What makes Bannerlord dull

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That's true. There's definitely a ton of potential with this system that hasn't been taken advantage of at all. There's lots they could do with it if they wanted to.
Simple, they should have done Shadow of Mordor Nemesis system for Bannerlord. It just perfect for this game. When first Bloc mentioned this, i was like "wow, this is it, this could turn Bannerlord into something great".
 
The game basically just needs to tell you things more organically. Warband wasn't great at this, but for lord personalities it was pretty good. Being reminded that you'd fought a guy more than once does wonders for immersion and player storybuilding.

But it suffered from the fact that there were too many people to remember. 20 lords per faction was pushing it. Now we have 20 lords, plus a bunch of replacements, and random mercenary clans. Even the best system in the world can't keep track of this many guys. bannerlord tries to compensate by making you interact with clans rather than individuals, but it makes it impossible to care about anything.
 
The game basically just needs to tell you things more organically. Warband wasn't great at this, but for lord personalities it was pretty good. Being reminded that you'd fought a guy more than once does wonders for immersion and player storybuilding.

But it suffered from the fact that there were too many people to remember. 20 lords per faction was pushing it. Now we have 20 lords, plus a bunch of replacements, and random mercenary clans. Even the best system in the world can't keep track of this many guys. bannerlord tries to compensate by making you interact with clans rather than individuals, but it makes it impossible to care about anything.
Each faction in Warband had 20 lords, yes, which makes the total number of lords 120. However, the difference is that ladies were absolutely unimportant. They just stood around in castles and you married one in some time. Some were mothers, daughters, wives, cousins, but they had NO purpose. Around at least a 100 ladies just standing. Which meant that the pool of meeting people was reduced and more memorable.

There are 8 factions. Lets say each one has 9 houses/clans inside, and that each of those has 5 starting members. Thats 72 clans. Which means there are around 360 nobles, including females. Here you fight ALL of them. Yes, there are mercenary clans but they dont contribute much to the pool. Some of them are just children so they stay in their castles, and some are governors so they stay too. Lets say we have 250 adult nobles, both male and female at the field all the time. Thats double the Warband amount, but only in the field. The number of characters in total is very similar if we exclude children as they take years to grow.

We can see thus that the difference is not so much in the number of characters, but rather how they were used.
 
Simple, they should have done Shadow of Mordor Nemesis system for Bannerlord. It just perfect for this game. When first Bloc mentioned this, i was like "wow, this is it, this could turn Bannerlord into something great".

yeah, that kind of system is a perfect fit for this game, but they'd have to be very careful to make it their own thing. I believe that Shadow of Mordor actually patented their nemesis system. Taleworlds could make a case that they already had their own basic version of it in Warband with how the relations system worked, but I bet it would still make the lawyers nervous
 
A lot of people say this is because of fixed personalities. While that is party true, the same can be done in BL using trait weights. But still, the quality of writing is a big difference. In WB when you were defeated honourable lords would tell you something like "I heard you were defeated by count Montewar. Worry not, defeats may happen to anyone" while a dishonourable lord would insult you by saying "I heard Jarl Turiya crushed you on the field of battle and whipped you like a dog. Maybe rightfully so". And THAT made quick connections to characters. Both dishonourable and honourable characters in BL just say "I heard you took Quyaz." Again, infinitely more mechanical potential ALREADY IN PLACE in BL, but absolutely terrible in actual performance (Lazily written dialogue, or lack thereof). So I would argue against people who claim this is due to character mortality and generational play. The system is in place but is terribly done. Also menuisation made talking to characters futile, so even if there was dialogue like this you would see it exclusively from enemies. Have you EVER interacted with a friendly lord in BL???
Agree 100%.

Lords in Warband weren't interesting to a higher degree due to mechanics, the dialogue alone before you gained/lost relations with them already clearly set them appart.

It doesn't take much really, a lord constantly taunting you AND raiding your villages makes for a good enough achenemy.

While a lord who just raids your village every now and then without flavourfull text is just "an npc lord raiding a village".

That's true. There's definitely a ton of potential with this system that hasn't been taken advantage of at all. There's lots they could do with it if they wanted to.

One example I always thought was interesting but not developed any further is how in that quest where you're supposed to find the spy among the tournament people, the quest recognizes the clothes someone's wearing and even cosmetic choices like facial hair. That's something that could be built on. It would be interesting if certain lords commented on what you're wearing and maybe got pissed off at you if you're dressed like the enemy. Or maybe they mock you for being a beardless youth. They could have real disguise missions where you actually have to dress like a native to pass. Maybe npcs treat you differently if you've got high tier armor compared to when you were in bandit rags. There's all kinds of stuff that could be done if there was a will to do it.
Yes! Exactly, it's those kinds of small interactions that make for a solid immersion and relationship building, even if just in the eyes of the player.


Bannerlord has SO MANY mechanics and tools at its disposition to make npcs interesting that the fact the devs can't make it work is seriously irritating.

Edit: I will add an example that I feel is quite representative of the problem with dialogue and interest:

You have this system of clans, with clan leaders, actual dynamic families with characters that are born and die... yet there is no dialogue relevant to this at all (at least there wasn't last time I played in 1.7.2).

Got a kid? Noone cares. Your friend had a son? Can't congratulate him. Your ennemy had a child? Can't tell your archenemy you wish their poop-stained donkey of an offspring to choke on their mother's milk.

No rivalries between siblings for the position of clan leader, no desperation of a lord that only has daughters and needs a male heir to lead the clan, etc.

It's. Just. Empty.
 
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No, it's definitely not that. Warband NPCs weren't some award winning characters, but they certainly had more to them than the husks in Bannerlord.It has nothing to do because of mortality, nothing at all. They're just boring.
I'm sorry but the mortality is the only difference. Their relationships were even randomized at the game's start. You just dislike BL and that's it. Maybe you just had to interact with them more to get fiefs.
 
A lot of people are posting about not having dialog reflect personalities? But it does, here's some examples:
  • I hear you fought bravely against __ and made the __ pay heavily for their victory. I salute your courage and your men's sacrifice. (Honorable/Valorous)
  • So apparently you're a tough bite to swallow. I hear __ paid heavily in blood to defeat you. (Merciless)
  • I hear __ ran you down. Some speak of heroic last stands, but I say a defeat is a defeat. (Merciless and/or just dislikes you)
  • I hear you fought bravely against __ until you were finally overwhelmed by superior numbers. (Generous)
That's for pyrrhic defeats. There's lots and lots of trait-driven dialogs, greetings and stuff like that too. If it's less common, or less distinct, or whatever other way worse than Warband - you'd have to be more specific about what the problem is.
But it suffered from the fact that there were too many people to remember. 20 lords per faction was pushing it. Now we have 20 lords, plus a bunch of replacements, and random mercenary clans. Even the best system in the world can't keep track of this many guys. bannerlord tries to compensate by making you interact with clans rather than individuals, but it makes it impossible to care about anything.
Big agree. Not only can players not keep track of that number of characters, but they change a lot more (like dying in battle, marriage producing new parties, etc) too, and the higher number of characters also means the number of times you by chance interact with any one character is reduced. Shifting relations to clans undermines the whole thing, though, because clans don't have personality traits, and clans don't fight in battles - characters do.
Simple, they should have done Shadow of Mordor Nemesis system for Bannerlord.
I never thought about it in Bannerlord until I saw news that a Skyrim mod had adapted it, but it does seem like a really good idea. Both the whole thing with enemies that defeat you getting highlighted, but also having a button that gives you a showcase of the lords/clans in other factions (in the nemesis-style UI, not the encyclopedia format) would be great too.
 
A lot of people are posting about not having dialog reflect personalities? But it does, here's some examples:
  • I hear you fought bravely against __ and made the __ pay heavily for their victory. I salute your courage and your men's sacrifice. (Honorable/Valorous)
  • So apparently you're a tough bite to swallow. I hear __ paid heavily in blood to defeat you. (Merciless)
  • I hear __ ran you down. Some speak of heroic last stands, but I say a defeat is a defeat. (Merciless and/or just dislikes you)
  • I hear you fought bravely against __ until you were finally overwhelmed by superior numbers. (Generous)
That's for pyrrhic defeats. There's lots and lots of trait-driven dialogs, greetings and stuff like that too. If it's less common, or less distinct, or whatever other way worse than Warband - you'd have to be more specific about what the problem is.
It may be due to the fact that after vassalage we dont really need to interact with allied lords, so we never see this. If you want to join an army, you do it in a menu. When you lose relations when sacking cities, they dont tell you anything, they just lose relations. You dont need to talk to them for policy or fief votes. You dont ever see them except when fighting.

So when do we talk to them? Marriage yes, but its pretty rare. When you go gift them money to improve relations? Why when you can just fight battles together. Other than that we dont have any reason to talk to them. If you could through dialogue spend influence to tell an army commander what to besiege, or if you could persuade someone to vote for you in the next fief/policy vote (also for influence), that could give meaning to talking to them. However, we cannot do any of these things. We cant even ask them if their daughters are being courted by anyone else to duel the bastard. None of these things are in, and many are discarded
 
I'm sorry but the mortality is the only difference. Their relationships were even randomized at the game's start. You just dislike BL and that's it. Maybe you just had to interact with them more to get fiefs.

You're not being honest by saying mortality is the only difference between Warband and Bannerlord NPCs. And you assume a lot and use those assumptions in lieu of arguments. However, even if I were more inclined towards the "hating Bannerlord" mindset, it does not make me automatically wrong. Despite whatever you might think.

They [BL NPCs] do the absolute bare minimum, and it shows. Majority of players don't care about BL lords because of it, too. As some above mentioned, they have so many systems they could draw on to improve this but for some bizarre reason, do not. The new marriage system, the child system, clans etc. They could easily remark upon the player about these things, or make them attend marriages or feasts for example, in which they recall later. But they don't.

Because the Bannerlord NPCs are, in fact, bland and lifeless.
 
It may be due to the fact that after vassalage we dont really need to interact with allied lords, so we never see this. If you want to join an army, you do it in a menu. When you lose relations when sacking cities, they dont tell you anything, they just lose relations. You dont need to talk to them for policy or fief votes. You dont ever see them except when fighting.

So when do we talk to them? Marriage yes, but its pretty rare. When you go gift them money to improve relations? Why when you can just fight battles together. Other than that we dont have any reason to talk to them. If you could through dialogue spend influence to tell an army commander what to besiege, or if you could persuade someone to vote for you in the next fief/policy vote (also for influence), that could give meaning to talking to them. However, we cannot do any of these things. We cant even ask them if their daughters are being courted by anyone else to duel the bastard. None of these things are in, and many are discarded
The #1 biggest cause of talking to lords for me in WB was asking where some other lord currently is. That's not really a thing in Bannerlord.

At #2 was trying to get them to back me for a fief vote, which is including spamming dialog with everyone post-battle for the + relation, to improve their odds of baking me in a fief vote down the line. The relationship factor feels less relevant in Bannerlord, although it could be basically similar formulas behind the scenes; but support is automatic now instead of needing to go talk to someone to ask them to back you. A distant third was quests, which feel like they fall off really hard in Bannerlord and aren't as worthwhile - at least personally, I tend not to bother with them more often than not.
 
So probably taking away the automation of some of it could really help Bannerlord, though they would still need to do some work on the NPCs engaging the player.
 
So probably taking away the automation of some of it could really help Bannerlord, though they would still need to do some work on the NPCs engaging the player.

The npc's need so much work . I hate this part of the game so little work done in this area of the game or it seems that way . They don't remember the play sometime or say they will make you sorry if the capture you and nothing happens they don't even lock you in a dungeon half the time . I could go on but everyone knows. TW please work on NPC's and there personalities matching there traits . It would go along way into making every campaign memorable and making the NPC's memorable and likable or like to hate.
 
I wrote about this on reddit and someone said no one can patent this kind of broad idea. I mean npcs remembering your actions and acting on it so creating a generic story between you and the npc. Maybe they patented their code of Nemesis.
There's an interesting article about it here. The patent seems pretty broad in its language, but I'm not a lawyer. An interesting tidbit is that it was rejected a few times before because what they were trying to patent was too similar to what Crusader Kings was already doing.
 
The only way they could take you to court would be if you literally implemented "The Nemesis System" in your game or stole their UI or something. It's not like the Shadow of Mordor implementation was particularly interesting either, there are far more dynamic and less interruptive ways of creating dynamic stories, but since actually dynamic open world games get almost no press, Warner bros probably believed their own propaganda claiming it was the new Dwarf Fortress or whatever.
 
Well i read it but not understand it. The part of exclamation should be asked to some lawyer. What was said by the guy on reddit really made sense to me. I could understand if they patent it the code but being able to patenting the idea itself would be unfair.

I mean if i write a story in a galaxy far far away which has a governance of republic but it has unique characters, history, power structure etc, etc. would i be still sued by Disney? I do not think so.
 
You're not being honest by saying mortality is the only difference between Warband and Bannerlord NPCs. And you assume a lot and use those assumptions in lieu of arguments. However, even if I were more inclined towards the "hating Bannerlord" mindset, it does not make me automatically wrong. Despite whatever you might think.

They [BL NPCs] do the absolute bare minimum, and it shows. Majority of players don't care about BL lords because of it, too. As some above mentioned, they have so many systems they could draw on to improve this but for some bizarre reason, do not. The new marriage system, the child system, clans etc. They could easily remark upon the player about these things, or make them attend marriages or feasts for example, in which they recall later. But they don't.

Because the Bannerlord NPCs are, in fact, bland and lifeless.
If we're talking interactions with the NPCs, it is obvious that Bannerlord gives you way less tools to work with than Warband, or streamlines them behind menus. I have a problem with the nostalgia-heavy talk of "rich" and "interesting" characters in WB, the game just did a good job hiding the shallowness of the characters.

For reference, I'm a fan of the kind of the storytelling that emerges from CK2, that's the kind of things I find interesting
 
Well i read it but not understand it. The part of exclamation should be asked to some lawyer. What was said by the guy on reddit really made sense to me. I could understand if they patent it the code but being able to patenting the idea itself would be unfair.

I mean if i write a story in a galaxy far far away which has a governance of republic but it has unique characters, history, power structure etc, etc. would i be still sued by Disney? I do not think so.
I've heard bad things of US patenting laws, but a system where characters that really hate you (the "rival" section in the encyclopedia) are able to reference past events should be fair game. As soon as we start straying into closer territory like "they randomly show up to beat you when you're going around" it gets risky.

Also yes Disney would sue you. They might lose but they'd still sue you out of spite, for the Mouse craves blood.
 
I think you will like the next iteration of the encyclopedia "fog of war" - even if it doesn't completely resolve what you are describing.
Please make this optional.

Anyway, the main thing that makes Bannerlord boring for me is that it quickly loses any sense of challenge past a certain point but the game continues going on. Everything in the game is scaled so you have to do it dozens or hundreds of times before you see benefits worth mentioning and the only way the game acknowledges late game progress is by heaping more of the same thing you've done to death previously.
That's for pyrrhic defeats. There's lots and lots of trait-driven dialogs, greetings and stuff like that too. If it's less common, or less distinct, or whatever other way worse than Warband - you'd have to be more specific about what the problem is.
People mostly stopped reading the dialogs after the quick convo thing came up. TW added a bunch of dialogs and almost no one on the forum noticed for months and months. There is a dialog for previously defeating someone in battle, for example.
 
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