2 years of EA. You could have created an entirely new game in that time.

[five bucks]

Isn't it already? I haven't encountered many bugs in my short playtime. I have to admit that pretty much all of that is early game since I couldn't be bothered playing longer than that at a time but still. Apart from that what is really left to do? Adding some scenes?

Category 2 of this list shows what major bugs and balance problems still remain.

TL;DR (and since you've probably already seen it): strategic AI's indecision, fief income, dumb peace and war declarations, tribute, autoresolve, kingdoms never dying, voting and influence, player and companions' skill levelling rate, skill effects, companion spawning, personality traits, armour effectiveness, cavalry AI aiming, spearman AI attacking, melee AI defending, high-speed jittering every time units are close to each other, spear weakness and glaive OPness, morale, and reinforcement teleport spawning, among other things, all still need to be fixed/balanced.

Apart from that what is really left to do?
They won't fix armor because it doesn't suit their vIsIOn.

Thankfully they have said in August last year they "plan to make fixes and improvements to armour effectiveness", and more recently in January, "have not yet decided on a final solution for armour balance."

They won't fix the constant war because guess what? Again it doesn't suit their ViSIoN.
They won't add the features they promised pre-EA. Hell I wouldn't bet that they add all or even most of the features they promised during EA.

I haven't seen an explicit statement from them on either of these. Other than stuff like castle building, which they explicitly deconfirmed before the EA even began.

Do you think they will finally fix sieges for good?

After 1.7.0 sieges are pretty good, other than ladders being too good when not bugged, AI occasionally still getting stuck (most of the time it works), defender AI not taking good tactical positions, and AI in general acting stupid once you give them an order. I think all those bugs/balance issues will probably get fixed other than the last one.

I don't know how the modding side of things looks like yet so maybe modding tools is the big thing.

Still quite a bit to go on the modding tools front.

But apart from that the game is basically already finished.

Sadly not.

 

[Life_Erikson]

TL;DR (and since you've probably already seen it): strategic AI's indecision, fief income, dumb peace and war declarations, tribute, autoresolve, kingdoms never dying, voting and influence, player and companions' skill levelling rate, skill effects, companion spawning, personality traits, armour effectiveness, cavalry AI aiming, spearman AI attacking, melee AI defending, high-speed jittering every time units are close to each other, spear weakness and glaive OPness, morale, and reinforcement teleport spawning, among other things, all still need to be fixed/balanced.

Are those all considered bugs though and not "features"? A bug to me is a system not working as intended or even producing an error.
I really don't know what TW intends at this point. I appreciate that you still have the motivation to go through things in detail. I don't. I have seen too many answers from TW claiming things in fact to work as intended. And if that is not the case at the very least they keep extremely vague what they are going to do about it and what the desired end state of the subject matter is.

Thankfully they have said in August last year they "plan to make fixes and improvements to armour effectiveness", and more recently in January, "have not yet decided on a final solution for armour balance."

Well you answered your point yourself. TW "hasn't decided on a final solution for armour balance". This could mean everything.
But it means one thing the most: "We do not agree with your points because otherwise we could adapt those without having to "decide" something in the vague far future." When reading forum posts about this issue most people are in line with the fact that armor is to weak in general. What is there to discuss? Even if our criticism made them rethink their entire damage system (which I don't believe for a second) they could have thrown us a bone with a quick and dirty fix in the mean time. They didn't. Because they don't think the problem is important or even a problem at all.

I haven't seen an explicit statement from them on either of these. Other than stuff like castle building, which they explicitly deconfirmed before the EA even began.

As far as I remember we have explicit statements from TW in accordance to what their vision for the game is. That being: A fast paced action game. As these statements were made in context of suggestions proposing more diplomacy and more stuff to do during peace time I assume TW doesn't want to reduce the amount of war in the game by much at all as it is more or less working as intended.

Castle building is probably the only feature promised before EA which they officially said they won't do before EA began. Hats off to TW for that, I respect that. But there is a multitude of features which were promised in devlogs and not implemented or (more likely) somewhat implemented but not in the way they were promised. This is the reason why fume so much at TW. Its not that the game isn't good or the development is slow and badly managed (that is obviously the case too), it is the fact that they (seemingly deliberatly) produced false expectations for the game (and for the EA release in that matter) to keep the hype train going.


The game has been in EA for two years now and the only major problem in the game that has been (kinda) fixed is sieges.
Apart from that:
-armor does not work
-war is constant
-no diplomacy
-no character interaction (no interaction with lords like in WB)
-combat balancing hasn't reached a halfway satisfying point (low-tier vs. high-tier / ranged vs. melee)
-very little to do outside of combat (no feasts, no diplomacy, no courting your lady, no crime system, shallow settlement upgrading)
-spears are almost useless, two handed weapons are deathclubs

The title of this thread is hyperbolic but in two years one could expect a company of a hundred workers to get that stuff done if they wanted.
Thats my point: IF they wanted. They don't. Thats the easiest and most logical answer to the WHY™ question.
On the other hand they got enough time to implement barber shops and got their creative juices flowing by adding new sheep models instead of some needed armor variation or some new scenes (which a 3D modeler could very well be put to do).

In my view hoping TW will continue developement is futile as long as TW's vision of what the game should be is on a completely different continent as ours. TW continuing developement will rather mean more useless fluff with no depth than actually fixing the stuff they started an make the game experienc deeper rather than wider.


Edit: Now that I proof read my post I noticed one thing: Remember the EA release? Remember how they told us all the basic (Warband) features will be in place and only some of the planned features will need implementing? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Maybe they didn't lie to us afterall.

 

[badman]

i mean its done as in feature complete. If its not balanced after 2 years it never will be.

 

[five bucks]

Are those all considered bugs though and not "features"? A bug to me is a system not working as intended or even producing an error.
I really don't know what TW intends at this point. I appreciate that you still have the motivation to go through things in detail. I don't. I have seen too many answers from TW claiming things in fact to work as intended. And if that is not the case at the very least they keep extremely vague what they are going to do about it and what the desired end state of the subject matter is.

Oh, I was saying at the end there that they were things that needed bugfixing or balancing. Apologies if you meant only bugs. A couple of them are unclear if they're (bad) intentional design decisions or bugs, e.g. cavalry being unable to hit stuff.

Because they don't think the problem is important or even a problem at all.

They cared enough to put it in their future plans statement, so I think they are going to address it in some way.

As far as I remember we have explicit statements from TW in accordance to what their vision for the game is. That being: A fast paced action game. As these statements were made in context of suggestions proposing more diplomacy and more stuff to do during peace time I assume TW doesn't want to reduce the amount of war in the game by much at all as it is more or less working as intended.

You could be right, but I hope not.

This is the reason why fume so much at TW. Its not that the game isn't good or the development is slow and badly managed (that is obviously the case too), it is the fact that they (seemingly deliberatly) produced false expectations for the game (and for the EA release in that matter) to keep the hype train going.

It potentially is looking like that. They used the name of Warband and yet the game is still lacking in so many ways relative to Warband.

The game has been in EA for two years now and the only major problem in the game that has been (kinda) fixed is sieges.

To be fair, a lot of medium-sized problems were fixed.

The title of this thread is hyperbolic but in two years one could expect a company of a hundred workers to get that stuff done if they wanted.
Thats my point: IF they wanted. They don't. Thats the easiest and most logical answer to the WHY™ question.

I have no definite explanation, but Glassdoor reviews from TW employees indicate that not wanting to is less the issue, moreso procrastination by some employees (we know some others work very hard) and a lack of preplanning and direction.

i mean its done as in feature complete. If its not balanced after 2 years it never will be.

It's not feature complete either by TW's definition or most players'.

 

[froggyluv]

If TW planned to make just "a fast paced action game" -well then I can see why ive been utterly unmotivated to even Install on my hard drive in forever. When M&B came out, there was nothing like it as directional combat hadnt been done so we called it a "physics" combat action game as compared to other sword games which were fast paced twitchy and arcade like. That description still held true for Warband at least until Mordau/Chivalry showed up. Those games then took the fast paced plus directional control game titles as warband still had the edge on tighter combat (imo) as well as the whole grand strategy aspect.

But nowadays, "Physics fighters" have become more common and advanced so you have to do more to stand out and sadly, Bannerlord hasnt achieved that. By also dumbing down the rest of the game its just kinda like an orphaned child without a real home. THE SP here keep praying for a real Diplomacy and Kingdoms game as the MP community seem to not be happy as it hasnt taken off like Warband MP.

 

[Life_Erikson]

If TW planned to make just "a fast paced action game" -well then I can see why ive been utterly unmotivated to even Install on my hard drive in forever. When M&B came out, there was nothing like it as directional combat hadnt been done so we called it a "physics" combat action game as compared to other sword games which were fast paced twitchy and arcade like. That description still held true for Warband at least until Mordau/Chivalry showed up. Those games then took the fast paced plus directional control game titles as warband still had the edge on tighter combat (imo) as well as the whole grand strategy aspect.

But nowadays, "Physics fighters" have become more common and advanced so you have to do more to stand out and sadly, Bannerlord hasnt achieved that. By also dumbing down the rest of the game its just kinda like an orphaned child without a real home. THE SP here keep praying for a real Diplomacy and Kingdoms game as the MP community seem to not be happy as it hasnt taken off like Warband MP.

You are pretty much on point. TW hasn't innovated on the combat part since M&B. Yet they seem to still use it as their selling point even though it has been surpassed by games like mordhau.
The fact that they also don't seem to understand that SP wise they have created an entire new genre (action/RPG/strategy crossover) only rubs insult to injury.
TW doesn't know what its games strenghts are.