Someone finally managed to put Bannerlord in the right direction!

[Rungsted93]

there's absolutely no way something like this could've been made as a commercial product.

It was more wishfull thinking on my part ^^ But why TW didn't take heavy "inspiration" from some of the CK mechanics such as: Tiered Vassal system, proper titles, heirs, claims and so forth confuses me.

 

[Mad Vader]

It was more wishfull thinking on my part ^^ But why TW didn't take heavy "inspiration" from some of the CK mechanics such as: Tiered Vassal system, proper titles, heirs, claims and so forth confuses me.

That's a good question. They probably didn't find much interesting new gameplay beyond player progression through the tiers.

 

[TheBerserk]

Honestly Native Warband never impressed me all that much either. In fact I put the Native versions of Bannerlord and Warband at about the same level overall. What hooked me on Warband was the dozens of amazing mod that completely transformed the native gameplay into almost an unrecognizable completely new and different game.

When they started talking about that they intended to do with Bannerlord it originally sounded like they were going to be incorporating all or most the amazing additions that came about due to these total conversion mods that had appeared in the wake of Warband's release. In fact the hype sounded very much like they were nearly copying my FAVORITE Warband mod, Nova Aetas, which quit frankly had the most in depth and comprehensive gameplay re-work of all the fantastic mods that came out of Warband. I encourage everyone to check out this mod and go over the feature list of what was added to Warband if your not familiar with it and then sit back in complete and utter shock at how big a disappointment Bannerlord has turned out to be comparatively.

I mean they guy who created the Nova Aetas mod said he did it in a year and half's time, as a side gig and it has to have at least 10x the feature content of Bannerlord. I mean you could farm in that game, mine, cut timber. Build your own castle anywhere on the map. It had a complete social class system you had to progress through from peasant to lord and it was complex and difficult to do so. It had a complete crafting system broken down individually into specializing in Sword making, Bow making, armor making etc. and you had to progress from Apprentice, to Journeyman to Master so some very specific tasks to get there. Religion was taken into account and your choice of being Catholic, Orthodoxic, Jewish, Muslim or Pagan had a huge impact on game play. You had random encounters happen as you moved across the map. You had dozen of random traits earn randomly both positive and negative you had to deal with with such as being Ugly and having a huge negative relationship debuff when dealing with the opposite sex that made it difficult to get married. You had sea travel and naval combat. You had the ability to sail across the map and colonize the new world. You had dozens of ruin spread across the map which involved searching those ruins for hidden treasures. Hell you had quests the triggered these treasure hunts. You could take part in a crusade or a holy war depending on your religious affiliation if you wanted to. All this USING that Warband native code and it took only a year and a half to do it, part time with small team.

When I think of the complexity and feature richness of Nova Aetas, It really makes me wonder what the hell Taleworlds has been doing all this time when the best they could come up with is very nearly a carbon copy of Warband plus or minus a few features. How can a Modder create such a rich and complex game out of Native Warband's code when Taleworlds entire PROFESSIONAL development team can't even get a 10th of the feature of Nova Aetas into Bannerlord WITH access to the source code of the game. It boggles my mind.

this is exactly why i am upset, because of this idea, of what bannerlord should have been

I don't understand either the people who don't seem to see this problem but on other games they almost perceive it as if Armagan the dark wizard had cast a magic spell to try to blind his consumers

 

[Rungsted93]

Yeah I agree with you @TheBerserk and @Midnitewolf, TW cut so many corners and it frustrates me they're getting away with it... I mean why didn't 1 of their interns spend a couple months making custom companions with cool back-stories, quests and interactions. Heck their first devblog was about composing music for the game, but yet I keep getting flashbacks to Guild 2 because they've licensed the same music they used.

I honestly think since 2015 they've not really been doing much and it was going nowhere!

 

[Askorti]

It was more wishfull thinking on my part ^^ But why TW didn't take heavy "inspiration" from some of the CK mechanics such as: Tiered Vassal system, proper titles, heirs, claims and so forth confuses me.

Because they want a fast-paced action RPG, so such deep mechanics are too difficult for the type of player they want to cater to.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Because they want a fast-paced action RPG, so such deep mechanics are too difficult for the type of player they want to cater to.

Well they got the fast pace down for the most part but totally missed the RPG aspect.

 

[Apocal]

I don't know about this. I am always suspicious about ideas like:' if a game had Total War battles, Paradox strategy, and Bioware RPG, it would be the best game ever.' I mean, there is a reason why no such game exists, aside from copyrights and technical issues. I once played a game called Age of Wonders, it's like a mixture of Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic. Although I quite enjoyed those two titles, I had a very bad experience with Age of Wonders. One word to describe that experience - exhausting. I can't play the Civilization game, which already requires a lot of planning and thinking, and go into HoMM battle every time conflicts happen. It's too exhausting. I presume the same thing would apply if a CK3 and Medieval 2 Total War/Bannerlord were to happen.

My personal opinion is that, as far as design goes (execution is obviously a different matter), there is a constant tension when you have a multi-layer game like that. The devs generally have their focus area for the game (like Total War with its battles) and they don't want the other layer(s) to do anything to invalidate it entirely. So they have to restrict the things you can do to keep the battles fresh. Obviously, some games are more successful than others at this. For example you could make Total War almost all battles a foregone conclusion earlier in the series just by stacking armies together, over and over, with the only limit being economy to support them.

Putting CK3 and BL together, I can totally see making the battle layer overcome the strategy layer because you can do pretty wild stuff to the AI in battles and result in an outcome like a solo clan of steppe nomads rolling over the entire Eastern Roman Empire.

edit:

Because they want a fast-paced action RPG, so such deep mechanics are too difficult for the type of player they want to cater to.

Well they got the fast pace down for the most part but totally missed the RPG aspect.

There is nothing fast-paced about Bannerlord.

 

[Antaeus]

In Total War I end up auto-resolving most battles and sucking up the higher death toll just because they're more repetitive and take longer to do. While Bannerlord battles are more samey, because they're fast, grind phases of the game aren't quite such a chore.

That has meant that my Total War experience ends up being like a CK3 experience (or Civ for that matter) where the battles take on a secondary nature to you managing your empire.

I think this kind of mod could help a game like CK3 because Bannerlord battles are quick. But I don't think Bannerlord could be helped by a CK3 level of depth in return. It is simple by nature, and exists entirely to service the battles.

There's a reason why I have stuck with Bannerlord for 6 months, but I usually end up dropping CK or Total War games fairly quickly. I think it's what the fast battles offer. So I think CK or Total War games could benefit from this speed, but spending less time in battle and more time microing your empire might end up diminishing some of the Bannerlord experience.