Why are the steam reviews so good?

[Phantom425]

Yeah, exactly. I don't know why people bring up stuff like player counts or what have you because, ultimately, casuals drown out superfans. It is arguing against their own interests because casuals are perfectly fine with Bannerlord and the guy who plays three hours a week is going to have a very different set of experiences when it comes to Bannerlord's development.

Because it shows that, very clearly, the response to BL has not been as negative as it has been made out to be. Also, there is no reason to talk down to "casuals". Casual fans deserve as much of a say in the development of a game as the superfans do. Games can be broken by only catering to what the top fans want, just look at games like R6 Siege, the devs constantly cater to the E-sports people rather than the more casual playerbase.

I'm not saying you specifically said this whatsoever, but I get a sense that people on this forum only want those on the forum to be heard on the state of the game. Just looking at the Steam reviews and pointing that they don't really say much in order to invalidate them. People don't need to write out paragraphs as to why they like a game, all they need to do is leave a positive review. If you look at WB, their reviews, while overwhelmingly positive, are basically the same as BL's. It is an incredibly elitist attitude that kinda needs to die. Creating an "us vs them" is never good.

All 100% correct but we're not going to just give up, we were here in the beta telling them how to fix the game and we'll be here at full release, sure the amount of constructive feedback is practically 0 at this point but that's on TW's being useless

i'd rather burn in hell than let some 5 minute forum andy tell me to move on from a game that was suppose to be the successor to my favorite game of all time

Genuinely at some point you'll have to. TW should listen to what people want, but once it becomes clear that it won't be that game there isn't much you yourself can do. TW has a lot more positive praise to listen to than disgruntled fans. I've said this before that this doesn't mean that you're wrong, but you're just simply outnumbered. Catering to a more casual audience works.

The game that you have pictured in your mind is most likely never going to be real, and if it will be it won't be for a while.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I would dispute the idea that Bannerlord specifically caters to casual players. It is a far more complicated game than Warband. The Clan system is extremely unintuitive, the levelling system is even worse, and the siege system is downright incomprehensible. Everything is harder to understand without googling stuff.

Taleworlds may have intended to streamline the game, but the actual result is completely the opposite. Either way, casual players didn't buy Bannerlord because it was simpler than Warband. None of the PR material or blogs or anything suggested as such. The idea that you have to completely dumb a game down for average people to enjoy it is kind of a myth. The best games have players in all skill levels.

 

[danEN]

Genuinely at some point you'll have to. TW should listen to what people want, but once it becomes clear that it won't be that game there isn't much you yourself can do. TW has a lot more positive praise to listen to than disgruntled fans. I've said this before that this doesn't mean that you're wrong, but you're just simply outnumbered. Catering to a more casual audience works.

The game that you have pictured in your mind is most likely never going to be real, and if it will be it won't be for a while.

When the full game releases and modders can get to work is when I'll move on

I can assure you we're not outnumbered at all, there's far more people out there that didn't like the game and gave up on it, and there's far more of us on the forums who are unhappy, since you're fairly new you wouldn't have seen how overwhelmingly negative the forums was. The only place I've seen that is majority supportive is reddit and we all know how low iq that place is

 

[dannazgu]

Please explain it to me, i just cant understand it.

Bannerlord Steam Reviews

It's pretty simple and not hard at all, but let's help you

It's called Respect for other people opinions and vies different than yours. I play Warband and felt in love with the franchise right there, I enjoy Bannerlord,

• does it have problems? yes
• does needs more polishing? yes
• needs more content and feature? absolutely
• is it good? yes, it's good, not excellent but good
• improving? only time will tell
• DO I have fun? Hell yes

See? It's not hard

People say the game is good can give good reviews and still be critical without being an ******* to the company and developers, lot of players here does more to this community helping devs find problem then just complaining and whining.

Sure, it's not out job do that, but it doesn't kill anyone be the minimum respectful to other people profession and personal life.

People have different views and you simply need respect them. I'm not considered a gamer, I play few hours a day mostly just weekends because I have more to do IRL, games as I see ar for fun, other way of living, doesn't mean I need be disrespectful to someone i disagree.
I'll keep playing this game and still have fun, will the game still lack things I want see? For sure, my vision and desires are different from Devs and Armagam.

The problem is that there are something called CEO (decision maker), sometimes wants to implement his vision on the product and force down the community instead find a balance, maybe just want start producing new things.

But quantity doesn't matter as long there is quality, what's the point in creating new games and DLCs with you going loose costumers as for sure TaleWorlds will lose some as is part of the process.

Maybe I'm not a Gamer, I only have 300 hours played and that for my lifestyle that's a lot

But, I still want see Bannerlord to its full potential, because the potential of being Game of the Year is there

 

[Ser Jon]

The crazy thing about these reviews that people are taking to one side is that most of the "positive" reviews even state there's a lot wrong with the game, but it's got a promising start or future if it keeps getting updated, and they are old too (real old). People who use the positive reviews with only a few hours in them and think anyone in their right mind should consider some rando on the internet who spent a grand total of 4.2 hours in Bannerlord should reflect how the world sees BL's quality is being insane.

If you look through the reviews, most of the positives are not that positive. Because they know it's EA and there's a lot broken and missing, but the start is good, so they left the review as "positive". If there were a third option in reviews, instead of just positive/negative, the state of games would be able to be reflected far easier. Of course, that said, there are even a lot of negative reviews that say positive things about the game--because clearly there are good things about the game.

Reviews ultimately mean little, especially when there are no standards in which they can be made or judged.

EDIT

Oh, I see that Ananda_The_Destroyer basically touched up on that very thing earlier. They explained it in a funnier way of course, so I'll leave it to them. ?

Literally who is saying that it is a perfect game. You don't have to think a game is perfect to give it a positive review. You can like a game and not have it be your favorite thing.

Well, it seems the fact that my comment was a joke was not clear, so I'll explain it. It was meant to be exaggerated to poke a little fun at people who use Steam reviews to judge the quality of a game.

And did you ever consider that MP isn't something these players are playing or care about precisely because it's a pile of garbage and not because they don't care about MP? It's a whole different ball game to play a SP broken game than to play a broken MP game.

I can assure you we're not outnumbered at all, there's far more people out there that didn't like the game and gave up on it, and there's far more of us on the forums who are unhappy, since you're fairly new you wouldn't have seen how overwhelmingly negative the forums was. The only place I've seen that is majority supportive is reddit and we all know how low iq that place is

No, no, no, no, no. You aren't getting it, my friend. 13k people are playing Bannerlord at average. It means every single one of them or by assumption the majority of them have no qualms whatsoever about Bannerlord's development etcetera because clearly, if they did, they wouldn't be playing it. See, that sort of thing also happened with Paradox's Imperator: Rome. Overwhelming disapproval on all sorts of social boards, but clearly because people were still playing it through the update/fix process, it meant nothing was actually wrong with Imperator: Rome! ?

 

[danEN]

No, no, no, no, no. You aren't getting it, my friend. 13k people are playing Bannerlord at average. It means every single one of them or by assumption the majority of them have no qualms whatsoever about Bannerlord's development etcetera because clearly, if they did, they wouldn't be playing it. See, that sort of thing also happened with Paradox's Imperator: Rome. Overwhelming disapproval on all sorts of social boards, but clearly because people were still playing it through the update/fix process, it meant nothing was actually wrong with Imperator: Rome! ?

13k!!!! HOLY SMOKES why are we not playing this amazing game we must be missing out on something man

hopefully one of those 13k can give us a list of the 50 mods they need to make this game playable

(bannerlord only 45,000 players behind cookie clicker on steam let's go!!!!!!!!!!)

 

[Lorcalus]

Reviews are not actually all that good. You must always compare a sequel to previous game.
Warband has 97% while Bannerlord has 87% overall. Both have over 100k reviews so they are objectively comparable.

That is a huge decrease. Also it is worth noting that reviews during early acces are usually far more favourable and MnB franchise got influx of new players that never played warband.

With that in mind when sequel gets lower reviews in range of 10% is a signal that something certainly didnt work .

Any serious company would also analyze those things. In my opinion the problem with tjhe game is that Banerlord is more of a remaster than a sequel. It is certainly not a bad game but it fails in terms of evolurion and absence of certain mechanics.

 

[Apocal]

I would dispute the idea that Bannerlord specifically caters to casual players. It is a far more complicated game than Warband. The Clan system is extremely unintuitive, the levelling system is even worse, and the siege system is downright incomprehensible. Everything is harder to understand without googling stuff.

I doubt they had any sort of plan going on other than a vague mandate to make things more accessible. My post was just saying that most people who bought the game aren't going three layers deep into the mechanics and are fine with that. But I also don't think quality or design matters much when it comes to reviews: HighFleet, a much more thoughtful, better integrated action/strategy game has nearly the same Steam rating as Bannerlord. And that in spite of going absolutely balls-deep into immersion aspects and very interesting (highly subjective) worldbuilding.

 

[Honved]

My suspicion is that the majority of the favorable posts on Steam for Bannerlord must have been from players who never played Warband or the original M&B. As a basic combat game, it's fine, but once you get past that, it's.....shallow at best. With many of the reviews coming from players who pick it up, fight a few battles and enjoy it, and then post, I'm surprised at how many reviews AREN'T positive. Then there are those who buy it, play a couple of hours and don't like it, then forget about it and never post. The polls have a certain amount of built-in positive bias, especially for a game that's actually pretty good at the beginning. The majority of the glaring omissions and flaws don't show up until you're well into a long campaign. For those who have played the earlier games, and tried mods of various sorts which showed how much was POSSIBLE, Bannerlord comes off as a worse game, but with better graphics. A lot of the hate comes from those players who had pinned their hopes on BL being everything that WB was, "and more", so when they got "and less" instead, the ****storm was inevitable.

Bannerlord isn't BAD, but it's a step down from Warband in several critical respects, while being an upgrade in a few others. For nearly a decade of development, that's really not saying much in favor of it. If the things you liked about Warband or the original game are missing in BL, then it's bound to disappoint you. As someone who was happy with the combat system and just wanted more stuff to do as the game progressed, I'm SERIOUSLY disappointed.

 

[Ser Jon]

The majority of the glaring omissions and flaws don't show up until you're well into a long campaign.

This is exactly it.

 

[Phantom425]

I can assure you we're not outnumbered at all, there's far more people out there that didn't like the game and gave up on it, and there's far more of us on the forums who are unhappy, since you're fairly new you wouldn't have seen how overwhelmingly negative the forums was. The only place I've seen that is majority supportive is reddit and we all know how low iq that place is

Orion made a post about this in the BL is a grift thread, where he breaks down that the forum is a small percentage of the M&B community. In terms of the community at large, not just this forum, you are the minority.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/bannerlord-was-a-grift.443728/post-9741927

Doesn't mean that your voice doesn't matter, it just means that the notion that this is the attitude of the entire community just isn't true.

Well, it seems the fact that my comment was a joke was not clear, so I'll explain it. It was meant to be exaggerated to poke a little fun at people who use Steam reviews to judge the quality of a game.

I'm awful at picking up jokes through next, so that one is my b.

And did you ever consider that MP isn't something these players are playing or care about precisely because it's a pile of garbage and not because they don't care about MP? It's a whole different ball game to play a SP broken game than to play a broken MP game.

Yeah, and even without MP the game still gets consistently high player rates. And I don't think most people come to M&B for the MP. Doesn't mean no one does, but I don't think that MP is the major pull of the series.

With many of the reviews coming from players who pick it up, fight a few battles and enjoy it, and then post

This kinda falls flat when you look at the reviews for players with over 100 hours in the game, it comes out to 86% positive. That is still a mostly positive rating.

With that in mind when sequel gets lower reviews in range of 10% is a signal that something certainly didnt work .

Not necessarily true, it just means that a part of the fanbase that played the original isn't happy with a new direction. Just look at the review difference between DoW1 and 2, 1 being 95% and 2 being 87%. Both games are held in good regard by the community, but there is a similar distance in the review score.

 

[danEN]

Orion made a post about this in the BL is a grift thread, where he breaks down that the forum is a small percentage of the M&B community. In terms of the community at large, not just this forum, you are the minority.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/bannerlord-was-a-grift.443728/post-9741927

Doesn't mean that your voice doesn't matter, it just means that the notion that this is the attitude of the entire community just isn't true.

there's one thing I'll never do on this forum and that's listen to anything orion says

 

[eddiemccandless]

No, no, no, no, no. You aren't getting it, my friend. 13k people are playing Bannerlord at average. It means every single one of them or by assumption the majority of them have no qualms whatsoever about Bannerlord's development etcetera because clearly, if they did, they wouldn't be playing it. See, that sort of thing also happened with Paradox's Imperator: Rome. Overwhelming disapproval on all sorts of social boards, but clearly because people were still playing it through the update/fix process, it meant nothing was actually wrong with Imperator: Rome! ?

Imperator: Rome does not exactly shine for a higher number of positive reviews though, unlike Bannerlord.

Imperator: Rome on Steam

Dominate the classical Mediterranean in Imperator: Rome, a grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive. Navigate the dangerous waters of politics and diplomacy as you build up your provinces and conquer foreign lands. Now available with special content and the digital artbook.

store.steampowered.com

When the full game releases and modders can get to work is when I'll move on

I can assure you we're not outnumbered at all, there's far more people out there that didn't like the game and gave up on it, and there's far more of us on the forums who are unhappy, since you're fairly new you wouldn't have seen how overwhelmingly negative the forums was. The only place I've seen that is majority supportive is reddit and we all know how low iq that place is

I mean you can think that if you want, but all the evidence points to the contrary. Unless there is an army of people who absolutely despise Bannerlord and didn't bother to leave a bad review, most players seem to enjoy it (and to be clear, I do not and left a negative review on Steam myself).

I have to agree with @Phantom425 on this one.

 

[Poddicus]

there's one thing I'll never do on this forum and that's listen to anything orion says

Amen

 

[crimsonfilms]

there's one thing I'll never do on this forum and that's listen to anything orion says

But he quoted facts. A GIF is not really countering his argument.


On topic:

This forum represents an extremely small portion, niche, part of the BL player base - long time WB players that do not see eye to eye with TW on the direction of BL.

Steam users, which also have a large portion of WB and long-time players, see the game differently.

 

[xdj1nn]

The game is really good. WE on the forum know that this game can be so much more! and it seems like we hate it but we really don't.

hey talk for yourself mate, I do hate it, I'm waiting for it to get properly finished to evaluate again, until that happens I'm basically out of the loop, uninstalled about a year ago, and it remains so...

 

[Ser Jon]

I'm awful at picking up jokes through next, so that one is my b.

It's all good.

Yeah, and even without MP the game still gets consistently high player rates. And I don't think most people come to M&B for the MP. Doesn't mean no one does, but I don't think that MP is the major pull of the series.

What do you mean "even without MP", if you do not mind me asking? If no one wants to play MP because it's garbage, why would they be playing it? Naturally they'd turn to SP or not play at all. It's not an indication that most people don't have interest in MP at all, it just means its so bad no one wants to play it.

Imperator: Rome does not exactly shine for a higher number of positive reviews though, unlike Bannerlord.

Part of the point I was making was that reviews mean nothing, as well as consistent player base. It was seen easily with Imperator Rome because everyone was *****ing, but they were still playing it, thus using reviews/playerbase as absolute evidence of an indication of quality is absolutely insane.

 

[Phantom425]

What do you mean "even without MP", if you do not mind me asking? If no one wants to play MP because it's garbage, why would they be playing it? Naturally they'd turn to SP or not play at all. It's not an indication that most people don't have interest in MP at all, it just means its so bad no one wants to play it.

That's true, however the M&B isn't really being advertised as a MP-focused game. The MP is in addition to the SP, not the main focus. SP is what draws people in. If I had to guess, the playerbase may increase by a thousand or so if the MP was actually, you know, populated.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Part of the point I was making was that reviews mean nothing, as well as consistent player base. It was seen easily with Imperator Rome because everyone was *****ing, but they were still playing it, thus using reviews/playerbase as absolute evidence of an indication of quality is absolutely insane.

Player base, I agree. Reviews, to a point. Obviously the quality of a game is not an objective measure that everyone will agree on, with very few exceptions. The reviews, with all their flaws, are still I think a good estimator of how popular a game is among the people who played it.

The game you mentioned has mixed reviews, which in the Steam world is a giant red flag. I do see a correlation between that and the game being criticized harshly by its player base. Bannerlord on the other hand has a very high percentage of people recommending it. You might say that they posted meme reviews, the way Steam has people review games invites a bias towards positive reviews, anything you want. But it is a fact that we have 87% of the people who decided to review the game clicking that thumbs up button.

My point is that Bannerlord has been well received, and us here thinking that the game is bad are in a minority. Which explains why TW is ignoring us for the most part.

 

[trafon]

That's true, however the M&B isn't really being advertised as a MP-focused game. The MP is in addition to the SP, not the main focus. SP is what draws people in. If I had to guess, the playerbase may increase by a thousand or so if the MP was actually, you know, populated.

There'd be more people playing mp than sp if mp had servers, mods and combat was any good. There are thousands of people like myself who only play mp and wait for TW to fix this trash game. TW doesn't care about mp, i can only hope they start to focus on mp more down the line, but it's been more than a year of ea and mp is still trash and not worth playing.