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I pop back every now and then but I am resigned that it won't be something I'll enjoy. My main issue is that for me the moment to moment combat and the way armies clash just feels off, something wrong with it how they all turn into a mass jelly pile that looks and feels unfun to play. So no matter what they add to the game or world the main gameplay is not fun imho which breaks it.

I won't even get into multiplayer, I am just shocked at how bullheaded they are charging ahead with the game formats and server state that they have. So damn clueless it's like the person that is designing it never played warband or any of the mods, didn't once look at the popular gameplay modes that have succeeded in warband and build on them. Nope right into wishing they were some 1 mil concurrent player game with ladders and matchmaking and a pro scene. All the matchmaker does is drive off players because who wants to wait around for 20 minutes for an unfun game mode anyway? Skirmish is a disaster that needed to burn and every time I see patch notes adjusting some class or that class's loadout when the fundamental game and combat under it is broken was just one more reinforcement that this game has no chance.

Huh interesting to have seen this issue having been pointed out for so long. It really does wreck the point of the game, having good medieval battles. I have an unfortunate feeling this issues must reach deep into several places that they don't want to touch at all.

Looking close at the first video it's the sliding around that is visually disconcerting, after a few moments a soldier can go from on the front line to the back then about 6 people over on the side of where they originally were, all without animating their feet/legs much at all.

This feeling of being on ice seems to be a common thread now that I'm thinking about a bunch of movement issues from way back. I think getting displaced is fine, however the way they do it by sliding around gradually really is just odd feeling and looking physics. They push in then are repulsed like someone shoved them on an ice lake. I wonder if they could temporarily fix this by animating the back movement and have them plant a leg against the direction of the force pushing them as they slide.

It's funny but this is so indicative of my issues with bannerlord. Systems and content will gradually come to the game as they build them, but the fundamentals of troops fighting and combat being off just make every other feature feel pointless to participate in, so not seeing them violently hunt down and squash these issues makes me feel like they have too much magic code and not enough expertise that is confident enough to touch it.

Nice roadmap, appreciate seeing it. I am taking a guess that there's a lot of environment artists/modelers/artists etc hard at work making a lot of things. Also glad to see some new systems starting to come online to fill out the world.

For me personally something about the combat still feels weird when the units come together and I can't seem to get over it. I can't even place what it is, like they are too close and they get into some gelatinous blob and then one side walks out. I have no clue why it bothers me and doesn't draw me in like warband always does.

For multi I don't really know what to say anymore except it's not for me. But also could be I'm just not into it like I used to be. Chiv 2 for example was perfectly fun but I was done after 3 days, so eh. I really am surprised how much they are sticking to their guns on skirmish mode and wont let it go though. From looking at the ebb and flow of melee games it seems the people really do want the things chiv 2 is pumping out or mordhau's big team games. All the comp modes despite being cried about being wanted seem to just bleed players out in this niche genre. People go in, get owned, and go, that was pretty cool, maybe someday I'll work on that, oh well back to big huge matches where I don't suck. I guess that is what siege is supposed to be just, eh.

A matchmaker in a dead game like this is a disaster. I feel like it contributed to killing of magicka wizard wars, nothing like waiting 15 minutes to play a game and then having it over in 45 seconds, at least bannerlord doesn't do that.

Anyway I really like seeing all the work going on in SP and lots of vital things. The recent smiting thing is a neat addition and would be nice to see that continue to be fleshed out, maybe even get it more out of menus and more into some of the scenes, like if you smith at a town your char will go to the town's smith and be hitting an anvil while working with a few random animations as you click/produce stuff.

Terco_Viejo said:

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I think something that stands out and bothers me is how in bannerlord the units just compress into a tight ball where in warband they stayed a bit spread out. I think it may be the forcefield around units is just too tiny, but probably something else as well. Just watching how bannerlord units ball up and kill each other extremely fast is just not fun, it's kept me from trying the game out. Basically I'll fire up a quick battle with two sides and watch them collide, if I can't make that feel fun there's not a lot of point in playing the game.

While we're nitpicking again I'll also say again I hate the troop leveling system, which goes with the other points on better default allocations. From a UI standpoint it's just ugly and a big PITA after each battle to slow level troops in a direction. If you are new and don't know where or why you are taking the troops somewhere it's even worse. What's 1 archer do for you? How many do I need for them to do something? Will they ever do something? How many hours of looters need to die before I know what kind and how many of each troop I need to upgrade?

I'm sure it would break the game, so I'm dreaming, but I'd love to just recruit in bunches of 5, 10, or more, and level them all at the same time instead of individually. Use some recruit/merge mechanics like other strategy games do replenish. I don't really get the value in individual stock units and why its done the way it is done besides that's how we've always done it. Have the companions as hero units with their own ai, have the stock units with a group ai, and I think we'd all be happier for it.

This was one of the reasons I stopped playing MP as quickly as I did. Even right at release the queue times were too long. This may just be me but I just don't want to queue for any game if the queue is longer than 30 seconds, esp if I have to queue between playing. I like to get on, maybe do some loading up and prep, but then when I'm in, I want to be in the game and controlling something until I'm done playing for the night.

Warband and now bannerlord has always been a low population game, so whenever things that destory server populations continue on it compounds the difficulty in finding a match. I used to see this in warband all the time on servers that allowed them to rotate into khergit vs khergit matches. You could have 60 ppl on for a solid hour, k vs k comes up and you are down to 10 people in 5 minutes, 100% of the time, and the server can stay dead all night from that point on too.

Thing is I know people wanted to play. If I hopped on and just said screw it, I'll hit a tree for 10 minutes, someone eventually showed up, then another and another, it's a critical mass thing of people randomly checking if enough people are playing. If so they will stay for a while, if not, they leave.

Long match making + server dumps every time will continue to kill the MP population regardless of how people feel about balance or whatever else. I have a feeling they just coded this game straight up like they were going to match make everything and made a ton of horrendous assumptions early on that leave it the way it is now for a long while.

I don't know why TW doesn't seem to fundamentally understand how people play these games online yet. The population will never be some huge AAA game. There are some competitive players (well, there used to be), but the majority of people playing aren't going to want that. This game is the ultimate medieval sandbox, and the multiplayer should reflect that. I don't know why they went like the esport 6v6 double down or nothing route when they should have leaned in hard into their customized weapon, outfit, and perk selections, and built a more involved siege mode.

I also think they are just insane for not having a huge PvE mode for online as well, but eh.

froggyluv said:

As far as encouraging Town exploration:

1. Hidden items
2. Unique characters with special offers/conflicts that are MOVING thru town not just standing about
3. Potential for dynamic combat
4. Build relations with town by simply being there more
5. Let emergent AI actions take place -dog attacks a kid, people argue and fight, a bard or poet performs with people gathering about
6. Like Bannerpage mod, dont allow interaction with Village chief until at least once travelling to town square to introduce yourself

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I feel like the gameplay arc to really push this is the crime one. It makes a lot of sense you'd have to leave your army and get down in the gutters to deal with al the gang stuff, and is consistent with how bandit lairs are dealt with. Having that unique set of menu options to manage another resource layer in the town would require you to walk in town and possibly get ambushed or set up ambushes to take over other sections. It's ambitious, but I think it would take that level of making almost another game within the game to really pull you into the scenes. I don't see that happening anytime soon but would hope that's somewhere in the years ahead.

One thing I was curious about with the mod tools was whether they could add in more scripted behaviors and more complex activities in scene objects? It would be interesting if you could start working on more scripted behaviors in a scene to start building out more unique gameplay in them.

As for length of scening, if you take a look at the contest's check list for what makes a good scene, you'll see the work that needs to go into it. Also don't forget about the whole artistic/creative side of it that takes place before the scene editor is even opened. You need to generate terrain and have a town laydown that is interesting and not overly repetitive from one town to the next. You then have to build multiple levels and multiple seasons of it. You also have to manage the performance of it with not too many objects or distant high detailed objects. You need to get the AI mesh manageable and marker off areas for sieges/attacks to play well also. All of that takes a lot of time and iteration and given the amount it takes to 'finish' a scene 2 weeks seems pretty tight for just one person to get done in time.

I think that disconnect between scene and map has been an issue in warband and basically this format of the game. It's hard to find that balance. On on hand I'd love to have towns and scenes as detailed as an RPG game like say kingodom come deliverance. On the other hand in WB/BL it can be frustrating to walk through a bland town to locate a village elder or someone when you need to have a 1 second exchange with them.

I think in a way this game fights with itself. Are you the guy on the map view menuing your way to success, or are you a person in the world and the world is more than text descriptions? I think the thing is just the way gameplay systems are designed right now, you fly around to towns and treat them like skill hits as you would in another game.

For example the, "I want a bigger/ better armry", you are ping ponging around to the town and looking for recruits. Because you only get a few troops here or there per town, you are required to ride to multiple towns and interact for half a second. It's not an interesting interaction in itself, and loading into the map feels like a chore because you only have 5 seconds of non decision making interaction before leaving it. If you had to spend 5 minutes in town, and had meaningful gameplay there, it would not feel like a chore.

So many systems though lend to, stop by a town check/refill on 'stuff' and go look in the next town. They are clicking waystations and don't provide much other type of gameplay and hence, not really a drive to have elaborate scenes, despite having an engine that is capable of showing them.

For anyone else having issues, because it took me way too long to figure out everything I needed to start the editor, just make sure of the following:
Bannerlord is downloaded and not a beta but the current release branch.
The mod tools are downloaded AND ON THE SAME HARDDRIVE as bannerlord. I had some issues launching cause the tools were not on my SSD with bannerlord.
Start the Mod TOOLS, not main bannerlord. This will give a launcher. Select single player. When the game menu comes up you will see the editor option on the top. You can press that or CTRL+ E to start the tools.

Saw hellish quart on reddit just now and wanted to come see if anyone saw over here. Looks really amazing. Need to see if I can find some extra info on it like if it's muliplayer and not just sp/local only. Either way really nice animation action happening, hope the gameplay holds up!

*edit* saw on steam forums developer commented on it and he said "The plan is to have a single player campaign (a series of fights tied together with a story), arcade mode (series of fights with a boss at the end) and 2 players PvP (fence with your friends)."

So he's not coming with multiplayer. Might be able to do it with parsec maybe, but meh. I hope at least the creator is thinking about networking in the back of his head and not coding himself into a single player box.

I like the tournaments but they are a pretty challenging design to get right.

The main problem as people said is the AI. Without their equipment being a factor, if you are reasonably competent at the game, it's very easy to win, even when your character is low skill. The battanian 2h tournaments are the easiest to win, since the last few rounds usually have a 2 hander that won't bounce on armor. The 1h /shield empire ones can be rough if the other guy has high tier armor, you have to focus on hitting the head or thrusting for pierce damage and it could take several rounds. The harder ones to win imho are the team fights. If your team melts and you have a weapon you aren't doing much with right away, you get into some 1vX's that take a lot more work to win.

It's hard to justify a mass melee though as the final fight. I like the idea of how they mix up your teammate becomes your opponent and things like that, but I don't know it always works in practice. I'd love to be able to enter with a companion as a teammate and just win together without fighting. But in the end the biggest and hardest tweak will be getting the AI fighting better, esp high level lords.

The other thing is the frequency of tournaments. I have a feeling when you ask for nearby tournaments it looks at the closest cities and makes sure that at least 2 of them are having tournaments. So that means you can have unlimited tournaments, which isn't a bad thing, however it makes them not important, or at least shouldn't be important.

I think I sort of hate the practice melee fights, the way enemies come running out one at a time, and why don't I get to be the guy that comes out the door last, kills one guy, and gets 250 gold? Basically it's really gamy, and if you have the time, you can just sit in a corner and let the AI kill itself and get your 250. I don't mind it's existence, but I think it could be better.

What might be nice then, is to follow the suggestions for tournaments in this thread. Make them bigger, more expensive, and more rare, and more rewarding. So there might be a huge entrance fee, you have to bring your own equipment, they only happen rarely etc. That's the big lords tourny.

Then add a second type of tourny, this is the local circuit that happens as frequently as it does now. It doesn't have huge rewards, it doesn't cost anything to enter, the area's are smaller, the opponents are bad, everyone has default gear, the reward is small, but there are rewards for lower place standings, runner ups and 3rd place rewards maybe. The idea would be that by doing local circuits you get some small amount of renown, gold, and some mid level gear, enough to start trying to compete in major tournaments.

In dreamland, (and come mod tools release time, I am thinking about trying to make this) I'd love for wandering tournament person to be an entire path of playing the game, like being a trader or playing the lords and armies game. I'd love to see basically a gladiator game packed in to bannerlord. Manage a team of fighters, pay for training, salary, tournament entry fees, manage tournament renown. Have reoccurring opposing teams/players to go up against, try to work your way up into the bigger arenas with large cash prizes etc.

But that's sort of dreaming, right now I think I'd love to see the major tournaments getting a rarity and reward overhaul, and introduce starter tournaments as a path for the player to get some mid tier gear/gold/renown help get started.

Just wanted to say that I have also had this same issue as well, and noticed it on the latest beta branch still. It's the first load in on the first hit, in single and multiplayer. Everything is on highest, using an SSD.

My experience of it is slightly different from the video in that parts of the character model go invisible It's just the first time I hit something, and also the first time that I'm hit as well. I don't think it's on blocks, only when contact is made.

I think this is a problem that esports in general has, except for a few naturally easy to watch games. Fighting games I think are the most easy to digest without knowing anything because all of the action is on screen and the speed is immediately recognizable. I have a lot of trouble watching CS, even back when I was still just in shock video games were being watched or even cared about. MOBA's were also hard to watch as well, though I WAS able to watch competitive HOTS for a bit because I was playing it.

For warband the bladecast streams kind of blew me away with the UI and everything they came up with the first time I saw them, it made the game way more readable, and they do an amazing job casting. But still, I just don't see it being broadly appealing to players outside.

I think that esports popularity rises and falls with the size of the player base and that's pretty much it. It's going to take a bit for esports to grow beyond their player base I think, but maybe in a few years.

That said there's something compelling about documentary style competition recaps. There's a series about formula 1 on netflix that recaps the seasons, watched it with my wife who has never had any interest in cars and racing for the 20 or so years we've been together, and midway through she was upset the seasons on hold because she wanted to watch a race. Video game wise I watched the informal competitive smash recap and was enthralled by the thing, but it didn't leave me wanting to watch comp smash. Still, that format of recap and explaining things you don't understand can really broaden an audience for a thing.

I'm hoping down the line to see a lot more things to do as a small group. It probably fights the whole 'lead an army/run a kingdom' thrust of the main game, but I guess I like the idea of exploring more ways to live in the world as a small group too.

I think bounty hunting might take a bit to work out for small groups and random people. I know warband had quests like that, but they were pretty boring, show up to town, beat up guy, end quest. I think bounties on a kingdom level might make more sense, capture a particular noble and bring him back to me could be very interesting, esp if you aren't at war with their faction.

Ziraal said:

No I really got that, and that's why I said "Anyway so now only true masters of the combat will be able to do it, maybe only sometimes with the right weapon type " emphasis on "sometimes". Tbh I think it adds some more depth to the combats, because you have to rely on luck a bit and not entirely on you skill. Maybe it will work, maybe not. You take a risk. That's what a combat should be, taking risks, not just becoming the master of blocking.
Yes it does "suck" for the ones that were solemnly relying on this to do 1v3, 1v5 or even more. But is it really good for immersion sake or even balancing ? That a simple can hold of 5 ennemies just cause he can block any types of weapons ? Is it balanced if just with a bit of timing you can pretty much take on anyone a bit less skilled than you ?

I will give you a good comparaison :
Some years ago lots of people on CSGO mastered the ways of the scout, like pretty much anyone skilled enough to get a timing right could make accurate jumpshots with this gun, but then they changed it so even if your timing is perfect it's still imprecise, it was purely for balanced sake and i must say now it even more gratifying when you can land one, cause not anyone can do it anymore. you can always try, you take the risk, would it land tho ? No one knows, and that's the spirit.

This totally my opinion, I know it is frustrating when things you knew gets shattered into oblivion, but I think it's for the best. And tbh from what I've seen on all medieval games with a tiny bit of a "complex" fighting system, there is always people to go to this "impossible for human" moves and land them everytime.

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I'm about 50% with you. I think the comparison with your example is that you are describing a hard shot that results in a kill. Maybe there is the risk that the shot (don't know comp CS very well) misses the other person will just kill the shooter, but just assuming that mostly it is a missed shot. A chamber attempt is a risk vs taking damage or death if you miss it, the reward for it looks to be getting blocked in rhytem since the chamber doesn't do much to break it.

Chambering consistently on left/right swings against beginners (who are very predictable and on rhythm) is not too hard after some practice. You do have to know your weapon and char and be familiar with the duration of the chamber window, and you have to know the speed of the incoming weapon, but there aren't many varieties of weapons you see online, and you can judge the big slow weapons pretty easily. I remember I had a brief CRPG stint where each person basically had a different swing speed. I thought at first chambering was impossible there, but with enough practice as you exchange some hits with them you get a feel for the weapon speed and could get it in there.

That said I'm about 100% in agreement with most that the timings, while hard, don't really get you anything or offer anything besides going 'hey, cool i chambered'. So even if you did pratice hard and could get the timing down vs a vet attacking you, it wouldn't get much.

On the plus side, in the beta patch today they added a unique sound effect for chambering, so hopefully there is some working going on with them.

My suggestion is focus on what you want to learn best in TDM. It got instant respawn you can have many trials. Try to control yourself and focus on what you want to learn rather than getting into the flailing fight, that might involve you dying a lot but eh. If you want to cav better try to not miss lances and stay alive, if you want to shoot better keep taking hard shots, watch how people move at a distance, get a feel for archer timing.

If you want to learn melee I'd say what people said, start with the AI in single player. Just go right into the training yard and block both of the 'advanced' melee bots until you are bored or are doing it automatically, not missing a beat. Then try blocking while moving around instead of standing still. Then try feinting between blocks. The move and feint while blocking etc. Increase the amount of tasks you are doing at once.

When you get into play people, try to just fight a nice block/ attack rhythm. I like to sometimes just block people to keep up on it. The game opens up when you feel safe standing in people's attack range because you know you can block most of what they are going to do.

Anyway good luck, it's not an easy environment to learn right now, but the majority of players don't know what they are doing, so you can learn without too much vet overhead. Plus if you can just block and attack back you'll rack up a lot of kills right now, which can feel good too.

Posted about it in suggestions but my guess is the swing delay they added needs to ramp down faster as they level up. I think what is happening is the ai starts a swing and holds it for some time with the delay and doesn't reevaluate if it's going to get hit while holding. This lets us spam them down now and/or race them to first hit. I think some tweaking and it will add something to have the low skill guys being that bad, they'll still be hard in large numbers.

I will say the cav changes are a huge improvement though, they were almost non functional in tournaments before the patch.

One more note, 2h arena battle vs nobleman with 220 2 handed, and I could combo freely until he was dead. So I think at the least need them to ease up on hold length at high levels or at least have them be able to pull out of the hold and defend themselves.