Which leveling system do you prefer Warband or Bannerlord?

[Koshkasa]

The leveling system? Good.
The leveling rate? Garbage
The UX/UI? The fly on the garbage.
The Reward vs Challenge curve? Seemingly non-existent.

I'll back that up. The idea itself is solid, where it falls flat and shatters its facial skull bones is the rate at which you learn things and how exactly you learn some of the XP points.

You can gain your first three levels by making 6 swings with a sword, but got forbid you get an (actually useless) focus point on level 18. It's too quick in the beginning, it's stomach-juice-in-your-eyesockets level of unbearable on high levels, and there's that little realm on levels 7-12 where you feel neither like it's raining focus points nor like you're wasting your time levelling the last stat you can to gain something.

Unless you deliberately grind some of the skills, you just won't be seeing them anytime soon. It has to stem from the fact that the way you recieve XP for some skills is questionable at best.

Bought some olives? You're now a good leader. Won a battle against impossible odds? Here's your helping of 1.4 influence, the stuff you can get a dozen of daily for sitting in your fief picking your nose. Run along now.

Bought 1 piece of Hardwood at Dunglanys and sold somewhere else? Here's your Trade XP, you little entrepreneur. Running a network of workshops and 5 caravans, making 5k on a rainy day? Tough luck pal, better go haul some Hardwood.

And some perks being in their perk trees is strange as well, such as ammo in Riding or the duplicate "any bow on horseback" perks. Half of Tactics tree is dedicated to actively discouraging the player from using tactics in combat, which is a questionable addition regardless of what the intention originally was.

That all said, however, the idea of levelling skills separately and becoming more proficient at them only via actually using them is extremely interesting. I realise that it's still EA and the perk tree will likely get reworked sooner or later, I'm just wondering how to playtest them without cheats in the meantime.

 

[Storm7Lightning]

I put 10 points into vigor and 5 focus into two handed. I dispatched an entire army during a siege defence killing 200 single handedly. Now at the time mytwo handed was 195. I got something like 2 points for killing 200 soldiers...

 

[xdj1nn]

I'll back that up. The idea itself is solid, where it falls flat and shatters its facial skull bones is the rate at which you learn things and how exactly you learn some of the XP points.

You can gain your first three levels by making 6 swings with a sword, but got forbid you get an (actually useless) focus point on level 18. It's too quick in the beginning, it's stomach-juice-in-your-eyesockets level of unbearable on high levels, and there's that little realm on levels 7-12 where you feel neither like it's raining focus points nor like you're wasting your time levelling the last stat you can to gain something.

Unless you deliberately grind some of the skills, you just won't be seeing them anytime soon. It has to stem from the fact that the way you recieve XP for some skills is questionable at best.

Bought some olives? You're now a good leader. Won a battle against impossible odds? Here's your helping of 1.4 influence, the stuff you can get a dozen of daily for sitting in your fief picking your nose. Run along now.

Bought 1 piece of Hardwood at Dunglanys and sold somewhere else? Here's your Trade XP, you little entrepreneur. Running a network of workshops and 5 caravans, making 5k on a rainy day? Tough luck pal, better go haul some Hardwood.

And some perks being in their perk trees is strange as well, such as ammo in Riding or the duplicate "any bow on horseback" perks. Half of Tactics tree is dedicated to actively discouraging the player from using tactics in combat, which is a questionable addition regardless of what the intention originally was.

That all said, however, the idea of levelling skills separately and becoming more proficient at them only via actually using them is extremely interesting. I realise that it's still EA and the perk tree will likely get reworked sooner or later, I'm just wondering how to playtest them without cheats in the meantime.

it would work better if all activities that relate to a skill would level said skill. It would be good to have some sort of "training" system to improve combat and level up units, it would be good to have more variety of useful perks (and have them working) Well, I could go on, but you totally get the picture, the whole progression system is flawed or missing.

 

[Earth Dragon]

I put 10 points into vigor and 5 focus into two handed. I dispatched an entire army during a siege defence killing 200 single handedly. Now at the time mytwo handed was 195. I got something like 2 points for killing 200 soldiers...

I mean......yeah. When you are that proficient at something and it becomes like clockwork, your rate of progression slows down.

You yourself just demonstrated that there wasn’t much to learn from what you just did

 

[Andthorn]

Interesting, I'll give this a go.

One thing with this approach is you'll miss out on learning new part components when forging weapons, but I guess I can learn them from smelting weapons too.

I know this is old, but might probably help ypu out if you wanna go serious on smithing. Make sure you max out focus on smithing.
Get a couple of companions to help you smith, and once in the smithy, you can select them, in the portrait panel where your stamina shows up, so they can use their stamina in refining, and your player uses his for smithing. In the beginning, like lvl 0-75 refining and melting weapons might be the fastest way to level your character. Make sure your character learns new recipees by smelting and smithing in the skill tree. leave the refining perks to the companions. Make sure at least one companion can make thamaskane steel. (This might make it slower at the beginning for your character to level up, but will make it insanely fast later due to the increase in probabilityto forge high tiear parts: IV, or V).
Grind til you get to lvl 100-125 through smelting, refining and smithing. Smithing with higuer lvl parts will exponentially increase the experience recieved. What you are looking for is tier IV o V components to create anything. I've found that 2H swords make for the best experience gain.
Once you are lvl 125 or something, try smithing a 2H weapon with a tier V or IV component, even if the rest or the components are trash, but make sure you meet the difficulty requirements for the smithing. If you do,once you forge a 2h weapon with a tier IV or V component, you will start gaining around 20 lvls per smith maybe more. The you can give those high tier trash weapons to your companions to smelt for an incredible boost in smithing too. Rinse and repeat, and you will get to smithing 300 within a couple of hours. (Provided you have maxed focus points on smithing).
I was able to max out smithing from 0 to 300 in around 12 hours. But I had to build a trading empire for that, to cover the costs of acquiring raw materials. Hope it helps

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

Both has their charms. Liked Warband most at first but now i like Bannerlord as much even if its a little bit fast atm

 

[Darkening Demise]

Warband was too restrictive and doesn't grow as you play. Bannerlord is dynamic and lets you increase skills as you use them with perks to pick along the way. Warband was like Fallout 4, you only level up one thing and that's your level. Then you get one point to get one thing. Bannerlord is just better 100%.

 

[black_bulldog]

Warband was too restrictive and doesn't grow as you play. Bannerlord is dynamic and lets you increase skills as you use them with perks to pick along the way. Warband was like Fallout 4, you only level up one thing and that's your level. Then you get one point to get one thing. Bannerlord is just better 100%.

It's true the Warband was very one dimensional. It emphasized combat and the only way to level was killing npcs. The game play loop was start out as a warrior which leads to being a lord or king and so the leveling system was more simplified. But what it did it did well.

BL is trying to focus on other styles of play which is great. But imho those other game play styles like merchant or bandit fall flat and have no replay ability. There maybe more ways to level character in BL but if the game has the depth of a kiddie pool then what's the point? It's why BL feels so hollow after 5-10 hours into it. I'd rather have a game like WB that stays focused, rather than BL that does a bunch of stuff poorly. Unless BL gets a helluva lot better I don't care if the leveling is more organic.

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

It's true the Warband was very one dimensional. It emphasized combat and the only way to level was killing npcs. The game play loop was start out as a warrior which leads to being a lord or king and so the leveling system was more simplified. But what it did it did well.

BL is trying to focus on other styles of play which is great. But imho those other game play styles like merchant or bandit fall flat and have no replay ability. There maybe more ways to level character in BL but if the game has the depth of a kiddie pool then what's the point? It's why BL feels so hollow after 5-10 hours into it. I'd rather have a game like WB that stays focused, rather than BL that does a bunch of stuff poorly. Unless BL gets a helluva lot better I don't care if the leveling is more organic.

well ive allready played as bandit 4th time now and merchant 2 maybe 3 so its subjective i think .....but yeah they could sure need some more love...Bandits are gonna get theirs later im pretty sure

 

[black_bulldog]

well ive allready played as bandit 4th time now and merchant 2 maybe 3 so its subjective i think .....but yeah they could sure need some more love...Bandits are gonna get theirs later im pretty sure

Cheers to you. I tried both styles and realized there just was nothing there to keep me playing after a few hours. There are so many systems in this game that are half baked but I'm getting off topic. I guess I'll say that WB leveling was simpler because it was a simpler game but simpler doesn't make it worse than BL.

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

Think Warband had an good in depth leveling system asw for customizing characters more like D&D of which i miss here. But BL system is also nice since it reminds me a little bit of Skyrim and such newer "rpg (questionable)" games

 

[Timmortal]

Think Warband had an good in depth leveling system asw for customizing characters more like D&D of which i miss here. But BL system is also nice since it reminds me a little bit of Skyrim and such newer "rpg (questionable)" games

The Warband level system was just a bore once you got to a certain level, where there was so much between each level that it would take days of playing to even get there. The Bannerlord system has rewards even when you reach "max" and then you die and start over at some point making it more interesting. Its just not done yet and therefor not balanced properly.

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

The Warband level system was just a bore once you got to a certain level, where there was so much between each level that it would take days of playing to even get there. The Bannerlord system has rewards even when you reach "max" and then you die and start over at some point making it more interesting. Its just not done yet and therefor not balanced properly.

yeah good points since you also need to go thru an legacy before the game ends., However its bit to fast pace right now since when you go to your next child the map is like 2-3 factions left. Maybe expand the map, (one more faction:to bold rn) or expand the factions of which there is room for at the maps

 

[Timmortal]

yeah good points since you also need to go thru an legacy before the game ends., However its bit to fast pace right now since when you go to your next child the map is like 2-3 factions left. Maybe expand the map, (one more faction:to bold rn) or expand the factions of which there is room for at the maps

I have made a suggestion to them that they need to slow down progression in the game. I think the best way of doing that is limiting how big of an army you get through renown and maybe making clan leveling slower. Bacially its to easy to get a big army, that you can pay for by just assulting nobles. If army size was more than halfed, it would take you far longer to get there and also make all the small rep/relation quest far more meaningfull, where as now you almost skip them.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I have made a suggestion to them that they need to slow down progression in the game. I think the best way of doing that is limiting how big of an army you get through renown and maybe making clan leveling slower. Bacially its to easy to get a big army, that you can pay for by just assulting nobles. If army size was more than halfed, it would take you far longer to get there and also make all the small rep/relation quest far more meaningfull, where as now you almost skip them.

Character progression is already far too slow. The last thing the game needs is for it to be even slower. If its a choice between a satisfying sense of growth or the children, well, the children can go scratch for all I care

The problem isn't too fast character progression anyway. Its too fast world progression. Slow the player down all you want, its not going to slow down how fast the world changes, it'll just keep the player on the sidelines for more of it.

 

[redmark]

The problem isn't too fast character progression anyway. Its too fast world progression. Slow the player down all you want, its not going to slow down how fast the world changes, it'll just keep the player on the sidelines for more of it.

Agreed, a number of issues would be improved just with factions being more discerning about going to war, and doing so much less frequently.

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

Character progression is already far too slow. The last thing the game needs is for it to be even slower. If its a choice between a satisfying sense of growth or the children, well, the children can go scratch for all I care

The problem isn't too fast character progression anyway. Its too fast world progression. Slow the player down all you want, its not going to slow down how fast the world changes, it'll just keep the player on the sidelines for more of it.

no hes talking more about the progression in armies, kingdoms and war if i understood it right. Since when you come to the point playing as your heir the game is almost done. In other words the world need to slow down but still have content and eventfulness which have to be balanced. But its another topic as he mentioned where somewhere in the forums...Character progression i think is okish but def not to slow. I can get top skills in 2-3 days which is pretty fast for an m&b game

 

[Timmortal]

Character progression is already far too slow. The last thing the game needs is for it to be even slower. If its a choice between a satisfying sense of growth or the children, well, the children can go scratch for all I care

The problem isn't too fast character progression anyway. Its too fast world progression. Slow the player down all you want, its not going to slow down how fast the world changes, it'll just keep the player on the sidelines for more of it.

I dont disagree the world changes to fast, i never even mentioned that, it does need to be slowed, but they are already working on that and done alot to make it better and even said they want to do more. They have not mentioned how fast we can skip content on our chars though and that really needs to be slowed down alot and its too easy to hit endgame in a few hours play if you really want to. Another part of that is the smithing exploit which they have also said they are fixing.

no hes talking more about the progression in armies, kingdoms and war if i understood it right. Since when you come to the point playing as your heir the game is almost done. In other words the world need to slow down but still have content and eventfulness which have to be balanced. But its another topic as he mentioned where somewhere in the forums...Character progression i think is okish but def not to slow. I can get top skills in 2-3 days which is pretty fast for an m&b game

yes thats what i was talking about. Right now theres not much rags to riches in the game, unless you balance poorly in the beginging and get too big of an army before you are good enoug to beat nobles, but if you just start out soloing looters and doing tournaments, then you are set and can get a big army and go kills some nobles, with a bit of luck you get 20000-100000 value gear in just a few battles, pretty much making you and endgame lord. Another way to fix this is likely lowering the rate at which tournaments spawn, right now they are too easy to farm and while they are not that good for gold farming, they are very good for all the things they give if you combine gold/gear/renown/xp rewards.

 

[NLCRich]

Personally I like the system in Bannerlord because it is derived more from actions the player takes in game than just points applied. However, I think it can still use some balancing, and obviously the perks still need work.

On the other topics - I don't think there is an issue with army size progression. Personally I think its fine. I find it important for the party size to increase to bring some tactical relevancy to the battles. The far greater impact is how quickly troops level up. Honestly, I like that they level up quickly. However, I recently took a break to go back and play VC, and I can say it is so many times faster than VC that going back and playing that game even with the troop ranking set to easy, it felt like it went at a snails pace. So I can agree it is a lot faster in BL and its probably faster than WB too. It's been a while, but it does seem to happen quickly as long as the troop gets some action.

I can agree that the world sometimes feels like it is moving too quickly, but I don't see it as much since 1.5.1. I'm pretty ok with it now since the diplomacy changes. Although I can admit I find myself wishing it balanced itself like WB and waited for the player to make the impact in wiping any one out. I felt like in WB, more often factions would go back to get lost fiefs and there was a lot more trading back and forth. The wars were a lot less one sided than they seem to be in BL. Typically in BL one side is always beating the other pretty badly.

The money I think is really more related to the super high pricing of certain pieces of gear, and also how smithing can be exploited to make the items. I don't think there is too much loot but the prices possibly could use adjustment. There is a lot more balancing to be done there. Personally though, I'm pretty good about spending all my money. I don't find money too easy to get where I'm banking more than I can put to good use, but I also avoid using the smithing much.

 

[HugoTheFrenchMan]

Personally I like the system in Bannerlord because it is derived more from actions the player takes in game than just points applied. However, I think it can still use some balancing, and obviously the perks still need work.

On the other topics - I don't think there is an issue with army size progression. Personally I think its fine. I find it important for the party size to increase to bring some tactical relevancy to the battles. The far greater impact is how quickly troops level up. Honestly, I like that they level up quickly. However, I recently took a break to go back and play VC, and I can say it is so many times faster than VC that going back and playing that game even with the troop ranking set to easy, it felt like it went at a snails pace. So I can agree it is a lot faster in BL and its probably faster than WB too. It's been a while, but it does seem to happen quickly as long as the troop gets some action.

I can agree that the world sometimes feels like it is moving too quickly, but I don't see it as much since 1.5.1. I'm pretty ok with it now since the diplomacy changes. Although I can admit I find myself wishing it balanced itself like WB and waited for the player to make the impact in wiping any one out. I felt like in WB, more often factions would go back to get lost fiefs and there was a lot more trading back and forth. The wars were a lot less one sided than they seem to be in BL. Typically in BL one side is always beating the other pretty badly.

The money I think is really more related to the super high pricing of certain pieces of gear, and also how smithing can be exploited to make the items. I don't think there is too much loot but the prices possibly could use adjustment. There is a lot more balancing to be done there. Personally though, I'm pretty good about spending all my money. I don't find money too easy to get where I'm banking more than I can put to good use, but I also avoid using the smithing much.

The biggest reason WB factions survived so long is because of how nobles respawned to where the last tiwn or the last 2 towns would both hve defenders of 700 or if just 1 town 1500 so no army execpt the player would really attack them and also the other reason is they would always respawn with top tier and when passively gaining troops while waiting most would gain be top tier that is the big reason why WB factions stayed alive so long.

2. The second big reason is expelling nobles every king after a month into the game wold have the tendency of expelling nobles which basically justvlet the juggle around a million factions and when they would eventually join a 1 or 2 town faction they would add around 70 troops and usually these factions would not expel as much