SP - General Initial Feedback (63 hours played) - a bunch of stuff

[iimstevo]

I understand that the suggestions forum is mainly for one suggestion at a time, but this is simply a feedback thread that contains suggestions, so I wasn't sure if that would be intended for the Suggestions forum, or The Keep... any moderators/admins can move this thread where needs be...

Summary
On first impression, the game is great. I never played Warband, so it has been a good experience playing through the Early Access of Bannerlord. The bugs have been getting addressed on an almost daily basis, which is amazing for any development team.
However, this wouldn't be in the Suggestions forum if it didn't require some needed improvements overall to really make the game special.

Already suggested items
Skills and Level System rework
Character Loadouts
Crafting (Smithing) rework

Campaign Quests/Missions
After playing through the campaign to the point where I don't really wish to go on, as I feel there's nothing left to accomplish, these are my findings:

• Issues within towns are boring and a chore if anything... At the start of the Campaign they're helpful enough to fund a starter army, but after that the payout is far too small, and they're just a time-hog. The only "Issue" I like addressing is the Army of Poachers... but even still, that's pointless at a later time.
• The first quest of tracking down 10 Lords/Ladies to tell you about a Battle to assemble the Banner thing is also really frustrating. You can spend in-game days chasing a party around just to try and have that conversation with them, for them to enter a battle, get captured, and then you have to start all over again tracking them down... This isn't a good first quest to embark upon (Tutorial aside).
• The second quest of tracking down the extra parts of the Banner thing is OK... it's an introduction to the hideouts if anything, but these hideouts are seemingly permanent? Why? They offer constant refuge to bandits despite being cleared out. Forest Bandits as already mentioned by a lot of people, are insanely overpowered due to their ability to use Bows and Arrows, and your own army being incapable of using ranged weaponry for some reason? (On a side note; why can't you select what troops come into the hideout with you as well?)
• After that, the third Quest being pretty straight forward... either forge your own Kingdom, or join an existing one. Fair enough... but why is this the only way to establish your own Kingdom? Are there intentions to allow players to simply establish their own Kingdoms later?
• The "final" Quest to prevent the conspiracy is far too difficult, with no indication of how to proceed. I've reached the point where the quests stopped spawning and it simply says "You failed to complete the quest within 10 years". On another note, why does the "Stop Conspiracy" quest continuously spawn even after its said its failed? It spawns and instantly fails itself with "You couldn't complete the quest in 10 years." despite still not being able to proceed.
• The map has been entirely dominated well within the 10 year period, and the quest objective to remove all but 4 imperial settlements still failed (Parent quest to the conspiracy one)... my faction are the Vlandians (Maybe they're still imperial but not Empire? I don't know...) but surely if the entire map is dominated, that's the quest being successful? I've eradicated the Empire afterall... I even went as far as capturing some of them and executing them to completely abolish the Empire factions (I think only one remains out of the three).
• After all the quests, and the map being dominated... what else is there? Shouldn't there be an "end-game" aspect? A set of victory objectives?
• What happened to my Brother? On another note... what has any of the Empire's dominion (or not) got to do with my missing younger Brother/Sister?

Characters / Interactions
While I enjoyed playing through over the last 63 hours or so my Character is still pretty dull, and his accomplishments go entirely unrecognised by anyone. The only exception is when I captured a castle with my own party, and a few NPC characters recognise that accomplishment, but then continue being oblivious to anything else...
So here's a couple of issues with Characters:

• Traits - they seemingly accomplish nothing, or help nothing. I'm "Devious" every single campaign I play, yet no one really acknowledges this trait in any regard. Nor do I even undersand how I obtained it. I believe its simply by capturing my enemy Lords and taking them prisoner, and then ransoming them? Who knows?!
  
  
• Social Interactions - Paired with the issue above, conversations where the words "Generosity" are painted Green seemingly accomplish nothing... it doesn't boost the odds of persuading the NPC to do what you want. A 59% dice roll still fails something like 75% of the time on average even if you have one of the required traits it highlights... and if you managed to luck out a "Critical Success" on the first roll, you can almost guarantee you'll then fail a 94% chance of success roll on the next stage. Again, all of the Traits in that seemingly have no impact whatsoever. Now, maybe they're supposed to reflect the NPC's traits to acknowledge them... but then why are the traits highlighted for what you possess? For reference regarding roll percentages, I've almost exclusively had a 9% critical failure chance across the board. After probably 500 or so interactions and roll attempts... I've only ever had one critical failure.
  
  So in my opinion, this needs to be a revealed and accurate chance of success, or it needs to be a hidden chance, and its upto the player to do the digging into characters to determine their own traits, to know what to talk about. - I would prefer the latter of the two, so you become more engaged with other characters.
  
  Lets take persuading someone to join your faction as an example...
  If you meet someone for the first time, you can tell them to join your side - You know absolutely nothing about this person, their loyalty, their friendships, their inner workings... nothing. Yet, somehow you can persuade them to leave their dearest friend and battle companion of 20 years to join your dictator King that executes everyone he captures.......... right?
  That shouldn't be the case, you should have to engage in conversation with a character, determine their traits, and then proceed on with conversations where you think you might have a good chance of success... not just be told a chance of success without knowing anything about them, and clicking randomly the highest chance of successes to find they fail a hell of a lot more than they should.
  
  Furthermore, there's seemingly no conversational interactions added in Early Access? There's always an option to start a conversation, quickly followed by "Never mind".
  
  
• Getting Married - Holy cow... that's one pain in the backside. Not only do you have to constantly search for a viable character of the opposite sex to woo, you need to do it several times... and ONE failure, means there's no chance of redemption!? You need a 100% record just to get through the onslaught of marriage... I'd take the quick death on the battlefield any day over that painstaking encounter again!
  
  
• Having Children - What a joyous occasion... except they never grow old? Lol. You also reproduce like rabbits on viagra. My Family < Image link. Considering I spent considerable time away in the game fighting wars, somehow I have 11 children (Spring 12, 1095 is the date - I don't know how many years its been since I got married though, like maybe 14?). Oh, and she's pregnant again. (EDIT: By the time I finished writing about Fiefs, I established the problem is that your wife can become Pregnant while already being Pregnant. I married Elys on Autumn 18, 1085 ).
  
  
• Companions - I don't get what the point in companions are? They're not really considerable fighters, despite their skills, and they don't really do anything. Yes, they can raise parties that you can get in your army, but you still have to pay the bill for them anyway. Why not remove the use of Companions and just make your characters' party bigger? Essentially, what are these supposed to be bringing to the table that I'm not actually seeing?
  
  
• Level system - I've basically completed the campaign, and I'm only level 15. My highest skills are 77, 76, 74, 73 and 58. I'm basically no-where near completing any character skills, and I've got nothing to do. See the Level system rework I suggested for reference on how to potentially address this.

Factions
Here's a big one...

• Clan Members - Now this is probably just my inexperience with M&B shining through, but I don't understand why you hire companions (essentially mercenaries) to be your loyal clan members? They're bought for an exceptionally low fee (Late game, I'm sat with 4.14m and I can essentially buy every town out of every resource, and still have change to spare) but you're entrusting them with running your towns and castles? That doesn't seem right. Furthermore, my companions seemingly dislike me. I can save their backsides in battle time and time again, and they don't even thank me for it. It's almost like I'm expected to clean up their terrible mistakes of chasing an army into a trap and getting absolutely battered for it. I make them governor of towns and castles, and they don't even bat an eyelid at the responsibility... where's the gratitude? Why don't they like my clan despite staying with it for all time?
  
  
• Clan Structure - Clans as a whole to me are seemingly broken. I actually feel like Companions that are hired should bring their clan under your banner... Essentially the same as a Kingdom.
  
  Your Kingdom > Your Clan > Your Minor (Companion's) Clans
  
  Essentially stemming a tree of power above and below your Clan. This should also offer more flexibility in interaction. If you're a terrible Clan Leader, then your Companion's should leave your service and go elsewhere... not just stick around because you paid them a one-off fee of a measely 800 gold coins 15 years ago.
  
  
• Betrayal - Why can't you betray a kingdom that you've subscribed to? You can leave their service, but you can't keep what you own in regards to Fiefs... why not? Surely you should be able to lock your own Keep's doors and say "Sorry, not today" to your old King as he turns up to reclaim what was once his.(On an unrelated note to Betrayal, Elys is pregnant again with child number 13 (Autumn 13, 1095 - she's a trooper having 3 children in one year!)).
  
  
• Being exterminated - So as I mentioned... I've completely blitzed a few opposing factions to the points where they have no faction leader clan anymore. It's completely wiped out. Yet, periodically, I get the prompt that we're at war with <insert dead faction here>. Great, I thought... There's an uprising, I thought... nope, just a seemingly pointless announcement that we've decided to go to war with the afterlife. I like the ability to completely erase factions from history, but I would also like there to be uprisings of the faction later on where they try and sway your lords that were native to their land, and try and retake a castle or two if the people of said Castle are unhappy.
  
  
• Empire vs Non-Empire - Why aren't factions aware of their ties to the Empire or not? As I have a preference of against Empire, and the three campaigns I've started and played through (two became unplayable due to bugs) the Empire in two of them completely swarmed the map and eradicated everything before I could even start my own Kingdom, and on the most recent play-through, the Empire wiped themselves out almost, while the Non-Empire killed each other. Is this because there's currently no room for "Alliances" in the game? Is this beause Children can't grow up?
  
  
• Policies - Policies are the only way I've found to establish friendships with NPCs in my clan. They're bloody expensive, and unless you've picked a majority popular one anyway, they get shotdown pretty easily... and ultimately, its all on the King to decide whether it sticks or doesn't stick. Again, if traits and reputation actually meant anything to other Lords/Ladies, then there might be some kind of repercussions to that as King, but seemingly my King is currently untouchable, and everyone loves him, even if he continually rejects majority proposals for Policies.
  
  
• Armies - They're great, except they cost too much influence that the NPCs don't seem to be held accountable to? If I'm lucky, I can assemble an army once to start out, and with that, I need to conquer three settlements with it to gain enough influence to start another one... if not, I get no leadership points.
  Joining other armies can help in that regard, but you've got a braindead AI chasing another army about while the Cohesion ticks away only to decide to start a siege with <10% of cohesion left...
  
  On another note, the Cohesion penalty shouldn't begin until AFTER the Lord/Lady has joined the Army... why does it tick down in time before the units are even there? Especially when half of them again start chasing enemies instead of simply grouping up with the Army before they engage in combat.
  
  Oh and when in another NPC's army, when it visits a settlement that it isn't raiding, the gameplay speed should pause to allow you to enter the settlement as part of the army, and buy resources / recruit troops. It shouldn't flash up and then disappear again.
  
  
• Fiefs - Trading fiefs should not be a perk after spending years of your life trading materials for profit. It isn't hard to say "Hey, I'll give you X if you do Y"... why is it locked down behind the perk system? It isn't really a perk, its a disabled feature being enabled, that shouldn't be disabled to begin with.
  
  Also, I appreciate this will be exceptionally hard to do, but why can't we actually create our own settlements? Find a nice clearing of flat land on the map, start a camp, expand it into a village with farms, then get some basic walls setup around it, then build a keep... etc... etc.. to the point where it reaches the size of the major Towns/Cities that requires you to have built up and created several settlements in a similar location.
  
  
• Diplomacy - If I wasn't clear under Empire vs Non-Empire... Diplomacy should offer far better options, and again, this shouldn't be a disabled feature that's enabled after you've completed the map, got nothing to do except grind interactions and trades.

Sieges
Not a big deal, I appreciate this is in early access and these are bugged... but I'd simply like to state that building offensive siege weapons should be constructable outside of range of the defensive ones... you know, like a proper siege? You wouldn't build a trebuchet in range of a catapult as the trebuchet had a far superior range. The siege defenders are always seemingly immune to starvation tactics as well. You're massively exposed in building a siege camp and can be attaked by any opposing armies, yet those inside the castle can build all their defences, and sit it out as long as they please... I'm hoping this just hasn't been enabled yet?

Map
A few additions here would be nice:

• Be able to click the Day/Night button thing to jump to view the entire world-map, regardless of what you're currently doing.
• Have NPC units on the map move considerably slower if on foot
• Have your movement speed restricted if your army contains foot-soldiers... armies consisting only of Cavalry should have enhanced map movement speed.

Water
There are several fresh water features on the map but no use of them. Armies have to sustain with food, but never water... which isn't realistic. It would be nice to have to obtain water for armies as well as food. Much the same, those bandits and looters should also be required to either visit towns or cities, or natural water sources to replenish their water supplies every 3 days so that their members don't die of thirst.

Becoming a prisoner
After losing a battle and becoming prisoner... a large portion of your loot is lost, as well as you being roamed around the map, deeper into enemy territory.
Eventually you either have to ransom yourself, escape, or you're simply set free, and you're sat in whatever hell hole they left you in, in the middle of no-mans land, on your own... and then "Hey, would you look at that, a bunch of looters and bandits!"... and you're a prisoner again because you start a battle on your own, with nothing to barter, and 20% health.
Yet, when you ransom or release your own prisoner lords, they're teleported safely back to their keeps and settlements ready to immediately amass a new army... why is this?
Why can't you be escorted out of enemy hands safely back to your nearest allied settlement? Only if you have no settlements should you just be released to the wild with no protection.

All in all...
In the end, despite a lot of questioning and suggestions of improvement, I'm very pleased with the game. It has currently got some amazing gameplay for battles, and the map conquest is also fun at working towards a goal (even if it goes unrecognised). I cannot wait for the game to finish Early Access now so I can play it to its fullest!