Search results for query: *

This isn't going to be a popular suggestion, probably, but I think all the problems that castles have, in terms of their actual practical purpose within the game world, stem from the fact that armies/parties on the march do not need to stop and rest.

If you were to force all parties to rest for some given period of time after every given period of activity, then lots of these things would fall into place, in my view.

Parties operating out of a castle or a town have a safe place to rest. Parties out in the field have to make camp out in the field, and are vulnerable to attack while resting. Therein lies the purpose of a castle. You remove or abstract the practical need for parties to rest, and by doing so you also remove the real, practical purpose of having castles - and then you have to introduce a load of other abstractions in order to give castles some sort of invented reason to exist, to replace the real one that you've removed, and none of it ends up making any sense.

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:

The early game shouldn't be about ammassing wealth is my point. Having a hard cap on how much money you can carry shouldn't really affect the early game at all, since even in the base game you barely ever spend more than a few hundred denars at a time.

Click to expand...

Well, surely that depends what you're doing?

If you decide to be a trader, travelling from town to town buying and selling things for a profit, then amassing wealth is precisely what the early game will be about? I mean, you'll probably want to invest your early profits back into your trading operation: buying more pack animals; paying for some caravan guards, perhaps; moving towards trading in higher-value goods. But ultimately, you're playing as a trader because you want to get rich.

I agree with you in that getting rich doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a treasury full of coins. But in that case, the game needs to allow you to invest in stuff - put your money into property, or something. Or money lending? Something that will give you a return on your investment when you want to sell it, anyway. Simply changing workshops back to how they were in Warband would go a long way towards achieving that (removing the cap on how many you can own); it would also allow you to have stashes there; and it would introduce (re-introduce?) some actual gameplay element, player input, into running a business.

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:

The game will basically have to be broken in order to fix it. There is no way for taleworlds to tweak and balance their way out of the current game mechanics.

Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more with this. What I meant was that, by introducing currency as a physical item in the game, you will break some of the current systems. And you would need to fix them by introducing several new supporting mechanics, as well as changing other mechanics, in order to make it work. And going back to your earlier point, having a finite amount of hard currency that's flowing around in the gameworld would be an important part of that. It would absolutely be worth doing.

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:

I don't think you have to add all that.

Click to expand...

I think you do.

If money has a carry weight, then there is a hard cap on how much you can have. In the early game, that cap is going to be very low? How do you accumulate wealth beyond your carry capacity if you can't stash it somewhere? How does the game balance/limit your ability to recruit, maintain and upgrade troops if that process isn't based on money? What reward do you get from completing quests, if it's not money?

I agree that this change would make the game much more interesting, but wouldn't it also break lots of things unless you added a lot of additional mechanics to support it?

I've been put off many a potential courtship or marriage, purely by the fact that the Lady in question speaks like Cathy Burke after bottle and a half of supermarket own-brand gin.

And in the game as well.

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:

Ideally i would like to see coins an an actual item and not just a number on your screen.

Click to expand...

I would love to see this as well, but it would open a massive, massive can of worms as to how the game (and the player) would handle it.

If money is a physical thing that you have to carry around with you, then it has to have 'weight', just like any other item. That means there's a limit to how much you can carry at once, and a big risk involved in doing so (lose a battle: lose all your money).

From that follows a much greater need for the game to allow you to have a 'base' - somewhere to stash your money and other items, so that you're not carrying everything you own around with you at all times. That's fine if you're a landed Lord: you put it in your castle keep. But what if you're not? The game could give you the ability to buy property in a town - a house or a workshop - so that you could keep a stash/inventory there. It could also give you the ability to build a hideout? But then do you have to leave guards there to defend it? Does the game allow your stash to be robbed if it's not in a castle (or even if it is)? If so, how does that work?

Then you've got the issue of paying for things. Say you buy a workshop: when you first set it up, it might be losing money for a little while. So you have to leave enough coin there in order to keep it running while you're away - otherwise it'd just stop working. And if it's making a profit, you'd have to keep going back to it in order to collect the money so that you could then go and spend it elsewhere. And how do you pay party wages, or garrison wages? You'd have to carry enough coin with you (or goods that you could regularly cash in at market) in order to keep paying soldiers for every day that you're out on the road. You'd probably have to change a lot of the mechanics around this in order to make it work in a way that wasn't a massive pain the in arse to micro-manage.

Personally, I think it'd be a big improvement to the gameplay - give you lots of extra stuff to do. But it would change the face of the gameplay quite significantly, and presumably be a pretty big undertaking to implement? Might well not be to everyone's taste?

Going back to the original topic:

Yesterday I visited a castle fief of mine, to which I'd assigned my wife as governor. Usually I don't bother talking to the wife, because it doesn't do anything. But this time I did, just for the heck of it, and in the vague, vain hope that maybe the devs might have added some interaction that would lead to a task for me to do that would actually give me a good reason to have a spouse in the first place. I wasn't surprised when there wasn't an option for something meaningful to say or do, but I was surprised by how the conversation opened:

"Yours is not a face I know. Who might you be?" she asked.
I didn't have the option to respond with, "WTF?! I'm your frickin husband! Don't you remember the wedding ceremony? [There was a nice cutscene, and she was definitely looking at me at one point.] You were in my warparty the other week, too. We've definitely met before."
Instead, I just just had to mumble something ridiculous like, "My name is Garios. And may I ask your name?"
"I am Vassilla of the Clan Zenos. We are famous throughout the Empire for our deeds in crushing the barbarians".
Yeah, I know. That's my clan. I set it up. I did the barbarian-crushing myself. FFS.
"I have heard your name," she continues. "It's good to finally make your acquaintance. You and I should talk from time to time."
"Yeah, whatever," I didn't reply. "Fancy a game of Tibult, since there's naff-all else to do?"

She was rubbish and I beat her easily. Don't think I'll bother talking to her again.

Ananda_The_Destroyer said:

Click to expand...

The worrying thing is that most of what it says here isn't actually true.

"Bannerlord invites players to weave their own tapestry of ambition and be whomever they like in their own Game of Thrones..." No it doesn't. It's nothing like Game of Thrones, except in that it involves swords.
"... letting them wage war..." Ok, I'll give you that one.
"... engage in diplomacy..." Really? I mean, yeah you can say hello to people, but that's about it. I suppose you can buy or sell things from them as well (at much worse prices than you'd get in the nearest town). Is that diplomacy?
"... fight in arenas..." Yes, but you can't go anywhere with that. It's not a career path. There's no progression there and they're always the same, no matter how many you do.
"... trade illicit goods... " Only in one specific quest - and that doesn't have much effect on anything. You can't actively engage in smuggling networks or anything.
"... be a town alderman..." No you can't. They just made that up.
"... and absolutely everything in between..." Like what? What exactly is there in between these other things? Nothing!
"... one of the most ambitious PS5 games to date." Well, that's a pretty sad indictment of PS5 games, then. It might be an ambitious game, but hardly any of those ambitions have been realised, unfortunately. Therein lies the disappointment.

Apocal said:

Eyes on the real prize: creating an actual late/end-game experience worth playing through.

Click to expand...

I totally agree. (I didn't quote your entire post because this sentence sums it up.)

Feasts are all fine and good, and I'm not opposed to them being added, but what the game really needs, I feel, is some proper strategic/management gameplay in the overworld map. That goes for running caravans, workshops, criminal enterprises, fiefs and kingdoms. We need to be able to take direct control of these things if we want to, and make decisions, give orders, adjust variables, etc. Then you could delegate aspects of it to your companions, governors, family members, vassal Lords, or even to notables under your rule - and we need to be able to give them direct instructions to fulfil specific tasks for us.

Make us feel like we're actually in charge of something. At the moment it's all passive incomes, perks and stat boosts; there's no actual stuff to do!

Apocal said:

(Also, traveling the world on a fetch quest for food is about as interesting as watching paint dry.)

Click to expand...

If they introduce feasts to Bannerlord with this requirement included, I'm not going to be doing them!

five bucks said:

Oh yeah the policies certainly need work too.

Click to expand...

To me, there needs to be a whole lot more than that. All that Kingdom Policies do is give a few perks here and there. They don't actually give you anything to do - no management, no orders to give, no strategic decisions to make or problems to solve. No gameplay.

It's the same with owning fiefs. A castle or town is mildly useful to have - because it gives you a 'stash' in which to put things that you don't want to sell and you don't want to carry about with you. More importantly, it gives you a Garrison, so you can build up a pool of spare troops that allow you to replenish your Party after a costly battle. But that's it - the upgrades you can build, again, just give you a few perks to certain stats. You don't feel like you're actually ruling anything, because there's no gameplay involved in that.

I really think they need to add some completely new gameplay elements to the overworld map - some management, some strategy. Something to give the player some real input.

xdj1nn said:

if you think doing the same thing over and over and over again is fun, than I must stop you right there - that's kid's take on fun, for any adult it's unbearable.

Click to expand...

Well, the entire game in concept revolves around a kid's idea of fun. I mean, we're playing at pretend medieval knights, for goodness sake. That's not a very grown up thing to do!

But I think the combat in Bannerlord is fun. I also think it's better than vanilla Warband.

Sweynforkbeard said:

More like some other reasonably meaningful goals than just to conquer the world.

Click to expand...

That's kind-of what I meant.

Being able to "rule" the world without conquering it. Manipulate events through a criminal empire, or dominance of trade, or control of food supplies, through your diplomatic contacts, or just your sheer weight of financial power.

They could at least start off by giving us some management options when we take control of a workshop or caravan or a criminal enterprise - let alone when we control a fief or a kingdom. Something meaningful we can actually do with it - and a reason to want to do it in the first place.

Dead End said:

Excluding mods, I was wondering what's a feature that is upcoming on the roadmap or missing from Warband that would dramatically improve Bannerlord as a vanilla Sandbox or uh Campaign experience?

Click to expand...

You need to be able to make progress in a variety of ways.

The pathway towards 'ruling the world', if that's the end-goal, needs to have different routes which are all viable.

You need to be able to make actual progress in the game as a trader, as a caravan runner, as a business owner, as a bounty hunter, as a bandit, as a criminal boss, as a mercenary, as a 'fixer' perhaps. There need to be roles that you can choose from - career paths if you like - that give you stages of progression, with new things to do at each stage - things you couldn't do before, that actually matter towards your progression.

You can dabble with these things at the moment, but you can't get anywhere with them. If you want to set yourself up as a workshop owner, there needs to be some actual gameplay involved in playing that role - otherwise there's no point in doing it. The same goes for the other roles.

The only gameplay in Bannerlord at the moment is in leading a war party. Once you've progressed through that career by leading larger numbers of increasingly stronger troops against larger numbers of increasingly stronger enemies, you've finished with all of the gameplay that Bannerlord offers. There is nothing else to do. Being a Vassal or a King doesn't give you more things to do that you couldn't do before - the Kingdom decisions and the owning of fiefs doesn't actually give you anything to DO. There needs to be some player agency, some actual gameplay, beyond the fighting of battles.

The game boils down to this:

The battles are fun. Combat is fun. The rest of the game is fluff. Progression in the game is all about being able to participate in larger and larger battles - that's it, there's nothing else.

You start out with a weak character, weak armour, weak weapons, a weak horse, and weak troops under your command: so you an only fight against weak opponents. The most obvious and straightforward way to make your character stronger, and acquire better armour, weapons, mount and troops is fight battles, and then sell the spoils of war (loot and prisoners). Quests that auto-generate suitable-level opponents to fight against for your current level help with this progression, and are worth doing; quests that don't involve the game auto-generating a battle for you to fight are not worth doing. Arena practice fights and tournaments help a bit with this progression as well, and are worth doing (up to a point).

Once you've got to the stage where fighting bandits and/or caravans becomes too easy, you're ready to progress to being a mercenary or vassal - so you do that. By now, all quests are pretty useless and redundant. You start participating in larger-scale battles involving Nobles and elite troops, big armies and sieges - the game's progression remains logical and rewarding up to this point. But once you've done this a quite few times, there isn't anything else to progress to. There's no point in trading (independent buying/selling, with caravans nor workshops) because it doesn't get you anywhere. There's no point in owning fiefs, because it doesn't get you anywhere. There's no point in talking to notables and noble clan members anymore, because it doesn't get you anywhere. There's no point in paying any attention whatsoever to the political decisions of the realm, because that doesn't get you anywhere. There's no point in starting a family because it doesn't get you anywhere. There isn't even any point in trying to become King/Queen of a realm, or start your own, because that doesn't reward you with anything new to do either.

The only meaningful progression in the game is the progression through the scale of battles you are able to participate in, and you reach the top of that scale once you become a vassal. There is no progression beyond that, and essentially nothing else worthwhile to do in the game. There isn't any variety of pathways to this progression, either - everything except fighting battles is just a side-show, because it doesn't get you anywhere. Fighting battles is fun; the combat is fun. But after you've fought battles over and over again at the highest level and scale possible in the game, even they begin to get boring. There is nothing else to look forward to or work towards, nothing else to achieve. There is nothing else to do... so you stop playing.

I read a fairly similar review in PC Gamer the other day as well. (Similar in what it said, but they gave it 80%!)

IGN summarizes: "Glorious action/real-time strategy combat, but forces you to to endure dozens of hours of laborious and repetitive activities on its dry, flavourless overworld map."

PC Gamer's verdict was more like, "Treat the game like a war sandbox where you dip into trade, management and politics, and it starts to make a lot more sense."

Personally, I don't think the campaign map part of the game is completely terrible. More like a missed opportunity to make something truly great.
The combat is truly great, and I think the devs deserve a lot of credit for it.

Kentucky James VII said:

Worse than the magic encyclopedia is how the AI can instantly know where enemy armies are, but the player can't unless they see an army with "going to defend at X. The AI can pinpoint its own armies, but the player has to rely on outdated information about where the army is headed, not where they are.
.

Click to expand...

How difficult would it be to implement a system of real-time information spread around the map, though? Taking into account all parties and settlements that 'witness' character movements and events, and pass it on to other characters they meet or places they visit?
I have no idea, but it seems like it might be a pretty daunting undertaking?

It needs to be possible for Clans to leave their starting faction, either by their own choice or because they are forced out by the other clans and/or king. But it doesn't follow that they should immediately be accepted into a different faction. It was one of the most confusing and frustrating aspects of mid-late game Warband, and for the system to be just ported over to Bannerlord almost unchanged is particularly disappointing.

I really think that there needs to be a way for AI Clans to operate independently of a major faction in the same way that the player's Clan can. From there, they could form a new Kingdom and recruit other independents to join them, operate as bandits or mercenaries, or even join a major faction again - just as the player can do. But to have them switch sides with instant effect just damages the gameplay and immersion in the scenario/lore.

If having culturally-mixed major factions is a common feature of Calradia's "history" how come they are all neatly separated the start of the campaign? What changes, lore-wise, to make them suddenly all want to mix together within a few years? It doesn't matter very much how the Roman Empire was composed or organised in actual history: we're taking about the history of Calradia here. Empire Clans are all culturally "Empire" - until the player turns up, that is.

It's not consistent or convincing for instant defections to suddenly be the norm when they clearly never have been before the start of the game's scenario.

I'd quite like to see more player input into the so-called "passive" income - so that if you want to concentrate on being a trader, say, there would be some minor management options that allow you to get more money out of your businesses and caravans, rather than just buying them and that's it.
And with fiefs, maybe some more detailed options for governing them that affect tax yields.
I don't think passive income should necessarily be entirely passive, that is.
And I don't like the idea of gold sinks for their own sake: the economy just needs to work properly so that it's balanced - things that you're doing anyway, like waging war and maintaining your properties, should be expensive enough for you not to need artificial "sinks".

This is a pretty old video, but I'm still hoping it's relevant.

damashkin said:

For balance and coding reasons I understand the current system. But paying troops and receiving taxes done on a weekly or monthly basis would be considerably more logical. Gaining profit from caravan would make more sense if say one day per week your caravan reported to you to meet them at the city in which you started it to collect your profits or pay the bills. Workshops hold the money until you check in on them. They give you a report as to what resources cost and why they made said profit or loss.

Click to expand...

I agree with this.
Daily income/expenditure is not only more of a pain in the arse to manage, but it's also less realistic. I especially like the idea of having to collect money from caravans and businesses when you visit them - the whole concept of an instant-access online bank account in a medieval setting has always irked me quite a bit.