April 1st celebration! Looking back to the TW blogs about MP.

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DainMorgot

Sergeant
Dear ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately TW could not be with us on the year 1 anniversay for reasons and making a scifi narrative game (good luck with that btw) while asking people to apply for a career at TW. But their requests are massive. Massive indeed. Shipped triple A game? Degree in computer sciences? Holy cow, do they make star citizen 2?

I think it's a good time to combine both the anniversary and april fools, to look back at the general philosophies they had in mind and failed miserably. And that's fine, people mess up, the goal is to take these lessons and put them to good use in the future. For a year now, we, the playerbase have been fighting with forks and torches against classes, slow combat, bad maps and boring gameplay. Tournaments cancelled, tournaments happened, new talents arise, old talents play lost oasis. An eventful year, with the bad meaning of the word, indeed.

So, let's begin with these 3 beauties. 1 2 3

1) - - - - - - - - - - SKIRMISH AND MP GENERAL

1)

We launched Warband with a multiplayer Beta that allowed players to jump in and test their Mount & Blade skills against players from all over the world. Our community really ran with this: clans were formed, scrims were organised, and eventually, tournaments started to take place (and still are!). Flash forward 7 years, and we were finally able to show our recognition to this amazing part of our community by hosting our own LAN event, The Battle of Bucharest, with the best individuals and teams in the scene being invited to participate.

Oh man! You talk about multiplayer with such pride, it seems, I can't wait to see what you have in store for us, since you LOVED the fact that warband had a self-dependant community that did everything from tournaments, scrims, mods etc. I can't wait!


With Bannerlord’s multiplayer, we want to build upon this strong foundation and offer a deeply engaging multiplayer experience that is easy to pick up, yet offers great depth and variety. To this end, we are working on a number of multiplayer modes.

AWESOME, dude. Build on that foundation! BATTLE V2? MORE CUSTOMIZATION? MORE BALANCED MAPS? Accessible and with depth? Lets goooo!

Skirmish is a 6 vs 6, player versus player (PvP) game mode. There are no bots to rely on, just your individual combat skill, and that of your fellow teammates. And while tactical prowess and strategy play a huge part in achieving victory over your opponents, solid teamwork and good communication are key to success.

Apparently in TW's office they consider cav and archer spam tactical prowess. Good to know. Good communication? Amazing, pretty bad you dont even have a ping system or VOIP in your game since it's early access debut. But this blog goes way back. Glad to see priorities were always straight.


The primary idea behind Skirmish’s design is asymmetry. Most multiplayer games strive to have a well-balanced mix of classes and characters where no single class is dominant. We considered going this route early in the design process but decided that this wouldn’t work at all in a game that aims to represent medieval battles where armoured knights mounted on destriers would share the field with peasants with pitchforks. Of course, there were ways to nerf the stronger classes, as we could easily make knights extremely slow and sluggish or give them reduced damage. However such moves would be kind of unrealistic and immersion breaking and so go against the spirit of our game...

Assymetry you say? You mean like those games that all failed within like 6 months? Deathgarden? Evolve? Nosgoth? Knights and peasants? Amazing idea, what's next, you gonna make me a medieval cook? I play your game to have the slashing/knight fantasy, not to play a peasant, mate. Naked people, just like people who play Lute in mordhau are there for meme potential. Nobody likes playing as a peasant, period. The reason people choose to play peasants in your game is because heavy infantry is trash and peasants have better movement speed with engaging/disengaging and in/outrange. Which could be done with a troop that wears actual armor and looks cool. Because this is a video game, not your realism/grounded fetish. It's also funny you say the word immersion when I cant customize my character and I can 360 shoot crossbows while jumping, and at the same time characters move 70% slower than a normal human being.


The solution we found was to have a game mode with limited spawns, where the number of spawns you can have depends on the quality of your class choices. To facilitate this, we introduced a points system. Players start with a set amount of points that they can spend to select a class for each spawn during a round. Higher tier troops with better equipment cost much more, which limits the number of times they can be selected by a single player each round, whereas low tier troops are much cheaper, giving players the option of an additional one or two spawns for that round. At the end of the round, if you have unspent points, a limited amount of these can be carried over to the next round, which in turn opens up more tactical options for teams.

Aserai 12 jav throw x 3 gang where you at? Probably the worst designed competitive mode I have ever played in my life. The 3 flag-spawn with 2 dissapearing has potential, but the lives system is lulz worthy.


2) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CLASSES BLOG




So, what is the class system? To put it simply, the class system is a selection of predefined loadouts that you can choose from before spawning. In Bannerlord, these classes are divided into three distinct categories: infantry, ranged, and cavalry.

The worst dumb-down in the history of video games after Watchdogs' graphical downgrade. The most disgusting, uninteresting, stupid and boring design choice that could have ever been made for Native. Universally hated, TW still lives in denial that it's going to work some time. To this very day, they defend it.



Our aim is to ensure that each class is a viable choice, allowing players to choose their preferred unit type while playing. Each of the classes has its own strengths and weaknesses, meaning no single class is particularly effective in every scenario. Some classes are clearly stronger and better equipped than others, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they will perform at a higher level in all instances, and of course, they also come at a much higher cost which limits your options when it comes to respawning. We feel that this approach puts a stronger emphasis on coordination, communication, and synergy in our team-based game modes, and encourages players to experiment and react to the events that unfold during a match.

No, not in every account. Majority of classes are very bad, the cookie cutters exist more than warband and since beta there is no 'organized' play unless we talk about tournaments, it's all about who has more archers and cav. I guess the fact they typed 'we feel that bla bla' saves them from heavy criticism since it's very clear that this is just their opinion. Well, you felt wrong.



With these changes, the entire focus of the gameplay is put onto player skill and teamwork, rather than whoever has the superior equipment or loadout. We think these changes will go a long way in preventing a snowball effect, in which the winning team just gets stronger with each consecutive round win. In Bannerlord, every round starts on a somewhat level playing field, which should provide for a more exciting back and forth between the two teams throughout the course of a match.

ahahahhahhahahhahhahahhahahhahhahahhahahhahahahahhahhahahhahahhahhahhahahhahhahahhahhahah

Overall, we think these changes to the multiplayer class system will make for a fairer, more accessible multiplayer experience that promotes teamwork and communication

Here we go with communication again, when there is no ping system and no VoiP. Accessible? Not even close, if you want your game to be accessible, make a tutorial with an NPC that mimicks real life's pro players with feints, kicks and explain everything.



It ensures that, at a glance, you can see exactly who your opponent is, and what their abilities and limitations are while eliminating the possibility of obscure meta builds from becoming prominent and ensuring that the game remains somewhat balanced.


So if TW was working on CSGO, they would have removed the galil because the more expensive choices are better by default, make everyone buy an AK47 and a molotov. In pursue of this, their game is an unfun clusterduck that nobody plays anymore.



3) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Q&A WITH PAUL KALLOF

Not much to say about this blog other than:


Video games, on the other hand, are supposed to be fun – and for that, they need to be fair, especially in multiplayer. If you see yourself in a disadvantaged position, you should be there because of taking the wrong decisions, not because the game failed to find a balance where it’s the one with the best skills who win. In a game with deep gameplay, such as Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, with so many different factions, troop types, weaponry, terrain, etc.

HOW SEVERE COMPARED TO WARBAND; WILL MOVEMENT PENALTIES FOR USING HEAVY ARMOUR/WEAPONS BE?
“As mentioned above, in multiplayer, we tie movement speeds to the class rather than weapon weights or armour


So apparently, balance on their minds is a very fast troop with light armor who can use a glaive and jump out of combat, 360 the glaive and run again. I have done this on MP since the release, many many times and it's cheese. Not balanced, and plain stupid. This is a simple example. I could write countless others about how the balance is all over the place, and use horse archery as a point but I won't.




Happy 1st year anniversary and april's fools.




edit: I intentionally skipped captain mode, because I dont care about that meme
 
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''With these changes, the entire focus of the gameplay is put onto player skill and teamwork, rather than whoever has the superior equipment or loadout''

lol
 
''With these changes, the entire focus of the gameplay is put onto player skill and teamwork, rather than whoever has the superior equipment or loadout''
No ****ing way they actually unironically said this while knowingly developing a system that revolves entirely around Unbalanced classes and gear as its entire point.
 
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