Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord News

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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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

As you know, Bannerlord’s closed beta is well underway! Throughout the beta, we have been introducing new content while working alongside our community to gather feedback, find and fix bugs, polish technical aspects of the game, etc.

Meanwhile, gamescom is just on the horizon. This year’s event is shaping up to be our biggest one ever, with both multiplayer and singleplayer set to be shown in the public and business areas of the trade fair respectively. As we have discussed in previous blogs, these kinds of events are a huge undertaking and require a lot of planning and preparation to ensure that things go as smoothly as possible!

We know that many of you can’t wait to get your hands on the game, and we are aware that only a small fraction of you will be able to play it at gamescom. Likewise, we know that many of you are hoping to get into the beta and test the game out, but haven’t been invited or had a chance to apply to take part just yet (don’t worry, your chance will come!). So, with that in mind, and with this being the 100th dev blog in the series, we thought we would do something a little different and try and make the wait a little more bearable by showing you some raw footage of the Skirmish game mode directly from last week’s beta test. There are no fancy cuts or edits, so expect to see your fair share of bugs (and some terrible skills from our community manager...), however, we hope you enjoy the video nevertheless!

https://youtu.be/xJ7SCHZWevI
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