Rank 1 Gamer Thoughts on Bannerlord PvP

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RodLimitless

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So a little about who I am -->

My name is Rod, I'm a twitch partner, and I've competed in various games at a highly competitive level. I've experience in MMOs, RTS, shooters, and so on. In 2015 I was ranked #7th rogue in World of Warcraft and competed in the BlizzCon regionals, and in 2017 I was ranked #11th. I've also achieved Champion's League in Fortnite, top 5% K/D in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Warzone), even got the top 1% in Sea of Thieves, and even at a smaller a smaller scale, I've been top 100 Players in Age of Empires. So I'm a veteran gamer, and I've high level experience in various genres.

A viewer bud of mine gifted me Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord about a week and a half ago from the time I'm typing this post. If I had to say what the most fun games I've ever played are, they'd have to be, Sea of Thieves, Warzone, and to my surprise, me thinking no game would ever come close to that --> Bannerlord.

I grinded this game extremely hard, playing 36+ hours the first days I got it. It was such a fun experience unlike anything I've ever played before, so kudos to the developers for doing an outstanding job. Despite the bugs, and having to search for mods to help ease the "quality of life" aspect of the game, it has been a phenomenal experience beyond anything I've ever played. I have not had that same feeling when playing a videogame for the first time in a long, long time. So well done.

Now, I personally, am a PvPer. When I say I was ranked #7th and #11th in the world in World of Warcraft, I'm not talking about raiding; I'm talking about PvP.

I've always been two things: A duelist, and a strategist. When I play a game, I ensure the first thing I learn, is how to handle myself in a 1v1. Doesn't matter if it's an MMO, an adventure, a TCG, a RTS --> I prioritize mastering the 1v1 or duel aspect of the game, before I move onto wider battles. And so I did, I mastered 1v1 to the point I felt comfortable doing those big team deathmatches, which by the way, are one of my absolute favorite modes in every game I play.

So here is the issue that I encountered and I hope developers will at least take a note on it.
The issue I encountered, was skillcap.

So for anyone not familiar with it, skillcap is the maximum level of skill in gameplay that you can't go beyond, once you reach that skill cap. As a general rule, in a game with a large skillcap, you are able to see the difference between a top 1% player, and a new player. In a game with very little to no skillcap, you can't tell a pro player from someone who just started playing.

So basically, a game such as World of Warcraft for example, has a very high skillcap. As an example, there are so many abilities in that game, that my keybinds are as follows:

"12346, Q,E,R,T,Y,F,G,H,Z,X,C,V,F1,F2, ALT-1, ALT-2, ALT-3,.... ALT-F2, CTRL-1,CTRL-2,CTRL-3....CTRL-F2, and then SHIFT-1, and so on. Adding mouse buttons into that, I literally have over 50 keybind combinations for each and every possible ability. So the skillcap is great. Someone who may only want to use keybinds 1 through 6, wouldn't stand a chance against someone that's mastered a keyboard full of keybinds.

But that's one mode of skillcap. In shooters, such as Overwatch or Warzone, the characters and players also have some special abilities, whether it's heals, or tactical abilities, and the skillcap is still significant due to timing, mobilization, and of course, being able to have perfect aim.

With Bannerlord, I see the skillcap in Bannerlord as being extremely low, to the point where you get much better once you master blocking, counterblocking on attack, and timing your swing and movement. And to me, a highly competitive player, this presents an issue because even if I possess the ability to go "crazy", the game limits me from doing so due it's mechanics and setup not being customizable.

Take a look at a game such as Sea of Thieves. The skillcap in that game, used to be incredibly high. They reduced the skillcap because Xbox console players complained so much that they couldn't keep up with PC player turning, and so they reduced the skillcap. But still, there is a significant skillcap, even if it's been belittled.

So what would I change about Bannerlord to increase skillcap? Let us customize our "classes". Similar to how in various games you get to choose your set up, let us choose from that instead of having premade class setups, where maybe we don't want those points or want those armours.

If I want to be Khan's Guard but with extra athletic running ability and absolutely no riding nor melee skills, let me be that. If I want to be fully armored with skill only in sword, and nothing in two handed nor polearm, let me be that. The premade classes prevent everyone from playing how they want.

Make it so that there are 50, or 100, or 150, or 250, whatever you want, POINTS to customize your class, and if you wanna put 250 of all your points in polearm, or bow, or crossbow, or whatever, let that person do so. If they want 25 points in athletic, 25 points in riding, and the rest split between sword and bow, or spear and bow, let them do so. Block the Intelligence, social, and the other perk column that is in single player that doesn't affect PvP, and only enable Endurance (athletic and riding), vigor, and control, and let us customize our class.

Heck, you could even allow Blacksmith, and allow to create our OWN weapon in multiplayer.

And also, let us choose the weapons. Maybe I want Knight armor but an axe or lance, or crossbow. And so on. Give us the option to customize our weapons. I personally don't like the multiplayer weapon variety at all, there's only like 3 good weapons (yes, the Aserai axe of course). In single player, I spent so many hours leveling blacksmith so I could craft my own one-handed sword thats long, fast, deals little damage, but it's long and quick and I like it. And it sucks I can't bring that into multiplayer.

I guess above all, it'd be cool if we could choose our talents spent, our armors, and above all, customizable weapons in PvP.

Thanks, and once again, Bannerlord has given me so much fun, like I haven't had in a long time, in this last week and a half. But now that I want to do PvP, with the skillcap and lack of customization, I feel it's something I can't enjoy.
 
So you have mastered the game? Send us a sneakpeak of your dueling skills and then your sword and shield gameplay, then your riding skills and last bit not least your archery skills. All of course in pvp.

I also invite you to join destiny pick ups. Here you can compete with the best players currently playing Bannerlord.

What you are asking for is very specific don’t worry. There is probably gonna be a mod. It is called cRPG and it will let you do exactly what you ask for in your Post. Just be a bit patient :smile:
 
talking almost like a warband veteran. :grin:
a lot of your points have been brought up by the community time and time again, TW does not seem like they care too much or is slow to react. Things are happening, I will give them that, but its been a very slow pace.

perhaps, if you are interested in the sort of game Bannerlord is just with a few more combat mechanics (and imo overall a bit more responsiveness) consider checking out its predecessor, Warband, and that maybe coupled with a mod like Mercenaries that offers continuous progression in multiplayer
 
For what you describe you should wait for cRPG to become a thing again.

While I do believe Rods statements have some value, it's fun to see people jump on the bandwagon because class customization.
While I do agree that Warbands system was more fun... come on guys, you can do better. This is not creating the skill cap bannerlord or warband has. Go on and hate, i don't mind that, but the skill cap in BL is not created by key binds or customization/load outs but by other things. We all know that. And not going to be rude, someone who has just spent two weeks in this franchise may give judgement, but many people in this forum played this game for years.

Dextrus summed well up what I think about it aswell. But Rod already said that due to lack of costumization (i.e. skill trees like in MMO, which Bannerlord is not) he won't compete. So case closed. Next one please.

PS: In WB Competitive there was meta for gear loadouts, equip share etc, so haha, **** custom equipment in this regard. This is in some way the thing the class system of bannerlord is doing now. There is also some meta in progress about the equipment here but... well, we'll see what the devs will do about it.
 
Meh, multiplayer is pretty garbage rn. Even at the highest level of competitive play it is just not as enjoyable as warband. All we can do is wait for mods, I have little hope in TW being able to fix the disaster they've created.
 
Meh, multiplayer is pretty garbage rn. Even at the highest level of competitive play it is just not as enjoyable as warband. All we can do is wait for mods, I have little hope in TW being able to fix the disaster they've created.
Still his argument is that the skill cap is really low, something people who have still some brain left after all their hate on the class system but calling themselves M&B veterans should strongly disagree with.
 
Still his argument is that the skill cap is really low, something people who have still some brain left after all their hate on the class system but calling themselves M&B veterans should strongly disagree with.
It is very low. You can't seriously say that Bannerlord takes as much skill to be really good at as warband. in BL the skill gap between the good players and the really good players is very slight whereas in warband that gap was actually a meaningful one.
 
For what you describe you should wait for cRPG to become a thing again.

While I do believe Rods statements have some value, it's fun to see people jump on the bandwagon because class customization.
While I do agree that Warbands system was more fun... come on guys, you can do better. This is not creating the skill cap bannerlord or warband has. Go on and hate, i don't mind that, but the skill cap in BL is not created by key binds or customization/load outs but by other things. We all know that. And not going to be rude, someone who has just spent two weeks in this franchise may give judgement, but many people in this forum played this game for years.

Dextrus summed well up what I think about it aswell. But Rod already said that due to lack of costumization (i.e. skill trees like in MMO, which Bannerlord is not) he won't compete. So case closed. Next one please.

PS: In WB Competitive there was meta for gear loadouts, equip share etc, so haha, **** custom equipment in this regard. This is in some way the thing the class system of bannerlord is doing now. There is also some meta in progress about the equipment here but... well, we'll see what the devs will do about it.

The thing is that bannerlord removed the fun, and tried to only encourage competitive, which it failed to do.


Also yes there is a skillcap 100%. Can you explain to me why in a duel, 1v1, you would whoop my ass but i would still manage to somehow kill you a few times?

I'm not saying it doesn't happen in warband, but i know for sure people like Gibby would whoop my ass in warband, and i won't be able to get him more then once.
 
The thing is that bannerlord removed the fun, and tried to only encourage competitive, which it failed to do.


Also yes there is a skillcap 100%. Can you explain to me why in a duel, 1v1, you would whoop my ass but i would still manage to somehow kill you a few times?

I'm not saying it doesn't happen in warband, but i know for sure people like Gibby would whoop my ass in warband, and i won't be able to get him more then once.
Exactly this. In Warband I can't touch people like Aporta or Vorn but in Bannerlord its a totally different story.
 
Still his argument is that the skill cap is really low, something people who have still some brain left after all their hate on the class system but calling themselves M&B veterans should strongly disagree with.
I said the same about people who said the bannerlord class system was better, didn't mean i was right. It's called an opinion. Just like i believe what you said is absolute crap.

Exactly this. In Warband I can't touch people like Aporta or Vorn but in Bannerlord its a totally different story.
I fear people who are top of the competitive scene in bannerlord, will become defensive about the game skill cap
 
cRPG was great for Warband and there will be certainly a mod of similar content in Bannerlord and that mod will be very successful and well populated.
I get that a lot of people are unsatisfied with Skirmish, but as a team based multiplayer it's way more difficult and individual skill is way more important than in Warband.
I suppose what most people would be happy with would be a Battlemode that utilised presets you could create for infantry/archer/cav (warband style) similar to what is proposed here. Add in a battle section to the armory where you can equip and skill the aforementioned meta types. You could well have a fixed skill per class in there to keep things balanced since a meta would be established rather quickly anyway. Have that with a 30v30 scale and it fits perfectly in the need PvP gap of Skirmish and Siege. (Exluding Captain here due to the bots being used, it's an entirely different PvP type).

This part was uncompleted due to a refresh, apologies:
Regarding creating own gear, this is where things would go into more of an RPG style in multiplayer and it'd be something of a crossbreed between cRPG and Persistant World. (Haven't played PW myself I can't comment on the customisabilty of player stats and weapos/equipment). Feel free to correct me or expand on this statement.

Personally, I'd be happy to just be able to set preset perks for skirmish in the armory.

Still his argument is that the skill cap is really low, something M&B veterans should strongly disagree with.
True. The game is easy to learn, but hard to master. As was and will all M&B titles always be. Having some balancing issues and bugs does not change the fact.
The impression may arise when you go on TDM and grind enough gear to go glaive cav and then feel good about that 30:mad: stat on the score board, but that is not how you would determine individual skill in this game. Neither would be siege, for the multitude of players present, and neither would be Captain for the multitude of bots present. Individual skill is found in player only 1v1 etc, which is why it's pretty clear that the highest individual skill levels would be found at Skirmish. Excluding the duel server on there, but to be fair a good duelist does not make a good Skirmish inf for a whole bunch of reasons (meaning it's not exclusive but it's not "I am a good duelist, ergo I am a good infantry player").
You can't seriously say that Bannerlord takes as much skill to be really good at as warband.
Yes, you can. I take assumptions like that with a grain of salt, since they usually come from people that have played Warband for 2,3k hours but stopped Bannerlord after 30 hours. And while they are similar games, they are not the same and the presumed expertise people derive their statements from is usually founded on credit that is misguidely transfered from a separate game.
Being good at Warband does not make you good at Bannerlord. What made you good at Warband was practise and while you might not have to learn some principles completely anew the game works and plays very differently. And that difference in feel is what "old" Warbanders, the people that played Native, possibly competitively until Bannerlord released, struggle with most. Whereas "OG Warbanders" like Bard or myself, who have played the Warband beta in 2009 and had quite a break from the competitive scene in later years, don't struggle with. Because we didn't jump from Warband directly into Bannerlord. Granted, this excludes people that really went on with this franchise without much breaks for over a decade.
Granted, we're older now and with higher age you also get a higher tolerance for whining about things changing because they just do, or atleast you should be less whiny about, but the "it's different therefore worse" is such a narrow mindset that all debate is fruitless, since people keep arguing about things in a game they don't even play.
I will give ground on the issue of chamber blocking: Because that is straight up not working reliably for the most part (it is possible on right swings but it's nowhere near as easy to reproduce as in Warband). Keep in mind that the game is still in its early stages and from personal experience I can tell you: Warband was pretty damn awful in its early stages. Servers were trash, combat was trash, balance was trash, some fixes fixed one issue and opened three new problems and reintroduced a bug that was fixed previously.
The thing is that bannerlord removed the fun, and tried to only encourage competitive, which it failed to do.
I believe the absence of custom servers and a battle mode attributes the most for this, which I personally absolutely agree with. See above for a proposed alternative.
Also yes there is a skillcap 100%. Can you explain to me why in a duel, 1v1, you would whoop my ass but i would still manage to somehow kill you a few times?
I am somewhat averseto the base assumption that "if you are better than me at this, then why do you not win 100% of the time" as a meta comparison between two games. I'd throw in the basis of "things you can exploit in Warband and, applying knowledge on these things, use to your advantage" and "any player can kill any player in any circumstance in literally any 1v1 game of this nature

Also, this post is so long because I had to refresh to include the last 4 or 5 replies in this post. Keep it classy, lads. Also excuse the typos.

Edit: Almost missed this one:
TW does not seem like they care too much or is slow to react. Things are happening, I will give them that, but its been a very slow pace.
To be fair and very brute about this: Taleworlds, by all growth in the past decade, is still a fairly small studio that, being independent, has comparatively much to handle themselves. This means that the team actively developing the multiplayer is very small, if I were to guess I'd assume it's less than a dozen people. And the amount of work to get things working, fix issues, include new features etc is a whole bunch of stuff that often has to be done repeatedly. While I am personally annoyed by some issues (server stability, feature X and Y not being there yet and feature Z not working properly) I am well inclined to see the issues in managing the mammoth that this game project actually represents. Could Taleworlds do better? Yes. Could they do better with the resources they have? Maybe, maybe not. I am not an expert in that area. Could they do a lot worse? How about choosing Electronic Arts as their new corporate overlord so M&B can get a disneyesque treatment. Think Star Wars and how people ridiculed the prequels, then Disney happened.
 
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I want to see more videos out there peeps :smile: im curious and love to see others adventures even in PVP. Only seen one good pvper in action and thats it :/ More vids please guys for the content :wink:

Other then that its good posting and has valid points, even if i havent tried out MP yet i can see where the concerns are
 
I had to edit the above post quite a few times since, as I refreshed every time something new had been posted, parts of my already typed response went missing. Apologies for the inconvenience, it should all be there now. Feel free to let me know if there are sentences ending abruptly. Don't let me know about typos, they're bound to be in that long of a post. Keep them and satisfy your grammar loving urges silently.
 

Yes, you can. I take assumptions like that with a grain of salt, since they usually come from people that have played Warband for 2,3k hours but stopped Bannerlord after 30 hours. And while they are similar games, they are not the same and the presumed expertise people derive their statements from is usually founded on credit that is misguidely transfered from a separate game.
Being good at Warband does not make you good at Bannerlord. What made you good at Warband was practise and while you might not have to learn some principles completely anew the game works and plays very differently. And that difference in feel is what "old" Warbanders, the people that played Native, possibly competitively until Bannerlord released, struggle with most. Whereas "OG Warbanders" like Bard or myself, who have played the Warband beta in 2009 and had quite a break from the competitive scene in later years, don't struggle with. Because we didn't jump from Warband directly into Bannerlord. Granted, this excludes people that really went on with this franchise without much breaks for over a decade.
Granted, we're older now and with higher age you also get a higher tolerance for whining about things changing because they just do, or atleast you should be less whiny about, but the "it's different therefore worse" is such a narrow mindset that all debate is fruitless, since people keep arguing about things in a game they don't even play.
I will give ground on the issue of chamber blocking: Because that is straight up not working reliably for the most part (it is possible on right swings but it's nowhere near as easy to reproduce as in Warband). Keep in mind that the game is still in its early stages and from personal experience I can tell you: Warband was pretty damn awful in its early stages. Servers were trash, combat was trash, balance was trash, some fixes fixed one issue and opened three new problems and reintroduced a bug that was fixed previously.
30 Hours? I have 677 hours in BL with about 350 in the beta, the majority of which was high level competitive play in tournaments and pickups. Of course they are different games that take getting used to and require a different skill set, but that alone doesn't wash away the fact that someone like me who only has about 1.3k hours in warband (majority of which was in SP and NW) can now suddenly beat people reliably who have thousands of hours of high level competitive play in warband. No, that's not them "not being used to it", that's a reduction in what constitutes a good player and how much practice it takes to reach that point. There are a few aspects that I would say Bannerlord improved upon but to say that as a whole bannerlord is just as hard as warband is incorrect. I think this is mostly due to inconsistencies within the game and the combat, but to be honest I am not good enough at warband to really tell why this is happening. If I am to be completely honest, I think that the people who say that the game takes just as much skill as warband say this to justify why they are suddenly very good at a game they were once only mediocre at, though obviously this does not apply to everyone.
 
I believe the absence of custom servers and a battle mode attributes the most for this, which I personally absolutely agree with. See above for a proposed alternative.

Your proposed alternative is one of many that has been proposed by quiet a few people during the beta and now. I believe i have seen a dozen suggestions concerning some major overhauls that could significantly improve the system, but i have so far seen 0 of them added. If my assumptions are correct the third perk is still planned to be passive perks, which was planned since the beta. It just shows to me the dev team doesn't actually want to change the class system.

I see many of us suggestion changes, we can continue this cycle of constant suggesting things to be added to the class system, but in the end i believe the suggestions are merely read and moved on from. In the meantime the studio is constantly trying to balance the perk system, which again prove to me they are in no way going to alter this system. They will follow the path that has been set since before the beta, and will not deviate from it.

Custom servers are a major influence in this, so is battle, but let's be honest. Battle is a gamemode that was popular only among events/clans. Casual play was constantly a mixture between siege/tdm/dm in warband, and i doubt this will have any change.

I am somewhat averseto the base assumption that "if you are better than me at this, then why do you not win 100% of the time" as a meta comparison between two games. I'd throw in the basis of "things you can exploit in Warband and, applying knowledge on these things, use to your advantage" and "any player can kill any player in any circumstance in literally any 1v1 game of this nature
I would agree with you on that if the game series inherently has a low skill cap. But mount and blade is a complete opposite to this rule. It has a high skillcap, and skill from warband translates pretty well in bannerlord as most players would already have most of the basics under them, and only have to adjust as opposed to someone who has to learn from scratch.

For reference: around 500 hours in bannerlord, about 3000-4000 hours on warband if cracked included.
 
I have 1500 hours in Bannerlord and almost the same in Warband. Combat technically in Bannerlord takes more skill. Except for being a bowman contra Warband SP then its easier to land a head shot in Bannerlord still after the changes
 
30 Hours? I have 677 hours in BL with about 350 in the beta, the majority of which was high level competitive play in tournaments and pickups. Of course they are different games that take getting used to and require a different skill set, but that alone doesn't wash away the fact that someone like me who only has about 1.3k hours in warband (majority of which was in SP and NW) can now suddenly beat people reliably who have thousands of hours of high level competitive play in warband.
Pure guesswork mostly, but I'd again throw in the nature of Bannerlord being an Early Access and thus essentially a stable Beta title whereas Warband is a game that has been released a decade agao and been updated and fixed for a multitude of years.
If you did, since I am not entirely sure that could be derived from your statement, please don't take the 30 hours line as a personal offense. While it is true for a select few players, consider it a hyperbole to illustrate the difference in time spent between both titles, while also considering the above statement. People that spent most of their enormous amount of hours in a pretty much end-game state of Warband will measure Bannerlord and its state very differently.
I am also not saying that Bannerlord in direct comparison to Warband is harder or easier to learn, because again that comparison lacks a good amount of perspective from a game development point of view.
that's a reduction in what constitutes a good player and how much practice it takes to reach that point.
That particular bit doesn't work for me either, since it's not a reducation in what constitutes a good player but a shift in priority as to what elements of combat make the difference between a good and a great player.

The entire debate of which game is actually harder actually leads nowhere as well. If consensus would be reached, it would ultimately only be used to legimitate the line of thought "I am better at Warband, you are better at Bannerlord. Since Warband is more difficult, I am the overall better gamer". You might not want to call if comparing apples and oranges since it's both M&B titles, but it is very much comparing different types of apples, a thought experiment you can expand upon whenever you feel inspired to deepen your knowledge in botany.
There are a few aspects that I would say Bannerlord improved upon but to say that as a whole bannerlord is just as hard as warband is incorrect
I can happily agree to this statement. For any further interpretation, see above.
 
Warband top duellist vs Bannerlord top duellist. A ft7 on both games. The BL top duellist will get 7-0ed in 2 mins in warband, while the Warband top duellist will get rounds in Bannerlord, because the skill gap between a top and a good player in bannerlord is really low. Also, no one in Bannerlord knows exactly how the game works yet (the devs themselves don't know) so it's impossible to master it fully.

Archery wise, Warband takes way more skill than Bannerlord, especially because of the lack of arrow drop and the over abundance of archer spots in Bannerlord

Cavalry wise Warband takes more skill than Bannerlord against foot units but mastering Cav vs Cav in bannerlord is much more satisfying and requires skills

Infantry wise, well this one is hard, cuz on one hand infantry is weak in bannerlord because the two other classes are superior and much easier to learn, but I'll go with warband cuz of the fact that you can tank like crazy in inf vs inf on bannerlord.


The simplest experience would actually to make Gibby face whoever is considered a top duellist in Bannerlord to prove my point.
 
Cavalry wise Warband takes more skill than Bannerlord against foot units but mastering Cav vs Cav in bannerlord is much more satisfying and requires skills
Cant agree...Landing a hit from with an Cav is easier in Warband then in Bannerlord. Combat is more fluid, fast and precise in Bannerlord then Warband
 
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