Death of Lords must stay,it was normal in Medieval Ages.Salvicz said:Hi guys,
I would like to tell some things as independent observer.
I can say, that I am an experienced player, I played Mount and blade from the original game, through warband and mods like fire and sword, floris, Viking conquest and so on (even some star wars mods…. Not good). And I participated in some team works, so I hope I can give you some advices…. Or I will point some stuff which I noticed. What you will take it from it is up to you, maybe nothing… my point is, I want to help, not just criticize. (And history, especially warfare is my hobby)
So first of all: learn how to handle criticism. You will take it a lot, not because of you or your work, but it is much easier to criticize than commend. Really, when people play or in general use some stuff and it is fine, they will not tell a word to someone who make it, but hell when there is something wrong, they will write a letter about it and not just one. So again, you will have to deal with it as your mod became more and more famous. If you have problem to hold your temper; think about it this way: you know how hard your work is, they don’t. Or think about them as children and you are adult: you have experience they don’t, if you answer them with anger, they get mad.
BUT these people are your community, even if they are impolite and disrespectful; they can have some good points.
Next, what is the strongest part of original AD 1257, why play it instead of other mods is historical accuracy; you must have that in mind all the time. This mode removes original warband where was fantasy land and mixture of stuff from early middle-ages to almost early modern period and instead of that it represents really amazing atmosphere of the 13th century, 13th century weapons, armours, (even for horses), castles and strongholds, tournaments, and especially music and paintings which really underline all that. And I almost forget: characters! I was so excited when I found out that there is kingdom of bohemia (I am from Czech Republic) with Přemysl Otakar the 2nd as a king.
So when you want to change something, thing about it as “how it will change the historical accuracy of our mod”. And don’t break something what is working.
Some examples for last statement:
The arena (I know, I blab about it again, I am sorry…): melee fights wasn’t particularly historical, but it made sense, you can expect if you bash someone with wooden sword to the head that he will fall to the ground but probably he won’t die, and... Yeah people were willing to bash each other for some money, so why not. And it is perfect place to practice especially for starting characters.
BUT you change it for something what is pretty less accurate. Your first arena was just nonsensical slaughterhouse, today it’s something pretty weird… So you changed something, made it from historical point of view much worse and it even broke some parts of the game (there are several arenas where you can’t fight) and it surely cost you a lot of time and now you have to fix it.
Your team really need some good planning and you have to debate about some decisions.
I think you tried to add to much stuff at the same time. You should add one think at a time at least for now.
Some individual notes:
Death of lords: again for the historical feel it is really bad, you will have to generate new lords with some generated names, so after few years playing, there will be no historical characters and it really kills the mood.
Tournaments:
One on one tournament was super-easy, so it was bad. BUT it was made pretty well, tournaments were like this in real life (not the difficulty, but with this set up) so don’t burry them, think how to improve it. Is there some way how to make it more difficult?
What was really great idea is the thrust from above the head with spear … it is pretty awkward move, but it makes spear more useful (they were the most popular weapon ever, so why make them so bad?!).
What can be repair is bow drawing animation: the string is during drawing totally misplaced.
What I found out was that there is sound of crowd in the arena but no crowd, most of the players computers can handle battle with 200+ soldiers, so why don’t add some people around tournament area with some simple animation.
Improve quests; most of them are painfully boring and annoying.
(but I guess it is preatty difficult).
PS: if you made the game so buggy and glitchy, add some info to the loading screen, something like “testing version” with really big letters. You can lose some fans if they don’t realize this is not the playable version. And you even will release some new non-save-compatible versions in the future.
Original AD 1257 was pretty damn good, so fix what was broken, improve what you can and add new stuff really carefully.
PPS: I am sorry if this sounds somewhat unpleasantly, I tried my best to be respectful and polite, but English is not my native language, so I don’t know how it end up.
Well,of course i like it aswell,im from Serbia but im half Hungaryan and i see real characters too,as i know its possible to disable custom NPC creation. But i understand whats your point and i like your ideas as i read. So you have support from me.Salvicz said:Viking-AllFather
Yes, of course it was, but as I said, after some time all original characters, which are based on real historical characters will be gone and there will be just bunch of lords with someway generated names. And I believe, that real names from history are one of the main reasons what makes this mod so great. Even in kingdom so small like Kingdom of Bohemia I recognize almost every character from our history and it is just great! So this mod is absolutely perfect for every fan of warband from europe, and even from other countries - everyone knows some kings from France, Spain, Holy Roman Empire, England or some characters from Crusader states. Or if you don't know them, you can search for them (google, wiki) and you will see about their life. This feature gives this mod really strong feeling of professionalism and feeling of 13th century.
And the game just can't be totaly realistic, the gameplay doesn't allow it. Yes, lords could die, but when there was battle in the field, it was ONLY when both sides thought they can win. In the field any army could always run away. You cannot just run after the enemy with an army, you would stretch your forces and enemy would kill your soldiers one at a time. You need formations for battle and formations cannot run like lunatics. Most of the battles were held for castles, strongholds and cities, field battles were minorities and that’s why there are some famous field battles, because they were so rare. In this game you can catch almost every enemy who doesn't have much less units then you. So the game must have some features which will not be from real life for the sake of gameplay.
And there is no feature which would allow soldiers to defend their lord during battle, most of the time you can just find the enemy lord a smash him, kill him with arrow, etc. As I play it I most of the time see enemy lords right next to the infantry, you can see them from miles away. But in history anytime lord was just injured, they take him away to safety (not always, I know).
Salvicz said:@stevehoos
And how many team members do you have?
And yes, I thought that most of my suggestions will be impossible, whether because of game core or development problems.
But even a small group of people can do a lot of things, you just need good plan and focus on stuff which is important for you. I hope i will not insult you somehow, but from my point of view your work seems great but pretty chaotic. You developed a lot of concepts but most of them were totaly buggy and screw up the rest of the game; you had a lot of patches but it is still buggy, barely playable.
Do what the apollo team did during development: have a meeting, determin key aspects of your mod, like what should be important historical accuracy / playability / look / ... / and then put on some place distinct and only for eyes of development team with really big letters what needs to be done and working to release mod to public; like
the decapitation
new armours and weapons
fix the arena ( )
restoration of a nation
etc. (not to much though)
Every time someone will work on somethink, he can't screw up what is higher then what he is working on. And for every main point there will be subteam of at least 2 people. You don't have enough people to all of it, nevermind do what is in the highest position. What is most important - don't develop something what will you delete in the future (that is what our politicians do all the time...).
I am sorry if you already have a plan, or something like that, and I am sorry if I somehow insult your work (not my intention) it is just that I am super into it, into this mod and overall into historical warfare and I see a great potencial in your work. But unfortunately I don't know how to help otherwise. Good luck!
YourStepDad said:One of the worst decisions DrTomas has made, among many, was the removal of companions.
Thank you. Happy to see you're still around.DrTomas said:Hey, glad to see this alive and kicking! Keep up the good work guys
KratosMKII said:Small fix for the mongolian horde spawn problem
Link
Now they're capped to 20. But if you have more than 20 in the save this won't remove the extra.
Thank you. Happy to see you're still around.DrTomas said:Hey, glad to see this alive and kicking! Keep up the good work guys
It's supposed to be this way. They are OP already with the custom equipment.knightkingzhang said:How can I modify the custom troop skill and money? Obviously, the custom troop are not as good as the normal troop.
Questions:KonraDz1k said:can i ask a question or report a bug maybe ^^ - so idk waht happened but I dont need to pay for my army and castles at all... like eveywhere are only pluses... help pls, cuz u know, it is being too easy holding my money with a huge army
I'm aware of this bug. It's annoying because the code is very similar to the default fugitive quest and that doesn't happen in it.Flavius Drusus said:If I can report a bug here, there is a problem with the bounty hunter missions from the taverns. When you reach the correct village and find the target, after the dialogue the character is stuck and won't attack.
I did some digging around the internet to see if there was a solution and it seems like this quest is also used in another mod and they have the same problem there.
There might be a fix and I have to test it but it's just a workaround.
Despite being a long time M&B player, I never played AD 1257 up until this... re-release but I'm liking it so far