Recent content by xombie5

If only there were some tangible link between what something looks like and what it is, without a outside-gamemode link as to why you're dressed the way you are.

Like, imagine there were some way to pick exactly what you were equipped with, and that piece of clothing/armour/weapon had its own stat-block AND visual flair, tied together in a logical, unforgettable way. Maybe give you the option to choose what those things might be when you join a match, or maybe even when you spawn in. And it would be consistent across all server and/or gamemodes. Hell, the mods could even have their own list of equipped thingies that each character or class had to choose from that they could use.

And what if it was all contained on a per-match or server basis, so you didn't have to worry about whether somebody had played X long or done X thing over the past few weeks or months or years to look the way they do in some ethereal unconnected to your game way. Why are they wearing that cool hat over there? Oh, probably because they picked it out of the equipment list. Why does it look so cool? It just does. Why is it such a lame hat? Well, because it is, but you can pick a different one if you like. What if the hat you like has really bad stats? Well, you can choose to wear it anyway! Crush your enemies with style *and* a slight handicap, won't that give you something to brag about.

Or I guess we could have a cosmetic list of items unconnected to the current match, without a unique stat-block and worry about progression over long periods, custom servers, non-custom servers, matchmaking, mods, and all that good jazz.

babelfisch said:

I don't think it was available on steam initially. But I can't remember, everything is kind of blurred. I started playing with a demo version and bought it later.

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It definitely wasn't. In fact i think it was only a couple years ago they even gave everyone the ability to redeem the game on steam if they already bought it in the early days. I remember when the steam purchasing became available you could redeem and download the game directly from taleworlds but not the other way round.
also why i've also got 3.4 hours on steam but many thousands in actuality.

Honestly i don't even get the obsession with needing classes just for captain mode.

Let's go back to warband as an example. We didn't have "captain mode" per say, but we still had those bot battle servers. Yknow, the ones with like 10 player slots and 200 bots enabled, or something silly.

As each player joins a team they get to pick their gear as normal, like they would for battle, and then tick the boxes of which bots they want to command. They're given all the bots on their team if they're the only player - half if there's two of then, a third if 3 etc etc, and you get to pick multiple classes to command, which are split in size equally~

Now, this is generally only the 3 warband classes, with the exception of khergits - so archery, infantry and cav - and they all come equipped exactly the same way - the default bot gear.
But you get to wear what you want~!
And for the servers that enabled it you also get to continue after you die as one of the people under your command.

Now call me crazy but this is basically captain mode, except, *maybe* better? Because you're allowed more troop variety under one person. It might not stick with the idea of "THIS guy commands the cav and THIS guy commands commands the archers" - if that's what the devs/people want from the mode.

But fine - remove the ability to select multiple types to command. Now you only get one troop type.

Not good enough?

Let the perk selection be for the bots then. Gear equipped as normal, ala warband, but you get your 2 bloody perk slots that modify the bots under your command~

Not enough bot class variety? Fine, add more preset bot types you can select as your minions.

It irks me hearing everyone say the class system is even necessary for captains mode because it bloody isn't. And if having the one starting player begin the match with the gear they want and can afford is risking throwing off the "perfect balance" of the gamemode then up your troop ai goodness and such.

The game doesn't need different equipment/class systems for each game mode. It just needs the one. And right now it's the wrong one.

Man, y'all remember the good old days back when you could tell roughly what gear someone had because you could see it on them, and you could guess how fast their were and how good their armour was by what armour they were wearing? And you could see everyone looking slightly different because they got the chance to pick their own gear preferences?
Crazy time that was.
Good thing all that complicated overreadability is gone and now we can instead memorize than X guy has X armour regardless of what he looks like, and that if you want to watch out for longswords just keep an eye out for sergeants because no one else is allowed to wield such a chivalrous weapon, regardless of their budgetary constraints or other gear they'd be willing to give up for it.

Even better to hear the extra layer of cosmetic fop is on its way in, because i know we all just love stuff that is functionally identical to something else but visually different because reasons - and it's okay because cosmetics don't affect gameplay at all. It's not like being able to just SEE what someone is using or wearing or looks like and make a logical jump as to their guestimated capabilities is gameplay affecting in any way.

How... how did we get here? I remember some people saying they'd be willing to tolerate certain cosmetic skins on items if it helped TW actually develop stuff because they needed the money, and half the rest of us losing our **** over it.
Why is the multiplayer portion of this game so vastly different from what i know so many of us have been hoping it would be for all these years - and by purposeful design ._.

Why is it i can talk to pretty much any of my friends i made in warband over the years and we all naturally have a pretty similar consensus over what we wanted bannerlord to be... Why does it feel like TW somehow didn't want the game we all wanted?

Got me ranting now. It's just... I know i'm not the only one that was emotionally invested in this game for many years. Every time i try and play it it quite literally makes me angry and frustrated and sours my mood. I want to love this game so much. Why can we put in thousands upon thousands of hours in warband multiplayer and enjoy every minute, but eaking out a few dozen hours playtime on bannerlord makes me sick to play it?

Alright, well let's say you're right and you've got someone ruining the match every single game. So what is skirmish, 6v6? So that's 1 in 12 people.
Captain is smaller, right?
So, hypothetically, this issue would be solved by banning 8.3% of the current playerbase?
More if you're in captain mode, i imagine?

I agree on that i think TW killing the game, but they are killing it through a lack of custom and private servers, NOT through lack of a banwave.
They are enabling map exploits by having exploitable maps and not yet releasing tools to allow people to fix those exploits.
They are enabling trolls that can't be dealt with easily through a matchmaking system instead of the old hop in-hop out server gameplay.
And the fact that the multiplayer base seems so small that it takes you 15 minutes to get a match with only a few other players, and what you desire more than fixing the issues that some of the few remaining ones are exploiting, is to instead have people banned for exploiting them is just as baffling to me as i'm sure my position is to you.

Yes, warband did have a thriving private server community with competent and lots of admins - but almost any time past... i think it might have been the first year after release - you barely ever saw anybody playing on official servers, because, they were all on these private servers with admins.~
But we do not yet have private servers. We only have a few official ones and a matchmaking system.

And until we do have those private servers where the admins and/or owners can set any rules they want, and i can't do anything about it - i desire to do what everybody else here is entitled and (hopefully) encouraged to do and express their opinions to TW in an effort to shape the direction the game will go in.
The direction i desire to see the game go in is one where people don't get banned for what they say or banned for exploiting game mechanics or map flaws, or banned for extending the round to the round timer limit.

Ling* said:

This is the stupidest thing I have read all day. I'm not even going to dignify this thread with any further responses as I can clearly see that you are dead-set on defending people intentionally ruining the experience of others, if I didn't know any better I would say you are one of those players and don't want to be dealt with like the scum of the earth that they are.

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K.

If being stuck waiting for 7-8 minutes is such a pain, i'm just surprised you think a 24 hour ban is super easy to move past and won't have an effect on people. I don't recall us having these issues in warband with 15 minute vote bans and kicks, or game breaking map glitches no?

Especially because it's early access, and we are yet to have battle and other modes implemented, yet alone community servers - i dislike the idea of a precedent being set that delaying the round or exploiting game mechanics or map design be a bannable offense.
What about when battle comes out? Where waiting six minutes because you died at the start is the norm. Where trying to hold out as long as you can for a draw or a clutch win is the norm? We don't want to ban those people, right?
But we don't have battle yet. We've got siege and skirmish and captain, and the rules and behavior that is set early in the games community is likely to stick around a long time.
I don't want a precedent to be set where people exploiting the map in public official games is a bannable (or even punishable) offense. This isn't activision blizzard. Fix the map exploits if you don't want people exploiting them.
Just the same way you don't ban people for derpfeints or lefthilthits despite the fact these are also exploits of the game.

I agree on the "don't try to intentionally crash the servers" front - but at the beginning this isn't what we were discussing anyway. We were talking about people delaying the round and making it last the maximum amount of time - i believe that's what was said, anyway. And if it's possible to consistently easily get out of bounds or into a rock, then just... yknow... Go in there and kill them. And doesn't captain mode have bloody flags that can net you the win, anyway, if people are doing this?

And when you've got custom servers people can do as they like, and it's very reasonable to discourage extending the round there - but it's my opinion that the official servers, at the very least BEING official servers, should not penalize people for using the entire round timer, being that it's the company that sets the round timer as the default, and that people have no where else to go until customs are out.

Edit: And i'm not asking people to wait 7-8 minutes every round, i'm merely saying that i don't think it's right to BAN someones access to a thing they paid for because they enjoy trying to survive as long as possible in that game, when, if 7-8 minutes is too long, make it shorter. That is what the round timer is for, no? It's the decided minimum bar of what the server thinks is the longest reasonable hypothetical amount of time for each round to be.
If every round should at most be 7-8 minutes long, then that is why the round timer is7-8 minutes. If that is unreasonable then it should be made to be shorter. Whatever is decided to be the longest amount of time people should be willing to wait to finish their game, EVERY game - that is what the round timer should be, because then they cannot possibly ever wait an unreasonable amount of time.

God forbid you have to play till the end of the round timer? So what? That's what the timer is for. If you think the timer is too long then petition to have the matches shortened.
The timers entire purpose in life is to end the round if it lasts "too long".
And how is trying to not die glitching? You mean like getting into unreachable areas? Because they don't sound that unreachable if this is the case.

How about trying to keep the punishment fitting to the crime in theory at least.
If people are being verbally unpleasant get some mutes on. Not everyone needs to be banned.
And we could just go back to ye olde "kill too many teammates and get autokicked and tempbanned for 15 minutes so you can't rejoin that match".

But wanting bans for people glitching? What is this, the olympics? Let people glitch in their game. If you want people not to glitch get glitches fixed.

Let's not be too hasty to want to hand out game-wide bans, eh? In the context of this game that's the IRL equivalent of the death sentence. Get removed from life, get removed from game - you get me?

Yeah, plus it's just hard to get over stuff you want to be able to get over quickly. Warband jumps were.... well, they had their quirks - but they worked with the game well, i think - and most maps took them into careful consideration for prop height and so on most the time.

bannerlord feels like that is the case... less so - and the maps tend to have more like... untouchable visual clutter, let's say. Things that are invisible walled out that you could otherwise easily access or terrain you can't climb or stand on - not because it's too high or steep but just "because balance". Not to say that it's a bad thing to balance where you can go on a map - but it needs to be obviously visually you can't go there. Don't just wall it off invisibly. Make it too high to jump onto.

It reminds me a lot of overwatch in that sense. There's so many surfaces in that game you just can't go on "because". Devs only want you standing on certain balconies or rooftops - but the only way to know which ones you can and can't stand on is to test them all out and see which ones they decide to make you slip off of with *no* visual indicator that you can't stand on it whatsoever.

And in other places things that should be easily jump overable are not. This isn't exactly a jump issue on its own, but the jumps themselves do feel somewhat short and unresponsive. It would be nice to tighten them up. And on a smaller note make it sound like you're having less of an asthma attack when you do.

I don't want to go so far as to say the combat feels totally *good* right now, but it sure as hell feels better, in melee at least.

Archery

Archery definitely needed a nerf, in some areas - but we still need to look at it as a whole. Compared to warband you can ready (have to ready, in a way with the nocking of the arrow after firing animation) a shot immediately. This feels good - and did before the changes also - however, it's incredibly different from warband, both in feel and the.... impression it gives you of the weapons place in battle.

In warband the shot is slow-ish to draw, but once you're able to shoot it's *almost* at the best accuracy you'll get (if you're stationary), and then you loose the arrow. If you wait longer, the shot gets less accurate. All feels fine, because the moment you're *able* to shoot, you're encouraged too - but also allows people to time it to dodge - because they KNOW exactly when your arrow will have the highest chance of hitting them - hence the rythm.

However, bannerlord in contrast allows you to ready a shot almost instantly. You can walk around with your right click held to enable to a reaction shot to anything - and that did feel good before - but also allowed archery to stronks. You've got a bunch of people fast on their feet who can ready shots in a blink and let them go at almost peak accuracy.

So in terms of timing in a bubble, compared to warband - the new changes are perfectly fine. But in it's own system, archery now *feels* worse because you're so frustrated at the illogical and unnimersive slowness of your shots starting accuracy. You've already readied the arrow - it's nocked and ready to loose, and you still bring up that bow in a moment, and you can still let that arrow fly as soon as you want - but who knows where it's going?

For balance this isn't a problem - but because the very fundamental design about archery in bannerlord was to make it more snappy, this change stands out so much. In warband it's fine because during the time this accuracy is low, the arrow is literally unfireable, and you can see yourself readying it.
But right now it's ready to go right away if you choose, yet still your guy is spending a couple of seconds trying to figure out how to stop his arthritis shaking the bow.

Anyone get what i'm saying? They've made these fundamental archery changes from warband, but slowing down the start defeats them - so may as well bring back the old version where you nock the arrow from the start.

Now - yes, you still can loose that arrow quickly into someone right in front of you, and that's all well and good - but in terms of feeling, it's better if you don't have to be pissed off at your avatar for something that shouldn't be an issue.
On the irl side i believe (at least i was taught) that with a oldschool bow you draw and loose the arrow but try and spend as little time as possible actually with the bow drawn. You find your shot first, then draw and loose quickly. Which bannerlord has been doing sofar splendidly.

And also let's not forget that one of the biggest benefits of archery in warband was THE STUN. You hit a guy in combat with your friend with your arrow and you can stop his swing. You can save your buddy. Or you can open him up to a hit.

Call me crazy but this doesn't seem to be a thing in bannerlord. If i'm not crazy then archery has a completely different role here. It's a killing machine and not a "support" class - whereas in warband it was. Yes, killing people is better, but the slow steady stun arrows of yesteryear had a role that made sense and an accuracy that didn't make them OP because of it. Whereas now i think archers were OP before because they just became machine gun killing machines - which is not what they should have become. They should have, like warband kept that supporting selective fire role - but with the more responsive "e-sporty" benefit of quick snappy good-feeling run and gun shots.

Also on a more obscure note, PLEASE taleworlds pay attention to first person here. Some of the gauntlets you force us to wear (because we still can't choose gear, yay <.<) and occasionally some thick armour get in the way of aiming the bloody thing in first person. It's not nice trying to see past your own gloves that are blocking the reticle and your target.

Melee

People do zip about less now suddenly, which certainly feels better up close and personal - and i'm noticing *less* rubber banding on the swings, though that could just be anecdotal. It's only been a day. Some of the weapons do feel a little slow after you think you've let go your swing - and due to stances or animations or combos or whatever, i haven't a clue, sometimes you just swing... slowly. Out of rythm. This isn't a new issue, but i'm just mentioning stuff that i think is still a problem. It sucks when you're in a fight and you know how fast your attacks are meant to be, but just, sometimes, your moves take longer than they're meant to. Whatever this is, stop it. Either make stances a toggleable controllable thing so you can learn your own body timings at your leisure, or get rid of them (or make them purely cosmetic). No ammount of "but you can step left before you start fighting and then try not to need to block and attack in another direction to keep that stance" is going to trump the importance of actual footwork and not not stepping away from a swing or attacking an opening. If i want to keep my left foot forward i'm perfectly capable of that in real life. Shame the bannerlordians haven't figured that out yet.

There's still a freaky weird meta developing about left-up-left feints - which is worsened by the odd sound queues (and sometimes lack thereof) and inability to chamber reliably. In warband if someone is popping feints without giving a ****e about his defence, you can just hit the boy. Here, not so much. Due to the fact you can't control your body orientation and the inconsistent swing speeds - you can't just know when it's safe to take that punishing hit.
And you can't just "well i'll go to chamber that next feint" then either, because they don't bloody chamber. Not only do they not chamber, but if he sees you going for it and decides to try and match your swing, he's still more likely than not to land that hit first.
And the sound queues - really - what gives? Why are half the feints completely silent? And why when they aren't silent, does the sound effect actually seem to cut itself out? Does anyone else notice this??
The audio feedback of a fight is nearly as important as the visuals.

And yes, because we have this variable stance system - and because we have 4 block directions (where, MOST importantly you CANT move your shield like warband) is much more important in a fundamental way than i think people are talking about. Because your body isn't under your control (when i say this i mean stiff, i suppose) - because your body isn't stiff and readable when doing something, it changes the meta of a fight completely. It changes the readability of the person.

This might be by design - Perhaps TW wanted to get rid of the controllable exploitation of warband (lolfeints, up down greatswords, instant left hits etc) - or maybe they just wanted it to look more organic and cool. But i think this needs more attention.
For example, you can choose your shield direction - but you can't tell if that guy is now looking up or down. In warband you could - and yes this down matter. Reading your opponent matters. Perhaps this is intentional and is made for shields to stop someone being able to read where you're looking in combat - and that's fine. But also due to the lack of stiffness/control of your body with shieldless weapons that readability is lost.
Yes, warband looked kind of jank - and yes, people learned to exploit that over the years. But i think TW are overshooting the mark in the balance scale between stiff jank readability and cinematical fancy animation, and this IS affecting combat.

Also, again - please modify shield play somehow (even if you have to make the back transparent for the player) in first person because most of them are impossible to see behind when using. I'm gonna keep bringing this up whenever i get the chance.

As for the actual moment to moment gameplay - it DOES feel more responsive. Movement is still floaty, however. It's not as bad but it still has that minor feeling of being on rollerskates swinging around dumbells feeling. Thought less extreme, now.


And the game has a real issue with speeds on different props.
Y'all remember how sticky that giant castle keep prop used to be in warband? You'd move really slow on certain surfaces.
Bannerlord is having this issue too. Look into it.

There's much more to say but my fingers are starting to hurt.

This has come up as a suggestion before - and though i'm usually in favour of as many options as possible for people to customise things, having attacks be bindable to keys without any noticeable input (move direction, mouse direction) i think is a bad idea for multiplayer, at the very least.

A large part of readability against other players comes from all the micro-movement and things you learn to pick up on over time that aren't as noticeable as the normal attack direction. You can "feel" the way someone is going to attack just before they do it, because after many many hours of seeing it your brain can see the little wiggle in their avatar as they prep their right swing/stab etc. It's also why a large part of succesful feints is not only throwing in a fake attack, but adding a little "wiggle" to it to tease out that reflexive reaction from your opponent.

Having the attack directions be bindable to a key, with no outside input visible (movement, essentially - wether by movement direction or turning your character a little) will potentially get rid of that... subconscious? level of play. It's a large part of why inverse became a larger thing in warband multiplayer in the later years. Outside the better-for-left-swing shenanigans, people were just generally much less used to that micro wiggle coming out in the opposite direction, and could greatly mess with the instincts of players that weren't used to fighting inverse players.

It's also a large part of why fighting bots can be... more difficult in some ways, than players. The things they do can seem *very* spontaneous and hard to read - in a very large part (in my opinion) due to that lack of micromovement in their attacks. They just lock their view on you can do things, with no other way to read them or their intentions, unlike a player - even the best of them, trying to act like a bot.

Regardless of what someone has or hasn't done, on a game we (or at least I) hope will be driven in future by mostly community run servers, am not fond of the idea of someones account getting banned from multiplayer as a whole for anything, really. From official servers and matchmaking though, do what you like i guess? Taleworlds playground to salt as they wish. But i don't think it's right to remove someones access from the game as a whole if they've paid for it and could be playing (in future, i know we ain't got server hosting yet) on an ecosystem outside yours.

You could hold your chat message for later by clicking, and when you pressed T/Y again it'd be there, but you could also clear it with escape instead of clicking.

Different armour values for different body parts



Units had stats that affected their damage, speed etc (strength, agi etc) in a less direct way than "give this guy a 4% damage perk"

You could wiggle your shield around while holding down the block key instead of blocking in a new direction. I get we have block directions now, which I'm okay with, but i still miss the wiggle and it'd help me see.

Could stun People for a moment with ranged weapons

Could turn somewhat while reloading a crossbow.

You could swing most polearms

There were crush through weapons (are those still in...?)

Game modes (CTF, battle, S&D, conquest, deathmatch, duel etc)

You could create character profiles for different looks or names or banners or just changing your identity

You could use ranged weapons next to cavalry

You could pierce through weaker shields with strong crossbows (do we have "weaker shields" now?)

In fairness there are numerous things we didn't have in warband in native too that we've got now but aye....