When Taleworlds started the Early Access, they said they would use community feedback to bring the game to the level that the community expects, and they aimed to release in a year. But that's not quite happening. A year has passed, but the game is nowhere near finished. Things the community has complained about for a long time
still aren't fixed, while other areas of the game receive development nobody asked for.
It seems like Taleworlds devs each follow their own path, instead of working together following a unified plan based on community expectations. I hope I'm wrong, but that's the impression we get. TW's community managers can rarely confirm/deny any future information, further indicating no long-term plan. We have the "Statement regarding Plans for Singleplayer and Engine," but it only seems to list short-term goals - not what Bannerlord is supposed to look like when it's done. This may explain the 8 years of development, and delayed release. If 90 people all work with different goals in mind, you get confusion and work going to waste, causing delays.
So:
Taleworlds needs a long-term roadmap that states how Bannerlord should look when it's finished. And yet,
despite -
many -
requests, there still isn't one.
That's why this thread is here. I've sorted heaps of community feedback to make an Early Access Roadmap for Taleworlds, so if they're honest about "bringing the game to the level the community expects", here they can easily see what the community expects.
But keep in mind that we're just customers, and Taleworlds is just a company (one that, to be fair, made millions of dollars by hyping up this Early Access). They don't have unlimited resources. Their only obligation is to deliver what they gave people reason to believe Bannerlord would be when they advertised it; the customer has a right to what they paid for, but not to their wildest dreams. So, I have limited community suggestions in this post to
only things within the established scope of Bannerlord. Even then it makes for a very long list!
With that out of the way, here it is.
Completed tasks are marked in green. Tasks they have recently announced they are currently working on are marked yellow. If I have made any errors or omissions, please let me know. This post was originally written in 1.5.8 and I will attempt to update it as things change.
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CATEGORY 1: Features missing that were previously in M&B, or were mentioned in dev blogs. (High Priority)
Taleworlds used the Mount & Blade name to sell Bannerlord, so to live up to that it must be as good as their previous Mount & Blade product, Warband. TW hyped up buyers by talking about new features in the developer blogs, so they should deliver on those expectations.
Overworld
* Civil Wars: The ability for a kingdom to split into two warring sub-factions.
This feature was mentioned in devblogs, and also present in Warband.
* Suggesting to allied lords that they attack/defend a specific location without you,
or scout an area, or bring reinforcements.
* Ability to promote companions to lords when you are a faction ruler.
* Deserters: Hostile roaming parties of runaway troops with military-level equipment,
created on the world map when AI parties' morale falls too low.
* Manhunters: Neutral bounty hunters who spawn to fight bandits in areas of high bandit activity, and have a unique recruitable troop tree.
* Choice as to whether you accept the offer to ransom a captive enemy lord, or keep them prisoner.
* Choosing a city to be your "capital" (home base for the player kingdom's court and husband/wife).
* Poor clan leaders coming to a player kingdom's capital and offering to defect.
* Minor Faction bases as seen in the 2016 gameplay video.
Roleplaying
* Reactive, Fixed Companions: A group of non-random companions who are the same in each playthrough, have more detailed backstories, who more often talk to the player about their actions and the game world, and ask the player to make decisions. Can be added alongside the randomized wanderer system rather than replacing it.
* Feasts: Gathering which can be hosted by the player or AI lords (just during peacetime!) in order to improve relations and gain influence.
* Political quests:
The ability to plot a coup against the ruler of a faction with other lords, plot to start a war,
or to accuse other lords of plotting.
* Courtship: The ability to talk to other NPCs about a potential spouse's likes in order to gain conversation topics. Completing quests for love interest to gain approval. Dissuading or dueling competing suitors. Returning more times over a longer period of time to build the relationship.
* Dueling lords: Legally fighting an enemy lord one-on-one, if you are competing for a lover or in a political feud.
* Skill Books: Expensive items which you can buy from a bookseller and read over time to gain proficiency in a skill.
* Sword Sisters: Hiring peasant women and upgrading them into combat troops with their own troop line.
* Sandbox Mode: Ability to skip main questline and choose own start.
* Crime and Gang system: Taking over gang hideouts and installing your own operation there,
bribery (added for breakouts in 1.5.9), smuggling contraband, crime rating penalties by faction, undermining local nobility, etc.
Battles
* Visible spawn point marker for reinforcements. (In Warband this was the supply chest and a banner, but anything easily visible will do.)
* Ability to select a group of troops in a small radius around you.
* Fighting your way out in civilian gear after failing to sneak into a town.
* Prison Break quest and battling your way out of the dungeons and town. (Added in Beta e1.5.9)
* Fight in the keep after winning the wall fight of a castle/town siege.
* Fight in the street after winning the wall fight of a town siege.
* Daring and Cowardly personality traits affecting lords' tactics.
* Pre-battle army placement in field battles.
* Intelligent attacking/defending siege commander AI
which will split its forces on multiple fronts, and change tactics to react to diversions.
* Banners borne by troops as shown in
the 2017 video.
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CATEGORY 2: Completing and balancing existing features, or adjusting them to create more satisfying gameplay. (High Priority)
Although I know
TW is aware of many of these issues, and working on some of them, they are listed for the sake of completeness.
Overworld
* Economy: Prices of military gear are way too high. Income from a well-managed town/village or caravan is too low. High tier troops should cost more to upgrade.
* Peace: There need to be longer periods of peace, so the player can regroup their forces. Rejecting war votes as the ruler costs the player too much influence. AI kingdoms should offer peace to the player.
* AI won't surrender in sieges where the odds are ridiculously against them, even if it's 50 vs 1000 or they're starving, so the player is forced to sit through a boring battle (which their army will take significant casualties in if they autoresolve it). If the defending AI is starving, they should either sally out or surrender.
* Governing: Player needs other ways to increase town loyalty, and more ways to increase the power of notables. Issues have too much impact on the prosperity of a player's towns/villages.
* Factions need to forcibly dissolve after they have held no territory for half a year, so their parties stop being a nuisance.
* Autoresolve: Needs to better represent how a battle would occur, and high tier troops need to be stronger in it. E.g.: a T5 soldier is only as strong as three T1 units in autoresolve, but should be able to kill five.
* Siege Artillery: Trebuchets are too strong; they should be slightly less efficient at destroying enemy siege engines, and should also cost more to build them. Fire siege engines should be more efficient at destroying siege engines.
* AI lords and companions die too rarely in autocalc battles, and too often in real battles.
* Bandit hideouts crop up too commonly.
* Mercenary relations need to reset when a war ends.
* Personality traits need to affect AI lords more in their politics and strategy.
* Strategic AI still makes some very questionable decisions, such as prematurely leaving sieges that they're winning,
running right past friendly towns/castles when fleeing instead of taking refuge (partially fixed in 1.5.9?), raiding a village prior to taking its town, offering peace when they're overwhelmingly winning a war, etc.
* Enemy lords escape imprisonment too easily and regain armies too quickly after a defeat; executing every lord you come across is the most viable strategy to conquer Calradia, because being hated doesn't affect your ability to fight much, but executing your enemies massively impacts their faction and is better than having to deal with constantly respawning lord parties.
* Player has little control over their caravans and clan/companion parties.
* Raiding: Too slow for large parties and doesn't offer enough reward. On the other hand, it is too effective in the hands of lots of little AI parties swarming the player's territory and crippling their income.
* Armies: It isn't worth joining them because you can't recruit, lose control of your forces, have to share food, and are at the whim of poor AI decisions. There needs to be better reasons to join them, such as gaining relations with lords you travel in an army with.
* Castles: Not strategically useful enough.
* Minor factions:
Mostly don't fit their lore. Factions described as criminals, eg. Hidden Hand, can be hired as regular mercenaries and don't seem to do crime. Some, such as Skolderbrovta, are described as elite warriors, but actually are worse than regular faction units. And some e.g. Forest People are described as basically farmers, but provide troops of the same strength and cost as professional mercenary companies. Also, some factions are enemies in-game with factions they're said to be allies with in-lore, such as the Eleftheroi being at war with the Empire.
* Player doesn't get enough opportunity to fight in defensive sieges.
Roleplaying
* Smithing system needs a rehaul. (Recieved improvements in 1.5.9)
* Engineering and Charm skills need more ways to level them. Leadership, Trade, Roguery and Medicine are too difficult to level. Steward is a bit too easy to level. Trade should level when owned workshops and caravans return a profit.
* Riding perks are almost mandatory.
* Leadership perk "Loyalty and Honor" makes the morale mechanics ineffective, and should be changed or moved higher up. It also says it makes T3+ troops immune to routing, but actually makes T2+ troops immune.
* Trade skill has no influence on the profitability of player-owned workshops/caravans.
* Tactics perk tree is too focused on autoresolve battles. This is undesirable, as a player who levels up Tactics and wants to play battles tactically is actually encouraged to not play the battles at all. Tactics should increase the number of troops you can bring to a non-simulated battle at the beginning, as it did in Warband.
* Persuading NPCs in conversations being reliant on RNG is unfair to the player and encourages save-scumming. Looking at other roleplaying video games, a deterministic pass/fail based on whether the player has enough skill to succeed would be better.
* Courtship is too quick. The intervals between conversations with a potential spouse should be longer. Marrying into a clan with a higher tier than yours should also cost more.
* NPC Relations: There are too many ways of losing influence and relations, and executing 5 evil, hated lords will ruin your reputation just as much as if you had executed 100 beloved, good lords. People on the other side of the world will hate you for executing someone. You can't offer lords a fief to get them to join your kingdom. Attacking and releasing enemy lords is the best way of gaining relations with lords; gaining relations is difficult otherwise. Fighting battles alongside allies, winning battles for your faction, and sharing similar personality traits (eg: honorable lords liking an honorable player) needs to have a more positive impact on relations and influence. Relation with your spouse should also be higher.
* Tournaments: Become pointless by mid game. The player should also be able to progress to higher-level tournaments which have tougher enemies and give gold and higher renown rewards.
* Dialogue: Multiple lines of dialogue in the game are not implemented, don't trigger, are contradictory, or have grammar/spelling issues. Personality traits, relations, the player's successes, and their clan rank need to have more of an impact on dialogue.
* Game flow can overall be described as grindy, with "grind" being defined as "executing non-challenging, repetitive tasks". Bannerlord's design needs to make more of an attempt to present the player with a more gradual curve of appropriately challenging fights and interesting quests when progressing through middle clan tiers; as opposed to the current situation of grinding bandit fights to move to the next clan tier rank.
Battles
* Armor Model: Arrows do way too much damage to armor. Melee attacks do slightly too much. High quality armor provides barely any protection. This is unrealistic, makes expensive armor nearly pointless, makes higher tier units too weak, and leads to troop imbalance (overpowered archers) that causes shallow tactics ("sit archers on hill") and battles ending too quickly.
* Combat AI obviously has many things that need fixing. Troops don't block or parry enough. Lance cavalry AI are far too inaccurate and will charge to the other side of the map to gain charging distance on an enemy who is behind them moving at the same speed.
Ranged unit AI stops targeting cavalry outside of medium range (fixed in 1.5.9), but is also too accurate at hitting fast moving targets. All types of AI have an issue of focusing on enemies who are too far away, instead of nearby threats. Etc...
* Troop Balance: Ranged cavalry and ranged infantry are way too strong (see armor). Melee cavalry charges aren't impactful enough. Melee infantry, especially spear users, are weak.
* Weapon Balance:
Throwing weapons don't do enough shield damage (fixed in 1.5.9). Player and the AI cannot brace polearms in singleplayer. Stab polearms are too weak, slash polearms are too strong.
* Mounted melee combat from horseback with swords and spears feels very inconsistent and the animations poorly match the hit areas.
* AI captains will charge wildly into battle with no self-preservation and die. What they should be doing is fighting if the fight comes to them, but otherwise staying just behind their men, not seeking out fights.
* Spawn locations of reinforcements can be very imbalanced, causing the player to lose in situations they would have otherwise won.
* Morale: Is too effective against low tier troops, and not effective enough against mid/high tier troops. The player can inspire perfect morale too easily in mid/high tier troops,
with little skill investment. (Partially fixed in 1.5.9) Morale should work like it was advertised: Tactical use of shock troops, flanking side/rear attacks, massive damage in a short time, leading your army from the front, destroying siege equipment, and killing enemy commanders should be able to impact morale to turn the tide of a close battle. Morale should not be ending battles immediately on the first kill, nor only kicking in once the battle is obviously won.
* Siege Equipment:
Troop behaviour with inefficient use of ladders needs to be fixed in sieges. Siege towers should not drop their gate until a group of units have gathered at the top. Battering rams need to roll backwards once they have destroyed both gates, to avoid getting in the way of pathing. Defenders should not be climbing down siege ladders or onto siege towers to pursue the enemy. Attackers' siege artillery is prone to friendly fire.
* Siege Balance: When they aren't bugged, sieges are too easy for attackers. The ratio of spawned attackers to defenders is about 90-10, it should be more like 70-30. Gate HP needs to be a bit higher. Perhaps ladders should even need to be carried over to the wall before they can be used, or be destroyable. Troops defending a breached wall or gate should use formations that properly cover the gap. Defenders should be able to open the main gate from the outside so they can retreat after a sally-out. When an AI attacker has all their siege equipment destroyed and hasn't yet reached the walls, they should retreat to rebuild their siege equipment, rather than standing around.
* Faction Variety: Half of the faction troop trees are too similar and lack distinct strengths and weaknesses, making the game more repetitive and less varied. Each faction needs to be more unique in its capabilities, so player's tactics are different for every faction. A good example is Vlandia: clear strength (lots of melee cavalry), clear weakness (no ranged cavalry).
Art/Sound
* Many town, castle, village, tavern, field, and hideout scenes are unimplemented.
* Rulers and elite troops of a faction look generic and lack truly noble-looking gear.
* Tabards always have a lion emblem on them, even if worn by a non-Vlandian player faction. Better for them to either be blank, or display the appropriate faction emblem.
* Unimplemented voiceovers.
* Unimplemented music.
Engine
* Mod tools need to be completed.
* Performance improvements, e.g. memory leaks in sieges.
* General bug fixing.
Please note I do not understate how difficult some of these things are just because I only give them a single point.
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CATEGORY 3: New features needed to fix problems with existing features. (Mid priority)
There are multiple features in Bannerlord which don't have much reason for the player to use them. It would be a fair assumption on buying a game for its features, that you would have a reason to use them. So, when Taleworlds has completed the other features, creating mechanics to tie them together so they're useful and fun is the next step.
* The dynasty/heirs system is mostly pointless. If you have played long enough for your heir to take control, you've probably conquered most of Calradia anyway, and have no challenging enemies left to fight. Possible solution: Allow the AI to start civil wars or foreign invasions so the player always has new enemies in a long game.
* Since only marrying nobles is possible, all non-noble roleplay styles Taleworlds have made can't use the heirs feature. Possible solution: Let player marry companions or notables.
* The beautifully detailed town/village/castle scenes of Bannerlord lack gameplay reasons to explore them. Possible solution: Add some basic mini-quests or random events that can only be found and completed inside those scenes.
* Castles in Bannerlord lack strategic value, and provide almost no unique benefit to the player outside of saving wages on garrison and being a second inventory. Possible solution: Make castles generate patrols that roam the nearby area to hunt bandits, fight small enemy forces, and report on the presence of large enemy forces.
* Tactics are very frustrating to execute when your units chase after the wrong enemies when you want them to attack a specific enemy formation. Possible solution: Allow the player to order a formation to attack a specific enemy formation (commonly requested feature).
* Minor factions are said in the lore to have unique skills, ways of life, and motivations. But in gameplay terms, they all just work as roaming mercenaries. They also have uniquely crafted troop trees, but the only way to access these troops is to defeat the factions in battle and recruit from prisoners, which is unintuitive. Possible solution: Give unique quests to minor factions that reflect their lore, and offer the ability to recruit the minor faction's troops from them (or some other reward).
* The player has to roam quite far to recruit troops of their original culture if they didn't choose the Empire culture. Possible solution: When the player conquers a town, mix recruits of their culture into the notables' troops on offer, alongside the native recruits.
* The ending of the game is an anti-climax. Once you get down to the last couple of kingdoms they have no chance of ever beating you, but slowly killing them is very boring. Possible solution: Make enemy kingdoms ally against the player when you control 50-75% of the map and fight you in a climactic large battle. If you win this battle, make their territories surrender.
These three categories make up the roadmap. The next two categories aren't part of the roadmap, and are just guidelines.
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CATEGORY 4: "Pet projects." (Low priority)
Features which Taleworlds employees would personally like to see added but which are not expected or asked for by the community. As Taleworlds is being paid by the people who bought Bannerlord, and told those people they aim to make the game to the buyers' expectations, their priority is to deliver that first and foremost.
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CATEGORY 5: "Bonus features." (Low priority)
Any features which are popular requests among the community, but were not promised or implied by Taleworlds, and aren't
needed to make the game's other features have a purpose. If Taleworlds feels like working on such things, or making them into a DLC, they can, but the customer has no right to demand these things.
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@armagan @Dejan @MArdA TaleWorlds @elysebluemoon @Singil @uçanbiblo @SadShogun @Duh_TaleWorlds @lottendill @Callum
If I haven't caused offense, then please feel free to use this roadmap how you see fit. It would give the community great confidence to see that Taleworlds has a unified plan for the long term. If 90% of this list can get completed, Bannerlord will be a truly good sequel to Warband, and though you can never please everyone, you'll please the vast majority of your buyers.
. I've put my heart and soul into this forum for half a decade.
