***Community Feedback ROADMAP - What Taleworlds still needs to fix!***

[DennyWiseau]

Lmao Everything that gets posted here by a member of the tales world team has to be approved by someone. You can't just have people who represent your company saying whatever they please.

Different companies have different policies about the engagement that is permitted. There are certainly some statements that would require permission (any confirmation of future content for one), but others, such as the discussion of existing features or community suggestions and what we (personally) think about them, don't. Of course, there are still certain standards to follow, including courtesy, but, no, not every post by a developer requires approval.

I think the most suitable result from you now would be "REEEEEEEEEE"

 

[Mad Vader]

<snip>

You are wrong in every way possible, congratulations. Take your attitude elsewhere.
This thread is for serious people looking for specific answers, not irrational rants.

 

[Ostrogoth Pikeman]

Thank you for the reply Duh. We appreciate seeing perhaps a small idea of what developments might be prioritized, even if they are only personal opinions. At this point, I would just be happy with an update that gives us a command for troops to use polearms/spears. Really sick of faulty spear troops.

 

[niekdegrijze]

check.
I don't think anything like this will be offered as it sounds like it would clash with the way formations work. Of course, if you have a formation following you, then they would presumably be selectable and around you.

As a player you want to use this in a tight spot when not followed by an formation and you don’t want to screw up the battle by ordering a whole formation to your rescue. A way this could work is by assigning these units to an new formation.
Ordering nearby units would also be very useful in sieges to help you clear a tower. Especially in sieges you don’t want to disrupt the AI

 

[Fate]

Sorry but why does it feel like every minor request/suggestion is made out to sound like some over-complicated feature which is not high priority.
Even worse when so many cool things were teased in the dev blogs and now we might not even get feasts lol.

This, so many things that should be relatively easy if there codebase was organized and extensible and developers talented. The simplest thing seems to add too much complexity. Lots of what's listed was possible and not overly complex when selling us on the game.

Combine this with TW recent post showing they honestly think this was a good year for them and modders are unfortunately the only hope with this game

 

[MostBlunted]

While I appreciate the reply it basically says:

"Doesn´t fit the game and/or it´s not possible."

Not that I have expected anything else. At least there is a minimal chance that we will be able to make companions into lords, wow.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

Just designating a capitol would yield little gameplay value, so this is a bit of an empty suggestion. Non-party leading clan members should (soon) be staying in whichever location you leave them in in any case. Of course, there can be many features added to make a capitol more interesting, but I am not sure which you are looking for.

It's the absence of lots of little things like this that lead to people feeling the game is bland and "lacks soul", things which don't necessarily yield huge amounts of 'gameplay value' on their own but add so much flavour. Even the simple plain ability to declare a city as your capital when you're king, or trying to capture an enemy's capital, would be a cool little thing to do.

 

[Nalgasucia507]

It's the absence of lots of little things like this that lead to people feeling the game is bland and "lacks soul", things which don't necessarily yield huge amounts of 'gameplay value' on their own but add so much flavour. Even the simple plain ability to declare a city as your capital when you're king, or trying to capture an enemy's capital, would be a cool little thing to do.

+1

 

[Senko]

It would certainly give the empire more flavor if it had a big capital city and all 3 empire factions were gunning for it.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

One may also argue that any separation from a kingdom in conflict (player leaving with fiefs) is arguably an act of civil war.

It's the fact that only the player can separate from a kingdom. No other clan leaves with fiefs and goes to war with its old kingdom to try and form its own like the player can.

The Aserai kingdom description says this:
"Today, with the waning of the empire, the Aserai have agreed to form a confederacy under a sultan chosen from richest of the clans, the Banu Hulyan. But everyone knows that the dance has only temporarily been stopped, and at the right moment it will begin again."
But the dance will only begin again if the player chooses the Aserai culture and goes to war with the sultan.

 

[a_ver_est]

Thks for the answer @Duh_TaleWorlds, I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately I feel sad, from some time ago it becoming more and more evident that the game mechanics are getting away from what some players wished for M&B2

It seems that the company strategy is create a great battle simulator (fine) and delegate almost everything else to the AI (bad), and that is sad because (and it is just my opinion) the combat model of WB was simple, fine and fun and it just needed some minor overhauls but the world of WB was poor (without moods) and we hoped for big improvements.

What we will get is an impressive battle simulator (not sure if it was necessary but it is great) but even a poorest world, without even basic features that were in WB... and let me be clear, I didn't hope for a clone of WB with better graphics, I though that we would get a world where we will feel like we were part of a medieval kingdom live, but it turned into that you are a single roaming party with a very limited options to interact with those kingdoms other than fight, so disappointing.

But my biggest fear is that the underlying mechanics of the game (like economy) have such complexity that probably mods will unbalance it and would make the game unplayable. And that's surprising because is hard to understood, why someone put such effort into develop this complex world to let the player almost just fight, IMHO it doesn't make a lot of sense. stunning and sad!

 

[D0c1]

As a player you want to use this in a tight spot when not followed by an formation and you don’t want to screw up the battle by ordering a whole formation to your rescue. A way this could work is by assigning these units to an new formation.
Ordering nearby units would also be very useful in sieges to help you clear a tower. Especially in sieges you don’t want to disrupt the AI

seconding this.
warband had this feature so should bannerlord.

 

[UK-Tranquillity]

Thanks for the reply @Duh_TaleWorlds I wanted to write something in response. I generally have stayed out of these topics before but I will try to give this one a go.
For this post I will be focusing on only the points where I feel I may be able to add something to the conversation:


Giving ally lords orders:

I don't think this will come. I remember the discussion with @mexxico - while the idea was explored, there were too many challenges with AI and the focus went to making the base army and party AI better.

I think this feature is quite important. It allows the player to have some measure of control over the allied lords to assist in a proper push on a front. Say you strike a town and at the same time another lord with an army strikes the castle close next to it. This could be easily achieved by a dialogue option. This was one of my most used features in Warband, and one of the only ways to "work together" with your AI allies.
This gives the player many ways to approach a war and capitilise on an area that is lightly defended after winning a large scale field battle.
Important that control/options for strategies for the player is not overlooked.

Deserters/Manhunters:

Nonetheless, they certainly seem worth discussing to me since they can add life to the world.

These add life to the world, also create another type of enemy party for the player (adds variety to the worldmap). Manhunters specifically can help to clean up the mess of the 100s of bandit parties we see gathering on the maps in various threads on these forums.
When the player is facing endless war they do not have the luxury to spend time clearing these out and it can help to combat this problem.
It would also allow another troop tree for the game, along with sword sisters as you mentioned above. (Again more content and options are good).

Capital city:

Just designating a capitol would yield little gameplay value, so this is a bit of an empty suggestion.

Yes little gameplay value. However this would open up many options to additional features. Feasts whilst you mention you don't consider them important, are one example (during peacetime). Weddings to be held in the capital (during peacetime). And for me the best reason I can think of is that if you had feasts you would also have one HUGE Tournament filled with all the allied lords in one place at one time.
Those tournaments were the most memorable. When else do you have so many lords in one place at one time to experience that?

Also would open up a place for other factions claimant to appear in the throne room with your faction leader. (A place for the player to start this quest).

So this area of focus would not be empty if you would be open to providing feasts and/or claimants to give them a gameplay function.

Selecting nearby troops with a hotkey:

I don't think anything like this will be offered as it sounds like it would clash with the way formations work. Of course, if you have a formation following you, then they would presumably be selectable and around you.

This one gives me another reason to believe the unit control options are designed in mind without players wanting to take much manual control of the battlefield or sieges? (Really confuses me as not everyone lets the AI do all the thinking).

The reason this is important in my eyes is that it gives you flexibility. You might see a gap forming that you could quickly push through but requires nearby troops to help it. Or maybe you want to push up a staircase to flank a group. Or defend the top of a ladder after climbing so that individual troops are protected when they reach the top and then they can gather around you.
But you do not wish the entire infantry formation to abandon the 3 sides they attack to achieve these small skirmishes.

It's really important that the player has freedom in battle to adapt and react how they wish.

Currently I feel like everything is left up to the AI to do all the controlling (especially in sieges). Why can the player not quickly on the spot decide to take all the surrounding troops through an opening? Currently there are not many options that help with this that can be achieved quickly.

Speed is important and having one hotkey like 0 which selects surrounding troops will give the player the option to capitilise on new situations.

Again I really hope this is not overlooked. Not everyone hits charge and that's it you know.

Banners:

Banners are pending another feature, but they will come.

I am really excited for banners. Thank you for this bit of info!

Hopefully some of this helps add to the discussion a bit... You will probably notice a theme throughout the post.

But I can't help but shake this notion that the approach to unit control in this game is all focused around letting the AI do all the controlling and that if the player has too much control over them it will "mess up the way AI works".
I really hope my impression on this is wrong.

But it feels like anytime the players request more control, it gets shot down citing "don't worry the AI will do this for you".

This reminds me of the complaint threads that were discussing the changes made to condense the controls into less hotkeys on the keyboard recently. And many players trying to point out that many of those changes reduced our ability to react or control our units in the heat of battle.
Many cases where it actually made the player need to press many more keys to achieve the simple commands like facing in a direction with one button press (where now the toggle feature gets in the way of this).

I can only speak for myself here. But manually controlling either portions of troops as and when I need them, or quickly ordering my troops to react to a new threat is very important to my play experience. The less control I have the worse experience I have.

Anyway thank you for your time in your reply. I hope some of this helps. Just wanted to voice some concerns I had when reading your post. I realise I may not be the best person for the job but I made an honest attempt.

 

[9yearsago]

The assault already includes the streets

It does not mate. They just run through the streets, not fight there.

 

[ShakenSpeare]

After 22 pages, Duh finally responded:

"Nope, lol xDD"

Oh well. It's not like anyone was expecting anything different.

 

[Rungsted93]

They earned so much money and got good reviews they have no reason to listen to us, it's the sad truth. And for new players to the franchise the game is probably a 7-8 out of 10 which is fine. But with more ambition from TW's side the game could've been a 10/10 for both new and old players alike and this is what frustrates me personally the most.

 

[Mad Vader]

This was a dispiriting reply if you expected significant new content. Duh's tone was defensive "it's not urgent", "too many challenges", which tells us that TW still works in a crisis mode where there are always urgent things to do and fix, as opposed to a polishing pre-release mode with developers trying to improve features. It could be a sign of poor morale and burnout too, not strange after the long development and negative feedback on this forum.
The good thing is that it sets the expectations for the Bannerlord release suitably low. It's better to be disappointed now than later.
The conclusion is that the sooner TW finishes their unambitious version of Bannerlord, the sooner the modders could start "finishing" it with widely expected features as in the OP.

 

[Fate]

The conclusion is that the sooner TW finishes their unambitious version of Bannerlord, the sooner the modders could start "finishing" it with widely expected features as in the OP.

#FreeLabor for the TW win

 

[five bucks]

Really appreciate you giving us your time for the reply Duh! There are parts where I could have worded the initial post better, or given more information (which was mostly omitted due to the post already being very long) which I want to clear up though:

This type of content seems possible but not a critical priority to me. I personally think that the base game mechanics of kingdoms and clans should be as solid as possible before building quests upon such a foundation.
Banners are pending another feature, but they will come.
(other comments mentioning priority)

As long as the category 1/2 things in this list (stuff within the existing scope of the series) get higher priority than stuff which would fall under category 4/5, personally I'm happy with whatever order TW decides to do them in.

I don't think this will come. I remember the discussion with @mexxico - while the idea was explored, there were too many challenges with AI and the focus went to making the base army and party AI better.

Sounds very reasonable. If the AI gets good enough we won't need to give it direct instructions to override its stupidity. And we're getting the ability to tell parties to be aggressive/defensive which fulfils a similar function too.

It doesn't seem impossible, but it's not part of the current priorities. These are changes at a rather broad level and may cause a range of unforeseen consequences - and I'm sure you wouldn't want them added in a way that makes the game worse.

If TW adds deserters/manhunters and it happens to cause some gameplay issue, there's the option of tweaking it. And if that doesn't work and it's impossible to fix (very unlikely) it can be rolled back. I know there are mods that add manhunters as map actors.

Just designating a capitol would yield little gameplay value, so this is a bit of an empty suggestion.

It was meant to be considered together with the point of potential defectors going to your capital- a mistake on my part for not just putting both things under the same point. I'll change it.

This seems possible, but needs to be approached carefully as a free defection is a fairly powerful boon.

My fault again for poor wording. Not for free- they should go to the player's capital and offer to make a deal.

but it's more of an immersion / QoL feature than a matter of critical urgency.

It's a major frustration for players I see mentioned constantly. People are really sick of having to run around the map asking every lord if they want to defect, without even knowing if they will say yes, while trying to do other things at the same time.

Feasts only really make sense if there is a good bit of attendance - which means lords and ladies need to prioritize them over other activities and those tend to be mostly military or self-preservatory in nature. Naturally, they could just be limited to periods of peace... but those can be few and far. I don't think that they are impossible, in fact, I am sure that they will continue to be discussed but they are not part of the current priorities.

Limiting feasts to peacetime would be a great way of doing it. There definitely needs to be more peacetime either way-- the endless warring is a common player complaint. IIRC in Warband, lords and ladies would finish their most urgent priorities before travelling to a feast, the guests would trickle in over time.

Persuasion may see some additional work, but I don't think it will go this route.

...Not even the part about increasing number of conversations and time between conversations during courtship? That bit seems like it would be easy and would go a long way to making a relationship seem less like buying a car. And what makes dueling lords so difficult to implement that it can't return from Warband?

The assault already includes the streets and will have the enemy retreat to the lord's hall - once the lord's hall fight is in.

Wall assault scenes do include the streets, but the battle rarely goes into them. When you say the enemy will retreat to the lord's hall, is there actually going to be any fighting occurring in the streets, or will they just run through the streets to the keep without fighting back like they do now?

I don't know whether you are discussing campaign or mission, but I think both can be affected by the character traits. Maybe the mission is only looking at the tactics skill, but I am not sure if further limits would actually make for a better experience, since it would just mean that there are more battles with a lower range of tactics that players can experience.

That was a bit ambiguous, sorry about that. "Tactics" was supposed to mean combat, rather than "strategic" campaign map stuff. In other words: Daring trait lords are more likely to rush in with their troops even in defensive situations, while Cowardly lords may hang back or retreat easily even in attacking situations. This is the impression the devblog gave.

(Promoting companions to faction vassals as ruler) This seems possible.
(Battlefield spawn zone marker/landmark) I think this is possible but it isn't my area of expertise. It may have been discussed recently, will check.
A plot to steal from the king or a rich clan (or the reverse - you being tasked to foil such a plot) or a quest to denounce / embarass another lord seem quite viable and I like the ideas.
It's certainly possible to add another set of mercenaries.

Excellent! I know these aren't confirmations, but it's better than not being sure if it's even something TW would consider.

I have one more question as well if that's okay. Someone said they saw a TW post from a while back stating that armor values are being kept weak (despite the negative impacts on singleplayer gameplay) because TW is trying to make it easier to transfer people from SP to MP without having to learn different armor values. Is that true?

 

[Duh_TaleWorlds]

I have one more question as well if that's okay. Someone said they saw a TW post from a while back stating that armor values are being kept weak (despite the negative impacts on singleplayer gameplay) because TW is trying to make it easier to transfer people from SP to MP without having to learn different armor values. Is that true?

Will take time to reply to you and others in more detail, but just to pick this one out for a quick answer - not to my knowledge. We are also discussing armor and how to improve it.