What do u think is missing for this game to have a soul?

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For me the problems lay at the very core of the game, it's political AI, battle AI (in certain battles) and recruitment policy. I don't need excessive "relations" to NPCs, feasts or some other niceties. I would never expect something similar to Skyrim, that's a totally different game system. I need a believable foundation for the political gameplay, that's lacking.

Early game is great, you build your group in small fights. These fights become a grind then but up to single stack against single stack combat is nice, for my taste. But I always feel uncomfortable in the phase where you are a vassal in big AI battles. The braindead rushes of the friendly AI and the general reinforcement mechanic usually make me wish to stop here.

This is paired with the senseless conquer-lose-conquer mechanic on the campaign map. I think that's what annoys me the most. Seldomly I can live through this period after I became vassal. Warband was of course not better here. Why does the AI siege a castle far away when an important town was conquered by the enemy, for example? Why does the AI conquer a new settlement instead of trying to defend the settlement under attack it conquered shortly before? I use a mod which makes the AI look for targets near their borders which makes it better, but it is still … weird sometimes.

Then there is the recruitment. You can make your super army from any place, always have horse archers and fians coupled with legionaries, no problem. Make a bandit to a top tier noble unit with a point in a perk, glorious. For me that is too much player freedom. How can I feel connected to a certain faction with such a system? The problem then after the early game is constant recruitment grind. As the game only knows total annihilation after a lost battle, you have to avoid risks or grind and grind.
 
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Completley agree. Culture should be more relevant. Also, it should matter more which culture the player picks. Currently I end up with Fian Champions and Elite Cataphracts each playthrough regardless of my culture.

Perhaps they could make it harder to recruit foreign troops, join foreign factions and convince foreign lords to join you.
 
For me the problems lay at the very core of the game, it's political AI, battle AI (in certain battles) and recruitment policy. I don't need excessive "relations" to NPCs, feasts or some other niceties. I would never expect something similar to Skyrim, that's a totally different game system. I need a believable foundation for the political gameplay, that's lacking.

Early game is great, you build your group in small fights. These fights become a grind then but up to single stack against single stack combat is nice, for my taste. But I always feel uncomfortable in the phase where you are a vassal in big AI battles. The braindead rushes of the friendly AI and the general reinforcement mechanic usually make me wish to stop here.

This is paired with the senseless conquer-lose-conquer mechanic on the campaign map. I think that's what annoys me the most. Seldomly I can live through this period after I became vassal. Warband was of course not better here. Why does the AI siege a castle far away when an important town was conquered by the enemy, for example? Why does the AI conquer a new settlement instead of trying to defend the settlement under attack it conquered shortly before? I use a mod which makes the AI look for targets near their borders which makes it better, but it is still … weird sometimes.

Then there is the recruitment. You can make your super army from any place, always have horse archers and fians coupled with legionaries, no problem. Make a bandit to a top tier noble unit with a point in a perk, glorious. For me that is too much player freedom. How can I feel connected to a certain faction with such a system? The problem then after the early game is constant recruitment grind. As the game only knows total annihilation after a lost battle, you have to avoid risks or grind and grind.
there are still many random and placeholder stuff in this game but specifically for this "Why does the AI siege a castle far away when an important town was conquered by the enemy" the dev already shared the mechanic for that in 1.4.0
jgSsK.png
.
you can check the discusion in this treads campaign ai . the problem is , even though the mechanic is there and implemented it's still doesn't feel natural like what real life player do, and that's what make people probably frustated about
 
Perhaps they could make it harder to recruit foreign troops, join foreign factions and convince foreign lords to join you.
This and have a general "race relations" meter in game. Example: Battanians and Aserai are currently -100 so you wake up one day and your troops are literally fighting each other. On the flip side an all Vlandian troop stirs with Nationlism and gets bonus fighting points bonus of some sort.Far fetched i know but would be fun and encourage player to stick with one faction throughout or else take a risk

Game needs more 'Hate' meters
 
Cultural differences are probably the biggest point. Now every faction looks the same (same character looks, same gender distribution, same combat, same society composition...), but what would make them special are cultural distinctions regarding their political structure, their look, their society. Maybe differences in how they are ruled, how their recruitment works, economy focus, some kind of spirituality/religion, different motivations etc.

Regarding combat there is a lack of specialization. They all have different unit types, but in the end every faction plays the same. No pike walls, no javelin skirmishing and ambush tactics, no longbow volleys, no proper horse archer behaviour, no strong heavy cavalry attacks. No faction distinctive tactics.

And in my opinion more customization would add a lot to depth, at least indirectly. You could forge your own army according to how you want it to look and fight, you could change your own kingdoms societal structure, rulership (why not distinguish between absolute monarchy, senate, tribal "Thing" and things like that?), diplomatic principles etc.
 
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[...]

Game needs more 'Hate' meters

And this. To bring it a little further: A neutral faction enters your territory? Diplomatic penalty. You want to sent your caravan across a third kingdom? Pay tolls. You want to attack a castle? Have a chance to be ambushed by looters or skirmishers on the street (!).

Things like those would add a lot of depth, immersion and authenticity, which are all three a part of what i would call the "soul" of a game.
 
there are still many random and placeholder stuff in this game but specifically for this "Why does the AI siege a castle far away when an important town was conquered by the enemy" the dev already shared the mechanic for that in 1.4.0
jgSsK.png
.
you can check the discusion in this treads campaign ai . the problem is , even though the mechanic is there and implemented it's still doesn't feel natural like what real life player do, and that's what make people probably frustated about
Maybe that's one reason for the lack of soul: maths. Following current trend, in the final version players will have companions doing quests and training, caravans doing their trade, companions parties doing their patrols and Marshalls doing their battles.

Players won't bother with battles because Marshalls will do it better. They will know instantlly where to go, whether to attack or defend, where are the enemy armies, where are the least defended fiefs...

Meanwhile players will be running around like mad, stocking food, horses and recruits, after the unavoidable general inflation and famine. AI characters get all the fun and human players get to fix the mess.

Good ideas in this thread but some of them nailed the bigger problems. Changing design and gameplay from the top.

geala said:
For me the problems lay at the very core of the game, it's political AI, battle AI (in certain battles) and recruitment policy. I don't need excessive "relations" to NPCs, feasts or some other niceties. I would never expect something similar to Skyrim, that's a totally different game system. I need a believable foundation for the political gameplay, that's lacking.

Early game is great, you build your group in small fights. These fights become a grind then but up to single stack against single stack combat is nice, for my taste. But I always feel uncomfortable in the phase where you are a vassal in big AI battles. The braindead rushes of the friendly AI and the general reinforcement mechanic usually make me wish to stop here.

This is paired with the senseless conquer-lose-conquer mechanic on the campaign map. I think that's what annoys me the most. Seldomly I can live through this period after I became vassal. Warband was of course not better here. Why does the AI siege a castle far away when an important town was conquered by the enemy, for example? Why does the AI conquer a new settlement instead of trying to defend the settlement under attack it conquered shortly before? I use a mod which makes the AI look for targets near their borders which makes it better, but it is still … weird sometimes.

Then there is the recruitment. You can make your super army from any place, always have horse archers and fians coupled with legionaries, no problem. Make a bandit to a top tier noble unit with a point in a perk, glorious. For me that is too much player freedom. How can I feel connected to a certain faction with such a system? The problem then after the early game is constant recruitment grind. As the game only knows total annihilation after a lost battle, you have to avoid risks or grind and grind.

archd said:
What I wish they do this game?

• delete the wikipedia data. To make it clear, I like the system but player shouldn't know everything about every settlement and every peoples living in calradian kingdom as soon as tutorial ended. Make it so the wiki is filled when people played it. kingdom notification/war notificiation/settlement change notification shouldn't be given to neutral player. Every data also have date when it was updated.
• bring the fog of war back again. related to earlier note. player/ai lord should have limited sense of what they know about their surrounding area. now it sound limited, but player/ai lord should be able to hire companion/player for scouting settlement,lord etc. to give more update about the world condition.
• give more interaction to people of calradia. anything. and not just limited to quest. give us feast in kingdom (with tournament that only someone who have clan status can join), give festival for villages people to have fun(no food deliveries and they spent all their gold, but give them big boost to heart. and to make it more fun for raider, if someone raid that villages when festival happened, they got more loot and longer recovery times for the village). every notable in villages and city should have relation with any AI lord/player, and every thing that happened to happened to the notables should effect your relation with lords.
• give us more quest/intrigues at lord interaction. give us far more complicated relationship. there is some good ideas in the forum, and some ideas that i like is to bring back noble relationship point for each one of them. Clan relation will be the same relation that clan leader have. if there is a change of leadership, it mean total change of relation for that clan. That bring more option in mid games like assassinating your clan leader, defection from some of the notable, etc. well basically everything you can read in Game of Throne book should be available as an option here. (an option to give one of your girl as marriage parents for one of your enemies, and when the the d-day happened, bring all your companion with you, and take out your sword from your sheath and plunged it your most hatefully enemy lord.
• and that bringing the last point, make the game progression longer. why would you care about the world if you can finish conquering the world in 20-30 years game times. And what I mean by progression is the way you can skip mid games session into late game stuff far too early(make your own kingdom phase). I don't really mind player have the option to make your own kingdom as soon as tier 4 clan but there should be big warning that you will be frustrated/destroyed when you makes one. A good smooth sailing changing phase for kingdom phase should be when player are the main general of one of the country(meaning he/she have lots of relationship with either lord inside and outside the country ) or one of the tycoon trader(rich enough to buy settlement out of some countries and pay for some peace moment from their neighborhood) .
 
I have to say i kind of miss my background playing a greater roll in how others treat my character.

For example in Warband if your background is not one of any sort of nobility or high social standing it was alot more difficult to rise in the ranks and be unable to hold land untill you had been made a noble after good service as a mercenary for the lord of a faction and granted the right to carry your own banner.

I would also suggest something along the lines of the banished nobles from warband with some of the minor independent factions with a quest with them to form a new empire with them through a unique quest line for the faction and with captured towns of the culture of the independent factions having the chance to provide the independent factions unique unit recruits.
 
Already been mentioned a few times, but just want to add my voice to it as well.

I think it really needs an overhaul when it comes to the relational, political and diplomatic aspect. Some way that make your characters actions impact the world and people around you. Stuff like the Fight Together Relationship mod is great. It’s so simple, but ofc other lords would respect you more if you fight with them.
I guess Taleworlds has a lot on their plates though, so hopefully the game will get more depth down the line ?
 
Now it s a bland skeleton.
1) Lack of details.
2) A lot of copy paste.
3) Tons of RNG and procedure generating.
4) Lack of things to do. It is a box without the sand.

Thats wwhy you feel like it was created by mindless machine.

The best game with "Soul" i can remember is Gothic 2. Becosue you can see a humans mind behind every single thing in the game. Every quest, monster, tree or chest was placed manually with some idea behind it.
 
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I think theres two things that to my mind would improve game immersion

1/ Greater faction diversity / more faction identification a few people have touched upon this already,

The fact that you can put any faction in your party might seem good to begin with but kills atmosphere a bit in the long run

First it means we need big bubbles above our troops for friend foe identification whereas if each faction was visibly quite different and we only recruited our own factions we could dispense with these big bubbles.

You're not really feeling you're fighting the empire if half your troops are recruited from there, you can't really fear those khuzait horse archers when you can just go and recruit a bunch. and you can cherry pick the best troops for each position from all around the map making slightly subpar troops unwanted or unused .

While I wouldn't necessarily forbid recruiting from all around the map I'd put in a disadvantage. if you go to war with say vlandia all your troops from that region desert as they are not going to fight against family and friends. This would mean that if your heavily identified with a faction by say being a vassal you'll tend to recruit that factions troops or suffer desertions if you go to war.


Now there is the case making your own kingdom and whether the dragon banner should allow you to use every faction with no desertions which might be an option as the dragon banner doesnt seem to give out many advantages at least that could be one. Or whether your faction would be the same as your first fief.

2/ Bodyguards

I find it annoying while shouting out commands and organising troops for some random enemy to blindside me and even sometimes even kill me while my troops presumably snigger at my incompetence. Then while everyones attacking I decide to join in, I run at a bunch of enemy promptly get knocked off my horse try and run away and get killed as none of my men try and help me.

Once I reach say clan level 3 I am an important person a leader of men at war and I deserve a few big burly body guards to jump in and save the day. They should follow and help me if I an attacked and if I get knocked off my horse they should dismount and offer me theirs.
 
1/ Greater faction diversity / more faction identification a few people have touched upon this already,

The fact that you can put any faction in your party might seem good to begin with but kills atmosphere a bit in the long run

First it means we need big bubbles above our troops for friend foe identification whereas if each faction was visibly quite different and we only recruited our own factions we could dispense with these big bubbles.

You're not really feeling you're fighting the empire if half your troops are recruited from there, you can't really fear those khuzait horse archers when you can just go and recruit a bunch. and you can cherry pick the best troops for each position from all around the map making slightly subpar troops unwanted or unused .

While I wouldn't necessarily forbid recruiting from all around the map I'd put in a disadvantage. if you go to war with say vlandia all your troops from that region desert as they are not going to fight against family and friends. This would mean that if your heavily identified with a faction by say being a vassal you'll tend to recruit that factions troops or suffer desertions if you go to war.


Now there is the case making your own kingdom and whether the dragon banner should allow you to use every faction with no desertions which might be an option as the dragon banner doesnt seem to give out many advantages at least that could be one. Or whether your faction would be the same as your first fief.

That's how it worked in Warband and it was a pretty good system. You could use foreign troops as long as you weren't using them against their own countrymen. I'd like to think that the absence of this is just an oversight that they'll eventually add in, but it might be an intentional omission since having 3 separate Empire factions complicates the system. It would give Empire factions an advantage of a much larger recruiting pool than any other faction. But maybe that's not such a bad thing and its just a perk of being an empire.

I love the idea of the Dragon Banner negating those morale hits. It would make the banner actually useful for something.

2/ Bodyguards

I find it annoying while shouting out commands and organising troops for some random enemy to blindside me and even sometimes even kill me while my troops presumably snigger at my incompetence. Then while everyones attacking I decide to join in, I run at a bunch of enemy promptly get knocked off my horse try and run away and get killed as none of my men try and help me.

Once I reach say clan level 3 I am an important person a leader of men at war and I deserve a few big burly body guards to jump in and save the day. They should follow and help me if I an attacked and if I get knocked off my horse they should dismount and offer me theirs.

This would be possible now if the formation button worked and was persistant. You could just assign the troops to a new group and have them follow you. But it would be a lot better if it was a special group with its ai behavior tuned for that so that they're actually watching your back.
 
More grouping and order possibilities would in general improve a lot. For example main force, reserve force, body guard as further option to group your party. Main would take part in battle, reserve would enter only when you choose to do so. That would enable you to keep your battle line free of weak recruits without shields, while maintaining their training before promoting them to something useful.
If we now could define standard behaviour and formation for every group and subgroup (which would be the allready existant kind of group here) we could have a lot less micro management and more immersion and depth, and at the same time big quality of life improvements.
 
One thing that hampers my immersion is the lack of discrimination. Playing a female or lowborn character should make the game a lot more difficult.

I know this is a sensitive topic, but the sense of accomplishment after subduing a patriarchal empire as an Aserai lowborn woman should be far greater than when you start as an Imperial highborn man.
 
One thing that hampers my immersion is the lack of discrimination. Playing a female or lowborn character should make the game a lot more difficult.

I know this is a sensitive topic, but the sense of accomplishment after subduing a patriarchal empire as an Aserai lowborn woman should be far greater than when you start as an Imperial highborn man.
That will only translate to months of more coding and hiring extra VAs for the lines, improving the current game meta and adding content to the pre-release version takes top priority over muh immersion.
 
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