Attempting balance in a feature incomplete game is a bad idea.

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I agree with this topic and I also want to add on thing that bothers me when it comes up.
People keep saying optimization is the final step ....
When people mention optimization we're really just wanting the game to run 'okay' on lower settings on our machines.
Optimization would be if it already ran okay, to make it run as good as it can.
Every other patch increases or reintroduces laggy bull**** all over the place. I wish I knew more about whats going on in the games engines to have an idea of why this happens, but it stinks and there's nothing to show for it. Meaning, the performance goes down but they AI isn't better, game doesn't look nicer, there isn't a new feature going on in the campaign (that I can experience), it just craps up for no apparent gain.

 

[SmattlePattle]

Do you need a tissue? There seems to be brain tumour coming out of your nose.

Ah you got me. One person did said "It feels like it" which I didn't take as "they literally think this is what TW is doing" but rather "this is the impression their actions leave". Still, ya got me there. I was wrong. Someone said it.

Now care to respond to everything else I posted, or did you just cherry pick the one thing you could address?

 

[Casseius]

Agree with op, theres no diplomacy, kingdom managment, armys roaming around with 500-800 recruits, lords defecting rng, most perks not working or useless, and you care about balancing a not good but working economy...

 

[Mount On Blade]

Ah you got me. One person did said "It feels like it" which I didn't take as "they literally think this is what TW is doing" but rather "this is the impression their actions leave". Still, ya got me there. I was wrong. Someone said it.

Now care to respond to everything else I posted, or did you just cherry pick the one thing you could address?

One example is enough when you and a bunch of other self-entitled people who don't know a thing about game development are clearly in the wrong and backpeddling ever so quickly to tell us, the people who realise they're still working on the game, are wrong instead.

Which part of this is hard for people to understand? The game isn't finished yet, nowhere near. They're doing easy fixes so the current released content is as playable as can be. Clearly people don't understand that because these threads wouldn't keep popping up about how this game isn't finished yet.

 

[YariAshigaru]

But i like to start building my house starting with the roof even though i have no foundations.

 

[ar181]

It's probably a balance really (game development-wise). It's hard to know what's working and what isn't if everything is completely unbalanced. In that way incremental changes make sense. However constantly trying to get everything balanced after slight changes seems like it would be very inefficient.

I wouldn't blame the devs for prioritizing balance though. Some people on here are whining way too much when something doesn't work exactly how they want it to, and it probably makes the devs think that minor things are urgently in need of big fixes.

 

[Salvation1945]

100% agree

 

[McSlurryhole]

To be fair, it's not like they can only work on balance OR features, taleworlds has over 100 employees, it's fairly easy for it to be one of the QA guys jobs to just adjust some numbers every patch during early access to see what works, that's the whole point of the early access after all.

I'm willing to bet the team of developers/animation/sound design guys are not the ones dropping all of their work to adjust economy values.

 

[ThePendulum]

The more I think about it the more I tend to conclude that economic balance is probably the last thing to be achieved in this game given most things can effect the economy.

What annoys me about the caravan thing is they didn't really add a new feature to caravans, which would make sense. If they were like "Hey your Caravans can get raided now BUT you can ride along with them and we put in a few caravan defense battlemaps, and you can tell them to stick to safer routes from reduced profit with less risk" it'd be cool. Most people would think its fleshing out a component of the game to be deeper - exactly what EA is for!

But now its just "lol hey ur caravans gone nothin u coulda done bud"

And good luck even finding your caravan to begin with, let alone finding them fast enough to be able to help them.

 

[Bannerman Man]

One thing I'd like to point out is that the nerfs they are doing right now are probably for good reason. They are almost without a doubt collecting data on how players are playing their game. This is call telemetry. The nerfs aren't arbitrary, or to ruin everyones fun, they are to nudge players in different gameplay directions so that they can collect data on how the whole system works and how players interact with it.

It was way too easy to accumulate enough money for caravans by riding around winning tournaments and selling the 5k prizes. The no-risk caravans allowed players to bankroll an army and train them through no-risk auto resolving Looters. Now with an elite, unbeatable army totally funded by caravans you could join a faction/start your own and steamroll over other factions, chopping off heads as you went with little to no consequences (because who cares about negative relations with the faction you're about to completely exterminate?). Sell equipment for unlimited money, recruit the highest tier prisoners to replenish lost troops, repeat, and you've won the game without giving much effort at all.

 

[The Leviathan]

One thing I'd like to point out is that the nerfs they are doing right now are probably for good reason. They are almost without a doubt collecting data on how players are playing their game. This is call telemetry. The nerfs aren't arbitrary, or to ruin everyones fun, they are to nudge players in different gameplay directions so that they can collect data on how the whole system works and how players interact with it.

It was way too easy to accumulate enough money for caravans by riding around winning tournaments and selling the 5k prizes. The no-risk caravans allowed players to bankroll an army and train them through no-risk auto resolving Looters. Now with an elite, unbeatable army totally funded by caravans you could join a faction/start your own and steamroll over other factions, chopping off heads as you went with little to no consequences (because who cares about negative relations with the faction you're about to completely exterminate?). Sell equipment for unlimited money, recruit the highest tier prisoners to replenish lost troops, repeat, and you've won the game without giving much effort at all.

Caravans being a safe and reliable way of making money wasn't the problem in and of itself though. The player can still get to a point where they make an absurd amount of money from selling battle loot (the real source of player inflation) without buying a single caravan.

 

[crewsk8200]

I agree with ya OP, but this really shouldn't need to be said. They're literally still MAKING the game, why the hell are they trying to do fine refinements to caravan economy based on RNG? There's absolutely zero logic to it.

Caravan economy IS the economy. The caravans are a huge part to how it works. It's not RNG, it is a basic risk factor they are aiming for and one of the most complicated parts to determine if you are going to actually simulate a risk factor of 1-5% instead of just blip a caravan out of existence and give a cheesy popup about it. Then after the base is there, we get money sinks to make it less risky and such.

 

[RKStranger]

I have to say I don’t agree. How do you know they are not working on AI, performance, etc.? They probably just push out the quick fixes and work on others intensively. Be considerable

 

[Juan77]

True things

 

[Bannerman Man]

Caravans being a safe and reliable way of making money wasn't the problem in and of itself though. The player can still get to a point where they make an absurd amount of money from selling battle loot (the real source of player inflation) without buying a single caravan.

I'm not sure why people are up in arms about the changes to caravans then if they are such a small part to the overall strategy. Caravans are/were an important intermediate step to the end game loot selling stage. I'm sure they will address the unlimited amounts of money from beating lords repeatedly soon enough. They already have in some respects.

 

[black_bulldog]

Writes 6 paragraphs

well he didn't lie at least

 

[BattanianDruid]

I'm not sure why people are up in arms about the changes to caravans then if they are such a small part to the overall strategy. Caravans are/were an important intermediate step to the end game loot selling stage. I'm sure they will address the unlimited amounts of money from beating lords repeatedly soon enough. They already have in some respects.

You kind of answered your own question.

Plenty of players liked having a reliable goal super early on to strive toward that would give them the economic push they needed to get to the mid-game quicker. Passive income is an important milestone and until you're a lord there are only two ways to achieve it. Caravans and shops. Both shops and caravans have been nerfed so far. Then a more active early game source of income, tournaments, was also nerfed.

This all serves to mostly make the early game more grindy rather than more difficult. I can still win tournaments and destroy looters with the same consistency as before. The only thing that changed was the quantity I need to go through.

The given goal by the devs was that these nerfs were meant to stop the economic snowballing players hit at mid-game. But caravans, shops, and tournaments provide pocket change in the late game when the snowballing it at its worst. Battle loot is the big offender, and nerfing that wouldn't have effected the early game as much as nerfing everything else they targeted.

And that is why so many players are upset at what has been getting targeted for nerfs.

 

[Emil]

Trust in modders, all I'm saying. Just imagine if proper modding tools were already released, or if TW dared to ask the community to help with, eg, the unique town/castle/village scenes.

 

[Ted Striker]

Caravans being a safe and reliable way of making money wasn't the problem in and of itself though. The player can still get to a point where they make an absurd amount of money from selling battle loot (the real source of player inflation) without buying a single caravan.

Battle loot is next on the chopping block though.

So no money from workshops, no money from caravans, no money from battle loot.

 

[stevehoos]

Battle loot is next on the chopping block though.

So no money from workshops, no money from caravans, no money from battle loot.

Battle loot has already been limited, I attacked a Sea Raider party of 20 and got a few ragged shirts, mail boots, and a sword. The boots were nice but that was the only valuable item I got.