Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[Luka-boy]

Lads, I got Butterlord running fine and stable on Linux. Time to pillage and rape engage in tasteful dickplomacy!

 

[RK47]

The world isn't much of a threat at the moment.
Maybe the AI needs work. There's no reason a caravan of 50 is afraid of a small Warband of 10.
But that's the situation in-game. Merchants would just run past towns and other safe refuges when confronted with a small hostile party.
They're not completely defenseless when engaged, but in the world map, they just keep running non-stop.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

There is something very wrong with game balance.
Skill progression is shit. Not only it take INSANE amount of time to raise skills, unlockable perk benefits are just garbage. +3 arrows, +1% to movement speed and etc. So get ready to grind hundreds of hours for that +1% increase. I doubt progression system was playtested at all. Equipment also doesn't mean a whole lot if you are fighting troops harder than looters.

 

[Zanzoken]

Mercenary contracts don't appear to have a time limit. The only way out of them is to speak to the faction leader, who treats it the same as if you were a vassal renouncing your oath. This causes a -20 reputation loss with all clans in that faction.

The faction AI also seems to be about as retarded as it was in Warband.

 

[Zanzoken]

Will be a while longer before we get proper gameplay patches – fixing crashes is always the top priority for any game dev company, so we'll only see more of that for now. I am surprised by the state of the game, however – the many obvious issues seem to be screaming that the release was rushed. REALLY rushed when even the starting quest is bugged (first time user experience – shit that should also rest on top of the priority checklist, and be thoroughly tested. If your game has bugs, you sure as hell do not want to show them during first impressions). But why? This game was in development for an insane amount of time, the devs have been steadily refusing to give out a release date for years. So why the rushed delivery and panicked hotfixing?

The only reasonable answer is that Taleworlds is a mismanaged, incompetent studio.

Mount & Blade is an awesome idea that has always suffered from sub-par execution. They get some things right, but a whole hell of a lot of other things wrong. It was this way with Warband and sadly, it's looking like more of the same with Bannerlord. The game is fun but has a ton of glaring flaws that just detract so much from the experience.

For whatever reason, I don't think Taleworlds is capable of doing any better. Our best hope is that they've delivered on their promise to make the game highly moddable, so others can go in and fix the game's issues and help realize its full potential.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Will be a while longer before we get proper gameplay patches – fixing crashes is always the top priority for any game dev company, so we'll only see more of that for now. I am surprised by the state of the game, however – the many obvious issues seem to be screaming that the release was rushed. REALLY rushed when even the starting quest is bugged (first time user experience – shit that should also rest on top of the priority checklist, and be thoroughly tested. If your game has bugs, you sure as hell do not want to show them during first impressions). But why? This game was in development for an insane amount of time, the devs have been steadily refusing to give out a release date for years. So why the rushed delivery and panicked hotfixing?

The only reasonable answer is that Taleworlds is a mismanaged, incompetent studio.

Mount & Blade is an awesome idea that has always suffered from sub-par execution. They get some things right, but a whole hell of a lot of other things wrong. It was this way with Warband and sadly, it's looking like more of the same with Bannerlord. The game is fun but has a ton of glaring flaws that just detract so much from the experience.

For whatever reason, I don't think Taleworlds is capable of doing any better. Our best hope is that they've delivered on their promise to make the game highly moddable, so others can go in and fix the game's issues and help realize its full potential.

 

[Jimmious]

Except Warband is still a better game

Vanilla Warband? Not sure about that

 

[Tiger]

Fucking amateur studio, taking 8 years to put out a buggy mess of a rehash of Warband. Of course the mass of idiots flock to throw money at them enabling this shit, sold millions already so they have no incentive to finish it properly. It will end up a half finished mess that can only be saved by the modders. This isn't some cheap game.

 

[Nerevar]

I'll play again after maybe 6 months of patching. Maybe even wait for this game to get a floris type mod.

It is too bad. Too many stupid decisions and game balance issues at the moment.

 

[Zanzoken]

"Raise the Meek" skill you get at Leadership 25 promises "medium XP" per day to tier 1 through 3 troops. Kind of like the old Trainer skill in Warband, which is good for bringing up new recruits quickly, right?

Turns out the bonus is a whopping 30 XP per day. For reference, to raise an Imperial Recruit from tier 1 to tier 2 takes around 600 XP. So that's 20 days to raise a single guy from just off the farm to shit-tier infantry. Completely fucking worthless waste of a perk.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Fucking amateur studio, taking 8 years to put out a buggy mess of a rehash of Warband. Of course the mass of idiots flock to throw money at them enabling this shit, sold millions already so they have no incentive to finish it properly. It will end up a half finished mess that can only be saved by the modders. This isn't some cheap game.

Yeah. To give my opinion - vanilla M&B had an addictive game loop, also riding horses was quite novel at the time the game came out, but vanilla M&B has never been more than half-assed as production values go. All the good graphics, balance, units and items came from mods, not to mention some important and interesting mechanics, which really altered the gameplay.

So, I understand the enthusiasm about Bannerlord, but we are less than halfway towards an enjoyable high-quality game with this updated engine. Those are the facts.

And I'll add one assumption - Taleworlds didn't work 8 years on this. They had a long pause in development, until they started releasing dev diaries again, and they had something of an "absolutely-final-do-or-die" deadline that was the end of March 2020. They hit that and they released whatever they had. The Eearly Access is basically a request for crowd funding for a 1.0 release, which will be technically stable, but will need balancing and gameplay fixes.

 

[Tacgnol]

There is something very wrong with game balance.
Skill progression is shit. Not only it take INSANE amount of time to raise skills, unlockable perk benefits are just garbage. +3 arrows, +1% to movement speed and etc. So get ready to grind hundreds of hours for that +1% increase. I doubt progression system was playtested at all. Equipment also doesn't mean a whole lot if you are fighting troops harder than looters.

It makes sense, as most of their balance testing has probably been around the multiplayer in which the only thing you have control over is loadouts.

Hopefully they'll do a decent pass on character progression now people are testing the single player.

 

[Van-d-all]

 

[Utgard-Loki]

ah yes, if you play the game like a complete spastic it is quite exploitable who would have thought.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

The game has HORSE MONSTERS????

Spoiler

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I would like to see him trying the same vs steppe/forest bandits.

 

[IDtenT]

Equipment also doesn't mean a whole lot if you are fighting troops harder than looters.

Might as well be naked. Shields are very effective though.

 

[IDtenT]

Turns out the bonus is a whopping 30 XP per day. For reference, to raise an Imperial Recruit from tier 1 to tier 2 takes around 600 XP. So that's 20 days to raise a single guy from just off the farm to shit-tier infantry. Completely fucking worthless waste of a perk.

Is that per unit, per stack or per party.

If it's for every unit then it's not bad at all.

 

[Van-d-all]

Turns out the bonus is a whopping 30 XP per day. For reference, to raise an Imperial Recruit from tier 1 to tier 2 takes around 600 XP. So that's 20 days to raise a single guy from just off the farm to shit-tier infantry. Completely fucking worthless waste of a perk.

Is that per unit, per stack or per party.

If it's for every unit then it's not bad at all.

Still better than +3 arrows per quiver, that doesn't even work.

 

[Toffeli]

Seems like a lot of people are experiencing (me included) a crash when trying to load any previous campaign save with the new patch (e1.0.2) which came yesterday.

 

[Aemar]

Two things that Bannerlord is severely lacking in, something that has undeniably contributed to the popularity of the series in the long run:

- trademark catchphrases
- memeable characters

Taleworlds seems to have ignored these aspects.

 

[Zariusz]

Two things that Bannerlord is severely lacking in, something that has undeniably contributed to the popularity of the series in the long run:

- trademark catchphrases
- memeable characters

Taleworlds seems to have ignored these aspects.

Well the only thing that i think could count is that camel from reddit that you can win in tournament and hordes of coomers that want to acquire Empress Rhagaea.
But yeah we lack meme material.

 

[A horse of course]

hordes of coomers that want to acquire Empress Rhagaea

Rhagaea is NOT for c00ming! She is my dried up old hag wife!

 

[Insane Psychic]

Yeah. To give my opinion - vanilla M&B had an addictive game loop, also riding horses was quite novel at the time the game came out, but vanilla M&B has never been more than half-assed as production values go. All the good graphics, balance, units and items came from mods, not to mention some important and interesting mechanics, which really altered the gameplay.

So, I understand the enthusiasm about Bannerlord, but we are less than halfway towards an enjoyable high-quality game with this updated engine. Those are the facts.

And I'll add one assumption - Taleworlds didn't work 8 years on this. They had a long pause in development, until they started releasing dev diaries again, and they had something of an "absolutely-final-do-or-die" deadline that was the end of March 2020. They hit that and they released whatever they had. The Eearly Access is basically a request for crowd funding for a 1.0 release, which will be technically stable, but will need balancing and gameplay fixes.

You hit that spot on, I think. The sheer amount of bugs I've seen until now (Quests not working correctly, perks not giving the listed benefit, stuff not being craftable, the attribute points only being gained every fourth level, despite it being listed as every third etc. etc.) as well as the crazy balance issues regarding things like income and xp gain, makes it seem like the single-player game was just cooked up over an extended weekend.

It's too bad, because I still like the game, by and large, but it needs an insane amount of fixing.

 

[dehimos]

It's too bad, because I still like the game, by and large, but it needs an insane amount of fixing.

Yep, I agree. It's an absurd mix of cool and bad stuff. But I have seen that they have a patch released every day, so they are taking this seriously.