The massive drop from 250k to 25k makes sense.
I agree it does ...because it didn't live up to peoples' expectations.
Very few games will keep that number.
I have to disagree. A lot of games keep a huge percentage of their initial numbers, and even increase them pretty soon after launch when the previously suspicious to the series also decide to buy in on the fun. The game you reference to later in your post is one of them (TF2). Some games like singleplayer games with a playthroughable story naturally decline, unlike sandbox games like Garrys Mod and Mount and Blade.
In fact, just look at the game Valheim, a very successful game. That game follows the same trend as BL is, it is just earlier on.
Valheim is developed by a studio of 5 people, and started as a side-project from one dude. It's a massive difference to the power of TaleWorlds, which is a studio of at least 200 developers. Valheims' population is yet stable with more concurrent players, per your own rhetorics, than the aforementioned game. Valheim will take about three years to complete per their estimation, meanwhile Bannerlord still has no public roadmap.
You're right in one aspect, if the devs do nothing the game will die. That makes sense, however the devs are doing things. I've stated this thousands of times, but the 1.6.0 patch should be one of the most important patches for the community, as it showed that the devs would listen and they are continuing to work on the game.
1.6.0 may have been a bigger update than the previously patches/hotfixes, but you'd have to be new to the whole spectacle if you're naive enough to mark that as redemption for eight years of mismanagement and ignorance. I think someone a while back stated it perfectly; some players had been hyped for years, and now they cannot fathom having wasted all those years being hyped for an underwhelming experience, thus they force themselves to play or like the game, and remain as vigilant white knights on the forums. That, if anything, hurts the strength of our feedback and power as customers.
I also looked at the MP letter and the games they compare the two games and, while Football manager 2020 had a longer amount of higher players, BL is currently doing just as well as the game and is not decreasing in player numbers. The two games, at this point, are doing equally as good.
Oh man, you don't take into account how the release of Football Manager 2021 led to the logical decrease of players in Football Manager 2020, just as Bannerlord led to the decrease of Warband players. The difference is whilst Bannerlord decreased rapidly post-launch, Football Manager 2021 only lost 20% of it's initial concurrent players and will probably keep that stable ratio until Football Manager 2022 is released, all whilst Bannerlord only has 10% remaining of its initial concurrent players, and to add salt to the wound, led to a further decrease in Warband as well.
There is no dire situation, although there is one.
The logic in this comment. The situation might not be dire for you, if you love playing the game with all it's issues, bugs and lack of the basic things which made the Mount and Blade-series a success. Personally, I loved the full overhaul mods, and the multiplayer. I played the first game as well as Warband between the release and 2013, then got tired of the game, only to somehow happen upon a YouTube video showcasing the Napoleonic Wars DLC, and since then it's prolonged my stay in the series for an additional seven or eight years. The lack of stuff that will prolong players stay is dire, and that's clearly why the numbers dropped like never before ...Well, in the exception of No Man's Sky.
Also, saying that it had the same numbers of players that WB had before the release shows that players either quit WB or moved to BL, as there are now more players playing BL then WB, standing at an average 17-20k playercount.
Oh yes, it's great that the sequel has the same numbers after a year as the prequel had after ten years. If anything it means either not a lot of new players to the series came to remain, or old veterans didn't return. Nothing to be proud of. It's not an accomplishment.
You can take that as you will, and I will make my own assumptions, but the one point that I am making is that this dire situation is the same as people touting that Team Fortress 2 is dead year after year after year, while there is a problem it is far from life threatening for the game.
I do not know of these individuals. I last played, and hosted Swedish server in TF2 back in 2014. However, I've never felt the need to be kept up-to-date on the politics of that game. What I can see from Steamdb is that it's a bad comparison. TF2 has had an stable population since it's release, and as previously said, even increased it's population when it got well-received remarks. In reality, the contrast is huge between the two games.