These are just my thoughts and opinions. I really enjoyed Warband, and like Bannerlord a lot. Lots of potential. I played it a bunch when it first released in early access and didn't stop until around patch 1.3 I think. I recently came back to play a bit on patch 1.5 (the latest beta).
LEVELLING, ATTRIBUTES AND PERKS
I have to say I really don't like the levelling system or the perk system (even the reworked perk trees I'm not a fan of). I think character builds would be more interesting if you got all of your attribute points on character creation and could allocate them how you please, and then maybe there could be some rare non-repeatable quests or one-time books in-game that could net you a bonus point in each attribute (but not beyond the cap of 10).
I think you should probably also get more focus points from the beginning and less as you level up. The actual levelling up system (like how you get from level 1 to level 2) is a bit weird and admittedly I don't fully understand it. It seems that you can level up the low levels really quickly but it slows down a lot when you get to level 10ish+? So maybe some balancing there to flatten that progression curve a bit so you level reasonably consistently.
With the perks system, I don't mind a lot of the perks but it seems bizarre to me some of the perks are mutually exclusive? I feel like all the perk trees, particularly the weapon perk trees, should be more branching than just two railroad tracks. For instance, with one-handed I think it might be more interesting to have perks which specialise you in axes, or maces, swords. But idk, to me the perk system is just a bit boring atm and doesn't allow as much variability/specialisation as I'd like.
As an aside I also think you should be able to assign companions perks when you recruit them, or at least pay some sort of cost to reset their perks (and your own).
SMITHING/CRAFTING AND TRADE
The smithing and crafting system needs a total overhaul, it's really bad and unenjoyable right now. I think it should be redesigned from the ground up. Not sure exactly how but yeah just my 2 cents on it. It's also odd that you can craft melee weapons but not ranged weapons, and also no armour. I think smithing overall needs to be made more useful too and should have more noticeable/noteworthy effects on your character/your party.
I'll also say that Trade probably needs to be looked at, it's really easy to make money through trade (particularly early-game) and I find that all of my games I inevitably start out by doing lots of trade. Maybe the other forms of revenue earning should be made more competitive/viable versus trade, like quests, tourneys, trade and fighting looters/bandits and selling prisoners.
TOURNAMENTS
Tourneys in particular need to scale better as you level, I suggest having different tourneys for different tiers of renown. When your renown is low you get small rewards which are still decent for when your renown is low, and you just fight against commoners and soldier units basically. Next tier of renown up you fight against a mix of commoners/soldiers and other nobles in the game with low renown (e.g. the bottom 10 nobles in the game by renown), but you have to pay a certain amount of money to enter the tourney. Next tier up you fight against a mix of low and mid-tier renown nobles, but you have to pay even more to enter. Last tier you fight against mid and top-tier nobles (clan leaders, kings, etc. as well as the tourney champs), the reward for winning is very high but you have to pay a lot to enter and also be a landowner.
BATTLES AND COMBAT
I can't really fault the combat/battles too much, they look great and are a huge amount of fun. If I had some feedback it would be the following:
- I think it needs to be possible to do basic strikes while holding your shield up (so overheard strikes with 1h weapons, and pokes with polearms), particularly with spears so that shield-walls and phalanxes are more effective.
- I think Pikemen/Spearmen need to be able to brace against cavalry charges. In fact spears need a big buff/upgrade to how they work, infantry wielding spears should really be able to jab with the spears a lot faster than they currently do.
- I think a lot of the unit types should be automatically categorised into Infantry/Cavalry/Archers/Skirmishers as they aren't at the moment (at least the Battanian units I've been playing with). Not a big deal as players can do this manually I guess.
- I think some of the throwing weapons need to be buffed to be guaranteed kills on lower-tier unarmoured infantry if you hit them in the chest. The javelins seem to be for the most part, but the throwing axes are quite underwhelming. I've not used throwing knives so no comment there.
- I think, for gameplay purposes, picking up throwing weapons should occur more easily. It can take up a lot of time to manually pick them up, so maybe automatically pick them back up if you run back over them? Or have it so you don't have to aim down to look at them and press F, but rather can just stand on/near it and press F to pick them up. Idk but atm throwing weapons (except javelins) seem a bit crap to use (particularly if you are infantry).
- I think infantry with javelins/throwing spears tend to throw them at the enemy when they're a little bit too far away. I think also they should (if they dont already) prioritise hitting enemy infantry over cavalry first, and then with infantry they should prioritise hitting infantry without shields before infantry with shields (and if they do throw at infantry with shields they should try to throw it, as best they can, to get a hit and avoid the shield).
BUGS, OVERSIGHTS AND MISCELLANEOUS
- I've noticed there are some texture streaming issues going on (where textures won't load properly) and that crossbows are still not produced and available enough.
- Workshops also seem to not be very profitable and it's weird that you get no projection of how much different workshop types might make in any given settlement.
- Not sure if it's still the case but it used to be that if you spend money to make a caravan if the caravan got destroyed it wouldn't reform automatically and all the initial capital just disappears. It's a bit **** from a gameplay point of view, I'd rather that once I assign a comp to a caravan they run it and if the caravan is destroyed it'll lose any profits/capital from that trade run and then just disappear for a bit while the companion automatically remakes the caravan.
- I really like that they've been adding more armours to the game, though I think the stats and prices need some balancing work and normalising. The progression curve at the moment when it comes to armour is a bit odd, and with trade being a really easy way to make money it can be trivially easy to get the best-in-slot armour before you even hit Clan Tier 1.
- Crossbows still seem to spawn far too rarely.
- There needs to be something to indicate to the player how many animals they can have in their party before they start getting a 'herd' speed penalty.
- There needs to be an icon or something that better distinguishes pack animals (mules/sumpter horses/generic camel?) from regular cavalry horses (better breed of camel?) and again from warhorses.
