BL is in a comparable state to Stellaris when it was released. BL was in the average state for an EA game when it was released. The missing features suck, yeah, but that doesn't mean the core part of the game was there. Bugs are expected from early EA games, it is kinda in the name.
That is full-blown delusion talking.
Stellaris was a fully-formed game with fully-implemented features and minimal bugs at launch - almost all of which were patched within a couple weeks. It was entirely possible to download the game at launch and play an entire fully-functional playthrough the same day. I know because that's exactly what I did.
Look at
this changelog. This is what a competent developer is capable of. They had 3 hotfixes in the first week after release and a major patch within a month, plus another major patch a month later and then weekly hotfixes after that. If you see what they changed, it's minor fixes and tweaks like "It is now possible to set a custom ruler/heir title for your custom empires" rather than "fixed sieges" or "implemented the perk system" - neither of which TW has done in over a year. BL at EA launch couldn't even use modern graphics cards or multi-core processors, from what I remember.
As Duh said when I asked him about it, they do not want to talk about their post-release plans. There is no good evidence to suggest that they will just drop the game, and it doesn't take a lot of logical thinking to realize why. If TW is in it for the money, like many people think they are, then they have no reason to just drop the game. If they do, then they give up on any future profits from games that they want to sell.
That's the opposite of how logic works. The only cash-grab they're going to make on BL is on PC release and then again on console release. Those are their only two chances to make REAL money. If they screw it up, no amount of post-release patching and expanding is going to be cost-effective. They might as well give it up.
You are a lunatic. The only game I've ever heard of that did something you're describing (releasing an incomplete game and then finishing it after they'd already made their money) is No Man's Sky - and that's hardly an example of good game development.
Because you were. Even Jance told you to chill. The second a dev went "Some internal issues will be added and removed" you literally went "DEFCON 1 DEFCON 1 TW DOESN'T GIVE A **** ABOUT MODDERS", which is just gonna discourage TW from wanting to listen to the community if they can't even wait a week and see that the patch was actually good for modding.
Bruh that entire conversation was like pulling teeth. It took MONTHS. TW was completely MIA and then they told us that the #1 complaint of the modding community may get better or worse, with zero explanation. It's like someone defecating at a funeral - you'd hope they have a really good reason for doing so, but you probably wouldn't trust that person to give the eulogy.
Your opinion is valid, however, you are a part of the vocal minority, not the majority. The steam reviews show that a majority of the people who play the game, like the game.
They played the game for 3 hours and went on Steam to say "WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO IMPLEMENT ELEPHANTS???"
If they - like you - have completely unrealistic expectations of this process, then their opinions don't matter.
None of our opinions matter, in any event, because TW already has our money. If they follow your completely insane prophecy and make a complete game well after release, it would be an act of charity because they wouldn't make their money back on the cost of further development.
If this were the case, BL wouldn't pull 10-20k players a day and would die out in favor of WB. Honestly, the only reason why I have considered leaving this forum is that how much of an echo-chamber it really is. I stop posting in this thread to A, stop giving Roy more posts in his thread that he so loves, and B that I'm not gonna be changing any minds.
BL had 20 times the number of active players when people thought it would be good and the 20k sad sacks who are still around at any given moment haven't budged in well over a year, despite tons of progress on sheep textures.
If this game weren't a rotting corpse, you'd expect the community to rush back after every big release to see what's new. That isn't happening.
Yes the forum is negative, because we know what's actually going on and we're also still big enough fans to keep complaining about it. But what you aren't considering is the very large number of gamers who periodically check the forums every couple months or so for posts that ask "Does the game still suck?" and leave when they see the depressing factual answers that - for instance - sieges still don't work.