Revisiting the game after months and 400h play time...still disappointed

[Tintenkobold]

So I decided to take a break from the game after my first 400 hours. Don't get me wrong - it's worth the money if you play this long. I won't complain about that. What disappoints me is the feeling I have as a hardcore fan of the franchise. I was very hyped after so many years but I still have the feeling Bannerlord does not get enough love. What I noticed when I played the game again...and it frustrates me:

• Cavalry/Horse archers still fall from cliffs in canyon maps - Game breaking
• AI still stupid as **** when it comes to sieges (engaging) - Game breaking
• Khuzait still massively overpowered - Game breaking (and boring!)
• Loading icons in inventory - what the **** is this? Everything was fine some months ago. What happened?
• Still can't select all companions in smith menu. I reported this bug months ago and it's just a UI problem.
• Still no private servers

Any hope Bannerlord will become what fans wish for?

 

[nyarlathotep1975]

Any hope Bannerlord will become what fans wish for?

That depends on your expectations. Probably not, since expectations are often higher then reality (in my case it was the diplomacy system). In general I would advise you to not play games in early access. Thats not meant in rude way. You might have seen games like Fallout 76, who came out and were a buggy mess. EA games are (if not released in EA for promotion) mostly a buggy mess. The reason devs do this is, firstly for the money and second (if the devs are good) for the fans to help them develop a game that fits their expectations.
If you are someone who likes to influence the development process with critics and advises and you can deal with tons of bugs and broken mechanics EA can be fun. And if you don´t, then just wait for the finished product (nothing wrong about that). Buying games in EA is a little bit of a gamble and trust thing. Until finish you won´t really know what you get.
P.S.: Being frustrated about slow process or not getting what you expected is completely normal. But keep in mind that the devs might have other ideas then you.

 

[froggyluv]

Havent touched it in months -play BannerPage Mod -its what i wanted in Warband but fell short. Finely polished and the AI fight as good as low/mid tiered MP humans. All the diplomacy stuff is really flushed out making you feel like a real part of a Kingdom -part of a dynamic world.

 

[Blynjubitr]

Right now Bannerlord, try to get rid of the banner, main quest and your stupid siblings that are forced on you until you realize you can't in a sandbox game, farm tournaments, join a kingdom or have your own, buy a wife with literally 0 immersive interactions before and after whatsoever, just battle forever because there is nothing else to do.

Bannerlord i hoped i would get, Do quests for actually unique characters and find the god damn NERVOUS MAN, get some unique followers so you can actually give a damn about them, have books, have feasts, have much much more interactions with ltierally every character in the game, have an actuall wedding ceremony and meaningful interactions with your wife so it would be more immersive than just buying a woman, i mean it is not a complete nonsense buying a woman in a medieval life simulation but polish this thing for crying out loud, i mean they literally made woman into casually picking up sword and leading armies, be able to form alliances with other factions, have some sort of status mechanic on top of influance so every idiot cannot gather an army. I can go on like this for a while.

Not even gonna talk about technical problems.

 

[Akka]

Havent touched it in months -play BannerPage Mod -its what i wanted in Warband but fell short. Finely polished and the AI fight as good as low/mid tiered MP humans. All the diplomacy stuff is really flushed out making you feel like a real part of a Kingdom -part of a dynamic world.

Tried BannerPage, but the off-period, off-location attire and altered factions turned me off. Too bad because it seemed to had a lot of interesting points.

 

[Tintenkobold]

Some more thoughts after playing another 100h (as mercenary clan):

• Caravans are useless. You pay some K to form them and they get captured by Looters or Bandits very fast. This problem increases over time as bandit groups grow massive. They player can't kill them all. So making caravans does not create profit, it empties your money bag
• Own parties raid villages and create new enemies for you. You can't control what they are doing. I wish to have more control and give orders
• Recruiting in own parties is stupid and random. You can provide them with your own troops but they will get captured because of stupid mistakes with armies anyway. So I just keep them struggling with random, poor troops. My kids are in prison way too often because they join weak armies. Again: I wish more control
• Becoming master smith without mods is pain in the ass. I'm lvl 300 now without mods or cheats but I needed a mouse click macro to survive this. Not to mention the character selection is bugged since Bannerlord has been released. You can't select all characters for smithing/smelting

 

[Discount_Blade]

Some more thoughts after playing another 100h (as mercenary clan):

• Caravans are useless. You pay some K to form them and they get captured by Looters or Bandits very fast. This problem increases over time as bandit groups grow massive. They player can't kill them all. So making caravans does not create profit, it empties your money bag
• Own parties raid villages and create new enemies for you. You can't control what they are doing. I wish to have more control and give orders
• Recruiting in own parties is stupid and random. You can provide them with your own troops but they will get captured because of stupid mistakes with armies anyway. So I just keep them struggling with random, poor troops. My kids are in prison way too often because they join weak armies. Again: I wish more control
• Becoming master smith without mods is pain in the ass. I'm lvl 300 now without mods or cheats but I needed a mouse click macro to survive this. Not to mention the character selection is bugged since Bannerlord has been released. You can't select all characters for smithing/smelting

How do you get married as a mercenary if you never joined a faction/kingdom? I thought you needed to join faction or the women of the kingdoms (or their fathers anyway) wouldn't open up the dialogues for it.

 

[Herr_Tankred]

How do you get married as a mercenary if you never joined a faction/kingdom? I thought you needed to join faction or the women of the kingdoms (or their fathers anyway) wouldn't open up the dialogues for it.

1st: Find unmarried noblewoman - some run around with troops (like Ira), others sit in the castles or city keeps (as non noble, you need to bribe yourself in those).
2. Speak with them, tell them you are their admirer.
3. Get through the questions she asks, find the father, pay him.

You don't need to be merc or join a fraction to do this. I just married the Asarai's kings daughter (no good deal, she has no shield, no range weapon and no helmet) and joined her fathers realm as merc afterwards.

To the TE: zu viel Gejammere.

 

[five bucks]

Any hope Bannerlord will become what fans wish for?

My lowest expectations were for it to have better graphics/sieges plus all of Warband's good gameplay features and it hasn't even managed that, it's actually gone backwards from the last game made 10 years ago with 10x less employees.

Which would be fine if they could at least confirm that they're going to fix that, but they refuse to! Honestly how hard can it be to make a sequel better than the last game? What the hell is going on?

Bannerlord is a big disappointment and with supposedly 5 months left of EA, I doubt at this stage it will even reach the very lowest bar I'd set for it.

 

[Dreed89]

My lowest expectations were for it to have better graphics/sieges plus all of Warband's good gameplay features and it hasn't even managed that, it's actually gone backwards from the last game made 10 years ago with 10x less employees.

Which would be fine if they could at least confirm that they're going to fix that, but they refuse to! Honestly how hard can it be to make a sequel better than the last game? What the hell is going on?

Bannerlord is a big disappointment and with supposedly 5 months left of EA, I doubt at this stage it will even reach the very lowest bar I'd set for it.

I agree. They lack vision and transparency. Providing a single player road map and developer update videos is not enough. They do not tell anything about the complete feature set Bannerlord shall have at launch. It is just what they will be working on in near future.

They need to be more specific. They should say things like "Yes, manhunters were really cool in Warband and we will add them", or "No, feasts do not bring much to the game so Bannerlord will not have it"

They always avoid these kinds of statements and leave players in the dark fearing about the vision and the future of the game.

 

[Apocal]

I agree. They lack vision and transparency. Providing a single player road map and developer update videos is not enough. They do not tell anything about the complete feature set Bannerlord shall have at launch. It is just what they will be working on in near future.

One of the devs said that they made Warband the same way; they didn't have a complete design document or whatever, they just put in features they thought were cool.

 

[Gandamula]

As I am not from an Anglo Saxon country I can say this without being accused of xenophobia, but being a Indie a Turkish company they lack a culture of planning and organization,they don't have a road map or a release schedule, looks like they stopped the production of the game, many resources were withdrawn, both in terms of commitment as at the human level, it should be 1/5 of the initial team working on the updates,.
Ultimately they could at least provide part of the code to allow moders to get into deeper aspects of the game.
Resuming the game have a great potential, as a total new player I found it fantastic in the first days, but TW seems lost in the path they want to follow, after reaching some game level, I've nothing to do, besides running wild in my war horse. And if I star a new game with other faction, the game is almost the same, with different colors.As a veteran of the Total War brand, I never understood why being a faction, we can have a complete army composed of members from other cultures, without any apparent penalty, this makes the choice of culture practically irrelevant.

 

[five bucks]

One of the devs said that they made Warband the same way; they didn't have a complete design document or whatever, they just put in features they thought were cool.

Bannerlord is a sequel, sold at an AAA price, by a team that's 10 times larger. Now is not the time to be throwing **** at the wall and seeing what sticks.

That results in stuff being worked on which the community doesn't care about, while stuff they actually care about gets ignored. I don't even need to present examples of poor prioritization at this point because they've been beaten to death.

Experienced gamedevs don't have design documents and prioritization just for fun.

 

[Apocal]

Ultimately they could at least provide part of the code to allow moders to get into deeper aspects of the game.

A lot of the game code is in DLLs you can freely access using something like dotpeek or dnspy. That's why modders were able to **** out mods at a cyclic rate on release, without mod tools.

Bannerlord is a sequel, sold at an AAA price, by a team that's 10 times larger. Now is not the time to be throwing **** at the wall and seeing what sticks.

That results in stuff being worked on which the community doesn't care about, while stuff they actually care about gets ignored. I don't even need to present examples of poor prioritization at this point because they've been beaten to death.

Experienced gamedevs don't have design documents and prioritization just for fun.

Well, I'm not TW's management, but with a firm design document it seems like they'd still end up ignoring most of the community's requests unless they were minor or happened to match what was on the design doc?

 

[five bucks]

Well, I'm not TW's management, but with a firm design document it seems like they'd still end up ignoring most of the community's requests unless they were minor or happened to match what was on the design doc?

It doesn't have to explicitly be a design document anyway (I think those were your words originally,) although that would have been great from the start. Moreso what we were asking for is a roadmap of long-term goals, rather than immediate ones.

Mexxico is a good example. He communicates with the community rather than being radio silent, he prioritizes their most pressing concerns rather than ignoring them, he lets them know a rough ETA on his long-term goal (implementing rebellions) which in itself is practically a small roadmap, and he actually makes a noticeable impact on two major issues with the game (economic balance and factional balance).

Extend this attitude to all of Taleworlds and the game wouldn't have made so little concrete progress in the last 8 months. It gets to the point you can't keep making excuses for them, lack of organization and planning and communication has become a real problem.

 

[Apocal]

It doesn't have to explicitly be a design document anyway (I think those were your words originally,) although that would have been great from the start. Moreso what we were asking for is a roadmap of long-term goals, rather than immediate ones.

I used the same term he used:

I wish we had all game design 8 years ago (when we start this project) and we follow that design document. Probably we could finish game sooner if that kind of development is followed. If this was the case all these problems would be already solved. We are trying to add features one by one and this is not best way to create a detailed game like Bannerlord because all different features are connected each other and we should think all together not one by one. Adding features one by one is dangerous (can broke existing mechanics). However Warband is also developed that way too and be a great game. But even Warband example I think this is hard way to develop a game.

I'm not a game dev, but I was surprised they apparently didn't have a design document as well. But if they developed Warband without one, well...

 

[danEN]

Any hope Bannerlord will become what fans wish for?

It will, I just doubt it will be that anytime soon.

 

[Nikomakkos]

So I decided to take a break from the game after my first 400 hours. Don't get me wrong - it's worth the money if you play this long. I won't complain about that. What disappoints me is the feeling I have as a hardcore fan of the franchise. I was very hyped after so many years but I still have the feeling Bannerlord does not get enough love. What I noticed when I played the game again...and it frustrates me:

• Cavalry/Horse archers still fall from cliffs in canyon maps - Game breaking
• AI still stupid as **** when it comes to sieges (engaging) - Game breaking
• Khuzait still massively overpowered - Game breaking (and boring!)
• Loading icons in inventory - what the **** is this? Everything was fine some months ago. What happened?
• Still can't select all companions in smith menu. I reported this bug months ago and it's just a UI problem.
• Still no private servers

Any hope Bannerlord will become what fans wish for?

I'm in somewhat of a similar situation as you, having had a long time love affair with Warband that's lasted ten years. I don't have the exact specific complaints as you maybe, and for me it was about 100 hours back in early April. I revisit it now and I see that it's still not a complete enough game.

I think it's just that the game is not ready and that we're all beta testers. This might be a fault of an "Early Access" - making unsuspecting players who do not wish to be beta testers into ones. Being a beta tester is fundamentally different from being a regular player, I think. Not everyone wants to be one and it's especially bad when they don't even know that they are.

We are just going to have to wait for the final release and that's that. And I won't complain that it takes long to make a game like this. I have no ire. But I'm not sure Early Access is a great idea. It might accelerate the process though, since they have a massive amount of beta testers this way.

Concerning the inventory, for me it took forever to load because the cheat menu was active and so it was loading every item in the game that then appeared on the left side. There's a config file in your documents/bannerlord folder with the variable "enable cheats" that apparently some patch set to '1'. Set it to '0' to fix this.

EDIT: engine_config.txt is the name of the file.

 

[Tintenkobold]

@Nikomakkos I think you missunderstood me. Cheats are off. My problem is that every inventory item has a rotating loading animation. The inventory itself opens without problems.