Campaign? What campaign....

[Agent707]

I've got this thing that I have 1600 days to figure out how much it's worth....? And that's it?
Game is weird.

Seriously wondering what the difference between campaign and sandbox is... seems campaign is pretty much just sandbox anyway. I mean, because there isn't one.

[Maero]

yeah they should have scrapped it imo,it's embarrassing

[Iskar]

I simply ignore it. The mediocre banner + everyone-declares-war-on-you script are not worth bothering with.

[Darth Revan]

campaign is sandbox with a bit of guidance through the sandbox which comes in the form of the main story quests.

the sandbox is and always was the main focus of this series. (at least of the main games of this series)

[Clovis Sangrail]

In campaign, you get that main campaign, plus a nice little quest to rescue your two brothers and your sister. These make very nice additions to your party, and they are not in sandbox,

That main quest is fubar and contributes absolutely nothing to the game except heartache and frustration. And you do not need to do it to create a kingdom. The cool kids know this, and they play campaign mode, rescue their siblings, then ignore Nerretzes' Folly and play the game as a sandbox.

That banner doesn't do ♥♥♥♥ for you anyway.

[Morkonan]

IMO, there's only upsides to playing in "Campaign" mode - One doesn't have to finish that quest. I see no reason for Sandbox mode existing. But, whatevs... /shrug

I really do appreciate the effort and the special scenes/etc that one can only experience if they engage with the Quest. It's worth doing... once. I wish there were some more bits of fluff like that scattered around in other game mechanics. I appreciate, especially, the writing and character interactions in the early portions of the quest that help color the gameplay from the differing points of view from the main parties concerned. I feel that bit of craftwork was especially well done to very good effect. (Though, later, one realizes these NPCs aren't worth reacting to and are all just hollowed out husks of "NPCs." :))


I'll leave this here:

TW sometimes responds very quickly to complaints that someone with decision-making capability thinks they have a "quick fix" for. I don't mean that they're doing something nefarious - I do believe they have a sincere wish to make players happy.

I also believe they, at one time, placed a large amount of importance on complaint-reading-and-responding-to during the first months of E.A. ...

To be honest, taken all in the same sweep, most complaints about any game are frivolous nothings that a developer doesn't need to know, doesn't need to respond to, and doesn't need to spend one hour of labor on addressing. I think someone may have burned out trying to cover the plethora of frivolous complaints and that's led us to the "Chorus of Silence" we experience, today. (Unlocking mods so very early in E.A. ruined E.A. and was a dumb move... that I still wanna ^%@ about... Unlocking "Kings With No Content" was dumb, too, but not dumber than not having them at E.A., etc..)

Players complained about the "story quest" (Main Quest) because they felt it was not "Warband'ish" to have included it in this sequel title. There's points on both sides of that argument, but TW responded very rapidly to this early E.A. complaint and added "Sandbox Mode."

That should have just been a "toggle" so that its use is very clear. But, it's present in high visibility in the launcher as a game-mode and raises unnecessary questions and confuses new players. (Sandbox Mode as a placeholder is understandable, but it's not a placeholder...)

Why should it just be a "toggle?"

Because it's just plain bad marketing as it is... What it says, in that state, given this game's gameplay, is that "you may not like the game as we designed it to be played, so here's another way to play that you might like more betterer because the real mode isn't worth playing." It also says "The Main Story Quest Is Stupid." Yes, that's what it says...

This is not a progressive, leveled, RTS game where a player may want access to all technologies, capabilities, units, buildings, and play a full playthrough on one preferred map against xx enemies/etc... The gameplay in Bannerlord is the same in both "modes."

But, i guess someone wanted to demonstrate that TW responded to "Quest complaints," but did not want to take the time and effort to respond effectively by changing the launcher and how the default quest "mod" is loaded so it could refuse to load those specific Quest instances... :/ (Heck, the main "Story Questline" could have been just keyed up as a "mod," separately. That might have been misleading, though, but it would communicate a better message than a "game mode" does.)

[The Big Brzezinski]

Plots similar to X4 would have been a better method. Chains of narrative quests you find in the world with unique encounters and rewards, changing the status quo of the world at the end depending on your actions. Do the ones you want, when you chose, and how you like. I think Fire & Sword had something similar. With this sort of narrative content, there would be no need to have different campaign and sandbox modes. Ah well.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Plots similar to X4 would have been a better method. Chains of narrative quests you find in the world with unique encounters and rewards, changing the status quo of the world at the end depending on your actions. Do the ones you want, when you chose, and how you like. I think Fire & Sword had something similar. With this sort of narrative content, there would be no need to have different campaign and sandbox modes. Ah well.

X4 is so far from Bannerlord you can get though, Completely different games.