Bannerlord was a grift

[AxiosXiphos]

If we want to speak about player numbers - it is absolutely worth considering the EA flag. It puts people off. I'm personally aware of at least 4-5 personal friends who won't touch it until it's fully released; and another 3-4 who don't pick anything up until a year or so after release (at a discount).

Bannerlords (SP) playerbase is actually remarkably good and stable for this stage in the game. Indeed it has more players then Stellaris (the game that keeps getting thrown around here) and CK 3 (the other name that gets thrown around).

Honestly broad appeal, reviews, player count, sales - in all these respects Bannerlord is a smashing success and it is silly to pretend otherwise. Where Bannerlord falls down is the appeal to the Warband Hardcore (arguably the people who kept warband a thing for all those years).

 

[julijs]

?carry on, carry on.

 

[Roy1012]

Totally unrelated,

Let's keep it on topic, now. Wouldn't want to break any rules, if this thread goes off topic another 5 times, I will have the extradition request fulfilled.

 

[Orion]

Being a snarky ass doesn't win you any points. I know you read the rest of it, so why bait?

 

[bonerstorm]

That's a pretty normal player activity trend for SP games. Huge release numbers that taper off after three or four months. Nothing short of DLC gets people to stampede back into activity, something I had to actually go out and graph like a year ago:

Except that snip you provided shows a much less drastic drop-off in active player numbers - and this for a game that I gather is far less replayable than a Mount & Blade game.

Active players dropped like a rock after release and haven't budged since. Considering that endgame quests weren't even functional at EA release, how can anyone say that fans just played through the SP campaign and moved on - like any other SP game?

Of course, what benefit high playercount actually brings to a mostly SP game with zero in-game monetization is itself a question worth asking.

I'm not saying that active player count is a monetizable and valuable thing here. I'm saying that when white knights talk up the GORILLIONS of happy BL players and positive Steam reviewers, their case is unconvincing.

The average BL gamer started it up, played for a couple hours and then dropped it in anticipation of the game being completed sometime in the future.

“T-they aren’t real fans, they don’t appreciate the game like us real fans do. Only we can state our opinion on the game, and no one else because they’re icky. Everybody totally hates the game, let me do some quick mental gymnastics to prove that point and then we can save M&B.”

Bruh... here is a collection of quotes from the "most helpful" "positive" Steam reviews:

"I see a whole bunch of complaints about it being unfinished. Which yes I understand. But tell me the truth..."

"Bannerlord when ?"

"My overall impression is possitive but that doesn't mean there are not a lot of issues with the game..."

"I have over 1000 hours in Warband. This is EA and i have over 400 hours in already. Are there bugs? Yes. Does it have issues? Yes. However it's still a great game despite these issues. It's the best "medieval warlord simulator" out there. I have gone for months at a time not playing this, then I come back and put another 100 hours in. Games great. And with more time and polish it'll be amazing. And you know the Mods are gonna be amazing."

"...The game is still unfinished, and although some features aren't added, mods can help, but not always..."

"...Sieges are plagued by the AI and player controlled soldiers not using ladders, siege towers and engines in a reasonable fashion. If there are 2 ladders to one side to scale a wall, only one will be used. Some siege towers have 3 ladders. Typically 1 is used normally but you might see 2 every so often. Very rarely 3..."

"its not finished but its still great. battles are EPIC"

"Enjoyable? Yeah. Will it ever be finished? Who knows."

"Thick tavern maids"

"It's good, will be even better when it's finished"

"...In many instances parts of the game feel incomplete, unimplemented, or broken. Despite an excellent early game experience, the glaring unaddressed issues of the game stack up and steeply produce an unsavory late game experience, which needs attention. For a game released over a year ago, most of the early access development has been directed toward optimization and bugfixes, and one can only wonder what type of spaghetti we have been cooking..."

"The Single Player Campaign is worth 2.5 k. Waiting and hyped af for the official Multiplayer campaign mode )"

"I have played an ungodly amount of this game and still I am unsure of how to play correctly."

"...I cant wait to see what else will be added as the early access nears the full release."

"Nut"

Like I said... the "positive" Steam reviews are from people rating based on the potential of the game, not of the actual game itself. They are fully admitting that the game is busted and unfinished and are looking forward to it being "completed."

 

[julijs]

Bruh... here is a collection of quotes from the "most helpful" "positive" Steam reviews:

you can even spend a few seconds tampering with the customer review settings to find how many hours a game has from reviewers.

49,459 reviewers out of 167,761 have played more than 50 hours

only 52,957 have played more than 10 hours.

it's not hard to see the reviews had been bloated at the beginning of the EA with all the hype going around. yet many people have not even bothered playing the game and are waiting for its full release (whilst leaving a positive review) indefinitely.

 

[Phantom425]

it's not hard to see the reviews had been bloated at the beginning of the EA with all the hype going around. yet many people have not even bothered playing the game and are waiting for its full release (whilst leaving a positive review) indefinitely.

They have been bloated, yes, but if you look at reviews for people who have played over 100 hours of the game, which is a decent amount of time to put into a game, they still come out of 86% positive.

Like I said... the "positive" Steam reviews are from people rating based on the potential of the game, not of the actual game itself. They are fully admitting that the game is busted and unfinished and are looking forward to it being "completed."

Not everyone is going to write out paragraphs as to why they like the game.

Active players dropped like a rock after release and haven't budged since. Considering that endgame quests weren't even functional at EA release, how can anyone say that fans just played through the SP campaign and moved on - like any other SP game?

Valheim

AC Oddysey

Fallen Order

All of these games had a drop off after the release, with the most drastic being Valheim. The hike in numbers for AC Odyssey on March 19th coincided with a free weekend, not an update.

 

[Ser Jon]

The fact that Bannerlord MP is almost completely a corpse right now and the huge numbers it had near launch died within just 2 months proves exactly where the state of the game is at right now. More people are playing a cookie related game right now than those playing Bannerlord. It went from 110k in April 2020 to 30k in May 2020 and then dropped even further in July to 14k, which is basically the amount of players it has managed to keep since then. It's almost as if the game is going nowhere and players are losing interest.

And I disagreed with that. Some games calling themselves "early access" are essentially (or literally) finished and largely bug-free. Some games described as released are a mess. Who stops them? No one. Am I saying that is good? No, it just serves to confuse buyers about what to expect from their purchase in many cases. But much of the time that confusion is the entire point of the exercise.

You seemed to have thought I was saying that all EA games are the same, when that wasn't the point I was making.

And what early access games do you think are "finished" and "largely" bug free? And what in the world would possess you to think that just because some are more finished than others, it somehow means "any" game can slap EA on it because its some marketing gimmick?

you can even spend a few seconds tampering with the customer review settings to find how many hours a game has from reviewers.

49,459 reviewers out of 167,761 have played more than 50 hours

only 52,957 have played more than 10 hours.

it's not hard to see the reviews had been bloated at the beginning of the EA with all the hype going around. yet many people have not even bothered playing the game and are waiting for its full release (whilst leaving a positive review) indefinitely.

Yep. A lot of them are low hours played nearer launch or haven't launched since. After months of nothing coming to the game, they all probably did the smart thing and uninstalled to wait until its finished. That's a pipe dream though. lol

 

[AxiosXiphos]

I think there is also a large proportion of players who treat EA more like a kickstarter then a beta. (and they are probably the wise ones).

Ergo they bought it so support development but won't touch it until it actually releases. I've done something similar with several EA games.

 

[Ser Jon]

I think there is also a large proportion of players who treat EA more like a kickstarter then a beta. (and they are probably the wise ones).

Ergo they bought it so support development but won't touch it until it actually releases. I've done something similar with several EA games.

I've met a few who actually do treat them like Kickstarters. They'll buy the games and then just trust that the game will reach the promises given to them.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

I think there is also a large proportion of players who treat EA more like a kickstarter then a beta. (and they are probably the wise ones).

Ergo they bought it so support development but won't touch it until it actually releases. I've done something similar with several EA games.

The fact that Bannerlord MP is almost completely a corpse right now and the huge numbers it had near launch died within just 2 months proves exactly where the state of the game is at right now. More people are playing a cookie related game right now than those playing Bannerlord. It went from 110k in April 2020 to 30k in May 2020 and then dropped even further in July to 14k, which is basically the amount of players it has managed to keep since then. It's almost as if the game is going nowhere and players are losing interest.

There are more people playing Bannerlord right now then Crusader Kings 3 - a newer game released by a bigger company and not EA within a similar market...

What standard do we need to hold it against? What number of players do you consider a success?

 

[bonerstorm]

They have been bloated, yes, but if you look at reviews for people who have played over 100 hours of the game, which is a decent amount of time to put into a game, they still come out of 86% positive.

Not everyone is going to write out paragraphs as to why they like the game.


Valheim

AC Oddysey

Fallen Order

All of these games had a drop off after the release, with the most drastic being Valheim. The hike in numbers for AC Odyssey on March 19th coincided with a free weekend, not an update.

It took 3 months for BL's active player numbers to drop from 91% from 248,034 to 20,337 and hasn't spiked substantially since. In three months from release, Fallout 4 dropped 87% from 471,995 to 57,102 and eventually stabilized at roughly 21k active gamers still playing five years later. That was for an actual complete game which people could finish with next to no replay value.

SP games experience drop-offs after release. BL's drop-off was drastic in a way that can only be explained by gamers giving up on the game shortly after actually playing it. If people had faith in the development and new features were being onboarded regularly (or rather, existing features actually implemented), then we'd see regular spikes.

Again, I'm not saying that this is a perfect gauge of player interest. I'm actually saying the opposite: you can't point at active player numbers (20k with millions of copies sold) and say that it's evidence that people are overwhelmingly happy with the product we have.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

Again, I'm not saying that this is a perfect gauge of player interest. I'm actually saying the opposite: you can't point at active player numbers (20k with millions of copies sold) and say that it's evidence that people are overwhelmingly happy with the product we have.

I agree - I don't think it's a great way to measure the success of a game. Nor do I think measuring success is really beneficial to the conversation anyway.

 

[Ser Jon]

There are more people playing Bannerlord right now then Crusader Kings 3 - a newer game released by a bigger company and not EA within a similar market...

What standard do we need to hold it against? What number of players do you consider a success?

It's not really about the number of players making it a success, but an illustration that the extreme drop off in players in just 2 months of release says something quite important about Bannerlord and its development progress.

 

[Lord Grindelvald]

It's not really about the number of players making it a success, but an illustration that the extreme drop off in players in just 2 months of release says something quite important about Bannerlord and its development progress.

The last ten posts showing a multitude of games with similar dropoffs beg to differ

 

[Ser Jon]

The last ten posts showing a multitude of games with similar dropoffs beg to differ

So then, about 90k people just stopped playing Bannerlord within two months because it was too perfect, right?

 

[AxiosXiphos]

So then, about 90k people just stopped playing Bannerlord within two months because it was too perfect, right?

No largely because it was massively over-hyped. Hell the release date was on r/all for a good period of time. But regardless many games have a similar drop off - as has been shown. Here's a few more from within the same general genre as Bannerlord.

It's really not that weird - especially for games with renowned releases.

 

[Ser Jon]

No largely because it was massively over-hyped. Hell the release date was on r/all for a good period of time. But regardless many games have a similar drop off - as has been shown.

It's really not that weird - especially for games with renowned releases.

Yes, and that hype created a slew of positive reviews at 50-100 hours by people who haven't touched it in months. Instead, it seems more logical to some people here to assume that because 13-17k people at average play Bannerlord now that it is somehow a success and thus the majority of players have no qualms about the game or think it needs major attention.

And what makes you think other games having drop offs disproves the majority of players who bought Bannerlord and played it aren't happy about its direction? And why are the 13-17k people more important to your argument than the tens of thousands that stopped playing it altogether for my argument?

 

[AxiosXiphos]

And what makes you think other games having drop offs disproves the majority of players who bought Bannerlord and played it aren't happy about its direction?

Which part proves it? There are 18k people sitting in the game right now happily playing it. More then Red Dead Redemption 2, more then Stellaris.

The argument (if we must argue) should only be on the opinions of the 'warband hardcore people' who make up the majority of the forum. Because vastly more people are happily enjoying the game.

Player counts, reviews - none of it is really applicable. But it is disingenuous to say most people dislike Bannerlord; because by any measureable value we have that is wrong.

Now if your discussion is the majority of Warband Vets dislike the game - then that has groundings at least.

 

[Ser Jon]

Which part proves it? There are 18k people sitting in the game right now happily playing it. More then Red Dead Redemption 2, more then Stellaris.

The argument (if we must argue) should only be on the opinions of the 'warband hardcore people' who make up the majority of the forum. Because vastly more people are happily enjoying the game.

Again...why do those people prove that the game is in a positive state, when a larger number existed and abandoned the game, clearly displeased? The people playing Crusader Kings III are playing it but do not believe it is in a great state, they play it because it has potential. Not because they think it doesn't need more work. In fact, the same can be said about RDR2 and many of the games you mentioned. People playing a game doesn't prove there's nothing wrong with the game or that all the players believe it's in a reasonably great state. At all.

Of course you would try that "hardcore Warband" fans argument. A tiresome and terrible argument, but one people make here all of the time as if it makes any good point. From that statement alone, I can conclude that you, for some reason, believe that the average pollies barely capping 20k on Bannerlord matter more than the tens of thousands that dropped off Bannerlord because they were "Warband harcore" players. Which, in the end, speaks volumes about you and your stance here.