Feedback on Prison Breaks

[Bannerman Man]

I've seen some general thoughts on the new prison break feature around the forums, but I haven't seen a dedicated thread for feedback yet, so I'm making one.

Quick explanation on how they work:

Spoiler

When an npc is thrown in prison, the player has an opportunity to break them out by paying off a prison guard. The amount that needs to be paid depends on three things: the ransom value of the npc, the security value of the settlement, and the player's roguery skill. A higher ransom value and security level increases the bribe cost, and a higher roguery skill level decreases the cost.

The number of guards that spawn in the dungeon depends on the wall level and security value of the settlement. The base number is 2, and 1 more guard will be added for each wall level of the settlement. One less guard will spawn if security is < 40 and one more will spawn if security is > 70. So that's a max of 6 and a min of 2. I haven't figured out how the game chooses which troops to use as guards yet though.

You cannot just make a mad dash for the exit, because it will be locked if any guards are actively alerted to your presence. However, from what I can tell, it appears that the door will be unlocked if you manage to reach it while there are no guards actively aware of your presence. So in theory, if you kill off any guards that have discovered you and you manage to somehow sneak past any others, you can escape without fighting all of the guards.

A large chunk of roguery experience is earned for doing a prison break, even if your attempt is unsuccessful; though you will earn significantly more experience if you are successful.

General Feedback:

1) It isn't clear to the player what affects the amount of guards that will spawn in the mission, and the number of guards is IMO the biggest factor for whether or not a break will be successful. There is a limited amount of space in the dungeon, and the more guards that are crammed into that space, the greater risk you have of alerting multiple guards at a time, which can make the difficulty of the fight increase substantially. Adding some hints as to what kind of resistance you can expect to face inside the dungeon beforehand would be helpful (both number and quality of guards).

2) Once a fight breaks out, the prisoner will rush towards the guard with a dagger, and as a consequence, the guard will often keep back-pedalling more and more to try to create space between them (this is more prominent with spear troops). This causes the fight to get pushed within aggro range of other guards, and you end up with the prisoner taking on 2 or 3 or 4 guards simultaneously until they get overwhelmed and fall. This lack of control over the prisoner's behavior makes it hard to keep them alive.

3) As noted in the explanation above, the door is apparently unlocked if you are hidden from any remaining guards, though I have never managed to reach the end without alerting all of the guards. I don't know if sneaking was intended to play a role in prison breaks, or if you're intended to fight them all, but guards seem slightly too easy to alert. As a side note, I don't think crouching plays any role in how easily guards detect you, but you will get stuck on the staircases if you try to walk up them while crouched.

4) You currently aren't able to sneak into enemy castles, but lords will sometimes deposit their prisoners within a castle, making them totally unreachable by the player. I know thematically it doesn't makes much sense for the player to be able to enter a castle under a disguise like they can a town, but offering an alternative would be nice. You can still break neutral lords out of neutral castles though.

5) On the topic of sneaking into a town, the two biggest factors on the chances are the player's roguery skill and renown. Roguery makes it easier to sneak in, and renown makes it harder, and the formula is such that 1 level of Roguery will negate 15 points of renown. In the beginning of the game it is relatively easy to stay ahead of the renown curve with your roguery, but as the game progresses, it becomes harder to keep up, since many of the ways of earning roguery XP will also earn you renown as a byproduct (You must fight to get prisoners to ransom and recruit. Raiding, attacking caravans, and attacking villagers all require a fight as well). By the time you reach the vassal stage of the game where prison breaks are useful to your faction, it will keep getting harder and harder to even break into a settlement, until the risk is not worth the payoff. Perhaps it would help to make roguery's positive effect on your chances of sneaking in scale up at a faster rate than renown's negative effect. Making the chances higher at night than in day could be cool too.


Anyone else can feel free to post their own feedback as well.

Tips for delivering feedback more effectively:

Spoiler

• Try to be as specific as possible with your feedback/likes/dislikes. Clearly explain why you think a certain aspect of the feature doesn't work well.
• Keep the hyperbole and emotional statements out of it. Attaching remarks like "it's a complete joke" or "why on earth did you think that was a good idea" is not actually necessary or useful, and only serves to distract from your main point. It's not about protecting peoples' feelings, it's about improving the signal to noise ratio.
• Keep it direct and to the point; make the feedback itself the central focus of your comment. It takes time to read through dozens of comments, and nobody wants to sift through four paragraphs about your general feelings on the company or disappointments with the EA or game itself just to find a nugget of actionable feedback. There are plenty of other threads on the front page where you can spill your heart out.
• If you want to offer suggestions along with your feedback, aim for simple changes that can be applied within the mechanic's existing framework. You stand a better chance of the devs being receptive of your ideas if they are feasible. Comprehensive suggestions that call for large changes or overhauls are better suited to the suggestion forum.
• Discussion about other peoples' thoughts is more than welcome, but try to at least keep it within a stone's throw of the topic at hand, and address the arguments and not the person.

 

[Qwezz]

Is it true that the ransom is paid from the campaign menu? I had hoped you would walk up to the guard in the town scene and pay the ransom from there. I know some would consider it a waste of time but there's still no incentive to visit town scenes.

 

[soul_jak]

Issue one: the prison break map is small narrow hallways and ceilings, can’t over head swing, can’t side swing.
Solution: larger hallways and more room to fight

Issue two: just u and the lord
Solution: depending on level allow some champions or units to come with you OR take some other prisoners to escape with you (max 5)

Issue three: can’t control prisoner (he just runs into the enemies)
Solution: let me control them f1 f-stay back

 

[Calabanar]

Issue one: the prison break map is small narrow hallways and ceilings, can’t over head swing, can’t side swing.
Solution: larger hallways and more room to fight

Issue two: just u and the lord
Solution: depending on level allow some champions or units to come with you OR take some other prisoners to escape with you (max 5)

Issue three: can’t control prisoner (he just runs into the enemies)
Solution: let me control them f1 f-stay back

I haven't tried the patch but can you pick a weapon? If yes, have you tried picking a shorter weapon?

 

[ArturMorhghain]

Does the player spawn in their civilian gear? I seem to recall warband used a “disguise” system that dressed the player up like Jeremus. Oh those memories of fighting off an entire castle garrison after paying some villager off to set a fire.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Is it true that the ransom is paid from the campaign menu?

Yes. I double checked to see if you can find and bribe a guard within the dungeon scene, but it doesn't seem like you can. So menu only I guess.

The number and type of troops that spawn in the normal dungeon scene also don't seem to correspond to the guards that will spawn during the prison break mission, so you can't go there beforehand to scope out the security situation.

I haven't tried the patch but can you pick a weapon? If yes, have you tried picking a shorter weapon?

Does the player spawn in their civilian gear?

Yep, it uses civilian gear, so you can choose your weapon. Shorter weapons do help in my experience, but you still might get the feeling that your weapon is catching the wall when it shouldn't be. That goes both ways though, because you can try to position yourself to cause the guards to hit the walls or objects too.

 

[soul_jak]

I haven't tried the patch but can you pick a weapon? If yes, have you tried picking a shorter weapon?

U spawn in with ur civilian equipment. I should have elaborated a bit more, guards with two handed weapons get stuck too also an issue with the small spaces is it effects the third person camera distance, ive had it clip through the walls a few times

 

[Bannerman Man]

it effects the third person camera distance, ive had it clip through the walls a few times

Yeah, I've had that happen a fair amount too. I suspect the changes to the camera collision mentioned in the patch notes were partly meant to deal with that issue, but there are still spots where it happens:

Spoiler

 

[Goya]

This is just poorly designed, it shows how poor imagination these devs have. It's unexiciting, it feels completely underwhelming given how dangerous it is to actually do this, instead it's just teleport to this place kill some npcs and then move on the campaign map. Completely dissapointing, I'm so tired of this company and the route it decided to take. It feels like an amateur quest design.

 

[Calabanar]

U spawn in with ur civilian equipment. I should have elaborated a bit more, guards with two handed weapons get stuck too also an issue with the small spaces is it effects the third person camera distance, ive had it clip through the walls a few times

Yes. I double checked to see if you can find and bribe a guard within the dungeon scene, but it doesn't seem like you can. So menu only I guess.

The number and type of troops that spawn in the normal dungeon scene also don't seem to correspond to the guards that will spawn during the prison break mission, so you can't go there beforehand to scope out the security situation.



Yep, it uses civilian gear, so you can choose your weapon. Shorter weapons do help in my experience, but you still might get the feeling that your weapon is catching the wall when it shouldn't be. That goes both ways though, because you can try to position yourself to cause the guards to hit the walls or objects too.

Good to know, at least the player can prepare for the event.

Would you say the problem is the walls' hitboxes, general area's small size or AI's weapons that affect the experience the most?
If you have identified the troops that spawn in the event, have you tried giving the troops concerned shorter weapons (through xmls) just to see how they fare? For testing purposes.

 

[Iberian Wolf]

Didn't have the chance to test it yet, but - is it only me or it doesnt really make sense to bribe the guards AND fight your way out? Both options would make this more interesting I suppose...either bribe the guards(an amount higher than the potential ransom) and get your prisoner hassle free, or fight your way in, and then rescue the prisoner.

BTW it's always a pleasure to read your ellucidative posts, Bannerman Man, you truly do a great service for the community, thank you kindly!

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I've seen some general thoughts on the new prison break feature around the forums, but I haven't seen a dedicated thread for feedback yet, so I'm making one.

Quick explanation on how they work:

Spoiler

When an npc is thrown in prison, the player has an opportunity to break them out by paying off a prison guard. The amount that needs to be paid depends on three things: the ransom value of the npc, the security value of the settlement, and the player's roguery skill. A higher ransom value and security level increases the bribe cost, and a higher roguery skill level decreases the cost.

The number of guards that spawn in the dungeon depends on the wall level and security value of the settlement. The base number is 2, and 1 more guard will be added for each wall level of the settlement. One less guard will spawn if security is < 40 and one more will spawn if security is > 70. So that's a max of 6 and a min of 2. I haven't figured out how the game chooses which troops to use as guards yet though.

You cannot just make a mad dash for the exit, because it will be locked if any guards are actively alerted to your presence. However, from what I can tell, it appears that the door will be unlocked if you manage to reach it while there are no guards actively aware of your presence. So in theory, if you kill off any guards that have discovered you and you manage to somehow sneak past any others, you can escape without fighting all of the guards.

A large chunk of roguery experience is earned for doing a prison break, even if your attempt is unsuccessful; though you will earn significantly more experience if you are successful.

General Feedback:

1) It isn't clear to the player what affects the amount of guards that will spawn in the mission, and the number of guards is IMO the biggest factor for whether or not a break will be successful. There is a limited amount of space in the dungeon, and the more guards that are crammed into that space, the greater risk you have of alerting multiple guards at a time, which can make the difficulty of the fight increase substantially. Adding some hints as to what kind of resistance you can expect to face inside the dungeon beforehand would be helpful (both number and quality of guards).

2) Once a fight breaks out, the prisoner will rush towards the guard with a dagger, and as a consequence, the guard will often keep back-pedalling more and more to try to create space between them (this is more prominent with spear troops). This causes the fight to get pushed within aggro range of other guards, and you end up with the prisoner taking on 2 or 3 or 4 guards simultaneously until they get overwhelmed and fall. This lack of control over the prisoner's behavior makes it hard to keep them alive.

3) As noted in the explanation above, the door is apparently unlocked if you are hidden from any remaining guards, though I have never managed to reach the end without alerting all of the guards. I don't know if sneaking was intended to play a role in prison breaks, or if you're intended to fight them all, but guards seem slightly too easy to alert. As a side note, I don't think crouching plays any role in how easily guards detect you, but you will get stuck on the staircases if you try to walk up them while crouched.

4) You currently aren't able to sneak into enemy castles, but lords will sometimes deposit their prisoners within a castle, making them totally unreachable by the player. I know thematically it doesn't makes much sense for the player to be able to enter a castle under a disguise like they can a town, but offering an alternative would be nice. You can still break neutral lords out of neutral castles though.

5) On the topic of sneaking into a town, the two biggest factors on the chances are the player's roguery skill and renown. Roguery makes it easier to sneak in, and renown makes it harder, and the formula is such that 1 level of Roguery will negate 15 points of renown. In the beginning of the game it is relatively easy to stay ahead of the renown curve with your roguery, but as the game progresses, it becomes harder to keep up, since many of the ways of earning roguery XP will also earn you renown as a byproduct (You must fight to get prisoners to ransom and recruit. Raiding, attacking caravans, and attacking villagers all require a fight as well). By the time you reach the vassal stage of the game where prison breaks are useful to your faction, it will keep getting harder and harder to even break into a settlement, until the risk is not worth the payoff. Perhaps it would help to make roguery's positive effect on your chances of sneaking in scale up at a faster rate than renown's negative effect. Making the chances higher at night than in day could be cool too.


Anyone else can feel free to post their own feedback as well.

Tips for delivering feedback more effectively:

Spoiler

• Try to be as specific as possible with your feedback/likes/dislikes. Clearly explain why you think a certain aspect of the feature doesn't work well.
• Keep the hyperbole and emotional statements out of it. Attaching remarks like "it's a complete joke" or "why on earth did you think that was a good idea" is not actually necessary or useful, and only serves to distract from your main point. It's not about protecting peoples' feelings, it's about improving the signal to noise ratio.
• Keep it direct and to the point; make the feedback itself the central focus of your comment. It takes time to read through dozens of comments, and nobody wants to sift through four paragraphs about your general feelings on the company or disappointments with the EA or game itself just to find a nugget of actionable feedback. There are plenty of other threads on the front page where you can spill your heart out.
• If you want to offer suggestions along with your feedback, aim for simple changes that can be applied within the mechanic's existing framework. You stand a better chance of the devs being receptive of your ideas if they are feasible. Comprehensive suggestions that call for large changes or overhauls are better suited to the suggestion forum.
• Discussion about other peoples' thoughts is more than welcome, but try to at least keep it within a stone's throw of the topic at hand, and address the arguments and not the person.

Thanks for explaining all this, I'm gonna try some again sometime soon. I tried it once but didn't have weapon
It's nice to know there aren't always too many guards as I thought it might be the full load you see when you walk in there normally..

 

[lukkyb]

I do prefer the Prodgical son quest where its a house with like 3 gaurds in but has alot of room for manouver and you cna bring a companion

 

[a_ver_est]

Thanks for explaining all this, I'm gonna try some again sometime soon. I tried it once but didn't have weapon
It's nice to know there aren't always too many guards as I thought it might be the full load you see when you walk in there normally..

If I remember correctly one dev explained that the number of guards is related with the security level of the town.

 

[The Horrorlord]

I love using this to build rep with different nobles. You dont have to be friendly to do it with them. And i find its pretty fun to have to build a weapon for close quarters fighting. I for one absolutely love the addition.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Here's my feedback after doing it about 20 times.
1: TOO MUCH ****ing damage! Guards kill you in 2 hits
2:TOO many Guards,
3: NEED COMBAT WEAPONS AND ARMOR LIKE IN WARBAND
4: Prisoners always runs ahead and die at some point, they need to be told to stay put ... guess what JUST LIKE WARBAND
NOT WORTH doing it (re-loading)10 times to het a little roguery exp, which is all it's good for, it's way too claustrophobic and random what the prisoner does.
I don't know what devs work on this but please I really want to know what part of this did you actually think was enjoyable or worth the player time?

It's just into the trash update pile with "sandbox" and "Pillaging"

Oh boy here's a WORSE thing to do in the game then before, oh boy a new thing to NOT DO because it's worse for you.

*Well okay, I found some better body armor and a better weapon(s) and pulled a few off okay and got a acceptable amount of roguery, but I feel my earlier feedback still represents some problems with it. Probably more Civ gear should be added as it was hard to find.

*More after doing more*
Guards don't respond to throwing knives into the room, if they did this would help you pull 1 out of a room of 2 and such and would increase the GAME play.
You could also add some other things to do to distract or defeat a guard other then combat.

There is a too long of a cool down before you can prison break again. Even after resting over a day to heal my wounds it still says the guards are on high alert. This is making the whole thing even more useless since even once you find a place with guard amounts and layout you feel you can handle, you can even break them all out, not even 1 a day? Why is a player spending campaign time waiting around more then a day (for healing) to do this for a little roguery? This is something I would like devs to consider when making new content or changes, thing the player can do should be roughly equal in benefit per campaign time to other thing the player could be doing. I could take town down 5 parties (or more if lucky)and ransom them all in the time it takes to refresh the prison break cool down.

 

[nyarlathotep1975]

Here's my feedback after doing it about 20 times.
1: TOO MUCH ****ing damage! Guards kill you in 2 hits
2:TOO many Guards,
3: NEED COMBAT WEAPONS AND ARMOR LIKE IN WARBAND
4: Prisoners always runs ahead and die at some point, they need to be told to stay put ... guess what JUST LIKE WARBAND
NOT WORTH doing it (re-loading)10 times to het a little roguery exp, which is all it's good for, it's way too claustrophobic and random what the prisoner does.

I don't know what devs work on this but please I really want to know what part of this did you actually think was enjoyable or worth the player time?

It's just into the trash update pile with "sandbox" and "Pillaging"

Oh boy here's a WORSE thing to do in the game then before, oh boy a new thing to NOT DO because it's worse for you.

*Well okay, I found some better body armor and a better weapon(s) and pulled a few off okay and got a acceptable amount of roguery, but I feel my earlier feedback still represents some problems with it. Probably more Civ gear should be added as it was hard to find.

sometimes (depending on the difficulty i guess) you get equipped with pilgrim outfit by starting the quest. so better civ gear won´t help.
in vlandian prisons the guards can spawn with polearms, needless to say they got stuck on the wall all the time and they don´t switch weapons.

 

[five bucks]

+1
i appreciate it exists, but it needs work (as is to be expected, i would say they probably dropped the unfinished version to satisfy the general complaints people like me have been making)

I'm still really happy they did it though

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

sometimes (depending on the difficulty i guess) you get equipped with pilgrim outfit by starting the quest. so better civ gear won´t help.
in vlandian prisons the guards can spawn with polearms, needless to say they got stuck on the wall all the time and they don´t switch weapons.

Oh no, I'll have to keep an eye out, that might be why I got killed so easily in some. For me the if there's two guards in a open room at the final door it's just a nope. Might be there's some prison layouts that are better for isolating the guards.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Would you say the problem is the walls' hitboxes, general area's small size or AI's weapons that affect the experience the most?
If you have identified the troops that spawn in the event, have you tried giving the troops concerned shorter weapons (through xmls) just to see how they fare? For testing purposes.

I'm not the guy to talk to about hitboxes, but it's probably a combination of the tight spaces and camera angles making it difficult to gauge how far you are from an object that can block your swing. The inmate you're breaking out tends to back guards into corners too, so your swings are blocked from either side, and your overhead swings might collide with the ceiling or the wall behind the troop, making thrusts the only option.

For AI troops, all of their weapons/shields aside from melee weapons are removed from their loadouts, and they are given a spear as their primary weapon if they don't already have one. I haven't tried altering troops' equipment in the xmls, but just based on personal experience, troops with a shorter side arm do tend to fair better in the tight hallways. For instance, Vlandian Champions are an absolute menace with their short maces. The good news is you can always pick it up and use it for yourself if you manage to kill one.


I finally got around to looking into how it determines which troops to spawn. It chooses troops from the garrison using a weighted random based on the troop's level. Higher level troops have a better chance of being selected. However, to do this, it uses the same code that is used to populate regular scenes with npcs, and for reasons I won't get in to, this can cause problems with the variety of troops chosen. You will sometimes find that all of the guards are the same troop type, which can happen even if there is only one troop of that type in the garrison.

After playing around with it for a bit, I'd say picking a medium-ish length sword with good thrusting damage seems to be the best strategy. Just stab your way through the dungeon to avoid your swings getting caught on walls. Use footwork to avoid enemy swings and get a speed boost to your thrust damage. Take fights one at a time if possible. It's also sometimes possible to bait guards toward you without line of sight by tossing throwing daggers into rooms near a spot you know a guard can spawn, though their behavior is wonky and inconsistent when it comes to investigating such things.

Depending on the quality of troops that spawn, I've gotten to the point that I can break prisoners out fairly consistently if there are 4 or less guards.

Didn't have the chance to test it yet, but - is it only me or it doesnt really make sense to bribe the guards AND fight your way out? Both options would make this more interesting I suppose...either bribe the guards(an amount higher than the potential ransom) and get your prisoner hassle free, or fight your way in, and then rescue the prisoner.

BTW it's always a pleasure to read your ellucidative posts, Bannerman Man, you truly do a great service for the community, thank you kindly!

Yeah, they kind of leave you to come up with your own headcanon don't they ?. (And thank you too!)

sometimes (depending on the difficulty i guess) you get equipped with pilgrim outfit by starting the quest. so better civ gear won´t help.

You will spawn in the beggar's outfit if you had to sneak into the settlement with a disguise, and you will spawn with your civilian armor if it's a neutral settlement that you entered freely. You will still get your full complement of equipped weapons in both cases though.

Oh no, I'll have to keep an eye out, that might be why I got killed so easily in some. For me the if there's two guards in a open room at the final door it's just a nope. Might be there's some prison layouts that are better for isolating the guards.

I agree the spawn locations need some work. With Sturgian dungeons especially, you can get anywhere from 3 to 5 guards spawning all within the final section, and they will all be alerted and rush at you simultaneously, making it nearly impossible to keep the prisoner (and yourself) alive.