Bannerlord was a grift

[Roy1012]

If Taleworlds wants a better MP, they should allow MP mods and copy what they like from the mods into the base game (by conceptual theft or even permission from modders). The modders and the community would do their work for them (=test various game designs) instead of the current "flailing in the dark" strategy.
So it's possible to have a strong and dynamic Native MP that people would play.

But they don't. As other posters have mentioned, they just want to force what they think works on us. Of course, it doesn't. That didn't have to necessarily be true, but honestly TW. What were you thinking?

1. Radically Change how the game works
2. Allow the players zero input and say "we believe this way is better"
3. Refuse to allow them to play what they want by screwing modders over
4. ????
5. PROFIT!

What you propose would work, it really would. It's not ideal, but it seems like a good compromise. Too bad TW refuses to do such.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

But they don't. As other posters have mentioned, they just want to force what they think works on us. Of course, it doesn't. That didn't have to necessarily be true, but honestly TW. What were you thinking?

1. Radically Change how the game works
2. Allow the players zero input and say "we believe this way is better"
3. Refuse to allow them to play what they want by screwing modders over
4. ????
5. PROFIT!

What you propose would work, it really would. It's not ideal, but it seems like a good compromise. Too bad TW refuses to do such.

On note 3 here; Taleworlds have actually responded really well to the Open letter from the modding community. I spoke to the kingdom of Arda devs last week and they told me the game was much easier to mod and there was no needless restrictions anymore. The only thing they were missing was documentation.

If Taleworlds wants a better MP, they should allow MP mods and copy what they like from the mods into the base game (by conceptual theft or even permission from modders). The modders and the community would do their work for them (=test various game designs) instead of the current "flailing in the dark" strategy.
So it's possible to have a strong and dynamic Native MP that people would play.

Well honestly it doesn't really matter anymore. I think the best thing to do would just be to ope custom servers and let the community do what they wish for MP. That way the pressure is off and TW can focus on SP pretty much soley. A shame but whatever - at least IMPO SP is actually shaping up really nicely. Keep battles are a blast and the direly needed siege fixes are (mostly) here.

I've got to be honest - I've kind of given up on Bannerlord Native MP. Regardless of my opinions of it - if there is no community; there is no game.

 

[NPC99]

...but honestly TW. What were you thinking?

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/overview-of-beta-as-of-b0-8-1.393770/post-9230408

 

[Life_Erikson]

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/overview-of-beta-as-of-b0-8-1.393770/post-9230408

Thats really interesting. I noticed the more realistic horse movement in the game (I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it) but the attack / defence animation thing is really interesting and seems sensible. Doesn't change the fact that weapon damage / armor is horribly balanced and animations on horseback are wonkey.

 

[Phantom425]

I don't think "harsh" is an especially vague term.

Harsh can be vague, and mean different things to different people.

Not incorrect, but most of the people spreading the words "toxicity" and "haters" around are implying that the accused are doing it out of pure hatred of the developing team and the game for the sake of raw hatred. Rather, the reason most of the time as I said is the immense frustration out of passion; they want this game to be great, but they don't foresee it happening outside of mods.

Well, it doesn't necessarily matter if people are doing it out of pure hatred of the developing team and the game. All that matters is that people are acting in a way that can be described as that. Since a murder analogy was already used earlier, it doesn't matter if it was out of hatred or passion, murder is murder. In no way is disliking TW or BL similar to murder, but I hope my point comes across.

I think the attitude and the atmosphere of the forums would be vastly different had TW's communication been better.

I don't necessarily think that it would. A big issue that a lot of people have is that development is taking a long time. It doesn't really matter if TW would be communicating much more, as that wouldn't really speed development up. Honestly, I think it would probably be best if TW communicated somewhat less on speculated features and what the community wants, as that will only lead to further disappointments or promises, which the community really does not need.

And there are instances where no communication can work, and I'm not saying this is that exact situation. Just look at what Hello Games did with NMS.

The way TW has treated their community overall has led to toxicity and discontent in my mind, it's not chiefly the community at fault

I don't disagree with this, I initially spoke up to disagree with this sentiment.

People get upset when others say harsh things about this game and the company's practices, and it's viewed as "toxic" and the behavior of "haters", and yet that can't be further from the truth. Most people who say such harsh things (at least myself) have nothing but passionate love for Warband and TW's achievement with it, much more so than any other game, and that apparent malice is just massive disappointment that TW utterly failed to deliver with Bannerlord in their eyes.

My point is that it doesn't really matter if it comes from a point of love or hate, toxicity is bad for the community. And, at the end of the day, it is the members of the communities' choice as to how they act.

Community interaction is always up to the company.

I disagree with this once again. While the company does have a good amount of control over the interaction between the community and the company, the actions of the community always lie within the control of the community. While yes, if the company is awful at communication and repeatedly fails the community, the community will most likely fail that. However, there are still instances where the discussion in a location can be dominated by toxic people.

Another reason why I find myself disagreeing with this sentiment is that it seems as if it is giving toxic people on "out", being able to point blame to TW and not take any of the blame for their own toxicity. Just because TW has been faulty at communication does not give an excuse for the discussion around BL to be toxic.

 

[Roy1012]

I will agree one of the few things bannerlord did right was horse maneuvering. It just feels so smooth, realistic and it’s aesthetically pleasing. That being said, you can’t carry your game on horse movement.

@Phantom425 i don’t know how many times we have to explain to you that if Taleworlds stopped being toxic, we would stop being toxic in return. Their failure to act on everything is the toxic thing and we are 100% not to blame for that. If their reasoning for not fixing things is because there are toxic people on the forums, they have the thinnest skin imaginable. There’s zero excuse for the game being as incomplete as it is a decade in the making.

 

[AxiosXiphos]

I will agree one of the few things bannerlord did right was horse maneuvering. It just feels so smooth, realistic and it’s aesthetically pleasing. That being said, you can’t carry your game on horse movement.

@Phantom425 i don’t know how many times we have to explain to you that if Taleworlds stopped being toxic, we would stop being toxic in return. Their failure to act on everything is the toxic thing and we are 100% not to blame for that. If their reasoning for not fixing things is because there are toxic people on the forums, they have the thinnest skin imaginable. There’s zero excuse for the game being as incomplete as it is a decade in the making.

I don't think a toxic forum has particularly harmed the development - but I certainly don't think it has helped either.... and let's not pretend the community have been saints. I've seen Taleworlds employees get death-threats from forum users and how many times have we seen users directly ask for certain employees to lose their jobs?

I don't agree with Taleworlds community responses sometimes - but I can certainly understand why they are so jumpy with it.

Equally I do understand the frustration of users - but I don't agree with the intensity of their reactions. Personal threats are never okay.

As for the game? Well it's a video game where you ride horses and stab digital people for less then the price of the takeaway I had last week. I feel everyone could do with chilling out - it's not important. The world won't end if bannerlord doesn't live up to its hype, there will be other games and other communities.

Relax and enjoy the ride.

 

[Mad Vader]

As for the game? Well it's a video game where you ride horses and stab digital people for less then the price of the takeaway I had last week. I feel everyone could do with chilling out - it's not important. The world won't end if bannerlord doesn't live up to its hype, there will be other games and other communities.

The takeway would disappear in a burst of explosive diarrhea, but a flawed Bannerlord would stay, filling much of the mass medieval combat niche for years. You can't **** Bannerlord out and be done with it!

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Also it's not the price people care about, it's the emotional investment a lot of people expected. Objectively the amount of time you get out of video games relative to their price, and compared to other entertainment mediums, is very good value, but nobody treats video games like an overpriced takeaway, or a coffee or cinema ticket (which is another ridiculous comparison that gets made a lot). MP tryhards and Modders spend literal weeks of their life doing things to make the game more fun for themselves and others. Video games have an inherent continuous social aspect completely divorced from the initial purchase value that isn't present in any other medium. I don't see anyone modding takeaways, or having cinema tournaments. And whenever I click the community hub for coffee all I get is a bunch of annoying hipsters.

 

[Spinozart1]

The takeway would disappear in a burst of explosive diarrhea

Say hi to the people checking the forums at lunchtime... ?

 

[Lord Grindelvald]

Say hi to the people checking the forums at lunchtime... ?

Say hi to the people checking the forums after lunchtime but before 5 p.m....
?

 

[Spinozart1]

Say hi to the people checking the forums after lunchtime but before 5 p.m....
?

?‍

 

[Phantom425]

@Phantom425 i don’t know how many times we have to explain to you that if Taleworlds stopped being toxic, we would stop being toxic in return. Their failure to act on everything is the toxic thing and we are 100% not to blame for that. If their reasoning for not fixing things is because there are toxic people on the forums, they have the thinnest skin imaginable. There’s zero excuse for the game being as incomplete as it is a decade in the making.

TW has been i creasing their communications over the pst few months and listening to fan feedback, just look at the modding. TW is starting to communicate much more. TW isn’t being toxic. It is the community’s choice as to how they act. And I never put all of the blame onto the community, blame lies with both parties involved.

My point was never that they wouldn’t fix things, it was that they wouldn’t listen to you. They wouldn’t listen to features you may want in the game, or changes you want made.

 

[Roy1012]

TW has been i creasing their communications over the pst few months and listening to fan feedback, just look at the modding. TW is starting to communicate much more. TW isn’t being toxic. It is the community’s choice as to how they act. And I never put all of the blame onto the community, blame lies with both parties involved.

My point was never that they wouldn’t fix things, it was that they wouldn’t listen to you. They wouldn’t listen to features you may want in the game, or changes you want made.

While communication is certainly horrible, it’s not my main concern. I’d be fine with their horrid communication if they made the game good. That’s a worthy trade off. Tbh, at the end of the day, I don’t care about anything aside from the game being good and enjoyable, and neither do you. Would it be nice if they had good communication? Sure. Would it be nice if the forums weren’t toxic? Sure. However, I don’t think anyone would care about those if the game was enjoyable. Those are secondary problems, symptoms of the situation. The way I see it is that I would take a toxic forum and a playable game over a well-behaved forum and a terrible game. And I can guarantee you would too. In an ideal world, both would be flawless, but at the end of the day the only thing anyone really cares about is the enjoyability of the game. After all, of bannerlords 3-4 million purchasers, only a few thousand ever bothered posting on the forums. The forums are a fraction of a fraction and are ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The game is what matters most and, unfortunately, it sucks.

 

[Blackhuskyy]

Only thing I want is something else then the class system all I care about lol.

 

[ShakenSpeare]

While communication is certainly horrible, it’s not my main concern. I’d be fine with their horrid communication if they made the game good. That’s a worthy trade off. Tbh, at the end of the day, I don’t care about anything aside from the game being good and enjoyable, and neither do you. Would it be nice if they had good communication? Sure. Would it be nice if the forums weren’t toxic? Sure. However, I don’t think anyone would care about those if the game was enjoyable. Those are secondary problems, symptoms of the situation. The way I see it is that I would take a toxic forum and a playable game over a well-behaved forum and a terrible game. And I can guarantee you would too. In an ideal world, both would be flawless, but at the end of the day the only thing anyone really cares about is the enjoyability of the game. After all, of bannerlords 3-4 million purchasers, only a few thousand ever bothered posting on the forums. The forums are a fraction of a fraction and are ultimately irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The game is what matters most and, unfortunately, it sucks.

At least if TW was transparent and everyone knew what the plans actually are, there'd be less argument, angst, and worry among the community about where Bannerlord is headed. People would be mad if the plans for full release are not indifferent at all to what we already have, but it wouldn't have all that uncertainty, worry, and misplaced hope along with it. That's probably why they don't want to reveal plans or a roadmap at all because they know that it will only set people off even more right now. They should've been doing this all along instead of continuously digging this hole and becoming too afraid to stop.

My point is that it doesn't really matter if it comes from a point of love or hate, toxicity is bad for the community. And, at the end of the day, it is the members of the communities' choice as to how they act.

Do you think though that general rudeness towards the company for the state of things is inherently toxic though? I don't. The only thing that comes across as indubitably toxic is people attacking individual developers, or death threats towards them, etc. Sure, the forum isn't a bastion of decent human behavior, but it's not the most terrible example out there. I think whether it comes from love or hate does matter, a father gravely disappointed towards his son to the point of anger isn't the same thing as being extremely angry at an ******* driver on the road. The fans who feel betrayed would show more respect and courtesy if TW showed respect and courtesy back. I mean this if they did it from the start of EA, not necessarily starting right now, because as you say, it would probably make things worse at this point if they opened up about their plans, or rather, lack thereof. Their inability to do this now does not excuse them from having made this mistake. I'm all for more civility, but it's not hard to understand the atmosphere here.

 

[NPC99]

...I'm all for more civility, but it's not hard to understand the atmosphere here.

Easy to understand difficult to justify. No one with a shred of intellectual honesty believes this game is a scam. TW's albeit brief roadmaps are clear about what they are working on. It's a game well short of many people's expectations. TW hype can be blamed for some of that shortfall, where features were sacrificed to support performance on minimum spec pcs (I wish they had targeted a higher minimum pc spec), but the rest is on us. We allowed our dreams to outgrow TW's vision for BL. TW will continue to work, amending bugs and mistakes until they reach their goal. That may be too late for multiplayer, I'm unqualified to judge (100% singleplayer), but it should provide a foundation for singleplayer mods.
Anyone still hanging around complaining, wants/expects something from TW. If I was a TW developer, toxic abuse wouldn't motivate me to work harder for ungrateful trolls. It would kill passion and convince me to deliver the minimum that would satisfy my professional standards, making a lack of civility on our part entirely counterproductive.

 

[ShakenSpeare]

Easy to understand difficult to justify. No one with a shred of intellectual honesty believes this game is a scam. TW's albeit brief roadmaps are clear about what they are working on. It's a game well short of many people's expectations. TW hype can be blamed for some of that shortfall, where features were sacrificed to support performance on minimum spec pcs (I wish they had targeted a higher minimum pc spec), but the rest is on us. We allowed our dreams to outgrow TW's vision for BL. TW will continue to work, amending bugs and mistakes until they reach their goal. That may be too late for multiplayer, I'm unqualified to judge (100% singleplayer), but it should provide a foundation for singleplayer mods.
Anyone still hanging around complaining, wants/expects something from TW. If I was a TW developer, toxic abuse wouldn't motivate me to work harder for ungrateful trolls. It would kill passion and convince me to deliver the minimum that would satisfy my professional standards, making a lack of civility on our part entirely counterproductive.

This whole process has definitely been dishonest and grifting in nature on their part, but sure, it isn't a literal scam. If they didn't hype this game up to no end and played into the community's level of hype presenting a "true successor to Warband", we wouldn't be in this situation, especially considering the fact that it took 8 years of development after the announcement to achieve this mess of a game; this is on them. The consumer should not be the one blamed for the producer's failures and dishonesty. For me the criticism of TW isn't a matter of hoping for a better Bannerlord, it's about expressing dissatisfaction with their work to show them that this is not acceptable tidings to allow to happen in future projects or endeavors. Bannerlord is basically as complete as TW is gonna make it, but yeah, I hope mods can really salvage this, and we should work harder at being civil about it.

 

[Shaxx]

especially considering the fact that it took 8 years of development after the announcement to achieve this mess of a game

Fun fact, next month will mark nine years of development since it was announced.

We are already in the 11th year of development in total, encroaching and sure to pass it's 12th.

Relevant links for any curious onlookers:
TW Press Release where they mention when they started.
Dev Blog with someone hired specifically to work on Bannerlord in 2010.

 

[Roy1012]

Fun fact, next month will mark nine years of development since it was announced.

We are already in the 11th year of development in total, encroaching and sure to pass it's 12th.

Relevant links for any curious onlookers:
TW Press Release where they mention when they started.
Dev Blog with someone hired specifically to work on Bannerlord in 2010.

“Sadly, the fact sheet still lists Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord's release date as TBA (to be announced), meaning that it could be even further than 2016.”

Ahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahhhahahahahahahaaahhahahahahahahhaha you sweet summer child. That article brings back memories. High school sweethearts, the old house & city I lived in, my garbage busboy job, you get the gist. Looking at that article, which I do remember reading from that very same website, did give me quite the laugh. I thought: “no way it’ll be past 2016. Are you kidding? This guy must be huffing glue. That’s crazy. A game like this takes 3-4 years to make at most, and your saying it won’t be done in a year and a half from now? I love the conservative estimation, but seriously let’s be realistic: it can’t be more than a few months away from a release date.”

Ah, ignorance is bliss. If TW is reading this comment, don’t be insulted. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at myself for believing that. Shame on me for believing in you, tbh.