Mount and Blade:Warband – Story time

January 7, 2011

I’m debating whether to keep a running blog account of my Mount and Blade game. Part of me thinks it would be interesting, and also a good way to cover what I like about the game without doing a ten page ‘review’ post. On the other hand, maybe it would make for some boring blogging? I mean in-game stories about MMOs (especially the “I’m not in Empire anymore” sandbox ones) are one thing; they are virtual worlds and unexpected and interesting stuff (hopefully) happens, but single-player games are different. Bet you won’t believe how my Dragon Age/Onyxia game ended! Whelps for you as well? Hmmm. M&B:W though is a single-player sandbox, so now what?

I’ll give it a shot, and if it’s not working out, I’ll stop. Feel free to suggest how to improve on this, or what you might like to read. With that said, on to the game.

I never finished my initial game (130 in-game days played), but I did experience enough that I feel like a second go-around will be different enough to make it worthwhile. I’m still clueless on how things work once you really rise in power, but I’m comfortable enough with the beginning and middle to feel like I’m not going to totally screw myself over. Plus with the few mods I’ve installed, I feel like a fresh start is the way to go.

I decided to start in Nord lands, since they are in the top-left corner of the map and are more protected than right-in-the-middle Swadia. I also like the idea of an army full of Viking-like melee units. I decided not to start as a noble, just to see what the journey is like to get to that status. Finally, I made a rough plan on which companions I want to keep around, and how exactly the various party-based skills are going to be spread around.

After completing the starting merchant quest line, I went around for a bit collecting recruits from the local villages. I also participated in a tournament, but with my character being so fresh, I only advanced a few rounds before getting knocked out. The real killer was archery, as I was doing next to no damage and that was after missing most of my shots.

The first quest I accepted was from King Ragnar himself, to collect taxes from his city. Once this was done, I was sitting on just over 7000 dinars. Instead of going back to the king, I used this seed money to buy up some local goods and went on a little trip around the world, visiting various cities to not only buy/sell for profit, but also to drop in to their taverns and find some companions. After seeing much of the world, I had collected some companions and made some good money, so it was time to return to Nord lands and go about becoming a lord.

Turning in the king’s taxes earned me a bit of favor with him, but not nearly enough for him to accept me as a vassal. Being a peasant, I was also not able to access the local feast to chat it up with the other lords. Since I was not officially aligned with a nation, my only ‘enemies’ were bandits, and unfortunately most of them traveled faster than my party, making it impossible for me to chase them down and fight them to earn some renown. Chicken/egg here.

I tried to help some of the local villages with their problems, but doing peasant work was not getting me very far in terms of status, and the few fights I was able to get into were very slowly getting me where I wanted to be. I cut down my party to just over 20 men, including companions, and this along with some training increased our travel speed enough to hunt down the local raiders. After a few tough fights, my little band was shaping up and we were finally earning some decent money, along with picking up some better equipment.

The tipping point came when a local lord, upset that the Nords were at war, wanted me to attack a Sarranid town or caravan, place evidence that it was the Nords, and hopefully start a war. While the journey was long, I finally tracked down a Sarranid trade caravan and helped myself to their goods (over the dead bodies of the guards). The local lord was very pleased with my success, and this combined with a tournament win earned me enough renown to become an official vassal of the Nords. Success!

As soon as I joined the kingdom and accepted rule over a poor little village, the Sarranids declared war on us. I wonder why…

The Marshal of the land sent out the call, and eager to prove my place, I hastily accepted. We traveled across Swadia to lay siege to a Sarranid castle, our army a solid 400+ men strong between seven lords. We made a quick stop at a village (to pillage it), and then it was on to the castle. After a few days of siege, the battle for the castle itself broke out, and while I went down on the final push (one too many arrows in my chest will do that), the siege was a success and our kingdom was one castle stronger.

After quickly resting up, I noticed one of our lords was locked in battle with two Sarranid lords, with things looking grim. I rushed over to help, but even with my band of 40ish men, the odds were still against us (120 vs 190). It also did not help that I was leading a band of peasant and not knights. Still, the first battle, while bloody, went our way. We had killed or wounded 150 of their men, at the cost of 90 of our own. Round two looked promising, as 30 vs 40 was much better than 120 vs 190. Or so I thought. Very quickly I noticed that their 40 were mostly highly-trained units, while we were left with pitchforks and rocks. It was a slaughter, and I was the last man to go down, taken off my horse by a very angry mob.

With that battle lost, and our other allies no-where in sight, I was captured and taken to a local castle, where after a few days I was able to escape. Unfortunately many of my companions are still sitting in the dungeon, and I’ve so far only been able to re-connect with two of them. Beaten, I returned home to Nord lands and began to rebuild my army.

As I did so, the Vaegirs, our neighbors to the west, declared war on us.

21 Comments | Mount and Blade: Warband | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

M&B:Warband modding, round one

January 6, 2011

Round one of Mount and Blade modding complete, and here are the results.

I started by installing the entire Floris Mod Pack. The install was super easy, and the first time I loaded it up everything worked, so huge plus there. Floris is not a total overhaul of Warband, but it does change so many things that it comes close, and for me, at this point, it was TOO much.

I’m also the type that if something makes 95% of a game better, but 5% of it worse, that 5% bothers me enough not to justify the 95% improvement, and that’s how I feel about the mod pack at this point. The expanded items, some of the UI changes, the graphics stuff, all of those were very nice. But then the small ‘bugs’ (like a lord not wearing his armor to a feast), the imbalances (AI not using spear-based units well), and the little stuff (new water texture looks great, except at the start of a river, where it looks terrible) add up in my mind and, well, I’m back to playing Native mode.

I think I’ll go back to the Floris pack at some point, as I would like to see what it does in the long run, but not yet.

That said I have installed some of the graphic upgrades separately, like the Graphic Boost Pack and Blood enhancement tweak. I also grabbed the Arena Overhaul mod, which is really great. I tried to install the Better Banner mod, but got an error when loading it up, and rather than fiddle with it, I just removed it. If anyone is aware of other good mods, feel free to post them.

Right now I’ve started a new game with the Nord faction, seeing how much better I can do this time around. So far the big challenge has been getting the King to accept me as a vassal (did not start as a noble), and hunting down bandits and such was not working with a 40+ band of peasants. Many of them got cut, horses got bought for my companions, and things are rolling now.

13 Comments | Mount and Blade: Warband | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Massively goes EG, I go Tobold.

January 5, 2011

I apologize for the “All Warband All The Time” interruption, but I think this is worth posting about. Massively did a quick impressions piece about Rift, which includes Jef playing it for an hour, and the comments explode with people judging the ‘professionalism’ and ‘journalistic integrity’ of the staff. Its good stuff, in that ‘watch the idiots’ train wreck kind of way.

In a comment here, Drew alerted me to this whole thing, and brought up everyone’s favorite bastion of truth, Eurogamer, as a comparison. The two are black and white here, and I think it’s worthwhile to quickly go over why (especially since I often do EG Style reviews here).

Up front, Jef states he only played for an hour. That right there level sets what you should expect. It’s an opinion from an hour, nothing more, nothing less. It’s also negative, which has SOME value, but it’s up to the reader to decide how much. The first hour of EVE and Darkfall are also somewhat negative for many, but what does that mean? If the first hour is poor because the design for the next 100 demands it to be, that’s one thing. If it’s negative because your first hour is identical to the last 100 you spend in themepark X, that’s another. And, perhaps you see “I’ve played this before” not as an issue, but as a selling point. If you are looking for ‘more of the same’, that’s a damn good sales pitch. If the next MMO to be released has a first hour impression of “Man, this feels exactly like Darkfall, bleh!”, I’m sold (on the first hour).

The clear difference between what Jef did and what EG did is Jef level set everyone up front, and he also did not attempt to break down features and provide ‘facts’ he himself did not experience. The EG issue was never about how long a reviewer SHOULD play, but that EG had multiple factual errors, and when pointed out, stood behind them. Like I said, black/white.

Tobold also has a post about this, although with a slightly different take, one that I somewhat echoed here before: Rift being ‘more of the same’ is not necessarily a bad thing, and I still stand behind the ‘2004 WoW for 2011 is not bad’ statement.

However, having spent some more time now with Rift (10 hours or so?), here is the issue; from what I saw, Rift is NOT 2004 WoW for 2011. 2004 WoW brought a lot of new ideas to the MMO genre at that time. It great improved on EQ1 in a number of areas, and while its core was similar, most of the details were significantly different. Rift is not significantly different. Forget moving the genre forward, it moves it sideways, or even, moves it back a few steps.

The rift system is being called WAR’s PQs version 2.0 (as somewhat of an insult), but as Zubon from KTR correctly stated, where is the 2.0? A whole version forward because they randomly spawn? They still get zerged (without scaling), they will still be forgotten/ignored once you have what you want, and you have indeed seen them all once you have seen two or three (if not one, sadly). That they may or may not temporarily impact the area around them is, for now, a total non-factor if you don’t need the rep/items/whatever from them (and have others who feel the same). Again, a beta is an ideal condition, but come live, things change drastically, and not in a good way. Nothing so far has convinced me that rifts won’t go the way WARs PQs did a few months after release.

The soul system does seem interested, but at a max of 66 points total and 50 to max one tree, how many 50/16/0 builds will be ‘viable’ three months after release? But even if you assume dozens and dozens of different builds are viable, so what? You now have dozens of different builds to… repeat 2004-era quests and grind out the first few parts of a rift? Yay…

I’m being harsh on Rift, perhaps too harsh, but in many ways it feels like a huge opportunity wasted. Rift just does way too many things too safe, and really does feel like ‘more of the same’ in a very bad way. 2004 WoW grabbed you because while feeling familiar, it constantly surprised or impressed with something, be it big or small. So far, each step with Rift has felt very familiar, but without a single surprise. You go around every corner expecting something, and sure enough, it’s right there, just as you predicted. That’s not good, but maybe beyond 10 hours this changes. I’ll likely find out when Aria and I finally sit down to play, but I’m not holding my breath here.

20 Comments | beta, Mass Media, MMO design, Rift, World of Warcraft | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Warband mod pack and a pile of bodies

January 4, 2011

All M&B:Warband, all the time!

I’m going to install this monster collection of mods as soon as I ‘finish’ my current game. I like the sound of a lot of them, and as of right now I’m looking more for stuff that enhances the core game rather than remakes it, and I think what Floris has put together is just that (correct me if I’m wrong here please).

As I mentioned before, fully maxed out (8x AA and such) I’m still sitting above 100FPS during the biggest battles, so I’m curious to see how far I can push things in terms of max characters and such. I upped the body count recently, and its good fun to ride in the aftermath of a huge blowout and see where and how things went down.

One of the best moments happened just yesterday, as one of my kingdom’s cities was under siege, and I rode in a bit late to help in the battle. It was the first time I’d been on the defending side of a castle, and it was just fascinating to see the battle from the walls rather than from the ground. It was also thrilling to crank out xbow bolt after xbow bolt as the enemies tries to make their way on to the walls, and eventually joining the mass of soldiers swinging away at the choke point. In a very realistic way, the enemies did push forward slowly, only to be pushed back off the wall once our reinforcements arrived. Castle fights are super brutal, and the amount of bodies piled into the choke point was jaw dropping.

One thing that I’ve noticed Warband does well is transition from being a small force focused game to more a political/meta game. When you first begin, all you are worried about is getting your small force up and running, making some coin, and doing whatever you can to get noticed. It’s a very ‘simple’ life.

As you progress, the ‘small’ stuff becomes less important, but you start to worry more about your relations with other lords, with the overall health of the kingdom, and how best to position yourself amongst all the turmoil of war. The game morphs very naturally, and in what I would image to be a very realistic way. I can only imagine things get even more ‘meta’ when you become king, but I’m not quite there yet.

10 Comments | Combat Systems, Mount and Blade: Warband | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Last day of Hardcore Casual

January 3, 2011

Dear Reader,

This is no longer an MMO blog, it’s now just a blog about Mount and Blade: Warband. I hope you understand, but lets face it, you are likely too busy playing M&B:W to read blogs. If I were home, I’d be playing too.

Thanks,

Syn

The above is said in jest, but just barely, and what kind of cruel world keeps a game like M&B:W away from me for so long? How has no one (that I read) blogged about this and declared it the second coming of everything awesome? I blame you all for this injustice; you collectively have failed as a blogging community.

Steam sale struck again, and because I remember seeing mentions that M&B:W had kind of a cool combat system, I picked it up. I believe that happened on Thursday. Three days later, I have just over 30 hours played. I’d like to have more, but the human body is weak. My mind has been playing it during the physical downtime however. Actually, as I write this I’m still mentally playing it. I just came up with a brilliant strategy to secure some land. Oh yes…

As frequent readers here can attest to, I’m kind of a big sandbox guy. I like ‘making’ the fun rather than having it handed to me, and nothing makes me smile like watching AI do something unexpectedly cool or clever. MMO sandboxes, dating back to UO, promised to replace the NPCs with other players, opening the box in terms of unexpected or cool stuff. UO more or less delivered, as have a few other sandbox games. Players however are flawed, because they can also do stupid things that break immersion, or cause perfectly good rules to be changed because they abuse them. For all the benefits an MMO brings to a sandbox, it also brings its fair share of drawbacks.

Single player sandbox games of high quality are rare, especially pure (no magic) medieval ones. It figures that a guy in a garage (plus wife) would be the ones to create such an amazing game like M&B:W. It’s also a slap in the face of the entire industry as a whole that so few can make something so amazing, in so many aspects. What in gods name do you spend $100m+ on if someone can make Warband happen?

I’m not going to do a full review of the game, but I do want to mention a few things that really stand out.

First and foremost is how well the game runs. Yes, we’re not talking DX11 powered Crysis graphics, but maxed out the game looks more than decent, and far more importantly the look of the game sucks you in rather than distracts you. Oh, and it runs at 120+ FPS maxed out at 1900×1200 with dozens of soldiers+horses all fighting it out. Loading times are very brief, and I’ve only had it crash twice (most likely due to my computer just begging me to give it a break more than anything else). With how quickly and frequently the game auto-saves, I lost less than 10 minutes to the crash, and that’s without ever saving the game myself. In short, the game just works, and you never find yourself fighting AGAINST your system or how things run. That’s rare in PC gaming, and highly appreciated.

Going along with how well the game runs, the UI and ‘how you play’ design of the game is simply fantastic. Things that should be in a menu are (selling/buying goods for instance), while things that add immersion are done ‘in game’ rather than in a menu (taverns, village/town quests). The game has great balance in this regard, and really makes you question the design of other games in contrast. You again find yourself just playing the game rather than playing with its controls, if you know what I mean. It also very much has that ‘one more turn’ style to it, without actually being turn-based. Straight medieval crack that makes hours disappear like seconds.

The often-mentioned combat in M&B:W is indeed phenomenal, and in so many different ways. For starters, it just feels powerful. You FEEL your sword coming down on someone, you FEEL your crossbow bolt taking someone off a horse, and you FEEL the terror you bring when you are charging into a line of infantry with your cavalry. Very similar to how Darkfall combat feels more visceral than standard hotbar mashing, the combat here is like that but on steroids.

But perhaps even importantly, everything feels balanced and accurate, while still allowing you to play hero. Taking a castle IS more difficult, and you can’t just go solo vs everyone else and expect to win. At the same time, you CAN be the deciding factor, and you can take out more men than the average soldier. It sounds very simple, but it really is a crazy balancing act. Yes, on a horse and with a bow you can ride in circles and pick people off, but they might hit you with ranged attacks, and if not, you will eventually run out of arrows. You can get really good at the melee combat, you easily beat 2-3 foes at once, but no amount of player-skill will stop 15+ enemies from eventually killing you. Far too many games either cheat to get you, or allow you to kill hundreds single-handedly. M&B:W get’s this just right.

Damn, almost two pages and I’ve yet to mention the best part: the sandbox world. To keep what is already a long post a bit shorter, I’ll just say that the world ‘works’. If you stand still and do nothing, the game will go on and things will happen. Factions will war against each other, lords will get captured, towns will trade hands, etc. Initially nothing in the world is tied to you or your actions, and the real beauty of the whole thing is FORCING the world to recognize you as a factor. That is the ‘end-game’ here, but how you reach is up to you, and, perhaps more importantly, the actions of the AI. That to me is the pinnacle of a sandbox, and based on my experience so far, Mount and Blade:Warband nails it.

Obviously, I can’t recommend the game enough to anyone at all interested in this style of play. It is, simply put, the most fun I’ve had with a game in 30 hours since… perhaps ever. No joke.

21 Comments | Combat Systems, Darkfall Online, Mount and Blade: Warband, Random, Site update | Permalink
Posted by SynCaine

Next Entries »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 49 other followers