Recent content by CharlieMRCR

sir Gregor Clegane said:

I agree, you need to remove the same companions and give players the opportunity to choose companion perks.

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A simple change like that would be better than nothing. However, the reason I suggest a more complete overhaul of the system is that one of the great joys of party based RPGs is the customizability of your party and getting it to operate in the way you'd like. A classic critique of party based RPGs is that premade companions (which is what Bannerlord effectively has) are woefully unoptimized and can never reach their full potential. It's a critique that goes back decades, and it's just a shame to see another developer fall down this pitfall of giving the player less freedom in who they can bring into the party, and less agency in how that person develops as a party member. The fact that you can't even reliably get premades for the different skills makes the whole companion system worse. But I want to continue to highlight the importance of letting us allocate not just perks, but also focuses and attributes ourselves. As I described in my original post.

There's a lot of potential in the current character development system in how players could mentor and train companions into being vital party members that I'm happy to have in the clan. But so much of this potential can never be realized with companions having so many of their attributes/focuses/perks/skill points already being allocated. I don't think there's a single companion preset in the game that at level 15 looks even close to how I would have a level 15 companion built. There's this whole potential gameplay loop of training up companions as valuable clan members that could exist. But it can't because of the frankly undesirable presets.

When the player character at 20 years old enters the game, they have 18 attributes (2 baseline in all + 6), 12 focus points, and 100 skill points. Recruiting custom companions could work like the player character creation works. So a custom trader for caravans would have 50 skill in trading with 5 focus points invested, and +3 social. A second skill could be chosen to start with 50 skill points, 5 focus points invested, as well as +3 to its relevant attribute. And they'd have a couple of focus points left over. I'm not sure if this is initial pool is true for NPCs across the board, but even just letting us a recruit a level 1 companion starting with this approximate framework would be preferable to the current system. Because this companion has their whole development ahead of them. So in my initial post, I should have started with just custom level 1 companions.

Things would get a lot more complicated if we could recruit custom level 15 companions like I initially suggested, so I'm not really saying we need get rid of the current companion system entirely. I'm sure there's plenty of people who are mostly fine with getting a current preset at level 15 and making do with it. Even if it's a terribly built preset in my opinion. But I just can't help but notice there's a whole additional gameplay loop here that could be in the game, if we could actually just customize our companions better and from level 1.

darksoulshin said:

If they added a sort of meeting place for the poor, canteens, city clinics, or small churches for some god, maybe even surgeons could be recruited in the city and not necessarily inside the fortresses of the nobles.

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Indeed! That did occur to me, although I figured using locations already in towns with an NPC is easier than adding new locales into every city in the game. The inconveniences of how Wanderers and party building works right now is just one of several systems that dissuades me from making Bannerlord an easy recommend to my friends. The Companion system is certainly not the only offender in that regard, but it is one that irks me greatly.

Jagati Khan said:

Hideouts defo need some changes they are pretty lame right now for a few reasons.
Attacking multiple times is utterly ridiculous as mentioned above the game states they will vanish if you fail.

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Gotta correct myself, I did A BUNCH bandit lairs today and reread the text. It says your party will disperse. Which is maybe even worse, but also doesn't seem to be happening ATM. I found the best way to do them is to not aggro the room that most of the bandits spawn in. Eventually, the leader will come out and challenge you. But if you aggro 15 at once, that's when you tend to lose. It either goes very smoothly or is a complete crapshow.

Dr-Shinobi said:

But you can multiple assault it. Retreat by exit the zone then heal up and go for it again.
Yeah if you push the attack button they will start to move up lowering it at times to gain extra speed..especilly when they are close. Use move order to get closer or move to enemy command if i remember it correctly. Im only using charge button when i know they are not much of a threat or when they are close towards my tight formation

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Yes, I've agreed with you from the beginning that multiple assaults are a viable way to do lairs. But the game says the bandits will disperse if you fail the assault. The dispersing part is not implemented yet though. Once it is, multiple assaults will not be possible. If TW decides to not implement it, multiple assaults will continue to be viable.

Dr-Shinobi said:

But is shouldnt just disappear when you fail. If that was the case the game would make no sense.

Weird because ive seen em empty out plenty of times from even 70 going out on their operations which makes this game so wonderfully dynamic. But seems were playing two different games or versions (even if i thought it was implemented before to....

What are you talking about ? have you tried using shield wall formation ? mine is always holding up against arrows but sure some arrows can hit em in the legs or other places depending of the shield ofc

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To your first point, if TW keeps it so multiple assaults are possible moving forward, yes. BUT the text is copy pasted from Warband. This leads me to think they will work like Warband did. In which case they would disappear. I could be wrong though. What the game is simulating is that the bandits just leave that hideout after you retreat.

To your second point, yeah I'm not saying they NEVER go out. But it's just not frequent enough that sitting around doing nothing for days on end in a game where you age and a year is like 100 days or w/e is good game design.

To your third point, the AI will drop their shields when they attack, and it does happen when ranged attacks are coming in.

We don't actually disagree much, I think. I'm just saying lairs are not tuned well enough to be considered "well-implemented." The game is going to be in early access for a year. I'd be surprised if how lairs are tuned now is what TW thinks is good.

edit: Oh, I forgot to agree with Waybrook. Yeah, I think just capping the number of bandits at 30, and making sure they don't spawn in batches of 20, which did happen to me, would also be good.

Dr-Shinobi said:

1st you go in and kill as many as you can then retreat and do it again
2nd You could wait it out untill theres lesser troops in there.

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I have to disagree. Bandit lairs are not tuned well ATM. Attacking a bandit lair actually says if you fail the attack, the bandits will disperse. I take that to mean it's like Warband where if you fail the attack, the lair will just disappear. But that is obviously not implemented yet. So in the future, it's unlikely we'll be able to make multiple assaults.

Also, bandit groups don't seem tuned to actually move out the base regularly. I've never seen it happen. Any element of game design that requires the player to sit around doing nothing needs a serious look. If groups actually moved out regularly, I'd absolutely agree with your 2nd point. But bandit camps are just not well implemented to be considered "good" ATM.

A LOT of the game is tuned way up from Warband thanks to ranged weapons getting an accuracy buff, and this extends to bandit camps. Your soldiers just don't reliably hold up their shields, compounding the issue. That's pretty annoying when a javelin headshot is a 1 hit kill. The game also values quantity over quality thanks to the stun-locking quantity gets you. As camps are tuned right now, you can actually aggro 20 guys at once if they all spawned in the same room.

I agree that currently, you can complete bandit lairs by making multiple assaults, but that's unlikely to be the case in the future. In which case, bandit lairs are over-tuned. TW could also increase the rate at which bandits leave the lair, but it just doesn't happen frequently enough to be considered good game design.

edit: So maybe OP saying they are pointless is an overstatement, but I'm closer to his opinion because they are not tuned well enough to be considered good.

Peuri said:

You sound like a Russian boyar circa 1240.

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Or OP is Crassus.

TBH, ranged is way buffed from Warband thanks to better accuracy, and that includes horse archery. Is it insanely strong? Yes. Has a point about rebalancing the damage though, especially VS higher quality armours. But removing horse archery completely is too extreme.

xdj1nn said:

And that is avoiding to mention the arbitrary perks, which basically give you a massive middle finger for wanting a efficient build, the worst of all is on the smith tree, you have to chose: "Will you farm unlocks or will you actually be able to craft ****?" Luckly it's so badly implemented that you actually won't need any of the refining perks, you can just smelt the **** out of everything for materials. The only two ****ing rare materials are charcoal (big WHAT THE F***?), and Thermalsighjuiehasoahjd Steel, which you'll probably never be able to unlock any part using that metal anyway, so it's useless.

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I have mentioned the inefficiency of the tree quite a few times on the forums now. Though my issue with it is that if you want to max out bow skill, for example, you need to increase Control. Meanwhile the crossbow and throwing skill perks are totally dead to you. At least Social, Cunning, and Intelligence have some pretty good all around buffs in their associated skills.

The current skill perks just make some attributes pretty dead, particularly the combat focused ones.

Skjuld said:

My main concern about Bannerlord isn't that some features are not present yet, it's that it does not seems focused on a clear direction. Original M&B was very clearly focused on combat, with trading as an aside. This iteration seems to want to go in several directions at once, some of which are conflicting.

The leveling system is a hodgepodge of M&B and Elder scrolls. Crafting is ripe with exploits and incoherencies due to trying to accomodate a purely combat-focused approach, a TES-like crafting system and "realistic" elements about forging, plus an "economy".

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Yup, my trade/bow/polearm character is just stuck at 20 1h skill even though he killed 1,000 guys with 1hers. Fact is current SP gains go down to like 0.6% of normal if you don't have attribute and focus points there. Your SP gains can never realistically get past a novice level in the skill even if you use it a lot.

johnny keitz said:

Those points are on point and i can see where your thoughts and feelings are coming from but don't be surprised long commited fans are invested in the series. Or don't tell me, that you really believe all those deep rooted problems will be fixed. The game wasn't designed with those immersion factors in mind from the start. It's not something completely fixable. It wanted to be a spiritedless, generic, amass meaningless power simulator. can't turn it into a game with soul no matter how many the updates.

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This is honestly what I was thinking about your original post. It sounds like you are disappointed that features aren't in Bannerlord which the devs never promised nor were present in WB. Like, if I got mad Elder Scrolls 6 was in Hammerfall and not Highrock, I'm just doomed to not like it, and what I wanted was never the direction the devs were going in. I hope you can one day find things in Bannerlord you do like though, mate.

Some devs have eluded to adding major content patches down the road, but I think they need to release a roadmap so we know what to expect is coming down the pike.

TBF we aren't done waiting. We will probably be waiting 11-12 year for a full Bannerlord release. At least they aren't redoing the engine anymore.

Biggest thing for me that you mentioned is the cultural/talents not working. It was surprising (in a bad way) to realize I bought the Noble Long Bow and not be able to use from horseback even with the talent. Then to realize none of the cultural bonuses were working was also mind blowing (once again in a bad way). Enough is not working that I won't be starting another campaign unless a big content patch comes out, or I'll play again in a couple months. I'll still play my current game though.

I think the core gameplay loop is there, but it's a lot of the surrounding features that need balancing/fixing/implementation. Like Hideouts, an iconic quest from WB, are really over-tuned. Randomly generated companions mean that entire skill sets won't be able to be recruited into your party if you're not lucky, or you can't get enough of what you need. OFC the talents/culture bonuses we mentioned earlier, but there's also the issue (at least on beta branch ATM) of skills going up at way too slow rate even at novice levels of the skill because you don't have focus/attribute points there, which makes advancing to even a beginner level of the skill nigh impossible. The list could go on, but you get my point. Core gameplay loop is there, but the stuff around it is not great ATM.

My last point about current skill progression there is probably why OP finds trade weak. My character had 10 attributes in Social, 5 focus points in trade, and even at the end of the early game, clan level 3, I was making up to 7k gold daily from caravans (even after the nerf) and workshops and regularly closing 10-20k trade deals. Making more money as a merchant prince than most lords at that stage. BUT, I OFC focused heavily on trade. Then again, he was stuck at 19 in 1h skill, despite I had killed 1000 dudes with 1her. I think choosing to not focus on a particular skill makes it just impossible to ever increase them to a useful degree, which is too extreme.

Like, everyone compares this skill system to Skyrim, but choosing the Warrior stone didn't make it impossible to level up magic. Just gave you a decent boost to warrior skills.

OP correct.

Yup, the quest line to form your own kingdom sucks. Finding those lords on EVERY new game will be tedious AF, not to mention the bits after. Would love a sandbox mode that worked more like Warband in the kingdom forming regard.