You may be right, but I wonder how much of the original code is still there waiting for some modder to resurrect and debug it for compatibility with modern features.
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Bannerlord was a grift
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Just because this variant (village->castle) is a bad idea, doesn't mean that customized locations are a bad idea in general. You can drop this variant and adopt a better one. They didn't and just gave up completely, which I found surprising at the time.
Here's one idea that's sure to do well with the players (and I'm sure you can come up with other similar ideas):
You have one special location you can build up to a castle. (Optional: there's also a village that goes with it.)
Or several special locations located in various parts of the map, so you can choose a convenient location.
They aren't outliers, not even remotely. There are more games doing it wrong, in the way you and Ser Jon define it, than there are companies doing it the way everyone wants. And they keep getting away with it too. Meanwhile, a company can slap "full release" on their title and do everything people want out of an early access period -- nothing changes, except fan expectations.
That's why I call it a marketing gimmick.
(Also why I don't care if they give us a detailed roadmap; TW can write whatever they want but probably won't deliver, so why does it matter?)
Nothing is left.
And, so what if it did? The game sold in a solid, finished state in what it promised from the start. Whether or not it got overhauls to certain systems later doesn't mean a thing. Early access games are games that did not begin selling at full/finished states, haven't acquired its vision yet and are still constantly undergoing new changes, dramatic or not, as it tries to find its vision. If you think Stellaris compares to Bannerlord, that's your own problem.
Did you see Stellaris when it first came out? The game looked literally nothing like what it does today. And if you don’t think BL is in a decent enough state to be in EA, that’s your own problem.
So we are still trying to find worse examples than Bannerlord? Right now, Bannerlord is in a good enough (!) state for an EA game according to the EA description. Back then it wasn´t. It should have been close to the state we have right now.
Did you see Workers & Ressources: Soviet Republic? It was good when it was released in EA and it´s even in a better state right now....
You know that this isn´t worth anything when you had hopes in Bannerlord. Duke Nukem forever doesn´t make Bannerlord a better game than it is right now. And my example doesn´t make it a worse game. It´s all about Bannerlord in this forum and not about other games....because "we" bought Bannerlord and not Stellaris or whatever game...
Also remember the hype TW (not the gaming press) created....in my opinion it´s just stupid to say "game XYZ was worse". Even the worst game game in the world (probably some game from Electronic Arts) doesn´t make Bannerlord a better game. Only TW can improve Bannerlord...
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Having played it at release, it was about what I expected from an EA release.
I will admit thought that TW messed up big time by announcing it in 2012. It is the Cyberpunk problem on a smaller scale.
Then you have very low expectations but that´s fine of course. Now I understand why you think Bannerlord is doing fine in it´s dev process.
I wasn´t even talking about 2012, just about the hype TW created before the EA release. I could talk about all the scrapped stuff but it was done like a hundred times here....and a lot of us bought it day one because we´ve trusted TW. If I would have bought it yesterday I would also say it´s ok....
That Buggerpunk 2077 got GOTY awards is a joke by itself. But the press had to obey and the fanboys had to be fanboys. And again, worse games doesn´t make Bannerlord a better game.
I wasn´t even talking about 2012, just about the hype TW created before the EA release. I could talk about all the scrapped stuff but it was done like a hundred times here....and a lot of us bought it day one because we´ve trusted TW. If I would have bought it yesterday I would also say it´s ok....
That Buggerpunk 2077 got GOTY awards is a joke by itself. But the press had to obey and the fanboys had to be fanboys. And again, worse games doesn´t make Bannerlord a better game.
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I mean, if DayZ could come back from where it was when it first came out then so can BL. I don't think I have low standards, I just think that some of you guys have inflated ones. Given what happened with DayZ, and how BL is nowhere near as bad as that mess was, I really have no reason not to doubt that BL can't become a truly great game if just given time. It isn't because of blind hope in TW, it is because it was been seen before with different companies.
Ok, so you´re still talking about other games. I could do the same, but I won´t waste anymore time with you and just hope you´re right.
Have a nice weekend.
Have a nice weekend.
I'm doing that to explain my position.
Definitely not true, at least in the case of competent devs. If they don't have an idea of where they are going, their vision for the game, it wouldn't even make it through development, let alone EA. Especially in the case of BL: they know exactly where they are going and what they are doing, people just don't like it. As for the rest of the stuff, a lot of games nowadays release incomplete and have constant changes throughout their lifecycle.
I was never saying Stellaris was bad. Stellaris was actually decent on release, just not my thing. PDS decided to overhaul it to make it better, doing more than most titles in EA. It was just an example of the EA label meaning absolutely nothing beyond "the game isn't done, plz don't give us bad press."
I never argued on the quality of what Stellaris was, just on the state of it. Whether or not it was a piece of crap, it was sold in a "finished" state. Quite a different thing than Bannerlord. Stop being obtuse about it.
How isn't it true? There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but that doesn't mean that early access games do not, a majority of the time, fall along those lines. They do. You can see it in many of them. This still doesn't mean that Stellaris and Bannerlord are comparable, though.
I absolutely agree with you. Early Access has very often been a scam in the gaming community. Most EA's I've been involved in have been positive experiences for me, but then again I tend to be pretty discriminating about which teams I trust enough to give money to before release.
My point isn't that you're wrong about Early Access being abused by developers. My main gripe is with people who claim that, because EA is abused so often, we're not allowed to be mad when TW does it. I haven't scrutinized the thread, but I'm pretty sure you didn't do that.
Getting scammed is still getting scammed, no matter how much you should have known better.
I'm just guessing that - in the 2 months that I've been gone - you still haven't articulated compelling evidence that TW actually intends to release a complete game or patch in complete features after release. It's just an article of faith on your part, stated in opposition to all of the evidence made available over 10 years of development.
Ideally that should be us, by refusing to accept this behavior. Are you suggesting that consumers shouldn't react accordingly when the mouths of devs write checks their rear-ends can't cash?
I think the three of us are all agreeing with each other. I was talking specifically about people who defend BL's shoddy state by saying that our "expectations are too high" - as if expecting a company to provide a promised product in working order were insane or something.
I played Stellaris at launch. I had my gripes about it, but it was a perfectly functional game. Even with the lack of balance in early mechanics, it was a worthy successor to the Master of Orion series and a hell of a lot more stable than competitors like StarDrive.
Paging @Phantom425 : All of the features of the game were actually implemented and bugs were fairly survivable. Nearly all the complaints about Stellaris were about issues with completely brand-spanking-new features released regularly, if hastily, for years after launch. There is no comparison to the turd sandwich of BL's EA release.
Again, this is a (!)medieval (2)fighting (3)RPG which can't do (1)sieges and can't do (2)shieldwalls and can't do (3)skill progression - not even after a year of EA "development". What is even the point of this game if it can't do the basic things advertised on the tin?
100%!!! We're theoretically months away from launch but - as I understand it - the skill and trait progressions (which, as an RPG gamer, I care about most) are still completely borked.
I'm gathering it's still literally impossible to level Calculating trait at all and virtually impossible to level Leadership before joining a faction and pointlessly difficult to level Engineering ever? Let alone something like Roguery which, last I heard, was impossible to level up to 250 without killing literally tens of thousands of caravans and millions of peasants.
Also it's good to see you alive!
But that doesn't explain the bizarre focus on marketing BL as an e-sport, while simultaneously ignoring everything that makes actual e-sporty games popular.
From what I remember of dev gossip over the years the last time I did a deep dive, it looks like BL originally had a broad swath of great RPG features planned but at a certain point someone checked a watch and panicked and the entire company became institutionally against implementing anything "complicated". So the only changes to the game since like a year before EA release were the ones that could be sold to management as "not complicated", regardless of how complex they actually were.
I absolutely am not forgiving about this. Mount & Blade is a genre unto itself and the appeal of this kind of game is much broader than people think. It brings together first-person slashers, real-time strategists, Dungeons & Dragons roleplayers, Magical Tea Party storytellers, modding enthusiasts and obsessive minmaxers. If it had been done well, BL had the opportunity to change the gaming landscape. There's a reason why the original M&B was one of the top-rated games of all time despite looking and playing like hot garbage on toast 2 generations behind on graphics/design.
The fact that the "casuals" posting about the game on Steam and Reddit clearly expect the finished product to have much more features than we're actually going to get (feasts, banners, ships AND *elephants*!) should be an indication that the demand for a "hardcore" game exists.
So much +1'ed. SO MUCH! The fact that so many features from VC like personal hideouts - let alone WB staples like feasts - weren't even on the menu for BL was a total blackpill for me when I saw BL EA drop.
I'm sorry for the brief misunderstanding. And yes, those people tend to actually think expecting quality out of a company for our money is insane. I've seen that attitude here numerous times.
Vonpritz
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I thought I would chime in even though I’m sure I’ll get slammed.
I bought bannerlord solely because I enjoyed the PW mod for Warband. I think I played one hour of Warband single player.
I didn’t really touch bannerlord until last week, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the game. Yeah, I wish there were more things fleshed out, but frankly I am enjoying the game more than Warband.
after reading through all of the forum posts the past few days, it seems pretty obvious there is a bit of confirmation bias going on.
Is the game perfect? No.
Is it ****? No.
My only gripe is I wish they’d get the custom server files out so Persistent Kingdoms could get developed. I rarely play single player games.
Also, I don’t really get the gripe about the combat being not realistic- I recall Warband multiplayer (I stopped playing PW like 6 years ago) just largely consisted of dudes staring at their feet and swinging two handed swords like Mordhau. I may not be a expert in sword fighting but I doubt medieval melee combat consisted of guys staring at their feet and swing 180 degree arcs with their broadswords.
could the combat be improved? Of course. Is it not fun? Eh, I’m enjoying it. And so are currently 13,000 other people. But the complaints I’m seeing on the forums are hyperbolic. (Except for the modders gripes about documentation and how updates are handled, those seem legit. If I was at TW I would make sure being “mod friendly” would be a priority. But I’m also not a software developer so I don’t know enough about the technical issues)
I bought bannerlord solely because I enjoyed the PW mod for Warband. I think I played one hour of Warband single player.
I didn’t really touch bannerlord until last week, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the game. Yeah, I wish there were more things fleshed out, but frankly I am enjoying the game more than Warband.
after reading through all of the forum posts the past few days, it seems pretty obvious there is a bit of confirmation bias going on.
Is the game perfect? No.
Is it ****? No.
My only gripe is I wish they’d get the custom server files out so Persistent Kingdoms could get developed. I rarely play single player games.
Also, I don’t really get the gripe about the combat being not realistic- I recall Warband multiplayer (I stopped playing PW like 6 years ago) just largely consisted of dudes staring at their feet and swinging two handed swords like Mordhau. I may not be a expert in sword fighting but I doubt medieval melee combat consisted of guys staring at their feet and swing 180 degree arcs with their broadswords.
could the combat be improved? Of course. Is it not fun? Eh, I’m enjoying it. And so are currently 13,000 other people. But the complaints I’m seeing on the forums are hyperbolic. (Except for the modders gripes about documentation and how updates are handled, those seem legit. If I was at TW I would make sure being “mod friendly” would be a priority. But I’m also not a software developer so I don’t know enough about the technical issues)
Is that so?
Vonpritz
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Yes, because the game clearly isn’t as terrible as people are making it out to be.
87% of steam reviews are positive, 13K current players.
People who have strong opinions- particularly negative ones- tend to be the loudest voices on all game forums.
****- look at Ark, if you went on the forums you’d think the game was awful and no one liked it if you read the forums.
kinda like reading these forums.
As I said, is the game perfect? No. Is it a scam like Star Citizen? No.
So the entire basis of your argument rests on reviews and reviews alone, is that it? It's just not possible that reviews don't reflect the larger number of players or the only large view of the game, correct?
And your misconception of the people complaining about the game is that they don't like the game is incredibly wrong. They do like it. They just aren't blindsided by 40hrs of buggy "fun" and can be honest about the glaring problems of the game, in an effort to make it actually good and not "meh".
Sure.
I think you overestimate our level of rage. At this point, I'm kind of tired of raging anyway and - if I were to rage - not even @Phantom425 could inspire that level of emotion.
When I raged at him during his first appearance in the forum a few months ago, it was because he was fairly aggressive in telling us that our complaints are completely unfounded and that our negativity was killing the game's development. And, to date, Phantom still hasn't been able to articulate why anyone should have faith in TW despite years of broken promises.
From my perspective, you've got low standards. That's OK. If you're enjoying the game, then good on you. By all available evidence, most players are either not enjoying it or are expecting significant improvements such that they'd be infuriated if the game released like this.
I'm sure that a lot of combat in WB was dumb or looked dumb. My gripe in particular isn't that BL is failing to be substantially superior to WB... it's that many aspects of the design are inferior to Viking Conquest, which started as a fan mod released over 10 years ago. As a minor medieval history nerd, I expect medieval combat to have shieldwalls. Modded WB had shieldwalls... Viking Conquest had shieldwalls... BL still doesn't have working shieldwalls. BL doesn't even have working ladders, FFS.
And the frustration gets even worse once you look back through years of posts and realize how great the game could have been... when you find out that they originally had functional spear infantry but a dev decided it wasn't "fun" for cavalry charges to ever fail even if sent head-on into a packed spear hedge, so he nerfed infantry AI to be "a little dumb". When EA released, cavalry AI was so much better than infantry AI that they ended up nerfing cavalry AI too to compensate. Since Early Access, several aspects of the game have actually gotten measurably worse.
For an idea of what I'm talking about, here's a list of cut and legacy content that dropped last year.
There are people like you who enter the forum on a regular basis, fans with a reasonable hope in the dev process and a limited understanding of the failures up to this point. Few are as reasonable and polite as you're being.
It's no big deal. 90% odds you'll take the blackpill like the rest of us if you stick around long enough.
New BL defenders often cite steam reviews and current players as a reason why this game has been well-received.
Putting aside the fact that fan polls in the forums are uniformly 70-90% negative, I've written half a dozen detailed posts myself debunking this exact idea.
Short version:
- Steam reviews often cite how great the game is GOING TO BE, not how it is. They boot the game up for 3 hours and then drop it once they're bored, assuming the game will not suck at some point in the future. The players with the most play time and the most knowledge of the dev process are the most negative.
- Jumps in active players and positive reviews do not correspond with significant fixes or new features (what little there've been) - they correspond perfectly with Steam sales. People buy the game on sale, play it for 3 hours, give a positive review and then are never heard from again.
- ^ That explains the fairly lackluster community, despite millions of purchases (we don't even have a regularly-updated wiki).
- There were vastly more players at EA launch and - unlike Warband (which maintained a consistent following for years) - BL's player stats dropped like a rock. You wouldn't expect this with a MP game, let alone an immersive replayable SP game which is still in development with new releases every couple months and is theoretically just a couple months away from full release.
- ^ And this during a pandemic when many of us are out of work or working from home with nothing better to do.
- The people who are talking this game up often say how excited they are about new upcoming features (or even old WB features like feasts) - despite the fact that devs have already said that things like feasts or ships aren't even on their radar. Most freak out when you link them to posts from devs explicitly saying this. If you look at peoples signatures here, you'll regularly see a link to ~~ Good features that were in Warband, but are still missing in Bannerlord~~
- 87% positive steam rating is actually pretty weak for a AA game. Warband got consistently higher positives and is one of the top-rated games of all time - a cult classic. BL isn't even in the top 250. According to Steam250, WB is the #18 top-rated Steam game of all time and BL stands at #1818.
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