Mount and Blade Fire and Sword Sale

[Paelos]

Right now you can buy Mount & Blade, Warband, and Fire & Sword (when it releases in 3 days) for $20.

Fire and Sword is prepurchase for $13.50

I'm all over that.

[Strazos]

So sad that I could never get into M&B.

[WayAbvPar]

Heh just bought this and was otw here to post about the sale 

[Paelos]

I think this game unlocks tomorrow. I'm rather  about the whole thing, but I guess I'm alone.

I'd buy it if you haven't already!

[Threash]

Fuck i thought it was today, OP lied to me!

[Ingmar]

Never trust a monkey.

[Paelos]

Never trust a monkey.

[Muffled]

Bought it, played it, was disappointed.  I'll put another ten hours time into it before I write it off, but right now it feels like very little was added.

[Paelos]

Bought it, played it, was disappointed.  I'll put another ten hours time into it before I write it off, but right now it feels like very little was added.

I'm with-holding opinion on it until I get later into the game. I will say that shooting people in the face has proven funny so far. The beginning isn't as intuitive and much harder than Warband though.

[Azazel]

I was disappointed that the sale bundle didn't give me a gift copy of the original M&B.

[pants]

Being a huge M&B fan - I can't see the appeal of this.  The whole appeal of M&B is to run around on a horse riding people down with a lance - and that is fun enough to put up with its shortcomings.  From what I can see of the preview vids, this has just added a bad FPS to the game.  I can't see the point - I'm quite happy sticking with lancing people in the face.

[Ingmar]

It isn't really FPS-y. Functionally the guns aren't really much different than archery in regular M&B, except they hit harder and take 7 years to reload.

[cironian]

Tried it, failed miserably out of the gate since the starting village wouldn't let me recruit anyone so I guess I had to travel solo for a bit. Then just a few steps from the village I got owned by a group of bandits with guns who easily shot lonely old me off my horse and took my clothes and bullets, leaving me even more defenseless. Not really a sign of a well-tuned game if you ask me.

[Paelos]

Tried it, failed miserably out of the gate since the starting village wouldn't let me recruit anyone so I guess I had to travel solo for a bit. Then just a few steps from the village I got owned by a group of bandits with guns who easily shot lonely old me off my horse and took my clothes and bullets, leaving me even more defenseless. Not really a sign of a well-tuned game if you ask me.

No, the beginning is bad, and they need to address that in a patch. Ideally, you have to take your starting money, go to the nearest town, and hire troops at the tavern.

There's a lot about this game that is different and tougher, but a lot about it that is vastly improved over the original. Trade is infinitely better in this game with the addition of banks, caravans, and more realistic pricing on items. Also, troop costs are WAAAAAAY down from what they were in Warband. No longer are you roaming around with 50 elite troops that cost a small fortune to maintain per week. In fact, I have 45 mercs with me in my current playthrough, and they cost a total of 385g a week. Considering how much more money you can make in this game over time, that's paltry.

[Threash]

Yeah, the price of troops compared to that of armor and weapons is way out of whack.  Some guy making 10g a week wearing 200k worth of armor is kinda silly.

[Vaiti]

I'm getting so many graphics bugs with this compared to Warband. It's like a bad acid trip.

[WayAbvPar]

Played 4 or 5 hours so far. Not sure how I feel yet. Shooting people in the face is indeed very rewarding. Not being able to recruit from villages right off the bat makes for a different start, but it may actually be easier. Merc troops are far more capable, so your early small band can kick the shit out of far bigger groups of rabble like looters and bandits. I had 6 merc cavalrymen and 1 companion, and tore through a group of 30 deserters with 2 casualties.

Need to explore the other new stuff before I render a final verdict. I do miss the character creation process from before, and tournaments/arenas (or are they still there and I just missed them?).

[Paelos]

From what I understand they removed tournaments. Arenas were replaced by duels which you can do if you punch a pub crawler.

[kildorn]

I'm meh on this. Played for a bit, joined a war... guns don't change much, but the damage values are crazy. I wouldn't mind except for how M&B handles the player dying and auto resolving the rest of the fight (by apparently being completely terrible with your troops)

So it's a passable mod, with a 0.5% chance per minute of you taking a random bullet to the head from across the map and losing all your troops.

They should also explain in the tutorial that you need to go to merc camps for troops now.

You can also go to the town square/whatever, and will sometimes have the option of visiting the Commander, and he'll have special troops available for cheap purchase.

[Paelos]

The game screams for a patch and a manual. It's not very obvious what they are doing with all the changes, nor what they intend for you to do in the beginning. Also, fuck them for having people steal items from me. That should never ever ever ever EVER happen to someone when they are below level 10. Double fuck the devs for letting bandits steal your horse when you lose. You know what that does? It makes you a sitting duck to be attacked by the same bandits immediately when you escape, and then they steal your shoes. Rinse and repeat until you are naked wishing for a bullet in the skull rather than play that character.

[Ingmar]

The bandits in prior versions used to stand around for a while to let you escape, I noticed these bandits were much quicker to follow me than I am used to.

[Vaiti]

I can't say I've noticed this. My only complaint about gameplay is inline with kildorn's.
Random lawl ur ded bullets are realistically frustrating. I realistically am playing a vidya game and like to  suspend realism to a point of play-ability.

[Paelos]

Being a huge M&B fan - I can't see the appeal of this.  The whole appeal of M&B is to run around on a horse riding people down with a lance - and that is fun enough to put up with its shortcomings.  From what I can see of the preview vids, this has just added a bad FPS to the game.  I can't see the point - I'm quite happy sticking with lancing people in the face.

If you don't get joy from unloading your musket in someone's face, then this game isn't for you. 

[Threash]

As fun as shooting someone in the fucking face and taking down a cavalry charge with a grenade is the random fucking one hit kills are seriously killing the fun of this for me.  Guns should be a tad rarer, i don't want to hide in the back because me dying = my entire army loses.

[Paelos]

I will say this. Most of that stuff I totally agree with. HOWEVER, I think they will balance things out like that over time.

[kildorn]

Fire and Sword made me remember how awesome Mount and Blade is, so I went and downloaded a mess of warband mods last night.

As is? It's close to okay. I like that money is less of a pain, but I can't get past how fragile your character is against gunfire. It wouldn't be bad if you could still order your troops around, but the autoresolver basically murders your troops in crazy stupid ways. 16 looters die, taking out 8 of your huscarls! Wait, what? If that was even slightly simmed out, that would never happen! It's just rolling dice!

[Paelos]

Fire and Sword made me remember how awesome Mount and Blade is, so I went and downloaded a mess of warband mods last night.

As is? It's close to okay. I like that money is less of a pain, but I can't get past how fragile your character is against gunfire. It wouldn't be bad if you could still order your troops around, but the autoresolver basically murders your troops in crazy stupid ways. 16 looters die, taking out 8 of your huscarls! Wait, what? If that was even slightly simmed out, that would never happen! It's just rolling dice!

I agree, here's my list of things that need work for the patch:

- Things should never chase you immediately after you escape
- Losing your horse after a defeat should never happen early in the game.
- The battle auto-resolve needs to be more realistic if you get knocked out.
- No 300y deathblows against the player. This isn't a sniper game.
- We need more information about the troop types.
- WHERE'S THE MANUAL?

[Vaiti]

I agree, here's my list of things that need work for the patch:

- Things should never chase you immediately after you escape

Agree.

- Losing your horse after a defeat should never happen early in the game.

Agree.

- The battle auto-resolve needs to be more realistic if you get knocked out.

Never going to happen but agree.

- No 300y deathblows against the player. This isn't a sniper game.

This here makes me wonder if they tested the game at all.

- We need more information about the troop types.

Not sure that is ever going to happen either. Would be great tho. Apparantly you can change troop equipment as well, not just your companions.

- WHERE'S THE MANUAL?

Compared to previous M&B, I thought this had abit more help/tutorial to it. But that could just be the god awful voice acting throwing me off. Horses are wily beasts.

[pants]

- The battle auto-resolve needs to be more realistic if you get knocked out.

Never going to happen but agree.

There is a mod pack for warband called 'Floris Expanded Mod'.  One of the mods in there has the great function where if you get knocked out, the battle continues on with you able to lie on the ground and watch it play out, and they play out pretty much the same as if you were fighting.  Its a much better way of resolving than the old auto-resolve.  I dont know which mod it is (it would be listed in the Floris docs), but I highly recommend it.

[Paelos]

The enhanced Native version did that as well I believe.

[Threash]

Horse back grenadiering is reeeeeally bad for your horses health.

[kildorn]

Floris is really quite good, as warband mod packs go.

Also: is training a completely useless skill in Fire and Sword? My troops are listed as Recruit, but it either takes a crazy amount of XP to improve that, or training stopped being a real skill, and you need to buy troop improvements now.

Oh, more Floris love: High int gives you xp bonuses on kills. And though it looks silly, troops have I/A/C and a number in front of them so at a glance you know what type and level of troop something is without memorizing all the troop names. Really helpful when doing troop upgrades, so you don't accidentally make your melee god into an archer or a mounted unit because you didn't know which option was "no seriously, keep being badass infantry"

[Paelos]

I have no idea what's going on with troop improvements either. It's very confusing.

See my FUCKING MANUAL disagreement thus far. I feel totally in the dark on this game, which for a sandbox is remarkable silly.

[Paelos]

BTW first patch just hit. It deals with troops properly upgrading. The alacrity of the first update is good news for how things will go with the game getting balanced in short order imo.

[Ingmar]

WTB a game where someone doesn't loot and burn the first village before I track down a 3rd bag of salt for them.