Bannerlord needs to learn from Warband

Do you agree with my points?

  • Yes

    Votes: 42 70.0%
  • Somewhat

    Votes: 8 13.3%
  • No

    Votes: 10 16.7%

  • Total voters
    60

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Here are some major things Warband did that Bannerlord needs to implement and improve upon.


1: If you're trying to marry a lady, you just have to pay the clan leader. It's not about building your relationship with a lord to get them to support your endeavors like it was in Warband, you just meet this lady one time complete a really stupid mini-game pay the lord some money, and bam you're married. What I cannot fathom is the fact that this system was handled much better 10 years ago! You had to meet the lady you wanted to marry and slowly build your relation, you had to know her protector and have a good relationship with him. You had to wait for a decent time to hold the wedding, and above all, there was an actual wedding cutscene. Now, you can get married within 2 minutes and it has no weight whatsoever.

2: Lords are lifeless: Somehow, the only interactions you can have with lords are quests and the awful marriage-related interactions. Warband handled lords much better:

3: Each lord felt like a distinct person, they had their own banner, fiefs, and you had to individually build relations with them. Now, the only meaningful lords are clan leaders, everyone else is basically a useless muppet. They all have the same banner, if you build relations with one lord in a clan you build relations with the entire clan. What's the point of those other lords besides just more manpower? I think taleworlds misused the clan mechanic, it could have been a really interesting feature where each clan basically acted as a mini kingdom and had its own power struggles, distinct features from other clans, etc but it was severly mishandled.

4: Building relations with lords actually had a purpose: If you wanted to get more fiefs in Warband, you had to have good relations with lords so they would support you over someone else. (another point about this, in some factions good relations with the king mattered more than relations with lords in getting fiefs. AKA each faction played slightly differently, they weren't all just copy and pasted with different troops, if you wanted more fiefs it would be best to pick certain factions over others becuase certain kings liked giving out fiefs to their vassels more.) Nowadays, you dont need to have good relations with clans. If you have enough settlements you will just gain influence which you can use to pretty much automatically get a fief, and that leads into my next point.

5: Deciding who should get the fief made a lot more sense. In warband, if a lord had enough support, he would get the fief. Now, you can choose to support one of three 3 random clans by pouring in influence. No interaction with lords, just a random kingdom decision screen. I don't think my clan has been a candidate for a new fief in over 15 in game years. Please fix this, it's awful and way, WAY worse than it was in Warband, a 10-year-old game.

6: Please add a control and space movement key. The current traveling speed is far too slow, especially since the map is a lot larger.


If you can think of other things feel free to suggest them.
 
Totally agree!
BL is ruled by RNG, they clearly made a game to cater to new generations and people playing PVP-oriented hack and slash games.
The strategy (and with it, the depth) has gone out of the window, the only objective improvements are scenes, art, graphics and the music (although WB music was really good IMO).
 
2: Lords are lifeless: Somehow, the only interactions you can have with lords are quests and the awful marriage-related interactions. Warband handled lords much better:

What interaction other then quests and awful marriage-related interactions you could have with lords with Warband? Because I don't remember any.

3: Each lord felt like a distinct person, they had their own banner, fiefs, and you had to individually build relations with them. Now, the only meaningful lords are clan leaders, everyone else is basically a useless muppet.

Except you now have nearly as many clans in Bannerlord that you had individual lords in Warband. While managing individual relations with lords in Warband was possible, in Bannerlord it would be nightmare. Not to mention that if lord dies, there goes all your progress in relations with him. Clan system suits Bannerlod mechanics and scale much better. You don't have to micro bother with every one of gazillion lords that can exist in the game.

They all have the same banner, if you build relations with one lord in a clan you build relations with the entire clan. What's the point of those other lords besides just more manpower? I think taleworlds misused the clan mechanic, it could have been a really interesting feature where each clan basically acted as a mini kingdom and had its own power struggles, distinct features from other clans, etc but it was severly mishandled.

What distinct "features"? Clans are clans, not factions.

4: Building relations with lords actually had a purpose: If you wanted to get more fiefs in Warband, you had to have good relations with lords so they would support you over someone else. (another point about this, in some factions good relations with the king mattered more than relations with lords in getting fiefs. AKA each faction played slightly differently, they weren't all just copy and pasted with different troops, if you wanted more fiefs it would be best to pick certain factions over others becuase certain kings liked giving out fiefs to their vassels more.) Nowadays, you dont need to have good relations with clans. If you have enough settlements you will just gain influence which you can use to pretty much automatically get a fief, and that leads into my next point.

You must be imagining things because there was no difference in fief granting mechanics among factions in Warband. And good relations with clan in Bannerlord can make that clan vote for you just like good relations with lord did in Warband. The only difference is, that powerful clans have more weight during voting then weak clans. Which makes perfect sense.

Influence system sure can get some polish, but it's a good feature and improvement over Warband.

5: Deciding who should get the fief made a lot more sense. In warband, if a lord had enough support, he would get the fief. Now, you can choose to support one of three 3 random clans by pouring in influence. No interaction with lords, just a random kingdom decision screen. I don't think my clan has been a candidate for a new fief in over 15 in game years. Please fix this, it's awful and way, WAY worse than it was in Warband, a 10-year-old game.

What interaction with lords did you have during voting for fief in Warband? Voting in Bannerlord is exact same as in Warband, except instead of individual lords voting and receiving fiefs, clans vote and receive fiefs. Zero difference there. And relations with clans matter as much as relations with lords did in Warband.

Your post seems to be the case of "old pastures always seems greener".

If anything fief granting in Warband was a mess that always ended in two or three lords owning everything in faction while rest of the lords were deserting or getting banned on a weekly basis. Bannerlord system at last keeps kingdoms somewhat balanced.

Late game Warband was complete mess and impossible to play other then your own kingdom.
 
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I agree entirely, especially about the relationship building between lords, companions and potential husbands/wives. The soul of Warband is largely missing in Bannerlord. I do think this is something they realize and will change, but on the chance that they do not have that intention, I would like to make it known. :lol:
 
Agreed, lords/ ladies do feel lifeless. It's weird that in Warband I felt my actions and character had more of an impact in the world and the characters themselves had an opinion. This illusion is sorely missed. I thought the character trait system would make NPC's more alive. Noticing certain chaps on the field who were master tacticians, using formations and another who would simply charge. But no, they all charge and they're all bots wearing different colours.
 
Here are some major things Warband did that Bannerlord needs to implement and improve upon.


1: If you're trying to marry a lady, you just have to pay the clan leader. It's not about building your relationship with a lord to get them to support your endeavors like it was in Warband, you just meet this lady one time complete a really stupid mini-game pay the lord some money, and bam you're married. What I cannot fathom is the fact that this system was handled much better 10 years ago! You had to meet the lady you wanted to marry and slowly build your relation, you had to know her protector and have a good relationship with him. You had to wait for a decent time to hold the wedding, and above all, there was an actual wedding cutscene. Now, you can get married within 2 minutes and it has no weight whatsoever.

2: Lords are lifeless: Somehow, the only interactions you can have with lords are quests and the awful marriage-related interactions. Warband handled lords much better:

3: Each lord felt like a distinct person, they had their own banner, fiefs, and you had to individually build relations with them. Now, the only meaningful lords are clan leaders, everyone else is basically a useless muppet. They all have the same banner, if you build relations with one lord in a clan you build relations with the entire clan. What's the point of those other lords besides just more manpower? I think taleworlds misused the clan mechanic, it could have been a really interesting feature where each clan basically acted as a mini kingdom and had its own power struggles, distinct features from other clans, etc but it was severly mishandled.

4: Building relations with lords actually had a purpose: If you wanted to get more fiefs in Warband, you had to have good relations with lords so they would support you over someone else. (another point about this, in some factions good relations with the king mattered more than relations with lords in getting fiefs. AKA each faction played slightly differently, they weren't all just copy and pasted with different troops, if you wanted more fiefs it would be best to pick certain factions over others becuase certain kings liked giving out fiefs to their vassels more.) Nowadays, you dont need to have good relations with clans. If you have enough settlements you will just gain influence which you can use to pretty much automatically get a fief, and that leads into my next point.

5: Deciding who should get the fief made a lot more sense. In warband, if a lord had enough support, he would get the fief. Now, you can choose to support one of three 3 random clans by pouring in influence. No interaction with lords, just a random kingdom decision screen. I don't think my clan has been a candidate for a new fief in over 15 in game years. Please fix this, it's awful and way, WAY worse than it was in Warband, a 10-year-old game.

6: Please add a control and space movement key. The current traveling speed is far too slow, especially since the map is a lot larger.


If you can think of other things feel free to suggest them.
I've been saying this from the start..villages used to be fiefs in their own right too. You joined a clan got issued a village , fought wars got acclaim , went to feasts , wooed a lady , worked your way up to a castle and then eventually a town...
 
What interaction other then quests and awful marriage-related interactions you could have with lords with Warband? Because I don't remember any.



Except you now have nearly as many clans in Bannerlord that you had individual lords in Warband. While managing individual relations with lords in Warband was possible, in Bannerlord it would be nightmare. Not to mention that if lord dies, there goes all your progress in relations with him. Clan system suits Bannerlod mechanics and scale much better. You don't have to micro bother with every one of gazillion lords that can exist in the game.



What distinct "features"? Clans are clans, not factions.



You must be imagining things because there was no difference in fief granting mechanics among factions in Warband. And good relations with clan in Bannerlord can make that clan vote for you just like good relations with lord did in Warband. The only difference is, that powerful clans have more weight during voting then weak clans. Which makes perfect sense.

Influence system sure can get some polish, but it's a good feature and improvement over Warband.



What interaction with lords did you have during voting for fief in Warband? Voting in Bannerlord is exact same as in Warband, except instead of individual lords voting and receiving fiefs, clans vote and receive fiefs. Zero difference there. And relations with clans matter as much as relations with lords did in Warband.

Your post seems to be the case of "old pastures always seems greener".

If anything fief granting in Warband was a mess that always ended in two or three lords owning everything in faction while rest of the lords were deserting or getting banned on a weekly basis. Bannerlord system at last keeps kingdoms somewhat balanced.

Late game Warband was complete mess and impossible to play other then your own kingdom.
+1
 
I've been saying this from the start..villages used to be fiefs in their own right too. You joined a clan got issued a village , fought wars got acclaim , went to feasts , wooed a lady , worked your way up to a castle and then eventually a town...
This

The people (well, ONE) who say things haven't changed from Warband seem to have not even played the game. They didn't improve anything, they only streamlined, and very little in a way that makes it better (the only thing I appreciate more is finally having an interface to vote for things like supporting a lord on getting a fief, rather than having to chase people down to exchange opinions).

Take the courting for example, there was a million ways to make it a bit better and more involved than just having a retarded minigame and nothing else. For example when courting a lady you could have several steps, the speech minigame being the first. Then she might start to ask you small quests based on her personality, for example she might ask you to go help a village in need and do one of their quests to show kindness; she might ask you to win a tournament in her name; she might ask you to briefly take her in your party with you and go win a battle because she wants to see the thrill of the fight firsthand. Even after the marriage your spose becomes just a completely lifeless placeholder.

They had to dedicate time to the immersion and rpg elements of the game to make it stand out from Warband, they did nothing, instead we got a ****ty campaign no one gives a **** about (and 1 year to get the sandbox mode which should have been the default from the start).
 
I definitely would like to see some of the aspects of courting a lady back, but no entirely for the courting aspect itself. Things like starting a rivalry over a woman, dueling for her, winning and having her be disappointed that you won all gave characters a little more personality which I think could be fleshed out if the current trait system offered differing responses.
Being able to mingle with the nobles after winning a tournament before you were famous enough to regularly do so was nice too and a system that has certain lord's traits make them take their tournament losses seriously against you could be fun. They already have the one quest where you duel someone in the arena, not sure why that's not available for lords.
I find the "enemies" list in most of my BL playthroughs to be empty, very rarely am I lower than -2 with anyone in particular whereas in WB I usually had at least a few lords who wanted me dead.

I also never really felt like I had to savescum in warband, either. In bannerlord I do it all the time because the game just feels outright against you at times. I had to pass two speech checks to get married and critical failed a check with 60% chance to succeed so many times I started recording it because I couldn't believe it. Trying to sneak into a town to break an ally out is essentially clicking the "go to jail" button a hundred times until the game finally gives me a break and despite the text saying "escape before the town comes down on you" and warband letting you fight your way out, you just give up and go straight to jail.
 
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I agree with most if not all of your points. I think Taleworlds focused too much on the scale of things. Sure the map is huge but it feels so empty. My brother is just a leader for one of my armies. I never even saw my little brother or sister until they came of age and also lead my armies. Can't even talk to anyone unless I want trade deals.

In Warband you could talk to the Lords and ask what they're doing but now you just got trade deals and thoughts on politics.

I also wish clans were something more. Let my children manage their own villages or castles. Let them lead armies or even declare war on me for my possessions. SOMETHING
 
I had to pass two speech checks to get married and critical failed a check with 60% chance to succeed so many times I started recording it because I couldn't believe it.
Just FYI, there is a seed of sorts in place, so if you fail and load, you'll fail again if you do the exact same thing. You have to load, then save and load again to reset it. I think entering settlements in different orders works as well.
 
Well basically what we all want is NPC improvement which is not their priority for now and I don't know know whether TW have any plans for it, we can only hope that TW will prioritise the NPC/THINGS TO DO DURING PEACE/DIPLOMACY after the terrain system and multiplayer update. I hope, I already am tired of waiting...but still there is no deadline yet so you can hope for it


Well, mount and blade was basically about war and battle, diplomacy was never it's strong suit, so I don't expect it anyway but if they do plan to improve it then it will make the game better and one of the best
 
Just FYI, there is a seed of sorts in place, so if you fail and load, you'll fail again if you do the exact same thing. You have to load, then save and load again to reset it. I think entering settlements in different orders works as well.
Ah yeah that would explain, thanks for the info!
 
1. There were a couple (or more by now) threads that we made detailing how courtship could be improved but they didn't seem to get the views/replies necessary to grab any dev's attention. I honestly doubt any of them have any interest in messing with the marriage system until after release.

2. The lifeless lord thing is a little hard to solve now that all interactions with a lord are based primarily on your relation with their clan rather than them as a lord. Which leads into 3.

3. They screwed up by taking away the individual lord relations (which they initially had in BL) and just making it strictly clan v player. Interactions now make little to no sense. ie. Lord A of Clan A raids your village = automatic -relation with all of Clan A. There can't be real rivalries or friendships with this system. It also #*&s over the execution system since most everyone is round about friends with everyone else. Want to execute that rival enemy lord whose done nothing but horrible things to you/your clan/your kingdom for years? Prepare to take a good relations hit with a huge swath of clan that can include those in your own kingdom. (You'd think you had gone through and butchered their wives and children with the way every other clan reacts). It should have been a 2 relation system where you built/destroyed relations with individuals quickly, and slowly with the clans excepting some extreme actions. They probably felt it was too complicated (which is what relations always are).

4. Since I usually played with a mod like Diplomacy I don't recall how many base requests/actions you could have with lords. I've never really had any serious negative relations with clans in my kingdoms so I'm curious if you are too low in relations (ie rivals) will they not be summon-able to an army you are putting together? or if they are friends do you get an influence discount?

5. Yeah you definitely lose that climbing up the ladder of society feeling with this game. I don't know if its because I played WB for years but the beginning period of BL games feels short/rushed. Even if not speedrunning I have an army/wife/fief incredibly quickly by comparison.

At this point its just a waiting game to see what they add or keep out. So long as its fully/easily moddable it should end up okay.
 
I don't see how marriage mechanic was better in warband than this. I used to pay the wandering poet then and her father too, now I do only to her father. You could technically convince any lady to marry you, even if they didn't like you in the beginning, just by winning a tournament for her, reading the same poems over and over and paying her enough visit to boost relation to 20. Don't know, maybe I always chose easy pickings then but I can't even recall any lord simply rejecting my proposal unless recently another lord with higher renown courts his daughter as well. Then you wait until your rival gets fed up and try again. And eventually all ladies turned into a beer counting, gossip telling, feast machines when you married them. And their fathers stayed exactly the same towards you. No relation boost, no recognition of being family, nothing. Now at least I can gear my wife up and put her in the field to fight for the family instead of sitting at the keep all the time and her family actually likes me.
 
Totally agree!
BL is ruled by RNG, they clearly made a game to cater to new generations and people playing PVP-oriented hack and slash games.
The strategy (and with it, the depth) has gone out of the window, the only objective improvements are scenes, art, graphics and the music (although WB music was really good IMO).
They didn't make a game to cater to a new generation.. There's no one, not that I've ever heard of, that enjoys RNG in any gamemechanic. RNG is nothing but the laziest attempt at a mechanic and I can't begin to describe how disappointed I am that Taleworlds doesn't have the imagination, the desire or the competency to create more engaging systems than a dice-roll.
 
I don't see how marriage mechanic was better in warband than this. I used to pay the wandering poet then and her father too, now I do only to her father. You could technically convince any lady to marry you, even if they didn't like you in the beginning, just by winning a tournament for her, reading the same poems over and over and paying her enough visit to boost relation to 20. Don't know, maybe I always chose easy pickings then but I can't even recall any lord simply rejecting my proposal unless recently another lord with higher renown courts his daughter as well. Then you wait until your rival gets fed up and try again. And eventually all ladies turned into a beer counting, gossip telling, feast machines when you married them. And their fathers stayed exactly the same towards you. No relation boost, no recognition of being family, nothing. Now at least I can gear my wife up and put her in the field to fight for the family instead of sitting at the keep all the time and her family actually likes me.
If you don't mind, I will quote your post next time I see people praising the marriage mechanic in warband. ?
 
If you don't mind, I will quote your post next time I see people praising the marriage mechanic in warband. ?
Except that it's somewhat wrong of course (you get + relations with family members of the bride) and actually makes a good case for Warband courtship and marriage, listing all the gameplay mechanics that make it superior to Bannerlord's baby making robots that you strip of gear when you marry them (and worse if you are a pro).

You can't just wait to get another go at a lady that is out of your class, because they may actually get married to a rival lord that their family (or them) prefers. You may even get a courtship quest to duel the rival.

Apart from feasts, a wife gives you quests to resolve disputes between lords and can be used as a minister of your own kingdom. If you are not a noble, you become one by marriage.

It's obvious Warband has much more complex and involved mechanics (that doesn't require you to reload for failed dice rolls as a bonus). It's rough around the edges and can be improved, but still far superior to Bannerlord.
 
Except that it's somewhat wrong of course (you get + relations with family members of the bride) and actually makes a good case for Warband courtship and marriage, listing all the gameplay mechanics that make it superior to Bannerlord's baby making robots that you strip of gear when you marry them (and worse if you are a pro).

You can't just wait to get another go at a lady that is out of your class, because they may actually get married to a rival lord that their family (or them) prefers. You may even get a courtship quest to duel the rival.

Apart from feasts, a wife gives you quests to resolve disputes between lords and can be used as a minister of your own kingdom. If you are not a noble, you become one by marriage.

It's obvious Warband has much more complex and involved mechanics (that doesn't require you to reload for failed dice rolls as a bonus). It's rough around the edges and can be improved, but still far superior to Bannerlord.
There was literally no point to having a wife in Warband though, unless you really liked throwing feasts for RP purposes.
 
There was literally no point to having a wife in Warband though, unless you really liked throwing feasts for RP purposes.
No one forces you to get the benefits, they are not required to win the game, but they help. You could also play Warband naked instead of wearing armor for "RP purposes". :smile:
 
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