No synergy in mid/late game

[Owen Wulfson]

Just one thing, Taleworlds neither made with fire and sword or Viking conquest. Both of those games were made by a different company and therefore the quest lines in them have nothing to do with taleworlds.

My bad. But I will say that Taleworlds needs to hammer out a more structured story that doesn't push the player to accomplish herculean tasks. The problem with both of the mentioned installments was that they expected the player to be able to accomplish difficult objectives without any payoff - whether it was leading another faction's civil war or capturing an enemy settlement miles deep within their territory. I don't think the npc ever gave us more than 1/10 the expenses as a "reward" for doing such.

At one point during the Bannerlord main questline, at least for the imperials, almost every single faction is set to war against your own at the same time. What were they thinking?

"Oh I'm sure the player has a large army and is able to defend their faction easily enough. Let's just throw the switch for all these wars at the same time. What? Reward for taking 2/3 imperial settlements? Was accomplishing that objective not enough of a reward?"

 

[Cèsar de Quart]

The longest I've played in this game is 9 years, and my own major problems with mid-to-late game are as follows:

1) The Stash System: Inventory management is a hassle in this game, and it impacts your ability to manage resources. I would love to stockpile weapons, metals and charcoal to upgrade my smithing over time, but a full inventory slows down your army and makes it harder to do things like farm bandits and catch smaller enemy groups. Thing is, you only get access to such a stash when you own a city, and for some reasons castles don't have such an inventory. Back in Warband, you could use a Workshop as a place to store excess items long before you swore fealty to a liege lord.

Castles don't have stashes? If not, that's a BIG problem.

3) Your Missing Siblings: You could be on top of the world. A personal army of close to 200 men, millions of denars, a prince or princess as your spouse and a weapon you yourself forged to legendary status that is ready to be handed down your lineage. And none of that matters because your siblings, since the beginning of your game, are still being held by a raggedy group of slavers.

I know Taleworlds was laying the ground work for the player to start with a family rather than as an adult orphan like in Warband, but at present it's a glaring problem with the game. Until they finally complete their work on the household system and allow you to save your siblings, it feels just bonkers continuing the so-called "main questline." Which brings me to my next qualm...

4) The Main Questline: Since With Fire & Sword and Viking Conquest, I was always under the impression that Talewords was absolutely terrible at weaving a story into their game system. That hasn't changed. The so-called Main Questline is just a series of ever more painfully difficult objectives that need to be checked off without any sort of payoff.

If Taleworlds decides to add extensions or changes to this mess of a quest, they need to make it more character centric and easier - because the real story-line in this game should be the one the player makes - not the developers.

Agreed, the main quest needs work and proper payoff.

 

[Frag]

The game has good foundation and the battle engine is excellent. Yes it needs some work, but this is quite a unique game. However, after 150 hours into the game, here is what I think should be worked on to achieve a masterpiece.

1. Way too many cut and paste. The same discussion coming back over ....over ...and over again. For all lords in this game, they should never re-use the same lines. Never. So even though the end result will be the same (Battle, let go, trying to hire them) ... the lines should be different. I mean I should have read 1000 times looters telling me "You will never take us alive." they could simply have 100 different sentences that lead to that battle, but would randomize the returned sentence to keep things fresh. The fact that the lines get re-used makes the character soulless. You stop reading after 5-6 hours in the game. In 2020, a cut and paste between character lines is just plain weird. We would like to feel the personalities of the different lords. They all share the exact same personality and you never get attached to any of those since it is just a different face on the same sentence book. Lore is needed here.

2. Not enough quests and branches for the player to explore. There is not even a need for a main quest. Just do quest branches depending of the player interest (raider, assassin, gladiator, trader, herder). The sandbox approach should be put in use where characters could simply be present in some town and assign you all kind of quests in the same area of interest. What if a dark guild lord would hire you for 20-30 quests to go and solo his powerful enemies all around the map!? What if a corrupted baron would hire you to raid a dozen of villages to trigger a war he wants!? What if a king himself would hire you to capture few castle in his name? The engine can already do that. The map should be covered of those characters offering quest branches. I swear to god if I see "Family Feud" again, I will hang myself LOLLL. Again the game engine is fantastic, but the game feels empty rather quickly. You feel alone in this world.

3. The biggest downfall for me is to not feel home anywhere. I would like to be able to set home, stock pile weapons and food, build an army there and being able to KEEP my prisoners. Period. Talelord should even think about the possibilities of letting the player buy a small domain to establish their base without even having to go at war with everyone if they don't feel like it. Not everyone is tempted in map level conquest and there are no reason with that engine to force it down the player throat.

Do not get me wrong, I am not negative here. I deeply love that game. It has great potential ... HUGE potential. But I mean, if you are not interested in full map conquest, you will get bored fast. Now my character is kind of stuck. I cannot go anywhere since I cannot keep prisoners. The cut and paste lords always come back to attack me (even though I beaten them over 10 times each). If I execute them I become the biggest a$-hole and everyone hates me ... breaking completely any chances of diplomacy ... and exploring all kingdom to find interesting quests or characters is mostly useless.

I know it is an early access. But even there, I report this for Taleworld to undertand how deep they should plunge to make their world alive. They have mostly the platform to do all of this, but they need to spend time to develop those characters, quests and careers interest for the players. Invest in lore and quest ... not only in the battle/economy system. This thing will make the difference between a decade classic and a flash in the pan.

 

[MBeagleguy]

snip

3. The biggest downfall for me is to not feel home anywhere. I would like to be able to set home, stock pile weapons and food, build an army there and being able to KEEP my prisoners. Period. Talelord should even think about the possibilities of letting the player buy a small domain to establish their base without even having to go at war with everyone if they don't feel like it. Not everyone is tempted in map level conquest and there are no reason with that engine to force it down the player throat.

Do not get me wrong, I am not negative here. I deeply love that game. It has great potential ... HUGE potential. But I mean, if you are not interested in full map conquest, you will get bored fast. Now my character is kind of stuck. I cannot go anywhere since I cannot keep prisoners. The cut and paste lords always come back to attack me (even though I beaten them over 10 times each). If I execute them I become the biggest a$-hole and everyone hates me ... breaking completely any chances of diplomacy ... and exploring all kingdom to find interesting quests or characters is mostly useless.

I know it is an early access. But even there, I report this for Taleworld to undertand how deep they should plunge to make their world alive. They have mostly the platform to do all of this, but they need to spend time to develop those characters, quests and careers interest for the players. Invest in lore and quest ... not only in the battle/economy system. This thing will make the difference between a decade classic and a flash in the pan.

Number 3 on your list was exactly what I thought Taleworlds would do from the start. I really thought I'd be able to scout out a plot of land and build a settlement from scratch.

 

[bodhi]

you could kinda do that a little in Viking Conquest, with its Camp mechanic. Was cool just playing as a nobody and still having a place to call home and torture prisoners you'd captured from your nightly bush stalks.

 

[xdj1nn]

Just one thing, Taleworlds neither made with fire and sword or Viking conquest. Both of those games were made by a different company and therefore the quest lines in them have nothing to do with taleworlds.

not "a different", they all differ (the ones who made WFAS are not the same who made Viking Conquest). WFAS I don't really recall who made it, but VC was made by the modders who created Brytenwalda, most of the "DLC" is basically a copy&paste of Brytenwalda, with some (although few) really welcome additions, and a engine oomph that improved most aspects of Warband, it's sad that TW has never updated WB with the improvements from VC, but debating that is pointless...

Thing is, the story here doesn't fare any better than those weird narratives in both WFAS and VC, and given Taleworlds owns both the game, the engine, and act as publishers of those, they do share responsibility on the quality department, so it is a valid criticism, even though I disagree with the guy, I think that everything in BL is a placeholder, and unfortunately for us, we are the ones beating the bushes by trying to play it now, what we should be doing is testing it, period.

 

[BlackRainZ]

I didn't say the story was necessarily good in those, although Viking conquests campaign wasn't that bad. So, I can't see how Taleworlds would have any responsibility in the story that those other companies made. They most likely gave no input at all regarding the story. Why would they? I am not defending taleworlds here for the lackluster story in bannerlord, but blaming them for two games they didn't make, just because they made the engine and was the publisher is silly.