Your Bladestorm Idea's

[LittleDragonZ]

What would you like being improved upon, added or even changed drastically in the next expected Bladestorm game? I would like:

1. An easier viewing map.

2. Being able to choose your own mercenary default weapon of choice. Such as a bow or pike instead of always a sword.

3. Cutscenes in the middle or throughout the game rather then just at the start and end.

4. Being able to unlock the characters as playables.

5. Better voice acting.

6. A more diverse range of missions. Such as protecting someone, defecting mid-battle, aiming to kill a foe whilst being vastly outnumbered and supporting the supply-lines, etc.

7. A more interactable environment. An example; Able to climb up upon castle walls and fire arrows with archers via ladders. Another being; Smashing castle walls and gates with elephants, etc. Also, a more variety of terrain and cycle weather changes.

I like those mounted paths in Bladestorm because of the strategy you can undertake, but there are too few of them.

8. Better balances in unit usage and to not let horses dominate 80-90% of the game when using them. Also, more attacks would be nice.

9. A SP transfer system.

[God-Like Phoenix]

Well...since you've already said most of them, I'll just say the few that I can think of, and perhaps add to yours :p

Firstly, well...this idea is kind of loosely based upon what your able to do in Fable and Fable2, and that is pretty much the free roam aspect, in the Bladestorm scene, you could just wander from battlefield to battlefield at your own leisure...and also to get to the taverns, you could go to one of the larger cities, or forts, castles, whatever, and enter the tavern through there(or press start and select it from the menu :p )

Some thing that I think could be improved upon would be your own mercenaries involvement in the cutscenes, sure your the main focus of half of them, but in all of them, you do nothing, you just sit there...not making a single sound, and not one bit of emotion shown, no matter what the situation(this actually annoyed me at times).

Now in relation to LDZ's 4th idea, perhaps at the start you could be given the choice to be either your own mercenary, or one of the characters that you would usually meet in the game. So if you wanted to be completely for the French side(like me) you could chose to be someone like Joan of Arc, La Hire or de Richmond, and vise versa. So when you wanted do be pretty much completely detatched, you can be your own merc, but still go for which ever army you want to win :)

I think thats enough for now... :rolleyes:

[LewisSO]

Because I've barely played it, all I'd like is it to be easier to understand. Me no understand Bladestorm.

[civiliza]

While there seems to be some continuity between successive battles in a region when the sides are relatively balanced, I find it frustrating to have completely subjugated a region in one battle only to return later and find some of the same cities now under enemy occupation.

Also it would be nice if the regions were better linked - completely subjugating one region ought to shut down / convert one of the entry points in a neighboring region.

Maybe some sort of three stage entry point might be in order tied to key cities in each region as follows:

1) If (at the start of the battle) the key city in both regions is French, the entry point is French in both regions.

2) If (at the end of the battle) one of the key cities is taken by the English, then at the next relevant battle, the entry point is French in the region of the English city and English in the region of the French city.

3) If (at the end of that battle) the second French city is taken by the English, then in the following battle, the entry point becomes English in both regions.

ie The key city or cities in one Region affect the entry point in the adjacent region (cities would be better since you would have to take say all three to affect a change).

Trouble is that this would be rather one sided, so maybe at the end of your battle, a "pools panel" style result of the battle(s) in other regions could be made to simulate the actions of other forces.

The extension of this idea would be that you can only fight in a region if you occupy at least an entry point and/or one of the cities. The English could theoretically be driven all the way back to the Normandy / Brittany coast and the French to say (demonstrating lack of French Geographical knowledge) entry points in Gascony or Champagne.

Of course, where the key battles could fit into this is another matter. Maybe I'm looking for Bladestorm Empires?

[God-Like Phoenix]

@civiliza: So what your trying to explain is really more like the Empires games? is that it? because that would be an interesting variation of the BLADESTORM game, but I guess it wouldnt really be all that great if it was just England vs France for control.

In the Historical version, you could do that, but for an empires type thing, what if each of the generals(Joan of Arc, Edward, etc) each take control of an area, acting as like its own kingdom. The generals that have 'sidekicks' can stay together though, like John Chandos with Edward, You Ji with Arthur and Marie with Phillipe and so on.

Throughout it, you could hire mercenaries to use in battles, and the better classed mecrs(crap=no names, good=Magnus, Karen etc) the more you would have to pay for them.

Once you really start to think about it that way, I think it could really be done pretty good :)

[civiliza]

@God Like Phoenix - Hmm, must admit I hadn't though it that far through - I can see where you're coming from, but somehow the idea of France's individual leaders creating mini Kingdoms and fighting each other doesn't quite gel with my (admittedly vague) conceptions of the war.

Or do you mean the leaders vying for interest in the names of their respective countries? ie while the Duke Of Flanders wouldn't invade the Champagne region, he would be prepared (against a rival bid from the Champagne region) to hire mercenaries to "liberate" English occupied cities in the Champagne region.

Ooh! Sounds like a potential nest of vipers. Machiavelli anybody? ;)

[civiliza]

The more I think about it, the less feasible Bladestorm Empires becomes. The fundamental problem is that Empires works from the top down - the person doing the strategies then gets to fight for them. Bladestorm works from the bottom up, the mercenary has no say over the strategies, and can switch sides at whim.

I just wanted a mode in Bladestorm where the mercenary can consistently drive forward one side's objectives Maybe fighting for the other side as necessary to learn new skills and/ or obtain new weapons.

FRESH IDEA ALERT

Since the main character switches sides frequently, how easy would it be to introduce some concept of trust at the individual NPC level. The more you fight well alongside an NPC or come to their rescue, the more likely they are to come to your rescue. Conversely the more times you defeat an NPC, the more likely they are to come looking for you on the battlefield as an opponent or abandon you as an ally.

Maybe contracts could go up on a notice board together with a list of signatories so that you could choose to fight with certain characters or avoid fighting against them.

It would also be good if you could hire some of the mercenaries yourself (at exorbitant prices) to act as bodyguards and vice versa - yes, I know that there is one such contract, but with the trust aspect it could add an extra dimension. Repeatedly succeeding as someone's bodyguard could improve their trust levels.

[God-Like Phoenix]

Firstly, please dont double post, next time, please use the edit function, thanks :)

Secondly, the way I was explaining it may have been a tad confusing...yes, there would be quite some difficulties in doing a BLADESTORM:Empires game. What I was suggesting was that if there were someway to split the regions up even further, then the regions could be split between the English and French generals.

In DW4:E and SW2:E (only E games Ive played :p ) you are given the choice for Historical or random scenarios, I was thinking of something similar to that. For the Historical version, England would have the majority of the Aquitaine region, and bit of Normandy, Brittany, Flanders and Gascony, while the French has the rest. As for the way the characters are used, each can have its own region(s) but under a permanent alliance of that country...or if merc...nothing ^^

When it comes to the Random or Fictional scenarios, each character could act as its own Leader, much like what you can do in the other Empires games, where you can buy out other characters, from either side, and try to take over the overall area which in this case in France. So for example, I might want to use Magnus or Diane, so I would start as a leader of lets say the region that surrounds Bordeaux, with random other characters(generics etc) filling the rest of the regions. From there, it would play out much like the other Empires games, so theres the strategy phase, movement, battle...and so on, and that would go on untill you win or lose...does that make more sense?

----

Ok, about your "trust" idea, I think that it would be a fairly brilliant addition to the game, should another one be made ^.^ . Im just trying to think of another game that utilises such a thing...the one that really pops into my head right away is the SSX snowboarding series. If you attack people, they start to hate you and attack you back, and so on, thats sort of the only game in which I've seen something like that...I think?

Ok...I'll take a break for a bit...let other's speak :p

[LittleDragonZ]

Oh yes, that trust idea sounds good and such a simple concept that can be introduced. Great ideas and discussion guys.

[civiliza]

@God-Like Phoenix. The trust element (or at least missions based on the idea) also appeared in DW5XL's Destiny Mode.

I could see individual NPCs reacting or trusting differently. eg

Yoshimasa? would trust honourable actions and (initially at least) a willingness to "Come home with your shield or on it". He wouldn't care whether or not you fought against him as long as you fought well.

Some NPCs would be quick to anger, quick to forget, others slow.

Some would be total pragmatists - they wouldn't go after you, but they wouldn't support you either.

I can imagine that some - like say Lord Chandos would never forget a slight.

Some would be biased for one side or another - they would make all sorts of allowances if you did dubious things in the name of their side, but come down hard on betrayals of that side.

Which brings me to betrayals.


I think that having accepted certain missions / requests, there might occasionally be a follow on scene where you were offered more money by an agent to complete a counter mission.

If leading reinforcements, you could hand them over to the other side. Thus making an enemy of the person who made the original request, and an ally of the agent.

Likewise, if defending a town, you could instead attack it.

In both cases, it could work like DW5XL where you would have to meet the agent on the battlefield to enable your own defection.

If the defection had to happen on say the first day of a battle, you would then have to complete the rest of the battle with your former allies very much against you and with no option to retreat.

This could then lead on to a story arc where you had to defend your home village against the reprisals of the force you betrayed. In addition you would have a degree of infamy.

Once you have become infamous, you would no longer be given trust type missions until you have "worked off" your infamy. Infamy could only be "worked off" by undertaking nasty contracts like taking a town deep in enemy territory on the first day and holding it until your allies can link up with you, or attacking a high ranking opponent who would have a number of bodyguards.

Each successive betrayal would give you a higher level of infamy to "work off".

Furthermore, if you betrayed say a French village, then in future battles, you could no longer regain health or lead units from that village when on the French side. The English in that village would support you, but the French wouldn't.

All of this in the longer term background of individual NPCs trust levels and reactions to your actions.

INFAMY, INFAMY (THEY'VE ALL GOT IT IN FA ME) :)

[Thadius]

The one thing I would like to see since alot of what I would want in a sequel has been mentioned already is the introduction of other lands to battle in, like the Holy Roman Empire or England. Think of them as extra maps with other story's running concurrently with the events of the war in France. The game isn't anything close to being historically accurate so it would just add some new elements to the game.

[Grummy]

Personally I'd quite like to see them move away from the real world setting and into a fantasy one. I know its not to everyones taste, but, for as much as I love playing the game, and I do, every army looks the same except for the colours. Moving into other countries would be interesting, but still to make it different there would need to be unit restrictions. At the moment we can hire what are from appearances, Roman Legions, and other known warrior races are named, Vikings for eample. And thats the beauty of this game, that we can hire any of these units, to restrict them would take something away from the game, but to make different lands actually any different, they would need to do it.

But if a fantasy setting was used, they'd have free reign to do as they pleased, allowing for much greater variety.

Id buy and play the game regardless of course, thats just what I think would be interesting.

In terms of gameplay, the one thing I think would be really beneficial would be if you could take control of units assigned as guards and reassign other squads in their place. Also it would be great if we could combine same type squads to top up the unit we currently command. If I'm commanding a lady lancer unit, and I have lost 7 soldiers, and come across another squad of lady lancers with 4 soldiers, I should be able to incorporate them into my squad to top up the numbers.

[God-Like Phoenix]

So what you are trying to say, and correct me if I am wrong, which is most likely, that Koei keeps the characters and the base storyline of the Hundred Years War, but instead of going for deadly accuracy go for more of a fantacised view of the war? or just go off on a completely different tangent?

Now dont get me wrong, I think its an interesting idea, that could actually be done quite well, but I just dont really know how Koei would be able to do it, while keeping ties to the fans of the original Bladestorm game

[Grummy]

Whilst that would be quite interesting, introducing races and characters from different Mythologies perhaps, Minotaurs etc to mingle with the usual additional armies that were not really a part of this era, it wasn't what I was actually suggesting.

What I meant was, keep the gameplay but change from a real world to a Pure High Fantasy world, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Ogres, Trolls, Centaurs, the whole nine yards.

If they did that, then they wouldn't be restricted in any way at all and could include whatever they pleased. Elven sabre wielders mounted on War unicorns? I'll take that. Dwarven Heavy Axes? Yes please. Goblin Mages? Sure thing.

I know Koei always has worked in real world setting in the past, and I love them for it, but the freedom they would have if they used a High Fantasy setting of their own making would be magnificent. No longer would everything look the same, separated only by whether or not they were wearing blue or red uniforms.

I just think it would be an exciting prospect.

Tell you one thing, as a Warhammer player of old, I'd say a Bladestorm game in a High Fantasy setting would be far more faithful to the essence of Warhammer tabletop game than Mark of Chaos and Battle March ever were.

[ivanff12]

I want a sequel of this game.

[Grummy]

Don't we all mate.

Completing this and getting all the achievements was both the most gratifying and most dissapointing moment of all my experiences with Koei games.

[Stubu]

This actually reduced my enjoyment of DW6. After playing the grand battles that had meaning to the rest of the game, DW6 kinda...lost meaning, dreary battles that if you died...game over (unlike bladestorms just failed mission) and the number of enemies was so high in Bladestorm everything else has kind of dimished in power.

The fact that the enemies actually attacked yo uwas also a huge draw for me, and going to DW where they all stand around scratching is a bit of a culture shock, so I really do hope that they make a sequel, and with so many battles left un-dramatised in this game, there is plenty of scope for a next stage game.

<Spoiler> With your merc becoming one of the most powerful mercs ever, but then not actually completing the war as it still carried on after the game ended, it would be easy to turn your old merc (from save file, or if that was not present load a random merc design) to become your new characters mentor, or even take over as bar keep as lets face it he WAS the mecenary General! <End of spoiler>

So taking into consideration the fact that this game is also so different from any other this is a perfect opportunity to create the next DW series... and turn this into the Koei Flagship series.

Imagine it

Bladestorm: The Three Kingdoms Era
Bladestorm: The Crusades
Bladestorm: Khan's Reign

All of which could maintain the above gameplay but with different settings and weapons / armour and stories would keep the series fresh, with even the smallest of tweeks to the gameplay.