So,is it known if TW plan to make villages 'upgradable'?

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I have just one question.The initial ideea of making all castels and towns unique scenes is on the future a think or not?I like the ones that we have but is a bit weird when i go to a vlandian castel on the coast and is the same scene
I'm sure they plan on adding more. I think Vlandia only has one castle layout. Every settlement having a unique scene would be so cool.
 
I am not very happy with the village battle one. Is it only me or do your archers get slaughtered regularly because they start at an odd location?
 
true, but I still lose good archers because they get charged first. A pity if you just built up a force of Battanian Fian Champions and they get slaughtered by a random mob even if you outnumber the enemy 3:1 because of bad placement.
 
Been a while since i've been on the forums, but this discussion caught my eye and it's a lot of good feedback players are posing. And it's encouraging that mexxico is engaged in the discussion.

This game has a lot of potential and the players are passionate about wanting to see it be a memorable game rather than just average at best.
 
I disagree. There is every reason to talk about this. Let me tell you a funny story. A metaphor.

Imagine a guy paying $$$ to a baker for a cake he will get later up front.
The guy was shown a picture of a cake with frosting, hazelnuts, lots of chocolate...and expects to a reasonable amount he will get the same.
During preparation of the batter the baker thinks 'There are people out there not liking hazelnuts and are even allergic to them. I will drop them. That way I will sell many more cakes to people allergic to hazelnuts. Then he thinks..too much chocolate is unhealthy...lets reduce the amount...same for sugar frosting. Instead put some butter cream on top. That way I can sell even more cakes to people liking butter cream while placating people not wanting too much chocolate or watching for calories. Then, let me use whole grain instead of wheat flour because this is a good idea as well. And remove the sugar for artificial sweetener. That way everyone will love my cake and many more people will want my cake.
Result: the next time the guy wants a cake, he will visit a supermarket and will buy a bland industrial cake for $ and rant on the internet about the baker. At least, when buying cheap-o grade industrial cake he exactly knows what he can expect and can have it now and whenever he wants it. Our clever baker will have to close his store eventually as noone want to buy the 'cake that everyone likes' - this cake is a lie.

*puts away the Ancient Tome of Bedside Stories (TM)*

:wink:

This is funny.

And sad because it is true.
 
I disagree. There is every reason to talk about this. Let me tell you a funny story. A metaphor.

Imagine a guy paying $$$ to a baker for a cake he will get later up front.
The guy was shown a picture of a cake with frosting, hazelnuts, lots of chocolate...and expects to a reasonable amount he will get the same.
During preparation of the batter the baker thinks 'There are people out there not liking hazelnuts and are even allergic to them. I will drop them. That way I will sell many more cakes to people allergic to hazelnuts. Then he thinks..too much chocolate is unhealthy...lets reduce the amount...same for sugar frosting. Instead put some butter cream on top. That way I can sell even more cakes to people liking butter cream while placating people not wanting too much chocolate or watching for calories. Then, let me use whole grain instead of wheat flour because this is a good idea as well. And remove the sugar for artificial sweetener. That way everyone will love my cake and many more people will want my cake.
Result: the next time the guy wants a cake, he will visit a supermarket and will buy a bland industrial cake for $ and rant on the internet about the baker. At least, when buying cheap-o grade industrial cake he exactly knows what he can expect and can have it now and whenever he wants it. Our clever baker will have to close his store eventually as noone want to buy the 'cake that everyone likes' - this cake is a lie.

*puts away the Ancient Tome of Bedside Stories (TM)*

:wink:

This really sums it up very well. These days noone seems to take risk and make something completely new and creative, everyone just playing it safe and tries to be like everyone else. This is true not only for gaming industry but also for music, movies, products etc. What made the Mount&Blade game series great and drew in all the players, surely wasn't beeing like everyone else. Its not full release yet, but threads like these deminish my hope day by day.
 
This really sums it up very well. These days noone seems to take risk and make something completely new and creative, everyone just playing it safe and tries to be like everyone else. This is true not only for gaming industry but also for music, movies, products etc. What made the Mount&Blade game series great and drew in all the players, surely wasn't beeing like everyone else. Its not full release yet, but threads like these deminish my hope day by day.

The argument of simplicity and shallowness to reach more people is short sighed in my opinion. People will buy games if they are popular and well advertised, regardless of what the games actually are, hype is everything and you can either spend money on marketing to create it or you can have diehard fans that will spread the word and content creators that love your game.

Take Dark Souls, for example, it became a genre of its own, how many "souls-like" games have popped up since then? The series has an identity it created for itself, being hard and punishing and they didn't make it easier to reach more people, it stood its ground in a way of saying "this is how it is going to be, beat the challenge if you can, and brag to others that you did". In 2019 a souls-like game won Game of the Year.

Yes, Bannerlord is a good game, I've already sunk in 400 hours and I will sink in even more, but it is not going to be memorable on its own, there won't be a massive wave of popularity, there won't be a wave of new Mount&Blade-like games and it won't get praised by being so unique because it fell short of everything it could have been so far, and the thing is, you can never make a second first impression, even if TW manages to deliver amazing new features in the future, the initial impact has already happened, the best thing it would achieve is something similar to what Reaper of Souls did for Diablo 3, it really improved the game, but by then, the damage to both reputation and general opinion of the game was already done and to a lot of people it will remain being the ****ty game that it was at release.

Maybe I am just being sentimental at this point but this is a series that I have been following since 2007, that I played with 15-20 fps in a really ****ty pc and that couldn't really run any of the mods because the integrated "video card" would crash and require a restart, I think I am entitled to vent a little disappointment at this point.
 
I think gaining a fief should be a much more signifikant event in a BL playthrough, and the game should communicate that better.

Right now it is an uneventful event, if thats possible. It's just not that significant.

The fief upgrades should be meaningful and offer significant effects (improvements , maybe disadvantages depending of balance). They should make the player care for the fief and what happens to it. If some AI lord comes and raids the fief, that should make a good intrinsic reason to search them and make them pay. Maybe put even an extrinsic reason to it - autogenerate a quest every time a player fief is raided: Lord A has raided your fief, get revenge!
It could work to other way, too - if the player raids an enemy fief, they will paint a target on their back fo the enemy lord.

This would lead nicely into the larger political landscape, when the player owns more fiefs, has a few parties in their clan. Make the fiefs the base of the players income - via nurturing them or oppressing them - make them their economic lifeline. And then make them have issues to resolve, with consequences, some based on the upgrades you built. And then let the player deal with them, or send someone else to do it (make them feel they are powerful, they are in control, take can make others to solve those problems). This could be made mostly via menus - even though I would like visual development in scenes, that train seems to have left and gone.

There are already foundations for something like this implemented - there are quests issued by notables in fiefs, there is a messaging system in place, there is a system to choose policies which have consequences.
What is missing is

- make owning a fief important game-wise (important source of revenue, raise the social status of the player if the fief is managed well)
- Make it feel important, present it to the player attractively, make them feel the positive and negative consequences
- tie it togehter with the other campaign systems, the clan system, the ploitical system, the social- and relations system.

I will quote a response from another thread, as I feel it fits the questions discussed in this thread here very well. Please excuse me if this against the forum's etiquette.

I will try to make a proper design something like increasing number of projects especially new projects effecting bounded villages (fe. saving them to be raided consequently) - it should be easy to implement to get approved - for making things better for villages / castles and go with that suggestion. We can discuss it in forum too. Then we will see what will be happened.
 
I disagree. There is every reason to talk about this. Let me tell you a funny story. A metaphor.

Imagine a guy paying $$$ to a baker for a cake he will get later up front.
The guy was shown a picture of a cake with frosting, hazelnuts, lots of chocolate...and expects to a reasonable amount he will get the same.
During preparation of the batter the baker thinks 'There are people out there not liking hazelnuts and are even allergic to them. I will drop them. That way I will sell many more cakes to people allergic to hazelnuts. Then he thinks..too much chocolate is unhealthy...lets reduce the amount...same for sugar frosting. Instead put some butter cream on top. That way I can sell even more cakes to people liking butter cream while placating people not wanting too much chocolate or watching for calories. Then, let me use whole grain instead of wheat flour because this is a good idea as well. And remove the sugar for artificial sweetener. That way everyone will love my cake and many more people will want my cake.
Result: the next time the guy wants a cake, he will visit a supermarket and will buy a bland industrial cake for $ and rant on the internet about the baker. At least, when buying cheap-o grade industrial cake he exactly knows what he can expect and can have it now and whenever he wants it. Our clever baker will have to close his store eventually as noone want to buy the 'cake that everyone likes' - this cake is a lie.

*puts away the Ancient Tome of Bedside Stories (TM)*

:wink:
I don't think the analogy is accurate. First, the village design was already changed way before early access launched.

Second, you are assuming they are reducing complexity to reach a bigger audience. I believe this assumption is wrong. In my opinion they want to create a game world that is self sufficient. You can see that in all areas of the game, dynamic prices, AI decisions, etc. Everything that happens in the game is based on something that happened before it, the game design relies on causality and correlation. There are just a handful of cheats available for the AI and they only exist in areas where it's currently absolutely necessary. The whole campaign design and AI decision making already is quite complex in itself, every time you add variables and mechanics you are risking that the AI can't handle it without artificial help. So if you add mechanics that make the game more complex for the player, you need to make it less complex for the AI, which means to give it all kinds of cheats.
That's why it seems like management is quite conservative when it comes to the addition of new mechanics and drastic changes.
You can disagree with TW management regarding that design approach, but it doesn't make it more simple. In fact, it allows the game to be more complex, even when your personal gameplay experience seems to be less complex.

Of course it's possible that I am entirely wrong and they just want to turn the game into CoD for consoles. I doubt it though.
 
I have just one question.The initial ideea of making all castels and towns unique scenes is on the future a think or not?I like the ones that we have but is a bit weird when i go to a vlandian castel on the coast and is the same scene
I'd say chances are pretty good. It's listed on Steam and the forums as a WIP feature. Throughout EA they constantly added new scenes. The last update was one of the biggest one in that regard, adding 40 new scenes. So it definitely seems like something they are working on.
 
@mexxico
Would it be a possibility to enable a simplified, minimalistic "scene editor" to at least "buy" visual/gameplay upgrades and thus change the scene file itself? This way, all meshes could be locked, but one could buy barricades, walls, and other structures for in game gold, that then persist through-out the game / or raid / siege. This might give players the immersion to adjust village designs for sieges and at least change the battle immersion, although it will have no difference to the world mechanics.

I understand though that this as well is a huge re-work of scenes as each item would need to be flagged in hindsight.

Scenes really are one of the most work intensive elements of the game, aren't they?
 
@mexxico
Would it be a possibility to enable a simplified, minimalistic "scene editor" to at least "buy" visual/gameplay upgrades and thus change the scene file itself? This way, all meshes could be locked, but one could buy barricades, walls, and other structures for in game gold, that then persist through-out the game / or raid / siege. This might give players the immersion to adjust village designs for sieges and at least change the battle immersion, although it will have no difference to the world mechanics.

I understand though that this as well is a huge re-work of scenes as each item would need to be flagged in hindsight.

Scenes really are one of the most work intensive elements of the game, aren't they?

He does not work on the art department/scenes afaik.
 
I don't think the analogy is accurate. First, the village design was already changed way before early access launched.
The hidden message is rather: "do not present people with an idea and take their money and after that change the idea that often, that it does not match the original expectations anymore".

But indeed, this is also a metaphor for cases like this in gaming industry. It is like:
"Hey, we have managed to produce a very good niche game! Let us do a sequel, but just better!"

And then thoughts like this kick in: "We need more potential buyers so..."
- make it work on console (infuriating PC-gamers having unnecessary UI changes AND consoleros not getting all the mods)
- reduce complexity to make the game more pleasant for casual gamers (which infuriates the niche gamers who liked the original game while the casual gamers might give a flatus volans and might or might not buy or even are deterred from the negative ratings the game gets from the disappointed specialists)
. just try to be a jack of trades, master of none (eventually resulting in a game everyone equally finds bland and unispired or even incomplete).

It is all about 'more, more, MORE!' - doing a good job and be content with it is nowadays not enough.
 
The hidden message is rather: "do not present people with an idea and take their money and after that change the idea that often, that it does not match the original expectations anymore".
That's what I pointed out, they only took the money after telling people that the village design is cancelled.

But indeed, this is also a metaphor for cases like this in gaming industry. It is like:
"Hey, we have managed to produce a very good niche game! Let us do a sequel, but just better!"

And then thoughts like this kick in: "We need more potential buyers so..."
- make it work on console (infuriating PC-gamers having unnecessary UI changes AND consoleros not getting all the mods)
- reduce complexity to make the game more pleasant for casual gamers (which infuriates the niche gamers who liked the original game while the casual gamers might give a flatus volans and might or might not buy or even are deterred from the negative ratings the game gets from the disappointed specialists)
. just try to be a jack of trades, master of none (eventually resulting in a game everyone equally finds bland and unispired or even incomplete).

It is all about 'more, more, MORE!' - doing a good job and be content with it is nowadays not enough.
I believe I addressed that in the part you snipped from my post.
 
I really hope that this will be done since villages seem pretty pointless now apart from being passive income generators.

We need a reason to feel like this is MY VILLAGE and I want to take care of it, spend money on it and help it to grow and prosper.

Warband and Viking Conquest had this feature.

I can't remember if it's planned for Bannerlord as well?
They mentioned it in some devblogs before release that you could actually turn a village into a castle. But I think they scrapped all of that for some reason. Probably because it would become too much micromanagement and work.
 
They mentioned it in some devblogs before release that you could actually turn a village into a castle. But I think they scrapped all of that for some reason. Probably because it would become too much micromanagement and work.

The official line was-

Can we still build castles in villages we own?
We had to drop that feature. At some point in development, fief management became too complex, with towns, castles and villages each having their own specific management screens. The ability to build castles in villages also gave rise to complex rules. For example, demolishing the castle in a village could potentially revert the village to another kingdom and we had to add complex logic to handle that. Overall, we felt that the design had become too bloated and unappealing.

Personally I'm not too disapointed at this as it could easily lead to castle saturation that would take away their uniqueness and make seizing a settlement far more challenging than it reasonably should be. Having said that, a fortified village with, say, a palisade and central fortified house to help the defenders would be quite interesting.
 
The official line was-

Can we still build castles in villages we own?
We had to drop that feature. At some point in development, fief management became too complex, with towns, castles and villages each having their own specific management screens. The ability to build castles in villages also gave rise to complex rules. For example, demolishing the castle in a village could potentially revert the village to another kingdom and we had to add complex logic to handle that. Overall, we felt that the design had become too bloated and unappealing.

Personally I'm not too disapointed at this as it could easily lead to castle saturation that would take away their uniqueness and make seizing a settlement far more challenging than it reasonably should be. Having said that, a fortified village with, say, a palisade and central fortified house to help the defenders would be quite interesting.

+1
 
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