Endgame is boring and really kills all the fun...

[froggyluv]

This would be a good time to being on the very requested feature of naval combat and travel with lots of great features like the following:

Most definite agree that if you're going to introduce something like the oh so tired and true end game invasion -adding a whole new body of game mechanics would definitely give it a fresher paint of coat. like if throughout the game your needing to researching and developing something like your Naval warfare -having that as something introduced late game is a really good idea. Maybe even needing to find the Invaders homeland and genocide the whole Tribe - now that would be a new one

 

[JunKeteer]

End-game invasions seem great for that first time, but not for the longevity of a sandbox game; it just becomes this arbitrary timer and that sort of forces players to 'prepare' for it and not at their own pace or own way.
I don't think this game needs naval battles - just better scenes near water and situations to trigger around that. The sea raider map is pretty good, shame it's only for hideout attacks (same with towns for that matter...).
Though there should be at least one or two 'crossing' paths by the Aserai/lake there and one by Sturgia - having just the two ends for both those factions is still a primary cause for the imbalance and pathfinding dis/advantages with each.

 

[froggyluv]

I don't think this game needs naval battles

No it doesnt but the grander scheme is that if they had a game mechanic almost absent early to mid game -something you had to study, engineer and develop -and thereby adding endgame in full force to counter an invasion would definitely freshen up the idea of End Game Invasion. New mechanics (done well of course)added later game are almost always a boost in my opinion to counter the endless MeatGrind,Replenish,Rinse,Repeat syndrome

 

[JunKeteer]

No it doesnt but the grander scheme is that if they had a game mechanic almost absent early to mid game -something you had to study, engineer and develop -and thereby adding endgame in full force to counter an invasion would definitely freshen up the idea of End Game Invasion. New mechanics (done well of course)added later game are almost always a boost in my opinion to counter the endless MeatGrind,Replenish,Rinse,Repeat syndrome

New mechanics or ones that develop into further complications towards the late game, yes, for sure is sorely needed. But adding/spawning some invading force isn't one of those; if something like that was to be put in place, it has to be done with depth and tied features with the map; a 'meter' of sorts (off-tangent example but something like plague inc boardgame - but not to that degree of difficulty).
X factor like raider hideout/raiders undefeated/left to their own device = 'unrest'+ = chance to spawn/merge into a larger group that meets a threshold to raid a village or even attempt a castle siege (and maybe turn minor rebel clan). Or maybe it leads to upgraded hideouts (scene change like castle upgrades?) that you have to actually attack (any time) with a full force; so all those 'pockets' in the hideouts are actually populated and not just empty tunnels majority of the time.

Once you get past mid-game - hideouts, looters, bandits, (even merc clans), etc...become useless relics of the early game. So all that's left is stomping small noble parties or those 1k vs 1k army bashes in the late-game.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

New mechanics or ones that develop into further complications towards the late game, yes, for sure is sorely needed. But adding/spawning some invading force isn't one of those; if something like that was to be put in place, it has to be done with depth and tied features with the map; a 'meter' of sorts (off-tangent example but something like plague inc boardgame - but not to that degree of difficulty).
X factor like raider hideout/raiders undefeated/left to their own device = 'unrest'+ = chance to spawn/merge into a larger group that meets a threshold to raid a village or even attempt a castle siege (and maybe turn minor rebel clan). Or maybe it leads to upgraded hideouts (scene change like castle upgrades?) that you have to actually attack (any time) with a full force; so all those 'pockets' in the hideouts are actually populated and not just empty tunnels majority of the time.

Once you get past mid-game - hideouts, looters, bandits, (even merc clans), etc...become useless relics of the early game. So all that's left is stomping small noble parties or those 1k vs 1k army bashes in the late-game.

I wouldn't like some random "extraterrestrial invasion" by super-vikings since it'd make it feel so arbitrary and gamey. And what happens if I take too long to be in a position to respond to it, or am too quick and already won the game?

I do think naval mechanics would be a nice addition though, provided proper balancing is done to make it work properly.

I don't know how well it'd work for Bannerlord, but the one game mechanic I can think of that actually provided some kind of challenge that escalated towards unification was officer factionalism and disgruntlement in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 6.

Basically, the way it worked was that every officer had a "Dream" which determined their personality, political ideals, officer to officer compatibility, etc. and going against their "Dream" (like disregarding the Han Emperor to somebody of the "Advisor" Dream) would increase their (hidden) level of disgruntlement, leading to decreased Body Points (Health and action points), protests, and even ignoring your orders during battles. If they were severely mad their loyalty would drop rapidly and would likely defect or abandon you. Rarely, they could even drop dead from indignation. There were several ways to appease them, from paying them personal visits (costs Body Points, which means it's harder for your ruler to pay personal visits as they have hundreds of officers in their payroll) to giving them orders that match their dispositions to actually heeding their concerns and changing your play style.

Bannerlord appears to already have a system similar to the "Dream" system but managing the loyalties of your vassals and appeasing them through changes in your behavior or home visits is not really a thing. As it is, their ideals/personalities have relatively small impacts. I think expanding on THIS system could make the late late game more interesting in that you'd have to focus on maintaining loyalty and assuaging beleaguered veterans (etc.) or they could desert, defect, secede, etc.

 

[sh1ny4]

I would very much like a gameplay that shifts away from battles and more into kingdom management (with the occasional battle ofc),4X games do this very well and should be taken as inspiration. For example in civ (your mileage may vary) you start by

• founding your cities, taking care of the barbarians,
• then you start optimizing your projects, do a religion, start some wonders
• then the race against the others factions

bannerlord should get something similar, I would tie it to the clan system and the kingdom system to give them some much needed use.
Beginning would be about yourself, then about defending the kingdom you're in, then once stable enough about managing it (or part of it).

Something I remember well about warband is that in the late game, the only time I was in a battle was for a siege by an army I was leading. most of the rest of the time I would spend trying to please the nobles, solve disputes, try to optimize my fiefs, or just waiting. I had spent enough time fighting and wanted something different.
Meanwhile in bannerlord not only can't I do that, but the fighting is even longer while being more boring.

some other ideas :

• warband had the marshall that managed the army, something similar could exist for the economy, the nobles. (bring in more money for the former, prevent defection for the latter)
• as I said before giving each clan tier a new perk the tier below didn't have
• when king you should rarely have to lead a party, outside of maybe some rare army leading. That is unless you delegate the tasks above to some NPC for you
• The possibility to convince other NPCs to simply surrender, have some barter not related to money, the possibility of being a diplomat that allows for peace or starts a war
• naval system as discussed above
• give some other use than voting to the influence, like recruiting high tier troops, convincing nobles without money.
• add in renown decay
• change the salary of troops : I could barely afford 50 swadian knight with a town in warband, I can run a 300+ tier 6 troops bulldozer of a party with two towns in bannerlord

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I would very much like a gameplay that shifts away from battles and more into kingdom management (with the occasional battle ofc),4X games do this very well and should be taken as inspiration. For example in civ (your mileage may vary) you start by

• founding your cities, taking care of the barbarians,
• then you start optimizing your projects, do a religion, start some wonders
• then the race against the others factions

bannerlord should get something similar, I would tie it to the clan system and the kingdom system to give them some much needed use.
Beginning would be about yourself, then about defending the kingdom you're in, then once stable enough about managing it (or part of it).

Something I remember well about warband is that in the late game, the only time I was in a battle was for a siege by an army I was leading. most of the rest of the time I would spend trying to please the nobles, solve disputes, try to optimize my fiefs, or just waiting. I had spent enough time fighting and wanted something different.
Meanwhile in bannerlord not only can't I do that, but the fighting is even longer while being more boring.

some other ideas :

• warband had the marshall that managed the army, something similar could exist for the economy, the nobles. (bring in more money for the former, prevent defection for the latter)
• as I said before giving each clan tier a new perk the tier below didn't have
• when king you should rarely have to lead a party, outside of maybe some rare army leading. That is unless you delegate the tasks above to some NPC for you
• The possibility to convince other NPCs to simply surrender, have some barter not related to money, the possibility of being a diplomat that allows for peace or starts a war
• naval system as discussed above
• give some other use than voting to the influence, like recruiting high tier troops, convincing nobles without money.
• add in renown decay
• change the salary of troops : I could barely afford 50 swadian knight with a town in warband, I can run a 300+ tier 6 troops bulldozer of a party with two towns in bannerlord

The marshal system already exists though, it's just done differently so there can be more armies and makes use of the Influence currency with relations determining Influence cost.

I don't like the idea of restricting gameplay mechanics to clan tier; I can only tolerate it here because it makes sense guilds and the like wouldn't trust a random hobo to own property but it doesn't make sense that they'd be skeptical of a well-known nobleman with a good financial history. Like, there's no good in-universe explanation as to why I need to be super-royalty to own one more store or have one more companion. I strongly dislike the way clan tiers operate because it's so gamey, but it doesn't bother me much because it's mostly ignorable and some sensible uses of it (restricting access to nobility and viability of creating a new country) actually do justify it.

Troop salaries are already very expensive in Bannerlord compared to income sources. If you stack a city with top tier troops, you'll be in the red unless it's a very high prosperity city. Even a stack of mostly crappy troops is expensive, never mind having top quality troops in your own retinue + clan parties. Bannerlord has a much larger scale for battles and armies than Warband, so 300 troops in this game is basically 50 in Warband and, in Warband, business (especially Velvet Dyeworks) were extremely profitable so once you set up enough your financial concerns with troops were a thing of the past. Not so in this game.

Renown's pretty useless besides obtaining Clan Tiers, so I don't see a reason to have a decay for it since it doesn't contribute to anything tangible (like troop count limits) like in Warband.

Since this is supposed to simulate a highly decentralized European-style feudal world, kings actually have to be active and busy themselves to get anything done on a national level so that checks out thematically, but I do think more stuff to do besides fighting would be a good idea. However, I would like it if it were possible to centralize power more and I think the framework is already there, just need to be able to have more influence (not currency) in determining vassals' actions, like a little speech minigame to convince them to attack or defend places or form armies for the purpose (etc.) similar to Warband.

As for my own original ideas...

Well, I'd take inspiration from Koei strategy games, especially Romance of the Three Kingdoms 6-8 and 13. From 6, I think it'd be sweet if we had to take care of our vassals mental needs (like I described above) and from later entries it'd be cool if there were more official bureaucratic stations like advisors, ministers, and regional commanders (although to go all the way Bannerlord would have to fundamentally change since a more centralized government structure would easily beat out the heavily decentralized feudal structure that currently exists). Not to mention schemes such as sapping city defenses, degrading public order, arranging timed defections, planting moles and other types of agents, alienating nobles so that they're more willing to leave/defect, etc plus counter-measures to protect/restore these things.

 

[Apocal]

(although to go all the way Bannerlord would have to fundamentally change since a more centralized government structure would easily beat out the heavily decentralized feudal structure that currently exists)

Then that should be the endgame goal.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Then that should be the endgame goal.

I'm already attempting to do that in effect lol. However, the A.I. is not smart enough to realize certain policy set ups are much better than others, so, if the game were changed to feature an expanding bureaucracy, they'd have to either be reprogrammed to gravitate towards more efficient governance or the entire thing would have to be rebalanced to justify the party between a noble democracy, a somewhat restrained autocracy, and a modern-style monarchy.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I would very much like a gameplay that shifts away from battles and more into kingdom management (with the occasional battle ofc),4X games do this very well and should be taken as inspiration. For example in civ (your mileage may vary) you start by

• founding your cities, taking care of the barbarians,
• then you start optimizing your projects, do a religion, start some wonders
• then the race against the others factions

bannerlord should get something similar, I would tie it to the clan system and the kingdom system to give them some much needed use.
Beginning would be about yourself, then about defending the kingdom you're in, then once stable enough about managing it (or part of it).

The problem with this is that gameplay-wise it's just more menus. I feel like the mount and blade formula is stretched to its limit with bannerlord. Taleworlds could add the most interesting 4x and building system of all time, but having a campaign of this scale would mean you spend even more time in menus and on the overworld rather than in the towns where your buildings are.

I would be really interested by a mod that takes place mostly within scenes. So instead of an overworld there are just different large maps with a few villages or a big town in them, and all the gameplay is contained within them. All the suggestions people make, like assassins or hunting or even the 4X type stuff in your post would make way more sense. It would be a fundamentally different game, but I feel like the MnB formula is just a brick wall, hamstrung by the overworld-scene-menu division which was a technical limitation back in the 2000s but a needless restriction nowadays.

 

[sh1ny4]

I don't like the idea of restricting gameplay mechanics to clan tier; I can only tolerate it here because it makes sense guilds and the like wouldn't trust a random hobo to own property but it doesn't make sense that they'd be skeptical of a well-known nobleman with a good financial history. Like, there's no good in-universe explanation as to why I need to be super-royalty to own one more store or have one more companion. I strongly dislike the way clan tiers operate because it's so gamey, but it doesn't bother me much because it's mostly ignorable and some sensible uses of it (restricting access to nobility and viability of creating a new country) actually do justify it.

Renown's pretty useless besides obtaining Clan Tiers, so I don't see a reason to have a decay for it since it doesn't contribute to anything tangible (like troop count limits) like in Warband.

I agree on the whole workshop & caravan limit, which in my opinion should be unlimited/have a soft cap instead of a hard cap. What I mean is things like tier 5 allowing to start armies for example, because the tier 3 nobody that just got out of mercenary work can summon top tier clans to it's army, it's a bit ridiculous. Same way I would restrict clans tier 3 to castles because they haven't proved to anyone they know how to rule a territory.
As for renown decay it's to avoid having every clan be tier 6 in the late game.

Troop salaries are already very expensive in Bannerlord compared to income sources. If you stack a city with top tier troops, you'll be in the red unless it's a very high prosperity city. Even a stack of mostly crappy troops is expensive, never mind having top quality troops in your own retinue + clan parties. Bannerlord has a much larger scale for battles and armies than Warband, so 300 troops in this game is basically 50 in Warband and, in Warband, business (especially Velvet Dyeworks) were extremely profitable so once you set up enough your financial concerns with troops were a thing of the past. Not so in this game.

Yes bannerlord has much larger battles (which is mostly because of the army system and the map size, I dislike both), but if clans didn't have such a high tier the battles would be of a smaller scale. The economy is in a rough state but in no case should my troops be made of solely top tier troops so easily. I had a run in which I governed three towns, each had 150 tier 5 garrison while I fielded 400 tier 6 troops. And I kept gaining money that way, without looting. It should not happend, or not so easily

Since this is supposed to simulate a highly decentralized European-style feudal world, kings actually have to be active and busy themselves to get anything done on a national level so that checks out thematically, but I do think more stuff to do besides fighting would be a good idea. However, I would like it if it were possible to centralize power more and I think the framework is already there, just need to be able to have more influence (not currency) in determining vassals' actions, like a little speech minigame to convince them to attack or defend places or form armies for the purpose (etc.) similar to Warband.

Totally agreed, I do not know how it is possible but I would love to see this

The problem with this is that gameplay-wise it's just more menus. I feel like the mount and blade formula is stretched to its limit with bannerlord. Taleworlds could add the most interesting 4x and building system of all time, but having a campaign of this scale would mean you spend even more time in menus and on the overworld rather than in the towns where your buildings are.

Well my idea of it was more about meeting the lords, even the notables and have a discussion to convince them of something. But the game woud need some of it's "QoL" features removed for sure, like the posibility to quick speak to notables without ever seeing them before, or talking to potential companions without entering the tavern

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I agree on the whole workshop & caravan limit, which in my opinion should be unlimited/have a soft cap instead of a hard cap. What I mean is things like tier 5 allowing to start armies for example, because the tier 3 nobody that just got out of mercenary work can summon top tier clans to it's army, it's a bit ridiculous. Same way I would restrict clans tier 3 to castles because they haven't proved to anyone they know how to rule a territory.
As for renown decay it's to avoid having every clan be tier 6 in the late game.

I don't see a problem in most clans becoming tier 6 a million years into the future since it implies everybody's been tested thoroughly enough lol. But, on principle, I don't think it'd be terrible to use clan tier as a restriction for fiefdoms either, but IF country-founding is 4, then city ought to be 3 and castle 2 since I don't think castles should be weighed equally to cities.

Yes bannerlord has much larger battles (which is mostly because of the army system and the map size, I dislike both), but if clans didn't have such a high tier the battles would be of a smaller scale. The economy is in a rough state but in no case should my troops be made of solely top tier troops so easily. I had a run in which I governed three towns, each had 150 tier 5 garrison while I fielded 400 tier 6 troops. And I kept gaining money that way, without looting. It should not happend, or not so easily

I must state I'm playing on PS4 which has a total troop rendering limit of 350, which means a battle involving a total of 1,000 combatants, presuming both sides are equal in number, could have several reinforcement waves coming in. I mention this because I wonder to what degree this affects the flow of battles and the way they're conducted, since I greatly enjoy the expanded scope in army size since it makes the tactical side of things more engaging and variable than ever with dramatic pushes and pulls and all that. As for map--I assume you mean the campaign map. I'm inclined to say "bigger is better" with that as well lol. Sure, it can translate to a more repetitive unification game but it also means the generational side of gameplay is far more likely to occur than if the world were only half its current size.

I'd have to see your books to comment because I've not been so wealthy in my first playthrough last month at roughly the same power level. It's especially strange since I typically hear complaints about how hard it is to make money outside of battle (etc. etc.) and from my experience I think it's fine but recognize there's numerous variable factors like city prosperity and village hearths that can dramatically impact revenue before expenses.

As far as raising top tier troops "easily," well... I prefer high tier versus high tier battles on one hand, and I'd only describe it as "easy" to raise a huge army of top tier troops when you're already very secure in your power that you can basically auto-battle recruits into top tiers over a short period of time.

Totally agreed, I do not know how it is possible but I would love to see this





Well my idea of it was more about meeting the lords, even the notables and have a discussion to convince them of something. But the game woud need some of it's "QoL" features removed for sure, like the posibility to quick speak to notables without ever seeing them before, or talking to potential companions without entering the tavern

I don't think it's a good idea to remove the shortcuts because the loading screens on PS4 are atrocious. Imagine waiting 15-30 seconds just to say "I'm done" to a quest-giver plus that time again to leave and then multiply it by the numerous scenes you'd have to load up for most non-overworld interactions. Warband didn't have this problem (aside from starting the game and saving/loading, I don't even think it had loading screens on PS4!) so I think these shortcuts are borderline necessary to prevent Bannerlord from becoming a painful slog where a desire to avoid loading screens becomes a main factor of choosing what to do in the game.

 

[five bucks]

I would be really interested by a mod that takes place mostly within scenes. So instead of an overworld there are just different large maps with a few villages or a big town in them, and all the gameplay is contained within them.

Wouldn't you then have to manually travel very large distances over a long period of time? Either that or have a tiny world?

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Well my idea of it was more about meeting the lords, even the notables and have a discussion to convince them of something. But the game woud need some of it's "QoL" features removed for sure, like the posibility to quick speak to notables without ever seeing them before, or talking to potential companions without entering the tavern

I agree, even if it would be pretty unpopular at this stage. However i think most players would be fine with a less immediately convenient user experience if they had to wade through less grindy ****e in the process, and their actions had more impact beyond the self-stabilising numbers game Bannerlord currently is.

Warband for example has barely a fraction of the transparency or QoL as Bannerlord, but it doesn't piss me off nearly as much as Bannerlord does, because in Warband I can spend 2 hours bringing a kingdom to the brink of destruction with a couple of battles and sieges, while in Bannerlord you need like 12 hours to do that.

Wouldn't you then have to manually travel very large distances over a long period of time? Either that or have a tiny world?

A bit of both. Bannerlord relies too much on forcing you to run around the world and visit every settlement in the game multiple times, to where the "massive" map actually feels tiny, even compared to something like a traditional RTS. Being confined to a handful of settlements would actually make different playthroughs feel unique.

 

[RozBritanicus]

This why this game needs political intrigues on a clan to clan bases such as blackmail, clan alliance's, Clan rivalries , Duels, Assassination's. The game is good its fun but grindy and the battle are great but over all the late game sinks. It needs a randomness beyond the players control random events which with cutscenes added would bring some wow moments and some challenge. I got to late game a lots of times and could take the map but i quit as it gets a slog. At which point i leave the game for months and then start a new game.

 

[five bucks]

Being confined to a handful of settlements would actually make different playthroughs feel unique.

Then how would you raise armies?

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

By sending messengers out to local village and other lords under your service on different "maps" to raise their levies. tbh absolutely anything would be better than the current system.

 

[five bucks]

By sending messengers out to local village and other lords under your service on different "maps" to raise their levies. tbh absolutely anything would be better than the current system.

So the game would all be played from a handful of towns you would never leave personally? Like you would never get to lead a siege on an Aserai town from the other end of Khuzait territory, for example, because the game world would be too big to travel on foot in real actual scenes?

 

[sh1ny4]

I don't see a problem in most clans becoming tier 6 a million years into the future since it implies everybody's been tested thoroughly enough lol. But, on principle, I don't think it'd be terrible to use clan tier as a restriction for fiefdoms either, but IF country-founding is 4, then city ought to be 3 and castle 2 since I don't think castles should be weighed equally to cities.

It becomes a problem because the lord's parties get much bigger, everybody has 130 to 260 troops, making battles even bigger and even more tedious

I'd have to see your books to comment because I've not been so wealthy in my first playthrough last month at roughly the same power level. It's especially strange since I typically hear complaints about how hard it is to make money outside of battle (etc. etc.) and from my experience I think it's fine but recognize there's numerous variable factors like city prosperity and village hearths that can dramatically impact revenue before expenses.

It was on a 1.8 save that I no longer have (deleted everything do to crashes), had Rhotae, Amitatys and Jalmarys, all of which I garrisoned with vlandian sharpshooters and sturgian heavy axemens, while my party was almost pure fian champions. It was lategame and the cities were between 5k and 7k of prosperity, at most 7.2k before starvation

I don't think it's a good idea to remove the shortcuts because the loading screens on PS4 are atrocious.

Well there is a reason why PC users hate when the game has to be cross platform, same thing happened to skyrim where console compatibility meant the game was very limited, hence the different worldspace for cities. A lot of bannerlord's issues can be tied to console compatibility

Then how would you raise armies?

if armies are smaller than less villages to recruit from is not an issue. If a kingdom can muster 5 2k+ troops armies when the game can at most render one thousand troops on the screen then maybe the armies are too numerous/too big

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

So the game would all be played from a handful of towns you would never leave personally? Like you would never get to lead a siege on an Aserai town from the other end of Khuzait territory, for example, because the game world would be too big to travel on foot in real actual scenes?

Like most games with big maps that the player is supposed to percieve as big, you would only travel to the other side of the world maybe once per playthrough, if at all. You would have a fundamentally different experience based on where you started, rather than being able to teleport wherever you want. Arriving in a faraway land would be an actual change of scenery for up to several hours rather than a 20 second trip, since going to the other side of the map would only ever be for an important reason and a long stay.

It's like this most prominently in Kenshi, to an extent the Arma series, and some of the newer Asscreed games. Having a gigantic map is kind of pointless if you can traverse the entire thing in seconds.