Which leveling system do you prefer Warband or Bannerlord?

[paladinx333]

I can say that I don't care for it either. I need to have 60 riding skill to ride any horse better than the one have now and even with focus points, the skill barely crawls along. ALL I DO IS RIDE!!!

I think the whole system is more obtuse than warband as well. When you first look at skills in Warband it all just makes sense. When I first looked at the skills in Bannerlord it took me moment to figure out what I was suppose to do. Then I realized how little direct control I had over my character build.

Back to riding, the tip for it says to ride as fast as possible on the map and something about maximum speed in combat. Why would you not ride as fast as possible on the map? Is it even possible to ride slower? Despite all that riding, I am still less than 50% of the way to being able to ride a warhorse. I even won a fast warhorse in a tournament that requires a riding skill of 90. I feel like my character will die of old age before ever hits a riding skill of 90.

 

[stevehoos]

25 hours in my second campaign and no level ups from my companions. This is a mess, the design just doesn't work right now. I want to level my companions up and build a Warband ya know? This is pure tedium. I do like the other ideas in the game, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of nice little touches in there.

 

[Woopzilla]

Yea, it seems the leveling system is a nice enough concept for the player character which needs a lot of fine tuning and adjusting still... but this system requires your companions to be absolute murder machines to get enough skill increases to trigger a level up. I have a scout and surgeon companion, but they both start with a skill level cap of 60 for their professions.

So, for example, my surgeon can't level through healing because they need to level up first to increase the medecine skill level cap... so, the only option is for them to get increases in athletics, bow, crossbow, throwing, one handed, two handed or polearm... everything else seems to be at their cap. So, my low skilled, low leveled companions need to really massacre enemies to get 30+ skill levels to gain their 1 focus point.

 

[Jhaerik]

It's a terrible system where you just end up abusing it the same way you do in TES 3&4. Just find ways to grind skills you don't care about until you cap them so you can spend your points where you want them. It's a dumb system where you end up solo grinding looters for hours and hours with a two hander so you can get better at using your one hander...

Going to say this again. It's a huge step back from M&B/Warband and I sort of wish they'd just abandon Bannerlord and work on an HD remake of the original Mount & Blade. Sword Sisters, Nords, Black Plate and all.

 

[kekkuli5]

Yup, i honestly couldn't notice much difference between ranged skill of 75 and 25. The focus point thingy is just trash. I like the idea of unlocking perks while you level up skills but some of are just off.

 

[High chief Kieran]

The whole character progression system in this game is a mess. I don't hate the ideas on paper, but everything levels to slow and it's like companions weren't considered at all when they designed the system. Companions need the same 70~ skill point gains to level up that you do, except there's no way for them to level non combat skills and even their combat skills go up like 1 every in game year.

you can level up some skill points of companions by assigning them a job in the clan overview, I managed to get my healer's healing skill from 60 to 71 now by making her the official clan surgeon. I assume it also works for the other jobs (only set a surgeon at this point).
still I agree that there should be more ways to do this.

 

[bheasman]

Some of the non-combat skills are currently impossible to realistically level. I'm many hours in and I've only been able to increase my leadership skill by +2.

I'm on about day 170 odd now, my leadership is 156, with all 5 learning focus'.

 

[Scuba Steve]

If they're going to maintain the route of do the skill to level the skill, then your attributes need to level up based on those skills rather than giving you a single point every 3 levels.

Make it like the mod for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead called "Stats Through Skills". Get better at fighting, your attribute that represents strength should go up on its own. Do things that require thinking and brain power, your intelligence should increase.

They need to fix the perk system though; lots of redundant and useless ones. If it's a perk it should cause an interesting change, rather than just "x% damage increase". Perks should be to give different specializations and make every character feel different

 

[VincentNZ]

The system is good, but needs to be sped up and more dynamic in various ways.
Yesterday I started a "stat-optimized" build to level faster. So I maxed out Riding and Bow as early as possible, with a 13x XP multi, for the two, making me level up pretty fast, then I maxed smithing.
Now I sit at 100ish for Bow and Riding. My multi dropped from 13x to 9x and the XP needed is around 13k. That is a lot, but I can still get 3 skill points total when engaging a gang of 4-9 Looters. Herein lies the issue though: Shooting a target stationary from 40m away on a horse will level Riding fast and bow quite a bit slower. Shooting a target 10-20m away at full speed, does nothing comparable. Killing a higher tier troop with a headshot seems to give the same or similar reward. So the optimal way to level Riding and Bow is to engage 4-7 Looters and hit them stationary from 40m.
I suppose it is worse for melee, although I have not tested with full multis. Hitting with a polearm for 100 damage and no focus point will give you 1.5-2 skillpoints at 5, so you can somewhat level that fast enough to a level of 50 or so, I suppose.

What the system needs is:

1) a rebalance regarding killing enemies that are a high level/gear and how you do it. Hits on the head and neck should also always give more. Also hits with higher speeds should give more, regardless if you move away from the enemy or towards. This counts for ranged and melee.
2) More synergy when doing certain things. Scouting a hideout should also increase your Riding. Charming someone should increase your Roguery. Ransoming prisoners should increase Roguery and Trade, Using a bow should also increase Athletics, Medicine should increase Leadership. So each action should primarily increase 1 Skill high, 1 skill medium and 1 skill low. This is specifically important for the non-violent skils that would otherwise take ages.
3) Each skill should also raise the governing attribute, instead of raising the attributes every 3-5 levels. It makes sense and is authentic. Using a melee weapon will increase your understanding of melee combat in general, so switching to two-handed after 50 levels of one-handed should be easier to learn.
4) The amount of skill increases for level ups need to be addressed. They start fastish and then drag out immensly. Instead of +5 per level I would say it should start at 10 for level two and then +2 to +4 for the levels after. So your progress would be more constant.
5) Solving quests should level governing attributes: Drove a cattle to Town X, get +0.5 to +5 riding depending on the distance. Talk poachers out of poaching? +2 in Charm +1 to Roguery. Killing poachers + 2 to either your highest or last raised combat skill. Ambushing and attacking hideouts for quests should give Scouting and Engineering.
.
I still think this is a very authentic approach and a better system than in Warband. If you learn to play Chess you get better fast and progress slows down. It is also of advantage if you played other games before that and learning chess helps you understand other things. Becoming a chess grandmaster does not make you a good boxer though, which is basically the old system (or most XP-based systems). Your skilltree should always represent, what you do the most, too. Tweaking is important here.

 

[Memoefe]

I like the new system, i you don't use focus on smithing you won't be able to get better at smithing obviously. Perks are nice, could be more impactful or various tho.

Not to mention the time it takes to level up by the time I was level 12 the game was over and a kingdom had already steam rolled

Thats another problem by itself, not intentional obviously.

 

[Sithrain]

Attributes feel completely pointless tbh. All they do is increase an arbitrary cap that shouldn't even exist if it's really a 'learn by doing' system. It would make a lot more sense to me if I got more hp from higher endurance than from a myriad of perks scattered through a dozen totally unrelated skills. The only place the levelling feels playable is with combat skills, and warband already did that through profs. Only now we don't have those either, we have to rely on iffy perks so rather than getting incrementally better in combat all the time you have five or six milestones to hit and progress in between might as well just be an xp bar like they were apparently trying to avoid. Noncombat skills are, at their best, a system of doing something boring and repetitive instead of something fun until you get whatever perk you needed to go back to having fun. At their worst they simply don't increase ever.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I think the "learning limit" needs to go and attributes should either go too or be changed to a different function. The way it is now is completely opposite of how it was explained (or imagined after a bad explanation?) in the game play interviews. I though it would be just you put more FP in a skill to level it faster, so you choose the priority of you char and skip stuff you're not interested in. I though that sounded wonderful. I was very disturbed when I got into the game and saw attributes and limits even after putting in FP.

 

[Wolfsblut]

Can't agree more.
They took the uniquie develop system form M&B and Warband and turned inot a cookie cutter action RPG garbage.
Sadest thing is, i doubt this will get fixed even by mods because its rotten to the core, i wouldn't even know where to start.

 

[MauledByABeer]

I think the main problem is pace (which I would say is true of much of Bannerlord at the moment). It's just too slow to feel rewarding. I don't dislike the system per se but they need to speed it up a bit and maybe give us more options for how to level up certain skills.

 

[fsinc2]

I don't like the new system as I find it lacks giving immediate and rewarding feedback from defeating different tiers of enemy.
I. E currently defeating a enemy Lord gives the same amount of feedback as cutting down a looter. I believe the lack of this feedback is pretty detrimental in game with combat being a big part of the game.

Question: Does increased proficiency level give any mechanical increase?
I. E having 10 extra proficiency point in leadership allowing you to field 2 more troops.

 

[Wolfsblut]

Its not only the pace.

I have to admit that i dislike this perk-crap per se and would do so even if it would be well made.
But the longer i play with it the more i see how utterly crap it is.

Just study the perks for a while.
You get garrison stuff for two handed weapons, 2 arrows more on foot for athletic, -2%morale for the enemy on 120er bowery... i wont start with 150+ because you will never reach that without cheating anyway.

 

[Ciderglove]

Its not only the pace.

I have to admit that i dislike this perk-crap per se and would do so even if it would be well made.
But the longer i play with it the more i see how utterly crap it is.

Just study the perks for a while.
You get garrison stuff for two handed weapons, 2 arrows more on foot for athletic, -2%morale for the enemy on 120er bowery... i wont start with 150+ because you will never reach that without cheating anyway.

This is crucial, and a whole new issue in itself. The perks are unbelievably borked. I have sometimes sat staring at the screen in disbelief when I've seen how useless and irrelevant perks are.

 

[imgran]

Agreed. Skill system is way too restrictive in its current form. I love that you gain skills by actions, and you can add specialties within those skills, but the cap is... its just stupid.

I think there should be a cap, but the current system as implemented is simply strange.

 

[xavire94]

Not to mention the time it takes to level up by the time I was level 12 the game was over and a kingdom had already steam rolled

+1 This happened to me also

 

[Falrock]

I don't mind the new levelling system but it should definitely be easier/less grindy.