Save NordInvasion!

[Bobo]

I think Kip addressed many concerns and it's good to see Devs respond and admit they are aware of community opinion and take it into cosideration. With many threads expressing players' upset with this or that we were looking forward to be noticed by the Devs and see some feedback. I've even seen ppl stating Devs ignore the community.
So thanks a lot Kip, we needed that.

Like every game I've seen in my life, NI mod has pros and cons. If I may suggest we should refrain from listing the changes we'd like. There is the Feature Request section for this. Let's just presume the mod is as it is at current state of affairs and consider what can be done by the community to stop the decrease in number of players. The mod attractiveness is the Devs concern and it's clear they keep working on it so I'm looking forward to see results. Just a bit of patience, guys.

[Malong]

Thanks Kip for the prompt and thorough reply.

I would love to have a public facing issue tracker but it is difficult to find a good one that fits our hosting requirements and does not add to our costs.  We are currently using Axosoft internally and might be able to create a public interface to it using their api but that would draw time away from working on the game itself.  We are also using GIT internally but keep in mind that this is not an open source mod.

That's good to hear. Release notes or product roadmaps would go a long way to informing the player base, and can be accomplished without sharing the repo.

As has been discussed countless times before, a random loot system is the fairest system available at the moment.  No, it does not directly reward players for putting in more effort but effort is still required to keep the team alive to reach later waves.  There is no way to gauge the effort put forth by shielders and medics.

From my understanding, shields do not have a property for damage taken, but it can be reverse engineered by calculating damage done by bots. The same with medic healing, you can calculate the damage done by bots, excluding friendly fire and falling damage. And to circumvent abuse of the shield and healing system, implement a cap of damage per bot per shield and player, so you can't spam to inflate contribution. Systems like this have existed in games for well over a decade in far larger scale, so it's certainly possible.

While technically there is no "true" randomness for computers, what is available is good enough for our purposes.  Also remember that to properly gauge the spread of the results, you must look at a very large sample of data - not just a few runs.  With regards to the lottery analogy, instead of buying more tickets, you need to spend more time playing.

Yes, the sample size I am using from my personal experience is hundreds of Odin kills alone per person. And the time spent by these people is in the thousands of hours.

I would argue that retaining players and gaining new players are both difficult, especially for a game as old as Warband.  There is only so much that can be done to keep the game fresh and we will continue to do our best to achieve this.

It is, but retention comes at a much reduced cost in effort to keep players rather than outreach.

[Kip]

We already have release notes for each patch.  What I would like to see improve is the bug reporting so that it is easier to if a bug has already been reported or a feature suggested.

The idea of capping how much damage is done by each bot is an interesting one but you might be surprised by how limited Warband is for modding.  Perhaps something like that would influence things in Bannerlord but I doubt it is practical at the moment.

While it might seem that certain people are looting legendaries every few weeks, the logs show this to be a bit exaggerated to say the least.

[Malong]

We already have release notes for each patch.  What I would like to see improve is the bug reporting so that it is easier to if a bug has already been reported or a feature suggested.

Release notes for the build in progress, as in for the non-ga/test server build.

[Swaliant]

Well, i dont think it´s about time spent in game, well, you can play this 1k hours and loot non legendary or you can loot 1 per week/month. I said once that loot system needs improvement. Yes, random system is the most fair system what we can have. But, Farawyn is looting every 1-2 weeks legendary while other players never looted anything for 1-3 years of playing, it seems unfair and most of these people think that these players have some advantages like more loot etc.
Nevermind. We need "big" update which will move NI few steps further.

And i would welcome if Official Events could be restored. I think more players could welcome this.

I hope you do realize Farawyn spent 8k hours in this game. So it's not surprising he loots more.

And I think it's not about the year you played because some people play 1000 hours in 2 years while others can play 2500 hours in 1 year.

[MatthewO]

Hehe, i know that farawyn spent much more time in game then me, i didnt wanted to say something bad abot him, did i ? well, i am not going to speak about loot system anymore, will see in bannerlord. Ofc. If ni will be released.

[Weiner]

na 

[Slayer]

I do admit that there are a lot of things wrong with the mod, but it's also great for what it is.

The main reason I quit was because I never looted a legendary from Ragnarok. I mean, I was literally no lifing this game so hard, I was at every event you could think of, staying up until like 4 Am just to play with WS and tricksters, pulling all nighters to play with Americans, sleeping during the day to come to AU events, you name it, I was there sooooooo much. As soon as 7.0 (i think it was 7.0) hit, you look in the legendary section, for a good 2 weeks 90% of legendary drops from Odin were from my kills. To see people who do literally nothing in the server and rarely contribute or anything and just plain have the IQ of a 5 year old loot an Odin legendary is just ridiculous IMO. I hate the fact that people do nothing in servers, don't get kicked because "oh but they're trying, they're a commando throwing spears while the shield wall is breaking and they're getting in the archers way, contributing very well" and then just loot some legendary and probably get scammed for it,

Perfect example: I was in a run, some dude looted a tower shield, he was the most useless player had literally no kills, didn't contribute at all, shot 2 arrows a wave and just AFK'd, got scammed the day after by imarc. I know this is once instance, but it's not the first.

Now unfortunately this game also somewhat requires "Scamming" although I would rather call it good deals, to actually become wealthy. I remember when I first joined, if you had striped armour, a grinder helmet and like a strange great sword you were Jesus. If you had trans and a flamberge you were god. Fact is it only took like 2 or 3 weeks to get striped etc, but now to actually be competent in a run, you NEED items well over the worth of 5 million. Resurrection tomes, Barrels, Stone Mauls etc, new players cant access this for a VERY long time unless they either:

A) Loot a LOT of green mats
B) Get lucky and loot a good legendary, not a wormbane
C) Trade their asses off all day and all night

Problem with C is that you actually need wealth to begin with.

So yeah, cut a long story short the loot system is the main reason I've basically quit and I only come on when I feel like it to hang out with a few mates or something. On the note of kiting, yeah I can't even play on AU servers any more, the past like 20 times i've actually come on to play it's been at 3AM on a European server because you can't kite any-more. Man oh man would I love to just go into an AU server and kite a bit, not for loot or legendaries, just for something to do with good ping.

Cavalry is a joke, but that's another topic and honestly cavalry is in my opinion, irrelevant to this mod and is a waste of time. It was made for community fun and should be kept that way.

So all in all, I personally will not come back to this game and play religiously as I used to, until the loot system gets fixed, or the material cost issue gets fixed, or kiting comes back.

This mod is so unnattractive for new players it is unreal. You have to spend SO MUCHHHH TIMEEEE levelling up. Honestly it's just so much, especially with the amount of unsuccessful runs going on now-days, I mean, if you are a new player and you die on wave 17, thats like 10k XP gone. You only get 20k xp per normal run and that's IF you're actually alive throughout the entire thing! It takes so long to level, the reward is tiny, the gear jump from Normal-Hard is rediculous, I mean how can you even expect a team of level 32's to do hard mode? They cant lol. You need to rely on the higher up players to carry you, but there aren't that many anymore.

A suggestion to perhaps "fix" the hard mode issue was nerf higher players and bolster lower players, stat wise, when you join a hard server. If a team of Ragnarok veterans join a hard server to carry three people it's a walk in the park, you have barrels, tomes, hero classes, shields that don't crack, the best weapons in the game, you name it, you could AFK it (not literally). Grab a team of level 39's that just hit 39 and some 32's, it's hard, they actually have to think. I believe to make the mod more appealing from what i've been reading (people want a challenge, hence kiting), is simply make Ragnarok level 52 and you must be a tier 4 support class, make hard mode level 32-39, if higher up players want to join simply bolster their level down and adjust the gear they can carry, for example you have the cavalry tab, and the normal tab. Have a hard mode tab with a level cap of 39 so you cant bring tomes and barrels and your stats will be nerfed. This will bring a challenge, so of course the bots will have to be nerfed, but with this new nerf of the bots and OP players not being able to come into the server and carry, there will be a balance and it will actually be do-able for new players.

People will now complain and say "But now we have no cades", well the bots will be nerfed significantly to suit the stats/weapons of level 32-39 players and don't know if this has happened yet, but it's been said a million bloody times, just make SHC's accessible to the same tier as heavy barricades. They're the same thing. One is tall, one is not. You can still upgrade to a wall cade and a barrel at level 52.

The game is too hard for new players if they are not carried. Also add a mode for like level 45-51 which is the same as hard mode, bots are a bit stronger, our stats are higher, but more xp drops.

Dunno but yeah, rant over.

PS: Not slamming anything, just stating my honest opinion after playing this mod for many many years. I still think the mod is brilliant to have fun and chill around, it's great for what it is!

[Church_Bank]

My opinion why the mod is dieing is: ( I didnt read all of your answers so i dont know if this was still tiped or so xD )

1) No more kitting
2) Less XP when you are playing allone
3) the game lose memeber thats a fact but for some reasons the devs made it impossible for new Player who has reach Level 39 and hasnt good few legenderys to do a rag run and reach at least wave 12 or so. THis is very frustrating when you see that on full rag Servers rarely are not high equip Players. So they will leave the mod becouse the havent got any Chance to do a sucessful run when they arent active in a house.
So my question: Why are you made the game harder for new Players? Why it gaves less xp when some not high equip Players try to do a normal run? So they Game is at the Moment: Waiting for a full Server and try to Joint them and no longer playing in Little Groups of 5 Players.
4) Finally the loot systhem, on my opinion there are lucky numbers which will loot more then other Players. on my self i got 5 chars (4 are Heros and 1 not) with one char i can fiend 5 green mats in a run ( nearly each run ) and with my archer i havent found any green mats since i Play with it ( he is Level 46 ) and i only Play hard and rag.
So can you explain me why i havent got any green loots? when you tell me its becouse i do not Play often i played every evening since 1-2 months without Greens. that made for me no sence but either, i am not dev and i cant stop this mod dieing.
My advice for you dont made the late game harder then it is atm expample the new patch with shieldpirce.
you have to think about the whole systhem not only the late game or the loot part and dont think to made the game better for high equiped Players, they already have enough fun with the game, you have too look at the new Players to Keep this moe a live.

Kind regards
Elaios

[Alphaa]

[...]you have to think about the whole systhem not only the late game or the loot part and dont think to made the game better for high equiped Players, they already have enough fun with the game, you have too look at the new Players to Keep this moe a live.

Honestly, it´s kind of boring especially for the veterans. Kiting is removed, so what shall we do more? We need new challenges, that was the reason I quit. Just being on a server which doesn´t seem to end successfully. Events also are rarely full, because it´s always the same.