Battle Brothers - Free DLC Released
 

The free DLC for Battle Brothers called Lindwurmhas been released.

More information.

A nice gesture, but while the mechanics are solid I don't know if I will replay this soon because of lack of story.

Gameplaywise, solid mechanics are what call for replaying a product.
Now a story, once done, does not provide anything new except liminar features.

Having a lack of story is a plus in my book. The tactics and strategy is so tight in Battle Brothers it's what keeps me coming back. Maybe a small chance they release mod tools because they also said no DLC. This game with D&D classes would be one of the greatest games of all time. My Paladin and Cleric would be ready for the undead horde.

This DLC has not yet triggered a renewal in BB streaming. Seems like players are finished with it.

For me the lack of an endgames is also not a pre.
Wish there was, then it would be one true awesome game !

Now that their base system is fully developed, perhaps they'll expand it into a strategy cRPG? One can hope…

This is actually the only title I've ever purchased and had refunded on Steam. The mechanics are great but I've never really been gripped by games that don't tell a decent story alongside their gameplay.

Still, it's nice to see the devs throwing their fans a bone after the drama over no mod support.

Streamers aren't real players.
Players that watch just streams aren't real players.

Fully agreed on the "who gives a fuck about streamers" sentiment (the AI seems to be programmed to be obsessed with streaming), but it does look like the release of this DLC has generated very little extra interest in the game:

https://steamdb.info/app/365360/graphs/

Only about 400 extra people playing the game after the DLC release (vs the previous weekends), seems pretty pathetic considering that 100K people own the game.

I actually agree with Chien for once, at least on the point of no overarching story. I'm perfectly fine with creating my own story in my head. So many folks, especially around here, complain about Bethesda's sucky main quests. I personally don't care at all. In an Elder Scrolls game, the first thing I have always done is grab a horse, abandon the main quest and ride off into the sunset to create my own.

I also agree with Wisdom, returning to the norm of disagreeing with Chien, in not giving a frog's fat arse about what streamers do.

That stuff with real/fake has been iincreasingly trending up to meet the demand issued by the instutionalization of double standard: when you start by claiming freedom as human condition and yet strive on slavery, either you admit something does not go as intended or you find out ways to weasel out like a distinction between freedom and freedom, human beings and human beings.

Streamers are players.
There is nothing like players who just watch streams. They are watchers,viewers etc.

BB streamers have reached a level of play in BB people on this site do not display.
They know the product way better than people on this site. They are a great source to learn about BB, which allows not to fall for assertions like BB mechanics are solid.

There is an endgame: the destruction of the supporting environment. That is the only way devs found out to curb the power machine of a BB party in the late game.

BB starts as very dicey, which gives it an impression of difficulty and might result in high casualty rate for players who do not bother about minimalization.

Later, BB turns to quasi certainty (they cant afford certainty) with 95 per cent hit chances so the casualty rate drops down.

Rare threats like orc cities, the black monolith are supposed to harm enough a party to endanger its continuity.

BB is about picking the right fight. With the growth in power, players could keep going on riskless missions.

To avoid that, devs have included a feature to kill a party by attrition: destruction of the environment. Without an environment to be supported by, the party goes extinct.

It is expected to force players into taking fights they would not have taken otherwise, exposing the party to harmful losses.

Experienced players, though, can get ahead of the curve and manage to overpower crisis threats when they appear.

The crisis, while an original feature, turned quickly controversial as they could force players into an end game (while players wished they could go on endlessly and reign as masters)

There is an endgame. Experienced players can mitigate or avoid it (demands serious dedication)

No. BB is horrible with free hand story. Already stated.

It has no scripted story (warbanners has but does not get praise for it)

BB, though, is no platform for writing a story. The characterization features are too weak.

There are few optimal builds. Players who min max converge toward the same style.
Worse, builds are precast: you cant start with any candidate and turn it into a suitable brother by adapting a playstyle to his qualities.

It does not work that way, you do not build the group as the summation of all members.

On the contrary, you fish (blindly) for candidates that meet ideal conditions to satisfy an archetype.
That is why you are forced to go around hiring people without knowing stats in advance. If the knowlege was available, people would only hire the proper candidates.

Players are forced in blind pick, you must crack a lot of nuts before finding the good pick. BB is very far from a product in which you could assemble a variety of bands, based on candidates of all sorts.

In BB, there is one shoe and only a few candidates fill the shoe.

At least, warbanners seems honest about that: they give no name to characters, they are just called swordsman, priest, minotaur. BB same, two handers, archers etc

No story material distinction between members.

You can make an end game. Try and destroy the Black Monolith. Good luck with that. Also, you can try and get thru all 3 end game events, in one iron man play thru, without getting most the cities destroyed.

Experienced players do that. It is possible to get ahead of the curve.
There is an end game for players who do not know how to play or do not wish to play.

For others, there is not.

Holy Chien triple-post, Batman!

BBBZZZZZZT does not compute…

I also couldn't get back into it for the DLC. I played over 300 hours already, think I'm just done.
There's zero chance of mod tools because the underlying architecture doesn't allow for it.

They're already working on their next game and it's not an expansion of BB.

And what is their next game ?

Grabbed Battle brothers today on steam for fifty percent off, so at some point I'll finally get to try this!!

That is the other way round: streamers do not give a fuck about what other players feel and think since products are more and more aligned to satisfy streamers'needs. Streamers are high in devs' priority list.

BB characterization is weak. It does not allow pawns to grow to a person status.
Yet streamers are preserved: the way pawns can be renamed helps them to build an interaction with their community.
They name a pawn by one of their viewers, the viewer is hooked as he relates to the pawn and the streamer is provided with material to remember.
Suddenly, the pawn is no longer undistinguished. It has acquired personality.

Streamers are served. Other players, not so much.

The mechanics are great in a min max product that provides maybe only one min max way to play.
The mechanics are great in a product in which something around half of the perks are irrelevant.

That can be believed.

There is way more then one way to play. I have 500 hours played and each play thru I have tried different tactics. A game with no range brothers. A game with almost all skirmishers. A game with all heavy tanks and shields. There are many tactics to work for your battle brothers. Just read the Steam forums and you can see everyone debating about the best builds for your troop of mercs.

Chien, I have come to the conclusion you really don't know squat about Battle Brothers. Thankfully, your almost impenetrable prose prevents anyone from taking you seriously.
----
Their next game hasn't been officially announced, they just posted one concept art shot of a bunch of soldiers in different dress. But one of the devs told me pre-production is rolling along.

Back to the demand of avoiding to assess a min max product from the min max angle.

There are obviously a lot of builds. It does not mean all of them are min max.

Better to mention the level of difficulty and the world settings. Going for a no range members run is high casualty prone when facing goblins and a goblin shaman. The goblin shaman alone is the main reason behind opting for the bull eye perk.

One thing that can not be taken from streamers: they show. Listening to them is not required, watching them is enough.
Players who tell they have an uncommon way of playing are welcome to stream it.
Streamers converge toward the same approach.

Anyone that gets hooked because a streamer named a pawn after him, is clearly a shallow shell of a person to begin with.
But I'm happy he found some meaning in his life….

Min max is only define some goals to manage the game in some ways, and minimize what's less useful for it, and maximize what's more useful for it.

As soon as the game can be won in different ways, there's multiple min/max paths.

Min/max is generally an absurdity because no player can predict future and what the gameplay will requires.

Usually, gaming is split into a learning stage and the playing the game stage. In gaming, you do not play a game before you've learned how to play it.

BB is also a run product. Players have a clear idea of what to expect.
Runs can be compared between themselves and between players.
BB is a demanding one as there are so few ways of playing it (probably only one) The pressure to keep on pace or to get ahead of the curve is huge.
Differences between players and what they do during the first 100 days can be big.
Players might have got ahead big time in which cases the end game conditions will not trigger. Or they might be on or behind, at this point, they will be caught up sooner or later.

BB is big on race.

This kind of judgmentalism can be expressed directly to people who get named as streams come with chats.

This will end up in semantics, though. People will be not hooked, they will be something else.

Thus rephrasing: BB provides streamers with a means to involve their community and
for their community to be involved.

Non streamers (as it was the main point, not about judging people's life by some random way they have to get fun) are left with a shell of a product that claim brothers in its title but deliver no mechanics to build up brotherhood.
There is no brother in BB, only pawns that cant raise to any personality due to a lack of design to support characterization.

This explains why so many people watch chess and checkers streams! The gameplay peices are named after the viewers. It makes sense now!

Or maybe chess and checkers streams are watched because their gameplay has passed the trial of times.
BB and its absence of gameplay…