[Article] Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Could Make an Amazing Esport

[Reapy]

I think this is a problem that esports in general has, except for a few naturally easy to watch games. Fighting games I think are the most easy to digest without knowing anything because all of the action is on screen and the speed is immediately recognizable. I have a lot of trouble watching CS, even back when I was still just in shock video games were being watched or even cared about. MOBA's were also hard to watch as well, though I WAS able to watch competitive HOTS for a bit because I was playing it.

For warband the bladecast streams kind of blew me away with the UI and everything they came up with the first time I saw them, it made the game way more readable, and they do an amazing job casting. But still, I just don't see it being broadly appealing to players outside.

I think that esports popularity rises and falls with the size of the player base and that's pretty much it. It's going to take a bit for esports to grow beyond their player base I think, but maybe in a few years.

That said there's something compelling about documentary style competition recaps. There's a series about formula 1 on netflix that recaps the seasons, watched it with my wife who has never had any interest in cars and racing for the 20 or so years we've been together, and midway through she was upset the seasons on hold because she wanted to watch a race. Video game wise I watched the informal competitive smash recap and was enthralled by the thing, but it didn't leave me wanting to watch comp smash. Still, that format of recap and explaining things you don't understand can really broaden an audience for a thing.

 

[Brandis.]

I think this is a problem that esports in general has, except for a few naturally easy to watch games. Fighting games I think are the most easy to digest without knowing anything because all of the action is on screen and the speed is immediately recognizable. I have a lot of trouble watching CS, even back when I was still just in shock video games were being watched or even cared about. MOBA's were also hard to watch as well, though I WAS able to watch competitive HOTS for a bit because I was playing it.

I'm not sure if I necessarily agree. I haven't played MOBAs, but they are watchable even if you know nothing about them (like me). The casters are excellent and there's a lot of handy charts and graphs everywhere. And you start to pick up on abilities and counters if you watch a couple matches in a row, like I usually do during T.I.

On the other hand, M&B is more simple to grasp. Like Ulf said:

How do you make "and now they are going to block each other's attacks for the next couple of minutes while waving their swords around in ways that will make no sense to most of you" interesting?

If you want to hit it big as an E-Sport you need gameplay that is really easy to understand, looks cool, and like you said has enough depth for the field to grow.

M&B looks simple. There's infantry, archers, cav, and they behave more or less as expected. M&B has the issue of getting people to care or acknowledge the skill involved. It looks relatively simple and if people are used to SP, they're used to being pretty much a god killing all the bots.

On top of that, if the "skill depth" looks glitchy or spammy with bad animations, then people just assume people are abusing the system in a way that ought to be patched out rather than explored.

And going back to Skirmish, I've been thinking of another way to critique it. Nothing is concrete in Skirmish to the lay-viewer.

• Someone gets a pick? Sure, good, but that enemy is just going to respawn, and it doesn't matter much if it's a 5v6, because the 5 players can just skey and hold shields if they don't want to fight outnumbered.
• Someone caps a flag? Okay, but that basically doesn't matter unless your opponents are lazy and cap zero flags.
• A team pushes into a strong position? Might matter, but not immediately, since the opposing team can just rotate to other flags.

There's no clear objective like in CSGO or points like in RL. There's no single moment that something happens.

You could say that M&B is more similar to a MOBA in terms of pacing and objectives because TTK is lower, objectives matter more in the long run, and there's respawns, but MOBAs have obsessive amount of details such as items/builds/jungles/creeps/abilities/ults that M&B doesn't have. In short, Skirmish is just too uninteresting to have slow pacing. Fast pacing puts all the details on the players skill and overall teamwork, rather than evolving macro strategies.

Skirmish floats between concepts in different popular games, but doesn't do well at any of them.

Since I've spent all this time complaining about Skirmish, let me try to propose some alternatives. I think that Skirmish as a game mode needs to become more simple. Skirmish has simple mechanics, a simple eco, and simple maps with the pacing and objective pacing of a more complex game.

Objectives should be liner and matter. If you take it and keep it, you will win. If you don't, you will lose. Some proposals:

• Arena / Battle: One-Life. Circular map with a low amount of structures. A flag spawns in the center at a minute remaining.
• Siege / Assault: Multi-Life. Asymmetrical linear map. One team must take 2-3 flags from the other in the allotted amount of time.
• King of the Hill / Control point: Multi-Life. Balanced symmetry with some structures around a central point. A wide-area flag spawns at the beginning of the round, and the team to hold it for a certain amount of time wins.
• Payload: Just kidding.

You could lower the morale in Skirmish, but doing that would encourage your team to split up even more in order to capture the flags or steal them from each other as cav. That just makes for a dumb mode without clear objectives that's hard to spectate.

 

[Charlini]

Impossible in current stage.

+1

 

[Joshu4BananaClip]

We dont have to talk about the playability of the game since its not close to be a "Esport" title yet....

I think about the viewability this game has alot of potential even when the skirmish mode can be confusing with the newspawns.
With a good spectator mode this could go really well(really important imo because in games like r6s you miss like 60% of all kills and that its just ****).
Its really ez to watch since you dont need to actually know items or champions and everyone knows basic medieval fight stuff.

Overall i think in M&B these "highlights" like in cs go are a bit missing but also happen sometimes in a diffrent way. at the end medieval fighting games are a small niche but this game with a team based combat is also unique.

edit: it also come down to the combat really if it stay slow like that and inf cannot do plays it might be boring to watch

 

[Shemaforash]

Bannerlord is not ready at all. I will wait until it’s more polished to even bother attempting to play this game seriously.

 

[Drewser]

Not every game needs to be an esport. Bannerlord in general seems to have gone down a very weird path with multiplayer. On release we get TDM, siege, commander battle, and skirmish. TDM and siege were in warband and definitely had their player bases but where are the battle players supposed to go? Skirmish? Skirmish isn't worth queuing solo. I play skirmish exclusively with a full 6 stack team and it gets boring quick. 90% of the time we hit full pub teams that stand absolutely no chance against a coordinated team and we 3-0 them. The best feeling is loading into a round and seeing a clan on the other team because then at least you have to sit up in your chair. Then you realize you've gotten A**erai for the 50th time that day and feel like necking yourself. Then you realize again that there's no way to specifically queue against another clan so you just hope you'll run into them again.

What is the holdup? Did the beta testers tell the devs they didn't want battle they wanted skirmish instead? Do the devs think they need these incredibly intricate maps to be made for battle? I can't tell you how many hours I sat on warband battle servers that just played random_plains_large or something close to it.

I hope to god that skirmish doesn't become the defacto competitive mode for bannerlord.

 

[Ikea Knight]

As someone who's played a fair bit of Captain mode, not in it's current state. It needs to take inspiration from MOBAs because that's currently what it feels closest to believe it or not.

I agree
With mods it could become a fun moba - if anybody really wants to put energy into it.
Also that's really the one unique thing mount and blade has.
There are a lot of games with Combat and a lot of them with troops.
But not that many with both at the same time.

 

[Brandis.]

I agree
With mods it could become a fun moba - if anybody really wants to put energy into it.
Also that's really the one unique thing mount and blade has.
There are a lot of games with Combat and a lot of them with troops.
But not that many with both at the same time.

A Total War MOBA on the M&B engine sounds interesting as a concept.

I don't think creeps or the "laning" game would fit very well, but if Captain got a lot more class/hero depth it would become a lot more strategic.

 

[Caps]

I agree
With mods it could become a fun moba - if anybody really wants to put energy into it.
Also that's really the one unique thing mount and blade has.
There are a lot of games with Combat and a lot of them with troops.
But not that many with both at the same time.

A Total War MOBA on the M&B engine sounds interesting as a concept.

I don't think creeps or the "laning" game would fit very well, but if Captain got a lot more class/hero depth it would become a lot more strategic.

that would be just a for honor for poor people...

 

[Shemaforash]

What is the holdup? Did the beta testers tell the devs they didn't want battle they wanted skirmish instead?

no the opposite, we told them we want battle and duel, removing the class system and trying to work on improving combat. Not much happened on those stages but I will say that performance has improved on my pc.

 

[๖Kern]

Not every game needs to be an esport. Bannerlord in general seems to have gone down a very weird path with multiplayer. On release we get TDM, siege, commander battle, and skirmish. TDM and siege were in warband and definitely had their player bases but where are the battle players supposed to go? Skirmish? Skirmish isn't worth queuing solo. I play skirmish exclusively with a full 6 stack team and it gets boring quick. 90% of the time we hit full pub teams that stand absolutely no chance against a coordinated team and we 3-0 them. The best feeling is loading into a round and seeing a clan on the other team because then at least you have to sit up in your chair. Then you realize you've gotten A**erai for the 50th time that day and feel like necking yourself. Then you realize again that there's no way to specifically queue against another clan so you just hope you'll run into them again.

What is the holdup? Did the beta testers tell the devs they didn't want battle they wanted skirmish instead? Do the devs think they need these incredibly intricate maps to be made for battle? I can't tell you how many hours I sat on warband battle servers that just played random_plains_large or something close to it.

I hope to god that skirmish doesn't become the defacto competitive mode for bannerlord.

Developers have their own vision of the game and refuse to communicate properly. Skirmish is indeed planned to be the competitive mode.

 

[MaddoxJW]

Not with Taleworlds attitude toward MP can we ever have a esports mode. I think the game would be perfect for an esports scene with how Skirmish can be played, and if you look back at the warband lan tourney, it was fairly fun to watch, but lacked the proper scene for it. MB has got a bit popular, but to do a esports mode they need to develop the MP scene more, and fix glitches, the combat issues, etc. Do I think people will attempt at a esports scene? yes, but do I think it is gonna happen as of right now? no. Skirmish is a great competitive mode, so it could be great to watch in the future.