No, seriously, I'm just kind of annoyed at this point, watching all of the pre-release footage that's available.
None of the stuff up to now looks like a game I want to buy yet
-->back to the usual fanboi stuff, or flaming me, or whatever. Honestly, I was planning to mod this thing when it arrived, but I'm so busy working on a game of my own now, I doubt I'll have time.
None of the stuff up to now looks like a game I want to buy yet
For example, spongy combat and poor simulation of armor and weapons effects. A guy wearing plate and maille is not just "taking less damage" IRL; he's basically invulnerable to a number of weapons types (like, swords don't work on plate, yo).
Watching the Gamescon 2018 footage... was painful. Watching some player shoot a guy wearing zero armor with an arrow, in the chest, and zero effect, other than a health bar depleting. Sigh.
Moreover, the hype doesn't match the gameplay footage. Complex physics and IK in the combat, for example? I can't see it, honestly; it looks like Warband with higher-resolution skins, thus far.
This is just a few other things:
Shield-bashing
People falling over from balance issues
Spear-setting
Overhand attacks with spears
Realistic damage systems (i.e., an arrow through a lung means, nope, they're not blithely going to keep charging you, hands getting lopped off, etc.)
Axes that behave like heavy blades at the end of sticks, not like swords
Shields that deflect attacks and act as offensive weapons, rather than damage sponges that act like walls
Large rocks falling on your head should be actually, you know, lethal
Spears should be the most common infantry arm; swords are for people with Real Money
Where are all the blunt weapons (and please don't tell me they magically "knock you out")
Why do horses still not kill each other when they collide at 25 MPH with riders on board
Why don't guys with lances occasionally get unhorsed when they hit people with same, or break lances, in 2019
Horses still magically run over humans without dying, breaking legs, or tossing riders
Despite their utter lethality in sieges and having been developed in early forms as early as the Pharaohs, apparently nobody in Calradia can be bothered to use crossbows
Despite missile weapons killing more soldiers than anything else IRL, even in the Middle Ages, no, you cannot use mobile mantlets to advance behind, dig trenches, archers still don't use plunging fire indirectly, etc.,
But you can use weak torsion catapults that the Romans would recognize to magically destroy walls that IRL are 2-4 meters thick
Horseman AI looks ripped straight from Warband and I'll bet it's just as badly performant
Commander AI still doesn't know any tactics besides, "form a line and charge the player at some point" despite Warband modders developing far better ones nearly a decade ago
Vaunted "modding toolset" is still not available to test by any actual modders, let alone bug-hunt, document or, if source made available, maybe even get working well before release
Level-design tools shown in said toolset don't appear to include navigation-mesh building tools to speed workflow, which was the main problem with Warband map development for anything but "my first map" projects... even though tools to do same were recommended to TW staff like, 5 years ago, IIRC
Hey, do boats work this time
Seriously, why does the economy look even more ridiculously over-complex
Why
I mean, is this a game about economics or a game about having fun pretending to be a lord
Whoever designed an economy that required flow-mapping should be fired forthwith for wasting your company's resources
Because it still won't prevent smart players from breaking it a week after release
The quality of the art assets is so variable that I'm still wondering whether it'll just look vaguely dated or genuinely bad
Especially the buildings and interiors, where the lighting system is still pretty bad by modern standards and materials / mesh sorting for translucency and a bunch of other things don't look like they're implemented fully
Where are interesting mini-games for when riding down harmless peasants gets dull
Stealth mechanics: still MIA, AI can clearly see for miles, through hills and nope, you can't hide
But now you can brush a few random bushes onto terrain, unlike Warband where you could- oh wai-
What about that weather, though; at least static skyboxes are gone
And wow, horse manes have floppy physics
I'm so excited about mane physics
I'm not excited about build-a-sword game mechanics encouraging lame minmaxing and boring art and gameplay that looks 10 years old
Come on TW. Get it together here. Focus.
The combat gameplay must be really, really on point this time. Warband was meh, the modders showed you how.
Forget the floppy physics, the gang wars in the cities, the flow-mapped economy. All that ... stuff ... is not terrifically important, compared to getting the core of this thing right. Players need to be able to smoothly and intuitively fight, move through the overworld, buy and sell loot and hire / fire troops. These things must be as perfect as possible; if the rest is just OK, that's fine, call the release Beta and hope those modding tools actually work on day one...
Watching the Gamescon 2018 footage... was painful. Watching some player shoot a guy wearing zero armor with an arrow, in the chest, and zero effect, other than a health bar depleting. Sigh.
Moreover, the hype doesn't match the gameplay footage. Complex physics and IK in the combat, for example? I can't see it, honestly; it looks like Warband with higher-resolution skins, thus far.
This is just a few other things:
Shield-bashing
People falling over from balance issues
Spear-setting
Overhand attacks with spears
Realistic damage systems (i.e., an arrow through a lung means, nope, they're not blithely going to keep charging you, hands getting lopped off, etc.)
Axes that behave like heavy blades at the end of sticks, not like swords
Shields that deflect attacks and act as offensive weapons, rather than damage sponges that act like walls
Large rocks falling on your head should be actually, you know, lethal
Spears should be the most common infantry arm; swords are for people with Real Money
Where are all the blunt weapons (and please don't tell me they magically "knock you out")
Why do horses still not kill each other when they collide at 25 MPH with riders on board
Why don't guys with lances occasionally get unhorsed when they hit people with same, or break lances, in 2019
Horses still magically run over humans without dying, breaking legs, or tossing riders
Despite their utter lethality in sieges and having been developed in early forms as early as the Pharaohs, apparently nobody in Calradia can be bothered to use crossbows
Despite missile weapons killing more soldiers than anything else IRL, even in the Middle Ages, no, you cannot use mobile mantlets to advance behind, dig trenches, archers still don't use plunging fire indirectly, etc.,
But you can use weak torsion catapults that the Romans would recognize to magically destroy walls that IRL are 2-4 meters thick
Horseman AI looks ripped straight from Warband and I'll bet it's just as badly performant
Commander AI still doesn't know any tactics besides, "form a line and charge the player at some point" despite Warband modders developing far better ones nearly a decade ago
Vaunted "modding toolset" is still not available to test by any actual modders, let alone bug-hunt, document or, if source made available, maybe even get working well before release
Level-design tools shown in said toolset don't appear to include navigation-mesh building tools to speed workflow, which was the main problem with Warband map development for anything but "my first map" projects... even though tools to do same were recommended to TW staff like, 5 years ago, IIRC
Hey, do boats work this time
Seriously, why does the economy look even more ridiculously over-complex
Why
I mean, is this a game about economics or a game about having fun pretending to be a lord
Whoever designed an economy that required flow-mapping should be fired forthwith for wasting your company's resources
Because it still won't prevent smart players from breaking it a week after release
The quality of the art assets is so variable that I'm still wondering whether it'll just look vaguely dated or genuinely bad
Especially the buildings and interiors, where the lighting system is still pretty bad by modern standards and materials / mesh sorting for translucency and a bunch of other things don't look like they're implemented fully
Where are interesting mini-games for when riding down harmless peasants gets dull
Stealth mechanics: still MIA, AI can clearly see for miles, through hills and nope, you can't hide
But now you can brush a few random bushes onto terrain, unlike Warband where you could- oh wai-
What about that weather, though; at least static skyboxes are gone
And wow, horse manes have floppy physics
I'm so excited about mane physics
I'm not excited about build-a-sword game mechanics encouraging lame minmaxing and boring art and gameplay that looks 10 years old
Come on TW. Get it together here. Focus.
The combat gameplay must be really, really on point this time. Warband was meh, the modders showed you how.
Forget the floppy physics, the gang wars in the cities, the flow-mapped economy. All that ... stuff ... is not terrifically important, compared to getting the core of this thing right. Players need to be able to smoothly and intuitively fight, move through the overworld, buy and sell loot and hire / fire troops. These things must be as perfect as possible; if the rest is just OK, that's fine, call the release Beta and hope those modding tools actually work on day one...
-->back to the usual fanboi stuff, or flaming me, or whatever. Honestly, I was planning to mod this thing when it arrived, but I'm so busy working on a game of my own now, I doubt I'll have time.