10 Easy improvements for Mount and Blade 2

So there are plenty of things that people think could improve the gaming experience in Mount and Blade 2 (better to start using M&B2 as with War Sails, we may be getting a myriad of different iterations of the game, at least hopefully) but we all know that many of these are either large asks at the end of the day or not something that actually fits in the base game and should just be left to mods. But then still, there are a handful of things that wouldn't be that difficult at all to implement that would enrichen the core experience just that slight bit more. The following list are things that would both improve that core experience without compromising anything for anything, and would be rather easy for someone at Taleworlds to implement.

1 - Get rid of the "clacking" when Camels gallop. As many know, a core difference between Horses and Camels is that Camels have feet and Horses have hooves. It's a large reason that Camels aren't seen that often in rocky biomes: it would destroy their feet. And while it would be obnoxious to not just suspend have the player suspend disbelief for a moment and allow Camelry to exist in the game, even if you occasionally find it fighting in northern rocky terrain, that doesn't mean we have to hear them "clack" just like the horses do when riding across it. This is a simple matter of just going into the sound file and making slight adjustments. There is already recognition that you are on a camel and not a horse in virtually ever other way, from it's model, to how the rider sits higher, and it's vocals, yet all the same noises were applied to wait it was running through. So the ask is very simple: just go into the camel's sound file, as it already has a separate one, and replace the sounds that it is suppose to make when running on rocks with the same one that is used when running on sand. This could literally be changed, tested, and applied in a single day by a single person.

2 - Allow us to Fast Forward Tournament matches we are watching. Some of you might be asking "Why the hell would we need this? You can just skip the match!" While this is true, if your companions or family are in the match, they won't get their experience for what they end up doing in that match like if you watch it. This is, in all honesty, a solid way to get your companions a little XP, even if the skill levels they are getting is in stuff you don't care about. It is also a decent way to get certain things, like bows for a crossbow companion, to those first two milestones for troops they are leading of the other variety without dedicating too much more time for it. But some of these matches can take FOREVER. Particularly trying to watch some of the Khuzait and Aserai matches where everyone is on horses. But instead of making us go watch an episode of a show we still need to catch up on so our wife can spend 20 minutes just to land 2 arrows from horseback, it would go a lot faster if we had the option to fast forward and blitz through it.

We know this would be easy to implement, as battles can be fast forwarded if you are knocked out. The ask is to add this same thing to a round that we are not active, either because we were already knocked out, or because we were never in it. This would allow us to get that sprinkling of XP for our notables without taking forever and ever. Even if other adjustments are ever made to growing our other notables in our clan, this should still be done.

3 - Allow Tier 6 troops to participate in Tournaments. Easy ask, and easy fix. Just stop barring them. This would increase the amount of money you could make, as each tier of troop is counted at an increasing threat level when betting. As of now, unless the Tournament leader is present, you start making pennies off your bets just after a few wins. This would extend that time period and make that Roguery perk have a longer shelf life, as most characters have too many wins for it to matter by they time they get access to doubling their bets.

I'm not sure that we've ever seen T6 in Tournaments, even in EA when Tiers 0-2 would show up, but we know this is something that can be adjusted, and if there are Tier 6 troops in the garrison, or in your company, it would be interesting for them to show up occasionally. The added challenge would be welcomed by the overwhelming majority of players, and the ones that might complain about it, likely save scum until they win anyway. The only argument that might be there against it is that their armor is too high for the weapons to hurt? But many of the Lords are already sporting armor at the same levels and that doesn't seem to be a hurdle.

More money to be made, more difficulty, more immersive to see top tier bodies show up.

4 - Change the way winnings work in the Arena. While this is "slightly" harder then the rest, it's still not something that would take a monumental amount of effort that couldn't be worked on by a single person. The winnings in Warband were the way they were because you, personally, had to fight through most of the opponents. This isn't the case in Bannerlord, and if you are trying to get a small bit of cash in the early stages of that game, most people just hide in the corner until the last guy is left and go knock them out.

This is a little too silly. Instead of getting 250d for winning no matter what, change it to where the winner gets 200d, but then they get a scaling amount of denars for every opponent they personally take out in addition to the 200d, instead of the champion money replacing what else you got. 1d for the 1st KO, 2d for the second, then 3d then 4d, and so on. So if you just find a corner to hide in and take out the last guy, you'll now get 201d. But if you were engaged the entire time and take out half the opponents, you'll pull in 320d. And even if you get hit with an arrow that takes you out late, if you took out 15 people, you are still bringing in 120d. Essentially, the system is adjusted in an "immersive" manner to where fighters are incentivized to get in there and take out as many people as possible, which explains why everyone else is running out there like a crazy person taking out whoever they can, versus staying in those tucked away corners like the players do most of the time as the payout in the end is the same no matter what.

I think this, and the following change, would get more people to use the arena a tad more.

5 - Allow random companions to show up when we are participating in the Arena. I'm not asking for their winnings, mind you. I'm just asking for ALL of them (not just the ones with high skills, like the Tournaments) to be put in the random pool to show up and get their penny worth of XP for hitting someone with a javelin before they are surrounded and run through. This is an "every little bit helps" change as far companion XP goes, and it would be easy to put them in the pool with no risk and downside to the player. It increases your willingness to do arena matches. If you notice they are there, you could avoid them and help them how you can, even to the point of figuring you'd rather they just put you down and get the XP to whatever weapon they are using then get the (proposed 200d above) from winning the thing. And it makes the game more living and breathing with your companions more involved.

6 - Have the Governor count as the "Party Leader" to the Militia. This is another one that I know would not be overly difficult to "add" the Governor to the militia party. The one possible problem to troubleshoot is the fact that random militia retire and making sure that CAN'T happen to the governor, but I'm not convinced it's a big enough hurdle to scratch this ask from a list that I am asserting as "easy" changes. There are two big things that you are looking for from this.

First, it buffs the militia in many of the same ways that it buffs a normal party. Party size won't matter (and many of the party size buff perks already have attached governor improvements) but giving all your guys 5 more HP or so and acting as their medic decreasing the amount of dead bodies after a fight would sure as shit count for something.

Second is the fact they would now show up to the fight and possibly get combat XP, the Eng XP they'd get from helping with war machines in the build up phase and possibly manning them during the fight. Not to mention the Medic XP they would get as militia were getting hurt. It's dipping the governor into other areas of growth, naturally, that would garner them more governor perks if they were in a situation where they were constantly having to defend the fief they were governing.

And as one more note for 1.3: Castles are getting curb stomped. Adding a Governor's tactics, as well as all the above, to the equation is honestly something that is needed in addition to a few other adjustments. This could be enough of a difference maker to not have to overhaul too many other things for this sake alone (obviously army movement AI needs a bit of work regardless of it making this situation worse)

Last point here is that there is a reason I'm saying Militia as well, NOT the leader of the garrison, as I think the garrison commander should be a completely separate role that you can assign someone into but it is not something that is sufficiently easy to be included in this list. There is a few more programming and balance concerns as well making them the garrison Party Lead, as the garrison is already getting different bonuses involving food and pay. And for many governors it wouldn't be as appropriate thematically to be leading the hardened troops versus the desperate defenders, so for this list's sake, keeping to overall immersion and ease of implementation, we're keeping it as noted in bold above.

7 - Make Horse Villages have you deliver mounts, not general livestock during the "Deliver Herd to town" quest. Is this a bug? This was in EA at one point and I want to say that we were once told this quest was causing an over abundance of horses to flood markets or something, but it is OBVIOUS that more horses are needed in 1.3, and this would go a long way to help with that. It's also pretty difficult at times to find the horses a lord is looking for, so if these quests are improving that supply, the player might not get barred from even accepting those quests at a certain points.

Admittedly, there may be something going on with this one that someone at Taleworlds can't figure out, but as I am under the impression that is was a conscious decision to eliminate the horses from these quests, they need to be re-added. And keeping to this one:

8 - Completing the "Deliver Herd to town" quest should improve your reputation with both the sender and receiver. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one. It's one of the oddest omissions in the game as far as relations goes, as there are lots of quests that shift multiple contacts relations upon completion, so it is obviously easy to program that, and this mission needs to be changed to reflect this as well. The receiver doesn't need to be nearly as much improvement as the sender, but they should appreciate your ability to get them the goods they are looking to sell.

9 - Add Bowmen to the Vlandian Militia and Crossbowmen to the Imperial Militia. Again, this is super easy, and super immersive. I am not asking to replace either in their entirety, but as bows are cheaper and much more plentiful, production limitations would be why you wouldn't see every tom, dick, and harry, sporting a crossbow in a militia outfit. While it is easier to train a crossbowmen over an archer, they are still cost prohibitive, and your local hunters in the militia are just going to use their bows they are more comfortable with anyhow. As there is multiple loadouts for most troops, just have about 1/3 of the standard Vlandian ranged militia have bows, with their bow stat matching whatever their crossbow stat currently is (you could probably get away with them being slightly different to represent the ease of training, as long as the bowmen had way more arrows and didn't have to find a barrel nearly as often as their upside), and then I would say 1/4 or so of the standard and 1/2 of the veteran Imperial ranged militia load outs be changed to crossbows.

Overall, this would also give crossbows a slightly better drop availability for what that's worth.

10 - Add Spice Workshops as an option to Aserai Towns. So this one may be stretching the "easy" side of things, mainly because you are hyper limiting where a particular workshop is even able to be established. BUT, you could technically not limit it to Aserai Towns, it's just being in a town of Aserai culture is the INPUT requirement, so having it anywhere else would make it yield nothing, similar to the old wool weaveries.

There are definitely those that think, because smithing and battlefield loot income is way too high in this game, trade income should be exponentially higher then it is. That's just not the reality of what is needed or what needs to happen, but trade does need and could improve. We've already seen what just two workshops working differently can do to the economy in 1.3, as wool weavers finally do something and produce a unique good, as well as Smithys and Wood Workshops getting split into two different goods. With only 3 workshop slots per town, this makes everything more scarce, and since the game uses an "absorption" mechanic to consistently deplete stock, and it doesn't take huge shifts in availability to then increase the demand of goods in regions. When the overall absorption rate is closer to the overall production rate, everything is worth more everywhere. And while buying goods with be more expensive, selling goods will follow suit. Instead of buying tools for 60 and selling them for 90 once things settle, you are buying tools for 100, and selling them for 200. And higher profit margins gives you and your caravans higher XP gains.

Adding Spice Workshops into the Aserai lands in addition to the other changes would nudge the issue just over the edge to place the trade economy in a satisfactory spot. The Aserai are already in a strange place as so many of the Towns don't have sufficient variable inputs to even supply 3 different workshops. Hell, several only have a single local option. This is fine here and there, as it becomes a great spot to sell what ever inputs that isolated workshop is looking, but this becomes moot when another Aserai town a door or two over is also looking for that thing, and the production becomes unprofitable (as has happened to plenty of my workshops when playing down there). Allowing them to eat up some of those stalls decreases the over abundance of breweries in a place whose historical counterpart would have outlawed it's production (not something I think is needed here, but it is funny to think about). This is then giving a trade good that is surely going to fetch you massive yields if you move it to the far northern reaches of the map, and with so many trade goods now not having local workshops in the aserai lands, these incoming goods would also have higher prices at these towns.

And to assure you this is easier then one might think: spices are already a trade good in the game code, with a unique picture, with a general trade value already set for them. This work has already been done and is already there. It just needs a way to kick it out into the game. And if "just being in an Aserai Town" seems like a highly exploitable input requirement, if the AI workshop owners start spamming them, the price could get really volatile and plummet, and the sale of 1 unit per day to the local market could easily stop countering that 100d labor cost, and then you or the AI would have to change your workshop to something else for a while until it got more profitable again.

Bonus - Lord needs troops at Castle Quests should ACTUALLY ADD THOSE GUYS TO THE GARRISON. Forgot about this one and saw it's omission during my proof read. Absurd it doesn't happen (unless something changed in the last couple patches as it's been awhile since I checked). Stop making these guys get eaten by the aether. This could literally make a huge difference in many situations. At quest completion immediately add them to the garrison.

I, like many people, could list 100+ changes that would be interesting for the game. But many of these changes are much more difficult to implement, or are a little too "personal preference driven" that may actually be better left to a mod.

The above 10 are not only on the easy side (half of them could likely be done in a day by only a single dev), but I feel they are all extremely low on the aversion scale, and all add to the game's immersive on a level or two. A third of these increase XP opportunities for your notables, which is just something this game is in desperate need to expand upon, and one of those (the tournie fast forward) is such a simple inclusion it just needs to be done as soon as Taleworlds sees the suggestion.

I appreciate those who made the effort to read through even most of this long post, and I hope we can keep this game going and improving with the game getting new life breathed into it with a new expansion coming up in the near future

submitted by /u/Creative-Seesaw-1895
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