I really want to like this game. It has potential, as long as TW is willing to actually do something with it. Here are some (quite a lot of) things that honestly need to be worked on in order for this to be enjoyable.
The class system:
I actually don't mind the class system. It has its merits. Most seem to complain about "not getting to choose your own equipment" or "customization" like in Warband. I mean... please. It's a overstatement to say that native Warband MP had great customization. There were literally 3 classes for each faction: Melee inf, Archer/xbowman and cav. For those classes you had the mindblowing "customization" of choosing either from the best armor and weapons you could buy or at best from like 3-5 armors and like 5 weapons from which 3 were pretty much never used. Of course there was also the Warband classic for infantry: The nude 2-hander user, but I wouldn't call that "customization".
In BL we have many classes with different roles. Or at least it should be so. My main gripe with the class system is that even though it's a good idea, it's so poorly implemented. All factions have more or less the same troops, completely undermining the fact that we have different factions in the first place. In Warband, we had for example Swadians who had solid infantry, ok crossbowmen and their knights with these huge lances which nobody else had, solidifying their title as THE heavy cav faction. The Vaegirs had the best archers with their terrifying war bows, knights and with their downside being kinda mediocre infantry. Nords had Huscarls which just wrecked in melee and had a huge advantage against archers with those big-a** round shields. Rhodoks had deadly sharpshooters and all kinds of wacky but deadly weapons like warhammers and cleavers, and of course, pikes.
So the factions in BL lack flavor. They need to have different strengths and weaknesses. This isn't CS:GO. The attempt to make a M&B title be like a competitive shooter is absurd. BL shouldn't be balanced so that all factions have the exact same classes. It's like Bethesda would make the new Elder Scrolls title be a f**king racing game. Warband was never designed to be an e-sport, but it was suited for being competitive even though it was essentially an RPG. Same should go for Bannerlord. Factions need variety.
ASERAI
- Aserai should have faster movement speed and skirmishers should be reworked (will be emphasized on later). I otherwise like the design.
- Imo they don't need the armored archer class, the good light archers are enough.
- Instead, they could have an elite swordsman class with medium to heavy armor armed with scimitars or similar weapons and small shields. Their role would be to massacre light inf with fast, hard blows from their 1-handers.
BATTANIA
- The heavy "skirmishers" are odd. They're essentially bad heavy infantry. Replace them with fast, lightly armored skirmishers. Maybe call them "woodrunners" like the troop in SP. Otherwise I quite like the battanian units.
- Savages for example are good unit design imho, though they could be a bit faster for having essentially no armor.
EMPIRE
- Recruit and Menavlion inf could be reworked to the following:
- Add a main skirmisher class, like a "velite", and/or a "light infantry" having similar equipment to the legionary, but more troops with lighter armor (padded or leather) and pila/spear. It would be a hybrid between skirmisher and legionary.
- Legionaries would able to choose from two sets:
The flexible set - A lighter chainmail armor, and an older looking imperial helmet, a gladius and a pilum or a spear
The heavy set - Pretty much the same as now. Heavy plate armor but no spears or pila. Able to have a mace or a longer spatha.
KHUZAIT
- The idea behind spear infantry is good, the way it's implemented is bad. It's way too tanky, has way too good weapons and does way too well against top heavy infantry. Make the spear inf have lighter armor, equipping it to become a support inf with its large shield and spears.
- Rabble's maces should be removed, they become too strong in big clusters.
- Khan's guard is a huge no-no for me. An archers with strong bows, 38 armor which is heavy cavalry level, and a damn glaive. It's just too strong overall. Either remove the glaive or reduce armor significantly.
- Horse archers can't hit anything while moving and it needs to be fixed. Also the behavior is broken.
SURGIA
- Sturgia's brigands are purely an effort to make every faction have similar troops. Just no.
- Warriors are ok, but remove the 2-hander and maces, but give them throwing axes.
- Varyags could be a kind of a unique dual class: In addition to having the current equipment, they could be made to have access to a 2-hander. This would make varyags the only heavy armored 2-hander class in MP (apart from Khan's guard lmao). This would make sturgia actually have the strongest infantry like it's supposed to have. Also, imo the varyags should be changed back to be more nordic-looking with valsgarde helmets, and maybe renamed back to Huscarls or maybe Skolderbrot etc.
- Sturgian lore suggests that they are very much slavic, but with the ruler having ties to the nord homeland, being able to summon Nords (like in Warband) to fight for him. So otherwise slavic, but with nord elite infantry.
VLANDIA
- Peasants are kinda cool, but they should have worse weapons and stats but there could be more of them in a unit. This would make them a weak meatshield kind of a troop to bog the enemy down in a fight, or to block enemy cavalry from doing their job. They shouldn't have too much killing power on their own, and they most definitely shouldn't have maces (hammers) or billhooks. Weak shields, sicles which could be upgraded to relatively weak axes and pitchforks for anti-cav.
- I don't like voulgiers. They fall into the same category as sturgian brigand, aka "have this troop for the sake of having this troop because everyone else has it too". Vlanda's successors aren't known for having shock infantry, so why would Vlandia?
- I see the role of vlandia's main infantry as more defensive rather than offensive. Sergeants holding the shield wall and doing the heaviest fighting with hammers and swords, while pikemen hold against cavalry. This would include both future Swadian and Rhodok influences in Vlandian culture.
- So change voulgiers to dedicated pikemen. With very long pikes.
- Crossbows could be divided further by the two classes: The other being a downgrade, but with more troops. A levy crossbowman squad able to setup at a hill or similar spot and barrage the enemies with light crossbows. The other being the famed sharpshooters we already have, but with few troops and increased accuracy and damage.
- The vanguard is kinda useless, and could be replaced by a medium infantry troop. Maybe "swordsmen" or "vlandian infantry", using swords and gambesons, possibly upgradable to mail armor.
All this would make it so that factions would feel different, and have to be played different. Now it's pretty much so that you can just rush sturgians with Khuzait heavy inf and absolutely delete them. It's rediculous.
Mechanics and overall gameplay design:
Maps:
Captain maps are too small and have often too many obstacles.
- Better maps: Ruins of Jawwali, Druimmor forest
- Worse maps: Cliffs of Akkalat, That hill fort map
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- In Jawwali, the B flag site offers too much cover. Shields cover the whole troop from the front, so it's not really needed. If you need cover in an open field from archers, get shield infantry or flank around. Simple. Having so much cover AND shields makes it extremely hard for archers to actually do anything there.
- In Druimmor, A flag is kinda nice, but the space should be wider, maybe having a small hill opposite to the house, on the edge of the map. A good design for it imo would be chopped down trees, with trunks and stumps on the ground, making it harder for cavalry to harrass melee infantry and archers.
C is otherwise fine, but the ground has too much height difference, making it too hard for archers to shoot.
- Cliffs of Akkalat doesn't really use its cliffs, instead has 50% of the map covered in either houses or more houses, again making it horrible for playing archer.
- The fort map is bad. I can't just get over how dull it's to play. It's either pick strongest infantry or lose. So little space for archers, especially since shields still cover pretty much the front of any unit completely.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Skirmisher class:
Skirmishers are plain bad. We have a skirmisher class, which is supposed to mainly you know, skirmish using the throwing weapons, usually javelins. A basic javelin deals 40 damage. It's less than a light archer's bow. Now let's take into account that the projectile travels much slower and thus deals less damage at range and is harder to hit enemies with, it's extremely weak. You also have 3-6 of them, compared to an archer's 25-40 arrows. The skirmishers are slow, they suck as a melee unit, and especially as a ranged unit.
Treat the skirmisher class as a ranged unit, with limited melee capability.
- Equipped with very light armor (5-15 armor), short swords, javelins and small, weak shields.
- Fast moving, fastest running speed in MP (obviously excluding cav on horses), able to run at enemies, throw a couple volleys and then retreat to allies.
- Javelins could have a stack of 6, with damage being around 80-120 (wouldn't be a 1-hit most of the time except from short range, but at least a two-hit), with "bonus against shields" (deadly in short range volleys, not so much in long range).
- Their role would be to soften the enemy, damaging and breaking the shields of enemy infantry and dealing heavy damage when flanking around shields.
- Strong mainly vs heavy- and shield infantry and anyone who they get close to without getting attacked, but very weak vs cavalry and archers when too far away to return fire.
- Throwing spears would be removed. A single pilum with very high damage (150-200) would be given to select empire troops, adding a nice touch of uniqueness to empire as a faction.
Rambo cav in captain:
Needs to be fixed. It's not funny. And as much you people doing it think you're good, it's actually sad. I've had people tell me to l2p and git gud when I've voiced my opinions about their ramboing. Needless to say I won them all in 1v1 (
) . It's essentially just cheesing the mechanics so that you get kills and ruin the idea of the game. I myself get no satisfaction from killing mindless bots, and that's not the point of the mode either is it.
There are so many threads covering this so I won't go too much into it. Just restrict damage dealt to 0 while being too far from your own bots, or make some of your bots rout each time you die (in one of my threads).
AI issues and lack of control over bots:
- The player needs to be able to control the AI better. Make us able to switch between "use weapons at will" and a forced "switch weapons". This could possibly be implemented into the "fire at will" and "hold fire" button (F4).
- In captain, (especially) cavalry going everywhere when ordered to charge is really annoying. The units should have some kind of a collective mind, that makes them stick together to a certain degree. The "advance" (F1+F4) order works ok with infantry, but with cavalry they won't charge with lances, which is a major flaw. Also, even in this situation, you can't fully control where they go.
I suggest that, when you have the UI for charge order ready (you've pressed F1, and it shows the banner on the ground), the unit will charge at the enemy unit closest to the banner indicator at the moment when the F3 key was pressed. I'm sure this kind of calculation is very possible, and also I'm pretty sure something like this has been done in a mod already.
- Also, a dream of mine is a system where you can also pick individual soldiers by pointing at them and telling them to move into assigned areas and giving them orders. This would mainly be used for sieges and such in SP and in Captain mode to better place archers on walls and other places so they can shoot more effectively. In other terms, the performance of the AI troops would not be hindered by having to sit in a line looking at a wall because the whole formation can't fit somewhere.
And lastly but not leastly:
CUSTOM SERVER FILES FOR MP MODDERS WHEN?
Self explanatory...
If these things were fixed, I'd actually be very, very happy. Of course there are more things to be fixed, but these are the main problems I see in the game (mainly MP, Captain) right now.
The class system:
I actually don't mind the class system. It has its merits. Most seem to complain about "not getting to choose your own equipment" or "customization" like in Warband. I mean... please. It's a overstatement to say that native Warband MP had great customization. There were literally 3 classes for each faction: Melee inf, Archer/xbowman and cav. For those classes you had the mindblowing "customization" of choosing either from the best armor and weapons you could buy or at best from like 3-5 armors and like 5 weapons from which 3 were pretty much never used. Of course there was also the Warband classic for infantry: The nude 2-hander user, but I wouldn't call that "customization".
In BL we have many classes with different roles. Or at least it should be so. My main gripe with the class system is that even though it's a good idea, it's so poorly implemented. All factions have more or less the same troops, completely undermining the fact that we have different factions in the first place. In Warband, we had for example Swadians who had solid infantry, ok crossbowmen and their knights with these huge lances which nobody else had, solidifying their title as THE heavy cav faction. The Vaegirs had the best archers with their terrifying war bows, knights and with their downside being kinda mediocre infantry. Nords had Huscarls which just wrecked in melee and had a huge advantage against archers with those big-a** round shields. Rhodoks had deadly sharpshooters and all kinds of wacky but deadly weapons like warhammers and cleavers, and of course, pikes.
So the factions in BL lack flavor. They need to have different strengths and weaknesses. This isn't CS:GO. The attempt to make a M&B title be like a competitive shooter is absurd. BL shouldn't be balanced so that all factions have the exact same classes. It's like Bethesda would make the new Elder Scrolls title be a f**king racing game. Warband was never designed to be an e-sport, but it was suited for being competitive even though it was essentially an RPG. Same should go for Bannerlord. Factions need variety.
ASERAI
- Aserai should have faster movement speed and skirmishers should be reworked (will be emphasized on later). I otherwise like the design.
- Imo they don't need the armored archer class, the good light archers are enough.
- Instead, they could have an elite swordsman class with medium to heavy armor armed with scimitars or similar weapons and small shields. Their role would be to massacre light inf with fast, hard blows from their 1-handers.
BATTANIA
- The heavy "skirmishers" are odd. They're essentially bad heavy infantry. Replace them with fast, lightly armored skirmishers. Maybe call them "woodrunners" like the troop in SP. Otherwise I quite like the battanian units.
- Savages for example are good unit design imho, though they could be a bit faster for having essentially no armor.
EMPIRE
- Recruit and Menavlion inf could be reworked to the following:
- Add a main skirmisher class, like a "velite", and/or a "light infantry" having similar equipment to the legionary, but more troops with lighter armor (padded or leather) and pila/spear. It would be a hybrid between skirmisher and legionary.
- Legionaries would able to choose from two sets:
The flexible set - A lighter chainmail armor, and an older looking imperial helmet, a gladius and a pilum or a spear
The heavy set - Pretty much the same as now. Heavy plate armor but no spears or pila. Able to have a mace or a longer spatha.
KHUZAIT
- The idea behind spear infantry is good, the way it's implemented is bad. It's way too tanky, has way too good weapons and does way too well against top heavy infantry. Make the spear inf have lighter armor, equipping it to become a support inf with its large shield and spears.
- Rabble's maces should be removed, they become too strong in big clusters.
- Khan's guard is a huge no-no for me. An archers with strong bows, 38 armor which is heavy cavalry level, and a damn glaive. It's just too strong overall. Either remove the glaive or reduce armor significantly.
- Horse archers can't hit anything while moving and it needs to be fixed. Also the behavior is broken.
SURGIA
- Sturgia's brigands are purely an effort to make every faction have similar troops. Just no.
- Warriors are ok, but remove the 2-hander and maces, but give them throwing axes.
- Varyags could be a kind of a unique dual class: In addition to having the current equipment, they could be made to have access to a 2-hander. This would make varyags the only heavy armored 2-hander class in MP (apart from Khan's guard lmao). This would make sturgia actually have the strongest infantry like it's supposed to have. Also, imo the varyags should be changed back to be more nordic-looking with valsgarde helmets, and maybe renamed back to Huscarls or maybe Skolderbrot etc.
- Sturgian lore suggests that they are very much slavic, but with the ruler having ties to the nord homeland, being able to summon Nords (like in Warband) to fight for him. So otherwise slavic, but with nord elite infantry.
VLANDIA
- Peasants are kinda cool, but they should have worse weapons and stats but there could be more of them in a unit. This would make them a weak meatshield kind of a troop to bog the enemy down in a fight, or to block enemy cavalry from doing their job. They shouldn't have too much killing power on their own, and they most definitely shouldn't have maces (hammers) or billhooks. Weak shields, sicles which could be upgraded to relatively weak axes and pitchforks for anti-cav.
- I don't like voulgiers. They fall into the same category as sturgian brigand, aka "have this troop for the sake of having this troop because everyone else has it too". Vlanda's successors aren't known for having shock infantry, so why would Vlandia?
- I see the role of vlandia's main infantry as more defensive rather than offensive. Sergeants holding the shield wall and doing the heaviest fighting with hammers and swords, while pikemen hold against cavalry. This would include both future Swadian and Rhodok influences in Vlandian culture.
- So change voulgiers to dedicated pikemen. With very long pikes.
- Crossbows could be divided further by the two classes: The other being a downgrade, but with more troops. A levy crossbowman squad able to setup at a hill or similar spot and barrage the enemies with light crossbows. The other being the famed sharpshooters we already have, but with few troops and increased accuracy and damage.
- The vanguard is kinda useless, and could be replaced by a medium infantry troop. Maybe "swordsmen" or "vlandian infantry", using swords and gambesons, possibly upgradable to mail armor.
All this would make it so that factions would feel different, and have to be played different. Now it's pretty much so that you can just rush sturgians with Khuzait heavy inf and absolutely delete them. It's rediculous.
Mechanics and overall gameplay design:
Maps:
Captain maps are too small and have often too many obstacles.
- Better maps: Ruins of Jawwali, Druimmor forest
- Worse maps: Cliffs of Akkalat, That hill fort map
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- In Jawwali, the B flag site offers too much cover. Shields cover the whole troop from the front, so it's not really needed. If you need cover in an open field from archers, get shield infantry or flank around. Simple. Having so much cover AND shields makes it extremely hard for archers to actually do anything there.
- In Druimmor, A flag is kinda nice, but the space should be wider, maybe having a small hill opposite to the house, on the edge of the map. A good design for it imo would be chopped down trees, with trunks and stumps on the ground, making it harder for cavalry to harrass melee infantry and archers.
C is otherwise fine, but the ground has too much height difference, making it too hard for archers to shoot.
- Cliffs of Akkalat doesn't really use its cliffs, instead has 50% of the map covered in either houses or more houses, again making it horrible for playing archer.
- The fort map is bad. I can't just get over how dull it's to play. It's either pick strongest infantry or lose. So little space for archers, especially since shields still cover pretty much the front of any unit completely.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Skirmisher class:
Skirmishers are plain bad. We have a skirmisher class, which is supposed to mainly you know, skirmish using the throwing weapons, usually javelins. A basic javelin deals 40 damage. It's less than a light archer's bow. Now let's take into account that the projectile travels much slower and thus deals less damage at range and is harder to hit enemies with, it's extremely weak. You also have 3-6 of them, compared to an archer's 25-40 arrows. The skirmishers are slow, they suck as a melee unit, and especially as a ranged unit.
Treat the skirmisher class as a ranged unit, with limited melee capability.
- Equipped with very light armor (5-15 armor), short swords, javelins and small, weak shields.
- Fast moving, fastest running speed in MP (obviously excluding cav on horses), able to run at enemies, throw a couple volleys and then retreat to allies.
- Javelins could have a stack of 6, with damage being around 80-120 (wouldn't be a 1-hit most of the time except from short range, but at least a two-hit), with "bonus against shields" (deadly in short range volleys, not so much in long range).
- Their role would be to soften the enemy, damaging and breaking the shields of enemy infantry and dealing heavy damage when flanking around shields.
- Strong mainly vs heavy- and shield infantry and anyone who they get close to without getting attacked, but very weak vs cavalry and archers when too far away to return fire.
- Throwing spears would be removed. A single pilum with very high damage (150-200) would be given to select empire troops, adding a nice touch of uniqueness to empire as a faction.
Rambo cav in captain:
Needs to be fixed. It's not funny. And as much you people doing it think you're good, it's actually sad. I've had people tell me to l2p and git gud when I've voiced my opinions about their ramboing. Needless to say I won them all in 1v1 (
) . It's essentially just cheesing the mechanics so that you get kills and ruin the idea of the game. I myself get no satisfaction from killing mindless bots, and that's not the point of the mode either is it.There are so many threads covering this so I won't go too much into it. Just restrict damage dealt to 0 while being too far from your own bots, or make some of your bots rout each time you die (in one of my threads).
AI issues and lack of control over bots:
- The player needs to be able to control the AI better. Make us able to switch between "use weapons at will" and a forced "switch weapons". This could possibly be implemented into the "fire at will" and "hold fire" button (F4).
- In captain, (especially) cavalry going everywhere when ordered to charge is really annoying. The units should have some kind of a collective mind, that makes them stick together to a certain degree. The "advance" (F1+F4) order works ok with infantry, but with cavalry they won't charge with lances, which is a major flaw. Also, even in this situation, you can't fully control where they go.
I suggest that, when you have the UI for charge order ready (you've pressed F1, and it shows the banner on the ground), the unit will charge at the enemy unit closest to the banner indicator at the moment when the F3 key was pressed. I'm sure this kind of calculation is very possible, and also I'm pretty sure something like this has been done in a mod already.
- Also, a dream of mine is a system where you can also pick individual soldiers by pointing at them and telling them to move into assigned areas and giving them orders. This would mainly be used for sieges and such in SP and in Captain mode to better place archers on walls and other places so they can shoot more effectively. In other terms, the performance of the AI troops would not be hindered by having to sit in a line looking at a wall because the whole formation can't fit somewhere.
And lastly but not leastly:
CUSTOM SERVER FILES FOR MP MODDERS WHEN?
Self explanatory...
If these things were fixed, I'd actually be very, very happy. Of course there are more things to be fixed, but these are the main problems I see in the game (mainly MP, Captain) right now.
