krippp
Veteran

I thought I should try to make my own tiny contribution to this great game, so I started a new game as a merchant, and decided to write down all the ideas for improvement that I got. The one's I've come up with so far are:
Map mode:
1) Make it possible to drop items. It would indeed be preferable to drop a few barrels of ale to make my party move faster than to get caught by bandits and lose a lot more stuff.
2) Give the freedom to become a real villain and to attack anyone you want. Peasants, allies, the caravans you're escorting, anyone.
3) The Vaegir and Swadian troops should refuse to attack their own kin, unless you pay them some extra for it. Maybe they could become callous over time as they get used to it and develop a bandit/mercenary attitude.
4) If you rob enough caravans, the Vaegir/Swadian merchants should send manhunters after you.
5) I've already seen this being suggested, but I'd like to add something to it: Make (some of) the computer controlled parties be lead by NPCs. Then, in a battle, you could make everyone to follow the leader, with the leader being the only one with the charge mode on. This would make it so that the fighting would seem a bit more organized than what it does now.
Battle mode:
6) When I order my troops to follow me, I want them to actually follow me, not to swarm around me blocking my sight and line of fire. Make them stay behind me until I tell them to charge.
7) Archers should shoot for as long as possible, except if the enemy has more firepower.
8 ) Make it possible to kill riderless horses, to clear your line of fire/sight.
9) Give the ability to sprint. Sprinting could give you temporarily something like +4 to your athletics skill. It could also give a "charge bonus" to your attack. Sprinting would give you more control of the game, for example by allowing you to dodge a horseman's lance or by allowing you to charge at an archer before he can shoot that decisive shot.
Naturally, the more armor you have, the slower and shorter the sprint is, and the more athletics skill you have, the faster and longer it is. You could also be slowed down a little after sprinting, depending on the amount of sprinting, armor you're wearing and the athletics skill.
10) The crossbows should be able to be reloaded while riding a horse. If the current unrealistic inability to reload them while riding is made for gameplay purposes, then maybe you could just make the reloading slower on horseback than when standing on your own feet.
11) Horsemen should attempt to flank you while the foot soldiers are pinning you down, except if you've got more firepower than them.
You can clearly see how much more effective the horsemen are when they appear to the battlefield as reinforcements while you're fighting some foot soldiers. As it is now, they are the first one's to charge you, and unless they're very numerous and well armored, they'll end up being surrounded and chopped to pieces by your forces.
12) Falling off a horse while in full speed should cause you some injury.
13) I think I saw this one being suggested already, but I'll write it here anyway: Make the fighting a bit more controlled, a bit like in the Jedi Knight series. So that when you move right and press attack, you swing your sword from right to left. When you move left, the opposite would happen. When you move backwards and attack, you'd stab, and so on. This system would be better than the current arrow system, which can be quite awkward at times.
14) This one was in one of the threads in the modification forum, but I'll also write it here: make moving backwards slower. As it's now, it's way too easy to kill 40 bandits alone, as all you need to do is to run backwards, go close enough for them to try to hit you, then quickly run further and hit them.
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Edit: added five more suggestions
Battle mode:
15) The strings and backings of medieval bows were made of sinews. When it rained and the sinews got wet, it made the bows less effective as the sinews (temporarily?) lost a part of their strength. So, if it rains during a battle, it could also make the range and damage of bows and crossbows to be slightly lower.
16) Add morale, so that you don't always have to kill the enemy to the last man. It would also be cool to see your peasants scattering in terror after seeing the horde of Dark Knights approaching. With morale you could also add some interesting things to the map mode.
Map mode:
17) Make the size of NPC parties a bit less dependant on the player's level. So that even if you're on level 40, it's still possible to see a party of 10 bandits. This would make it feel more like the game world would live it's own life without the player being the center of everything, and it would also allow the player to play and fight battles without always having a big party accompanying them.
18 ) a. Merchants shouldn't trust you to protect their caravans if you've robbed their faction's caravans before. Maybe they could forget your bad deeds over time or after you've paid them a lot of money.
18 ) b. If morale would be in the game, and if you managed to kill every last one of the caravan's guards and passengers, then there would be no negative consequences of the robbery, as there would be no one to tell the merchants that it was you who robbed the caravan.
19) Make good equipment more expensive, so that you can set some real goals and have a dream of maybe one day acquiring a full black armor set. Now you can have a full set of black armor by only playing for a few hours, and many levels before 20.
Also, to prevent players from becoming filthy rich too soon, you could make broken equipment a lot cheaper than unbroken. I mean, having a quiver full of bent arrows probably isn't going to do you much good, and I doubt anyone would buy them for any other reason than for getting the small amount of metal from the arrowheads.
Map mode:
1) Make it possible to drop items. It would indeed be preferable to drop a few barrels of ale to make my party move faster than to get caught by bandits and lose a lot more stuff.
2) Give the freedom to become a real villain and to attack anyone you want. Peasants, allies, the caravans you're escorting, anyone.
3) The Vaegir and Swadian troops should refuse to attack their own kin, unless you pay them some extra for it. Maybe they could become callous over time as they get used to it and develop a bandit/mercenary attitude.
4) If you rob enough caravans, the Vaegir/Swadian merchants should send manhunters after you.
5) I've already seen this being suggested, but I'd like to add something to it: Make (some of) the computer controlled parties be lead by NPCs. Then, in a battle, you could make everyone to follow the leader, with the leader being the only one with the charge mode on. This would make it so that the fighting would seem a bit more organized than what it does now.
Battle mode:
6) When I order my troops to follow me, I want them to actually follow me, not to swarm around me blocking my sight and line of fire. Make them stay behind me until I tell them to charge.
7) Archers should shoot for as long as possible, except if the enemy has more firepower.
8 ) Make it possible to kill riderless horses, to clear your line of fire/sight.
9) Give the ability to sprint. Sprinting could give you temporarily something like +4 to your athletics skill. It could also give a "charge bonus" to your attack. Sprinting would give you more control of the game, for example by allowing you to dodge a horseman's lance or by allowing you to charge at an archer before he can shoot that decisive shot.
Naturally, the more armor you have, the slower and shorter the sprint is, and the more athletics skill you have, the faster and longer it is. You could also be slowed down a little after sprinting, depending on the amount of sprinting, armor you're wearing and the athletics skill.
10) The crossbows should be able to be reloaded while riding a horse. If the current unrealistic inability to reload them while riding is made for gameplay purposes, then maybe you could just make the reloading slower on horseback than when standing on your own feet.
11) Horsemen should attempt to flank you while the foot soldiers are pinning you down, except if you've got more firepower than them.
You can clearly see how much more effective the horsemen are when they appear to the battlefield as reinforcements while you're fighting some foot soldiers. As it is now, they are the first one's to charge you, and unless they're very numerous and well armored, they'll end up being surrounded and chopped to pieces by your forces.
12) Falling off a horse while in full speed should cause you some injury.
13) I think I saw this one being suggested already, but I'll write it here anyway: Make the fighting a bit more controlled, a bit like in the Jedi Knight series. So that when you move right and press attack, you swing your sword from right to left. When you move left, the opposite would happen. When you move backwards and attack, you'd stab, and so on. This system would be better than the current arrow system, which can be quite awkward at times.
14) This one was in one of the threads in the modification forum, but I'll also write it here: make moving backwards slower. As it's now, it's way too easy to kill 40 bandits alone, as all you need to do is to run backwards, go close enough for them to try to hit you, then quickly run further and hit them.
--
Edit: added five more suggestions
Battle mode:
15) The strings and backings of medieval bows were made of sinews. When it rained and the sinews got wet, it made the bows less effective as the sinews (temporarily?) lost a part of their strength. So, if it rains during a battle, it could also make the range and damage of bows and crossbows to be slightly lower.
16) Add morale, so that you don't always have to kill the enemy to the last man. It would also be cool to see your peasants scattering in terror after seeing the horde of Dark Knights approaching. With morale you could also add some interesting things to the map mode.
Map mode:
17) Make the size of NPC parties a bit less dependant on the player's level. So that even if you're on level 40, it's still possible to see a party of 10 bandits. This would make it feel more like the game world would live it's own life without the player being the center of everything, and it would also allow the player to play and fight battles without always having a big party accompanying them.
18 ) a. Merchants shouldn't trust you to protect their caravans if you've robbed their faction's caravans before. Maybe they could forget your bad deeds over time or after you've paid them a lot of money.
18 ) b. If morale would be in the game, and if you managed to kill every last one of the caravan's guards and passengers, then there would be no negative consequences of the robbery, as there would be no one to tell the merchants that it was you who robbed the caravan.
19) Make good equipment more expensive, so that you can set some real goals and have a dream of maybe one day acquiring a full black armor set. Now you can have a full set of black armor by only playing for a few hours, and many levels before 20.
Also, to prevent players from becoming filthy rich too soon, you could make broken equipment a lot cheaper than unbroken. I mean, having a quiver full of bent arrows probably isn't going to do you much good, and I doubt anyone would buy them for any other reason than for getting the small amount of metal from the arrowheads.