Multiplayer's future and server population.

Does Bannerlord's multiplayer have a future?

  • Absolutely, it just needs a meaty update.

    Votes: 25 27.8%
  • Yes, but it needs mods.

    Votes: 21 23.3%
  • It's dead, Jim.

    Votes: 44 48.9%

  • Total voters
    90

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So, it's been a week and a few days since "full" release.
Multiplayer has plenty of issues, you can just take a look at the forums and you'll see what's wrong. Disconnection issues, crashes, lag, bad hit registration, balance, loot system. There's little that's working as it should. It can be entertaining, at times, but so is farting at a Halloween party (I know, oddly specific.)

But even more worrisome it's that, usually, games tend to have a strong and vibrant multiplayer on RELEASE, and only after a year or so they begin to decline, albeit slowly. Napoleonic Wars still has a rather strong community this long after the release, and it was a "mere" mod turned into a DLC.
Speaking of which, the server population of Bannerlord at 2:00 CET, which is prime time on the US East coast, was:

-A cRPG NA server with 56 players.
-An EU siege server with 44 players.
-Another cRPG server with 14 players.
-A dozen servers with less than 10 players.

Now, I ask you: is this sustainable for Bannerlord's multiplayer? For ANY game's multiplayer?
It was probably to be expected given how multiplayer was treated, well, how the GAME was treated, but a game with that kind of sales cannot get back on its feet with those numbers. Or can it? It was said that mods and custom servers would have saved it, yet there's just cRPG out there and it has a paltry amount of players compared to what I was expecting given how many copies the game's been selling. I'm not seeing any multiplayer mod coming soon either.

Is there anything that can be done? Would a massive multiplayer update (which won't come, I'm pretty sure) be enough to make multiplayer viable for the long term, or is it just too late for that?
 
At this point I want to see this game fail. Hope modders drop this game honestly. Hope they wake up and realize they are nothing more than slaves for Trashworld devs. Because its the mods that are going to keep this game running but the money is flowing to Trashworlds direction.
 
If they put the care that was was required into a major update for it and really pushed it as a revival in advertising absolutely. But they've shown they don't care. They may say otherwise but you don't allow your servers to be broken for years if you care. It's frankly ridiculous how lackadaisical progress has been on both sides of the game, and in a just world TaleWorlds would be lampooned by the industry at large for releasing in this state. With just the minimum effort Bannerlord could have had a bustling and vibrant Multiplayer scene. With a respectable amount of effort it could have been a contender with other online games. No effort brings us right here. Very frustrating!
 
I think it has nothing to do with the state of game or lack advertising or updates.
The market for a third person melee combat game is not there.
Look at War of the Roses, Of Kings And Men, Tiger Knights most players prefer first person games.🤷‍♂️
 
I think it has nothing to do with the state of game or lack advertising or updates.
The market for a third person melee combat game is not there.
Look at War of the Roses, Of Kings And Men, Tiger Knights most players prefer first person games.🤷‍♂️
The Market isn't there in my opinion because it hasn't been well catered to. I really believe M&B has the audience and hype to have made it happen. Releasing like they have has probably been the killing stroke against Multiplayer though sadly.
 
I think it has nothing to do with the state of game or lack advertising or updates.
The market for a third person melee combat game is not there.
Look at War of the Roses, Of Kings And Men, Tiger Knights most players prefer first person games.🤷‍♂️
Imo, that's not really true. The game would have full pop servers if it wouldn't crash every second map. It's so annoying that it might kill the game despite demand.
 
Even if they fix the game and all is perfect, how many players would play it? a thousand or two? even if TW goes f2p i believe it doesn't get higher then that.
 
I'll just copy what I posted in another thread.

My review of the game will stay negative until the issues are solved. There is no transparency on the status of the MP fix and the same crash pattern for over 2 years is inexcusable for a full release. I encourage anyone who takes MP seriously to have their voice heard through a negative review, so as to prevent the next player to spend money on an unfinished, but advertised feature they may otherwise enjoy.
 
I think it has nothing to do with the state of game or lack advertising or updates.
The market for a third person melee combat game is not there.
Look at War of the Roses, Of Kings And Men, Tiger Knights most players prefer first person games.🤷‍♂️
^ this is not entirely accurate, there is a market, as these games were successful till they failed, their failings have nothing to do with 3rd person, or GV and Warframe would be on this list.

Wotr was successful, it provided everything it promoted, and should have just add more maps, instead it went from a melee game with a focus on replicating the knights who fought in the hundred years war, to a agi peasant pitchfork fest with kiting archers using shotgun bows. Disgraceful

OKAM was semi successful despite its overall lack of advertising, and the little they did advertise they waaay oversold what they could actually do. An ambitious project, with far too few actual promised features implemented.

Tiger Knight was a fantastic game, and honestly an example of how Bannerlord could have kept Warband combat, but tweaked/upgraded it. Alot of people put in alot of hours into a game that barely had any content, what they had was amazing, the problem was the further you went up the ladder, the harder and harder it was to find a match, bad waiting times turned into a disaster of people logging in and just staring at a waiting screen for 45mins straight.
 
Couldn't agree more. Do the Devs ever check these forums? Surely, if they did, they would see how many people are crying out for some love for MP. It's devastating. I played NW for 6 years religiously, I've got almost 4000 hrs in that game. It's committed online community kept it alive far longer than much bigger, much more expensive games.

Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to build and nurture a similar community in Bannerlord because no one can play the damn game without it crashing!
 
They may say otherwise but you don't allow your servers to be broken for years if you care.
Yeah, it's not like it's an issue that sprung up a week before release. It's been in that state for years at this point.
The Market isn't there in my opinion because it hasn't been well catered to.
I also agree with this. I mean, Bannerlord had a lot of traction when it first came out as early access. With some work and some attention to what was asked, I find it hard to believe it wouldn't have had a sizable online playerbase.

^ this is not entirely accurate, there is a market, as these games were successful till they failed, their failings have nothing to do with 3rd person, or GV and Warframe would be on this list.
I think that, if you made a really good game, players will just flock to it. And even more so because you have so few competitors!

Do the Devs ever check these forums? Surely, if they did, they would see how many people are crying out for some love for MP. It's devastating. I played NW for 6 years religiously, I've got almost 4000 hrs in that game. It's committed online community kept it alive far longer than much bigger, much more expensive games.
I absolutely love NW. I have probably a thousand hours in that one myself, probably the best game I've ever played when it comes to the hours played / hilarious and fun moments ratio. Not to mention how little it sold for. It was and still is janky, it's absurd in how silly it can be, but it's also VERY enjoyable! That's why it managed to retain so many players for so long, even if it's ultra-niche.
 
as these games were successful
Define success, here a couple of numbers from yesterday prime time EU.
For Honor: 4500 players 60% off right now
Chiv 2: 2500
Mordhau: 2500
Gloria Victis: 350
Bannerlord online:~400
Warband i assume:~300
.
WotR on the first Weekend after it went f2p in 2013: ~2000
OKAM all-time peak in 2017: 1.800

Warframe: 40.000 completely different genre
CS:GO: 600.000

It's a niche market and i dont think its going to change.
 
Do you know how this game should be?
Strategy and world map like total war (multiplayer campaign!)
action RPG - MB
it's sega's job to blend these two together :grin:
the multiplayer part is really like a bleeding wound.
there are very serious problems, most of them were expressed by the friend who opened the subject.
in the early versions of the game, they had a very nice setup. they even opened FF on the siege servers at that time.
combat experience was very good, there was no lag problem the game was not crashing constantly.
it got worse with every update, fine settings are lost, errors spawned brand new bugs while trying to be rectified.
stuttering, packet losses, telemetry problems, server crashes, in-game bugs, graphics bugs, optimization issues etc.
I opened a very ambitious topic here before the full version came out.
"1 god's day servers did not work properly and it will never work properly i note it here (they couldn't, There's a problem they can't get over)"
i wrote this. i still think i'm right.. im sorry
 
I don't think it's fair to say that a game should have a vibrant multiplayer community on release if it's already been out in Early Access for 2 years. It had 200k players March 2020, by July 2020 it had 20k players, and that figure has slowly increased since then. So I'm slightly optimistic about the future.

But yeah, I agree that it's VERY STRANGE that they have not solved server stability yet.
 
I don't think it's fair to say that a game should have a vibrant multiplayer community on release if it's already been out in Early Access for 2 years.
Why not? If it was a game people wanted to play, you would think that two years in it would be at the peak of its activity, as there has been sufficient time to establish communities and learn how to play the game, yet not enough time for people to lose interest.
 
As i've said in other threads, I think the main reason people even played BL MP is because it's the Steam counterpart to the then-EGS exclusive Chivalry 2. Even then, Bannerlord's multiplayer is bad enough that people would rather install the Epic Games Launcher than keep playing the medieval game on Steam.

And now that Chiv2 is on Steam, platform loyalty's no longer a valid reason to keep playing Bannerlord's multiplayer. Unless you're one of those "don't give the devs your money cuz they took the exclusivity deal in the first place" kind of people.
 
Here's the thing - Bannerlord SP is actually extremely successful;

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20th Most played game on steam. And as long as people are in the game enjoying it; there will be a demand for a MP. TW just need to take advantage of it. People look at this forum and see only doom & gloom; and forget that this game is ridiculously popular for such a niche type of game.
 
As i've said in other threads, I think the main reason people even played BL MP is because it's the Steam counterpart to the then-EGS exclusive Chivalry 2. Even then, Bannerlord's multiplayer is bad enough that people would rather install the Epic Games Launcher than keep playing the medieval game on Steam.

And now that Chiv2 is on Steam, platform loyalty's no longer a valid reason to keep playing Bannerlord's multiplayer. Unless you're one of those "don't give the devs your money cuz they took the exclusivity deal in the first place" kind of people.
It's more fun and rewarding than Chiv 2. I have less than 100 hours between Age of Chivalry, War of the Roses, Chiv, and Chiv 2, but thousands in M&B Warband/Bannerlord MP. I look at Chiv combat like Battlefield/CoD whereas M&B is like Counter-Strike/Jedi Academy.
 
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