five bucks
Knight at Arms
Hi all. If we compare Bannerlord to Warband, which was made 10 years ago, we see Taleworlds has definitely improved the visual presentation, the battle size, and added a lot of depth to some game mechanics, which is great.
However, some people call Bannerlord "shallow" and "soulless", because it is missing quite a few fun, immersive gameplay features from Warband, so it's actually gone backwards in those areas. These missing features include:
Claimants/Civil Wars.
In Warband, the player could support an AI "claimant", who claimed they were the true ruler of an existing kingdom, and could recruit you and other lords into a Civil War against that kingdom's ruler. Bannerlord has small rebellions, but only for one town, rather than the whole kingdom. Edit: This has been confirmed by Taleworlds for their long-term development plans.
Feasts.
Feasts had multiple benefits for gameplay. You could host a feast yourself to gain relation with lords, which was good for roleplaying. Feasts brought lords/ladies together in one location, making it much less annoying to try and find them when you wanted to talk; and it was more immersive to see lords do something in their lives other than fighting all the time.
There was one problem with feasts- kings could hold feasts while losing a war. This could be solved by not letting the AI declare a feast while already at war.
Kingdom Court and Minister.
In Bannerlord, if you want to find lords to join your kingdom you must chase them all around the map personally to talk to them, which is unrealistic and very frustrating for many players. In Warband, you had a "Court", where your Minister could be talked to about political matters to receive political quests or send out diplomats to other kingdoms, and where Lords would travel to if they were interested in defecting to you. (This could be balanced in Bannerlord by them only waiting there for a while, and still requiring you to make a deal first).
Reactive Unique Companions.
Warband's companions would react more often to the player's actions based on their personality, and argue with each other and ask you to take sides, which made them feel more like people. Also, unique characters like Jeremus and Rolf had the same personality, stats, appearance and backstory in every playthrough, so people got more attached to them as characters than Bannerlord's randomly generated wanderers. Keeping the random wanderer system, but also adding a handful of non-random companions with more backstory, reaction dialogue and decisions to make, would give players stronger characters to identify with.
Strategic command dialogue.
You could suggest to allied lords that they should travel to and attack/defend a location while you went somewhere else, which allowed you to strategize over AI's stupid moments and made you feel more like a ruler. Edit: A similar feature, telling vassals and clan parties to act defensively or offensively, was added in 1.5.10.
Promoting Companions into Lords.
Warband let you make your companions into Lords and Ladies, which was good for roleplaying and starting a new kingdom from scratch. Edit: This has been added to Bannerlord in 1.6.4!
Deserters.
In Warband they were roaming enemies on the map, providing more opponent variety than just looters or bandits, and being more challenging to fight due to their superior equipment. In Bannerlord they are only present in one quest.
Manhunters.
When there were too many bandits in an area, these bounty hunters would start appearing to chase them down. This helped fix excessive bandit spawns and added to the feeling of an alive world, and they also had a unique troop tree you could hire to your army.
Objective: Escape.
When you failed to sneak into an enemy town, you had to fight your way out wearing only a civilian outfit, which was exciting and made sneaking feel risky, and was much fairer than the current situation where you just instantly get thrown in jail if you fail the sneak check.
Assassins and Belligerent Drunks.
Lords who hate you would hire Bandit Traps and Assassins to attack you when you entered town. Belligerent Drunks would attack you in taverns. This made lord relations more relevant, added more immersion to the game, provided variety to combat, made town scenes more useful, and would also help make civilian outfits a more useful feature in Bannerlord.
Prison Break quests.
One of the coolest quests in the game, breaking a lord out of the center of an enemy stronghold by yourself and escaping before the guards killed you. Edit: Taleworlds has re-added this feature to Bannerlord in 1.5.9!
Political quests.
There were two political quests in Warband. Denounce Lord, where a noble would give you a quest to publicly insult a noble they dislike to reduce their influence, which required you to fight a duel and gained relation with the noble who gave the quest; and Resolve Dispute, where you could improve relations between two arguing nobles using Persuasion skills or giving gifts. These gave the player more roleplaying options, and something interesting to do during the vassal/ruler phase, which Bannerlord lacks.
In-depth Courtship.
In Bannerlord, getting married is just three quick conversations, which lacks immersion. In Warband you could learn about a potential spouse's personality and visit them repeatedly to build up relations and improve your chances of marriage, or even fight a duel to defend their honor, making the process more immersive and fun.
Collect Taxes Quest.
A lord would ask you to collect taxes in their fief. Halfway, the peasants would say they couldn't pay any more. You could choose to force them to pay the rest, which would trigger a battle. Edit: Taleworlds has re-added this feature to Bannerlord in 1.6.1!
Lord Duels.
A fun one-on-one fight with another lord from the same faction, which occurred if you insulted a lord in the Denounce Lord quest, decided to defend a lady's honor from an insult, or were insulted for being female by a sexist lord and you chose to duel them.
Skill Books.
These could be purchased and read over time to gain levels in a specific skill. This would be a good option for players to choose to spend money to get a boost in a particular skill, especially if it's a skill they don't get to use often, like Engineering.
Multi-stage sieges.
When they lost the walls, defenders of a castle/town in Warband would try to defend the streets or the lord's hall, creating an intense close-quarters battle in interesting environments. In Bannerlord, the lord's hall is not used, and troops can retreat through the streets but do not attempt to fight you there. Edit: Taleworlds has re-added keep battles to Bannerlord in 1.6.1! However, troops defending the streets are still not mentioned.
Some of these seem small on their own, but all together, they create a major improvement in variety and immersion. Without (most of) these features, or similar features to replace their benefits, Bannerlord will not be a good sequel to Warband.
Taleworlds has said it is committed to making Bannerlord to the community's expectations. Based on various threads and polls on the forum and elsewhere, a large part of the community wants Bannerlord to have all the good features of Warband. So, can we please get an official statement from Taleworlds on this?
However, some people call Bannerlord "shallow" and "soulless", because it is missing quite a few fun, immersive gameplay features from Warband, so it's actually gone backwards in those areas. These missing features include:
Claimants/Civil Wars.
In Warband, the player could support an AI "claimant", who claimed they were the true ruler of an existing kingdom, and could recruit you and other lords into a Civil War against that kingdom's ruler. Bannerlord has small rebellions, but only for one town, rather than the whole kingdom. Edit: This has been confirmed by Taleworlds for their long-term development plans.
Feasts.
Feasts had multiple benefits for gameplay. You could host a feast yourself to gain relation with lords, which was good for roleplaying. Feasts brought lords/ladies together in one location, making it much less annoying to try and find them when you wanted to talk; and it was more immersive to see lords do something in their lives other than fighting all the time.
There was one problem with feasts- kings could hold feasts while losing a war. This could be solved by not letting the AI declare a feast while already at war.
Kingdom Court and Minister.
In Bannerlord, if you want to find lords to join your kingdom you must chase them all around the map personally to talk to them, which is unrealistic and very frustrating for many players. In Warband, you had a "Court", where your Minister could be talked to about political matters to receive political quests or send out diplomats to other kingdoms, and where Lords would travel to if they were interested in defecting to you. (This could be balanced in Bannerlord by them only waiting there for a while, and still requiring you to make a deal first).
Reactive Unique Companions.
Warband's companions would react more often to the player's actions based on their personality, and argue with each other and ask you to take sides, which made them feel more like people. Also, unique characters like Jeremus and Rolf had the same personality, stats, appearance and backstory in every playthrough, so people got more attached to them as characters than Bannerlord's randomly generated wanderers. Keeping the random wanderer system, but also adding a handful of non-random companions with more backstory, reaction dialogue and decisions to make, would give players stronger characters to identify with.
Strategic command dialogue.
You could suggest to allied lords that they should travel to and attack/defend a location while you went somewhere else, which allowed you to strategize over AI's stupid moments and made you feel more like a ruler. Edit: A similar feature, telling vassals and clan parties to act defensively or offensively, was added in 1.5.10.
Promoting Companions into Lords.
Warband let you make your companions into Lords and Ladies, which was good for roleplaying and starting a new kingdom from scratch. Edit: This has been added to Bannerlord in 1.6.4!
Deserters.
In Warband they were roaming enemies on the map, providing more opponent variety than just looters or bandits, and being more challenging to fight due to their superior equipment. In Bannerlord they are only present in one quest.
Manhunters.
When there were too many bandits in an area, these bounty hunters would start appearing to chase them down. This helped fix excessive bandit spawns and added to the feeling of an alive world, and they also had a unique troop tree you could hire to your army.
Objective: Escape.
When you failed to sneak into an enemy town, you had to fight your way out wearing only a civilian outfit, which was exciting and made sneaking feel risky, and was much fairer than the current situation where you just instantly get thrown in jail if you fail the sneak check.
Assassins and Belligerent Drunks.
Lords who hate you would hire Bandit Traps and Assassins to attack you when you entered town. Belligerent Drunks would attack you in taverns. This made lord relations more relevant, added more immersion to the game, provided variety to combat, made town scenes more useful, and would also help make civilian outfits a more useful feature in Bannerlord.
Prison Break quests.
One of the coolest quests in the game, breaking a lord out of the center of an enemy stronghold by yourself and escaping before the guards killed you. Edit: Taleworlds has re-added this feature to Bannerlord in 1.5.9!
Political quests.
There were two political quests in Warband. Denounce Lord, where a noble would give you a quest to publicly insult a noble they dislike to reduce their influence, which required you to fight a duel and gained relation with the noble who gave the quest; and Resolve Dispute, where you could improve relations between two arguing nobles using Persuasion skills or giving gifts. These gave the player more roleplaying options, and something interesting to do during the vassal/ruler phase, which Bannerlord lacks.
In-depth Courtship.
In Bannerlord, getting married is just three quick conversations, which lacks immersion. In Warband you could learn about a potential spouse's personality and visit them repeatedly to build up relations and improve your chances of marriage, or even fight a duel to defend their honor, making the process more immersive and fun.
Collect Taxes Quest.
A lord would ask you to collect taxes in their fief. Halfway, the peasants would say they couldn't pay any more. You could choose to force them to pay the rest, which would trigger a battle. Edit: Taleworlds has re-added this feature to Bannerlord in 1.6.1!
Lord Duels.
A fun one-on-one fight with another lord from the same faction, which occurred if you insulted a lord in the Denounce Lord quest, decided to defend a lady's honor from an insult, or were insulted for being female by a sexist lord and you chose to duel them.
Skill Books.
These could be purchased and read over time to gain levels in a specific skill. This would be a good option for players to choose to spend money to get a boost in a particular skill, especially if it's a skill they don't get to use often, like Engineering.
Multi-stage sieges.
When they lost the walls, defenders of a castle/town in Warband would try to defend the streets or the lord's hall, creating an intense close-quarters battle in interesting environments. In Bannerlord, the lord's hall is not used, and troops can retreat through the streets but do not attempt to fight you there. Edit: Taleworlds has re-added keep battles to Bannerlord in 1.6.1! However, troops defending the streets are still not mentioned.
Some of these seem small on their own, but all together, they create a major improvement in variety and immersion. Without (most of) these features, or similar features to replace their benefits, Bannerlord will not be a good sequel to Warband.
Taleworlds has said it is committed to making Bannerlord to the community's expectations. Based on various threads and polls on the forum and elsewhere, a large part of the community wants Bannerlord to have all the good features of Warband. So, can we please get an official statement from Taleworlds on this?
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