Yeah to bad leveling companions works for crap!
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Which leveling system do you prefer Warband or Bannerlord?
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You should read more posts, cause as you level higher your learning limit is lowered no matter how many attribute points or focus points you have in a skill. Nothing like adding a focus point to raise your learning speed then gaining a level and watching your speed shrink.
To be fair, that's not what *all* people want to be doing as their main thing all the time.
I like experimenting with different gameplay styles, so having different ways to gain XP and skill points are a great boon for players like me.
What I do think needs to happen is that the rewards/multipliers need to be tailored, and some of the skill trees need to be redrawn to have more appropriate perks for the specific tree inside them.
I definitely do not want to go back to fight in xx tournaments and kill xx sea raiders to learn a point in trade....
Warbands leveling system was a sandbox leveling system.
Bannerlords leveling system is one that belongs in a themepark like Diablo.
If there is a way to mod out the leveling system, it will be one of the first things I do. Themepark is cheap gaming design.
Achieve 100 in skill A = 3+ arrows/bolts.
Achieve 100 in skill A = Same rewards only provided as a choice...which will you choose! "dramatic music playing in your head" oh noes what will it be even though there really isnt a choice at all because if you use a bow, youll choose arrows and if you use a crossbow it will be bolts!
Achieve 100 in scouting = +5% food use in woods/marshes
Achieve 100 in scouting = same rewards only provided as a choice! Well...where the hell is my town/village/kingdom closest to? There is my choice...which wasnt really a choice at all.
Its a gimmick and actually does nothing to enhance gameplay, just give the illusion of it.Sandboxes should not be giving illusions, just providing the tools/options to make the sandbox as great as I can make it in my playing. The time spent on this could have been put into expanding trade caravans allow bringing food from one point to another where its needed, or allow cornering the market to starve out kingdoms/drive the prices up so playing as a trader has a greater impact on the game...or some other way that adds depth to what a sandbox is.
Less gimmicks, more depth.
Bannerlords leveling system is one that belongs in a themepark like Diablo.
If there is a way to mod out the leveling system, it will be one of the first things I do. Themepark is cheap gaming design.
Achieve 100 in skill A = 3+ arrows/bolts.
Achieve 100 in skill A = Same rewards only provided as a choice...which will you choose! "dramatic music playing in your head" oh noes what will it be even though there really isnt a choice at all because if you use a bow, youll choose arrows and if you use a crossbow it will be bolts!
Achieve 100 in scouting = +5% food use in woods/marshes
Achieve 100 in scouting = same rewards only provided as a choice! Well...where the hell is my town/village/kingdom closest to? There is my choice...which wasnt really a choice at all.
Its a gimmick and actually does nothing to enhance gameplay, just give the illusion of it.Sandboxes should not be giving illusions, just providing the tools/options to make the sandbox as great as I can make it in my playing. The time spent on this could have been put into expanding trade caravans allow bringing food from one point to another where its needed, or allow cornering the market to starve out kingdoms/drive the prices up so playing as a trader has a greater impact on the game...or some other way that adds depth to what a sandbox is.
Less gimmicks, more depth.
TBf you could steamroll the entire map without ever opening the skill tree window and not notice a difference. So shows how well implemented it was
Vasdema
Recruit
That's the part of the system I dislike. At later levels you find yourself grinding skills you wouldn't otherwise use in order to gain levels for extra focus points for the skills that you do want to use. It all feels a bit... MMO-ish. It forces you into playing as a jack-of-all trades.
It also makes clan positions useless, because if one of your companions is a scout or surgeon, then you're not getting scouting or medicine experience respectively. If you're not getting that XP, you're robbing yourself of the SP you need for levels and by extension, focus points.
In addition, a lot of the XP gains for skills are currently unbalanced, in favour of the wrong method of gaining XP, or plain broken.
It's far harder to keep your morale up at 75+ outside of the large battles of an all-out war. You need to keep that Food Variety bonus all the way up and be constantly killing Looters and Bandits. Yet you earn far more Leadership by simply forming an army and... Riding around with it.
It's easier to get Charm up by just giving 1 denar to every noble you meet rather than actually solving issues for the Notables and Nobles of Calradia.
Trade XP for running caravans is currently broken. Doesn't matter if you're losing 250 a day or gaining 2000. Nothing.
As for Smithing... Yeah, thank the Gods for mildeww and Bannerlord Tweaks.
To be fair, though, those things can be fixed and balanced as the game continues though the EA cycle.
But none of it will affect the inherent grinding problem of having your level being based on total SP.
I'm for the level based on total XP method. All the way..
I'm really not sure why there are levels at all. I don't even know what they mean. It's like here are some arbitrary breakpoints for receiving stat and focus increases?
There should be skills, which there are. They should increase with use, so that is happening. When you get better with skills, you get perks.
When you work on your skills your associated stats should just go up, not like some choice. Like right now I can get more social by cleaving people with my sword? What?
And you focus should just be your focus. Like if you skill up a lot of sword, it should give you focus to the sword because you're obviously concentrating on your sword because look at all these skill ups. And then if you stop using your sword the focus should decay of course.
There should be skills, which there are. They should increase with use, so that is happening. When you get better with skills, you get perks.
When you work on your skills your associated stats should just go up, not like some choice. Like right now I can get more social by cleaving people with my sword? What?
And you focus should just be your focus. Like if you skill up a lot of sword, it should give you focus to the sword because you're obviously concentrating on your sword because look at all these skill ups. And then if you stop using your sword the focus should decay of course.
Pardon me for not reading all of 43 pages...
The question in poll can be understand in multiple ways:
IMO the way of increasing skills is better in BL (learn what you actually do, instead of assigning skill points manually). Of course it's unbalanced and badly communicated to players, but that can be ironed out during EA.
But (!) the effect of skills is too weak. There is hardly any difference between complete ignorant and a master. 3% is just laughable. That's also easy to fix - just tweak some numbers.
Also I hate perks. They are 0/1, which feels very artificial and gamey. Just include their effect into the skill itself, and make it gradual.
And attributes are completely redundant. Just give us bonus to 1h xp gain if we have high 2h/polearm skill. Same effect, less hassle.
The question in poll can be understand in multiple ways:
IMO the way of increasing skills is better in BL (learn what you actually do, instead of assigning skill points manually). Of course it's unbalanced and badly communicated to players, but that can be ironed out during EA.
But (!) the effect of skills is too weak. There is hardly any difference between complete ignorant and a master. 3% is just laughable. That's also easy to fix - just tweak some numbers.
Also I hate perks. They are 0/1, which feels very artificial and gamey. Just include their effect into the skill itself, and make it gradual.
And attributes are completely redundant. Just give us bonus to 1h xp gain if we have high 2h/polearm skill. Same effect, less hassle.
So my internet and power have been out for almost a week now. During that time I ended up playing a lot of Bannerlord (1.0.10) and Skyrim SE (unpatched PS4 version) while running off my generator. In that time (around 30 hours on Bannerlord and 15 or so on Skyrim) I pretty much came to the same conclusion yet again. I fricken HATE TES style leveling systems. I mean I enjoy both games to an extent, but Jesus Christ the crap you have to do to level up is power-gamey as all hell and it feels more like playing an endless mini-game than a character in an RPG.
First let me sum up my time on Skyrim to establish a basis. The first 6 hours I did nothing but attack an unkillable NPC with a 2 handed sword, a one handed sword, a bow, block, bash,get hit on purpose and heal myself while changing the difficulty setting around to make this more effective. At the end of that 6 hours I was level 21 with 60+ two hander, 60+ light armor, 40+ restoration 30 Archery, 30 block and some leftover one hander to reach that extra perk point I needed. 6 Hours into the game and I hadn't even left the starting area. At this point I could basically ignore the skill system and go play the character I wanted.
On Bannerlord I pretty much spent 4-5 hours spamming Practice fights and soloing bandits until I had 25 in One Handed, Two Handed, and Polearm for the bonus HP perks. I then hired some recruits and auto resolved bandits for a few hours to PL my medicine skill to get the other bonus HP perk. I don't think my sanity would have lasted long enough to walk around enough to get the other one out of athletics so I didn't bother. I did some basic 3-4 town trade loops to to earn around 30k and bought two workshops because frankly I didn't want to bother with caravans. Then hired some compansions and figured I'd give smithing a shot. Jesus was that ever a waste of my time. Took an in game year and a half to make 70 some odd fine steel, and 270'ish regular steel. I literally could NOT buy enough hardwood to keep it going, because there isn't enough on the map to sustain it unless you spend days traveling.During this time I'd earned enough renown for Clan 2, joined a Kingdom, and married that rich chick in Northern Empire that has 160 steward so I could inflate my troop count and steal her armor. At that point money became useless and everything desolved into spam hiring troops and throwing them into whatever battle was winnable then repeating that. There wasn't nearly enough Warhorses for sale on the map to upgrade any of the cavalry anyway so pretty much just an endless loops of throwing men at whatever AI my kingdom was pissed are currently. My characters skills made literally no difference compared to the other attempts I'd made where I rarely passed level 10.
Frankly the FUN part took FAR too long to get to due to the arbitrary boredom of PL'ing skills. The game in it's current form would be better off without a leveling system at all than the current one. When the best advice you can give someone is "ignore the skill system, just kill ****" there is something wrong with that system.
First let me sum up my time on Skyrim to establish a basis. The first 6 hours I did nothing but attack an unkillable NPC with a 2 handed sword, a one handed sword, a bow, block, bash,get hit on purpose and heal myself while changing the difficulty setting around to make this more effective. At the end of that 6 hours I was level 21 with 60+ two hander, 60+ light armor, 40+ restoration 30 Archery, 30 block and some leftover one hander to reach that extra perk point I needed. 6 Hours into the game and I hadn't even left the starting area. At this point I could basically ignore the skill system and go play the character I wanted.
On Bannerlord I pretty much spent 4-5 hours spamming Practice fights and soloing bandits until I had 25 in One Handed, Two Handed, and Polearm for the bonus HP perks. I then hired some recruits and auto resolved bandits for a few hours to PL my medicine skill to get the other bonus HP perk. I don't think my sanity would have lasted long enough to walk around enough to get the other one out of athletics so I didn't bother. I did some basic 3-4 town trade loops to to earn around 30k and bought two workshops because frankly I didn't want to bother with caravans. Then hired some compansions and figured I'd give smithing a shot. Jesus was that ever a waste of my time. Took an in game year and a half to make 70 some odd fine steel, and 270'ish regular steel. I literally could NOT buy enough hardwood to keep it going, because there isn't enough on the map to sustain it unless you spend days traveling.During this time I'd earned enough renown for Clan 2, joined a Kingdom, and married that rich chick in Northern Empire that has 160 steward so I could inflate my troop count and steal her armor. At that point money became useless and everything desolved into spam hiring troops and throwing them into whatever battle was winnable then repeating that. There wasn't nearly enough Warhorses for sale on the map to upgrade any of the cavalry anyway so pretty much just an endless loops of throwing men at whatever AI my kingdom was pissed are currently. My characters skills made literally no difference compared to the other attempts I'd made where I rarely passed level 10.
Frankly the FUN part took FAR too long to get to due to the arbitrary boredom of PL'ing skills. The game in it's current form would be better off without a leveling system at all than the current one. When the best advice you can give someone is "ignore the skill system, just kill ****" there is something wrong with that system.
I agree. Having to level up other skills in order to just gain more points for your favourite picks just doesn't make any sense, in a "game" world.
That's pretty badass dedication, man!
What I miss most about warband leveling is 2 things, first that big fat exp from killing stronger units. In bannerlord I go start killing the heavy Cav and get excited and the....oh yeah it doesn't do anything extra, night as well be recruits from the exp pov.
Second is 'getting ready' with my character. In warband you have about 20 fast levels to get your character ready for the long haul. If you want to be a INT surgeon, max leadership, or max power draw..... you can make you character what you BEFORE you're dragging around a huge army in wars all the time.
In Bannerlord you get combat skill up fast but if you wanted high medicine and engineering before you start going to war.... though luck they are slow wonky skills to level even after speed updates. I kinda think they missed engineer somehow though, it doesn't feel different in speed since the original build.
Second is 'getting ready' with my character. In warband you have about 20 fast levels to get your character ready for the long haul. If you want to be a INT surgeon, max leadership, or max power draw..... you can make you character what you BEFORE you're dragging around a huge army in wars all the time.
In Bannerlord you get combat skill up fast but if you wanted high medicine and engineering before you start going to war.... though luck they are slow wonky skills to level even after speed updates. I kinda think they missed engineer somehow though, it doesn't feel different in speed since the original build.
I agree. Its so weird that there seems to be no difference between killing a cataphract or a looter. Maybe there is a difference behind the scenes, but if there is its invisible to the player.
TheWitchIzalith
Regular
Bannerlord has the superior leveling system, by far. The only draw back is that earning a skill somewhere, lowers the learning rate for all of them.
The "Forces" jack of all trade is kind of a moot argument, because in order to do that you'd have to have competency in everything. Based on skill rating, competency in game would be like 125+ in every skill. If not higher to really be "Jack of all trades".
Warriors also wouldn't just focus on combat and combat alone. You would have various side skills. If you're only skill was a fighter, you probably wouldn't be a very good fighter realistically and probably just a levy.
Most nobles would also practice falconry, and archery, hunting all sorts of other things, and by no means would they be experts in the fields, they certainly wouldn't simply be swordsmen. Not if they were people of any real merit.
I much prefer Bannerlords "Do it to level it" theme, as opposed to the very grindy "Just keep exponentially killing more and more people to level".
That said, Bannerlords leveling system could use tweaks and adjustments, but Id would absolutely hate to see it return to a Combat only XP based leveling system.
People say Bannerlord forces you to "Be a jack of all trade" but Warband literally forces you to do combat if you want to level with any amount of proficiency.
The "Forces" jack of all trade is kind of a moot argument, because in order to do that you'd have to have competency in everything. Based on skill rating, competency in game would be like 125+ in every skill. If not higher to really be "Jack of all trades".
Warriors also wouldn't just focus on combat and combat alone. You would have various side skills. If you're only skill was a fighter, you probably wouldn't be a very good fighter realistically and probably just a levy.
Most nobles would also practice falconry, and archery, hunting all sorts of other things, and by no means would they be experts in the fields, they certainly wouldn't simply be swordsmen. Not if they were people of any real merit.
I much prefer Bannerlords "Do it to level it" theme, as opposed to the very grindy "Just keep exponentially killing more and more people to level".
That said, Bannerlords leveling system could use tweaks and adjustments, but Id would absolutely hate to see it return to a Combat only XP based leveling system.
People say Bannerlord forces you to "Be a jack of all trade" but Warband literally forces you to do combat if you want to level with any amount of proficiency.
Bannerlord has a clearly superior leveling system, albeit it's too damn slow. They could fix that, which shouldn't matter right now because late game is barely playable, and many perks do not even work atm haha
The only change I'd probably cast a vote upon would be to ease the cap at which skills become a slow drag. As of now it's next to impossible to even match AI skill proficiency, you are permanently a underdog because the soft caps stop you from getting even an acceptable level of certain skills, that includes combat. Which if you want to focus on 2h you are hindered by tournaments because they give you 1h skills, which lowers the cap, so you lose "potential" points to skills you don't want, due to bad mechanics. A simple fix for tournaments, though, would be to allow people to pick weapons. Also, this cap thing makes it, AGAIN, much better to be a horse archer than any melee class, because if you dare have all 3 melee skills high, you'll be hindered from getting useful, and necessary passives. As of now, Leadership, Charm, and Tactics are a real pain to level up, unless you focus the PC into those from the get go. Tbh I'm not even sure how to level all skills, some I've figured out, others I have no clue.
The only change I'd probably cast a vote upon would be to ease the cap at which skills become a slow drag. As of now it's next to impossible to even match AI skill proficiency, you are permanently a underdog because the soft caps stop you from getting even an acceptable level of certain skills, that includes combat. Which if you want to focus on 2h you are hindered by tournaments because they give you 1h skills, which lowers the cap, so you lose "potential" points to skills you don't want, due to bad mechanics. A simple fix for tournaments, though, would be to allow people to pick weapons. Also, this cap thing makes it, AGAIN, much better to be a horse archer than any melee class, because if you dare have all 3 melee skills high, you'll be hindered from getting useful, and necessary passives. As of now, Leadership, Charm, and Tactics are a real pain to level up, unless you focus the PC into those from the get go. Tbh I'm not even sure how to level all skills, some I've figured out, others I have no clue.
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I wanna say bannerlord because there's more flavor to it BUT it needs heavy polishing. I would like to see more perks too. I like the idea of fully tailoring your characters to your play style. I still feel like you're forced to take useless perks which is why I want to see my paths you can take for each skill.
Vasdema
Recruit
Umm, no.
Leveling gives you Focus Points, which raises the multiplier for experience earned in that skill. It also raises that skill's soft cap by 30 points, which, after hitting, tanks the experience gain for that skill. Focus Points are good.
At present, leveling is achieved by attaining a number of SP. That number goes up by 5 with every level.
SP literally stands for Skill Point. Every time you level a skill, a point goes towards leveling your character.
As you level your skills via experience derived from use, the amount of experience needed for the next level also goes up, requiring more and more effort to level that skill. Hence the reason Focus Points are so nice.
However, as stated, leveling a skill is what counts towards the SP level requirement. Any skill. Of any level.
Just leveled Stewardship from 211 to 212? 1 SP towards your level.
Polearm just went up from 156 to 157? 1 SP towards your level.
Killed your first Looter with a Crossbow? Skill went up from 15 to 16? 1 SP towards your level.
So yes I could, "pick a certain build and stick to it." Or instead of grinding out the 28k xp I need to level up Throwing, I can go level two-handed with a single swipe from a claymore.
So, as I previously stated:
I still stand by that.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of "do it to level it" systems myself. Even if they are a bugger to balance in terms of effort vs. reward for all the different skills.
And yes, xp derived solely from combat would suck.
I would just prefer they pool up all the xp from all the skills you're learning and have that go towards your xp bar. With the soft caps still in place, of course, so people couldn't just keep grinding the same lvl. 5 focus skill over and over for levels.
Hell, I'd prefer they rip out levels, attributes and focus points completely and just have us concentrate on our skills, over the system we've currently got.
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