Horrendous state of MP

[Blücher_]

I would like to preface this by saying I quit the game in January just to come back now and see how the multiplayer has changed. I have 600 hours in bannerlord mp and have become increasingly frustrated by the lack of development in this game, and the continued absence of private servers.

Some points of note:

Skirmish melee:
The melee feels objectively unfun. To me, the meta strategy is clear; spin to win. Especially, the damage and range of two handers make melee a ***** to deal with when just wanting to play to relax. If you ever find yourself blocking back and forth in skirmish, you have already lost. Damage is too high for there to be much skill across a round, so thusly the way to melee is to kite and bait people. This is bad as a meta mechanic, when melee skirmishes all turn in to who can spin the most, it gets increasingly less fun. The medieval combat game becomes less about block attack and more into spam. Two handed weapons, especially the glaive, still can spam hits when positioned right against a shield. As a new player, it must be really frustrating to deal with when you can competently melee in single player and then are faced with people who freeze your shield in multiplayer. Archery is in an ok spot right now. Throwing weapons are in a good place. Cavalry is not.

Skirmish Cavalry
For the small maps, there needs to be a limit on how many cav should be allowed. Honestly, cav is unfun as a mechanic on every map, except trading post. I played a lot of cavalry in NW. This part of the game was the most fun to me, but here it seems poorly implemented in what it is meant to do in a battle. Bump cav hits should only be possible with a sword. Getting hit for 50+ damage with a lance after a bump is all too common when playing with people who practice cav. If you are playing as heavy inf, that hit is 1/4 of your life for the whole round at least. Cav would be fine in a large battle where the mechanics don't need to be perfect for someone to have fun.

Too many 3v3s
Anytime except peak hours, I am playing 3v3s constantly. The 6v6 skirmish is bad, but a 3v3 is worse. The maps feel empty, and the match is boring. I do not understand why no maps or game modes were made to handle a 12v12 (trading post could handle this and be pretty fun). Instead, as a game, it is going the opposite direction in gravitating to lower pop to just start a game. But simply that game is so unfun, I would rather not play.

Lack of MMR:
There may be a MMR system, but I never see it implemented. I get that game pop is too low, but really the only way to fix this now is to make a 12v12 mode so the new players will have fun and want to come back. It should not be the old players' responsibility to stop pubs getting stomped. Personally, the only fun I have in the game is playing with friends, but I feel this is not an option when a 3 stack in peak hours is often enough to guarantee a slaughter of the other team.

Frame rates dropping since my return
In the games I have played over the past 3 days, my frame rates are dropping in melee in every other match. It is happening to my friends as well as we try to play your game. This is especially bad as it was not this way 2 months ago. I had high settings then and now I am being forced to play on low just to make the melee bearable again. This also does not happen every game. I do not think playing competitive is an option if the game has this problem with inconsistent lag. The server menu additionally feels laggier.


These are some of the most glaring issues in the game. For these reasons, we have seen the mp game pop go lower and lower, only compounding the initial issues. The same old experiences are being played out with changes made seemingly being reversed in the next few patches (eg menavs and cav being constantly altered back and forth in their strength) It is becoming more and more apparent to me there has been no earnest attempt to fix any of these issues in the year this game has been in EA.

 

[Yukmouth++]

We cant really know if their MMR system is working, like you said its 3v3 on peak time. I think we can resume why MP is horrendous with the following : Taleworlds is completely out of touch with what the players want in a game.

 

[Etonviper]

the combat system needs to be fixed, put max rotational speeds on players so they cant just crank their dpi up and become a Beyblade. Servers are worse then Tarkovs which is a feat in itself, anything over like 60 ping feels like you just consumed/huffed industrial glue. Spears are about as useful as using a butter knife to cut steak. you can rear a cav, 3 of your teammates can spear this cav player in the head and he just runs of with only 60 dmg done to them while you have the khuzait's nuke on a stick (mace) 2 shoting every heavy inf in the game. Im also convinced the bastard axe has a rocket thruster on the head of it.

 

[Blücher_]

the combat system needs to be fixed, put max rotational speeds on players so they cant just crank their dpi up and become a Beyblade. Servers are worse then Tarkovs which is a feat in itself, anything over like 60 ping feels like you just consumed/huffed industrial glue. Spears are about as useful as using a butter knife to cut steak. you can rear a cav, 3 of your teammates can spear this cav player in the head and he just runs of with only 60 dmg done to them while you have the khuzait's nuke on a stick (mace) 2 shoting every heavy inf in the game. Im also convinced the bastard axe has a rocket thruster on the head of it.

Imo, melee (player speed) should be slowed down, but even then I feel like the main issue of the game is a lack of a fun game mode. 12v12s or 24v24s would be amazing. I would reform my clan just to try and build server pop again for that kind of experience

 

[JimmyCakes]

No one making the decisions is playing the game, it's all moot.

 

[Brandis.]

We cant really know if their MMR system is working, like you said its 3v3 on peak time. I think we can resume why MP is horrendous with the following : Taleworlds is completely out of touch with what the players want in a game.

Its not because people leave games constantly. I imagine crashes don't help either.

It's probably slightly better than truly random teams but that's about it.

 

[Scalpel01]

Combat speed is fine, I think. it's a bit faster then most servers were on Warband but ppl should just get used to that speed level. And it's not that hard. The movement speed makes me hate most fights. As people just hit once and turn then repeat. There really should be acceleration cap at least while turning 240 degrees and trying to run.

 

[Jesus__is__Lord]

battle mode will bring back alot of people,
nerfing archers and cav will bring back alot of people

 

[Greedalicious]

battle mode will bring back alot of people,
nerfing archers and cav will bring back alot of people

Doubtfull. A battle mode will split an already tiny playerbase. It'll just cannibalize the community we have, so nobody gets a game.
Their Battle mode will most likely be open flat areas designed for events like linebattles and shieldwall events.

Nerfing archers and cav wont bring people back because 90% of the players who started playing this game and quit, wont come back to it. They'd need an incredibly strong incentive to get these players back. PvP for Bannerlord will be a lost cause unless they get their crap together quickly.

 

[Jesus__is__Lord]

Doubtfull. A battle mode will split an already tiny playerbase. It'll just cannibalize the community we have, so nobody gets a game.
Their Battle mode will most likely be open flat areas designed for events like linebattles and shieldwall events.

Nerfing archers and cav wont bring people back because 90% of the players who started playing this game and quit, wont come back to it. They'd need an incredibly strong incentive to get these players back. PvP for Bannerlord will be a lost cause unless they get their crap together quickly.

i think battle mode has been a feature that should of been in multiplayer day one, i think they took it out just to fit the game to their class system which doesn't make sense in battle mode bc everyone would be heavy cavalry in a one life mode,

once they give us battle mode people will come back,
once we make custom servers with gold system of warband back we will see servers fill up hopefully

 

[Blücher_]

i think battle mode has been a feature that should of been in multiplayer day one, i think they took it out just to fit the game to their class system which doesn't make sense in battle mode bc everyone would be heavy cavalry in a one life mode,

once they give us battle mode people will come back,
once we make custom servers with gold system of warband back we will see servers fill up hopefully

Even any of those additions would not fix my frame rates dropping when I play, which is completely inexcusable when playing on a good computer on lowest settings

 

[AxiosXiphos]

Doubtfull. A battle mode will split an already tiny playerbase. It'll just cannibalize the community we have, so nobody gets a game.
Their Battle mode will most likely be open flat areas designed for events like linebattles and shieldwall events.

Nerfing archers and cav wont bring people back because 90% of the players who started playing this game and quit, wont come back to it. They'd need an incredibly strong incentive to get these players back. PvP for Bannerlord will be a lost cause unless they get their crap together quickly.

I think you are being way too pessimistic. The servers are actually relatively healthy right now - I can jump on at pretty much any time of the day and get a full siege, skirmish or captains game. If anything the servers have had more players recently then 6 months ago.

The playerbase is small though - but that's not a permanent affair. Custom servers will draw in a huge new MP community. So will multiplayer mods, duel mode, battle mode etc. Also leaving EA in general will double the playerbase overnight.

Basically Taleworlds have a number of opportunities still to see the community grow substantially - we just need to see if they can take advantage of them.

 

[56nights]

the combat system needs to be fixed, put max rotational speeds on players so they cant just crank their dpi up and become a Beyblade. Servers are worse then Tarkovs which is a feat in itself, anything over like 60 ping feels like you just consumed/huffed industrial glue. Spears are about as useful as using a butter knife to cut steak. you can rear a cav, 3 of your teammates can spear this cav player in the head and he just runs of with only 60 dmg done to them while you have the khuzait's nuke on a stick (mace) 2 shoting every heavy inf in the game. Im also convinced the bastard axe has a rocket thruster on the head of it.

Mad because of the amount of times you got beat in NADuelEast?

 

[danEN]

battle mode will bring back alot of people,
nerfing archers and cav will bring back alot of people

It might bring them back but It won't make them stay

 

[Blücher_]

It might bring them back but It won't make them stay

12 v 12 skirmish type deal with a cav class limit would probably have me dedicate another 600 hours in the multiplayer. I can think of plenty of fun events to do with that, even with no custom servers

Then again, the servers can’t handle a 6 stack right now

 

[AxiosXiphos]

It might bring them back but It won't make them stay

We will have to see. Thousands of people rushing to play a very early version of bannerlord online though shows there is clearly a demand for Bannerlord MP content - even if the majority of this comes in the form of mods. That was certainly how it was with Warband; 2-3 activet Native servers (if you call NeoGK native) and then dozens of mods with hundreds of players.

 

[darksoulshin]

the combat system needs to be fixed, put max rotational speeds on players so they cant just crank their dpi up and become a Beyblade. Servers are worse then Tarkovs which is a feat in itself, anything over like 60 ping feels like you just consumed/huffed industrial glue. Spears are about as useful as using a butter knife to cut steak. you can rear a cav, 3 of your teammates can spear this cav player in the head and he just runs of with only 60 dmg done to them while you have the khuzait's nuke on a stick (mace) 2 shoting every heavy inf in the game. Im also convinced the bastard axe has a rocket thruster on the head of it.

I would like to preface this by saying I quit the game in January just to come back now and see how the multiplayer has changed. I have 600 hours in bannerlord mp and have become increasingly frustrated by the lack of development in this game, and the continued absence of private servers.

Some points of note:

Skirmish melee:
The melee feels objectively unfun. To me, the meta strategy is clear; spin to win. Especially, the damage and range of two handers make melee a ***** to deal with when just wanting to play to relax. If you ever find yourself blocking back and forth in skirmish, you have already lost. Damage is too high for there to be much skill across a round, so thusly the way to melee is to kite and bait people. This is bad as a meta mechanic, when melee skirmishes all turn in to who can spin the most, it gets increasingly less fun. The medieval combat game becomes less about block attack and more into spam. Two handed weapons, especially the glaive, still can spam hits when positioned right against a shield. As a new player, it must be really frustrating to deal with when you can competently melee in single player and then are faced with people who freeze your shield in multiplayer. Archery is in an ok spot right now. Throwing weapons are in a good place. Cavalry is not.

Skirmish Cavalry
For the small maps, there needs to be a limit on how many cav should be allowed. Honestly, cav is unfun as a mechanic on every map, except trading post. I played a lot of cavalry in NW. This part of the game was the most fun to me, but here it seems poorly implemented in what it is meant to do in a battle. Bump cav hits should only be possible with a sword. Getting hit for 50+ damage with a lance after a bump is all too common when playing with people who practice cav. If you are playing as heavy inf, that hit is 1/4 of your life for the whole round at least. Cav would be fine in a large battle where the mechanics don't need to be perfect for someone to have fun.

Too many 3v3s
Anytime except peak hours, I am playing 3v3s constantly. The 6v6 skirmish is bad, but a 3v3 is worse. The maps feel empty, and the match is boring. I do not understand why no maps or game modes were made to handle a 12v12 (trading post could handle this and be pretty fun). Instead, as a game, it is going the opposite direction in gravitating to lower pop to just start a game. But simply that game is so unfun, I would rather not play.

Lack of MMR:
There may be a MMR system, but I never see it implemented. I get that game pop is too low, but really the only way to fix this now is to make a 12v12 mode so the new players will have fun and want to come back. It should not be the old players' responsibility to stop pubs getting stomped. Personally, the only fun I have in the game is playing with friends, but I feel this is not an option when a 3 stack in peak hours is often enough to guarantee a slaughter of the other team.

Frame rates dropping since my return
In the games I have played over the past 3 days, my frame rates are dropping in melee in every other match. It is happening to my friends as well as we try to play your game. This is especially bad as it was not this way 2 months ago. I had high settings then and now I am being forced to play on low just to make the melee bearable again. This also does not happen every game. I do not think playing competitive is an option if the game has this problem with inconsistent lag. The server menu additionally feels laggier.


These are some of the most glaring issues in the game. For these reasons, we have seen the mp game pop go lower and lower, only compounding the initial issues. The same old experiences are being played out with changes made seemingly being reversed in the next few patches (eg menavs and cav being constantly altered back and forth in their strength) It is becoming more and more apparent to me there has been no earnest attempt to fix any of these issues in the year this game has been in EA.

The problem with ballerina-style rotations is not the speed of rotation, the damage or the tactics, but the context that leads the player to consider it "convenient" to spam and spin rather than to strike precisely and selectively.
What makes the player understand that the ballerina style is more convenient?
The armor system.

If as a player you know that even if there is localized damage, this only involves slight damage reductions, such that instead of 3 hits you have to put 4-5 to kill an enemy, this leads you to think:
"well, it is irrelevant that I do not spam my attacks and rotate because while I await an opening from the enemy, he will begin to use the dancer style, aware that by attacking at any random point of my character, he will still inflict non-negligible damage and in 3 -5 shots will take me out.
So it is also convenient for me to use this tactic ".

But where exactly does the problem lie? In the cause that generates the convenience of attacking casually rather than methodically.
And what is the cause?
The cause is that the armor system is based on a few hurtboxes.
The fact that they are 6-7 and that the armor components are 5, and each component comes to protect even 2 of these hurtboxes means that a character wearing a complete set finds himself completely covered.
But clearly you can't make heavy armor realistic protection, as this would result in the wearer's invulnerability.
So the armor, whether heavy or light, is reduced to a simple skin with a numerical parameter of damage reduction and this implies that:
If you wear light armor you die in 2 hits.
If you wear heavy armor you die in 5 hits.
All of this is significantly INDEPENDENT of "where you get hit".
By "significantly" I mean that the written numbers can vary by 1 or 2 hits, even 3 at most, but not by 10 or 20.
This means spam and ballerina style are rewarded because it doesn't matter WHERE you hit but HOW MANY TIMES you hit.
And although this is not always true, it is very likely that those who are good at blocking, both at being a dancer, can afford to turn in their underwear (metaphorically) and still be much more advantaged against those who are on average good and wear armor. heavy which in theory should make it difficult to defeat, and this is because those who turn in underwear die in 2 shots and those who turn in heavy armor in 5 shots, but both use the dancer style and spam attacks by aiming randomly, just because they know that "hitting the arm, leg or head eventually deals significantly similar damage and if I don't kill him in 3 hits I'll do it in 4 "

So what would the solution be?
I will give a not simple solution for developers, but USEFUL to solve many balancing problems as well as make spam and ballerina inconvenient in some cases.

The aim is "to make it inconvenient to hit randomly and convenient to aim methodically."
I have already written a thread about it and will insert the link, but I still give you a short version and in which I will omit many things that you find in the thread.
In general the solution is to apply this series of changes:
1) increase the hurtboxes of the characters (suppose 20 hurtboxes).
2) increase the armor slots but such that they are fewer than the character's hurtboxes.
3) Armor does not cover all hurtboxes and uncovered hurtboxes must be small enough and "consistently in-game".
ES: arm and forearm are covered hurtboxes, while between them there is an uncovered hurtbox: the elbow.
4) greatly increase the armor value in relation to the type of armor and the type of damage received.

Consequences of application:
1) killing an enemy by hitting him in an open area allows you to defeat him in 3-4 hits.
2) hitting an enemy in a covered area allows you to defeat him in a number of hits that depends on the quality of the armor:
uncovered hurtboxes (bare skin) => 3-4 shots
Light Armor hurtbox and suitable damage against that armor => 7-10 hits
hurtbox with light armor and unsuitable damage => 15-20 hits
hurtbox with medium armor and suitable damage => 20-30 hits
hurtbox with medium armor and unsuitable damage => 30-40 hits
hurtbox with heavy armor and suitable damage => 40-50 hits
hurtbox with heavy armor and unsuitable damage => 50-100 hits.

If an enemy is naked you can afford to perform ballerina style and spam.
If an enemy is poorly protected you can spam and ballerina, but chances are you won't be able to target uncovered hurtboxes well, however it still isn't so grossly inconvenient that it's not usable.
if an enemy is on average protected or heavily protected, then it is better to aim well at the uncovered or less protected hurtboxes, otherwise even in 50 hits you knock him down => spamming and being a dancer is inconvenient.

Well, what else can be deduced from such a solution? Does it solve more problems than it can create?
Yes.

"Bullets vs Infantry" and "Bullets vs Knights".
The fact that the hurtboxes have increased and that some are "uncovered" gives us the probability that a bullet will hit the character in a significant way in terms of the ratio between the uncovered area and the total area offered by the character.
If we assume the character has almost complete protection (95%) and that this is plate and that the armor value reduces the damage by 95% and that an arrow in the scopeta area deals 50 damage, then out of 10 arrows that arrive on the target only 0.5 will hit it severely and the other 9 will have 95% damage reduction and therefore only deal 3 damage each.
So a total of 27 damage.
It takes 2 forests of arrows (so another ten) for 1 arrow to seriously hit the character.
At that point the damage would be 50 + 54 and the character would die.
But this is a special case of 20 arrows on 1 target.
If the two groups of 10 arrows were shot at a group of 10 warriors, then, from the distance, 1 arrow would arrive on the single target for every 2 shot and with the odds involved, it is only a matter of bad luck to be hit.
But here we are talking about heavily protected knights.
In the case of close combat, shooting an arrow at an uncovered hurtboxes is simpler than doing it from a great distance, but certainly less simple than "hitting any point that I do so much damage anyway".

In this way the heavy cavalry can charge the archers and not be very afraid of the forest of arrows.
Heavy infantry (without shields) can do this too, but being slower, it gives archers more time to shoot more arrows and therefore the number of arrows that could hit a soldier is given by the product between the probability that the soldier is hit and the number of arrows / javelins / darts / throwing axes, and since you are slow on foot, a longer time implies a greater number of arrows shot and therefore a greater number of arrows hit.
Furthermore, the closer you are to the archers, the more they can aim better at the uncovered hurtboxes, which, however, being small, are not easily hit, especially if in movement (in short, you have to be good archers).
Of course, here it is the size of these uncovered hurtboxes that determines how simple or not it is to hit them.

These are part of the information summarized in the thread, you will read the rest and also some new mechanics suggested under the name of "the helmet flies away"

link to the thread:
JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)

 

[hoonii]

Even any of those additions would not fix my frame rates dropping when I play, which is completely inexcusable when playing on a good computer on lowest settings

I had the same issue as well but I updated my graphics driver and the problem was gone. I advise you do the same if you haven't, if you have then reinstall your gpu driver and verify the game files through steam.

 

[danEN]

We will have to see. Thousands of people rushing to play a very early version of bannerlord online though shows there is clearly a demand for Bannerlord MP content - even if the majority of this comes in the form of mods. That was certainly how it was with Warband; 2-3 activet Native servers (if you call NeoGK native) and then dozens of mods with hundreds of players.

Bannerlord Online is something we were told is impossible and it's an attraction to both SP and MP players so naturally it gained some hype. I can't see most SP players caring about Battle mode but for MP players sure they will want to play it, but unless it's like god tier, I don't see it being the thing that retains players.

Imo Custom classes and private servers would be the main things they could do if they really cared.

 

[Greedalicious]

I think you are being way too pessimistic. The servers are actually relatively healthy right now - I can jump on at pretty much any time of the day and get a full siege, skirmish or captains game. If anything the servers have had more players recently then 6 months ago.

The playerbase is small though - but that's not a permanent affair. Custom servers will draw in a huge new MP community. So will multiplayer mods, duel mode, battle mode etc. Also leaving EA in general will double the playerbase overnight.

Basically Taleworlds have a number of opportunities still to see the community grow substantially - we just need to see if they can take advantage of them.

Last time I played for 5 hours and not a single match started as a 6v6. Crashes when loading the maps, no meaningfull update to the game in months, everything is "soon."
Custom servers which probably wont be out this year.
Multiplayer mods even further away.
Duel mode wont attract people for long, its a niche within a niche within a niche.
Battle mode might not be out this year.
Spectator client even in its most basic state is still not out (wont really get people back anyway but I just want to commentate the damn matches....) and even if it was out, matches are almost impossible to finish right now because of the crashes.

Leaving EA at this point will have exactly the same effect as entering EA did. A large pool of players will click play multiplayer. Get their ass kicked by veterans, see the full content within a few hours of playing, then leave again.

While I agree theres still oppertunities to make the community grow, people wont wait forever, and casual players have already forgotten this game exists.

"Soon" there wont be anyone playing.