Mount&Blade II: Bannerlord

[Kawee]

I said this in the Skyrim thread already, Morrowind was by far the best of the modern TES games in this respect. The main baddie was holed up in his stronghold and he had no reason to come out, it was up to you to go to him. His presence outside the Ghostfence was limited, hidden, and often immaterial (i.e. spreading disease, driving people mad with nightmares, that sort of thing). Oblivion and Skyrim both have invasions as the driving force behind the plot, which just doesn't work with their "do what you want when you want, no time limits, no pressure" design philosophy.

Now M&B, that's the right kind of game where an invasion could drive the story! You could have an enemy force actually doing ****, taking cities, conquering territory. More to the point, you could have the same overarching goal of "defeat the invasion" as you do in Oblivion and Skyrim, but you could do it your own way. Perhaps you've invested a lot into Persuasion, so you could be the diplomat that negotiates peace between the various kingdoms and helps them to unite against a common foe. Perhaps you're a rich merchant, so you can use your money to bribe the right people to weaken the enemy, or hire mercenaries to join the fight against the invaders. Perhaps you could find a long lost relic, like the sword of some legendary ruler or something like that, to inspire the people and boost the morale of the armies. The possibilities are endless, all it takes is a little imagination. The point is, the main quest in such a case wouldn't even need to be scripted. Just give the player a goal and a whole bunch of different things to do that contribute to it somehow and he'll make his own story. And if you just want to run around hunting bandits while the invasion force wins, well so what? You can continue doing that just fine under the new rulers.

I can dig into something like that, but a lot of people don't like having a plot in their game. They like the open sandbox-ness of the game, where there really isn't a goal. You set your own end, not just the means.

 

[Jome]

That's what I like as well, but there should atleast be something to do after you finished your goal. ''Conquer the world'' .. okay, now what? There is nothing left to do.


Heck, even a reset thing in camp that resets the world, but lets you keep your companions and your own skills/inventory would be ****ing a.

 

[Ringwraith #5]

Not this annoying as hell going into text chat and ordering/persuading a lord to go patrol somewhere from a list.

This whole dialog-based UI idea crops up in other places as well, particularly in that the game requires you to go through the party screen and then a dialog screen to get at a companion's inventory. And then repeat the whole process for each companion. I have no idea why they made it like that, whether it was realism or some other misguided idea like that, but it's idiotic and it needs to go away.

 

[Mad Vader]

If all the features were accessible through icons and keyboard shortcuts, I have the feeling the same people here would have complained about the lack of realism and immersion.
"Am I telepathic to tell lords what to do at great distances? This is stupid and it ruins the game for me rant rant."
Right about the companion skills and equipment - they don't need to be implemented through dialogs, but they are ONLY 4 CLICKS away as things stand now. Is it hard to click 4 instead of (maybe) 2 times? No.

What they could do is to have a better companion skills and equipment overview, something that mods have done a lot better.
I'm concerned that the TW crew hardly plays any mods, and don't follow the latest developments and breakthroughs there. Admittedly, it's hard to keep track, as many people do many different things, but it is possible, and if you are TW, necessary.

 

[Scully]

All I really want, as said earlier, is more options for political manoeuvring. They really need to make relationships with other nations be more than simply "at peace" and "at war". I'm talking alliances, ransoms, arranged marriages, backstabbing, trade agreements, all the moves available on the medieval political scene.

And random events where you have to choose something, like if you make an example of a few peasants after a peasant rebellion, torture their village elder or execute the lord who owns the village.

And I want superstition in the game, and that if you are very spiritual and believe in curses for example, they can have an effect, like bad luck.

And a mod system like TES, where you can add multiple mods to the native games without replacing files.

And integration between the singleplayer and multiplayer components.

gib

Mostly though, I want the engine to be good and very modable so that modders can give us all the things we want.

 

[Lord Tim]

I want strange armor.

 

[Călaraşi]

Just dont forget guys that this is Mount & Blade
If you want that much political flexability you shold go play Victoria II or Europa Universalis III
I for one want more emphasis on mounted warfare,and i dont mean a battle spammed with horses which are hard to kill

 

[MadocComadrin]

Not true: just skimming through the MS, you can see there's a lot complex features that weren't implemented that I bet they'd love to have in M&B2 now that they have the manpower and money.

 

[Jome]

If all the features were accessible through icons and keyboard shortcuts, I have the feeling the same people here would have complained about the lack of realism and immersion.
"Am I telepathic to tell lords what to do at great distances? This is stupid and it ruins the game for me rant rant."
Right about the companion skills and equipment - they don't need to be implemented through dialogs, but they are ONLY 4 CLICKS away as things stand now. Is it hard to click 4 instead of (maybe) 2 times? No.

Agreed. If you expect taleworlds to put time and money into doing something that isn't really a problem to begin with instead of making new features or enhancing the big ones they already have then you have the wrong idea.

 

[Dyingdignity]

*Prays that there will be a multiplayer campaign*

 

[Ringwraith #5]

If all the features were accessible through icons and keyboard shortcuts, I have the feeling the same people here would have complained about the lack of realism and immersion.
"Am I telepathic to tell lords what to do at great distances? This is stupid and it ruins the game for me rant rant."

False dichotomy, one does not necessarily contradict the other. You could have a slick and easy to use UI and messengers to carry orders back and forth. You give an order using the UI and the game spawns a messenger that carries the order from your party to the party you commanded, and the commanded party will carry out the order only if the messenger reaches that party.

Right about the companion skills and equipment - they don't need to be implemented through dialogs, but they are ONLY 4 CLICKS away as things stand now. Is it hard to click 4 instead of (maybe) 2 times? No.

Actually it's more than four. P for party screen (1), click companion (2), click Talk (3), click dialog option (4), click to dismiss the companion's reply and go to the next screen (5). And no, five clicks isn't much. Except when you have 16 companions, then it suddenly becomes 80 clicks to check everyone's inventories. And then another 80 to go to their character screens and distribute their points after every level up.
And the worst thing is, it's not that difficult to figure out.

Spoiler: Really, would this be so hard to do?

IMO it's pretty clear the devs made it tedious and obtuse on purpose, out of some misguided desire for realism or immersion or something like that. And yeah, it's nice that it's possible to access those screens that way, but it's bad design that it's the only way to access them. Now the city interface, that's done well. You can walk around and visit every merchant if you want to. Or you can just use the menu. That's the correct way to do it, and that design philosophy should have been applied in this case as well.

Agreed. If you expect taleworlds to put time and money into doing something that isn't really a problem to begin with instead of making new features or enhancing the big ones they already have then you have the wrong idea.

As I explained above, yes, it is a problem and no, it wouldn't cost that much to fix it.

 

[Chewbacca]

*Prays that there will be a multiplayer campaign*

How would that work?

 

[Dyingdignity]

*Prays that there will be a multiplayer campaign*

How would that work?

I have no idea, I'm too tired to think about such things... I just hope it will exist one day, if it is possible it would be amazing. For me, at least

 

[Scully]

A sound designer from Taleworlds said that there will be multiplayer campaign support through modding. But he might have misunderstood the question or had a different idea of a multiplayer campaign.

*Prays that there will be a multiplayer campaign*

How would that work?

Use your imagination.

 

[Călaraşi]

*Prays that there will be a multiplayer campaign*

How would that work?

I have no idea, I'm too tired to think about such things... I just hope it will exist one day, if it is possible it would be amazing. For me, at least

That would take ages,even more than to finish a civ V multiplayer campaign

 

[Scully]

Yeah cause the goal of M&B has always been to complete it...

 

[Dyingdignity]

*Prays that there will be a multiplayer campaign*

How would that work?

I have no idea, I'm too tired to think about such things... I just hope it will exist one day, if it is possible it would be amazing. For me, at least

That would take ages,even more than to finish a civ V multiplayer campaign

For me that would be good, as long as you can leave the game and come back to it at another time

 

[Jome]

Agreed. If you expect taleworlds to put time and money into doing something that isn't really a problem to begin with instead of making new features or enhancing the big ones they already have then you have the wrong idea.

As I explained above, yes, it is a problem and no, it wouldn't cost that much to fix it.

So you're saying that you want a camp where you have to walk around looking inside tents where all the soldiers are till you find a companion then tell them to wear this and that through dialogues, so it would justify calling the current way of doing it easier? I see.

 

[Tatari_okan]

So you're saying that you want a camp where you have to walk around looking inside tents where all the soldiers are till you find a companion then tell them to wear this and that through dialogues, so it would justify calling the current way of doing it easier? I see.

Clicking like in flash games (Sword and Sandals) to your companion with 2D view would be interesting. You could see all of your companions as materialized and it would be good both for friendly interface and having a beautiful scene.
Clicking specific part of the screen like some flash games to move at world map would be interesting too.

 

[Jome]

I don't remember companions in Swords and Sandals. () Go something to illustrate that with? Or perhaps the version of Swords and Sandals, so I could have a look myself?