It's still ****

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I can't speak for others but I put in over 1k hours back during ea, but at some point I got disgusted with the lack on going lack of communication and the poorly thought out features and the lack of player input so I just quit. I even quit the forums for awhile but after I was less salty I came back. I'm still not pleased with where the game is and I refuse to play it again until I feel it gets better but at least I'm not bitter like I was, my suspicion is that some people couldn't or wouldn't step away for awhile. It's difficult to not feel some bitterness when this is my favorite game franchise of all time maybe others have the same attitude.
I haven't played the game in about a year (they havent changed the core gameplay and i find it more interesting to discuss its failures than actually play), but for a lot of people i think Bannerlord is just the only game of its type, excluding warband. It's like how people who play paradox games complain like mad despite having 1000 hours. Its a bad game with no competitors.
I mean I do get it, though as I say, many of the posts and comments by many users are just over the line in terms of respect and personal boundaries. Tbh, I was a bit salty as well until I tried to play Warband again.Then I realized that Bannerlord completely dumpsters Warband despite several lacking features and many persisting glaring issues. I realized that there is a positive move forward with the development of the game and the franchise, however glacial it may feel (although maybe not as slow, as my memory of the pandemic and of 2020 in general is kinda hazy). As I said though, there are still major issues that needs fixing which will hopefully get fixed relatively soon (and fixed as part of the base game, not with the paradox model of releasing 20$ DLCs for every new minor feature or flavour pack).
 
I don't think bannerlord completely dumpsters warband. I played full vanilla campaigns of both back to back just to compare them, and bannerlord was a far more aggravating and repetitive experience. Don't get me wrong warband has a lot of stupid and grindy crap in it, but bannerlord maintains all that and amplifies it tenfold.

Everything suggests to me that the developers had no idea what really made warband popular, and more importantly, what they should have stripped from the game entirely. So now Bannerlord is just a confusing mess of a game, amplifying poorly designed features from a jolly Turk's basement project from 2001, combined with the worst and most idiotic trends from other modern games.
 
I don't think bannerlord completely dumpsters warband. I played full vanilla campaigns of both back to back just to compare them, and bannerlord was a far more aggravating and repetitive experience. Don't get me wrong warband has a lot of stupid and grindy crap in it, but bannerlord maintains all that and amplifies it tenfold.

Everything suggests to me that the developers had no idea what really made warband popular, and more importantly, what they should have stripped from the game entirely. So now Bannerlord is just a confusing mess of a game, amplifying poorly designed features from a jolly Turk's basement project from 2001, combined with the worst and most idiotic trends from other modern games.
Yeah I guess it is very much subjective, I just can't get back to Warband or its mods after playing Bannerlord. Viking Conquest is still probably my overall favourite though (even tho I haven't played it in like 5 years).
 
Yeah I guess it is very much subjective, I just can't get back to Warband or its mods after playing Bannerlord. Viking Conquest is still probably my overall favourite though (even tho I haven't played it in like 5 years).
It's funny I've been playing PoP so much lately that I've almost finished a campaign as soon as I'm done with that I plan on doing a VC play-through. But I can't touch Bannerlord in it's present state. If VC was set a couple of centuries later I would play it all the time but unfortunately it's not my personal favorite medieval time. But there are so many interesting ideas in VC and for me it is still less frustrating than Bannerlord. I think I can echo @Kentucky 『 HEIGUI 』 James feelings in that Taleworlds either doesn't understand what fans want or they just doesn't care.

They threw so many different ideas and mechanics into the game without thought of how to fully integrate them in. For example they wanted crafting in the game. The funny thing about crafting is that Taleworlds originally stated that the player could go and get a weapon crafted but somewhere along the long the way it changed. What we got is a frustrating system that's grindy as hell, has random unlocks, and it's so exploitable that it destroys any need for other sources of money making. Why is it in there? Who knows? Was this a big requested feature by players? As far as I can tell no. This is just one example of how this game has a bloat of features that don't enhance the game but just pad it out.

Imho the games focus should've been about battles and also diplomacy to a lesser extent. But there are so many mechanics thrown in it that none of them are developed properly and even battles and sieges which should've been the centerpiece for the game are over before the player can really even have a chance to implement a strategy and they become so common that most players suffer from fatigue from seeing the same thing over and over.

The game can be a semi-enjoyable time waster for sure but after 10 hours or so the repetition and grindiness cause many players to just start over. That boredom and fatigue of a playing an open world game eventually happen for everyone, but for me that usually doesn't happen for at least 50-100 hours but in Bannerlord that starts about the time I become a lord maybe 7-10 hours in. I just don't see the point in continuing because it's way too boring and repetitious. It feels like there's no rhyme or reason to what the ai does not in wars not in diplomacy and not in making policies for the kingdom and I don't like that I have little to no control over my own kingdom or even my own clan. I feel like most of the time I'm just playing a glorified version of cookie clicker that could run itself with minimal input from me.
 
I think I can echo @Kentucky 『 HEIGUI 』 James feelings in that Taleworlds either doesn't understand what fans want or they just doesn't care.

I actually disagree, I don't think the fans know what they want either. Most of the new features were actually things fans had made hundreds of suggestion posts about when bannerlord was first announced, like here and on reddit. If you showed a feature list of Bannerlord to an average forumite in 2013-2018 they would have been overjoyed.

They threw so many different ideas and mechanics into the game without thought of how to fully integrate them in. For example they wanted crafting in the game.

Crafting was met with overwhelming support when it was announced, same with the influence system, the gang stuff (how they described it in early devblogs is basically how it is now), the army system, perks, I could go on. Everyone was like "this game is going to be great!!!!". If you survey a hyped-up fan they will always want to throw everything in the game, because surely more choice is better, right?

Good developers have to make difficult decisions about removing stuff that doesn't fit the intended direction of the game. The problem is that MnB is itself a mishmash of poorly thought out ideas from other older games like Sid Meier's Pirates and Way of the Sword among others. It worked in Warband, just about, but it was still a game lacking a clear direction, with design contradictions like spending most of the game on an abstract overworld while also having to worry about the correct angle of sword strikes, and the campaign being too long to allow for any real game-ending challenge or tension. Armagan should have spend a year or two prototyping radically different gameplay structures to better fit the combat, which is the real draw of the series, not half-assing popular stuff from other games and mods and hoping it would all work together.
 
................ MnB is itself a mishmash of poorly thought out ideas from other older games .............
In 2011 Skyrim was the exciting breakthrough game, and of course was contemporary with Warband.
Both have been heavily modded, in so many impressive ways, since.

One could imagine a TW that by 2023 consolidated the feel of these exemplars, along with that of their respective state - of -the - art mods, into a 2020s high tech medieval " meta - game " that really did have great RPG features, also with sandbox character career and NPC interaction, and interesting strategy alongside, of course, cornerstone " tactically correct " slow, immersive, battles ..............
Is this not a generic Vision of what this community yearns for ?

We can be somewhat impressed with KCD, RDR2, The Witcher3 .......... but these give a feeling of skating over a ( nicely made ) surface, heavily scripted, death by a thousand cut scenes, etc.
But 12 years ago we all anticipated that a 2023 game, a game of " the future ", would be way more " advanced " than BL currently is.

Is it all too hard, really ?
For professionals ?
Like, IT rocket science ?
( there is still, still, armour clipping in BL )

Not long ago a TW Dev said " we are doing our best ". I don't understand what this can mean in 2023 - James, do you ?
Maybe TW indeed does not have the best talent in their stable, with apparently c. one hundred IT professionals poring over this project for years.
Maybe very skilled and dedicated modders can build / rebuild BL, but this will take years .......

Maybe a cashed - up Warhorse Studios, watching this BL saga, will come to the party and fully blossom their Deliverance into an " open world ", tactical battles, sandbox character career and NPC immersive interaction, kingdom building and management, strategy, etc, Kingdom Come 2 ........ a Bohemian Rhapsody. Is this our best hope ?

I just feel that we have been short changed with BL ( and truth be told, the whole IT game industry ), now we are here in 2023.
 
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Maybe a cashed - up Warhorse Studios, watching this BL saga, will come to the party and fully blossom their Deliverance into an " open world ", tactical battles, sandbox character career and NPC immersive interaction, kingdom building and management, strategy, etc, Kingdom Come 2 ........ a Bohemian Rhapsody. Is this our best hope ?
I adore KCD, I have done several playthroughs (including a hardcore run with all negative traits), but I wouldn't hold my breath for KCD 2 having most of those features. That game had many glaring issues that we could look over because of it's sheer historical immersion, characters, music and atmosphere as well as the passion put into it. Unless the Warhorse devs scrap the engine and make a completely new one with completely overhauled combat mechanics, the game will not approach anywhere near a satisfying tactical combat experience.
 
............ Unless the Warhorse devs scrap the engine and make a completely new one with completely overhauled combat mechanics ................
Yeah, I know.
Can we hope ?

Some marriage of the best of KC - D / R and WB - BL ( ie with strategy and tactical systems that work ), blend in some CK, some " Skyrim " RPG, sandbox ....... it is the obvious sort of game to make for this market.
Somehow, sadly, it is apparently not happening ........
Is it because it would indeed be such a complex project ? In the 2020s ?

The ball was in TW's court ........... and we all went along and bought BL anyway, good or not. TW wins.
 
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I actually disagree, I don't think the fans know what they want either. Most of the new features were actually things fans had made hundreds of suggestion posts about when bannerlord was first announced, like here and on reddit. If you showed a feature list of Bannerlord to an average forumite in 2013-2018 they would have been overjoyed.



Crafting was met with overwhelming support when it was announced, same with the influence system, the gang stuff (how they described it in early devblogs is basically how it is now), the army system, perks, I could go on. Everyone was like "this game is going to be great!!!!". If you survey a hyped-up fan they will always want to throw everything in the game, because surely more choice is better, right?

Good developers have to make difficult decisions about removing stuff that doesn't fit the intended direction of the game. The problem is that MnB is itself a mishmash of poorly thought out ideas from other older games like Sid Meier's Pirates and Way of the Sword among others. It worked in Warband, just about, but it was still a game lacking a clear direction, with design contradictions like spending most of the game on an abstract overworld while also having to worry about the correct angle of sword strikes, and the campaign being too long to allow for any real game-ending challenge or tension. Armagan should have spend a year or two prototyping radically different gameplay structures to better fit the combat, which is the real draw of the series, not half-assing popular stuff from other games and mods and hoping it would all work together.
Pinning you on the design contradictions. The amount of work they dedicated to towns, castles and interiors design, and they just throw you the "talk quickly". What is the design choice here? They couldn't decide on menu based or interaction based so they just threw both? This obviously and literally resulted in towns having absolutely nothing to do with them but hey, if they modeled one let's model all of them. I don't know what the idea is here.
 
Pinning you on the design contradictions. The amount of work they dedicated to towns, castles and interiors design, and they just throw you the "talk quickly". What is the design choice here? They couldn't decide on menu based or interaction based so they just threw both? This obviously and literally resulted in towns having absolutely nothing to do with them but hey, if they modeled one let's model all of them. I don't know what the idea is here.
I believe the quicktalk feature was added because the towns were not well optimized at launch and it took a really long time to load the scenes. Originally, talking to a notable from the main screen loaded the entire town scene (I seem to remember you could just walk away down the street after the conversation was over, unless I'm hallucinating that), so they later added the fake backgrounds to make the convos quicker, because it was a real pain sitting through all those load screens just to grab a quick quest
.
 
Yeah, I know.
Can we hope ?

Some marriage of the best of KC - D / R and WB - BL ( ie with strategy and tactical systems that work ), blend in some CK, some " Skyrim " RPG, sandbox ....... it is the obvious sort of game to make for this market.
Somehow, sadly, it is apparently not happening ........
Is it because it would indeed be such a complex project ? In the 2020s ?

The ball was in TW's court ........... and we all went along and bought BL anyway, good or not. TW wins.
I don't know anything about game development or design, but my guess is that yes, it probably would be a really complex project. They can most definitely add more in depth mechanics, but literally combining all these games sound ludicrously difficult, although it really really depends what kind of combination you're envisioning.
 
I believe the quicktalk feature was added because the towns were not well optimized at launch and it took a really long time to load the scenes. Originally, talking to a notable from the main screen loaded the entire town scene (I believe you could just walk away down the street after the conversation was over, unless I'm hallucinating that), so they later added the fake backgrounds to make the convos quicker, because it was a real pain sitting through all those load screens just to grab a quick quest
.
Yes, you're remembering correctly. For all I'm complaining about there being nothing to do in towns, it definitely doesn't include quick talk. Quick talk is unironically one of the best additions to this game. This will be bit of an extreme example, but imagine having to load the town scene and having to travel to the marketplace on foot every single time to buy basic supplies or walk to the tavern and load the tavern to hire mercs and companions. It would definitely be more immersive for sure, but by god I would've deleted the game in mere minutes (and tbh playing KCD hardcore isn't too different from my example).
 
Yes, you're remembering correctly. For all I'm complaining about there being nothing to do in towns, it definitely doesn't include quick talk. Quick talk is unironically one of the best additions to this game. This will be bit of an extreme example, but imagine having to load the town scene and having to travel to the marketplace on foot every single time to buy basic supplies or walk to the tavern and load the tavern to hire mercs and companions. It would definitely be more immersive for sure, but by god I would've deleted the game in mere minutes.
yeah, I really had high hopes for in-town adventures until I experienced those load screens and realized that was never going to work
 
I don't know anything about game development or design, but my guess is that yes, it probably would be a really complex project. They can most definitely add more in depth mechanics, but literally combining all these games sound ludicrously difficult, although it really really depends what kind of combination you're envisioning.
Well, right now our hopes lie with crack mod teams like Kingdoms of Arda, The Art of War, Shokuho, et al, to not only (re)create whole new BL makeovers, but build in new lore, Relation and NPC depth, strategy and tactical systems tweaks ............ and all this this will take some years to perfect, no doubt. But it will likely be quality work.
They will be really clever technicians ( Bloc, for instance ), some will be moonlighting professionals.
Yet, as for the so - called industry Studios ........
 
Pinning you on the design contradictions. The amount of work they dedicated to towns, castles and interiors design, and they just throw you the "talk quickly". What is the design choice here? They couldn't decide on menu based or interaction based so they just threw both? This obviously and literally resulted in towns having absolutely nothing to do with them but hey, if they modeled one let's model all of them. I don't know what the idea is here.

It's a more fundamental issue with the game where i think the overworld and the third person elements cannibalise each other. Of *course* going into scenes is a waste of time because all other travel happens at like 400x the speed as walking. Its like a bunch of pedestrian only towns connected by bullet trains, but also in the station is a phone booth connecting everyone in the city. Why would you ever *not* use the phone booth, especially when *every single* playstyle forces you to ping-pong between towns constantly to do even the most basic of tasks?

The only way I think they can resolve this contradiction is to get rid of the reliance on the overworld. They can force the player to use scenes by removing the phone booths, but they just make the game worse because all you're ever doing is talking to a guy and leaving. More of the gameplay needs to bee fully containe within scenes otherwise scenes are always going to be nothing more than window dressing.
 
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Well, right now our hopes lie with crack mod teams like Kingdoms of Arda, The Art of War, Shokuho, et al, to not only (re)create whole new BL makeovers, but build in new lore, Relation and NPC depth, strategy and tactical systems tweaks ............ and all this this will take some years to perfect, no doubt. But it will likely be quality work.
They will be really clever technicians ( Bloc, for instance ), some will be moonlighting professionals.
Yet, as for the so - called industry Studios ........
Hey nice to see Shokuho is still being made. I used to write some characters and quests there but I had to leave because of studies + work. They had a lot of cool ideas, I hope they get to implement them.

It's a more fundamental issue with the game where i think the overworld and the third person elements cannibalise each other. Of *course* going into scenes is a waste of time because all other travel happens at like 400x the speed as walking. Its like a bunch of pedestrian only towns connected by bullet trains, but also in the station is a phone booth connecting everyone in the city. Why would you ever *not* use the phone booth, especially when *every single* playstyle forces you to ping-pong between towns constantly to do even the most basic of tasks?

The only way I think they can resolve this contradiction is to get rid of the reliance on the overworld. They can force the player to use scenes by removing the phone booths, but they just make the game worse because all you're ever doing is talking to a guy and leaving. More of the gameplay needs to bee fully containe within scenes otherwise scenes are always going to be nothing more than window dressing.
Gameplay contained in the same scene is actually a great idea that could solve the chore like status of them. Adding a few actually interesting characters and bonuses or treasures would be a good idea to reward you for exploring at least. I actually liked the quest where you have to find a spy of a tournament because I get to explore the area but it gets so repetitive and it's so easy (it doesn't depends on the player discovering anything and defeating the spy it's just too easy), the quest is just spamming clicks until you get the right info and that's it. They need to do more in scene quests and make higher stakes.

But in the end it seems to me Taleworlds dig themselves into hole with this mechanic, and then made the hole bigger by making Bannerlord as huge as it is, the map is just too big, it's nonsensical. They followed the 3A garbage rule of wider but not deeper, players don't need a real life continent, they need interesting content. Plus 400 of conquering almost alike towns and castles is more a chore than anything else by the endgame.
 
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