drastic things = curbing one sided stomps due to entire clans being on the same side
plus maybe adding something similar to warband matchmaking
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cRPG has only a week and already killed Vanilla
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plus maybe adding something similar to warband matchmaking
merrrica
Recruit
Isn't this what Warband native MP did, tread water long enough for MP mods to fix everything for them? This seems to be their formula ingrained into their gaming DNA. Take that as you will.
With that said, join cRPG and actually get constant updates and communications from devs
With that said, join cRPG and actually get constant updates and communications from devs
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This. I've made several lengthy posts over the years criticizing the fundamental concept of cRPG in Warband, but native Bannerlord is so poorly designed, that I think even I would prefer playing cRPG in Bannerlord over the current state of native.
merrrica
Recruit
Would that apply to mercenaries, PK, and PW? If so, what mod did you consider acceptable in your opinion?
Not very big right now because the native multiplayer is utter bonzo
I agree with this general sentiment. I never really liked or disliked cRPG that much, but I definitely preferred Native Warband. Compared to Bannerlord Native, cRPG is far preferable even for people like me.
Bannerlord's Multiplayer scene is still somewhat tied to Warband, which Native never recieved proper attention from TaleWorlds. Given that it was a rather niche indie game when it came out in 2010, the 'penetration' of the market didn't happen in one big go. A lot of games these days get hyped, massive playerbases at launch, which depending on how good the game was then leads to either a fast or moderate decline in players/concurrent players on an order of 90%+ (99% in many cases) and the game never picks up momentum again. Warband's multiplayer never had that single massive push, in part because most people that play Mount & Blade do it for the scale and flexibility of the singleplayer (something which multiplayer simply doesn't have without significant modding). But it did have a consistent influx of players as more people discovered this somewhat niche indie game at different times, leading to a surprisingly consistent multiplayer population for most of the first decade. So right now it's a rather small (certainly small compared to singleplayer numbers, especially given just how bad Bannerlord multiplayer is - there still isn't open server access yet), but highly dedicated Mount & Blade MP playerbase. The vast majority of whom are either inactive waiting for MP to not be total rubbish, or still play Warband.
I have said this many times but... when the private servers are fully released and the players and modders can choose and do whatever they want with it.. the TW vanilla servers and their game modes will be dead in the water, their siege, captain, skirmish tdm servers will get insta killed.
All mods are acceptable in their own way, especially to those who belong to the niche of players that those mods cater to.
To better understand my perspective on this topic, take into consideration that I have been playing native warband competitively for nearly a decade, and I've spent quite some time playing NW and PW over the years.
My personal gripe with cRPG is that it's a mod that makes players who spend more time playing the game artificially better, because they persistently have access to better weapons, armors and stats than newer players.
I haven't played the bannerlord version of cRPG yet, but in the warband version, if you were a new cRPG player, you were, BY DESIGN, just supposed to be fodder for the players that have already farmed up some actual equipment to fight with. As a new player, you started with piss poor stats, peasant clothing, and a sickle that you literally couldn't even block attacks with. Even if you were a genuinely good with M&B combat, you would still lose to an absolutely terrible player who just happened to put a lot of hours into cRPG and wore heavy armor, because you would just glance every hit on them with your sickle. It was at its core, an unfair and unbalanced experience for newer players.
A player who has already spent hours playing a game should have already had extra time to develop a natural skill advantage over newer players. Adding an artificial advantage on top of that (in the form of better stats and equipment) is obscene and unnecessary, and IMO, fails to create a fair, competitive gameplay environment. When you beat another player, it should be in virtue of you having fairly outplayed them, not in virtue of you having had significantly better stats and equipment than them.
Something that I've always liked about native Warband is that whether you had 2 hours in the game, or 2000 hours in the game, you started every map on even footing. The 2000 hours player had absolutely no advantages over the 2 hour player, except for the natural advantages of having more knowledge of the game, and having had more time to develop some skill in the game. Moreover, the default 1K base gold everyone was given at the start was enough to make a very solid build that was also sufficiently fun to play with. A 1K build in Warband had a much better equipment loadout than the peasant classes you are sometimes forced to play as in Bannerlord. In addition, the scenario of someone with basic equipment having to go up against someone with top of the line equipment was very rare in native Warband. In Bannerlord, this scenario is commonplace due to the way the class system was designed.
Ironically, Persistent World was less persistent than cRPG. When you died in PW, you lost all of your equipment, as well as a decent % of your money. Back when PW was first released, it was more about roleplaying than fighting, especially in the times before banks became a thing, when all players had to carry all of their money on them. This made them approach RP interactions very differently than in more recent times, as players had a lot more to lose back then. Old PW servers also used to have a lot of rules of engagement that actually had to be followed, or you'd get banned. Every PW/PK server I have played on recently was basically just a glorified TDM server. Old PW and new PW/PK play out very differently. I'm not really a fan of what the new PK meta became, as it basically just felt like trying to play native TDM, but with extra steps and a lot less actual combat within the same time frame. It just became boring never ending wars between the same handful of clans, and a whole lot of running between castles. There didn't seem to be much else going on besides that.
As for mercenaries, I never played it, so I can't really comment on it.
A few posts ago, you seemed to insinuate that native Warband was not a good enough experience on its own, and that it was basically just a placeholder until MP mods came out, but as far as I am aware (I've been playing Warband since 2011), MP mods never overtook native population-wise, and if I ever missed the time when they did, then they clearly didn't outlive native. The only thing that ever overtook native population-wise for any meaningful period of time was the Napoleonic Wars DLC, and when it comes to the NW DLC, I've known many people who only bought Warband in order to play NW. They never even attempted to play native warband, nor ever had the intention to. Those were people that didn't pick NW over native because they thought native was bad. Those were people that saw NW gameplay either on the steam store or on YouTube, and wanted to play that version of the game specifically from the very beginning. You'd be amazed at the number of people I used to talk to in NW who said that they didn't even know that native Warband had multiplayer. Bannerlord's case is different, everyone who has played Bannerlord knows that it has multiplayer, as it's front and center as one of the two selectable options for Bannerlord on the Bannerlord launcher. TW did a much better job making people aware that M&B had multiplayer this time around, but they didn't to as good a job of making an enjoyable multiplayer experience. I think that's fair to say, considering that Bannerlord has had far more more advertising than Warband ever did, yet the Bannerlord multiplayer population is tragically low compared to the multiplayer population that Warband had in its early years. It's simply a fact that Bannerlord in its current state is not enjoyable enough to retain players to the level Warband did. The SP side of Bannerlord has far more players than the SP side of Warband ever did. Player retention doesn't seem to be a problem for the game as a whole, but it clearly seems to be a problem for Bannerlord's multiplayer specifically. Servers crashing is obviously an annoyance, but I doubt that having to wait a minute for servers to come back up would keep people who love the game from continuing to play. There's obviously more fundamental problems with Bannerlord's multiplayer that are keeping it from growing and retaining a large playerbase. I'd get into it, but I'd just be beating on the same dead horse that people on these forums have been beating on since alpha. This post is also already going to be long enough.
To bring the conversation back to cRPG, the reason why I would consider playing cRPG over the current state of native Bannerlord is because the only game mode I care to play in Bannerlord right now is battle, and right now in native battle, if you enter the server after the first round has already started, you start with less gold than the people who were in the server before the first round started. You also have so little gold, that the only classes you can afford to play as on your first personal round on the server are the dumpster tier peasant classes. Meanwhile, the players that were in the server before the first round started basically start out with enough gold to play any class they want on their first round, and since they can start as the strongest classes on the first round, it's a lot easier for them to survive and deal damage to get kills and assists to secure enough gold to play as one of the strongest classes again the following round. While they can do this, you are stuck fighting an uphill battle with a trash peasant class.
Now let me give you a very frustrating scenario that happened to me recently that perfectly encapsulates why this is absolute dog**** game design. I launched the game again after not having played it in over 4 months. I joined the GK Battle server when it had around 17 people on it. It was Khuzait vs Sturgia on a very open map. I joined Sturgia because they had one less player on their team. Sturgia was losing 0-3 to Khuzait. Once the class selection screen appears for me, I come to find out that the game is only going to give me enough gold to play as either a Sturgian Brigand or a Sturgian Warrior, AKA, Sturgian Peasants. Already, I'm thinking "Hmm... playing as a peasant infantry class against a horse archer faction... this is already looking pretty lame." Then I spawn in, and I see that literally everyone else on my team also spawned in as either a Sturgian Brigand or a Sturgian Warrior. I think to myself, "There's no way these people are dumb enough to pick this class on purpose against Khuzait," and sure enough, I take a look at the scoreboard, and I see that everyone on my team basically has not a single kill or assist, so literally no one on my team can even afford to pick an archer or cav class in order to counter the Khuzait horse archers. The only way we could possibly even deal damage to them is if they were dumb enough to run into us and let us hit them. Sure enough they didn't let that happen, so they just rushed our spawn and rode in circles while shooting down my peasants-in-arms. They quickly massacred us, and then just did the same the following round. There was absolutely no chance of me being able to do anything useful that map from the second I entered the server, or of my team being able to make any sort of comeback, all thanks to the way the game was designed.
Now someone, ANYONE, after hearing that story, please tell me why a new player who would have had that be their first multiplayer Bannerlord experience would have ever wanted to play this game again? I'm pretty sure the only kinds of thoughts going through their head would have been things along the lines of "Who is the absolute smooth brain who hand crafted this dreadful multiplayer experience?" "Who thought it would be a good idea to put players in a situation where they wouldn't even be able to play a class of their choosing?" "Even worse, who thought it was a good idea to create an economic system that would allow for not a single player on a whole team to be able to play as an archer or cav when they deliberately put a faction in the game that has a horse archer class?"
With cRPG (I imagine, because I haven't actually played it yet), at least you would only have to deal with playing with a dumpster tier loadout at the beginning, but once you overcome that hurdle, you will be able to persistently play with a loadout that matches the way you would like to play the game from then on. You would be able to launch the game, join a battle server, and instantly play the game the way you would like to play it. If you launch native Bannerlord right now, and you join a battle server that started without you, you will not be able to play the game the way you would like to play it every single time. You will be forced to play at an immediate disadvantage with a terribly underequipped and boring class every single time. The very thought of it irks me. That and the fact that I generally don't like playing as most of the classes in native Bannerlord are the main reasons why I would seriously consider completely ditching native Bannerlord and play cRPG instead.
The power scaling progression of cRPG characters still bothers me though. I would very much prefer a mod that functions closer to Mordhau's customization system, where all the items in the mod are given point values based on how powerful or useful they are, and everyone is given the exact same amount of points to make a build out of. That way the potential item based power imbalance between players can be minimized, and a semblance of a fair and balanced gameplay experience can be achieved, all while allowing players to look and play the way of their choosing, within reason. I would also adopt Mordhau's take on armors, and just put armors into 3 tiers, light, medium, and heavy, and give them all the same armor values within their tier. It would make balancing armor values and speed values way easier when there are only 3 values to work around, and it would also make it easier for players to make decisions on what armor they choose because now they can focus more on the aesthetics of the armor they want to play in, rather than racking their brain over whether having 4 more armor value is worth not looking as fly. It would also bring with it a feeling of consistency when a player can have a reasonable idea of how many solid hits its going to take to kill a certain player, with a specific weapon of choice, against an armor that is discernably one that fits into one of the 3 tiers of armor.
merrrica
Recruit
I will go back and edit to give a proper response, but the gist is that you don't like cRPG because you start out with under power results. That's the meat of your arguments, correct? I would argue that level up is very easy and not time consuming at all. cRPG is specifically balance where no one player is extremely over power just because they have an extra 1000 hours on everyone else. Yes there are higher tier weapons and armor, but the point of cRPG, like any other RPG that you have played is that you give attribute points to what play style you enjoy. Yes, it's unforgiving, yes cRPG players are a greasy bunch that take no mercy, but your gripe seems very bias due to you being a previous skrim player.
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i just played some vanilla bannerlord mp in a long time and holy **** it's boring, bland and it sucks. Forces me to play weapons I dont wanna play, cant take throwables when i need them. Bad design at its finest, if it stays like that then crpg will remain the core of bannerlord multiplayer
Who knew, selecting gear is far superior to a perk selection. Wow.
Farticle
Sergeant
I just want Warband spawning but it has literally every weapon and armor in the game available to purchase with gold built up during the match.
I never played Crpg in Warband. I get the impression that an "over-class" will quickly emerge comprised of players with complete sets of meta gear against everyone else. This doesn't make much sense to me for player retention. Imagine being a new player logging in for the first time with a bag of rocks versus fully plated arbalesters with two-handed swords. I wouldn't keep playing. Correct me if I'm mistaken.
I never played Crpg in Warband. I get the impression that an "over-class" will quickly emerge comprised of players with complete sets of meta gear against everyone else. This doesn't make much sense to me for player retention. Imagine being a new player logging in for the first time with a bag of rocks versus fully plated arbalesters with two-handed swords. I wouldn't keep playing. Correct me if I'm mistaken.
agree, and levelling is not even a core play of CRPG. at least not the reason good players also stick with it.
The beauty of cRPG is the Balance. It's important when your character is on a lower level. even tho level 10, You can be the key to victory.
Because you are "auto balanced" to a higher average character level team. You, as a peasant, bring your pike. With every successful brace(in crpg1 it's just a thrust attack), you are pushing your team to a better result.
Your will never experience it in native M&B.
In M&B, everybody is a big character
that's why I hope devs can allow new players start from at least level 15. The lvl 1 is only for 2+ generation ppl.
the lvl 1 is meaningless because you can make 0 impact when you are lvl 1... veterans know its levelling fast, but new players dont know, then will just leave. (I cant remember exactly but I think cRPG1 has a mechanism to help newcomers)
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That kinda happened, though the meta changed as devs nerfed/buffed certain things. For a while heavy armor with giant long mauls was the meta. There were a lot of people who didn't play the meta and just did whatever they wanted, but they were at a disadvantage.
It makes the new player experience horrible, and Mount & Blade already suffers from this. Easy and not time consuming I wouldnt say that, the first several hours of gameplay you're gonna have zero impact on the game, you exist to be farmed by higher level and better geared players. First several melee fights I had, the guys I fought couldnt block, but I did 5 damage per attack with my swings so I had no way of winning. Doesnt feel good, and its the reason I stopped playing cRPG in Warband aswell. The first hours of any game/show etc etc is the most important, thats what sucks you in.
Its incredibly unbalanced, with everything favoring cavalry, from the maps, the player pop, gameplay, lack of counter cav, crossbows broken, archery seems weak, and its still in a better state than current Native Bannerlord. Hopefully these things get fixed quickly. Tons of customisation options is nice. Personally I still prefer no level ups in Mountain Blade. It goes against the fundamental ideas imo.
Alkix
Regular
My suggestion for crpg or any leveling game like it it is to make progression an unlock system like rogue-like games have, but make sure that the things you unlock (with the exception of higher tier equipment) be optional perks that change your play style but aren't better than any other perk.
For example: all new characters can allocate all of their stats points as if they were max level, but everyone has 3 perk slots, and level 1 characters only have access to three perks. One perk might be that the player has +5% hp. No other perk is better at giving you hp than this perk. As you level, you can unlock different perks. One might give you long reach and let you pick up throwables off horseback. Maybe one gives you armor pen on arrows.
The point is, that you can design a system that allows players to want to progress and play with more interesting combos (and get more pricey gear), but also have a system that allows new players to still play around with combinations (though stat selection and basic gear loadouts) and still be effective in the game.
For example: all new characters can allocate all of their stats points as if they were max level, but everyone has 3 perk slots, and level 1 characters only have access to three perks. One perk might be that the player has +5% hp. No other perk is better at giving you hp than this perk. As you level, you can unlock different perks. One might give you long reach and let you pick up throwables off horseback. Maybe one gives you armor pen on arrows.
The point is, that you can design a system that allows players to want to progress and play with more interesting combos (and get more pricey gear), but also have a system that allows new players to still play around with combinations (though stat selection and basic gear loadouts) and still be effective in the game.
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