Disappointing progress.

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Doofus

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I post bugs on support page, so this is basically just a rant, but....

Started a game with 1.8.0. Things weren't too bad until I joined the Southern Empire. As soon as I got a castle the trouble started. The prisoners in the dungeons disappear and the number accepted varies for no reason. At one point it was negative. I 'think' maybe the 2nd number its giving is the remaining prisoners it will accept rather than the max allowed. This is totally different from what the numbers mean for everything else in the game.

Between wars I stored excess soldiers in the garrison to save money. When I stored them, it said I had about 250 of 353 there. After a quick trip around the empire it was down to 81 of 353 with no reason given and said it was going to drop more because of either max exceeded or lack of payment. Even with militia I don't think it was over about 230 or so. I never came close to running out of money, but lost about 175 troops before it stabilized.

Recently the Southern Empire declared war on the Sturgians, which was a smart move because they were warring one or two other kingdoms. The lords quickly created 3 armies, leaving nothing for me, but I figured I could follow and assist the armies. Within a day 2 of the armies besieged Husn Fulq, which had rebelled about 30 days earlier. Apparently the leader of the 3rd army had a sudden onset of Alzheimer's Disease because his army has sat in the middle of the Southern Empire since being formed. 10 days into this 'war' and none of the 3 armies have passed the northern half of the kingdom. Fortunately, the Sturgians are busy elsewhere. As far as I know only one party has attacked us, which was a raiding party I destroyed. Why did we declare on the Sturgians if we weren't going to attack them???

Plenty of other problems that come & go. But my understanding is this game has been in development over a decade. In the 2 years I've been in early access, some things have improved, but others are worse. Seems it will never get out of development, I'm sure part of my frustration is because when I first bought it I thought 'early access' was the stage after Beta testing & it would be going live in a few months. Apparently early access is before Alpha testing or whatever its called. I feel like the Devs never even play the game or they would run across some of this stuff and be actively fixing it before it was even reported by the pre-alpha testers.
 
I'm sure part of my frustration is because when I first bought it I thought 'early access' was the stage after Beta testing & it would be going live in a few months.
Yes, this is the way EA should be. But the Bannerlord release was more an alpha version of the game (Placeholderlord).

To be fair, TW claimed (and I guess still claims because they never bother to change it) it will be in EA for around one year.

Around 1 year is something between 0,5 and 1,5 years for me.

There are some rumors that the console version will be released in october and if this is true, the PC version will also release then. And if this happens we can just hope most major bugs are fixed and the missing announced features are added. Sounds unrealistic to me if I consider TWs pace for releasing updates or fixing bugs.

But at the end there is nothing we can do but wait, just keep the company name in your mind when they announce/hype their next EA games and ignore them.
 
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Yes, this is the way EA should be. But the Bannerlord release was more an alpha version of the game (Placeholderlord).
There is sadly no minimum standard for EA, it simply means you're paying for something that is usable but incomplete. In fact, EA during alpha is most common, especially if you exclude the AAA studio quick cash grab releases, to make profit before the release reviews get published.

If we were strict with Bannerlord it should be called alpha, as it is far from being complete enough to warrant the beta status, but that maybe a misunderstanding on my part. If a company sticks to the "usual" release stages is up to them, and the real status is always a bit fuzzy in agile projects.

There are some rumors that the console version will be released in october and if this is true, the PC version will also release then. And if this happens we can just hope most major bugs are fixed and the missing announced features are added. Sounds unrealistic to me if I consider TWs pace for releasing updates or fixing bugs.
I was most times very optimistic with the development, as I know the usual problems in big ambitious software projects firsthand. I hoped for TW getting their mess sorted out and upping the pace. But now I simply must agree, that the development speed is way too slow to hope for big features if the October release rumors are true.
 
There is sadly no minimum standard for EA, it simply means you're paying for something that is usable but incomplete.
And you have to trust the EA description and TWs description was just a lie, they sold it as "mostly finished, needs polishing and bug fixing and some minor stuff is missing" and their best joke was the feedback part. But to be fair, every company always claims that they listen to their customers so it´s just a standard lie.

And I´m sure, TW was totally aware that in no way they would be able to complete the game in "around one year".

I was most times very optimistic with the development, as I know the usual problems in big ambitious software projects firsthand. I hoped for TW getting their mess sorted out and upping the pace. But now I simply must agree, that the development speed is way too slow to hope for big features if the October release rumors are true.

The sad part is, even if they won´t realese it in 2022, there is no hope for any big new feature which was not announced yet. There won´t be this big surprise update from TW, they are just doing their stuff and finish the game.
 
The most exciting "feature" of this game, have to be the modding tools.
And that's really sad.
It's good when people want to engage with your game by creating various mods that prolong their enjoyment of the game, but when you have to rely on the mods to fix the shortcomings of the base game that weren't, and will not be addressed until release, you're doing something wrong.

And there's been a lot of speculation on what exactly is wrong in Taleworlds, be it the management, game designers with different ideas to players, patches being pushed out without prior testing,company culture affecting development, inflexibility during the pandemic, sudden 3 month code refactors, "listening to player feedback", etc.

It's just weird how slow the development is.
They're not working with a difficult engine or programming language, but the development is extremely slow.
I do wonder how they'll develop other titles they're making without the monetary success, and attention of the media that Bannerlord had.

And screw EA.
You'd think it would give an incentive to finish the game, and release it once, and for all, but no, we just have to give money for unfinished products.

And begrudgingly, the shambolic EA did make us more demanding.
Those developer blogs would've been better if they never existed in the first place.
 
I do wonder how they'll develop other titles they're making without the monetary success, and attention of the media that Bannerlord had.
+ without the Bannerlord fanbase
+ without beeing the only game in its genre
+ failed Bannerlord EA

Their space game will fail, it will be compared with games like Elite while Bannerlord just has no damn real competition sadly.
 
And I´m sure, TW was totally aware that in no way they would be able to complete the game in "around one year".
By now, even claiming that Covid slowed their development and that's why it has been delayed doesn't hold much water. Surely it had some impact, but in a couple of months we will reach the three year anniversary of the MP F&F test which was shortly followed by a community-based invitational beta before reaching EA launch at the end of March/beginning of April 2020. The bulk of work on MP was done before EA even started, only missing a few key elements like duel, siege, and battle game modes, custom server support, and (ranked) matchmaking. These are all systems built around or on top of the core of the game. The same is true of SP, where the core gameplay loop of travel -> battle -> loot -> sell -> spend has always been present and all other systems are dependent upon it. All of the engine and back-end things like rendering, shaders, lighting, memory allocation, multithread management, so on and so forth, that was all in place (if not in a finished state, as performance matters never are) because it is fundamental. Without these things the game would not function, or would do so in such a deteriorated state that it might as well not. Since the early betas & launch of EA, this stuff has been improved upon but it was never entirely missing.

Development since has been focused on feature addition and iteration, which has dragged on for over 2 years with mixed results. At this point the issue is clearly not one of individual developer incompetence or inability. I think it's unfair to cast any of the employees as unqualified to do their jobs. The issue seems to be indecision or loss of perspective by those with a death-grip on the reins. When I say loss of perspective I specifically mean that they may be too invested in work on certain aspects or features of the game to a point where they lose track of other ongoing work and thus fail to follow up and provide direction for these other things.

From the consumer side, it certainly feels like some parts of the game have been languishing for months or years while others get most of the attention, and when these neglected parts do get some work it's not always consistent with the direction it seemed to be going previously or (more commonly) with community expectations. If asked individually, I'm sure every developer would tell you that they want to make a product which people enjoy playing, but part of being a team is that they are not left to do whatever they want. They have to follow the direction of leadership, and while I think the big chief is certainly a capable developer in his own right I don't think that has translated well into the management of a studio of over 100 people.

TL;DR I think the studio as a whole has not adjusted well to their increased size since the Warband days and some procedures/norms they have established may be hamstringing them. It looks more and more like an organizational problem as time goes on.
 
I can tell you about a little of this stuff.
As soon as I got a castle the trouble started. The prisoners in the dungeons disappear and the number accepted varies for no reason.
Yes some of the prisoners are removed daily when it's full. Also NPC parties can overfill the prisons so they will be auto-full when you go to a fief with an army after a battle. So, prisoner storage isn't a thing anymore. I think amount of prisoners they can hold is effected by something, but I don't care TBH, if it can't hold what I want without somebody dumping in it and getting them deleted I just won't use it. It reminds me of the garrison auto recruitment original issues, where it seemed TW just didn't understand the player expect fulls control over garrison storage.

Between wars I stored excess soldiers in the garrison to save money. When I stored them, it said I had about 250 of 353 there. After a quick trip around the empire it was down to 81 of 353 with no reason given and said it was going to drop more because of either max exceeded or lack of payment. Even with militia I don't think it was over about 230 or so. I never came close to running out of money, but lost about 175 troops before it stabilized.
Hmmmm, haven't seen this, did you turn on wage limit?
3rd army had a sudden onset of Alzheimer's Disease because his army has sat in the middle of the Southern Empire since being formed
yes, this can happend with single parties too, there's something wrong and it causes them to just sit around for a very long time.
Why did we declare on the Sturgians if we weren't going to attack them???
Yeah, I would much rather abandon the 'daily random checks' and have player influenced long term agenda for the faction the player is in.
 
Ananda, I'm pretty sure the prisoner problem is that the numbers mean something totally different than they do in every other instance. If it says 6/14, it doesn't mean you have 6 prisoners in there out of 14 allowed. It means you have 6 in there and have 14 that you can still fit in there. This is totally different from what its meant in the past and inconsistent with how the rest of the numbers (such as garrison) work.

Regarding garrison, I do have the wage limit turned on. I'm guessing the wage limit screen shows you how much you are allowing and spending for the garrison, but the wage limit is actually applied to the militia as well, meaning that when you look at the wage limit you are thinking you have room for some growth, when in realty you have too many for the limit you set and are going to start losing some. So now, instead of stopping recruiting of weak militia troops it will keep recruiting militia and eventually start deleting all your solid garrison troops.

Having just started playing again after a couple months away, its amazing the problems there are. If anyone wants to see things more in-depth this thread is very detailed, since the devs apparently don't even know how to disband a party (which changed and took me a while to figure out as well). https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...ore-troops-goes-far-away.452553/#post-9813173
 
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The same is true of SP, where the core gameplay loop of travel -> battle -> loot -> sell -> spend has always been present and all other systems are dependent upon it. All of the engine and back-end things like rendering, shaders, lighting, memory allocation, multithread management, so on and so forth, that was all in place (if not in a finished state, as performance matters never are) because it is fundamental. Without these things the game would not function, or would do so in such a deteriorated state that it might as well not. Since the early betas & launch of EA, this stuff has been improved upon but it was never entirely missing.
The functionality seen at Gamescom demos didn't have to run on BL's minimum pc spec or consoles. I suspect TW was overwhelmed by the scale of bugs and crashes on the players vast range of differing hardware. EA seems a long round of bug fixes, stabilisation and optimisation for inadequate hardware. Missing banner-bearers suggest that BL's optimisation remains incomplete.
I assume any testing of 1.8.0 Tools was done within TW's development environment as opposed to using the version shipped. There are too many failed debugging asserts to files in C:\Development\mb3\source\Engine, which isn't part of any version shipped.
Given the premature Sony Database leak of 25th October 2022 (presumably the contractual target release date as opposed to a guaranteed release date), TW will stick to their roadmap. I suspect we will only get unique scenes for every town based on the current status:
HW5ZI.jpg
That's hardly surprising given the massive scene-making effort going into the battle terrain system - 1.8.0 has 86 unique battle scenes with more clearly planned.
I hope that BL isn't permanently hobbled by its minimum pc spec and at some stage in the future as hardware becomes more powerful the hardcoded limit on the number of agents in a mission scene can be raised from 2,048 to 4,096, but that seems unlikely.
 
At this point the issue is clearly not one of individual developer incompetence or inability. I think it's unfair to cast any of the employees as unqualified to do their jobs. The issue seems to be indecision or loss of perspective by those with a death-grip on the reins.

How so?

Take the recent implementation of wage limit. If you have auto recruit and wage limit enabled, what happens is your elite troops slowly get replaced by recruits. I'm pretty sure a better job could have been done.

How about the implementation of autocalc? The formula is so basic. It's really quite average. Has it changed? It doesn't feel like it has.

HBLtdVT.png

This is the entire GetPower used for autocalc to determine troop strength. It only care about three things:
1. Hero unit?
2. Tier?
3. Mounted?

As of a few patches ago, the mounted bonus was disabled in sieges. That changed almost nothing about snowballing because most sieges are 'overdetermined', as they put it in mil-speak. Battania does uncommonly well because it has (or had) an uncommonly high amount of cavalry in its party compositions. That was it. If you adjusted Battania's troop tree to eliminate the excess cavalry, then their performance dropped accordingly.

What about terrain? Defender bonus? Troop ratio bonus/penalties? These are basic military calculations. If I have 100 soldiers vs 10 looters, I should NEVER lose a single person. Yet it's possible in autocalc for my Elite Cataphract to die.

Because the formula is so basic, it caused the Kuzait snowball. How did they fix it? Did they improve autocalc? No, they gave everyone more cavalry and endless recruits. When that didn't work, they just made the AI declare war against impossible odds.

A more elegant solution would have been to improve autocalc to factor in defender bonus and terrain bonus. Battanians fighting in forest should have the upper hand against Vladian cavalry. Sturgians fighting in snow should be able to catch up to and ambush Kuzaits.

Giving battanians more cavalry is just cheap. So yes, perhaps management screwed up with their bad decisions on how to fix snowballing but if autocalc was better, they wouldn't have been in a position to make the bad decision.


Then there's attributes and skill points which ought to matter more.

Right now, with less than 100 bow skill and a noble bow, I can shoot and kill anyone through the small windows in a castle. I'm better than Robin hood. How is that possible? That is the most defensive position on the map but it's as good as standing in the open.

To be that accurate, I ought to have at least 250 bow skills. Or maybe 300. But as far as I can tell, bow skills don't do anything except grant you perks. Perhaps instead of noble bow conferring 95 accuracy or whatever, it could confer 65. Total accuracy = bow accuracy + skill/10

I'm sure a creative developer could come up with something more elegant.

Lastly, all great employees learn to manage up.
 
Also, if cavalry is like the strongest unit, shouldn't they make it harder to get some? Forcing us to buy horses only slows us down at the start. Mid game, everyone is swimming with lame warhorses and warhorses.

They should tweak the replenishment rate along the lines of 5 infantry: 3 range :1 horse. Mid game everyone is riding with huge cavalry stacks. Ridiculous. Especially empire! After awhile I can recruit tier 3 cavalry directly. I don't even have to buy warhorses. Frankly, I can recruit cavalry faster than I can recruit trained infantryman. Where's the sense in that?

Slow replenishment rate and levelling rate.
 
The functionality seen at Gamescom demos didn't have to run on BL's minimum pc spec or consoles. I suspect TW was overwhelmed by the scale of bugs and crashes on the players vast range of differing hardware. EA seems a long round of bug fixes, stabilisation and optimisation for inadequate hardware. Missing banner-bearers suggest that BL's optimisation remains incomplete.
I assume any testing of 1.8.0 Tools was done within TW's development environment as opposed to using the version shipped. There are too many failed debugging asserts to files in C:\Development\mb3\source\Engine, which isn't part of any version shipped.
Given the premature Sony Database leak of 25th October 2022 (presumably the contractual target release date as opposed to a guaranteed release date), TW will stick to their roadmap. I suspect we will only get unique scenes for every town based on the current status:
HW5ZI.jpg
That's hardly surprising given the massive scene-making effort going into the battle terrain system - 1.8.0 has 86 unique battle scenes with more clearly planned.
I hope that BL isn't permanently hobbled by its minimum pc spec and at some stage in the future as hardware becomes more powerful the hardcoded limit on the number of agents in a mission scene can be raised from 2,048 to 4,096, but that seems unlikely.
Why am I concerned about getting 99 unique hideouts?
 
99 unique scenes to get hedgehogged by forest bandits. A must have!

That wasn't the point he was making, nor was he asking for it.
Yet that doesn’t answer the question, nor did I challange anything in his post.

Why is this a feature that was planned. What would 99 bandit lairs be needed? 3-4 varieties per bandit seems sufficient
 
I think it's unfair to cast any of the employees as unqualified to do their jobs.
Well something went wrong, I think even TW would agree.

Of course there is no specific employee to blame and I´m quite sure that the devs are not incompent or anything. But I also don´t see anyone blaming the employees.

In my personal opinion the problem is in the managment but of course that´s just an educated guess (stuff Mexxico said).
 
Management has to play a role in it because if the tech employees aren't doing their job, its up to management to get them on the right path or get rid of them.

That being said, how many people here think the Devs have actually never played the game as a whole? I feel like a lot of the changes they make are done blindly with no consideration, and probably not even any awareness, of how they are affecting other things. I had a situation recently where I reported something, quite frankly complained about a lot of things, sent a save, and got back the message that the Devs were unable to recreate the problem. This had to do with disbanding a party, but I had also brought up issues of the garrison max & dungeon maxes not working properly as well. So I recreated the issue documenting it step-by-step & also gave a lot of screen shots about the party disbanding issues, the dungeon max issues, and the garrison issues. It took over 45 minutes and I included 20 screenshots. Quite frankly, if I wasn't typing extensive screen-by-screen details, I could have done the whole thing in about 15 minutes, but they 'were unable to recreate the issues'.
 
Well something went wrong, I think even TW would agree.

Of course there is no specific employee to blame and I´m quite sure that the devs are not incompent or anything. But I also don´t see anyone blaming the employees.

In my personal opinion the problem is in the managment but of course that´s just an educated guess (stuff Mexxico said).

Right. No one's to blame, everyone's great but something went wrong. Bad luck I suppose.

Would be nice if people actually started taking ownership of their work. Nothing wrong with admitting fault. That's actually how you start to improve but responsibility seems to be anathema to people nowadays. Everyone's a victim, no one's responsible. It was all because of XYZ.

Apparently disbanding party is now broken too. Incredible. I mean how difficult is the logic? It's really not that complex. Someone or a group of someones coded that but it's management's fault that they got the logic wrong. Right.
 
Well something went wrong, I think even TW would agree.

Of course there is no specific employee to blame and I´m quite sure that the devs are not incompent or anything. But I also don´t see anyone blaming the employees.

In my personal opinion the problem is in the managment but of course that´s just an educated guess (stuff Mexxico said).
Some same bugs have to be reported and fixed each patch. That shows something..
 
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