Focus points just don't feel good.

[Schmiddy]

I'll be honest, the whole focus point system kind of sucks. It was a great idea, but the execution leaves me feeling pretty dissatisfied long-term, it seems like the game pushes you to min-max and become an end-game god within just a few hours of play, then afterwards progression grinds to a halt. I think it took me 2-3 hours to get my party limit to over 100, exceeding most enemy mercenary companies straight out of the gate, not to mention combat skills and insane party speed buffs. It also discourages you from exploring different play-styles, locking you into a specific set of weapons or skills.

Editing this section out of the post because people were being nitpicky about the technicals of progression and i misremembered how the riding skill works. The point is that progression with focus points is absurd and unfulfilling.

What I really want is a "classic mode" which is very simple: no focus points, just 1x experience all day.



On a side note bring back villages as their own fiefs with their own management.

[kristianjakob]

Nonsense.

The only thing that is remotely factual in this comparison is that, yes, you could level up all the weapon proficiencies you liked in Warband. However, in Warband they only affected your own personal combatskill. In Bannerlord each weaponskill comes with various party related buffs, so it kinda makes sense that access to them is more restricted.

[Teralitha]

^^
LOL, beat me to it. I was about to call BS on most of what he said. But, I kind of agree on the character progression. Feels too grindy because of the slow progress of some skills.

[Schmiddy]

Originally posted by kristianjakob:

Nonsense.

The only thing that is remotely factual in this comparison is that, yes, you could level up all the weapon proficiencies you liked in Warband. However, in Warband they only affected your own personal combatskill. In Bannerlord each weaponskill comes with various party related buffs, so it kinda makes sense that access to them is more restricted.

what is not factual?
This is 100% opinion other than my experiences of raising party limit to over 100 in 2-3 hours (which is not hyperbole) and raising 2 handed to around 200 in a couple hours (also not hyperbole, this happened just last night) and my riding was stuck at 90 because i didnt have enough focus points put into it

[kristianjakob]

Originally posted by Schmiddy:

Originally posted by kristianjakob:

Nonsense.

The only thing that is remotely factual in this comparison is that, yes, you could level up all the weapon proficiencies you liked in Warband. However, in Warband they only affected your own personal combatskill. In Bannerlord each weaponskill comes with various party related buffs, so it kinda makes sense that access to them is more restricted.

what is not factual?
This is 100% opinion other than my experiences of raising party limit to over 100 in 2-3 hours (which is not hyperbole) and raising 2 handed to around 200 in a couple hours (also not hyperbole, this happened just last night) and my riding was stuck at 90 because i didnt have enough focus points put into it

So. You could easily do the same in Warband. And if you dont put points into horseriding then, surprise, you cant level it. Funny enough, if you didnt put points into horseriding, in warband, then it was obviously also stuck. So, what the f... is the difference.

Teralitha is however right, a key problem with progression in Bannerlord is that the rate of growth is not remotely even between different skills. That does create issues where certain skills are virtually pointless to invest in because the advantage arrives too late to really matter.

[Aegyssus]

Originally posted by Teralitha:

^^
LOL, beat me to it. I was about to call BS on most of what he said. But, I kind of agree on the character progression. Feels too grindy because of the slow progress of some skills.

[Xequilibrium]

Nothing wrong with the system, you grow quick on start, but slow down later. The AI gets bigger armies later ingame. You can meet 700+ soldier armies under one lords command.

Also you can't take castles / towns with just 100 soldiers. While you beat bandits easily (and you are suposed to) other lords armies are another story. Try take on an enemy army alone and you will see :)

[fastforward]

I totally agree with the OP. The Character Development System is not really well done.
It's totally fine that TW decided to make a new system and not use Warbands System, but then they made the new system simply anti fun. Its fine that this new system is a grind but what is not fine is that my character that has killed countless Armies that were larger than his by a margin of 50+% still has tactics value of 17 because i didnt put any "focus points" into tactics to increase the learning limit. Even without focus points that char is definetly a better tactician, but the game simply ignores that. There should be no cap on how high a skill can get.
Attribute and Focus Points are simply the same thing only difference is that Attribute points increase limits in 3 skills while Focus Points increase limit in only 1 skill. If we would have no attributes or no focus points, (i mean one of em removed) it would change nothing. Literally the system would already be better if we only would get either attribute or focus points.
The limits to how many focus points and Attribute points (max 5 focus and max 10 attribute in 1 skill or attribute) are anti sandbox. In warband i could make my character be super charismatic/strong/agile/smart, in Bannerlord most of my characters are simply the same. Why cant i put like 10 focus points into leadership and make my character a incredible leader with a 500 man strong army? If you want to answer sth about balance, dont even bother. This is a singleplayer game that is supposed to be fun, and having unique playtroughs is what i believe is fun and values can allways be tweaked to not make sth completely OP.
The learning limits are badly designed, there simply should be no limit, skills should be able to develop infinitely as long as one uses em, but ofc the amount of xp necessary for the next level should rise exponentially so that without sufficient focus points in a particular skill reaching level 300 from 299 would take a very long time. Still at least it would feel like the character is actually progressing, getting better and so on. The whole thing that the learning speeds decrease the further a skill progresses makes it so that non player character never even reach the good perks. I have never ever seen a single NPC have the ministry of health perk, or the 275 leadership perk, or the lvl 275 steward perk... and so on.
What I would have done with the skill system is focus points increase learning speed but by a lower amount that they do now, the learning speed would never decrease, and Attribute points give a flat bonus in the associated skills. The bonus from the Attributes is added to the final skill and does not add to qualify for perks. And the Xp required for next level rises exponentially. It would mean that reaching lvl 100 in any skill is possible without any focus points, but ofc would be reached faster, if there is focus points in there. Getting to level 200 is possible even with lower focus points amounts, but getting to like lvl 300 without focus points is simply impossible because the character will die of old age before reaching this high skill level without focus points. To calculate the Xp gained from actions and the xp required would require a guy actually sitting down and doing some math but it could end up being a really great and fun system. (i tried modding that but some patch changed something about how the character development system is designed in the code and it broke it and after that i simply didnt want to start from scratch and do even more reverse engineering)
on perks, there is too many of them, and most of them do nothing except for the ones that are OP, like Ministry of Health. Many Perks are completely useless either on the main character or on the companions, since main character will never be governor, or companions that never will be clan leaders. the ones that could be useful like some perks that increase damage or movement speed do so by such a small margin that its not noticeable, there is no difference when fighting enemies whether they have a good commander with the perks actually fitting his troops or whether i fight a commander that has no perks whatsoever. And same goes for the player, even if i go through all the hassle of making a particular companion be the best infantry leader possible, the impact from his perks is barely there, maybe 15% dmg and 10-20% movement speed. And to achieve that i would need to train that companion, take him fighting vs bandits, clearing hideouts with him, watching out that he doesnt die, and so on. only for that ridiculously small impact. If those perks were gone, i believe i wouldnt even miss it, i would just spend more time playing instead of selecting new perks over and over again on many characters.
There are some good perks, but most of them are very high up in the skill tree so that non player characters never get them even when fully focussed and attributed on those skills. (have you ever tried getting a party of companions with the throwing perk that makes em penetrate shields? i did and it wasnt fun, it took so long i gave up, especially because even at skill level of 300 they still miss 10/10)

this post is a rant, i enjoy this game alot, but i hate it that it simply is not way way way more the way i wanted it to be.

[awanderingswordsman]

There's mods that fix this. I forget which one I'm using but it let's you customize base learning limit, focus point learning limit gain, stat point learning limit gain, and focus and stat point max (as well as how many gained per level). You can also set a minimum learning limit that it'll never go below (which I put at 0.5) so you will never completely stall out any skill growth even if you don't focus on it.

I do agree though that focus points in general don't really feel good to use. I think the game functions fine if not better without them entirely. Stat points basically already serve the same function and it feels more like a bandaid to stop you from getting too strong too fast rather than a fun game element to work around.

[Schmiddy]

Originally posted by kristianjakob:

Originally posted by Schmiddy:

what is not factual?
This is 100% opinion other than my experiences of raising party limit to over 100 in 2-3 hours (which is not hyperbole) and raising 2 handed to around 200 in a couple hours (also not hyperbole, this happened just last night) and my riding was stuck at 90 because i didnt have enough focus points put into it

So. You could easily do the same in Warband. And if you dont put points into horseriding then, surprise, you cant level it. Funny enough, if you didnt put points into horseriding, in warband, then it was obviously also stuck. So, what the f... is the difference.

Teralitha is however right, a key problem with progression in Bannerlord is that the rate of growth is not remotely even between different skills. That does create issues where certain skills are virtually pointless to invest in because the advantage arrives too late to really matter.

You couldn't do EVERYTHING required to become a major power right at the start of the game. If you min-maxed you maxed out a single skill and everything else massively suffered. Also weapon proficiency was its own category which was supported by skills rather than being entirely reliant on skill points being put into it.

Sorry i forgot about the horseriding being a points skill, thats the one booboo I made. Sue me. The issue still stands.

[Sleepysteve]

The problem is the utterly insane lack of depth in the game coupled with a relatively steep diminishing return on xp leaves you feeling bored after a few hrs of playing.

[Schmiddy]

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[Schmiddy]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

There's mods that fix this. I forget which one I'm using but it let's you customize base learning limit, focus point learning limit gain, stat point learning limit gain, and focus and stat point max (as well as how many gained per level). You can also set a minimum learning limit that it'll never go below (which I put at 0.5) so you will never completely stall out any skill growth even if you don't focus on it.

I do agree though that focus points in general don't really feel good to use. I think the game functions fine if not better without them entirely. Stat points basically already serve the same function and it feels more like a bandaid to stop you from getting too strong too fast rather than a fun game element to work around.

If you could check your modules when you get a chance and let me know I would super appreciate it, I've been looking for a mod that works but the ones I'm finding are all outdated and dont work anymore with 1.2 beta (which is essential IMO because it fixes the siege bug where you cant launch attacks after another lord joins.

[awanderingswordsman]

I'm not playing on 1.2 beta so it probably doesn't work anymore if thats the case, I'll check now to see which one I am using and edit this though.

EDIT: I'm using "adjustable leveling" which only seems to be on the workshop (not nexus). It works for the live branch but no idea about the beta 1.2 branch.

[Schmiddy]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

I'm not playing on 1.2 beta so it probably doesn't work anymore if thats the case, I'll check now to see which one I am using and edit this though.

EDIT: I'm using "adjustable leveling" which only seems to be on the workshop (not nexus). It works for the live branch but no idea about the beta 1.2 branch.

not working on 1.2 yet unfortunately, bummer

[Panthaz89]

I think the focus+attributes works well imo though I think attributes dedicated to weapons(str/ctrl) are very underwhelming for your character personally because they won't be using multiple melee/ranged unless you want be an infantry/ranged captain yourself. If anything I'd love to have the option for a slider for NPC xp gain(boost it by 300%) as I have no problem getting OP i'd love to fight and fight with other op characters.

Having Caravans should give you passive trading XP/SP. I think the changes to Leadership/Rougery that they made a few patches ago where your troops can earn you leadership/roguery was a great add for the system they need more ways for you to invest and feel like your making good progress when you work to build up for it.

Tactics is one of the skills in serious need of a major upgrade as its really not worth going for and even maxed out doesn't make a big deal in simulations if you wanted to do that type of campaign.

I do agree that there should be an option to have a minimum of 0.25-0.5 SP gain if you are maxed over your threshold. IT SHOULD feel painfully slow rather than no gain. I'm pretty sure you always gain xp towards your level but don't gain SP.