Norland Demo Review & Feedback

[OGPG]

This is my 3rd play-through of Norland.
First 2 were the Alpha Play-test and now the Public Demo.
Around 30 hours total in playing.

The game runs fantastic and I didnt experience any issues with gameplay.
After 3 playthroughs I finally got the hang of building out and managing my Town.

This time my Town wasnt burned down by Raiders, my Wife didnt cheat on me with the Bishop, my Brother wasnt seduced by a spy, my 8 year old son didnt spread rumors, sleep with a peasant and conspire against me. Half the Citizenry wasnt sick with Rutabaga overdosing. The Town didnt rebel and lynch the cheating Queen.
This time everything went fairly well and just as things were getting interesting, the Demo ended. LOL.

I'm anxious to play further and see how it all progresses.
Got a new addition to my Favorites list. I will definitely be purchasing this when it goes into EA.

Suggestions:

Emoticon Guide. Half the time I dont know whats going on or whats being discussed.

Keymap Guide. WASD, Space, 1, 2, 3, Tab & ESC + the Mouse are all I have found that have a function. Are there others?
A way to Edit the Keymap would be nice.

Slow down the Character aging.
Lords age about 1 year per Game day. They will grow old and die within 1 Season (30 days?)
That seems a bit fast. What are we, mayflies?
I would like my Lords to be able to learn, teach, adventure, grow and develop as characters, but they age so fast in the time frame of the game (2 years to every RL hour) that they never really get to do anything or become anything.
Why dont they age in parallel to the in-game clock?

Larger/More Fertile Fields or a way to create them.
You only get about 5 spots of fertile land near the starting area.
Outside of those areas 10%-30% fertility isnt really worth laying a plot or maintaining it.

Replanting/Reseeding Trees so we dont turn our Province into a wasteland by cutting down all the trees.

The "Teach" Action should be called "Learn" because you are learning a skill from someone else (Performer) and not teaching them.

A way to delete all the backed up Auto-Saves


TLDR: Awesome fun game. Keep up the great work Devs.

[D.]

Thank you, that's helpful

[PFD]

Originally posted by OGPG:

This is my 3rd play-through of Norland.
First 2 were the Alpha Play-test and now the Public Demo.
Around 30 hours total in playing.

The game runs fantastic and I didnt experience any issues with gameplay.
After 3 playthroughs I finally got the hang of building out and managing my Town.

This time my Town wasnt burned down by Raiders, my Wife didnt cheat on me with the Bishop, my Brother wasnt seduced by a spy, my 8 year old son didnt spread rumors, sleep with a peasant and conspire against me. Half the Citizenry wasnt sick with Rutabaga overdosing. The Town didnt rebel and lynch the cheating Queen.
This time everything went fairly well and just as things were getting interesting, the Demo ended. LOL.

I'm anxious to play further and see how it all progresses.
Got a new addition to my Favorites list. I will definitely be purchasing this when it goes into EA.

Suggestions:

Emoticon Guide. Half the time I dont know whats going on or whats being discussed.

Keymap Guide. WASD, Space, 1, 2, 3, Tab & ESC + the Mouse are all I have found that have a function. Are there others?
A way to Edit the Keymap would be nice.

Slow down the Character aging.
Lords age about 1 year per Game day. They will grow old and die within 1 Season (30 days?)
That seems a bit fast. What are we, mayflies?
I would like my Lords to be able to learn, teach, adventure, grow and develop as characters, but they age so fast in the time frame of the game (2 years to every RL hour) that they never really get to do anything or become anything.
Why dont they age in parallel to the in-game clock?

Larger/More Fertile Fields or a way to create them.
You only get about 5 spots of fertile land near the starting area.
Outside of those areas 10%-30% fertility isnt really worth laying a plot or maintaining it.

Replanting/Reseeding Trees so we dont turn our Province into a wasteland by cutting down all the trees.

The "Teach" Action should be called "Learn" because you are learning a skill from someone else (Performer) and not teaching them.

A way to delete all the backed up Auto-Saves


TLDR: Awesome fun game. Keep up the great work Devs.

Making lords growing slower or even in parallel to ingame clock will absolutely destroy balance, I suppose

[OGPG]

You "suppose"?
Please explain your supposition on how having them age at slower pace would absolutely destroy balance.

[D.]

Overall, we wanted to make a balance between giving players time to get attached to the characters while also developing dynasties. Personally, I have one character from birth to death who lives about 8-9 real hours. This is enough to make me sad when he dies

[ralfaltmann]

Hi,

I'm also enjoying this game. In addition to the already made suggestions I think that the immigration part should be reworked - less frequent immigration, maybe managed by an immigration office or something like that. And maybe peasants can become babies? ;)

Regards

[BrowneHawk]

I just started dabbling last night. I already know this games gonna be a hit.

One thing I like about it is, based on what I saw on the pictures and what was said about this game I already had an idea of what it was like prior to touching it. I was not let down. I got what I was expecting.

You have your rimworld/prisonarchitect graphics, already proven art style that people like.
Some will say it has ck3 elements, but those are just people who haven't played a guild game.
The having 3 main characters, the dynasty stuff, the relationships between townspeople and overall life sim going on is very The Guild vibe and I'm all for it.

I like how the combat is more hands off. You pick your lord(leader) you give him some men with weapons, then send them off to fight. After that its up to them on how they perform and do the bidding of their master. Sometimes in rimworld I found myself micromanaging combat way too much, this game doesn't seem to have that issue.

I like the hover over tooltip to lock in place method. I keep that setting in ck3 also.

I guess what I'm getting at is on the initial fire up of the game, its has way more Green flags compared to Red flags.

[D.]

Originally posted by ralfaltmann:

Hi,

I'm also enjoying this game. In addition to the already made suggestions I think that the immigration part should be reworked - less frequent immigration, maybe managed by an immigration office or something like that. And maybe peasants can become babies? ;)

Regards

You just don't have to satisfy the needs of the peasants so hard. Sell them less alcohol, more expensive food - their mood will go down, and migration will slow down (and you will make money).

You can also reduce the number of fanatics (and reducing the potential danger from religious rebellion) through sermon of doubt in the temple.

[ralfaltmann]

Originally posted by D.:

You just don't have to satisfy the needs of the peasants so hard. Sell them less alcohol, more expensive food - their mood will go down, and migration will slow down (and you will make money).

You can also reduce the number of fanatics (and reducing the potential danger from religious rebellion) through sermon of doubt in the temple.

Okay, I'll play with those settings. It just feels "wrong" to take the mood down to have a stable population :D

[xMGDx]

I like the 1 year per day aging. Seems like in the long run this will keep the game from having an overpowered unbalanced lord

[Z-Prodigy]

Hats off to the devs outstanding job. This has been a great game. I am loving it and I look forward to the EA release. If you need a tester I'm up for it.

Some possible suggestions/Future additions: for lineages/dynasties maybe a family tree page might be helpful.
I like the setup of the main city with villages layout where they pay you taxes. Is there any way they set what they give to you as a tithe? Appointing a tax man/sheriff to collect dues could be integrated with creating army and bonuses given for lord management skill.

Also ability to create structures within the provinces: Additional villages with specialties like lumber, alchemists, mining, fishing/hunting/farming, etc.

Elevation of outstanding citizens to lordship-- maybe a medal system for warriors who do well in battles. <From what I saw archery is on the way which will change tactics, something tells me mount may be thing in the future as well which has me thinking up so many plays>

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like the holy rings is basically the prestige system <which is an awesome outside the box way to go about things>? Is it meant for tracking singular prestige of a house/dynasty member? If so, would it be possible to account for that prestige somewhere and maybe also give prestige for certain buildings being built/upgraded? Maybe the lord's hall or temple can have a holding place for trinkets/artifacts which could be attained through quests for the lords at random places on the map.

I already felt the hand the inquisition for the silly death of a bishop wanting to play amateur hunter in my lands. It was quite terrifying<shivers>. They could be used as well against players getting to big for their britches so to speak. I.e. those like me who learn how to abuse the diplomacy system with barely a thought to the other petty lords armies.
Those who accrue tyranny/bad actors would face the inquisition for their transgressions.

Roving merc bands which can cause issues depending upon standing with them. You could host them at the tavern to increase their disposition towards you making it easier to higher them piecemeal or as a group. Or you could risk going to battle. With defeating them or subduing them while in your lands nets you possible loot: slaves, gear, gold

A Kennel/Warhounds-- possible from the capture and taming of fleshwolves-- men could use them in battle trading shield equipment slot for leashes. Leashes and collars could be made at the kennel. Collars would be needed for taming along with a steady supply of meat.

I have loads more ideas but not sure of their implementation as I believe this is low fantasy
<fleshwolves, undead>

Have I mentioned I love this game?

[OGPG]

Originally posted by xMGDx:

I like the 1 year per day aging. Seems like in the long run this will keep the game from having an overpowered unbalanced lord

Well, if they slowed down the aging of Lords they would also have to slow down how quickly Lords develops any skills, abilities and other attributes to avoid them becoming over powered.

I dont know, maybe aging is good the way it is post 10 play hours. Dont know as I havent gotten that far

[Polundo]

First off. Absolutely loving the demo and can't wait for the actual release.

An issue I had though was when I first started playing the demo it was running fine, but it wasn't long before it started Lagging and Freezing, even when I started a new game. So I'm wondering if this has something to do with there being so many auto-saves. So something handy to include might be to auto delete older auto-saves after so many, and an option to delete auto-saves yourself.

Also in the Dynasty tab I'm a little confused by what click the different tabs do? Same in the Army Tab, I saw a bone broken tan, a angry face and two others I think, what does clicking these do? Thanks

[Meowish]

Originally posted by OGPG:

A way to delete all the backed up Auto-Saves


TLDR: Awesome fun game. Keep up the great work Devs.

I guess you could go into the save location on your pc and delete them from there, at least until the option to delete them from in game is there :)

I do absolutely agree though, this game is fantastic and I can not stop playing the demo, can't wait for EA to be released so I can play until I'm old and stiff (in which case I'm happy I don't age like the characters in the game do )

Originally posted by Z-Prodigy:

A Kennel/Warhounds-- possible from the capture and taming of fleshwolves-- men could use them in battle trading shield equipment slot for leashes. Leashes and collars could be made at the kennel. Collars would be needed for taming along with a steady supply of meat.

I have loads more ideas but not sure of their implementation as I believe this is low fantasy
<fleshwolves, undead>

Have I mentioned I love this game?:goldensmile:

I absolutely LOVE this idea!

[dasjay3]

there are a few things i would just like just for fun, I would like a dev mode and maybe bows for ranged combat.

Honestly I've played for about 10- 11 hours and i think its pretty fun so far

[NorlandCM]

Originally posted by dasjay3:

there are a few things i would just like just for fun, I would like a dev mode and maybe bows for ranged combat.

Honestly I've played for about 10- 11 hours and i think its pretty fun so far

Archers, cavalry and sieges are currently being developed and planned to be added in the future, thanks!