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Yazem

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Jan 20, 2011
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Since it was mentioned that TW was working on "Project Obvious" in the run-up to WFS, it's not much of an announcement to only give the title of the game. A confirmation on the time-period and/or geographic setting would have been nice, or a target release quarter would have also been acceptable.
 
Why any change? The settings is known: Calradia.

Either they were running out of new names, feel they will sooner or later or 2 is to announce a new engine.

Waiting to see if they change direction of the game or try to stay course...
Hope they wont too much push the balance toward graphics improvement vs content improvement.
 
I hope it keeps the M&B1 setting...
 
I hope it keeps the M&B1 setting...

But what's the appeal in that setting? The world of Calradia is very generic and bland. Not to mention tiny.
 
Tiny. The gameworld is as large as many other games from similar genres. Either most game universes are tiny or...

The gameworld is also far from having met all its potential. Generic? Few gameworlds offer what is offered now, if there is any.

Why change? If the developers come to change, it would mean they think they are unable to reach their goals. No good news.
 
When project obvious was mentioned the devs also acknowledged the interest for real geographical settings seeing the popularity of mods made that way. To me that's a hint that they might move out of Calradia and head to Europe.

Where can we find the outlines of the devs vision that you keep referring to?


edit: finally found the quote I was looking for
Do you intend to return back to the setting of Caladria in a later expansion – or in the next Mount & Blade game?

If our community has shown us one thing through their interest in this game’s setting as well as the plethora of history based mods they’ve made, is that they want to play as real countries, in real wars, with real historical figures.
http://www.manapool.co.uk/interview-with-taleworlds-on-mount-blade/
 
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When project obvious was mentioned the devs also acknowledged the interest for real geographical settings seeing the popularity of mods made that way. To me that's a hint that they might move out of Calradia and head to Europe.

Where can we find the outlines of the devs vision that you keep referring to?


edit: finally found the quote I was looking for

http://www.manapool.co.uk/interview-with-taleworlds-on-mount-blade/

Shame. I liked Calradia. But I suppose it's fairly likely that if they move to Europe someone will make a mod to bring back Calradia. (for the record, I am not volunteering to do it myself)
 
I enjoyed Calradia as well if only because there was no historical significance. The world was my unknown oyster.
Hopefully there is an engine upgrade and a few more varied things to do.
 
Where can we find the outlines of the devs vision that you keep referring to?

By playing the game.


Another instance of players funding other players' wishes. People who invested to play in the Calradia settings have founded players who did not want to play in Calradia. Of course, the turn happened afterwards.

Too early to tell but it might indicate they might not be unable to reach where they were aiming at.

As the settings might no longer be fantaisical, here we are with historical players who would want to replay the crusades, placating their current wishes and venting their frustration on what they think should be done right now into the game.

The good thing is that there I wont wait for M&B2 if this is confirmed. It turns to being just another game, a game that could be a good surprise. Or not.
 
If they change it to a historical setting, that's fine. But I honestly wouldn't pay anything for just that change, having many mods around to do that job already.

No matter if it will be fantasy or history, they should focus on an up to date engine imo:

  • New and improved physics and more life-like animations
  • Proper multi-threading and 64-bit support (especially to make those very large battles possible)
  • More easy to use interface (the old one worked fine, sometimes it was just a bit of a mess and it could take too long to find the information you wanted)
  • More RPG-like dialogue and character development while still keeping the sandbox elements (i.e. a random dialogue doesn't have to just be a wall of text that in no way effects you, making you want to skip it immediately)
  • While on that track, maybe the campaign-battle map view could be more fluid and believable. While an elegant solution for performance, it may hinder some people from truly being sucked into to the game.
  • Perhaps a hardcore mode
  • This could entail letting you see the way a soldier would, having fatigue/muscles/cardio/speed as stats or the like (all the other stats removed, except maybe for the weapons) and with it a more advanced food/foraging/looting system with the risks of disease.

That's the dream scenario for the base game, but I'm sure whatever they come up with when it's released it'll be cool.
 
When project obvious was mentioned the devs also acknowledged the interest for real geographical settings seeing the popularity of mods made that way. To me that's a hint that they might move out of Calradia and head to Europe.

Where can we find the outlines of the devs vision that you keep referring to?


edit: finally found the quote I was looking for

http://www.manapool.co.uk/interview-with-taleworlds-on-mount-blade/

Brilliant. I find historical based mods much more immersive than generic fantastic realms. F&S was a step in the right direction, although not as good as it should've beed.
 
[*]More RPG-like dialogue and character development while still keeping the sandbox elements (i.e. a random dialogue doesn't have to just be a wall of text that in no way effects you, making you want to skip it immediately)

In a RPG, characters developpment is bound to actions. Dialogues are bound to attributes like speechcraft etc... Which M&B does not include.

Dialogues affecting the developpment of the character is mostly an adventure games feature, not RPG.

M&B was a RPG. With the turn to historical settings, (which is going to divert resources from developping other aspects in the game), I doubt the developpers keep going that way.
 
Caladria was always a generic abstracted europe anyways... And a huge work in progress. When the game started it was very limited and only started to expand with its success. Even then the devs were focused on engine, feature and code improvements, not story, which they left to modders to flesh out content. Can't blame the devs since they started as two people and were still very small for a long time even when the game caught on over the years and held up well before warband was such a huge hit.

The kingdoms all represent major european military styles. The two first factions were swadians being high medieval central-east catholic european in style vaegers were more turkish/byzantine, to represent the conflict of south-eastern europe between Austria and Eastern Anatolia, and all the kingdoms in between. added after were Khergits, generic steppe/scythian/caucasian + nords, early medieval viking obviously. Then later they added rhodok who are kind of an italian/swiss/flemish late medieval infantry style, and the sarrinid who are arab style.

I kind of like that abstraction but as TW said, all the popular historical mods seem to point that going with actual real world geography and kingdoms would not be a bad move and they need to add twists like that to help distinguish between M&B1 and M&B2.

M&B2 is definitely needed tho, M&B1 is a fantastic game, an all-time classic revolutionary game, but is showing its age and the limitations of its small time garage start. Game could definitely use some better dynamic RPG & political content generation built into the engine from the beginning. Modders have done wonders scripting stuff in but the engine has so many limitations.

Also the combat mechanics could be further refined, they can be a bit clumsy and have weird animations and hitboxes. This is especially exposed in multiplayer where players have figured out some really ridiculous moves and other physics tricks. I don't really mind this but when a game is dominated by special tricks it starts to make it too hardcore, and ultimately too hard for newcomers to get into which limits long term appeal and growth. For multiplayer they also need to look at what the c-rpg modders did with the clan warfare campaign map, M&B2 definitely needs that kind of multiplayer economic and political layer, and these talented modders have shown TW the way it can be done.

Finally I hope TW keeps M&B2 as open and moddable as M&B1, not pulling an EA. Modders propped them up in the beta era when they had little time to develop content themselves (they even hired modders onto the team, essentially to port over their own content which was far more advanced than vanilla), and pushed the game's engine/features to the limit, even in the post-warband era doing stuff like adding a clan map conquest campaign to basic warband multiplayer. I have faith they won't shut modders out tho if Paradox is publishing them.
 
Oh no please no real world map of Europe. Over the years, I have campaigned on maps of Europe with armies from ancient times until the present in all kind of games. I know every town, province, river and mountain, and am so tired of it. Please make it ahistorical, no more maps of Europe.

A new word generated with every game, now that would be true progress.