Vigato
Recruit
WARNING TO ALL THAT HAVE BEGUN READING: If you have reading problems and are so impatient that if you had the choice of going to the bathroom in your seat and in the toilet, that you would go in your seat because you cannot wait, then you probably shouldn't even bother reading this. Not to say its that long but I'm just preparing those children that CANNOT read more then 5 sentences without their attention spans fizzing out and losing all self control.
When i played this game a while back, i liked it enough to buy and support the game. I enjoy sandbox games, however, even sandbox games need to have enough gameplay options to keep it fun and dynamic. Nobody plays an empty sandbox game, no matter how much freedom you have. I'm going to divide it into sections based on certain categories.
First off lets talk about Gameplay
I like the game from the standpoint that it doesn't slam you into a story and say that you have no choice, i hate those games unless i really deliberately wanted to play one, like picking up Lost Odyssey for Xbox. If i wanted a linear game, i would go play one. Sandbox games really out do linear games by leaps and bounds. Giving player freedom is the best thing you can do for a game. Like i said though, there needs to be lots of gameplay options within a sandbox or its just a barren wasteland, i don't think anyone with any sense or life would find that enjoyable.
So what does Mount and Blade do right with sandbox? From day 1, you can go wherever you want, but what you can do is different and limited.
I started off near the Vaegrs and went to the training area, fought off 3 rounds of each soldier type and then completed training. In my opinion, fighting through them once is more appropriate, 3 isn't necessary, it gets repetitious. You're going to be fighting a ton in the game anyway and you could always go back for more training if you wanted to.
I then proceeded to a town where i had only 4 options. Recruit, which isn't always available. Village Center. Buy Supplies. Hostile Action which only allows me to take their supplies or cattle, but not let you take the town for yourself. Or even bribe the town or use persuasion skill to make them join you, so thats VERY limited and disappointing.
Let me get a little bit more into towns.
Towns give you quests from the town elder, the other villagers maybe will ask you for the same quest of 300 silver to help their family but it doesn't raise the towns prosperity at all, just your reputation with them. There is no way to help the village to become prosperous and the town graphic doesn't change or upgrade in any way shape or form to make it look like a more bustling city, which is disappointing. The only way to maybe make it better is to become a lord of that nation and to be given the town. Then you are forced to wait a collosal and unreasonable amount of time for buildings to be created, the options for creating things in towns is very limited as well. Manor, Mill, Messenger service, and some others i can't recall. But it takes a ridiculous 80 days or more to build, thats a LONG time. I didn't wait long enough to find out what happens to that one.
The fact that you cannot take the towns over or persuade them is a huge disappointment because it limits the game incredibly. If i wanted to join a lord then i would join a lord, but even if i do all i can do is pillage the town and leave it to rot, i cannot claim it ever.
Castles are a little bit more filled with content, they have more shops, a tavern, an arena and you can visit the lord of the castle. The shops are fine but the tavern is very empty and boring. Theres no excitement in there that you would expect from a tavern, you just have one option from the bartender to buy everyone a drink, which raises your reputation. One person to hire, and sometimes a slave trader or a traveler or a hero character. There should be lots of people in there with lots of quests that you can do. It should have the feel of a tavern, not an empty storehouse. Give it a little ransomness, it doesn't always have to have people in it. The arena is not exciting, there should be more people visible in the stand cheering and getting involved in the suspense. There should be a special music for it. Boos and cheers depending on what happens. There should be different games that the player can choose to do, where the entire battlemap changes within the arena, like roleplaying a famous war of some kind and dividing players on teams and putting up objectives other then last man standing. You could have players wreck a tower as if its some sort of fortress that was being defended in some great war that took place long ago, and you're roleplaying it in the arena, you get what im saying? Not just, 3vs3, 1vs1 of naked men with random weapons, cmon you gotta have a little bit more creativity then that.
When i first walked into the lords room i was interested in talking to him wondering what kind of interactions i could do with him BUT, you get this very limited options problem again. He asks me who i am, thats fine. Then all i can do is ask him something about finding a person or how goes the war, which i can already get a sense of anyway through the game log, my travels and the world map. Then you can ask him what tasks you would like to do, he gives me a quest to send some letter to someone, LOL, a letter? Me: "Hi, how are YOU doing",NPC " Oh hi, peasant, go send this letter for me" LOL. Um ok. So i go ahead and do that, you know what the other guys says,NPC "Hey scrub, go send this letter for me as well", ME "Calradia Postal Service, at your service SIR!" And i don't even get paid anymore then 30 silver for each letter either, hmm, not a good living, thats not going to pay my army upkeep or my food bills, hmm. I was doing better rolling mountain bandit heads.
So i went to another lord and he told me to kill someone he didn't like very much in a town that was 3 spaces away. So i went into the town asking people where he was, so it was a scavenger hunt. I found him in a field and he told me that i wasn't going anywhere!! Bam, knocked him out with my mace. For some reason the town hates me because i took care of a cutthroat? Strange. But i guess so since he said that he was staying with his kin, where was his kin i wonder, nobody came to his aid, strange. I guess his father looked out the window and said, Henry is getting his head bashed in, oh well, who cares. Would have been more fun if i had to fight off his whole family at once.
So i go back to the king and get my 300 coins. Then i went to another castle, and you know what? There was ANOTHER cutthroat, who would have known, and he was 3 clicks away, man. His name was Bob this time and he was in the same town layout, and in the same field, wow, deja vu. He also told me that "YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE FOOL", Bam, one shot kill. So i dragged his body to the king, 300 coins. And i said, hmm, this is decent money, killing cutthroats, so lets goto this castle so i can hopefully kill another cutthroat in the same town layout and in the same field, for the same money, and have him tell me that "YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE". But no sadly, the king wanted me to do something else, take a guess, A LETTER!" I'm sure you knew that one! And he also gave me......30 silver coins!! He also called me a scrub. I guess nobody likes me since i only have around 2 reputation with them so i guess that must be why i get all the crappy jobs, hmm.
One day i walked into a new castle and the tournament had started. So i joined, and guess what happened. It put me on a horse, and gave me a bow. Uh oh, i am a trained swordsman on horseback, not a bowmen. But sorry, you don't get to choose what you fight with, so guess what, yep, i got owned. That was the quickest tournament i ever participated in, oh well better luck next time. Honestly we should get to choose what we fight with. I also would like the bet option to go up to 1,000, i had a lot of money at that point, 100 coins was too low.
Ok so to sum this whole thing up, Towns and Castles need to be reworked extensively with better quests, more variety, different dialogue, different rewards in both money and items. This is a nice sandbox game yet i am so limited in my options that after playing it for a day, it gets really old. The way to fix that is to improve the quest content, nothing wrong with providing gameplay within sandbox, people can still do what they please, but at least you give them options of fun things to do.
Currently the only quests i have seen are, "Deliver Letter You Scrub!", "Go kill the Nervous man for me", "Join the Campaign", "Follow a spy", "Collect a debt".
Let me go over the spy and campaign one. The spy, i feel it could be reworked, i was at revyadin and the spy never came out and if it did, he flew by so fast that i had no time to catch him, there was no way to reset the quest or to try again, he was just flat out gone, i sat there for one week of in-game time, pitching in my little tent. Never came, ME "Sorry Lord, can't do it" NPC " Get outta here scrub" That's 50 DKP minus!!
The Campaign is broken, for 4 straight tries, when i got the quest of, Meet some lord because he has a campaign, the marshall, as i walked towards him, it failed automatically. Then one time i finally was able to walk to him and begin the quest, and guess what happened. He pranced around for 30 days and did nothing, he didn't attack, he didn't give me orders, he just pranced around like he had nothing to do and wasted my time and upkeep money, and no i didn't stay the entire 30 days, you'd have to be insane, i left. And he gave me a warning, i ignored him, and he said, Marshall " You will never be forgiven for this"!! Me "eh, so what".
Ok, so i have other stuff to do i was planning on making this longer but i have work to do. Summing this up really quick. This game was fun for a little bit, but due to the serious lack of anything to do except hunt down bands of units and very limited quests causes this game to get a score of 5/10. And i say that because its not finished, you cannot be seriously considering this game to be ready to leave beta stage. If you do, you will get such negative reviews that nobody will touch this game, i don't know what pushed you to believe that this game was in any way shape or form ready to be released for retail. You have a very nice high potential game on your hands and it even has great mod capability, don't ruin it by rushing it out. I don't know if its a time issue, money, lack of motivation, impatience to get money or success, whatever it is....don't do it. Don't see this as an insult to you, your designers or your game. Its honest feedback, you did a great job, keep it up, but its not ready to leave beta stage. If you no longer care, or if you want to achieve low success, by aiming low and putting forth low effort then you will get very little success with this game, but if you continue to finish it and make it more polished, it will be a great game.
It needs:
1) Better Graphics
2) Better quests
3) More gameplay options, not being able to be King of Calradia, now that just sucks.
4) More music and sound tracks
5) More dialogue instead of "Were gonna rip of your legs, nice and slow, like 50,000 times"
6) Add a more dynamic feel to the towns, let them upgrade, and prosper and change, more events need to take place in the world, its just too predictable. It feels like its been half-assed and rushed, it needs more content and variety, more polish.
Please discuss this, I'm open to conversation on this and i don't care what you want to say, so just express yourselves. I like this game and i want to help make it better, its not ready to leave beta, and it will fail if prematurely launched. I supported it and bought it because thats not very much money anyway, not much of a loss, but will i play this game a year from now? No i won't, it needs to be improved upon quite a bit. Please take some of this to heart.
When i played this game a while back, i liked it enough to buy and support the game. I enjoy sandbox games, however, even sandbox games need to have enough gameplay options to keep it fun and dynamic. Nobody plays an empty sandbox game, no matter how much freedom you have. I'm going to divide it into sections based on certain categories.
First off lets talk about Gameplay
I like the game from the standpoint that it doesn't slam you into a story and say that you have no choice, i hate those games unless i really deliberately wanted to play one, like picking up Lost Odyssey for Xbox. If i wanted a linear game, i would go play one. Sandbox games really out do linear games by leaps and bounds. Giving player freedom is the best thing you can do for a game. Like i said though, there needs to be lots of gameplay options within a sandbox or its just a barren wasteland, i don't think anyone with any sense or life would find that enjoyable.
So what does Mount and Blade do right with sandbox? From day 1, you can go wherever you want, but what you can do is different and limited.
I started off near the Vaegrs and went to the training area, fought off 3 rounds of each soldier type and then completed training. In my opinion, fighting through them once is more appropriate, 3 isn't necessary, it gets repetitious. You're going to be fighting a ton in the game anyway and you could always go back for more training if you wanted to.
I then proceeded to a town where i had only 4 options. Recruit, which isn't always available. Village Center. Buy Supplies. Hostile Action which only allows me to take their supplies or cattle, but not let you take the town for yourself. Or even bribe the town or use persuasion skill to make them join you, so thats VERY limited and disappointing.
Let me get a little bit more into towns.
Towns give you quests from the town elder, the other villagers maybe will ask you for the same quest of 300 silver to help their family but it doesn't raise the towns prosperity at all, just your reputation with them. There is no way to help the village to become prosperous and the town graphic doesn't change or upgrade in any way shape or form to make it look like a more bustling city, which is disappointing. The only way to maybe make it better is to become a lord of that nation and to be given the town. Then you are forced to wait a collosal and unreasonable amount of time for buildings to be created, the options for creating things in towns is very limited as well. Manor, Mill, Messenger service, and some others i can't recall. But it takes a ridiculous 80 days or more to build, thats a LONG time. I didn't wait long enough to find out what happens to that one.
The fact that you cannot take the towns over or persuade them is a huge disappointment because it limits the game incredibly. If i wanted to join a lord then i would join a lord, but even if i do all i can do is pillage the town and leave it to rot, i cannot claim it ever.
Castles are a little bit more filled with content, they have more shops, a tavern, an arena and you can visit the lord of the castle. The shops are fine but the tavern is very empty and boring. Theres no excitement in there that you would expect from a tavern, you just have one option from the bartender to buy everyone a drink, which raises your reputation. One person to hire, and sometimes a slave trader or a traveler or a hero character. There should be lots of people in there with lots of quests that you can do. It should have the feel of a tavern, not an empty storehouse. Give it a little ransomness, it doesn't always have to have people in it. The arena is not exciting, there should be more people visible in the stand cheering and getting involved in the suspense. There should be a special music for it. Boos and cheers depending on what happens. There should be different games that the player can choose to do, where the entire battlemap changes within the arena, like roleplaying a famous war of some kind and dividing players on teams and putting up objectives other then last man standing. You could have players wreck a tower as if its some sort of fortress that was being defended in some great war that took place long ago, and you're roleplaying it in the arena, you get what im saying? Not just, 3vs3, 1vs1 of naked men with random weapons, cmon you gotta have a little bit more creativity then that.
When i first walked into the lords room i was interested in talking to him wondering what kind of interactions i could do with him BUT, you get this very limited options problem again. He asks me who i am, thats fine. Then all i can do is ask him something about finding a person or how goes the war, which i can already get a sense of anyway through the game log, my travels and the world map. Then you can ask him what tasks you would like to do, he gives me a quest to send some letter to someone, LOL, a letter? Me: "Hi, how are YOU doing",NPC " Oh hi, peasant, go send this letter for me" LOL. Um ok. So i go ahead and do that, you know what the other guys says,NPC "Hey scrub, go send this letter for me as well", ME "Calradia Postal Service, at your service SIR!" And i don't even get paid anymore then 30 silver for each letter either, hmm, not a good living, thats not going to pay my army upkeep or my food bills, hmm. I was doing better rolling mountain bandit heads.
So i went to another lord and he told me to kill someone he didn't like very much in a town that was 3 spaces away. So i went into the town asking people where he was, so it was a scavenger hunt. I found him in a field and he told me that i wasn't going anywhere!! Bam, knocked him out with my mace. For some reason the town hates me because i took care of a cutthroat? Strange. But i guess so since he said that he was staying with his kin, where was his kin i wonder, nobody came to his aid, strange. I guess his father looked out the window and said, Henry is getting his head bashed in, oh well, who cares. Would have been more fun if i had to fight off his whole family at once.
So i go back to the king and get my 300 coins. Then i went to another castle, and you know what? There was ANOTHER cutthroat, who would have known, and he was 3 clicks away, man. His name was Bob this time and he was in the same town layout, and in the same field, wow, deja vu. He also told me that "YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE FOOL", Bam, one shot kill. So i dragged his body to the king, 300 coins. And i said, hmm, this is decent money, killing cutthroats, so lets goto this castle so i can hopefully kill another cutthroat in the same town layout and in the same field, for the same money, and have him tell me that "YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE". But no sadly, the king wanted me to do something else, take a guess, A LETTER!" I'm sure you knew that one! And he also gave me......30 silver coins!! He also called me a scrub. I guess nobody likes me since i only have around 2 reputation with them so i guess that must be why i get all the crappy jobs, hmm.
One day i walked into a new castle and the tournament had started. So i joined, and guess what happened. It put me on a horse, and gave me a bow. Uh oh, i am a trained swordsman on horseback, not a bowmen. But sorry, you don't get to choose what you fight with, so guess what, yep, i got owned. That was the quickest tournament i ever participated in, oh well better luck next time. Honestly we should get to choose what we fight with. I also would like the bet option to go up to 1,000, i had a lot of money at that point, 100 coins was too low.
Ok so to sum this whole thing up, Towns and Castles need to be reworked extensively with better quests, more variety, different dialogue, different rewards in both money and items. This is a nice sandbox game yet i am so limited in my options that after playing it for a day, it gets really old. The way to fix that is to improve the quest content, nothing wrong with providing gameplay within sandbox, people can still do what they please, but at least you give them options of fun things to do.
Currently the only quests i have seen are, "Deliver Letter You Scrub!", "Go kill the Nervous man for me", "Join the Campaign", "Follow a spy", "Collect a debt".
Let me go over the spy and campaign one. The spy, i feel it could be reworked, i was at revyadin and the spy never came out and if it did, he flew by so fast that i had no time to catch him, there was no way to reset the quest or to try again, he was just flat out gone, i sat there for one week of in-game time, pitching in my little tent. Never came, ME "Sorry Lord, can't do it" NPC " Get outta here scrub" That's 50 DKP minus!!
The Campaign is broken, for 4 straight tries, when i got the quest of, Meet some lord because he has a campaign, the marshall, as i walked towards him, it failed automatically. Then one time i finally was able to walk to him and begin the quest, and guess what happened. He pranced around for 30 days and did nothing, he didn't attack, he didn't give me orders, he just pranced around like he had nothing to do and wasted my time and upkeep money, and no i didn't stay the entire 30 days, you'd have to be insane, i left. And he gave me a warning, i ignored him, and he said, Marshall " You will never be forgiven for this"!! Me "eh, so what".
Ok, so i have other stuff to do i was planning on making this longer but i have work to do. Summing this up really quick. This game was fun for a little bit, but due to the serious lack of anything to do except hunt down bands of units and very limited quests causes this game to get a score of 5/10. And i say that because its not finished, you cannot be seriously considering this game to be ready to leave beta stage. If you do, you will get such negative reviews that nobody will touch this game, i don't know what pushed you to believe that this game was in any way shape or form ready to be released for retail. You have a very nice high potential game on your hands and it even has great mod capability, don't ruin it by rushing it out. I don't know if its a time issue, money, lack of motivation, impatience to get money or success, whatever it is....don't do it. Don't see this as an insult to you, your designers or your game. Its honest feedback, you did a great job, keep it up, but its not ready to leave beta stage. If you no longer care, or if you want to achieve low success, by aiming low and putting forth low effort then you will get very little success with this game, but if you continue to finish it and make it more polished, it will be a great game.
It needs:
1) Better Graphics
2) Better quests
3) More gameplay options, not being able to be King of Calradia, now that just sucks.
4) More music and sound tracks
5) More dialogue instead of "Were gonna rip of your legs, nice and slow, like 50,000 times"
6) Add a more dynamic feel to the towns, let them upgrade, and prosper and change, more events need to take place in the world, its just too predictable. It feels like its been half-assed and rushed, it needs more content and variety, more polish.
Please discuss this, I'm open to conversation on this and i don't care what you want to say, so just express yourselves. I like this game and i want to help make it better, its not ready to leave beta, and it will fail if prematurely launched. I supported it and bought it because thats not very much money anyway, not much of a loss, but will i play this game a year from now? No i won't, it needs to be improved upon quite a bit. Please take some of this to heart.
Haven't you ever played Nintento? It's chock full of bad graphics, no story, repetitive crap that sold millions of copies. Sure, that was the video game technology at the time... But it still hasn't changed. Super Mario Kart? Another example of a fun game with nothing to do except race around a track. Counter-strike? That's another. The only story there was "TERRORIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISTS!"
It doesn't bother me to be honest, the only reason to actually walk around the village is either to complete or to get a quest. If you could do either from the initial menu I probably wouldn't notice if the ability to wander the village was removed.
