High tier equipment as a goal for end game

[Akka]

At this point -I hate to say it, but they really should just make it like Warband.

I disagree. Warband had the exact same problem as Bannerlord, it just had one zero less in numbers which gave the illusion it worked better. But we still had single pieces of armor at 50 000+ denars, with money revenues being on a weekly basis and usually at a lower level than Bannerlord - so basically it was the same problem, just spaced more.

 

[Dabos37]

I disagree. Warband had the exact same problem as Bannerlord, it just had one zero less in numbers which gave the illusion it worked better. But we still had single pieces of armor at 50 000+ denars, with money revenues being on a weekly basis and usually at a lower level than Bannerlord - so basically it was the same problem, just spaced more.

Not really. In Warband you are able to get the Swadian Knights or any other top tier unit armor in a few days. You could even buy the Swadian Knights chest in the first 2-3 days.

Having expensive armors is not a bad thing IMO, the problem comes when you give regular units access to these super expensive armors without any effort. It feels really bad and totally hurts game immersion. This does not happen in Warband.

 

[Hans 77]

I disagree. Warband had the exact same problem as Bannerlord, it just had one zero less in numbers which gave the illusion it worked better. But we still had single pieces of armor at 50 000+ denars, with money revenues being on a weekly basis and usually at a lower level than Bannerlord - so basically it was the same problem, just spaced more.

First, to clarify, when I say Taleworlds should make it just like Warband -I mean everything about the game, including armor, economy, political systems, and mechanics. Bannerlord has developed into a calamity.

Second, not even close. In Warband you could acquire enough money for elite armor relatively quickly. This could be done through going on a tournament tour and winning big each time, or conversely through a brief but focused bandit grind, killing Sea Raiders/Taiga Bandits and taking on hideout extermination quests from lords.

To put it in perspective, a standard plate armor cuirass costs 11,000 denars. That's perfectly feasible for a determined early-game player dead set on obtaining enough denars for good armor. Add in a good helmet and gauntlets and the player is very well-protected in battle.

Yes, some of the top-tier armor with the Lordly modifier can cost between 50,000-200,000 denars -which is admittedly a lot in Warband and viably only a late-game goal. That being said, having lordly armor is only a luxury -it's not required when the standard set functions perfectly fine as well.

This brings us to another one of Bannerlord's problems. Their elite armors are exorbitantly priced, but they barely protect the player better than leather armor!

What a ripoff!

Scam!

Imagine paying millions of denars for an armor set that functions the same as the low-mid tier trash you can find in any shop on day one. It's like if the plate armor in Warband had the same armor rating as the leather jerkin but retained its same plate armor price.

That fact this is an actual thing leaves me speechless.

So to compare...

Warband armor:
-Reasonably priced
-An attainable goal
-Has actual functionality in battle

The latter two points go hand-in-hand, because it gives the player a sense of catharsis and satisfaction when they finally get the top-tier armor they desired. I repeat, when they item they grinded for has an actual purpose, it gives the player a feeling of accomplishment.

If you're a developer, this is really good thing to have in your game, because it creates a positive reinforcement cycle and encourages more playing.

On the other hand...

Bannerlord armor:
-Unreasonably overpriced
-Locked by tier level (why???)
-Barely functional
-

 

[Maximum997]

I disagree. Warband had the exact same problem as Bannerlord, it just had one zero less in numbers which gave the illusion it worked better. But we still had single pieces of armor at 50 000+ denars, with money revenues being on a weekly basis and usually at a lower level than Bannerlord - so basically it was the same problem, just spaced more.

No.
Becouse in WB you can buy full plate pretty cheap. For example you can buy rude full plate that cost pretty much nothing and just a little bit worse.
Only lordly versions are super expensive but you can buy full plate ezpz.

In BL there are no modifiers for some reason.

And that why you have stupid situation when average joe soldier wears armor that his lord cant affort.

 

[SadShogun]

Well, it is not intentional that we have 3,000,000 denari worth of armors as it is in the current state. The item values are generated procedurally and not set by the content designers, so as we introduced and tweaked armor values some of it fell into weird ranges. If the new changes go through perhaps you will see 3 or even 6 fold reductions on the extereme ends.

We will try and reduce these to more managable and less grindy-feeling levels. As far as the MMORPG aspect, while it is possible that some of the progressing are not paced well, I do not believe the intention here is creating a grinding experience. Instead we want goals which are hard to achieve and satisfactory for you, the players. It takes time to fix some of these aspects and I understand that the change is on the slow side.

These systems will be improved gradually and iteratively over time, but I would not expect very drastic changes as these post suggests.
For stamina, the reason of its existence is actually curbing its grind potential, i.e. inhibit a behaviour where the player sits and crafts all day (and does other stuff while regaining stamina.) However, currently it stands too powerful and lucrative to make some quick denars and a lot of people are against cheating but require denars are inclined to use crafting as a an exploit or "soft cheat".

We will introduce a new system to curb these exploits by heavily penalizing the selling prices of high tier crafted items. This is justifiable and has its basis in the reality as well. (You cannot sell luxury items for their buy price immediately as there is no immediate demand for them.)
You will also be able test the changes soon™.

 

[Maximum997]

What about modifiers? Like lordly?

 

[SadShogun]

What about modifiers? Like lordly?

We have an apperance modifier in the items which affects their item values linearly. Though not sure if they're actively used. I will bring up your suggestion about the modifiers in an internal meeting.

 

[Nalgasucia507]

Thanks for your info SadShogun.

 

[Dabos37]

Well, it is not intentional that we have 3,000,000 denari worth of armors as it is in the current state. The item values are generated procedurally and not set by the content designers, so as we introduced and tweaked armor values some of it fell into weird ranges. If the new changes go through perhaps you will see 3 or even 6 fold reductions on the extereme ends.

We will try and reduce these to more managable and less grindy-feeling levels. As far as the MMORPG aspect, while it is possible that some of the progressing are not paced well, I do not believe the intention here is creating a grinding experience. Instead we want goals which are hard to achieve and satisfactory for you, the players. It takes time to fix some of these aspects and I understand that the change is on the slow side.

These systems will be improved gradually and iteratively over time, but I would not expect very drastic changes as these post suggests.
For stamina, the reason of its existence is actually curbing its grind potential, i.e. inhibit a behaviour where the player sits and crafts all day (and does other stuff while regaining stamina.) However, currently it stands too powerful and lucrative to make some quick denars and a lot of people are against cheating but require denars are inclined to use crafting as a an exploit or "soft cheat".

We will introduce a new system to curb these exploits by heavily penalizing the selling prices of high tier crafted items. This is justifiable and has its basis in the reality as well. (You cannot sell luxury items for their buy price immediately as there is no immediate demand for them.)
You will also be able test the changes soon™.

Thank you very much for taking time on posting here. Just a question: high tier armors at 500K is something which you want to keep? Would be possible at least to do not give such expensive armors to regular troops like legionaries, Heavy Axemen, etc (they are not even noble units).

Is ok if you (devs) do not agree with my point but I still feel that this is a big mistake to keep the player and companions equipment behind +T4 units for a long of time, and it completely break any kind of immersion.

Having to pay +600K for fighter companion, just to match tier5 units equipment, is for me a bad idea and will always keep companions not appealing at all.

 

[vonbalt]

We have an apperance modifier in the items which affects their item values linearly. Though not sure if they're actively used. I will bring up your suggestion about the modifiers in an internal meeting.

Nice to hear about the ongoing work on armor pricing, just want to add my voice that modifiers would be awesome to have back, in warband you could easily attain some end-game gear although in a battered state from looting or buying them cheaply in the cities, the real end-game gear was lordly versions of those that were much more expensive and rare to get by (but still reasonably expensive for mid-end game money levels).

Since we don't have modifiers now it also affects battle loot, you basically can't get anything interesting from battles because all good gear is too expensive to be dropped and they also almost never appear in stores for the same reason so all battles give is trash to sell and this gets old quickly.

 

[a_ver_est]

At this point -I hate to say it, but they really should just make it like Warband.

A lot a the "new directions" they went in Bannerlord turned out to be failed experiments, and I literally see no other successful path moving forward other than build on top of what worked - and by that I mean, of course, Warband.

So true. And this is what blows my mind. They had the blueprint right in front of them. They had an entire script of what worked and was proven and successful. All they had to do from there was start adding new content and features -as you said. Had they simply done this, Taleworlds could have saved a lot of time and resources.

I disagree, honestly many of warband mechanics were boring and repetitive. Replicate it will be a failure for me, like the wanted feast... wiythout mods you have to go around the map looking for food and drinks, then sent invitations, wait for people and day after day say hello!!! ey Hello!!! do i said already hello??? IMHO replicate it will be a fail, there are plenty of room to improve it.

The problem isn't that they haven't copied the old mechanics, the problem is that the new ones are bad designed, unfinished or missing... I have some hopes that during the EA phase they will improve current ones and include others but I agree that everyday this hopes are smaller looking the development speed of the lastest months.

 

[Shun]

I do think a good way to go would be having the highest tier armor available at a reasonable price range (reasonable being determined by credit earning factors; as a user said very fittingly, different systems in BL attribute a totally different value to 1 dinar; which is also problem needing solving), while tthe same items with a "lordly" (or equivalent) modifier could easily have 5 times the price, while only giving marginally better protection.

As a reasonable prize, I would throw into the discussion 30K dinars as BL is right now, when played without exploiting smithing. Just as a starting point for discussion.

This would mean that we could look dapper when leading our top tier troops - won't somebody ever think of the Fashionlords - while still have some optimizing potential for longer term item hunt.

 

[Maximum997]

We have an apperance modifier in the items which affects their item values linearly. Though not sure if they're actively used. I will bring up your suggestion about the modifiers in an internal meeting.

Becouse in WB it was pretty balanced.

Average plate armor had ok price. Crude was pretty cheap.
But lordly one was stupidly expensive.

So you dont ruin immersion with ridiculous prices of "average Joe" gear. And player has something to spend money on in late game.

 

[Akka]

First and foremost, thanks a lot @SadShogun for jumping in the thread and giving us informations. Wether we like said information or not, it's absolutely great to have explanations for why things are in the game, which are intentional and which are not, and what the plans are. It helps a lot !

Well, it is not intentional that we have 3,000,000 denari worth of armors as it is in the current state. The item values are generated procedurally and not set by the content designers, so as we introduced and tweaked armor values some of it fell into weird ranges. If the new changes go through perhaps you will see 3 or even 6 fold reductions on the extereme ends.

The problem, as we already discussed here, is that the formula is based on exponential growth, which is completely insuitable for real-life values as it goes far too high far too quickly.
Samely, I suspect the whole concept of "tier" for gear is a gamey system that doesn't fit well in the verisimilitude of the world and adds some artificial value to gear rather than having said value be a logical consequence of the usefulness of the item.

I don't think even a factor of 3 to 6 is enough to bring down prices to a believable level. 100 000 denars is still a price that could be compared to a whole castle, not an armor or a weapon.

We will try and reduce these to more managable and less grindy-feeling levels. As far as the MMORPG aspect, while it is possible that some of the progressing are not paced well, I do not believe the intention here is creating a grinding experience. Instead we want goals which are hard to achieve and satisfactory for you, the players.

I understand the point, but I disagree that hugely priced gear is a suitable goal for a game in this genre. We are in a game about kingdoms, cities and whole armies. Pieces of gear should not play on the same levels as the fate of countries.
What should be a late-game goal is being a king or a general, not having a breastplate. Armies should be expensive, not gear.

We will introduce a new system to curb these exploits by heavily penalizing the selling prices of high tier crafted items. This is justifiable and has its basis in the reality as well. (You cannot sell luxury items for their buy price immediately as there is no immediate demand for them.)
You will also be able test the changes soon™.

I'm rather wary about such kind of solution. When a system gives bogus results, I'd say the good solution is to fix the system so the results are adequate. Here you suggest to add another system to correct the bogus results instead. It feels like overengineering (adding complexity instead of simplifying to solve the problem) and it risks causing weird results in unexpected places when you reach edge cases for both system, or when the first system is used without the second to correct it. It also makes modding harder, as you have to alter several parts or risks having everything crash down.

I'd say the better way would be to 1) fix the formula so that no ridiculous prices are reached, and 2) not aim for gear to be an end-goal.

 

[vonbalt]

I disagree, honestly many of warband mechanics were boring and repetitive. Replicate it will be a failure for me, like the wanted feast... wiythout mods you have to go around the map looking for food and drinks, then sent invitations, wait for people and day after day say hello!!! ey Hello!!! do i said already hello??? IMHO replicate it will be a fail, there are plenty of room to improve it.

The problem isn't that they haven't copied the old mechanics, the problem is that the new ones are bad designed, unfinished or missing... I have some hopes that during the EA phase they will improve current ones and include others but I agree that everyday this hopes are smaller looking the development speed of the lastest months.

I agree that they were boring and repetitive but they atleast were there to add immersion, i hoped bannelord would have basically everything vanilla warband had and improve on them with some new goodies just like the jump from classic to warband, instead many features simply got axed or replaced by worse versions like the marriage system that had courting, the poems, the marriage scene and all, yeah it was simple but still better than a speech check that we have now don't you agree? the only improvement in marriage was the dowry and that was it lol

 

[Shun]

First and foremost, thanks a lot @SadShogun for jumping in the thread and giving us informations. Wether we like said information or not, it's absolutely great to have explanations for why things are in the game, which are intentional and which are not, and what the plans are. It helps a lot !

The problem, as we already discussed here, is that the formula is based on exponential growth, which is completely insuitable for real-life values as it goes far too high far too quickly.
Samely, I suspect the whole concept of "tier" for gear is a gamey system that doesn't fit well in the verisimilitude of the world and adds some artificial value to gear rather than having said value be a logical consequence of the usefulness of the item.

I don't think even a factor of 3 to 6 is enough to bring down prices to a believable level. 100 000 denars is still a price that could be compared to a whole castle, not an armor or a weapon.

I understand the point, but I disagree that hugely priced gear is a suitable goal for a game in this genre. We are in a game about kingdoms, cities and whole armies. Pieces of gear should not play on the same levels as the fate of countries.

I'm rather wary about such kind of solution. When a system gives bogus results, I'd say the good solution is to fix the system so the results are adequate. Here you suggest to add another system to correct the bogus results instead. It feels like overengineering (adding complexity instead of simplifying to solve the problem) and it risks causing weird results in unexpected places when you reach edge cases for both system, or when the first system is used without the second to correct it. It also makes modding harder, as you have to alter several parts or risks having everything crash down.

I'd say the better way would be to 1) fix the formula so that no ridiculous prices are reached, and 2) not aim for gear to be an end-goal.

Very well put. TW, plz listen to this person.

 

[Nalgasucia507]

First and foremost, thanks a lot @SadShogun for jumping in the thread and giving us informations. Wether we like said information or not, it's absolutely great to have explanations for why things are in the game, which are intentional and which are not, and what the plans are. It helps a lot !

The problem, as we already discussed here, is that the formula is based on exponential growth, which is completely insuitable for real-life values as it goes far too high far too quickly.
Samely, I suspect the whole concept of "tier" for gear is a gamey system that doesn't fit well in the verisimilitude of the world and adds some artificial value to gear rather than having said value be a logical consequence of the usefulness of the item.

I don't think even a factor of 3 to 6 is enough to bring down prices to a believable level. 100 000 denars is still a price that could be compared to a whole castle, not an armor or a weapon.

I understand the point, but I disagree that hugely priced gear is a suitable goal for a game in this genre. We are in a game about kingdoms, cities and whole armies. Pieces of gear should not play on the same levels as the fate of countries.
What should be a late-game goal is being a king or a general, not having a breastplate. Armies should be expensive, not gear.

I'm rather wary about such kind of solution. When a system gives bogus results, I'd say the good solution is to fix the system so the results are adequate. Here you suggest to add another system to correct the bogus results instead. It feels like overengineering (adding complexity instead of simplifying to solve the problem) and it risks causing weird results in unexpected places when you reach edge cases for both system, or when the first system is used without the second to correct it. It also makes modding harder, as you have to alter several parts or risks having everything crash down.

I'd say the better way would be to 1) fix the formula so that no ridiculous prices are reached, and 2) not aim for gear to be an end-goal.

+1

 

[scarface52]

snip

-1

 

[Nalgasucia507]

-1

why?

 

[scarface52]

why?

What he suggests basically removes the item progression. As he suggests in his thread:

I think that a better way would be to have gear at a reasonable price (a basic sword costing maybe 100 or 200 denars, a very good sword maybe 2000, no more)

It might be realistic but wouldn't be fun nor satisfactory to buy the best items in the game at 10 minutes mark. Paying 100.000 denars for the most expensive item in the game is reasonable in my eyes and would make a good progression. I also tested suggested change from this thread (it's similar to what SadShogun mentioned) and it felt reasonable.