This game sucks

[Milo The Orange]

You both have an extremely romanticized view of what a consumer is entitled to. There is not a "right" here - there is no legally binding agreement other than that in exchange for your money you are provided a good or service - which has been provided. Even then,

There are plenty of scenarios out there where money was exchanged and nothing was delivered, or a literally unplayable product was delivered, this is not the case.

I just find it intellectually dishonest when folks come on here complaining the devs don't listen to them as if they're entitled to that - no one is - and then they turn around and churn out threads like this as if throwing a tantrum is going to have the devs ensorcelled into bending to everyone's demands. That's childish and pathetic, some posters here must have not been spanked as a kid with the level of pathetic rants like this.

And yes, that's just my opinion, I still think there are far more constructive engagement techniques that can be undertaken but I stand by my original take in that someone getting bent out of shape over a video game is gross.

Is this a troll or are you very dense? As the consumer I wanted a FINSIHED game not this clearly unfinished crap. What type of bootlicker do you have to be to back the devs delivering an unfinished product? I think in real life you are a pig masquerading as this "common sense" type when the common sense between the fans is that the game is still unfinished.

Though it is common and almost the rule that you have the fanboy types mostly on the company forum.

have you honestly reached the late-game in BL? In warband it took much longer for the game to become bonkers and blatantly pushing anti-player mechanics. In BL that happens much earlier, and it's crap for it

well... - baldurs gate, nvwn, kotor, the FO games (all up to NV included were great games - all after were garbage), the GTA games up to San Andreas (which's still the best), the first Dragon Age, Star Wars Galaxies, original WoW, Warcraft RTS series, Star Craft, birth of DOTA & growth of Counter-Strike, Hitman series going full rage, TES with Morrowind and Oblivion (way way better than Skyrim ever was), Jedi Academy, VTM Bloodlines, Battlefield 1&2, original AC, Half-life, diablo 1&2, etc.
Many of the greatest games were released between 98 and 2010. The generic crap games were overlooked and often forgotten, but the most important part's that PC gaming was at it's peak and had the most engaging RPG games... Today we have absolutely zero RPG games based upon good systems like the PnP, stories are becoming less engaging and often very braindead, with very few and rare exceptions (like TW3); Mechanics and total depth of features / gameplay / gamedesign has been steadily decreasing while they invest ever so more in graphics...

You are being intellectually dishonest to say that "it's the same" or that "it's a lie" that games were much better at that period. Than there's the experimental era with the first few 3d attempts like Doom, Redneck Rampage, Duke Nuken... Those were also golden because they brought completely new things and opened the doors for all of the greatest games that came a bit later...

Can't understand where you are coming from, you basically pulled a niche mostly unknown practice out your arse to justify what became the mainstream, yet we have physical proof that your point's basically dishonest... Only fools would buy these games - the only thing that would grab masses by their balls were games carrying blockbuster movie titles - these were pure hype and pure garbage, I have to agree there... Yet any gamer knew that at the time, even the youngsters (I was among the youngsters in the late 90s)

Yeah video games are in decline specifically RPGs, of course 1999 to 2004 was golden for the genre and games in general (love alpha centauri). Torment and Fallout are still some of my favorite games.

Well at least the game is better than most sequels made today, the game is fun! I expected more from the devs, a complete and total upgrade of every aspect from warband is what I wanted. That's all.

 

[Ser Jon]

Why in the world shouldn't people disappointed with the game stick around and try to change it? They should just shrug and say money wasted, time to stop trying? Do you people even "hear" yourselves? How does that even remotely make sense to you?

People love Warband/Mount and Blade. They want to see it be good, to actually succeed, not pass the bare minimum to give a dopamine fix to people who have no problem dropping $60 or more on a game that's riddled with ridiculous amounts of issues. That discussion doesn't make it impossible for you to enjoy the game, it just means they want to make the game you love even better. But your blindness to the issues and your weird attempts to dismiss others because they aren't in love with a barely functional, feature vacant game doesn't make you look right in the discussion, it just reveals the amount of mediocrity you accept.

 

[xdj1nn]

I remember first time running into you back in the day playing Baldurs Gate 1... down in Nashkel. You went by another name back then... Didn't you Noober?

Yeah video games are in decline specifically RPGs, of course 1999 to 2004 was golden for the genre and games in general (love alpha centauri). Torment and Fallout are still some of my favorite games.

Well at least the game is better than most sequels made today, the game is fun! I expected more from the devs, a complete and total upgrade of every aspect from warband is what I wanted. That's all.

 

[Apocal]

looks like garbage - their steam trailers with that narrator talking like blippi's the cherry on top...
If you tell me that these games are the same level as NvW or Baldur's Gate I'd snap...

After having you talk so much about how modern games lack depth, game mechanics, use simplified design principles, etc. seeing you judge a pair of universally acclaimed RPGs based on their Steam trailers is pretty funny, ngl.

"Anyone who says gaming now is worse than it has ever been is either lying or too young to experienced the era in gaming where like half of all titles announced turned out to be vaporware" - you actually did

If you'd read the previous sentence, you'd see I was talking about the 90s. Not your supposed golden era of gaming.

Media pushes were on spot for AAA, yes, but it wasn't straight bribe / there were much less shills working in those medias, reviewers used to actually play the games and talk about the game itself...

This is how I know you're full of ****. GameSpot was only exceptional because they got exposed doing it but the gaming industry was full of game reviews that were driven by the need to sell ad space. Like, that was their business model back then: the publishers were paying them through advertising.

 

[Grank]

Like, that was their business model back then: the publishers were paying them through advertising.

I'm surprised they didn't teach this in his video game school.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

If anything, reviewer bribery nowadays rarely involves a direct exchange of money like in the past. Companies like blizzard and creative assembly have press meetings and "influencer groups" where they embed themselves with youtubers and make friends with them, to where it's difficult for them to justify scathing reviews, either out of friendliness with community managers or fear of blacklisting.

A funny example of this was the eu4 leviathan dlc, probably the worst launch in modern PC gaming history, but not a single youtuber talked bad about it at all until months later. It would cost millions to achieve this level of widespread press obedience "conventionally". However at the very least you don't get blatant payouts like the old days. As bad as IGN still is, they can no longer just deny reality by claiming a completely broken game is a 10/10, because there are now a massive number of amateur reviewers with tons of views. We now have a funny inversion where some IGN reviewers are more scared of fan backlash than company backlash. Gekokujo on your ass.

 

[xdj1nn]

I'm surprised they didn't teach this in his video game school.

After having you talk so much about how modern games lack depth, game mechanics, use simplified design principles, etc. seeing you judge a pair of universally acclaimed RPGs based on their Steam trailers is pretty funny, ngl.

If you'd read the previous sentence, you'd see I was talking about the 90s. Not your supposed golden era of gaming.

This is how I know you're full of ****. GameSpot was only exceptional because they got exposed doing it but the gaming industry was full of game reviews that were driven by the need to sell ad space. Like, that was their business model back then: the publishers were paying them through advertising.

I always kept a cool head when playing games, and was always exceptionally analytical (you're born like that, nothing can change it) and I don't remember off-scores come up too often - in fact lower than 8 was pretty common, not like now that a developer farts and IGN rates it 9/10 and kotaku itself writes an article praising some bs like "this fart was inclusive" without ever touching on the "game" itself, ie what really matters.

I do know of a brief darker era during the 90s where gaming in general was much less spread-out, back than I was playing nintendo and other shenanigans and was too young to be actively in the know... My top gaming years were filled with joys of uniqueness among them, I'd be playing warcraft, suddenly Postal drops, than I was playing nvwn, than counter-strike... I mean, it was rich... Now for reviews we used to use other media, internet wasn't the main source at all... We'd actually buy magazines to read those and they were pretty much the same as buying a "mini-news paper on gaming". You're talking about gamespot's slow climb (2007) to a prestigious place in an age where they still coexisted with printed stuff and most of us a little experienced at the time were actually sourcing games through multiple means, not just a single website, and not just websites. - the more life became "online" the worse everything got. And it's not just for gaming journalism, it's much much broader, we're still climbing that ladder now and you can see the surfacing of fake news and other absurdities all over the globe...
2007 the most I'd see were those crappy and blatantly low-quality tin-foil websites talking about conspiracies, now even main media winds up victims to fake news - great portion of that falls onto now-a-days journalists who are simply lazy at their jobs.

 

[Gadheras]

Why in the world shouldn't people disappointed with the game stick around and try to change it? They should just shrug and say money wasted, time to stop trying? Do you people even "hear" yourselves? How does that even remotely make sense to you?

People love Warband/Mount and Blade. They want to see it be good, to actually succeed, not pass the bare minimum to give a dopamine fix to people who have no problem dropping $60 or more on a game that's riddled with ridiculous amounts of issues. That discussion doesn't make it impossible for you to enjoy the game, it just means they want to make the game you love even better. But your blindness to the issues and your weird attempts to dismiss others because they aren't in love with a barely functional, feature vacant game doesn't make you look right in the discussion, it just reveals the amount of mediocrity you accept.

This whole thread is a prime example of how you don't try to reach out to creators.

They (TW) did make the game THEY did want to make. Yes, it might not match your vision of how the game should be. But they didn't make the game special for you. They made it for all those people out there that like it, play it, and have a good time with it. So much salty people that feel they are entitled to have it "their way" because they invested so many hours in warband, having lots of fun with all the mods for it and so forth. But Bannerlord isn't that game, it's a new game. Doesn't matter how much some of you tell how the game sucks, and how terrible the creators is. People have fun with the game, and numbers from steamdb back that up. A vocal minority shouting loud is still that, a minority. Maybe you should form a support group to deal with the pain and sorrow? idk.

I'm not saying the game is perfect in every way or couldn't need some more meat on the bones. That is what you have mods and conversions for right? Just as you had for warband. Don't tell me you played that game only vanilla.

 

[Calabanar]

This whole thread is a prime example of how you don't try to reach out to creators.

They (TW) did make the game THEY did want to make. Yes, it might not match your vision of how the game should be. But they didn't make the game special for you. They made it for all those people out there that like it, play it, and have a good time with it. So much salty people that feel they are entitled to have it "their way" because they invested so many hours in warband, having lots of fun with all the mods for it and so forth. But Bannerlord isn't that game, it's a new game. Doesn't matter how much some of you tell how the game sucks, and how terrible the creators is. People have fun with the game, and numbers from steamdb back that up. A vocal minority shouting loud is still that, a minority. Maybe you should form a support group to deal with the pain and sorrow? idk.

I'm not saying the game is perfect in every way or couldn't need some more meat on the bones. That is what you have mods and conversions for right? Just as you had for warband. Don't tell me you played that game only vanilla.

It's more about what was expected in Devblogs, the hope put in TW throughout EA and lack of delivery plus the unpolished/incomplete state of the game on release rather than having things "our way" (for most people ou are mentionning at least, imo).

It's precisely because it's a new game and was so hyped up it hurts, I for one still remember at the very early stage of development when they were asking people what they expected from Bannerlord to help direct development...

TW isn't terrible, but extremely dissapointing. And I don't see how hard it can be so hard to understand that people who genuinely invested a LOT of time in trying to play and give feedback for a game they love will get mad when they realize there isn't as much discourse as hoped... idk if you were there during the Mexxxico phase, but people were much less agressive overall. Why? Although there were decisions they disagreed with, people felt like there was an exchange going on... you know, the whole point of EA.

Is this Forum extremely sour? Yes.

Are there good reasons it is? Yes.

Do forumites regularly exaggerate everything out of frustration? Yes.

Is Bannerlord still potentially fun? Yes.

Does that excuse the clear lack of content, cohesion and polish? No.

Does that make the devs a bunch of incapable scrubs? No.


Edit: Btw, I for one genuinely enjoyed vanilla warband (even M&B original for a few months) more than vanilla Bannerlord, 300 hours at the very least before ever touching/hearing of mods. It felt more complete around what it was trying to accomplish and relative to its capabilities. Granted I was a teen and had never experienced anything like M&B, so ofc I've gotten more used to the formula.

 

[Gadheras]

It's more about what was expected in Devblogs, the hope put in TW throughout EA and lack of delivery plus the unpolished/incomplete state of the game on release rather than having things "our way" (for most people ou are mentionning at least, imo).

It's precisely because it's a new game and was so hyped up it hurts, I for one still remember at the very early stage of development when they were asking people what they expected from Bannerlord to help direct development...

TW isn't terrible, but extremely dissapointing. And I don't see how hard it can be so hard to understand that people who genuinely invested a LOT of time in trying to play and give feedback for a game they love will get mad when they realize there isn't as much discourse as hoped... idk if you were there during the Mexxxico phase, but people were much less agressive overall. Why? Although there were decisions they disagreed with, people felt like there was an exchange going on... you know, the whole point of EA.

Is this Forum extremely sour? Yes.

Are there good reasons it is? Yes.

Do forumites regularly exaggerate everything out of frustration? Yes.

Is Bannerlord still potentially fun? Yes.

Does that excuse the clear lack of content, cohesion and polish? No.

Does that make the devs a bunch of incapable scrubs? No.


Edit: Btw, I for one genuinely enjoyed vanilla warband (even M&B original for a few months) more than vanilla Bannerlord, 300 hours at the very least before ever touching/hearing of mods. It felt more complete around what it was trying to accomplish and relative to its capabilities. Granted I was a teen and had never experienced anything like M&B, so ofc I've gotten more used to the formula.

End of the day though. Players doesn't dictate how a game get developed or the content of the game. They do however decide if they want to buy it and play it. A old video I saw from gamescom basically said they had majority of features and mecancis already set back then. If people expected more, or assumed there would be things in the game TW already said wouldn't be in the game. That would be on them though. The hype some people set for this game is by own doing. I didn't have the feeling of the creators blow smoke up my bum to be the deciding factor buying the game.

I got Bannerlord before I got the other games in the series.. With Bannerlord I spent over 1000+ hours. The other games less than 10. Why is that you think? Shouldn't the other games in the seires be the "magic kool-aid" that set the standard?

I have a lot of fond memories of games I used to play back in the day. Revist them these days doesn't bring back the magic. But it doesn't keep me from use them as a standard I judge other games on. Back in the day playing original Xcom /UFO Enemy unknow) on my Amiga at hours end. Then later got a pc and got X-com apocalypse, and I was like.. what kind of **** is this? Or playing the original civilization game and all excited about get my hands on Alpha Centauri and it just didn't click...the magic wasn't there.

 

[Life_Erikson]

What makes pop music bad isn't necessarily the quality of individual tracks, but the fact that it uses the same elements in every song with no innovation or change for years at a time. Even "elevator music" (officially known as library music due to the vast libraries of it that were produced), a highly complex fusion of jazz and orchestral music, is now seen as low quality trash due to oversaturation and overuse of the same tropes and motifs.

I feel the same way about video games. The pop music of the game industry is stuff like CoD and asscreed, even though if you let someone from 2003 play modern CoD and asscreed odyssey their minds would be blown. As an example, I didnt buy any new AAA games until 2015 when I bought Just Cause 3, a fairly unfleshed empty open world. But at the time it basically made my head explode, having played nothing but old physical copies of games and cheap indies.

Basically individual novelty is part of how the player views the game. Playing warband was a novel experience, but playing it again in 2022 is not.

Interesting point. There is certainly truth to that.

 

[Fistochat]

Even if the game was perfect, some people would still complain. That's why this discussion is pointless. Now as I stated before, there is two ways of dealing with this game : first you decide to be optimistic, thanks to the great mods that are coming (KoA, Guerra del'arte, etc.) ; or you decide to be pessimistic, in which case I can assure you will have regrets because mods are going to be amazing and in 10 years, your opinion will be the extreme opposite of today.

So don't waste time, just enjoy what is coming.

 

[Grank]

mods are going to be amazing and in 10 years

I can sense the "muh 8 years of development" jabs coming. Take cover!

 

[DLW khan]

FailWorlds

 

[The Vladinator]

Hmmm.. I think constructive criticism and feedback is important. Why not actually now that full release has occurred, make it abundantly clear what you want fixed? Making a thread that is titled 'This game sucks' I believe is a misconception of the idea of providing feedback.

I wrote in another post why feedback is important. I will quote it below.

It's sad to see that Taleworlds have not responded to the concerns players have. I believe that @TaleWorlds should make their position clear, provide development roadmaps and listen to community feedback if they want a game that continues to have a vibrant and humming community. These forums are full of broken promises but maybe with full release that will change.

They don't even support the PC version what makes you think they give a **** about you either

The reason I say this is explained below:

Profits and Redistribution
If we take a sales figure to date of about 10 million copies (was 3.1 million as at July 2022 according to my research), then we will use that round figure as an estimate of how many copies have sold this far.

If each copy of the game is sold for $40 USD that is a total of $400,000,000 dollars made from the game sales.

Then subtract costs. Let's say the costs of development is similar to GTA V at $200,000,000. That leaves Taleworlds $200,000,000 in profit margins. I would say that probably has blown out of proportion because how long it was in development so that's probably an interesting figure.

Then we subtract the cut Steam and other companies take. Let's leave it at Steams 30%.
---
That would mean a tasty $60,000,000 is taken for selling the game and Taleworlds is left with $140,000,000.
---
Why does this matter to the games overall continuing support? Well, at those estimated figures, the game needs to perform well in sales and money made for Taleworlds to make profit from the game. Thus, it would make sense for the company and honour its shareholders to support the community. By players and consumers showing that they want more, bug fixes, more content and to deal with issues that have not been dealt with until now, now that it is launched need to be dealt with for the making of the game to be profitable.

For example: the multiplayer has an in-game store for cosmetics that you unlock by playing multiplayer. I can see that they may end up doing what Chivalry 2 did in selling in-game currency for real life money, thus allowing the purchase of cosmetics. In addition to expansions etc they could make alot of money for more content with smaller development time (ie the Paradox Interactive strategy). While GTA V was expensive to make, it made $6 Billion in worldwide revenue.

From that $140,000,000 if they invest $40 mil in hiring more programmers etc they can make the changes and content people would like to increase profits. $40 mil could buy you 20 positions for 2 year contracts at $100k per year, ultimately paying for experienced content creators to firstly fix issues and then create more content - but it would require investment. That investment would make more profit, and therefore make the game profitable.

Atm a glance makes it look like they've lost millions of dollars in making the game if they didn't break even.

Remember: Gaming is an industry as much as it is entertainment.

So yeh post and let your voice be heard. This post is about the fact I want the console version to be supported. Voicing your opinion makes them know what the community wants so they can make in the long run more . The worse reputation the game gets, the less copies people will buy. Lets endeavour to help Taleworlds out though and let them know what the community wants so the game can get better for everyone with more and more content and fixes And it makes business sense for Taleworlds to get on board and hear us out. That's why it's important to be constructive in giving them feedback.

TLDR:
They're probably making $140 mil profit after selling 10 mil copies for around $400 mil. Your voice matters so they can fix stuff and make the game better, and that's why I want console support

P.S
Research:
aurochdigital.com/blog/2021/8/19/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-game
protocol.com/bulletins/valve-defends-30-percent-commission
steamspy.com/dev/TaleWorlds+Entertainmentt

This isn't an in-depth analysis just making a point why voicing concerns matter.

You can go uphill and down dale going red in the face, swearing and cursing...but the game hasn't been fully released for long. Yeh the game has been in development for years and there's stuff to fix but overall it's pretty good. Have you heard of Star Citizen? Have you seen the development of Chivalry 2 that still has the same issues the game had on day 1? There are many worse examples than this game that one can complain about but what's the point in doing that if it isn't constructive? Imo there is no point.

Make a difference by doing stuff that matters. Report bugs, give feedback on individual game aspects and make suggestions. Again, it matters even if no-one replies - TW wants to make money out of the game, and the way they do that in droves is by listening to constructive community feedback.

If there is no evidence of response from devs, where is your evidence someone from TW isn't monitoring the forums? Where is the evidence that your opinion doesn't matter? Where is the evidence that they don't care about their game that they need to make money from? If you can answer those questions in a decent way people will listen otherwise it's just drivel.

 

[Poddicus]

Hmmm.. I think constructive criticism and feedback is important. Why not actually now that full release has occurred, make it abundantly clear what you want fixed? Making a thread that is titled 'This game sucks' I believe is a misconception of the idea of providing feedback.

I wrote in another post why feedback is important. I will quote it below.


You can go uphill and down dale going red in the face, swearing and cursing...but the game hasn't been fully released for long. Yeh the game has been in development for years and there's stuff to fix but overall it's pretty good. Have you heard of Star Citizen? Have you seen the development of Chivalry 2 that still has the same issues the game had on day 1? There are many worse examples than this game that one can complain about but what's the point in doing that if it isn't constructive? Imo there is no point.

Make a difference by doing stuff that matters. Report bugs, give feedback on individual game aspects and make suggestions. Again, it matters even if no-one replies - TW wants to make money out of the game, and the way they do that in droves is by listening to constructive community feedback.

If there is no evidence of response from devs, where is your evidence someone from TW isn't monitoring the forums? Where is the evidence that your opinion doesn't matter? Where is the evidence that they don't care about their game that they need to make money from? If you can answer those questions in a decent way people will listen otherwise it's just drivel.

You haven't been here for very long have you

 

[Grank]

You haven't been here for very long have you

To be fair he's not wrong. TW does listen to feedback. They just don't listen to every single one. True, part of it is because of Le Vision, but part of it is simply because they lack the ability. I don't think they deserve this level of hatred.

 

[TurkishEconomy]

To be fair he's not wrong. TW does listen to feedback. They just don't listen to every single one. True, part of it is because of Le Vision, but part of it is simply because they lack the ability. I don't think they deserve this level of hatred.

I would disagree entirely. TW doesn't listen to feedback. For example, the community has been clamoring for certain QOL things for literally years now, and it's never addressed by them (see emersion / RP elements on this forum). Both the current Devs and 'Community Managers' ghost this forum constantly, and the only developer who really engaged the community left the company; clearly frustrated by the direction of both TW and this product. It's a complete gong show.

 

[Fistochat]

I can sense the "muh 8 years of development" jabs coming. Take cover!

HAHA you are right. But by 10 years I mean : 10 years of intense modded bannerlord gaming.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Even if the game was perfect, some people would still complain. That's why this discussion is pointless. Now as I stated before, there is two ways of dealing with this game : first you decide to be optimistic, thanks to the great mods that are coming (KoA, Guerra del'arte, etc.) ; or you decide to be pessimistic, in which case I can assure you will have regrets because mods are going to be amazing and in 10 years, your opinion will be the extreme opposite of today.

So don't waste time, just enjoy what is coming.

This is a thread about bannerlord, not mods. If someone makes an amazing mod in the future then, genuinely, good for them. But none of us can say one way or another if that's going to happen, so bringing it up is irrelevant. Having actually made an overhaul mod, you're always at the whim of the developers, and a bad patch can ruin all your hard work and make you quit for good.