... went to post this, already quoted, Flockingbird got hands.
^^' I don't think I would've been allowed to make those events otherwise. Though I think the original reasoning was sound at the time (it's generally better to not design features that just... won't work in certain game modes if you can avoid 'em), it's certainly been shown that the appetite is there, folks are willing to make the compromise, and with ToTo, we can see that it's really not as big a deal as long as it's not constant.
Now we're into weedier design questions. Do we have time for this? Should we do a basic implementation? Should it be its own feature and get a dedicated chunk of a DLC? Is this something we can handle in down-time or for a free patch or something, or does it require a DLC? If it does, does that mean we need a whole warfare DLC?
All of these are
much easier to answer (albeit with a bit of discussion) than the MP thing. Glad to have the MP problem (and I must stress that my words are non-binding here, it's just me speaking), in my opinion, mostly answered.
I'd certainly like to! Love writing gore content. Some of my favourite writing in the title is in the duel system, and it's been ages since I've had a chance to sit down and write some horrible grisly first person deaths.
FWIW, my gut feeling is that playable knights'd do a lot to allay this. We can
check what your base prowess is. We can
check what your actual prowess is. Event content can see if you're a sixteen year old wearing the best gear in the world and assuming that means you don't need skill. Technically battle events as they are now could too, but they're so hidden most folks barely remember they exist, and doing niche skill interpretation content like that'd be way too obfuscated.
Were we to do playable knights, there'd doubtless be some power fantasy in there, but tbh I'd want to do more with the chaos of war, the ultra-chaos of battle, and the ability of armies other than the stereotypical doomstack or Space Marine squad to fight.
All excellent points.
For future plans: Oxycoon and I spend a not-insignificant amount of time conspiring about warfare content. We're often a tad stymied, generally for very good (if very frustrating) reasons, but playable knights alone've got... about three drafts for different potential designs atm? There might be others from different cabals on the team. As ever, I can't promise them, let alone a timeline, but at least some of these designs look a helluva lot more plausible right now than they did six months ago.
Sadly correct. AFAIK, it's hardcoded not to be possible. Likely not too hard to script around hackily, I imagine that's how most mods do it, but it's not natively doable unless I'm very much mistaken.
Worth noting that, technically, knights are considered to have retinues, so it's not supposed to be
just them fighting alone. That said, I think we've let that become a bit of a cop-out — prowess is individual for every other check in the title, it's individual in duels, and none of the prowess modifiers are flavoured around supporting characters, so
ehhhh. If we add more warfare content, this is something I'd like to address, either to revise it or to reinforce it.
Man, the stuff I'd do with heartstrings on the battlefield. Locking eye contact with your child as someone drives a spear through their heart? Your best friend riding to your rescue when you get cut off, as your bodyguard is falling all around you? Watching a rival break ranks with their troops to assault your section of the line? So much narrative potential.
