[Old Man Yelling At Cloud] Leaving it to the modders is not (necessarily) lazy

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Hello angry Bannerlord netizens,

I have seen a lot of replies in which the poster says something like "smh I guess they are leaving [fixing X] to the modders because the dev team was too lazy to spend TWO SECONDS out of ONE DECADE OF DEVELOPMENT to [implement my ideas about X]." Some or even most of the time X is in fact broken, and the poster may even have a good idea about how to fix it, and there may already be a mod for it.

However...

Building a robust modding API that enabled community bugfixes is not an easy task! Also, it is mostly "under the hood", so there are few things that your average player swinging their menavlion around and failing to seduce Rhagaea will think about while they are doing it. As far as I can tell from spending time in the modding forums, the complaining seems mostly to be about a lack of documentation than the lack of flexibility to do what modders want*. Another view of the fact that mods like Bannerlord tweaks have so many desired fixes is that the game was engineered such that it was possible to make them.

Therefore, the fact that a modder has made X the way you like it does not imply laziness on the part of the dev team!


*There is that rager of a thread on C#, but some of the major sides in it would agree with with this post.
 
Building a car the average Joe can work on is not an easy task, but doing so doesn't mean you can expect anyone that buys it to put in work to just get it to be fully functional.

Not everyone will be interested or capable of installing mods to fix up the game to a point the devs should have done it.
 
games in worse state did get away with it because the EA was free
people who pay except a product that worthy of the price tag
hence some backlash
i see the work and the scenes and the pace devs working on right now
but what angers people why is this work not done in the past years
i didnt play warband so it me i am comparing this to dayz EA and its actually in a better state for an early release
 
but what angers people why is this work not done in the past years

The people that are angered by it do not understand development cycles or software/game development in general.

8 years may seem like a long time, but its important to remember that they have had to:

-Design, build, and implement and entirely new, modern, and robust engine which would also entail:
(1) implementation of a new physics engine
(2) AI engine
(3) graphics engine

And then building out all the systems that would go into the game itself, UI screens, textures, models, voice acting lines, all the scripts, rough passes at balancing, crafting, economy simulation, battles, etc. etc. etc. Just looking at the dev blogs over the eons, its easy to tell that almost the entirety of every system has gone under at least one revision.

When you work on the same thing for long enough, what might seem fine or acceptable to you - due to your experience - could be untenable to someone who hasn't touched it before.

And especially for any sort of technical backbone, any work done on it has an extremely high probability of affecting other attached systems.

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Early Access is both a blessing, and a curse. I've been blessed to have done paid QA testing, application/invite based alpha/beta, buy-in EA(one game I was extremely passionate about required the purchase of a $100+ bundle in order to get beta access), free EA, discounted EA, etc.

On one hand, its an easy way to mark your game as unfinished - but still get it in the hands of as many people as possible to ensure the game works as intended and get extremely valuable feedback. Some developers leave games in EA forever and barely make progress. Some developers use EA the way it should be used, and make regular changes to the game based on the experiences of those players(like TW is currently doing, thankfully).

On the other hand, some developers abuse EA to release subpar products that would otherwise not be excused.

Depending on the developer's approach to EA, you'll get different crowds of people, but every approach will always have its own backlash associated with it. It is inevitable.
 
Depends what you leave to modders. I absolutely DESPISE games that leave bug fixing to modders. Something Bethesda is famous for.

Enhancing gameplay with additional mini features? Sure. But we have to draw a line somewhere. Else it will become selling a canvas and charge a Van Gogh painting price.
 
Genuinely curious - did the devs ever say it or is it just people being salty at the whole EA thing and that their demands aren't implemented right away?
 
The devs should continue fixing bugs and implement the features they´ve advertised over the years, which they seem to be doing already. Modders can do what they want, whether they´re adding additional features or bringing already existing features closer to their own liking.
 
I reoeat it once more. Modders can add stuff solely based on their opinion and not thinking about what impact it brings to the game. Devs can't, they have to keep in mind whole commmunity and potential balance impact.
 
I reoeat it once more. Modders can add stuff solely based on their opinion and not thinking about what impact it brings to the game. Devs can't, they have to keep in mind whole commmunity and potential balance impact.
that's not how Game Design works, but I have no idea of how they are operating it to be frank...
 
I have no problem with "leaving it to the modders" normally, but it's almost impossible to use many mods, mostly bug fixing, due to the nature of early access. With how they're updating the game constantly, one mod that fixed the game could turn into a mod that break the game in the matter of days. I can only avoid the bug fixing mods and hope TW would fix it themselves.

So I'd prefer TW to just go all in on bug fixing, instead of trying to balance things, rather than leaving it to the modders. In fact, leave the balancing to the modders, fix the bugs first.

The fact that modders can already throw out bug fixes like it's candies, even when there's no modding tool yet, while the devs are trying to balance things really does implies that the devs aren't doing too well.
 
I bet the devs have their own list of "2 second fixes" that is thousands of items long. It's not surprising that any particular "2 second fix" might take some time to implement.
 
110% disagree with you there, modders shouldn't be fixing the game they should be adding things that weren't intended by the developers.

anyway i doubt that's what taleworlds is intending, the game is in alpha the updates/fixes will come in time if they abandoned the project to modders i wouldn't touch another TW game because it's incredibly poor business practice.

No one could justify that malarky no matter how you dress it up.
 
First make a complete and bug free game, then modders can expand upon it.
As soon as a Developer lets a modder fix a bug or a broken mechanic, it's the easy way out (and very unprofessional).
This is the fair way to do it...going the Bethesda way is not, but TW is doing just that ATM and it is really sad to see (although I expected it in 2020).
 
The game is barely out 4 weeks, during that time they have done nearly a patch/hotfix a day. So we cannot say they are doing nothing. I have no doubt that when they gradually fix most of the bigger issues they will start on adding in more features, including stuff where there is already a mod for.

But lets not forget that TW has to consider the entire game, and all of the bug reports they get in daily. They do not have the same luxury as a modder to pick out 1 thing they dont like and spend their time fixing that.

I for one am enjoying this much more then vanilla mount&blade, and just as in warband the future mods will expand upon a great game, and make it epic worthy of 100's if not 1000's of hours:smile:
 
I for one am enjoying this much more then vanilla mount&blade, and just as in warband the future mods will expand upon a great game, and make it epic worthy of 100's if not 1000's of hours:smile:
Just that. I didn't play the previous ones for more than 10 hours because I just didn't like them. I've played Bannerlord for 195 hours. So they're definitely doing something right.

And I have not installed any mods that fix bugs. Only things like 100x forging, or setting the stamina of forging to 0%.
 
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