How to give a "soul" to this game?

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TW gave us a "sandbox", but forgot to put "sand" in it. As it currently stands, aside from a few stray grains in the corners, it's empty.

The game lacks a few "small details", like meaningful diplomacy, an economy, village/city building/development, personal interactions with ANYONE (all peasants with the same "filler" dialog, Lords with the same handful of mostly meaningless options), or a reason to CARE about anyone or anything in the game.
Most of what people are complaining about on this topic are either things that Warband didn't do either, or things that are abstracted to a menu (ex, recruitment) that they want to have a requirement to go talk to an NPC in town. Which isn't saying those complaints aren't valid, but it's an important perspective to keep in mind.
 
Soul?

How about making a good game, that's not only properly balanced, but actually surpasses it's predecessors in more than just graphics? It's 2022 and TW is no longer a small indie company. Imma just reiterate something I said before:
  • More detailed politics:
    • Alliances: trade, military, marriage, temporary truce to curb power of another realm, etc;
    • Realm splits: rebellions, death of a ruler and resulting power vacuum, civil wars, betrayals, lands sold to other realms, etc;
    • Covert ops: secret alliances between monarchs, bribes, assassinations/kidnappings of nobles/prominent figures, betrayals, etc;
    • Ability to start and end wars by assassinating the king.
    • Ability to force a realm or fortress to surrender:
      • Kidnap a member of royal family (or other prominent figure) to force a ruler to submit;
      • Starve a fortress by cutting off their supply lines and exits;
      • Cripple a realm's economy by cutting off it's supply lines, sabotaging caravans, convincing other realms not to trade;
      • Destroy a king's reputation among the populace;
    • etc.
  • More detailed real-time strategy:
    • Proper pre-battle troops deployment with an option to get an overhead view;
    • Ability to choose which troops, in particular, to include in the battle (if there's a limit to how many you can include);
    • Ability to tell different parts of your troops, or even specific ones, exactly which targets to attack and which ones to ignore;
    • Ability to get into overhead view (pause screen) at any point of the battle and order your troops around (commands will be carried out once battle is unpaused);
    • etc.
  • More detailed courtship:
    • NPC nobles with actual ambitions and sense of competition;
    • Ability to distinguish yourself (on battlefield, in trade, in strategy mind) and prove yourself more worthy than some NPC for some position (marshal, king, some noble title, a friend, a lover, etc.);
    • NPCs holding grudges, that may take them as far as betray their realm and hunt you down with another army, or go after your friends/family;
    • Bold NPCs unafraid to insult you, or your family, publicly. Your reaction will decide what the other NPCs think of you;
    • Dueling lords over an insult;
    • Dueling lords over a lady;
    • Ability for NPCs and players alike to hit on another's wife;
    • NPCs can even wage wars due to love afairs (love triangles, cheating, desire to impress a sadistic lady, etc);
    • Friend NPCs abandoning their duties to come to your aid, when you are in need of it (depends on personality);
    • Friend NPCs that helped you, but abandoned their duties, facing punishment. You can either try to save their skin, or abandon them. Both could have dire ramifications for your standing in the realm.
    • etc.
  • More detailed 3rd person combat (individual):
    • Dodging;
    • Crouching;
    • Better spear combat - spears could be held overhead, and used effectively at short distance;
    • Better spear combat - long spears can be used to hit enemy over the shoulder of friendly troops;
    • deflect&riposte - precisely timed and directed attack can deflect opponent's weapon and damage the opponent, at the same time;
    • etc.
  • More detailed field combat:
    • Properly working formations (effective shield walls, turtle/testudo formation, smooth transition into attack);
    • Properly working spears (spear bracing against cavalry, phalanx/rows of spears against infantry);
    • Properly working cavalry (proper charge formations, that don't break);
    • Archers not being OP;
    • Ability to use terrain to your advantage:
      • Fall trees/rocks/build barricades to interfere with cavalry charges;
      • Drive enemy forces into a chokepoint when outnumbered.
  • Better Battle AI:
    • Uses proper formations, instead of just charging or sitting in map corner;
    • Uses terrain elevation and features (trees, other obstacles) to it's advantage;
    • Gives different target priorities to different troops (e.g. cavalry flanking towards archers, or to hit infantry formations from rear)
    • etc.
  • Additional immersion-increasing stuff, that existed in previous games:
    • Dog companions;
    • Hunting;
    • Ambushes - must be changed though. They were seemingly chance-based upon engaging an enemy in Viking Conquest. Which was annoying;
    • Feasts;
    • etc.
If I saw these things, or at least like 90% of these, I'd consider the game good enough.
 
As far as adding a soul to this game, the funny thing is the hard technical challenges are all overcome, the engine works well. If the right design choices were made I dont think it would take much development time to make huge progress. I just think time is being spent on other things which is interesting.
Modders on their free time unpaid have created enormous amounts of highly requested features and tweaks while reworking it after every patch cycle. Obviously this is a dependant relationship - the modders heavily dependent on TW devs for the whole engine and back end, work the modders couldnt do.
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
"If the right design choices were made I dont think it would take much development time to make huge progress"
:lol::lol::lol::lol:

Bannerwhen has been under development for over 10 years:

Pay attention to the date: "27 Sept 2012"

Nothing doesn't take much time with them. There are present balance issues and bugs still in-game since the first release, 2 years and no progress on that department. Things are moving forward but in slo-mo, there's no world where TW does things in a normal time-frame.

That aside, in another topic the OP has already shown not actually liking M&B, otherwise such requests wouldn't happen. OP wants an RPG, understandable because there's a significant lack of that in the market, the last decent one was TW3 (which's overrated as an RPG goes, if you ask me - TW3 is a jewel game, but not a jewel RPG, there are far older games that win on the RPG department a thousand fold if put side-by-side with it). But M&B was always about sandboxing + combat, what strikes me poorly is that they didn't improve combat much, made terrible balancing decisions and cut significant sandbox features that should be in the game, but are not (those were cut way before the BETA was even announced).

What'll probably happen is that the OP will either abandon the game soonᵀᴹ or will find a good mod once the game's released and understand why so many ppl have been screaming to just "release the game and quit doing patches that break mods", many mod creators have moved on because it's too time consuming to keep up with TW's updates, and all mod creators do it as a hobbie, so time isn't something they have much. Once the game's here you'll soon find out that there are already massive mods being aligned to come that have strong RPG elements to them, yet they still carry the same old M&B principle, so it's a wild guess what the OP will think.
 
Soul?

How about making a good game, that's not only properly balanced, but actually surpasses it's predecessors in more than just graphics? It's 2022 and TW is no longer a small indie company. Imma just reiterate something I said before:
  • More detailed politics:
    • Alliances: trade, military, marriage, temporary truce to curb power of another realm, etc;
    • Realm splits: rebellions, death of a ruler and resulting power vacuum, civil wars, betrayals, lands sold to other realms, etc;
    • Covert ops: secret alliances between monarchs, bribes, assassinations/kidnappings of nobles/prominent figures, betrayals, etc;
    • Ability to start and end wars by assassinating the king.
    • Ability to force a realm or fortress to surrender:
      • Kidnap a member of royal family (or other prominent figure) to force a ruler to submit;
      • Starve a fortress by cutting off their supply lines and exits;
      • Cripple a realm's economy by cutting off it's supply lines, sabotaging caravans, convincing other realms not to trade;
      • Destroy a king's reputation among the populace;
    • etc.
  • More detailed real-time strategy:
    • Proper pre-battle troops deployment with an option to get an overhead view;
    • Ability to choose which troops, in particular, to include in the battle (if there's a limit to how many you can include);
    • Ability to tell different parts of your troops, or even specific ones, exactly which targets to attack and which ones to ignore;
    • Ability to get into overhead view (pause screen) at any point of the battle and order your troops around (commands will be carried out once battle is unpaused);
    • etc.
  • More detailed courtship:
    • NPC nobles with actual ambitions and sense of competition;
    • Ability to distinguish yourself (on battlefield, in trade, in strategy mind) and prove yourself more worthy than some NPC for some position (marshal, king, some noble title, a friend, a lover, etc.);
    • NPCs holding grudges, that may take them as far as betray their realm and hunt you down with another army, or go after your friends/family;
    • Bold NPCs unafraid to insult you, or your family, publicly. Your reaction will decide what the other NPCs think of you;
    • Dueling lords over an insult;
    • Dueling lords over a lady;
    • Ability for NPCs and players alike to hit on another's wife;
    • NPCs can even wage wars due to love afairs (love triangles, cheating, desire to impress a sadistic lady, etc);
    • Friend NPCs abandoning their duties to come to your aid, when you are in need of it (depends on personality);
    • Friend NPCs that helped you, but abandoned their duties, facing punishment. You can either try to save their skin, or abandon them. Both could have dire ramifications for your standing in the realm.
    • etc.
  • More detailed 3rd person combat (individual):
    • Dodging;
    • Crouching;
    • Better spear combat - spears could be held overhead, and used effectively at short distance;
    • Better spear combat - long spears can be used to hit enemy over the shoulder of friendly troops;
    • deflect&riposte - precisely timed and directed attack can deflect opponent's weapon and damage the opponent, at the same time;
    • etc.
  • More detailed field combat:
    • Properly working formations (effective shield walls, turtle/testudo formation, smooth transition into attack);
    • Properly working spears (spear bracing against cavalry, phalanx/rows of spears against infantry);
    • Properly working cavalry (proper charge formations, that don't break);
    • Archers not being OP;
    • Ability to use terrain to your advantage:
      • Fall trees/rocks/build barricades to interfere with cavalry charges;
      • Drive enemy forces into a chokepoint when outnumbered.
  • Better Battle AI:
    • Uses proper formations, instead of just charging or sitting in map corner;
    • Uses terrain elevation and features (trees, other obstacles) to it's advantage;
    • Gives different target priorities to different troops (e.g. cavalry flanking towards archers, or to hit infantry formations from rear)
    • etc.
  • Additional immersion-increasing stuff, that existed in previous games:
    • Dog companions;
    • Hunting;
    • Ambushes - must be changed though. They were seemingly chance-based upon engaging an enemy in Viking Conquest. Which was annoying;
    • Feasts;
    • etc.
If I saw these things, or at least like 90% of these, I'd consider the game good enough.
+1 this would be a great game if it had these features, bannerlord should of been an expanding version of warband.
 
Soul?

How about making a good game, that's not only properly balanced, but actually surpasses it's predecessors in more than just graphics? It's 2022 and TW is no longer a small indie company. Imma just reiterate something I said before:
  • More detailed politics:
    • Alliances: trade, military, marriage, temporary truce to curb power of another realm, etc;
    • Realm splits: rebellions, death of a ruler and resulting power vacuum, civil wars, betrayals, lands sold to other realms, etc;
    • Covert ops: secret alliances between monarchs, bribes, assassinations/kidnappings of nobles/prominent figures, betrayals, etc;
    • Ability to start and end wars by assassinating the king.
    • Ability to force a realm or fortress to surrender:
      • Kidnap a member of royal family (or other prominent figure) to force a ruler to submit;
      • Starve a fortress by cutting off their supply lines and exits;
      • Cripple a realm's economy by cutting off it's supply lines, sabotaging caravans, convincing other realms not to trade;
      • Destroy a king's reputation among the populace;
    • etc.
  • More detailed real-time strategy:
    • Proper pre-battle troops deployment with an option to get an overhead view;
    • Ability to choose which troops, in particular, to include in the battle (if there's a limit to how many you can include);
    • Ability to tell different parts of your troops, or even specific ones, exactly which targets to attack and which ones to ignore;
    • Ability to get into overhead view (pause screen) at any point of the battle and order your troops around (commands will be carried out once battle is unpaused);
    • etc.
  • More detailed courtship:
    • NPC nobles with actual ambitions and sense of competition;
    • Ability to distinguish yourself (on battlefield, in trade, in strategy mind) and prove yourself more worthy than some NPC for some position (marshal, king, some noble title, a friend, a lover, etc.);
    • NPCs holding grudges, that may take them as far as betray their realm and hunt you down with another army, or go after your friends/family;
    • Bold NPCs unafraid to insult you, or your family, publicly. Your reaction will decide what the other NPCs think of you;
    • Dueling lords over an insult;
    • Dueling lords over a lady;
    • Ability for NPCs and players alike to hit on another's wife;
    • NPCs can even wage wars due to love afairs (love triangles, cheating, desire to impress a sadistic lady, etc);
    • Friend NPCs abandoning their duties to come to your aid, when you are in need of it (depends on personality);
    • Friend NPCs that helped you, but abandoned their duties, facing punishment. You can either try to save their skin, or abandon them. Both could have dire ramifications for your standing in the realm.
    • etc.
  • More detailed 3rd person combat (individual):
    • Dodging;
    • Crouching;
    • Better spear combat - spears could be held overhead, and used effectively at short distance;
    • Better spear combat - long spears can be used to hit enemy over the shoulder of friendly troops;
    • deflect&riposte - precisely timed and directed attack can deflect opponent's weapon and damage the opponent, at the same time;
    • etc.
  • More detailed field combat:
    • Properly working formations (effective shield walls, turtle/testudo formation, smooth transition into attack);
    • Properly working spears (spear bracing against cavalry, phalanx/rows of spears against infantry);
    • Properly working cavalry (proper charge formations, that don't break);
    • Archers not being OP;
    • Ability to use terrain to your advantage:
      • Fall trees/rocks/build barricades to interfere with cavalry charges;
      • Drive enemy forces into a chokepoint when outnumbered.
  • Better Battle AI:
    • Uses proper formations, instead of just charging or sitting in map corner;
    • Uses terrain elevation and features (trees, other obstacles) to it's advantage;
    • Gives different target priorities to different troops (e.g. cavalry flanking towards archers, or to hit infantry formations from rear)
    • etc.
  • Additional immersion-increasing stuff, that existed in previous games:
    • Dog companions;
    • Hunting;
    • Ambushes - must be changed though. They were seemingly chance-based upon engaging an enemy in Viking Conquest. Which was annoying;
    • Feasts;
    • etc.
If I saw these things, or at least like 90% of these, I'd consider the game good enough.

I would add, just thinking of wiking conquest, to add the role of Christian priests and representatives of pagan beliefs (druids, "shamans", "Greek-Roman deities", there is some research to be done on old Nordic beliefs , Celtic, Greco-Roman, and North African in opposition to the new Christian religion, I also forgot the beliefs of Asian peoples such as the Huns). One could even imagine that the Vlanders, for example, are opposed to any "spiritual" power, lay people before their time, they would defend an avant-garde perception of separation of the power of the clergy from political power...
- sources of conflict,
- politico-religious conspiracies,
- fanatical lords,
- roles of refuges, looting of monasteries, temples, desecration of sacred sites.

etc
Good luck, big job...
 
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
"If the right design choices were made I dont think it would take much development time to make huge progress"
:lol::lol::lol::lol:

Bannerwhen has been under development for over 10 years:

Pay attention to the date: "27 Sept 2012"

Nothing doesn't take much time with them. There are present balance issues and bugs still in-game since the first release, 2 years and no progress on that department. Things are moving forward but in slo-mo, there's no world where TW does things in a normal time-frame.

That aside, in another topic the OP has already shown not actually liking M&B, otherwise such requests wouldn't happen. OP wants an RPG, understandable because there's a significant lack of that in the market, the last decent one was TW3 (which's overrated as an RPG goes, if you ask me - TW3 is a jewel game, but not a jewel RPG, there are far older games that win on the RPG department a thousand fold if put side-by-side with it). But M&B was always about sandboxing + combat, what strikes me poorly is that they didn't improve combat much, made terrible balancing decisions and cut significant sandbox features that should be in the game, but are not (those were cut way before the BETA was even announced).

What'll probably happen is that the OP will either abandon the game soonᵀᴹ or will find a good mod once the game's released and understand why so many ppl have been screaming to just "release the game and quit doing patches that break mods", many mod creators have moved on because it's too time consuming to keep up with TW's updates, and all mod creators do it as a hobbie, so time isn't something they have much. Once the game's here you'll soon find out that there are already massive mods being aligned to come that have strong RPG elements to them, yet they still carry the same old M&B principle, so it's a wild guess what the OP will think.

Thinking modders will make up for the game's shortcomings doesn't work. Modders will never be able to do it, they will only make small bits that are difficult to adjust. Or else "TW" would have to be the "conductor", but the modders, fortunately, do what they want. So we will only have small bits that are difficult to compile. The player will always have this same feeling of an incomplete and "messy" game. And above all, we will have the feeling of having been wronged. Well Named
 
Soul?

How about making a good game, that's not only properly balanced, but actually surpasses it's predecessors in more than just graphics? It's 2022 and TW is no longer a small indie company. Imma just reiterate something I said before:
  • More detailed politics:
    • Alliances: trade, military, marriage, temporary truce to curb power of another realm, etc;
    • Realm splits: rebellions, death of a ruler and resulting power vacuum, civil wars, betrayals, lands sold to other realms, etc;
    • Covert ops: secret alliances between monarchs, bribes, assassinations/kidnappings of nobles/prominent figures, betrayals, etc;
    • Ability to start and end wars by assassinating the king.
    • Ability to force a realm or fortress to surrender:
      • Kidnap a member of royal family (or other prominent figure) to force a ruler to submit;
      • Starve a fortress by cutting off their supply lines and exits;
      • Cripple a realm's economy by cutting off it's supply lines, sabotaging caravans, convincing other realms not to trade;
      • Destroy a king's reputation among the populace;
    • etc.
  • More detailed real-time strategy:
    • Proper pre-battle troops deployment with an option to get an overhead view;
    • Ability to choose which troops, in particular, to include in the battle (if there's a limit to how many you can include);
    • Ability to tell different parts of your troops, or even specific ones, exactly which targets to attack and which ones to ignore;
    • Ability to get into overhead view (pause screen) at any point of the battle and order your troops around (commands will be carried out once battle is unpaused);
    • etc.
  • More detailed courtship:
    • NPC nobles with actual ambitions and sense of competition;
    • Ability to distinguish yourself (on battlefield, in trade, in strategy mind) and prove yourself more worthy than some NPC for some position (marshal, king, some noble title, a friend, a lover, etc.);
    • NPCs holding grudges, that may take them as far as betray their realm and hunt you down with another army, or go after your friends/family;
    • Bold NPCs unafraid to insult you, or your family, publicly. Your reaction will decide what the other NPCs think of you;
    • Dueling lords over an insult;
    • Dueling lords over a lady;
    • Ability for NPCs and players alike to hit on another's wife;
    • NPCs can even wage wars due to love afairs (love triangles, cheating, desire to impress a sadistic lady, etc);
    • Friend NPCs abandoning their duties to come to your aid, when you are in need of it (depends on personality);
    • Friend NPCs that helped you, but abandoned their duties, facing punishment. You can either try to save their skin, or abandon them. Both could have dire ramifications for your standing in the realm.
    • etc.
  • More detailed 3rd person combat (individual):
    • Dodging;
    • Crouching;
    • Better spear combat - spears could be held overhead, and used effectively at short distance;
    • Better spear combat - long spears can be used to hit enemy over the shoulder of friendly troops;
    • deflect&riposte - precisely timed and directed attack can deflect opponent's weapon and damage the opponent, at the same time;
    • etc.
  • More detailed field combat:
    • Properly working formations (effective shield walls, turtle/testudo formation, smooth transition into attack);
    • Properly working spears (spear bracing against cavalry, phalanx/rows of spears against infantry);
    • Properly working cavalry (proper charge formations, that don't break);
    • Archers not being OP;
    • Ability to use terrain to your advantage:
      • Fall trees/rocks/build barricades to interfere with cavalry charges;
      • Drive enemy forces into a chokepoint when outnumbered.
  • Better Battle AI:
    • Uses proper formations, instead of just charging or sitting in map corner;
    • Uses terrain elevation and features (trees, other obstacles) to it's advantage;
    • Gives different target priorities to different troops (e.g. cavalry flanking towards archers, or to hit infantry formations from rear)
    • etc.
  • Additional immersion-increasing stuff, that existed in previous games:
    • Dog companions;
    • Hunting;
    • Ambushes - must be changed though. They were seemingly chance-based upon engaging an enemy in Viking Conquest. Which was annoying;
    • Feasts;
    • etc.
If I saw these things, or at least like 90% of these, I'd consider the game good enough.
As with all games, "3D" takes up 80% of developers' time at the expense of "meaning". We then effectively have "soulless games" with an impression of a game of coders because we only see the mechanics of the game.
If we look at all the corrections, they are very much related to the coding of 3D fights, "multiplayer"... The "campaign" game and the "sandbox" are not the priority.
Many games suffer from the desire of players to want a perfect "3D", a "perfect" combat simulation. This takes : a crazy amount of time for the coders, and making sense of the game, implementing a more elaborate "political", "economic", "religious", "npc / rpg" dimension becomes secondary.
What matters to most players is the animation during a siege, it's the right combat simulation, it's the "perfect strategy" in real combat (impossible to ask, but the coders do their best to give the illusion), and all that takes a long time at the expense of "giving meaning to the game".
The 3D simulation of the fights acts like a cancer.
This is true for many games.
And I know what I'm talking about. Developing a strategy game with a 3D simulation to develop at the same time is the kind of project I would refuse to work on because I know what I would be forced to spend my time on.

I know a lot of coders who left the gaming world because of this. By dint of wanting to satisfy a "majority of players often idealized by managers", we end up making stupid games.

Often, managers take the players for fools (this is sometimes true) in a short-term vision: "to make the maximum profit in the shortest possible time". Conclusion: a lot of money comes in on a "tactical economic coup", but the game dies very quickly.

It means: the managers are wrong, the players are not fools. Players who are involved in a game for the long term are very demanding. And if you want a game to last, you have to make a quality game, that means thinking a lot about the background. This means thinking about the meaning of the game, its long-term future, having more teams working on each dimension of the game (economic, political, religion, npc, rpg, interactions, "fun"... and a little less about simulation and animations). You even need a "fun" team, that is to say one that always thinks about making the game as "fun" as possible or at least thinking about the consistency of the whole thing so that it's interesting and fun to play. to play. For that you have to have a sense of the game, few managers have it.

At the same time, money must be brought in to pay the teams, or even to expand them. Because to do things well, you need a lot of people.

Friends who work in video games, worked from home or in dilapidated offices. They worked quite a lot of overtime (sometimes 50 hours a week). These hours were often unpaid. Sometimes they had no bounty. And all this for what ? To enter lines of code for a bloody game of... Super exciting work!

Behind that, there was the feedback from the players brought up by the "managers". Insults, contradictory instructions, stupid perceptions of the game to please as many players as possible (the managers believed),harassment, in the end you end up with a depression for 2000 Euros per month at 50 hours per week, work at night, on Sundays... ruined family life... And all this under the insults of the players. I have known...

Then you say:

"**** you all!" And you leave.

It's just a ****ty game after all...

Result: sometimes the company loses the best coders, those who know all the manufacturing secrets. They hire new people who don't understand anything. And that's ****...

Again harassment, anger, depression, arguments, social injustices and stupid players...

"It's just a game you bunch of rotten spoiled gamers!"

The second team resigns before the end of the trial period.

The game ends up without encoders. The managers take the money, close the company and go live in a tax haven.

This is the world of video games!!
 
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I figured that they would have been utilizing their writers moreso than the last time around with Warband. Are there writers at TW, or freelanced? There are still unused dialogue options, years later. No personalities. Etc.

The "traits" barely have any effect on the world, let alone conversations with the player.

It's all still very Wiki-ish, but atleast in Warband you could ask a lord about their relations and the whereabouts of other people. You could host or join feasts. Dueling with a lord over a lady. And in VC, there was a meaningful fatigue system, which made camping and hunting useful.
 
Thinking modders will make up for the game's shortcomings doesn't work. Modders will never be able to do it, they will only make small bits that are difficult to adjust. Or else "TW" would have to be the "conductor", but the modders, fortunately, do what they want. So we will only have small bits that are difficult to compile. The player will always have this same feeling of an incomplete and "messy" game. And above all, we will have the feeling of having been wronged. Well Named
look, I seriously recommend that you buy Warband in a sale as soon as you can and look up Prophesy of Pendor mod, it's among the best we get as an RPG leaning example of what I was saying. Apparently Bannerlord will support a even more complex and deep RPG implementation, which means that PoP will likely be exceptional when the game gets released (and the mod).
As for the best you can get out of Mount&Blade game, it's:
  • Prophesy of Pendor (Warband)
  • 1257ad - this one's the best of the best on the combat department imho (Warband)
  • World of Ice and Fire (Warband + VC)
  • A Clash of King (Warband)
  • Perisno (Warband)
  • Floris - the most vanilla of all of them created by @Duh_TaleWorlds before he became a developer (Warband)
  • Brytenwalda - I dislike this one a bit, but it's a jewel. I prefer the DLC they created later which's Viking Conquest (Warband)
This makes up the top list of mods I can think of (remember really), there are others, I helped some mods I played in the development department as a occasional collaborator, but can't remember all of them, there's 1 in particular I remember from this list which was AWIF but I'm not sure if my recommendations were implemented. And than there's another one that was called Stag something that never made it out of the cooking which I helped a lot with but ultimately the creator abandonned the project.
That's basically the "Mount&Blade experience", it's a genre of it's own and it isn't neither an RPG nor an RTS. If you don't like it, I respect that, but it won't change because of it, core of the game's being a Sandbox and all of us fans love it for that reason, insisting on wanting it to change into something else's like trying to turn Star Craft into a Hack&Slash, doesn't make any sense. I do, however, hold a lot of things seemingly proximate to you, as in I did recommend a lot of things for BL, gave extensive feedback for 2 or 3 months straight, designed a few balancing systems myself and tried to explain how to work with it and why, though eventually I just gave up. I think the game needs more depth, that doesn't mean RPG, means more stuff to do and a more intricated and flashed-out hoster (many character lords in Warband were really memorable, in BL none of them are) but that's about it. For any oldfart reading, remember the butter feast memes? xD
 
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look, I seriously recommend that you buy Warband in a sale as soon as you can and look up Prophesy of Pendor mod, it's among the best we get as an RPG leaning example of what I was saying. Apparently Bannerlord will support a even more complex and deep RPG implementation, which means that PoP will likely be exceptional when the game gets released (and the mod).
As for the best you can get out of Mount&Blade game, it's:
  • Prophesy of Pendor (Warband)
  • 1257ad - this one's the best of the best on the combat department imho (Warband)
  • World of Ice and Fire (Warband + VC)
  • A Clash of King (Warband)
  • Perisno (Warband)
  • Floris - the most vanilla of all of them created by @Duh_TaleWorlds before he became a developer (Warband)
  • Brytenwalda - I dislike this one a bit, but it's a jewel. I prefer the DLC they created later which's Viking Conquest (Warband)
This makes up the top list of mods I can think of (remember really), there are others, I helped some mods I played in the development department as a occasional collaborator, but can't remember all of them, there's 1 in particular I remember from this list which was AWIF but I'm not sure if my recommendations were implemented. And than there's another one that was called Stag something that never made it out of the cooking which I helped a lot with but ultimately the creator abandonned the project.
That's basically the "Mount&Blade experience", it's a genre of it's own and it isn't neither an RPG nor an RTS. If you don't like it, I respect that, but it won't change because of it, core of the game's being a Sandbox and all of us fans love it for that reason, insisting on wanting it to change into something else's like trying to turn Star Craft into a Hack&Slash, doesn't make any sense. I do, however, hold a lot of things seemingly proximate to you, as in I did recommend a lot of things for BL, gave extensive feedback for 2 or 3 months straight, designed a few balancing systems myself and tried to explain how to work with it and why, though eventually I just gave up. I think the game needs more depth, that doesn't mean RPG, means more stuff to do and a more intricated and flashed-out hoster (many character lords in Warband were really memorable, in BL none of them are) but that's about it. For any oldfart reading, remember the butter feast memes? xD
I know Warband yet, i liked. But i don't know this RPG "Prophesy of Pendor", i'll try. Thank you.
 
look, I seriously recommend that you buy Warband in a sale as soon as you can and look up Prophesy of Pendor mod, it's among the best we get as an RPG leaning example of what I was saying. Apparently Bannerlord will support a even more complex and deep RPG implementation, which means that PoP will likely be exceptional when the game gets released (and the mod).
As for the best you can get out of Mount&Blade game, it's:
  • Prophesy of Pendor (Warband)
  • 1257ad - this one's the best of the best on the combat department imho (Warband)
  • World of Ice and Fire (Warband + VC)
  • A Clash of King (Warband)
  • Perisno (Warband)
  • Floris - the most vanilla of all of them created by @Duh_TaleWorlds before he became a developer (Warband)
  • Brytenwalda - I dislike this one a bit, but it's a jewel. I prefer the DLC they created later which's Viking Conquest (Warband)
This makes up the top list of mods I can think of (remember really), there are others, I helped some mods I played in the development department as a occasional collaborator, but can't remember all of them, there's 1 in particular I remember from this list which was AWIF but I'm not sure if my recommendations were implemented. And than there's another one that was called Stag something that never made it out of the cooking which I helped a lot with but ultimately the creator abandonned the project.
That's basically the "Mount&Blade experience", it's a genre of it's own and it isn't neither an RPG nor an RTS. If you don't like it, I respect that, but it won't change because of it, core of the game's being a Sandbox and all of us fans love it for that reason, insisting on wanting it to change into something else's like trying to turn Star Craft into a Hack&Slash, doesn't make any sense. I do, however, hold a lot of things seemingly proximate to you, as in I did recommend a lot of things for BL, gave extensive feedback for 2 or 3 months straight, designed a few balancing systems myself and tried to explain how to work with it and why, though eventually I just gave up. I think the game needs more depth, that doesn't mean RPG, means more stuff to do and a more intricated and flashed-out hoster (many character lords in Warband were really memorable, in BL none of them are) but that's about it. For any oldfart reading, remember the butter feast memes? xD
And i played "Vicking Conquest", i liked too much. It's what i would like with Bannerlord.
 
Mount & Blade, in all of its versions, covers at least 3 distinct groups of gamers, with plenty of sub-groups and crossovers to confuse the issue.

The first group would be the FPS combat players, who are also the prime (if not the only) multi-player participants. Their primary interests are in better combat mechanics and animations, better framerates, and nicer graphics. This should have been a "slam dunk" for Taleworlds. Thanks to balance issues, interest in multi-player is WAY down.

The second group would be the RPG players, for whom the action element is an essential but not overriding concern. Their main interests, however, are in better dialog, more meaningful effects of player choices, and more distinct and interesting (not "more overpowered") NPCs, or in short, a more "living" world, with better graphics a major concern for some (more "immersion") but not others (possibly requiring a bit more "imagination" on the part of the player). A few pieces of this were already in place in Warband, and more was promised, but instead most of it has been removed or broken in Bannerlord.

The third group would be the Strategy players, for whom diplomacy, the world economy, fief management, and tactical combat would all be important. Making the outcome of major inter-faction battles more meaningful, improving the economic side (such as a world economy, local pricing and availability, and items being produced by craftsmen in towns rather than springing up out of thin air, ESPECIALLY when troops are created or upgraded) would certainly help. Troops (especially high-level) and their equipment should not an inexhaustible resource for the AI or for villages, and over-recruiting should weaken your economy (which doesn't matter at the moment because the player gets more than enough money from loot and Smithing certain items, and the AI doesn't use money). The AI also needs to be more willing to come to more rational terms (we may be down to our last castle, all of our armies are defeated, and we're at war with two other factions, but we're demanding that YOU pay US thousands for a peace deal that we'll inevitably break in a month), rather than starting yet another pointless war just because the Random Number Generator said so.

I suspect that MOST players have at least some degree of interest in every one of these aspects, although the balance will undoubtedly be drastically different from player to player. Unfortunately, in its efforts to make a "shinier" game, improvements in the RPG and Strategy directions have been minimal, and some former elements have even been removed. On top of that, the balance isn't there for multi-player. In essence, this game fails to live up to its predecessors in ALL of these dimensions.

Instead of turning this game into something INTERESTING, we'll likely get another patch which addresses a couple of clipping issues, as well as some optimization to help stutter problems. The sandbox will still be empty, but it will look prettier.
 
Mount & Blade, in all of its versions, covers at least 3 distinct groups of gamers, with plenty of sub-groups and crossovers to confuse the issue.

The first group would be the FPS combat players, who are also the prime (if not the only) multi-player participants. Their primary interests are in better combat mechanics and animations, better framerates, and nicer graphics. This should have been a "slam dunk" for Taleworlds. Thanks to balance issues, interest in multi-player is WAY down.

The second group would be the RPG players, for whom the action element is an essential but not overriding concern. Their main interests, however, are in better dialog, more meaningful effects of player choices, and more distinct and interesting (not "more overpowered") NPCs, or in short, a more "living" world, with better graphics a major concern for some (more "immersion") but not others (possibly requiring a bit more "imagination" on the part of the player). A few pieces of this were already in place in Warband, and more was promised, but instead most of it has been removed or broken in Bannerlord.

The third group would be the Strategy players, for whom diplomacy, the world economy, fief management, and tactical combat would all be important. Making the outcome of major inter-faction battles more meaningful, improving the economic side (such as a world economy, local pricing and availability, and items being produced by craftsmen in towns rather than springing up out of thin air, ESPECIALLY when troops are created or upgraded) would certainly help. Troops (especially high-level) and their equipment should not an inexhaustible resource for the AI or for villages, and over-recruiting should weaken your economy (which doesn't matter at the moment because the player gets more than enough money from loot and Smithing certain items, and the AI doesn't use money). The AI also needs to be more willing to come to more rational terms (we may be down to our last castle, all of our armies are defeated, and we're at war with two other factions, but we're demanding that YOU pay US thousands for a peace deal that we'll inevitably break in a month), rather than starting yet another pointless war just because the Random Number Generator said so.

I suspect that MOST players have at least some degree of interest in every one of these aspects, although the balance will undoubtedly be drastically different from player to player. Unfortunately, in its efforts to make a "shinier" game, improvements in the RPG and Strategy directions have been minimal, and some former elements have even been removed. On top of that, the balance isn't there for multi-player. In essence, this game fails to live up to its predecessors in ALL of these dimensions.

Instead of turning this game into something INTERESTING, we'll likely get another patch which addresses a couple of clipping issues, as well as some optimization to help stutter problems. The sandbox will still be empty, but it will look prettier.
I am part of the "first group". Why ?

Out of taste, no doubt for RPG games, to begin with. But not only for that, if I felt that this game had a chance to be a good strategy game, I would change my mind, but I don't believe it. Why ? Because I think the sandbox is an impossible gas machine to properly tune and transform into a decent strategy game.

I think this "economy", "diplomacy", and other intricacies of the game are just a backdrop for building an RPG that sadly seems to have been abandoned. It was however the most reasonable: the weaknesses of the game could have been compensated by a world teeming with stories.

But for that, it is necessary to "write" this world. However, i thing nothing is written and nobody wants to do it. . The backdrop, the history of Calradia, the main characters, the culture of each people, none of this has been developed into a story. And it's a huge job that should have started ten years ago. Which artist would like to fill the void by writing? In my opinion, none, or else it will have to be paid very well.
And if they find it, how many months or even years will it take for the cooperation between this artist and the developers to produce a coherent and deep RPG ? Too much.

It's dead.

The "multiplayer" game will never interest me, I don't like this type of game for that. And I think it will never be a good "multiplayer" game, because it's not made for that.


The "RPG" was the only dimension that could have "saved" this game from nonsense. If they gave it up, then this game will only ever be a bad DIY.
Look at the development teams for "RPGs", it's worse than for a movie. I'm not sure TW can afford it.

Yet an RPG, even a little "old-fashioned" in its presentation ("Morrowind" or "Oblivion" style, with dialogue windows as TW knows how to do), with the original combat system of Warband and Bannerlord, could have been a outstanding game.

TW must think it's too late and unfortunately they are right. Or, you have to put a "big artistic team" on the subject. There aren't enough of them for that, I think. They put a lot of energy into the combat system, the rest they don't have the teams to do. That's what I believe but I don't know their inner workings.

I hope that the future will contradict me and that when the game has reached a decent level of functioning, they will produce an addon that will surprise everyone... And it certainly won't be free...

I do not believe it. If they released an "RPG addon", I wouldn't buy it: because they would never be anything but a "mock" RPG.

Decently, for this game, it would take a miracle and I don't believe in miracles. I really hope they will contradict me.

Good luck.
 
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look, I seriously recommend that you buy Warband in a sale as soon as you can and look up Prophesy of Pendor mod, it's among the best we get as an RPG leaning example of what I was saying. Apparently Bannerlord will support a even more complex and deep RPG implementation, which means that PoP will likely be exceptional when the game gets released (and the mod).
As for the best you can get out of Mount&Blade game, it's:
  • Prophesy of Pendor (Warband)
  • 1257ad - this one's the best of the best on the combat department imho (Warband)
  • World of Ice and Fire (Warband + VC)
  • A Clash of King (Warband)
  • Perisno (Warband)
  • Floris - the most vanilla of all of them created by @Duh_TaleWorlds before he became a developer (Warband)
  • Brytenwalda - I dislike this one a bit, but it's a jewel. I prefer the DLC they created later which's Viking Conquest (Warband)
This makes up the top list of mods I can think of (remember really), there are others, I helped some mods I played in the development department as a occasional collaborator, but can't remember all of them, there's 1 in particular I remember from this list which was AWIF but I'm not sure if my recommendations were implemented. And than there's another one that was called Stag something that never made it out of the cooking which I helped a lot with but ultimately the creator abandonned the project.
That's basically the "Mount&Blade experience", it's a genre of it's own and it isn't neither an RPG nor an RTS. If you don't like it, I respect that, but it won't change because of it, core of the game's being a Sandbox and all of us fans love it for that reason, insisting on wanting it to change into something else's like trying to turn Star Craft into a Hack&Slash, doesn't make any sense. I do, however, hold a lot of things seemingly proximate to you, as in I did recommend a lot of things for BL, gave extensive feedback for 2 or 3 months straight, designed a few balancing systems myself and tried to explain how to work with it and why, though eventually I just gave up. I think the game needs more depth, that doesn't mean RPG, means more stuff to do and a more intricated and flashed-out hoster (many character lords in Warband were really memorable, in BL none of them are) but that's about it. For any oldfart reading, remember the butter feast memes? xD
Game mechanics have always been a bad loop, in Warband too. What made the originality of the game was being able to be the "leader" of a large band of barbarians. That's what I found amusing. But the rest was all bad.

"Wiking Conquest" is the best mod I could play because it was totally RPG. We forgot about the bad mechanics of the game, and we focused on the story with his "band of warriors". The game finally made sense.
With Wiking Conquest, that's when I understood the "RPG" and original potential of this game: being the leader of a large band of warriors, sometimes taking part in a huge battle, while pursuing a story. But this potential has never been exploited.

But sincerely, I wouldn't advise anyone to buy "Warband" and the "Wiking conquest" addon, it's not my role, and it's not to be advised.

By dint of wanting to please the maximum number of players, we end up making a wobbly game.
 
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Mount & Blade, in all of its versions, covers at least 3 distinct groups of gamers, with plenty of sub-groups and crossovers to confuse the issue.

The first group would be the FPS combat players, who are also the prime (if not the only) multi-player participants. Their primary interests are in better combat mechanics and animations, better framerates, and nicer graphics. This should have been a "slam dunk" for Taleworlds. Thanks to balance issues, interest in multi-player is WAY down.

The second group would be the RPG players, for whom the action element is an essential but not overriding concern. Their main interests, however, are in better dialog, more meaningful effects of player choices, and more distinct and interesting (not "more overpowered") NPCs, or in short, a more "living" world, with better graphics a major concern for some (more "immersion") but not others (possibly requiring a bit more "imagination" on the part of the player). A few pieces of this were already in place in Warband, and more was promised, but instead most of it has been removed or broken in Bannerlord.

The third group would be the Strategy players, for whom diplomacy, the world economy, fief management, and tactical combat would all be important. Making the outcome of major inter-faction battles more meaningful, improving the economic side (such as a world economy, local pricing and availability, and items being produced by craftsmen in towns rather than springing up out of thin air, ESPECIALLY when troops are created or upgraded) would certainly help. Troops (especially high-level) and their equipment should not an inexhaustible resource for the AI or for villages, and over-recruiting should weaken your economy (which doesn't matter at the moment because the player gets more than enough money from loot and Smithing certain items, and the AI doesn't use money). The AI also needs to be more willing to come to more rational terms (we may be down to our last castle, all of our armies are defeated, and we're at war with two other factions, but we're demanding that YOU pay US thousands for a peace deal that we'll inevitably break in a month), rather than starting yet another pointless war just because the Random Number Generator said so.

I suspect that MOST players have at least some degree of interest in every one of these aspects, although the balance will undoubtedly be drastically different from player to player. Unfortunately, in its efforts to make a "shinier" game, improvements in the RPG and Strategy directions have been minimal, and some former elements have even been removed. On top of that, the balance isn't there for multi-player. In essence, this game fails to live up to its predecessors in ALL of these dimensions.

Instead of turning this game into something INTERESTING, we'll likely get another patch which addresses a couple of clipping issues, as well as some optimization to help stutter problems. The sandbox will still be empty, but it will look prettier.
The only thing, that TW actually worked on, though, are the graphics. And for me, as well as (probably) many others, that's the least important aspect of a game. In most other aspects, however, this game is inferior to it's predecessors.

What I wanted here, is basically Warband (with all the expansions like VC) updated and brought to modern gaming scene, supporting a larger world, larger battles, more interactive and detailed environments, updated physics... And, at least, somewhat more detailed politics, courtship and strategy. If mods managed it, so could TW, being as big as they are now.

And they could do this. But they needed this game as simple as possible, because they wanted to port this game to consoles... LMAO Imagine screwing over your primary target platform audience to bring this game to consoles... A kind of game, that would never properly transition to consoles...

And then rumors about TW working on some other game... Instead of perfecting their signature franchise... The company's at freefall.
 
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The only thing, that TW actually worked on, though, are the graphics. And for me, as well as (probably) many others, that's the least important aspect of a game. In most other aspects, however, this game is inferior to it's predecessors.

What I wanted here, is basically Warband (with all the expansions like VC) updated and brought to modern gaming scene, supporting a larger world, larger battles, more interactive and detailed environments, updated physics... And, at least, somewhat more detailed politics, courtship and strategy. If mods managed it, so could TW, being as big as they are now.

And they could do this. But they needed this game as simple as possible, because they wanted to port this game to consoles... LMAO Imagine screwing over your primary target platform audience to bring this game to consoles... A kind of game, that would never properly transition to consoles...

And then rumors about TW working on some other game... Instead of perfecting their signature franchise... The company's at freefall.
basically more and better of the same, I believe that's what we all WB fans expected. Right of the bat, all new implementations are wacky (influence system, their built-in diplomacy system, their new siege system, their new smithing system, their new "gang" system, their new recruitment system, their new perk system). It's really a wacky mess rn, but it can be salvaged and improved before release IF they don't rush release. On a side note, if they do release in the wrong "final" state, we'll be stuck with a bad game which none of us want.

So far the game's bad, passable because it's in EA and theoretically nothing was fully flushed out yet, and most mechanics and balancing aren't done. Releasing it too close to this state means crap game. While it isn't, there's potential, but it must be carefully curated, as in, imo, they should just fix the game challenge curves, progression curves and either copy the balancing from Warband or improve upon it, as is, this game has crap balance even compared to Warband (which was already meh on itself, yet it was good enough to feel fun).

One of the best ways to salvage the perk mess is to actually put meaningful hybrid build perks at the bottom and meaningful over-spec perks at the top, always giving a hyrid choice or a specialized choice at all skill level unlocks. There should be no "hard choice" perks, and all should carry the same scope of effect too, they should also carry multi-effects to encompass all possible characters, there are some perks that are ultimately useless to the player or to a companion because they are either leading a party at all times or never leading a party. So if you wanna push "Party Leader + Governor", than the perk unlock should carry 3 effects instead of 2 to encompass a larger array of roles (what I'm basically saying is that perk effects should be "global" as in it always improves the Character regardless of role, so at least 2 effects add to them something)

As for diplomacy, they must extend it and make it more meaningful, we still aren't able to redeem bad relations, it must be there, we lack control over vassals or as vassals any meaningful interaction with our peers and liege... It's very messy and to fix it requires extensive work. For that the first and most important mechanic would be to implement companion squires for all lords and have this NPC work as a messenger. Have the guy leave the party and physically move to deliver messages when a lord needs. This way events could be made where lords contact you for help, support, or whatever reason, and it would also create a effing usefulness for companion's charm skill.

Economy balance's awful too because we lack any reliable way to make a "living" as a lord besides fief income, when we all know for a fact that throughout medieval history, the bugeois were either on par with feudal lords or even richer. If flushed properly, we could fare with a few "merchant" lords in which the guy's a noble but has a strong mercantile focus and as such ends up being the richest lord to their respective realm (a Lannister of sorts if you will) who has the wealth power to create serious trouble to their liege. That means caravans and workshops and all other trading route stuff should make a huge impact, specially because those are set-in-stone choices we have to make, sacrificing military strength to improve income. As is, it isn't a choice, it's a complement yet you don't have enough level up pts to do both, so you're always half-arsed at something and forced to ignore a lot of skill trees just so you can make the bare minimum.

Not having villages as independent fiefs always destroys the power distribution and feudal structure the game tries to convey, ideally Lords should only be able to hold a single fief and influence it's income and man-power through others (a lot comes into play here, like diplomacy, questing to help your thane's village, etc) As is we can't do that, we can't even properly protect our fief zones because we have no control over companion parties what-so-ever.

Combat's wackness comes from turning all armor into a useless piece of gimmick, a meme even. As suggested a billion times over, they simply must rework materials + dmg type and amp up the soaking for expensive armory, if you have a 500k helmet, it should practically make your head "ivulnerable", the best balancing for such a power-up imo could be maintenance of equipment, which could already be implemented since we have effing SMITHING.

Companions wackness could be fixed by implementing a permanent hoster (making those more memorable), making all cultures have all sorts of spec with their personal caveat and force-spawning all roles plus letting lords recruit the neglected ones over-time. Currently it's just crap, RNG crap. You must basically get "lucky" to even have a chance of spawning a decent caravan leader, and we severely lack blank-slate companions in general. Their leveling's also so painfully slow due to numerous reasons that it's better to Meta-pick companions at all times than it is to RP companions, and since all of them lack any meaningful interactions, they're just dummies to extend our PC's effectiveness, nothing else.

well, I could go on, but most of these points I have already made years ago, doesn't bode me as something productive to keep repeating myself over and over again throughout different threads.
 
Hire game designers and writers that care about RPGs
idk if they want to, I think they just wanna rush release at this point. Not even sure if there was ever a consistent plan revolving around the Game Design itself, it's just a buch of features slapped-in together that barely communicate with each other, the game couldn't be further from being round and cosistent. To paint it more clearly, all features are isolated, if you do X to Y NPC it's a dead-end between you and Y NPC, nobody else cares, basically the entire NPC hoster acts as bots in isolation, except for killing lords. Which's another weird feature considering the AI never does it.

Since we have this disgusting companion RNG spawn system, it also detracts from functionality and makes absolutely zero sense to not have Lords hiring their own companions. To counter-balance the PC having a legion of functional over-specialized companions, they've instead made all Lords Overpowered in stats and skills, another big mistake imo. Both players and lords should fiddle in the same grass, all rules applied to both, yet lords suffer no consequences from raiding, while if you raid as the player you're virtually effed for the rest of the save.

The worse part of Warband's in Bannerlord (NPCs functioning in a totally separate system from the player), while the best parts of Warband are missing.
 
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I just got crusader king 3 on recommendation from some bannerlord players on steam forum and i am blown away by a game where the battles are a bar on the screen filling up with some text above telling you of characters exploits in the battle is so amazing. In this game clans have marriages to form alliances and there is always intrigues someone plotting be it to murder or to befriend or to strengthen a bond with someone and on top of that you can upgrade you throne room . Bannerlord is at the moment just a battle simulator and its ok but needs to step it up because there are other battle simulators out the like chivalry 2 and Mordhau and Epic battle simulator . Bannerlord for me a least needs more interesting peace time and other options to affect war time other than just battles. Bannerlord really needs to adopt a crusader kings approach but not a heavy a simplified system but with outcomes that matter. Just hoping the the single player game is ok and the modders can do the rest and consoles will boost the multiplayer isn't going to work out well for this would be great title . That said TW gave us Viking conquest which is superior in features to Bannerlord its just bannerlord controls are more slick and we have another update or updates . I hope Bannerlord can stand among those games i have mentioned and stand strong at the moment its a big no but we are not released yet so here's to hope.
 
I just got crusader king 3 on recommendation from some bannerlord players on steam forum and i am blown away by a game where the battles are a bar on the screen filling up with some text above telling you of characters exploits in the battle is so amazing. In this game clans have marriages to form alliances and there is always intrigues someone plotting be it to murder or to befriend or to strengthen a bond with someone and on top of that you can upgrade you throne room . Bannerlord is at the moment just a battle simulator and its ok but needs to step it up because there are other battle simulators out the like chivalry 2 and Mordhau and Epic battle simulator . Bannerlord for me a least needs more interesting peace time and other options to affect war time other than just battles. Bannerlord really needs to adopt a crusader kings approach but not a heavy a simplified system but with outcomes that matter. Just hoping the the single player game is ok and the modders can do the rest and consoles will boost the multiplayer isn't going to work out well for this would be great title . That said TW gave us Viking conquest which is superior in features to Bannerlord its just bannerlord controls are more slick and we have another update or updates . I hope Bannerlord can stand among those games i have mentioned and stand strong at the moment its a big no but we are not released yet so here's to hope.
yup, being saying that for the past 8-10 years here in these same forums...

Warband lacked a lot but was ultimately fun, although boring overall. That was fixed by modders to the edge of their engine limits over the years. Bannerlord theoretically should be a better modding platform with a, at bare minium, base game quality on par with the best mods for Warband, but rn it's actually less than Warband in most aspects, the only thing we have more is grind and boring chores. Their perk system has been needing a total revamp since it came out, they need more unique memorable NPCs, including companions (which are currently 100% RNG generated with most skill rolls being Culture + gender locked). We lack diplomatic choices, there's absolutely no intrigue system. Crafting's poorly designed since EA release (apparently changed for the first time just now with 1.8 - yet still probably not good). The list goes on and on.

From major detractions, we lost the ability to hold villages as isolated fiefs, reducing the noble ranks to only mere 2 levels besides the kings, and the possible noble hoster to the number of castles and towns you own. Bad move. Instead of widening the depth by turning village lords into their bound castles / towns, and castles bound to their closest towns (which would open the possibility of having Dukes, Barons and Thanes) we were reduced to all direct vassalage and villages being ruled by the owner of their bound fortification. idk, feels bad, wrong, feels less... Warband one of the best moments was swearing allegiance and receiving a mere village to take care of, having to build a manor so you could spend time there watching over it while paying reduced wages for your party, building it up to improve income while indirectly buffing your bound castle owner's wealth in the process... Good times...
 
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