Removed this predefined classes

Users who are viewing this thread

I think the class system is perfect for Captain mode, decent for Skirmish and an unnecessary burden for all other gamemodes. I'm not totally sure what the solution is.. but I feel like less competitive modes like siege and TDM need to allow for more individualistic customization. Troop balance doesn't matter nearly as much in these modes and shouldn't be the main focus as players are there just to have fun.
 
^ I'm not quite as dramatic as you but I too want the bulk of players to be on native, mods should be a nice distraction or change, they shouldn't be the main thing people play on though. Warband players mostly play on mods or modded servers as it is, if you count NeoGK and Matchmaking as modded content.
Yeah. We all should not have to download and install a module just to get the base game experience we were hoping for.

Im not very serious about my prediction either, but I wont be surprised at all if it actually happens to some extent, and Im 100% convinced they at least slightly factored in cosmetics when they were initially deciding which class system to go with. Still doesnt mean they cant reverse course for the good of their MP.
 
Id rather not wait 2 years, and that also means that Taleworlds would lose control over game balance and the module being played on, which I doubt they want. If Taleworlds wants people to actually buy the cosmetics theyve admitted to wanting to put into the game, they need to revert to a class system people actually want to play with.

The problem is the warband class system makes it very difficult to implement cosmetics. How could you tell what tier of armor someone is using if they are using an armor skin that they are wearing all the time, regardless of which armor is actually being worn? Therein lies the problem and why I suspect Taleworlds brass are so reluctant to change the current system. They are desperate to turn the multiplayer into a sustaining cash cow and need a system that lets them do that. The problem is that if nobody is playing the module that contains the cosmetics, nobody is buying cosmetics.

Ill be pleasantly surprised if we have individual multiplayer modules ever. Its not something Im anticipating based on what taleworlds has said about custom servers, how creating maps works, and cosmetics. They want full control over the multiplayer traffic so they can sell cosmetics, and a ton of people playing a cRPG or Persistent World module that has 0 ties to the base game doesnt allow for that.

With that said, if the individual modules arent made possible...nobody will be playing this at all in 2 years. Certainly not the numbers they are hoping for. They are in a lose lose situation in terms of cosmetics unless they redo the class system and limit cosmetics to banners, weapon skins and stuff that would be possible with Warbands old system.

Id love to be wrong and we can all look back on this in 2 years and roast my premonitions, but thats just the way my anxiety sees the game trending right now.

If anything you're saying is true, this game is doomed.
 
Roughly quoting Taleworlds from awhile back: Part of the problem with switching back to the Warband system is that MP amour is designed as one entity. This means that helmets, chest armour, boots, ect.. cannot be seperated from each other and result in one base amour value from head to toe. Body part damage multipliers scale player damage output afterwards. This is opposed to the SP system of individual amour pieces we are all familiar with from Warband.

I'm pretty sure Taleworlds did this, once again, for easier troop balancing but the system comes with the drawbacks of less unique customization and thus less interesting options. Who knows how easy it would be to implement the SP system back into MP. I suspect these are some of the reasons why Taleworlds insists the old system can never return.
 
Last edited:
Roughly quoting Taleworlds from awhile back: Part of the problem with switching back to the Warband system is that MP amour is designed as one entity. This means that helmets, chest armour, boots, ect.. cannot be seperated from each other and result in one base amour value from head to toe. Body part damage multipliers scale player damage output afterwards. This is opposed to the SP system of individual amour pieces we are all familiar with from Warband.

I'm pretty sure Taleworlds did this, once again, for easier troop balancing but the system comes with the drawbacks of less unique customization and thus less interesting options. Who knows how easy it would be to implement the SP system back into MP. I suspect these are some of the reasons why Taleworlds insists the old system can never return.

It CANNOT be that hard to make it work exactly how it works in singleplayer. The hits to different areas of the body still register as hitting those parts, so the exact same calculations are taking place.

If making the armor be individual pieces is the biggest hurdle...thats not even a hurdle.
 
Roughly quoting Taleworlds from awhile back: Part of the problem with switching back to the Warband system is that MP amour is designed as one entity. This means that helmets, chest armour, boots, ect.. cannot be seperated from each other and result in one base amour value from head to toe. Body part damage multipliers scale player damage output afterwards. This is opposed to the SP system of individual amour pieces we are all familiar with from Warband.

I'm pretty sure Taleworlds did this, once again, for easier troop balancing but the system comes with the drawbacks of less unique customization and thus less interesting options. Who knows how easy it would be to implement the SP system back into MP. I suspect these are some of the reasons why Taleworlds insists the old system can never return.

I dont see how thats a problem... Each pieces give a number of "armor" which cumulates to produces one number.
 
I too want the bulk of players to be on native, mods should be a nice distraction or change, they shouldn't be the main thing people play on though. Warband players mostly play on mods or modded servers as it is
agreed
taleworlds need some radical changes in their ways and considering class system is here to stay they really need to implement thorough customization to the class system
 
What turns me off the most is having to play some annoying infantry classes because I cannot afford normal shielded infantryman. Basically you gotta go peasant or some 2h class which I dont enjoy. I just want to play shielded inf, and it doesnt have to be with heavy armour but at least a good shield and decent weapon
 
I dont see how thats a problem... Each pieces give a number of "armor" which cumulates to produces one number.

Their line of thought must be that one piece of amour is less time consuming to balance than each individual piece. While that makes perfect logical sense, the reasoning doesn't account for the player's emotional preference for customization in less competitive modes (or even in competitive modes).
 
Last edited:
Their line of thought must be that one piece of amour is less time consuming to balance than each individual piece. While that makes perfect logical sense, it doesn't account for the emotional preferences for customization in less competitive modes.

On paper they are right, but in practicality the class system has proven to be more and more complicated to balance than the Warband system ever was because not only do they balance classes, they balance weapons and overall factions as well now.
 
Yeah, totally. Right now captain and siege and tdm and skirmish all share same gear/ premade builds.
Eventually they would need to seperate those cuz they're already getting stale and people want flexibility
So either:
A: TaleWorlds seperate all different gamemodes with different premade builds. Or they let players choose as they could in warband. Either one will take work. And anything less will make people run to mods and custom servers the second they come out, leaving native a sad empty place.
 
Yeah, totally. Right now captain and siege and tdm and skirmish all share same gear/ premade builds.
Eventually they would need to seperate those cuz they're already getting stale and people want flexibility
So either:
A: TaleWorlds seperate all different gamemodes with different premade builds. Or they let players choose as they could in warband. Either one will take work. And anything less will make people run to mods and custom servers the second they come out, leaving native a sad empty place.

Separating mods would be a good idea, either if some want to play it competitively on skirmishes with the preset class system, or on the siege with a more free one.
It would be a fair share

especially that it would give the possibility to modders to choose between two systems of classes already made
 
+ I support this idea, I was kinda mad when i found out about this premade classes on the beta
Premade classes removed the option for the player to use and experience with new weapons and equipment
 
I think they were looking at making bannerlord into a super balanced e-sport type thing, I heard Armagen say something along those lines in an interview, but most of the people don't want that, maybe alot of the hardcore forum people do but they refuse to even play bannerlord mp because it just feels wrong compared to warband or something snooty like that, the majority of people that are willing to put up with the game want a sandbox they can mess around with.
 
they refuse to even play bannerlord mp because it just feels wrong compared to warband or something snooty like that
You can read up on some of Bannerlord's criticism if you want:
This new "physics-based™" chamber blocking system is inherently inconsistent due to the large number of different weapons and animations. Chambering with a sword against a hammer will require different timing and positionning than chambering with a knife against a spear. But most importantly, the animations themselves aren't made to facilitate chamber blocking. Some attacks, such as the ones shown in the video below, are mirrored and will move in parallel to each other instead of intersecting. These attacks are practically impossible to chamber.

To sum it up, here are the variables that come into play for chamber blocking in both games:
Bannerlord's variables:
- What weapon you're using
- What weapon your opponent is using
- Your opponent's height in relation to yours
- Your weapon's position
- Your enemy's weapon's position
- Your stance
- Your position in relation to your enemy's
- Correct attack direction
- Correct timing

Warband's variables:
- Your position in relation to your enemy's
- Correct attack direction
- Correct timing

This overcooked system needs to be entirely dumped if Taleworlds ever want chambering to be a mechanic that can be relied upon. It's at the moment an inherently inconsistent system due to the insane number of variables that go into the equation. Variables that no one here as regular human being can account for."


"Imo this is another example of the wonky physics that I have noticed in single player as well. The infantry there died from a lance laterally touching their left cheek, I don't know how the devs can think that this is more realistic or makes more sense than Warband."

"It's because horses always move you around regardless of a knockdown or not, regardless of on your team or not. In Warband a cav would either stun you and keep you in the same place, or knock you down but keep you in same place. In Bannerlord they can move you, knock you flying for 5m, drag you around with them, etc, making it all feel very unpredictable for everyone."


"The camera is rather slow moving back to its original position after looking around with circumflex. I feel like we need a button to enable the instant snap back from Warband.
Its basically impossible to look around during fighting since you loose very important time in combat.
And it feels unnatural and unsatisfying to use circumflex at all since you know that a weird camera move will follow. The camera motion also causes some kind of motion sickness when you want to turn your character while the camera is moving back."

"It's really important to be aware of and dodge cavalry, given how deadly they are and how quickly they can appear. So, using the camera (view outfit) key is incredibly important for gameplay. Having the camera snap back slowly (i.e. not instantly) is severely limiting and frustrating.

At the very least, add the option for the camera to snap back immediately in the menu."


"Bannerlord has a number of issues which contribute to RNG and a general head-scratching bewilderment about how the combat works.

-The Stance System
The Bannerlord stance system affects the speed and range of swings depending on which stance you're in -something that is difficult for the player to control when they're in the heat of very intense combat. This obviously creates inconsistency in the combat mechanics and makes it near impossible to fully master distance and timing -because distance and timing are now subject to a degree of randomness.

-Weird Character Movement
This has been somewhat improved upon in recent patches, but the issue remains. Bannerlord characters can accelerate very rapidly and then rotate at weird unnatural angles. There are also many variables attached to movement, such as class speed, which shield they are using, attacking, blocking, and S+A/S+D. Why is this bad? Because, when compared to Warband -which had much more measured and consistent character movement, rotation rate, and acceleration speed, this adds a degree of randomness to the fighting. Suddenly positioning and range becomes a lot less consistent. I can't tell you how many times I've hit someone flush, dealing a chunk of damage, only to suddenly miss on my immediate follow-up swing because they were able to scoot away. Like how? Oh, wait, it's because there's almost no penalty to movement speed when you get hit. Oh and pro-tip, if you're fighting someone better than you in Bannerlord, just try spinning -that's good trick.

-Inconsistent Hitboxes and Weapon Reach
Weapons feel functionally shorter than they actually appear (except for some maces and short swords, which feel longer than they look). The hitboxes also seem really janked at times. A lot of either ghost-hits or unexplainable straight-up whiffs on a pretty nice-sized targets. The friendly fire too, allied hitboxes just seem to be magnet for teammate attacks. And don't get me started on the those wall-hit that your weapons always get stuck on. Something just feels off about the hitboxes. I might be the only one thinking this, or maybe it's not just me. Who knows, that's just my take.

-Over-exaggerated Swing Animations
Warband had nice tight animations. It really put the player in control of where they were attacking. In Bannerlord they bring the weapon all the way behind their back like they're in a bad 80s movie. It's a ridiculous over-windup of the swing and it causes you to hit things more at your sides than what's in front of you. All too often I've actually hit an enemy I wasn't even aiming at simply because of the over-exaggerated swings -and if that's not RNG/inconsistency then I don't know what is.

-Arbitrary Delays
Block delay was a battle that raged for months. Now the issue of attack/hold delay sadly remains. I mentioned earlier about Warband being so seamless and responsive. Held attacks were a major part of melee fighting, used to throw off your opponent's rhythm, open them up, or foil an opponent trying to chamber you. Well now with Bannerlord's extra animation attached to held attacks (known as hold delay), holds become a lot less powerful. Additionally, keep in mind that it only takes your left mouse button being held down for a few milliseconds to trigger a hold delay, so many times this issue happens even when you're not trying to do a held attack.

-Archery
Not so much having to do with RNG/inconsistency, but adding to the skillcap issue all the same. Incredibly user-friendly, drop-assist in 3rd person, arrows are auto-nocked after every shot, high archer mobility, high dps. Bannerlord's tagline at Early Access launch should have been: "Now you too can play as John Wick."

-Misc.
Non-uniform infantry movement speed between the factions, creating a big disconnect between faction infantry abilities.
See above but now apply to different infantry classes.
Kicking (especially before 1.5 patch. If you are one of those people who said kicking was fine pre-1.5 then sorry but you are a shill.)
Broken chamber blocking.
Throwing weapons accuracy/damage (has seen improvement though)
The hitboxes for horses' heads are a magnet for melee damage thus protecting the rider from attacks that would otherwise hit them."


"The ability to jump over kicks was a flashy and effective move that I dearly miss from warband. It was also a fun tool for infantry who wanted to catch cav off guard, and a properly timed jump swing could be very punishing and was my primary source of dopamine for like 90% of my GK_TDM pub days. Overall having a useful jump added further depth to movement and just made the game more fun in general."

"Yeah, plus it's just hard to get over stuff you want to be able to get over quickly. Warband jumps were.... well, they had their quirks - but they worked with the game well, i think - and most maps took them into careful consideration for prop height and so on most the time.

bannerlord feels like that is the case... less so - and the maps tend to have more like... untouchable visual clutter, let's say. Things that are invisible walled out that you could otherwise easily access or terrain you can't climb or stand on - not because it's too high or steep but just "because balance". Not to say that it's a bad thing to balance where you can go on a map - but it needs to be obviously visually you can't go there. Don't just wall it off invisibly. Make it too high to jump onto.

It reminds me a lot of overwatch in that sense. There's so many surfaces in that game you just can't go on "because". Devs only want you standing on certain balconies or rooftops - but the only way to know which ones you can and can't stand on is to test them all out and see which ones they decide to make you slip off of with *no* visual indicator that you can't stand on it whatsoever.

And in other places things that should be easily jump overable are not. This isn't exactly a jump issue on its own, but the jumps themselves do feel somewhat short and unresponsive. It would be nice to tighten them up. And on a smaller note make it sound like you're having less of an asthma attack when you do."

"I'm not sure if there's anything wrong with the body animation. It's just the movement through space that feels lacking. People do still jump a lot within groupfights in MP, but the lack of height and speed affects the functionality quite a lot. And it's a lot less fun. Not to mention it doesn't look realistic or convincing in any way. It feels like you're moving underwater. This isn't just as heavy infantry either; I tested jumping as a peasant troop with no weapon, and it was just as limp."


"Shields are in this interesting spot where they are incredible in melee but terrible at blocking arrows"


"If shields were only held in one direction (forward) then there would only need to be very minor forcefields covering the entire front of the body (but not so much around the sides, so that shot in the OP would have hit). However, with the directional shield blocking, they make the forcefield go way off around the body (if you block to the side) and it remains quite a lot at the front too. I wouldn't ask for archers to be buffed. Shields and infantry simply need to be fixed."

"Body parts remain visible beyond the shield even with the directional shield blocking - all the more so, when it's in any position but down, and even then the feet aren't covered (physically). Meanwhile, if you direct the shield up to protect your face while looking straight forward (at least as a Varyag), it does this...

Even if the arrow doesn't kill you, it still feels incredibly annoying to get shot past the shield, and you can't always be playing in heavy armour. It's also too much to expect infantry to quickly direct the shield to cover whichever body part the archer will suddenly be aiming towards. In Warband, it could be really quick shielding an arrow in the heat of battle. I guess I could have tried to look at the archer at a 45 degree angle while holding the shield to the left, but ... it's not exactly feeling intuitive."


"I think these may be some examples of projectiles penetrating shields: The two cheapest board shields in Warband could be penetrated from normal arrow shots, so it might be the same with the board shield I used here in the first clip - I got shot in the leg, but I held the shield down. Cavalry shields could be penetrated in Warband, and travelling at a high speed into the arrow might help it happen, which I'm guessing is what happened in the second clip. I don't remember shields getting penetrated by throwing weapons in Warband, even at point blank, but that's possibly what happened in the third clip, since I don't remember releasing the shield. Penetrating shields has always been one of the worst features in the game.

Here's me bringing up my shield to an archer but still getting shot because the shield goes in funny angles: I guess I'm expected to recalibrate my shield after holding it up (although there's often not enough time to do so) or point my camera at a weird angle while understanding what direction my shield will be pointing as I bring it up...

Here are moments where I directed the shield properly but the arrow still went past. Arrows could go past the round shield and kite shield in Warband, especially with footshots. It always felt horrible and unfair, and now I think it's even worse.

Here I blocked down and got hit in the upper body (I think from above). Although, the projectile visually goes through the shield. I'm guessing that's just a visual bug. It might make it look like shield penetration. The projectile goes to the stomach (where the shield is protecting), but the blood effect happens on the shoulder.

Here I blocked up at an archer higher than myself but get hit in the leg. I'm not exactly sure where I'm supposed to direct the shield then... And to have to direct the shield up or down at all feels ridiculous.

Here's the actual crossbow going through my shield instead of being knocked back, so it could shoot me dead in the shoulder. I was hoping the mechanic of stunning a bow or crossbow by moving into it would be improved from Warband by making it more consistent and reliable."


"It's the attack delay that concerns me the most. It's hard to tell whether it's sometimes lag or a peculiarity in the game design or just my own slip up, but clearly they've put a lot of variables into the system, which probably give off this responsiveness issue. I'm aware of weapon stunning, but still, apart from when you've committed to a swing, there shouldn't be too much else to prevent you from attacking, otherwise it feels really annoying, like you're fighting your own character more than your opponent."


"He's not talking about the "perfect block". He's talking about if there's any difference of sound for when a normal block gets hit by a held attack from a heavier weapon or not. I haven't tested it a lot, but I think there might be a heavier metallic sound for when you block a held attack, particularly against a heavier weapon.

In this video, there are lighter metallic sounds when normal attacks are blocked, but when a "stronger" attack is blocked, it plays a heavier metallic sound, which might not just be random. You can see that it stunned the weapon, because it created one of those moments where both players are staring at each other and doing nothing. And I don't think there was any visual indication. The sparks are held off for other features. Most people will probably find out the weapon is stunned when they're clicking the mouse and the game isn't doing anything, which is a really annoying feeling.

Maybe you can learn to expect when weapon stunning is likely to occur? Yet it doesn't really look like the enemy's weapon was held for very long. It was possibly the speed of the swing as the player was spinning slightly that turned it into the equivalent of a held attack to stun the weapon. In this video, my shield was hit by a 2h weapon, and I believe there was stunning. It wouldn't let me attack, and something dodgy is happening in the animation. I don't think there was any particular difference of sound."


"To be more concrete, why does it feel like I'm fighting underwater or carrying a bag of stones?"


"As it stands, multiplayer in Bannerlord isn't doing too hot. It seems to me that neither seasoned veterans, nor new players can find enjoyment or a reason to stick around. While many people have already explained why class systems, combat mechanics, and the lack of private servers are a problem, I think that the problem may also extend to our offering of gamemodes. More specifically, the exclusion of the best one. If you want a tl;dr: skirmish mode is hostile to new players, and battle offers public players the best shot at a competitive game which they can enjoy.

To start, I’ll explain why I think skirmish is especially anti-pub and anti-new, then show how battle mitigates the issues inherent to skirmish. I think an easy way to explain Bannerlord skirmish’s problems is to compare it to an analogue. When I imagine a 6v6 gamemode, one which is also well optimized for esports, the first thing that comes to mind is CSGO competitive. Both focus on teamwork, include small engagements, and are pretty skill intensive. However, whereas CSGO’s scene is still vibrant, Bannerlord’s queues are perennially empty, and that’s after a month of play. What went wrong? Put simply, such gamemodes rely on both teams having comparable skill, and Bannerlord can’t provide that promise. The reason for that is Bannerlord’s multiplayer is inherently niche, while CSGO or R6 are massive franchises with far larger player bases. In those games, when someone new decides to solo queue, there will be similarly skilled players that MMR can sort them with. They end up fighting with and against people they stand a chance against, and having fun. However, if their communities were as small as ours, they’d have to fight global elites, or a team far worse than them, and suffer. In Bannerlord, this reality is noticeable. We can see that 6 stacks are getting tired of pubstomping, and pubs now instinctively quit when they see a 6 stack. The consequence of this has been that veterans and clans got burned out, and pubs uninstalled, never to play again. I’m sorry to say, but unless Bannerlord becomes a critically acclaimed FPS franchise, this issue will persist -- the community won't be big enough to entertain this system.

Even if we ignored this matchmaking issue, however, skirmish’s structure remains deeply unrewarding. This is due to two factors: small engagements, and the presence of respawns. I’m sure we’ve all noticed that the leaderboards on our skirmishes often look like this:

The values are almost always skewed, with one or two “carries” tearing up the enemy on each side, and a set of bystanders. How is this related to skirmish’s structure? Firstly, in such small confrontations, differences in skill have a disproportionate effect on outcomes. One bad or uncooperative teammate constitutes a loss of 15% of your fighting strength. Conversely, one comparatively good teammate means 15% of your team is “elite.” Not only that, the death of another team’s carry has little consequences for that team, because they have the potential to respawn (sometimes 3 times in a round). This means that one good player can (and often does) stomp the other team, and one bad player can cost a round through their ineptitude. The system exaggerates skill differentials, and that makes for consistently imbalanced matches.

How then does battle mitigate these issues? Firstly, the fights are far larger, and so skill differentials even out and become less significant. Having a bad regiment or clan assigned to your side in a battle wasn’t a death sentence, even if they made up 20% of your team. There’s a lot of structural reasons for this, one is that larger battles allow new players to pick and choose their fights. They can follow large blobs (a form of teamwork which is unlikely to be achievable in skirmish), and they have the option to blend into a crowd, rather than be forced into suicidal 1v1's. Moreover, losing 50% of your team in a battle simply doesn’t hurt as much as it does in skirmish. Whereas a 3v6 can be brutal (and is inevitable in skirmish once such losses are achieved), players in battle can still have a large group with which to fight, and a 10v20 is far easier to win than, say, a 2v4. This is why carries were far harder to find in battle.

While we’re on the topic of carries, here’s my second reason for why battle is better: deaths matter. If I were to get a lucky kill on say, Beeflip, a player who terrifies me, then he’s gone for this round. There’s a sense of accomplishment associated with this, and it has a tangible (if small) effect on the battle. The chance of him tearing me up is gone, and I can continue to fight without fearing that he’ll reappear this round and smack me. As someone who played Warband battles extensively, and was very bad, this was what kept me going. I had a chance to win; my victories, however small, felt consequential. Furthermore, I got a chance to immerse myself in a competitive, hard fought situation, but I wasn’t ever responsible for winning or losing it. In other words, the wins felt sweeter, and the losses were less bitter. I don’t envy the pubs who get a lucky kill on an OG player, only to have him respawn and “nothing personnel, kid” them. And I'm sorry for those players who feel personally responsible for losing to a VK 6 stack, solely because they were the 15% of the team who couldn’t get a kill. These things didn’t happen in battle, and they allowed the players who weren’t good but wanted to experience a competitive and cutthroat fight to do so.

If Taleworlds really wants to cater to new and casual players, they need to understand that casual refers to the extent to which they play the game, not the kind of fights that they want. Deathmatch and siege are all well and good, but there are pubs and newbies who clearly crave a hard-fought win, rather than a moshpit of sword swings. If you want evidence of this, look at the absolute masochists still playing skirmish. To them, “casual” means that they don’t want to waste their lives mashing rmb to block, not that they hate a challenge in a video game. So please, TW, recognize that there are new and low skill members of our community who want to play something “hardcore,” and that skirmish is inherently hostile to them. Implementing a battle mode would be the best move towards properly including our new players in the fun that the sweaty side of Bannerlord can be, and so I hope you consider it"


"Faction/Class satisfaction and fun
In an attempt to provide balance in the game, several points got ignored by TW in my opinion. First and foremost, factions are considered classes themselves. They have different stats to each archetype (infantry/archery/cavalry). Therefore, many players will be at a disadvantage when playing a certain faction due to playstyle, or the opposite, an advantage.

The problem with the first point is that I for example, do not like Aserai and Khuzait and a big part of the empire. Therefore, when I am playing these factions I just do not have fun. I could have fun in Warband because I could build my character within a faction that cannot excel at infantry, which is my main class, to have the best performance possible within the faction limits. This does not happen in Bannerlord. I get stomped every time I play Aserai and Khuzait because none of their classes fit my playstyle. I cannot build something that can give me satisfaction in playing those factions and since it's random as to what faction you play in Skirmish, I am sure you understand that a lot of time the fun goes away. I am not claiming this is the case for all the players, but it is for me. And I am pretty sure it is for others aswell. Mount and blade is a mechanical-skill requiring game, every swing speed counts, every speed counts. And that's why warband, even if unbalanced, was beautiful to play.

Personalization
In warband, I could mix and match armor, have no helmet if I wish and I could see my character. I could choose specific loadouts per faction and train on them. But due to the fact that I was building them, I approached the game how I want to approach it. I could build an identity that players who saw me knew who I was. The same goes for other players. I could recognize players by their face and their gear, it was almost like every other player who is dedicated and plays had his own tale in the game over the years and they were recognizable.

This does not happen in Bannerlord. We all look the same. I am identical to other huskarls, I am identical to other nomads. It just feels very generic. I understand, to an extent, that TW thought that unified units would look good, because we are an army. That is good for movies and books, but not in a video game. It is eye candy for the first month. Then it's boring. That's why skins sell so much in video games. People want to be special, not the messiah or the 'hero', but able to create identities. And that is very important in a medieval video game, because that's all you have. We do not have casting fireballs that look cool, or special spinning moves, or casting lightning bolts. We are playing a grounded game that has semi-realistic movement and combat and feels earthly. Therefore, we do need immersion. The medieval era's tales and actions of people passed through generations through books and stories. And it was all about identity, the way they fought, the way they looked, heroic actions or terrible actions. Identity is important. And the class system does not allow that, at all.

The illusion of balance
Classes in paper work better for balance but I have to disagree. People will find out about metas, and when you can't form an identity all you have to do is playing the most broken thing to win. I disagree that classes are easy to balance. Overwatch, LoL, DoTA are all proof of that. Blizzard is a billionaire company and they still cannot balance OW decently. LoL's viable champions are about 10-15 out of the 50+ it has. And the list could go on and on. The class system is okay to drag casual people in, but it won't make the game easier for them long-term. It will force them in shoes they dont want to be in because they can't build specific characters, it enforces certain playstyles. And that is very bad. Imagine if CSGO scrapped their economy system and go classes. There would be a riot. And rightfuly so. Warband's system was more balanced in my opinion. If we could get away things like archers triple stacking quivers, or 4 x Javelin characters then that would be better. I am not claiming warband is the most balanced game in the world, but it definitely was better than Bannerlord at this point.

Fun should be a video game's scope, not total balance. Balance has a lot to do with skill ceiling and personal training. And that's why games like Call of duty, after 10 years go back to the roots, that's why World of Warcraft re-released classic, which is much harder but also more fun than retail. The pattern is very clear, video games should be fun overall.

Unexpected scenarios:
In a medieval game, I find it absurd that you show us what classes the enemy have. The game should not feel like chess. It should feel like a fun, reactive and fast paced game. Unexpected scenarios and not expecting specific things from another player when you see him is what keeps your adrenaline pumping. The current game design gives me information on everything that the enemy will do. A wilding? He will probably smash my shield with his axe, run away and javelin me. A tribal warrior will spam me with his mace. And its almost always what happens. That is both a mistake by making classes and giving us a UI revealing enemy classes. A big element of surprise is lost there and it does not feel like a fight anymore, it feels like a competition of who will picking better counter units. It's not immersive, or fun, for me.

Faction stats
There are certain things that I liked in warband and that was the stats. Power strike, ironflesh, athletics etc. This feels much more dumbed down in Bannerlord and it's currently a spam fest of swings on who will gain the faster weapon. In warband, it was cool because your faction had certain stats and then you could modify by choosing weapons to your liking, slow or harder hitting, armor for speed etc. In Bannerlord, the heavy armor makes you painfully slow, the slow weapons are just nonviable at the moment and the characters feel like they either weigh a ton or weigh a feather. It's just a very strange game design that does not feel like an action RPG, but more of an action game with minimal rpg elements.

Infantry fights take way too long.
Infantry in bannerlord simply feels bad. Especially slow ones. Mamlukes on foot for example, two painfuly slow characters with slow scimitars can literally fight forever. The HP pool and swing physics make battles very dull and sometimes you need to hit someone else about 7 times to die. This is not fun, especially when archers and cavalry are in the game. The game's movements in-combat are too fast but the combat itself when it comes to exchanging hits is too slow. This makes low-sensitivity players have a natural disadvantage aswell. My suggestion to this would be to nerf backpedal and siderun speed, while making swings faster for most weapons except the already fast ones. The faults mentioned before is a result of both dumbed down character depth regarding stats and the class system.

Freedom will always attract more players
I cannot stress this enough. Freedom will always overshadow classes. I have said an example before, the class system is like a bad parent that locks his kids inside the house because he is scared that if they go out and have fun, a car might hit them. Too much care and handholding can ruin the fun and limit you. In warband, I could adapt to situations but I could adapt my own way. Now I need to play a class I do not like and adapt to the game's very specific systems instead of being creative. And that is a problem, a massive one. Games like Dark souls are a good example. They are hard as hell, but you can build and adapt to your own liking. That is the true essence of rpg-action games.

New player arguement
Most people I have shown warband and they deny to play its multiplayer, is not the gold system. It's the bad unimmersive graphics and wonky animations. I have literally never saw someone complaining about the equipment system to the point that it drives him away. New players do not need handholding with class limits, they need tutorials to teach them combat. They need to learn feinting, strafing and hitting to get momentum, holding their swing to break the spam pattern and confuse the enemy, and basic footwork to distance themselves from the enemy. Simplicity to new players is good for the first 10 hours, then it gets boring. People want to be creative, not being forced to what to play.

Progression
When I play a Knight of Vlandia, I do not feel special. Because I have not earned it. I am like the new player who will jump in and he has the choice. The problem here lies in the fact that in Warband, loser gets nothing. This could get fixed with several ways. If I die after upgrading, I could get compensated by keeping my gear for one more round. So it does not feel futile after 1 death. Or, keep the gear and lose starter gold, untill I can get a few kills. There are countless ways to fix Warband's system. Classes are not a good option.

The peasant/knight arguement
You claim that you want to see peasants and knights in the same battlefield. This very well happened in sieges on warband. In skirmish, which a 6 player force against another, I am not sure why a peasant would fight besides a knight. It makes no sense. Peasant power lies in numbers, a peasant besides 2 knights is useless and stupid.

Snowballing
You cannot prevent that. This is a mechanical-skill requiring game. There is no way in hell that snowballing won't exist. People do not care about the scale of snowballing. It is what it is. Snowballing exists in every successful competitive game and it is what it makes them fun to an extent, you cannot overly balance everything because the skill-groups are different. So what bannerlord is essentially right now is snowballing in the scale of Warband (and even more due to no class-limits) but without the fun."

There's a lot more thought-out explanation going on there than you seem to imply.

It's not just that it "feels wrong", especially after 1-2 years of trying it out. There are things that simply don't work well for a combat-based MP game with matchmaking. It's pretty obvious that they've prioritised graphical realism and simulator-type design that doesn't owe towards a responsive, functional, skill-based combat system - at least not to the degree that people have come to expect of the series.

Nonetheless, there are some new mechanics people have praised (e.g. turning around on horseback with your shield up is much less clunky).

It's kind of understandable that they'd focus mostly on the SP, given its popularity, although I'd have thought it would make more sense to leave the combat system and MP modes mostly alone to concentrate on fleshing out the SP campaign with creative RPG elements instead. Both sides of the playerbase would have really appreciated that.
 
I think they were looking at making bannerlord into a super balanced e-sport type thing, I heard Armagen say something along those lines in an interview, but most of the people don't want that, maybe alot of the hardcore forum people do but they refuse to even play bannerlord mp because it just feels wrong compared to warband or something snooty like that, the majority of people that are willing to put up with the game want a sandbox they can mess around with.
The whole "The old MP community is simply too pretentious to see the light and glory of Esports" argument completely falls apart when you look and see that warband was both more balanced and had a stronger Esports scene than Bannerlord currently does.

It isnt some holier than thou complex thats keeping people away from Bannerlord multiplayer and causing them to detest the class system that was introduced. Its just a bad system. When even the casual players with minimal exposure to the previous title are also not touching the multiplayer you know that is the case.
 
Back
Top Bottom