Which leveling system do you prefer Warband or Bannerlord?

Which has the better leveling system?

  • Warband

  • Bannerlord


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The system is good, but so grindy it almost feels like a MMO, where you don't have the slightest hope to reach top level.

I can only imagine how frustrating would it be to have your character die of old age only to start the grind all over again with you feeble heir.

It's too much grind for a single player experience.
 
Rather than forcing you to choose between 2 perks, they should give you points to spend on the perks you want and at most limit the level to which the perk is obtainable through the level.

I feel like they make you choose in order to prevent players from creating power builds or something that everyone mimics. Just a theory though.
 
Hmmm Ok that's good advice thanks! I was thinking of starting a new character soonish cause I'm eh about my current one, which is like, sort of well rounded. I was thinking of doing some two handed, bloodthirsty kind of character lol
You'll still plateau, it will slow down again after the quick skills level. but it does go faster early on due to how much faster you gain those skills from battles. Stewardship by just having the food for example is another that goes insanely fast.

I started to slow down around lvl 10-12 but still faster than my first game. Hopefully in time they rebalance those slow to level ones. Charm for example I believe got patched in another way to gain it, but that skill was soooooo slow and may still be lol.
 
The skill system made me go back to Warband until either they change it COMPLETELY, or there are mods that do so.

As in get rid of the stupid focus system and attribute points and just let me level skills like in Kenshi. You use it, you level it. Bam. Done.

If they keep it as is, it will be a deal breaker for me and many, many others. I sincerely hope the good will they're finding in the steam reviews doesn't lead them to conclude most things are fine and just need some tuning. This skills system is the worst in any game I've ever played.

If you think it's fine or good, then that's because you don't understand how the skill system currently works. You are unable to level very far, or in any direction outside of optimal or you literally make it so you can't level anymore.

Hope you enjoy using excel to plan your character like in WB, except the math is like 2nd year university this time...
 
I may be the only one, but conceptually, I actually really like it.


The skill system made me go back to Warband until either they change it COMPLETELY, or there are mods that do so.

As in get rid of the stupid focus system and attribute points and just let me level skills like in Kenshi. You use it, you level it. Bam. Done.

That's literally the way it is. Focus points simply increase the level rate (and influence the skill cap).


lung problems from breathing crappy medieval smoke-filled air

Come now, there was far more smoke in the air in the 1890s, and people were living into their 70's then!
 
That's literally the way it is. Focus points simply increase the level rate (and influence the skill cap).

No, that is not the way it is. In Kenshi the only level cap is the highest possible level to take a skill which is wholly impractical for about the last 10-15% outside of focusing entirely on doing so. In Bannerlord the highest you could take a skill - therefore it's absolute cap - is like 3/4 of the way to the end of the bar. How can you think that's the same? It is literally completely impossible to even reach the last perks lol.

In Bannerlord there are level caps that you must repeatedly reach and then raise for no reason what so ever, and it is possible to leave yourself ****ed completely. In Kenshi if you want to be better with Crossbows, just grab one and use it. It doesn't matter what you did before stat-wise, everybody is just as capable as everybody else to reach max proficiency if they train long enough. No magic hard cap whatsoever, nor any real soft cap until extreme skill levels.

There is absolutely no comparison between the skill system in Bannerlord and the system Warband or Kenshi. The Bannerlord system is garbage. It is complex with bizarre halts and starts in the progression of skills for no reason other than to be different and to arbitrarily increase the grind to stretch content.

I absolutely do not believe the person in charge of this aspect of the game could be so incompetent as to not realize that 1/4 or the perks are actually impossible to attain without cheating. I don't care how early the access is, that is inexcusable. It would be like inventing a new card game except you forgot how many cards are in a playing deck. Honestly, the Math you need to take to get a degree in programming covers the exact type of problem that the current system has - if you spread your attribute points to evenly you make it impossible to reach the same level as if you min-maxed.

Because, you know, there was this problem in previous games where the majority of players didn't min/max as Horse Archers enough. /s
 
No, that is not the way it is. In Kenshi the only level cap is the highest possible level to take a skill which is wholly impractical for about the last 10-15% outside of focusing entirely on doing so. In Bannerlord the highest you could take a skill - therefore it's absolute cap - is like 3/4 of the way to the end of the bar. How can you think that's the same? It is literally completely impossible to even reach the last perks lol.

In Bannerlord there are level caps that you must repeatedly reach and then raise for no reason what so ever, and it is possible to leave yourself ****ed completely. In Kenshi if you want to be better with Crossbows, just grab one and use it. It doesn't matter what you did before stat-wise, everybody is just as capable as everybody else to reach max proficiency if they train long enough. No magic hard cap whatsoever, nor any real soft cap until extreme skill levels.

So it's not the way skill are acquired you're upset about, but the fact that there's a cap.

So why say this?

As in get rid of the stupid focus system and attribute points and just let me level skills like in Kenshi. You use it, you level it. Bam. Done.

If you'll forgive my saying, it sounds like you're a bit confused as to what you're upset about.

The reason the level cap system is a plus is that once aging, death, and heirs are working properly, every character will be different. Likewise, it adds variety to the endlessly generated companions. It encourages us to specialize and makes it less boring than having a character with 250 skill points in every single skill every single generation, over and over again. If you disagree with that, that's fine, and I'm sure there'll be a mod or six that change that. Personally, I like it, but what I like isn't important to you so that's nothing to predicate an argument on. What I will argue is that you should be clear what the system is, how it works, and precisely what you don't like before providing feedback. The devs need clear thoughts from us before they can turn it into action.
 
If you'll forgive my saying, it sounds like you're a bit confused as to what you're upset about.

You are the only one who doesn't grasp what the issues I raised even are, yet you say I'm confused.

You literally just spelled it out while trying to be snarky. But I'll pretend you really don't get it and go slower for ya.

There are level caps based on arbitrary point allocations. These caps shouldn't exist at all. They serve no purpose. Why do you need to allocate points on some screen in order to play the game differently? If you wanted to use a spear this run just use one. Why need to put points into it?

I'm genuinely curious as to why you can't just... play differently and level those skills instead? Why do you need to pull up the character screen, assign a point to whatever, just so you can go back to lancing people from horseback or trading or whatever and continue to grow in skill? What is the purpose of this extra layer?

What about pressing 'C' and then clicking somewhere on the screen, then closing the screen just so you can get back to what you were doing before makes this system appealing over just getting better without the BS?

I have so far provided several reasons why the system is bad:

1) You need to min max when assigning points to even reach the highest possible level with your character. Balanced characters, therefore, cannot reach the same level as min-maxed characters. Do you really not understand that this is not just counterintuitive but also extremely bad game design? Really? You are actually fine with this? Actually address this for once if you're going to keep responding to me instead of just repeating that you 'like the new system' and passively aggressively refusing to understand this problem, at the very least, is a problem.

2) Some skills will invariable suck to level because it isn't fun to click through screens and that is essentially what you have to do to slowly level them - Trade comes to mind - which is further amplified by how you level in general. If you want a character who uses some of these skills as well as combat skills then you will have to play the clicking through screens minigame to level those skills just so you can go back to leveling the combat skills.

Example: You are a trader who fights with a sword. You've just started so you have crap money and you are out there fighting bandits and suddenly your combat skill plateaus at your current cap. So now you need to go and grind trade to level up, but you still need the money from bandits to do this or else it will take forever. So now you aren't getting skill ups for fighting but you must still keep fighting bandits for money for leveling trade so you can level up and raise the skill cap on your combat skills so you can fight bandits to level your combat skills. But because you forgot to level trade at all, now you need to grind that till M&B III comes out or until you get enough points to raise the cap on your combat skills. So you grind that out ignoring other things because it bottlenecks your progress. You avoid fights that in Warband you would have fought just because your progress is stalled. But hey, you say, now you know the system, no more bottlenecks for you! From now on you make sure you grind trade at the same rate as whatever else! ...which ends up limiting how you respond to world events because you are being dragooned between tasks. See, now you have to grind in very specific ways to maximize leveling progress. Gee, that sure sounds like you're being forced to play the same way every time. Huh, thought that was the problem with the old system that this was supposed to fix by letting you 'level by doing'. It looks like the opposite is the case. You level by focus point application and then by doing very specific things to unlock further focus point applicaiton! So much better, right?

There is no reason to lock leveling sword fighting behind grinding out one more level of trade, or vice versa, yet that is what happens currently. It makes no sense. It's dumb. It leads to boring outcomes for the player. Does that make sense to you? I think it makes a lot of sense. Boring = bad. See? Easy!

3) If skill caps weren't there none of these gripes would exist.

What I'm saying is if you could level any skill from start to finish without ever assigning points or leveling up, then there would be no problems with the system. The aforementioned example wouldn't exist. A player could bounce between trading and sword fighting as the mood took them instead of following a careful regime.

You could also play however you wanted in the moment and that would be what your build organically became. No jumping around between leveling skills, no need to assign points. Just like it is in Kenshi. The only thing necessary to fix the current system is to make it like this.

Do you understand now? Is that clear enough for you? Let me spell it out again just in case. You can screw yourself and make it impossible to get the points you need to progress in the ****ty level up system which is further exacerbated by the bottlenecking of progress around leveling boring skills and finally there is no reason for any of this to even be a problem because they could just remove focus points and stat points and just keep the skills and have a largely perfect framework to just finish tweaking.
 
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Do you understand now? Is that clear enough for you? Let me spell it out again just in case. You can screw yourself and make it impossible to get the points you need to progress in the ****ty level up system which is further exacerbated by the bottlenecking of progress around leveling boring skills and finally there is no reason for any of this to even be a problem because they could just remove focus points and stat points and just keep the skills and have a largely perfect framework to just finish tweaking.

May I asked who managed to locate and subsequently stomp on your cajones this afternoon? Because I most certainly have not been near any cajones this afternoon.

Yes, it's quite clear now. You're not fond of the level cap. That's fine. Raise that point with the people who can actually do something about it and move on. Having a tirade about it to a stranger who teaches Japanese kids for a living isn't going to change anything. I merely said that it wasn't clear the first time, as you distinctly made it sound as though you didn't simply gain levels in skills by using them. My goal was to help you voice your concerns properly, nothing more or less.

I suppose, in a sense, I've accomplished my goal. I feel good about myself now. What would this community do without me?
 
You are the only one who doesn't grasp what the issues I raised even are, yet you say I'm confused.

You literally just spelled it out while trying to be snarky. But I'll pretend you really don't get it and go slower for ya.

There are level caps based on arbitrary point allocations. These caps shouldn't exist at all. They serve no purpose. Why do you need to allocate points on some screen in order to play the game differently? If you wanted to use a spear this run just use one. Why need to put points into it?

I'm genuinely curious as to why you can't just... play differently and level those skills instead? Why do you need to pull up the character screen, assign a point to whatever, just so you can go back to lancing people from horseback or trading or whatever and continue to grow in skill? What is the purpose of this extra layer?

What about pressing 'C' and then clicking somewhere on the screen, then closing the screen just so you can get back to what you were doing before makes this system appealing over just getting better without the BS?

I have so far provided several reasons why the system is bad:

1) You need to min max when assigning points to even reach the highest possible level with your character. Balanced characters, therefore, cannot reach the same level as min-maxed characters. Do you really not understand that this is not just counterintuitive but also extremely bad game design? Really? You are actually fine with this? Actually address this for once if you're going to keep responding to me instead of just repeating that you 'like the new system' and passively aggressively refusing to understand this problem, at the very least, is a problem.

2) Some skills will invariable suck to level because it isn't fun to click through screens and that is essentially what you have to do to slowly level them - Trade comes to mind - which is further amplified by how you level in general. If you want a character who uses some of these skills as well as combat skills then you will have to play the clicking through screens minigame to level those skills just so you can go back to leveling the combat skills.

Example: You are a trader who fights with a sword. You've just started so you have crap money and you are out there fighting bandits and suddenly your combat skill plateaus at your current cap. So now you need to go and grind trade to level up, but you still need the money from bandits to do this or else it will take forever. So now you aren't getting skill ups for fighting but you must still keep fighting bandits for money for leveling trade so you can level up and raise the skill cap on your combat skills so you can fight bandits to level your combat skills. But because you forgot to level trade at all, now you need to grind that till M&B III comes out or until you get enough points to raise the cap on your combat skills. So you grind that out ignoring other things because it bottlenecks your progress. You avoid fights that in Warband you would have fought just because your progress is stalled. But hey, you say, now you know the system, no more bottlenecks for you! From now on you make sure you grind trade at the same rate as whatever else! ...which ends up limiting how you respond to world events because you are being dragooned between tasks. See, now you have to grind in very specific ways to maximize leveling progress. Gee, that sure sounds like you're being forced to play the same way every time. Huh, thought that was your problem with the old system.

There is no reason to lock leveling sword fighting behind grinding out one more level of trade, or vice versa, yet that is what happens currently. It makes no sense. It's dumb. It leads to boring outcomes for the player. Does that make sense to you? I think it makes a lot of sense. Boring = bad. See? Easy!

3) If skill caps weren't there none of these gripes would exist.

What I'm saying is if you could level any skill from start to finish without ever assigning points or leveling up, then there would be no problems with the system. The aforementioned example wouldn't exist. A player could bounce between trading and sword fighting as the mood took them instead of following a careful regime.

You could also play however you wanted in the moment and that would be what your build organically became. No jumping around between leveling skills, no need to assign points. Just like it is in Kenshi. The only thing necessary to fix the current system is to make it like this.

Do you understand now? Is that clear enough for you? Let me spell it out again just in case. You can screw yourself and make it impossible to get the points you need to progress in the ****ty level up system which is further exacerbated by the bottlenecking of progress around leveling boring skills and finally there is no reason for any of this to even be a problem because they could just remove focus points and stat points and just keep the skills and have a largely perfect framework to just finish tweaking.

1. I think it's not a bad design at all, it simulate the "talent" portions of human life. E.g. Why do some peoples can't really learn math and some learn math like rocket speed? it's because talent, so the game simulate that.

2. This is an issue, not the trading one but some skill like leadership and engineering, it's very very difficult to learn in early game and some skill actually useless like throwing cause the carry number limitation and range and accuracy issues.

3. The skill caps is there for good, it make the game have more strategy and tactic elements in it. Much like some successful RPG like Diablo, Never Winter Night etc. You gotta choose you role/tactic in RPG also in Action games. It also encourage multiple play-through. it just currently the skill variety is very basic and the issue 2 is really there.

I think you don't understand the charm of mount and blade at all, it's a game perfectly mixing action game elements, tactical warfare and RPG in depth build (In some fictional medieval war time era). I think currently leveling system is adequate, it just the skill variety and perk quality is pretty much suck in current state, so that give you feels that it doesn't have any progression for a very very long time. (i personally feel that renown, influences and money are the way important thing to grind cause those perk is really nothing)

As for the low leveling progressing issue I think they design this way to compensate the extremely hollow and incomplete late game. Currently in late game (By that I mean you got more than 4 towns and 2 castle) there's nothing left to do in game but to grind your level and upgrading your troop. Money? 800k with every day 10k increasing. Renown? It's still not max but that is not a really big issue cause i beat a 11000 power kingdom down back to 8000, with only 150 of sacrifice. Influence? it's more than you could ever use (Maybe I'm the only clan in my kingdom). So they kinda had their intention in their design but it had it flaws.

Generally I like to build my self and companion stat in early to mid game and worry about money, influence and renown for late game. But hey, if those stat and perk suck anyway why not just skip to late game XD (which many function also haven't finished) .

PS: In late game you also grind those skill in comparable much more satisfy level due to siege and 1000 vs 1000 combat, also some skill like engineering and leadership pretty much soft lock until late game.
 
1. I think it's not a bad design at all, it simulate the "talent" portions of human life. E.g. Why do some peoples can't really learn math and some learn math like rocket speed? it's because talent, so the game simulate that.

I agree with the majority of points. I will say there are more creative ways to make the game tactical than skill caps, but leaving that aside, the thing is you don't need focus or stat points or anything else to achieve the charm of M&B or what you are going after. Since your character is already going to grow old you already can't be master of everything. Without all the focus and stuff, that alone is enough to prevent all skills at 250 characters every generation. You do not have the ingame time to accomplish it.

Balancing the skills around a player only having about enough ingame time to get 1 or 2 to really high levels, or 3-5 to moderate levels in a character's lifespan is all that is necessary to simulate people being good at certain things. A law of diminishing returns past a certain skill level would accomplish this by forcing somebody to literally specialize to get to really high skill levels, or accept being about average in a few useful things. Current system has no real way to do this without seriously kneecapping yourself level-wise.

Main thing that sucks with new system is jack of all trades characters are SOL. You literally can't be average - you can be amazing at 1 or 2 things or terrible at everything, no in between what so ever.

EDIT: Let me ask you a question - did you ever feel bottlenecked in progression playing WB while leveling? All that happened was later levels came slower and slower.
 
I agree with the majority of points. I will say there are more creative ways to make the game tactical than skill caps, but leaving that aside, the thing is you don't need focus or stat points or anything else to achieve the charm of M&B or what you are going after. Since your character is already going to grow old you already can't be master of everything. Without all the focus and stuff, that alone is enough to prevent all skills at 250 characters every generation. You do not have the ingame time to accomplish it.

Balancing the skills around a player only having about enough ingame time to get 1 or 2 to really high levels, or 3-5 to moderate levels in a character's lifespan is all that is necessary to simulate people being good at certain things. A law of diminishing returns past a certain skill level would accomplish this by forcing somebody to literally specialize to get to really high skill levels, or accept being about average in a few useful things. Current system has no real way to do this without seriously kneecapping yourself level-wise.

Main thing that sucks with new system is jack of all trades characters are SOL. You literally can't be average - you can be amazing at 1 or 2 things or terrible at everything, no in between what so ever.

EDIT: Let me ask you a question - did you ever feel bottlenecked in progression playing WB while leveling? All that happened was later levels came slower and slower.

Actually now that you get to a point of something important, i don't think many game out there implement ages issue in a game and they actually have a very very good reason behind it.

Players simply don't like that, even game like "The Sim" doesn't bring that issue to game. It's probably because we were fed up by the time constraint we can live our life and the misfortune of aging issue in health, every drawback and problem in life certainly didn't help.

I think implement age system in this game is a big No No. Player simply don't like the aging factor in a games, this is time where realistic defeat fun, especially when that "realistic" is not some issue everyone want to face in life let alone in a video game. Also it defeat the purpose of game depth in term of replay-ability.

So even though I don't think the game time for 1 generation is particular harsh in this game, I can face aging issue fairly very fondly in life (I'm still at my prime), and I'm not that type of gamer will give up after some hardship in game etc. I'm still don't think it should be implemented in game, unless you particularly create a whole system designed around it to make it fun, but that's a very low reward and high risk moves.
 
Actually now that you get to a point of something important, i don't think many game out there implement ages issue in a game and they actually have a very very good reason behind it.. ...I'm still don't think it should be implemented in game, unless you particularly create a whole system designed around it to make it fun, but that's a very low reward and high risk moves.

Yes. This I completely agree with. However, if you are able to pass a portion of your skills and abilities on to the next generation and can get some cool traits or perks that would otherwise be unavailable, I think it could be neat. Dying would definitely have to not reset your skills or people are gonna freak, myself included.

Making this system is very high risk on their part, as the only game I can think of where it is interesting and fun is Crusader Kings 2, but only because of how zany the game itself actually is, and the fact that you play as the lineage not the individual person/people who die but the family as a whole in some sense. Making Bannerlord too much like this would definitely spoil some of the flavour of M&B.

All that being said, if dying is made into a process of preparing the way for a newer, stronger version of your old character, it could be an interesting way to reach ever higher levels without a disgusting grind or obfuscated stat focus system. As well, it could serve as a way to keep characters from getting all 250's while still allowing you to recover what your dead character had stat wise fairly painlessly. If they can pull it off then it could be quite a good addition and may just make the whole leveling thing work.

But considering the **** show the current level cap system is... I think you're right about the risk lol.
 
Yeah, die and "Respawn" into stronger version, much like the Dark Soul way or roguelike game probably the only method player will accept, cause everyone like to be immortal and OP XD.

But that's not very realistic and complete unrelated with age mechanism actually. You could just let them up classes like many RPG games.
 
Yeah, die and "Respawn" into stronger version, much like the Dark Soul way or roguelike game probably the only method player will accept, cause everyone like to be immortal and OP XD.

But that's not very realistic and complete unrelated with age mechanism actually. You could just let them up classes like many RPG games.

That is probably what they are going for, and if that's a way to boost all of your starting skill caps and your total skill caps regardless of stat/focus point allocation then that'll probably be good enough for me. It's still a very ass backwards system that's far more confusing than the original and I cannot wait to see it changed or modded out.

I urge you to check out the leveling system in Kenshi. While it is certainly possible - in an absolutist sense of the term - to get a character who has max every skill, that is in itself a goal to extend a playthrough past 'endgame'.

Essentially every skill and stat can go from 1-100, however as you pass 90 and approach 100 you slow down greatly, to the point where you need to create special circumstances to level more - fight the strongest boss again and again, knocking him out but not kill him, etc. The practical limit for most skills is 80-90 as progress beyond that requires fighting the toughest opponents while greatly outnumbered just to gain xp. This leads to most people having fairly specialized characters because why bother making an all 100's character? It's boring AF and takes forever and the benefits are meh outside of saying you did it which isn't exactly something that's gonna get you laid at the club.

While your first few Kenshi runs you may want to become a living god as a goal and have all sorts of milestones you grind toward, by the 3rd or 4th run you just wanna get the show on the road and so start using underleveled characters and flying by the seat of your pants just for fun. Even my wife watched a few of the harder fights riveted to the screen, where I was kiting around really tough enemies while most of my team is down and the few that are up are running or healing and trying to distract the enemy. It leads to really exciting circumstances that wouldn't happen if you were worried about leveling according to some focus or whatever and reaching certain levels to get certain 'key' skills. It becomes more like real life (but mad maxish) - you and your buddy are starving and that guy just got killed by a wolf. You take his sword and your buddy takes his pack and viola! swordsman and trader classes unlocked! lol. Then you go try to fight some bandits when you really shouldn't, but you could get some fast skill ups and some loot, so it's worth the risk, etc. You get strength xp for carrying the heavy loot, you get athletics xp for running, toughness xp for taking damage. No need for focus or level ups. No practical way to get to 100 in even 1 skill, nor any real need to grind beyond what you naturally do with your character. Still plenty of consistent, believable progress. Plenty of OP enemies to pound your head in and remind you that you are not special, and all your skills and stories and great works are but a transient expression of your inability to accept the absolute and total insignificance of your being in a world that couldn't care less about you. Really makes you appreciate that starving beggar you just recruited at the bar and his rusty metal club you can now bring to bear against your likewise starving, scrap-wielding enemies.

That style of leveling leads to players behaving in a way that is far more organic. Rather than having a specific build you work toward attaining you instead simply deal with whatever the environment throws at you and kind of evolve along with it. That sword you found and use is the reason you have sword skill, not some childhood dream or innate proficiency, but (simulated) real-world circumstances that forced you to survive, adapt, overcome. That's what I was hoping for here. Not a worse system than what was in Warband. Hell, at least in WB I could use proficiency points to level things like archery till they were useful, not here though. Gotta grind it all baby.
 
Not really, I cannot say I agree your progression sense in an RPG.

The Kenshin you mention seem like a good action game, but generally I don't like pure action game without classes and specialization in general. And my general favorite pick is wizard, archer or similar occupation. Cause the world of action RPG without tactics just feel dull, the game you mention seem like Monster Hunter World in which I like the system, but not the class cause it's way too monotone, the archer in it is very very boring but I still played about 100 hours for some late game boss.

I will tell you every genre game have it sweet spot in playing time, generally pure action game is the worst, they have about 30 hours of play through time averagely. I'm more of a in depth RPG and tactical game (Like 100 hours play minimum game. E.g Diablos 2, FF tactics, Disgaea, Shadow heart Covenant etc).

Ok, so after we clear about my gaming preferences I will tell you why I disagree your claim it's better than class system which had already occurred in many many many legendary best of the all time game. Your gaming preference seem like a "open world" "adventures" action RPG, which is more or less like Skyrim but more action base and battle base.

The 1st drawback of the "freedom" character progression system you mention in that game is it lack of different viewpoint in game, aka depth. You know why Monster hunter and Diablo 2 so successful in it's fan base? Because it provide very different playthrough in game with significantly different experience and viewpoint of how the game world design. (E.g. You might find some boss extremely difficult in archer playthrough and might want to cheese it with kiting and find it easy in other classes like warrior if you know how to block/make equipment. )

Seriously why should I do multiple playthrough if the experience is the same and I can just max anything I want? You may argue that has better "freedom" but in the end it hampered the game potential, replay-ability and depth. Just like in a game it can make you want to go to toilet every half an hours or if you press F5 you will automatically win a battle etc... They can give you that "freedom" but it WILL kill your gameplay experience and significantly limited their game's potential.

Now that we make it clear it's not better in any sense the 2nd mistake you make is you should know this is large scale faction war simulation in it's core, so you are in the wrong genre compare it with "adventures" "open world" action RPG.

Why don't it let you change classes at the fly on battlefield? Or eat potion? Or generate a boss or some sort of thing in a battlefield? Why don't it let you 1 v 100 when all of your skill is maxed? Or even unleash a mosou on a battle field?

The answer is simple, because they want to create some tactic/strategy feels in an action game since this is not a 1v5 RPG grinding or bossfight etc. By creating tactics feels it's essential for it to let you feel, every choices you make before the battle had a consequences, like bring all 2 -hand infantry vs archer, Spec all your point in 2 hand sword and no shield unit, spec all your point in trading then go 1v10 with 2 hand sword etc.

(Now you know why 1st thing after I create my kingdom I take all the town & castle with horses village in Khuzait, and not some random weak ass def town. it's called use your brain and plan well.)

The 3rd mistake is about perfectionist player, if you don't intended to let people max everything why bother set an unrealistic softcap + make it meaningless so you can provoke your fans base? Isn't it a little bit evil and straightly bad design if it's not worth the time to level up a bad system you design and claim it you give them "freedom"?

PS: I may seem too harsh in criticize sometime but I just use the most accurate word to prevent confusion and misunderstanding, because that's what engineer do. If it's a mistake, it's a mistake. Also i won't say the 1st point is a mistake cause maybe the game designer don't mind their game being shallow and they think maybe their game is too simple so they let the player experience it all in one to boost the playthrough time. Didn't own that game so I will leave it at that.

PPS: it's very risky to do a inheritance system instead of classed advance system cause there will be huge investment and issues like: Where your current wife/your heir mother do after you die? Do your heir need to find a girl to marriage again and again everytime etc. Like I mentioned, manage a whole family tree is another big system and may not worth the investment if players find it's too tedious.
 
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I am sorry, I don't understand what you are saying (english is not my native language). If you want to be good at engineering you build siege engines, you don't kill 100 men... (?)

The problem is the skill point accumulation soft cap that requires attribute points (and focus points) to increase. If you just try to max one skill, or even an entire row, you'll eventually max them all to the current soft cap. There is then no way to level them up by using those skills because you no longer gain xp from doing those skills. You must go and level up other skills in order to gain more attribute points to put back in to the skill set you want. eg:

In your example, levelling up engineering you'll eventually hit the soft cap and be unable to progress that skill further therefore not being able to level up and gain attribute points. So, you go on a rampage and level up your VIG skills and put any attribute points in to INT to continue levelling up engineering. So, in effect you go kill enemies to get better at engineering:smile:

It's just wrong. In effect, the game is forcing everyone to become jacks of all trades, masters of none. Fine, there is some tailoring to which order you prioritise skills but you still need to level most of them up in order to master one.
 
The 1st drawback of the "freedom" character progression system you mention in that game is it lack of different viewpoint in game, aka depth. You know why Monster hunter and Diablo 2 so successful in it's fan base? Because it provide very different playthrough in game with significantly different experience and viewpoint of how the game world design. (E.g. You might find some boss extremely difficult in archer playthrough and might want to cheese it with kiting and find it easy in other classes like warrior if you know how to block/make equipment. )

Seriously why should I do multiple playthrough if the experience is the same and I can just max anything I want? You may argue that has better "freedom" but in the end it hampered the game potential, replay-ability and depth. Just like in a game it can make you want to go to toilet every half an hours or if you press F5 you will automatically win a battle etc... They can give you that freedom but it WILL kill your gameplay experience and significantly limited their game potential.

Now that we make it clear it's not better in any sense the 2nd mistake you make is you should know this is large scale faction war simulation in it's core, so you are in the wrong genre compare it with "adventures" "open world" action RPG.

Why don't it let you change classes at the fly on battlefield? Or eat potion? Or generate a boss or some sort of thing in a battlefield? Why don't it let you 1 v 100 when all of your skill is maxed? Or even unleash a mosou on a battle field?

The answer is simple, because they want to create some tactic/strategy feels in an action game since this is not a 1v5 RPG grinding or bossfight etc. By creating tactics feels it's essential for it to let you feel, every choices you make before the battle had a consequences, like bring all 2 -hand infantry vs archer, Spec all your point in 2 hand sword and no shield unit, spec all your point in trading then go 1v10 with 2 hand sword etc.

(Now you know why 1st thing after I create my kingdom I take all the town & castle with horses village in Khuzait, and not some random weak ass def town. it's called use your brain and plan well.)

The 3rd mistake is about perfectionist player, if you don't intended to let people max everything why bother set an unrealistic softcap + make it meaningless so you can provoke your fans base? Isn't it a little bit evil and straightly bad design if it's not worth the time to level up a bad system you design and claim it you give them "freedom"?

Starting with 1, Your character still can't be good at things you don't train for. One game I made a Xbow user. Next I made a sword guy. You get bored of the playthrough eventually, map is already mostly painted or going to be, or you just want to write a different story. It's not like your guy can pick up a weapon they've never used and dominate with it. Considering that the rest of the group who specializes will be able to fight way harder guys than the dude who tried to be a martial artist - xbow user. But, the martial artist - xbow user can run really fast and dodge well, so there is a class unto itself, not as good at shooting as pure xbow, or at fighting as martial artist, but good enough at shooting to be ok and able to keep alive long enough for help to arrive.

What you're looking for in variety is better served by more meaningful alternatives to being a mercenary/slaver/farm pillager/venture capitalist until you become king. What if they fleshed out banditry and there were legitimate reasons to use throwing weapons and have a bad reputation, that this could be another path to being king and ruling through fear instead of honor. Or maybe you can 'redeem' yourself in the eyes of the people and turn your life around depending on what you do. That would be really interesting for reasons that have nothing to do with focus point allocations.

Making it so because you are good at managing a settlement and fighting you can't also be good at running an army too because running an army and running a settlement use different stat points but for some unknown reason you can be a good medic is a fairly obtuse way to force 'unique' characters.

Actual gameplay variety is the order of the day to get what you desire here, and there are much better ways than simple character stats.

2 Technically Kenshi is a large scale warfare game in many of the same ways that M&B is. Battles can easily feature a similar number of onscreen combatants as in Warband in some areas. Both games have rudimentary strategy in terms of positioning and attack orders, but nothing to the level of a tactical wargame or a CRPG. So I make a very fair comparison. Especially considering you can have any number of 'castles' and villages that you can build and defend against sieges while destroying other factions. Its a lot more similar than you think. We certainly seen a lot of Warband refugees hungry for something similar while waiting for Bannerlord on reddit when Kenshi came out. They all made the same comparison - not exactly the same but quite similar feeling of starting a nobody and becoming whatever you want if you work for it. The interface is certainly different, and Kenshi is just giving orders not action like M&B, but very similar in a lot of ways.

Also consider that you get actual quests in Bannerlord. With actual dungeons no less! - bandit lairs - that you clear for loot(!). That's pretty 'open world' and 'adventure' to me. Hell, M&B has a lot more in common with most adventure style games than you're letting on. :razz:

3 The softcap is more of a way to make reaching 100 a challenging quest in itself. You'll have to capture at least 1 of the strongest boss type characters in the game and fight them arena style. It's not undoable, but it's not something that you're like 'OK, gotta go get the hardest guy and fight him for skillups before I leave the beginning area.' Type of thing. Think of it this way, if you conquered essentially all of Calradia, the last challenge you might decide is to reach level 63. So you might keep a kingdom alive just to farm xp till you get there. Not something that will define the playthrough, but something to do before you reroll. If you're into that sort of thing. I don't see how the softcap in WB enraged anybody, I don't think that's a very fair point. :razz:

One final point, addressing your changing classes on the battlefield, that is actually kinda realistic. To some extent. Depending on how liberal your interpretation. In medieval Japan samurai would first dual with bows, then fight with spear and sword. So they change from archer to spearman with backup sword. They were also the ruling class who were able horsemen that practiced horse archery. So very high level archery, spear, sword, horse riding and settlement management. Oh, and many of them were talented poets on top of it all. That this is impossible in Bannerlord is very unrealistic, at the very least. Certainly very disappointing that it isn't even an achievable long term goal like ruling the world.

Because it being easier to literally conquer the world than be good at leading an army, fighting in close quarters, engaging in archery and managing your community even though people did those very things in real life and it was no more or less uncommon than talented university students. That's good gameplay?
 
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