After taking a break of over two years I've just now started playing Bannerlord again and to my surprise, not too much has changed in that time, and not everything that changed has been for the better. I think the current state of the multiplayer is quite troubling considering that the game is releasing next month.
Last saturday during peak hours there were around 330 players in EU, 240 of them were playing cRPG, and only around 50 of those playing in native were doing so in official Taleworlds servers. The NA community doesn't seem to be doing any different, with even more of them choosing cRPG over native.
I haven't been abe to find any skirmish or captain battle games through matchmaking, somehow the estimated wait time is always 01:25 minutes for skirmish even if there are no players queueing up, I want to point out that during the beta not only you got a wait time estimation that made sense but you also could see the number of players in the same queue as you (region, game mode). The only way to play these game modes now seems to be in custom servers.
The servers also seem to be a big problem at the moment, they're crashing constatly, I've been able to finish siege matches less times than I've had them crash, and it's not like they're crashing at max capacity.
I don't know when the troop customization system was introduced but since I've seen no one talking about it recently I'm going to assume it was a long time ago, and it kinda sucks. I think it is too expensive with prices ranging from 300g all the way up to 2500g (for a fancy cape) depending on the item tier. I think that in the average match that I play from start to finish I'm getting around 16g, less when the server crashes and ends the match abruptly. I'm not sure if this loot reward is tied to performance, game length or a mix of both, I don't even think that winning matters at all. But it takes way too much time to unlock even the cheapest items. We also get no loot at all if playing in custom servers. Leveling up also doesn't grant any loot and it's only purpose seems to be to show how much time you've spent playing in the official servers. With skirmish and captain out of the equation, to gain loot you have to play siege, TDM or duel. Siege has been the only thing I've found somewhat enjoyable in native, and the fun is ruined with the constant server crashes. TDM is just mindless slaughter for those who want some quick action I guess. These modes would also be more interesting if they had friendly fire enabled, which I think most if not all official servers should have.
And I feel like at times this customization system goes pretty much against what Taleworlds envisioned when they introduced and defended the class system we have, one of the supposedly strong points of this troop class system was that we should be able to very quickly what we are up against by just having a look at the appearance of an enemy, but with this customization system you can have a menavlion infantry (which has a base armor rating of 7) that is outfitted with chainmail over leather and the same helmet the imperial legionary uses by default, giving it the look of a 20+ armor unit like the palatine guard or the vlandian sharpshooter while actually having the exact same armor rating as the ****ing vlandian peasant.
You can also customize your banner sigil! You get 6 for free and all the others are apparently worth 100g, most are also really ugly and uninspired, as far as I can tell they're the same ones you choose when picking a banner for your clan in singleplayer.
The troop perks seem to be all over the place, with many feeling very cheap and lazy:
I don't want to talk too much about combat because I'm still quite rusty, but so far it doesn't really feel any better than what I remember: the slower weapons don't feel very good when compared with the faster ones, spears seem pretty bad outside of the use against cavalry and supporting with poke when outnumbering an enemy. Throwing axes are very inaccurate. Kicks don't allow for a free quick follow up attack with most weapons. Chambers are a total gamble with high risk and very low reward. The chained attacks you can perform after a swing still look super weird, and I still can't tell how the stances are supposed to work.
All in all, it's pretty clear that native multiplayer is doing pretty bad at the moment and it will not thrive in this state even if the full release brings in some new or returning players
So what's the plan? Is Taleworlds gonna do nothing and let the multiplayer ship sink? Or do they have an ace up their sleeve that they want to surprise us with next month?
Last saturday during peak hours there were around 330 players in EU, 240 of them were playing cRPG, and only around 50 of those playing in native were doing so in official Taleworlds servers. The NA community doesn't seem to be doing any different, with even more of them choosing cRPG over native.
The servers also seem to be a big problem at the moment, they're crashing constatly, I've been able to finish siege matches less times than I've had them crash, and it's not like they're crashing at max capacity.
I don't know when the troop customization system was introduced but since I've seen no one talking about it recently I'm going to assume it was a long time ago, and it kinda sucks. I think it is too expensive with prices ranging from 300g all the way up to 2500g (for a fancy cape) depending on the item tier. I think that in the average match that I play from start to finish I'm getting around 16g, less when the server crashes and ends the match abruptly. I'm not sure if this loot reward is tied to performance, game length or a mix of both, I don't even think that winning matters at all. But it takes way too much time to unlock even the cheapest items. We also get no loot at all if playing in custom servers. Leveling up also doesn't grant any loot and it's only purpose seems to be to show how much time you've spent playing in the official servers. With skirmish and captain out of the equation, to gain loot you have to play siege, TDM or duel. Siege has been the only thing I've found somewhat enjoyable in native, and the fun is ruined with the constant server crashes. TDM is just mindless slaughter for those who want some quick action I guess. These modes would also be more interesting if they had friendly fire enabled, which I think most if not all official servers should have.
And I feel like at times this customization system goes pretty much against what Taleworlds envisioned when they introduced and defended the class system we have, one of the supposedly strong points of this troop class system was that we should be able to very quickly what we are up against by just having a look at the appearance of an enemy, but with this customization system you can have a menavlion infantry (which has a base armor rating of 7) that is outfitted with chainmail over leather and the same helmet the imperial legionary uses by default, giving it the look of a 20+ armor unit like the palatine guard or the vlandian sharpshooter while actually having the exact same armor rating as the ****ing vlandian peasant.
You can also customize your banner sigil! You get 6 for free and all the others are apparently worth 100g, most are also really ugly and uninspired, as far as I can tell they're the same ones you choose when picking a banner for your clan in singleplayer.
The troop perks seem to be all over the place, with many feeling very cheap and lazy:
- Many are just stat boosts.
- Some are pretty much the same perk but with a twist (e.g., the difference between the bullseye, marksman and hunter/poacher perks for the ranged classes is that they all give +4 damage to your ranged weapon and a bonus to headshots, max accuracy time, and damage to mounts, respectively).
- Some perks literally just give you a random item (vlandian peasant gets a random farming tool and sturgian raider a random horse) which I think are the pinnacle of lazy design.
- An issue that was pretty apparent during the beta still remains, some perks can't really compete with others within the same set.
- Some perk explanations are a bit misleading or have actual mistakes in them: the rapid throws perk for the imperial recruit claims it grants additional javelins (increasing the ammo stack from 3 to 6), but what it doesn't tell you is that it replaces the imperial javelins with regular javelins, that are shorter and deal less damage, it also spells missile as "missle" in the tooltip. Another example: the aserai tribal warrior has a long sword perk that claims to replace the flyssa with the kaskara, which is longer and deals more damage, problem is that the other two perks in that set are a mace and an axe that also remplace this supposedly default sword, so the tribal warrior doesn't even have access to the flyssa in the first place.
- Many classes felt more unique and interesting in the past: imperial legionaries had access to the pilum, menavlion infantry had plumbatas, vlandian sergeants and voulgiers had franciskas, sturgian varyags and berserkers had throwing axes, battanian oathsworns had pikes... It seems that when tackling some issues Taleworlds has chosen the lazy route of removing stuff rather than making an effort to balance it.
I don't want to talk too much about combat because I'm still quite rusty, but so far it doesn't really feel any better than what I remember: the slower weapons don't feel very good when compared with the faster ones, spears seem pretty bad outside of the use against cavalry and supporting with poke when outnumbering an enemy. Throwing axes are very inaccurate. Kicks don't allow for a free quick follow up attack with most weapons. Chambers are a total gamble with high risk and very low reward. The chained attacks you can perform after a swing still look super weird, and I still can't tell how the stances are supposed to work.
All in all, it's pretty clear that native multiplayer is doing pretty bad at the moment and it will not thrive in this state even if the full release brings in some new or returning players
So what's the plan? Is Taleworlds gonna do nothing and let the multiplayer ship sink? Or do they have an ace up their sleeve that they want to surprise us with next month?
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