Some thoughts on overhauling the perk system

[Kataphrigus]

Hi guys, I guess you'll probably agree with me that perk designing in BL is rather unbalanced. A few perks are OP, while some perks not worth one more glance. That's actually pretty normal in games with such mechanics, but based on that, in BL most cases you must choose one perk from a pair, making many not-so-strong perks also much neglected. As the result, on one side we have so many perks, part of them are duplicated(e.g. quite a few +5 party size limit or +0.5 militia and stuff) or otherwise boring, filled up the skill panels with perks on-pair, on the other side we do not really have many choices to make our building special. A new player may find it interesting to have new choice every 25 higher skill lvl, but I believe after several playthrough he should have enough with that, more so if he tries to make use of companions.

So I come up with some ideas on how to make things more reasonable, perhaps also more enjoyable.

The main idea is introducing Perk Points to the system. You accumulate certain number of levels on one skill, say 20-30 lvl, then you get a free Perk Point, and use the point to unlock perks. No longer have to choose one perk from two, you can unlock as you wish if there is still PP available, just need to consider how to invest the limited Perk Points.

And we divide extant perks into 4 or 5 Tiers, from S-tier to C- or D-tier. S Tier perks need 4-5 Perk Points to unlock, and so on. Thus balancing the effect with cost.

Or we could make the perks multi-staged, like in Skyrim. Every stage of perk need one Perk Point to unlock, so a S-tier perk has 4-5 stages, a bottom-tier only 1 stage or 2. Take the Athletics 275 perk "Might Blow" as example: for now once unlocked it gives the character 1 HP for every skill-lvl above 250. We can divide this effct into 5 stages, each unlocked stage gives you 0.2 HP. Thus we could also give weak perks more stage to make them more pickable.

Also duplication perks such as "Merry Men" of Bow skill and "Having Going" of Athletics could be merged into one single 5-stage perk under Leadership skill, giving you with every stage +5 party size limit. Or considering that there is already the INT skill Steward to make additive party size limit increment, we could let this SOC-bound Leadership perk be multiplicative, say every stage +5% or +4% party size limit. So could be done with those +0.5 Militia or +1 Loyalty perks scattered everywhere. If a Crossbow/Polearm perk has something to do with militia, I hope it is like "spawn/retrain to militia crossbowman/billmen", which could be kind of non cultural-bound troop, like the mercenaries. By doing so we could delete some placeholder-like perks while also make attributes/skills more specialized. Why an archery expert suddenly get ability to lead more men, just because Robin Hood was a good archer and by chance had his Merry Men? Then what is the relationship between the Merry Men and town militia increment?

Next, to regulate how fast the character earn the Perk Points, I think we could use Focus points for that. The more Focus you invested at a skill, the less skill levels you need to get one more Perk Point. Say you have 0 Focus on Riding, then you earn 1 Perk Point with every 30 Riding levels, while if you have put 5 Focus , you will get one PP for every 20 skill lvl. Focus effect should be retrospective, you improved one skill to 100 with 0 Focus, already got 3 PP from it, then if you invest 5 Focus point into it, you'll immediately get 2 more PP.

Let the Attributes alone responsible to regulate learning rate & limit. ATM Attributes and Focus are basically doing exactly the same things, perhaps not an excellent mechanics design.

That's all. Thanks for reading!

[dawn13245]

My biggest gripe with the perks are like you said in the first paragraph, maybe not necessarily the perk system in of itself. A lot of perks aren't worth a glance, and there are a lot that are still broken. Like for example, two handed and polearm have perks that effect knock down chance... Yet there's no weapons with knock down flags... lol

 

I'd like to see a total perk overhaul that changes the effects of perks we can choose from. Skyrim's Ordinator or Vokrii overhauls are popular for a reason. Changing the perks can make a huge impact on gameplay. I'm surprised there are no mods for perks in Bannerlord after 3 years of modding.