An open letter from the Kingdoms of Arda team, and the total-conversion mod community

[Callum]

Hi guys,

We want to thank you for the time and effort you have put into coordinating with each other to communicate your concerns with us. Modding has always been a massive part of Mount & Blade, and Bannerlord is no exception to that! We of course want to do what we can to support you in your efforts wherever possible.

It will require some time to address all your concerns, but we held a meeting today regarding your letter and reviewed our feedback and bug reporting processes, along with the specific points you raised. We decided to set aside some time next week to discuss possible solutions and ways in which we can support you more, such as with more extensive documentation. In the meantime, we will be reaching out to gather some more modding-related feedback and suggestions.

 

[Maroon]

In the meantime, we will be reaching out to gather some more modding-related feedback and suggestions.

Might I suggest a more open dialog, such as using a Discord server with a bunch of TW developers and mod developers? I'm not sure what the usual method for this is, but please don't go down the "class system discussion" path that we had in the beta, where people posted a lot of good points, but we just ended up with "nah we're not changing anything".
Please take the time to explain the why behind certain choices if you can, and what your plans are. Why do so many random attributes use the "internal" keyword, and are you planning to work those out soon, or were you planning to do that after EA is done (like Bloc and Earendil are suggesting)?

 

[redsimon]

I support this message by the mod teams of several mods I have played.

I think there are many important points raised in the open letter that have to be adressed. I hope there will be direct communication with the mod developers.
Changes are necessary.

 

[Callum]

Might I suggest a more open dialog, such as using a Discord server with a bunch of TW developers and mod developers? I'm not sure what the usual method for this is, but please don't go down the "class system discussion" path that we had in the beta, where people posted a lot of good points, but we just ended up with "nah we're not changing anything".
Please take the time to explain the why behind certain choices if you can, and what your plans are. Why do so many random attributes use the "internal" keyword, and are you planning to work those out soon, or were you planning to do that after EA is done (like Bloc and Earendil are suggesting)?

There's already a community modding Discord that we link to from the modding section of the forums. Several game developers are on there and are open to people pinging them and asking questions etc.

 

[GoldenKingSmurf]

Thank you for this statement Callum. I hope that the modding community and Talewords can cooperate to find solutions to the issues raised in the letter for the benefit of everyone.

 

[Maroon]

There's already a community modding Discord that we link to from the modding section of the forums. Several game developers are on there and are open to people pinging them and asking questions etc.

I'm in the community modding Discord, and I appreciate that several of you take the time to answer questions there. I was mainly referring to/suggesting a more focused cooperation channel (Discord being merely a suggestion for that) between mod developers and you guys, to streamline the modding integration in Bannerlord, or at least to alleviate the concerns listed in this open letter.

 

[Brocephus]

Hi guys,

We want to thank you for the time and effort you have put into coordinating with each other to communicate your concerns with us. Modding has always been a massive part of Mount & Blade, and Bannerlord is no exception to that! We of course want to do what we can to support you in your efforts wherever possible.

It will require some time to address all your concerns, but we held a meeting today regarding your letter and reviewed our feedback and bug reporting processes, along with the specific points you raised. We decided to set aside some time next week to discuss possible solutions and ways in which we can support you more, such as with more extensive documentation. In the meantime, we will be reaching out to gather some more modding-related feedback and suggestions.

I commend the team for being receptive and taking action on this.

 

[Jance]

Hi guys,

We want to thank you for the time and effort you have put into coordinating with each other to communicate your concerns with us. Modding has always been a massive part of Mount & Blade, and Bannerlord is no exception to that! We of course want to do what we can to support you in your efforts wherever possible.

It will require some time to address all your concerns, but we held a meeting today regarding your letter and reviewed our feedback and bug reporting processes, along with the specific points you raised. We decided to set aside some time next week to discuss possible solutions and ways in which we can support you more, such as with more extensive documentation. In the meantime, we will be reaching out to gather some more modding-related feedback and suggestions.

Thanks for the response Callum!

We think this is a good first step towards resolving the problems we outlined.

We look forward to seeing what solutions you come up with next week, and hopefully working in closer coordination in the future. You know where to find us, and we are always happy to give our feedback when given the opportunity. In this case though, actions will speak much louder than words, and we sincerely hope the issues brought up are not swept under the rug.

To anyone interested in getting into Bannerlord modding, or following the progress made on these issues, we highly recommend joining the official modding discord

 

[pinkycatcher]

Awesome, good to hear. From what I think is happening is that TW is just trying to push out tons of updates but not actually spending time on the core code base.

Because it's EA people want to see progress and keep interest in the game, so the things they're incentivized to do is stuff that's visible, look at this new feature, look at this update that adds armor or changes combat. They're not incentivized to make good code for the future.

I think an apt metaphor is they're building a house they already sold and the buyers stop by every week to see progress so they're putting up walls to show they have made progress rather than building a solid foundation and then building walls on top of that.

They seem to be making short sighted decisions that will hurt them in the long run. Modding specifically uses that foundation to build their own walls which is why only the modding community spoke up.

 

[danEN]

Imagine intentionally hampering the biggest selling point of your game, what the hell is wrong with this company.

 

[Karl V.]

+1

 

[Shaxx]

"Fixing" is not the correct term in there, that's why I didn't just say fix without quotation marks. Making a code piece more accessible is not fixing it but making it.. well.. more accessible.
And that can take time - however, designing that in the beginning by thinking about the modders would take more time. Especially if your design can change/gets updated/revised etc. before the deadline. And this happens quite often in the game industry.

Oh no, it can take time? The game has been in development for 11 years, with 60+ people working on it at the outset to 100+ in 2016 with revenue backing it measured in the tens of millions of dollars from just Warband alone and modders ask for some crumbs over a decade in and we just cannot have that, can we.

--

lol I'm the last person that would defend TW about their approaches and such.

That has all you have done this entire thread.

If you have no arguments, you don't have to post.

Gets completely refuted, ignores it. Denying reality, so hot right now.

 

[sakirma]

Oh no, it can take time? The game has been in development for 11 years, with 60+ people working on it at the outset to 100+ in 2016 with revenue backing it measured in the tens of millions of dollars from just Warband alone and modders ask for some crumbs over a decade in and we just cannot have that, can we.

That has all you have done this entire thread.

Gets completely refuted, ignores it. Denying reality, so hot right now.

Shaxx, I love you man.

 

[TFK_Ted]

A mod divided against itself cannot stand, so to say.

Taleworlds has provided some great possibilities for modders. The sceneeditor is an outstanding tool, one can clearly see how some of the "good" features of the Warband editor have been kept, but expanded and made way easier to handle in many other areas.
However, as scener for a conversion, I have to rely on my mates being able to do their work. Right now, these "roadblocks", as they have been called, are a serious obstacle. Moddevelopment has been seriously obstructed. I hope that TW will provide a solution.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

You mean except for those games that are not getting less and less modable...

Ark, Conan Exiles, Empyrion Galactic Survival, Sims 4, Fallout, Skyrim (FYI Bethesda already reached out to the major modders of Skyrim for ES6), GTA 5 is more moddable than 4 and there are literally 100s of others that are not scaling back moddability. Why did you pick one of the FEW games series that is?

Ark is an unreal engine game, fallout and skyrim are basically developed like mods using public tools, and GTA V is in a similar situation to bannerlord where every mod is a runtime patch that gets completely broken every minor update, and there are no official tools. The only reason there are a lot of mods is because it was an enormously popular game, not because it's easy to mod.

Broadly speaking Earendil is completely right. A combination of a number of factors means that it is harder and harder for amateurs to mod an average game. Warband was simple enough that it could get away with using slow, hacky psuedo-python that even an idiot like me could understand, but nowadays almost every game is coded directly in C++ or C# with very little exposed.

That has all you have done this entire thread.

Bloc is not defending them, he's just being realistic. I agree with the spirit of the open letter but in a way I'm like, what the hell did you guys expect lmao. Taleworlds has been making dumb decisions and writing bad code since the bush era, they change extremely slowly and usually for the worse, and have become gradually less communicative over time. Expecting this trend to change is just wishful thinking.

A part of me wants to tell all bannerlord modders to stop immediately and work on something else, because they're just going to get frustrated banging their head against armağan's solid arse.

 

[Shaxx]

Bloc is not defending them, he's just being realistic.

And shilling.

what the hell did you guys expect lmao.

"Cannot even imagine it. This has always been a problem for our kind. Even our dreams are small."

 

[Ettenrocal]

Bloc is not defending them, he's just being realistic. I agree with the spirit of the open letter but in a way I'm like, what the hell did you guys expect lmao.

I feel like that too, i just don't expect anything from TW now. I'll just wait and see. Viking Conquest was in fact a pretty good release! Maybe some talented frustrated modder will end up make his own M&B style game! I don't think anyone wants to "defend" TW, but yeah if you realtistic even writing a letter to TW is already an act of faith!

 

[Shaxx]

I feel like that too, i just don't expect anything from TW now. I'll just wait and see. Viking Conquest was in fact a pretty good release! Maybe some talented frustrated modder will end up make his own M&B style game! I don't think anyone wants to "defend" TW, but yeah if you realtistic even writing a letter to TW is already an act of faith!

You use Viking Conquest as an example, but that was only possible because the Brytenwalda mod team (who were largely the studio that developed that DLC) were given greater access to Warband and modding it on various levels, which is the whole point of this open letter.

But yea, that was a great release, and TaleWorlds had very little to do with it. It had an ambush feature, a 750 max troop count, naval battles, a main quest, player housing, an improved formation system, you could have children, get a pet dog.

Wait... what did Bannerlord add that was new again?

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

"Cannot even imagine it. This has always been a problem for our kind. Even our dreams are small."

Unless you want to overthrow taleworlds or infiltrate them from the inside, they aren't going to change. 2 whole years of people complaining on the forums about the state of game is has done nothing, so at this point the overhaul modders are at risk of wasting their own time on a mod that will never be possible. It's not about "dreaming big" when you're up against an incompetent company. This isn't anime, at some point you just have to give up and move on to avoid wasting your own time.

I feel like that too, i just don't expect anything from TW now. I'll just wait and see. Viking Conquest was in fact a pretty good release!

Viking conquest was a horrendous release which was borderline unplayable on launch day and permanently broke a ton of stuff in vanilla. Its the main reason I'm so negative about them today, because the overhaul mod I'd spent years making was basically bricked.

 

[Bloc]

Oh no, it can take time? The game has been in development for 11 years, with 60+ people working on it at the outset to 100+ in 2016 with revenue backing it measured in the tens of millions of dollars from just Warband alone and modders ask for some crumbs over a decade in and we just cannot have that, can we.

So they have to make it moddable the moment it hits market with EA, just because they worked for 11 years on the project? Nice logic.
Also no one said you can't have that. I'm stating a fact - if you wanna blindly ignore that, suit yourself.

That has all you have done this entire thread.

It's not my problem that you have issues with understanding what's written there.

Gets completely refuted, ignores it. Denying reality, so hot right now.

Completely refuted? Calling me the one that is denying the reality? Fun and also proves that you don't understand what I'm posting.

---

Anyway not gonna waste my time with this.

Modding has always been a massive part of Mount & Blade, and Bannerlord is no exception to that! We of course want to do what we can to support you in your efforts wherever possible.

Thanks for discussing this and for the update. But modders and all other players are already aware of the fact that modding is a massive part of M&B. I would like to ask a really direct question which we discussed in here yesterday, "Did TW tried to put restrictions to codebase in order to limit modding capabilities?" - I'm looking for a yes or no as an answer ( and with an explanation if possible ). Shouldn't be hard to answer I think.