JohannTheFirst
Veteran
Here some of my suggestions for the UI. I know this title isn't very descriptive, and I can change it (Maybe? Not sure how the Forum works nowadays) if needed as per suggestion guidelines. Some or most of these may have been posted in the past, but I, quite frankly, am flabbergasted at the fact that the UI Design and how it's been handled in Bannerlord has not received much more attention, at least from what I've read on the Forums so far.
This list is by no means exhaustive.
Inventory/Party UI/Dialogues
-Loading into cutscenes when engaging a party automatically NEEDS to be taken out. There's already a mod called Fast Dialogues that begins fixing Issues around this.
-Loading into cutscenes after battles when deciding on taking Lords as Prisoners also has no place in the game currently. Even if the options (free/imprison) were to be expanded upon, just making it part of the Prisoner exchange Menu at the end of a Battle makes for a more fluid gaming experience. (Possibly having a converse option if you could interact with them in any other way other than free/imprison)
-The Party and Prisoner management screen is completely archaic. The Menuing grind of Prisoner Exchange without proper Sorting Options and Unit upgrades (Now with another click to randomly expand the Unit tab!) was never what provided the satisfaction of M&Bs gameplay loop. It was an annoyance in M&B, Warband and it is thus now. As mentioned, we need sorting options (by Tier, Name, Troop Type, Faction).
-Additionally, the Limits (Prisoner and Party Limit) are shown as "x+x/y". This should be amended when the only thing that is relevant directly after a battle are the overall sizes. I know, individually doing the maths on "ready+wounded" soldiers isn't much of a chore, but it's an annoyance that just doesnt need to be there. Show it as "x/x,50 wounded". If you really don't trust me to do maths of that level consistently, we can set a time and a date and you can quiz me personally.
-Unit Upgrades need to be handled differently. Once you have recruited a recruit, you should be given a party menu option to set an upgrade path and automatically upgrade all eligible units with one click (or even completely automated!) if you decide to do so. On this one I'm rather fuzzy on how I would approach it, at least without drastically altering or giving the party management a whole new interface. (Maybe you could have a party designer, that lets you drag and drop different end-tier unit types in any quantity you wish to end up with, not a perfect solution but the best thing I could come up with on the spot.)
-There should also just be a recruit all eligible prisoners button.
Edit: -Completely forgot: If you want to keep the limited amount of units to bring to a hideout, just give us a menu to pick them. Bears repeating as well.
Town/Trading UI
-If you want to keep with the current theme of having specific persons be loaded into a cutscene (which I would advise against) to do stuff within a Town, just add the Workshop "Shop Worker" to the Settlement Menu. (Not as Generic Shop Worker of course. Why are we buying a business from a Shop Worker anyway? Either its a Magistrate of some sort that sells the real estate, or a Private Businessman.)
-I suppose I can understand that the scene design for towns and castles has been a work of passion for many over the development cycle, but hiding certain actions within the scenes themselves makes no sense, especially not when there's no indication that there is any content in there to begin with. If you want to keep some cool aspects of quests or storylines in the town/castle/village scenes themselves (random encounters with npcs that dont warrant consistent existence, thugs, assassins), give us an exclamation mark next to the "Take A Walk Around Town" option itself, so we know that there IS content to be had there in the first place.
-This has been mentioned before, but bears repeating. The Trade Menu has no business closing after Pressing Done. Your options to reset a deal are limited to just that, a reset. When you're saddled with an inventory of 30000 weight and you're doing inventory management after having won 20 battles against 500 men armies, stuff gets confusing, so you should be able to trade in increments.
-You should be able to auto-lock certain items in your inventory once acquired. Recently I've seen a mod do this for Horses and Food. I guess my Problem is solved, but this should be in the base game.
Kingdom Management/Map
-I know the whole "limited map knowledge" (??? on certain data on Towns/Castles/Villages when you're too far away etc.) is a feature (that I don't particularly like), but once we have our own Kingdom we can check this data for our own fiefs in the Kingdom Menu (or even clan menu?), but while hovering over them on the map the data is still obscured. This shouldn't be the case.
-We need more structured and clear access to information (this also applies to many other areas of the game). Either we need map overlays, or an actual clean 2d strategic map that we can check for village production, clan ownership, maybe relations or anything else that tickles your fancy. Ideally this would also work with overlays (Check out any paradox game for beautiful structuring of information on a map, in my humble opinion)
-The usual stuff. Game needs to be paused and a massive warbanner in red letters needs to appear when you've been declared war on. Maybe give us a reason? But thats more gameplay than UI. Same type of super obvious thing should happen when someone of your Kingdom/Clan gets captured, or one of your fiefs is sieged.
-Give us info (Perhaps on that new strategic map I was talking about!) on when a garrison is starving.
-Once you're in the Kingdom management phase of the game, we need a different way to recruit and level troops entirely. This is only tangentially a UI issue, so I won't go into detail here.
If you're just interested in the suggestions you can stop reading now.
Even though this is strictly speaking against the rules in this suggestion board, I'll rant a bit about design philosophy now.
I'm completely aware that we're not working with a polished product. I'm completely aware that we're missing a massive amount of features. I'm also very aware that a crap ton of new content absolutely alleviates the aches and pains that come with a very unwieldy UI like the one in Warband, which is why I've been around these forums since about 15 years.
A huge part of the appeal of M&B is the relatively stable and free sandbox, that at least initially shows a lot of different possibilities to shape the world, your character, your army, your kingdom. The fights can be amazing and impressive experiences.
But the end results of my playthroughs of Bannerlord had many of the same underlying issues as M&B or Warband. The core gameplay loop is always accompanied by massive amounts of tedious inventory management.
Tedious, not the fun kind where you find out that you've suddenly gotten a cool piece of kit to try out in new battles, or just enough money to build fun thing x or buy y to make your management easier, but the one where you spam automated fights against looters to level up your Crossbows to Sharpshooters just so you can AI abuse a 500 man Battanian Army with your fast horse and your super elite troops.
This has little to do with balancing, and more to do with fundamental aspects of the game that have been ported in a more or less straightforward fashion from Warband, which I would be fine with to a certain degree (although I would wish that the loop gets broken once we have more Kingdom Management Content in), as long as it works perfectly and the redundant click grind is reduced to a minimum.
If the Party and Inventory Management is the lion's share of your playthrough from the moment you get your own fiefs (in my case its more along the lines of 80 soldiers+), this aspect of the game has to run like clockwork without any minor or major repetitive annoyances during the required management phase between the battles.
Or you spend 5-10 seconds (with an M.2 SSD and a ridiculously expensive rig) in loading screens, 3 seconds in the Battle Autoresolve Table and another 5 seconds in the Party Menu and Inventory for a looter battle where you're only interested in the XP for your troops. That alone is at least a 3/1 tedium time/"reward, play time" ratio.
Now after 45 minutes of an hour doing exactly this, you have your army ready to face an enemy lord's army. That fight might be cool and close, or it might be a needed fight against an AI trying to raid your village that'll just be an easy win.
Either way, you fight the fight and lose, lets say, 20 troops, and straightaway you get even more annoyed about redundant time losses by 3-10 loading screens that show you a character that you have a binary choice of imprisonment or letting go in a pointless conversation. These things add up a lot during a playthrough and it absolutely does baffle me that it is this similar to the way M&B 1/Warband handled it.
Again, players can and will overlook many of these things for a while, at least as long as there is promising content to explore on the horizon, but even while accepting these issues they make the gameplay experience much, much worse than it could be. It is more like dangling a carrot in front of the player's faces while they have to jump through hoops to make even the most minor progress by individually recruiting units and prisoners and upgrading them, to someday get quantities that even a minor AI noble with a bunch of fiefs will get.
We need more control around many areas of clan and kingdom management, which I'm sure TW is aware of, but when it comes to relatively simple UI design a lot can be achieved to even make that relatively repetitive part of the gameplay at this stage much more enjoyable than it is right now.
The way the player can interact with the possibilities the game has to offer is one of the most important aspects of any game, and can be a source of massive frustration or make an experience smooth as butter. The UI and, what many would term "QoL", should be heavily prioritized in my opinion.
I do apologize if a lot of this sounds harsh or way too preachy, but I wouldn't be bothering writing this if I wasn't convinced that there is still great potential in TW and Bannerlord.
This list is by no means exhaustive.
Inventory/Party UI/Dialogues
-Loading into cutscenes when engaging a party automatically NEEDS to be taken out. There's already a mod called Fast Dialogues that begins fixing Issues around this.
-Loading into cutscenes after battles when deciding on taking Lords as Prisoners also has no place in the game currently. Even if the options (free/imprison) were to be expanded upon, just making it part of the Prisoner exchange Menu at the end of a Battle makes for a more fluid gaming experience. (Possibly having a converse option if you could interact with them in any other way other than free/imprison)
-The Party and Prisoner management screen is completely archaic. The Menuing grind of Prisoner Exchange without proper Sorting Options and Unit upgrades (Now with another click to randomly expand the Unit tab!) was never what provided the satisfaction of M&Bs gameplay loop. It was an annoyance in M&B, Warband and it is thus now. As mentioned, we need sorting options (by Tier, Name, Troop Type, Faction).
-Additionally, the Limits (Prisoner and Party Limit) are shown as "x+x/y". This should be amended when the only thing that is relevant directly after a battle are the overall sizes. I know, individually doing the maths on "ready+wounded" soldiers isn't much of a chore, but it's an annoyance that just doesnt need to be there. Show it as "x/x,50 wounded". If you really don't trust me to do maths of that level consistently, we can set a time and a date and you can quiz me personally.
-Unit Upgrades need to be handled differently. Once you have recruited a recruit, you should be given a party menu option to set an upgrade path and automatically upgrade all eligible units with one click (or even completely automated!) if you decide to do so. On this one I'm rather fuzzy on how I would approach it, at least without drastically altering or giving the party management a whole new interface. (Maybe you could have a party designer, that lets you drag and drop different end-tier unit types in any quantity you wish to end up with, not a perfect solution but the best thing I could come up with on the spot.)
-There should also just be a recruit all eligible prisoners button.
Edit: -Completely forgot: If you want to keep the limited amount of units to bring to a hideout, just give us a menu to pick them. Bears repeating as well.
Town/Trading UI
-If you want to keep with the current theme of having specific persons be loaded into a cutscene (which I would advise against) to do stuff within a Town, just add the Workshop "Shop Worker" to the Settlement Menu. (Not as Generic Shop Worker of course. Why are we buying a business from a Shop Worker anyway? Either its a Magistrate of some sort that sells the real estate, or a Private Businessman.)
-I suppose I can understand that the scene design for towns and castles has been a work of passion for many over the development cycle, but hiding certain actions within the scenes themselves makes no sense, especially not when there's no indication that there is any content in there to begin with. If you want to keep some cool aspects of quests or storylines in the town/castle/village scenes themselves (random encounters with npcs that dont warrant consistent existence, thugs, assassins), give us an exclamation mark next to the "Take A Walk Around Town" option itself, so we know that there IS content to be had there in the first place.
-This has been mentioned before, but bears repeating. The Trade Menu has no business closing after Pressing Done. Your options to reset a deal are limited to just that, a reset. When you're saddled with an inventory of 30000 weight and you're doing inventory management after having won 20 battles against 500 men armies, stuff gets confusing, so you should be able to trade in increments.
-You should be able to auto-lock certain items in your inventory once acquired. Recently I've seen a mod do this for Horses and Food. I guess my Problem is solved, but this should be in the base game.
Kingdom Management/Map
-I know the whole "limited map knowledge" (??? on certain data on Towns/Castles/Villages when you're too far away etc.) is a feature (that I don't particularly like), but once we have our own Kingdom we can check this data for our own fiefs in the Kingdom Menu (or even clan menu?), but while hovering over them on the map the data is still obscured. This shouldn't be the case.
-We need more structured and clear access to information (this also applies to many other areas of the game). Either we need map overlays, or an actual clean 2d strategic map that we can check for village production, clan ownership, maybe relations or anything else that tickles your fancy. Ideally this would also work with overlays (Check out any paradox game for beautiful structuring of information on a map, in my humble opinion)
-The usual stuff. Game needs to be paused and a massive warbanner in red letters needs to appear when you've been declared war on. Maybe give us a reason? But thats more gameplay than UI. Same type of super obvious thing should happen when someone of your Kingdom/Clan gets captured, or one of your fiefs is sieged.
-Give us info (Perhaps on that new strategic map I was talking about!) on when a garrison is starving.
-Once you're in the Kingdom management phase of the game, we need a different way to recruit and level troops entirely. This is only tangentially a UI issue, so I won't go into detail here.
If you're just interested in the suggestions you can stop reading now.
Even though this is strictly speaking against the rules in this suggestion board, I'll rant a bit about design philosophy now.
I'm completely aware that we're not working with a polished product. I'm completely aware that we're missing a massive amount of features. I'm also very aware that a crap ton of new content absolutely alleviates the aches and pains that come with a very unwieldy UI like the one in Warband, which is why I've been around these forums since about 15 years.
A huge part of the appeal of M&B is the relatively stable and free sandbox, that at least initially shows a lot of different possibilities to shape the world, your character, your army, your kingdom. The fights can be amazing and impressive experiences.
But the end results of my playthroughs of Bannerlord had many of the same underlying issues as M&B or Warband. The core gameplay loop is always accompanied by massive amounts of tedious inventory management.
Tedious, not the fun kind where you find out that you've suddenly gotten a cool piece of kit to try out in new battles, or just enough money to build fun thing x or buy y to make your management easier, but the one where you spam automated fights against looters to level up your Crossbows to Sharpshooters just so you can AI abuse a 500 man Battanian Army with your fast horse and your super elite troops.
This has little to do with balancing, and more to do with fundamental aspects of the game that have been ported in a more or less straightforward fashion from Warband, which I would be fine with to a certain degree (although I would wish that the loop gets broken once we have more Kingdom Management Content in), as long as it works perfectly and the redundant click grind is reduced to a minimum.
If the Party and Inventory Management is the lion's share of your playthrough from the moment you get your own fiefs (in my case its more along the lines of 80 soldiers+), this aspect of the game has to run like clockwork without any minor or major repetitive annoyances during the required management phase between the battles.
Or you spend 5-10 seconds (with an M.2 SSD and a ridiculously expensive rig) in loading screens, 3 seconds in the Battle Autoresolve Table and another 5 seconds in the Party Menu and Inventory for a looter battle where you're only interested in the XP for your troops. That alone is at least a 3/1 tedium time/"reward, play time" ratio.
Now after 45 minutes of an hour doing exactly this, you have your army ready to face an enemy lord's army. That fight might be cool and close, or it might be a needed fight against an AI trying to raid your village that'll just be an easy win.
Either way, you fight the fight and lose, lets say, 20 troops, and straightaway you get even more annoyed about redundant time losses by 3-10 loading screens that show you a character that you have a binary choice of imprisonment or letting go in a pointless conversation. These things add up a lot during a playthrough and it absolutely does baffle me that it is this similar to the way M&B 1/Warband handled it.
Again, players can and will overlook many of these things for a while, at least as long as there is promising content to explore on the horizon, but even while accepting these issues they make the gameplay experience much, much worse than it could be. It is more like dangling a carrot in front of the player's faces while they have to jump through hoops to make even the most minor progress by individually recruiting units and prisoners and upgrading them, to someday get quantities that even a minor AI noble with a bunch of fiefs will get.
We need more control around many areas of clan and kingdom management, which I'm sure TW is aware of, but when it comes to relatively simple UI design a lot can be achieved to even make that relatively repetitive part of the gameplay at this stage much more enjoyable than it is right now.
The way the player can interact with the possibilities the game has to offer is one of the most important aspects of any game, and can be a source of massive frustration or make an experience smooth as butter. The UI and, what many would term "QoL", should be heavily prioritized in my opinion.
I do apologize if a lot of this sounds harsh or way too preachy, but I wouldn't be bothering writing this if I wasn't convinced that there is still great potential in TW and Bannerlord.
Last edited:
No plans to remove it.
