Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[Catacombs]

I found it opens up completely new gameplay that I didnt even know existed.

Like what?

 

[Burning Bridges]

My buddies moan ecstatically and make animal noises in the microphone while I masturbate shamelessly.

 

[A horse of course]

Mountain Braid multiplayer does have some similar sub-communities to ARMA, such as the ones for Napoleonic mods that LARP as line infantry. Luzur

 

[Zariusz]

Happily it seems that In the name of Jerusalem 2 is still going strong.

 

[Gradenmayer]

I have not played this since the first EA build. All that was added is dogshit multiplayer mode?

 

[Fedora Master]

Mountain Braid multiplayer does have some similar sub-communities to ARMA, such as the ones for Napoleonic mods that LARP as line infantry. Luzur

You mean those turbo autistic ones that ban you for not following orders like its real life. Woooow.

 

[ArchAngel]

I have not played this since the first EA build. All that was added is dogshit multiplayer mode?

They also added a lot of quests, weapons, models, optimized everything. I am not sure if they already added battle maps based on where you are on main map, I am waiting for that to do another run.

 

[Spectacle]

Every single update is a long list of crash fixes and various bug fixes, with new features rarely added. To me, that means that for whatever reason (most likely a combination of unexperienced programmers and deadlines), their codebase is fucked. Because this is what your development process ends up being when the codebase is fucked – fixing and fixing and more fixing, because each one of your fixes is liable to break something else, and each new feature is liable to be halted mid-development due to encountering a seemingly impenetrable barrier of bugs. The slow progress would also be explained by it – tracking a bug can take anywhere between five minutes and a week, and tracking it in a fucked codebase (which tends to be basically unreadable) only further prolongs it. Instead of developing new shit, they keep going over old code and fixing it.

Pretty unfortunate, but hardly unusual in software development. Let's hope they'll realize sooner rather than later that there's only one real solution to this issue – to stop with the eternal fixing of various bugs, and instead stop development for a couple months and just rewrite the worst parts of the codebase, this time doing it properly. Of course, halting development for such a time will enrage the fans, which might be why they're still crawling at glacial speed instead.

Taleworlds already tried that, no updates for months while they were "refactoring". Didn't seem to help all that much.

 

[Zeriel]

Every single update is a long list of crash fixes and various bug fixes, with new features rarely added. To me, that means that for whatever reason (most likely a combination of unexperienced programmers and deadlines), their codebase is fucked. Because this is what your development process ends up being when the codebase is fucked – fixing and fixing and more fixing, because each one of your fixes is liable to break something else, and each new feature is liable to be halted mid-development due to encountering a seemingly impenetrable barrier of bugs. The slow progress would also be explained by it – tracking a bug can take anywhere between five minutes and a week, and tracking it in a fucked codebase (which tends to be basically unreadable) only further prolongs it. Instead of developing new shit, they keep going over old code and fixing it.

Pretty unfortunate, but hardly unusual in software development. Let's hope they'll realize sooner rather than later that there's only one real solution to this issue – to stop with the eternal fixing of various bugs, and instead stop development for a couple months and just rewrite the worst parts of the codebase, this time doing it properly. Of course, halting development for such a time will enrage the fans, which might be why they're still crawling at glacial speed instead.

I said it a long way back, but you can tell how fucked their codebase and how deep their technical debt is because basic scripting calls can cause hard crashes. Basically when a script fails, the game itself bluescreens. That's a level of fuck-up that's hard to describe.

 

[thesecret1]

I said it a long way back, but you can tell how fucked their codebase and how deep their technical debt is because basic scripting calls can cause hard crashes. Basically when a script fails, the game itself bluescreens. That's a level of fuck-up that's hard to describe.

Yeah, I've worked in fucked codebases before, it's an endless story. A truly Sisyphean task if there ever was one. The only real solution is to rewrite the whole damn thing (because you need to change the whole architecture if you want to be rid of these issues), but the management will never allow it because they'll balk at the prospect of redoing months of work. And so you'll spend those months endlessly fixing something that's inherently fucked, leading you to something that's sort of less broken in the sense that it doesn't crash so much anymore, but still just as fucked in the sense that the moment you try adding any new functionality, it'll all start breaking down again.

 

[Zeriel]

The sad thing to me is they already took a fucklong time to get to where they are right now. It took them almost a decade to write what they have, so if they started anew... jesus fuck, do you want to be coding on your deathbed? They took as long to reach an alpha engine stage as they took to make all of Warband's content, expansions, full releases, etc...

 

[thesecret1]

Taleworlds already tried that, no updates for months while they were "refactoring". Didn't seem to help all that much.

It all depends on just what exactly you do with said "refactoring". We "refactored" our codebase many times too (by the way, just another show the codebase is fucked. You do not need refactoring time if your codebase is in good order). There's a big difference between refactoring some scripts so as to make them more readable and less error-prone, and between straight up deleting an entire feature or several in order to re-do the very core of how it works. The former helps but doesn't really solve the core issue, the latter is too radical for most managements to allow.

The sad thing to me is they already took a fucklong time to get to where they are right now. It took them almost a decade to write what they have, so if they started anew... jesus fuck, do you want to be coding on your deathbed? They took as long to reach an alpha engine stage as they took to make all of Warband's content, expansions, full releases, etc...

Yeah, no idea what the situation in the company must be like for them to take this long.

 

[Konjad]

New captain improvement: Be the best in your team and get votekicked at the end, because then your loot reward will be divided among others.

 

[IDtenT]

For someone complaining so much, you sure are addicted to this game.

 

[Konjad]

For someone complaining so much, you sure are addicted to this game.

I love combat in this game, it's so fluid, accurate, excellent, fun and addictive.

Unfortunately everything else in this game is trash

Annoyed, I uninstalled BL multiple times only to come back next day because no other game has such a good combat. That alone makes multiplayer fun, even with servers crashing half of the time and other irritating quirks. There's just no other game like this, now I can't go back to the outdated combat of warband or chivalry.

 

[IDtenT]

Did you ever play Mordhau?

 

[Konjad]

No, but I guess it doesn't have horses?

 

[Beowulf]

No, but I guess it doesn't have horses?

It does, but only a handful per match usually.

 

[Eyestabber]

First impression of the game is pretty bad. Where is the fun? Combat is a chore, your character is MUCH weaker than his troops so you're left spectating for the most part. Ai takes ages to mop up small groups of looters. Autocalc is a joke, 3 looters will kill 2-3 Elite Cav. Mounted combat remains a clusterfuck of terrible controls, but seems even worse. I'm tired of running enemies over for 1 dmg while the couched lance misses because...reasons. Enemies stun lock you all the time (even out of a fucking mounted charge), raiding villages got nerfed into being total shite, raiding caravans is impossible because THEY MOVE AT INSANELY HIGH SPEED and I can't catch 'em*, trade is unfun as rumors seem to come from the ether and the game doesn't even bother to tell you what the "base" price of an item is. Character look worse than Oblivion, battles are still small potatoes scale, multiple "Empire" factions is a shitty escuse for lame copy-pasting, UI doesn't help you keep track of opinions/good places for recruitment, KINGS are STILL trusting some guy they just met to collect their taxes, CHARNAME's family looks ugly and stupid and I regret rescuing them.

In short, the only improvement from Warband is turning sheep into items and removing herd mechanics. Everything else is a straight up downgrade.

OH and Steam reviews are "Very Positive" so I guess I must be playing a different version from all the cool kids.

*: Inb4 "just buy more horses hurr" -> STFU. Caravans aren't supposed to outrun small raiding parties and they didn't do so in Warband. This is something the original got right but the sequel managed to botch.

 

[Fedora Master]

You haven't experienced the joys of Bannerlord until you spent two days chasing a 12 man band of bandits.

 

[Eyestabber]

So the sane thing was to uninstall and forget about the game, but I have a 5+ yo Codex account, so ofc I went for the non-sane thing and tried to fix the game with mods EXCEPT...

all the top mods on the Nexus don't work with the current game version and most modders seem to have ragequit development like a year ago. After numerous crashes I gave up in frustration and finally uninstalled this broken piece of shit. Interestingly enough, the game never crashed for me in its shitty vanilla state.

Man, srly, I JUST WANTED TO RAID A MOSLEM CARAVAN. That's all I wanted to do and STILL the game failed miserably at that. When I finally got the speed mod working the game just crashed after loading the battle. AGAIN. Fuck this shit.

 

[ArchAngel]

First impression of the game is pretty bad. Where is the fun? Combat is a chore, your character is MUCH weaker than his troops so you're left spectating for the most part. Ai takes ages to mop up small groups of looters. Autocalc is a joke, 3 looters will kill 2-3 Elite Cav. Mounted combat remains a clusterfuck of terrible controls, but seems even worse. I'm tired of running enemies over for 1 dmg while the couched lance misses because...reasons. Enemies stun lock you all the time (even out of a fucking mounted charge), raiding villages got nerfed into being total shite, raiding caravans is impossible because THEY MOVE AT INSANELY HIGH SPEED and I can't catch 'em*, trade is unfun as rumors seem to come from the ether and the game doesn't even bother to tell you what the "base" price of an item is. Character look worse than Oblivion, battles are still small potatoes scale, multiple "Empire" factions is a shitty escuse for lame copy-pasting, UI doesn't help you keep track of opinions/good places for recruitment, KINGS are STILL trusting some guy they just met to collect their taxes, CHARNAME's family looks ugly and stupid and I regret rescuing them.

In short, the only improvement from Warband is turning sheep into items and removing herd mechanics. Everything else is a straight up downgrade.

OH and Steam reviews are "Very Positive" so I guess I must be playing a different version from all the cool kids.

*: Inb4 "just buy more horses hurr" -> STFU. Caravans aren't supposed to outrun small raiding parties and they didn't do so in Warband. This is something the original got right but the sequel managed to botch.

I wanted to write a long post but I think this is more appropriate: Learn to Play noob.

I have lots of fun doing battles and my character is not weaker than another single soldiers. I usually get 10 to 20 kills per battle. Of course you are weak at start, you are not much more than a peasant. Train your skills and get better gear and you will become a force to be reckoned with.

 

[Fedora Master]

And still instantly die to a random javelin...

 

[ArchAngel]

And still instantly die to a random javelin...

If you are on horseback don't slow down when in enemy part of the map.
If you are on foot don't be an idiot that charges before everyone. You go behind first line and take out enemy units on edges or those that pass through the line. Use longer melee weapons. Short fast weapons are only good for 1v1 which happens mostly in Arena, not on battlefield.

And of course you can be an archer and kill many from safe area.

 

[Alienman]

Gonna try asking here again if someone knows. Asking on the Steam forums seems to just make people pissed for some reason. Anyway.

Anyone know how to lower the XP gained for troopers under your command? I started to play a little yesterday and I just find it absurd how you can have tier 4 or 5 inf before you even find your first helmet. Also I like keeping higher tier units rare. Combination with a mod that makes armor useful I think this is the way to go, also better for Bannerlord autism

 

[Alienman]

Fuck, this is the frustrating thing ever. There is a mod that you can use to change the gains, but of course it's not updated and don't work. And you can basically change everything else in text form with some editing, except this fucking thing. And as a bonus it was super easy to change in Warband, but not now for some unknown unfathomable reason.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I don't understand your preferences, but I support them.

 

[wyes gull]

The similarities between this and CP77 now have me convinced that CDPR and TW are actually the exact same studio. It's just that the devs get spray tans and wear fake mustaches when they take pictures pretending to be Turks.
I mean, think about it. Game takes 8 years of development and comes out buggy and patently unfinished, looking like it took, what, 2 years to throw together. And one year after launch, they've barely fixed anything and added nothing of note. Which game am I talking about? Both. And why? Because the same people actually had to do them both! I mean, makes sense, right? No way the people who made Warband and Witcher 3 could be that incompetent. And if there really were 2 different studios, given their time and resources, the results would've been nothing short of Prosperous. Hell, he'd probably do better.

On a more serious note, given the deserved lambasting CDPR got, I can't shake the feeling the Turks kinda got away with murder here. Seems like if Taleworlds announced a Bananalord 2 in a few months with a new gimmick, most people would get back on the horse. Quite literally.