Character Progression - Does it suck?

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Bannerlord

The benefit of levelling up is that you gain attribute and focus points which help you level your skills faster and further, though the more you level up, the more experience you then need to level up, so levelling becomes slower. Feels slightly counter-intuitive.

In my opinion it's poor design that the benefit of levelling up is to be able to level up faster while levelling up takes longer each time you level up.

While you do get perks while increasing your cap on skills by levelling up, you find that it sometimes takes too long to level up your skills even though you've levelled up enough to max out the rate at which you can level up your skills (5 focus points etc) This makes the levelling up process feel pretty unrewarding and shallow as it takes ages to level up while not feeling like you've levelled up at all. The majority of the perks provide small and hard to notice differences, especially in beginning to mid game.

Funnily enough, if your skills are very low level, and you have a lot of focus points, you level up these skills extremely quickly (Until a certain point). This process also feels unrewarding to me as these levels don't feel earned or meaningful.

Warband​

When I think about my experience with Warband, I felt like I could really feel a difference from when my character was a low level to when I became I high level, I can't say I feel that with Bannerlord, especially on the battlefield. My weapon may be better, my armor may make a slight difference, but my character feels very ordinary and boring, and perhaps this was intentional, but does it make for a more enjoyable gameplay experience over Warband? Not for me personally.

I can win a few Tournaments in Bannerlord and equip some of the best armor in the game, in Warband, I can't even wear the best armor until I've earned that right by levelling up and increasing certain skills that allow me to wear it. These kinds of shortcuts in Bannerlord make earning things feel really unrewarding, but hey, it's not like armor makes much of a difference in Bannerlord anyway.

In Warband, each level up you had opened up a lot of important choices, which could take you some time to think about unless you had a specific build in mind. Where you placed your attribute and skills points felt like an important decision and also every skill point you put into a skill felt impactful and useful, some even necessary. With Bannerlord, all my skills level up individually and it's a simple choice between 2 generally lackluster/forgettable perks, it doesn't feel as exciting to me.

Though this is just my underexplained opinion.

Thoughts?
 
They're softening/removing the high-level slowdown, but that won't fix the perk system being hot garbage.

There's a mod called Attributes Matter which gives the Warband Feeling to attributes.
 
I think the current system is fine. Spending points is suppose to increase the rate in which you level up skills, the idea that levels individually take longer to get is fine. The alternative is that either earlier levels take longer to get (which makes it take longer to do anything) or you can reach an obsurd level which lets you max out all your attribute points and focus points, removing choice from the game.

I do agree, however, that attribute points could do a little bit more than basically be 'extra focus points'.

My biggest problem with leveling currently is that, without a level cap, the max level you can achieve varies wildly based on how you allocate your focus and attribute epoints.
 
In my opinion it's poor design that the benefit of levelling up is to be able to level up faster while levelling up takes longer each time you level up.
I'm not sure if you're talking about character level (the one that gives focus points) or the skills (focus points help boost it) but raising your character level no longer causes learning rate for skills to drop.

If you meant purely the XP requirement for character levels, the same system iss present in Warband and almost every game with character leveling. It is usually intended to get people into their build relatively quickly but still keep them from becoming demigods.
Where you placed your attribute and skills points felt like an important decision and also every skill point you put into a skill felt impactful and useful, some even necessary.
Bolded is the part I think is hot garbage about Warband's system. Tax skills are absolute cancer and the opposite of meaningful choice. Is anyone going to not take Inventory Management? Prisoner Management? If you're going with a melee build, of course you're going to get (at least) Strength 12 or 14 or whatever it was for the heavy armor. Player choice reduced to the question if they want to handicap themselves or not.

As for Bannerlors, the biggest issue is certain skills take forever to level or have no opportunities for early-game growth. Medicine, Engineering, Leadership somewhat, Roguery and one other I think I'm forgetting. Throwing has the issue of just kinda being a cling-on skill without much thought given to the idea you should be banging out way more XP for damage/kills with thrown weapons than bows or crossbows, because your ammo is so limited in comparison and it is so much harder to land one.
 
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As for Bannerlors, the biggest issue is certain skills take forever to level or have no opportunities for early-game growth. Medicine, Engineering, Leadership somewhat, Roguery and one other I think I'm forgetting.
Scouting. It have the most horrible progression curve of them all because you gain XP mostly from tracks, but lower the scouting level, less tracks you can actually find. Therefore at low skill you're gaining hardly any skill at all. Yes, you can try to find hideouts to jump start your scouting, but it's waste of time because they are few and spread across whole map and you still level slowly.

Medicine is actually not THAT hard to level early game if you're want to level it. Just hire recruits and send them fight at hopeless odds that makes them get killed/wounded.
 
The only way I've found to level medicine with any sort of speed is to fill your party with peasants and go on an auto resolve spree. But I actually find this OK. I don't need medicine above 25. Low medicine is a reward for being a good leader and any role that can be assigned to a companion is wasted focus points in my opinion.

I like that the current system encourages role specialisation, and discourages players becoming some sort of super-hero-level-amazing-at-everything. In that respect, I feel like my character levels up at a fairly good pace in the skills I need (Archery, Riding, Charm, Leadership, Tactics, Trade!). By the time my character is in their 30s, in the prime of their life, they're becoming OP. By the time they're in their 40s, they've also passively levelled up to a good place in many other traits that aren't so necessary. So my character can sit there and say "kids these days want everything all at once and a gold star for participation on top"
 
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