Captain Mode needs your help!

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Captain mode is not meant to be a competitive mode. There is nothing competitive about bots killing bots. It certainly is a nice gamemode for casual play but attempting to make this more competitive is delusional..

(P.S. doesn't mean you can't post feedback to generally improve massive bugs ofc)
 
Captain mode is not meant to be a competitive mode. There is nothing competitive about bots killing bots. It certainly is a nice gamemode for casual play but attempting to make this more competitive is delusional..

(P.S. doesn't mean you can't post feedback to generally improve massive bugs ofc)
Anything can be competitive, including painting, washing windows, or stapling stacks of paper together as long as there are competitions that exist for those things and people who are willing to compete in them, which captain has both of despite whatever your personal opinion may be.

At any rate, making the mode more competitive is not the focus of this post, the goal is to improve the overall quality and enjoyability of the mode via gathering player feedback.
 
The fact is, multiplayer is dead. Literally, there are no more people playing aside from small groups of friends, but even certain 1999 titles can make that claim. Whether people will come back after a full release or not is just speculation. On top of that, competitive players will almost inevitably look for different changes they see as improvements, whereas a more casual player would probably see as useless hassle. That would do nothing but split the TINY community even more.
Mind you, I love captain's mode. Played it constantly on Napoleonic Wars, still do. They should add maps, improve AI (which would help discouraging rambos) and open the world to the marvels of custom servers. That would make it stable when it comes to playerbase, the rest is pretty much useless if there are just twenty people playing.
 
Anything can be competitive, including painting, washing windows, or stapling stacks of paper together as long as there are competitions that exist for those things and people who are willing to compete in them, which captain has both of despite whatever your personal opinion may be.

At any rate, making the mode more competitive is not the focus of this post, the goal is to improve the overall quality and enjoyability of the mode via gathering player feedback.
Well yes of course anything can be competitive. But some sports/activities/gamemodes are simply more appealing to the larger mass due to their nature. Anyways its totally fine you're trying to make the gamemode better and more enjoyable, but it shouldn't be seen as a gamemode as competitive as battle or skirmish for example.
 
Captain mode is not meant to be a competitive mode. There is nothing competitive about bots killing bots. It certainly is a nice gamemode for casual play but attempting to make this more competitive is delusional..

(P.S. doesn't mean you can't post feedback to generally improve massive bugs ofc)
Total War games have a competitive community too though. And it's hard to argue it's any less "bots killing bots" than Captain mode. Captain mode's purpose is to have people use tactics to win games compared to having small tavern brawls where you compare who can abuse the atrocious horse bumping best.
 
They should add maps, improve AI (which would help discouraging rambos) and open the world to the marvels of custom servers. That would make it stable when it comes to playerbase, the rest is pretty much useless if there are just twenty people playing.
I support in this part
 
Captain mode is not meant to be a competitive mode. There is nothing competitive about bots killing bots. It certainly is a nice gamemode for casual play but attempting to make this more competitive is delusional..

(P.S. doesn't mean you can't post feedback to generally improve massive bugs ofc)
Is captain as competitive as skirmish? No. Can captain still be a competitive game mode? Yes, as long as TW does not remove rambo play. Captain currently functions as extra lives skirmish mode. In tournament/event "competitive" play there could be an adoption of rules that make skirmish tournaments like BEAST function well by implementing a class limit on cavalry and creating an equitable distribution of matches when teams from different regions go head to head. The last season of Captain League featured Bo5s and Bo7s in the playoffs and needs to shift toward Bo4s with extended overtime in the event of a 2-2 where both sides play an additional game in their home ping region and the tie is broken by rounds won with play continuing until there is a clear winner. Ling is aware of these changes and their potential impact to create a better version of the game mode that again, will not be as competitive as skirmish given the existence of the braindead AI but will still likely function as skirmish with additional lives.
 
Hello everyone,

For those of you who don't know me, I am Ling, co-founder of Captains League and a dedicated member of the Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord community.

Like many of you, I have spent countless hours enjoying this game over the last year both online and offline and I count myself lucky that I have been able to meet and interact with so many avid fans of the series and I have made some wonderful friends along the way.

When I logged into Multiplayer for the first time back at the start of early access I decided to play around a little bit with TDM, Siege, and Skirmish but none of them were really what I was looking for in my MP experience. That was until I discovered Captain Mode. An action packed, strategic 6v6 battle where every captain controlled his own AI troop formation and worked together with their teammates to form a cohesive army to defeat the other team. I fell in love with the mode immediately, and together with my best friend Beefless, over the next few months decided to build a competitive tournament series revolving around it. As we played more games and met more and more people who also shared our love for the game mode, what started out as a discord of a handful of friends who would queue for captain mode together quickly grew into the community of over 800 players that we have today.

During the early months of EA, captain mode was at its peak in terms of gameplay. While we always had some minor complaints about faction balance (Battania's dreadful winrate) or the size of the maps, (I'm looking at you Streets of Syllianon) overall the mode was incredibly enjoyable and I would personally play upwards of 10 to 20 matches every single day, very quickly achieving the once-coveted 750 wins badge. Things were going great with the community as well, we were in the middle of Captains League Season 1 and everyone was having fun going head to head in the competition. This was until Patch 1.5.0 was released during the Gamescom 2020 event, which just so happened to be during the Season 1 League Finals. Patch 1.5.0 was a complete gamechanger, it brought about many different combat changes that were mostly geared towards balancing the other PVP game modes (TDM, Siege, Skirmish) and included huge penalties to ranged weapon accuracy and the over-implementation of crush-through mechanics. I won't sugar coat it, Season 1 League finals were downright sabotaged as a result of these changes and many members of the community were livid, myself included. Things quickly spiraled out of control for Captain Mode and the Metagame devolved from being very enjoyable to becoming a complete and absolute mess where teams would just spam 6 shock troops vs 6 shock troops. Every. Single. Game. This, despite our best efforts and vocal protests to the developers, would remain the meta for the next 6 months. Crush through eventually (finally) received a huge nerf which would help to mitigate things somewhat, but archers and skirmisher troops still felt lasting negative effects from the 1.5.0 update and as a result disappeared almost entirely from competitive play due to just how terrible their performance was/is.

Fast forward to Season 2, gone are the days of the 6 v 6 shock troop spam, and now the meta revolved around players Ramboing (Going off alone, separated from their ai troops who sat in safety while the captain would ride around on a horse and kill as many of the enemy teams ai troops as possible before dying and then using his parked ai as extra lives to repeat this process.) This low risk - high reward strategy now dominates the competitive scene and has trickled down into some casual games as well where you will see players parking their armies on the side of a hill to go off alone.

This is not what Captain Mode should look like. This is not the mode that I fell in love with. We have gone backwards in so many ways it's hard to count, but if you take a look at the history of updates for MP the picture starts to become clear. I'm not writing this post to criticize the developers or to bring them down, they receive enough of that toxicity on a daily basis in this forum and I don't find it very respectful or productive. In fact there have also been some great changes to the mode that shouldn't be overlooked as they are actually in the spirit of improving the game mode, including the developers adding more map variety as well as making Battania a more balanced and competitive faction. My mantra has always been to be constructive and to try and help the development team figure out the best way to move forward so that everyone can enjoy a better game. This is why I need your help. Captain Mode needs your help.

In the past, the players of Captains League came together to provide their feedback at the request of @AVRC and came up with a collective list of the Top 10 most requested fixes and features, which included some outstanding suggestions and a heartfelt desire to improve the game mode for all players and not just the competitive community.
Top Ten Most Wanted Features For Captain Mode
(As requested by the Captain League community)

1. Add More new large maps, similar to Ruins of Jawali in size and larger. (They could be as simple as utilizing pre-existing Campaign maps, and then adding 3 Morale flags and then porting them into multiplayer) Players are absolutely HUNGRY for captain mode map variety and will gladly take as many maps as you can give us. Seriously, like 3-4 more maps atleast. This was by far the most requested feature on the list.
2. Ai ranged units should be given a focus fire / selective fire command and be able lock on to a targeted location or enemy unit, preventing the ai from turning around trying to shoot any units that are behind them or are too close to them when you need them to focus on a specific location. This will allow archers to face in only 1 direction and not get distracted when firing.
3. Separate the updates and balance patches between Skirmish and Captain mode so that an update designed to improve or balance one mode, does not negatively impact the other mode in any way as the balances for each mode would be independent of eachother. 1.5 is a huge example of an update designed specifically for skirmish that ruined the balance of captain mode.
4. Allow captains to control which weapons their ai troops wield at any given time, and also allow the player to tell our troops to cycle through their weapons functionality. For example if I have a Battanian oathsworn unit with the following setup: Bastard Sword , Shield, and Spear. We should be able to give them a command to "Swap weapons" or "Switch to spears!" or "Swords out!" and they will pull out the weapon that we tell them to and not switch unless the player commands them to. Additionally with the bastard sword and other multi-use weapons we should be able to tell them "Use 2handed!" or "Use 1handed!". Currently if a cavalry unit gets too close to your melee units, your ai will decide all on its own to pull out a thrust weapon to try and combat the horses, which causes them to not use their stronger mainhand weapons during a melee fight against other melee units putting them at a severe disadvantage. This is a mechanic that simply needs to be removed to give more control to us players.
5. Mirror-match / Same-faction battles should have more obvious color difference so as to distinguish each team from the other, for example aserai vs aserai is impossible to tell which units belong to which team during a closed in melee fight due to both faction colors being brown.
6. More class variety and perk options that are useful for captain mode and large-scale unit engagements. This includes making the current classes more viable to play in the mode, as currently skirmisher units, light cavalry, and archers rarely if ever get picked over 2-handed shock troops due to how effective shock troops are in comparison. With the latest 1.5 patch this problem was made even worse than it was before. Please make more classes viable to play.
7. Faction balance needs to be as close to 50% for all factions as possible, not exactly 50% but close enough to where we don't encounter a faction that is nearly impossible to win with such as Battania and its 21% round winrate, and even more abysmal match winrate. If you need help testing captain balance, I can think of no better players to ask to help test than the players of Captain's League.
8.Re-position the flags and spawns on the current maps so that more area and space can be used for fighting and is viable to play in during matches. Currently the flags are too close together and too close to the center of the map, leaving alot of unused terrain and open space near the outer reaches of the map that never get used.
9. Add new formations and replace any non-functioning formations such as the "Spread out" command that does nothing in multiplayer. Ideas for formations: Testudo, Phalanx, or the Zulu "horns" formation, and definitely there needs to be a "Spear brace" formation for our troops.
10. Ranged weapons and arrows should deal more damage to shields and or make them too heavy to wield after having 20-30+ arrows or 3-4 javelins stuck in them.

Since it has been nearly an entire year since the community made that list, I thought it would be the perfect time to make an updated version, but this time I would like to extend the invitation not only to members of the competitive community but to players of all levels and creeds.
The MP development team has a "long list" of improvements of their own for captain mode and I'm very eager to see it as I have no doubt they too want the best for the mode, but I also want to know what you, the players, want to see improved about captain mode.

If you are interested in giving feedback about the current state of captain mode and how you feel that it could be improved, please consider participating in this survey.
If you don't feel comfortable following the link and filling out the survey, you can simply leave a comment on this thread with your top 10 requests for captain mode.

Thank you all for taking the time to read this, I care deeply for this game and this community and I hope that going forward we can all enjoy captain mode to its fullest.

-Ling
@Ling* and you turn out to be a very cool guy who selflessly cares about the TW gaming community. This deserves respect, especially given the current bleak state of this community (although personally I don't see much of a motive for such discouragement)). Forgive me if, with my harshness in some of my answers, I could offend you (but I don’t refuse the essence of my opinion, buddy).
PS: all the same, it becomes a little sad that almost all "Top Ten Most Wanted Features For Captain Mode" remain relevant even after such a long time.
 
I bought this game to play mainly Captains Mode.
Thanks to our clan we got such a great bunch of people who plaed together across the world, with many subject to talk about etc...

After 2 years of promises nothing is done and many left the boat.
Multiplayer is dead now.
A big thank you for those who play Single yet have to comment every MP thread, to those trolling and especially for great TW devs who did nothing to counter this trend, who listened to wrong groups, while being still in EA with the game after so many years.
So, a big good bye until something change.
 
I would really like actual commander mode to be added too (like the one from Napoleonic expansion for Warband). 500 vs 500, 5-15 commanders on both sides, sizes of groups adjusted to that, no E sports capture the point garbage, just some of the bigger normal maps. And obviously private servers and modding enabled for MP.
 
The mode is full of ramboing ****s, just like you said. Would be easy to fix (negate damage dealt to enemy troops if none of your bots is near, easily demonstrated in NW Commander Battle), but TW is too incompetent to do jack**** about anything, so whatever.

 
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The mode is full of ramboing ****s, just like you said.
Don't exaggerate, dude. After the latest updates, encounters with the use of Rambo tactics in the game have become a very rare event. And why are you so worried about this tactic in general? I do not understand. When using your head for its intended purpose, any opponent's tactics will not be an obstacle to winning.
 
Don't exaggerate, dude. After the latest updates, encounters with the use of Rambo tactics in the game have become a very rare event. And why are you so worried about this tactic in general? I do not understand. When using your head for its intended purpose, any opponent's tactics will not be an obstacle to winning.


This thread is not about winning. This thread is about whether the gamemode works as a fun and engaging CAPTAIN mode. Right now, it's more of a "use your bots as respawn reserve and engage alone because nooewbies won't even block your attack" mode.

Oh and believe me, using my head for its inteded purpose is what I'm doing. Maybe you should start using your own and look at what we modders were trying to achieve here, but can't because Taleworlds is too incompetent to fix their ****, but won't give us the tools to fix it either. I'm questioning whether some of Taleworlds' devs actually have a head worth using.
salty-salt-bae.gif
 
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Right now, it's more of a "use your bots as respawn reserve and engage alone because nooewbies won't even block your attack" mode.
After reading this, I got the impression that you haven't played in captains mode for a long time, or are you describing the situation according to rumors? Well, there is no such thing, no! Perhaps these are some very rare episodes, but definitely not systemic behavior. Please do not invent...
At least I, almost daily playing 10-15 games in captains mode, do not notice any significant abuse of Rambo's tactics by the players now.
Oh and believe me, using my head for its inteded purpose is what I'm doing. Maybe you should start using your own
Why are you doing this? Obviously, not only did I not mean you personally, but I also did not put any offensive meaning in the way I used my head. Do you know the saying that any game (football, hockey, basketball, etc.) is played primarily with the head?
look at what we modders were trying to achieve here, but can't because Taleworlds is too incompetent to fix their ****, but won't give us the tools to fix it either.
I really appreciate the efforts of the modders, but I cannot agree with your statement about the incompetence of the developers of the game, for which mods are so diligently and massively created.

Thanks for your comments.
 
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