Progression and XP balance

[Gavyn]

There are in my opinion several issues that ruins the progression through the game, particularly in the XP department.
-1) Fighting in the arena, either on tournament or PRACTICE, gives NO experience, which makes no sense. Zero to combat related abilities and zero to endurance.
-2) Betting at the arena gives very low profit, even when you are a nobody. The max profit is somewhere around 500 per tournament, less than finding a daughter for somebody, and not enough to help maintaining a serious army. This, together with issue (1) makes taking part in tournament pointless once you have beaten a couple to get the gear, when you can be finding daughters.
-3) Selling and buying things gives NO experience to Trade. What?
-4) Convincing people of not killing someone (Familiy feud), going away (army of poachers) or going back to their fathers (Missing daughter) gives NO exp to Charm. Again, what?
-5) Commanding your troups in battle gives NO exp to Leadership, but simmulating them does. Re-what?
-6) The mission Family feud can only be reasonably resolved with Charm, since the offended guy is always surrounded by 5 thugs, giving no chance to the murder-by-accident guy to survive if you fight.
-7) Caravans and bussines are uber-expensive, and in many cases give very low profit (and it is really hard to know which shops give the best ones). Spending 15.000 gold in a shop or caravan just to find that it gives 18 in profits is a keyboard breaker, but I admit that I haven't explored this world in depth, maybe it gets better over time.
- You should not have to maintain the minor parties in your clan, they should live on their own. Having to pay 400/day in maintenance for your party and founding that suddenly you have to pay 800/day in "issues with the new party" and ALSO their new maintenance is bollocks.
-9) The mission of training 10 peasants is just absurd. The player has very little control over it (they either die or not get any exp at all) and can only be reasonably fullfilled by giving it to a companion.

Overall the games gives the impression of stoping you from progressing unless you want to follow a lord everywhere with a small army or are able to spend 20 hours grinding money/exp. Maybe is intentional, since the late game is not fully implemented? If that is the case, I understand, but please confirm that this issues are.

BTW I can't play my 1.0.1 save with the 1.0.2 version. Any ideas why?

 

[ArminPyke]

ye tournaments are so mediocre depends on the prize you get that most of the times isn't even good + no money in the end except if you bet is weird

 

[Kalin]

Caravans are super profitable in the long run. Truly.

 

[ForgottenTree]

-3) Selling and buying things gives NO experience to Trade. What?
-7) Caravans and bussines are uber-expensive, and in many cases give very low profit (and it is really hard to know which shops give the best ones). Spending 15.000 gold in a shop or caravan just to find that it gives 18 in profits is a keyboard breaker, but I admit that I haven't explored this world in depth, maybe it gets better over time.

3) If you sell bulk goods (resources and materials) above the normal market price then you will get exp
7) They start with low profit and improve over time, the caravan takes a long time to turn a profit but gives way more than a workshop

 

[TwentySicks]

I agree with plenty of these posts.

I have not progressed in anything for a long time, even though i run around doing lots of stuff in game.

The combat is really nice and all, but my god the single player progression is the worst. I play with all settings on realistic btw.

Side note, my companions havent leveled up at all.

I simulate almost all my battles, since its faster and more efficient for the grind, so that might be do something for my playthrough.

 

[MightyMark]

Agree with everything. +1

 

[Ichon]

The part where actually fighting in battles is far more risky and less rewarding than simulating really feels weird. I would think they would make it highly the opposite to encourage people to fight in early access and get more feedback as well more people getting experience in the weapons balance to help MP.

Tournaments give renown, cash, and random rewards- that is a pretty good deal and if you chase a few bandits and trade as you follow the tournament circuit you can quickly get into 20k cash and full kit for you and companions though you will level relatively slowly. Having way to 'play to the crowd' in tournaments to increase charm (at the cost of HP or maybe kit- throwing away your main weapon and having to scrounge or another weapon etc).

Arena battles now those are very annoying you can't gain at least 50% XP on combat skills because they are so full of RNG and actually waaay more difficult than tournaments being solo, having only single HP (not reset as you progress like in tournament) and having random archers spawn across the arena and shooting you in the back as you fight 1 v 2 opponents who both stopped fighting and charged you simply because you are the player...

Also how long does it take to level Athletics now? I used to just run everywhere and jump around in older M&B and while Athletics took forever to get over 100 so the AI wasn't constantly outrunning me right now it feels almost impossible to level and is HUGE disadvantage if you don't fight from horseback in battles not to mention the AI is even faster at flanking and swarming players now- if you have 3 soldiers against you even with a shield you are dead because the shield blocks in a narrow cone to your front and the AI on the sides can attack past the shield 1/3 of the time at least and they spam attacks so fast that if you manage to twist and block your shield is gone in a few seconds.

Playing as an archer or mounted knight are really the only options even more than in past M&B where those were the 'best' options at least fighting on foot was possible if you didn't mind getting killed more often.

Finally- crossbows need to be significantly stronger than bows to offer any reason at all to play as them. Having maybe +10 pierce damage compared to same tier bows but shooting more than 100% slower and if any part of the reload animation is broken you have to start over makes playing with crossbows ridiculous compared to an archer that can reload at 3x the speed for less than 5% real damage difference (avg 5 damage after subtracting armour).

 

[darksinz117]

3) trade does give exp, what are you talking about?

The bigger issue all the exp and faction bonuses are not applying, which is hindering overall exp gain as well.

 

[[Rei]]

3) trade does give exp, what are you talking about?

The bigger issue all the exp and faction bonuses are not applying, which is hindering overall exp gain as well.

Remember, some play on older patches still. Dont ask me why. And the game is a heap of glitchy & unbalanced lovemix atm, so we all have different experiences with the same mechanics.

 

[Miktaew]

Every quest should reward xp. Prove me wrong (protip - you can't)

No, seriously. Quests only give gold (in ammounts that are not worth effort once you have 1 or 2 good caravans) and relations (which are kinda worthless, used only for recruitment but you can easily play without those few more units). I think most profitable quest I did yet was to escort caravan and it gave me maybe a few thousand gold. Cool, but 1 caravan gives me ~1 thousand every day. Quests are just an absolute waste of time once you manage to get a steady income - and even before that it might be better to simply travel around, trading stuff.


Either just make all quests provide free SP that don't increase any skills but level your hero (so there's more attribute points and focus points), or make them actually reward skill xp.
I would strongly prefer the second option. There are many types of quests and each of them can reward something. Of course it's not possible to make perfect balance with those, but hey, that's obvious when there's a system of skills rising by being used, right?

• quests for gangs could reward roguery xp
• 
  
• quests like "kill bandits" could reward scouting xp and tactics xp
• 
  
• quest "find missing daughter" could reward scouting xp but also extend it to allow us to convince father to let them go after we spoke with them (maybe make the daughter worried about dad so there's a reason to go to him?), with both this and convincing daughter to come back rewarding charm xp
• 
  
• quest "spy party" could reward roguery xp and scouting xp (I mean, scouting is about spotting things, it doesn't have to be solely about finding things in wild, but also noticing things in urban environment)
• 
  
• quest to deliver materials to artisans and quest "artisans can't sell products" could reward trading xp
• 
  
• quests to train people could reward leadership xp and perhaps also tactics xp
• 
  
• quest "army of poachers" could give scouting xp
• 
  
• and so on with other quests that I forgot about...

Other than quests:

• destroying bandit camps, considering how there's all this waiting till night to prepare, could reward tactics xp (also increase scouting xp for spotting them)
• having a succesful caravan should reward trading xp, just as skill description says
• obviously full xp for tournament combat, maybe also some additional for winning (shared between all types of weapons?), also increased renown reward

Sadly I have no ideas of what could fit intelligence and endurance skills, shame