Reus' Rants & Critiques

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I disagree, that would give to much the feeling of being the "chosen one". Still, there needs to be consequences for war. War weariness have to factor in. The numbers of recruits have to be limited and depending on the prosperity of the village. They should also account for the total population. So that losing factions are more inclined to ask for peace, and winning factions are more incline to accept surrender terms so they can maximize the profit of the war.
The downside of allowing the kingdoms to do whatever they want, is that there's a chance that your entire playthrough will be ruined because one faction went on a rampage and conquered everything before you even got to that part of the game. A simple way to mitigate this would be to have the kingdoms continue to fight, but also stay relatively stable until the player gets involved in the kingdom aspect of the game. You could, of course, instead make things more complex in order to drag things out and make it harder for kingdoms to snowball, but there's still a chance that a kingdom will snowball regardless. On top of that, it also adds extra development time, and therefore I'm not sure how feasible it is. The Early Access blog did mention that kingdom management features, among other features, are missing, so we may not know if it's already being worked on.
 
The downside of allowing the kingdoms to do whatever they want, is that there's a chance that your entire playthrough will be ruined because one faction went on a rampage and conquered everything before you even got to that part of the game.

True, but with the warmongeriness toned down, that scenario would be less probable. Still, if it happens, they can counter it by expand the gameplay systems. They should introduce civil unrest, civil war. Rebellion of the conquered factions, which could rise again. They could introduce plague or other scenarios that weaken the strongest party. Or they could even introduce the migration of Warband factions into Calradia, like the Nords, or the Rhodoks etc... The latter could even serve as endgame for players who manage to conquer all Calradia
 
Great thread Reus, I'm glad you compiled all of your discord rants into something that will hopefully help Devs make the game better.
I personally completely agree with this. I myself am a 10 years player with around 3k hours in previous games and was quite shocked how fast it has happened to me and couple friends too. There are many features enhancing long game times like character death, clans, heirs etc. but in 10 game years, 80% of map is owned by a faction. To me it doesn't feel realistic, it doesn't improve gameplay and it doesn't make it more re-playable.

Also I am part of the server team so I am not working directly on Bannerlord but as a long time M&B fan, I have to thank you for this really good feedback!


I'm just glad people are reading from the teams.
 
I think it's time to say it. Let's be honest here, the singleplayer mode, in its current state, is pretty much unplayable for MOST PLAYERS. You never know when you'll get a bugged quest. You never know when your game will crash. You never know when your save will become incompatible. So many issues, both minor and big.
I understand the devs need players to play the game and help them with many of these issues, however, most players won't be patient enough to do that and most likely request a refund. That's just how it is...

For most players? I don't know how one would verify that; I don't get that feeling at all from what we are seeing on the forums (it certainly isn't unplayable for me, even for all its faults I haven't been this engrossed in a game since...well, years). Yes there are a lot of people complaining of crashes (which is par for the course, a newly released early access which the devs stressed was going to be buggy etc.), but plenty more saying they've been having no such problems, and of course the majority of players don't post on the forum.
 
even for all its faults I haven't been this engrossed in a game since...well, years
Same here. Despite my excessively long collection of rants, I've actually been enjoying the game a lot and have 43 hours played so far in the first three days. As soon as the snowballing kingdoms issue gets fixed, I'll very likely be starting up a long playthrough again. Until then I'm just testing out various cultures, kingdoms, and features.
 
About mutually esclusive perks they seems a fine idea but often the choices don't match. For example I have a two handed character with bow.....One handed skill has the +3 hp Perk so I get that skill to 25 (there are few two handed weapons early game anyway) just to get the hp increase.
Also some perks are same in different skills like reloading crossbows horseback that Is both in riding and crossbows perks.
 
I played for the first 33 hours, but after witnessing all the glaring issues, poor balancing, and missing features, I just can't make myself play Bannerlord right now. It hurts to say it after waiting for so long and having over 2600 hours in Warband. I wanted to love the game, I really did, but with all these glaring and obvious issues that Taleworlds apparently didn't bother to test, it pains me to say that I'm just going to have to wait even longer to enjoy a game I thought I would love to play over and over.

I'm sure the modding scene will fix basically all the obvious issues Taleworlds couldn't - all Bugthesda style.
 
Had to figure out my account from years ago just to log in and say this is a perfect summary of my issues. Hope the Devs notice and just start working down the list. Great job.
 
Alright, a couple of things.

The early game I think is fine, I'd like to win some money even if you make it into round 2 of a tournament, I am thinking of how they work in a GRRM's books, you still win the ransom from the first round even if you get ganked in the 2nd round. As far as the rest, I don't mind the questing system, it's a little buggy. I escorted a few caravans, killed some poachers, did a bit of trading myself after getting some horses for cheap from a village. I ran around with 25ish troops for most of the early game, and with about 30 horses I just picked up any time I went by a village that made them. I was zooming around the map and catching looters, though if I had many prisoners I might have to chase them across half of the continent.

The map feels small, but mabye because I zoom around at speed 3 constantly, also I am used to the map from Clash of Kings mod for Warband.

I feel like the early game economic system is fine. I don't like how you finish the tutorial and it's like okay Brother, I am off to build the clan, and he takes EVERYTHING, and I am left with my horse a sword, a bow, and some ****ty arrows that take 2-3 headshots to kill a looter.

So, I do the poachers quests, the escort caravan quests and trade, and maybe fight in a tournie, while fighting the odd group of looters.

On one Escort quest though, a group of bandits attacked the Caravan I was escorting inside the hitbox for a City. I had to flip the map around, and do all sorts of clicking to try to get to them. Maybe the selection for a battle could be the big swords above the battle rather than trying to click on one of the parties.

Leveling is...well, I don't know, uneven or something? I can't seem to get my bow skills up on horseback, so I should just join the archers I guess, I get riding though, and tactics.
 
Great post, Reus. Hopefully the devs will look into these issues and fix them.


A few more additional things that could improve the game's experience (Note that these are only early game issues since I've only played 15 hours of it) :

AI
- Would be nice for low-tier enemies such as looters and mountain bandits to at least have basic formations and strategies instead of the good old Warband suicide run.

NPC Dialogue

- Getting kicked out of the dialogue when you talk to an NPC. It's really annoying and I don't see a reason as to why it does that. For example, if I talk to a lord related to the main quest, once this conversation finishes, it's putting me back to the overworld. Why can't you let the player continue to talk to the lord if he wants to?

Workshop features
- It would be cool to have more workshop customization such as hiring people and expanding your workshop. Also, it would be nice to know the profit of it BEFORE you buy it. As of right now, it feels disappointing because it's working almost exactly like Warband does.

UI
- Would be nice to have a list of the relations you have with every NPCs in the game, similar like in Warband, which I have not seen in Bannerlord? I would love to have a tab that lists all the NPCs that i've met and the relations with them on a single screen.
 
The downside of allowing the kingdoms to do whatever they want is that there's a chance that your entire playthrough will be ruined because one faction went on a rampage and conquered everything before you even got to that part of the game. A simple way to mitigate this would be to have the kingdoms continue to fight, but also stay relatively stable until the player gets involved in the kingdom aspect of the game.
I think the issue with snowballing is the current army system. Even though it's a great concept, it is horribly executed in balance.

The restriction in Warband was that there would be one Marshal to lead the realm, and this worked as every main battle would be THE battle, the determination on whether or not you gain a huge upper hand or lose it. In Bannerlord, with multiple armies everywhere, no one battle ever feels like a victory, because as soon as its done, another army shows up with similar numbers. This is terrible when considering how there is no limitation on armies.

Essentially as soon as one faction becomes even slightly powerful, they can run around with 4-8 MASSIVE armies blitzkrieging the rest of the map.

Currently, I consider it a BIG downgrade to Warband, but it has major potential.
 
Smaller thing, but some of the nobles/noblewomen default to whatever their culture uses as their introduction rather than their current circumstances. Battanians who are Imperial in culture introduce themselves as "Archons."

Also, the stairs in the noble keep in Car Banseth make you bounce.

Overall, I'd have to mostly agree with Reus here.
 
Great post. Agree with most everything said. Although if you started on the first version of the game some things might be very different now that more stuff is balanced.

This part was funny to me:

Basically, I gamed the skill check system and bought a wife, whom I know nothing about, for 14.000 gold.

That sounds... realistic enough for a scumbag playthrough. There's just no option to take a different approach other than what you described.

One of my next characters will be a female weapons/armor trader, so I wonder how that will impact getting married.
 
New: Maybe the items could be separated in tabs within the trade screen rather than everything being in one big list. It is rather tedious to navigate and find what you're looking for.

There already is. It's the icons at the top.

Trading prices seem funky. On several occasions have I bought some food item for trading because it said I could sell it at a profit in a different town, but once you actually arrive at the other town, the prices will have changed, and the item may no longer be profitable.

Could be because some other merchant got there first. Just take the loss and look for your next route. Also don't go all in on a single trade good on a single run, it's better to diversify even if it means slightly less return.

Caravans, like workshops, are just slot machines that cost 15.000 gold to use. In my case, I paid 15.000 gold for the privilege of losing another 300 gold per day until I eventually disbanded it.

I don't know what you did differently, but my caravans make bank. It takes the initial 15k, and then it operates at a loss for a week or two. Once the caravan gets going, it makes an average of 500-600 Denars daily.

Your party eats slightly too much food, in my opinion. I have to fill up most of my inventory in order to travel for more than 10 days,

How? I just stock up on a few hundred things of grain and I still have more than enough inventory thanks to all the mules and horses I have. Inventory space isn't a problem outside of the first few hours of play.

Lords' parties in general just seem really small.

This is because they no longer cheat and have to play by the same rules as us, meaning if their army gets wiped out, they have to start building another one. It's also why their armies have lots of lower tier troops.

New: Looters are too tanky at the moment. Why are they sometimes able to survive a full speed lance from cavalry charges?

Personally haven't experienced this. Looters, and even most elite troops, are one hit kills with a polearm from horseback.
 
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