More important anything else, to me

[Xoatl]

Plenty of people have addressed your points. I’m not one because I’m not interested in convincing a fellow player of anything with walls of text. One of the devs mentioned that they’re thinking of having a character customizer for the founding members using a crown system. Pro traits/backgrounds cost crown, negative give crowns I’m guessing. Something like that is a familiar system. I think we’ll see that in the final game. Makes total sense for a roleplaying game, aside from your desire to make it arcade-y.

[GOD]

Sky wrote:

I’m with GoD on this. Without a doubt. The equipment is far more influential at the very start than it is at the very end. If you make the charactes in a generator you will be attacherd to them more than for their fairly weak starting members perk. I can even imgaine how many people will reroll the game just cuz they lost one of their custumized starters who they had big plans with. And this will happen at any part of the game. You are playing not as one (tho you definetely can RP that) but as a whole group of mercenaries who didn’t become this way because they like it, but had to. Just by reading the backstories it is quite obvious that most of them aren’t the mercenary material. This game is not about heroes, it is about mercenaries. The expendable kind. Death and gold are your companions, you are no heroes, you do all the stuff for money, even when it does not seem like that. This is not the MLP land, this is the harsh and bloody dark ages.

The mercenary life IS your LAST resolve, if this will not work out you can just go and die, nothing else is there in the world for you. That is the reason your people gather up, be whoever they were before. Ultimately it does not matter. What only matter is who you become if you survive and prosper. Tbh i’d even bound some of the backgrounds to a minimum party level so you can not recruit the combat experienced people too soon. As the player you would have a lot of time to get used to dying sellswords, lack of resources, fearsome enemies. The moment my group leveled up to lvl 8ish it was not so much fun anymore, there were rare encounters that could make me rotate someone to the back of injuries, and even less when I did lose someone. At that point it all became an OP group of dudes. Ofc that was only because the state of the game at this point. Besides had no time for games this weekend.

PS. That comment about strict parents and no fun made me rotfl. Why do I have the feeling that you will be the first to cry when your beloved custom character bites the dust? And… Just for lolz, what do parents have to do with a game preference and fun? Wouldn’t it be exactly the opposite when you break out of that stricnes every possible way and always have fun?

Pretty much. Customised character creation would a very misleading way of starting the game and encourage the idea that your first three are some sort of main characters, like in most RPGs. That’s why I’d much prefer to see something like that as a mod, so that you can play it as an alternative playstyle.

lfish wrote:

I think that the difficulty also changes the cost of items overall throughout the game, but I’m not certain about that. Difficulty right now only really affects the early game, since after a few large battles you get to a point where the starting conditions become irrelevant. There’s not really enough content and focus to the game at this point to know how hard it will end up being, so discussions about difficulty balancing are probably premature.
I do think that having a little more choice about starting conditions would help quell some of the dissatisfaction people have with a random start, without hurting the game’s theme too much. I do agree that it’s probably ultimately unnecessary though; more a concession to modern expectations about game design than a required feature.

I don’t think it does, but I haven’t checked. Maybe adding something like an additional difficulty level is an idea. A difficulty level for starting gold, like we have now. And a difficulty level for the minimum starting value of your team (gear, traits and backgrounds). It would still be random, but you would have a bit more control over how good your starting team is.
You could divide it into random, easy and hard. Easy raising the minimum value of your team that you’ll get. Hard lowering the maximum value of the team you can get. And random changing nothing.

Xoatl wrote:

Plenty of people have addressed your points. I’m not one because I’m not interested in convincing a fellow player of anything with walls of text. One of the devs mentioned that they’re thinking of having a character customizer for the founding members using a crown system. Pro traits/backgrounds cost crown, negative give crowns I’m guessing. Something like that is a familiar system. I think we’ll see that in the final game. Makes total sense for a roleplaying game, aside from your desire to make it arcade-y.

Not sure who you’re talking about, because the arguments I’ve seen in favour of customisation have been about convenience and the personalizing starting characters. No actual replies addressing my arguments regarding design.
They’re discussing customised creation, but handpicking traits and such is something Psen at least wanted to absolutely avoid. The crown thing was about buying mercs from a randomised list, which I have less of a problem with than with customised creation.

[Kahsm]

lfish wrote:

Being able to determine with any kind of specificity the attributes of your individual units undermines the feeling of being the head of a mercenary company,

Not being able to have any input into who I’m picking to be my founding members of my Merc group undermines the feeling of being head of a merc group.

But this doesn’t really have to be solved by customization. Just give us a long list of random people and let us pick 3.

GOD wrote:

What I’m emphasising is the need for good, tight design. That’s how you make a great game, rather than a forgettable one (people still play HoMM 2 and 3, while HoMM 4 is barely mentioned). A feature that seems fun on its own can ruin the kind of play experience that you’re trying to create. I’ve yet to see anyone actually address my arguments regarding that,

Maybe people aren’t addressing it because it’s a ridiculous assertion. Skyrim, GTA V, Minecraft, Terraria, Mount & Blade. These games are all insanely popular and not what anyone would consider “tight design”. Freedom is what people crave right now. Sandbox is the current fad. Look at all the survival games out there where people just want more and more stuff added constantly because they’re “fun features”. If the devs want to make something else, that’s their choice of course. But your point seems pretty far from reality.

BTW, a lot of good ideas there, hope to see many of them in game eventually. But the low-hanging fruit are the simple concepts that have the broadest possible impact on the player model of the game (The Simulation Dream). I believe customization is an easy win there.

Sky wrote:

I can even imgaine how many people will reroll the game just cuz they lost one of their custumized starters who they had big plans with.

They already do, so this cannot be used as an argument against customization. When you find a guy with the right face and decent stats, you rename him. That’s how customization is done now. No one can argue that customization will change the game, because it’s already done. The question is, should it be less infuriatingly annoying to do.

Sky wrote:

You are playing not as one (tho you definitely can RP that) but as a whole group of mercenaries who didn’t become this way because they like it, but had to.

You’re playing the leader of a company who doesn’t fight with the company. At every other point in the game you get a list of available people to pick from. You can see how they look and their background, just not their extra traits and their stats. Why couldn’t that be done at the start? How would that damage the narrative?

[GOD]

All hands on deck! Incoming wall of text!

Kahsm wrote:

Not being able to have any input into who I’m picking to be my founding members of my Merc group undermines the feeling of being head of a merc group.
But this doesn’t really have to be solved by customization. Just give us a long list of random people and let us pick 3.

No input is because it’s a ‘take what you get’ kind of beginning. That is also reflected in how you don’t choose your starting location and starting gear.
If more control absolutely needed to be implemented I’d prefer something like an extra difficulty setting that affects the total value of your starting team. Settings could be easy, hard and random. Like, easy raising the minimum value, hard lowering the maximum value and random changing nothing. Picking or buying your starters from a random list I can also live with if it absolutely has to be implemented. Customising your starting characters, however, flat out does not suit the design. The current way os starting works, however, works just fine and suits the game perfectly.

Kahsm wrote:

Maybe people aren’t addressing it because it’s a ridiculous assertion. Skyrim, GTA V, Minecraft, Terraria, Mount & Blade. These games are all insanely popular and not what anyone would consider “tight design”. Freedom is what people crave right now. Sandbox is the current fad. Look at all the survival games out there where people just want more and more stuff added constantly because they’re “fun features”. If the devs want to make something else, that’s their choice of course. But your point seems pretty far from reality.
BTW, a lot of good ideas there, hope to see many of them in game eventually. But the low-hanging fruit are the simple concepts that have the broadest possible impact on the player model of the game (The Simulation Dream). I believe customization is an easy win there.

This comparison doesn’t work on several levels. To start, a game doesn’t have to be financially successful to be great and a game that is financially successful isn’t necessarily a great game.

Secondly, those games aren’t designed as badly as you might think. They do, however, have more flexible themes than this game and are less reliant on quality over quantity. That’s why Dark Souls is a better comparison as a successful game, as that game does rely on it. Skyrim for example wants the player to feel free and awesome. This is reflected in the gameplay and world design. You can customise your character, go wherever you want and are a capable fighter from the start. It compensates for any quests that compromise this through the sheer amount of them. They can do that because they have a large team with a near limitless budget and a readymade modding community. Now, I dislike the design of Skyrim, but not because it fails at knowing its audience. GTA V can do the same thing in terms of volume, giving players the ability to follow a serious story or just play around in the sandbox. They can only do this because they have the funds needed to essentially make two games. Minecraft can ignore matching gameplay to story and has design that emphasises interaction with the environment. It gives the players the building blocks to play with and then sets them loose, so the players essentially generate content on their own and together. The core design here is really damn solid. Terraria puts these same design ideas in a 2D world and puts more emphasis on struggling with your surroundings through the adventure elements. Again the execution matches the design ideas. I never played M&B, so I can’t compare it in terms of design, but I doubt that it makes design decisions that contradict what the game is trying to be.

Thirdly, they are all real-time games that emphasise freedom of movement through directly controlling your avatar, who is a single person. Most of them are also first or third person, with one being 2D. This in combination with real-time means that you directly control your avatar and in that way interact with the world. Resulting in you more strongly identifying with that avatar and giving the player a sense of freedom and immersion. Real-time games are also more popular than turn-based games and single and first person are more popular than the top-down perspective.

Fourthly, all of them have relatively accessible difficulty levels and multiplayer (except multiplayer for Skyrim). This difficulty is crucial to their success, as it emphasises the feeling of freedom the player wants. Difficulty limits the actions of a player in a game sandbox game. Less difficult therefore means more freedom for the player. Mass appeal sandbox games don’t force people to play the hard way, but make it optional as mods or menu options. The importance of multiplayer and effectiveness varies per game (as shown by Elder Scrolls Online), but it is of particular importance in Minecraft and Terraria. They add the element of not just creating for the sake of yourself, but to show it off to others.

The developers here need to focus on tight design, because they don’t have the funds needed to intentionally make mass appeal a success. They also can’t compensate with marketing campaigns, expect the players to expand the game themselves or insert massive amounts of content into the game. Their aim is to make mercenary company simulator in land under threat by itself excludes many parts of sandbox gameplay and they lack the means to make alternative modes. Trying to go for mass appeal is therefore an exercise in futility, because this is a niche game by its very nature. Turn based, an inflexible them, highly difficult with no easy mode, relatively simple graphics, limited freedom, top-down perspective, no controllable avatar and no multiplayer or co-op. Their target audience basically consists of hardcore gamers and the occasional convert. Achieving mass appeal would require rebuilding the game from the ground-up and to turn it into something completely different. Therefore those games do not make for a relevant comparison for how to approach the design of this game. They should instead look at games like the Darkest Dungeon, Dwarf Fortress and FTL. Those games achieve their success through finding a niche and then going all in.

Glad to hear that you like the ideas! :) Though stuff like probably never implemented though, unless some people make some full-conversion mods. That’s why I’m against this change. The developers simple cannot afford to implement non-crucial ideas.

Kahsm wrote:

They already do, so this cannot be used as an argument against customization. When you find a guy with the right face and decent stats, you rename him. That’s how customization is done now. No one can argue that customization will change the game, because it’s already done. The question is, should it be less infuriatingly annoying to do.

That’s not actual customisation, just restarting until you get favourable result. Just like how you can copy the save file in Dark Souls and save it incase you do something wrong.

Kahsm wrote:

You’re playing the leader of a company who doesn’t fight with the company. At every other point in the game you get a list of available people to pick from. You can see how they look and their background, just not their extra traits and their stats. Why couldn’t that be done at the start? How would that damage the narrative?

Because you have no influence on which recruits you get to choose from. It’s like how you can choose where to go once the game starts, but you don’t choose your starting location.

[Sky]

Kahsm wrote:

You’re playing the leader of a company who doesn’t fight with the company. At every other point in the game you get a list of available people to pick from. You can see how they look and their background, just not their extra traits and their stats. Why couldn’t that be done at the start? How would that damage the narrative?

Once again I do agree with GoD. This game should be tight. Yeah sure it would be cool to have a free roaming sandbox where you have no limitations and everything is in it while the world plays itself and you. But that would take a lot larger dev team, a lot more resources, and a lot more time. At the end it would be an absolutely different game. Still I do think that there is place for a customization to a certain degree, where you can perhaps change the appearance and the quantity of the starting brothers, the starting background with considerable limitations, and maybe some equipment. Having all these bound in to a starting point pool. Where the simple start involves random using the whole pool aviable, while the custom could chose between things even making one starting member but perhaps a bit stronger with a better gear. Again, that should not involve the traits. And the player choises should be limited so there will be no hedge knights and swordmasters running around. Tho even that couldn’t be too bad. Needs a lot of though and consideration from the devs. It will determine the whole early game, and might throw off the whole balance making it necessary to rebalance a lot of things.

I do agree that it is nice to see what people you get before naming the group. Also adding more difficulity lvls that will change the starting party power lvl aswell as the gold.

To answer how would it damage the narrative, we need to wait till there will be more seen from the game. At this moment we can see only the very base of the game, without any story, any lore, any events. Just a naked world to build upon. At this moment it could not damage it, but if you read some of the plans the devs already have, and i’m sure even more after they release the roadmap, there will be lots of things the heavy suctomization may or even might not collide.

M&B has some similarities like the world map or the hiring of other fighters to fight alongside you, tho I still consider them entirely different. The difference is that M&B is a FPS, you play as you and have no direct controll over the troops, only throught orders and equipment for hero units, you controll yourself always and everywhere. If not familiar with M&B anyone cab always hit youtube and look. On the other hand, here in BB you aren’t directly represented. To be honest you aren’t a leader of the company per say, but there are no other options to make the player as some sort of a common conscious shared between the band members but as is. However you can make yourself a leader, a member, and fight with your fellow comrades, tho it requires a lil RP. If you wish you can simply make one of the dirty dozen an avatar of yourself who will be there but will do nothing but give the aura effects so to say he will be “commanding” the band.

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