you do dis?
 
SP priority modding tools ✅ PRIORITY MAX
MP priority custom servers ❌ NOT EVEN ON FULL RELEASE BOZO

They are not making sense, they go full priority on SP modding tools but for MP? Nothing
In both SP and MP the modding is the max priority for the community, somehow it isn't in MP?
MP players are a small fraction of overall playerbase and we both know it. And it's very sad and exactly why we get no love.
 
MP players are a small fraction of overall playerbase and we both know it. And it's very sad and exactly why we get no love.
Just because something is smaller in size doesn't mean you have to almost completely ignore it. Literally makes no sense.

Server files as a tool are supposed to be a full release feature, regardless of how small the MP is.
 
I'm already making the assumption that the base core mechanics will most likely be hard-coded outside of a few tweakable parameters (speed and what not) mods might be able to patch over these core issues but they won't fix them outright (depending on what's hardcoded, really.) The draw from casual to competitive is enjoyable mechanics

I don't watch any bannerlord duel tourney/ skirmish and go "OH THESE GUYS ARE COOL LOOK AT THE SKILL". Private servers nor modding tools will not fix all the bad choices they still have the opportunity to fix. MP mods and private servers aren't going to instantly make everything better, either. The most stubborn casual players might make the leap to competitive if they want to deal with a toxic mindset that are rampant in competitive games (which is ****ing ridiculous because there's nothing to compete about)

There's not any evidence to prove that casual players won't enjoy having improved mechanics. I would say increased performance, better mechanics and better modes afterward. Game mechanics are the foundation that a MP game is built on and right now, it's simply not enjoyable or comparable to other melee games available, Warband included.

Simple as.
 
There's not any evidence to prove that casual players won't enjoy having improved mechanics.
Lmao, you are a joke.
Of course, they would enjoy improved mechanics otherwise they wouldn't be improved, would they? The thing is, and that is complicated, that there is a limited number of resources available and spending those resources on minor issues isn't the brightest thing to do.
 
Funny how everyone says "SP is the priority that's what everyone plays" when the SP is barebones as **** in itself, at least compared to Warband.
I'd be fine with the MP being dead if the SP was good, but its not even worth playing, especially unmodded.
 
Lmao, you are a joke.
Of course, they would enjoy improved mechanics otherwise they wouldn't be improved, would they? The thing is, and that is complicated, that there is a limited number of resources available and spending those resources on minor issues isn't the brightest thing to do.
There's been a breakdown thread about how "resources" shouldn't be that limited. Making sure the core mechanical gameplay is enjoyable is not a minor issue it's massive for a melee game that once aspired to be an esport. I am glad I brought you amusement, however. :grin:

To assume that casual players don't notice mechanical gripes is a fallacy upon which you have no proof. You don't speak for all casual players, nor is there a way to prove how the people who aren't *****ing about the games on the forum feel.
 
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The issue is they don’t give a **** about multiplayer because everyone rejected and hated their terrible class system and refuse to release private servers because they want to punish us for our genuine feedback about their terrible system. They know once they release private servers people will be free to mod the game as they like and remove their terrible game modes, and they want to cling onto the game modes since they put a lot of time and effort into them and don’t want to see that go to waste. They’d rather kill the game than let people have fun on it and it be successful.

The combat is horrid I agree but not nearly as important.
This is precisely my take on taleworlds narcisisstic attitude, I further suspect that the reason why Mod support for singleplayer is ALSO extremely broken is because someone working there got jealous at how the Warband total conversion mods were more popular then Warband ever was as a base game.

Edit: please watch your language!
 
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Here's a super convenient and very short list as to why:
  • It's just not fun
  • The balance sucks
  • Devs refuse to listen to players
  • Catering to ultra casuals (console players prep)
What do these things mean? To put it very frankly, it just means they don't care. They got annoyed or mad or perhaps even lost heart that only a handful of people enjoyed their weird, unfun class system and now they just want to put the barebones work into MP, such as adding skins (lol), so they can shift focus to SP (which is barely making progress as is). These undesired changes, which have left MP completely dead, were all made in preparation of console porting. And no console player—or at least the majority is assumed to be like this—like things that are challenging.

These issues aren't as important as you think they are. BL's success relies on SP more than anything, and people don't play SP for the combat mechanics, they play it for roleplay and map painting, which can be further expanded via mods.

Your assumptions are so wild! The issues aren't important to who, you? And people don't play SP for the combat, but for roleplay? What roleplay are you talking about exactly and do you care to provide the reasons why you think your assumptions are fact? Lastly, has it ever crossed your mind that MP is not played directly because it is neglected, and thus a giant pile of dog ****e no one likes?
 
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