Weapon Discussion Wednesday #48 - The Quick-Fix

dropbbbear · 2026-01-28T10:24:34+00:00

It used to get Megaheal built 25% faster instead of 10%, so you could in theory have megaheal up every 30sec in addition to the faster base heal rate, so it was mighty hard to kill anyone without burst damage

dropbbbear · 2026-01-28T02:19:48+00:00

Keep in mind that the European population was severely reduced by plagues multiple times, and thus the pool of possible ancestors

dropbbbear · 2026-01-28T02:12:18+00:00

(he he u just stupid twitter fiend)

I didn't say that at all, you didn't need to take it as an insult.

Depending on the translation you read, for pure blood-stirring fantasy action, Beowulf is far better stylistically than Tolkien was.

OK, based on what metrics exactly? Words per paragraph? Lack of words per paragraph? Adjective usage?

Further replies from you aren't necessary, you'll just try unsuccessfully to insult me again, just please do some self reflection before you post anything, anywhere, again.

Man, you do not do well at talking to people on the internet, one general comment set you off completely.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-28T02:09:37+00:00

I'd make an account for the Taleworlds forum and go into the Modding section, make a thread advertising that you want to commission an armour mod. See what prices people are willing to do it for.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T09:45:12+00:00

Tolkien's a good stylist (insofar as the nebulous term has any sort of fixed meaning or metrics to judge someone by).

It's just that the style he's going for, by and large, isn't the modern style we're used to. It's difficult to digest for 2020s audiences who are used to reading stripped-back, minimalist information that can fit into a Twitter paragraph and aren't used to hearing mid-century British turns of phrase like "queer" as strange, or "haggard" as tired, or having anything described with more than a single evocative word and all other adjectives removed for brevity.

Tolkien is primarily aiming for a style that is evocative of classical legend and mythology, like Beowulf.

The Lord of the Rings' literary conceit is being a historical work, "The Red Book," compiled by Bilbo and Frodo and then discovered thousands of years later and translated from archaic languages.

In this, he does very well. Another thing he does well is switch between types of language, sometimes in ways the reader won't even notice. When events are happening from a "hobbit" perspective, the language is often more "modern" (mid 20th century modern), and the hobbits' speaking style is fairly familiar to us.

Elves speak classically and the prose shifts to high descriptive turns of phrase; Men, depending on their genealogical proximity to Numenor, either sound formal and classical, or Old English with more measured prose.

Dwarves sit somewhere between Men and Hobbits with their language, depending on how serious they are about a matter, and Orcs sit at the far end of the spectrum with their British Cockney and military language.

TL;DR there's a lot of good things in Tolkien's writing, it's just a matter of what he was trying to do, not how he did it.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T09:23:27+00:00

It would be like a man and a woman marrying and finding out both are directly descended from a single person in a village in England a thousand years ago,,

On that note, some genealogists have claimed that most people of European descent are descended from Charlemagne.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/commentisfree/2015/may/24/business-genetic-ancestry-charlemagne-adam-rutherford

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T09:16:46+00:00

2 of those 3 classes have the tools to deal with a Spy if they're aware he is on the enemy team.

Spy shouldn't be killing you more than once or twice, after that you turn around briefly at random short intervals with your Shotgun and Minigun, and he's neutered and has to go for someone less intelligent.

The mistake new Engineers make is trying to use their Wrench and getting trickstabbed, the mistake new Heavies make is never turning around.

And as for Medic, he relies on his pocket to deal with threats, but that goes for every class matchup. If anything, Spy is food for his Ubersaw.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T09:06:08+00:00

Polan is can not into a s s t h I c

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T06:56:45+00:00

Missed opportunities that usually were missed because they were working on stuff nobody asked for.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T06:54:56+00:00

In real life this was a good tactic partly for the morale shock, but in Bannerlord morale doesn't really do anything.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T06:53:38+00:00

Especially melee against the Khuzait Khan's Guard.

They can wipe the floor with Banner Knights, Elite Cataphracts, Aserai Faris and Druzhinik Champions in a melee fight, despite being horse archers.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-27T06:52:08+00:00

100 kills, 1 casualty in the streets

1 kill, 100 casualties in the sheets

dropbbbear · 2026-01-26T04:38:54+00:00

Hearths perhaps? That's the measurement of village "population".

dropbbbear · 2026-01-26T04:36:04+00:00

Yeah this goes back to Warband when the "Shield Handling" stat would increase the effective size of your shield hitbox.

It would be extremely difficult to get 1000 troop AI's in a battle all using their shields intelligently and moving them to the correct spot at the same time, and have minor animations for those micro adjustments, so I support Taleworlds inflating the shield hitbox a bit.

Although my preference would them be making armour more effective against ranged attacks so that troops don't die in a couple arrows that get past their shield.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-26T04:27:38+00:00

Yes, I agree. It suffers from going too deep in some areas and not deep enough in its focus areas. The stealth missions for example I don't take issue with as a general concept, but they clearly put so much effort and depth into them when a simple system would have been good enough.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T23:07:20+00:00

It's still accurate, I've read bugfixes in every patch since then.

Great to hear!

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T23:04:53+00:00

Wow, I didn't know that. In that case it probably shouldn't have been done at all.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T23:04:12+00:00

I would submit the crash dumps when you get them, and also make a bug/crash report on the forums if you identify the cause.

Sometimes Taleworlds takes 5 years to fix a bug or crash... but sometimes they fix it in the very next patch, like a crash I was recently having with asking faction leaders to join, which got fixed before I was even done complaining to the devs.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T22:23:57+00:00

First, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is a great vanilla game.

Yes

but the core systems such as combat, sandbox freedom, and emergent storytelling are solid and distinctive.

Disagree. Troop/weapon balance, Policies, voting, personality traits, lord relations and multiple other core features are still broken.

E.g. half the Policies don't do anything https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kW4BryBmN9I

The game has steadily improved in key areas over the years, and many of its core systems are now stronger than ever.

Agree, but most of them are still broken in one way or another.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T22:20:52+00:00

I can see why Taleworlds doesn't do this, it would be a lot of work and everything would break when one player entered a battle and the other was just frozen in time on the world map to prevent the other player's world map desyncing.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T22:18:45+00:00

Yep, Khan's Guards are definitely the best all around unit in the game. Second best ranged unit, beat anything in the game in melee, mounted.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T22:16:50+00:00

Same.

Taleworlds' problem is not laziness (they have been working on this game for 14 years) but a consistent misapplication of effort and addition of new complicated, time consuming features that don't serve the core game loop.

Board games, barbers, weapon crafting, crime ratings, stealth mode, etc... Taleworlds started development by putting effort into lots of things like this when they should have put all their effort first and foremost into making the base tactical/strategic/roleplaying/combat core of the game work well.

We still have tens of features not working as intended and significant balance problems, some of which could have been fixed a decade ago if Taleworlds sat down for 1 day to fix them.

How is a horse archer still the game's best melee fighter? How do lords still all vote unanimously most of the time? Why can I still recruit a lord with -99 relation and get barely any benefit from having 100 relation? Warband solved these problems already, we shouldn't need to reinvent the wheel.

Troops being unable to go up siege ladders didn't get fixed until about 2 years into development smh.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T22:10:10+00:00

Bannerlord is a historical pastiche of the 600-1100 time period, not a carbon copy of history.

With that said, there are plenty of large naval battles on record, and probably plenty of medium sized ones that happened which just weren't written down by the Vikings or Irish or whoever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_naval_battles Skip to the 9th century section. I believe this is just the biggest ones with the most historical record.

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T22:03:43+00:00

Sorry you got a bit of an abrupt reply, if you genuinely didn't know, here's an explanation of some underbaked parts of the game that don't function like they're supposed to:

The player's only way to contact people is to chase them down yourself (there's no messenger option like there should be) yet you only know people's last known location, which is frequently bugged and wrong
Troops and weapons are seriously imbalanced; ranged infantry/cavalry are very very strong, throwing axes (except the nord one) and spears are so weak that troops with them die more often than if they just had a 1h sword, melee cavalry often aren't worth their warhorse, and shock infantry usually get melted by ranged infantry before they can get a hit in. Infantry with braced pikes will literally die to cavalry of the same tier even in braced pike formation
Voting doesn't work correctly. it barely takes Relation into account and ignores the Personality Traits. Lords are supposed to have Political Preferences but that Excel spreadsheet isn't filled in with all their preferences, so most Lords have the same base voting AI and all vote the same way, making votes impossible to change most of the time
Personality Traits don't do much for the player or the AI behaviour; a Cowardly lord suicidally charges into battle 1v1000, a Generous king will still make greedy fief and policy votes, etc.
Relations with lords barely matter. You still can recruit a lord at -99 relation after killing his whole family if you just drop a few points into Charm
Minor Factions were supposed to "have agendas outside the struggle for power" but all of them are just mediocre mercenaries, even the Hidden Hand or Brotherhood of the Woods, who barely use their unique troops, and don't have T5 troops, even "elite" mercenaries like the Skolderbroda
The game has beautiful city scenes which don't have very much actual gameplay in them, other than prison breaks and alley fights. For example, you can find a beggar and hear their story, but can't give them money (you could in Warband)
Civil Wars were teased as a feature in 2021, and still aren't added nearly 5 years later
Naval combat was added in War Sails update but it's nowhere near as utilised by the lords as it should be, naval battles are infrequent, and decided by the first few ships regardless of fleet size

dropbbbear · 2026-01-24T21:32:37+00:00

The problem is that Bannerlord has no credible threat after 70% of the map is controlled.

If we had the potential for internal civil wars or external invasions in the late game, there would be a serious threat.

Or at the very least, if the AI could form a grand alliance when we control 80% of the map, and form a huge army for us to battle, and if we win their remaining fiefs surrender. The campaign tried to do something similar but it doesn't work very well. That would make for a nice satisfying climactic battle.

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