Making Personality Traits, Noble Relations and Political Stances relevant

[five bucks]

On Merciful, I know the YouTuber Halyclion claimed to have followed King Derthert around to see if he'd hypocritically raid--he didn't, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're at least partially implemented. I have not actually checked to see if the idiots eager to pin down large hordes when I'm only passing by had Impulsive or Brave or not though--I really ought to...

I'll keep my eye out also, but I think I've seen "Merciful" lords raiding before.

In that case it'd be easy to keep the bad guys in check by virtue of there being numerous traits that'd counteract it with your proposition. A random assortment of vassals, chosen for their abilities rather than their Traits, would likely result in a net positive relation. However... I do think companions and their preferences should be expanded upon. It was a real surprise when Sorgard Breakskull confronted me on retreating, and me saying I wouldn't do it again raised his affection by +44, and then I did it again and the same thing happened... clearly, this could lead to something, but I'm not seeing it so I can't but think it's a half-baked idea as it stands. Like, he should have called me out on it and turned that +44 into a negative 44 or something, and that relationship value ought to mean something as well when, as it stands, relations within your own clan are meaningless.

Yep, clan relations are indeed pretty meaningless which is a shame. I think since clans are designed as an extension of their leader, the other clan members are an extension of you, "the player", so I get why that's the way it is. But it's a shame we'll probably never have stuff like our brothers plotting against us or something.

Referring back to your first point about illogical implementations; I notice a weirdness where Honor/Dishonor seems to refer to adherence to morality more than fulfillment of obligations (except you can gain Honor by turning in tax monies to nobles asking for you to tax farm for them) while Generous/Closefisted, at least in character descriptions and Encyclopedia, refers to the rate at which characters adhere to obligations. Therefore, somebody like King Caladog is supposed to take care of his homies but not give 2Fs about the moral question of life's value and whether it's better to suffer righteously for an unworthy ruler or be free and true to yourself as a traitor.

Possibly, but it could also be interpreted that you'd a madman who fights unwinnable battles (Impulsive) who happens to be good enough for those balls to be true (Brave)!

Calculating/Impulsive is pretty vaguely defined by the game, so I erred on the side of "Impulsive" being a largely negative thing, like most of the other opposite traits are usually negative. I interpreted "impulsive" as "liable to make bad decisions". But your interpretation could be equally valid too.

Honor used to be a catch-all "good/bad" in Warband, then when Bannerlord rolled around and added other traits, its role got a bit confused in the messy development of the game. Sometimes it seems to refer to morality (artifact of its role in Warband), and sometimes it seems to refer to keeping one's word.

The encyclopedia description leads towards keeping obligations, but on the other hand you can currently lose Honor for executing people. And I question that, because then what's the point of the Cruel personality trait? I think you should lose Mercy/gain Cruelty for executing people.

You wind up with these confusing situations when you make a sequel that recycles some code and dialogue from the last game, has the lead writer leave halfway through development, has no unified game design document, and has 100+ employees working on it with different ideas of how things should work.

In that case, why is there an "extreme" yellow/red framed variant of it? They ought to range from negative 2 to positive 2 at the very least; THAT kind of moderation would justify it as-is, and would be a preferable handling.

My apologies, you were right and it is a thing, it just doesn't really seem to factor in the game. I thought it had been removed at some point.

I'd really rather NOT have it be so predictable because half the fun of an open simulation is the sheer randomness and lack of predictability. If I always know King Derthert (for example) will be a great guy who'll never willingly force me into a stupid war, I'll never be miffed if he suddenly says "You know what? F__k the Empire, we're going on a crusade for Lycaron" or something lol. However, SOME predictability and trends is good, but not to the point where I can predict how everything in a long playthrough will turn out before I even set about it. Hammers and monkey wrenches ought to be thrown into my plans; I like it when God laughs, since I'm too used to strategy games where I can plan all day and watch it happen with little deviation.

You do make a convincing argument, maybe it would be better if it was like a 5% chance for Merciful nobles to raid villages.

That's very interesting; I know from my first playthrough that it's rare for voting nobles to be split down the middle or even 40/60. Usually it's on questions of war declarations where the prompt to vote on it preceded another prompt saying we got declared on and so, with changed information, some of the hawks decided to return to the nest.

Yep. Which sucks because the player usually can't manipulate the vote.

It's difficult for me to say what TW is and isn't willing to do--it's highly unusual for developers to update content for free into video games in general, so I have no precedence for this. After all, at least nominally, the game's done and officially complete for publication; normally it'd be time to do whatever it is we're postulating in the form of DLCs rather than do stuff (of varying levels of complexity) for free.

I think it's better to shoot for the stars at any rate; even if it falls short, it'd likely better than falling short of a modest target. Furthermore, to those like myself who'd be willing to reach into their pocket books, it may better for them to just clean up the game for now and then add new stuff (and redo existing stuff) via expansion packs. Considering how unstable the Sims 4 is (the only other game I know of with a post-development cycle, albeit one doing pricy DLCs AND free updates), I suspect it's much smoother to focus entirely on clean up or entirely on expansion content rather than trying to do both plus free update content. But... I don't know how game development works lol, and I've heard Sims 4 is being worked on by a skeleton crew on minimal budget whereas TW is an independent company, so... (shrug)

I just think that if they advertised a game as having certain mechanics that did certain things, then they should make it happen without the player having to buy expansion packs.

Back when they did the demo in 2016 https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/15 they said: "The personalities of characters in the game are defined by their traits, which are earned in a variety of ways and determine how characters react, are reacted to and can affect their behaviour."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/43 "In Bannerlord, an NPC’s behaviour is heavily influenced by their personality traits."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/83 "To keep each battle varied and to further the emergent narrative for the player, this layer of the combat AI is influenced by the AI lord commanding the army. Some lords might be more cautious and prefer to seize the high ground before setting up in a defensive formation, whereas other lords might be a little more rash, putting pressure onto their opponents by committing to an early assault."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/91 "An honorable emir may feel compelled by his oath of fealty to stick by even the vilest of sultans. A conniving one might turn down the choicest bribe because frankly, he doesn’t think you have what it takes to win a civil war, and silver is no use to him if he’s dead. Persuasion is a means to help players overcome these reservations."

 

[froggyluv]

I just think that if they advertised a game as having certain mechanics that did certain things, then they should make it happen without the player having to buy expansion packs.

Back when they did the demo in 2016 https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/15 they said: "The personalities of characters in the game are defined by their traits, which are earned in a variety of ways and determine how characters react, are reacted to and can affect their behaviour."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/43 "In Bannerlord, an NPC’s behaviour is heavily influenced by their personality traits."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/83 "To keep each battle varied and to further the emergent narrative for the player, this layer of the combat AI is influenced by the AI lord commanding the army. Some lords might be more cautious and prefer to seize the high ground before setting up in a defensive formation, whereas other lords might be a little more rash, putting pressure onto their opponents by committing to an early assault."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/91 "An honorable emir may feel compelled by his oath of fealty to stick by even the vilest of sultans. A conniving one might turn down the choicest bribe because frankly, he doesn’t think you have what it takes to win a civil war, and silver is no use to him if he’s dead. Persuasion is a means to help players overcome these reservations."

I remember reading all of this and taking them at their word -im convinced regardless of what defensive Devs here say that console stole this focus away from the PC gamers.

 

[JunKeteer]

I remember reading all of this and taking them at their word -im convinced regardless of what defensive Devs here say that console stole this focus away from the PC gamers.

Yep, I'm tired of all these console>PC or PC>console ports that release at the same time. I don't mind ports as it was before that if a game is successful on one platform, 'remaster' it to another in the future.
But shooting for both at the same time, particularly with how nearly all games now release with plenty of missing/underdeveloped features and not just bugs is ridiculous; biting way, way more than the studios can chew.
You're just sacrificing the focus of devs and overall game design (even if it's different dev departments) to manage how it works for not only the PC, but for Xbox, PS, and maybe even Steamdeck(?). To somehow make it 'equal' among them all at the same time to shoot for that massive initial fad sales release.
We're left with compromised features after features - things dumbed down, scope creeps, reduced version update efficiencies/certifications, less QA oversight, multiplicative bug/crash issues, etc...

'jack of all trades, master of none'

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I'll keep my eye out also, but I think I've seen "Merciful" lords raiding before.

Yep, clan relations are indeed pretty meaningless which is a shame. I think since clans are designed as an extension of their leader, the other clan members are an extension of you, "the player", so I get why that's the way it is. But it's a shame we'll probably never have stuff like our brothers plotting against us or something.

Calculating/Impulsive is pretty vaguely defined by the game, so I erred on the side of "Impulsive" being a largely negative thing, like most of the other opposite traits are usually negative. I interpreted "impulsive" as "liable to make bad decisions". But your interpretation could be equally valid too.

Honor used to be a catch-all "good/bad" in Warband, then when Bannerlord rolled around and added other traits, its role got a bit confused in the messy development of the game. Sometimes it seems to refer to morality (artifact of its role in Warband), and sometimes it seems to refer to keeping one's word.

The encyclopedia description leads towards keeping obligations, but on the other hand you can currently lose Honor for executing people. And I question that, because then what's the point of the Cruel personality trait? I think you should lose Mercy/gain Cruelty for executing people.

One aspect of traits I miss from Warband was how Honor heavily impacted your HR with the world; high honor in Warband basically made everybody love you and made it so the entire Kherjit Khanate (for example) would fly over to you middle-of-nowhere village to rescue it lol but perhaps positive honor was too OP since I can't think of any good reason to play evil from a cost/benefit analysis beyond long term versus short term gains. It would be nice if traits had a passive affect on clan to clan relations...

But yeah, there's some serious ambiguity since you'd think Cruel/Mercy would be checked when you execute people rather than Honor/Deception; I can make some sense of it (even in Calradia it could be argued a dead noble saves hundreds of commoners--in fact, flavor text for some of the anti-social personalities inherited from Warband basically say as much) but it's an unintuitive stretch to say the least.

My apologies, you were right and it is a thing, it just doesn't really seem to factor in the game. I thought it had been removed at some point.

You do make a convincing argument, maybe it would be better if it was like a 5% chance for Merciful nobles to raid villages.

Yep. Which sucks because the player usually can't manipulate the vote.

No problem; considering how many hidden mechanics there are, and how this game was in open beta for a couple years, I doubt anybody fully knows what does and doesn't work in the game and to what degrees. Like, for example, traits may indeed play a role in voting patterns but votes don't count abstentions (which I notice make up the majority of votes in kingdoms with dozens of clans) and they're numerous other factors that might diminish the importance of traits if they're even a factor to begin with.

I think somewhat merciful should be at least half the base rate and extremely merciful either not at all (unless forced, like in an Army) or a quarter the base rate.

If there was one aspect of voting I'd like to change, it's opening a window of time where we can try to convince people to change their minds. Even if it's only 2 days so we have to grab whoever's nearby, it'd be a great use of the speech minigame and make the noble democracy more engaging.

I just think that if they advertised a game as having certain mechanics that did certain things, then they should make it happen without the player having to buy expansion packs.

Back when they did the demo in 2016 https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/15 they said: "The personalities of characters in the game are defined by their traits, which are earned in a variety of ways and determine how characters react, are reacted to and can affect their behaviour."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/43 "In Bannerlord, an NPC’s behaviour is heavily influenced by their personality traits."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/83 "To keep each battle varied and to further the emergent narrative for the player, this layer of the combat AI is influenced by the AI lord commanding the army. Some lords might be more cautious and prefer to seize the high ground before setting up in a defensive formation, whereas other lords might be a little more rash, putting pressure onto their opponents by committing to an early assault."

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/91 "An honorable emir may feel compelled by his oath of fealty to stick by even the vilest of sultans. A conniving one might turn down the choicest bribe because frankly, he doesn’t think you have what it takes to win a civil war, and silver is no use to him if he’s dead. Persuasion is a means to help players overcome these reservations."

I think TW's mistake was saying too much before they could determine if what they said was even possible to do under given circumstances. This is pretty much the same trap Peter Molyneux fell into back when he was hyping Fable games (although not to the same degree) and to a lesser degree the same pattern you see when guys like Todd Howard say their games will have XYZ but they only "technically" have XYZ. In principle; you're right, they should have what they said they'd have in the base game rather than as a paid DLC. As it is, these lines are only technically true (with me not being at all sure about how it affects battle behaviors because it wasn't something I was looking out for) but people hyped for Bannerlord (the target audience, basically) would naturally imagine far more than presently exists.

Well, at any rate, I'd rather they make it "truer to the spirit" via a meaty expansion than a slight adjustment here and there. If they're going to fall short, better do it in ethics than in terms of end result? Maybe? I don't know lol, but I do know pretty much every ambitious game falls short of its original goals (Morrowind, for example) but only a few games studios actually advertise what they're doing and thus let the general public know that they fell short in the first place (how would a neo-Morrowind be reviewed if we could follow the development team from their big ambitions early on to the numerous compromises they had to make to make barely working by the end of their stretched budget?).

Yep, I'm tired of all these console>PC or PC>console ports that release at the same time. I don't mind ports as it was before that if a game is successful on one platform, 'remaster' it to another in the future.
But shooting for both at the same time, particularly with how nearly all games now release with plenty of missing/underdeveloped features and not just bugs is ridiculous; biting way, way more than the studios can chew.
You're just sacrificing the focus of devs and overall game design (even if it's different dev departments) to manage how it works for not only the PC, but for Xbox, PS, and maybe even Steamdeck(?). To somehow make it 'equal' among them all at the same time to shoot for that massive initial fad sales release.
We're left with compromised features after features - things dumbed down, scope creeps, reduced version update efficiencies/certifications, less QA oversight, multiplicative bug/crash issues, etc...

'jack of all trades, master of none'
Click to expand...

As far as I know, it's ALWAYS been like this (like, back when it was different types of personal computers rather than PC vs Console); it's just TW is far more transparent than most so you can see the difference between what was conceived versus what came out. Therefore, I don't think Bannerlord is lacking in areas due to time being devoted to making a console port but rather due to a mix of over-ambition, over-sharing (raises expectations too high), lack of experience with expanded scope, and other matters like that. Even so, and perhaps I'm fortunate to have stopped following the dev blogs early on since I didn't feel like waiting years before I could finally play it on PS4, I do think Bannerlord's a fantastic one-of-a-kind game. However, like many great games of history, it's fallen short of its intended scope and it's impossible to say if it'll ever reach the originally aspired height one way or another.

 

[black_bulldog]

I remember reading all of this and taking them at their word -im convinced regardless of what defensive Devs here say that console stole this focus away from the PC gamers.

I remember when we got the new control layout to "make it easier for players who use a controller to use" ie we're trying to make it console friendly and I ask a dev flat out whether we would get the old layout back. I was told yes, and when that never happened I decided that Taleworlds didn't give a about anything but money and that's about the time I stopped playing.

 

[five bucks]

One aspect of traits I miss from Warband was how Honor heavily impacted your HR with the world; high honor in Warband basically made everybody love you and made it so the entire Kherjit Khanate (for example) would fly over to you middle-of-nowhere village to rescue it lol but perhaps positive honor was too OP since I can't think of any good reason to play evil from a cost/benefit analysis beyond long term versus short term gains. It would be nice if traits had a passive affect on clan to clan relations...

I definitely felt having high Honor a lot more in Warband than I do in Bannerlord. Though to be fair, multiple different "positive trait" roles falling under Honor probably helped it be more impactful, as opposed to being divided between 4 new mechanics.

But yeah, there's some serious ambiguity since you'd think Cruel/Mercy would be checked when you execute people rather than Honor/Deception; I can make some sense of it (even in Calradia it could be argued a dead noble saves hundreds of commoners--in fact, flavor text for some of the anti-social personalities inherited from Warband basically say as much) but it's an unintuitive stretch to say the least.

Yes, and I think Cruel lacks a real gameplay role for the player without it.

If there was one aspect of voting I'd like to change, it's opening a window of time where we can try to convince people to change their minds. Even if it's only 2 days so we have to grab whoever's nearby, it'd be a great use of the speech minigame and make the noble democracy more engaging.

That would be great.

I think TW's mistake was saying too much before they could determine if what they said was even possible to do under given circumstances. This is pretty much the same trap Peter Molyneux fell into back when he was hyping Fable games (although not to the same degree) and to a lesser degree the same pattern you see when guys like Todd Howard say their games will have XYZ but they only "technically" have XYZ. In principle; you're right, they should have what they said they'd have in the base game rather than as a paid DLC. As it is, these lines are only technically true (with me not being at all sure about how it affects battle behaviors because it wasn't something I was looking out for) but people hyped for Bannerlord (the target audience, basically) would naturally imagine far more than presently exists.

Some of them aren't even technically true. I would at least be happy with technical truths that accomplish being some sort of fun, if not super deep. I was happy with their implementation of criminal alleys, prison breaks and keep battles for example, which made them true to their word and added a bit of fun to the game even if it wasn't super deep.

As far as I know, it's ALWAYS been like this (like, back when it was different types of personal computers rather than PC vs Console); it's just TW is far more transparent than most so you can see the difference between what was conceived versus what came out.

They were far more transparent than most back when they started developing BL, but now they are less transparent than most EA developers, probably because they are a bit too afraid of repeating the mistakes of the past.

However, like many great games of history, it's fallen short of its intended scope and it's impossible to say if it'll ever reach the originally aspired height one way or another.

Agreed. And the really sucky thing is it's mostly bad balance/design/tuning decisions that are holding it back from being one of the great games of history. So much good content is there and only fails to be fun because it's *partially* implemented.