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Man this brings back memories. I used to play this game a lot back in 2013.

I don't think this is just a mistake of a few misguided developers. Practically all developers of multiplayer (and often even singleplayer) games think this way nowadays. Developers have access to a truly megalithic amount of data about how people use their games, and there is a huge pressure to use that data to make their games more profitable for longer. The problem is that most of them aren't data analysts and often remove stuff they think isn't being used at all, instead of improving it so that more people use it, and so on.

A really extreme case of this is Total War, since after NTW released they suddenly had all this data about gameplay that they were collecting under people's noses, and ever since then they've been stripping their games bare and removing stuff that nobody is using, with the culmination being these strange, rigid robotic games like Total War Troy which hardly feel like they were made by humans.
I think with the sheer amount of easy data corporations have access to these days it's difficult for them to avoid just relying on analytics to tell them what the users "want". It's easy to focus on Taleworlds but it's a capitalism-wide problem that even affects Microsoft and Apple. Taleworlds just isn't very good at it.

I agree fully, though in the case of TW there's no way to know exactly what data they are relying on. I still remember when one of the devs claimed that they had data which showed an overwhelming percentage of players preferred the class system, before Callum revealed that there was no such data and the post was deleted. It wouldn't surprise me if TW do actually have data that indicates a majority of players have no preference between the class system or a freer gear system and decided that, since their data showed no preference either way, they would go with the "easier to balance" (although this is not true) route of using classes. There is no way to know what data TW have but the majority of their MP decisions do seem to be based around what they think would expand the potential playerbase and attract SP-only players. It's possible to theorise endlessly about what data could have led to the decisions which were made, and I don't entirely disagree with the idea that Bannerlord should have had some focus on accessibility for its MP given how inaccessible Warband's MP was, it just appears that everything was done to that end, using whatever data they had, and that there was no attempt to take the unique elements of Warband and expand upon them.

I have to agree with you that the negative-focus of Bannerlord's MP is almost certainly data-driven, and we have heard from TW that it is 100% driven by conceptual data, which is surprising and alarming considering how Bannerlord fails to cater to any of the three major categories of Warband MP players.

I knew you were going to answer Gibby because you knew this problems all along, and you're so right about Warband having casual people messing around. You were in the SA community messing around a little bit, well, I was a founder of the Jorrvas clan, and you know, we sucked, we were really bad hahaha, but it was so much fun, in fact, before our clan turned 100% competitive most of the players were just my friends and some other dudes that werent all about wining every competition and stuff, and some of those players we had were plain bad, or didnt cared to be good, and that is fine, but you know what is surprising, that most of them sticked in the game for like 3 years? more I think? But because they were having fun, because we joined battle and messed around, listened to music, played together in massive encounters, joined events, played PW when it was opened, all of those moments were so good and so special, and I barely care about not winning anything because it was a nice group, but in Bannerlord I doubt any of them would have the fun we had in Warband, and mostly, because Battle doesnt exist, because we dont have a private server we cant make (they refused to give SA even a lame TDM server). Warband was so succesful, and so good, and it was fun. The devs neglected their game and thats were it failed, what a shame.

I am echoing what many others said before and after me. From the very first few days of the alpha there were dozens of people warning about these problems and those voices grew louder as Early Access drew closer, yet they were ignored in exactly the fashion that Brandis' post describes. TW have a vision which differs from what the vast majority Warband players envisioned for Bannerlord. In Alpha/Beta it was impossible to claim that, because there was no guarantee that Warband players would overwhelmingly reject Bannerlord's MP, but time has proven that assumption to be correct and there is now no doubt whatsoever that Bannerlord's MP has failed on almost every account. Yes, it is still Early Access, but the issues which the MP has are deeply rooted not just in the code of the game, but in the design philosophies of the developers themselves. Without fundamentally changing many of these things I do not see how Bannerlord's MP could possibly recover from the state it is in now.
 
I agree fully, though in the case of TW there's no way to know exactly what data they are relying on. I still remember when one of the devs claimed that they had data which showed an overwhelming percentage of players preferred the class system, before Callum revealed that there was no such data and the post was deleted. It wouldn't surprise me if TW do actually have data that indicates a majority of players have no preference between the class system or a freer gear system and decided that, since their data showed no preference either way, they would go with the "easier to balance" (although this is not true) route of using classes. There is no way to know what data TW have but the majority of their MP decisions do seem to be based around what they think would expand the potential playerbase and attract SP-only players. It's possible to theorise endlessly about what data could have led to the decisions which were made, and I don't entirely disagree with the idea that Bannerlord should have had some focus on accessibility for its MP given how inaccessible Warband's MP was, it just appears that everything was done to that end, using whatever data they had, and that there was no attempt to take the unique elements of Warband and expand upon them.

I have to agree with you that the negative-focus of Bannerlord's MP is almost certainly data-driven, and we have heard from TW that it is 100% driven by conceptual data, which is surprising and alarming considering how Bannerlord fails to cater to any of the three major categories of Warband MP players.



I am echoing what many others said before and after me. From the very first few days of the alpha there were dozens of people warning about these problems and those voices grew louder as Early Access drew closer, yet they were ignored in exactly the fashion that Brandis' post describes. TW have a vision which differs from what the vast majority Warband players envisioned for Bannerlord. In Alpha/Beta it was impossible to claim that, because there was no guarantee that Warband players would overwhelmingly rejected Bannerlord's MP, but time has proven that assumption to be correct and there is now no doubt whatsoever that Bannerlord's MP was failed on almost every account. Yes, it is still Early Access, but the issues which the MP has are deeply rooted not just in the code of the game, but in the design philosophies of the developers themselves. Without fundamentally changing many of these things I do not see how Bannerlord's MP could possibly recover from the state it is in now.
Yes it's true, but you know what the problem is now? They won't do it, or I highly doubt they'll do it. How many times have we been arguing this now? Making suggestions, several threads, taking our time to be constructive or making polls within players, I feel all of this is useless, I'm genuinely tired of this situation, will they ever realize this?
 
Dont think that there are fundamental design flaws, but lots of small issues like crashes, the combat is still clunky (e.g too strict vertical turncap), cpt mode would need more randomness (like random flag spawns). Most of the combat is just too repetitive in general. Skirmish needs to be balanced and the playernumeber should be higher or variable in casual to give more room for strategy.
 
Dont think that there are fundamental design flaws, but lots of small issues like crashes, the combat is still clunky (e.g too strict vertical turncap), cpt mode would need more randomness (like random flag spawns). Most of the combat is just too repetitive in general. Skirmish needs to be balanced and the playernumeber should be higher or variable in casual to give more room for strategy.

????
 
I like how most skrimish fixes are just making it Battle. Honestly 60v60 Battle gamemode, make a max amount of Cav and Archers, make it % based and then use the maps already in the game and use the server player count to determine the maps being played less than 40 players in total, only play certain maps,40-80 maps and then 80-120 do a traditional flag in the middle of the map after so long and if no one goes there for x amount of time round automatically ends. So you don't need admins, make a auto temp ban or kick. Don't kick people out of servers when the match ends. That would work well beginning of the rounds it will allow clans to organize and bring the players counts they want and also recuit. I don't like the idea of voice chat.
 
Captain mode got it's final deathblow dealt with 1.5. Faction balance is completely skewed still, instead of 2 superior factions and 1 completely useless one, we now have 3 superior factions, 2 useless ones and one that's barely usable.

With shock buffed the only real comps are either 1 shield 5 shock, or 6 shock. Archers used to be a pretty hard counter to shock units, but now that's gone with the archer AI not being able to use bows due to new combat parameters. Cavalry AI was always bad, but with 1.5 they don't even use their lances anymore. Menavlions are not used by menavs units if they have a sword in hand, which means palatine guards are almost useless, and taking a sword on menav units (even if completely stupid) is now a death sentence to the whole unit.

Throwing weapons are also useless because of the same combat parameters that ruined archers, which leads to how skirmishers were always a useless class in captain, just as well as peasant units (discounting Warriors with improved armor and 2h axe, which is more powerful than Berserkers as a choice, and peasant before the billhook got nerfed). The only factions that could make use of the peasant units AS peasant units were Battania, and Khuzait, (battania being the worst lost useless faction out of the 6) and even those only when you could draw the right team comp out of the opposing team, and pulling them in a spot where they could be easily overwhelmed.

Captain has been in shambles for a long time, but the recent changes have made it near unplayable. The community has nesrly died in the span of the last 4 or so weeks that we have been playing this latest patch.

Shock infantry is OP because archers and skirmishers were OP before. So this was just a way to make shock infantry units useful because they got massacred by missile units in no time. Now that archers are not OP, shock infantry should not be as good as they are now in melee IMO.
 
Shock infantry is OP because archers and skirmishers were OP before. So this was just a way to make shock infantry units useful because they got massacred by missile units in no time. Now that archers are not OP, shock infantry should not be as good as they are now in melee IMO.
Archers were the hard counter to shock infantry. Now there is NO counter for shock, and they steamroll all other unit types. Skirmishers were always bad in captain, so idk what you're talking about. If you mean in skirmish, that's a whole another thing, and my post didn't go into its problems at all.
 
I like how most skrimish fixes are just making it Battle. Honestly 60v60 Battle gamemode, make a max amount of Cav and Archers, make it % based and then use the maps already in the game and use the server player count to determine the maps being played less than 40 players in total, only play certain maps,40-80 maps and then 80-120 do a traditional flag in the middle of the map after so long and if no one goes there for x amount of time round automatically ends. So you don't need admins, make a auto temp ban or kick. Don't kick people out of servers when the match ends. That would work well beginning of the rounds it will allow clans to organize and bring the players counts they want and also recuit. I don't like the idea of voice chat.
Nooo TW doesn't want to do Battle mode because... Uhh.... ???
what was the reason?
 
battle mode was a failure. didn't become an esport

absolutely nothing of what they did became esports

they removed the custom warband classes and made those predefined classes for epsort ( or just for futures skins or lootboxes ) at the expense of fun and in the end it's unbalanced and boring and nobody wants to stay there
they lost on everything

now i'm wondering what will happen when there are modded servers with warband class system which will contradict the basic one imposed on us by taleworlds since they are so stubborn that they don't want to listen to the community
 
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I must say I share a lot of the doubt and shattered expectations I read on this thread, and the forum in general. The lack of battle mode troubled me from the start, and now that I've rediscovered the forum, I've learned it's unlikely to be implemented. While other games (CoD, Fortnite) embrace battle modes, encouraging cooperative gameplay, by increasing the consequences of an in-game death, BL's most populous gamemode is TDM (in NA) where random spawns and spamming are the order of the day (in the few hours where you have more than 15 per side).

I understand a "duel" mode is coming soon, but the current "duel" servers are emblematic of some of the problems with MP as a whole. Why lock the server? The "etiquette" of dueling posted on the forum was developed and kept spontaneously in Warband without forcing players to come here to "read" the rules. And TDM for "duel" servers? You cut the the dueling potential by half by not allowing DM. At the very least turn on friendly fire. I understand some of the reasons behind some of the choices, but I worry about the path this game is on. As much as I love this franchise, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone right now.
 
Usual feelings from my gameplay since 1.5 build lead to a basic sentence: "mp is not fun"

Cav still looks like a tank, hitting walls with almost no penalty, archers aim slower, which is a killer for me, and runing feels very slow. There is no friendly fire in the most popular servers, the overhead swings feel too unnatural to me. I just reinstalled couple of days ago, having played this at least an hour daily until 1.5, but I can't play it more than a couple of rounds. Warband and NW were just fun and ridicolous, but Bannerlord mp isn't as engaging.
 
ahh i was so full of hope during alpha and beta now i come back every 5-6 months to see if anythings changed and i see the same threads and issues :facepalm:. I fully expect to come back again next year to see OGL once again describing perfectly the issues like he has for a year + and how nothing has changed
 
the multiplayer in this game is dead and i dont think it will ever take off after the complete shambles of taleworlds handling of the games release.
 
I feel like multiplayer games are successful when they present an astronomical skill ceiling and limitless ways to approach gameplay (with or without friends). Successful games always leave players wanting more and dreaming about the possibilities. Fortnight, Among Us and even Warband the hit the nail on the head in both areas and it's why they succeed to this day. EA Bannerlord has fallen flat because of the various limitations to skill ceiling and gameplay ideas. This includes clunky, non-responsive combat, limited map and game mode pool, lack of custom servers and custom maps, the class system, and lack of personalized customization. Bannerlord leaves players fighting the gameplay rather than growing with it and they run out of ways to play in a manner of days. The game is just not fun for long atm.
 
I've been playing Warband a bit, and I couldn't agree with you more, @BayBear. There is something intensely rewarding about playing around with game mechanics, and Bannerlord lacks that. The game murdered individuality and emergent gameplay in its crib.
 
I found a great reason on why MP failed

Open Bannerlord, wait for it to load, try to get past the bugs that close the game (doesn't happen very often now), try join a Skimrish match, wait 4 minutes, not yet, finally get a match, wait more, game starts, your team is full of noobs, the other team goes full current meta, get kicked in the ass and lose 3-0. That was boring, let's go Captain, same thing happens, wait a **** load to have an unpleasant time, fine I'll go TDM, do the same things without objective, get swarmed by 6 dudes once you spawn, get 1v1, the only nice moment in the game, get instakilled by a javelin/archer/cavalry.

Open Warband, custom server, 20 dudes playing battle, have a nice time, almost 0 waiting, the server doesn't kicks you out once the game finish, life is good
 
I found a great reason on why MP failed

Open Bannerlord, wait for it to load, try to get past the bugs that close the game (doesn't happen very often now), try join a Skimrish match, wait 4 minutes, not yet, finally get a match, wait more, game starts, your team is full of noobs, the other team goes full current meta, get kicked in the ass and lose 3-0. That was boring, let's go Captain, same thing happens, wait a **** load to have an unpleasant time, fine I'll go TDM, do the same things without objective, get swarmed by 6 dudes once you spawn, get 1v1, the only nice moment in the game, get instakilled by a javelin/archer/cavalry.

Open Warband, custom server, 20 dudes playing battle, have a nice time, almost 0 waiting, the server doesn't kicks you out once the game finish, life is good

add to that the fact that against a full cav meta team, the game will not allow you to counter them because it does not allow you to take the equipment you want, you lose on a round you lose money and therefore you have even less possibility of taking an appropriate class and so you lose again and again, and the rest of your team has the same problem

and I don't understand how they came up with the idea that such a casual class system would be appropriate for the competitive

I really feel that the developers have never touched a single game in their life
 
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add to that the fact that against a full cav meta team, the game will not allow you to counter them because it does not allow you to take the equipment you want, you lose on a round you lose money and therefore you have even less possibility of taking an appropriate class and so you lose again and again, and the rest of your team has the same problem

and I don't understand how they came up with the idea that such a casual class system would be appropriate for the competitive

I really feel that the developers have never touched a single game in their life

As far as I know Callum argued that there is no snowballing in the current system ?

Game is just unfulfilling, it's weird they didn't capitalize on Battle when it's basically a mini battle royale mode with no breaks, since they're "data-driven" and all. Must be tons of data on how unsuccessful the game is and they can just go read the beta and alpha feedback to find out why.

Many of my friends quit playing the moment we received our first feedback from the developers and learned more about their vision for the game.
 
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