Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord News

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Last week, we asked for questions from you, our community, regarding Bannerlord's multiplayer closed beta and the early access phase that the game will transition through on its way to a full release. We decided to answer a few more than we originally anticipated, and so, we thought it would be best to save the campaign gameplay video until next week's blog instead (our apologies if that is what you are here for!). We hope that these direct and honest answers will give you an insight into what is happening with the beta and a greater understanding of what to expect from early access. So, without further ado, let's get to it, shall we?

The way of reporting feedback is the first question that comes to mind if I join open beta, would I be able to report feedback/issues with ease, and how?

We have a beta section on our official forums which has been segmented in a way to allow players to provide feedback about specific points while making that information easily accessible by our development team. (the forums are hidden right now, but they will be opened up and accessible next week alongside the first wave of beta invites!). In addition to this, we send out regular feedback forms via email to gather players thoughts on different aspects of the game. We also use automated tools as part of the process which allows us to gather data on a number of different things. One such example is our analytics tool on our servers. This allows us to track events in each multiplayer match to aid us in balancing the game. Another tool is our crash reporter, which automatically sends a crash report to us for review in the event of a game crash.

What criteria are you basing the waves of invites for the beta on? I’m assuming computer specs mostly.

We have identified several key groups and we’ll be allocating quotas for different groups according to the kind of feedback we need at each specific stage of beta testing. For example, at one stage we may invite old M&B MP players because we are particularly interested in how they will adjust to a certain mechanic. At another stage, we may invite players with low-end PCs because our engine team needs to see how the game runs on their hardware.

Will the beta expand to include other game modes? I would love to get a look at captain mode, and possibly some multiplayer sieges, etc.

Of course! To give you an idea of how this will progress, when we started the beta, we launched with Skirmish Mode, two factions and one map. Over time we introduced Captain Mode, Team Deathmatch, a selection of maps, and the remaining 4 factions. At times, such is the case right now with Captain Mode, we will disable some content so that it can be worked on and improved before being reintroduced. Moving forward we hope to introduce more content, including siege as a game mode. However, we should say that people shouldn’t expect new content with every patch. Sometimes the patches will be focused entirely on balancing and bug fixing.

Will you give a chance to SP players to try MP and hear their opinion or will your first choice be MP players for the Beta?

We are interested in hearing the thoughts of people from a wide range of gaming preferences and backgrounds. Bannerlord’s singleplayer and multiplayer share a lot of core systems, in particular, the combat system, which means that changes we make based on the feedback from our beta testers has a knock-on effect with single-player. It is for this reason that won’t strictly select people who prefer MP over SP.

Will beta be ongoing until (or very close to) the launch of EA? If not, when will it close?

For now we plan to run the beta up until the launch of EA, however, there may be times when we decide to close the servers down for certain periods while we make adjustments and improvements. It is also possible that our plans may change as we close in on the start of EA, but if they do, we will let you all know!

How long is it planned to be in early access?

We have some internal estimates of how long the game will stay in EA before making it to full-release, however, at this moment in time, we would prefer not to share those. We are more focused on creating a game that players will enjoy and can keep coming back to and playing well into the future. This means that our estimates could change depending on how happy we are with the state of the game and whether we feel it is ready for a full release or not.

Will the price change upon full release?

We will be sharing more information about the price of the game closer to the start of EA, and whether or not this will differ from the full release price.

Roughly what percentage of single-player features and gameplay mechanics will be in-game upon early access release? Many of the blog posts make it seem as though it will be nearly feature complete, while some suggest otherwise.

Most of the basic features will be there and we can say that it will be possible to play a campaign from start to end with 100+ hours of gameplay. However, some features may be missing or turned off if they are not in the state that we would like to present yet. We encourage players who want a complete and fully polished experience to hold off on buying the game until full release.

Will we be able to host dedicated servers in early access?

This probably won’t be possible at the very beginning of EA.

Which languages will be available in early access?

We will only support English at the beginning of the early access period. We do plan to offer the game in quite a few languages at the full release.

There was a noticeable absence of banners in the battles shown at Gamescom. Have these been removed? Or was it just a temporary measure?

Banners and banner bearers will definitely come back as even better and more polished than before.

On cloth physics: is this feature still in the game? Can we expect any kind of human hair physics?

Cloth physics is in the game, it works and is used in many places. Hair physics wasn’t a priority since it is difficult to get right and you are usually wearing a helmet anyway. However, it is something we can look into if we can find the time.

I didn't notice the pommel bashing in any Gamescom / beta video so far, is it still a thing?

Yes, you can still very much bash someone in the face with the pommel of your sword. The animation is different depending on your weapon type, which might explain why you didn't notice it, but regardless, it is still there!

In earlier instalments of M&B it was always bothering me that I had to choose a flag that has already been used by a lord. I don't know how this will go in Bannerlord, but since it has the word BANNER in it, will we be able to choose our very own unique banner? Or even better, create one without modding tools? I think this would be a small yet great addition to the game!

We were planning to offer a banner editor, however, we eventually decided to limit it such that each clan has a specific charge with the colour scheme of the banner being determined by the kingdom. This has the advantage that it gives clans within a kingdom a more uniform look while retaining their character. Having said that, we already have quite a variety of different charge designs and it is a great idea to let the player select from unique ones that are not used by any existing clan!

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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

As the dust from Gamescom begins to settle, we thought we would use this week’s blog to give you a summary of the events from last week’s show before inviting you to present some questions for us to answer in next week’s blog.

So, let’s get to it, shall we? As we explained a couple of weeks back, this year’s Gamescom was a rather special one for us. For the first time ever, we presented the game in the public area of the show with a hands-on demo of Captain mode, a 6 vs 6 team-based game mode that puts players in command of a detachment of their own AI troops. Meanwhile, over in the business area, we presented guests with a hands-on demo of the mid-game of Bannerlord’s vast sandbox campaign, putting a heavy focus on large-scale battles and sieges.

This was actually quite a challenging task for us. Before this year, we had only shown the game in the business section to a restricted audience. This time, we would not only have a public booth for the first time, but we would also offer the single-player demo separately in the business area. This really put a lot of stress on our team. Although programmers working on single-player and multiplayer could generally work independently, our QA team, level designers etc. had to put a lot of work to ensure that both demos were ready. We also had to design and plan for two separate booths, which was quite a task in itself!

The TaleWorlds team making the final preparations at our business area booth

Thankfully, in the end, our confidence paid off and we were able to show the game in somewhat its entirety, with thousands of guests visiting our booths, and in some instances, multiple times! We won’t lie though, for as well as we feel things went (amazingly if we do say so ourselves!), there were a few small issues here and there, but that is to be expected of a game that is still in development. Barring the odd obscure crash and some minor optimisation issues, overall the demos were stable, had a sufficient amount of content to keep people entertained, but more importantly, they were fun!

Community member, Killbotter, after a game or two of Captain mode

We were blown away by the response from the players at both booths. It was amazing to see people completely fresh to the series standing alongside Mount & Blade veterans, enjoying the game we have worked so hard on for so long. We can’t express how much it meant to us to see the look on people’s faces as they rode head-on into battle with a huge smile on their face.

Visitors at our public booth playing Captain mode

At the beginning of the week, we made the announcement that the game will be launched on Steam Early Access in March 2020. It wasn’t our intention for Bannerlord to launch exactly 10 years after our previous game, Mount & Blade: Warband, was released, however, we do find it to be a rather amusing coincidence nevertheless! Alongside this announcement, we opened up a web form for people to apply to take part in Bannerlord’s ongoing closed-beta, which, by the way, is still open: beta.taleworlds.com

https://youtu.be/yCk6Jk7DvrA
So, why the decision to launch in early access? Well, for a game as huge as Bannerlord, we knew that at some point we would need to get a large pool of players in to play the game and find all of the strange and hidden bugs that are simply impossible for a team of our size to locate. The game has completely expanded in scope compared to anything we have released before, and not just in terms of map size and settlement counts. We are talking about the many new game features and mechanics, most of which are interconnected, meaning that any slight change in one can have an unexpected knock-on effect in another. We are keen to hear feedback from our players on these new features, as well as, the changes we have made to existing features. We want to work alongside our community to deliver a game that achieves our goals and vision while providing them with a unique and enjoyable experience that they can keep coming back to well into the future.

We will be talking a lot more about what you can expect from early access over the coming weeks so that you can make an informed decision on if you would like to access the game in an unfinished state or not, but for now, we just want to make it clear that there will be a lot of content there to keep you entertained for many, many hours.

As for the multiplayer closed-beta, we will start to invite players in from next week onwards. We have made the decision to invite people in waves, so if you don’t get a key next week, please do not be disheartened. We will be targeting different groups at different stages so we can gather feedback from a wide range of players. We have decided to take this approach because we feel it would be the most effective way for us to make use of the limited amount of time we have to gather feedback and data to refine multiplayer in time for the early access launch. This allows us to target and tackle specific problems individually rather than allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed from the get-go.



We would like to invite you to ask any questions you may have about this year’s Gamescom, as well as, any questions you may have about the closed-beta and early access, by leaving them in the comment section below. We will select a few to answer in next week’s blog, which we will present to you alongside a gameplay video from the single-player demo.

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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

As you know, we are currently at Gamescom showcasing both the single-player and multi-player of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. The event has been absolutely amazing so far, with thousands of people visiting our booths to play the game in the business and public areas of the show.

Today, things have just wrapped up over in the business area and we are hoping that you will get to see a lot of footage from the mid-game of the sandbox campaign in the coming days. Over in our multi-player booth in Hall 9, we are still going strong and will be open until Saturday evening for people to come and play multi-player in the form of Captain mode.



Earlier in the week, we made the announcement that many of you have been waiting for. But for those of you that missed it, we will leave it to the creator of the Mount & Blade series, Armagan Yavuz, to share with you.

https://youtu.be/nQykXaM7l-U
In the coming weeks, we will be talking more about what you can expect with the early access and what it means for both you, our community, and for us. For those of you that simply can't wait that long, head on over to beta.taleworlds.com to apply to take part in Bannerlord's multi-player closed-beta.

https://youtu.be/yCk6Jk7DvrA
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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

It is that time of year again where we head off to Gamescom to showcase Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. However, this year, things are a little different... For the first time ever we will be presenting the game in both the business and public areas of the event. This means that anyone with a ticket can come along to one (or both!) of our booths to play the game for themselves. This is a completely new experience for us and we are sure there will be many unforeseen challenges that crop up, but, so far, our preparations have been going well and we are really excited to be able to show the game in (somewhat) its entirety!

Last year, we took the early-game of Bannerlord’s vast sandbox campaign to the business area of the show, along with 3 premade characters to ensure that players didn’t miss out on any gameplay by spending all of their allotted time in our deep character creation system. This year, guests will be able to choose between the same 3 premade characters, but with a bit of a twist! This time around, we see the characters 10 years on in their adventures, putting players squarely in the mid-game of the campaign.



This comes with a shift in focus for this year’s demo, with an emphasis put on the large-scale, epic battles and sieges that are unique to Mount & Blade games. However, with this being a sandbox game, players will still be free to choose their own path and roam the continent of Calradia, experiencing many of the different features that we have detailed throughout this series of blogs. Of course, we will be at hand to offer advice and guidance, but players will be largely left to their own devices which should lead to some interesting and diverse content coming out for you all to enjoy.

Over in the public area, players will be able to experience the multiplayer side of the game in the form of Captain mode, a team-based PvP game mode that puts players in command of their own detachment AI troops. Captain mode is just one of the new multiplayer game modes to be introduced in Bannerlord, but we feel this particular game mode is a good representation of what Mount & Blade games are all about: putting players in control of their own AI troops that they command and fight alongside in large battles.

Next week, will give you an update directly from Cologne to ensure that you don’t miss out on anything that we have to show or announce during the event, so make sure to check back then!



Finally, we would like to extend our thanks to ASUS! ASUS is the official Gamescom 2019 hardware partner for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.

We would also like to thank Razer for providing peripherals for our guests to use in the business area of the event.

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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

As development on Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord steadily proceeds, we are constantly looking at how best to allow players to interact with the game’s many features. One big change in this regard is the way that we are handling sieges. Sieges are key events in Mount & Blade games, and we are making great efforts to improve this aspect of the game in Bannerlord.

As we discussed previously, sieges in Bannerlord encompass a lot more than simply waiting until the attacker is ready to initiate an assault (as is the case with Warband). There is an active back and forth between the besiegers and the besieged as they seek to gain an advantage over one another or hamper each other’s progress, even on the world map. This raised some important questions that we had to consider. Should these changes be abstracted in images and text or should there be something more tangible? And to what extent should the level of control be for players?

We felt it would be best to provide players with a relatively high level of access and visual representation to make the initial stages of a siege more engaging for both attackers and defenders. When a settlement is besieged, a siege camp is set up by the attacking force, with individual tents being placed down for each attacking lord. Following this, both sides have the ability to construct siege engines to be used in both a bombardment phase that takes place on the world map and the final assault that takes place in a scene. Each settlement has a limited number of slots assigned to it, which players can select between and choose which siege machines to build and in which order. This should be given some tactical consideration as siege machines will automatically target whatever is closest to them.

The besieging force has the option to build siege towers and battering rams, which are only brought to the front to be used during the assault phase. They also have an assortment of ranged siege engines at their disposal, which can be used to attack the enemy’s machines, soldiers, and walls during the world map bombardment phase, weakening the enemy before the battle begins. Each ranged machine performs differently and has varying levels of success depending on what the player is trying to achieve -- so while a ballista may excel at whittling down the enemy troops, they are ineffective against walls. Meanwhile, trebuchets can be used to dominate the defender’s machines and walls, but they are expensive to produce. Of course, players could always choose to conserve their supplies and refrain from building any machines at all, and instead, opt to starve their enemy out without taking any casualties. Likewise, defenders can choose to hunker down and avoid building any machines while they wait for a relief force to break the siege. However, this would leave the attackers free to bombard the walls of the settlement without reprisal.



Players now have complete control on the deployment of siege engines on the campaign map. The game shows hit point bars on siege engines and wall sections so players can follow the development of the ranged duel, can pull back damaged machines to reserve, and put them back to the frontline when needed. These new additions make the campaign part of the sieges much more interactive and interesting, turning them into an event that engages players from start to finish. No longer is it simply a case of bringing greater numbers and waiting for the assault to commence (although, that is still a possibility). Now, there are other aspects to consider and tactics to develop, which helps to make each siege stand out and feel unique.

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