SP - Battles & Sieges Tournament balance

[idiotekque]

Just adding to the pile of complaints about this nonsensical nerf. Tournaments are hardly the only exploitable thing in this game, and they were completely pointless in their pre-1.0.7 incarnation as well. They did NOT need a nerf based upon balancing a single-player game mode that is going to be full of bugginess and exploits for months/years to come, at all.

Ways to make tournaments better:
1. Force all competitors to wear the same armor (Warband did this, I have no idea why this isn't implemented)
2. Increase max bet drastically, increase bet odds on player depending on how many tournaments they have won (with a 3-month/1-year cooldown that tapers you back down to initial odds over time)
3. Tournament rewards should be specific to region (no regional armor rewards that don't fit the tournament region, not doing this was so lazy)
4. Chance of rarer tournament rewards on a % basis, with more expensive rewards rarer to see, and hiding what that item is from the player (simply show that the reward is armor, helmet, weapon, etc on the intro screen)
5. Fix the AI, don't nerf components of the game into uselessness because you're afraid of players exploiting a buggy early access game. Exploits will be in large supply for a long time, do NOT make parts of the game useless and un-fun in illogical efforts to balance an early access single-player game mode. Seriously, this is the dumbest thing I've seen in awhile


EDIT: Wow, while I was typing ID10T16 mentioned a lot of the same suggestions. Totally agreed, and I'm a little creeped out by the username and suggestion similarity haha.

 

[awegaweegwehgehe]

I think the main problem of the tournament is the armor. Tournament is a test of skill instead of equipment, since we are having standard weapons we should also have standard armor instead of everyone wearing his own. This also help with the problem that fighting some top tier, heavily armed adversary might be lengthy and boring with only a short sword which deals about 10 points each hit.

 

[leon123442]

So moving left or right around your opponent is cheating? ?

Anyways, whatever you call it, after it's fixed and AI fights smarter we can think about upgrading tournament rewards. Right now they are just a free bonus whenever you visit a town so increasing them would be detrimental to the game.

I never used an exploit in bannerlord, and I have to say that tornaments were very difficult in the early game, even on an easyer difficulty. They become easyer the better you get, but if you play them as intendet you still lose ofthen.

And yes, moving right or left with the intent of disabeling the enemy AI is as much cheating as pressing control+x to get money with cheats activated.

 

[abc123456]

Problems-solutions for tournament:

• Duels too easy with shield
  • Improve AI
  • Final round duels shields are not allowed: Ultimate test of skill
  • AI doesn't defend well against bash/kick
  • AI doesn't use kick or bash or feints or chambers
• Leaderboard is not rewarding. You climb up to number 1 leaderboard, so what?
  • Being higher in the ladder increase your renown/influence
  • Number 1 duellist in calradia should be more powerful in influence.
  • Basically like the ronaldo of calradia
• Too much of the same
  • Increase variety of arenas. Some major city arenas should be like Colosseum
  • increase variety of round types (fist fights, throwing weapons only, daggers only, add camels, etc)

 

[CharlieMRCR]

In my experience, tournaments are functionally the same but nerfed in terms of earning potential from Warband. The upside now is that you can get good basic equipment for the early game. In fact, I found starting my games on a trade journey until I get pieces for all my armour slots, a weapon and horse sets me up really up good. By the time I get all kitted out, I can get some caravans going and workshops too.

I've been doing a lot of tournaments lately in the 1.1.0 Beta branch. My main critique is about the rewards. The possible reward is a helmet way too often. This is because there's a padded, leather, and mail versions of helmets. Not to mention cultures even offer multiple base helmets which also have variations on them. I'm pretty sure Vlandia has like 10+ helmet rewards, and that's all you ever see when you're there. But I also really like that equipment rewards are culturally inspired.

Since earning potentials are nerfed but you CAN get equipment, tournaments would be better if you could get a good baseline kit themed around the culture the tourney is in. But when all you see is helmets 50% of the time, it just takes freaking forever. It would be really awesome if each culture's tournaments offered:

-Helm
-Cape
-Body Armor
-Gloves
-Boots
-Melee Weapon
-Range Weapon
-Shield
-Horse

But we only need one of each of these categories.

TL;DR I'm just sick of all the helmets lmao.

 

[Reapy]

I like the tournaments but they are a pretty challenging design to get right.

The main problem as people said is the AI. Without their equipment being a factor, if you are reasonably competent at the game, it's very easy to win, even when your character is low skill. The battanian 2h tournaments are the easiest to win, since the last few rounds usually have a 2 hander that won't bounce on armor. The 1h /shield empire ones can be rough if the other guy has high tier armor, you have to focus on hitting the head or thrusting for pierce damage and it could take several rounds. The harder ones to win imho are the team fights. If your team melts and you have a weapon you aren't doing much with right away, you get into some 1vX's that take a lot more work to win.

It's hard to justify a mass melee though as the final fight. I like the idea of how they mix up your teammate becomes your opponent and things like that, but I don't know it always works in practice. I'd love to be able to enter with a companion as a teammate and just win together without fighting. But in the end the biggest and hardest tweak will be getting the AI fighting better, esp high level lords.

The other thing is the frequency of tournaments. I have a feeling when you ask for nearby tournaments it looks at the closest cities and makes sure that at least 2 of them are having tournaments. So that means you can have unlimited tournaments, which isn't a bad thing, however it makes them not important, or at least shouldn't be important.

I think I sort of hate the practice melee fights, the way enemies come running out one at a time, and why don't I get to be the guy that comes out the door last, kills one guy, and gets 250 gold? Basically it's really gamy, and if you have the time, you can just sit in a corner and let the AI kill itself and get your 250. I don't mind it's existence, but I think it could be better.

What might be nice then, is to follow the suggestions for tournaments in this thread. Make them bigger, more expensive, and more rare, and more rewarding. So there might be a huge entrance fee, you have to bring your own equipment, they only happen rarely etc. That's the big lords tourny.

Then add a second type of tourny, this is the local circuit that happens as frequently as it does now. It doesn't have huge rewards, it doesn't cost anything to enter, the area's are smaller, the opponents are bad, everyone has default gear, the reward is small, but there are rewards for lower place standings, runner ups and 3rd place rewards maybe. The idea would be that by doing local circuits you get some small amount of renown, gold, and some mid level gear, enough to start trying to compete in major tournaments.

In dreamland, (and come mod tools release time, I am thinking about trying to make this) I'd love for wandering tournament person to be an entire path of playing the game, like being a trader or playing the lords and armies game. I'd love to see basically a gladiator game packed in to bannerlord. Manage a team of fighters, pay for training, salary, tournament entry fees, manage tournament renown. Have reoccurring opposing teams/players to go up against, try to work your way up into the bigger arenas with large cash prizes etc.

But that's sort of dreaming, right now I think I'd love to see the major tournaments getting a rarity and reward overhaul, and introduce starter tournaments as a path for the player to get some mid tier gear/gold/renown help get started.

 

[platin35]

Wouldn't be nice if we can put a bet on our NPC's or some other guy who join in tournaments? Btw 150 gold is such a low bet limit atleast this must be increased.

 

[Kreu2009]

The combat AI needs some serious improvements.



They never try to block after they get hit. I think thats also partly the reason why battles are over so quickly.
Units just don't defend themself well enough.

 

[danielpm307]

+1

race tournament is for win horse .
bow tournament that you shot sign
gladiator tournament is bet game you may will die in game but you earn a huge money (5000)
knight tournament is for improve your fame (fight with high level knights )
Finding a prince tournament for marriage single noble girl

 

[Memento]

As many others i think tournaments didnt needed a nerf, in fact they deserved a buff. I know you can cheese the AI to win tournaments easy, but that is an AI problem, not a tournament balance issue. So, try to improve AI to make tournaments harder instead of nerfing them to the point there is no reason to participate. Please think about this suggestions to increase tournament viability:

-Increase renown gain to at least 5. It doesn't make sense that killing a bunch of looters gives you an equal ammount of renown as winning a tournament and just have to compare the effort required to do both things. In one hand, the click of a button (simulation), less than a minute of your time gives you 3 renown. On the other hand, winning a tournament where you fight against the finnest men on the realm, you can lose, and it will cost between 10-20 minutes to do a tournament, not to mention finding one.

-Increase maximum bets to 500. 300 wasn't great to begin with, 150 it's a joke.

-Increase the ammount of % you gain from betting. I think it's needed to do a fair comparison with warband at this point: In WB you could get 10x times your investment in your first round, while you get less and less the more you win rounds. I think it should function in a similar way in Bannerlord, with a few numbers tweaks. So, with that in mind a good ammount will be 4x times 1st round, 2x times 2nd round, 50% increase the 3rd and 25% the final round.
Now, let's do quick math, shall we? Betting 500 per round will give you (2000+1000+250+125) 3375 gold, minus 2000 from your bets that is 1375 gold won in this tournament for bets. 1375 is not a crazy ammount, it's frankly not a lot of money if you think about it, a single trade trip gives you more than that in less time and with lesser risks (you could lose 2000 in tournament).

-Better equipment rewards and culture based: I recently won a tournament in a Batannian town, they give me a crappy sarranid helmet worth 200 gold, why? First of all, this item was crap, like i can buy a much better helmet for 500 gold. Second and most important, why they give a sarranid helmet in a battanian town? It doesn't make any sense. Make tournament rewards culture dependent, so: Falxes, Long bows and Batannian armor for battania; Horse chargers, Knight lances for Vlandia, etc.

So, my thinking is not making tournaments as overpowered as they were in warband, but to give them some utility as right now there is no reason to participate in them.

True,that you can dance arround your enemys is a ai problem,and the reknow too ..
well maybe they can implement,like after the won tounument that you're able to join a feast also

 

[rhn]

I have to agree with most here that tournaments are now pretty pointless. There is almost zero reasons to do them any more.

Before you could at least get the occasional decent mid-tier items. After nerf I have not seen a single useful item, basically all on par with bandit trash. At the point in the game where they might be useful(for maybe 5mins or so till you kill something that drops better), the tournaments are still rather hard and unreliable way of getting them(without save scumming).

Before you could at least get a little bit of gold for the effort by betting. Now I don't even bother to do the bets. Seriously? Getting like 10% reward on a win? Forget adventuring, let me just settle down in a town as a bookie...

Outside the very early game, the renown reward also gets completely trivial.

Suggestions:

• Make tournaments a lot less common. At the moment they are going on everywhere all the time. Do make them pop up on the initial page of the town GUI, like in previous games, so we will actually notice when they start. They should be a special occasion which would also balance out a better reward.
• Better rewards. Make the winnings at least slightly useful throughout the early-mid game.
• Revert/improve the betting. Less frequent tournaments would easily balance out the still measly winnings.
• Make renown reward scale somewhat with clan tier. Getting 3 renown at clan tier 5-6 is just... Will help keep tournaments valid as the game progress. And its pretty realistic, the more known you are throughout the lands, the more people will talk about your win.
• Make a win(possibly top 3) give small relation bonuses to notables in the town, similar to how it worked in previous games. Will likewise help keep tournaments relevant throughout the game. And would help even large gap in relation gain between villages(clearing bandit hideouts) and towns.

 

[artemis_entreri]

Just adding to the pile of complaints about this nonsensical nerf. Tournaments are hardly the only exploitable thing in this game, and they were completely pointless in their pre-1.0.7 incarnation as well. They did NOT need a nerf based upon balancing a single-player game mode that is going to be full of bugginess and exploits for months/years to come, at all.

Ways to make tournaments better:
1. Force all competitors to wear the same armor (Warband did this, I have no idea why this isn't implemented)
2. Increase max bet drastically, increase bet odds on player depending on how many tournaments they have won (with a 3-month/1-year cooldown that tapers you back down to initial odds over time)
3. Tournament rewards should be specific to region (no regional armor rewards that don't fit the tournament region, not doing this was so lazy)
4. Chance of rarer tournament rewards on a % basis, with more expensive rewards rarer to see, and hiding what that item is from the player (simply show that the reward is armor, helmet, weapon, etc on the intro screen)
5. Fix the AI, don't nerf components of the game into uselessness because you're afraid of players exploiting a buggy early access game. Exploits will be in large supply for a long time, do NOT make parts of the game useless and un-fun in illogical efforts to balance an early access single-player game mode. Seriously, this is the dumbest thing I've seen in awhile


EDIT: Wow, while I was typing ID10T16 mentioned a lot of the same suggestions. Totally agreed, and I'm a little creeped out by the username and suggestion similarity haha.

Agree with this 100%. Was going to post something similar, glad I found this.

 

[Necropolitan13]

It's been a month since the last post here so figure I'll add an update to the info here. I agree completely with all of the complaints I've seen here, with one exception that appears to be fixed: tournaments do seem to give culturally-appropriate rewards now. All else seems to be just as bad. The tournaments are largely worthless; especially once you get good and your gain potential from betting goes down so much (I assume that's why it does so). You get to a point (fairly quickly, I'd say) where tournaments are just a waste of time, and even more likely a monetary loss than a gain if you bet. The rewards need to be much better for the time and effort it takes to win.

Aside from many of the other suggestions I've seen here (I didn't read the entire thread), I'll add these:

- Standardized equipment (I think I saw this mentioned in the thread). I was really surprised when I went into the tournaments and had my own gear on. Makes no sense and makes the fights very unfair/unbalanced. Though I did have one tournament where one of my borrowed troops made it into the final round with me... That was silly.

- Increase the immaterial rewards. More renown (perhaps debatable), some reputation with local notables, and/or influence with your faction if you are in their territory.

- Give some amount of gold as a reward. Items are nice but inconsistent in quality (and therefore, price, if you want to sell them, which at some point you will). Giving a more standard gold reward would help keep tournaments actually rewarding.

- Give a scaled-down reward for participating, even if you don't win. You should still get some renown (and other immaterial rewards I mentioned) from being in the tournament, dependent on how well you do. If you make it to the final round, people are still going to get some idea of who you are, even if you don't take home the ultimate prize. Even material rewards could be given the same way. If gold were awarded, then "second place" could get half of the grand prize, and those who make it to round 3 could get half of that. It's really disappointing when you spend time and effort participating and then get absolutely nothing if you don't win the whole thing. Real battles are punishing enough when you lose.

- Companions should count for rewards, at least in renown (and influence, if that were a thing). Your companions are supposedly part of your clan, so why wouldn't your clan gain renown if your companions won tournaments? They might even share the item they would win, especially if they are in your own party. That point is debatable I guess, but I think it would make sense. Where would the item go? Do they have their own stash?

- Take named characters into account when assigning participants to teams. It's probably completely random currently, but that can lead to situations that are incredibly one-sided if there are several named characters participating and most of them end up on one team, as they are typically stronger than standard troops. This one is admittedly debatable as well, and is mostly only a problem if it happens that the player is put into a team with a bunch of low-ish tier troops against one or more teams of mostly named characters, as it can take you out of the tournament early just because you have to contend with so many difficult enemies mostly by yourself.

Anyway, hopefully the devs are still looking at this thread and taking the feedback therein into consideration. There are a lot of good ideas in here that would *really* help make tournaments fun and relevant.

 

[Niomedes]

As many others i think tournaments didnt needed a nerf, in fact they deserved a buff. I know you can cheese the AI to win tournaments easy, but that is an AI problem, not a tournament balance issue. So, try to improve AI to make tournaments harder instead of nerfing them to the point there is no reason to participate. Please think about this suggestions to increase tournament viability:

-Increase renown gain to at least 5. It doesn't make sense that killing a bunch of looters gives you an equal ammount of renown as winning a tournament and just have to compare the effort required to do both things. In one hand, the click of a button (simulation), less than a minute of your time gives you 3 renown. On the other hand, winning a tournament where you fight against the finnest men on the realm, you can lose, and it will cost between 10-20 minutes to do a tournament, not to mention finding one.

-Increase maximum bets to 500. 300 wasn't great to begin with, 150 it's a joke.

-Increase the ammount of % you gain from betting. I think it's needed to do a fair comparison with warband at this point: In WB you could get 10x times your investment in your first round, while you get less and less the more you win rounds. I think it should function in a similar way in Bannerlord, with a few numbers tweaks. So, with that in mind a good ammount will be 4x times 1st round, 2x times 2nd round, 50% increase the 3rd and 25% the final round.
Now, let's do quick math, shall we? Betting 500 per round will give you (2000+1000+250+125) 3375 gold, minus 2000 from your bets that is 1375 gold won in this tournament for bets. 1375 is not a crazy ammount, it's frankly not a lot of money if you think about it, a single trade trip gives you more than that in less time and with lesser risks (you could lose 2000 in tournament).

-Better equipment rewards and culture based: I recently won a tournament in a Batannian town, they give me a crappy sarranid helmet worth 200 gold, why? First of all, this item was crap, like i can buy a much better helmet for 500 gold. Second and most important, why they give a sarranid helmet in a battanian town? It doesn't make any sense. Make tournament rewards culture dependent, so: Falxes, Long bows and Batannian armor for battania; Horse chargers, Knight lances for Vlandia, etc.

So, my thinking is not making tournaments as overpowered as they were in warband, but to give them some utility as right now there is no reason to participate in them.

Couldn't agree more. Tournaments leave a lot to be desired. This, and feasts.