Almost two months into EA. Satisfied?

Are you happy with how the game launched in EA and how it evolved during the first two months?


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That's where I think the game is currently lacking a lot.
Bannerlord was fun to me to the point I was a vassal and my kingdom was in constant war mode.
Winning the war out of an stalemate was kind of fun. But then loosing the war and not being able to do anything about it isn't.

There are not enough features for the player to interact with the world. Meaning mostly politics.
If the player had the option to circumnavigate some inbalances then the inbalances wouldn't be that much of a big deal.

In my campaign the Kuzhait steamrolled everything including the Southern Empire which I was part of.
Couldn't do anything about it and subsequently set Bannerlord aside.
most people are "circumventing" the flaws by a combination of multiple mods + cheating. It's not ideal, nope, but then again we're having virtual 1 to 2 weeks expiration dates for each playthrough due to the patching and how bad it is to keep the same save after some of those patches. It's better to go for short bursts, but it gets old after 3 or 4 cycles. I for one am VERY burned out of BL, but since I've moved all other games to sluggish HDDs, I've been kinda dealing with it and still play frequently, but can't endure over 1h at a time because it's too repetitive and there are many "grief-inflicting" issues with the game currently. From crashes (caused either by vanilla itself or mods) to bad performance, to nonsensical game behavior due to RNG or pure lack of "luck". The worst RNG thing tbh is the "roll" for companions. 9 outta 10 game starts I only get useless companions to spawn, and that's a REAL issue because I don't see new ones spawning fast enough nor can I force new spawns in any way shape or form.
1.4.1 is also broken pertaining wars because the new "vote for war" system is really badly implemented, so lords keep declaring completely retarded wars for no reason, most of the time hindering their own kingdom and causing irreversible losses. The voting for new wars is practically a constant stream of spam, they'll do it up to 3 or 4 times a in-game week, sometimes forcing the realm into a FFA war instance by declaring war on literally anything that moves on the map.

The constant wars wouldn't be so annoying if the AI could handle, strategically speaking, defense. In turn they declare war on 5 kingdoms, and rush deep into enemy territory like idiots, and lose most of the army to "attrition", either by running out of food or by failing on maintaining a decent morale, they'll capture a fief that is indefensible and when they are returning, enemies have captured multiple core fiefs. Soon enough more than one lord will bail the ship and join another nation, and there's where the snowballing starts. The losing faction enters in a self-destruction spiral, and if it survives it does with at most 1 or 2 fiefs, while the steamrolling ones blob like crazy. They don't tend to keep "new-coming" vassals for long, but then again after they get ridiculous amounts of territory it doesn't really make a difference.

The game needed many sub-mechanics to deal with all of these issues, from improved AI to severe punishment for ruler-blobbing (they tend to keep most fiefs, which in any strategy game would cause internal instability and rebellions, not to be seen in BL what-so-ever at this point, and I have no idea if they intend to add such a thing)

Then there's the pace and ease of capturing, AI never fails to capture fiefs, they can only lose to other AI by battle-field. Capturing fiefs is not punishable enough (armies tend to do it as if siege assaults were a walk in the park, they take almost no losses at all), and their priority queue seems really odd... They prefer to capture a single fief and lose 5 than to defend 1 fief consistently. Most of the time the AI will defend ONCE, and then ignore any new threats. This one could be amended by making assaulting fiefs a high-risk high-reward, through forcing massive losses on assaults, and programming the AI to evaluate if it's better to starve the fief out and capture it passively (which should be the predominant warfare anyway). Warband had this same bad mechanic, but I hope TW makes things less nonsensical by giving these serious thought. 100 men garrisons should be enough to hold off at least 1 assault from a 1k army. So, supposedly we get something more believable pertaining sieges? Many problems would go away, and the pace of the game would start to be more in tune with their desire to add aging and inheritance. So far, Aging is but a gimmick, and having kids pretty pointless because unless you deliberately handicap yourself, you'll never take more than 5 in-game years to basically capture the entire map.

I've suggested once to make heartbeat quests for your own fiefs, add mechanics of "ruling" / "being a lord" and not just having you do fetch for a peasant. Imo that's the biggest flaw in BL so far, you're still treated as a random mercenary by everybody even if you own their ****ing lands hahaha Also, village and town issues should be brought to you "in-court", and not having you strolling to the village to solve their problems... They should petition for help.

So, to conclude I'd say that the game is like a Onion, there are layers upon layers of things that should be there, but currently it's as if all of the Onion is missing but the core and the peel, and by playing it you peel it, and when you do you find nothing but bare-bones. My biggest fear is that when the game gets "done" it remains practically the same with one or 2 layers of the Onion only (which's very possible, WB was VERY (TOO) MUCH LIKE THAT)
 
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Because in mount and blade there has never really been anything for low level characters to do except level up. The game basically forces you to keep getting better and become a steamroller.

Becoming the "great one" isn't the problem, it's rather about the goal of starting out as one out of many and earning your progress to come out top in the end. And this is what M&B is about for me and many other players, because you start as a poor and simple guy and have to fight for every success. Being gifted everything (via grinding or direcly) just destroys that for me. Grinding doesn't make it actually hard, but boring and tedious.
 
The issue though is that the route there doesn't really feel particularly gratifying. Sure you have to fight to reach the top, but the fight isn't particularly difficult or challenging. You can obliterate enemy armies without even thinking, like F1 F3 with cavalry and enemies melt. Only the very early game is even remotely hard, and that's only if you choose to solo sea raiders instead of looters.

If the entire game was like the first hour or so of warband I would agree with you, but the majority of both warband and bannerlord is so samey that any sense of achievement is diluted by the time you reach it. The only difference between spamming swadian knights and using money cheats is the raw time investment.
 
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I'm honestly confused as to what some employees at TW has been doing for 8-10 years.
I am neither confuse or surprise. A project dragged for such a long time, anything can happen: people leaving, new people joined, change of management, team reorganisation, time wasted on failed ideas etc. The list can go on.
 
I wonder if dev team is paying attention to this and similar articles of constructive criticism.

What I have witnessed is that they are actively banning people critical of EA and TW work, I myself got a warning for making a joke at how fixes are delivered.

Not sure if this is a normal thing in non-western development companies, but I have lost respect for how EA is handled and how TW is dealing with community.
 
What I have witnessed is that they are actively banning people critical of EA and TW work, I myself got a warning for making a joke at how fixes are delivered.

Not sure if this is a normal thing in non-western development companies, but I have lost respect for how EA is handled and how TW is dealing with community.

Most of the moderators aren't turkish and the main PR manager who handles all the moderation is english. On the Turkish language forum you're most likely to get warned or muted for swearing.
 
Most of the moderators aren't turkish and the main PR manager who handles all the moderation is english. On the Turkish language forum you're most likely to get warned or muted for swearing.
Then they better get Turkish moderators here instead of the current ones lol

Starting a war with a paying customers and community is a death sentence, reviews online can get bombed down really quickly thus also the sales
 
Bad reviews rarely translate to many lost sales. People ranted and raved about Battlefield V (usually for idiotic reasons) and it has reviewbombed ratings, but it still sold fairly well. Conversely people will sometimes hype up a game and say it's the best thing since sliced bread, but they don't actually play it that much. There is often next to no correlation between game sales and what people online say about it.
 
The issue though is that the route there doesn't really feel particularly gratifying. Sure you have to fight to reach the top, but the fight isn't particularly difficult or challenging. You can obliterate enemy armies without even thinking, like F1 F3 with cavalry and enemies melt. Only the very early game is even remotely hard, and that's only if you choose to solo sea raiders instead of looters.
...

And that is what they could and should have improved. Yes, Warband was also grindy and at some point easy, but it was in my opinion much harder and much deeper than Bannerlord. There are too many things they didn't even think about how they could improve it, instead they copied, made it easier, more arcady and more superficial. There are however enough possibilities to make the game rewarding and hard for people who like that and still get rid of the superficial grindfest.
 
Bad reviews rarely translate to many lost sales. People ranted and raved about Battlefield V (usually for idiotic reasons) and it has reviewbombed ratings, but it still sold fairly well. Conversely people will sometimes hype up a game and say it's the best thing since sliced bread, but they don't actually play it that much. There is often next to no correlation between game sales and what people online say about it.
there's a serious lack of reliable video game reviewers, the main reason being that most professional reviewers lack the formation and knowledge to review games, they just say whatever they want with little to no understanding of what they are criticizing. Blame the internet for that, now any basement dweller can become a reviewer with the same level of education of an amoeba, add to that the bribes the AAA industry does (but no one admits) to reviewer websites, and boom, you've got a main-stream fake-news industry built upon another industry, that's basically the reason.

I've seen games much worse than Dragon Age 2, for instance, and DA2 was the only AAA video game in history to receive such a blunt backlash from reviewers (I mean that game was awful, truly one of the worse, but then we have Fallout 76, which's 10x worse and got a pat in the head by reviewers for no logical reason other than possible shady bribes). Another contributing factor to fake reviews is that most of the snowflake generation has emotional reasoning with any products they use or consume, so if you criticize it, even being right, you as a reviewer will get a massive backlash from those vermin, and you won't ever be able to build your reputation properly. Hence why there are no reliable reviewers anywhere to be found, if there are, they are basically unknown to most. The Gaming Industry should organize itself to create a Critics Association, but doing so is of no interest of the AAA bulk which year after year worsens their releases, the video-game quality is on a free-fall and they like that because it is being more lucrative. Instead of hiring good people, they can hire bulks of average to bad teams and just do anything with some well established franchise/brand and cash in on it with ease.

TW is a company in growth, they are no AAA and do not fit those, but they have some weird and unorthodox policies which have impacted their quality output for this EA and are the main reason behind the "delay". BL can be incredible yet, but it'll take time, they could still give up on doing so at any point in the future though. The reason why BL isn't on the Great to Epic level right now are in fact those unorthodox practices.
 
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there's a serious lack of reliable video game reviewers, the main reason being that most professional reviewers lack the formation and knowledge to review games, they just say whatever they want with little to no understanding of what they are criticizing. Blame the internet for that, now any basement dweller can become a reviewer with the same level of education of an amoeba, add to that the bribes the AAA industry does (but no one admits) to reviewer websites, and boom, you've got a main-stream fake-news industry built upon another industry, that's basically the reason.

I've seen games much worse than Dragon Age 2, for instance, and DA2 was the only AAA video game in history to receive such a blunt backlash from reviewers (I mean that game was awful, truly one of the worse, but then we have Fallout 76, which's 10x worse and got a pat in the head by reviewers for no logical reason other than possible shady bribes). Another contributing factor to fake reviews is that most of the snowflake generation has emotional reasoning with any products they use or consume, so if you criticize it, even being right, you as a reviewer will get a massive backlash from those vermin, and you won't ever be able to build your reputation properly. Hence why there are no reliable reviewers anywhere to be found, if there are, they are basically unknown to most. The Gaming Industry should organize itself to create a Critics Association, but doing so is of no interest of the AAA bulk which year after year worsens their releases, the video-game quality is on a free-fall and they like that because it is being more lucrative. Instead of hiring good people, they can hire bulks of average to bad teams and just do anything with some well established franchise/brand and cash in on it with ease.

TW is a company in growth, they are no AAA and do not fit those, but they have some weird and unorthodox policies which have impacted their quality output for this EA and are the main reason behind the "delay". BL can be incredible yet, but it'll take time, they could still give up on doing so at any point in the future though. The reason why BL isn't on the Great to Epic level right now are in fact those unorthodox practices.
Dunkey did 2 game critics videos that highlight these points very well. Metacritic have tons of games with userscore <5.5 and critic scores 8.5 and above which just show how large the disconnect is
 
Maybe you should check something like their Wikipedia page to see that they do first party development. Or is that another way to move the goal posts?
If you would check their Wikipedia page you would learn that they are both, a publisher and a developer.
How many third party studios are working for Taleworlds?
You are the one moving goal posts by comparing Taleworlds to Nintendo and Ubisoft. The only reason I am not surprised why we are even discussing that nonsense is because we are on the internet.
 
If you would check their Wikipedia page you would learn that they are both, a publisher and a developer.
How many third party studios are working for Taleworlds?
You are the one moving goal posts by comparing Taleworlds to Nintendo and Ubisoft. The only reason I am not surprised why we are even discussing that nonsense is because we are on the internet.
I never said they aren't a publisher. You tried to claim that TW is an indie studio because someone else is not publishing their games. I gave examples of companies that release games published by themselves like TW does who most people would not classify as indie studios trying to make you realize that your stance is silly. Examples you tried to dismiss from your definition of "indie" just because they partake in other business ventures besides development (according to your logic, if TW sold candy on the side, they'd stop being an indie studio). Apparently your definition of "indie" differs so much of what everyone else thinks it means is that your definition can safely be ignored.
 
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I never said they aren't a publisher. You tried to claim that TW is an indie studio because someone else is not publishing their games. I gave examples of companies that release games published by themselves like TW does who most people would not classify as indie studios trying to make you realize that your stance is silly. Examples you tried to dismiss from your definition of "indie" just because they partake in other business ventures besides development (according to your logic, if TW sold candy on the side, they'd stop being an indie studio). Apparently your definition of "indie" differs so much of what everyone else thinks it means is that your definition can safely be ignored.
I never posted an ultimate definition of the term indie development, I merely pointed out that your examples obviously aren't comparable and that Taleworlds is an independent studio.
 
I never posted an ultimate definition of the term indie development, I merely pointed out that your examples obviously aren't comparable and that Taleworlds is an independent studio.
Then perhaps you should actually tell me why they supposedly aren't comparable instead of just claiming it is so. What you have offered thus far has been rather silly, like if they do other business besides development You could explain to me how that is supposedly a disqualifying reason from the label indie. Also, I'd wager most people wouldn't classify a studio with more than 100 employees as indie, but hey, with your weird definitions everything seems to be possible.
 
Then perhaps you should actually tell me why they supposedly aren't comparable instead of just claiming it is so. What you have offered thus far has been rather silly, like if they do other business besides development You could explain to me how that is supposedly a disqualifying reason from the label indie. Also, I'd wager most people wouldn't classify a studio with more than 100 employees as indie, but hey, with your weird definitions everything seems to be possible.
what defines "indie" is in the word itself: "independent", which TW is. Sorry to shatter your ranting dreams.
 
It doesn't really matter because everyone uses the word differently anyway. Calling a game "indie" conjures up an image of a small team in most people's minds, and it's important to acknowledge that when using it.

Up until 2015 I think it was, Taleworlds wasn't an indie company. It was with paradox entertainment until then.
 
And that is what they could and should have improved. Yes, Warband was also grindy and at some point easy, but it was in my opinion much harder and much deeper than Bannerlord. There are too many things they didn't even think about how they could improve it, instead they copied, made it easier, more arcady and more superficial. There are however enough possibilities to make the game rewarding and hard for people who like that and still get rid of the superficial grindfest.

I don't know that Warband is necessarily harder than Bannerlord, at least Native. I suppose it depends on what you mean by harder. It is certainly more engaging. And a lot of it in my opinion is that in Warband they removed the need to repeat certain activities over and over once you work up to a certain point (buy all productive enterprises and you won't really need to worry about money any more. Level up training and you don't need to hunt bandits for troops to level up, That allows you to focus on getting fiefs and kingdom management... Not that there was much of a kingdom management in Native Warband). This makes the game change and evolve with your character and gives you a sense of progression. In Bannerlord the game stays largely the same from early game to end game. You always need to fight looters, you always need to fight to make money (up to the point where you have nothing to spend that money on anyway so that part becomes just irrelevant). It just all feels very shallow and in need of a fundamental rework.

I wonder if dev team is paying attention to this and similar articles of constructive criticism.

What I have witnessed is that they are actively banning people critical of EA and TW work, I myself got a warning for making a joke at how fixes are delivered.

Not sure if this is a normal thing in non-western development companies, but I have lost respect for how EA is handled and how TW is dealing with community.

I have expressed plenty of criticism towards the game myself (see paragraph above) and I am still here. People get banned for raging and flaming, not for criticizing. Constructive criticism will never get you in trouble.
 
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