Reply To: The Missing Features of a Love Child

#3247
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To continue on in light of the last dev blog…

Random Party Events: In Mount & Blade random events occur for the player whilst traversing the world map, or whilst visiting settlements and locations. Once triggered, these random events (generated from a pool, dependent upon specific triggers) offer the player a number of choices. These choice can have positive or negative effects. None of these effects were so punishing that they crippled the player i.e perm death for random characters. The way they worked in Mount and Blade could work well in Battle Brothers, except instead of effecting the player (in the case of mount and blade) they instead impact individual brothers. I don’t know they extremes to which the devs plan to go to in order to implement such a feature – however – I do believe events will help the story telling in the game, and prevent the world from feeling static.

One suggestion I do have is perhaps a bit controversial. People whinge about RNG. But I really strongly believe random events, and their effects need a good triple dose of RNG. One action should not always have the same outcome. For example, if one scenario involves stumbling across a bunch of prisoners on the run. the options to ‘leave them be’ ‘detain’ or ‘let them go at a cost’ should yield different outcomes the next time that same event occurs. The ‘detain’ option could commence a battle, or it could give a new trait to the brother who caught the quick little Hugo who tried to escape, or it could yield you two new brothers for free.

What I’m suggesting is a complex multi-prong events system whereby the options have different outcomes to prevent predictability. A random (yet invisible) roll of the die, gives us unpredictability, which translates into replayability and believability. The world of Battle Brothers is unpredictable and this should translate into the events system when it is finally implemented.

World Map Interactions: The events system can also impact the way the player interacts with the world around them. In Mount & Blade, all things on the overworked map are to some extents intractable. Trade caravans, roaming parties, patrols – you name it, they all can be interacted with. If events work through specific triggers, then in game dialogue and interactions could involve a matching system of triggers. An event triggered by a patrol recognising a battle brother with the ‘deserter’ backstory, here the deserting brother is the trigger for the event, this could also be adopted for the NPCs (when they finally make it into the game). When entering a dialogue with a trade caravan, having a merchant in your party could open up dialogue unavailable without them, i.e. the ability to trade (manipulating what resources get exported and imported between settlements). An event that involves stumbling across a wounded hedge knight, could have an additional option if say, a healer was in the player’s party (an option that may yield more desirable results).