Question about this 8 years of Development thing

[D0c1]

made the obviously far too optimistic assumption that people would simply act maturely and roughly compare the complexity of the inner working of both games without playing dumb.

you can't expect to make blanket statements, provide no support and think that people will do the thinking for you.

No, what is natural in a conversation is to try to understand what the other is saying and then think about the points he's making, trying to see their validity

well, when the other isn't providing proof or even an argument, why would one make an argument for him?

both able to have a big number of independent actors in the same scene.

how many bots can NMS have before it turns into a slideshow? do they interact with each other in real time?

BL includes complex management of positioning with each actor, complex AI able to take into account itself and all the others, an economic and social system. It's only able to deal with maps limited in scale and can't do procedural creation though.
NMS can manage procedural maps of humongous size, and is able to create them on-the-fly. It allows for map modification, several different way of locomotion including vehicles, air, ground and underwater. It also allows for base creation and management with a very in-depth crafting system.

can you honestly put "several different way of locomotion" and "very in-depth crafting system" next to "procedural maps of humongous size, and is able to create them on-the-fly" and consider them at the same level?

Anyone not completely blind or of bad faith can recognize that BL can manage better large crowd of actors with a more developed fighting system, but NMS has a MUCH more advanced engine and more (and more polished) systems around

you put one impressive feature (huge procedurally generated maps on the fly) from NMS with some non-features (vehicles and crafting) and concluded that NMS has more advanced engine. i don't agree with this conclusion.

Yes-men never caused anything to improve, criticism does

valid criticism, yes. not claiming that a game with a single impressive feature is more complex and has bigger scope than bannerlord.
and a game dev/coder is saying that feature isn't really impressive and can be done in bannerlord.
you shouldn't compare apples and oranges. like he also said.

 

[Akka]

My point is that they could easily have a mapgen system far superior to warband in the current engine, but like with so many things in the game, they just haven't bothered. I really don't believe there's anything inherently special about the engine NMS is using in comparison to the Bannerlord engine.

I don't know enough about their engine to have a strong opinion on this, but I think you're probably right.
But then again, that's my point : as you said, they haven't bothered/couldn't take the time/etc. to do this with their engine despite it adding a lot of useful functionality in the game and having had a lot of aditionnal time to do it. In other words, they did less with more.
That's just supporting my point about how smaller teams with less time managed to do more, and so it proves there is something really, really screwed up happening.

The real problem isn't that they're taking forever, it's that they're going in the wrong direction entirely.

I'd say the problems are
1 - That they are taking years to do things that should be done very quickly, AND
2 - that they seem to have no logic nor reason nor vision when it comes to fix and evolutions (critical elements easy to fix left to rot for month while irrelevant and more complex ones are corrected in way that breaks other things), AND
3 - that we have no idea about the direction they are going for the game when it comes to design (we still don't know if even basic things like how armor function are final or just dummy fill-ins).

 

[Akka]

You can't expect to make balnket statements, provide no support and think that people will so the thinking for you.

No, but I can make adequate statements and expect people to do their own thinking, rather than just trying hard to be contrarian because they are blind fanboys. I'm not going to waste more time for people who are the latter.

 

[babelfisch]

The game had good graphics and is fast action paced something that casuals whom play 40-50hours at max then move to the next shinny thing love.

If you play more than that you'll start to see the problems in the game and how it lacks a soul, even faster if you played previous M&B games, warband had some barebones features but they were there atleast to add immersion.

Bannerlord only sold so well because of the hype generated and spread to all corners of the internet by the passionated community of the series.

If you check positive reviews for Bannerlord you can see that lots of people play it for hundreds of hours.
Anyway, you are moving goalposts.

 

[babelfisch]

The problem is that at this rate the game will never be good. Some of the people you see complaining now have been extremely patient with the game, but that was almost 2 whole years ago in the closed alpha. Since then there are major problems that could easily be fixed that are still in the game with no sign of progress, while they fiddle with balance and graphical changes that will just get broken in future anyway. To make matters worse there has been no official acknowledgement of these issues for literally years.

The real problem isn't that they're taking forever, it's that they're going in the wrong direction entirely.

Yes, that's way more reasonable even when I don't agree with it. For me Bannerlord is exactly what I hoped for: Warband with better graphics, more features and better polished. Some things are still lacking but in another year the game should be perfect for me (mostly for missing features from Warband, AI improvements and some other stuff that gets frequently criticised on the forums).
I understand that some people expected something different though.

 

[vonbalt]

If you check positive reviews for Bannerlord you can see that lots of people play it for hundreds of hours.
Anyway, you are moving goalposts.

I agree and i was one of these but after a year of early access the game barely moved forward and i started to lose hope TW will truly deliver on the potential this game has, the game is good but it still has several huge problems that range from balance to AI (coof coof broken sieges since release) a year into early access and lacks features warband had 10 years ago.

 

[babelfisch]

I agree and i was one of these but after a year of early access the game barely moved forward and i started to lose hope TW will truly deliver on the potential this game has, the game is good but it still has several huge problems that range from balance to AI (coof coof broken sieges since release) a year into early access and lacks features warband had 10 years ago.

Can't argue against that, valid criticism in my opinion.
By the way, regarding the previous discussion: I just checked and there are 16682 reviews with more than 100 hours play time (some are even above 1000). 84% of them are positive. So I guess that debunks the 'only casual players leave a positive review' argument.

 

[vonbalt]

Can't argue against that, valid criticism in my opinion.
By the way, regarding the previous discussion: I just checked and there are 16682 reviews with more than 100 hours play time (some are even above 1000). 84% of them are positive. So I guess that debunks the 'only casual players leave a positive review' argument.

Agreed, can't argue against numbers.

When people talk about casuals i think they are referencing more the design choices of TW that seem to cater more to that demography of gamers, take for example the infamous design choices of multiplayer that seem focused on turning the game into a competitive e-sport to the detriment of the established fan-base that loved the previous iteration of multiplayer systems they had in warband.

People get mad because they are passionated about this series and want to see it become the best they can be (and everyone has different opinions on how to achieve that of course) and then blame the dubious design choices and casual players who won't stick to the game like many here have done since the first beta of the original M&B (myself included)

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I don't know enough about their engine to have a strong opinion on this, but I think you're probably right.
But then again, that's my point : as you said, they haven't bothered/couldn't take the time/etc. to do this with their engine. In other words, they could do it but didn't.
That's more or less supporting my point about how smaller teams with less time managed to do more, and so it proves there is something really, really screwed up happening.

Yeah that's pretty much what I think as well. Most modern engines are basically the same thing anyway, they're just interfaces between the computer architecture and coding languages like C++ and hlsl, but have somehow ended up being part of the fanboy wars, i.e. my game is better than your. What really determines if a game runs well or can do specific things is the coders and the structure of the company.

Here's a really extreme example:



This is in Unity too, an engine most people assume is slow and incapable of making anything beyond crappy shovelware. Bannerlord actually makes use of a few of the same techniques and their tech team is really talented, but whoever is in charge of the level design and maps is doing the bare minimum.

By the way, regarding the previous discussion: I just checked and there are 16682 reviews with more than 100 hours play time (some are even above 1000). 84% of them are positive. So I guess that debunks the 'only casual players leave a positive review' argument.

That is 17,000 100+ hour reviews out of a total of 180,000. Almost all the negative reviews were made only a couple of days after release, so those people have just stopped playing. What's more only a tiny fraction of those reviews actually contain any text, and the ones that do are often a mixed bag despite having a thumbs up or down.

Either way steam reviews have never been a good metric on how good or bad a game is. Unless something is literally unplayable, it's just a popularity contest like metacritic is.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

[...] but whoever is in charge of the level design and maps is doing the bare minimum.
[...]

Of course, without mentioning names, where would you put the spotlight of the problem? I just ask out of technical curiosity and with no intention of seeking morbidity or controversy.

 

[Rungsted93]

I think a more fair comparison of Bannerlord to a different game is Conqueror's blade. Conqueror's blade is obviously inspired by Mount & Blade but it does bring some innovation to the table.

1. It has a multiplayer campaign (Something which TW said wouldn't be possible to implement in a way that's "fun"). Now I'd personally prefer a MP campaign for Bannerlord to be a more "local" experience with friends and not a mmo. But they did show it was technically possible so that's quite an impresive feat by the dev team.
2. It's graphics, optimization and general polish is on par with Bannerlord if not better. Conqueror's blade has that eastern feel to it, which I completely understand why some people here don't like. I'm actually in the same boat and really dislike the gameplay with over the top combat and special abilities. But objectively at the moment I have to say Conqueror's blade is just in general a more "well-made" game for what it is.

So the interesting thing here would be to know the following about Conqueror's blade:
-For how long was it in development?
-How large is the development team?

 

[babelfisch]

That is 17,000 100+ hour reviews out of a total of 180,000. Almost all the negative reviews were made only a couple of days after release, so those people have just stopped playing. What's more only a tiny fraction of those reviews actually contain any text, and the ones that do are often a mixed bag despite having a thumbs up or down.

That does not compute because the negative / positive ratio remains the same regardless if you look at 10 hour or 100 hour reviews.

Either way steam reviews have never been a good metric on how good or bad a game is. Unless something is literally unplayable, it's just a popularity contest like metacritic is.

True, just like forums are never a good metric on how good or bad a game is.

Anyway, the original claim that started the discussion was 'they completely ****ed up development' which means as much as 'literally unplayable'.

 

[method man]

Anyway, the original claim that started the discussion was 'they completely ****ed up development' which means as much as 'literally unplayable'.

No it doesn't lol. You can make a bad game that is also playable; imagine a technically perfect paint drying sim. It works, sure, but I'd still argue that the game sucks. Bannerlord's worst crime isn't being buggy (though it is buggy), it was being poorly conceived.

 

[Apocal]

yeah it was a financial success because of the hype generated beforehand.
reviews don't matter at all, here's why:

The vast majority of reviews were given on day one or within ~3 weeks after that - people bought the game and gave it a good review after it didn't immediately crash on them (or even if it did, because they were hyped and expecting TaleWorlds to improve the game throughout EA - that has barely happened.)
tl;dr: reviews aren't recent and they don't show how people feel about the game after actually playing it for a while.

You know you can sort Steam reviews by recent ones, right? You can even add in more filters to exclude low playtime "It's finally harvesting season" hype reviews.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

I agree and i was one of these but after a year of early access the game barely moved forward and i started to lose hope TW will truly deliver on the potential this game has, the game is good but it still has several huge problems that range from balance to AI (coof coof broken sieges since release) a year into early access and lacks features warband had 10 years ago.

Totally agree. I retain a little hope that they've been working on overhauling things like sieges behind the scenes like they have been with the battle maps. I find the vanilla game unplayable without a bunch of mods.

 

[Namakan]

You know you can sort Steam reviews by recent ones, right? You can even add in more filters to exclude low playtime "It's finally harvesting season" hype reviews.

I personally don't think 100 hours is a particularly large amount of hours for a game like those from the M&B series, so I don't find the filter all that usefull. Sorting by recent reviews shows a larger amount of negative reviews than overall, which should be an indicator as to the direction we're heading in.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Of course, without mentioning names, where would you put the spotlight of the problem? I just ask out of technical curiosity and with no intention of seeking morbidity or controversy.

It's impossible to pinpoint because there seem to be several people who barely communicate but are also part of the problem, making nonsensical decisions . The biggest issue is what I've seen in some of the glassdoor reviews and heard from some developers, where all these interns are basically in isolated teams and allowed to do whatever with little supervision. It feels like a massive, neverending game jam, or worse still a class of game dev students. But to some extent these are a microcosm of problems happening all across the AAA game industry.

It would be interesting to see what relationship the nearby university has with them, and if they're basically just using Taleworlds as an apprenticeship training camp for undergrads.

 

[Apocal]

I personally don't think 100 hours is a particularly large amount of hours for a game like those from the M&B series, so I don't find the filter all that usefull. Sorting by recent reviews shows a larger amount of negative reviews than overall, which should be an indicator as to the direction we're heading in.

Over one hundred hours is absolutely exceptional for almost any SP game. Getting even 60 hours average playtime is an uphill battle that most SP games (even really highly rated ones with loads of content) fail. I'd be shocked if Warband managed it, considering how the majority didn't even manage to get the steam achievement for gaining a fief...

edit: And if you discount the opinions of casual players*, why on God's green earth would you ever use Steam reviews as proof of anything?

* Actually not casual players but bona fide superfans in this case.

 

[Pizi_G]

Over one hundred hours is absolutely exceptional for almost any SP game. Getting even 60 hours average playtime is an uphill battle that most SP games (even really highly rated ones with loads of content) fail. I'd be shocked if Warband managed it, considering how the majority didn't even manage to get the steam achievement for gaining a fief...

thats true , check yourself
i play alot , really alot and i have only 21 games over 100h with x-com2 at 100,6

 

[Terco_Viejo]

@Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James oh boi... thanks for sharing your thoughts anyway.