Beta Patch Notes e1.4.2

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Seems like that most players lost interest in this game anyway:

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The threads in this forum also confirms this, a lot of people are getting annoyed of those useless updates. Time to wake up TW.
 
@mexxico thank you for your communications.

While you're looking into the economy/trade issues, I'd like to bring one thing to your attention: That is that the "Whole seller" perk was working but broke some time ago. The prices of the items in your inventory would be colored red/green to indicate whether you would sell at a loss/profit. This was somehow broken about 2 months ago. Whatever broke it might also have broken the "Appraiser" perk. I am not sure whether the discount is working.

Having this fixed would go a long way to making Trade a more enjoyable strategy and I would think it would be "low hanging fruit" since it was once working.

There is a documented issue here.

Also, for clarification, there was a second issue related to this perk even when it was working and that is that the trade history was lost between game loads. I believe there was an attempt to address this at around the time it broke so maybe the big is related.

Also, as I noted in that problem thread, it may be intentionally a play on words, or it may be just an English as a second language thing but the correct term for this would be "Wholesaler". :smile:

Thanks again.

Yes this is a known issue. @Flesson19 also reported 2-3 days ago and I informed related people. They are working on this perk to work it again.
 
Seems like that most players lost interest in this game anyway:

vzbvcque.jpg


The threads in this forum also confirms this, a lot of people are getting annoyed of those useless updates. Time to wake up TW.
That's a curve that is pretty common with most games and doesn't necessarily mean that the game is bad, The Witcher 3 and Skyrim have a pretty similar graph for the first 3 months after release.
I'm one of those players that go into "play the game as much as possible" mode for the first week or so and then keep playing it on a more relaxed schedule, maybe even just once or twice a week. That doesn't mean i've lost interest, it's just that also play other games or have other things to do.
 
A lot of people don't stay online on steam for singleplayer content, no matter what game because it's nonsense.
I myself spent more than around 500 hours with Bannerlord but my online timecounter only counts 2-4 hours because I don't play multiplayer at all.
Other games have even more real spent hours and less hours on steam because I didn't test patches after download while staying online.
There are even games which provide a no-steam.exe to avoid launching steam in the background for pure singleplayer titles alltogether.
 
A lot of people don't stay online on steam for singleplayer content, no matter what game because it's nonsense.
I myself spent more than around 500 hours with Bannerlord but my online timecounter only counts 2-4 hours because I don't play multiplayer at all.
Other games have even more real spent hours and less hours on steam because I didn't test patches after download while staying online.
There are even games which provide a no-steam.exe to avoid launching steam in the background for pure singleplayer titles alltogether.
Exactly, personnaly I use "-no-browser" launch option for steam, allow me to keep tracking my playing time without having "steamwebhelpers" process eating my performance and my ram while I am playing.
 
That's a curve that is pretty common with most games and doesn't necessarily mean that the game is bad, The Witcher 3 and Skyrim have a pretty similar graph for the first 3 months after release.
Okay, I'm seeing this type of comments quite often so let me clarify something. First of all, the games that you are comparing is not 1-v-1 equal. Witcher is not a sandbox game with multiplayer in it. Same goes for Skyrim as well. Although Skyrim has more sandbox-like elements in it, it's still very dependent on its main storyline and it doesn't have multiplayer. Bannerlord is both SP and MP + promising sandbox features with long playtime so you would expect it to have more active users compared to these two.

Let's start with Witcher,
Witcher 3 has quite a bad start in terms of numbers - but this also made me think that they weren't selling from Steam only but also from GoG (Since it's their platform) hence It's questionable if this data is correct.
Regardless, they start with 89906 players, and it goes all way down to ~9100 players in 3 months.
Lx1KO2.jpg

It's definitely not great, but again, data is questionable
Now Skyrim
Skyrim starts with 287k players ends up at around 77k within 3 months. And it's not the flatlined date, so they have pretty spread graph that goes downwards as expected.
GIx74m.jpg
Now let's check Bannerlord
Bannerlord doesn't have 3 months of data, but we can check what we have. It starts off with 248k and goes all way down to 20k as a flatline. If you consider that this game offers Multiplayer and Singleplayer and lots of Save Game lists ( this is also important because this adds up extra activity who are okay to start a new game and spend same time from scratch ) then you can conclude that this pattern is not like any other game and its decreasing faster than it should be.
PmJvcw.jpg

Now you also have to consider the fact that Skyrim released in 2011 - meaning that there was no Twitch, no digitalization of gamers/games or proper game protection. Meaning that this data is not pure like Bannerlord because of the pirate copies and such.

As a fun fact, here is Warband
The game launches at 2010 and goes super steady. This is mostly due to low player base. Still surprisingly promising.
ZBsu2V.jpg

And something happens in 2014 ( I'm not sure but perhaps a DLC ) and it rises quite high, still drop-off is not as dramatic as Bannerlord.
Ve4HpT.jpg

So Bannerlord is definitely not in a great shape. It's not horrible but it's going down and bad. If you wanna see a horrible drop-off, here is the Mount and Blade: Fire&Sword
bABtae.jpg
 
One thing that will also be influencing that drop-off though is the lifting of stay-at-home orders and the resulting return of many to the international workforce.

A comparison against other games released during the pandemic would likely give a more relevant comparison, as there is much more "going on" right now that will impact the number of players at release versus now (compared to the Witcher or Skyrim).

Not to say the game doesn't have serious issues with longevity at the moment, however. I've hardly touched it recently, so a die off-like that doesn't surprise me.
 
One thing that will also be influencing that drop-off though is the lifting of stay-at-home orders and the resulting return of many to the international workforce.

A comparison against other games released during the pandemic would likely give a more relevant comparison, as there is much more "going on" right now that will impact the number of players at release versus now (compared to the Witcher or Skyrim).

Not to say the game doesn't have serious issues with longevity at the moment, however. I've hardly touched it recently, so a die off-like that doesn't surprise me.

+1

The decision to realease it at the very end of the fiscal year 2019 (in march '20) was a strategic financial decision but I totally agree with @Яowan about the very, very special circumstances related to the world wide lockdown.
I and many of those I know personally which play games every now and then had way more time at hand and got surprised by the EA-Release of BL which resulted in them getting it and playing most of the free time they would have otherwise spent working.
 
Okay, I'm seeing this type of comments quite often so let me clarify something. First of all, the games that you are comparing is not 1-v-1 equal. Witcher is not a sandbox game with multiplayer in it. Same goes for Skyrim as well. Although Skyrim has more sandbox-like elements in it, it's still very dependent on its main storyline and it doesn't have multiplayer. Bannerlord is both SP and MP + promising sandbox features with long playtime so you would expect it to have more active users compared to these two.
Yeah, i couldn't think of any similar recent game that could be used as a reference.

So Bannerlord is definitely not in a great shape.
By people playing? Not so much, it still has a daily peak of nearly 20k concurrent players (not 20k daily players, which is very different), surpassing plenty of other MP-only or SP/MP games, some with active esports community.
Could it be better? Yes
Is the game full of bugs and problems? Yes
Are people playing the game? Yes. Not as many as at launch, but that's to be expected.
 
A comparison against other games released during the pandemic would likely give a more relevant comparison, as there is much more "going on" right now that will impact the number of players at release versus now (compared to the Witcher or Skyrim).
True. Although statistical-wise, pattern is not matching with other games in pandemic. Even for those who have huge support and fanbase. For example,
CS:GO - Which is literally free and have the highest active users - so you would expect same drop-off after the COVID measurement relieves.
There is definitely a rise up because of pandemic stay-at-home stuff, but the drop-off is not as dramatic as Bannerlord.
iwPBCm.jpg
Also R6 - Again another game with huge player base ( although they are Uplay, so Steam only shows a fraction of their player base )
Again, rise up can be seen, but drop-off is not as dramatic as Bannerlord in this case either.
GifdnC.jpg
So this comparison might indicate the following: People bought Bannerlord, didn't like it much, and continued to play whatever they were playing before. Because that drop-off is not COVID relief dependent.

By people playing? Not so much, it still has a daily peak of nearly 20k concurrent players (not 20k daily players, which is very different), surpassing plenty of other MP-only or SP/MP games, some with active esports community.
You are missing the point I guess. Currently they have 20k. And game didn't even finish it's first 3 months. Seeing around 88% drop-off for a game within 2 months is not good. And most likely around 80% of those 20k is playing Singleplayer. Which will contribute to this dropoff even more in the future if Bannerlord continues to get useless patches, because lack of content makes the game quite repetitive after several days/hours.
It's also sad to point out that we are discussing not the acquisition of new users but saving the ones that already bought the game. So financial-wise they will be in big trouble in the long run if TW won't do anything
 
Steam reviews are still very positive for Bannerlord. But TW had the "luck" of the "release" reviews being like:

Playtime 1 hour
"It´s finally harvesting season" positive

I did the same (reminder for myself, change review from positive to negative). So TW should be still getting new buyers (reviews have an impact).

I was stunned in the first 10 hours, I had big hope for the game. Then I encountered all those missing stuff (placeholders, family doesn´t do anything, and so on, you know it) and then all those lackluster updates.

But if I imagine that I have no clue about the game and would not check the reviews on steam but look in this forum...would I buy the game? Hell no! :grin:

I don´t want this game to fail, but TW is working hard on it.
 
Considering how irrregular the last two updates were released, I'm a little out of the loop with all this. So, I'll just ask - should we expect an update today? At least in theory...
 
So is the economy being completely broke intended? Or were you trying to fix something here. Because prices seem to be the same across the cities and even the kingdoms. With workshops now nerfed into useless status and Caravans bugged, are we suppose to turn to smithcoin for actual profit? I can sell Javelins for some 100k where as I was perfectly content for the 5k I was making manually trading and being a merchant, but now if I want to have any type of high tier army I'm almost forced to constantly raid or smith.

Thanks for this report. We found an important bug which make all item prices very close to average price. So even there are hundreds of same item in town inventory its price do not drop to 0.2x-0.4x of average price as old days so caravans and players who play game as a merchant cannot make enough profit. We are fixing it. It will be fixed with probably tomorrow's patch.
 
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Is it my poor english or are you contradicting yourself?
I mean TW is working hard on the game to fail with those frustrating updates.

As I´ve written earlier in this thread, they need to slow down those updates and put some quality into them. It should be possible that an update doesn´t introduce new game breaking bugs as the last ones always did. Before they release it they should test it internally.
 
Thanks for this report. We found an important bug which make all item prices very close to average price. So even there are hundreds of same item in town inventory its price do not drop to 0.2x-0.4x of average price as old days so caravans and players who play game as a merchant cannot make enough profit. We are fixing it. It will be fixed with probably tomorrow's patch.
nice work thanks.
 
Is it my poor english or are you contradicting yourself?

I am a native English speaker and I don't see a contradiction here. He is essentially saying that they are focused so much on changes that don't bring real value to the players that they are essentially "working hard" on failing. Of course they're not really trying to fail but the recent history of patches just seems like useless churn.

They had a really good early 1-2 weeks where they were fixing a lot of crashes very quickly. This brought a lot of value due to eliminating high-frequency problems that were making the game unplayable.

Now the game is relatively stable- it's core mechanics are absolutely playable and yet we continue to see a lot of changes to fix "rare crash..." and lots of clumsy tuning that often causes regressions. What we need to see are 1) Fixes to low-hanging fruit, many items that have been addressed in mods for MONTHS now. E.g. UI improvements, garrison management, dialog shortcuts, etc. 2) But, most importantly, first cuts at new features that add depth to the game: e.g. Perks. Feasts. Advanced workshop management. Advanced fief management. Lord relationships. Advanced marriage. More unique companions. These have been coming far too slow for a team of this size.
 
I am a native English speaker and I don't see a contradiction here. He is essentially saying that they are focused so much on changes that don't bring real value to the players that they are essentially "working hard" on failing. Of course they're not really trying to fail but the recent history of patches just seems like useless churn.

They had a really good early 1-2 weeks where they were fixing a lot of crashes very quickly. This brought a lot of value due to eliminating high-frequency problems that were making the game unplayable.

Now the game is relatively stable- it's core mechanics are absolutely playable and yet we continue to see a lot of changes to fix "rare crash..." and lots of clumsy tuning that often causes regressions. What we need to see are 1) Fixes to low-hanging fruit, many items that have been addressed in mods for MONTHS now. E.g. UI improvements, garrison management, dialog shortcuts, etc. 2) But, most importantly, first cuts at new features that add depth to the game: e.g. Perks. Feasts. Advanced workshop management. Advanced fief management. Lord relationships. Advanced marriage. More unique companions. These have been coming far too slow for a team of this size.
A few more scenes wouldn't hurt as well. The Aserai landscapes in battles look like some crazy mix of Imperial, Khuzait and some desert scenes...

And, in general, any new visual content would be nice to have, since it's not TW, and we visit many villages and cities quite often to see like 2 or 3 variations for each of those. Would be cool to have some new scenes for sieges in particular, like Sturgian towns, when you crash the first gates and getting traped in a small fortress territory surrounded by enemy archers in the walls....
 
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