Why village elders felt more immersive

[Elbromas]

Recruiters are not that bad as a mechanic, they increase the number of recruits you can have, they increase the number of people you can help in a village/town so that could create a dynamic of who you help in a villlage and who you dont help, but shamefully they also feel weird, why do you happen to recruit people through them?Village elders made sense, since they were a voice of that village, they were a connection of you and the village. When you did quests for them, it wasnt a personal job for the most part, is was a quest to help the village: training men because of an upcoming threat you would have to deal with, gathering food when they're lacking, escourting villagers to towns in a road full of bandits, etc. soo when you completed those quests you were helping the village and not just a man, you had a little visual representation of how devoted that village was, so it made sense that people were willing to join you, because they liked you and knew you, and you as a player felt invested in that town so helping them when for example a lord was attacking them was almost a priority, you couldnt let down a town where you were loved.
Instead the recruiter is like a person that manages people and hands them out like objects, and that really feels weird, it feels like trading slaves to join my army.
I feel like TW also tried to fix this by making peasents talk about said influential people, but it handed it very poorly in my opinion. I dont have any screen now, but the thing goes: you talk to a peasent, he looks at you in the eyes, says "oh this influential person did a thing" and then he says "oh excuse me, do you need something" like if he was talking to someone else even though he's looking literally to your eyes. Why instead they dont have a dialog option that lets you ask him about who's better with people, who can give you more recruits because of their influence, or something like that. Also, bringing back town relationship, or peasent relationship would make sense with this, for example if you helped a recruiter that was a mean fker like a gang owner that would decrease relations with town, making you for example buy things at a higher price but allowing you to recruit better recruits, and the other way around too, helping the good people would allow you to lower the prices in town but you wouldnt access the troops the other offered etc

 

[stevehoos]

I agree entirely.

 

[Apocal]

When you did quests for them, it wasnt a personal job for the most part, is was a quest to help the village: training men because of an upcoming threat you would have to deal with, gathering food when they're lacking, escourting villagers to towns in a road full of bandits, etc. soo when you completed those quests you were helping the village and not just a man, you had a little visual representation of how devoted that village was, so it made sense that people were willing to join you, because they liked you and knew you, and you as a player felt invested in that town so helping them when for example a lord was attacking them was almost a priority, you couldnt let down a town where you were loved.

It's just that the village is broken up into the village proper (the headman) and people of status who own land around the village (the landowners). But all three of those quests are in Bannerlord. Train Troops for X, Village needs Seed Grain and Deliver Herd to X. Seed Grain is not nearly as the other two as the other two, but if you have a lot of bandits harassing villagers on the campaign map, Deliver Herd comes up quite often and Train Troops is a decent one although a bit rarer. Any of them that the Headman give are said to be for the whole village, not just himself.

I feel like TW also tried to fix this by making peasents talk about said influential people, but it handed it very poorly in my opinion. I dont have any screen now, but the thing goes:

This is almost a direct cut-and-paste from Warband:

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

The recruiters make me laugh internally whenever I think about them. It seems the most commonly sold commodity in Calradia is slaves. You have people called Rhodian the Baker or Julia the Carpenter and all they do is sell people for the same price as a bag of grain.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

One thing I want to see with the system is the ability to remove notables and replace them with someone else. That way you can have a source of Aserai in an Imperial village you were given.

There's potential in the system, but it needs cleaning up. It does seem weird for some iron monger to give you a professional trained archer.

I doubt the recruiting system will see much change otherwise though. Its just the M&B way. Hopefully mods step up.

 

[Worlok]

The recruiters make me laugh internally whenever I think about them. It seems the most commonly sold commodity in Calradia is slaves. You have people called Rhodian the Baker or Julia the Carpenter and all they do is sell people for the same price as a bag of grain.

You would not pay denars to a slaves

 

[Tercero]

One thing I want to see with the system is the ability to remove notables and replace them with someone else. That way you can have a source of Aserai in an Imperial village you were given.

There's potential in the system, but it needs cleaning up. It does seem weird for some iron monger to give you a professional trained archer.

I doubt the recruiting system will see much change otherwise though. Its just the M&B way. Hopefully mods step up.

Actually, this is a very good idea, maybe if you do that, they would start with very low influence so you get less recruits until their influence increases over time

 

[AxiosXiphos]

Actually, this is a very good idea, maybe if you do that, they would start with very low influence so you get less recruits until their influence increases over time

This would be interesting. Perhaps the 'land owner' notable should be the owning players faction.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

I also heard someone else suggest the idea of murdering notables, be it in a village raid or maybe even a mission. That way if there's a notable that absolutely hates your guts and will never help you, you could always replace them.

 

[RoboSenshi]

I agree with every thing you said. The entire recruitment system in the game needs to be scrapped and redone. I was in the middle of writing an extensive suggestion thread about redoing recruitment from the ground up but I scrapped it. I don't think anyone at TW listens or even reads them so what's the point.

There are so many flawed and out right bad fundamental design choices in the game that are ingrained into the core mechanics that sometimes I fear I'll never like the base game.

soo when you completed those quests you were helping the village and not just a man, you had a little visual representation of how devoted that village was, so it made sense that people were willing to join you, because they liked you and knew you, and you as a player felt invested in that town so helping them when for example a lord was attacking them was almost a priority, you couldnt let down a town where you were loved.

That's a very good point. I hadn't thought about this but you're absolutely right. There are a bunch of systems in the game that work to suck out all immersion and attachment to anything in the game world. They all just build on one another it seems and leaves the player feeling, well, bored and detached. Good catch.

 

[Timmortal]

if you play on realistic, as seem to be the intended mode to play in, they dont just hand you out people, you have to gain favor with them to really be able to recruit. Also why only have one person when you can have 2 or 3? Towns were rarely lead by only one person, they often had small councils, depending on the time and area ofcourse.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

if you play on realistic, as seem to be the intended mode to play in, they dont just hand you out people, you have to gain favor with them to really be able to recruit.

This would work if the quests were interesting, or if you didn't have to cross the entire world just to fill up your army after a Pyrrhic victory (i.e. practically every battle).

Also why only have one person when you can have 2 or 3? Towns were rarely lead by only one person, they often had small councils, depending on the time and area ofcourse.

I wouldn't have any issue with this if the game were set around a small handful of towns, but right now you have 100s of settlements and no reason to care about any of them other than to suck up recruits.

 

[RoboSenshi]

if you play on realistic, as seem to be the intended mode to play in, they dont just hand you out people, you have to gain favor with them to really be able to recruit. Also why only have one person when you can have 2 or 3? Towns were rarely lead by only one person, they often had small councils, depending on the time and area ofcourse.

What happens when there are no quests to do for these people? It happened with me. No notables had any quests for ****ing months in game and so I was stuck with very few recruits forcing me to travel far and wide to fill my army. They can still have several notables and have a relationship score with the village. Why not both?

 

[Timmortal]

This would work if the quests were interesting, or if you didn't have to cross the entire world just to fill up your army after a Pyrrhic victory (i.e. practically every battle).



I wouldn't have any issue with this if the game were set around a small handful of towns, but right now you have 100s of settlements and no reason to care about any of them other than to suck up recruits.

I agree atm the system is a bit off, i think they need to balance progression in the game, so theres more reason to do quests. Atm you can get a big army waaaay to fast, it needs to be something you work more towards and one of the ways to do that should be buy building up relations with villages. atm you can skip most of the mid game by just being at war with nobles and beating them. The game works far better on full realism and seems more tailored towards that, i hope the they ad on some harder modes than realism to make the game work better, or do some balance in this area.

 

[Timmortal]

What happens when there are no quests to do for these people? It happened with me. No notables had any quests for ****ing months in game and so I was stuck with very few recruits forcing me to travel far and wide to fill my army. They can still have several notables and have a relationship score with the village. Why not both?

I have rarely been in situations where there were no quests, guess its a bit random or you had a bug. Having to two different score systems would just devalue both, but maybe theres a third way to do it, cant think of any atm. maybe in the future if more functions are added to villages to different relation values could be justified.

 

[RoboSenshi]

You could have relationships with villages provide more raw recruits and relations with notables provide higher tier or special troops. It's not that hard. Some quests could even be made that you have to chose between gaining relations with a notable or the village.

"Hey you, I want to sell this plot of land that's owned by the community to a private investor. Help me intimidate the villagers into agreeing so we can both get rich." The player has a choice to help the notable for gold and higher tier troops or the defend the villagers to gain honor/renown and relations.

Just little things like this can help a player better connect with the game world.

 

[Apocal]

You could have relationships with villages provide more raw recruits and relations with notables provide higher tier or special troops. It's not that hard. Some quests could even be made that you have to chose between gaining relations with a notable or the village.

Errr... what?

That is what happens when you build relations with a village notable; it unlocks more recruitment slots and the deeper slots tend to have the higher tier/noble troops, somewhat depending on their power but doing quests builds up their power level (lol) over time.

And there are quests that force you to choose between notables, along with gaining (or losing) certain traits. It is currently opaque and somewhat grindy on the trait angle -- I've been at it for twenty years in one playthrough and haven't yet gained Honor 2 or Merciful 1 -- but it is definitely in the game and working.

 

[RoboSenshi]

Errr... what?

What don't you understand?

That is what happens when you build relations with a village notable; it unlocks more recruitment slots and the deeper slots tend to have the higher tier/noble troops, somewhat depending on their power but doing quests builds up their power level (lol) over time.

I'm well aware of what the current system is. I'm saying it sucks and that the current system adds to various other things in the game that make it feel grindy and soulless.

And there are quests that force you to choose between notables,

This is all what the current system is based around. "Oh you must do quests to gain relation with random dudes so you can recruit people. But watch out! The notables all fight each other so you have to choose which one you support!". Rinse and repeat for every goddamn fief. To me it's ****ing boring. Having to recruit solely from "notables" is a terrible system is the gist of what I'm trying to say.

 

[Apocal]

What don't you understand?

I'm well aware of what the current system is. I'm saying it sucks and that the current system adds to various other things in the game that make it feel grindy and soulless.

I don't understand how grinding rep for more recruits with the village headman is different from grinding rep through the village elder for more recruits. They didn't change anything in the essence of it except allowing you to pick the troops you get and offering one or two alternatives (landowners) that maybe have special troops.

 

[Telyon]

+1 to the OP. Recruitment in Bannerlord currently feels like human trafficking. I'd like to see the relation gain for village quests start applying to all the notables; such a change would help reduce the grind. Most of the village quests seem to be for the benefit of the entire village: Extortion by Deserters, Seed Grain, Train Troops, Eliminate Bandits, Eliminate Bandit Base, etc. Off the top of my head, Landowner needs access to Pastures, Runaway Daughter, Family Feud, and maybe the newest Bandit Manual Labor quests are the only ones that explicitly solely benefit the quest-giver and harmonize with the current system of only the quest-giver gaining relation.