POLL: DLCs from Taleworlds

Do you plan on buying DLCs for Bannerlord?

  • Yes

    Votes: 55 29.3%
  • No

    Votes: 87 46.3%
  • Only if there are discounts/promotions

    Votes: 21 11.2%
  • Other

    Votes: 25 13.3%

  • Total voters
    188

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Even in its current extremely flawed state, I got more enjoyment out of it than any other modern game that's come out in the past 10 or so years and unlike those games, this one at least has a small chance for the devs to get their **** together + future mods to look forward to.

If you haven't found a game in the last 10 years that can either top Bannerlord or be more enjoyable, then.. respectfully saying, I'm sorry. There are a lot of good games out there, better than this.

Do not get me wrong, though. I too enjoy Bannerlord (and fully aware it could be miles better). Last night I was rekindling with Warband mods, while I LOVE Prophecy of Pendor (thank you MadVader for the custom order tutorial and cheats <3) and Perisno for the amount of depth they have (which Bannerlord might not even reach), functional features etc... the engine is too dated for me in regards to character movement and combat. I love all the little touches that Bannerlord adds for those, (I like the perk system despite how long it took them to implement it), just wish there wasn't as many broken or unimplemented features mixed in there.

Unfortunately, I can only play the game with mods like the previous game, it's just this one needs many more hands to hold. I have a fully functional modpack of like 45 mods for 1.5.9. The problem is, I'm never satisfied with mods and I haven't played the game in a good month because I'm waiting for the perfect patch. I've been saying that for months now. Plus it's still EA and mods break so I would have to sit down and go these boards or nexus and manually see what mod is compatible with what, I'd rather just play Warband mods.
 
If you haven't found a game in the last 10 years that can either top Bannerlord or be more enjoyable, then.. respectfully saying, I'm sorry. There are a lot of good games out there, better than this.
There are plenty of games I've enjoyed, but very few that I've played for 500+ hours. I played vanilla warband for a few hundred hours and a few hundred more with mods and I've played Bannerlord for a couple hundred now as well. There are a laundry list of things I don't like about the game but I still got a lot more value out of it than an 8 hour "cinematic experience".
 
Similarly, I can't think of a medieval strategy game better than CK2. Even without real-time combat, it puts anything in the TW series to shame. And... er... I guess after 9 years and hundreds of $'s later it's finally complete?
The fact is, it doesn't have much... competition. It's a niche game, and there are few studios willing (or able) to try something like that - they'd be immediately beaten with the "AHHH, it's a Crusader Kings clone" stick and end up doing something completely different instead.
And it really, really costs too much. I mean... at that point be honest and release it as some kind of live service, just like World of Warcraft. I would literally pay more for the whole CK2 experience than I would for two years of WoW.
As for Stellaris, I really didn't like it. It's a massive time sinker, sure... but Master of Orion 2 was leagues ahead, imho. It's probably just about personal preferences here though.
 
I've recently tried Stellaris with a bunch of DLCs to see what the noise was about. It's not bad, and the exploration part is fun, but the battles are not interesting (and you can't tell easily if your ship designs are any good by watching battles) and you can't win the game in normal 4x ways (except conquest) - you need to grind it because PDX wants you to grind every time in every game.
And don't let me get started on the hundred or something mana types and currencies you need to keep track of. It's poor game design typical of Paradox.

IMO, when Stellaris shipped, Distant Worlds was (and still is) the best 4x space game. Even Endless Space 2 is a better game than Stellaris, although its battles are glorified dice rolls and it tries you to overwhelm you with dopamine hits from quests and achievements, suspiciously like sleek casual games.

More ****ting on Paradox is what we need to put Taleworlds in perspective.
Stellaris was honestly more stable and balanced and fun at the beginning of the process. And I believe it was a solid improvement to implement - though many OG Stellaris fans consider it heresy - the update to hyperlane-only play.

The real innovation (or at least I THINK it was innovative? haven't played every 4X game) were things like the late-game crisis mechanic --> features designed to create three distinct stages of the game and to balance it around fun at each stage.

Early game is all exploration and land-grabs and strategizing and it's spiced up by minigames plus maybe one or two significant wars... mid-game is where the big wars and alliances happen... late-game crisis is basically the SimCity Deploy Godzilla button which throws a monkey wrech into everything and can punish mid-game winners for having overextended themselves.

Stellaris showed promise by being the first 4X game I played that was actually designed to be FUN rather than balanced or edgy or cool-looking or "realistic" (which I generally appreciate but see limits to). They kind of squandered that lean-mean-fun-gaming with layers of crap added on over the years... and also their forum culture got extra weird and culty and political and - for some bizarre reason - explicitly communist, which is kind of hilarious given their cartoonishly greedy corporate conduct.

Bottom line: Yes let's all bond over hating PDX. I definitely appreciate TW the more I think about how terrible their former partner was.

The fact is, it doesn't have much... competition. It's a niche game, and there are few studios willing (or able) to try something like that - they'd be immediately beaten with the "AHHH, it's a Crusader Kings clone" stick and end up doing something completely different instead.
And it really, really costs too much. I mean... at that point be honest and release it as some kind of live service, just like World of Warcraft. I would literally pay more for the whole CK2 experience than I would for two years of WoW.
As for Stellaris, I really didn't like it. It's a massive time sinker, sure... but Master of Orion 2 was leagues ahead, imho. It's probably just about personal preferences here though.
The "Pay us hundreds of dollars to regularly update an ancient product" stuff is totally a thing. It used to be "worth it" (your mileage may vary) when their patches consistently improved the games rather than consistently bugged/slogged them.

I don't think there's inherently anything bad with the business model as long as you maintain a corporate culture that takes fan reputation seriously (which they only 50% do these days). There are worse ways to monetize a game and - legitimately - I appreciated a straightforward transaction where I get to replay a solid indie-ish title for years without worrying about when they're dropping support entirely.

Haven't played MoO2 TBH so I can't compare.
 
Haven't played MoO2 TBH so I can't compare.
If you go back, you won't understand a lot of what made MoO2 so special -- it was like... I dunno, Shakespeare. So many things that were huge innovations in that time are now standard fare, so people coming from Stellaris to MoO2 probably won't see the big deal. Or even be actively turned off by a lot of the design.

It was also made in an era where people didn't balance **** after release, so it is possible to stumble upon one of the brokenly optimal strategies and sorta ruin the experience for yourself.
 
If you go back, you won't understand a lot of what made MoO2 so special -- it was like... I dunno, Shakespeare. So many things that were huge innovations in that time are now standard fare, so people coming from Stellaris to MoO2 probably won't see the big deal. Or even be actively turned off by a lot of the design.

It was also made in an era where people didn't balance **** after release, so it is possible to stumble upon one of the brokenly optimal strategies and sorta ruin the experience for yourself.
MoO2 still has great ship design and tactical battles where design matters. Curiously not picked up by the likes of Paradox who are genetically not interested in tactics.
The only games that came close to this are (IMHO) Distant Worlds and Sword of the Stars, but I'd like to hear other opinions too since I don't play much anymore.
 
If you go back, you won't understand a lot of what made MoO2 so special -- it was like... I dunno, Shakespeare. So many things that were huge innovations in that time are now standard fare, so people coming from Stellaris to MoO2 probably won't see the big deal. Or even be actively turned off by a lot of the design.
OHHHHH! I thought you meant Master of Orion 3 - which I've heard is a thing.

Yeah I loved MoO2 (which is merged in my mind with the experience of MoO1). That game was a treasure! Stellaris at launch was the best spiritual successor to the MoO series by far.

MoO2 still has great ship design and tactical battles where design matters. Curiously not picked up by the likes of Paradox who are genetically not interested in tactics.
I get the impression you may have missed a bit of the complexity on the ship design in Stellaris. Obviously it wasn't at MoO levels, but the meta is a bit more deep than it looks like at first glance and is much more balanced than - say - the post-Man-The-Guns naval meta in HOI4.

I absolutely saw the problem of trying to scale the old-style system into the modern gaming world when I played Stardrive... that crap would melt your processor if you had the temerity to play a campaign to endgame.

It could definitely do with some love, though. The mechanics are unclear enough that it's difficult to pinpoint good build strategies beyond "SPAM CHEAP CORVETTES" or "NEVER CRUISERS EVER". Even the dedicated MP crowd tends to be ignorant about the nuances that I learned by doing a deep dive into the mechanics... which I aborted when I gave up on PDX.

And then the bastards dropped an update which puts an empire-wide soft cap on population rather than a per-planet modifier like sane, decent God-fearing humans would do. I just laughed at the fan outrage at a very far distance because LOL NOPE.
 
If they actually are planning on making a dlc I will be very disappointed. You cannot have a game that relies on free content made by modders and at the same time a game that is releasing payed content that a mod could provide.
The decision of building the game with a dlc in mind will for sure affect the design and liberty given to modders.
A better approach would be making a robust game and provide proper modding tools. The better mods available the more fame and sales TW will get.
 
If they actually are planning on making a dlc I will be very disappointed. You cannot have a game that relies on free content made by modders and at the same time a game that is releasing payed content that a mod could provide.
The decision of building the game with a dlc in mind will for sure affect the design and liberty given to modders.
A better approach would be making a robust game and provide proper modding tools. The better mods available the more fame and sales TW will get.
that i'll have to strongly disagree, it's not a zero-sum game where you can only have dlcs or mods, many games in fact have a healthy dose of both.

DLCs are simply "official mods" from which we expect high quality content while mods are usually in a much smaller scale unless they are total conversions or projects made by huge mod teams but in general the community is much more patient with mods cause they are labors of love shared for free with the community.

Warband had both mods and dlcs just like Elder Scrolls/fallout games, Paradox games, Civilization series and much more.

DLCs are simply ways for the devs to keep working on a certain game while making profit at the same time since game making isn't charity, they can range from mediocre (think oblivion's horse armor) to amazing pieces of art (witcher 3 dlcs), just vote with your wallet if you like that content or not, as long as the devs keep the engine modable aswell it's a win-win scenario.
 
MoO2 still has great ship design and tactical battles where design matters. Curiously not picked up by the likes of Paradox who are genetically not interested in tactics.
I always saw it as a deliberate decision to reduce the tension between strategy and tactical portions. They don't ever want a situation where a player can just out-perform tactically and get away with ridiculous things strategically as a result because the strategy portion is the meat of their games.
 
I think a game with so poor content can not think about creating a dlc, but to complete the game that we bought. I paid more for this game than for MS Flight Simulator.
 
I'm not a fan of DLC in general since games started being developed with the idea that you can leave out features to add them back in later for more money. I like Bannerlord, but it's soulless right now. If things improve by the time it's officially released, I'll likely get them. If not, it really depends on the DLC itself.
Perfect answer.
 
Depends on what the DLCs are. I am more than willing to support the devs by spending some money on DLCs.
I wonder if you are aware that the two things you mentioned are completely unrelated. I doubt you would be supporting the devs by giving TW more money for DLC of an unfinished product... at least nobody would recognize the correlation. I am sure this will allow them to keep their positions in the long run but for sure won't have an immediate effect and no Dev will really feel your "support".

I generally believe that this may have the opposite effect (on the quality improvement) as they (Management, Stakeholders, etc.) will keep this machine inefficient thinking everything is right if fans are willing to give more money for whatever we do...
 
I wonder if you are aware that the two things you mentioned are completely unrelated. I doubt you would be supporting the devs by giving TW more money for DLC of an unfinished product... at least nobody would recognize the correlation. I am sure this will allow them to keep their positions in the long run but for sure won't have an immediate effect and no Dev will really feel your "support".

I generally believe that this may have the opposite effect (on the quality improvement) as they (Management, Stakeholders, etc.) will keep this machine inefficient thinking everything is right if fans are willing to give more money for whatever we do...
To be fair. Alot of people complain about the current state of the game. I've had a fun 200 hours so far in the game, which is rare in the current gaming industry. So supporting a developer by buying dlcs for more content is completely fine in my eyes. Also I consider buying DLCs as supporting, since you do in fact financially support them, whether it has a huge impact or not.

I am not saying the game is complete or perfect, but it's certainly not as terrible as some describe it to be.
 
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