I've been away from the game and the community for more than half of last year. After such a long time, I've finally started playing again at a save I had left very early on in the game (I hadn't even finished the Neretzes Folly quest yet) so I've had the experience to look at the game again with fresh eyes.
These are the most important feedback I could think of and also the most frustrating ones. Things that I thought was bothering before, but this time were excruciatingly frustrating and I would claim critical even, specially for players who choose to create their own kingdom instead of joining into an existing one.
These issues were the most critical and/or frustrating matters I found at the current state of the game when playing it again after a long time.
I believe I had mentioned them individually at several feedback since long ago, but felt that, given this fresh eyes view of the game, should state how critical or frustrating they felt.
These are the most important feedback I could think of and also the most frustrating ones. Things that I thought was bothering before, but this time were excruciatingly frustrating and I would claim critical even, specially for players who choose to create their own kingdom instead of joining into an existing one.
- Get out of jail free cards.
Currently, it feels like capturing nobles is absolutely useless, when it should be one of the most important tools and leverages for a smaller kingdom to be able to deal and barter with a bigger kingdom.
As it currently stands, beheading an enemy noble is almost the only available option after winning a battle, as it got to the absurd point where I won a battle, captured the enemy, took literally a single step after the battle and that very enemy escaped with absolutely no way of preventing that, be it an attribute, perk or anything.
A party of over 200 well trained horsemen weren't able to capture a single heavily wounded female noble on foot.
Using captured nobles to barter for peace treaties, to avoid a certain battle or to convince other nobles to join your kingdom is extremely important for a small kingdom, so the fact that they will always escape extremely fast with no way to prevent it makes creating your own kingdom extremely difficult.
- Random wars and the lack of a diplomacy system.
I don't know what is the current development state of a new diplomacy system is or if it even is in the works since I have been away for so long, but the lack of a diplomacy system makes the game exceedingly frustrating for someone who chooses to create their own kingdom, instead of swearing fealty to an existing country.
For reference, there was one situation in the game where I was walking from my single existing castle to my only city. I had no ongoing war nor did I cross any foreign border since they were side by side. By the time it took for me to walk from my castle to my city, the Aserai, Southern Kingdom, Battanian and the Vlandians all had declared war on me for no apparent reason.
In the span of about 1 in-game day, over 70% of the map was my enemy and I had literally 2 fiefs with 1 being a castle.
I loaded a save before I had left my castle and not a single one of them declared war on me. They declared war on each other.
The AI currently does not stay at peace for any reasonable amount of time and must be at war at all times, and for some reason, the war declaration algorithm give heavy preference to the player faction so randomly higher factions declare war on you for no reason whatsoever and if you just load a previous save and take the exact same actions, those wars will be avoided.
There is currently no concept of strife, gratitude, hate, non-aggression pacts or, well, diplomacy.
When you joined an existing faction, that is not a problem, but when you are your own kingdom, this can put you and your clan alone at war with over 4 kingdoms that each has over 10 clans and can come at you with 3 armies of over 1000 men when you can muster at most 400 men for no reason and with no way to prevent it.
- Speech, charm and a need for a new dialogue system.
This might be my opinion as someone who analyzed and studied several games when wishing and trying to become a game designer myself but, to my knowledge, percentage based chance dialogue systems, specially those to convince others to join you, never works well and is always a bad design decision.
Percentage chance dialogues always creates 2 situations:
- The player will save exactly before going into dialogue and, even if the chance is close to 1%, load and retry 98762168321 times until he succeeds at the "impossible".
- The player will have a 70% chance of a critical success with 10% chance of critical failure and get a critical failure. He will then load 5 times and get 5 more critical failures, and when he finally gets a success, he will fail at the next dialogue where he had 5% chance to fail.
Both situations are quite boring or frustrating and overall create a bad gaming experience.
While the first will see the loading screen thousands of times until they achieve the impossible and just not proceed with the game simply because he can, the second will have to reload several times just to achieve that which should in theory be easy to their character.
It is to the point where even if your character was built 100% towards charm, you still have a terrible experience at convincing other clans to join your faction with the worst part being that it is entirely out of your hands if you will succeed or fail.
Having a mini-game based dialogue or flat value based dialogues are both better choices when it comes to a gaming experience.
Flat chances mean either you are capable to convince that character or you are not, so it is binary and if you have enough charm to do so, it will happen, being 100% reliant on your build and with either 0 or 100% chance to succeed or fail, which means it always was in your hands.
Mini-game based dialogue will give you the power to try where your "percentage chance" would increase or decrease how easy that mini-game should be, so it will still be 100% in your hands, though it does not remove the situation where a player will reload several times in order to succeed at that which is almost impossible to him, it makes it so that if a player fails at something that should be easy to him, it is extremely less frustrating, since it was under his or her control to either succeed or fail at that mini-game.
- The player will save exactly before going into dialogue and, even if the chance is close to 1%, load and retry 98762168321 times until he succeeds at the "impossible".
- Wars are important and should be properly notified.
I don't know if this was more of a bug or something changed over time, but I remember war declaration against me being a lot more visible in the past.
War is an extremely huge matter when you are playing with your own kingdom, so it is a huge issue if the notification is not extremely visible and properly portrays the urgency of the matter.
A situation that arisen to me was that I suddenly noticed I was at war with the Khuzait, which I never noticed when they declared war on me. I then loaded a save from 10 minutes back and they still were at war with me. A second load to a save 30 minutes back and they still were at war on me.
I had to load a save more than 2 hours back and lose a lot of progress to avoid that random war and that was not the only situation where I had to lose progress because I never noticed when an enemy faction had declared war on me and kept on advancing and saving the game, leaving me at an awkward situation when I had to load back and try to find when I wasn't at war.
- Having to replay the Neretzes Folly quest several times for every new game gets boring.
The first few times I played the game long ago, the Neretzes Folly quest was quite interesting. I read the dialogues to understand the story a bit, even though I am a bit hyperactive and want to go on with the game and usually skip dialogues, I constantly found myself reading those.
Thing is, going around the map to talk to 10 NPCs in every corner for the fifth time before going to Istiana and Arzagos gets boring fast.
It should be possible to entirely skip talking to all 10 NPCs if you go straight to one of them, creating a situation where they will tell you the story of the banner and skip straight to their section of the main quest.
Even more so, it shouldn't even be required their approval for you to create a new kingdom of your own or to join another kingdom.
Their quest reward should provide benefits in a new diplomacy system in the future, but not dictate if you can or can't create or join a kingdom at all.
These issues were the most critical and/or frustrating matters I found at the current state of the game when playing it again after a long time.
I believe I had mentioned them individually at several feedback since long ago, but felt that, given this fresh eyes view of the game, should state how critical or frustrating they felt.
Last edited:
