1.0.6 gives XP for tournaments and...practice matches?

[Uruk34]

The thing you're missing out on here is that the ARENA is not meant to grind your skills in. It never was that way in Warband nor base M&B. It was always meant for you to just learn how to use your weapon, chambers, blocks, etc. It's not meant to grind skills in... so having a slider to give yourself more XP per engagement in an environment that has no limit is essentially tantamount to exploiting and cheating the game. In Warband it only gave you 5-10XP per engagement in the Arena and no one ever had an issue with that... why?

Because we ALL knew what it was meant for, learning the game and the weapons you use. Tournaments? Those can have high XP rewards, they're competitive. Battles? Absolutely need more XP reward and so do Sieges... but an Arena with literally Tier 1 scrubs the majority of the time? That's not a challenge and that's definitely not meant for grinding skills up to be a God or Lord of all. It just doesn't fit with the overall gameplay loop TW wants us to engage in... which is to venture the world, build a warband and conquer. That's how you become the better warrior and master your skill.

I'm afraid I'm now back to the position of "why do you care?" The solutions suggested mean that this change will make no difference to your campaign (genuinely this time). Why not just let other people play the game the way they want?

It's not really that different from having a slider to reduce the damage you take. Or playing on easy mode in other games. Mount and blade isn't Dark Souls, the selling point of the game isn't that it's the same for everyone and there's no difficulty setting. In fact, the selling point of the game is literally the opposite of that given that it's a sandbox. Just because you don't want to do it, doesn't mean others are the same.

 

[panxo_dakilla]

abit off topic lol, but teams who don't practice never wins championships... idk what world you live in to claim that championship caliber teams never practice and still wins games/championships... maybe show me that team and i will believe you..

on topic, i support this change by TW.. there is already a mod that adds xp that seems to do this.. so if you remove it, people will flock to that mod... might as well keep it.. if you don't like it, maybe make that mod that removes xp....

maybe TW should add an ingame option that can set how much xp you gain in tourneys/practice to satisfy both supporters and against it...

M8 you need to get better at sarcasm.

 

[SpectreSC]

I'm afraid I'm not back to the position of "why do you care?" The solutions suggested mean that this change will make literally no difference to your campaign (genuinely this time). Why not just let other people play the game the way they want?

It's not really that different from having a slider to reduce the damage you take. Or playing on easy mode in other games. Just because you don't want to do it, doesn't mean others are the same.

Because it takes away from the core gameplay loop? It's SUPPOSED to take you a decent amount of time to grow your character and see that progress mate. You aren't just supposed to sit in an Arena and become the best of the best in a short period of time. That's not a good gameplay loop nor is it balanced at all.

In Warband this is how it was and it was balanced out by the fact you gained MORE XP per battles and engagements in the FIELD and not in some structured arena environment where you get 5 denar per win.

 

[Gunteraz]

I don't think there's anything wrong with geeting xp for practice matches. It takes so long to level up your skills anyway.

 

[SpectreSC]

I don't think there's anything wrong with geeting xp for practice matches. It takes so long to level up your skills anyway.

Neither do I, what I have an issue with is the AMOUNT you're getting. 100%? Really? That's far too high for just a practice match. In actual battles and engagements you gain just as much but the difference is that you cannot do them repeatedly back to back without injury, can you?

Unless you auto-resolve against looters, then sure... but that's another issue.

 

[Danandur]

Excuse me but I will also take the same stance against you then. If you want to enjoy the limitless and endless amount of XP gain from the Arena then that's all on you. Go enable an XP slider mod and have at it. Or better yet, once they fix the amount of XP gain you receive from Arenas and Tourneys, you can enable cheats yourself and do as you please.

But the Arena has always been meant for one thing and one thing only, practicing with your weapons and learning the game. Not to XP farm. I'm fairly sure a good majority of Warband Vets would agree with me on that one.

I tested quite extensively the arena ever since the patch, it's very far from limitless XP source. It jumpstarts the first levels until like lvl 10 or so. (Even your compaions start as lvl 16 average).

That's also an opinion, that it was meant to use for this and that. Are you the developer of warband who knows what it was supposed to do when you coded? Nah, you use it for something and others use it for something else. For example I am also a warband veteran with thousands of hours into the game, and every single ranged character, I used the arena to jumpstart my archery skill to like 100-150 proficiency, because in warband low proficiency meant very low hitchance (especially on horse archer characters). In bannerlord I use it to increase my athletics skill, since it's annoying as a footman that I'm unable to run on a decent speed. With the arena I can now take down larger looter parties in melee alone, instead of getting gangbanged like at the start of the game. In the case of bannerlord XP and skill proficiency are tied together, that causes the fuss. I don't want a lvl 50 main character, I want a certain proficiency increased to a certain point until its useable in real battle. Like I always did in the arena.

 

[Uruk34]

Because it takes away from the core gameplay loop? It's SUPPOSED to take you a decent amount of time to grow your character and see that progress mate. You aren't just supposed to sit in an Arena and become the best of the best in a short period of time. That's not a good gameplay loop nor is it balanced at all.

In Warband this is how it was and it was balanced out by the fact you gained MORE XP per battles and engagements in the FIELD and not in some structured arena environment where you get 5 denar per win.

As a fellow warband vet- that game had an entirely different levelling system. I didn't have to train 2 handers in the arena because I could manually up my skill to the point that it was usable in the field. Also, 10 years have passed. A large proportion of Warband vets probably have significantly less time on their hands than when that game came out so I think you'd be surprised how many like this change. You only have to look at the ranks on this forum of some of the people advocating for it.

It's one thing saying you don't like something because it directly affects your game (as it does currently). It's another saying it shouldn't be in the game because it allows other people to play a game in a way that you don't approve of. It really is quite a selfish perspective to take.

I should clarify that I don't plan to grind the arena to super-high proficiency as like you, I don't think MB is about instantly being a powerful warlord but about developing, building relations, skills to get to that point. If there were a slider I'd probably set it to 10% after the initial grind to get to a baseline of proficiency. If somebody else does want to play the game that way though, more power to them.

 

[SpectreSC]

As a fellow warband vet- that game had an entirely different levelling system. I didn't have to train 2 handers in the arena because I could manually up my skill to the point that it was usable in the field. Also, 10 years have passed. A large proportion of Warband vets probably have significantly less time on their hands than when that game came out so I think you'd be surprised how many like this change. You only have to look at the ranks on this forum of some of the people advocating for it.

It's one thing saying you don't like something because it directly affects your game (as it does currently). It's another saying it shouldn't be in the game because it allows other people to play a game in a way that you don't approve of. It really is quite a selfish perspective to take.

I tested quite extensively the arena ever since the patch, it's very far from limitless XP source. It jumpstarts the first levels until like lvl 10 or so. (Even your compaions start as lvl 16 average).

That's also an opinion, that it was meant to use for this and that. Are you the developer of warband who knows what it was supposed to do when you coded? Nah, you use it for something and others use it for something else. For example I am also a warband veteran with thousands of hours into the game, and every single ranged character, I used the arena to jumpstart my archery skill to like 100-150 proficiency, because in warband low proficiency meant very low hitchance (especially on horse archer characters). In bannerlord I use it to increase my athletics skill, since it's annoying as a footman that I'm unable to run on a decent speed. With the arena I can now take down larger looter parties in melee alone, instead of getting gangbanged like at the start of the game. In the case of bannerlord XP and skill proficiency are tied together, that causes the fuss. I don't want a lvl 50 main character, I want a certain proficiency increased to a certain point until its useable in real battle. Like I always did in the arena.

Listen, I understand these points both of you are making but my point is the following and it has NOT changed at all:

The Arena gives TOO MUCH XP per engagement for literally very little if any cost at all. That's the issue here, I'm not against giving XP for these activities because it makes sense! But to sit in an Arena with competition that is hardly worth training on to begin with, getting 100% of the gain and leveling your skills up without much of an issue in this environment is the problem I have. You're supposed to be gaining the MOST from Battles and actual Sieges/Warfare/Quests, etc. Not from sitting in an Arena with rookies and greenies and becoming God amongst men, that's the issue I have here.

I do not have any issue whatsoever with actually gaining XP from these. I just believe the amount of XP gained is far too high for what is entirely a newbie/tutorial arena. In Warband I used these Arenas to learn tactics, weapon handling, etc. It gave you minimal XP and it did level proficiency because of how the leveling system worked for Warband. In this case with Bannerlord, proficiency is directly tied to your level... so to sit in the Arena is essentially powerleveling you. I just don't understand how you don't see that as an issue? The game isn't meant to be easy.

 

[Danandur]

Listen, I understand these points both of you are making but my point is the following and it has NOT changed at all:

The Arena gives TOO MUCH XP per engagement for literally very little if any cost at all. That's the issue here, I'm not against giving XP for these activities because it makes sense! But to sit in an Arena with competition that is hardly worth training on to begin with, getting 100% of the gain and leveling your skills up without much of an issue in this environment is the problem I have. You're supposed to be gaining the MOST from Battles and actual Sieges/Warfare/Quests, etc. Not from sitting in an Arena with rookies and greenies and becoming God amongst men, that's the issue I have here.

I do not have any issue whatsoever with actually gaining XP from these. I just believe the amount of XP gained is far too high for what is entirely a newbie/tutorial arena. In Warband I used these Arenas to learn tactics, weapon handling, etc. It gave you minimal XP and it did level proficiency because of how the leveling system worked for Warband. In this case with Bannerlord, proficiency is directly tied to your level... so to sit in the Arena is essentially powerleveling you. I just don't understand how you don't see that as an issue? The game isn't meant to be easy.

Look, I already wrote it in an earlier post in this thread, that in the arena you do not only fight against recruits. It sends gradually higher tier enemies at you, until the last 10 guys are usually tier 5-6. (Go ahead take a look at the name of those soldiers you take down. Imperial cataphracts, Strugian berzerkers, Battanian fiann, aserai heavy cav, etc.) They just don't have the armor advantage like in battle. (And why should they? You are running naked aswell! Fair combat against the best AI.)

As I already wrote peviously I would very much welcome a new arena setup, where you can choose your equipment and the difficulty of your enemies and adjust the XP multipliers according to these setups. So fighting against such tier 6 opponents should very well yield normal combat xp levels. It would make a decent narrative RP-wise aswell (like "he was trained by the battanian heroes and fianns, the very best of the local garrison" or something like that.)

 

[Uruk34]

Listen, I understand these points both of you are making but my point is the following and it has NOT changed at all:

The Arena gives TOO MUCH XP per engagement for literally very little if any cost at all. That's the issue here, I'm not against giving XP for these activities because it makes sense! But to sit in an Arena with competition that is hardly worth training on to begin with, getting 100% of the gain and leveling your skills up without much of an issue in this environment is the problem I have. You're supposed to be gaining the MOST from Battles and actual Sieges/Warfare/Quests, etc. Not from sitting in an Arena with rookies and greenies and becoming God amongst men, that's the issue I have here.

I do not have any issue whatsoever with actually gaining XP from these. I just believe the amount of XP gained is far too high for what is entirely a newbie/tutorial arena. In Warband I used these Arenas to learn tactics, weapon handling, etc. It gave you minimal XP and it did level proficiency because of how the leveling system worked for Warband. In this case with Bannerlord, proficiency is directly tied to your level... so to sit in the Arena is essentially powerleveling you. I just don't understand how you don't see that as an issue? The game isn't meant to be easy.

I agree that battle XP needs an overhaul. I agree that after a certain point, fighting Joe random in the arena should stop being particularly beneficial. But just because you or I don't want the game to be easy, that doesn't mean that everybody feels the same way. It's a very obvious point, and I'm still at a loss as to why it would still be an issue for you. If any of the suggested solutions, either allowing each person to customise their own game directly, or to train in training fields, were put in place, then your own experience of Bannerlord wouldn't be affected at all.

I'd also still have no mechanism to train 2h weapons early on even if the battle XP was increased, because I'm either in an open field battle, meaning the rest of my troops are getting in the way (or I'm dying because I'm trying to 1v10 sharpshooter looters with no shield), or I'm in a hideout, meaning I have to use a bow to be of any use as my starting athletics skill (another one that can only really be levelled in the arena) is so low.

 

[barthez4]

Training for sports is obviously important but nobody can do so infinitely while time stands still. Quests and wars shouldn't be on hold while you train. I think a good happy medium would be a checkbox enabling either 10% damage (100 damage in arena = 10 damage to your actual character) or making practice fights have a small amount of time elapse between fights. Maybe a city runs a fight every hour during the daytime. Regarding the equivalency of killing looters, you still consume food, pay troops, risk getting captured, and run the timer down on any existing quests while you do so. I don't think people want to stop anyone from practicing, it's about turning a completely free resource into one that has at least some opportunity cost just like everything else in the game.

The idea that it has to stay exactly the same as Warband is silly. Warband is amazing but it's not a perfect game. And saying "why didn't you bring this up during Warband?" is also misguided - this is a brand new game still in development that we are playtesting. There are plenty of changes I'd have loved TaleWorlds to make in the 12 years I've been playing this series that had to be addressed by the nodding community. We have the opportunity to put ideas together while TW is still making the game so why not at least present the ideas as a toggle option so the game can be as good as it can be?

Ideal case for me: Choose arena loadout, have a generous but limited amount of fights per day*, reduce arena XP rate, reduce prize money to 100. Make the fight limit a toggle option.

 

[SpectreSC]

Look, I already wrote it in an earlier post in this thread, that in the arena you do not only fight against recruits. It sends gradually higher tier enemies at you, until the last 10 guys are usually tier 5-6. (Go ahead take a look at the name of those soldiers you take down. Imperial cataphracts, Strugian berzerkers, Battanian fiann, aserai heavy cav, etc.) They just don't have the armor advantage like in battle.

As I already wrote peviously I would very much welcome a new arena setup, where you can choose your equipment and the difficulty of your enemies and adjust the XP multipliers according to these setups. So fighting against such tier 6 opponents should very well yield normal combat xp levels. It would make a decent narrative RP-wise aswell (like "he was trained by the battanian heroes and fianns, the very best of the local garrison" or something like that.)

I just feel like that solution you're proposing is already handled fairly well by actual Tournaments in general. That's where those hefty, more experienced fighters, can come out to face you and that's where you can gain the brunt majority of the XP. Maybe divide Tourneys into different types of bouts? Melee Foot? Lance? Archery? etc... so you can gain a good bonus to those specific proficiencies in a competitive format.

I agree that battle XP needs an overhaul. I agree that after a certain point, fighting Joe random in the arena should stop being particularly beneficial. But just because you or I don't want the game to be easy, that doesn't mean that everybody feels the same way. It's a very obvious point, and I'm still at a loss as to why it would still be an issue for you. If any of the suggested solutions, either allowing each person to customise their own game directly, or to train in training fields, were put in place, then your own experience of Bannerlord wouldn't be affected at all.

I'd also still have no mechanism to train 2h weapons early on even if the battle XP was increased, because I'm either in an open field battle, meaning the rest of my troops are getting in the way (or I'm dying because I'm trying to 1v10 sharpshooter looters with no shield), or I'm in a hideout, meaning I have to use a bow to be of any use as my starting athletics skill (another one that can only really be levelled in the arena) is so low.

Don't get me wrong I understand your point here and I agree with you, again I just think the Arena is too powerful for giving XP right now. If they debuffed the XP gain to something a little more reasonable I'd have no issues with it at all. I'm not worried about it myself because, like many have said I can ignore it, or like I've done, I can always download a mod to fix it... my issue is that the base-game seems too easy if the Arena is going to have 100% XP gain so you can power-level your stats. Have it be a happy medium or a balance and let the real earners be those epic battles and sieges on the world map.

 

[Danandur]

I just feel like that solution you're proposing is already handled fairly well by actual Tournaments in general. That's where those hefty, more experienced fighters, can come out to face you and that's where you can gain the brunt majority of the XP. Maybe divide Tourneys into different types of bouts? Melee Foot? Lance? Archery? etc... so you can gain a good bonus to those specific proficiencies in a competitive format.

True, but tournaments are held once in every week, thats still an issue. I want my character to be useable in combat. And I understand that it can be weird to level up 5-6 times in a day, but you can approach it from another angle. You start as a 30 year old guy (or gal) on the peak of his strenght, and your initial skill level is nowhere near the average tier 1 troops. Looters out sprint you if you want to play as a footman and dont even dreem about decent footwork which you can control 2-3 opponents attacking simultaniously. Go ahead try to start a 2h footman as Uruk mentioned in his post, you will see what I'm talking about. So consider it like you are making up for getting started with the level of a baby as 30 years old guy. I would certainly give up the arena grind if actually selecting the prehistory of the player would result in obtaining some proficiency (not just 40 points for a fully stacked cav for example at the start of the game, but like 100-150). I guess people wouldn't be forced to make up for the disabilities of his newborn baby 30 years old hero.

As for the possibility to select different tournament types and give these related skills a very heavy boost, seems to be a nice idea. I love the cultural setting of the tournaments right now (horse cultures focus on that, inf focus on this, etc.), instead of making every type of combat present in every tourney, but maybe could sice it up by allowing the player to change the preference of a city if he becomes the lord or lady of the town. (Like a battanian lord obtain a vlanadian town and he can show those fuffy coward what real combat is about. Upclose an personal with an axe on your feet.) I could completly support this idea.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Listen, I understand these points both of you are making but my point is the following and it has NOT changed at all:

The Arena gives TOO MUCH XP per engagement for literally very little if any cost at all. That's the issue here, I'm not against giving XP for these activities because it makes sense! But to sit in an Arena with competition that is hardly worth training on to begin with, getting 100% of the gain and leveling your skills up without much of an issue in this environment is the problem I have. You're supposed to be gaining the MOST from Battles and actual Sieges/Warfare/Quests, etc. Not from sitting in an Arena with rookies and greenies and becoming God amongst men, that's the issue I have here.

I do not have any issue whatsoever with actually gaining XP from these. I just believe the amount of XP gained is far too high for what is entirely a newbie/tutorial arena. In Warband I used these Arenas to learn tactics, weapon handling, etc. It gave you minimal XP and it did level proficiency because of how the leveling system worked for Warband. In this case with Bannerlord, proficiency is directly tied to your level... so to sit in the Arena is essentially powerleveling you. I just don't understand how you don't see that as an issue? The game isn't meant to be easy.

You can't really become a God amongst men combat wise in the current version of the game. Even at high proficiencies try soloing a party of 10 or more forest bandits then let me know how that goes for you

 

[Danandur]

You can't really become a God amongst men combat wise in the current version of the game. Even at high proficiencies try soloing a party of 10 or more forest bandits then let me know how that goes for you

Speaking of which, I found a way to solo the forest bandits and even sea raiders on foot against a group of 10. Battanian woodrunners gave me the idea. All you need is a good skirmisher (athletics lvl 50+, throwing lvl 75+, a wide shield, two stacks of broad headed throwing spears (costs 1000/stack, cheap as hell), and some proper perk allocation (obtaining perks that increases the stack number of your throwables)). The rest is literally just about timing and precision throw for the head. He's the ultimate forestbandit slayer. But this setup is weak against cav though.

 

[Uruk34]

Ideal case for me: Choose arena loadout, have a generous but limited amount of fights per day*, reduce arena XP rate, reduce prize money to 100. Make the fight limit a toggle option.

This is a very good idea. Nobody loses out with a toggle on/off and if you could choose your loadout that would somewhat mitigate for the lower XP gain.

Maybe you could also have an automatic modifier in arenas, where you get less XP from them the higher your proficiency with the weapon you're using, to still get through those really early levels of uselessness reasonably quickly. I mean if an arena's designed to get the player to grips with the basics of the game it follows that it should also get a character to grips with the basics of a given weapon. Although athletics...

 

[SpectreSC]

You can't really become a God amongst men combat wise in the current version of the game. Even at high proficiencies try soloing a party of 10 or more forest bandits then let me know how that goes for you

Forest Bandits are OP and broken though At least they were for the longest time! Lol

True, but tournaments are held once in every week, thats still an issue. I want my character to be useable in combat. And I understand that it can be weird to level up 5-6 times in a day, but you can approach it from another angle. You start as a 30 year old guy (or gal) on the peak of his strenght, and your initial skill level is nowhere near the average tier 1 troops. Looters out sprint you if you want to play as a footman and dont even dreem about decent footwork which you can control 2-3 opponents attacking simultaniously. Go ahead try to start a 2h footman as Uruk mentioned in his post, you will see what I'm talking about. So consider it like you are making up for getting started with the level of a baby as 30 years old guy. I would certainly give up the arena grind if actually selecting the prehistory of the player would result in obtaining some proficiency (not just 40 points for a fully stacked cav for example at the start of the game, but like 100-150). I guess people wouldn't be forced to make up for the disabilities of his newborn baby 30 years old hero.

As for the possibility to select different tournament types and give these related skills a very heavy boost, seems to be a nice idea. I love the cultural setting of the tournaments right now (horse cultures focus on that, inf focus on this, etc.), instead of making every type of combat present in every tourney, but maybe could sice it up by allowing the player to change the preference of a city if he becomes the lord or lady of the town. (Like a battanian lord obtain a vlanadian town and he can show those fuffy coward what real combat is about. Upclose an personal with an axe on your feet.) I could completly support this idea.

I can see what you mean by this after having tried out a 2H character for about an hour just now. So I can agree there are definitely areas lacking to skill up proficiencies and the Arena does help for now to get past that wall early game. It just still seems like it's a bandaid on the larger issue here but at least we can agree that there is a need for some changes on that matter. I just want them to fix the XP issues and skill-leveling in general so we don't have to resort to the Arena to do that for us. Making those backstory changes during character creation would absolutely go a LONG way to helping with that.

And yeah, since Warband I've wanted tournaments that are specialized to their specific weapon and form of combat. If Bannerlord can make that happen and even give us relevant XP/Skill per bout for those engagements then I feel like that would make things more immersive and also give us an outlet to grind our skills out in a more reasonable way.

 

[SpectreSC]

Seems like they adjusted values for Arena and Tourney XP, anyone have any current numbers with the latest patch?

 

[Danandur]

Seems like they adjusted values for Arena and Tourney XP, anyone have any current numbers with the latest patch?

Well I tried it with a new alt. It took like 4 guys to kill with a 2h in order to advance from 5 to 6 proficiency. (Roughly with 2.5x multipliers) It is roughly 10-20% of the previous XP gained, since previously killing a guy in similar conditions resulted in 3-4 points (from 5 to 8-9). Which means I have to grind ages again in order to advance the athletics skill to like 50-60... They really need to adjust the proficiency values granted from character generation...

 

[Floriano]

I can't believe you guys nerfed practice experience, godammit dudes, why you do this? Do you guys think that people kept practicing their skills by going to war? No, they did so by sparring which the practice fights are.
Hell in boxing sparring is a very important part of training and not that safe. It's even theorized that it's in fact constant sparring that hurts boxers the most, rather than the fights themselves.

The solution wasn't to nerf the experience from it, it was to make time pass so that even if you want to spam it, it will sacrifice something named time. And with time comes costs. Same with smithing, it takes time so sacrifice it for a smoother experience gain that doesn't take real life time, but time in game.