Winning Back Multiplayer Players

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I seriously doubt it's even possible to bring back a significant number of players at this point. Bannerlord multiplayer is so bad that I would believe you if you told me it was intentionally sabotaged.

I still wouldn't even want to play it if nothing changes except player count anyway.
 
I think that some of the imbalance of TDM and Siege could be mended by increasing default money to 120 so everyone can afford the viable/enjoyable classes more often. The 100/90 gold classes are clearly designed for skirmish and serve mostly as last reserve and not as viable first choices. Cavalry would also be more balanced if more people were able to afford classes with a long spear that are able to defend against them.
I mean, most of the free units are actually decent enough that a late joiner can do enough damage to get some gold to use on stronger respawns.

Peasant Levy costs 90 gold, has a decent cut weapon attached to Improved Armor, and has probably the best mace in the game in the form of the Hammer

Khuzait Rabble has a club attached to Improved Armor, has some solid cut weapons for perks, and has access to a pike. The fact that he just spawns with a shield regardless of perk selection the Looter perk slightly busted from my personal experience

Sturgian Warrior has the Raider Axe, though the basic short sword attached to Improved Armor can still do a lot of damage when picking the Warrior perk

Battanian Clan Warriors, while they don't have a shield by default, can spawn with a mace and axe combo, which can be a fairly strong counter to non-Sergeant heavy infantry, provided that you're good at blocking melee attacks without a shield.

On paper, the Tribal Warrior is arguably the best light infantry in the game, though the faction's primary downside is that the overreliance on Tribals for anti-armor combat makes them vulnerable to two-handed weapons

Honestly, the only outlier in regards to light infantry being viable is Empire, who just has a 100 cost conscript with basically no armor, and the only perks worth using are Spatha/Specialist, or Spatha/Pila. Even then, the Spatha is roughly the equivalent to the weapons that other light infantry get when choosing Improved Armor, and your lifespan is short enough that the larger javelin quiver is useless to you. The fact that the Recruit has been the worst unit in the game relative to even the other free units in the game for as long as Bannerlord has existed suggests that Empire being a kill farm is an intentional design decision.

I don't know if increasing the minimum gold will do much tbh, since that will likely devolve Bannerlord into an archer spam fest, as if it doesn't already happen too often. As I've mentioned in the Patch Notes thread, people who hop onto medieval games have the expectation that melee weapons are viable in that type of setting, and most people don't stay around to play Bannerlord's multiplayer due to that expectation not being satisfied.
 
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If default money would be increased, archers would be seen more often but also classes that can handle them would be seen more often, like heavy inf. I personally find cavalry a lot more annoying than archers and most 100g classes don't have anything that can handle them: Their one handed spears are too short to have a chance against a good lancer. Clan Warriors even have to choose between a poleweapon and a shield, making them either helpless against archers and significantly weakened in melee or helpless against cav.
 
Me thinks its a summary of worst things that happend (or featured) in Warband:
Units:
1.Disgrunteld peasant bu l l s h i t (was never fun imao)
an agricultural equipped unit with no real armor and no real weapon that does its only impact by being overspeed in both run and swing speed> check
but now its oblifgaatory for vlandia while the spampires recruit is an elite unit by adding throwing any s hit with pierce boni.
2. Heavy armoured shooting stars with ranged and decent 2hand select. A bah lance lord premium. check.
3. turbo nudists with high end speed in running and swinging latern long 2hand weapons to swarm the map. check
4.Full factions that reference is not to use the directional combat system but use any other opportunity to win any game mode.
best select is speeeeed perk and run arround like chicken with input. check
5.34a The cavalary mounts with speed of a warband"courser" in full armor are the real invention in Bah lance lord. They are steam tanking through any amount of infantry. Best result in captain mode. Balanced this becomes by the small small shield select so they cant get archers down alone even unprotected... Warband mounts far better balanced aswell!
A little hint for Captain players: mount a horsie and stay in center of you infantry! The best thing that stops a horse collision is a horse collision.
This will give your units the oppportunity to actual hit the enemy rider befor he is away.

Mechanics/Modes
Siege:
1.directional doors insted of factional ones again. Makes you ending up and or spawn in areas from where you cant get to defend flag location.
check
and for this there is no excution cuz the prob is old and the solution was there already.
2.Spawns in general are something no game studio I know struggles as hard as TW (wrong and stupid ones) check
2.1 and spawn killing now also optional with artillery support. check
Did i miss one?
Let me know!
The whole Flag and "Morale" points system of siege is a bad copy of the wonderful multiflag siege in crpg.
There you simply had to get one or two flags of outer ring to conquer flags in inner ring.
that was easy and worked so we will never see it in bah lance lord.
 
If Taleworlds wants to even entertain the idea of saving their multi-player the first thing they need to do is actually deliver stable servers. It is a joke, that 4 years on from early access the servers are still crashing daily, it is almost malign incompetence, a deliberate choice to deliver a poor service. I cannot fathom how the servers are still having issues, unless the entire team has been sacked and the game is being developed by one inexperienced intern. Oh and Taleworlds? Changing the 'awaiting server' crash message to 'game ended' is incredibly dishonest, we know it crashed, we know it wasn't meant to end then and there, do not treat us like idiots.

I don't understand what is going on at the studio, it's like there has been a total breakdown in cohesion, what do the employees do each day? Come into the office and just sit on their thumbs? We get 1 small update every 3-6 months, which for a team of TW size is a joke, unless they're working on a secret project or a DLC in the same vein as Viking Conquest; which would be bizarre, since the single-player is still missing so many core features from Warband (Feasts).

When Taleworlds can prove they're capable of keeping a server up and running for more than 2 hours then they can focus on delivering balance and content updates, but I genuinely do not believe this will ever happen. I would be just as happy if TW announced today that Bannerlord is no longer being supported, because then I could at least move on. I had such high hopes for the MP, it looked so great in previews, but it is totally unfit for purpose. Just take a look at this guys thread proving there have been huge desync issues from the beginning. You wondered why your opponents attack glitched through your shield? Well this is why: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...synchronous-stances-affects-all-of-mp.462346/

What happened to the team that made Warband? An absolutely beloved game where the jank was at least endearing. Viking Conquest Reforged is my favourite DLC ever, for any game, what happened to that creativity and talent? Why can't a team in 2024 keep a server up and running, when Quake 3 Arena to this day has had servers up and running for 25 damn years?

All these questions are pointless though, because one thing TW doesn't do, is communicate. Community tales does not address the complaints, the issues, the demands for more information. We're screaming into the wind here, and I wouldn't be so angry if I didn't spend money on this. Such a waste of potential and time, truly a tragedy.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the exploits, cheaters, and general bugginess of the maps, but why even bother, it took 4 years to fix the Nord Town house glitch
 
1.Disgrunteld peasant bu l l s h i t (was never fun imao)
an agricultural equipped unit with no real armor and no real weapon that does its only impact by being overspeed
You can still do a surprising amount of damage as a disgruntled peasant.

Assuming you can ever swing the Pole Axe, you can basically one-shot most things, and if you're in a 1v1, the sickle is a pierce weapon, so you can still do decently well against a 30 armor unit.
 
:smile: yes man the damage is insane aswell.
@ Ketran i would not mind a view server restarts more than other games. And it happens after several matches not so often in a running match.
If it would be restarted in time. It does not more often as it does.
Anyway me is more disgusted by the balance issues me tried to describe up the page.
 
Not so long a go, TW updated their backend servers that they could stand if events cause spikes in activity. Well, nothing happened, lobby or game servers cannot handle few hundred players for a very long time. This same thing has been around from dawn of Early Acces, nothing has changed. Would I buy another game by Taleworlds? Never again.
 
Bannerlord multiplayer is so bad that I would believe you if you told me it was intentionally sabotaged.
When you consider that Empire has consistently been the absolute worst faction in the game while Vlandia remained as the absolute best since Early Access, I think it's reasonable to believe that.
 
I haven't been able to log in to Multiplayer since Early Access. I was able to log in once, got killed within 10 seconds and then nothing since.
I would love to try MP again but the thing just won't work.
 
I know people hate the idea of the Recruit being a stronger unit, but as I've mentioned earlier, a part of why no one plays Bannerlord's multiplayer is because a better portion of their playtime involves feeding kills to the enemy, and they know that it's not a skill issue. In any game where I absolutely have to play Empire, that's often the point where I just hit alt+f4 and launch Chiv2 instead.

As i've mentioned in an earlier post, the only perks worth using are Spatha/Specialist and Spatha/Pila, though those loadouts are not without issue. If Bannerlord is to get more players moving forward, the Recruit can no longer just be treated as a free kill

Javelins
Specialist is picked because while Rapid Throws has a higher total damage per quiver, the Recruit's life expectancy is such where you'd never live long enough to throw all 6 of your Javelins. It makes more sense to opt for damage per shot. I will get to how Rapid Throws can be buffed later. For now...

Pila
The Pila is the worst anti-cavalry weapon available to light infantry, which is only an improvement from the Peasant Levy's complete lack thereof. 180 reach is roughly the bare minimum required to competently stab horses when taking into consideration that the shortest spear for light cavalry is 193. Yes, I am aware that the Pila can be thrown but once it hits something that's not the environment, it can't be reused. As a result, the more common usage case is that it's thrown at infantry and archers, since the player knows fully well that he will just be killed due to how weak his unit is, and a confirmed Pila hit is a guaranteed assist.

Yes, I get that dying is to be expected when you're playing as a starting unit, but I don't know if your game plan should revolve around the knowing that you'll die, since other light inf can be played to still allow late joiners to kill stronger enemies to get some gold in their pockets. While I can see Pilas still having their place in Captain mode, I don't think they'd work very well in other modes, since their usage case is often relegated to "hit something, die, hope I get my +10 gold from the assist later on". Because of this, I wonder if it'd be more appropriate to give the Recruit his own version of the "Farmer" perk, where he still has access to Javelin (3), but instead of a 153 reach throwing spear, he instead gets a slower and lower-damage version of the Vlandian Spear where the spear head with a two-pronged fork. I think a worse version of what's already the bare minimum to stab horses would suffice for a free unit that also has access to javelins.

Perk 1
As a weapon, the Gladius is honestly pretty worthless, since its speed doesn't do enough to justify the short range and low damage. The only thing that you can realistically kill with it is a dismounted Knight or Mamluke, since their respective Cavalry Swords are the only weapons that are worse than the Gladius. In this regard, the only sensible Perk 1 perk is the Spatha, and even then, it's only about as strong as the weapons that other light infantry get when they choose Improved Armor (Tribal Warrior excluded)

Because the Gladius is attached to the other two Perk 1 perks, they are actually pretty crappy. The Shield Wall perk is pretty worthless because when you account for having only 10 armor and the wimpy butter knife from the first paragraph, you aren't going to live long enough to see your shield take more than 80 damage. I think it'd be worth it to instead have a perk that is instead focused around doing more damage to shields IMO, which could allow the Recruit to have decent synergy with archer teammates. I feel like this would take on the form of being given the Woodsplitter Axe that's currently attached to the Sturgian Brigand, and maybe a minor bonus damage to shields if necessary.

Footwork is the second useless perk, and it's so bad that it actually makes the 130 HP shield look useful in comparison. I feel like the best way to buff this would be to give a +5 armor bonus on top of the movement speed bonus and rename it from "Footwork" to "Survivalist". He'll still be the worst light infantry in the game for single combat, though the minor armor boost should be sufficient enough to make Rapid Throws actually worth using. If necessary, I could see the ranged accuracy bonus while moving get toned down, although it'd still need to be present since it's competing against the Spatha
 
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what about remove civilians from battlefield at all?
sorry but....gladius is a spammy both real and feint spam.
Throwing is a problem cuz the amount of spampires units can just spell projectils. And cuz im playing for the sake of the melee system i dont care if they are not that helpful for the thrower.
Running perk is mainly used for backcapping in sieges and therefor a problem in its very own right.
They can use for ultra speed ganking aswell, Out of what it feels like enemies could spawn out of the floor all around ya and at once.
Not much of what i read there is concerning the issues i blame for the melee combat becoming an absurd mess.
And a twisted mutation of what it has been in Warband even with that heavily OP ranged units highlighted in the figure of that everdoomed Vaegir Archer

Edited jan.25 .´25
And i did forget a problem feature:
6) the height adjustable for multiplayer chars. They can make themself pretty small just so they might not get hit or shoot.
togehter with that speed options for run and slashing this does let dwarven speed runner rule the melee combat.
I mean is there anything that disbalances this game too obviously and not already implemented?
realy it makes one doubt any sense.
cheers
 
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I don't know how such a failed flow happened. It sounds crazy, but I can't believe that a company that made millions of dollars pocketed the money and disappeared from view. Obviously, it still makes me happy to see that I have friends in the multiplayer module who are still trying to enjoy the game. On the other hand, crazy math calculations are spinning in my mind. With the money they earned, they could have signed a lifetime contract with a mapper. Or it shouldn't be hard to find a senior c# developer who will develop modes like FFA instead of TDM. I tried to calculate the money they earned in a sketchy way, and it still saddens me that they did not claim such a treasure after this money was earned.

The data via SteamDB is as follows;

Bannerlord has sold between 5 to 10 million copies. Assuming an average sale price of $50, the total gross revenue can be calculated as follows:
  • 5 million sales × $50 = $250 million
  • 10 million sales × $50 = $500 million
Steam Comission and Taleworlds share
Steam takes a standard 30% commission on game sales. This means Taleworlds' net revenue would be:
  • $250M × 0.70 = $175 million
  • $500M × 0.70 = $350 million
For high-earning games, Steam’s commission can drop to 25% or even 20%, which could result in slightly higher earnings for Taleworlds.

Development Costs and Net Profit
Bannerlord was in development for around 8 years, with a team of 100+ people at Taleworlds. Considering development costs, salaries, infrastructure, and marketing expenses, the total cost is estimated to be around $20-50 million.

After deducting these costs, the estimated net profit is:
  • Low estimate (5M sales) → $175M revenue – $50M cost = $125M profit
  • High estimate (10M sales) → $350M revenue – $50M cost = $300M profit
These calculations are based only on Steam sales. Since the game was also released on Epic Games Store, Xbox, and PlayStation, the total revenue and profit are likely to be even higher.

It is tragicomic that they have turned off the tap, which will continue to flow money.
 
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