Bad immersiveness for bandit playthrough

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the immersiveness of bandit playthrough is bad across multiple sandboxing games, I have no idea why.

M&B warband and bannerlord - you can barely play as a bandit. Bannerlord have this roguery perk but it just doesn't do anything

Viking conquest is ok-ish, as you can sack cities and monasteries. However conquering cities still requires a **** tons of the effort and requires you to have a base somewhere.

Skyrim - unplayable

Total wars warhammer or 3k: basically feels like any normal factions.

Overall, playing as bandit is very unimmersive across all these games. Very hard to find that elusive feeling where you can actually just focus on robbing/razing and hiding and evade major clashing with the authorities.
 
the immersiveness of bandit playthrough is bad across multiple sandboxing games, I have no idea why.

M&B warband and bannerlord - you can barely play as a bandit. Bannerlord have this roguery perk but it just doesn't do anything

Viking conquest is ok-ish, as you can sack cities and monasteries. However conquering cities still requires a **** tons of the effort and requires you to have a base somewhere.

Skyrim - unplayable

Total wars warhammer or 3k: basically feels like any normal factions.

Overall, playing as bandit is very unimmersive across all these games. Very hard to find that elusive feeling where you can actually just focus on robbing/razing and hiding and evade major clashing with the authorities.
I think to a certain extent because it's not a very rewarding style of game play.
There is a reason bandits tend to be poorly equipped scum, because historically they were poor desperate people getting by, until they could get back to a normal life, or wanted criminals who had no way of supporting themselves otherwise. I'm not really sure what that as an immersive play through would look like other very small scale and short lived (like most bandit groups).
The closest to a playable bandit style to me would be a mercenary campaign where you use bandit troops and pillage everything you can. They even hint that many of the existing merc factions are just that.
The only thing I can think of that would help would be for there to be a roguery perk that let you convert regular troops into their bandit equivalent so you could only field bandit troops and maybe where appropriate you could convert noble troops into an appropriate minor faction equivalent.
That said it's a fantasy setting so I guess maybe I'm thinking too narrowly.
 
I think to a certain extent because it's not a very rewarding style of game play.
There is a reason bandits tend to be poorly equipped scum, because historically they were poor desperate people getting by, until they could get back to a normal life, or wanted criminals who had no way of supporting themselves otherwise. I'm not really sure what that as an immersive play through would look like other very small scale and short lived (like most bandit groups).
The closest to a playable bandit style to me would be a mercenary campaign where you use bandit troops and pillage everything you can. They even hint that many of the existing merc factions are just that.
The only thing I can think of that would help would be for there to be a roguery perk that let you convert regular troops into their bandit equivalent so you could only field bandit troops and maybe where appropriate you could convert noble troops into an appropriate minor faction equivalent.
That said it's a fantasy setting so I guess maybe I'm thinking too narrowly.


Roguery is probably the most unfun perkset of all skills, and the leveling is quite bugged. I think the only real way to level it up is to sell prisoners to the ransom brokers. Leading bandit troop barely give any exp, and raiding even less so.

Viking conquest is probably as close as it can get across all the rpg and strategy games I've ever played. It's the vikings so they somehow encouraged raiding. But if you want to move further, you still need to run a city like a normal lord. What I hope is just work with other bandits, and establish a bandit network across the map or something
 
Roguery is probably the most unfun perkset of all skills, and the leveling is quite bugged. I think the only real way to level it up is to sell prisoners to the ransom brokers. Leading bandit troop barely give any exp, and raiding even less so.

Viking conquest is probably as close as it can get across all the rpg and strategy games I've ever played. It's the vikings so they somehow encouraged raiding. But if you want to move further, you still need to run a city like a normal lord. What I hope is just work with other bandits, and establish a bandit network across the map or something

VC is a much better game than Bannerlord and it is not close! :smile:
 
Levelling for roguery is rubbish (although at lest it's not medicine), not sure how a bandit network works unless you mean you could just join the current bandit faction and treat them as allies when committing crimes near them.
I guess you could become a bandit clan and form parties based on renown, although if all other factions are against you it would be tricky for them to survive for long. It would be good if you had major penalties to party size to represent the difficulty of keeping a large group of bandits going. I guess the issue I have is it feels like a very short term goal, unless you could tie it to defeating gangs in towns and putting your own people and then claiming a tribute from them or something I'm not sure how long it would be able to keep at least my attention. Still the more options the better.
 
Levelling for roguery is rubbish (although at lest it's not medicine), not sure how a bandit network works unless you mean you could just join the current bandit faction and treat them as allies when committing crimes near them.
I guess you could become a bandit clan and form parties based on renown, although if all other factions are against you it would be tricky for them to survive for long. It would be good if you had major penalties to party size to represent the difficulty of keeping a large group of bandits going. I guess the issue I have is it feels like a very short term goal, unless you could tie it to defeating gangs in towns and putting your own people and then claiming a tribute from them or something I'm not sure how long it would be able to keep at least my attention. Still the more options the better.

if based on the current bannerlord, I think they can add something called "infamy" which is basically the bandit counterpart of influence. You could spend the infamy to have other bandits to join your army. So by the time you grow stronger, you will constantly leading a larger army but with with lower troop quality and morale. So formation and morale management is now more relevant. And when you have high infamy some bandits will hear your deed, and begin to beg to join you. This now plays way more like a very charismatic legendary bandit leader I suppose.

Also taking over and perhaps improving hideouts is highly needed. Bandit converting to reg troops also needs a rework.
 
The appeal of rogue skill is there for me, it just needs to be tuned.

So many of the buffs can work if they aren't forced to be in just one slot: for example faster raiding in one slot at 5% faster is not noticable. But give the 5% on the other 3 raiding perks as well and you get 20% which is much more noticable. A bit more work but can make the single 20% upkeep spread into 4 or 5 perks of 10%. That way if you focus on that aspect of the skill you get more impact at the cost of not the others rather then the current lukewarm little bit of everything
 
It was okay in warband, you could even raid villages without starting a war, if you knew the secret way :smile:
The looting skill was not good or worth points, but raiding to get your funds going in a new game as a lone bandit was awesome and you could get lotsa archery skill ups form shooting all those villagers! You could clonk village ladies on the head and make them into sword sisters too! I guess it's not 'immersive' but you could certainly make your own fun and success as a rouge in warband.

In VC I was pretty salty that it wouldn't let me do my warband solo trick "you need more men for that" ***** do you know who I am?

Skyrim has a whole thieves guild quest line.... I guess if it's not immersive I don't know what you even mean.

Bannerlord has no official Bandit gameplay, raiding is garbage, rougery is too slow to level and not so great perk wise. The best use of bandits is making them into nobles.

However, if you just want to be a bad guy, forced recruitment to take noble units is really good and executing everyone is the easiest and fastest way to paint the map!
 
It was okay in warband, you could even raid villages without starting a war, if you knew the secret way :smile:
The looting skill was not good or worth points, but raiding to get your funds going in a new game as a lone bandit was awesome and you could get lotsa archery skill ups form shooting all those villagers! You could clonk village ladies on the head and make them into sword sisters too! I guess it's not 'immersive' but you could certainly make your own fun and success as a rouge in warband.

In VC I was pretty salty that it wouldn't let me do my warband solo trick "you need more men for that" ***** do you know who I am?

Skyrim has a whole thieves guild quest line.... I guess if it's not immersive I don't know what you even mean.

Bannerlord has no official Bandit gameplay, raiding is garbage, rougery is too slow to level and not so great perk wise. The best use of bandits is making them into nobles.

However, if you just want to be a bad guy, forced recruitment to take noble units is really good and executing everyone is the easiest and fastest way to paint the map!
Thieves guild in skyrim is great by itself... but nowhere near a real bandit experience that you live with your fellow bandits at valtheim towers or halted stream camp. There is a mod called live another life that can spawn you in a bandit lair and start off as a bandit. By that moment you will understand how much you miss a "real" bandit gameplay. I think unable to enter the major settlements and missing the contents is what it makes it difficult there
 
I also try to play a similar way but actually there is no advantage to be a bandit. It is so easy to make money the legal way even without smithing so it doesn't give anything. The old workhorse exploit gives money quicker if I want money.
I just wanted to be a bandit at the beginning than switching to a mercenary role but I cannot really play a roguish way. Gang quests are rare, caravans are very quick and lords always catch me while raiding.
 
I wish there was way to be a sneaky, criminal, dagger wielding assassin type in the game. Haha I will keep dreaming for a long time, I suspect.
 
And the no defection perk is still not implemented after all this time, and it's the only perk in roguery that even allows you to do sort-of a bandit playthrough... because you could amass bigger parties of bandits eventually than you can with normal troops.

I do agree that I really wish for a decent bandit playthrough and currently we don't have it at all... I wish there was an option to gain reputation bonus with bandits by siding with them when they're fighting caravans/villagers/and even lords. You could gain reputation with each bandit faction by doing that, forest bandits/looters etc would be their own faction. If you finally become friendly with forest bandits (from -100 to 1+) then you would be treated as a bandit in the region of battania so permanent war with battania. And for looters with all the empires, for sea raiders with Sturgia and so on. I think it would be a great gameplay mechanic...

But right now sadly I'm really not sure if we will receive such good things... the only good thing I got going now for games is that Valheim has released in early access and it's actually quite enjoyable to play. Now I can wait more patiently for both games to be updated, since I have 2 games I'm looking forward to. But ya, from bannerlord I wish they did add some more complexity by adding at least some features like I mentioned, but I don't know if they will...
 
The only thing I can think of that would help would be for there to be a roguery perk that let you convert regular troops into their bandit equivalent so you could only field bandit troops and maybe where appropriate you could convert noble troops into an appropriate minor faction equivalent.
that would be a really great addition, too... more perks should be more meaningful
 
I wish there was way to be a sneaky, criminal, dagger wielding assassin type in the game. Haha I will keep dreaming for a long time, I suspect.
Assassinations won't be implemented in the game. I asked Duh about it a few months ago. Modders are our only hope.
 
I think to a certain extent because it's not a very rewarding style of game play.
There is a reason bandits tend to be poorly equipped scum, because historically they were poor desperate people getting by, until they could get back to a normal life, or wanted criminals who had no way of supporting themselves otherwise. I'm not really sure what that as an immersive play through would look like other very small scale and short lived (like most bandit groups).
The closest to a playable bandit style to me would be a mercenary campaign where you use bandit troops and pillage everything you can. They even hint that many of the existing merc factions are just that.
The only thing I can think of that would help would be for there to be a roguery perk that let you convert regular troops into their bandit equivalent so you could only field bandit troops and maybe where appropriate you could convert noble troops into an appropriate minor faction equivalent.
That said it's a fantasy setting so I guess maybe I'm thinking too narrowly.

From a historical standpoint you are correct. Banditry was never profitable and usually lead to an early grave. Hell even highly romanticized pirates really didn't have it all that good. Also a lot of what was considered "banditry" was just raiding sponsored by some country or another.

On the other hand, I could definitely see a few, highly successful bandit groups, becoming strong, even famous mercenary groups at some point which is again just legitimatized banditry if you get right down to it. However, your still being sponsored if your a merc.

So my idea of a Bandit playthrough would be to start off as bandits, then progress to merc, then progress to vassal then maybe king which isn't really different than the normal gameplay loop in game. Only difference would be that you have to start solo without a group, capture some looters, convince them to join you so within a few hours, you would be right back into the normal gameplay loop. Doesn't seem worth it to me.
 
I should add, though there was of course a lot to be desired, I found the bandit profession about as rewarding as many of the alternative professions in Warband. It was challenging, though not impossible, and usually involved choosing a home, friendly faction and then raiding the rest. The biggest lack in Warband there was that I lacked the options to sell loot the way other bandit parties could.
 
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