[Suggestion] TW NEEDS to add a pseudo-MMORTS persistent multiplayer campaign mode!

[wyqydsyq]

Having played both the campaign and multiplayer obsessively since EA launch, I'm really enjoying the game but feel there's something sorely missing.
This game has a fantastic sandbox/RPG experience but all of that is thrown out the window in multiplayer which is purely ephemeral match/round-based with zero sense of progression or character development. Yet after only a few weeks I'm starting to find singleplayer bland and boring, playing with all the difficulties turned up is still too easy purely because the AI becomes predictable quite quickly.

So right now:
- Singleplayer gets stale due to predictable (and hilariously buggy) AI
- Multiplayer gets stale due to being purely ephemeral match/round based with no progression and none of the RPG/sandbox elements of the campaign mode

IIRC there were mods for Warband that added multiplayer to the campaign, but given the harsh criticism TaleWorlds has been copping due to BL taking so long to develop and not really expanding on Warband's features by much, it should be worth consideration of TaleWorld's execs to look at doing something different to really make the game stand out beyond just being Warband on a newer engine with slightly better metagame simulations.

According to my search on this forum I'm hardly the only one who thinks multiplayer campaign would make this game amazing, even GOTY 2020 material. But I wanted to suggest this with a slight twist.

Multiplayer would add unpredictability, fresh challenges, and a sense of impact and meaning - owning X castle doesn't mean much when everyone else playing the game owns the same castle in their own local save, but to be THE owner of X castle in Bannerlord multiplayer in the OCE/NA/EU region does

Imagine a persistent multiplayer campaign mode where:
- Simulated battles and time cheats are disabled (to maintain consistent timescale for all players)
- Policy voting has a much longer timeout giving players more time to react, unless everyone in a kingdom has voted upon which it instantly completes
- When players own at least 1 fief and are offline their characters are controlled by a defensive lord AI (allowing you to hold your fiefs while offline somewhat by defending in sieges, ensuring your militias stay populated etc) and hostile votes like kick from kingdom or take fief are disabled.
- Player networking is partitioned based on in-game geography, the world is divided up into server clusters each handling a small "zone", since you can only see your own LoS you would never need world data for a player who is on the other side of the world, and with the world map already being a high-level abstraction a visible border or pause as you transfer zones wouldn't exactly be immersion breaking. Game state from cluster servers gets collated on global meta servers so events and states like fief ownership and kingdom status can be synced and shared globally. This would enable a "pseudo-MMO" experience (think Elite: Dangerous, Foxhole, PoE, Warframe etc) with a global (per OCE/NA/EU region) economy and metagame.

TaleWorlds could even put in cosmetic microtransactions to support the ongoing server costs, lots could be monetized without it becoming P2W:
- Banners, the base range of designs and especially colours for banners is pretty meh, I would happily pay cash to pimp out my banner with more variety in a persistent pseudo-MMO Bannerlord
- Aesthetic blacksmithing blueprints - equivalent to other base game weapons but with various visual designs to allow further aesthetic customization of one's character and companions, think cloth/ribbon decorations on polearms, blades with different sheaths etc
- Aesthetic gear skins - not complete "costume" skins like in many MMOs, but think different stylistic variants (maybe some gold plating, engravings, various helmet plumes) where overall the look and feel still conveys the same stat properties as the original (no bikinis with stats of full plate armour for example)
- Character/Family name & appearance changes
- Respec or restart character with maintained earned levels to spend again


Other than the clustered networking (plenty of indie devs implement this well so I'm sure TW could manage) and probably increasing the world map size a fair bit so there's enough space that owning fiefs isn't too exclusive pretty much all of the building blocks for this are already there.

EDIT:
Lots of people commenting negatively are complaining that it would be changing the game in a way they don't like, I am not suggesting any changes to existing SP or MP modes. I am suggesting a new MP game mode that if it's not for you, you can simply just play SP or the other MP game modes that already exist. This game mode could be entirely self-funded through micro/subs/whatever monetization model specific to this game mode, so it wouldn't necessarily impact development of other modes negatively by detracting resources from their teams.

 

[R4MPZY]

I choose the third option, no.

Microtransactions, especially no.

 

[Randlocher]

I choose the third option, no. Microtransactions, especially no.

this

 

[Rungsted93]

I'd much rather prefer a 4-8 player multiplayer system running P2P with other's joining the "host" game.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Yeah no, wrong game buddy. I suggest Allods.com.

 

[BlackRainZ]

Absolutely not.

 

[wyqydsyq]

I'd much rather prefer a 4-8 player multiplayer system running P2P with other's joining the "host" game.

Even just his would be fantastic, hell even just 2-player co-op would be great. Only downside to that is that it would be committing to a long term multiplayer game and you'd pretty much need to coordinate everyone being online to play at once so you can't solo play if you wanna make progress when other players aren't online, but that's already a problem with games like Civ so it could still work.

I choose the third option, no.

Microtransactions, especially no.

this

Why are you opposed to microtransactions outright? I get they have a bad history but that's always due to it becoming P2W, what's wrong with purely cosmetic microtransactions?
Besides I was mostly just throwing it out there because if a TW engineer were to read this and like the idea they'd still need to convince a business exec who only talks $$$ it's worth the investment, but it wouldn't be a necessary monetization model. I'd even be happy to pay a subscription for a game mode like this

 

[wyqydsyq]

Yeah no, wrong game buddy. I suggest Allods.com.

Looks like some random cookie cutter MMORPG so not sure how that's relevant but okay bud

 

[Pinkman]

nobody will take this seriously, especially when your only 2 poll options are yes and yes

 

[wyqydsyq]

nobody will take this seriously, especially when your only 2 poll options are yes and yes

Yeah fair call, I added some 'No's to make it a bit more sensible

 

[R4MPZY]

Even just his would be fantastic, hell even just 2-player co-op would be great. Only downside to that is that it would be committing to a long term multiplayer game and you'd pretty much need to coordinate everyone being online to play at once so you can't solo play if you wanna make progress when other players aren't online, but that's already a problem with games like Civ so it could still work.



Why are you opposed to microtransactions outright? I get they have a bad history but that's always due to it becoming P2W, what's wrong with purely cosmetic microtransactions?
Besides I was mostly just throwing it out there because if a TW engineer were to read this and like the idea they'd still need to convince a business exec who only talks $$$ it's worth the investment, but it wouldn't be a necessary monetization model. I'd even be happy to pay a subscription for a game mode like this

Microtransactions only do well in F2P games, a game where you already have to pay "full" price and on top of that microtransactions is a disaster.

Just look at Fallout 76, they had a complete meltdown at launch, but atleast the store was working. Hell now they even added in a monthly subscription for an unlimited scrap box which was previously "impossible to add".

Also this

nobody will take this seriously, especially when your only 2 poll options are yes and yes

 

[wyqydsyq]

Microtransactions only do well in F2P games, a game where you already have to pay "full" price and on top of that microtransactions is a disaster.

Also this

There's F2P microtransaction games that started out with initial buy price anyway and then transition to F2P once buying slows down, Guild Wars 2 comes to mind.

Also you only "have" to pay full price for the game, nobody has to buy the cosmetics microtransactions on top of that but many still do. This is not really any different from the cosmetic DLC business models many non-MMO devs publishing on Steam are already supporting their games with. If they were to add this mode and microtransactions to support the servers, people who don't play this mode would never even encounter the microtransaction store

 

[R4MPZY]

Also you only "have" to pay full price for the game, nobody has to buy the cosmetics microtransactions

Pretty sure that is how they started out the very first time it happend.

Now we have FUT packs in fifa, cosmetics and stashes in POE, Monthly subscriptions in FO76,Fortnite,CSGO, list is endless.

It always starts with "nobody has to buy it, its optional", but no it really isnt.

 

[wyqydsyq]

Pretty sure that is how they started out the very first time it happend.

Now we have FUT packs in fifa, cosmetics and stashes in POE, Monthly subscriptions in FO76,Fortnite,CSGO, list is endless.

It always starts with "nobody has to buy it, its optional", but no it really isnt.

It's ultimately a high level business decision made by executives, yeah devs/publishers are often greedy but it clearly harms reputation and revenue in the long run. For companies with histories of greed like EA and Valve it's pretty obvious to see why they did it.

But smart devs/publishers who want to prolong the relevancy/lifetime (and profitability) of their game won't succumb to the greed and will ensure microtransactions never affect game balance. It might be less profitable in the short run but it avoids exiling a huge portion of the playerbase that gets pissed off when their favourite game becomes P2W

But again it's not even essential, just thought I'd suggest it because there needs to be some business motivation for this to happen, and with the extensive customization systems in the campaign it seems silly to not let players have more cosmetic options if they're happy to pay

 

[LordKaien]

No.

MMORPG need to be plan at the beginning. Not when it is half finish. This is the best way for crash a project.
MMORPG need special skill. Servers, communauty managements, financial gestion. TW dont have this skills.
WB and BL target singleplayer gamers. I know some MMORPG, and I dont go on this games. If they change, our communauty will go away and a new one will maybe come. This is not a good idea.
WB was famous for mod. A MMORPG cannot really well deal with MOD. You will cut the best part of the game.

MMORPG with the model of Bannerlord, why not, but this need 5-10 years of developpement and be a new game.

So just no.

 

[wyqydsyq]

For the people who say no outright:

If you're not interested in a multiplayer campaign game mode but existence of it and any associated monetization provided TW enough funding to upscale and invest more in overall development budget and sustain the game for a longer time, the existing game modes you do play would still benefit as a result, so shouldn't you still want this?

No.

MMORPG need to be plan at the beginning. Not when it is half finish. This is the best way for crash a project.
MMORPG need special skill. Servers, communauty managements, financial gestion. TW dont have this skills.
WB and BL target singleplayer gamers. I know some MMORPG, and I dont go on this games. If they change, our communauty will go away and a new one will maybe come. This is not a good idea.
WB was famous for mod. A MMORPG cannot really well deal with MOD. You will cut the best part of the game.

MMORPG with the model of Bannerlord, why not, but this need 5-10 years of developpement and be a new game.

So just no.

Wrong, there's no real reason any part of the rest of the game would have to change, this could just be a new multiplayer game mode in addition to the existing ones. The SP and modding experience could still be exactly the same. Mods are already disabled when playing multiplayer in matchmaking or on the public siege/TDM servers.

It would not take 5-10 years to make a pseudo-MMO when 90% of it is already there. Technical work would amount to writing new software for servers to handle a persistent map and delegate player networking to geographic zones, and additions to the MP client adding a game mode that connects and syncs to these servers, it could even be implemented by the community as a standalone server and a clientside mod but then the playerbase would be tiny which diminishes the meaning of owning fiefs or being a powerful clan/in a powerful kingdom if there's only a few other lords to compare yourself to.

I am suggesting adding a new multiplayer game mode that could potentially be self-funding, not changing or taking anything away from the rest of the game.

 

[Revverie]

Persistent World and thats it bye bye

 

[black_bulldog]

Absolutely not.

^ this

 

[Shaggy_711]

Wtf? This guy is ADVOCATING for turning a fully priced single player game into an MMO with microtransactions? Wtf is this ****? Go play an MMO if that's what you want.

 

[wyqydsyq]

Wtf? This guy is ADVOCATING for turning a fully priced single player game into an MMO with microtransactions? Wtf is this ****? Go play an MMO if that's what you want.

> Wtf? This guy is ADVOCATING turning
Wrong, I'm not advocating changing anything, I'm suggesting a new game mode that doesn't change the existing SP or MP modes

> Go play an MMO if that's what you want.
What MMOs have the same fluid combat, combined with tactical command, strategic planning, and deep sandbox + RPG elements that Bannerlord SP campaign has? None. This would literally be something completely new to the market without any direct competitors.