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

[Cheeky]

Warband Swadian Infantry choices -

Six Helmets, Five Armours, Four Boots, Four Gloves.

Five One Handed Swords, Four Two Handers, Two Awlpikes, Four Shields, Two Throwing Weapons.

Amount of possible combinations depending on economy, situation and play style? 30,260,340

Bannerlord Vlandian Infantry choices -

Three niche, situational Infantry classes, with two perk slots, providing three arbitrary choices each. Some of which I could argue are redundant or entirely useless, but I digress.

Fifteen possible options per class, Levy, Voulgier and Sergeant. Three classes, times fifteen equals a measly 45

Pretending that the Bannerlord system is anything but a watered down, casual version of the previous games system is level of mental gymnastics I am not yet prepared to tackle. It will not lend itself to competitive play, it has watered down casual play, and is a grave insult to the sheer amount of armours that are currently available to Native Vlandia.

It lacks flavor and puts players into a box that nobody asked for.

That's just my personal opinion though.

 

[Swordnoob1]

I fail to see how current system is supposed to prevent snowballing when there are some obvious balance issues when it comes to weapons and classes aswell (just pick a glaive for example and 360° IK anyone around you 4Head).
Also I don't remember that anyone would be confused by Warband system that they would not know what to pick. Even dumb person figures out that more expensive armour is probably better, and there are different weapons better for different situations (speed, lenght etc.). Only thing I can think of is blunt/thrust/slash difference but this is not really explained in Bannerlord either.
Only thing I can agree with would be easier balancing, but at what cost? If they wanted to implement this, they should have keep the old system and just add some additional perks for each class, that would actually be kind of interesting.

 

[Shemaforash]

It's just... shallow. I feel like BL mp is inspired by shallow warband clones that had a lifespan of 6 months instead of 10+ years.

NIN3, one of the developers, said his favorite multiplayer game is War of the Roses.

 

[Ratvioli]

NIN3, one of the developers, said his favorite multiplayer game is War of the Roses.

Interesting since all that game had going for it was the customization.

I've said it before, if yall back in 2018 when it was first revealed had protested with me instead of looking at what was proposed with interest and a sense of "hmm, I'm intrigued, let's not judge it before we play it in the beta", then perhaps it would have been killed in its womb and we would never be forced deal with the perk bull****tery in mp.

 

[Fietta]

I think the class system was heavily inspired by Napoleonic Wars, I'm pretty sure one of the main MP devs loves Napoleonic Wars.

 

[부부를 넘어서 가자]

sounds like none of them actually liked warband
that explains alot

 

[Scarf Ace]

I think the class system was heavily inspired by Napoleonic Wars, I'm pretty sure one of the main MP devs loves Napoleonic Wars.

But surely, if he understood NW, he'd know why such a system belongs in a Napoleonic game and not a medieval one?

 

[Plazek]

My keyboards G button is going to break from having to drop all the useless crap the classes spawn with that I don't want.

 

[hoe12moe]

My keyboards G button is going to break from having to drop all the useless crap the classes spawn with that I don't want.

You don't like having a one-handed axe and 3 swords?

 

[Guaccmoleboy]

hey,

i think that an important point to be made here is that snowballing in warband multiplayer was a faction balancing problem rather than a fundamental problem in economy. factions like swadia and nords were able to buy high tier armour much faster than rhodoks, sarranids and vaegirs, making it difficult to counter them if you get swept in a round. if taleworlds had actually cared about competitive in warband, then they would have increased armour prices on high-snowball factions and added more cheaper armour options for low-snowball factions. round-win bonus should have been modified so that one could not purchase higher tier armour after only having a single round win, no deaths and no kills.

warband's economy system worked great to reward skilled players, while not making the game significantly more difficult for the opposing side. i feel like snowballing as an issue was compounded due to the high-snowball factions (swad and nords) already being overpowered with starter gear due to long-awlpike meta and tanky, high dmg nords. this led them to sweep the opposing side more often, then snowballing in the next round and making it more unfair. again, this is a problem of faction imbalance and not economy.

in TDM or siege where good players can get max armour very easily, then the class system works perfectly. but in competitive, it only serves as a hindrance. i could expand on that last point if ppl disagree, lol.

@Tork789 your example of the class system being good by being able to do "save" rounds to mount a comeback is utterly stupid. the premise of you thinking that giving 1/3 or 2/3 of your rounds to have a chance of beating the opposing side shows how unbalanced bannerlord's class system is. also, you extremely over exaggerate snowballing in warband.

 

[Jess_the_Hobozerk]

hey,

i think that an important point to be made here is that snowballing in warband multiplayer was a faction balancing problem rather than a fundamental problem in economy. factions like swadia and nords were able to buy high tier armour much faster than rhodoks, sarranids and vaegirs, making it difficult to counter them if you get swept in a round. if taleworlds had actually cared about competitive in warband, then they would have increased armour prices on high-snowball factions and added more cheaper armour options for low-snowball factions. round-win bonus should have been modified so that one could not purchase higher tier armour after only having a single round win, no deaths and no kills.

warband's economy system worked great to reward skilled players, while not making the game significantly more difficult for the opposing side. i feel like snowballing as an issue was compounded due to the high-snowball factions (swad and nords) already being overpowered with starter gear due to long-awlpike meta and tanky, high dmg nords. this led them to sweep the opposing side more often, then snowballing in the next round and making it more unfair. again, this is a problem of faction imbalance and not economy.

in TDM or siege where good players can get max armour very easily, then the class system works perfectly. but in competitive, it only serves as a hindrance. i could expand on that last point if ppl disagree, lol.

@Tork789 your example of the class system being good by being able to do "save" rounds to mount a comeback is utterly stupid. the premise of you thinking that giving 1/3 or 2/3 of your rounds to have a chance of beating the opposing side shows how unbalanced bannerlord's class system is. also, you extremely over exaggerate snowballing in warband.

There were countless threads just like these during warband, providing great ideas for fixing the issues warband MP had, but they fell on deaf ears.

 

[Charlini]

Just gonna throw my opinion briefly as fixing combat is way more concerning than equipment/classes:

I agree with everything that Gibby and OGL answered to Tork. Snowballing is an issue.

Overall I feel that classes could be ok if they presented enough variety and logical balanced choices, it's not the case now.

In reality Warband had 'premade classes' for competitive, playing other stuff was unviable or weaker. Upgrades were fun and good for the game(I would have provided more gold to a player killing an upgraded unit). But imagine if Taleworlds actually worked since 2010 to try and balance all weapons/armors & shields, giving them use and propper prices also for competitive, investing in worse weapon quality to boost upgrades in case of surviving. We lacked lot of balance(Watch Khergits' topic 2010-2015 or heavy horses in the scene overall), we lacked Matchmaking and constant balance patches, we lacked direct support and communication. Most of the gear was unused in competitive due its overpriced value.

On top of all of that, just wanna point out that Warband was nothing competitively compared to what it could have been because the developers wasted its' potential and didn't release patches, direct support and matchmaking mode(with ranked, back when every game was launching theirs' back in 2010 to 2012). I think that working from that spot on going would have attracted way more players, instead we had lack of most of that & a decreasing player pool that in the end could survive because the game combatwise is really good.

Now we're on the opposite situation, TW stated they want to provide that support and showed it via LAN, matchmaking initiative, competitive medias, but then we're coming a step back in the other area, combat & balance.

I'm quite sure they won't answer to most of the feedback nor this thread or anything related to MP/combat & balance any time soon, they're overwhelmed by SP work(Bugs & Glitches) and cannot spend 5 minutes to make some communication regarding their thoughts and intentions towards combat system, balance & competitive. Which once again, should be totally compatible with SP & Casual gameplay in MP.

 

[Achaner]

I'm quite sure they won't answer to most of the feedback nor this thread or anything related to MP/combat & balance any time soon, they're overwhelmed by SP work(Bugs & Glitches) and cannot spend 5 minutes to make some communication regarding their thoughts and intentions towards combat system, balance & competitive. Which once again, should be totally compatible with SP & Casual gameplay in MP.

I want you to be wrong but you're most likely correct. TW communication has gotten much better since Callum came around but again, there's so much SP patching and work to do, they've obviously put MP on the backburner for the initial release. Of course why have the MP Beta if that's the case but... not sure. Either way, I'm confident we'll get a proper response eventually or else TW risks losing some core veterans back to Warband (maybe).

 

[Tork789]

@Tork789 your example of the class system being good by being able to do "save" rounds to mount a comeback is utterly stupid. the premise of you thinking that giving 1/3 or 2/3 of your rounds to have a chance of beating the opposing side shows how unbalanced bannerlord's class system is. also, you extremely over exaggerate snowballing in warband.

Your interpretation of what I said indeed sounds very stupid. However it's not at all what I was describing, not sure if it's my writing comprehension or your reading comprehension, but something definitely went wrong if that is how you truly understood my point.

You don't need to give any rounds to have a chance of beating the opposing side, nowhere did I suggest that, in my example you already lost a round and now you face two options: either save some gold for the next round, or go all in right now again like in previous round. In both cases you are at a much better position than in WB in which you don't get to have any options but try harder and try to overcome the ever increasing equipment gap, hence why snowballing is much worse in WB.

 

[RCC_God]

Snowballing is way worse in bannerlord from my experience because peasants are ass and getting three lives with a heavily armoured dude is worth 6 peasant lives. Also there wasn’t the problems of weapons doing like 8 damage a swing in warband

 

[Jess_the_Hobozerk]

Your interpretation of what I said indeed sounds very stupid. However it's not at all what I was describing, not sure if it's my writing comprehension or your reading comprehension, but something definitely went wrong if that is how you truly understood my point.

You don't need to give any rounds to have a chance of beating the opposing side, nowhere did I suggest that, in my example you already lost a round and now you face two options: either save some gold for the next round, or go all in right now again like in previous round. In both cases you are at a much better position than in WB in which you don't get to have any options but try harder and try to overcome the ever increasing equipment gap, hence why snowballing is much worse in WB.

You're wrong though in that warband upgrades were marginal until you won several rounds consecutively without dying. Winning 3 rounds in a row without dying, provided your with armor that took maybe 1-2 extra hits to kill someone; or a weapon that would give you a marginal speed or damage increase and a stronger shield.

In bannerlord, you can spawn in as the best and most expensive class and face stomp taking 6-8 hits to die or more depending on the opponent's class; along side with an armored horse that takes countless hits and if you win a round you can do that with several lives.

If your team is on the losing side of that, you are stuck in a position where you cannot make up that gap and you will constantly have a throng of the best and most heavily armored classes spawning over and over and you cannot make up the gap because you are spawning as a peasant where you cannot even interrupt their attacks and they swing through your attack, killing you.

It wasn't until a player had won 5-7 rounds in a row in warband to have that kind of equipment gap.

I have no idea how this is even comparable in your vision.

 

[RCC_God]

Also hitting cav does so little damage with bannerlords speed based damage model that a cavalry can just sit there poking at you while you fight an infantry which is another reason that cavalry is so good

 

[Tork789]

You're wrong though in that warband upgrades were marginal until you won several rounds consecutively without dying.

I don't agree that it's marginal, but whether or not it's marginal is irrelevant, the very fact that the system allows for snowballing is telling and my main point, so I don't see how I'm wrong here.

If your team is on the losing side of that, you are stuck in a position where you cannot make up that gap

Yes you can and I've already described how several times. Where you can't do that is in Warband.

 

[RCC_God]

Do you have warband experience playing competitive? I’m just curious. A lotta people are talking from experience and I’m just wondering where you are in that equation

 

[Jess_the_Hobozerk]

I don't agree that it's marginal, but whether or not it's marginal is irrelevant, the very fact that the system allows for snowballing is telling and my main point, so I don't see how I'm wrong here.


Yes you can and I've already described how several times. Where you can't do that is in Warband.

Your solution to snowballing is throwing a round away and git gud next time to make up for the very thing you claim doesn't exist in bannerlord.

To overcome someone in warband that won 2 rounds in a row, all you had to do was play marginally better and hit the person one extra time. Meanwhile in bannerlord you have peasants slapping 4-6 damage against fully armored players who get 2 lives as fully armored in the second round.