I got to here and stopped, you've already answered your own question. You said there's plenty of threads explaining that but you've obviously not bothered to actually read them
Taleworlds said "we will use community feedback to bring the game to the level our community expects." But the game still has major problems which buyers complained about since launch two years ago. So: This is a collection of community feedback, to show our expectations, and track if...
forums.taleworlds.com
I have opened this thread only with the intention of turning it into an informative tool and space for debate without entering into heated discussions about the Bannerlord development process and its launch date. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the question to sound like "have we arrived yet?"...
forums.taleworlds.com
A few others which I cba finding
Its okay to enjoy the game, its not a bad game, but when you compare it to its predecessor its pathetic and the amount of criticism is amplified by lack of communication
Okay so let's go up from the bottom. Threads 3-4 basically complements number 2, which is a very well made list that I had skimmed through a couple times. And before discussing that whole super long early access thing, I want to briefly touch on No Man's Sky. As you probably know, NMS generated a galaxy-sized amount of hype when it was teased, launched very bare and full of bugs, not even calling it an early access or beta and that generated a ton of hate, but the devs didn't run away with the money and kept working and now the game is widely seen as a success and very positively reviewed. Why this thread brings this to mind is because their was a similar sort of thing but in the form of a spreadsheet for NMS, with all the features that were promised at some point pre-launch and wether they were present in-game or not. And it feels like when this spreadsheet was starting to show as much green as you can see in the list you linked, people were already kissing Hello Games' buttocks super hard.
That being said, I totally agree that this was a very miscalculated early access launch and they probably shouldn't have released that soon, probably could have made more progress since, but hey, we don't know for sure what motivated these decisions (I mean, money obviously, but in detail we don't know) what happened during the development cycle and stuff.
Which brings me to the first thread you linked, that I had not read and which is closed for new replies. I sincerely hope we can keep a civilized tone here.
But basically what I have to say about what OP wrote, point by point, is this :
1. You don't know. Yes he can do a back of the envelope calculation and come up with a rough estimate but I can also do a back of the envelope calculations and estimate that his margin of errors are too big for his calculation to be meaningful. Plus, for-profit company made money so boo-ooh? What's the logic here? This is absolutely the kind of irrational rant I was referring to in my original post.
2. He says the game lacks content and is absolutely bare-bones with nothing to do, my 452 hours of play time disagree, and then he says I don't like singleplayer so the game is trash. Well the devs decided to make a mostly singleplayer game, some people do like these games, and as long as they make a good singleplayer game that is fine. You can't call a game trash because it was not made with you in mind, if you want that then make your own game and see how hard it is. That being said, I do understand that the community might feel let down by the devs that they previously supported, and yeah, it is truly a shame. But in the end, it's their jobs, it's about their lives, not about ours. We have other games, they don't. They do what they want with their product and in the end we're still free to buy it or not.
3. Modding tools and early access games don't go well together, and again, I think they screwed up the early access launch, game wasn't ready enough, probably still isn't. And now they have to update the modding tools and modders have to update their mods every 5 minutes but nobody got time for dat so mods get abandonned and that's bad. Yep. Let's just hope modding gets better and more stable in the future, the devs said it would be the case at some point, probably gonna have to wait a long time for that though. But although I do feel empathy for people who were hoping for a great multiplayer mode and got basically nothing, I feel that such a profusion of hateful comments might discourage the devs and thus ruin the experience of people who do also enjoy singleplayer.
4. Time. Well, people always seem to assume that a game with an abnormally long development cycle is necessarily going to be a masterpiece when reality has shown time and time again that it is not true. Cyberpunk 2077 was disappointing (7-8 years development I think), recently ArmA Reforger came out 9 years after ArmA 3 and crashed every 10 minutes at launch, Duke Nukem Forever took 15 years and was just wholly unexceptional and there are many more examples I've heard about but these are just games I played that come to mind. If a pregnant mother doesn't give birth after 24 months you don't go "Surely that's gonna be the best baby ever!".
It's mostly a sign that something went wrong in the development cycle. Could be money, mismanagement, major technical hurdles, a global pandemic, sometimes a mix of all that... It's so common that I'll even do a prediction : Kerbal Space Program 2, planned sequel to the beloved KSP 1 my favorite game ever, was due to come out "in 2020" when it was announced. That was pushed back several times and this time they say have a "for sure" release date of Q1 2023. People are saying oh that's good they're taking the time to polish their game and they're going to come out with a really good and well finished product. My prediction is, and I'd be willing to bet quite a lot on it, that they are just being pushed by their publisher to release the game in fiscal year 2023 because that will look good in their annual revenue even if the game is crap given that it is highly anticipated, so the game is going to be at best a buggy mess at launch and people are going to get frustrated.
As for what went wrong with Bannerlord's development, I'm willing to bet that it is :
something. Yeah I would assume that something went wrong but we don't know what because we don't work at TaleWorlds, and imo speculation is useless other than for the purpose of pure entertainment.
So in conclusion, yeah the game is not perfect, but fortunately it is also being worked on, and if you are disappointed by the lack of a good multiplayer mode I understand, that sucks. But I think people shouldn't be bullying the devs away from developing at least a good singleplayer game.
