Leveling system still unenjoyable and unbalanced

Does the leveling system SUCK?

  • yes

    Votes: 110 75.3%
  • no

    Votes: 14 9.6%
  • anime tiddies

    Votes: 35 24.0%

  • Total voters
    146

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yup, mods in warband/classic were amazing but i really hope (and am here annoying the devs everyday with feedback lol) that vanilla bannerlord becomes an amazing and balanced game that won't be so reliable on mods to really shine :smile:
Personally I think what made warband was great was that it is an incredible sandbox. Same goes for Bannerlord. I've played native in warband a lot (like 1000 or so hours), but I went on to spend many times more than that on modified versions be it big mods by teams or tweaked version of the base I'd done just to cater to my whims.

The great joy of bannerlord will be that it can (especially modded) cater to an absurd number of different players. If TW made a game that was great for me it would annoy many other players and I would think this is true for most of us (at least where single player is concerned). So in most cases I'm content to let them build the game they want to build then I am happy to tweak and mod it to be the game I want to play.
 
one of my characters died at age 58 at level 39. And no, no mods no console commands. You see, steward is a skill
Evidently we play the same way. In my current campaign I used Steward to start leveling up Leadership.

I have one good combat skill, Bow, and one moderate one, 1H.
 
The biggest problem of bannerlord's leveling system is you gain skills harder and harder, and by this case you cannot even save the harvest of your grinding——your character will pass one day and you will have to pick a heir weaker than your start character(weaker at same lvl, hell), or you will have to disable the whole death/Heir system, atm high level perks are more likely a thing leave to moders, for vanilla version it's not enjoyable at all grinding those skills.

It's fine not easy to reach high skills, but in this case it is also important to keep the hardwork did by players, to show the respect to their time and trust on the dev team. Bannerlord badly need the export system back to warband, and heirs should be hugely buffed.
 
SCOUTING as example of slow leveling? It's one of the fastest skill to level and you just need to run around the map (or assign whoever levels it as a scout).When my scout companion died in battle, i made sister into one and in 1 year she had 250+ (and you should know how terrible your younger siblings stats are, so i used few focus points for combat skills and riding instead of droping all 5 into scouting after each level up), if you get companion with decent stat/focus distribution it's even easier.
Combat skills (except for throwing because of low ammo count) and riding/athletics are also relatevely easy to level in ~10 years - personally i had 310 xbow. 280 polearm and almost 300 athletics after 9 years without any mods.
Though some skills like medicine, leadership are complete nightmare to level.
 
I would remove that stupid thing where leveling get's overall slower the more you level up, it's borderline crazy how much grinding it takes to reach even 150 in many skills, and your character and companions can die too.
 
I would remove that stupid thing where leveling get's overall slower the more you level up, it's borderline crazy how much grinding it takes to reach even 150 in many skills, and your character and companions can die too.

This is to counteract all the bonuses you get as you level up. As you level up, your ability to level up increases. Kind of like monetary inflation IRL.

E.g. When your trade gets high enough, one of the perks gives you passive +1 renown each day for each caravan or each workshop you have. Once you have this perk, you start accelerating in your levelling and even level up if you sit in a town for the rest of the game.

The last 100 points of each skill area is really hard for this reason. But levelling up perks beyond this point puts you into the "best in the world" category for that perk. So it should be hard.

Kind of like in real life if you became both the CEO of a car company, and had the 100 meters world sprint record and you won the Kentucky Derby all at once. Nobody can do all those things at once. To be the best you have to specialise and work at it for years.
 
I think overall the system is ok, but it could be improved upon still no doubt.

My suggestion is to have 1 focus in every skill there at start.
This would be a huge benefit overall.

The skill caps where you hit the wall and it won't move up anymore should perhaps be removed, but instead make it slower and slower when it hits the deep end(flips red).

Overall to reach 300 it seems they have adjusted it down abit though, instead of haveing say 7 in the stat + 5 focus it seems like you can hit it with 6 in stat + 5 focus.

The whole system with haveing caps besides the 300, seems "forced" and do kind of suck abit of the "fun" out of it.
No doubt this is one of the things that will be modded down the line.
 
The whole system with haveing caps besides the 300, seems "forced" and do kind of suck abit of the "fun" out of it.
No doubt this is one of the things that will be modded down the line.
yes the thing with 330 skills is another bad decision imo. It's like they REALLY don't want you to specialize in multiple skills, so they still let you gain enormous amounts of exp after 300 so that you get tricked into leveling up more, so that other skills are even harder to attain, because again, the more you level up = the slower exp you gain for skills. The more I think about this system the more it frustrates me of how annoying and dumb it is. Skills should cap at 300, period. You should feel a sense of accomplishment when you do so, like "I finally did it, I finally hit the top of the mountain". It's inherently human to feel very blissful once you overcome a challenge and achieve your goal. Imagine if everest mountain was infinite, never-ending. Nobody could say "I did it, I climbed Mt. Everest.". This is what this leveling system does, it prevent you from EVER feeling accomplished.

And the leveling exp going down the more you level up is the absolute worst. Because they keep increasing exp requirements the furter you advance in skills, and they keep BRINGING DOWN the exp gain speed if you level-up. What is the POINT of focus points and attribute points if ALL THEY DO is increase leveling speed, JUST SO you inevitably lose those bonuses that they SHOULD provide you, but in the end they don't give you anything because those bonuses are taken away with each level-up. And the exp requirements stay the same (tens and hundreds of thousands of exp for 1 measly skill point later on). This whole system just ruins my enjoyment of the game every time I start a new game and think I'm going to have any sort of fun... I've honestly never seen an rpg system so poorly designed before.
 
The idea behind the focus points is sound - I rather like that you can concentrate on which skill levels faster than others.
The idea that each level of skill is more expensive in terms of XP is fair. It is not linear. You can learn stuff quickly, but mastering takes years of practice, this feels right.
However, a connection between your level - which should only somewhat represent your "power" or overall experience should NEVER cripple XP gain otherwise it takes away the reason for having foci and makes non-focussed skills unbearable slow.
The learning cap should not be a hard cap, but just reduce the XP gained. This fels right because you can achieve something with enough dilligence even if you are not cut for it otherwise. It just takes (much) longer - but never it should prevent you from trying.
Last thing: the governor skills are a joke because our character cannot use them and I have found, that the charm tree has a perk choice between two governor only skills - seriously? So we have a jump of 50 levels of skill XP until we get something useful again? You, the player should be able to fulfill each job an NPC could do. And even IF you appoint a governor, you can help him with synergy effects - a bit like the field marshal/general system HoI 4 has. The general directly buffs his units with full bonus, but the field marshal does this for all generals under him just adding a fraction of what they get from the general. Like giving 25% of the skill's worth to all governors, if your main character has it. You are the ruling lord after all, the master of the merchant enterprise, the commander of the mercenary band..whatever you are playing, so it should somewhat influence your subordinates.
 
The idea behind the focus points is sound - I rather like that you can concentrate on which skill levels faster than others.
The idea that each level of skill is more expensive in terms of XP is fair. It is not linear. You can learn stuff quickly, but mastering takes years of practice, this feels right.
However, a connection between your level - which should only somewhat represent your "power" or overall experience should NEVER cripple XP gain otherwise it takes away the reason for having foci and makes non-focussed skills unbearable slow.
The learning cap should not be a hard cap, but just reduce the XP gained. This fels right because you can achieve something with enough dilligence even if you are not cut for it otherwise. It just takes (much) longer - but never it should prevent you from trying.
Last thing: the governor skills are a joke because our character cannot use them and I have found, that the charm tree has a perk choice between two governor only skills - seriously? So we have a jump of 50 levels of skill XP until we get something useful again? You, the player should be able to fulfill each job an NPC could do. And even IF you appoint a governor, you can help him with synergy effects - a bit like the field marshal/general system HoI 4 has. The general directly buffs his units with full bonus, but the field marshal does this for all generals under him just adding a fraction of what they get from the general. Like giving 25% of the skill's worth to all governors, if your main character has it. You are the ruling lord after all, the master of the merchant enterprise, the commander of the mercenary band..whatever you are playing, so it should somewhat influence your subordinates.
I do agree with everything you mentioned, but I have to add something for the non-linear exp requirements and how it's not implemented properly in my opinion.

Yes, each level of skill should be more expensive in terms of exp, naturally, but I would argue that the way TW does it is not really sensible. The exp amounts required grow inconsistently, or by a very poor formula. You start with barely 30 exp required let's say for the very first skill, then by 40 skill you are already over 1,200 required exp which is a 40x increase of exp requirement in a very short time-frame. It's not a consistent growth of requirement, that is what seems really bad to me. If skills 1-100 needed let's say each between 1000-3000 exp , and then from skills 100-200 every skill needed between 3000-6000 each, and then from 200-300 = 6000-9000 exp, then that would make more sense. It would be at least resembling a consistent progression, the player would know what to expect. It's just an example, and with this you can set exp gain low enough that leveling up won't be too quick, but it will be consistent which is my biggest gripe with the system to begin with. The way they increase exp required from point A to point B by 100 times more exp needed (because you do need over 30,000 exp at one point for one measly skill point, which is ridiculous) is the biggest flaw of the system. Literally anything will be better than what they currently have made.

What happens in the game is that the requirements go insane at one point and keep increasing inconsistently for no reason at all, it must be a really dumb formula they used and they said: eh, good enough. By getting to over 30,000 exp required for a single skill point, and while leveling speed not only does not stay the same, but it even GOES DOWN, this inconsistency in exp required and exp gained is exactly what causes the first 80 skill points to level INCREDIBLY FAST, and what causes every skill point after to level incredibly slow (=inconsistently bad progression). The problem is not that the system is not linear (because it really shouldn't be), the problem are the numbers, which make leveling up feel downright unsatisfying since you level too quickly at the beginning (=0 sense of accomplishment), and you're praying for level-ups later-on (again, unsatisfying since it's so slow).

So basically, what they can do is:

1) lower exp required amounts per total, and make it more consistent from 1 to 300,
2) adjust exp gained amounts, and don't reduce the learning rate because of level. Can get fewer level-ups so that we don't get too many focus points/attributes etc, that would be fine also. The options are limitless.
3) I do agree with what you say, I said the same thing about the leveling cap. It should be reduced, but never be a hard cap. I would rather start with 0.5 learning rate in every skill (since we start with 2 attribute points), and every attribute give 0.25 learning to every skill (capping to 2.5x learning rate at 10 attributes). And every focus point give 0.5x learning rate and so make it cap at 2.5x, making it a total of 5x learning if you really focus on a skill. Again, this is just an example of how simple it can be and still be better than what it is currently. All the numbers I have mentioned until now can be adjusted at will. The biggest thing to take from this is that the gameplay would benefit greatly with more consistency in progression, lower numbers so that the grind is not as insane as it is now (can make it 1000 to 5000, 5000 to 10000, and 10000 to 15000 too, literally, as long as we don't reach over 20-30-40-50k per skill point I'm happy at this point). And make attributes and focus points give PERMANENT bonuses to learning rate, and lower the learning rate in general so that you don't have to lower it through artificial level-up reducing method.
 
Strange to see such thread in comparison to what it was right now finally I can level up anything I want no need to go after one skill for penalyt later almost stoped the growth. I play with death disabled ofc for aging for my taste is too fast so leveling if takes still some time is not big problem when there is no death around the corner. Well a new atribute point couild be more often than once per 4 levels (I would not mind even if for every 2nd lvl).

Only one thing I understand what might cause "tiring" when with new patch new char is needed so something like character export / import would be really welcomed with just experience having perks unused or even a reset for perks would be cool.
 
The idea behind the focus points is sound - I rather like that you can concentrate on which skill levels faster than others.
The idea that each level of skill is more expensive in terms of XP is fair. It is not linear. You can learn stuff quickly, but mastering takes years of practice, this feels right.
However, a connection between your level - which should only somewhat represent your "power" or overall experience should NEVER cripple XP gain otherwise it takes away the reason for having foci and makes non-focussed skills unbearable slow.
The learning cap should not be a hard cap, but just reduce the XP gained. This fels right because you can achieve something with enough dilligence even if you are not cut for it otherwise. It just takes (much) longer - but never it should prevent you from trying.
Last thing: the governor skills are a joke because our character cannot use them and I have found, that the charm tree has a perk choice between two governor only skills - seriously? So we have a jump of 50 levels of skill XP until we get something useful again? You, the player should be able to fulfill each job an NPC could do. And even IF you appoint a governor, you can help him with synergy effects - a bit like the field marshal/general system HoI 4 has. The general directly buffs his units with full bonus, but the field marshal does this for all generals under him just adding a fraction of what they get from the general. Like giving 25% of the skill's worth to all governors, if your main character has it. You are the ruling lord after all, the master of the merchant enterprise, the commander of the mercenary band..whatever you are playing, so it should somewhat influence your subordinates.
Maybe the should add a clan wide bonus for governor skills which the clan leader has. So if the governor skill has increase +10 loyalty to a town, then if your clan leader has this skill then all towns have 10% more loyalty or +2 loyalty or something. This would allow them to keep these and make them useful to the controlled player.
 
Maybe the should add a clan wide bonus for governor skills which the clan leader has. So if the governor skill has increase +10 loyalty to a town, then if your clan leader has this skill then all towns have 10% more loyalty or +2 loyalty or something. This would allow them to keep these and make them useful to the controlled player.
I like the idea. I wish every perk had an effect for any situation. For example: as party leader give X, as captain give Y, as governor OR clan leader give Z or a percentage of Z to your fiefs. The more choices the better imo. Right now it feels like some perks are clearly better than others and it doesn't even feel like a choice most of the time
 
I just want to point out too, so there's no confusion: You gain equal MC level up EXP for all skill actions regardless of the learning rate, including ZERO learning rate. This means you cannot try to out smart the leveling up as you will get just as much exp from everything you do in the game no matter how you spec your character.
 
I just want to point out too, so there's no confusion: You gain equal MC level up EXP for all skill actions regardless of the learning rate, including ZERO learning rate. This means you cannot try to out smart the leveling up as you will get just as much exp from everything you do in the game no matter how you spec your character.
really, now that's really screwed if you really gain level-up exp by doing actions that have 0 learning rate. I never noticed that. If that is true, it makes me hate this system even more :/

Man, they really did everything they could to make the system as unenjoyable as possible then... TW needs to understand that people love progression. Slow and consistent progression is still very appreciated. If someone can spend 50 game years to get all skills to max, that's their choice, and that's really enjoyable to do, but we should have this option. Look at prophesy of pendor, one of the best mods for warband (THE best for me). It was pretty hardcore, with strong troops that you would fight, big armies, OP noldor archers. But the progression was infinite, you could also become a pretty strong character yourself. Those qualis gems were giving attributes and such and that was really, really fun. The sense of unending progression if I felt like it, felt really good. Like, to me, limitless progression (still, slow and consistent, so that you actually feel like you're accomplishing something through hard work), is the best thing a game can offer really... If you want a realistic system of "ohhhhh, to become master in this you have to put in YEARS of work, and have to dedicate all your time and passion in it..." then at least make it fully god damn realistic. If you don't use that skill, the skill should start to decay. It should in no way affect other skills exp gain nonetheless. If I'm a pretty good pianist, or even master pianist, and I get bored at one point and want to learn another skill, I don't see what's stopping me.

The best age to learn stuff is when you are very little, the brain develops then. But our character already starts at 20+ age. This really isn't any in-depth psychological system that revolutionizes leveling, TW just decided to add unneeded limits/mechanics that don't even make sense because they don't go all in, they just half-go there. I just don't really understand the idea behind those design choices....
 
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Even with investing in 5 focus points in Leadership really early on (started the character with 25 Leadership, first perk unlocked) after a dozen hours and my army now being 100 man strong with high morale around 80 all the time fighting enemy lords - i only got 10 points of Leadership now being around 35. That is ridiculously unfun and grindy.

Same with Roguery, i run around with 50 Forest Bandits, but fighting with them and leading them you don't even get any Roguery Skill.
Village needs manual labor. Give him some slaves. No roguery skill.
5 Forest bandits don't want to die and instead want to join me, I'll accept - no roguery skill.
The only time i get some noticeable roguery skill is when i sell some prisoners at the tavern.

It's all really ridiculously slow and grindy. It's so broken.

Stewardship is one of the only skills that are fun to level up - but the more you level up - the slower it will get for every other skill. That's so stupid.
 
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