What is the one thing you're waiting for before doing another serious playthrough of Bannerlord?

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stevepine

Sergeant Knight at Arms
For me I think it's for castles and towns to have much more unique identities and (most crucially) functionality.

Then.... these in the following order:
  • At least semi-intelligent and slightly nuanced diplomacy
  • Villages to have more reason to exist - again added functionality
  • Taverns to be diverse - hopefully each one to have its own individual scene - one of the things I really loved about previous Mount and Blade games was walking into a town, going to its tavern, soaking up the atmosphere and ordering a drink for myself and my men before looking around to see who I could recruit.
But yeah castle and town scenes and added functionality is my number 1 - what about you?
 
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Same as yours for the most part; The game needs more incentives on many aspects outside of battles. For me these are:

-Things to do during peacetime, this can be things like feasts, hunting, political intrigue etc.

-Reasons to walk into towns & villages other than buying a workshop or doing the same 5 quests throughout the playthrough. Castles are just bare bone when it comes to this.

-Your decisions & actions actually need to mean something. For example, If I save a lord from near defeat by engaging an ongoing battle & joining his side, make it have an impact. As the way things are now there's literally no difference how another lord who despises you or the one who's life you just saved portrays you . Or if I defeat a certain noble with negative traits in tournaments several times over, put in repercussions somewhere along the line. Just throwing things out there.

-The above points are just a couple of things that make the campaign system pretty shallow, and because of that there's no incentive to take advantage of the lineage system. Single player gets pretty stale at mid-playthrough; ultimately its in drastic need for more replayability.
 
- The character development/leveling progression is the most important to me and it has been since the beginning...

- Then more fun/rewarding side activities that are better polished, including the tavern games which are still not that enjoyable most of them. Also more uniqueness between the empires (can easily give them 2 more board games at least, and one should hopefully be chess). Plus more unique troops between the empires, again would be really cool. It's a shame, because it's one and the same faction only split in 3. Hugely missed opportunity to add more variety to the game.

-Tournaments rework and different tiers would be fun... also make arena a little bit useful as well or just remove it.

- More structure. For me a better progression between the early game, mid-game and late-game would make a world of a difference. And by that I mean quests separated by tiers (tier 1 quests available at low clan levels, then tier 2 at half-way, then tier 3 for clan tier 5-6... same for tournaments, have tiers so that everything is fun and useful at every stage in the game). Guess that's pretty much it that I want. Progression, structure.

But really, to start a new playthrough for me character development is the most important, and if this gets fixed the next patch then everything else is just a bonus for me at this point in time (and for the love of God, implement the no-defection roguery perk, it's an entirely useless perk tree at the moment and I hope this is still a planned perk. I hope they add proper perks in time (replace useless ones one by one and make actual good and fun perk trees).

If character progression doesn't get improved then I might keep waiting still. I've been doing so for several patches now and only tried them out a bit and it is same old same old for me... last patch being bad in particular... with all the small bandit parties everywhere, no icons loading etc.
 
Sorry more than one:

1 - The hotkeys on PC to go back to normal. Condensing everything to 3 hotkeys is horrible. Even with the new shortcuts now it just doesn't make sense anymore and completely puts me off playing everytime I try.

Can only have been done to make it easier for gamepad users. And sorry but give them their own one is my opinion. Don't dumb down the PC hotkeys...

2 - Something to be done to the archery to make it more like Warband. Because currently I find archery to be too easy and feels off.
Using a bow of any kind just feels horrible. (Sorry if you disagree but archery is not what we saw in original footage):



Even changing reticle to three point, removing the trail and vertical aim correction and it still feels like a dumbed down and learning curveless version of what we saw above and in Warband.

3 - Siege AI. Just so much goes wrong or is buggy or the performance just in general depending on the map is just terrible (this is a big one for me).
Also I never once got to participate in a siege defence in about 150 hours of gameplay.

Anyway if those were sorted out I'd do another play through.
 
I'm not sure what I'm waiting for exactly, but I know that I'll know it when I see it.
If forced to pick something I would probably say working and in depth diplomacy first and foremost, then working and balanced economics, then siege better AI, then reasonable player progression, then upgrades for villages (and lots of them, especially if they are visible when you visit them!) And finally boats.
 
-including the tavern games which are still not that enjoyable most of them. Also more uniqueness between the empires (can easily give them 2 more board games at least, and one should hopefully be chess).
Ladies and gentlemen, we finally found him.

The one guy in the entire userbase who considers the board games high priority.
 
Ladies and gentlemen, we finally found him.

The one guy in the entire userbase who considers the board games high priority.
you mean the one guy who wants more polished and fun side activities to do other than spam easily-winnable fights with never-ending, instantly-regenerating armies? Ah yes, I must be the only one..
Mini-games are usually really fun, but bannerlord's are not. What I'm suggesting also has to do with immersiveness/atmosphere in the tavern. Kingdom Come Deliverance also had archery competitions, which would also be great. I specifically said "more fun/rewarding side activities that are better polished, including the tavern games". "Including". Side activities = more content, simple. Unless your idea of prime gameplay is to spam-fight looters and lords. Even if TW fixes the siege AI, gameplay is still stale with nothing to do in the end-game but fight. In all the hours of gameplay, how often are you fighting in sieges? This is just an example. Character progression, world progression, more things to do are all good priorities to mention. And yes, board games are part of "more things to do", if they were more polished at least.

Anyway, you didn't even give any suggestions so I'll take it that you have no priorities at all for the game, so even board games > your suggestions which are nonexistent as of now.

And the funny thing is, Chess is a board game that is more popular right now than this game even is. That is why I suggest adding Chess, since it's been really popular on twitch and it's a fun game to play. When certain chess events take place, they have more viewers than how many players are playing bannerlord right now. Even now there are 10.8k viewers on chess on twitch, and only a sad 168 viewers on bannerlord. So there is literally nothing to laugh at, but you can cry if you want to.
So yes, if they implemented a good challenging chess board game in the game, I would probably sit in a tavern and enjoy playing that more than battles, which are the only thing the game allows late-game and it has been so since the beginning of the alpha, the other thing that we were able to do is maybe trading (for the trading fans who grind it and buy cities at the end).

Also the mechanic in which you win 1 board game and that guy won't play anymore is really dumb, I want to add that. Again, 0 focus on immersion.
 
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other than spam easily-winnable fights with never-ending, instantly-regenerating armies? Unless your idea of prime gameplay is to spam-fight looters and lords. Even if TW fixes the siege AI, gameplay is still stale with nothing to do in the end-game but fight.
Look up "opportunity costs". Yes, the battles are heavily flawed. If Taleworlds don't waste any more time on board games, that frees up some time to keep working on the battles and making them more fun.
What I'm suggesting also has to do with immersiveness/atmosphere in the tavern. Kingdom Come Deliverance also had archery competitions, which would also be great. I specifically said "more fun/rewarding side activities that are better polished, including the tavern games". "Including".
And the "including the tavern games" is the part I'm specifically taking issue with, because they've already wasted enough time on that area for something the vast majority of players don't touch again after the first try, if they even try it at all.
Anyway, you didn't even give any suggestions so I'll take it that you have no priorities at all for the game, so even board games > your suggestions which are nonexistent as of now.
Here is a list of things about this game that need attention far, far more than the board games do.
* Troop Combat AI is broken
* Siege pathfinding is broken + siege towers are useless
* Morale is nearly nonfunctional
* Armor damage model is broken
* Smithing sucks
* War is constant with almost no peace
* Mounted melee combat is super inconsistent
* Strategic map AI is stupid
* Formation AI is stupid
* Player relations with NPCs are broken or nonsensical
* Economy is totally broken
* Castles are almost useless
* Tactics are a pain in the ass to execute
* Enemy lords escape imprisonment like they're covered in grease
* Autoresolve battle system is totally unrepresentative
* Overall game flow and pacing is extremely grindy and unsatisfying
* Mod tools aren't done
* Most town, castle, village, tavern, field, and hideout scenes are unimplemented
* Game still has lots of bugs and performance issues

I didn't think listing any of this was needed initially, because surely you would be smart enough to work out for yourself that board games are not the highest priority in the game right now?
And the funny thing is, Chess is a board game that is more popular right now than this game even is. That is why I suggest adding Chess, since it's been really popular on twitch and it's a fun game to play. When certain chess events take place, they have more viewers than how many players are playing bannerlord right now. Even now there are 10.8k viewers on chess on twitch, and only a sad 168 viewers on bannerlord.
Wait, do you really think that adding chess to Bannerlord is going to make its Twitch viewers shoot up? If not, why even mention it?

You can play chess in a million places. You can only play Bannerlord in Bannerlord. So Bannerlord needs to focus on improving what makes it unique, not on improving its ability to do things you can already do elsewhere.
 
Look up "opportunity costs". Yes, the battles are heavily flawed. If Taleworlds don't waste any more time on board games, that frees up some time to keep working on the battles and making them more fun.

And the "including the tavern games" is the part I'm specifically taking issue with, because they've already wasted enough time on that area for something the vast majority of players don't touch again after the first try, if they even try it at all.

Here is a list of things about this game that need attention far, far more than the board games do.
* Troop Combat AI is broken
* Siege pathfinding is broken + siege towers are useless
* Morale is nearly nonfunctional
* Armor damage model is broken
* Smithing sucks
* War is constant with almost no peace
* Mounted melee combat is super inconsistent
* Strategic map AI is stupid
* Formation AI is stupid
* Player relations with NPCs are broken or nonsensical
* Economy is totally broken
* Castles are almost useless
* Tactics are a pain in the ass to execute
* Enemy lords escape imprisonment like they're covered in grease
* Autoresolve battle system is totally unrepresentative
* Overall game flow and pacing is extremely grindy and unsatisfying
* Mod tools aren't done
* Most town, castle, village, tavern, field, and hideout scenes are unimplemented
* Game still has lots of bugs and performance issues

I didn't think listing any of this was needed initially, because surely you would be smart enough to work out for yourself that board games are not the highest priority in the game right now?

Wait, do you really think that adding chess to Bannerlord is going to make its Twitch viewers shoot up? If not, why even mention it?

You can play chess in a million places. You can only play Bannerlord in Bannerlord. So Bannerlord needs to focus on improving what makes it unique, not on improving its ability to do things you can already do elsewhere.
If you really think they've used up much time on board games and that's why the battles are crap you must be joking. Every feature feels like a placeholder atm. Board games have "difficulty options", they are not polished at all so you can't say they spent a lot of time on them. There has been no patch that I remember at the moment that said "We've been working hard on board games lately". Board games were in at the start of the early access and they're not much better now, they haven't used any time on that. They did use some time creating and polishing quests, but that's pretty much it.

As for battles, AI used to be more challenging at the start of the beta, at least in small battles/tournaments, but they dumbed it down intentionally. At this point you don't even know if they want to improve the AI anymore (apart from fixing the siege pathfinding which they said they will), so your best bet will probably be mods even by the end of early access, even though I hope I'm not right on that one.

They started developing another game, and also use time on console stuff, so whatever you say about them wasting time on features like board games is simply not true. They work slowly in general and work on many things at once. Even if they wouldn't take their time to add a board game or two, they would be doing other stuff anyway.

The morale system is worthless and it's at most an annoying feature. It leads to situations where you fight a small party of looters, kill a couple, and then spend 10 minutes chasing them out of the battle map if you want their loot or combat experience. They shouldn't prioritize this feature at all, they should completely remove it from the game. It should have never been a feature, it's just an annoyance at best. I don't know how they would turn it into a non-annoyance, but imo we could have lived pretty well without a morale-system to begin with.

Smithing is broken, but as TW said: not a priority. Why? It's just one small part of gameplay, so even though that is your preference it should still objectively not be more of a priority than any other feature. They said it themselves. Same with trading, which is something "just a small portion of players do". They're used to make money. Meanwhile board games are used to make money and build relations. If they were to be improved, you could have more fun time improving relations with NPCs, so this at least ties in to another system of the game somewhat.

"Overall game flow and pacing is extremely grindy and unsatisfying" it is also what I mentioned, progression.

The reason that I mentioned chess as an example is because you saw my suggestions and decided to stop at "board games, LUL", and that was all your response, not even thinking or asking for my perspective on things. And I mentioned the twitch thing because you're literally making fun of board games that are more popular and fun than the current bannerlord, that's all. Minigames have been part of games for years, and they are simply attention to detail that makes good games great. In World of Warcraft you had mining, you had fishing, you had alchemy and many others. At its time it was one of the greatest games, it was and is the biggest MMORPG still, and had a peak of 12 million subscribers when the game still had a soul. The game had attention to detail and had side-activities, a.k.a things to do that are considered fun and can snap you out of the main objectives of the game (the battles in Bannerlord's case) that would get boring if not for the side-activities.

Imagine if bannerlord at least had one more feature where you can walk around the towns/villages in different parts of the map, where different kinds of herbs reside. Just walk around those scenes that you so much want, gather herbs and create potions or medicine. But the game doesn't really have a disease system, does it? We can all agree that the game lacks plenty atm, but you clearly underestimate the value of side-activities in a game. Look at Valheim, most popular game as of late. You have underground dungeons to explore, you have building, you have cooking and potion-making, grind, upgrade gear, bosses, farming in a way, sailing. It's a very simple game, very basic graphics, but there is variety, which keeps it fun. Yes, right now many people are waiting for more content, but the game was already worth it for the money.

The things you mention are basic features, many no more important than even something as trivial as board games. Town and village scenes, seriously? Most players don't even enter a town or a village. I too only talk to an NPC at the center of a town and go straight to a workshop and that's pretty much it, and many players do the same. There are still features lacking, like giving athletics exp while you walk through a town. Giving a reason to actually walk around.

I spoke against the autoresolve when it was the easiest thing at one point and no troops of the player died anymore, after people complained their high level troops were dying against looters. But I only saw people complain that their high level troops were dying, wanting the game easier. So if what you really want when you mention this is an army of high-tier cav stomping looters with 0 casualties then I wouldn't consider it a priority either; Auto-resolve is a non-feature, it literally should not be a priority in any way. It's a way to skip one of the only features in the game, which is combat. And you want that as a priority somehow, ok..

As you see, we can both find faults in what the other said based on our perspective. So don't be so quick to judge, next time just ask and move the conversation in a more productive direction.

Other than this, you suggested some basic things, and also some things that the devs already announced they will fix sooner or later anyway. Imprisonment will be longer at one point after they make sure there will still be AI to build armies and fight in the captured lord's place, if I reckon correctly and that wasn't just a player suggestion. Siege AI will be fixed, but it's difficult to do so, yet they will. Smithing will be fixed, but it's not a priority, the devs said so themselves. Mod tools will come at one point, closer to EA ending probably as they have mentioned.

War has also already been talked about. We can't have longer peace without having things to do during peace, so for now they're keeping the constant wars. (but no, let's NOT focus on creating more side activities, in no-shape or form should that ever be a priority, duh)...

The things you mentioned are definitely in need of improvement, but not all that you mentioned are clear priorities, just as not all that I mentioned are clear priorities for you. Still, no reason to make fun of it just because you don't understand what I truly mean by it.
 
On my list the board games are just straight at the end. When everything is done they can start "polishing" or creating new board games. Even the barber is a better feature.

Every invested minute into board games is a waste of time as long as a lot of important stuff is broken/not working/not included yet.
 
On my list the board games are just straight at the end. When everything is done they can start "polishing" or creating new board games. Even the barber is a better feature.

Every invested minute into board games is a waste of time as long as a lot of important stuff is broken/not working/not included yet.
when I mentioned board games I also tied it in giving the empire more variety. Like, just add 2 more board games and some uniqueness to each of the 3 empire's troops. Right now they're just a copy-pasted version of each other.

I never used the barber, that's one feature that I don't see how is useful in anyway. At least with board games you can make a quick 500 denars in the early game moving from town to town, but it's not enjoyable, that is its only purpose. Hey, reminds me of smithing a little bit don't you think? Still, more useful than the arena. They don't even have to put much work into the games, just remove the dumb option that the player has to choose difficulty for starters. It's immersion-breaking and that's really my point. Imagine if you want to play a game with a stranger and he asks you to choose easy medium or hard difficulty for the next game, but only if you choose hard difficulty you can bet money on the game.

You don't have to put 100 hours of development into something, but there are some things that were just implemented wrong from the start and I don't understand why. Some things just take a little bit of common sense to fix, and it wouldn't be much time spent on that at all. The development is going slow as hell anyway, we would barely notice a difference. You would think that the next patch would have come the last week, yet here we are.
 
On my list the board games are just straight at the end. When everything is done they can start "polishing" or creating new board games. Even the barber is a better feature.

Every invested minute into board games is a waste of time as long as a lot of important stuff is broken/not working/not included yet.
Yeah agreed.

Sorry but F board games. You can do that elsewhere.

Bannerlord is missing so many features and many of the current ones are a broken mess. Warband (without mods) still has more features.

Personally don't care about "immersion" when I'm walking around taverns by what is placed in said tavern. My immersion is far greater affected by something like SOUNDTRACK. Music is the key to making you FEEL something when you enter a new scene in a game. I would rather they made more music than a new boardgame or two.

Also I want to spend my time controlling armies, fighting in arenas and if they want to add new side activities they could add something like jousting tournaments. Just one idea. If I want to play board games I'd grab a mobile phone and find the 1,000,000's of them on there.

Sorry just what I think about it. The devs are slow enough as it is, they need to focus on important areas. All the side things that need improving can come last.
 
Yeah agreed.

Sorry but F board games. You can do that elsewhere.

Bannerlord is missing so many features and many of the current ones are a broken mess. Warband (without mods) still has more features.

Personally don't care about "immersion" when I'm walking around taverns by what is placed in said tavern. My immersion is far greater affected by something like SOUNDTRACK. Music is the key to making you FEEL something when you enter a new scene in a game. I would rather they made more music than a new boardgame or two.

Also I want to spend my time controlling armies, fighting in arenas and if they want to add new side activities they could add something like jousting tournaments. Just one idea. If I want to play board games I'd grab a mobile phone and find the 1,000,000's of them on there.

Sorry just what I think about it. The devs are slow enough as it is, they need to focus on important areas. All the side things that need improving can come last.
same thing you can say about music. If you want music just go on youtube and find the 1,000,000s songs out there and play them while you play the game. Board games were just one example for the many more side-activities that need to be implemented and also polished (if they implement more features but they're crap-quality they might as well not implement them, wouldn't you say?).

They can add jousting tournaments, archery tournaments, herb gatherings, farming. Anything would be good, but everyone considers something else as a priority. All I'm saying is we need more side activities. I don't know how much you played the game, but after 1000 hours "controlling armies" becomes quite old... game definitely needs more stuff.

Anyway, this post is about what you personally want to see in the game in order to get back to it. I want more polished small features, and the main thing I want is leveling progression to be fixed. Anything that makes it at least sort-of an RPG.

Also arenas are worthless and I too said that they should be reworked in something better. Current arena is just plain bad
 
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