Dev Blog 18/04/19

[parsehtml]<p><img class="frame" src="https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_86_taleworldswebsite.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="290" /></p> <p>Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s deep and immersive sandbox doesn’t just facilitate an emergent narrative, it actively encourages it. And while the game includes quests and tasks to help guide you on your travels, ultimately, you are free to chart your own course and plot your rise to power using the many different game features at your disposal. In this week’s blog, we talk with, Rabia Adigüzel, one of our campaign team programmers who is responsible for ensuring that these different features and systems work together, and provide you with an engaging and fulfilling experience during your adventures in Calradia!</p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/106

 

[Fortnight]

>During the decline of their health, the player can arrange his/her final wishes then, when the death occurs, the player selects an heir from one of his/her clan members that are suitable and mature.

So, if you were to die without specifying anyone in a will, simply the heir with the best claim to your postition takes over? And perhaps taking over your freshly empty spot on the feudal pyramid does not neccesarily mean becoming the new PC? Baseless speculation here, but it does make some sense. Whoever has the strongest claim takes over your position, but if you groomed someone else into being your new PC, you can play as them instead, and if you choose them to be your heir despite not being the firstborn or whatever, the other sibling might fight with you over who gets to be the inheritor? Perhaps? Please?

As for dying without an heir, I really do hope you can start a fresh character in the same world. If the conflict from the previous paragraph happened, and your chosen heir/family branch lost to the naturally legitimate one, you'll have a brand new character and have what was your first PC's dynasty as just another npc lord dynasty. That'd be absolutely amazing honestly.

Oh, and it would be nice if you could incarnate into an heir that isn't mature yet, a simple solution would be to have a regent do their things for them until maturation, so just implement a timeskip (or a time-fastforward, I suppose).

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Calm down guys...we've had several pages going around in circles and the quota of suppositions has already been filled. What we need is for Taleworlds to explain to us how the dynasties work and the offspring system they told us about in the Ruwa blog. Maybe next Thursday? 

 

[Mad Vader]

Absolutely, and of course they need to include different sets of children clothes as they grow up, baby blue for little boys and Manchester United away kit for little girls.

 

[NPC99]

>During the decline of their health, the player can arrange his/her final wishes then, when the death occurs, the player selects an heir from one of his/her clan members that are suitable and mature.

So, if you were to die without specifying anyone in a will, simply the heir with the best claim to your postition takes over? And perhaps taking over your freshly empty spot on the feudal pyramid does not neccesarily mean becoming the new PC? Baseless speculation here, but it does make some sense. Whoever has the strongest claim takes over your position, but if you groomed someone else into being your new PC, you can play as them instead, and if you choose them to be your heir despite not being the firstborn or whatever, the other sibling might fight with you over who gets to be the inheritor? Perhaps? Please?

As for dying without an heir, I really do hope you can start a fresh character in the same world. If the conflict from the previous paragraph happened, and your chosen heir/family branch lost to the naturally legitimate one, you'll have a brand new character and have what was your first PC's dynasty as just another npc lord dynasty. That'd be absolutely amazing honestly.

Oh, and it would be nice if you could incarnate into an heir that isn't mature yet, a simple solution would be to have a regent do their things for them until maturation, so just implement a timeskip (or a time-fastforward, I suppose).

...then, when death occurs, the player selects...

Forget about wills. You’ll probably go to a clan screen that shows all available successors. Either you pick one and the game continues or you stare at the screen forever. Your heir doesn’t have to be one of your children. You’re picking the next leader of your clan from the available clan members. If you made up a companion to lead his own party, I presume he figures as a clan member.

 

[DanAngleland]

There really should be a "Speed of the Passing of Time" option. 

I'm lukewarm to Character permadeath but I think being able to slow down time to what it used to be (or slower) would help those of us leery about the lineage/heir features to be more okay with it.

From what I remember of long ago discussions about how long people spent on each playthrough of Warband, the longest time mentioned was of around 3-5 in game years, which surprised most of those in the thread (personally I don't think I've ever done more than 2 full years, by which time I was fed up with the playthrough, not least because the factions were an unrecognisable mess due to repeated defections- one also has ample time to become sick of the flaws of the game, such as enemy lords repeatedly looting your villages even when they have tiny parties).

Even given that Bannerlord time moves at about 4.5 the speed of Warband's (if I remember rightly), some of the concerned folk might find that dying of old age rarely becomes an issue for them. That said, it depends as well on just how the game is balanced; the devs may have made it hard to speedily conquer Calradia within one character's lifetime, and many players like to conquer the whole map (I never bothered coming close, in fact never even tried to become a king in Warband or M&B). Some players like to speed through the game and try and become a king and conquer all as fast as they can. In essence, I suppose what I'm saying is wait and see how it plays. That said, in general it doesn't do any harm to have more options with which to customise the game to one's liking.

 

[Rabies]

Manchester United away kit for little girls.

If it was the grey one from back in the 90s, it'd enable you to train them into invisible stealth ninjas?

 

[DanAngleland]

I think few forumites will be old enough to appreciate that reference Rabies, but I did.

 

[Fortnight]

>- You like big battles, eh? Here's a soft cap on party size, because famous commanders back then couldn't count very well. Oh, that elite cavalry you had deserted because you are less famous than last week, try to keep up.

I absolutely despise the party limit mechanic. It's so silly and gamey, I wish there was something else in it's place. Have soft caps all you want, exponentially increase morale loss and make food punitively expensive for example, but the hard 'you can have this many units and not a single one on top' limit is a terribly unimaginative way to handle power scaling, not to mention that it basically forces charisma builds.

This and 'lord managed to get away' are some of my biggest gripes in warband, and both are present in bannerlord according to current info.

 

[Mad Vader]

Even given that Bannerlord time moves at about 4.5 the speed of Warband's (if I remember rightly), some of the concerned folk might find that dying of old age rarely becomes an issue for them. That said, it depends as well on just how the game is balanced; the devs may have made it hard to speedily conquer Calradia within one character's lifetime, and many players like to conquer the whole map

Below is the current timescale calculation. However, it's based on a blog that came in December 2015. That's like 15 Old Calradian years ago and these numbers tend to change.
At least I hope so, because there's no point in developing a comprehensive mortality/inheritance system if you are barely going to use it. If they did this, perhaps they were timid about the validity of their design and hedged their bets by not deviating far from the Warband experience.
I think they need to speed up aging much more dramatically so we can get full use of the inheritance system and play at least as 2-3 characters in a single playthrough.
For the sake of illustration, if players got bored after 2 years in Warband, maybe that's the right time for the game to kill their first character. Currently that's just 9 Bannerlord years and assuming the first character lasts for 30 years (as below), aging should be accelerated about 3 times, as in 1 Bannerlord year = 28 days.
I'm not confident they will make the right call.

A year in Bannerlord is 84 days where as a year in Warband is 365 days. If you assume that you start the game with a 20 year old character and die of old age at 50 then that is 30 years in Bannerlord.
Assumption: A day in Bannerlord is the same length of time as in Warband
30 x 84 = 2520 days
2520/365 = 6.9 years
Therefore the lifetime of a character in Bannerlord, under the given assumptions, is roughly equivalent to 7 years of gameplay in Warband.
I don't know about you but i never played more than 2.5 years on a character in Warband so i doubt it will feel rushed.

 

[FBohler]

This math is about right, but time passes a bit faster in BL, especially when in fast forward mode, a full day and night cycle may take just a couple of seconds.

 

[Baltic Marauder]

Even given that Bannerlord time moves at about 4.5 the speed of Warband's (if I remember rightly), some of the concerned folk might find that dying of old age rarely becomes an issue for them. That said, it depends as well on just how the game is balanced; the devs may have made it hard to speedily conquer Calradia within one character's lifetime, and many players like to conquer the whole map

Below is the current timescale calculation. However, it's based on a blog that came in December 2015. That's like 15 Old Calradian years ago and these numbers tend to change.
At least I hope so, because there's no point in developing a comprehensive mortality/inheritance system if you are barely going to use it. If they did this, perhaps they were timid about the validity of their design and hedged their bets by not deviating far from the Warband experience.
I think they need to speed up aging much more dramatically so we can get full use of the inheritance system and play at least as 2-3 characters in a single playthrough.
For the sake of illustration, if players got bored after 2 years in Warband, maybe that's the right time for the game to kill their first character. Currently that's just 9 Bannerlord years and assuming the first character lasts for 30 years (as below), aging should be accelerated about 3 times, as in 1 Bannerlord year = 28 days.
I'm not confident they will make the right call.

One week per season sounds pretty good. I think the main reason they havet gone whole hog on this is because they're still holding on to the day/night cycle for some reason. Personally I think ditching that and saving night maps for ambushes and prison breaks would be a better call. Who really likes having battles at night anyway?

 

[FBohler]

I remember some old video where they said nights will be somewhat shorter than days.

 

[kalarhan]

interesting blog.

hopefully this also extends to other aspects of the game.

For example: will kingdom relations and treaty with another be affected by the king death? King dies and all hell brakes lose with civil wars, invasions, rebellion, 

and how will this affect the player relationships with notables? Will our heir keep the same values, or have to start from a lower position? And when the NPC dies, how that affects our numbers with the NPC successor?


Bannerlord, Game of Thrones Edition, coming soon (tm)  -  anyone can die!

 

[Kara Bey]

For example, villages near the sea or a river can produce fish, but an Aserai village that is in the desert can not.”

Nice detail. I want to see more things like it feature.

 

[privar]

Nice. Will be for the benefit.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Today may be that day.
Let's keep the flame of hope™ burning.

 

[Mad Vader]

I would be happy with a Civ-like barter screen with political actions added. It's "advanced" when compared to Warband.
The interesting bit is the choice of political actions, of course, and that would be interesting to see in a blog. Instead of things like the intricacies of arrow-making or peasant undergarments.

 

[Orion]

The interesting bit is the choice of political actions, of course, and that would be interesting to see in a blog. Instead of things like the intricacies of arrow-making or peasant undergarments.

Those are hot-button issues! Clearly, the Battanians should be contained because of their distinct lack of undergarments, which renders them a collectively filthy and repulsive people.

 

[DtheHun]

]Those are hot-button issues! Clearly, the Battanians should be contained because of their distinct lack of undergarments, which renders them a collectively filthy and repulsive people.

In that case, the authors of Conan Exiles have a superfluous "endowment" slider. Just to save some devtime.

 

[Mad Vader]

No one wants to meet a Battanian Commando in full cry.

@Callum, can you touch shortly on the departure of the lead(?) gameplay programmer after 8 years in the company? This looks like a key loss both for the content and the release date of Bannerlord. Not everyone can be replaced adequately.
There was a blog interview with her not long ago.