General M&B Commentary

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Damien

Sergeant at Arms
Rather than respond to indivudal points in a dozen different threads, I figured I'd give all my current thoughts in one place.. to make it easier on my self. Hope that's all right, and my points aren't too redundant with anyone else's.


1.) The new 'hand' slot is really cool. I was hoping I'd eventually be able to have something rather than bare hands, like in the previous version of the game. However, I'm curious -- has anyone seen any other 'hand armour' besides the leather glove? It's nice and all.. but I was really hoping to see a mail gauntlet and a plate gauntlet to go with those armour types.

2.) Why was the title 'longsword' changed to 'sword?' Longsword was better, in my opinion.

3.) Horses still die (or get crippled) -way- too easily. The only way around that is to cheat and create your own horse with good speed and armour for cheap, otherwise you spend a great portion of the game getting your horse cut out from under you.

4.) The gameplay in general is awesome. I'm having tons of fun running around the map now that thick fog, snow, thick forest, and 'steppe' have been introduced over just "hills with rocks, hills with flats, hills with flats and rocks" for terrain.

5.) I'm not sure if this comment belongs in 'bug reports' or not.. but I'm just going to post it here. I'm getting awefully tired of enemies being able to stab their weapons -through- each other to hit me. It takes the fun out of taking on 5 or 6 guys when they can all swing through each other.. it also makes it very hard to time attacks.

Not hard in the fun way, either.. hard in the lame way.


6.) Cheating is fun. I have two games currently - one where I'm playing to really play.. and one where I'm screwing around with the cheats.. you know, just to see what it's like to be a 60th level character with every piece of equipment you could possibly want...


7.) I don't play video games very often... in the past 2 years the only computer games I've played were Mount & Blade, Battle for Middle-earth, and Stronghold. I like Mount & Blade the most. That's saying a lot since I had high opinions on the other two. It really is a great game, despite some of the problems I have with it.


8.) And just a request: I'd really like to see more diversity in the equipment selections at various merchants. I've run circles around the entire map and never once found particular items (like today I went around the map three times without finding a single mail hauberk). It gets tiresome, and in my opinion ruins some of the fun of the game, when all you want is a particular item and you cannot find it anywhere.

Not sure how that could be remedied, or if it could be remedied, but I'd really like to see it happen.


In any event.. this game is really fun.. I'd happily pay two, three, even four times what I paid for this game, and not consider it wasted money.
 
Nice commentary and I agree with most of it.

But as aggravating as it might be, I believe the mortality rate of horses in battle is only realistic and thus it fits the whole realism of Mount&Blade.
 
9) The snow looks nice, but there's no way you can read the text. Wether change the colour of the text when fighting in snow, or make an option to remove the snow completely.
 
Damien said:
1.) The new 'hand' slot is really cool. I was hoping I'd eventually be able to have something rather than bare hands, like in the previous version of the game. However, I'm curious -- has anyone seen any other 'hand armour' besides the leather glove? It's nice and all.. but I was really hoping to see a mail gauntlet and a plate gauntlet to go with those armour types.

Armagan said that they will be adding more glove types as soon as they get moved into their new office and Ipek can get started on them.

You can read what he said about that here.

Damien said:
3.) Horses still die (or get crippled) -way- too easily. The only way around that is to cheat and create your own horse with good speed and armour for cheap, otherwise you spend a great portion of the game getting your horse cut out from under you.

I haven't had much time to play but I believe that I have read several posts where people were saying that the horses get crippled easier than before. Can anyone confirm this with a bit of testing, maybe?

Damien said:
4.) The gameplay in general is awesome. I'm having tons of fun running around the map now that thick fog, snow, thick forest, and 'steppe' have been introduced over just "hills with rocks, hills with flats, hills with flats and rocks" for terrain.

The new terrain is probably one of the best features that Armagan added this update. Awesome work!

Damien said:
6.) Cheating is fun. I have two games currently - one where I'm playing to really play.. and one where I'm screwing around with the cheats.. you know, just to see what it's like to be a 60th level character with every piece of equipment you could possibly want...

Cheats for teh win! Seriously though ... has the level cap been changed to allow lvl 60 now? I might want to check that out! :razz:

Damien said:
8.) And just a request: I'd really like to see more diversity in the equipment selections at various merchants. I've run circles around the entire map and never once found particular items (like today I went around the map three times without finding a single mail hauberk). It gets tiresome, and in my opinion ruins some of the fun of the game, when all you want is a particular item and you cannot find it anywhere.

I actually prefer the way the merchants have random equipment. It makes it fun (for me) to wander from town to town looking for that last piece of armor to complete my set ... and not knowing if it will take me half of a day or a month and a half to find it. :grin:

Damien said:
In any event.. this game is really fun.. I'd happily pay two, three, even four times what I paid for this game, and not consider it wasted money.

I agree. M&B is a great game and has become a permanent icon on my desktop. If you were to see my PC gaming collection ... you would understand that a statement like that really (really) means alot.

Good times,

Narcissus
 
Armagan said that they will be adding more glove types as soon as they get moved into their new office and Ipek can get started on them.

Excellent.. thanks for the link.


I haven't had much time to play but I believe that I have read several posts where people were saying that the horses get crippled easier than before. Can anyone confirm this with a bit of testing, maybe?

This isn't definitive confirmation, but:

I rarely get my horses crippled. It was more common for them to just get knocked out. However, since I DLed the patch for 0.7, I've had -three- horses end up crippled.

Like I said, not definitive confirmation, but definitely something to chew on.


Cheats for teh win! Seriously though ... has the level cap been changed to allow lvl 60 now? I might want to check that out!

I have no idea how high it goes -- I was exaggerating. My 'cheat character' is currently level 45 or 46 though.


I actually prefer the way the merchants have random equipment. It makes it fun (for me) to wander from town to town looking for that last piece of armor to complete my set ... and not knowing if it will take me half of a day or a month and a half to find it

Don't get me wrong.. I enjoy the randomness too.. in moderation. But there's also something to be said for NOT having to waste entire real life days trying to find thick mail chausses or a guard helmet that isn't rusty or battered.



9) The snow looks nice, but there's no way you can read the text. Wether change the colour of the text when fighting in snow, or make an option to remove the snow completely.

It's not impossible to read the text.. but it is a bit difficult. That's true of many games though... when you have single-tone text and backgrounds that can be many colours.. it's really hard to set it up so that the player can always read the text without difficulty.

That said, a darker colour text might show up better against all the various backgrounds.. except maybe at night.. so I guess that's not much of a solution.. haha.

Maybe two-tone text? Black text with a white lining? That way it shows up no matter what.



While I have all of your attention.. can anyone comment on something that's confusing me:

I noticed that in the items text file in Mods:Native the longsword is still listed as such.. but in the game it shows up as "sword."

Anyone have a reason for that?
 
My only complaint with the terrain is the flat map with rocks everywhere. The rocks are all identical and it looks like a giant pinball or pachinko machine.

2 sizes of rocks, the current large and a slightly smaller one, would make it flow better visually in my opinion.

And the snow maps do make it hard to read the text.

Love the new tree though. I think its a really nice one.
 
Actualy, I find my horses get taken out quicker but bothmy stubburn charger and stubborn warhorse lasted many battles before they were crippled and eaten.
 
More or less I agree with you on everything, but expecially on the merchant issue.
It's frustrating to keep searching all towns to find an helmet that isn't cracked or battered or a twohanded axe wich is not chipped, expecially as everything is VERY expensive, you have little money, and re-selling items means losing a lot so you can't buy a crap thing and then buy a better one later. It was frustrating but acceptable on 0.632, now it's worse, but as Damien said that's not hard in the "good" way, rather in the "lame" way.
 
After a second look it seems the rocks are not all identical... Maybe there are just too many of them on those all flat and rocks maps though. I dunno.
 
Yeah, why do they sell so many LAME horses? There used to be alot more equipment in stores for sure, it's one of the first things I noticed.
 
I am not sure that horses being crippled so easily is a good idea, considering the new economics. It can take you a very long time to accumulate enough cash to purchase another courser/hunter/charger (charger, BTW, will be out of my price range for a LOOOONG time). Also, PrinceScamp's post about stubborn horses seems to be accurate, in my experience: they don't get lamed as easily.

Still, even if your horse gets lamed, it isn't the end of the world. Keep it in your inventory for awhile and it will heal back up to normal status. I've noticed that my horses seem to heal more rapidly than before, although I haven't confirmed this. I had a lamed courser heal itself in just 2-3 days, and a lamed saddle horse heal in about 7 days.
 
I still haven't had one of my horses get crippled with the new version. Of course, I think I tend to be more careful than most and I don't often get knocked off.

On the "the game should be more realistic" side of the argument, what horse, after sustaining massive sword and axe blows, wouldn't end up crippled (or dead)?

On the "the game should stay fun even at the expense of realism" side of the argument, getting your horse crippled really often isn't much fun. And it's expensive, forcing players to take time to find new spirited chargers/warhorses/hunters instead of doing what they really want: immerse themselves in the glory of combat.
 
After playing the game for half of the day today... I have come to report that I -still- haven't found: A thick or reinforced mail hauberk, thick or reinforced mail chausses, a balanced longsword, a kite shield that isn't somehow damaged, a spirited warhorse, OR a thick guard helmet.


I really enjoy this game.. but this is getting ridiculous.
 
I suspect it's now either level (must be powerful enough) or reputation-based (merchant must like you enough).
About sword:
Longsword is, actually, a term for a two-handed sword, that is later would be called bastard one.
One-handed swords were called arming swords, usually. (There was a thead about that).
I think that was modded to give the game more historical accuracy.
 
That's actually not entirely accurate.

The term longsword, in and of itself, is completely ambiguous. There's evidence of its use long prior to the existance of longer-hilted swords, and it's likely that the term was explicit -- it referred to a long sword. What kind of sword is long depends on the timeframe.

And a bastard sword is not a two-hand sword.. it's a bastard sword. The term 'longsword' has come to be often applied to both two hand and bastard swords, for some reason. Some people agree, some don't. But calling a single-hand sword a 'longsword' certainly isn't ahistorical, though it might be anachronistic.

On the other hand.. arming sword is just as ambiguous as 'longsword.' The historical usage of 'arming sword' is a sword that you are able to arm yourself with.. to be armed with a sword is to gird it to your waist. Every sword short enough to be worn at the waist normally (most hand-and-a-halfs and pretty much every other kind of non-two-hander) is technically an arming sword -- a sword that you arm yourself with, and the term invariably referred to whatever sword style was popular during the era and in the particular country.




However.. I can't imagine that is even the issue in a game that has other, much worse, historically inaccurate terms like 'broadsword.'




A reputation-based system sounds.. interesting... but I don't think I follow how you'd become more reputable with a merchant. Even further it seems unlikely because I found a Heavy Charger at a merchant I'd never been to before, in a town that is technically opposed to me (I'm Vaegir, it was a Swadian town), but I can't find a regular mail hauberk, or a thick or reinforced mail hauberk even in Vaegir towns.




I also noticed the change to horses... and I gotta say - -I don't like it. I can't think of any game or logical reason to limit how long it takes for a horse to be able to jump again.... any explanation on that?
 
Because he's a living creature and has to catch up his breath again? Note that an armored horse with an armored guy on his back, usually can't jump at all.
 
Damien said:
3.) Horses still die (or get crippled) -way- too easily. The only way around that is to cheat and create your own horse with good speed and armour for cheap, otherwise you spend a great portion of the game getting your horse cut out from under you.
I don't agree. My horses don't die that often, and only if I'm not careful about how I use them.

Damien said:
5.) I'm not sure if this comment belongs in 'bug reports' or not.. but I'm just going to post it here. I'm getting awefully tired of enemies being able to stab their weapons -through- each other to hit me. It takes the fun out of taking on 5 or 6 guys when they can all swing through each other.. it also makes it very hard to time attacks.

Not hard in the fun way, either.. hard in the lame way.
I agree... this makes it almost impossible to handle more than 3 opponents at a time unless you are much faster than they are...
 
I don't agree. My horses don't die that often, and only if I'm not careful about how I use them.

Well my current character concept is primarily a mounted warrior. It seems unreasonable to expect such a character to constantly dismount for fear of getting his horse injured.

That's what I'm saying.. I shouldn't have to concern myself overmuch with "well if I go in there.. my horse will probably die." I don't like being -that- careful about where I take my horse. But maybe I'm just expecting things to be too easy.

Just out of curiosity.. has anyone else noticed an inconsistency with how much damage horses can take?

I was just playing last night.. and the combat had just started.. I had taken no damage, and I hadn't been in a fight since before I rested in Zendar... and my horse took 14 damage and fell over crippled. The next battle.. my horse took 12 damage, then 25 damage.. then 8 damage.. and was still standing...




I agree... this makes it almost impossible to handle more than 3 opponents at a time unless you are much faster than they are...

Exactly.. because the guy two rows back nails you with his club or spear, or other weapon that probably shouldn't even be able to reach you, the moment you open up to hit the guy that's actually in front of you.

I've also noticed that sometimes your hits will go through the guy in front of you (not hitting him at all) and will damage the guy -behind- him.

I thought that was a bit weird.. probably a product of the weapon reach and being so close to your enemy (sort of like how arrows and crossbow bolts do nothing at extremely close range).


Because he's a living creature and has to catch up his breath again? Note that an armored horse with an armored guy on his back, usually can't jump at all.

My charger can jump with me in mail or a coat-of-plates.

The living creature having to catch his breath (a logic reason) doesn't fly. A real horse can jump continuously... hence jumping competitions often having two, three, or even four jumps one right after another...

Yet.. somehow my Spirited Courser can't jump twice in a row.. ever.. even if his rider is totally naked or close to it?

Like I said.. I see absolutely no logic reason to limit jumping.. and I can't seem to find any reason why it would be necessary just for the game itself..
 
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