I think I'm just about ready to give up on TW developing Bannerlord into the sequel it could've been, a sequel that Warband deserved. Callums snarky, disingenuous response tells me nothing is going to change in terms of how much depth the decision makers at TW want for the vanilla game. It's disappointing, but that's their choice. So with a deep sigh I'm ready to accept that I'll just have to wait & hope that modders can do the game justice once it's out of EA with a stable release version.
I do get the "we have our own vision" thing. I've worked professionally for game studios myself, I know what development is like. Decisions need to be made and inevitably some ideas get rejected. But dev visions are not divine, they can have bad design decisions, be lackluster or unambitious, and being so dismissive of other ideas or views outside of the "vision" can ultimately hamper a game from becoming a better experience. TW can technically say they've listened to player feedback, but ultimately the vast majority of community desires that have made it into the game have been relatively minor things, QoL etc, things that TW would likely have eventually done themselves anyway. There's been very little noteworthy in terms community impact on the big things that really matter, the "direction" or "vision" of the game. This can be broadly broken into two categories of disagreement that there's clear contention over, and TW have completely ignore community desires for:-
The battle phase
-TW's vision is fast & arcadey, while there's a signicant call from players for battles that last longer, are more tactical and have better use of formations. People want this to different degrees, but the general trend is clearly there.
Non-war stuff
-Essentially related to what the game offers when NOT at war, or near total lack of as of this post. The main things which TW currently offers (managing fiefs, workshops & caravans, recruiting troops, repititive fetch quest missions & clearing the same bandit hideouts over and over), most of this can be done in a few minutes max and is just straight up objectively lackluster. Since day 1 there's been a clear desire from players for deeper diplomacy, alliances, feasts, character/NPC relations, greater RPG & "immersive" features that warband mods introduced like freelancer, going hunting etc. All of this has been rejected by TW in preference of a simple war-war-war experience.
I don't work at TW so I cant say exactly why they would reject these aspects, when that side of the game is very clearly lacking. I can only guess. With an eye on consoles, maybe they think players would be put off by any additional depth. Maybe they just want Bannerlord to be an arcadey battle game. Maybe they have less experienced or young devs who don't grasp why Warband became so popular, sustained by its great mod scene that added depth to the base game. I don't know. Ultimately the reason doesn't matter, a poor decision is still a poor decision no matter the reason behind it.
Bannerlord will of course be a great financial success after EA. It already is. It got great positive feedback from people that played the game for 5 - 10 hours, left a review, played another 10 hours and then dropped it for other games. It'll get more of those after EA, and more again after the console release. Great for TW, and I'm sure those M&B first timers will have a fun 20 - 30 hours before they move onto their next game. For those of us that name Mount&blade among their favorite franchises, that got into the series when it was doing alpha releases in the mid 2000s, it's just such a disappointment to see what TW's "vision" for Bannerlord has ended up being. It's a 7/10 that could've been a 10 with some ambition.
For now, I will quiety wait for post EA Bannerlord and hope that modders have the tools & freedom/code access to make the game what it could've been.