After 500 hours (most in singleplayer campaign), I found a fundamental problem with bannerlord.
The scale is too large. I think this causes a lot of problems
Quests are unstatysfying: There are 53 towns, each with ~5 notables; ~180 villages, each with ~3 notables, that makes for up to 800 notables. That's right, up to EIGHT HUNDRED quest givers, and you have to raise your relations with each one separately, and the main reward for raising relations-increased recruitment slots(+1 for 1-2 quests), isn't that great when I can simply go to the hundrends other notables in the vicinity. The same goes for quests from nobles ~8 clans per faction, with ~4 nobles each, total of 32 nobles, and the reward for running errands for them is that they will sometimes vote for you in kingdom decisions...swaying the vote by 1-5%. Altough it is still worth raising relations with the ruling clan and other powerful clans, beacuse they actually influence the gameplay.
None of the namd characters feel unique: This ties into the previous point, with the exception of faction leaders, every single noble and notable feels really samey. The best (worst) example of this is the companions - procedurally generated characters with backstories chosen out of a template. You just look at their stats without paying attention to "character traits" (I'm honestly not certain how much these influance anything), set them as party role, party leader, caravan master or govenor and you are done with them.
WAR IS... boring: I remeber this being a common complaint, you fight an EPIC 600vs1000 battle, taking heavy casualities and barely squeezing out a win. But it's alright, your victory surely turned the tides of war... and then you find another 1k stack coming for you 3 days later. And this just keeps happening, and happening. Eventually, after maybe 5 of these types of battles and 10k+ casualties inflicted, the war is over, with 1-2 castles and towns changing territories and the losing side paying 100-500 tribute daily. And in a week's time, war's declared again and it all repeats.
Late game is a slog: After a ceratain point, the player faction becomes unstoppable, and it's only a matter of time till it takes over the world, but oh boy, it'll take a lot of time. With 53 cities and 80ish castles there's a lot of sieging to be done. The maps are at least unique for most of them, and the team is still working on that, but it's the process itself that becomes repetitive.
A lot of modders focus on adding extra stuff to bannerlord, but maybe the game needs LESS, I think, that with 1 less city, 1-2 less castles 2 less clans per faction and 1 less notable per settlement, the game would play a lot better
The scale is too large. I think this causes a lot of problems
Quests are unstatysfying: There are 53 towns, each with ~5 notables; ~180 villages, each with ~3 notables, that makes for up to 800 notables. That's right, up to EIGHT HUNDRED quest givers, and you have to raise your relations with each one separately, and the main reward for raising relations-increased recruitment slots(+1 for 1-2 quests), isn't that great when I can simply go to the hundrends other notables in the vicinity. The same goes for quests from nobles ~8 clans per faction, with ~4 nobles each, total of 32 nobles, and the reward for running errands for them is that they will sometimes vote for you in kingdom decisions...swaying the vote by 1-5%. Altough it is still worth raising relations with the ruling clan and other powerful clans, beacuse they actually influence the gameplay.
None of the namd characters feel unique: This ties into the previous point, with the exception of faction leaders, every single noble and notable feels really samey. The best (worst) example of this is the companions - procedurally generated characters with backstories chosen out of a template. You just look at their stats without paying attention to "character traits" (I'm honestly not certain how much these influance anything), set them as party role, party leader, caravan master or govenor and you are done with them.
WAR IS... boring: I remeber this being a common complaint, you fight an EPIC 600vs1000 battle, taking heavy casualities and barely squeezing out a win. But it's alright, your victory surely turned the tides of war... and then you find another 1k stack coming for you 3 days later. And this just keeps happening, and happening. Eventually, after maybe 5 of these types of battles and 10k+ casualties inflicted, the war is over, with 1-2 castles and towns changing territories and the losing side paying 100-500 tribute daily. And in a week's time, war's declared again and it all repeats.
Late game is a slog: After a ceratain point, the player faction becomes unstoppable, and it's only a matter of time till it takes over the world, but oh boy, it'll take a lot of time. With 53 cities and 80ish castles there's a lot of sieging to be done. The maps are at least unique for most of them, and the team is still working on that, but it's the process itself that becomes repetitive.
A lot of modders focus on adding extra stuff to bannerlord, but maybe the game needs LESS, I think, that with 1 less city, 1-2 less castles 2 less clans per faction and 1 less notable per settlement, the game would play a lot better
