I'm a virulent detractor of this game, but
@Kentucky 『 HEIGUI 』 James and
@Apocal are right about the economic/quest systems being complex.
The problem isn't that the systems aren't there. The problem is that the systems are busted.
The average player will never notice that quests are contingent on triggering factors like bandit camps - because bandit camps respawn too fast for you to even notice. There's practically no difference between the quest spawning the camp and the camp spawning the quest because they happen with such ridiculous speed.
Similarly, the economic system looks less sophisticated than it was in Warband because the tolerances of the price system are busted (with overly-strong price elasticity and poor/no substitution effect and AFAIK no stickiness from chronic shortages). Also it's all driven by the prosperity mechanic, which is not remotely balanced to the prevailing market conditions even at game start.
But they're also wrong about all this being evidence against BL being dumbed down for a console port. There's plenty of evidence from
commented out code that BL
used to be more complex further back in the dev process and this could be a relic of that time - or it could just be something a TW exec thought was important for completely arbitrary reasons.
My hypothesis: Somebody coded a complex economy system at a time when TW considered that important. Eventually the winds shifted to dumbing down the game for a console port and - since it doesn't sound too resource-intensive and it's not visible enough for console players to notice anyway - nobody bothered to either take it out or maintain it. It's just a vestigial organ at this point.
Perhaps the same logic applies to the janky leveling system. Also whatever's going on with smithing. Also the personality system and conversations with notables and the persuasion mini-game.
These systems all exist in the game but haven't been touched since EA launch because nobody at TW cares about them one way or the other - right up to the moment where somebody claims something is an "exploit", at which point TW applies the nerf bat.
ALSO: mexxico explicitly told us that he was working on dumbing down AI for consoles. Do I really need to dig up and link that old thread?