Interesting point about the term "fan" and I totally get what you are saying. To that end, let me say in my usage of it I think its more of a colloquialism and I used for the lack of a better word.
Most would, probably. "People who like the game" might be a phrase that is be detached enough, but as implied above, all of what's going on in this forum seems to be a microcosm of the self-enforcing mechanisms all human collective endeavours have. You get a thread (in this case rather seldomly, due to pre-selection of the audience) that's rather positive, and suddenly you have an influx of people showering it in generalized praise. In another there's talk about Failworlds and you get the impression that Armagan himself has sold his audience a bridge and ran off to the caribbean afterwards.
Hell, I'm sure all of the devs are nice guys, but some seem to adore mexxico like the second coming of christ, while some seem to despise Callum like Satan.
Now all of this probably isn't quite as problematic as it seems, since hyperbole is often simply used to reinforce an opinion, while the person behind a post is usually more levelheaded in their approach. And even if not, there's nothing important at stake here, except for the mental well-being of the devs, but I suppose you can argue that that's a path they chose for themselves.
This being said, I don't know if there's really a solution for any of this. It's deeply rooted in the way human biology/psychology seems to work. The only reason I can be this detached from whatever happens with Bannerlord, is because I don't have that much of a stake in it. And usually people like that don't engage in Forums, because they don't care enough. I haven't played the game in ages and I only returned to the Forums after months. Before Bannerlord the last time I checked around here with a different account was more than a decade ago. Imagine everyone was like this, this place would be dead, and it would probably be even worse of a motivator than thousands of pages ****ting on the studio.
People just suck at middle grounds. Including me, naturally.
Please enlighten those of us who think the game has gotten WORSE not better. What are the good things?
I can't speak for the progress of the EA of Bannerlord, but that is in flux anyway. When it comes to Warband: The game was nearly unplayable. Another poster recently spoke of "death by a thousand cuts", with regards to UI issues that annoy the ever loving crap out of any sane human being, referring to Bannerlord. Now Warband had the worst user experience of any game I've come across, modded or unmodded. And in years of its existence, very few people seemed to even bat an eye, they were just a bunch of people making the game after all, and think of the limited engine, and... etc., it makes sense that it's clunky.
No, it was absolutely terrible. Taken together I probably spent 50/50 time-wise being annoyed by the UI and actually playing the game. Annoyances of game mechanics that I didn't agree with aren't even counted in here.
Bannerlord initially made a ton of mistakes UI wise as well, mainly by doing it the same way as Warband, but there are some really important QoL things, especially for the UI, that mean that IF I will ever play a Taleworlds game again, it will absolutely be Bannerlord, and not Warband.