the new death in battle sucks

[froggyluv]

im all for it but what they did is just drop death feature with 10% death chance and said we will fix it later, im not against a nice calibrated game i hate when they put a half ass solution for a problem that wont happen in most gameplays.

Fair enough - ive not played it in some time so im only arguing in theory and warning of the dangers of thinking "Options save everything". You may be totally right in that this is just a a cheap mechanism and not a well thought out mechanic.

froggyluv, you compliment the devs in assuming they are headed toward "a strong visionary product"... and I hope they are, but I fear that is just...hope. To me, there is so much extemporized in this game that I can't see the "vision" that it started with.

Someone considering scope of a campaign RPG would need, from the start, to be thinking about how long a typical campaign will need to hold together.

Well now i agree with this 100% as well and have stated this many many times on this forums -these games need to be designed from the ground up with a vision of game difficulty and challenges planned with foresight. I think its safe to say THAT HAS DEFINITELY NOT HAPPENED. Personally when i first fired up BL i was in awe -i thought man they really nailed the visceral effect of war and battle in a way i had always dreamed of for Mount&Blade. Of course upon further inspection, soon realized that the strategy/kingdom portion of the game was really thin and unfufilled but figured they are working hard behind the scenes to bring that to fruition. Now we are seeing that yes, a few devs are working REALLY hard behind the scenes but was there ever vision or game forethought that they are working towards or are they in a sense -winging it..?

Population control is of course just one element of the game. The economy and the smithing are two other areas where math modeling should have started before coding. TW is still flailing on both.

A game design document shouldn't consist solely of "I want to make the best damn medieval campaign game with the best damn combat for Single and Multiplayer." It needs to have some idea - some vision - of what that will look like. TW appears to be feeling its way towards an understanding of the details, but dammitall, putting in one system at a time breaks the others and requires endless iterations until it's somewhat workable.

Also +1

A good measure of a calibrated game is like Mount and Blade 1 or Operation Flashpoint -games that dont allow you to scum save and are still enjoyable but with much at stake and the possibility to actually lose - are signs of solid game design.

 

[sirano]

froggyluv, you compliment the devs in assuming they are headed toward "a strong visionary product"... and I hope they are, but I fear that is just...hope. To me, there is so much extemporized in this game that I can't see the "vision" that it started with.

Someone considering scope of a campaign RPG would need, from the start, to be thinking about how long a typical campaign will need to hold together. Since a higher population means higher PC resources, having a runaway population will at some point ruin anyone's game. Some mechanism had to be provided for dynamism: new notables/heroes/nobles shuffling in, older ones checking out. When BL went into EA, I don't think there was any mechanism at all for in/out (edit: except for executions). Adding death in battle only after three-quarters of a year (and sneaking it in on a hot-fix without warning, as I understand from the beta folks) indicates to me that either there was no vision at the start, or that the devs are just correcting population imbalances that happened - predictably - because important people weren't dying in battle. Setting the death "tax" at 10% "to start with" indicates (again, to me) that no serious ability to mathematically model outcomes is being invested. Why should BloodGryphon, a player, have to be providing statistical analyses to the devs to help them out?

Population control is of course just one element of the game. The economy and the smithing are two other areas where math modeling should have started before coding. TW is still flailing on both.

A game design document shouldn't consist solely of "I want to make the best damn medieval campaign game with the best damn combat for Single and Multiplayer." It needs to have some idea - some vision - of what that will look like. TW appears to be feeling its way towards an understanding of the details, but dammitall, putting in one system at a time breaks the others and requires endless iterations until it's somewhat workable.

agree on all. they should not sneak this or even implement it if its just a rushed "balance" . as i said before i was completely against it but when someone explained why its important for longer campaigns im with it, but not in this rushed and 0 thought behind it state they should for now remove this work on it for a while and when its ready and balanced implement . i assure u it will take at least months for them to fix it even in 1.5.6 there is no mention of balancing it and don't know when that is coming to the main game branch

 

[Ling*]

Perhaps 10% is too high, but I really like the option of having companions and lords die on the battlefield. If it were up to me I would extend this death mechanic to happen in all simulated battles as well between Ai Lords. Obviously the 10% will need to be adjusted first to be way lower, but I really like the idea that battles are risky and it's participants can die. It's a little immersion breaking to have deaths really only occur in player-driven battles though so adding death to AI simulated battles would be a good addition.

 

[Clanker]

I don't really understand why companions even need to fight. The only reason I have them is for the bonuses they give to medicine, scouting etc. Does anyone actually recruit the companions that only have combat skills? There should be an option to have them accompany the party but not onto the field of battle.

 

[Hairy Yahoo]

I have a thread about slider suggestion, it's in my signature please support that. There are examples like Conan Exiles, we should have that kinda customization for singleplayer campaign because why the hell not? Bannerlord is a cow that can produce different tastes of milk and everyone wants to milk bannerlord to their liking, give player what they want please!

 

[Earth Dragon]

I don't really understand why companions even need to fight. The only reason I have them is for the bonuses they give to medicine, scouting etc. Does anyone actually recruit the companions that only have combat skills? There should be an option to have them accompany the party but not onto the field of battle.

This has always been up to you to keep them safe when a battle breaks out. Making them horse archers with their own unique number assignment can keep them away from the fighting.

Combat oriented guys are good for mission completion. There is a mission for pretty much every skill that a companion would have. It’s the Scout and Medic I honestly normal skip on so I level up faster

 

[Mike86563]

You could add a secondary feature which would remedy many of the problems people have as well as allow the AI to somewhat control noble population, instead of "died in battle" the character could be "critically wounded in battle". You would then have the option to pay a large sum of money/a constant substantial sum of money to get them emergency medical care (as well as put them out of commission for a month or so, which would more or less be until the relevant war is over) and have them return healthy after that. Or you could just roll with the punches and say that's life until it isn't, and save your denars for your precious elite troop wages and let them perish.

The AI could take current total (adult) population (as well as clan member population and wealth) into account when deciding whether to let a clan member die or shell out to save them, and that way the game could never get too overcrowded, or underpopulated, because the rate of death is somewhat naturally synced to population. It would also counteract wealth inflation to a degree I imagine.

The main reason is because the game is incredibly grindy in terms of how skills level, even for the player character let alone AI controlled soldiers, and even after 100 battles you'd probably be incredibly lucky to see a companion get from 125 Two Handed to 175 Two Handed or somesuch, I wouldn't know the exact numbers but he would probably need at least a 5/1 kill death ratio to do so before he died in probability even if the death rate was 1%, which is fairly extravagant. Even with a low rate of death, fighting is most of what you do in this game and you're never going to have a combat oriented companion who makes it to the stage where they truly feel like a companion and not a troop with a name because more likely than not they'll be dead before you can give them any perk past 125, and that's a lot of time investment just gone, you just wouldn't even bother investing anything in his replacement. Maybe if you set them to archer and exclusively pick on enemies much weaker than yourself, but those are the most boring fights the game has to offer, and it really doesn't need yet another incentive against taking risky encounters, it certainly has enough of those already.

 

[stevehoos]

As many pointed out, death in battle is necessary to keep the population from overgrowing. If you are afraid to loose your companions, just keep them as archers or horse archers, or change them to a custom unit that you will keep away from danger as your personal guard (though, I noticed they have higher survivability in archers divisions).

War is war and I actually like the fact that my companions and even wife are at risk. It makes the game a little more immersive. Just yesterday I lost one of my old companions that ran with my for quite a lot of years. The guy was my medic ad he kept complaining about me raiding villages and slaughtering peasants (economical warfare for the win ) so I was actually planning to kick him out of clan whenever I could find a replacement for his position. But when he died I felt kind of sad.

Another memorable moment was when I was leading a quickly assembled Surgian army to recapture Tyal from Khuzaits. We took the city by surprise, and it was poorly defended so I led the assault without any preparations. Sturgians took the city walls and I was taking out defenders with my bow. I kept shooting, taking down one enemy with every arrow until I accidently headshoted one of our Sturgian lords... and the poor guy died... At the end we captured the city but I felt guilty about this guy. This unfortunate accident also forced me to reconsider my war plans, as the guy's party added up about 25% of my manpower. After his death his men dissasembled so I was no longer able to continue my march to victory.


So yeah, I love this game for the fact that it writes it's own stories and death in battle actually ads a lot to that immersion.

It writes its own story? LOL, that's about the funniest thing I have read all week.

 

[TechnoSarge]

This has always been up to you to keep them safe when a battle breaks out. Making them horse archers with their own unique number assignment can keep them away from the fighting.

They are using up slots in your army, like it or not. Far from keeping them safe, if you accept battle against an opponent with enough troops to give you trouble, even your back line is likely to be attacked. You can only keep them safe in cakewalks.

And meanwhile, gradually increasing your warband's limits forces you to accept lower effective ones if you don't intend family & companions to fight. I tote seven around with me - which is a substantial chunk of strength to turn into noncombatants.

 

[adrakken]

i am a bit salty tbh i dont like when devs do something to force allot of us to play a certain way in an rpg,

Not just in an RPG, but a SANDBOX on top of it.

Also, many are salty over this, still are a month after the changes...even on reddit its rare for a day to go by without having at least one new person begging for a mod that either turns death off for the player and companions and not other lords or turns child births back on if death is off. TW went full retard with this change and you should never go full retard.

And to those that keep saying we MUST HAVE IT because overpopulation OH MY GOD!

No, no we do NOT have to have it. MANY of us have been using mods that not only allow us to increase the amount of children we can have but mods that also add in many factions and lords as well...that means we have been playing games that had at LEAST 2x the population YOURS have had and we played fine.

YOU, just want to force everyone to play like you want to play based on your potato PCs capabilities.

 

[Warlord123123]

In 1.5.7 its not that bad, only once or twice my mele companion has died in a battle, I just reloaded a save and that's it.
It seems realistic.
Disable death if you want a Disney land version of a game.

 

[Bovice]

But, if they give a option to choose, shoudln't they give us a option on how % we want of death rate?

I mean, 2% it's nearly impossible anyone dying in battle....

I agree an option would be nice but 2% is still pretty significant because it would include simulated battles going on across the map instead of just player battles.

Does anyone know if the type of wound inflicted have any effect on wounding/killing? I swear headshots almost always inflict death against normal troops.

This could give the player some ability to choose to kill the lord in battle or not. Want a lord as a potential ally later? Shoot him in the leg (1-2% chance). Has this MFer been raiding your villages every week? Headshot (10% chance).

 

[Monkey]

Deaths and births are two good things that increase the realism and give more depth to the game. Personally, I don't like nobles dying (not allies nor enemies) because it takes from the richness of the game IMO. Again, that's personal and not realistic. If noble deaths would enrich the game with story, that would be different, but it's not the case. The nobles are just gone and people even keep pointing to them for information on "Neretze's Folly".

There is one way of giving birth and there are two ways of dying (of old age and by being killed).

I know this might be a "polemic" opinion, but I don't think TaleWorlds should leave it possible for births without deaths (of old age at least) in the unmodded game. That indefinite multiplication of the game world population should be left to mods IMO and people who "know what they're doing".

That said, I do believe there should be an option to enable/disable "life cycle", which is giving birth and dying of old age.
Once that option is enabled, there should be an additional option to enable "death in battle", which is the possibility of being gone for good if killed in battle.
Yet another option could be offered (though I'm not really sure if it should), if death in battle is enabled, to prevent death in battle of the main player (and his companions?). Since that looks like cheating IMO, maybe that should also be left for mods.

Though I really like births and deaths of old age in my game, at this moment I'm playing with it turned off because I really don't want noble deaths in battle.

TLDR: Life cycle (births and deaths of old age) should be one option. Death in battle should be another separate option. None should be forced.

 

[Galvar]

Death in battle in itself is a good idea and a necessity for population control. But the fact that it happens only in player battles is extremely unbalanced, so I can't wait until they're done with their testing and lower the percentage.

Also, there have to be changes to the leveling and companion system. Make them more easily replacable and/or faster to level.

 

[Goonfrom32]

I think it's a great feature. It forces you to change your playstyle and not have some super-soldiers which you can rely on in every battle. The companion mechanic itself is really overpowered, so there has to be some type of drawback to balance it. You can't have your cake and eat it

I don't understand why people complain about this, if you want ez-mode just play on lower settings or put them in a separate formation and simple leave/retreat them.

 

[Brentimus Maximus]

I want death to be related to how you were knocked out and how much armor you had at impact.

 

[Midnitewolf]

as i said i just want death of old age to play as my character children its not bravery its a game and i want to enjoy they could just add lords and companion death as an option not change the entire thing

I just posted in another thread that I am totally shocked there aren't more toggles and sliders in the native experience. I mean since this game is mostly a single player experience and it is obvious that it is relatively easy to create a mod with sliders and toggles for most of this stuff (The Bannerlord Tweaks mod is a prime example), why the hell didn't the developers just put in tons of sliders and toggles so the play could easily tweak his experience?

I mean just add an advanced configuration screen with toggles and sliders that allow you to set party wages, max party size, max garrisons, rate skill progression, tournament rewards, death, birth, aging rate, things that only affect companions, things that only affect the player, cost of items, enable special loot drop and the rate they drop at, smithing stamina recharge rates, how easy it is for lords to escape, frequency of wars, etc, etc. I mean all these are just parameters in the game and can easily be tweaked and in most cases, there only needs to be a UI and a few lines of code to actually overwrite and change any of these parameters. It shouldn't even be that hard to do and it leaves the player to determine what sort of game play experience they want and enjoy. Hell Taleworlds could pretty much wash their hands of trying to balance things, just provide some sort of decent default settings then let the player go wild changing things up to their hearts content.

 

[sirano]

I just posted in another thread that I am totally shocked there aren't more toggles and sliders in the native experience. I mean since this game is mostly a single player experience and it is obvious that it is relatively easy to create a mod with sliders and toggles for most of this stuff (The Bannerlord Tweaks mod is a prime example), why the hell didn't the developers just put in tons of sliders and toggles so the play could easily tweak his experience?

I mean just add an advanced configuration screen with toggles and sliders that allow you to set party wages, max party size, max garrisons, rate skill progression, tournament rewards, death, birth, aging rate, things that only affect companions, things that only affect the player, cost of items, enable special loot drop and the rate they drop at, smithing stamina recharge rates, how easy it is for lords to escape, frequency of wars, etc, etc. I mean all these are just parameters in the game and can easily be tweaked and in most cases, there only needs to be a UI and a few lines of code to actually overwrite and change any of these parameters. It shouldn't even be that hard to do and it leaves the player to determine what sort of game play experience they want and enjoy. Hell Taleworlds could pretty much wash their hands of trying to balance things, just provide some sort of decent default settings then let the player go wild changing things up to their hearts content.

it's doable and it can be just like warband and anno games, the harder options the higher the difficulty% u play
i actually stopped playing the game from the time i posted this its dead for me im just annoyed i payed full price on it (first game i ever buy it full price and on launch )

 

[levilop]

Currently I am playing 1.5.6 because of mod compatibility, here is my experience with enabled death:
- I do not really care when a companion dies in the battle, as I can quickly replace him by another tavern dude with the same skills. Until companions remain general and not unique, their death will not make me reload
- AI lords dying really adds to the game, they are not just permanent units that can only be knocked out. However, their occasional death do influence the game:
1) A dead AI lord means a decrease in manpower of the kingdom, therefore losing one of them equals to a permanent loss of ~ 100 soldiers.
2) For some reason, lords are much more likely to die during big battles between armies. Whenever I create an army and siege / battle with another army, there is always a guaranteed death. In my most recent battle, that was a phyric victory, I had 800 troops against 1000 better ones quality wise. Although I managed to win the battle with tactics, the final report was bittersweet:
* One of my companion died, no big deal
* 3 lords in my army perished
* My freaking wife died
* However, none of the enemy lords died...
And this was just 1 battle between armies, I suspect my faction already lost like 5 lords in this war so far
- The death system will be nerfed for sure, but I just hope the devs will find the sweet balance between children growing up & AI lords dying in battle / of old age

 

[WNxSpectre]

yeah it's true lol
I don't know if they player can die in combat though. I might be wrong but it hasn't happened to me yet.

Save before battle, load the save and redo the fight if they die. You have to get them good armor and gear so that they dont die so often, and until then, keep them close and use them carefully. You have to take calculated risks with them, but you can keep them alive this way. I have lost only one, because I wasn't aware of it at first until I noticed one had died.