It's because of that and hundreds of other accumulated things that it raises the eyebrows of those of us who have played previous M&B installations (with or without mods). We've been going since the closed alpha-beta period of 2019 like this...
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It's because of that and hundreds of other accumulated things that it raises the eyebrows of those of us who have played previous M&B installations (with or without mods). We've been going since the closed alpha-beta period of 2019 like this...
There's an economy?
Bluko88
Sergeant
A little bit...
You can actually buy dozens of horses now sometimes which is nice.
Towns seem to vary wildly between non-existent goods or they over-produce something to such a ridiculous degree that the price becomes laughably low. I'm not exactly sure what screws up the production in some Towns. Maybe it's war/raiding, but honestly I blame brigands. Just doesn't really make sense and there's really no reliable trade routes. I understand there's going to be some fluctuation due to war, caravans, etc.But to me it seems like it should be simple: whatever Villages are attached to a Town, that Town will get an abundance of those goods. But they should be short or in-demand of non-local goods almost always.
Maybe you won't always make a killer profit selling Battanian wood in the Aserai deserts, but it should still be profitable. I refuse to believe there's all these caravans with an abundance of Wood, able to completely make up for the Aserai's non-existent Wood Production.
And then there's stuff like Prosperity. Because my Town has high Prosperity it's always chewing through Food like no tomorrow (literally starving), and it has a Grain Village next to it... I'd understand the constant food shortage if my fief only produced Iron and Wood. I feel like Prosperity is a very poor way to prevent over-production.
There's also conundrums like Grain can be turned into Beer, but what do Fish get turned into? What's the purpose of Salt (besides obvious human need, even though it's not Food)? Really needs to be a Workshop for every resource, or that's how it should have been. I get things like Tools, Pottery, etc. getting consumed by Towns. But the fact some Towns benefit from Workshops, while others don't really is just kind of dumb.
Bro I don't really know how to convey to you just how absolutely ****ing stupid armor is in this game beyond that this is akin to saying that 5.56 being able to penetrate the Glacis of an M1 Bradley is sensible and fine as game design "because you could get it stuck in a tank trap". Against the highly armored figures in this came, you could have an MLB pro wind up a shot and punt a rock as hard as he physically good and against the Cataphracts in this game which would have probably 5mm riveted/solid alternating maille with lamellar and scale on top of this because lolwhatthe**** is weight the rock wouldn't even register as a hit, and all one handed bladed weapons would probably bounce clean off with zero sensation of pain because it just struck what would have an effective material thickness of at least 4mm if not more. Even assuming a metallurgy of "hot garbage pure iron" which would be expected of the "era" Bannerlord is attempting to evoke, what would happen is a whole lot of nothing.
Your view of how it would also go down is quite frankly, ridiculously absurd ignorant supposition blatantly bereft of knowledge on how things actually played out. Because the way it actually played out is the five guys watch their buddy get viciously stabbed to death by said lord and immediately leg it because people aren't suicidal. Because even if you isolate an infantryman that's well equipped, unless you literally jump him in the dead of night and tackle him as a group, you're a group of squishy unprotected rogue bandits that really shouldn't even exist in the first place that somehow think rocks with less joules to even register with any level of armor above exceptionally thin scale armor or really light padding is a great weapon choice while the other guy's got a sword. It takes an awful lot of trauma to kill somebody, but you can still level enough cuts on somebody who doesn't even have a weapon or training to properly parry that they'll be gripped in a state of shock while exsanguinating and their buddies immediately break. Looters not only shouldn't be damaging you through any armor above 20, they should suffer a total morale failure as soon as the first one dies. Or simply not even be in the game as bandits that can't even scavenge up a simple sword are utterly bizarre.
People also seem to have this blighted idea that maille somehow is bad at blunt force trauma or that it can't handle thrusts. Yes if you slam a hauberk with 300 joules of impact energy from a lance which has forward momentum pulling the blow well beyond just a single instance, good quality hauberks have a strong risk of failure, or not, really depends on the random metallurgy of the rings themselves, ring diameter leading to density, flat vs solid, smoothing rivets so they don't snag or chafe as much, etc etc. But unless you're being shot at by bodkins, getting accosted by a rather unfriendly lance, or being wailed on by a bloody dane axe, the list of weapons prior to the 13th century seriously threatening your hauberk with lethal 10cm penetrations is pretty short, and even the things that do penetrate are only doing so very very lightly. This is why eddas, sagas, and poems from the early to high period are filled with peer fights consisting of two guys slamming each other with swords until blood starts flowing out from under the hauberk, because for two guys with heater shields and arming swords the only way you get through a good hauberk is wailing on it for a prolonged period of time until somebody collapses and cries uncle, or you manage to wrestle them to the ground and shove a sharp blade where the hauberk isn't. With this in mind you should even in early/high period armor, be able to willingly 'tank' hits you feel are safe and just walk it off with either super minor or zero damage, and no flinching mechanic either at that. That's the entire point of armor, and without getting into the mess of Cataphracts in history being very well armored for their time, much less Bannerlord's grotesquely over armored abominations of cataphracts that should be dying of heat stroke. Even just the Vlandian Gallant, with his zero shoulder armor and just a hauberk to his name, should be a veritable tank of combat. Maille comes in different qualities but units with *good* hauberks should very well be tanks as much as Warbadn's brigandine or plate armored Swadians. And even the common Empire Legionary in his less than stellar hauberk should still be solidly protected and not casually brought down by what is effective soccer hooligans that are Looters. And if we really got into mechanical complexity, different types of arrow heads should be the difference between "whole lotta nothing" for penetration to "not only penetrated, but in one end and out the other". Bodkins really are night and day against maille, so something like Aserai or Khuzaits knocking broadheads meant to sever through flesh, padding, and lamellar straps should have a less than fun time against a bunch of Imperials or Vlandians riding in.
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Yes, quite a wall of it, and painful to read at that. Thing is, I agree with most of it.
I've worn armor in SCA combat, and taken a few strong hits. Where the armor pieces overlap, you really have trouble even telling where you were hit. With chain, it tends to spread out the impact to the surrounding links, so it takes a lot of force to either break the rings (or the rivets) or to inflict bruises through that and the light padding beneath. Other than using polearms (I've seen someone knocked over by the force of being hit), it's going to take either extremely strong or repeated hits to the same area to damage the armor enough to penetrate it, or else a hit to a location that's unprotected by the main body of the armor before it permits lethal damage. Fatigue and overheating were actually major concerns.
Some arrows were designed with extremely thin tips to go through (and potentially split) rings in the chain, but they don't do nearly as much damage as a broadhead arrow even if they do penetrate. The broadhead arrow simply won't go through at all, unless the very tip manages to cut you a bit through the padding. A thrown rock, unless it's baseball sized, isn't going to do much to someone in chain or overlapping scale armor, and someone isn't reasonably going to carry 20 heavy baseball sized rocks around with them.
Armor is badly underpowered in this game, and looters are overpowered as a result.
I've worn armor in SCA combat, and taken a few strong hits. Where the armor pieces overlap, you really have trouble even telling where you were hit. With chain, it tends to spread out the impact to the surrounding links, so it takes a lot of force to either break the rings (or the rivets) or to inflict bruises through that and the light padding beneath. Other than using polearms (I've seen someone knocked over by the force of being hit), it's going to take either extremely strong or repeated hits to the same area to damage the armor enough to penetrate it, or else a hit to a location that's unprotected by the main body of the armor before it permits lethal damage. Fatigue and overheating were actually major concerns.
Some arrows were designed with extremely thin tips to go through (and potentially split) rings in the chain, but they don't do nearly as much damage as a broadhead arrow even if they do penetrate. The broadhead arrow simply won't go through at all, unless the very tip manages to cut you a bit through the padding. A thrown rock, unless it's baseball sized, isn't going to do much to someone in chain or overlapping scale armor, and someone isn't reasonably going to carry 20 heavy baseball sized rocks around with them.
Armor is badly underpowered in this game, and looters are overpowered as a result.
Ted Striker
Veteran
I suspect the devs consider the Warband system as wrong and are "correcting" it with armor that doesn't do much. We all know it's wrong but I fear they think the opposite.
People also seem to be ignoring another problem with Bannerlord: some ridiculously overpowered weapons. Two-handed glaive on horseback? What nonsense is that? A falx that can mow down opponents like a scythe through wheat regardless of armor? If these kinds of long-reach, heavy and slow cutting weapons were so damned good we would see them used historically all the time instead of pikes, spears, blunt weapons etc.
In the time Bannerlord is supposed to take place armor was not as advanced, but neither were these crazy weapons. Long weapons like polearms only really became popular in the later middle ages. In the dark ages (Bannerlord's general time) it was simpler weapons. Horsemen did not ride around swinging heavy glaives like they were Superman, footmen did not run around swinging falx with no regard for personal defense. No, you saw swords, spears, maces, simple clubs. The stuff we see in game is pure fantasy and exacerbates the issue.
Let me ask: who here uses a mace and shield vs a heavily armored opponent instead of a two-handed weapon?
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absolutely, balance is all over the place. It's actually really baffling, and quite insulting tbh, how the devs just ignore this while pretending everything is okay
That's not the worst part, large battles lasting under 3 minutes, as well as heavy infantry feeling incredibly weak, are imo.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
Yeah twohanders should be great against shields but not extra effective against armor. And swinging polearms need a big damage nerf, like 25%.
Twelve years into development I imagine they are quite comfortable at ignoring all the things wrong with the game, it's how they got to where they are.
I want to point out the fact that the AI in Bannerlord is better at aiming at the head with their strikes than Warband's. Not that I think 4 whacks to the head should be enough to knock down the cream of the crop of a militaristic society with the best armour money can buy.
Wall of text is the only way to even engage in a topic as complex as the mechanics of armor performance. This is something that has literal research papers written on it and the principle book on Eurocentric medieval armors has over 900 pages and before it went out of print would run you up by several hundred bucks, nowdays going for 500 unless you just pirate (Knight and the Blast Furnace). The mechanical performance of plate or plate-lets armor is already a complex subject, but diving into maille or leather will drive a man to insanity with the sheer breadth of variables that could radically shift performance.
There really shouldn't even be great weapons at all in this game. Polearms would exist on some infantry but the glut being cutting spears or thick bladed spears like the menavlion (which is nothing like it is in game). "Dane Axes" would exist as two handed axes certainly were a thing, but the greatswords are ridiculous. Somehow in a world bereft of complex steel forging so people often are humbugging about like it's AD 700-1150, people are swinging around massive steel greatswords that nobody should even be able to manufacture without crippling weaknesses that should see those blades snap. The only exceptions would be China or India who were ahead of their time. Although granted Bannerlord is fantasy and has little historically accurate armor for the most part anyway.
Also I think the main issue is that for some reason Talesworld got it into their head that multiplayer literally matters at all to the financial success of Mount and Blade. This game survives based on its single player based community, nobody has ever really given a damn about multiplayer and they sure aren't going to start now. Having tournament/competitive PVP players provide "insight" on development is also a terrible idea since they are the last people you should be marketing to given you can't financially support a product on a tiny minority.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
Taleworlds justified their inclusion by talking about Swabian mercenaries at the Battle of Civitate in 1053 who were said to wield "very long and keen" swords, which some historians have interpreted as two-handed swords, though this may be incorrect.
By the way are you active in the Mordhau community under the same name? Your name is familiar.
I don't think this is an accurate statement at all. Warband MP was very popular in three forms: vanilla, Persistent Roleplay, and Napoleonic Wars (highly selling MP-only DLC)
But yes I would agree singleplayer is the main drawcard.
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For 5 years now I've met with the same group of friends who barely engaged with SP and just bought Mount & Blade for the Napoleonic Wars DLC. Some have gotten tired of it, some moved to Holdfast (a game I now passionately hate) waiting for another Mount & Musket. There is no grind in competitive clan fights, there's just getting better at it with the help of your veteran comrades, with the very tangible results of winning rounds and defeating other clans in field battle: I don't know if you've ever experienced it, but being able to outmanuveur another regiment and decimate them with a single volley is quite the satisfaction as an officer and as a private.
Granted, I prefer Singleplayer as well (it's the reason I'm here), but to say "nobody cares about MP" is very, very wrong.
Speaking of which, fatigue should be in the game. If there was in-battle fatigue like in Total War games then the AI constantly seeking the high ground would make a little more sense & horse archers kiting melee cav would be a little more viable, though if it was tracked on a per-character level it would probably lag the game some.
Also fatigue in the campaign sense should also exist. Right now you can casually run through enemy territory as long as you're slightly faster than most lord parties and have a good stock of food. Of course the AI can do this too, meaning that there aren't really fronts in a war, just a combination of village raider whack-a-mole and sieges. If parties had to rest, then having good scouting and control of nearby castles would matter a lot more, because a fresh enemy party who was waiting in a castle could sally out and attack you while you're recovering from a long day's march. Bandits would also be more of a threat to trade, now they can't catch caravans unless they're from the Steppe or get super lucky with terrain. It seems like clearing out bandits doesn't actually benefit anyone except the player's inventory and XP in their current implementation.
Yeah the idea of the Swabians wielding greatswords is almost assuredly BS considering metallurgy of the time is well, crap, and the only kind of great 'sword' you might see from the early/high period is one of those hafted War-Scythes that show up in the Morgan Bible, of which half of their length is just the tang/hilt of the blade. Early historians are also pretty crap when it comes to translations, especially if it's English translating any other language. Just to look at the text referenced itself and it's pretty easy to tell it's a bad translation/hyperbolic on part of the original author.
>These swords were very long and keen, and they were often capable of cutting someone vertically in two!
That kind of description turns up all the time in the Nibelungenlied, and always in fantastical nature because anyone sane knows a sword cannot bisect a man from the top down. That and formations of men with greatswords literally never existed at all, and the pop fixation on greatsword is bad history much of the time as they were either specialist weapons augmenting formations in the late middle ages, or purely civil defense weapons for retainers in public, not even being used in pitched combat. Even if you wound the clock forwards to say, a 1500 circa era, the amount of greatswords that should be present on the battlefield should only be about maybe 10% or even less of combatants. Probably far fewer.
As for warband multiplayer I don't think it was terribly successful in course of numbers. According to Steam IB the estimated buyers of Napoleonic Wars was in the hundred thousand to three hundred thousand, but this is compared to Warband which sold in the millions. Certainly in terms of server population I don't recall it ever being that much of a behemoth. Compared to the sales of the game itself, things like Persistent Roleplay are basically a single drop of water in an ocean. Hundreds of players or even thousands is an OOM or two behind the level of sales of WB which we can only assume the glut of was singeplayer buyers. The horrific lag when accessing servers across continents doesn't help either, so if the local multiplayer scene dies out in your area, you're kind of screwed in getting games that don't involve you rubber banding like a squirrel on crack from latency.
The issue is that all of these experiences are anecdotes and don't speak to the level of sales of WB where even Nappy Wars is basically just a fraction of the greater whole. The multiplayer scene and its rather light population always gave me the impression of just being a vestigial limb of Warband that was there, but not terribly populated either. You meeting with a close group of friends is the point - the Mount and Blade multiplayer scene is basically just a small but dedicated group with occasional bursts of denser populations upon the release of mods that stir up a lot of popularity or new DLC. With this in mind it's also kind of silly to market the base game at all to the multiplayer crowd if the glut of the population isn't going to seriously touch it, better to direct resources elsewhere and simply bolt on more multiplayer focused concepts afterwards as DLC. The rather ****ed state of combat certainly seems to me to be spawned by the Devs having multiplayer pros provide input on development, considering the interests of PVP is often a low TTK which armor would get in the way of.
Fronts really shouldn't exist inside any medieval focused game, the concept of fronts is born out of modern combat, even post dating the Napoleonic Era really as they still didn't have the number of warm bodies to create 'fronts' of combat. Rather it's just small garrisons that can run sorties to savage a baggage train here and there as a massive force moves through enemy territory until either the defender's army can intercept and destroy it, or runs out of supplies and needs to run back. The issue is more that you can simply have an ungodly amount of food with a baggage train that must be absolutely massive, along with no food spoiling mechanic when you probably shouldn't be able to eat meat you've had in your inventory for like... five years lol.
One thing the game really needs though is the idea of subdivided realms, where houses can and do start their own wars without dragging their overlord into it automatically. So a clan can start a war with another clan, either in the same realm or another one, and they can try to annex another's territory. And having multiple obligations as well, so if a house conquers three cities each belonging to a different culture, but the overlord did not annex them as part of a kingdom-on-kingdom war, now that house has three overlords.
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