M&B 1.0 copypasta lulz deluxe.

[dagorkan]

The AI is supposed to have improved significantly with the gold version

 

[Trash]

The AI is supposed to have improved significantly with the gold version

Got the game and it runs without any problems when started with the old 960 uniloader. The AI fights a bit smarter as far as I can tell from the training field fights at the start and a few of the early encounters. Normally these are a total pushover for me, and while they still aren't that hard the enemy fought quite a bit smarter and harder. I can see how fighting multiple foes at a time might turn difficult with this new version. I'll buy the game as soon as I find it in the shops.

 

[MisterStone]

Everyone keeps saying that Armagan could have done more, etc. etc. Well, the man has been developing the game for four or five years! Can't he get paid for his work, finally? Can you image how hard it is to get the bugs out of something like this for a full release when you are working with a small staff and a public beta test?

The game is better value than ANY other major label game as it is, and I for one don't give a fuck about the perceived lack of content... It is supposed to be a freelancer type game similar to Pirates! or the like, most of the fun relies on procedural stuff such as armies running around on the world map and the like, and as far as I am concerned, it is brilliant. It has excellent modder support, and I think that by concentrating on polishing the look, sound and AI of the game the man did the right thing, since this is not the kind of thing that modders can easily improve on. In short, a fine game and a great value.

 

[LCJr.]

He's been getting paid all along. Not mention we all were taking a gamble it would even get finished.

You seem to be forgetting when a lot of us bought in it was supposed to have an epic story, yadda, yadda. I don't mind the sandbox myself but I can see how lot of people aren't happy they're not getting what they payed for.

I'll believe the AI is fixed when I see it. There hasn't been any major improvement to the unit AI since I started at .711. Why should I believe they waited til the last second to fix it?

Last, what's the deal with holding back the 1.0 release from the community that's supported him and got the word out about the game? You know the people who already paid, did the beta testing and made the mods he stole a lot of ideas from. Is he afraid that what the community has to say about it will hurt sales?

 

[mondblut]

I don't care about plot in M&B - it is simply not this kind of a game, there is no plot in Elite, Pirates and other trading/privateer games. But it certainly could use a vastly more powerful strategic/diplomatic level and tons of background info to enrich the world.

As of now, it has very little to do other than getting oneself a sizable troop and then taking over the world castle by castle. Which works fine in proper strategy titles with their diplomacy, building and research, but in M&B capturing your 50th castle isn't any different from capturing your 2nd.

I, too, expected a lot of stuff to be added in 1.00, making this game something more than a combat sim with trading trips thrown in between.

Well, as certain devs out there have proven, there is always an Enhanced Edition to sell :D Besides, having a release set in stone will make looking for and trying out mods much more manageable than it was when versions changed every couple of months.

 

[MisterStone]

He's been getting paid all along. Not mention we all were taking a gamble it would even get finished.

You seem to be forgetting when a lot of us bought in it was supposed to have an epic story, yadda, yadda. I don't mind the sandbox myself but I can see how lot of people aren't happy they're not getting what they payed for.

I'll believe the AI is fixed when I see it. There hasn't been any major improvement to the unit AI since I started at .711. Why should I believe they waited til the last second to fix it?

I don't agree. The AI improved a great deal in the .9xx releases... the enemy does not simply make a beeline towards you, they often advance slow, wait on hillsides or other areas where they hold a strategic advantage, etc. It's still not Deep Blue vs. Kasparov good, but it definitely improved a great deal. I don't know about the short game (ie, how they attack individually when the two forces close for battle), but it seems like this is a bit better as well.

Last, what's the deal with holding back the 1.0 release from the community that's supported him and got the word out about the game? You know the people who already paid, did the beta testing and made the mods he stole a lot of ideas from. Is he afraid that what the community has to say about it will hurt sales?

Yeah, I am not very happy with this either... I can only assume that their deal with the distributor had some fine print in it that they had to abide by. Who knows? The least they could do, though, is make some kind of statement. I wonder if the dev (is he a practicing Muslim?) went out and got drunk after the retail version went on sale, and has not had a chance to recover yet.

 

[Balor]

Well, compared to Spore, it's still great and has most of the features that make it a good GAME, capable of delivering you a huge amount of playtime.

 

[Fez]

Well, compared to Spore, it's still great and has most of the features that make it a good GAME, capable of delivering you a huge amount of playtime.

QFT, even though I was disappointed with Mount & Blade's development path over the past year or so and its divergence from the once promised RPG.

 

[LCJr.]

I don't agree. The AI improved a great deal in the .9xx releases... the enemy does not simply make a beeline towards you, they often advance slow, wait on hillsides or other areas where they hold a strategic advantage, etc. It's still not Deep Blue vs. Kasparov good, but it definitely improved a great deal. I don't know about the short game (ie, how they attack individually when the two forces close for battle), but it seems like this is a bit better as well.

There are exactly three tactics the AI uses. The default charge. "Follow me" where all follow the leader at walking speed until either the player's units get within 50m or 30 seconds pass then they charge. The last is "Hold" where they move to the closest high ground within a 100 meters and set still for 5 minutes and then they charge.

I've written two tactics scripts myself. One more and I'll be on par with Armagan.

 

[The Dude]

Kergits try to flank sometimes though. Not that it makes much of a difference in a game like M&B, but it's nice to see them try.

 

[LCJr.]

Kergits try to flank sometimes though. Not that it makes much of a difference in a game like M&B, but it's nice to see them try.

There's nothing about flanking in the scripts. I've seen off center approaches before but to me it looks like the same bad pathfinding you see on the world map. Like when you click on a location and instead of moving in a straight line your party takes off at an angle.

That's one the things that's been wrong with the game since I started that never was fixed. All they did was make the maps bigger and stick the AI in the middle so it wouldn't get stuck on the edges anymore.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Well, compared to Spore, it's still great and has most of the features that make it a good GAME, capable of delivering you a huge amount of playtime.

QFT, even though I was disappointed with Mount & Blade's development path over the past year or so and its divergence from the once promised RPG.

You can't even trusts indies these days dude....

 

[Heresiarch]

I would never consider the AI "fixed" as long as the AI lancers can't properly couch their lances. As I've seen in 0.960 lancers still use their lance to stab for pathetic efficiency.

The thing that M&B sucks compared to Pirates! is the world doesn't feel as lively. Maybe it's because of the music isn't as EPIX as say, NWN's.

 

[MisterStone]

Well, the dev Armagan posted a message on the forums saying that 1.0 will be available for download on "Monday the 19th" from the Taleworlds site. Now, most people are assuming this means tomorrow (at least, tomorrow from where I am right now)... but it would be lulzy if he actually meant next Monday. Wait and see what kind of wackiness ensues.

 

[Trash]

Well, after playing the game for a bit I must say that it feels an awful lot like the last release. It also has a number of improvements in the AI that provide quite a bit of challenge and the entire game feels more polished and "finished". It's still the same old medieval combat sim it always was, but now wars are more exciting, individual battles are more difficult and the game finally feels done.

I like it.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Can you actually wipe entire factions out and get some sort of recognition for it yet? I did that in whatever the last version it was that I played and... nothing happened. No glory. No recognition that I totally kicked ass. Just a lot of combat.

... and how are sieges in 1.0? Everyone still get stuck going up one lousy plank one-by-one and dying at the end or did they fix that? Usually I had to charge up with my long two-handed sword and pick them all off at range or wait with bow and arrow and pick them off when they popped their heads up. Sieges kinda suck when you're the only one capable of killing anybody.

 

[dagorkan]

... and how are sieges in 1.0? Everyone still get stuck going up one lousy plank one-by-one and dying at the end or did they fix that? Usually I had to charge up with my long two-handed sword and pick them all off at range or wait with bow and arrow and pick them off when they popped their heads up. Sieges kinda suck when you're the only one capable of killing anybody.

Pathfinding during sieges seems to be improved but it's still boring as hell to me. You can do nothing except shoot from a long distance until the tower comes close enough and the plank comes down and then it's pretty much mindless hacking because every unit zombie walks toward the one place where the fighting is.

Storymod two years ago actually implemented interesting sieges, though the way he did it was to have each segment of the battlement, tower, courtyard separated by 'teleporting' doors and triggers that made new enemies arrive. And there was a battle to find a way to open the main gate for reinforcements. In other words all scripted.

But apart from that it's always been pretty boring compared to the horseback skirmishes.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Can you actually wipe entire factions out and get some sort of recognition for it yet? I did that in whatever the last version it was that I played and... nothing happened. No glory. No recognition that I totally kicked ass. Just a lot of combat.

What I really liked was taking over the Kingdom of Nords with a claimant. My reputation with the "Kingdom of Nords rebels" (the claimant faction) was like 99, but when I took over and the rebels became the new Kingdom of Nords, my reputation was reset to 0.

Yeah.

 

[someone else]

What I really liked was taking over the Kingdom of Nords with a claimant. My reputation with the "Kingdom of Nords rebels" (the claimant faction) was like 99, but when I took over and the rebels became the new Kingdom of Nords, my reputation was reset to 0.

Yeah.

Yeah, its fun to start from ZERO. Thats the point of grinding, its the journey that matters!

I also like not attacking enemy armies, stalking them instead, waiting for some friendly Lord to get into serious trouble and I can swop in and rescue him. Makes me more popular.

 

[MisterStone]

Release version is up- checkitout chawl!

http://files.filefront.com/mountandblad ... einfo.html

 

[Zomg]

I had very few expectations after I got my money's worth - at my most feverish I was hoping for half Pirates! and half Darklands, which was probably too much to hope for. I'm happy to get 1.0 out of the way just to get armagan working on something else, because the real entertainment payload of M&B (horse combat) was there the whole time and he's been wasting years just embroidering it.

 

[MisterStone]

I think its a good release. Most of the people who are "dissapointed" with the game are disappointed because they were beta testers and have been playing more or less the same game for the last 2 years or so. People new to the game should be happy with it, and get a lot more play time out of it than the average big budger super-hyped next-best-thing game (think Bioshock- didn't most people finish the whole game in like 8 hours or something?). Old timers should not be pissed, because they paid less and have probably been enjoying much the same game for a long time now- otherwise, why would so many people have their panties in a wad?

People always image too much stuff from game development... I remember back before Quake I was released- some wankers were expecting some kind of 1st-person persistant MMORPG fantasy world in real-time or some crazy shit. M&B is a reasonably well-polished version of the game that we have been beta-testing for a couple of years... nothing more and nothing less.

As a side note, the music in the final version is damn good. Whoever is responsible for it will hopefully be recruited for major projects in the future (if they haven't already been). It is major motion-picture quality stuff.

 

[Fez]

A few thoughts on playing it so far: The AI still sucks and there is no real strategy or tactics to it. There are siege issues that should have been fixed, like the annoying one-plank-march, people getting stuck in the scenery where they can't be reached (gaps between buildings, inside walls, on the sides of/halfway up walls), the AI giving too much importance to the player and lacking any kind of tactical competence (to the point of it looking absurd and allowing all manner of easy exploits), the "one man army" feeling.

The mods will likely fill out the lack of content in the game. For all those defending this to the hilt though: was it really worth while him updating the graphics and music when he could have been working on the gameplay/content instead? Tsk.

@MisterStone: Speaking of the music, is it just me or does one track remind you of the Conan films?

 

[MisterStone]

Yeah, it does sound like the music from Conan. At least it uses the same instruments and so on. Works for me!

 

[Fez]

Now I'm wondering if I can add my own music to the playlist? Start up a barbarian-themed character.

 

[someone else]

http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/board,41.0.html

Its outdated, you have to change the music.txt in the mod/native directory.