JimmyCakes
Regular
Please, where is patch
Being a dedicated trader was the only real fun I had with the game. Of course that was immediately after release when that was a viable way to make money. Right now if you play that way you are intentionally gimping yourself so if that's what you meant I agree.
In that 7 month time period, there were a huge amount of minor balance changes and bugfixes and a fair amount of medium-sized ones. When it comes to content additions however, there have been only a handful of minor and medium-sized ones.Interesting! We've had a completely different experience then. I thought there were a huge amount of changes implemented from november 2020 till june 2021.
In that 7 month time period, there were a huge amount of minor balance changes and bugfixes and a fair amount of medium-sized ones. When it comes to content additions however, there have been only a handful of minor and medium-sized ones.
You can't deny that to someone returning from an absence, the major problems are all still there, and have been since launch. Sieges, armor, the economy and prices, strategic AI, traits, companions, voting/influence, mod tools, dialogue, combat AI, war/peace, autocalc, leveling, and morale are all still broken, unfinished or imbalanced in various ways. Numerous Warband features, or features they talked about in devblogs, still aren't in.
Taleworlds don't need people defending them saying they're making "huge amounts of changes" because while that's technically true, it's misleading. The game is still very broken and has not made a "huge" amount of progress.
A very solid post. Sorry if I implied you were white-knighting.I have not been a knight in favor of TW, on the contrary. My absence from the game did however give me perspective that most of the players here have not. Every patch in that 7 month period held minor changes. But all those patches added up to a very different game experience from what it was. From the the introduction story, the improved early game quest line, the improved party management, better diplomacy war/peace making, better economy to smithing and even the Taverns which now hold more then 3 people. They amount to a more "complete" feeling.
I personally have changed my personal review based upon this from negative to positive. And I feel more confident in the outcome of the game.
But. There's a very big but. In the above statement where I change my review from negative to positive, I am forgetting that the game Warband even existed. The game Bannerlord in itself is becoming a good game. But having played Warband, firstly unmodded, then modded, there are so many missed opportunities in Bannerlord that boggle the mind. The dialogue is still empty, hollow and forgettable. Companions are disposable. Relations with lords are mere tools. In Warband I naturally gravitated towards certain counts because I liked them. There was personality in the game, soul, jazz and character. It looked like dog**** but graphics were not why we played it.
As a successor from Warband it still has a long, long way to go, and I doubt that it can become a worthy successor. But forget about Warband and you have a playable game that can surely eat up quite a few hours and still provide entertainment.
Now, in my playthrough I have yet to reach endgame. I am nearly at the start of midgame. So I can not yet provide an opinion based on the multitude of points you stated above, but with what I've seen thus far, I'm pleased.
In my opinion, Five bucks, and I hope you can read my following statement objectively, they have made big improvements on the existing mechanics. I am curious what you think of it when looking at Bannerlord as a standalone game and not as a WB successor. Thanks!
You have cheat mode on.Question... Should I be able to open up inventory and buy from no merchant (potentially at no cost) in beta branch? Is that intentional for testing purposes?
it's a shame that playthroughs become politically uninteresting at the 25-year mark, just as the player's offspring are about to enter the fray. I'd be curious to know how many of the superactive players of Bannerlord have done multi-generational playthroughs... I'd wager, not many.
A very solid post. Sorry if I implied you were white-knighting.
I'd definitely agree that Bannerlord felt more complete after those 7 months, I just object to that "huge"; it kind of implies the game has changed hugely, and while those things you listed are nice, they're mostly minor individually in terms of real impact (eg: the 2 minute intro cutscene, while we all liked it the first few times, just gets skipped now; the main quest changes were just tweaks and the whole thing is still broken) and don't add up to a major difference in the game overall.
The fact Bannerlord still has nearly all the major issues it did at launch, and TW is working so slowly, is why I'm such a stickler against using positive language to describe its progress, until they really start fixing the big problems and implementing the big features. They can make a billion tweaks but the game will still suck while the major problems remain un-fixed.
I agree with everything you said about Warband's greater personality.
Since you asked, I think Bannerlord as a standalone game, without taking Warband into account at all, has a good early game and is fun there, but is repetitive, frustratingly luck-based, and unintuitive in the mid/late game. Getting through an entire map-painting playthrough from beginning to end is a thoroughly unfun experience unless you use exploits, and even then that just feels wrong.
You really have to give it credit for all the genres it covers - slasher, tactics, grand strat, RPG - but those last three elements are a bit more shallow than they should be, even when considering the hybrid nature of the game. Bannerlord is also an impressive visual spectacle (despite the, understandably, dated visuals) and you can see a lot of love that's gone into it. The game's underlying systems are very deep, if flawed, and they have done a good job catering to modders too.
I think either they wanted to but couldn't due to lack of expertise/ability or they just wanted to change the game so it had a wider appeal and didn't give 2 's about Warband fans. If I were to guess it was probably both but the second one is most likely the real reason.I wonder why TW's didn't looked back at warband and said, ok what was good about it and what was bad. The bad stuff would be improved and the good things would be kept or further developed.
Also, the many mods for native, really made warband an even better game. Why couldn't TW's use some of their ideas? Copy right issues? But it's their game! Lol
I don't remember too much but people were a lot less forgiving and much more optimistic. There was a couple of times in early Warband that I lost interest due to bugs, but they actually got fixed pretty quickly. People on the boards were just excited to see where the game could go from this point. So it's understandable that 10 years on, and a lot of things seem to have gone backwards, people feel frustrated.I see @badman has been there a long time, perhaps he remembers the development/early access stage of M&B and sees any comparable traits?
This nails it on the head for the bugs, My 2 cents is I do remember they split the beta's for multiplayer and singleplayer, they did the multiplayer beta first then later down the line the singleplayer, this was probably a more ideal way to do it. In terms of features being added all I can remember was that buying workshops was post launch and they released a free dlc which was a new swadian knight skin.(edit: some multiplayer maps too)I don't remember too much but people were a lot less forgiving and much more optimistic. There was a couple of times in early Warband that I lost interest due to bugs, but they actually got fixed pretty quickly. People on the boards were just excited to see where the game could go from this point. So it's understandable that 10 years on, and a lot of things seem to have gone backwards, people feel frustrated.