SomeWeirdSins
Veteran
Hello, Taleworlds community. I've been streaming Bannerlord for the last 2 weeks on twitch, and I wanted to share some of my observations in the hope that they can help further the development of Bannerlord. I'm a big fan of what this game is trying to do, and hopefully the missing parts can be completed. What follows are my opinions and experiences with Vanilla Bannerlord gameplay (ignoring stability/optimization issues). I'm not claiming to be the world's best Bannerlord player or the #1 expert on the game. I've also seen the vast majority of the below sentiments on this forum before, so I doubt that any of the below is new.
I. Game Pacing
A. Early game: The early game 'small mercenary band' part of the game feels quite well developed. It's easy to make money, and there's a good variety of quests/fights. Trading, workshops, and fighting all give good income.
B. Mid-game: The game starts to unravel, let's get into some details:
1. Trading doesn't scale--the player's available income is based on buy/sell spread of trade goods around the map. This spread actually DECREASES as the player hires more caravan groups. Trade skill has no influence on the profitability of player-owned workshops/caravans, and the player can't level trade by managing a fleet of caravans or a franchise of workshops.
2. Player-faction parties led by NPCs are completely non-functional. The player has zero control over the region the parties play in or their objectives. Want your 2nd party to train a bunch of archers, develop goodwill in the east, and stockpile horses? I should be able to give my brother those commands, right? If you are winning a war they can be a very small source of income. If you are on the losing side in a war they will just die within 5-10 days even if you give them 80+ tier 4+ troops. There's no way that Bannerlord can be a strategic game if you can't issue basic commands to your alternate parties. These problems extend to caravans.
3. Levelling grinds to a halt as soon as your party starts to scale. Why can I get a level every day or two killing looters, but when I'm commanding an army I 'learn' nothing?
4. The loot system doesn't scale. I saw that Mexxico was working on this issue in another thread, so I won't belabor the point.
5. Sieges are non-functional: The attacker AI has perfect knowledge over the power of the defenders and will almost never lose. AI in sieges is still awful, and often 100+ units will just sit idle and die.
6. Raiding is absurdly slow and a almost always a money-loser.
7. Joining a lord's army rarely results in an interesting fight and is less profitable than killing looters.
8. Companions do not level/develop at all.
What's left to do? I have two options: I can try to keep my companions and expensive troops out of my party on missions while I chase bandits around, but this is just extending the early game. My other option is to play behind enemy lines slaughtering militias and weak straggler lords. It never really feels like I'm actively participating in the war effort, because joining a lord's army and losing money for 30 days for a 25% chance that I get to fight 1 interesting battle before the war ends is a poor risk-reward for my in and out of game resources.
All of these mid-game problems continue to get worse as the game goes on, and in my opinion the late game is totally unplayable/uninteresting in its current state.
II. Combat balance/mechanics
A. Tactics: Ranged attackers do FAR to much damage to armored units. This problem encourages the player to mass archers and 'just enough' melee units to finish off stragglers. Poor unit balance means that fights are not tactically complex. Mass archers on high ground, wait for enemy to charge, eat popcorn.
B. Ranged attackers do FAR to much damage to armored units, resulting in poor performance of non-horse archer builds. The player isn't able to armor himself against ranged attackers, and so if he wants to have an impact in battle as a fighter he needs to prioritize being evasive. HA is the only build that can consistently output damage while still being evasive.
C. Cavalry upgrades are generally non-profitable, further reducing the opportunities to play tactically with mixed units. Having to commit a horse AND a warhorse to upgrade a unit is too much of an investment. Would I rather have 1.5k gold and a knight or an archer? Easy, give me the gold and the archer. Then, once you actually start fighting aggressively it's very hard to keep up with horse-losses (if the fights are actually challenging. More encouragement for the player to just clean up weak/straggler lords?).
III. Player skill builds
I. Melee skills- the melee skills are well designed/balanced. 1h weapons are niche, but the perks are generally very good. 2h weapons are very good on foot, and polearms are good on horseback and have good applications on foot as well.
II. Ranged skills: bows shoot faster, have more range, and do more damage than crossbows? I believe I read that crossbows are getting reworked. Throwing weapon perks need to be generally strong so that levelling throwing is viable (like the movement speed, HP, and party size boosts from levelling one-handed). No reason to use xbow or bow in my experience, although with xbows you can meme-solo most hideouts. Shooting bandit-leaders in the face on the 'duel' is extra-hilarious.
III. Endurance skills: Riding campaign speed perks (nomadic traditions, sweeping wind) make it almost mandatory. The problem with athletics isn't levelling speed. There are a few tricks where you can level athletics very quickly. The problem with athletics is that you aren't able to avoid ranged fire and be combat-effective at the same time. The design/balance issues here are actually related to the armor/projectile problems. IIRC smithing is getting reworked. In my opinion smithing/crafting is boring and doesn't fit the concept of bannerlord, but I'm aware that some players enjoy crafting. Maybe I'm just not the audience.
IV. Control skills: Scouting seems good. To the best of my understanding roguery is mostly non-fictional in 1.58 due to problems with the looting system that is currently getting looked at. Tactics: In my opinion tactics should have impacts not related to auto-resolve. Having a full skill tree that is nearly irrelevant on the player seems like poor design to me.
V. Social skills: Charm and leadership are good. Trade needs to interact with caravans/workshops (level from 'managing' and contribute to profit). Trade needs to have perks that allow for more workshops. If trade is a governer perk it also needs to level when the NPC is assigned to govern.
VI. INT skills: Steward is good. Sieges are non-functional, so engineering is also non-functional. Medicine levelling speed is absurdly slow and basically makes the skill non-functional. If engineering impacts governing, then governing should improve engineering.
I'm hoping that I can put bannerlord down for another 6 months and come back to see some interesting solutions to the above problems!
I. Game Pacing
A. Early game: The early game 'small mercenary band' part of the game feels quite well developed. It's easy to make money, and there's a good variety of quests/fights. Trading, workshops, and fighting all give good income.
B. Mid-game: The game starts to unravel, let's get into some details:
1. Trading doesn't scale--the player's available income is based on buy/sell spread of trade goods around the map. This spread actually DECREASES as the player hires more caravan groups. Trade skill has no influence on the profitability of player-owned workshops/caravans, and the player can't level trade by managing a fleet of caravans or a franchise of workshops.
2. Player-faction parties led by NPCs are completely non-functional. The player has zero control over the region the parties play in or their objectives. Want your 2nd party to train a bunch of archers, develop goodwill in the east, and stockpile horses? I should be able to give my brother those commands, right? If you are winning a war they can be a very small source of income. If you are on the losing side in a war they will just die within 5-10 days even if you give them 80+ tier 4+ troops. There's no way that Bannerlord can be a strategic game if you can't issue basic commands to your alternate parties. These problems extend to caravans.
3. Levelling grinds to a halt as soon as your party starts to scale. Why can I get a level every day or two killing looters, but when I'm commanding an army I 'learn' nothing?
4. The loot system doesn't scale. I saw that Mexxico was working on this issue in another thread, so I won't belabor the point.
5. Sieges are non-functional: The attacker AI has perfect knowledge over the power of the defenders and will almost never lose. AI in sieges is still awful, and often 100+ units will just sit idle and die.
6. Raiding is absurdly slow and a almost always a money-loser.
7. Joining a lord's army rarely results in an interesting fight and is less profitable than killing looters.
8. Companions do not level/develop at all.
What's left to do? I have two options: I can try to keep my companions and expensive troops out of my party on missions while I chase bandits around, but this is just extending the early game. My other option is to play behind enemy lines slaughtering militias and weak straggler lords. It never really feels like I'm actively participating in the war effort, because joining a lord's army and losing money for 30 days for a 25% chance that I get to fight 1 interesting battle before the war ends is a poor risk-reward for my in and out of game resources.
All of these mid-game problems continue to get worse as the game goes on, and in my opinion the late game is totally unplayable/uninteresting in its current state.
II. Combat balance/mechanics
A. Tactics: Ranged attackers do FAR to much damage to armored units. This problem encourages the player to mass archers and 'just enough' melee units to finish off stragglers. Poor unit balance means that fights are not tactically complex. Mass archers on high ground, wait for enemy to charge, eat popcorn.
B. Ranged attackers do FAR to much damage to armored units, resulting in poor performance of non-horse archer builds. The player isn't able to armor himself against ranged attackers, and so if he wants to have an impact in battle as a fighter he needs to prioritize being evasive. HA is the only build that can consistently output damage while still being evasive.
C. Cavalry upgrades are generally non-profitable, further reducing the opportunities to play tactically with mixed units. Having to commit a horse AND a warhorse to upgrade a unit is too much of an investment. Would I rather have 1.5k gold and a knight or an archer? Easy, give me the gold and the archer. Then, once you actually start fighting aggressively it's very hard to keep up with horse-losses (if the fights are actually challenging. More encouragement for the player to just clean up weak/straggler lords?).
III. Player skill builds
I. Melee skills- the melee skills are well designed/balanced. 1h weapons are niche, but the perks are generally very good. 2h weapons are very good on foot, and polearms are good on horseback and have good applications on foot as well.
II. Ranged skills: bows shoot faster, have more range, and do more damage than crossbows? I believe I read that crossbows are getting reworked. Throwing weapon perks need to be generally strong so that levelling throwing is viable (like the movement speed, HP, and party size boosts from levelling one-handed). No reason to use xbow or bow in my experience, although with xbows you can meme-solo most hideouts. Shooting bandit-leaders in the face on the 'duel' is extra-hilarious.
III. Endurance skills: Riding campaign speed perks (nomadic traditions, sweeping wind) make it almost mandatory. The problem with athletics isn't levelling speed. There are a few tricks where you can level athletics very quickly. The problem with athletics is that you aren't able to avoid ranged fire and be combat-effective at the same time. The design/balance issues here are actually related to the armor/projectile problems. IIRC smithing is getting reworked. In my opinion smithing/crafting is boring and doesn't fit the concept of bannerlord, but I'm aware that some players enjoy crafting. Maybe I'm just not the audience.
IV. Control skills: Scouting seems good. To the best of my understanding roguery is mostly non-fictional in 1.58 due to problems with the looting system that is currently getting looked at. Tactics: In my opinion tactics should have impacts not related to auto-resolve. Having a full skill tree that is nearly irrelevant on the player seems like poor design to me.
V. Social skills: Charm and leadership are good. Trade needs to interact with caravans/workshops (level from 'managing' and contribute to profit). Trade needs to have perks that allow for more workshops. If trade is a governer perk it also needs to level when the NPC is assigned to govern.
VI. INT skills: Steward is good. Sieges are non-functional, so engineering is also non-functional. Medicine levelling speed is absurdly slow and basically makes the skill non-functional. If engineering impacts governing, then governing should improve engineering.
I'm hoping that I can put bannerlord down for another 6 months and come back to see some interesting solutions to the above problems!