[parsehtml]<p><img src="https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_55_taleworldswebsite.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Last week, we had the pleasure of attending Gamescom to present a hands-on demo of the singleplayer sandbox campaign of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord for the first time. Attending this kind of event is a lot of work, but at the same time, we had a lot of fun! More than 500 journalists, YouTubers, streamers, and even fellow developers from other companies came to our booth in the 3 days that we were present at the event. It was great having the opportunity to show what we are doing and it was humbling to see everyone so excited about the game!</p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/75
Dev Blog 30/08/18
- Thread starter Callum
- Start date
Users who are viewing this thread
monoolho said:
And I disagree with you. Taleworlds pampered the fans? No, Taleworlds is outright mocking the fans until now.
The only new things that Bannerlord has to offer are MINOR features which are worthless to even be discussed: improved game menus, crafting system, crime alleys, some new quests and a new skill system. Zero content, zero depth, zero things to keep you interested after 10-20 hours of excitement. Serious Warband mods had 5 times more content than Bannerlord.
And Taleworlds is advertising the game as follows "Do whatever you want: trade, fight, enter tournaments, complete quests and join factions". DUH. You could do ALL OF THIS in Warband as well. So, what's new??? 90% of Bannerlord is essentially the same as Warband...
I sincerely hope that Bannerlord has new features that they haven't talked about. But I truly doubt it...
Lamias said:
You’re mocking TaleWorlds by suggesting they are mocking the fans. Of course it’s going to be like warband, it’s a sequel and it wouldn’t be a mount & blade game with too many differences. Warband was great, but it had a lot of things missing and some things not quite polished or improved.
TaleWorlds have endeavoured to create a bigger and better version of warband, and I’d say they are being successful. We haven’t seen the whole game yet anyway, there could be even more.
I am not saying it should drift apart from Warband, Warband was GREAT and INNOVATIVE and I will congratulate them all my life for giving us a game like that when they were a small company.
What I am saying is that they did not build upon Warband. They didn't expand it. They didn't make it deep. They didn't add new mechanics, new features and gameplay choices. They improved the graphics and the menus, and added a couple of small features which will get washed up after 20 hours of gameplay.
Where is the better version of Warband? How are they successful? Please count that they are 6 years into development and tell me if what you see is a new game, or just a remastered Warband.
What I am saying is that they did not build upon Warband. They didn't expand it. They didn't make it deep. They didn't add new mechanics, new features and gameplay choices. They improved the graphics and the menus, and added a couple of small features which will get washed up after 20 hours of gameplay.
Where is the better version of Warband? How are they successful? Please count that they are 6 years into development and tell me if what you see is a new game, or just a remastered Warband.
Remastered Warband is all I want.
You entirely forgot about Clans, Minor Factions, expanded world map, new factions, and biggest of all, playing as your children! These, I would say, are extreme improvements over warband that increase replayability and the roleplaying aspect.Lamias said:
Revverie
I agree with some of this guy's point. The game is as robotic and non smooth as it was in Warband. Again going to towns and talking to people feels like talking to a wall, but now they move correctly and "do" stuff, tournaments are literally the same, being captured its just waiting a few days, which could at least turn into a quest some of the times, yet I see no punishing for losing. And I can imagine talking to the lords, im sure they haven't added a single thing to them and will be the same boring repetitive personality kind. Yes it improved in a lot of things but the game, in terms of immersion is the same.Lamias said:
I won't hate Taleworlds because they're definitely making a good game, yet I will wait for this game to have good mods to play it, because we've already know what they did in Warband and sure will do it in Bannerlord.
ArnulfFloyd
Knight at Arms
True is this, because is a M&B game, I will play game only for mods exactly how I do with Warband currently
With all due respect, these are not gameplay features nor mechanics. These are just expanded content, which frankly, it's easily added. The mod 1257 AD had over 20 factions.
Clans, minor factions and expanded world map are a joke. Is this all you want from a game with the potential of Bannerlord? Playing Warband on a bigger map with 10 enemies instead of 6?
And playing as your children... Please... That may be cool, but it's irrelevant to what I am saying. Yes I will play as my kid only to get bored in the same dull world as his father got bored and probably killed himself...
You wanna know what are GOOD and DEEP mechanics that keep the game interesting? The following features from known Warband mods:
A concept of love - hate - fear, which influences how people treat you
Religion
Ships, naval combat
Hunting system
Bounty system
Diplomacy Mod
Freelancer Mod
And some personal suggestions, that feature A LOT in other (decent) games:
Random events, choices, decisions. This is the flavor that keeps an RPG game interesting, role playing, you know?
Dealing with issues of your kingdom (judging and passing sentences, solving problems etc)
Being able to work on jobs (brytenwalda had this, it's boring to always trade and kill bandits to earn money, very linear
Weather that influences the world (rain fertilizes crops, snow = penalty on morale etc)
Economic - espionage wars possible, not just destroying kingdoms because you are a Godlike swordsman with 500 HP and you don't die.
But noo.. We get more factions and playing as our children. In the same hollow world....
Warband was amazing because it was released on 2010. We had other expectations and standards back then. Today if a game wants to be competitive it has to offer much more than this...
You are talking way too early.
Economical warfare can be in the game if what this devblog described will be implement in to the game effectively:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/2504443199094163392
Also, there is this. Of cource, these would be just some writings if they were not implement in to game effectively.
Armagan said:
Economical warfare can be in the game if what this devblog described will be implement in to the game effectively:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/2504443199094163392
Also, there is this. Of cource, these would be just some writings if they were not implement in to game effectively.
no one did not answered my question.great_khan said:
i dont know what is meaning of community manager in taleworlds we never can communicate with this guy callum.
mr community manager please spend this 30 min that you spend to write this useless blogs every week to communicate with fans and answer their questions
ArnulfFloyd
Knight at Arms
Wait until devblog of next week in which Callum promise to answer our questions
Sincerely was a plenty of Gamescom videos, which is best gameplay footage because I am not interested in interviews
Sincerely was a plenty of Gamescom videos, which is best gameplay footage because I am not interested in interviews
@Bjorn, in one demo gameplay you can buy a NPC's workshop for like 1000 silver.(assuming any NPC's) So i dont think there is a competition yet.
but in game concepts there were kingdom laws and personality traits which sounds cool. Also new skill system can be very integrated to world. So they are probably thinking about implementing deep mechanics.
but in game concepts there were kingdom laws and personality traits which sounds cool. Also new skill system can be very integrated to world. So they are probably thinking about implementing deep mechanics.
Whoa that's a wall of text... Should I put it inside spoilers?
Some of those features are most likely being put into the game in one way or another, maybe not as explicitly as the mods did, maybe not in the same way, but they are. Remember that what you consider depth as in "adding a quest when you try to escape imprisonment" or something can seem awesome in theory, but simply not work in the game. TW did remake BL about three times because stuff didn't work in some form. It is perfectly possible they added different features that simply broke the game or were annoying, taking away from fun of the game.
You call the world hollow, which is a right granted to you, of course, but you are completely disregarding the background history written in the encyclopedia and what we may see in the end product. You are basing much of your argument on what you see in gamescom as a final product and that Warband was innovative: gamescom demo was a much reduced version of the game, hence no meaningful quests, no sieges or factions, and probably no deep features. Warband was also not innovative by a long shot, as it was a Mount & Blade Remastered with improved lighting and 4 new features from mods. Viking Conquest was innovative, that much we can argue, but Warband was not.
I too am afraid that the game will feel shallow, but for exactly that reason I avoid much in-depth analysis, or watching skill trees and encyclopedia videos, so I am not spoiled before the game is even released.
Yes, the game still feels a tad robotic in which you enter scenes and talk to meaningless people, but the same can be true in The Witcher 3, it's still a game, not a whole compendium of deep make your own adventure books, it will never have the depth of an intricate novel or romance, much less of a book series. The Witcher 3 was able to reach that peak (and still stands there) narrative-wise because they invested HEAVILY on writing and voice acting, it's not a trivial job, nor is it cheap. There's always the conflict between freedom and limit in adding more or less story-driven aspects: adding more story needs more characters written, and these characters shouldn't be random-generated, each need a particular care, and they most likely left it to designers and the backstory writer to do and make, which is not ideal.
I believe they could add more story elements, which can be seen as depth, by adding more particular quests and events. I am personally a fan of random events, especially after knowing Crusader Kings, but I know they do not work in all kinds of games. But this is also not hard to solve: TW could make a "competition" in which everyone sends (privately so as not to spoil anything) ideas for quests and random events. Not merely "make a X quest, that'd be cool", no... Something truly formal, with forms and requirements with all the stuff they know are necessary to make a decent quest/random event/random encounter/whatever in their engine.
This would not only truly make the community participate, as it would take some of the writing load off TW's back. I'm fairly certain Paradox did it with Crusader kings in the Way of Life DLC, where they added numerous fan-made events.
The problem with this is that we, as fans, do not know the intricate ways of the engine and the design, so we mostly just blabber ideas off, instead of giving them fully productive feedback/ideas. (just as I did above, I blabbed off)
Now, considering the proportion of things made and done, BL is a pharaonic improvement over Warband, even if it is seen as Warband 3.0 (which I do not mind, as I did not with Warband back in the day), whereas Warband was just a good improvement over M&B. If you do not take that into account, you are being malicious to say that Bannerlord is "featureless" compared to Warband. The size of the game world might not be as immense as you wanted, the newer factions might not be that impressive to you because you've already seen it, but you are not considering they are not the same factions from WB, they are precursors, and designing a whole "prequel" culture is not an easy task.
And these small details to which many merely shrug off are details that make a difference in the context of a game (or any fictional universe). I will defend TW shamelessly once more on the sheer basis that the general aspect of the game may look "too similar" to the previous iteration, but the mechanics and the whole underlying system is completely overhauled. If you could completely replace the internal systems and functions of a living being to something completely different, without transforming it into an ugly chimera, making it have the same appearance as before, you would be a god among biologists. If you can make a complete overhaul of a FIAT UNO's inner parts and place a ferrari GT engine inside of it, and still make it look and sound like a UNO, you are one of those legendary mechanics. This is what TaleWorlds is attempting: to keep the same superficial appearance of the game, while allowing the engine to be much, much deeper, flexible and allow modders to do creative work because they WANT TO create new stuff, not because they NEED to be creative to circumvent limitations. This is no small feat. Look at how many adaptations from books to movies actually work, a handful, how many are there? A ton. It's not shallow work, even if it may look like so.
Yeah, it would be perfect if they could add all those other systems they want to within their timeframe, but they can't, they are a small developer by modern standards, they don't have the staff, and probably nor the resources to do it all at once, thus they made 'promises' to add more stuff in future content packages, like naval warfare, for example. I am not being a fanboy and being a white knight to TW because I want a job from them (which I would love...), it's just that from an author and designer perspective I truly admire what they do: from the outside it looks the same, from the inside, it's a whole new beast. By far it is not perfect, but we do not know the whole picture, we don't have access to the full game, we can't see what's EVERYTHING they have in the game, and gamescom footage is not reliable as final product in all aspects because it is an excerpt of the final game.
Of course, if it ends up being just the gamescon stuff with factions, some sieges and a few more quests, it will be disappointing, but like Arnulf, I too am waiting for mods, because Native can only get you so far. So the possibilities are not ended there.
1256ad is by far the mod I've most played, probably over 400h more than native, VC and napoleonic combined, maybe more. I love its size, but it is empty, it has over 20 factions and it is a constant stutter due to the many scripts running constantly. Bannerlord added completely new factions, with different backstories and intricacies... It's not the same as sifting through wikipedia and writing down names of notables and aristocrats.
These sandbox games need to be deep, but also shallow enough to allow you to unfold your own story, and not be taken by the hand cinematically to save the world. It's a whole different ballpark, and one not so easily done. They could, maybe, add a chronicle feature to help the player better make sense of the world and their own story as it was at the start and as it unfolded...
He's a TW's forum social observer and critic, I believe...
Well... I hate to be such a Leo, and I believe this will be the second or third time i've quoted myself on these forums since 2009, but here it goes:Lamias said:
Just like many have said it before, there are plenty of new features. What you are arguing over is like arguing The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is set in middle-earth in medieval times, instead of being a modern-day reimagining of the second book. It wouldn't be the same. Much of what you argue are deep mechanical features to which they alluded to over the course of the devblogs, even since the red guy.monoolho said:
Some of those features are most likely being put into the game in one way or another, maybe not as explicitly as the mods did, maybe not in the same way, but they are. Remember that what you consider depth as in "adding a quest when you try to escape imprisonment" or something can seem awesome in theory, but simply not work in the game. TW did remake BL about three times because stuff didn't work in some form. It is perfectly possible they added different features that simply broke the game or were annoying, taking away from fun of the game.
You call the world hollow, which is a right granted to you, of course, but you are completely disregarding the background history written in the encyclopedia and what we may see in the end product. You are basing much of your argument on what you see in gamescom as a final product and that Warband was innovative: gamescom demo was a much reduced version of the game, hence no meaningful quests, no sieges or factions, and probably no deep features. Warband was also not innovative by a long shot, as it was a Mount & Blade Remastered with improved lighting and 4 new features from mods. Viking Conquest was innovative, that much we can argue, but Warband was not.
I too am afraid that the game will feel shallow, but for exactly that reason I avoid much in-depth analysis, or watching skill trees and encyclopedia videos, so I am not spoiled before the game is even released.
Yes, the game still feels a tad robotic in which you enter scenes and talk to meaningless people, but the same can be true in The Witcher 3, it's still a game, not a whole compendium of deep make your own adventure books, it will never have the depth of an intricate novel or romance, much less of a book series. The Witcher 3 was able to reach that peak (and still stands there) narrative-wise because they invested HEAVILY on writing and voice acting, it's not a trivial job, nor is it cheap. There's always the conflict between freedom and limit in adding more or less story-driven aspects: adding more story needs more characters written, and these characters shouldn't be random-generated, each need a particular care, and they most likely left it to designers and the backstory writer to do and make, which is not ideal.
I believe they could add more story elements, which can be seen as depth, by adding more particular quests and events. I am personally a fan of random events, especially after knowing Crusader Kings, but I know they do not work in all kinds of games. But this is also not hard to solve: TW could make a "competition" in which everyone sends (privately so as not to spoil anything) ideas for quests and random events. Not merely "make a X quest, that'd be cool", no... Something truly formal, with forms and requirements with all the stuff they know are necessary to make a decent quest/random event/random encounter/whatever in their engine.
This would not only truly make the community participate, as it would take some of the writing load off TW's back. I'm fairly certain Paradox did it with Crusader kings in the Way of Life DLC, where they added numerous fan-made events.
The problem with this is that we, as fans, do not know the intricate ways of the engine and the design, so we mostly just blabber ideas off, instead of giving them fully productive feedback/ideas. (just as I did above, I blabbed off)
Now, considering the proportion of things made and done, BL is a pharaonic improvement over Warband, even if it is seen as Warband 3.0 (which I do not mind, as I did not with Warband back in the day), whereas Warband was just a good improvement over M&B. If you do not take that into account, you are being malicious to say that Bannerlord is "featureless" compared to Warband. The size of the game world might not be as immense as you wanted, the newer factions might not be that impressive to you because you've already seen it, but you are not considering they are not the same factions from WB, they are precursors, and designing a whole "prequel" culture is not an easy task.
And these small details to which many merely shrug off are details that make a difference in the context of a game (or any fictional universe). I will defend TW shamelessly once more on the sheer basis that the general aspect of the game may look "too similar" to the previous iteration, but the mechanics and the whole underlying system is completely overhauled. If you could completely replace the internal systems and functions of a living being to something completely different, without transforming it into an ugly chimera, making it have the same appearance as before, you would be a god among biologists. If you can make a complete overhaul of a FIAT UNO's inner parts and place a ferrari GT engine inside of it, and still make it look and sound like a UNO, you are one of those legendary mechanics. This is what TaleWorlds is attempting: to keep the same superficial appearance of the game, while allowing the engine to be much, much deeper, flexible and allow modders to do creative work because they WANT TO create new stuff, not because they NEED to be creative to circumvent limitations. This is no small feat. Look at how many adaptations from books to movies actually work, a handful, how many are there? A ton. It's not shallow work, even if it may look like so.
Yeah, it would be perfect if they could add all those other systems they want to within their timeframe, but they can't, they are a small developer by modern standards, they don't have the staff, and probably nor the resources to do it all at once, thus they made 'promises' to add more stuff in future content packages, like naval warfare, for example. I am not being a fanboy and being a white knight to TW because I want a job from them (which I would love...), it's just that from an author and designer perspective I truly admire what they do: from the outside it looks the same, from the inside, it's a whole new beast. By far it is not perfect, but we do not know the whole picture, we don't have access to the full game, we can't see what's EVERYTHING they have in the game, and gamescom footage is not reliable as final product in all aspects because it is an excerpt of the final game.
Of course, if it ends up being just the gamescon stuff with factions, some sieges and a few more quests, it will be disappointing, but like Arnulf, I too am waiting for mods, because Native can only get you so far. So the possibilities are not ended there.
1256ad is by far the mod I've most played, probably over 400h more than native, VC and napoleonic combined, maybe more. I love its size, but it is empty, it has over 20 factions and it is a constant stutter due to the many scripts running constantly. Bannerlord added completely new factions, with different backstories and intricacies... It's not the same as sifting through wikipedia and writing down names of notables and aristocrats.
These sandbox games need to be deep, but also shallow enough to allow you to unfold your own story, and not be taken by the hand cinematically to save the world. It's a whole different ballpark, and one not so easily done. They could, maybe, add a chronicle feature to help the player better make sense of the world and their own story as it was at the start and as it unfolded...
Oh boy, the pressure!! I can't think of anything now! I'm not sure if I even have an actual question... Maybe worries that I expressed in KhergitLancer's thread... Now I'll have to think on it, perhaps for 7 and a half million years...zabfalat said:
Oh, from some Oatmeal Cookies artist I've seen somehwere, you wouldn't know him, I think...zabfalat said:
He's a TW's forum social observer and critic, I believe...Revverie
I agree with you too in a lot of things but I won't stop claiming to Taleworlds a better written world. You can have all the features you have but it the world you are playing doesn't changes when you move then it's pointless and the role playing effect will wear of in matter of no time. I can't count how many times I've started Wsrband games, including mods that I have not finished, because there was nothing to keep me playing, just the same place I've already know before, the same people in different towns and etc. Of course this game is a great overhaul but who tells us this demo is not what we have to expect of the actual game? If they haven't changed all that important stuff already is because they just won't and that is sad, yet Ill get it because I hope some modder like the ones in prophesy of Pendor will change everything and actually give you a world worth fighting for where you feel you are actually someone. Yes encyclopedia helps but it's just off narrative text that needs to take you out of the place you're playing to show you what it has. I understand this world will feel more alive than any mb game we have played but if this game truly doesn't have any interesting event it will end up being hollow. Yes you're free to do what you want but in order to tell story from freedom of choice you need things to choose from and a world that gives you that level of choice, that is all I expected from this, but whatever, I will not take my world as final and my hopes dead until I see the final product.monoolho said:
Edit: sorry for the misspelling I'm drunk
ArnulfFloyd
Knight at Arms
Interesting is how Warband keep me playing despite visit same places and meet same characters. Claiming to Taleworlds to spent time in better writting sounds comically
Lamias said:
Nope, they did not. I grant you this
Is it bad thing? For me, nah. There are games so great, that one expects just remastering and will still enjoy playing them. Warband is one of them (I sometimes still play it today). Other notable examples? Jagged Alliance 2 (I'd love a remaster). X-com (Xenonauts was a good one, and sequel will be even better). Civ4bts (it is greatest of cis by far
)So the bottom line is: Bannerlord is Warband with improved graphics, some new background content, improved UI and fixed few bugs/imbalances that made game annoying. That's it. Take it or leave it, man.
What Bannerlord will also have is potential for mods. So many innovative features will once again be added by modders or in expansions/DLCs. But tha base game is same : you ride on your mount, kill enemies, loot, buy gear. Rinse and repeat. If that does not satisfy you, well, tough luck. Maybe wait for certain mods or just enjoy other productions.
ArnulfFloyd
Knight at Arms
I agree. Mods and DLCs are true strenght of BL exactly how was with M&B WB
Revverie
Cmon, don't play blind now. How many times have you all finished a warband game. Of course the world is attractive enough to keep you coming back but it end ups lacking man, it's the true.Arnulf Floyd said:
In example, I always start a game excited and role-playing until the mid game where things get repetitive and then I start remembering why I keep leaving this game, is an endless cycle that Bannerlord can break, and needs to break
