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Leveling skills is tedious and unbalanced
I like Bannerlord's "learn by doing" levelling system over Warband's. Feels more immersive and makes roleplaying non-combat builds more viable and believable.
The only real issue for how levelling works for me is that it feels a bit too slow overall, especially on certain skills (trade, roguery, medicine). Focus points and attributes should buff your XP multiplier more, and those aforementioned skills should gain more XP.
Broader issues with the skills system are that Engineering doesn't really feel like it does anything, Tactics buffs autocalc battles more than it buffs real battles so leveling it discourages you from fighting real battles, and Athletics isn't good enough to be worth playing the game on foot or let you catch someone while wearing armour even if fully leveled.- five bucks
- Post #14
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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The approach to MP has failed, and what could be done to revive it
I also mean Youtubers when I say "streamers", which is my bad.
If I sit on a poker machine for 1000 hours, and ended up breaking even, did I get the most out of my money? I spent a lot of time there, but did I have fun?
It's not enough for a game to simply be capable of sucking up your time for 100s of hours, it needs to be fun too. Bannerlord keeps a lot of those high hour-count players coming back because they're checking if the game is fun yet, or testing things that are broken, and the process of doing this is time consuming.
You're jumping right to the other end of the spectrum by saying 1000 hours. Let's say 100 is a reasonable amount for this type of game to get a few campaigns in. In this type of game that's reasonable.
As said above, this type of game at this price needs to be fun for the long time that campaigns take.
Let's look at recent positive reviews:
Shades_godown, 20 hours - "murder people fun fun times yes".
I_ZIPTYED_MY_PENIS, 14 hours - "vghbjm".
jolti, 20 hours - "horse. NEED CO-OP. 7/10"
cristina.schaffer20, 6.5 hours - "i love the game but it likes to crash yes"
miniterjack, 15 hours - "fun"
epla svla1, 2.3 hours - "sww" (product refunded, despite positive review)
chickadee, *5 hours* - "sword"
Nobody here would have even finished even one campaign in 5 hours. How are they supposed to be able to say it's fun to play through a campaign?
So I do not think reviews like these are any sort of reliable indicator of whether the game is in a good state, or good value for money. Being playable for 100 of hours is not enough, if it's going to cost AAA money it needs to be *fun* for 100 hours.
Doing a playthrough of Bannerlord takes up heaps of time, that doesn't necessarily mean someone is having the time of their lives slowly moving from Lageta to Qasira to Chaikand dropping off herds, then sitting through a blob battle of 1000 complete idiots, then looking at a recruitment menu, rinse and repeat.
A game with this many serious bugs, gamebreaking balance problems, missing and incomplete features is accurately described as "in a bad state". That's not to say that it doesn't have a lot going for it, or that it doesn't have great potential which keeps you interested, or that you can't salvage tiny bits of fun here and there which keep you coming back to try it out in case they've finally fixed it.- five bucks
- Post #70
- Forum: The Fields of Valour - Multiplayer
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Vanilla Armor vs RBM Armor
Well you kind of can, I like some of Bannerlord's damage calculation and only dislike small aspects of it that ruin an otherwise good system (mainly, the amount which pierce and blunt damage ignore armour). But to each their own.
The amount of time it would take to fix armour, at its most basic level, is half an hour to change a handful of numbers in the code. Or if they want something more complex, there are mods people have made and/or example code they have written which TW is legally allowed to just copy+paste into the game and see how it works. Or they can recycle their Warband armour formula with minor changes.
Then for balancing, leave players to decide whether armour is too strong/weak still for a month, and change the numbers slightly up or down as necessary. It really isn't hard, which is why untrained modders did it within weeks of Bannerlord's launch.
Of course you are right we don't know what is 100% truth, but we do know what the sources from both sides say, we also know what other sources say about armour in other historical conflicts, and we know the results of plenty of modern tests into the effectiveness of armour. We also have common sense, that tells us someone would not buy very expensive armour and wear 20kg of it on them frequently if it did not provide good protection. These combined are enough to form an opinion for a video game.
The evidence-based conclusion that has been drawn - see that "Mail: Unchained" article I linked earlier - is that padded double mail was considered almost arrow-proof, and padded single mail was considered quite good protection from all but the best bows.
Most of these threads were made before they actually told us that they were testing it. They only told us quite recently after much pestering and noise making.
Before that, they said they were "discussing" it one year ago, and then the most recent update was Callum saying "don't expect any significant changes", with the reasoning that "only a subset of players are upset about this", and that pissed people off enough to make this and other threads to show that a majority of people wanted it fixed.
These threads are old now, they are only coming up in Page 1 because there is still discussion to be had.
It's been literally a year since they said they were discussing it, as well as the 9 years of development before that. It's not fair to call us impatient when we've been waiting for a decade.
The real reason it's taking so long is this:
There are definitely people at TW who work very hard, but there is also, from other reviews and what we know from other employees have told us, much time wasted and a lack of clear organization.
You kind of can. Bannerlord's gameplay work is split into the following areas -
1 Combat AI
2 Tactical and siege AI
3 strategic overworld AI
4 political and defection AI
5 weapon and armour balance/stats
6 Troop balance
7 overworld battle/governance simulation
8 overworld economic simulation
9 RPG mechanics skill gains and effects balancing
10 quests creation
11 modding tools
12 performance
13 bugs/crashes
14 modding tools and docs
If two unpaid amateur modders, working in their spare time, can massively improve three areas of combat AI, tactical AI, and weapon and armour balance in the space of two years, as well as fixing the bugs that arise from that, that means 1 modder can handle 1.5 areas of gameplay in 2 years. So even 10 full-time employed professional Taleworlds employees should have been able to do what those modders did and still get their other work done. Let alone 50 (I don't think that many are coders).
This is of course massively oversimplifying it, but there is no denying Taleworlds works slower than it should be.
I get what you're trying to say, now can you get what we're trying to say?- five bucks
- Post #85
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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The approach to MP has failed, and what could be done to revive it
No. The anger comes from the people who are still playing, while the positive reviews come from the streamer crowd who breeze in, enjoy the visual spectacle of a couple of depthless 1000 man mindless blob battles, leave a thumbs up review saying "lol butter", and leave after 10 hours for the next game their streamer likes.
There are plenty of people who will give a positive review even to a game that they don't think is worth the cost so long as they didn't actually hate it. Because Steam has no neutral review option.
Saying a game can be in a bad state and worth the price tag is straight out stupid. Like it's a fundamental contradiction of what the words mean.- five bucks
- Post #64
- Forum: The Fields of Valour - Multiplayer
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Vanilla Armor vs RBM Armor
Oh, they still had to actually fight for it. Two important things worth noting are that the 7,000 longbowmen were not fighting in the melee alone - they were accompanied by 1,500 men-at-arms; and the longbowmen were most likely wearing partial plate or brigandines too, as the development of mass-produced munition armour, plus secondhand noble armour that was sold off or looted, had made armour more widely affordable for professional fighting men in the 1400s, unlike earlier periods like what Bannerlord represents.
After the long run through sticky mud under arrow fire in heavy armour, the French knights were described as "scarely able to lift their weapons". You are correct the arrows would have been a significant contributing factor to this exhaustion.
I'm on the fence about it. I like what it can do for troop and weapon balance, but actually having a stamina mechanic as the player is pretty unfun (I spent most of my time in Viking Conquest walking veeery slooowly).- five bucks
- Post #77
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes e1.7.2
To me, something like Bannerlord gets so tantalizingly close to reality that it may as well go for max realism (or as realistic as it can get without making gameplay bad), while TF2 is at the opposite end of the spectrum, going full-on arcade wacky for the sake of the best gameplay possible, with just a veneer of plausibility.To be honest with you, seeing how much you like realism and historical accuracy, I was not expecting you suggesting a game like TF2
Maybe something more like Hell Let Loose (which I already played 100h+ and highly recommend) or so.
Thanks for the recommendation, is it similar at all to Day of Defeat? I liked that game despite not knowing heaps about WW2.- five bucks
- Post #598
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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The approach to MP has failed, and what could be done to revive it
I was replying to the implication that the game is in a good state (when you said "worth the price tag") which is arguable, not arguing that it was popular or anything, I don't disagree with that.- five bucks
- Post #56
- Forum: The Fields of Valour - Multiplayer
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The approach to MP has failed, and what could be done to revive it
ehhhh, if you love deep but janky simulations that annoy you and waste your time, and you don't need fun or challenge, then maybe- five bucks
- Post #53
- Forum: The Fields of Valour - Multiplayer
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Vanilla Armor vs RBM Armor
Archers weren't useless in Warband. My proposal is to make armour work more similarly to Warband.
Bannerlord hits to kill from 30m:
Warband hits to kill from 30m:
So roughly 2X as effective as now.
However, I would make one change from Warband - no 0 damage attacks. Every attack would always do at least 1 damage.
That crossbowman you charged at would only deal 40% of your health in damage instead of 80%. That theoretical Longbow fired from 150m would do 20 damage instead of 30.
That can only be a good thing! The current meta is extremely stale and archer-oriented due to the state of armour. I can beat literally any lord party the AI will ever field, no matter what their troops are, with a large stack of archers and small amount of infantry, or a large stack of horse archers (especially Khan's Guards).
The meta needs to change, with 4/6 troop types being severely underpowered it can literally only get more balanced from here. As I've said, archers weren't useless in Warband.- five bucks
- Post #74
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Vanilla Armor vs RBM Armor
This is a bit of a myth - the Church attempted to ban crossbows at the Second Lateran Council https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Council_of_the_Lateran not because they were especially deadly, but because they wanted to prevent killing between Christians in general (like an early United Nations) so they could minimise suffering or focus on reconquest crusades.
Bows and slings were also prohibited by the same Council. Also, plate hadn't been invented yet in 1130 anyway.
Until quite late in the development of crossbow technology (1400s steel springs and windlass mechanism which could draw back a steel bow), crossbows were not more powerful than longbows, because both were essentially just pieces of wood, except the crossbow's bow was smaller and thus capable of imparting less force, but had a lock to keep it steady. Thus, the main advantage of crossbows over bows was accuracy and ease of use.
Agreed, this is currently the biggest problem with the game.
Then why does your vote say that you're happy with the armour system in that other poll
Well, I don't think we are asking here to be able to charge a group of archers with minimal consequences. But it would be nice to charge one crossbowman and not lose 80% of your health.
Agincourt is a fantastic example of the effectiveness of armour (at least, plate). The French knights' plate let them run a kilometre under heavy arrow fire to reach the English lines, and a lot of them had to be killed "using hatchets, swords and the mallets they had used to drive their stakes in"! The English bowmen were simply putting out such a massive amount of arrows that eyeholes eventually got hit by chance.
Agincourt showed that you could fire a huge amount of arrows at an armoured man and have to get lucky in order to actually kill him. Of course, plate was more effective against arrows than mail, so I'm not asking to be that arrow-proof.
Other important historical facts to note about Agincourt are: The French did not even all turn up to the charge, because they were so sure they were going to win (destroying everything in their path was fairly standard for French heavy cavalry charges). The knights' horses were unarmoured and got shot down, meaning the knights had to run 1km the rest of the way. The horses who did survive couldn't charge anyway because the English were behind a row of large stakes. The ground was very thick sloppy mud, preventing the knights from running as they had clay sticking their legs down. The knights and men-at-arms who did show up came in three separate waves, rather than all at once; so the ones who died at the English lines acted as a further tripping hazard for their exhausted comrades.
Pretty much the only thing that went right for the French on that day was their armour.
They have told us they are testing the armour system at the moment.- five bucks
- Post #73
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Beta Patch Notes e1.7.2
Team Fortress 2. Unlike Bannerlord it's a fun and challenging game, but you'll still feel at home because you get to infinitely wait for Valve to do stuff.- five bucks
- Post #584
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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The approach to MP has failed, and what could be done to revive it
I don't necessarily disagree with the rest of your post, but saying the game is too expensive isn't ridiculous at all. There are a lot of F2P PC multiplayer games out there nowadays - Team Fortress 2, CS:GO, LoL, DotA 2, PUBG, Lost Ark, Apex, MIR4, PoE, Warframe, Destiny 2, War Thunder, the list goes on and on and on - that are all very successful and the most played games on Steam, while ones that cost $50 USD are far less common, and have much smaller playercounts. For a hell of a lot of PC gamers who just get pocket money, $50 USD is a big barrier to entry.
Therefore I think it is quite reasonable to say that the game's MP portion could stand to be cheaper to draw in more players. In addition to fixing the underlying gameplay issues.
Since there's nothing else to be said, perhaps you could give us another explanation of the underlying problems with MP and how to fix them.- five bucks
- Post #46
- Forum: The Fields of Valour - Multiplayer
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High level armor feels so worthless.
Agreed.
Also, I have to ask. What mod is your pic from? There seems to be a lot going on there and I love it.- five bucks
- Post #114
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Vanilla Armor vs RBM Armor
We're asking for armour to give roughly twice the amount of protection from arrows and a bit more protection from blunt/pierce damage. That's as simple as changing a handful of numbers. It's not "changing the entire way the combat works".
Unpaid, amateur modders managed to figure it out within a month of release. Taleworlds has had 2 years of Early Access, 8 years of prior development, and already has the working armour code from Warband to look at, as well as the widely praised work of modders which they are legally allowed to copy+paste into the game if they want. It really isn't rocket science.
It's not a mistake by you, especially not if you were on foot, which is supposed to be a viable playstyle. What are you meant to do on foot, just ignore him and never try to attack while he keeps shooting at you? Try and dodge (not reliable because if he misses where you were, you get hit anyway)?
The entire point of your armour is so that you can charge that crossbowman and only lose like 10% of your health instead of 80%. Just like you could in real life. It was why people wore armour at all.
As was already said, your preference is massively in the minority, so the 0.5% of players are the ones who should be installing mods for their preference, not the 99%.
Also, because (as has already been said too), there are an enormous amount of things that weak armour affects negatively, not just player survivability.
You are partially correct in that it may only partially fix some of the issues I listed.
Making armour more protective will definitely fix
* The player dying too easily to random bull**** so that they can't participate in frontline fights for long
* Armour not being worth its ridiculous cost
* High tier enemies being too easy to kill
* Headshot and multiple other combat perks not being worth it when you can just one shot armoured people without them
It might only partially fix
* The massive imbalance of troop types (this also needs melee cavalry aiming fixes to be complete)
* High tier enemies not feeling threatening (as you correctly point out, they also need better AI, but better armour will still help enormously).
* High tier units not being effective enough (they also need better AI, but better armour will still help enormously).
* Battles being too short (better armour will help enormously, but bad AI is also a part of the problem)
But ultimately, fixing armour is something that HAS to happen to begin fixing every problem I mentioned.
Sure those AI/recruitment fixes would improve things too, but entirely regardless of what happens with those, armour must be fixed. You could have the best melee cavalry AI in the world and it wouldn't change that a Battanian Fian Champion can kill two guys from a safe distance before a Banner Knight can even charge in and kill one. That's a fact.
We aren't focusing this hard on armour for no reason or because we irrationally think it's the "root of all evil", but because we can all see that it's the biggest problem here with so many obvious flow-on effects.- five bucks
- Post #53
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Please add female troops back in bannerlord
When it comes to historical authenticity of female troops for the 600-1100 time period in this region, we're talking such an incredibly small scale that it would be most accurate to err on the side of not including them in the regular army at all.
The strongest case is for Aserai, as the early Muslim period has about 7 female fighters on record... In the entire 7th century, making them not even 0.01% of all the 1,000,000s of men who fought during that time in that region. And that is the century where female fighters were the most common, due to the desperate circumstances of a new religion facing off against the collapsing Sassanian empire; afterwards, there are no Arabic female warriors.
Khuzait are based on the Mongols, Gokturks, Khazars, Kipchaks and Avars, who collectively have 5 scattered references to female warriors in about 500 years. So 1 per 100 years.
Sturgia in particular should not have female fighters if you want to preserve historical authenticity, as there is only one historical incident where the Kievan Rus' had women participate in combat, and that was a desperate breakout of starving defenders from the Siege of Dorostolon, where the Rus' needed everyone they could get.
To learn more about how the pop history meme of "shield maidens" has spread but there is no actual evidence for Viking women being regular combatants, just ask Judith Jesch, who is a scholar on the topic. http://norseandviking.blogspot.com/2017/09/lets-debate-female-viking-warriors-yet.html?m=1
Female regular troops should just exist when the player goes out of their way to make it happen, like Sword Sisters did in Warband.- five bucks
- Post #23
- Forum: Singleplayer
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What can modders actually do?
I think Petersen was trying to say that we need to live our society like King Harlaus and allow our lives to be ruled by feasts and butter. A butteriarchy, if you will- five bucks
- Post #22
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Vanilla Armor vs RBM Armor
Being aware won't stop the arrow before it hits me and takes away a chunk of my health in the thick of battle though. How can I focus on archers at the back of the fight while also trying to fight 3 guys in melee and swinging my weapon/camera around?
You definitely can't tank 20 hits from low tier archers, I've tested it.
I've read an Arabic source confirming that Richard actually rode up and down in front of Saladin's lines from a close distance to try and taunt them out of formation. I haven't found any Arabic ones confirming that he was a frontline fighter (then again I didn't look very hard), but I think there is a pretty conclusive amount of evidence that the Crusaders considered Richard to be a frontline fighter, even his rivals from different European countries who would have wanted to taint his name.
They occasionally did, and they were fine. Richard only died to that crossbow because he wasn't wearing his armour at the time. Double mail with padding, while very expensive, was considered almost arrowproof.
? That was their whole job, especially in the time period Bannerlord represents.
I do agree with you here.
Making my guy take 50% less damage doesn't solve most of the issues I listed. Expensive armour still isn't worth its cost/high tier troops still aren't good so you don't get a sense of progression, high tier enemies still feel too easy to kill, battles will still be too short for the player to enjoy them or use tactics, headshot perks still aren't worth it, archers will still be the most OP troop type making tactics pointless, etc.
Fixing armour will fix all these things.- five bucks
- Post #39
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Damage/protection conception: the elephant in the room
If you look at the current game state, in that video again, even with the weak armour in its current state, half of the 250 shock troops survive the run across the field to the 100 archers.
So, if TW doubles the average HTK of armour (including head armour- not only chest HTK would be buffed), and it were 100 shock troops against 100 archers, I think that would be close to an even fight despite the lack of shields. Or perhaps the archers will have a slight advantage, which I'm fine with.
It really takes the feeling of eliteness from them when every second village provides a greater number of them than normal troops.
Could genuinely be a good idea if armour gets fixed and good troops are dying less often, so that replacing them when they do die isn't as easy.
I said 2.4m, because that is the minimum length a kontarion was in order to be called a kontarion; the weapon ranged from 2.4 to 4m. "Shorter version", to me, means "on the smaller end of the range". So in essence, their spear/pike would be at least 2.4m, if not even a bit more. Otherwise I think it would just be called a spear.
True enough.
Thanks, I'm very glad we agree overall, and you have made my idea more appropriate to the current state of the game, and less reachy.
The way I see it, hybrid troops would be classified as whatever their primary is (eg: Faris are ranged cavalry because their primary is their javelin, with a side of melee cavalry,) and they would have counter relationships with more troop types, but the counters would be even softer - smaller advantages and disadvantages.
In the Faris' case, smaller advantages than most ranged cav - maybe even none- against pike infantry since they have fewer javs to throw before being forced to engage in melee against a pike wall; smaller disadvantage against ranged infantry as they can ride them down with their lances.- five bucks
- Post #221
- Forum: The Citadel - General Discussion
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Higher tier units should die less in Autocalc Simulated Battles
Yep, and yet it also seems that so many systems in the game are built around the player going and grinding out these looters themselves. So we should at least be able to skip it without punishment- five bucks
- Post #5
- Forum: Singleplayer