MP Suggestion: Replace the class system with something that's actually fun.

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Scarf Ace

Sergeant Knight at Arms
The new forums need a thread too.
This joke is really getting old. I think that now that it's in EA, a proper gear system should be added.
To prove that it's an ill-conceived joke, here are the absolutely paper-thin reasons TW provided:

Prevent snowballing
So, the very first point immediately shows a complete lapse in logic. Namely, this issue of "Snowballing" has nothing to do with how players pick their gear!
Quite simply, it's a gamemode issue. What they are talking about is how some modes in Bannerlord count your resources differently. Instead of having a certain sum of dough and spending it on gear or a class, you can basically choose whatever, but the more expensive your choice, the more you are penalised. In Captain this is with troop numbers, in Skirmish it's with the amount of lives you get.
If you still could pick your gear in BL, then nothing about this would change. You'd still spend more dosh on gear and get fewer lives in return in Skirmish, and so on.
That they even brought this up puts their competence into question.

Making picking equipment simpler. New players don't know what to pick and why, and spawning time is limited.
Obvious playerbase insulting aside, this would easily have been addressable without throwing everything good out.
Many games that let you pick your loadout give you solid presets, autocomplete functions, and loadout saving. This is a solved problem.
We wanted to see fully armored knights AND peasants on the same battlefield and they should NOT be equal in power.
And we want to see both of them available on round 1.
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We want the knight to be able to picked by anyone, not by the already skilled player who killed everyone and now has enough money to buy the equipment.
As I've already explained, this is an issue of gamemode design, and not of gear systems. None of this is unachievable if you let players pick their own stuff.

Making troops distinctive enough with a glance you know all about what you are facing. Capabilities, gear, etc.
This one is hilarious, because they managed to achieve the exact opposite! In Warband, when you see a player, you see their weapons, their shield and their armour. This gives you a fairly good estimation of what they're facing. Is he wearing mail armour? His body will probably take a few hits. Oh, he has no helmet? Okay, go for the noggin. He's also using a two-handed polearm, so unless he switches weapons, he's vulnerable to ranged attacks. See? Simple and intuitive.
Meanwhile, the devs their infinite wisdom have decided to disconnect unit appearance from unit stats. Armour values are arbitrary, no longer based on what the character is wearing. This has some really strange, counterintuitive results where a virtually naked class can tank more hits than a guy in actual armour.

Also, locational armour has been removed in MP, but is still exists in SP. Not only is this a terrible dumbing down of the game, but when it comes to bridging the gap between SP and MP, and smoothing out the transition, this is an extremely idiotic choice. They made the game less intuitive, less accessible and less interesting!
Giving each class a predetermined purpose. To enable players to work on building effective teams, adapting tactics depending on the situation.
What an absolute joke of a statement. Not only has TW's class design proven they aren't really capable of delivering this, but the added flexibility of designing your own loadout for the situation, for adapting and creating an ever-evolving meta, is infinitely more interesting than a top-down created one, especially when it's not even any good.
To provide better visuals for the spectators or other players by having properly dressed soldiers. Knights looking like knights, Crossbowmen looking like crossbowmen etc.
A decked out Swadian cavalryman looks like a knight. Ranged classes always had a certain choices in gear that made them look distinct, even if they dropped their crossbows. This isn't anything new. That they think they achieved something new with this yet again calls their own knowledge of M&B, and their general competence into question.
To be able to use the same system for all game modes - Captain mode and Skirmish mode etc.
And hilariously, this hasn't worked out very well. The system only really fits a few modes. It's downright unsuitable for anything non-competitive, certain perks become totally pointless in some modes, and so on.
Free gear selection is unquestionably more adaptable. Let players kit themselves up to suit their playstyle or the exact circumstances. Don't give us such a limited amount of choices, especially when much of the choices you give us are comically unsuitable.


Finally, a more recent post from Callum:
You can refer to the OP for some of the reasons we put forward previously. In addition to this, we are pretty set on the idea of players making significant and meaningful choices during the game (i.e. selecting which class to play) rather than focusing on min-maxing choices.
Again, just read this. Do I even need to explain how utterly bad this reasoning is?
Not only is min-maxing still a thing as generally very few choices are actually viable, but the dilemma of what you upgrade first in a more casual mode is gone. Should I choose a better weapon? Should I get a proper helmet? All of those significant and meaningful choices are gone. Now all I can do is get the more expensive class and pick the non-crap options.

You can do so much more with actual gear selection. Here, watch me expand on it in a way Warband didn't do. For example, more expensive armour doesn't always need to be heavier. You could give the player a choice between if they want an exquisite mail vest that provides good protection with little impact on mobility, or for the same cost, the full coat-of-plates, long-sleeve hauberk shabang that's much tankier, but comes with major mobility penalties. If you want to go really crazy, you could even make things like berserker gear give you bonuses totally unrelated to armour!
Horse barding! Do I want all-round protection, at a major speed penalty, or do I go with the front-only option? Maybe I want protection against projectiles, but ain't too worried about melee attacks, so I could go with a specific material (padded?) and save money/mobility?

Sure, to some degree, there will be a defined meta that comes out of this for competitive play. So what? You can still have meaningful choices at other levels of play, the best choice will probably change depending on map and mode, and so on. Giving players free choice will obviously result in more viable options than with this current system.

Then there are the less meaningful, but still important question of customisation and aesthetics. The current system is laughably bad at this. In a modernised gear-based system, having options like helmet plumes, or different variants of the same gear would be a no-brainer.
Hell, I don't see why in some casual modes, you shouldn't get the option to bring weapons you designed yourself into battle! It wouldn't matter if it's about minmaxing, cool looks, funny gimmicks or what. It'd be great fun and add tons of replayability.

So yeah, this joke stopped being funny in September. It's time to move on. Warband's system wasn't perfect at all, it was a very simple, low-effort solution that could punch way above its weight class.
To throw it all out and replace it with a downgrade was a massive mistake. A new system that builds on the foundation Warband created would be worlds better in every measurable way.
 
I like the class system, I think it just needs some optimising. Like, I got the feeling that sturgia are two handed berserkers and Khuzait are hunting nomads just from the multiplayer. I really like this stuff. I just think it needs to go further in this direction to make units feel even more unique. Also needs work in balancing and perks which I'm sure will happen.
 
What an absolute joke of a statement. Not only has TW's class design proven they aren't really capable of delivering this, but the added flexibility of designing your own loadout for the situation, for adapting and creating an ever-evolving meta, is infinitely more interesting than a top-down created one, especially when it's not even any good.
Can't agree more with this statement, that's part of what made Warband a great game. But again, combat is still bad which is definitely the main issue that needs to be addressed before diving into secondary stuff
 
Yea, people been complaining about the class system since beta and not much has been done. Modders will probably have to save this game as they did to Warband. But I completely agree with you on this. I wouldn't mind a class system like Warband where you have the FREEDOM to pick whatever armor and weapons you wanted to use.
 
I've clocked in a few SP hours now.
I have to say that looking at the extra gear slots and weapon smithing system, I can only conclude that not including these things in MP is just straight-up lunacy. Incredible self-sabotage.

Seriously, what the hell Taleworlds? What kind of psycho looks at these great features and deliberately cuts them from MP?
 
Says it all when the first thing newbies were asking when they joined a multiplayer game was: How do I customize my gear?

I had to tell them it was a class system and it's fixed.
 
All of OPs points are good. However, they won’t change it because it’s getting great reviews on Steam so that’s probably all that matters. Their refusal to change fundamentally flawed features is apparent after 9 months of the MP beta staying the exact same. Plus the combat feels like a downgrade from Warband in general.

The custom servers in the beta had modified code created by one person that made the combat feel far better and actually increased server performance significantly.

One person managed to fix/significantly improve the combat in two days. TaleWorlds hasn’t been able to do that in 9 months (or 10 years).

It’s almost satirical.
 
In Captain each of the hundreds of possible choices, helmet, sword, horse, armour etc would have to have their own amount of troops per load out
 
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