SP - General Bannerlord's Gameplay Has Gone Backwards In Multiple Areas From Warband

[SonOfSaruman]

Well, if we look at other games like the elder scrolls series, you also see that they had removed a lot or "changed" some methods, so I can understand him in this regard. (I will never understand why skyrim was such a hype)

This matter is incomparable and different in "some ways". And giving an example of a company that doing the same thing is not suppose to be mean that TW doing the right thing.
idk about skyrim but if a new feature makes the game better, so be it. But if not, then simply use the old one.

Other than that, the stuff we talk about in this topic is clearly showing that TW not even improved but removed some good mechanics and put nothing in the spot ( Such examples stands in topic description). There is good new features/mechanics releated to BL but more than half of them either broken or not working well.

 

[roffels11]

I started out insulting you because your behavior is abrasive and insulting.

This is not exactly mature or rational. Reacting this way because of a videogame is far from neurotypical.

invested in BL at a AAA-game price

And you got AAA graphics and AAA animations. If around 50 USD hurt you so much, you should not have bought an early access game.

 

[Departed]

Sword Sisters

not agree with this ...

 

[bonerstorm]

This is not exactly mature or rational. Reacting this way because of a videogame is far from neurotypical.

And you got AAA graphics and AAA animations. If around 50 USD hurt you so much, you should not have bought an early access game.

If videogames aren't a big deal, then why did you spend hundreds of hours over the past few weeks playing one and podcasting about it and then follow it up by flaming the game's forums? Instead of, like, having a job or a social life or a Netflix binge or even another video game?

Yeah you don't get to pretend like you're a troll who's pwning us, because that's way too much effort for a neurotypical troll. You're an autist. This would be about as cunning and elaborate a troll op as s***ing yourself in public.

 

[Mad Vader]

It's very annoying to have to debate an obviously dishonest and arrogant person who thinks that he has figured it all out and then tries to preach to people who know much more. Probably an oldtimer who imagines he talks to kids.

 

[Calabanar]

Just dropping in to say hi

And also that I completely agree with everything Five Bucks said whilst disagreeing completely with roffels11’s take on the topic at hand.

 

[WhyAmIHere]

It's very annoying to have to debate an obviously dishonest and arrogant person who thinks that he has figured it all out and then tries to preach to people who know much more. Probably an oldtimer who imagines he talks to kids.

The disengagement should have happened a long time ago but I guess some of us are stubborn.

 

[SOku]

I think this discussion should stay rather on a mature level without cursing each other, it's somewhat better to elaborate different thoughts, even though I understand some users are triggered by what it has been written previously.
Attacking the users on their experience on this franchise rather than concentrating on their arguments and what they have to say is straight a fallacy.
I understand at this point some of you guys will paint me as a wannabe moderator or social justice warrior, that's just plain wrong, I just want to debate on a healthy manner, regardless on how the heck do you all play this game. Your experience will lie on the arguments you will produce anyway.
We shouldn't implicitely discard new players to participate on discussions, that's not healthy.

I am with Bonestorm and Fivebucks on this one, they nailed everything. Well said.

On that note, I enjoy the different fell of Bannerlord but it would just make the game better to have some of the old features back and others which would simply spice things up so it feels more "living" than as Bonestorm put it: a spreadsheet.

So I assume you disagree with me on Feasts ? Given I just posted a message about this feature.

I don't like the phrase "game X has a lack of choice", because videogames themselves are a restricted medium, thus they are a restritive medium by default! The only "medium" offering many choices is the real life.)

Strictly speaking, without sounding too much pedant, video games offer choices, just like video games has AI.
Sure thing you will get corrected by any Machine Learning Engineer that AI in some video games is so poor that's basically just if/else statements on a packed algorithm. He may be right, but in the video games context, that's still an AI.
Same things for choices in the game, if the game design allow you to do so ( because it's definitely a harder task than a "corridor" type of a game ) well made games can both create significant choices ( e.g a certain ending ) and create an illusion of choices.
What do I mean by that is if backed in a certain manner the player can choose a lot of things inside the virtual world the devs are delivering, the trick here is to bake the world in a way that the player doesn't feel the boundaries of this world too much or too easily.
Needless to say that Bannerlord is rather shallow on this segment.

And no, it can sound optimistic and a great subject of philosophy so I'll try to trim this a bit, if I want to be an astronaut tomorrow I can't. It sucks but I can't. Life doesn't give me choices to be born in South America, I'm just born where my parents where at that time, that's it. I do not choose my destiny like an algorithm in a video-game, the concept of illusion of choices can be also applied in real life, see the American Dream.
Algorithms on paper can create an infinite amount of choices, real life can not. If you would say Pen&Paper RPGs yeah I'm okay with that.

between waiting at w lords fief for him to show up, because he will sooner or later return there, and waiting at a feast for a lord to show up, which he might not, is pretty much the same "fun" experience

No, big no, big no no. But I'm paraphrasing myself at this point.

Assuming to know what I think and understand is a bit bold, I think.

That's the very reason as to why I choosed to use the verb assume, seem and think to leave the doors opens.
Now I think you're overthinking a little bit too much.

(I'm saying it reads weird and pretentious, not that you intended to be pretentious.)
Thanks for this lesson in communication! (I'm not kidding you) I will be more polite in future arguments to provide even stronger, yet less pretentious, counters.

I'm definitely aware of that, it might be because I have issues findings some words or expressions, figure of speech you name it in English.
I didn't want you to give a lesson tho, I'm not an instructor and you shouldn't listen to me in this context, I'm pointing some flaws I've seen on your message, that's it. Tomorrow is another day.

In all these games the player is the trigger for every dialogue, either by standing at a certain point or actively pressing the "interaction button". They all are a chase for NPCs to then "tick a bland array dialogues".

But this isn't a zero-sum game, just because the others games did it at a certain point doesn't neglect the fact that Bannerlord did this especially poorly. Organic-wise, BL is shallow, whereas on some others games you can pretty much follow NPCs during their daily routine ( Oblivion, 2006 tho ) to talk to them.

Bannerlord is quite unique in this context, it got a worldmap à la Total-War, small scenes / instances like Oblivion or any non fully open-world 3D game, yet whereas you lean in the former ( Total War ) or the latter ( scenes / instances ) everything feels dead.
As an example from a person not working in this industry at all, the small addition to simulate a real caravan entrance in a city while you're visiting it ( bonus points if it's a real caravan taken from the world map of course, it could strenghten the immersion ), seeing the merchant sellings/buying goods and then returning to the gate to dissapear from the scene and/or the player's viewport could add a tremendous amount of life inside the cities.
That's not rocket science for Christ sake, indies have been doing this for a solid decade actually.


I agree with you thought that some games just mask mechanisms better than others, let me slice this argument a little bit, to mask a mechanism the premise is to have a mechanism that works in the first place. Bannerlord has none of that unfortunately.

The disengagement should have happened a long time ago but I guess some of us are stubborn.

If you have nothing to say, your best bet is to let this subject sink and let the " some of us stubborn" spend their week-end the way they want.

 

[five bucks]

That is a valid observation, but no "rule" that applies to every sequel.

If it isn't a rule, it should be. Sequels absolutely should always aim to be an all-around improvement upon the game that came before, bringing back the things people liked from the past game, and adding new things that people liked.
As a consumer, it is not in your interest to support the games industry selling us sidegrades instead of upgrades.

Now, what is true for Warband and Bannerlord? The visual difference is not as big as between Daggerfall and Morrowind, but they use different engines, different meshes, different physics and are coded in different languages. This makes implementing the same features difficult.

James has solidly pointed out the flawed reasoning on this

Then I have a question: What is so bad about different features in different games belonging to the same franchise

Nothing, but that's not the topic at hand. The topic at hand is when gameplay features get removed and the "different features" do not replicate what people liked about the original features.

e.g. fusion of parties into one armies instead of small warbands following onemarshals,

For starters, nobody is asking for marshals back, that isn't in the OP at all

random companions who live and die instead of immortal ones,

Nobody is asking for immortal companions, we just want companions with handcrafted personalities added alongside the existing system as has already been said. Just like how rulers can die and be replaced in this game, but their personalities are still handcrafted.

This particular thing isn't even a hill I need to die on, though. If they give the existing random wanderers a bit more personality and make them more interactive and have more good dialogue like Warband companions did, I'll be happy enough.

several small independent clans with x number of parties attacking looters instead of 4 warbands of 10-15 manhunters for the entire map attacking looters in vanilla Warband (I'm not kidding, it is 4 warbands each in one part of the map that respawn after a few in-game days if killed) etc.?

Clearly the current system doesn't work in Bannerlord because bandit proliferation can get absolutely ridiculous in certain parts of the map.

 

[WhyAmIHere]

This particular thing isn't even a hill I need to die on, though. If they give the existing random wanderers a bit more personality and make them more interactive and have more good dialogue like Warband companions did, I'll be happy enough.

I'll die on the hill for you. The current companion system is dog**** and should be ripped out and replaced wholesale with the Warband one, "immortality" be damned.

 

[Mad Vader]

I'll die on the hill for you. The current companion system is dog**** and should be ripped out and replaced wholesale with the Warband one, "immortality" be damned.

There's a good reason for immortality. When you invest much time in some game aspect like leveling a companion, it's stupid if he one day dies randomly and all that investment goes down the drain. Some people like this (the roguelike fans and masochists), but the majority don't.
Taleworlds "solved" this problem by making companions expendable and replaceable. You are expected to care less about NPCs and don't try to imagine them as people, but robots with utility. Obviously someone at Taleworlds hates RPGs or loves procedural generation because it's a nice coding challenge. This is what sometimes happens when you let programmers design a game.

 

[SOku]

James has solidly pointed out the flawed reasoning on this

Well I won't say his message was particular solid because an engine and the creation of a game is a little bit more than hus simple idea of a codebase I'm affraid. I mean he probably wants to simplify things and that's fair.

What he is right however is the fact that a programming language for most uses cases doesn't matter, heck I can make a RPG tomorrow with PHP HTML CSS and Javascript and ship it to Steam.
And if you don't believe me you would be surprised to see that many games on steam already use web technologies, definitely not the prime choice in the industry but that's in the realm of a possibility.

To me, because their engine and their codebase are implemented in a certain way it makes tedious to ask such a trivial task or feature which was, decade ago something seemingly made like a breeze.
I don't think that's the matter of using x language over y but more like their actual pipelines, omitting here the talents of the said devs of course.
Sometimes a smaller team designing a game for scratch is 100x more efficient that a bigger team seemingly on a development hell.

I'm on a development hell myself at work, I'm really considering to cancel anything and redo it on a blank paper since it's draining my energy so much, I can so much relate to this.
In the mean time I advanced so much in my current project that the sole idea to undo this thing seems frightening to me. Enough said about me tho.

That's why I was on the team " let's see how this goes after their so called code refactor happens " but my patience like many others here have some limits of course.
( no doubt the DX - developer experience should be enhanced )
Not only we can't see it from a player perspective, those refactoring but also the updates are getting harsher and harsher as the times goes on not the idea I was thinking about when someone on a software development tells me they refactor their codebase.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

To me, because their engine and their codebase are implemented in a certain way it makes tedious to ask such a trivial task or feature which was, decade ago something seemingly made like a breeze.

This is true if you're a modder, but Taleworlds has access to all the code they create, hence why I say it's "just a codebase", because from their perspective it is. I think someone even found warband engine code in bannerlord somewhere, although I can't remember who posted that or where since it was a while ago.

As is true with almost any project, if they won't or can't do something it's most likely because of the management or organisational structure, not the engine or code or whatever other tools they're using to make it. Anything they haven't implemented is due to the lead developers not wanting to add it for whatever reason (probably inter-office drama more than anything), or just mismanagement.

 

[roffels11]

If videogames aren't a big deal, then why did you spend hundreds of hours

Because they are fun and during the current pandemic there is not much else to do in the phase of lockdown my region is in. But fun is not the same as a big deal.

flaming the game's forums

I tried to get more information on Bannerlord's developement here, but I found mostly nostalgia and very enraged users, so I pointed out the positive things I found while trying out Bannerlord and counter some exagerated statements. Obviously this resulted in my opinions being a trigger for the irrational and offensive members of this community.

obody is asking for immortal companions, we just want companions with handcrafted personalities added alongside the existing system as has already been said. Just like how rulers can die and be replaced in this game, but their personalities are still handcrafted.

But that is an "impossible" task, at least it takes a immensive amount of work for a detail. A companion is either handcrafted and (at least to certain point) immortal or he is able to live and die autonomously and replaced by another companion after his death. There are games that attempted a mixture of these ideas, e.g. The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, with handcrafted yet autonomously acting NPCs, but once they die it's over and the world becomes just emptier death after death as nothing new is "born". "Birth" in videogames is either achieved by creation menus or randomized processes... Maybe I misunderstood the term "handcrafted". What do you mean by this exactly?

How I understood the term "handcrafted": In previous games the companions were designed by someone, now a system of presets was designed by someone as the player encounters the similar visual archetypes for "the shieldmaiden" or "the butcher" more companions and still familiar faces at the same time. In native Warband, Viking Conquest and native With Fire and Sword the companions were "handcrafted" because someone wrote specific texts they sad in situation X (most of the time when they "disliked" something), but the same is true for Bannerlord 1.5.9 and 1.5.10 as the companions in your party react to your deeds with their specific text (a rougish companion uses other phrases than a merciful one, e.g.) triggered by situation X (most of the time whenever they "disliked" something, like in Warband or WFaS). With this definition I don't really get the downside of the new companion system, which is still worked on as the patches 1.5.9 and 1.5.10 show compared to 1.5.7 and 1.5.8 in which companions did not react, if I remember rightly.

If it isn't a rule, it should be. Sequels absolutely should always aim to be an all-around improvement upon the game that came before, bringing back the things people liked from the past game, and adding new things that people liked.
As a consumer, it is not in your interest to support the games industry selling us sidegrades instead of upgrades.

An interesting claim, but - like all we have discussed in this thread so far - nothing but our opinion's clashing. This could be a productive guideline for future games, but be aware that the wish for an "all-around improvement" can backfire pretty hard on the consumer by creating "copy-paste" games that also carry on the worst parts of the previous games (I'm looking and the Fall Out and the Elder Scrolls series, for example). The more I think about it the more subjective this all seems to me the happier I am that TaleWorlds does not follow this principle

seeing the merchant sellings/buying goods and then returning to the gate to dissapear from the scene and/or the player's viewport could add a tremendous amount of life inside the cities.

That is a good idea. I like it. A new, fresh take on the caravans present in all Mount & Blade games!

Life doesn't give me choices to be born in South America, I'm just born where my parents where at that time, that's it. I do not choose my destiny like an algorithm in a video-game, the concept of illusion of choices can be also applied in real life, see the American Dream.

Can't argue with that and still I remain convinced that videogames, from a players point of view, are a restrictive medium. This does not deny the fact they provide experiences or choices that are not available in real-life.

Attacking the users on their experience on this franchise rather than concentrating on their arguments and what they have to say is straight a fallacy.

Thanks for your statement. That's kind of you . I don't really get why playing a game for 100 hours ten years ago counts more than playing the same game for 100 hours since 2019, but it is an "argument" I read a lot here.

We shouldn't implicitely discard new players to participate on discussions, that's not healthy.

Well, it was not exactly a "warm welcome" and this "community" is pretty good and doing exactly the said unhealthy thing (I'm not talking about you, but the general way discussions work here). I don't think even want to consider myself part of the Mount & Blade community anymore. I put enough energy in this and noticed that in this forum there is not the information about the developement I was looking for, so the community can continue insulting members that have a different point of view than they have. So I will recommand my friends to try out Warband, WFaS and Bannerlord, but stay away from the forum.

 

[Mad Vader]

Well, it was not exactly a "warm welcome" and this "community" is pretty good and doing exactly the said unhealthy thing (I'm not talking about you, but the general way discussions work here). I don't think even want to consider myself part of the Mount & Blade community anymore. I put enough energy in this and noticed that in this forum there is not the information about the developement I was looking for, so the community can continue insulting members that have a different point of view than they have. So I will recommand my friends to try out Warband, WFaS and Bannerlord, but stay away from the forum.

There's enough information about the development - if you were interested in that, you could have asked. But you chose to lecture people why they are wrong to complain, without bothering to read threads that explain what led to this. It seems that you saw a few rant threads and decided everyone here is a shouting fool and you know better. This attitude makes people dislike you a lot.

 

[Vekar]

To SOku:

Feasts need redoing, in the old Warband model? Meh, it is redundant now. However, with some modifications it could be made a very interesting and useful part of Bannerlord. First of all, tie in tournaments again, only instead of the current bland, pathetic tournaments we are trapped with? Make it so when a kingdom holds an OFFICIAL tournament you get HUGE numbers showing up to partake, instead of the sad, pathetic and castrated 4v4v4v4 do a whopping 20v20 or 40v40 and REALLY make it a national event! Bring back the ability of the champion to visit the keep and associate with the lords for reputation gain or LOSS (evil lords dont like the fact you whupped them) and you are well on your way of making it very, very interesting. Also make it so that holding a feast boosts reputation with lords (for the king) and helps keep them "docile" while also adding perhaps the chance that like a Canadian hockey match... Things might spill into the streets if the crowds favorite goes down early or loses. There is a lot that can be done with feasts to greatly improve upon the old Warband model and frankly it should be done, but just not as a "copy-paste" from Warband. The current system can handle grander things than the old engine so they should go for it.

Feasts right now though would remain useless, they need re-addressed, modified and if done so properly they could become a truly wild, extravagant, joyous and FUN affair to be a part of that once more sends the players scurrying wildly across the continent when they hear X is holding a feast at Y.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

An interesting claim, but - like all we have discussed in this thread so far - nothing but our opinion's clashing. This could be a productive guideline for future games, but be aware that the wish for an "all-around improvement" can backfire pretty hard on the consumer by creating "copy-paste" games that also carry on the worst parts of the previous games (I'm looking and the Fall Out and the Elder Scrolls series, for example). The more I think about it the more subjective this all seems to me the happier I am that TaleWorlds does not follow this principle

Bethesda is probably the single most incompetent tech company of its size. Their hiring requirements are the lowest in the industry, and they were the pioneers of hiring 1000 interns in waves rather than 100 veterans permanently. They are not a good example of what's possible and what isn't.

 

[five bucks]

Maybe I misunderstood the term "handcrafted". What do you mean by this exactly?

"Handcrafted" means "Not randomly generated." As it says in the OP, what is being asked for is what was present in Warband.

Warband had a group of 16 companions who each had the same (non-randomly generated) name, appearance, backstory, likes and dislikes, and stats in every playthrough. In other words, handcrafted.

The fact they were not obviously randomly generated from a list of attributes, and stayed the same in every playthrough, meant players got attached to them, and also communicated about them outside the game since people had a shared experience. In Bannerlord, nobody cares about the randomly generated wanderers, which is a contributing factor to the game often being called soulless.

Ideally, I would like a handful of not-randomly-generated companions to be added into Bannerlord's world, with the same name, appearance, backstory, traits, and stats in every playthrough, and more dialogue given to them. These would be added to the existing pool of randomly generated wanderers, and when they die, be replaced by other randomly generated wanderers.

If they can't do this then I'd settle for the existing wanderers at least getting more dialogue and backstory, their traits having more impact on relations once certain actions are taken, and them occasionally asking you to make a decision or telling you a bit about themselves/Calradia while you are travelling (appearing as one of the side-screen popups).

Then wanderers won't be such a step backwards from Warband's well-liked and (in Jeremus' and Rolf's case) much-memed companions, who actually felt like believable characters and companions.

How I understood the term "handcrafted": In previous games the companions were designed by someone, now a system of presets was designed by someone as the player encounters the similar visual archetypes for "the shieldmaiden" or "the butcher" more companions and still familiar faces at the same time.

An archetype and a character are different things for the purposes of immersion though. The fact an archetype can have an interchangeable name makes it very obvious to the player that they're just a randomly generated robot, rather than a character you can suspend disbelief for.

In native Warband, Viking Conquest and native With Fire and Sword the companions were "handcrafted" because someone wrote specific texts they sad in situation X (most of the time when they "disliked" something)

Refer to the definition of handcrafted given above.

the same is true for Bannerlord 1.5.9 and 1.5.10 as the companions in your party react to your deeds with their specific text (a rougish companion uses other phrases than a merciful one, e.g.) triggered by situation X (most of the time whenever they "disliked" something, like in Warband or WFaS).

On the "handcrafted" semantic side of the argument, just because there is a system in place for NPCs with a randomly assigned set of traits to react the same way to certain events, doesn't mean their traits aren't randomly assigned to each NPC- therefore the NPCs are generated, not handcrafted.
And regarding the traits - reactions/dialogue system, there are only a few traits that cause reactions or interactions. Most still do not, and there is definitely not the variety of triggers that there was for Warband's companions.

The wish for an "all-around improvement" can backfire pretty hard on the consumer by creating "copy-paste" games that also carry on the worst parts of the previous games (I'm looking and the Fall Out and the Elder Scrolls series, for example).

Explain: How is the customer asking for an all-around improvement meant to cause the developer to provide a game which is not an all-around improvement? That's an issue with the developer, not the consumer.
In your example, it's an issue with Bethesda, who are notoriously lazy and lacking quality control in all aspects (look at Fallout 76 to see that Bethesda still makes crap even when they try something entirely new).

 

[WhyAmIHere]

The inherent problem with randomly generated companions is that soon enough you figure out the archetypes and then the companions become the archetypes instead of the character. Jeremus was always the character Jeremus. Nobody else was Jeremus. There was no "Jeremus archetype" because there was only one Jeremus.

On the other hand, Bob the ex-thief-gone-legit is merely "the ex-thief-gone-legit" because in your next playthrough, Bob is Jacob instead of Bob. Bob and Jacob blend together and both become merely the archetype because they're the exact same person, just reskinned. This happens unless you add in enough archetypes to make it so that we never see the same one twice. But by the time you've made the probably hundreds or thousands of archetype necessary for that, you cold have easily made a few dozen handcrafted companions.

You might know the Jeremus personality like you know the the ex-thief-gone-legit, but the Jeremus personality is attached to a legitimate character with some staying power, and not swapped around onto a new person every time you reset the world.

I remain fully willing and able to die on the hill of "gib handcrafted companions" as I have been since launch.

 

[Mad Vader]

Fully agreed and that hill is unassailable. The problem with procedural generation is always that there are limited variants and players will see through it sooner or later. I'm a big fan of it, but handcrafted stuff is simply superior to factory-made stuff and the players know the difference.
And there's also the shared experience of players with the same NPCs, which leads to memes and fan videos and art.
When last we talked about this subject (and involved Duh who just said "moar templates"), we came to a possibly perfect solution - a hybrid system with both handcrafted and generated companions, one set to take seriously in your roleplay, and the other set as minor red shirt characters.