Reminder that even with an overwhelming negative response to the MP, Taleworlds won't change any fundamental design decision.

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What do you guys think the MP player count is like realistically, aside from events and BL online? I'm feeling pretty vindicated about our collective predictions on how it would be received, and it's the anniversary of release. Here's to another year!
 
No they don't. It's impossible to compete with those games.

Considering that Bannerlord EA failed to garner much attention and is currently losing players, the only route to competitive success is to slowly turn the game around and figure out how to make multiplayer compelling to a broader audience by EA launch.

Examples of games that have grown from humble origins and no major monetary backing are Paladins and Brawlhalla. They've slowly grown into some esports prominence. Paladins is the 40th highest prize awarding game with over $2million in prizes; Brawlhalla is at #64 and continues to climb with over $1million. (https://www.esportsearnings.com/games)

The class system is horrific to balance yet simultaneously offers players low strategic depth. The most useful balance data is win-rate and pick-rate (and ban-rate but not in BL). This is categorically true in virtually all esports.

This is not true for Bannerlord. It's ridiculously complex. Let's consider some of the factors going into the Sturgia Brigands pick-rate:
  • If a player dies in a round, they could pick Brigands again and raise the pick-rate. However, since they died the first life on Brigand, the Brigand is hypothetically weaker despite having a higher pickrate, which would classically suggest that the unit is stronger.
  • A team with higher economy may run 3 Brigands while on low economy they run 2 Brigands. This increases the Brigand's pickrate in a decision based on an external factor (econ) instead of unit value.
  • In another external factor, players may choose the Brigand simply because they have 110 gold left. However, this is only relevant if Sturgia is the played faction and you have 110 gold leftover. If you were playing Vlandia, you would of had to taken a different route to have 110 gold remaining, altering the frequency when you have 110g remaining.
In the end, you're left with something like a Brigand pickrate of 8.29 per round, which is only completely accurate when comparing Brigands to Brigands, and no other unit, so it's kinda useless. But it's all you have, so, keep it I guess?

Winrate isn't any better. You take the 8.29 average Brigands per round and weight the winrate based off it. You end up with a flat winrate that represents many complex interactions and unique decisions that went into choosing the Brigand.

The core problem here is that due to gold, some troops are played when down in econ (losing) and some troops are played more when up in econ (winning). Nerfs and buffs to units that are chosen for external reasons -- losing teams buying cheaper units and winning teams buying more expensive units -- isn't balancing based on unit impact to winning but instead removing the impact of econ in general.

Let's say that Brigands are used by winning teams and Varyags are used by losing teams. This is because the Brigand allows three spawns at 330g and the Varyag fits 300g. (My mistake if these aren't the correct values.) This is NOT because the Brigand is overpowered or because the Varyag is underpowered. This is simply because they fit their respective team's gold optimally. If you were to nerf Brigands because of their winrate and nerf Varyags because of their lossrate, you wouldn't be balancing the classes. You'd be making 300g closer in value to 330g.

Let's compare this to League, who are transparent in their data and balance framework.

01_Balance_Framework_At_Launch_v1.jpg


Yeah. It's that simple.

League is thousands of times more complex (to put it lightly) than Bannerlord Skirmish, yet offers devs a clear balance direction.

(If worth noting, Riot has a secondary system to check and balance this framework. It evaluates additional "game health issues" to ensure champion diversity between levels of play and that champions don't get bunched up in some places and have low variety elsewhere.)

Unfortunately, the best method to balance Bannerlord is probably an amalgamation of winrate/pickrate -- and all the nightmares that entails -- and KDA/R -- which doesn't account for massive-impact low-KDA behaviors such as zone of threat, support potential (bowspeed/reload/damage may dramatically alter this factor due to light stuns on melee targets), cav bumps, bodyblocking (some horses do this much better than others), kicks that a teammate follows up on (movement speed, armor/shields impact success), and so on.

For example, in some cases stuns > damage. Such as a fast bow that constantly stuns with low damage compared to a slower bow with higher net DPS. Warband comes to mind where the Strong Bow had the highest DPS potential but other bows were favored due to speed. WARBAND BAD. Okay, sorry for mentioning it.

Due to all of the problems with KDA used in balancing you'd want to avoid it, but in Bannerlord, winrate/pickrate are both confuddled and poor numeric representatives of gamestate, but hopefully it's somewhere between the two.

Which gets back to the original statement: The class system is horrific to balance yet simultaneously offers players low strategic depth.

This ended up being really long for a reply. I might refine it and make it into a thread.
@Brandis. You summed it up perfectly last month in this post. I could never put my thumb on exactly why the class system was harder to balance. You nailed it perfectly here.
 
Personally I like the class system.

Played multiplayer Warband for thousands of hours and always found it frustrating having to pick my equipment based off of gold every round. This new class system seems to address and simplify that, which I like.

The only three problems I have with the game at the moment are;
- The tilde key seems broken/bugged with a cinematic camera effect so it's difficult to have any situational awareness.
- The classes for most races seem to lack a medium infantry spear-sword-shield soldier, which is the bedrock of most teams, both public and competitive.
- I'm a little confused by the combat mechanics changes; my swings seem to be going through some of my opponents on the big siege server, I'm not sure if this is possibly down to lag or just a different mechanic or what?
- I've been unable to chamberblock anything so far.
 
Personally I like the class system.

Played multiplayer Warband for thousands of hours and always found it frustrating having to pick my equipment based off of gold every round. This new class system seems to address and simplify that, which I like.
That could be solved by having an option to save your loadout.
 
Personally I like the class system.

Played multiplayer Warband for thousands of hours and always found it frustrating having to pick my equipment based off of gold every round. This new class system seems to address and simplify that, which I like.
There were plenty of ways they could have approached that by introducing things such as an armory, a system that auto selects the optimal armor without having to do the petty maths in your head and you simply have to pick weapons, presets,...

They went the worst way possible with this.


That could be solved by having an option to save your loadout.
Pretty much yeah
 
What's so bad about it? You still have ~~2-3 distinct infantry classes per faction to choose from and each has 2 customisable equipoment slots. I find it quite neat personally
 
What's so bad about it? You still have ~~2-3 distinct infantry classes per faction to choose from and each has 2 customisable equipoment slots. I find it quite neat personally
People get mad when their freedom to walk around like a pothead is taken away from them for the sake of competitiveness.
And/or freedom in general.
 
People get mad when their freedom to walk around like a pothead is taken away from them for the sake of competitiveness.
And/or freedom in general.
Sums it up.

The class system wasn't designed to be fun or special, it was designed to be balanced. Which even on that matter they fail.
 
I haven't been around here in a while but I can tell you that the discussion was exactly the same in the early days of Warband (Jesus Christ i'm old); people complained about the balance and the devs eventually fixed it. Please try to remember that this is a Beta, they may have said it'll be released in a year a year ago but that's the nature of game development, there are delays, just be patient and i'm sure they'll improve the game.

The only thing i'm really wanting fixing in the short term is the tilde camera and making sure that each race has variation of a balanced medium infantryman with sheild 1h and spear.
 
The only thing i'm really wanting fixing in the short term is the tilde camera and making sure that each race has variation of a balanced medium infantryman with sheild 1h and spear.
Unfortunately many people have been asking for a medium infantry since the beginning of early access, but there has been no comment regarding it from the developers. I don't think it fits into their vision or design, which is a shame.

This issue would not have been an issue with a class-less system, but as there's pretty much no chance this system will change it would be good if there were more classes or sub-factions added in.
 
I haven't been around here in a while but I can tell you that the discussion was exactly the same in the early days of Warband (Jesus Christ i'm old); people complained about the balance and the devs eventually fixed it. Please try to remember that this is a Beta, they may have said it'll be released in a year a year ago but that's the nature of game development, there are delays, just be patient and i'm sure they'll improve the game.

The only thing i'm really wanting fixing in the short term is the tilde camera and making sure that each race has variation of a balanced medium infantryman with sheild 1h and spear.

I was around the early days of Warband as well and there was a difference between current way of taleworlds receiving the feedback and the one in warband beta days (armagan would directly talk with people on the forums during warband beta). It's very clear to everyone, but tw fanboys and white knights that the game won't be fixed and they'll continue to push their unwanted trash vision of the game to have 10 people playing the MP at best.
 
I haven't been around here in a while but I can tell you that the discussion was exactly the same in the early days of Warband (Jesus Christ i'm old); people complained about the balance and the devs eventually fixed it. Please try to remember that this is a Beta, they may have said it'll be released in a year a year ago but that's the nature of game development, there are delays, just be patient and i'm sure they'll improve the game.

The only thing i'm really wanting fixing in the short term is the tilde camera and making sure that each race has variation of a balanced medium infantryman with sheild 1h and spear.

This isn't a balance issue, this is a core design issue. Which is something you don't alter with a few numbers.

The beta has been finished for almost a year now, actually it has finished a year ago now i think about it. The game has been announced as far back as 2012. There is 0 excuses for 8 years of development for such a failure the multiplayer is. Treat TW like any other company and you will see how bad it is.
 
The current system is too basic. Say I wanted a shield to counter couch lances as archer, but not to survive in melee nor prevent archer fire. I would not need to have big shield coverage, since it is moot against couch lances. I would want a shield with as little weight as possible, since i don't want to stay in melee, I want to run away. I would be happy to have little hp and armor value for shield too. The situation of needing shield to counter couch does not happen multiple times in a lifespan, but once.

So my option as sharpshooter is getting a huge, heavy shield. And I was ready to sacrifice a lot of stuff to optimimize my build, but this game does not allow me to use my experience and judgement to make those calls.

I could also imagine not needing foot armor as archer. Foot armor is used by riders and to prevent footshoots around a shield. I will not be holding up a shield against an archer, I willl try to countershoot him. So I should be able to make that sacrifice and cut the shoes.

But I am not allowed to make these calls...

*Edit* Finding a shield with great speed would also be important for me.
 
The current system is too basic. Say I wanted a shield to counter couch lances as archer, but not to survive in melee nor prevent archer fire. I would not need to have big shield coverage, since it is moot against couch lances. I would want a shield with as little weight as possible, since i don't want to stay in melee, I want to run away. I would be happy to have little hp and armor value for shield too. The situation of needing shield to counter couch does not happen multiple times in a lifespan, but once.

So my option as sharpshooter is getting a huge, heavy shield. And I was ready to sacrifice a lot of stuff to optimimize my build, but this game does not allow me to use my experience and judgement to make those calls.

I could also imagine not needing foot armor as archer. Foot armor is used by riders and to prevent footshoots around a shield. I will not be holding up a shield against an archer, I willl try to countershoot him. So I should be able to make that sacrifice and cut the shoes.

But I am not allowed to make these calls...

*Edit* Finding a shield with great speed would also be important for me.
And no, you should not be able to make calls like you describe it right here.
Archers which can't kite forever are one of the good improvements of the game. Such "optimization" kill balance.
 
Its baffling to me how the game is promoted as an action RPG yet everyone can use horses, bows, crossbows etc. We are overanalyzing something that it was a perfect base in warband. They could built it from there.
 
The only thing i'm really wanting fixing in the short term is the tilde camera and making sure that each race has variation of a balanced medium infantryman with sheild 1h and spear.
There are lots of things we are "only" waiting for with relatively simple fixes identified nearly 2 years ago. Those two specific issues have been highlighted for most of that period.

MP improvement is glacial and beset by bugs.
 
And no, you should not be able to make calls like you describe it right here.
Archers which can't kite forever are one of the good improvements of the game. Such "optimization" kill balance.
Give inf option of pavise shield size that is light, but also low armor and hp. So inf has an interesting option to chase archer..
 
I've literally only just come back to these forums after years absent and I've noticed in a few threads that the devs have been quite cooperative, I'm really not sure what the problem is? It's a beta and things take a long time to improve, as they always do with beta's.

I literally got linked to a thread from mid 2020 where someone was saying about the lack of medium infantry with spear/shield and one of the devs literally said they wanted that too.

Regarding it being a core design issue, the class system isn't inherently a bad system; this would be relatively easily tweakable to add a couple more customisation buttons to each class to further customise, there are lots of possibilities within the current class system, just need to give them time to develop it.

I don't know if i'm just new around here or what but it seems to me that the devs are working on singleplayer and multiplayer is coming second; that doesn't mean that multiplayer won't be developed it just means that their core market is singleplayer players.

Patience my friends, patience.
 
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