An open letter from the Kingdoms of Arda team, and the total-conversion mod community

[RichardtheCat]

Give them some time, the update has been out since less then half a day

I wasn't asking for a full opinion =) I just wanted to know how do they feel/think about the news? Modders opinion is important for me. =)

Here is my satisfaction formula about the game:

((Games Status + My Thoughts) x My Favourite Modders Thoughts)) / ((Warband's Features + My Expectations) x My F. Modders Expectations)

 

[Kowal252]

"A decent first step" is how I'd put it, but also yet more evidence that TW needs to take some classes on corporate communication and customer relations. I mean jesus ****, if you're removing >100 and adding 4, you don't just say "added some and removed some", especially if you're gonna give that another week to stew.

That's just an absolute own goal in terms of advertising your response. And that came from a COMMUNITY MANAGER, not a random dev, so it's not like it was someone you can give a bit of a pass on for not knowing how to communicate stuff like this.

Yea, i got same feeling. It looks like they were doing decent job, they really listened to the modders and removed a LOT of blocking problems And they got ragdolled by community because of misleading communication :/

 

[Jarungo]

You're so out of touch it's beyond belief, matter of fact the ego of this entire company to disregard the defining aspect of their games that brought in almost the entirety of their success is incredible.

You did not make Warband successful, I beg you as a company remember who did that.

You should probably take a step back and try to remember who made the game in the first place and who allowed you to modify it. None of these mods or the success of the game would've been possible without the work of the developers. The mods are just merely one part of what allowed this game to thrive on over the years. I played hundred of hours without mods before discovering them because I love medieval sandbox games.​

 

[John_M]

This thread is for discussing the open letter and the developer responses.

Please take the statistics, game history, and other off-topic elsewhere.

Deleted off-topic and handed out warnings.

 

[TFK_Ted]

You're so out of touch it's beyond belief, matter of fact the ego of this entire company to disregard the defining aspect of their games that brought in almost the entirety of their success is incredible.

You did not make Warband successful, I beg you as a company remember who did that.

They don't.

 

[lazeras]

So far having looked at the code for the 1.6.0 release I feel that the code is still a flimsy mess with private and internal flags through out the code for no logical reason and has only been a tiny step in the right direction. The code's lack of design or consistency still forces whole sale copying of code for no reason other than that its been restricted deliberately or through lack of enforcing any decent standards. Personally i feel coned and that i have paid for a product and been provided with a cheap knockoff item instead.

 

[Eärendil Ardamírë]

They have added 4 internal flags and removed 141 as far as I am aware. They probably just didn't review all of the code yet. People are asked to explain which ones are hindering them at which specific problem to review them.

 

[lazeras]

They have added 4 internal flags and removed 141 as far as I am aware. They probably just didn't review all of the code yet. People are asked to explain which ones are hindering them at which specific problem to review them.

for specifics every behavior and every model in the code I have tried to work with suffers from this. Simple things such as text explainers are always private so you can never just use the base stuff you have to copy them out, this is a example of what I am referring to

 

[Eärendil Ardamírë]

That is such a detailed explanation, I am sure that's helpful for them

 

[lazeras]

That is such a detailed explanation, I am sure that's helpful for them

I seriously doubt they will do anything, They cant even fix core game mechanics and they only barely fixed some of the internals

 

[five bucks]

I seriously doubt they will do anything, They cant even fix core game mechanics and they only barely fixed some of the internals

Either way, they can't do anything without more information. Can you provide more specifics on what you're trying to do? Perhaps here?

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/e1-6-0-modding-adjustments-access-modifiers-changes.443896/

 

[svelok]

I seriously doubt they will do anything, They cant even fix core game mechanics and they only barely fixed some of the internals

The devs have implemented many things on community request, including the 140-odd internal access modifiers they made public in 1.6. It might take like two months for a given request and that request may or may not be implemented but they literally have been making changes people ask for.

 

[Mad Vader]

The devs have implemented many things on community request, including the 140-odd internal access modifiers they made public in 1.6. It might take like two months for a given request and that request may or may not be implemented but they literally have been making changes people ask for.

The amount of requests the devs listened to is very low, compared to a consensus list of requests. They didn't listen during the beta and they rarely listen now. The "internal" problem was fasttracked only after a modder complained about it 2.5 months after Taleworlds agreed they would handle it.
This makes you an ignorant apologist.

 

[Phantom425]

The amount of requests the devs listened to is very low, compared to a consensus list of requests. They didn't listen during the beta and they rarely listen now. The "internal" problem was fasttracked only after a modder complained about it 2.5 months after Taleworlds agreed they would handle it.
This makes you an ignorant apologist.

You’re partly ignorant on this one. Duh already stated that the push 2.5 months later did not have an effect on what was in the update. Either Duh is telling the truth, or he is a liar. The Devs have yet to lie yet, even if they have been wrong multiple times.

And yes, there are a lot of issues that have yet to fixed that the community has called for. But, he is right with the 1.6.0 patch. And I’m sure that calling someone an ignorant apologist is a great way to make them agree with you.

 

[Mad Vader]

You’re partly ignorant on this one. Duh already stated that the push 2.5 months later did not have an effect on what was in the update. Either Duh is telling the truth, or he is a liar. The Devs have yet to lie yet, even if they have been wrong multiple times.

Is a face-saving statement a lie? Probably. We can't tell either way, but we can have an educated guess.
Why didn't they do this on their own and earlier? They already agreed to do so and known that a bunch of modders are waiting for these changes.
Now tell me what does this look like. It looks like what I described. TW was pressured to do something they didn't really care to do or they would have done it already.

 

[Phantom425]

Is a face-saving statement a lie? Probably. We can't tell either way, but we can have an educated guess.
Why didn't they do this on their own and earlier? They already agreed to do so and known that a bunch of modders are waiting for these changes.

What face do they have left to save? We can have an educated guess, that they didn’t do this on their own so they could roll it out with a bunch of other fixes. And they did agree to do it, and they followed through with that agreement.

Now tell me what does this look like. It looks like what I described. TW was pressured to do something they didn't really care to do or they would have done it already.

The situation, at least how it seems to me, is that it would be done and they planned on rolling it out with the 1.6.0 update. If 1.6.0 was only just the mod fixes, then I would be inclined to agree with you, but it wasn’t. And the anger really only came after Dejan stated that some internal modifiers would be added and removed, not immediately after Jance’s post. It was after Dejan’s statement that Bloc quit.

 

[Mad Vader]

The situation, at least how it seems to me, is that it would be done and they planned on rolling it out with the 1.6.0 update. If 1.6.0 was only just the mod fixes, then I would be inclined to agree with you, but it wasn’t. And the anger really only came after Dejan stated that some internal modifiers would be added and removed, not immediately after Jance’s post. It was after Dejan’s statement that Bloc quit.

There is a single point we agree on, that the anger after the vague statement what they'll actually do was a bit hysterical and I was here saying just that, confident they'll come good in 1.6.0 (because the alternative would have been a full scale rebellion and the effort to avoid it was low).
But this is just masking the real issue, which was that they needed a frustrated public reminder from a modder to do what they promised 2.5 months ago. Anyone thinking they would have done it anyway needs to study basic human psychology. There's also a lesson here that white knights like you hate: pressure works, and sometimes only pressure works.

 

[Naur]

As a professional developer IRL, who has decided to get into modding for a hobby, one issue the letter hadn't raised which I think is particularly pervasive throughout the codebase is lack of centralization. In our design patterns at work, we attempt to keep single sources of truths strict as possible. But the codebase I've been reverse-engineering seems a bit convoluted, and specific functions appear to be spread throughout. For instance, if I want to add a specific character tethered to a specific lord I have to create an entire HeroHandler which piggybacks onto MobileParty, which in turn has to interact with several variables randomly spread throughout the codebase. (Such as telling the Hero not to exist outside the context of the party, removing the character, etc).

Or, at the time of writing this, for instance, I've been changing the OnHereComesOfAge() to allow for specialization for none heirs-of-throne. I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the character was spawned, to find out it was actually in an entire other class with (I think 3?) different areas where OnHereComesOfAge() actually exists.

Centralizing little things like this could be a massive help!

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_source_of_truth)

 

[DarkDragon9191]

Im gathering that the devs have begun listening at this point ? im new to the situation as i was downloading the freelancer mod and saw the post there about this. Think it was ****ty of the devs for their responses to the modders but im trying to figure out where things stand now? hopefully alot freaking better. love mount and blade with a passion and the mods are just the cheesecake frosting ontop of a already amazing cake

 

[Midnightknight]

I'm happy at least talented and known modders put their efforts together to at least be heard.

It's been almost a year now i warn about the internal and private issues and nobody seemed to care, most of the modders answering me "Use Harmony" what made me left the modder discord cause i was bored being harassed each time i was saying Harmony is a bad practice and should only be used when no other choice is left.
It's been months i was warning about how Harmony was making the game almost impossible to debug as soon as it was used, what is a shame in an EA game where the goal is to fix it and make it stable. I tried to ask TW to remove some of those roadblocks that were only pushing more people to use Harmony, making new players learn how to use the patcher and not bother to learn the M&B2 API.

Might be a really small step but after a break, i'm really happy to see the community seem to have recovered it's reason and that TW seem to finally listen at least a bit and start to understand the issue that is slowly building, sending the game in a wall of brick if nothing is done.
And people telling "TW need to focus on the game and not mods" are still completely blind. The game itself is a mod and i hope Tw use their modding tool to make the game. If not they have a serious issue. What will happen when they will add content? What will happen when there will be spin off like there was for Warband? That's now they need to set the mod features correctly, cause they are the very foundation of the game and you don't give love to foundations once you are building the roof, or be prepared to break everything again.

Now i really hope the tools given to us, and this include behaviors, models and all the assets will truly be shared and accessible, and i hope i will be able to move to my other mod project that are not progressing at all cause i'm forced to fix patch after patch one single not so complicated mod. Simply because i have to spend more time on guessing what they changed, why they changed it and what is the purpose of their change, than really adapt my code to match the new update.