Recent content by Badcritter

Nalgasucia507 said:

I dont think the first issue is bad. That sounds like an appropriate time to heal up for me.

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Realistically it should take a lot longer than that of course. For gameplay purposes 3 days for full resting heal probably makes good balance sense, but 3 days standing still is a very big speed bump to the pacing of the game for a human player.

Personally I can't bear to sit in a town for days on end paying my party's wages for them to do nothing - I have to keep moving and doing things to not feel like the game world is marching ahead without me. For me that usually translates to attaining the minimum health required to participate in battle ASAP, then playing captain mode style commanding my troops and avoiding risk of personal injury until my health gets back above 2/3. Then I can get back to playing the mixed command/personal battle style that makes the game unique.

I think the valid complaint players make about long healing times is that such periods essentially lock you out of playing the game at its best. While other play styles can be fun, it isn't really practical to reconfigure your party for just a few days of playing differently.

Flesson19 said:

As put by mexxico they are high risk/high reward and mostly shouldn't be used when at war since they do get captured easily.

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Totally agree. It is unfortunate that the player does not seem to get a return on their capital investment when disbanding a caravan. When war comes, as it always will when you are involved with kingdoms, there is little difference between disbanding your caravan so that it doesn't get destroyed, and just waiting for it to get destroyed. Option 1 gets you your companion back faster, option 2 makes you more money because the caravan gets to run longer.

Successfully disbanding a caravan should return the gold/value of goods the caravan was carrying at the time it disbanded. If it is already doing that, it needs to be made more visible as I couldn't see it happening.

AnandaShanti said:

In my game of 1.5 I'm getting notified of lords as young as 50 dying of old age? This game is only about 145 days in.

A 52yo and 62yo also died in short order. 62 is okay I guess but under 60 is too young I think. I noticed these while I waiting in my town to get pregnant. I wait about 7 days then exit game and try again. Might be important as it seems loading the game does weird stuff in 1.5.

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At the point in history where the game is set, average life expectancy of an upper class male who made it to adulthood was in the 40s. The current age allowance in the game is quite generous by historical standards.

McBaal said:

So the 1.4.2 stable includes the code refactor, meaning most likely none of the mods will work anymore?

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I'm not expecting that, it would be different to how their process has worked in the past. It would be high risk for them to drop the refactored code on millions of casual players without it passing through beta scale testing first.

I expect the current 1.4.2 which has been on beta for so long to move to main branch and mods updated for 1.4.2 will still work on it.
1.4.3 will come to beta, and it will be largely the same to play as 1.4.2, but it has been code refactored under the hood and that is likely to break mods.

Assuming it does play out that way, it means if you need mods to enjoy the game you can just play main branch (which will be the 1.4.2 we've all come to know and love... and get bored of) until mods are updated. You won't miss much in the way of new features or content since 1.4.3 is focused on refactor, not features or content.

Smyxyz said:

You mean 1.4.3. The 1.4.2 version will be moved from BETA to ALPHA, that means a much stable one. 1.4.3 will be the new beta for those who want to experiment it. hope u understand now

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Not sure if you're making a joke or you misunderstand the terminology of beta and alpha in software development... Alpha is a lower standard, earlier in process, smaller test pool phase than beta. At this point in time, the public has no access to the alpha builds of Bannerlord, and though they have in the past mentioned the possibility of opening an alpha build to the public for eager testers to opt into, that hasn't been mentioned for a while and I don't expect it to happen in the near future.

1.4.2 will be moved from beta to production/release/main branch. 1.4.3 will move from internal/alpha to beta.

Jamestec said:

The other thing I've wondered is, yes they're fixing bugs after the code refactor (or during?), but how come it isn't pushed to the beta branch anyway? I thought the purpose of the beta branch was to be as close to the developer's branch as possible and the unbuggy version would be the stable branch? Even though there may be bugs, as long as it launches, it should be moved to beta and if anyone complains, just tell them to gtfo out of the beta branch?

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I would say the reason they haven't pushed it to beta is because there is no point exposing a build to a wider array of testers when there are already serious known bugs to work on. Perhaps some new bugs would be unearthed earlier, but generally the resources that would work on them are already tied up on the known bugs, so mostly it just generates an angry mob of beta testers complaining about the state of the build. The time to go to beta is when internal QA aren't hitting show stoppers.

For me the bigger question is why hasn't beta been pushed to public? It as been stable for weeks and I'm sure the broader playerbase would like the new refinements of 1.4.2. Seems arbitrary to hold that back just because the new beta build isn't ready.

Julio-Claudian said:

PLEASE find a way to stop entire groups of infantry turning their backs to the entire enemy army to chase after one horse archer or a couple of cavalrymen. It's the most frustrating and immersion breaking thing that happens in battles, maybe in the game.

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This is a fairly interesting problem to try and solve. As humans we have an instinctive sense of threat assessment which allows us to see the current behaviour and say "that's stupid", but it is pretty complex to actually define the rules of an AI's decision making to ensure the facing decisions it makes aren't stupid.

In the meantime, you can always manually control the facing of your troops via the in-combat commands instead. But that will probably take enough cognitive load to prevent you doing any personal weapon swinging or blocking.

Blood Gryphon said:

" Our goal is a weekly cycle where we push our internal version to the beta and the prior beta version to the main Steam build. However, if serious challenges arise, we may delay an update until those issues have been addressed. "

Why? They stated that they will take more time if they need it in the same statement that said they hope for weekly updates. People need to set their expectation to what was actually said and not just a part of the message. They have provided the reason why this is taking more time then usual. Play and/or wait.

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I refer you to goal theory or the corporate world, whichever you prefer.

Taking 3 times as long as the goal to get something done, on multiple occasions, is an indication that the goal is not realistic. Unrealistic goals are pointless and even destructive in the context of goal theory, and repeatedly missing unrealistic goals by orders of magnitude can get you fired in the corporate world if steps aren't taken to make them realistic.

You'll notice I didn't complain that it has taken them 3 weeks (twice). What I did was suggested they adjust their target so that it will be more in line with what is achievable. When they set the one week target they thought it was achievable - but in practice it looks like that estimation was off. Making the goal more realistic is more motivating for staff and better for morale, and also happens to set player expectations closer to what will actually be achieved. That's a win/win. That's best practice.

It is probably time to adjust the formal target of weekly cycles from beta to main. Two cycles of (at least) 3 weeks seems like an indication that 1 week isn't feasible to stabilise the volume of changes going into each update. 2 weeks is probably enough for stabilising beta judging by the last 2 cycles, but it seems to take 3 to get the next update stable enough for public consumption (ie. pushing to beta).

Avatar 1968 said:

And about the recoding/refactoring job; i Do hope it means some form of modding tools wll be available as well, because it could mean all known mods will not work on the new version and that would be a shame

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Refactoring is likely to be associated with preparation for modding tools (among many other things).

Unfortunately other things it tends to be associated with include breaking existing mods as you note, and bugs in general.

Nobody likes refactoring. I remember once on a project the lead designer expressed his exasperation about the fact we were doing it, saying "I'm starting to think 'refactoring' is just a euphemism for wasting time." Often users don't see an immediate benefit from it, but when you need to do it you need to do it - and it usually enables greater things to flow and is worth it in the long run.

stevehoos said:

You can beat the AI anyway eventually, that's why it's called AI.

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Skynet be like...

Mama Luke said:

People are talking about devs like they're some sort of prey who'd get scared and run away if we make too much noise.

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The other side of the coin is to let's not forget that the devs are human, and nobody likes to be told they suck at their job - or that what they are doing is stupid or worthless. There's a level of thoughtfulness and respect that should be used to offer feedback even if it is negative. There is also a certain irony in people demanding more communication (reasonable) then spitting chips when they get it (understandable in some case, but still not wise).

I don't like the game being dumbed down and I agree with the sentiment that it is being dumbed down too much. However, there is a very clear answer to the question:


"Where are these players that want the gamed dumbed down?".

The answer is: not posting on this forum.


The game sold millions. This forum's membership is 1/10th of that, the regular participants are 1/10th of that, and the regular posters an even smaller subset of that. We are Bannerlord's 1%'ers people. The majority of the players don't even have an account on these forums, and they play less than 10 hours a week.


The logic is that we 1%'ers who want a more heavy duty experience can and will download mods to get it. The average/majority player will not, thus the game should be tailored to that majority.


When you think about it, it's actually hard to argue against that logic. HOWEVER, tailoring to the majority doesn't need to marginalise hardcore players to the extent TW's intentions and actions seem to be doing.

eg. Banners. A complex version was implemented, but then the feature got dumbed down.

When a feature has been built which has more complexity than suitable for the lowest common denominator, you don't remove the complexity to the detriment of more engaged players, you improve the interface to it so that the lowest common denominator isn't overwhelmed, and others can still access the full feature. The depth of a great game is accessed along paths of discovery which allow players to venture down them as far as their interest and engagement level allows. Don't build a wall across the path to "protect" the casual gamer. Good design is more sophisticated than this, but at the very least in this example the game could default to the basic banners with a button to switch to "advanced mode".

Interesting comments in this reddit thread where a guy starved out 700 defenders. Particularly the observation that it is apparently easier to starve out the garrison of a highly prosperous town (than a less prosperous one), which is clearly unintuitive.

I micromanage vulnerable troops in a separate group and put them behind the group with shields sometimes, but whenever practical I simply don't use vulnerable troops because of the annoyance of needing to micromanage them.

An infantry formation that is not engaged in melee combat can and should be configured to put the shielded at the front and the vulnerable behind them automatically.

High Solar said:

Can we give all 2h weapons the ability to cleave trough multiple opponents. I find it weird that this is only for axes and nod swords and maces.

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As @Bob The Mexican notes, 2H maces can cleave.

I have wondered why swords don't. Some thoughts as to why this might be intentional:

Swords can thrust while the other types can't (some blunts can thrust, but its still blunt damage not pierce). While thrust attacks are not very exciting at the moment, presumably that will be balanced and the additional tactical flexibility of thrust attacks can be important.

Are there hand and a half maces and axes? Swords can be crafted or bought in this format (Bastard Swords). There is potential for technical complications and balance questions about a hand and a half weapon being able to cleave.

Swords usually have longer range than axe and blunt weapons.


I agree it feels odd intuitively that 2H swords don't cleave when the other types do, but there are logical arguments for why it might be better that they don't.