Dev Blog 20/12/18

[parsehtml]<p><img class="frame" src="https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_71_taleworldswebsite.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="290" /></p> <p>No medieval drama, from Shakespeare to the Game of Thrones, is complete without a few scenes of high-stakes negotiation. Although most of our development effort goes into battles and combat, we also want to offer players alternative gameplay. Be it a plot to betray a king, a dynastic marriage, or just a way to handle a thorny conflict between your bickering subjects, skilled persuaders can find solutions to solve problems and save a bit of wear-and-tear on their sword-edges.</p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/91

 

[Sasquatch_Punter]

Finally, the game tracks most major events, and if you can remind the Countess that the king you want her to betray murdered her cousin, or passed her over when last handing out fiefs, that will make your task much easier.

This seems pretty cool. Sounds like exploiting feuds between rival lords will be easier. I hope this means past services by your character (ex. rescuing a relative or murdering a feuding noble) will count towards this.

This would be even cooler if there were events that could only be revealed by roguery, ex. you pay someone in the lord's court to tell you about secret feuds, or you hire a spymaster that does this for you.

 

[monoolho]

Oh boi, so many points of view, so many things to consider... I will take my little time off to deeply study this thread over the next week and I may or may not come up with a good opinion or argument.

About the blog: This was really informative and a great read. It really gave much hope and hype to the depth of the political aspect. The blog was seriously entertaining and interesting to read, if you're not reading it just to post about

[u]WHEN[/u]?

>Ctrl+f
>Influence
>0 results
I'm hoping that horrible idea never resurfaces.

I might be the only one who thinks that influence 'currency' was a good video gamey addition to the game.

I too sort of like (or simply accept) the influence system, but oh boi, was it great seeing they're not relying entirely on it. Even if it is a gamey concept of filling a bar to persuade someone, and they could change it to show in facial expressions, which could be funny, and maybe hard to see on particularly ugly characters, I still think the bar is not at all bad. Maybe the traditional ON/OFF setting: add the facial expressions according to the persuaded level, and add a setting in options to turn the graphical bar on/off and we're all set! Or maybe not. Still it would feel like a pity adding the whole facial animations and only use them in battle and to show that some npcs don't like you. It feels a bit like oblivion, yes, because of the progress bar, but it still feels that it's sort of right. Adding the options according to skills and other social tools is awesome, can't think of a better system, really, and the "progress level(bar)" is a good visual feedback so we don't feel like we're merely dealing with robots while the game calculates RNG for each choice.

Unscripted roleplaying presents a lot of difficulty in adding a "natural" system that provides enough feedback and stimulates enough immersion. I'd rather have the access to means that show my progress, since I've always felt it was too much like guesswork in fallout games, and it either worked or it didn't, but never gave me any real advice on how to improve on that.

some dainty maiden with nothing to recommend her but vast tracts of land

 

Too bad someone had already pointed that out before I did, but

Spoiler

Since Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this blog on

persuasionment

, and t'is the season, I wish you all happy holidays, merry christmas and whatever sort of familial ritual we all share in, religiously or not, and gather 'round those we care about to compare who spent more on whom, I wish you all (devs and users alike) a merry... Holiday and reveillon. May the memes keep flowing on 2019, and may the elusive date finally reach us in its material form, sooner rather than later. And until then, enjoy the eating, the drinking, the partying, the lurking, the sleeping and all the stuff you do that make you merry, content and fulfilled.

 

[Life_Erikson]

Great news! So far Bannerlord ticked almost every box I wanted from it. I think furthering your goal through negociation was the missing link between the roleplay and the strategy aspect of Mount&Blade.

 

[JuanNieve]

Do you think we can know if a lord lies to us with the facial expressions they have been developing? Like in L.A. Noire

 

[xdj1nn]

Great news! So far Bannerlord ticked almost every box I wanted from it. I think furthering your goal through negociation was the missing link between the roleplay and the strategy aspect of Mount&Blade.

Being as sincere as I possibly can, I am still concerned about BL being just as grindy and sort of boring like M&B and WB were. Of course WB had more depth, with the support of founding your own kingdom and all, but both Vanilla experiences were sort of boring, and almost all mods are too grindy (translating: repetitive mindless tasks). On the other hand I did have my fair share of fun with WB and classic M&B, but M&B only lasted a single playthrough where I've found out you had no support at all for independent kingdom (so no late-game), and in WB it was the repetitiveness and meaningless siege grinding to paint the map for no reason but to, idk, fulfill my non-diagnosed low degree OCD... My fear, summing up, is that BL just gives more of the same experience overall, despite the addition of the new features... That's like a risk/curse of most Sandboxes when there's no additional non-sandbox content to be found in the game... Not to mention my personal impatience towards the time it's taking to even get an ETA (that generally adds 1 or 2 years before release)...

 

[rrtdfgdfyredtdtgdrtdr]

Wow these graphics look like ****

 

[FBohler]

Not to mention my personal impatience towards the time it's taking to even get an ETA (that generally adds 1 or 2 years before release)...

BL is likely to get a release date announced pretty close to the actual release.

 

[ermine]

Happy about those gadgets ( persuasion etc ) if it makes sense - does the game really apply it properly ? I am not sure.

It is something that might really work fine or something that really messes things up ( Hello Save scumming). The blog did not really help with that.

 

[Life_Erikson]

Great news! So far Bannerlord ticked almost every box I wanted from it. I think furthering your goal through negociation was the missing link between the roleplay and the strategy aspect of Mount&Blade.

Being as sincere as I possibly can, I am still concerned about BL being just as grindy and sort of boring like M&B and WB were. Of course WB had more depth, with the support of founding your own kingdom and all, but both Vanilla experiences were sort of boring, and almost all mods are too grindy (translating: repetitive mindless tasks). On the other hand I did have my fair share of fun with WB and classic M&B, but M&B only lasted a single playthrough where I've found out you had no support at all for independent kingdom (so no late-game), and in WB it was the repetitiveness and meaningless siege grinding to paint the map for no reason but to, idk, fulfill my non-diagnosed low degree OCD... My fear, summing up, is that BL just gives more of the same experience overall, despite the addition of the new features... That's like a risk/curse of most Sandboxes when there's no additional non-sandbox content to be found in the game... Not to mention my personal impatience towards the time it's taking to even get an ETA (that generally adds 1 or 2 years before release)...

I completely agree with you on the boring grind in WB and M&B. But I think most of the reasons why it has been boring and unimmersive seem to have been fixed in Bannerlord (at least from what I expect having read the devblogs).

Mount&Blade felt cold and unimersive because the characters didn't behave like humans. There were in theory some lords which wanted to rebell, or switched sides, but as a player you hardly noticed and I could never get advantages out of it, at least when playing as a vasal. The way factions made and ceased war against each other didn't follow a logical pattern but a purely game balance based one. Was a faction too successfull in its conquest it would start war with a second one and the other way round. Lords would leave their marshals at random and go on feasts and the AI wasn't up to the task of defending its own villages. Things like that threw a giant spanner in the gears of the strategical aspect of the game. As a player this left you fighting against windmills or be it the braindead AI of your own faction/lords. I think this in combination with a lack of immersiveness made the game grindy.

This seems (hopefully) to be fixed. Lords have teir own goals. You can further your position by creating a reputation (in more ways then in WB) and by choosing which lords you could ally with to reach your goal. I think this gives an entirely new dimension to the game. The feeling I get from this is that you can influence other lords and your faction much more and in more meaningfull ways even if you are not the faction leader. 

All of this existed, at least in theory, in WB already. But As a player you weren't initiating it. You could go on a quest to start or end a war if you found one. I hope in Bannerlord it is the other way round. As long as you can gather enough support from other lords you should always be able to influence the direction in which the game is going.

 

[Bjorn The Dead]

Not to mention my personal impatience towards the time it's taking to even get an ETA (that generally adds 1 or 2 years before release)...

BL is likely to get a release date announced pretty close to the actual release.

Spoiler: 2.58

Seems so.

 

[xdj1nn]

Not to mention my personal impatience towards the time it's taking to even get an ETA (that generally adds 1 or 2 years before release)...

BL is likely to get a release date announced pretty close to the actual release.

Spoiler: 2.58

Seems so.

Yup, so I am, hopefully, wrong about the pattern of announcement/release distance

 

[FBohler]

It seems TW wants to make sure the game is in perfect shape to announce a release date. The lead time between announcement and release may be commercial rather than technical.

 

[Jim2000]

The release date is getting closer and closer for 10 years..Please stop torturing us just give us the game at 2019 pleasee..

 

[FBohler]

Maybe we'll get early access in 2019. Full release is unlikely though.

 

[killer-blead]

I completely agree with you on the boring grind in WB and M&B. But I think most of the reasons why it has been boring and unimmersive seem to have been fixed in Bannerlord (at least from what I expect having read the devblogs).

Mount&Blade felt cold and unimersive because the characters didn't behave like humans. There were in theory some lords which wanted to rebell, or switched sides, but as a player you hardly noticed and I could never get advantages out of it, at least when playing as a vasal. The way factions made and ceased war against each other didn't follow a logical pattern but a purely game balance based one. Was a faction too successfull in its conquest it would start war with a second one and the other way round. Lords would leave their marshals at random and go on feasts and the AI wasn't up to the task of defending its own villages. Things like that threw a giant spanner in the gears of the strategical aspect of the game. As a player this left you fighting against windmills or be it the braindead AI of your own faction/lords. I think this in combination with a lack of immersiveness made the game grindy.

This seems (hopefully) to be fixed. Lords have teir own goals. You can further your position by creating a reputation (in more ways then in WB) and by choosing which lords you could ally with to reach your goal. I think this gives an entirely new dimension to the game. The feeling I get from this is that you can influence other lords and your faction much more and in more meaningfull ways even if you are not the faction leader. 

All of this existed, at least in theory, in WB already. But As a player you weren't initiating it. You could go on a quest to start or end a war if you found one. I hope in Bannerlord it is the other way round. As long as you can gather enough support from other lords you should always be able to influence the direction in which the game is going.

I hope the campaign is a little bit faster passed and that the lords are more useful. Playing a lord or king in Warband basically meant that you had to solo pretty much all the lords of the factions you are at war with, you took over castles and towns alone unless you could convince 1 - 2 lords to join you for longer than 3 minutes.

There were points in the game where I would join as a lord and casually play the game, not really going in the offense, just defending my own fiefs (not even taking out that many lords) after 150 days of war really nothing had changed at all.

I'm not saying all wars should be over by then or that something incredibly dramatic should have happened. Just a bit more proof that you are actually still at war.

 

[masterhound3]

Great feature. But if they didnt waste time on kids, we would already have the game in our hands.

 

[masterhound3]

I completely agree with you on the boring grind in WB and M&B. But I think most of the reasons why it has been boring and unimmersive seem to have been fixed in Bannerlord (at least from what I expect having read the devblogs).

Mount&Blade felt cold and unimersive because the characters didn't behave like humans. There were in theory some lords which wanted to rebell, or switched sides, but as a player you hardly noticed and I could never get advantages out of it, at least when playing as a vasal. The way factions made and ceased war against each other didn't follow a logical pattern but a purely game balance based one. Was a faction too successfull in its conquest it would start war with a second one and the other way round. Lords would leave their marshals at random and go on feasts and the AI wasn't up to the task of defending its own villages. Things like that threw a giant spanner in the gears of the strategical aspect of the game. As a player this left you fighting against windmills or be it the braindead AI of your own faction/lords. I think this in combination with a lack of immersiveness made the game grindy.

This seems (hopefully) to be fixed. Lords have teir own goals. You can further your position by creating a reputation (in more ways then in WB) and by choosing which lords you could ally with to reach your goal. I think this gives an entirely new dimension to the game. The feeling I get from this is that you can influence other lords and your faction much more and in more meaningfull ways even if you are not the faction leader. 

All of this existed, at least in theory, in WB already. But As a player you weren't initiating it. You could go on a quest to start or end a war if you found one. I hope in Bannerlord it is the other way round. As long as you can gather enough support from other lords you should always be able to influence the direction in which the game is going.

I hope the campaign is a little bit faster passed and that the lords are more useful. Playing a lord or king in Warband basically meant that you had to solo pretty much all the lords of the factions you are at war with, you took over castles and towns alone unless you could convince 1 - 2 lords to join you for longer than 3 minutes.

There were points in the game where I would join as a lord and casually play the game, not really going in the offense, just defending my own fiefs (not even taking out that many lords) after 150 days of war really nothing had changed at all.

I'm not saying all wars should be over by then or that something incredibly dramatic should have happened. Just a bit more proof that you are actually still at war.

In the previous games the auto battle mode as well as the sending lords on campaigns features waas very weak. I hope this can be solved in this game. At least with lots of training and good gear.

 

[King Edric]

Interesting addition

 

[FBohler]

I hope the campaign is a little bit faster passed and that the lords are more useful. Playing a lord or king in Warband basically meant that you had to solo pretty much all the lords of the factions you are at war with, you took over castles and towns alone unless you could convince 1 - 2 lords to join you for longer than 3 minutes.

There were points in the game where I would join as a lord and casually play the game, not really going in the offense, just defending my own fiefs (not even taking out that many lords) after 150 days of war really nothing had changed at all.

I'm not saying all wars should be over by then or that something incredibly dramatic should have happened. Just a bit more proof that you are actually still at war.

I have this exact same feeling. War in Warband felt like taking and losing the very same settlement over and over again. (and obviously having your villages being looted as often as possible by fast moving 5-10 sized parties)

Now in BL TaleWorlds makes us believe the systems are way more complex than in Warband, meaning long war periods might render regions out of supply, making it easier to make advances in enemy territory if you do the strategy right.
This, in addition to the influence currency system, is likely to make war waging more dynamic than Warband. Well, as long as the systems are well made and balanced.

 

[Roccoflipside]

I hope the campaign is a little bit faster passed and that the lords are more useful. Playing a lord or king in Warband basically meant that you had to solo pretty much all the lords of the factions you are at war with, you took over castles and towns alone unless you could convince 1 - 2 lords to join you for longer than 3 minutes.

There were points in the game where I would join as a lord and casually play the game, not really going in the offense, just defending my own fiefs (not even taking out that many lords) after 150 days of war really nothing had changed at all.

I'm not saying all wars should be over by then or that something incredibly dramatic should have happened. Just a bit more proof that you are actually still at war.

I have this exact same feeling. War in Warband felt like taking and losing the very same settlement over and over again. (and obviously having your villages being looted as often as possible by fast moving 5-10 sized parties)

Now in BL TaleWorlds makes us believe the systems are way more complex than in Warband, meaning long war periods might render regions out of supply, making it easier to make advances in enemy territory if you do the strategy right.
This, in addition to the influence currency system, is likely to make war waging more dynamic than Warband. Well, as long as the systems are well made and balanced.

I'd hope they are after this amount of time.

I don't think, as apparently other people do, that these are features they've decided to add in at the last second, thus increasing the dev. time exponentially, but rather that these are rather complicated features dependent on other areas of the game, therefore they've been planning/working on them the whole time, it just took a bit before they could start on them, and once they had they have taken a while to fit them in