Hey Guys - OP here (couldn't you tell by the 1 billion word post that only 1% of folks will actually read?)
Reaction to the current thread:
I'm glad there are folks who see what I'm saying. To the folks who are focused on the reference to CK2 -- that was only in there as an example. To be clear, I don't want to make Mount and Blade into CK2 - I don't want the arbitrary prestige points n' so forth that exists in CK2 -- what I'm hoping for, is a bit of depth added to the politics side of being a king, with the focus being on the people, not on the "nation".
I also disagree with the sentiment that Warband was meant to be a "simple" game. I feel like when Taleworlds made Mount and Blade, and Warband, they were a smaller company, and they tried to do as much as they could to add depth and detail to make Warband as close to a "sim" as they could, while still being fun. That's why, though you do have to buy food for your armies to eat, you don't have to manage the baggage train and choose what you store where. I feel like Mount and Blade has always tried to make a "real feeling" single player experience, and that inspiration from real life has already made its way into the game. If the game was just about mindless battles, they'd start you off as a king, and let you go a-conquering.
Basically, the reason I made the original post, is because right now, being a lord doesn't
feel right (to me). "oh hey - I was given a castle! oh - 2 minutes later, the Khuzait sieged it down - I should go take back my land! - except, wait a second, I just spent all my troops reconquering my land, and the council voted to give it to some other dude... why did I bother?" Also, the leveling is so slow, that by the time you've comfortably risen to some manner of minor noble status, three factions have already been knocked out, and one side is clearly on the way to winning with half the map (in the three games I've started, once it was Vlandia, the other two times it was the Khuzait). Also, When you're a vassal to a king, he has no concept (it seems) of what land "should" be his. E.G., Vlandia takes two of the central most territories of Battania, and instead of focusing his effort on retaking those settlements, the king decides to declare war on the strongest faction in the game (the Khuzait, at the time), and the Aserai - even though all his vassals together could barely hold off the Vlandians, who are still at war with Battania.
I love the battles of this game. I love feeling like I'm in this little world doing cool stuff. I get a
little bothered by the stuff that's not working correctly (I dunno about you guys, but Siege Ladders seem to be the only things my infantry can figure out how to climb. Siege Towers usually end up having the entire force waiting for the center ladder to clear, and even then - most of the time - people stop halfway up, and just wait for a few minutes)... but the thing that really makes me worried, is what the end-game will feel like.
Like I've said, I've started 3 different playthoughs so far -- each time, once I hit the level of some Minor noble, I get frustrated, and want to start over.
My feeling is that Mount and Blade is multiple different games, where the early game is the scrappy-adventure seeker, trying to make his name in the world, which evolves into some hob-nobbery with powerful people, and taking your army on campaign, to eventually leading your own campaigns, to even later running the state which has other people do the campaigning. I think Bannerlord has the beginning of that down pretty good. I'm not gonna bash the story quest stuff they put in - I don't think it's perfect, but it's not the end of the world, and there's already mods to remove it - but once you leave the early/early-mid game, I don't think bannerlord has the systems it needs to make that aspect as fun as the scrappy adventurer part.
Would better AI help? Yes - but I don't think it would solve the problem. For example; at a certain point, you just run out of things to spend money on. You've fully upgraded all your fiefs, you've already got all your armor, you can't hire more soldiers, or start up more parties -- but you still have to take your Kingly-Ass out of the castle, and kill a band of looters, because no one else will. Why not start spending money on Bribes, or political favors, or (like in my original post) fabricating a claim on someone elses land so you can ask the king to declare war on your behalf, and get the entire nation to fight a war so that you can get that piece of land? That seems cool to me.
Why not?
If this was CK2 with field battles, it would be perfect.
The only real drawback to making Bannerlord into CK2 would be that I highly doubt the devs are capable of pulling it off. Some modders might be able to do it, but right now, Taleworlds should be focusing on fixing the crashes, memory leaks, and gamebreaking bugs. Once the game is playable without mods, then add new features.
That's exactly what people were saying when action RPGs first became a thing, and yet here we are. We're playing an action/RPG/RTS/4X hybrid.
I kind of disagree with you here. I think the think about CK2 is that it uses "points" to "represent" things. Stats to represent that a character is paranoid, or points to represent Prestige, etc. I think Mount and Blade has it's strengths in that it "shows" these things, rather than represent them with tokens. That's essentially why I'd love for Mount and Blade to still be M&B, but just add in some of the complexity of the interpersonal aspects you can find in CK2. I might be misinterpreting what you're saying - if so, I apologize. If what you're getting at is something like, using CK2-style rules in the background to govern the actions of the NPC Kings/Lords - I could get behind that, assuming you could describe how it should work in more detail.
Hell no, I don’t want Bannerlord to be Ck2, I have more CK2 hours than warband and that’s last thing I want. If anything I’d like it to move more RPG/Action than strategy. CK2 is fun but at the end of the day it’s just shifting though dozens of tabs and clicking dozens of buttons. Warband was so fun to me because you can go in and just do stuff without thinking about all the dozen Ck2 mechanics and flipping through screens. This is why they made the game moddable, instead of forcing it to be one type of game they make the basis of a RPG/Action/Strategy mix then allow the community to move it whichever way they want. Warband was so moddable it felt like a dozen different games, this is a trait that a narrow game like Ck2 can’t take on. Despite the many good mods at the end of the day it just feels like Ck2
I agree that I don't want Mount and Blade to become CK2 either... which is why the only things I suggested pulling in were the war-system, which would slow down the mega-domination of a single faction, and things like Land Titles - which would play into the changes of the war-system, and provide a way to help kingdoms focus on specific goals. Do you have any objections to those ideas?
I don't think simplistic diplomacy is something that's been designed into Warband by choice, and none of the suggestions in the OP make Bannerlord into CK2. I also can't fathom why someone would call Warband an Action-RPG, when there were clearly pretty ambitious plans to integrate strategic elements into the game from the get-go.
How Bannerlord apparently makes any attempt at it being an RPG unfeasible because of a main quest (??) is also beyond me. If I want an in-depth RPG experience, instead of a sandbox with many elements of many genres interspersed, like M&B is and always has been, why wouldn't I just play a cRPG, or Dark Souls, or whatever else there is?
If you delete any references to CK2 in the OP, they're simply reasonable suggestions for the direction the game has been taking since it's inception and you wouldn't have any idea where he got his inspiration from, aside from a few wordings if you're familiar with Paradox games.
Edit: That being said, I would absolutely not want my vassals declaring any wars without me. I want more control to shape the world (barring intrigue within a realm that I have to manage), not less, in M&B.
Bro... even though we disagree about the vassal wars thing, thank you for taking the time to read and understand what I was trying to say.
M&B has always had battles. M&B didn't make players waste time or restrict their in-game time while burdening them with raising a family. M&B still had politics, strategy, but focused on the player character's adventure. Companions actually had backstories that tied to the in-game world. You could build relationships with lords and kings over the course of a game, but not be rushed to do it because of the generational mechanics that make other characters a less detailed one-off. You could play it at your own pace, and do every side quest or activity you could find.
CK fans have already started threads asking for the ability to **** each other siblings. CK fanbase is incredibly neckbeard cringe. You can keep your 'Deus Vult,' desire to inbreed, and requirement for players to invest time playing house.
I'm not asking for the ability to **** a sibling. I'm just mentioning adding some more depth to the end game. What is it about the Casus Belli war mechanic, or the 'when you're given land - you get the right to try and fight to take it back' that you dislike?
You couldn't really build relationships with in-game lords. Those mechanics were too basic and rudimentary, like the marriage mechanic that was also in Warband, and has now been fleshed out through the addition of ageing and children. They didn't have much in the way of unique personalities or problems.
You could develop rivalries or friendships. The companions had backstories and would develop based on the context of the world map.
To expand on this a bit, I'd love to see a marriage acting more as an alliance between the two clans (or if not an Alliance, then a reluctance to go against one another). Political marriages as Alliances were definitely a thing back in the day. Don't really see any reason why it couldn't be done here. Likewise - shouldn't it also be possible to marry a non-noble? There's a lot of companions in the game, and while it might cut off the possibility of a political alliance, that companion might have some trait or skills that you would want your wife to have, which could help you in other ways. (Granted, I've no idea what those skills would be in the current game. Maybe Stewardship?)
I imagine the RP stuff is coming, but - that it's currently on the back-burner. I've more than once seen the words "
Generic Backstory Here" as place-holder when talking to a companion, so, yeah - still work to do there... but the reason I think it's on the way, is cause I've also seen the little character interaction pop-ups where they talk to you, and say "hey - I don't like that we raided that village". I don't think they'd put those in the game if they weren't going to have some effect, y'know? But - as always - we'll see.
