SP - General Hide encyclopedia contents and reveal them bit by bit through gameplay

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divyanthj

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Having an encyclopedia that not only lists characters but also lists their friends, enemies, traits, problems (issues), last known location and tournaments they won is great, but it kinda breaks immersion since there wasn't any internet or databases back in 1082 AD!

So instead, reveal these pieces of information through conversation and dialogue!

We should have the ability ask other lords and NPCs for this information.

Some bullet points
- The more an NPC likes you, the more information he/she reveals.
- The more intelligent you are, the more information you can retain (yes, add a feature where you "forget" info)
- Forgetting information should be based on your intelligence attribute, perks and how "important" those characters are. Also it should be based on their relationship with you.
- If an NPC does not have the information you ask for, he/she should direct you to another NPC who might know. "I don't know M'lord, but perhaps Chandion the Chandler will know."
- We could probably have minigames like interrogation, coercion or persuasion checks to make NPCs reveal more info.

Now, I know this is going to be a huge undertaking since as developers, you might need to keep multiple copies of the same information i.e the actual information and the information each NPC knows. But such an undertaking will definitely be worth it and make the game far more immersive.
 
While I can get behind limited release of information, the "forgetting" mechanic is an objectively bad suggestion. If I can bypass a mechanic by the simple expedient of having a piece of paper and a writing implement next to my computer then the mechanic has no value and is a complete waste of development time.
 
While I can get behind limited release of information, the "forgetting" mechanic is an objectively bad suggestion. If I can bypass a mechanic by the simple expedient of having a piece of paper and a writing implement next to my computer then the mechanic has no value and is a complete waste of development time.

You can write it down but how many times can you do it until you have a huge pile of papers and therefore, have less important information that is buried so deeply, it is inaccessible and is as good as being forgotten?
 
I like the idea (except of the forgetting, for reasons the others stated already). It would also be interesting to have advisors (for which you pay) that give you these informations when you have a kingdom of your own.
 
So instead, reveal these pieces of information through conversation and dialogue!
this would be nice, yes, but to make it worth it first they would have to make those traits have a more impactful effect on the way lords act, allowing them to be exploited based on their traits.

for example increasing relation with villages and passing a persuasion check would allow you to incite a revolt, where the villagers would stop trading with their assigned town (even trading with your town instead), merciless lords villages would be more easily convinced to revolt (would sometimes do it without your help even) but the lord would quickly impose brutal force to subdue the villagers (and that would make them lose relation and influence with other lords), merciful lords on the other hand would be against using force, thus the revolt would happen for a longer time.
this is just one example, there would be more events like this.
 
You can write it down but how many times can you do it until you have a huge pile of papers and therefore, have less important information that is buried so deeply, it is inaccessible and is as good as being forgotten?
The assumption is that the person making the notes has the intelligence to organize things.... like one section has everything about a single subject.

My position, by the way, isn't a personal bias - it is standard industry knowledge. Long ago game developers thought it was a great mechanic to force you to remember everything on your own. RPGs didn't have minimaps or quest logs. Eventually they realized that everyone just wrote everything down anyway and there was absolutely no value to making people remember everything. It creates frustration without adding difficulty.
 
The assumption is that the person making the notes has the intelligence to organize things.... like one section has everything about a single subject.

My position, by the way, isn't a personal bias - it is standard industry knowledge. Long ago game developers thought it was a great mechanic to force you to remember everything on your own. RPGs didn't have minimaps or quest logs. Eventually they realized that everyone just wrote everything down anyway and there was absolutely no value to making people remember everything. It creates frustration without adding difficulty.

Yeah but dialogue options would appear based on the things you know. This isn't about what YOU know but what your character knows. "Knowledge" works just like skills where even if you are a super-star Ninja who made Chuck Norris cry in real life, your character in Bannerlord still has to grind his/her skills.
 
That can only work to an extent, but you can't force a player to "un-know" stuff in a game. An example of this is Medieval 2 Total war where after your first playthrough you know that the Americas exist and that the Mongols are coming. There's nothing the developers can do to prevent the player from preparing for things they know are coming, so most developers just accept this, and leave it up to individual roleplayers to make the decision of whether to metagame or not.

Player / Character knowledge dissonance exists in all games with any sort of progression whatsoever, but as long as the game mechanics are good and allow for multiple playstyles most people will ignore it. The believability you gain from doing this isn't worth the level of annoyance you will cause players by deleting information from under their noses and forcing them to write stuff down.
 
I understand what the OP is saying here, I just don't see a solution. This game is on immersion life support. A mod like Last days of The Third age for M&B is 100 times more immersive. I have zero connection to my NPC companions or Faction Nobles despite my attempts to force myself to.
 
That can only work to an extent, but you can't force a player to "un-know" stuff in a game. An example of this is Medieval 2 Total war where after your first playthrough you know that the Americas exist and that the Mongols are coming. There's nothing the developers can do to prevent the player from preparing for things they know are coming, so most developers just accept this, and leave it up to individual roleplayers to make the decision of whether to metagame or not.

Player / Character knowledge dissonance exists in all games with any sort of progression whatsoever, but as long as the game mechanics are good and allow for multiple playstyles most people will ignore it. The believability you gain from doing this isn't worth the level of annoyance you will cause players by deleting information from under their noses and forcing them to write stuff down.

Even in Medieval 2, you can only know things that are broad; like whether Mongols are coming or whether Americas exist. There's no way for you to know which city the Mongols will attack first; will they attack Antioch or will they ignore and march ahead to Constantinople? Obviously you can't forget information like where Tyal is located or what kind of a person Garios is.

But you can forget details like who Garios's enemies are and why they are enemies. Maybe Garios' enemies are not enemies anymore.

But yeah, deciding upon which information is "forgettable" itself is a big task; which might not even give us enough info to make implementing 'forgetfulness' worthwhile.

Also, knowledge is collectively held by the party and not by the individual, so that itself could eliminate most of "forgettable" pieces of info.
 
Even in Medieval 2, you can only know things that are broad; like whether Mongols are coming or whether Americas exist. There's no way for you to know which city the Mongols will attack first; will they attack Antioch or will they ignore and march ahead to Constantinople?

That doesn't matter, most players cheese the mongols by putting forts in their spawn point (which is announced about 10 turns before they show up). And simply knowing that the Americas exist in 1080 AD when the game starts will impact anyone's campaign unless they consciously act as if it isn't there. But I don't see why these are "problems" that have to be resolved. Players will suspend disbelief to such a degree that none of this is necessary for immersion. It's the equivalent of wanting a film to have plot threads that go nowhere, just like in real life.
 
That doesn't matter, most players cheese the mongols by putting forts in their spawn point (which is announced about 10 turns before they show up). And simply knowing that the Americas exist in 1080 AD when the game starts will impact anyone's campaign unless they consciously act as if it isn't there. But I don't see why these are "problems" that have to be resolved. Players will suspend disbelief to such a degree that none of this is necessary for immersion. It's the equivalent of wanting a film to have plot threads that go nowhere, just like in real life.

Well yeah, Bannerlord is a sandbox RPG that's supposed to accommodate players of many different play styles; even if they will never get to experience most of the game.

Even I personally wouldn't mind plot threads in movies that lead nowhere; to me, they serve as a reminder that the world is more complex than what's immediately around the main characters. To each, his own I suppose.
 
Even I personally wouldn't mind plot threads in movies that lead nowhere; to me, they serve as a reminder that the world is more complex than what's immediately around the main characters.

Interestingly enough, this was a trend in filmmaking around the same time as the video games @Zyffyr mentioned. The problem is that it just confuses people. "Realist" cinema sounds like a good idea but in practice it's just in contradiction with the entire purpose and strength of storytelling, i.e. to focus in on a small piece of human existence. Most realist / maximalist cinema is either boring or pretentious, or both. It's the same with video games, even something as broad as an RPG has to eliminate most of the tedium and redundancy in human life otherwise it just becomes bloated and disorganised.

If you wanted to make a game about note-taking or memory you would have to focus all the mechanics on that to justify it. I think this is part of what people mean when they react negatively to realism in games. Gameplay works best when it's focussed on one thing, and the more little details and dead-end, detached mechanics you add the less focus there is.
 
- The more an NPC likes you, the more information he/she reveals.
- The more intelligent you are, the more information you can retain (yes, add a feature where you "forget" info)
- Forgetting information should be based on your intelligence attribute, perks and how "important" those characters are. Also it should be based on their relationship with you.
- If an NPC does not have the information you ask for, he/she should direct you to another NPC who might know. "I don't know M'lord, but perhaps Chandion the Chandler will know."
- We could probably have minigames like interrogation, coercion or persuasion checks to make NPCs reveal more info.
...
Now, I know this is going to be a huge undertaking since as developers, you might need to keep multiple copies of the same information i.e the actual information and the information each NPC knows. But such an undertaking will definitely be worth it and make the game far more immersive.

No, it won't make me any more immersed. This would just become a very annoying fetch quest for information in order to do things I need to do to get back to the actual gameplay. I'm not looking in the encyclopedia or on the notables tab in search of T H E F O R B I D D E N K N O W L E D G E. I'm looking to interact with them for a fairly limited set of reasons.

And how would the game know someone is important to me? Personally, I care much more about the pair of 350+ power landowners in Karakalat than I do about the Empress of the Southern Empire. The latter has about 21,000 men at her disposal, the latter perhaps 10. But does the game realize that my interest is due to being able to recruit those 10? And my non-concern with Rhagaea is because we aren't currently at war?
 
No, it won't make me any more immersed. This would just become a very annoying fetch quest for information in order to do things I need to do to get back to the actual gameplay. I'm not looking in the encyclopedia or on the notables tab in search of T H E F O R B I D D E N K N O W L E D G E. I'm looking to interact with them for a fairly limited set of reasons.

And how would the game know someone is important to me? Personally, I care much more about the pair of 350+ power landowners in Karakalat than I do about the Empress of the Southern Empire. The latter has about 21,000 men at her disposal, the latter perhaps 10. But does the game realize that my interest is due to being able to recruit those 10? And my non-concern with Rhagaea is because we aren't currently at war?

You've got a point there.

Interestingly enough, this was a trend in filmmaking around the same time as the video games @Zyffyr mentioned. The problem is that it just confuses people. "Realist" cinema sounds like a good idea but in practice it's just in contradiction with the entire purpose and strength of storytelling, i.e. to focus in on a small piece of human existence. Most realist / maximalist cinema is either boring or pretentious, or both. It's the same with video games, even something as broad as an RPG has to eliminate most of the tedium and redundancy in human life otherwise it just becomes bloated and disorganised.

If you wanted to make a game about note-taking or memory you would have to focus all the mechanics on that to justify it. I think this is part of what people mean when they react negatively to realism in games. Gameplay works best when it's focussed on one thing, and the more little details and dead-end, detached mechanics you add the less focus there is.

You too.

Maybe this "forgetting" mechanic is more trouble than its worth.

This was an excellent discussion btw.
 
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