Well...consider me at least content with a major update like this after lots of minor hotfixes. There are things addressed, where I was looking forward to them being fixed.
- Level impact on learning rate is such a thing and it makes me happy someone listened to the community
- fixing bugs in EA is bread and butter and bugs crashing the game have priority, correct. It is a complex game so I expect bugs to happen and as we see, they are squashed one by one. Takes time but better done late than never done leaving the game in a Gothic 3 state
- Optical improvements (scenes) have been made. I am ambivalent about this. Sure this is nice, but as pointed out very often by the community, villige scenes are mostly moot when you have a shortcut button. I must admit, that I am not encouraged by the game to enter a town or village if I totally do not need to. So currently this is invested time wasted unless there will be improvements on the importance of those scenes later. I give them credit on that matter for now.
- I see an improvement in terms of diplomacy as now map assets can be traded during truce talks if I understand the patch right
- UI changes look reasonable and seem to improve QoL
- Siege behavior seems to be improved. There are some subtle things added like grant "safe passage" to leave a lost siege at a cost.
- The changes done in character development department look reasonable with the best thing that the level influence is gone now. Finally not feeling cheated when levelling up! Still, progress there is slow as we still lack some playstyles like robber baron
- Changes done to the clan management are important as well as it seems to eliminate some exploits and adds some direly requested features like setting a cap for party wages or setting stance for parties. Small improvement, but important. Hoping to see more.
- Economy still is a bit lackluster but improvments have been made, albeit smaller ones
- Kingdom and Diplomacy have gotten some work as well. Cannot say much about this as I never am a king in my games. but I acknowledge that work has been done (and appreciate it)
- Quest fixes seem reasonable. Some still are meaningful, some..meh. I think I would now abandon Inn and Out quest as I do not like the minigames (yet)
- The other stuff is a random assortment of fixes and balances and corrections - bread and butter work during EA as well.
I will not talk about multiplayer as this is something I only sometimes do - besides the kick player option. I will watch closely where this is heading. If it leads to being trolled out of the game because you are not l33t enough for the ones playing 24/7 because they do not have many other things to do, then it is a terrible thing. Lesser skilled players still should be able to play and learn together with veterans and the latter ones not hogging the game for themselves. I hope this does not happen. Also I fear as archer you will be auto-kicked often if friendlies run into your targets and catch the arrows with their backs. I am ambivalent about that. Throwing weapon nerfs are terrible in my book...but this is only my opinion.
Conclusion: Happy to see movement. Still going too slow for my taste but then I am not sitting and working at Taleworlds and do not know how fast they work, who does what and what are the internal priorities. I still want to believe that the devs work on the game because they want it to happen. We are condemned to watch but still should refrain from toxicity. Read enough toxicity the last days (see EU4 DLC launch, HoI4 DLC announcement). Sometimes I think some of us gamers just are spoiled, entitled, immature brats who fling around words without caring to hurt someone. My grandma - god rest her soul - once said: "Cannot say something good about someone? Then better shut yer trap and stay silent!" - Words of wisdom. Concerns can be voiced reasonably and civil and we should keep it like this instead of ranting and memeing. Frankly? I could understand that in the devs position I would loath visiting the forum because I would need to read a lot of nasty things. And this is maybe one reason why good suggestions are overlooked. Can't find a pearl in a proverbial dungheap, right? So I feel empathy as a human. That does not say that I am content with the project's pace as a customer - indeed I am not as I paid a good chunk of money for a game still under development and lacking in some core areas. But at least I can be that fair and acknowledge progress and be a bit happy about it.
Mikal over and out