My final verdict

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Or until they have enough resource (man and time) to handle new requests. That's the thing. There are times to receive feedback, and there are times to sit down and work. You can't be receiving and working on feedback all the time. Let alone do it fast. Just take a look at this list. They need to work on their original plans, core mechanics, bug fixes (which constantly comes in and needs to be dealt with), and features on top of that long list of suggestions.
Honestly, I can imagine the TW guys being pretty burned out themselves on this project. Especially the employees may just want to get it done so they can add a shipped game credit to their resume. Not in software but I had to make similar decisions to just reduce the scope of a project because people want to get on with their lives. You can say that just proves the original project outline and project management was bad, and I know that in my case it was certainly true and I've learned from mistakes, but what's done is done
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And I explained that it's not annoying and provides benefit.
No you didn't. You just said it wasn't like that in the past which may or may not be true. There are multiple posts by devs and CMs on this forum indicating that suggestions have been brought up and got shot down by management multiple times. To me, that indicates that at this point in time management does not want the feedback, i.e., does not see the benefit in receiving the feedback on here. The annoying part is just speculation but if I were a CM and got the 1000th "siege ai when" reply after pointing out multiple times that it is already on the list I'd certainly be annoyed
 
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I probably should have specified "unironically" using the quote. As much as I set myself up for that, I did get a chuckle out of it.
 
No you didn't. You just said it wasn't like that in the past which may or may not be true. There are multiple posts by devs and CMs on this forum indicating that suggestions have been brought up and got shot down by management multiple times. To me, that indicates that at this point in time management does not want the feedback, i.e., does not see the benefit in receiving the feedback on here. The annoying part is just speculation but if I were a CM and got the 1000th "siege ai when" reply after pointing out multiple times that it is already on the list I'd certainly be annoyed
Let me rephrase it. You said the forum doesn't have any benefit. And I told you that's wrong because the forum is the only reason why you have Bannerlord. You said it's annoying and I said it's not, because forum is the only place you get feedback for the game and this feedback loop did indeed helped this game in the past and even helping right now.

People, especially regular people don't care if management wiped their arse with those suggestions or considered. They will continue raising their concerns about the aspects they think it's not a good implementation and such. You cannot know "hard" limit for considering issues. It can be 1000th message, can be 100000th message. Depends on the company and how they view something as a problem.
CM has to engage with the community - and if 1000th siege ai when comes in then he has to at least make a statement about their crappy messed up siege AI because at least 1k individuals are complaining about that. CM should talk to whoever the dude is posting Facebook videos and tell him that it's not funny to post a video about siege AI abuse since this is a really stupid bug they failed to fix - And this is the tip of the iceberg - because not all people who hate some feature or encounter a bug comes to the forum and writes. So if there are 1000 comments about something, it's very likely that it's affecting everyone and it's in a bad shape because real affected user count can be 100 times more than that.

You can get annoyed as an individual, you can get sad, you can punch the wall - I don't care. Individuals can have feelings, companies cannot. Especially if your company is charging AAA price, people expect AAA game and when they cannot find it, they have the right to complain. And if your title is Community Manager, you have to address these complaints and issues. As a CM, If you are ghosting your own community because you are "annoyed" - community that made that title worth something, then you have don't know what you are doing and you shouldn't be a CM.
 
You said it's annoying and I said it's not, because forum is the only place you get feedback for the game and this feedback loop did indeed helped this game in the past and even helping right now.

+1. TW even acknowledged this in their EA statement on Steam page.


WHAT THE DEVELOPERS HAVE TO SAY:

Why Early Access?​

“Early access is something that we are very familiar with: our first title, Mount & Blade, helped to pioneer this method of release back in 2005. By working alongside our community we were able to deliver a unique gaming experience that players still enjoy to this day. These past experiences have taught us that it is vital to bring players in to help us iron out any issues and refine the game by utilizing feedback to bring it to the level that both our community and we expect.


And this:

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?​

“We intend to use a range of different methods to gather player feedback and data throughout the early access period. These include engaging with users directly on our official forum and our Steam forum, requesting specific feedback through questionnaires, hosting and participating in multiplayer events alongside our community, and using analytics tools to gather data.”
 
Let me rephrase it. You said the forum doesn't have any benefit. And I told you that's wrong because the forum is the only reason why you have Bannerlord. You said it's annoying and I said it's not, because forum is the only place you get feedback for the game and this feedback loop did indeed helped this game in the past and even helping right now.

People, especially regular people don't care if management wiped their arse with those suggestions or considered. They will continue raising their concerns about the aspects they think it's not a good implementation and such. You cannot know "hard" limit for considering issues. It can be 1000th message, can be 100000th message. Depends on the company and how they view something as a problem.
CM has to engage with the community - and if 1000th siege ai when comes in then he has to at least make a statement about their crappy messed up siege AI because at least 1k individuals are complaining about that. CM should talk to whoever the dude is posting Facebook videos and tell him that it's not funny to post a video about siege AI abuse since this is a really stupid bug they failed to fix - And this is the tip of the iceberg - because not all people who hate some feature or encounter a bug comes to the forum and writes. So if there are 1000 comments about something, it's very likely that it's affecting everyone and it's in a bad shape because real affected user count can be 100 times more than that.

You can get annoyed as an individual, you can get sad, you can punch the wall - I don't care. Individuals can have feelings, companies cannot. Especially if your company is charging AAA price, people expect AAA game and when they cannot find it, they have the right to complain. And if your title is Community Manager, you have to address these complaints and issues. As a CM, If you are ghosting your own community because you are "annoyed" - community that made that title worth something, then you have don't know what you are doing and you shouldn't be a CM.
Again, we're not in disagreement, I don't think. I probably could have worded it better, I'm not making a judgement on whether the forum is objectively annoying or not beneficial. You are making normative claims. TW should do this, CMs should do that. Well, they don't and they probably have a reason for it. And my guess is, the reason is that they, subjectively (and possibly falsely), do not see the benefit in enganging right now. That goes both as a business decision (i.e., we need to finish this game as is before looking at suggestions) and on a personal level (e.g., I don't want to post the patch notes for the sheep textures because I will get bullied, I'll do it later or not at all).
 
I think TW is getting away with way more compared to other developers. What other game released in the state that Bannerlord was/is would be at a 85% positive score ?

Another beloved game of mine named "The guild 2: renaissance" way quite buggy but otherwise a great game! 2 years ago it got a sequel named "The guild 3", like Bannerlord it was a visual upgrade but in many other aspects it was a step down compared to it predessesor (Much like Warband vs Bannerlord). That game after 2 years of EA development is now at a 57% review score on Steam (rightly so as they still didn't add interiors, which was one of the coolest things about the series).

Edit: Additionally Conqueror's Blade was supposed to be an Asian M&B MMO knock-off, however it feels more polished than freaking Bannerlord. And they probably didn't even spend 5 years on development. (Oh and it's multiplayer which is also way harder to do)

Because M&B alone is worth a try and a positive review to me, regardless on how poor it is implemented, a lot of people are trying this formula with Bannerlord. Hate it or love it, the game has no competition on Steam, not even close.
I'm not quite sure this is the case for your nth survival game with paid assets made in UE4.

Bragging about the years of developements is hardly a nice argument anyway, the vast majority of indie studios don't even scratch the burden to design and make an engine.
Thus taking the easy to prototype, hard to master route of Unity or UE is wayyyyy wayyy faster than doing your tools on your own, sounds obvious, but we should be more aware about that.
 
I think TW is getting away with way more compared to other developers. What other game released in the state that Bannerlord was/is would be at a 85% positive score ?
I think the score is inflated because 1) the issues most people are having with the game don't become apparent till you put in 20+ hours into the game and many of those scores are people with less than 20 hours 2) many people forgive issues with a game because it's in ea.
 
I think the score is inflated because 1) the issues most people are having with the game don't become apparent till you put in 20+ hours into the game and many of those scores are people with less than 20 hours 2) many people forgive issues with a game because it's in ea.
The second one is a trend I see in most EA releases. You'll see a large number of reviews that are like "it's not great now but it's got a lot of potential!" and that's listed as a positive review when it should really be neutral or negative one because you're not reviewing a theoretical version of the game that may or may not exist in 12-24 months. You're reviewing the game as it is now. If it's not good now you should not be giving a positive review.
 
The second one is a trend I see in most EA releases. You'll see a large number of reviews that are like "it's not great now but it's got a lot of potential!" and that's listed as a positive review when it should really be neutral or negative one because you're not reviewing a theoretical version of the game that may or may not exist in 12-24 months. You're reviewing the game as it is now. If it's not good now you should not be giving a positive review.
I wish Steam would let people give a neutral review or unsure review.
 
Creative Assembly pulled out of their forum - they just post announcement there and use reddit/discord/facebook as they primary communities.
I remember being a closed beta tester for a game (a long time ago) and the coordinator told us, in reaction to some testers bringing up an issue from the forums, that the official forums were blocked at the company office. It is just normal for the OF for a game to either be full of bittervets or draconian moderation.
 
I remember being a closed beta tester for a game (a long time ago) and the coordinator told us, in reaction to some testers bringing up an issue from the forums, that the official forums were blocked at the company office. It is just normal for the OF for a game to either be full of bittervets or draconian moderation.
I'd say it is a bit tyranical but i assume they think - that's one genuine way to not distract your employees...

P.S. Something tells me it is in players best interest to "not let this thread die of natural causes"
 
Didn't the No Man's Sky lead do exactly that to shelter his team from the negativity so they could focus on working?
Dunno, but in this particular case... it didn't payed off. My pesonal experience about dealing with critcism is - The more you can whitstand, use and smelt into your work, the better for the final result. It works on all planes.. personal, proffesional, sports, education, etc. No brainer here i guess. It just require balls... and hard backbone.
 
Didn't the No Man's Sky lead do exactly that to shelter his team from the negativity so they could focus on working?

They have been very open to criticism, harsh or not, since day one I'm pretty sure. There is no way Hello Games hid from the harsher criticism, because it was the harsher stuff they often quoted or fixed in content patches. I would be very surprised if they did and still managed to redeem themselves without seeing a larger part of the criticism.
 
They have been very open to criticism, harsh or not, since day one I'm pretty sure. There is no way Hello Games hid from the harsher criticism, because it was the harsher stuff they often quoted or fixed in content patches. I would be very surprised if they did and still managed to redeem themselves without seeing a larger part of the criticism.
What I heard is, Sean redirected all those criticisms to his own machine and he sorted them by himself during their "shut the hell up and work" phase. His team didn't see all the negativity and focused on working. They only heard the compiled and "sanitized" feedback from Sean.
 
What I heard is, Sean redirected all those criticisms to his own machine and he sorted them by himself during their "shut the hell up and work" phase. His team didn't see all the negativity and focused on working. They only heard the compiled and "sanitized" feedback from Sean.

If that is true, that harsher criticism still motivated him to motivate his team. So it still has merit. If he only saw pleasant things about the game, would we have the No Man's Sky we have now? I do not personally think so.
 
What I heard is, Sean redirected all those criticisms to his own machine and he sorted them by himself during their "shut the hell up and work" phase. His team didn't see all the negativity and focused on working. They only heard the compiled and "sanitized" feedback from Sean.
That's about the best move you could do. Both accepting reality and shielding your team.
 
What I heard is, Sean redirected all those criticisms to his own machine and he sorted them by himself during their "shut the hell up and work" phase. His team didn't see all the negativity and focused on working. They only heard the compiled and "sanitized" feedback from Sean.
Sometimes there's a lot to be said for shutting out the outside world and just focusing all your attention on getting the job done. Of course, that requires a very solid vision of what it is you're trying to achieve. Unfortunately, its very hard to tell what Armagan's ultimate vision for the game really is, and judging by the progress of this EA so far, I'd venture a guess that the developers aren't all that clear on it either.
 
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