Calradian Empire, Anno Imperi MMXXI Performed by Sergeant NodiceLXXXIII
“Vox Populi REPORT” no. MMXXI / I
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I. Introduction
Salve Fellow Calradians,
First of all – I want to thank to all of you - who decided to take part in this poll. I found your inputs very much valuable, reasonable, and needed in the current state of the game. I also want to believe that some open-minded people in
TaleWorlds would find them useful in the future development of the
Bannerlord. I want to also apologize it took so much time. We live in the strange times and many things distracted me from the original plan. What I wanted to achieve was preparation of the “Voice of Customer” kind of thing. This is something that any company with “customer first” approach would gladly use in their business plan. This is merely an input to greater and far more advanced statistics (e.g. QFD analysis ->
https://measuringu.com/qfd-ui/) that can be used to correctly prioritize the work. Unfortunately, I am unable to apply the counterbalance, methods, and other metrics into the analysis – TW has all the aces to make it right. And this is what I hope they’ll do. And for anybody who read so far - I hope you will bear with me till the very end (knowing this won’t be a short one).
II. Methodolody
It took me some time to find out what would be the best option to summarize the very much raw data I got from you. I had to find keywords to adjust the features properly. I decided to narrow down certain ideas to only one or couple of words (which in my opinion would be suitable to describe what was behind the idea). I thought - We can always go back to the original post to see what people really had in mind.
Very specific instructions I gave in the first post were not always treated as a requirement but rather as a loose guidance. This was something I struggled with a little bit in the beginning but finally found (as I tend to think) pretty accurate method to digest and present all those things. Later I found - what was first considered “curse” eventually turned out to be the “data blessing”. Many of you described more things which were taken into final statistics. Sometimes you mentioned features such as “Units” and “AI” in the one sentence - which on itself can be either connected or separated. Unit rework and AI rework cannot necessarily mean the same. I found both equally important and because were listed in the first point were given 9 points each. With that approach I could multiply the data. I later categorized them with proper weights (as it was stated in the initial email) and summarized in the one column with corresponding score. I counted all ideas beyond point no.3 as it would be point no. 3 (all got 1 point).
III. Data
Table. I. Raw data table with corresponding forumite’s Nickname.
Table II. Convertion to the “One word – key features” table.
Table III. Score % distribution within the poll (maximum points = 842).
Graph I. Score % distribution within the poll on a pie chart.
IV. Conclusions
Vox populi, vox Dei. I consider this simple exercise completed. After weeks of collecting data we finally know what the community expects the most. Guess what - it is not that much of a surprise (at least not to me) ?.
Place | Score | Feature |
1 | 88 | AI |
2 | 68 | Siege |
3 | 52 | Diplomacy |
4 | 42 | Quests |
5 | 30 | Rogue |
6 | 29 | Battle |
7 | 27 | Campaign |
8 | 25 | Clans |
9 | 25 | Economy |
10 | 22 | Combat |
Table IV. Top 10 most expected features (means - feature development, updates or re-design) in the next (not yet started) update.
Who may have guessed that, hmm? Personally, I find Siege an unexpected 2nd place, but I believe AI and Diplomacy are desired and justified for their 1st and 3rd place. And don’t get me wrong – sieges would use some extra polishing as well, and, in this game, it should work just perfectly. The rest of the community found it more important than I would have guessed. And this is the whole point – our individual opinion may not be so important to the other players. ? Without further ado… Let us deliberate a little bit on the top 3.
3rd Place – Diplomacy – 6.18% of total score.
Man, this is broad… Some of you were so detailed and brought up various examples of mechanics (e.g. Alliances -
@Apocal), units, and kingdom’s features. Some just said it is all messed up and should be re-designed from a scratch (
@Death2Tyrants, @MostBlunted, @jak1up, @Figulus) or it is currently very basic (
@vonbalt –
Diplomacy beyond "monke strong attack, monke weak make peace") or literally nonexistent.
For instance,
@a_ver_est and
@Count_Morfetico indicated that there should be more of a lord to lord, wife to player interactions (gifts, advises, etc.) and whole lot of a political intrigue and other options available to the player.
@Gandamula, @Noschkov made a good point stating we need more possibilities to get our kingdom rolling (peace treaties, alliances) and that Economy and Diplomacy should usually be somehow linked (e.g. trade deals -
@Gandamula). Just my quick thought on that... this can work on discount systems – allies would benefit from the fact they are reliable partners (
e.g. I am fancy panties Vlandia giving 15% discount on butter to Empire as they are my friend and preferred customer). Genuine opinion from
@TheLordOfTheDiamond who claims well crafted Diplomacy “
is the only thing that truly matters for long campaigns” – cannot be disputed.
2nd Place – Siege – 8.08% of total score.
I don’t know another game with such a great siege FFP mechanics and repeatability. I enjoyed Witcher 2 Prologue with all the siege that was going on the background and of course constantly enjoy Total War Sieges with more tactical approach. With respect to above titles… Mount and Blade - Bannerlord is nothing compared to those two. Its sieges possess unique features, beautiful scenes and entertaining momentum on one side of things but is also buggy, can be easily exploited and present unfinished models and mechanics on the other.
Let start from the Siege Towers - who has never witnessed any problems with that game’s aspect probably never resolved a siege on the field.
@Midnitewolf was first to point that out in the poll. I agree with you it is a bugfix, but how important one! Not to mention something even less complex – ladders as mentioned by
@Sanctum who also claim we need some more choices / mechanics (authors comment: cows shoot from trebuchets? ?).
@Hawkwind, @UK-Tranquillity and
@ArturMorhghain have factorized all developers’ sins we observe during the siege - showing how bad siege AI can be (also a remark from
@MostBlunted). We all want the sieges to be fixed, less fps intensive, smoother and brilliant as much as yourself
@Neofd10, @Sh1mbo and
@Fellington.
1st Place – AI – 10,45% of total score.
The winner and the true problem for us all. Doesn’t matter if you are single or multiplayer fan. It is always the AI that all of us will blame for everything ?. No difference this time. Campaign (
@Midnitewolf, @Hawkwind, @MostBlunted), Battle
(@Apocal, @AnandaShanti), Party (
@Jaang, @Edward the Bastard), Combat (
@AnandaShanti, @Hawkwind), Unit (
@AnandaShanti), Companions (
@Galvar), Kingdom (
@Blood Gryphon, @Because) Lord (
@Galvar), Vassal (
@Galvar ), Siege (
@Hawkwind, @ArturMorhghain, @UK-Tranquillity), NPC
(@five bucks), Rebellions (
@five bucks), Clans (
@The Horrorlord ) name it – the AI must be tweaked
(@a_ver_est, @Maifailun). Pretty self-explanatory but in the same time isn’t that the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of the game making (I see all those armchair programmers who now prepare the stake on which they will verbally burn me of being ignorant and disrespectful to AI designers work) ? So please TW, once and for all - fix the damn thing ?
Thanks for getting thus far! Have a good one.
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This work was entirely sponsored by the Neretze’s Young Engineers Program - Long live the Empire !
Special thanks to Epicrotea’s and Poros’s Imperial Laboratories - Your patience, skill and butter are legendary.