Do developers change the game based on our feedback? Should we have the power to vote on changes?

Should game changes be polls that everyone could vote on?

  • yes

    Votes: 15 23.1%
  • no

    Votes: 50 76.9%

  • Total voters
    65

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I was talking specifically about a bug that made anyone playing the game almost deaf. This bug report as you say isn't simply "noise". It's a pressing matter that has to be fixed. You can't simply look over it and move on.

Like i said, i don't know what kind of applications you create, but the way you describe it, it seems like the software you develop only goes live when it's completely finished. Early access is a complete different approach to this as you're shipping it to your "client" or consumers in this case in an unfinished state.

You could fix a bug later on when you know the software in question isn't actively being used right now, but this isn't possible for bannerlord. You can't do this for an early access title. Bug fixing is a top priority regardless.
Well friend I believe nobody was specifically talking about that sound of doom bug. I don't think you even mentioned it before, and neither have I said that "noises" are simply noises. A noise is something you need to answer. That's why it's distracting and stressful. It can be an important input or an unimportant one, but it's still a distracting noise.

I will make it clear now, that I'm not defending TW here. I'm merely talking about this topic, whether or not the playerbase should decide what TW should do. All I've been saying is just to explain why it's a bad idea to do so.

Just to answer your curiosity tho. I work commission projects, and my main clients are government bodies. We do show the unfinished product during the dev process, once a week or so. Just like Early Access but way sooner. We deploy a demo as soon as possible for the clients to try, and we get feedbacks and bug reports from that. The software is deemed complete after everything on the contract is done, and by that point we have a few months of maintenance period for bug fixing and minor updates if the client demands any. We have returning clients who want to commission updates for products we've already made for them. That's iterations. Kind of a mess if it's old and the original devs are gone but eh...

That aside it's good practice to listen and analyze honest feedback on what's good and what sucks in your product and improve it accordingly, they aren't making the game to keep for themselves after all but to please a public and profit at the same time.
Unfortunately for us, Bannerlord is neither one of these:
1. A mainly multiplayer game that relies on an active playerbase to live and sell (ex: Guns of Icarus)
2. A Software as a Service product like those anime gacha games that rely on active purchases, content updates and popularity
3. A subscription-based online game which income relies on players not quiting the game (ex: WoW the MMORPG)

It's a mainly single player game with multiplayer game modes. We buy it once, the money comes in, and business is done as far as they're concerned. There's no financial reason for them to keep updating the game, especially after they've reached their target. If they were scums, they could just ignore us completely.
 
Should TW consider player feedback, interact with the playerbase, maybe discuss critcal points? Definitely.
Should players have a vote on design? Definitely not.
 
I'm with Jesus here. There were surveys promised that haven't come since beta and the ones back then were a joke since they wouldn't listen to any different ideas than their own anyways.
They don't ask for feedback anymore because people keep posting lists of demands. That's enough feedback for anyone.
 
They obviously consider our feedback, but if were consistently voting on new content, or what the players want, its not based off of whether these decisions help new players or just gameplay in general. Have you seen oldschool runescape? Its an abomination now. and the only people that play it still are the vets
 
Tough question to truly answer, should do what we want, no, it's not our game they own it however should they listen to the community and react to it, then yes. So listen and act on feedback but just don't do whatever someone says. The bad thing is TW doesn't listen that well to the community anyways so doing what we say would never happen in any case. It is a problem in gaming today for some reason companies refuse to listen to their fan base and it turns them off. It is mind blowing why companies do this and don't realize they are. Someone needs a brain to say ok stop and let's really understand what they are saying and communicate so we can get on the same page, but that is TW #1 problem, their communication in the past few months has probably been the worst of any game I have "beta tested" notice quotes, in my life. And I think it's because in early access they got your money already so they don't care. What they fail to realize is every person is a potential advertisement for the the game and they should want us talking the game up, not down. But for some reason they just don't care and it's impossible to think why.
Ok bashers come out.
 
Not by popular vote. That's how naive changes can be made.

No. Main reason being the fact that online votes can easily be exploited. Secondly, it's not our place to decide the direction of the development. I will dare myself and say this. We clients don't know the product as well as we think we do. We're not entitled to such authority either, as we only paid a small amount of money to get the product.

Having the public dictate a development will lead to disaster, and lead to much frustration for the developers. Half-assed ideas will be pushed, and after they get implemented people will see that they suck and want them removed. There will be too many demands to fulfill, too many bugs and issues born, and too many complaints to hear. It will make people act even worse because they think they have authority over the developers.

If you want your input to be heard by developers, here's some tips. Be very polite, really think the idea through, list the benefits of implementing them, describe how to implement them in as much detail as you can, and try to make the implementation steps as simple and easy as possible. If you were a developer of anything, you'd know just how bloody frustrating it is to just hear "X is broken" or "X is bad" from your clients. Broken how?Describe it. How do you want it to be? What part of it is bad? How do you think it can get better? Give more information.

They got plenty of good feedback during the beta from core players, but they dismissed it in favour of Q&A tests with players from outside the core community.

TW developer in 2019: "The vast majority (i mean VAST) of the testers love it. I know among the forum users the majority has issues about it but to be honest I was expecting that."


So, the MP then quickly ended up like Robocraft...

"Interesting interview referring the downfall of Robocraft. They changed all key features of the game attempting to attract new players but all they archieved was made the active players quit. I see similarities :sad: If the core players are pleased that means the game is good. And that will get you new players.

Class system is easier so it should attract new players riiiiight? No."




"This video shows a literal parallel on what Taleworlds is doing right now, and why they're failing, this has happened before in another game, please guys watch this video and tell me what you think about this, I'll leave some interesting (non exact) quotes with timestamps:

Around 5:30: "We dumbed the games mechanics in order to retain new players but we failed at it, and at the same time we angered the existing playerbase."

Around 6:50: "Our biggest regret is that maybe if we went back we would listen more to the dedicated players and less to the short term players and focus about what the dedicated players like so much about the game and exposing more of that and building on that".

This is literally a videogame developer that learnt about their mistakes but after their game almost died, what else does it need to be said here? Really."


At least TW can fall back on the inevitable success of SP, but the way they've handled MP has been incredibly baffling.
 
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Good stuff. Figure out how to get someone from TW to comment on it.
At least TW can fall back on the inevitable success of SP, but the way they've handled MP has been incredibly baffling.
SP players are as angry about dumbed down SP features - TW has this new ideology of removing player control for the sake of simplicity.
 
At least TW can fall back on the inevitable success of SP, but the way they've handled MP has been incredibly baffling.
As MadVader said, this is no longer a question of SP over MP, they are intentionally screwing both sides of the game at this point and it can only be explained as chasing console sales.
 
For the love of God no, community-driven projects are basically always a disaster and not how you should run your business.

I really hope you never start a business if you think this is a good idea. Talewords software management seems to be the biggest dumpster fire I have ever seen but you want to make it a nuclear one.

The only thing that would be possible is doing a community poll where they get a feel for what is wanted the most at this point in time. They already have this feeling so it would be rather useless.
What about Linux, Python and other community based things? It's not a bad thing, but ofc it shouldn't be organised around open polls, just small amount of responsible and experienced players should make a decision
 
What about Linux, Python and other community based things? It's not a bad thing, but ofc it shouldn't be organised around open polls, just small amount of responsible and experienced players should make a decision
Those are done by actual programmers, with actual skills, pushing actual work, which will then processed in an actual review, before getting actually implemented.

One then might wonder, why not let the Bannerlord community do just that? It's copyright stuff. The source code is owned by TW, not open source like Linux, so random people can't look into it and thus work on it. It means protecting Bannerlord from being copied into various Bannerlord derivatives, like distros in Linux. It limits your workforce, but that's what you gotta do if you want to make money.
 
Those are done by actual programmers, with actual skills, pushing actual work, which will then processed in an actual review, before getting actually implemented.

One then might wonder, why not let the Bannerlord community do just that? It's copyright stuff. The source code is owned by TW, not open source like Linux, so random people can't look into it and thus work on it. It means protecting Bannerlord from being copied into various Bannerlord derivatives, like distros in Linux. It limits your workforce, but that's what you gotta do if you want to make money.
Maybe linux isn't the best example here, but programming languages are. Usually they have huge open discussions on their forums where people come up with their suggestions that are then discussed by users with different levels and tasks, and than they make core changes (not just extended libraries which could be compared to bl mods), based on that community feedback and proposed solutions. That's how I see development in bl should work, mainly because their designers are not competent enough to make good balance patches. It's not their fault that they have no time to actually play the game, but they have a lot of competent players with thousands of hours played.

For each patch we predicted all balance issues just by reading patchnotes when changes were not even implemented, and each time it turned out that we were right. I don't get it why they make obvious (from experienced player perspective) mistakes over and over again and don't want to change their approach of making balance patches.

Lawzilla-artist-art-девушка-art-3288938.jpeg
 
Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same f**king thing... over and over again expecting... **** to change... That. Is. Crazy.
 
Maybe linux isn't the best example here, but programming languages are. Usually they have huge open discussions on their forums where people come up with their suggestions that are then discussed by users with different levels and tasks, and than they make core changes (not just extended libraries which could be compared to bl mods), based on that community feedback and proposed solutions. That's how I see development in bl should work, mainly because their designers are not competent enough to make good balance patches. It's not their fault that they have no time to actually play the game, but they have a lot of competent players with thousands of hours played.

For each patch we predicted all balance issues just by reading patchnotes when changes were not even implemented, and each time it turned out that we were right. I don't get it why they make obvious (from experienced player perspective) mistakes over and over again and don't want to change their approach of making balance patches.

Lawzilla-artist-art-девушка-art-3288938.jpeg
Do you know how slowly programming languages are developed? Also, they are developed with an infinite amount of money behind them or in people's free time.

TW is a business wanting to earn money. They know what we want as they read these forums, that's all that is needed.
We have a platform to out our opinions and they read them from time to time. I think the MP team is very small and inefficiënt but apparently, TW thinks this is the best way to make money.

They have a general overview of our opinion and needs, it is their choice to act on it or not.
Polls and more discussion will just be a waste of the little dev time they have, polls should only be done for further clarification but are often too simple.
 
Do you know how slowly programming languages are developed? Also, they are developed with an infinite amount of money behind them or in people's free time.

TW is a business wanting to earn money. They know what we want as they read these forums, that's all that is needed.
We have a platform to out our opinions and they read them from time to time. I think the MP team is very small and inefficiënt but apparently, TW thinks this is the best way to make money.

They have a general overview of our opinion and needs, it is their choice to act on it or not.
Polls and more discussion will just be a waste of the little dev time they have, polls should only be done for further clarification but are often too simple.
public polls are bad idea in general, cause most players will vote for cool looking features and stupid but 'new' ideas. 80% of mp players are casuals that have no idea of current balance issues and bad consequences of new features. Sadly, tw sometimes listen to these players. I found 'shields are op nerf them it's impossible to kill a guy holding block button' thread in suggestions with green 'solved' checkmark and got frustrated after seeing this
 
TW is a business wanting to earn money. They know what we want as they read these forums, that's all that is needed.
I can give you infinite examples of how TW ''just knowing'' what we want is not enough. Knowledge isn't power. Applied knowledge is power. And the fact is that TaleWorlds are not applying the knowledge they gain from the forums in the sense of community feedback. Most feedback is discarded or disregarded entirely.
 
I can give you infinite examples of how TW ''just knowing'' what we want is not enough. Knowledge isn't power. Applied knowledge is power. And the fact is that TaleWorlds are not applying the knowledge they gain from the forums in the sense of community feedback. Most feedback is discarded or disregarded entirely.
Not enough for who? Make peace with it lol, this is all you are going to get. A small dev team who have a general knowledge of what the player base wants.

Do the devs want to make a good game? If you assume they are passionate about their product then yes.
Does TW want to make a good game? No, they want to make money. They think that the current strategy is the best way to make money, so it is enough for TW to do it like this. Make peace with it and stop crying.
 
Not enough for who? Make peace with it lol, this is all you are going to get. A small dev team who have a general knowledge of what the player base wants.

Do the devs want to make a good game? If you assume they are passionate about their product then yes.
Does TW want to make a good game? No, they want to make money. They think that the current strategy is the best way to make money, so it is enough for TW to do it like this. Make peace with it and stop crying.
A game development studio solely focussed on money would have retracted a long time ago, especially considering that most copies have already been sold. Nobody is crying, these are just the facts.
 
Not enough for who? Make peace with it lol, this is all you are going to get. A small dev team who have a general knowledge of what the player base wants.

Do the devs want to make a good game? If you assume they are passionate about their product then yes.
Does TW want to make a good game? No, they want to make money. They think that the current strategy is the best way to make money, so it is enough for TW to do it like this. Make peace with it and stop crying.
Anyway they make changes, they are doing some work, trying to balance stuff and they are doing it wrong. They'll put the same effort for making changes based on community feedback (they'd have to do even less cause there won't be huge gamebreaking exploits this way after each patch). Balance issues are not caused by tw development politics, but by mp dev's incompetence since they are still doing their job and getting paid for it
 
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