This is a list of things that I think breaks this game for me at the moment:
For all the forum readers of this lengthy post, here's a quick statement:
I want to play this game my way; I do not want to have to play the same way that you're playing because you found a way around a certain system I've referenced above as being broken - this game is an RPG, and therefore I want to play the role I am creating for my character. 9/10 of the points above slot into that because they restrict how I am to play the game (and in a lot of scenarios, really pointlessly), with the only exception being the game crashes.
EDIT: Also, I shouldn't have to resort to modding to get the game's functionality that I was sold on. I didn't pay BobUser20184 money for his game, I paid Taleworlds for theirs.
- Crashes - There's still a ridiculous number of game crashes, for seemingly no reason. I've got a conspiracy quest active at the moment which I can't complete because as soon as I beat the conspiracy party, the loot screen crashes the game. It's pure pot-luck playing the game and coming away without a crash, which after a year, I wouldn't have expected there to be still so many crashes with systems that seemingly haven't changed since launch.
- Difficulty - I play on Very Easy, and while battles get stale and boring because I can use 100 men to take on 900 men, the game is actually impossible to beat on Very Easy, let alone any other difficulty, and this is because of the lack of intelligence in AI. If you siege any town, that AI faction just relentlessly hammers you. Your tactics could be superior in every way, but eventually your army will be whittled away into nothingness, if not for retreating-scumming (in itself, is an issue anyway), but in removing the option to retreat-scum, you lose your entire army before you can even build a siege camp unless you take the entire enemy faction as prisoners (which they easily escape anyway). All in all, the difficulty of the game is both immensely easy, and impossible at the same time. Again, this is something I expected much more progress in after over a year of development since release.
- Skill Tree - This is still as broken as launch day. You need the attribute points to be assigned in order to get good usage from skill points to allow you to progress further in the ranks, but you need to level up too many times to get one attribute point. If you don't have attribute points, you max-out your learning (which isn't realistic) and make zero progress, which in turns means you can't earn any more attribute points. Thus, there's always a loop you get stuck in where you never manage to progress with your character. In my opinion, the absolutely minimum earning potential for any skill should be 1.00x the experience being earned, not 0.00x. If you're still doing something, you're still learning and getting better at it. Attribute points should just assist in levelling up quicker in a given field, not be the skill cap.
- Kingdoms - The biggest issue of all is that Kingdoms are impossible. If you start a Kingdom, you're immediately at war with 2-3 factions just for existing. Those factions just relentlessly batter you, while they let their own settlements and castles get taken from the other factions they're at war with - but that's ok, because they're still wanting to beat down on the new guy. It's really, really, really odd behaviour from the AI. They shouldn't be focused on eradicating a small-strength kingdom that poses little to no threat, and should be focused on the faction that's swept through two kingdoms to meet them and then is taking all their settlements and income away from them. Not to mention that becoming stronger is also virtually impossible. Lords you're "best friends" with in the game, are demanding you pay them 800k gold to betray their lord that they have a -20 relationship with? Seriously? The whole loyalty and alignment thing needs serious work, and I mean serious work. It's utterly terrible as it stands.
- Social Interactions - Completely null and void of any interest. The persuasion checks aren't even accurate with 90%+ actions failing repeatedly where as a 2% critical failure seems to have a higher chance at triggering. Either the percentages are wrong, or the system is wrong... either way, it's still a crap system. You shouldn't see the percentages. You should see the statement, the statement's attributes/traits that it appeals to, and then have to read the question and figure out the best answer based on that character's attributes/traits. For example, if they're a disloyal person, you shouldn't be choosing answers that highlight loyalty (unless the question is about demonstrating loyalty to them). This means you actually need to read the question and answers, instead of just hoping that the dice roll is a success because there's literally no redo aside from save-scumming.
- Scumming - It's literally the only way to play the game in the current state. You're timed on everything, and you can't train units fast enough especially when the AI don't even train units at all and just constantly bombard 700 recruits at you over and over. You can't buy enough Units to outnumber any of the AI, and you generally can't afford the better units at around 200 Unit cap (even with two settlements). So when you finally get an army, and it gets wiped out through chance, or bad decisions, or whatever else, you more or less have to resort to save-scumming... and then battles that you're significantly outnumbered in - which lets face it, is about 99% of battles because you have no way to recruit factions without being rich - you then have to retreat-scum as well to protect them. It all feels really poorly balanced, and its the absolute foundation of the game - how on earth has this not been addressed in almost 18 months of development post-release?
- Loot / Equipment - The loot rewards are madly imbalanced. You get way too much loot from battles to the point an entire settlement can't buy you out after a few successful battles (so just perform one siege and the ensuing 21 battles of relentless AI onslaught will be surely enough to buy out all the settlements in the region). This in turn makes buying armour, buying weapons, pretty pointless, because you're always going to end up being able to fund it after a very short space of time - if you don't cheat and just marry someone and steal their armour anyway. It'd be nice to have the best loot extremely rare, and even still eventually be able to craft the best stuff at the highest level yourself (if you invest time into smithing), personally, I've rarely been bothered to do any smithing because it costs a lot of resources and stamina, and takes way too long. Some people probably enjoy it, but meh... In an MMORPG, sure, that's great... in Bannerlord not so much. If the Stamina were to be removed, then cool... it makes it much better imo.
- Trading - I really don't get this... You need to level up to a ridiculous high trading skill to say "Hey, you can have this castle."... really? Are those words not possible otherwise? Trading perks = cool. Trading options being inaccessible because apparently you cannot say those words in that specific order = not cool.
- Income - I still feel this all round is pretty broken and needs balancing. I get the impression that TW don't really understand that at the start of the game you're pretty anon and shouldn't be regarded as a threat, and therefore your army shouldn't need to be that big in order to get involved in things... but every other lord is seemingly Tier 3 and above, and has 80+ parties, while you're stuck as a tier 1 20+ party with poor units that you can't afford to upgrade... but then when you get to tier 5 and have a party of 240, you're contending with armies of over 1000, so you're still in the exact same boat, all the way through - there's always the AI with 4x more men than you. The income is pretty much the foundation of the game for army recruitment and upkeep, and its grossly imbalanced, especially when it seems that the AI don't even need to bother with Income or balancing their finances. Oh and more on this; Caravans get intercepted and attacked way too often (most often by looters), at this point it doesn't even seem to be cost effective spending 22.5k on getting "good" troops to defend a caravan when the caravan rarely lasts 22 days when you're in war time. Workshops seem to be the only productive spending, but then, they're also poor in that the income they generate fluctuates between 0-200 per day and as it stands, no way to upgrade them, or make their production any better.
- Politics - There's absolutely no diplomacy, still. "Make peace" and "Declare war"... that's the only two options? Really? And I have no idea what decides the whole "tribute" factor. When some faction declares war on me, and then I repeatedly spank them for 100 days and give them 40,000 casualties, take a castle off them, have their entire faction imprisoned (eventually), and the option for peace is I pay them 1350 gold per day is utterly ridiculous.
For all the forum readers of this lengthy post, here's a quick statement:
I want to play this game my way; I do not want to have to play the same way that you're playing because you found a way around a certain system I've referenced above as being broken - this game is an RPG, and therefore I want to play the role I am creating for my character. 9/10 of the points above slot into that because they restrict how I am to play the game (and in a lot of scenarios, really pointlessly), with the only exception being the game crashes.
EDIT: Also, I shouldn't have to resort to modding to get the game's functionality that I was sold on. I didn't pay BobUser20184 money for his game, I paid Taleworlds for theirs.