An Open Letter to TaleWorlds from the Kingdoms of Arda team, and the Total-Conversion Mod Community about our concerns and frustrations with Bannerlor

[Gandamula]

But is at least one guy of this team a famous Streamer or YouTuber?

Just kidding!

I appreciate the work of all modders that invest their spare time to make this game better for all players!

Even TW will see this post and forward it to our king Armagan I guess. And Armagan will be like:

+1 of course

For the Mount and blade bannerlord/lord of the rings fans they are.

 

[Bloc]

Armagan: Stall them, Callum, buy us time.
Callum: But I can't do this for long, they are all over me.
Armagan: Arrange a meeting every week if you have to, just stall them. We need until 2024 to complete our master plan.
Callum: I want a raise? Now please?
Armagan: You'll get a raise and a bonus for every abandoned major mod.
Callum: We are not evil, are we boss?
Armagan: Modders are terrible people, you know that.

Callum: What is our plan?
Armagan: We developed a new game in 11 years, they are onto us now. Because everyone knows "game development time == modding support capabilities", it's a no-brainer. But don't worry. We will use constants and internals just to make life harder for them. This has nothing to do with our horrible coding style and unstructured design. We are doing this only for messing up with their mod plans. We actually had amazing architecture but we tore it down just for this purpose. So that, they cannot use anything else and they won't generate more revenue to our unfinished game with basic buggy features. Our plan is taking so many wrong weird decisions that at the end, everyone will buy MB3 because they will pity us.

 

[Mad Vader]

Making a LoTR mod is a bit like cheating. You have a ready audience and all those models from the Peter Jackson movies.
I'm more curious if they can invent new gameplay mechanics that's different from Bannerlord and fun. Vague plans are all very nice, but I'd wait for in-game videos that demonstrate features.

Our plan is taking so many wrong weird decisions that at the end, everyone will buy MB3 because they will pity us.

You may be onto something. Maybe they are trying to make MB2 so poor that MB3 would be an obvious improvement and everyone will buy it.

 

[MostBlunted]

What about MB3 soon BUT IN SPACE?

 

[froggyluv]

Armagan: Stall them, Callum, buy us time.
Callum: But I can't do this for long, they are all over me.
Armagan: Arrange a meeting every week if you have to, just stall them. We need until 2024 to complete our master plan.
Callum: I want a raise? Now please?
Armagan: You'll get a raise and a bonus for every abandoned major mod.
Callum: We are not evil, are we boss?
Armagan: Modders are terrible people, you know that.

Read like straight outta movie. Sir Ian Mcellan as Armagan’s voice, c3p0 as Callum

 

[Worlok]

Have you considered that the mess reffered in the letter is not caused by intentional mod sabotage but rather unskillful coders? If this is the case then it's not about they don't want to fix the code (or make documentation) but about the unability to do so.
In this case it's a sad story.

 

[Philozoraptor]

As a mod supporter, I subscribe this letter and will post it here.

If you have time and patience read the full letter, for those who like Mods and thought that this game would have future, things are going wrong.

Hi r/Bannerlord!

Here is a link to the full letter.

I'm a programmer on the Kingdoms of Arda team, and I am representing 12+ total-overhaul projects (listed at the end of the letter). Over the last few months, the KoA team has been collaborating with dozens of other total-conversion mods, sharing what we know about Bannerlord mod development with each other. We've determined that there are some serious issues with Bannerlord's code, as well as TaleWorlds' development practices in general. Over the last few months (and even years), we have shared our needs and feedback with Taleworlds regarding what functionality we would need to make our mods, and for the most part that feedback has been completely ignored.

Over about a year and 30 updates made to the game, we've seen little to no work done on support for custom campaign maps, custom skins (so we don't have to implement non-human skin as armor pieces like in Warband), custom skeletons (for monsters like Trolls), and countless other features critical to many mods' development. Nearly none of their code is documented in any form, and the mod tools are incredibly unstable. Instead of addressing these concerns, we've seen TaleWorlds putting lots of effort into somewhat underwhelming features, and even neglecting massive issues in the native game (Siege AI, crafting exploits, etc.).

We think it is within the interests of both the players and modders that TaleWorlds shifts their focus to polishing and fixing Bannerlord, rather than building new features on an unpolished foundation.

In addition to neglecting our feedback, TaleWorlds has made huge decisions behind closed doors that make it nearly impossible to work on total-overhaul mods (detailed in the letter). This is the main reason why many overhaul mods have little to no progress to show outside of importing 2D and 3D assets. We are almost completely hamstrung when it comes to modifying and extending Bannerlord's code at a high level.

We encourage any criticism, support, or whatever commentary you may have to be shared in this thread, or the complementary thread on the official forums. We hope this letter and the discussion around it will prevent yet another respected game developer/publisher from ignoring and failing their stakeholders.

With love and butter,

The Total-Overhaul Modding Community

Good luck to you guys. Also I did not know that Harmony is a bad way of modding.

 

[Yukmouth++]

For f**k sake TW pull your **** together.

 

[Nalgasucia507]

Lets all make sure to remember how all this **** is hitting the fan for 2 reasons:
1. Never trust TW again with an EA or even a released product until after reviewing it extensively by others
2. How to not run a company

 

[Lornloth00]

I have always wondered how will game saves and total conversion modules be handled by the developers. Will every total conversion saves go into a separate directory like the total conversions for Warband or will they just be put in the same directory as native? How will the launcher handle total conversions? Will it be a drop down in the launcher like in Warband or will it be just another plugin mixed in with the others? Will each overhaul and total conversion have its own launcher like the Bannerlord Mod Launcher which allows the player to have portable instances that can have separate mod load outs? This is done by the app creating a config file for each instance if the player sets it in its settings.

 

[black_bulldog]

Have you considered that the mess reffered in the letter is not caused by intentional mod sabotage but rather unskillful coders? If this is the case then it's not about they don't want to fix the code (or make documentation) but about the unability to do so.
In this case it's a sad story.

I'd hope it's due to incompetence rather than sabotage. While both reasons are bad one can be reversed easier than the other and that's what worries me the most. I don't think TW can undo this easily or quickly, or maybe not at all.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Have you considered that the mess reffered in the letter is not caused by intentional mod sabotage but rather unskillful coders? If this is the case then it's not about they don't want to fix the code (or make documentation) but about the unability to do so.
In this case it's a sad story.

That's exactly what I was trying to say at the beginning. I see clear indication that this is the case in the way they handle bugs, the way they write code, the general architecture and how the development process is going.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I'd put my money on thoughtlessness. As in, I bet these issues never once occured to them. Hopefully, this letter will make a difference. One thing about this situation that makes me happy is seeing so many modders get together to speak with one voice that's loud enough that it's gonna be hard for Taleworlds to ignore. Seems like a good approach

 

[HotPie]

+1

 

[Nalgasucia507]

I'd put my money on thoughtlessness. As in, I bet these issues never once occured to them. Hopefully, this letter will make a difference. One thing about this situation that makes me happy is seeing so many modders get together to speak with one voice that's loud enough that it's gonna be hard for Taleworlds to ignore. Seems like a good approach

+1

 

[CrazyElf]

I'd put my money on thoughtlessness. As in, I bet these issues never once occured to them. Hopefully, this letter will make a difference. One thing about this situation that makes me happy is seeing so many modders get together to speak with one voice that's loud enough that it's gonna be hard for Taleworlds to ignore. Seems like a good approach

I agree - a unified voice is the only way.

They should also reach out to some prominent Youtbers and the like as well to get them onboard

 

[Mad Vader]

They should also reach out to some prominent Youtbers and the like as well to get them onboard

You are right, Taleworlds seems to listen more to some video-making guys with names like Redundant, rather than its own forum community.

 

[Aldemar]

I love Bannerlord, but i have a guess that TW plans something with microtransactions and mods is the enemy of greedy ingame shops. Fallout76 is the best example. Remember that in the Beta there was a hidden button with "Shop".
Thats why there are no dedicated Servers. (cant apply mods if you cant host servers)
Thats why there is no custom equipment in mp. (easier to apply skins)
Just a guess but it feels like it.

Thanks that we got Bannerlord Online atleast now.

 

[JimmyCakes]

The game's been created by interns and management who didn't know what they were doing.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

I love Bannerlord, but i have a guess that TW plans something with microtransactions and mods is the enemy of greedy ingame shops. Fallout76 is the best example. Remember that in the Beta there was a hidden button with "Shop".
Thats why there are no dedicated Servers. (cant apply mods if you cant host servers)
Thats why there is no custom equipment in mp. (easier to apply skins)
Just a guess but it feels like it.

Thanks that we got Bannerlord Online atleast now.

That would be a brilliant way to make the game universally disliked lol