Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[a Goat]

One day closer


Any day now

 

[Latelistener]

I think combat lacks a punch or a sense of speed. What I see is two plasticine guys trying to slice each other. Was ok for the first game, but now I expect more.

Sound is also very important but I have been unimpressed by it so far.

They need a year or so to improve it, but unfortunately with the current speed of development for Taleworlds it means 10 years. Then again, this is the amount of time it'll take to push it out of Early Access.

 

[thesecret1]

I think combat lacks a punch or a sense of speed. What I see is two plasticine guys trying to slice each other. Was ok for the first game, but now I expect more.

Sound is also very important but I have been unimpressed by it so far.

They need a year or so to improve it, but unfortunately with the current speed of development for Taleworlds it means 10 years. Then again, this is the amount of time it'll take to push it out of Early Access.

The more realistic you make it, the more computing power it'll take for each NPC. And you've got a pretty strong demand for "bigger battles" from the community, which goes sort of counter to this.

 

[Latelistener]

No one said anything about realistic. It has nothing to do with computing power. For example, Severance combat is much better at it, but the game came out almost exactly 19 years ago.

 

[vota DC]

Well they said weapons feel more weighty, also this time hitting is different, for example axes are very bad for new players because you can hit with haft for very low damage. Hitting won't be elaborated as other ancient games.
They won't try something complex like die by the sword....in that game every collision of weapon was a damage if I remember well (you could also damage the enemy without moving the weapon but moving yourself with weapon on hand), I hope they will add some passive collision for Spears st least.

 

[Spectacle]

So apparently there will be an "announcement about the Early Access" sometime tomorrow: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/question-about-this-week-dev-blog.392793/

Note it's not called an "announcement about the Early Access date"...

 

[LESS T_T]

PC Gamer leaked it already, March 31, 50 USD: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/pc-gamer.392820/post-9218079

 

[Peachcurl]

Is that pricing normal for early access? I usually stay away from early access, so I have little experience with that.

To elaborate: this feels like a full release price, while I'd actually be a paying beta tester...

 

[Nutria]

you've got a pretty strong demand for "bigger battles" from the community

I really hope they don't listen to the kind of literal spergs who want to play out Operation Barbarossa at battalion level because they have an autistic fascination with large numbers.

 

[Vincente]

 

[thesecret1]

you've got a pretty strong demand for "bigger battles" from the community

I really hope they don't listen to the kind of literal spergs who want to play out Operation Barbarossa at battalion level because they have an autistic fascination with large numbers.

Well, they've already shown that battles will be significantly bigger than in Warband, so I guess they already did listen.

 

[Vincente]

you've got a pretty strong demand for "bigger battles" from the community

I really hope they don't listen to the kind of literal spergs who want to play out Operation Barbarossa at battalion level because they have an autistic fascination with large numbers.

Well, they've already shown that battles will be significantly bigger than in Warband, so I guess they already did listen.

 

[Turuko]

Most expensive EA ever?

 

[Berekän]

They really want to milk it, fuck.

 

[Spectacle]

Is that pricing normal for early access? I usually stay away from early access, so I have little experience with that.

To elaborate: this feels like a full release price, while I'd actually be a paying beta tester...

It is the same price as the final version. That's not normal pricing for an EA game, but then again nothing is normal about Bannerlord.

 

[CyberModuled]

Most expensive EA ever?

Nah, it's still this I think (so fucking ass backwards in this case too since they actively lowered the price more and more overtime before release)

https://www.geek.com/games/playing-planetary-annihilation-early-on-steam-costs-90-1559005/

 

[Vincente]

Confirmed.

 

[LESS T_T]

They also updated the first item of EA FAQs:

“Early access is something that we are very familiar with: our first title, Mount & Blade, helped to pioneer this method of release back in 2005. By working alongside our community we were able to deliver a unique gaming experience that players still enjoy to this day. These past experiences have taught us that it is vital to bring players in to help us iron out any issues and refine the game by utilizing feedback to bring it to the level that both our community and we expect.

We are hoping to run a productive and efficient early access for M&B Bannerlord as well. However, due to the nature and scale of game that we have envisioned, there may be various problems or missing features and content during the course of early access. Here are a few aspects you may need to know:

Unique Maps for Towns, Castles and Village: Although we plan to create unique maps for every town and castle in the game, it is a rather arduous process to create that many well designed maps and as such, different locations may share the same map during early access.

Quest Content: A portion of planned quests may be missing entirely, and those in the game may be using placeholder maps, animations, etc.

Balancing: Various aspects of the game may be poorly balanced. Parts of the game may be too easy or too hard.

Voice overs: Since the game uses a lot of dynamic text and hundreds of NPCs, we are planning to record voice-overs for only a limited subset of the dialog (greetings, companion introductions and main quest). Some of these planned voice overs may be missing or using placeholder versions during EA.

Savegames: We will strive to keep savegame compatibility during EA, however it may be technically infeasible to provide 100% backward compatibility in savegames and you may occasionally have to start a new game after updating to a new version.

Bugs and glitches: Although we strive to create a stable game experience, the game will be actively developed during early access and hence there will be a greater chance of bugs and glitches creeping up. It will of course be a priority to fix these.

Localization: Our current plan is to localize the game into the following languages: French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish (Latin American) and Turkish. Other languages may be added later. During EA, localizations for these languages may be missing entirely or may be incomplete.

Multiplayer modes and features: The game currently supports several popular multiplayer modes, but we are planning to add more modes and features, possibly including ranked matchmaking.

Singleplayer Features: Several planned single player features may be missing or incomplete. These include but are not limited to: full game controller support, some skill and perk effects, crafting, some aspects of sieges, and clan, army and kingdom management.

Developing M&B Bannerlord has been, and continues to be a fabulous experience for us, and we are excited to be walking the final phase of this journey together with our players. Of course, you may prefer to wait a little bit longer and hold off until the final, finished product. In this case, please consider adding the game to your wishlist and you’ll receive an email when we release the full version.”

 

[Aemar]

Unique Maps for Towns, Castles and Village: Although we plan to create unique maps for every town and castle in the game, it is a rather arduous process to create that many well designed maps and as such, different locations may share the same map during early access.

Eight fucking years in the making with hundreds of people working on this game and they still haven't sorted out at least this aspect yet.

Iirc, the original game remained in early access from 2005 to 2008, so it's safe to assume Bannerlord will follow the same path for an equal amount of time, given the amount of content they still have to add.

Planning on spending hundreds of hours on this game, so 50 euros should be a fair price.

 

[deuxhero]

Aemar
Most mods that don't use native maps don't have unique maps everything either. It's not as big a problem as it sounds. It also makes sense to wait to make siege maps till your siege mechanics are 100% solid.

 

[Aemar]

Obviously I have nothing against mods not using unique maps, since a few modders can't match the workload put together by a studio comprising of at least 100 people working on the game at any given time. You may be right about the correlation between siege mechanics and city maps.

 

[Van-d-all]

What the actual fuck? $50? I know they can probably afford to milk it, since the game is popular enough to be picked by AAA crowd where it's still <$60, but they will loose shitloads of potential sales to piracy in Eastern Europe, where they had a substantial fanbase. I know "IT'S M&B WOLOLO" and will probably amount of hundreds of hours of gameplay, but honestly I thought people from Turkey would be more sensible to indie pricing reality being past the times of slapping AA prices and wishing for the best.

 

[Aemar]

Eight years of development must have costed a lot of millions, even if Taleworlds has most likely benefited from state funds as well. Then add the hype and the fact that you can easily spend hundreds of hours in this game. I think 50 euros is a fair price for what the game has to offer. Regarding piracy, no doubt they will loose some money because of that at first, like any other game out there, but I'm sure some of the people who owned a pirated copy will pick it up eventually on sale, just like I did with the original release.

Yavuz knows he's sitting on a gold mine, considering the series have sold at least 7 million copies so far. I would have opted for a similar pricing too.

 

[Xamenos]

What the actual fuck? $50? I know they can probably afford to milk it, since the game is popular enough to be picked by AAA crowd where it's still <$60, but they will loose shitloads of potential sales to piracy in Eastern Europe, where they had a substantial fanbase. I know "IT'S M&B WOLOLO" and will probably amount of hundreds of hours of gameplay, but honestly I thought people from Turkey would be more sensible to indie pricing reality being past the times of slapping AA prices and wishing for the best.

Basic economics. When you have people willing to buy your product at $50 and you price it at, say, $20, you're leaving money on the table. They no longer need the networking effect of a low price and more sales at release to market their game. The price WILL get lower, and the game WILL be deeply discounted so that everyone can buy at their preferred price point. Those Eastern Europoors will just have to not buy on release if they value their vodka budget more than this game's asking price. My appreciation for the Turks' business acumen has measurably gone up, and I'm sure more (smart) indie devs wish they could price their game like that without burying it.

Incidentally and out of curiosity, did you also object to Kingdom Come: Deliverance being priced at $50 on release?

 

[Aemar]

Incidentally and out of curiosity, did you also object to Kingdom Come: Deliverance being priced at $50 on release?

A game that costed 36 million to make. I reckon Bannerlord is positioned more or less within the same range.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/kingdom-come-deliverance/kingdom-come-deliverance-cost-budget