Idea: A Comprehensive, Polite and Well Reasoned Letter of Dissatisfaction to Taleworlds?

[yangot]

Devs are already aware of the community's complains and dissatisfaction through hundreds of forum posts. A new letter will not make any changes regardless of the approach. For now, I just silently wait for improvement and updates and share some thoughts on interesting topics.

 

[RectalRanger]

Honestly the steam reviews speak for themselves. Why would the devs bother listening to the one percent (even if they are the hard-core fans) when their "vision" for the game has been so successful?

 

[Poddicus]

The problem is the vast majority of people (Who aren't on the forums btw) are completely happy with the game and to Taleworlds it justifies the fact that their devs know 0 about the previous game.

The only reason they replied to the modding letter is because they know that modding is the long-term life of the game and its what most people are looking forward to. It directly affects the success of the game.

Money > Passion

 

[Mad Vader]

Honestly the steam reviews speak for themselves. Why would the devs bother listening to the one percent (even if they are the hard-core fans) when their "vision" for the game has been so successful?

The Steam review score is very average. Success on Steam means "Overwhelmingly Positive".

 

[RectalRanger]

Oh my bad, I thought it had said Overwhelmingly Positive. It's been a while since I have actually taken a look.

 

[momo1]

@stevepine Do you have a link to the reply?

 

[Mad Vader]

Oh my bad, I thought it had said Overwhelmingly Positive. It's been a while since I have actually taken a look.

The overall score is 86% and dropping, the last month average being 82%. It's a trend.
But it still doesn't mean a bad game according to the masses, just an average one (which is a fair assessment IMHO).

 

[momo1]

The overall score is 86% and dropping, the last month average being 82%. It's a trend.
But it still doesn't mean a bad game according to the masses, just an average one (which is a fair assessment IMHO).

With a lot mods, it is a pretty decent battle sim.

 

[Dabos37]

Honestly the steam reviews speak for themselves. Why would the devs bother listening to the one percent (even if they are the hard-core fans) when their "vision" for the game has been so successful?

TW still want to get money from consoles, and having a forum with tons of complains every day won’t be a good thing for them. While not all people visit forums, I am pretty sure that Armagan is not comfortable with his forum getting tons of complains every day. I know that every videogame’s forum is full of complains but I have never seen something like this where 9 of 10 posts are about disappointed people complaining.

Concerning this game, I have mixed feelings... This is the game I have invested more hours on it in my life (1300 hours or so), and I am not going to say that this is a bad game. What really annoys me is that this game could be easily x3 better if TW would hear its community a bit more.

I think the whole community does agree with:

- Diplomacy is currently nonexistent. People want a deeper diplomacy system.
- Armor effectiveness should be increased.
- Late game is boring as hell. There is not much to do aside endless wars and fighting loop.
- The game is not immersive at all.
- People miss some Warband/VC features which look not really hard to add to Bannerlord, but TW refuses to add them.
- High tier equipment is insanely overpriced.
- High tier units do not feel much better than low tier units.
- AI is mediocre at best. Especially sieges and cavalry AI.
- Battles last for seconds and there is not enough time to use any decent strategy.

I encourage the people to continue complaining until TW change their minds and start working on making this game great. I really do not care if I have to pay more money on DLCs, expansiones, etc, I just want to see TW investing more effort on this game which will give them much more profit than any silly space game.

 

[DennyWiseau]

With a lot mods, it is a pretty decent battle sim.

True, and not even a lot mods to be honest. Realistic battle mod+ai is all I ever wanted Bannerlord combat to be and when the author of battlestamina finally works out the kinks the combination of these mods will make bannerlord more enjoyable than anything else Taleworlds might come up with. In comparison most other released mods are just nice additions but by no means essential, Realistic battlemod should just be vanilla at this point imo.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

TW still want to get money from consoles, and having a forum with tons of complains every day won’t be a good thing for them. While not all people visit forums, I am pretty sure that Armagan is not comfortable with his forum getting tons of complains every day. I know that every videogame’s forum is full of complains but I have never seen something like this where 9 of 10 posts are about disappointed people complaining.

Concerning this game, I have mixed feelings... This is the game I have invested more hours on it in my life (1300 hours or so), and I am not going to say that this is a bad game. What really annoys me is that this game could be easily x3 better if TW would hear its community a bit more.

I think the whole community does agree with:

- Diplomacy is currently nonexistent. People want a deeper diplomacy system.
- Armor effectiveness should be increased.
- Late game is boring as hell. There is not much to do aside endless wars and fighting loop.
- The game is not immersive at all.
- People miss some Warband/VC features which look not really hard to add to Bannerlord, but TW refuses to add them.
- High tier equipment is insanely overpriced.
- High tier units do not feel much better than low tier units.
- AI is mediocre at best. Especially sieges and cavalry AI.
- Battles last for seconds and there is not enough time to use any decent strategy.

I encourage the people to continue complaining until TW change their minds and start working on making this game great. I really do not care if I have to pay more money on DLCs, expansiones, etc, I just want to see TW investing more effort on this game which will give them much more profit than any silly space game.

Absolutely.

I personally have mixed feelings about the game too, it's not the first time I've talked about it both publicly and privately (friends/devs). M&B is my favourite franchise, otherwise obviously I wouldn't be here, nor would I or anyone else I guess.

Despite my usual humorous gif/meme drama, as I've said before, I'm grateful to Taleworlds for allowing me to actively participate in the development of the game and for providing me with a copy of Bannerlord for free and for the years of enjoyment from previous titles. It's all of that together that somehow makes me feel annoyed about the current situation; that wasted (or unused, call it what you like) potential and that chain of unfortunate and questionable decisions made in the eyes of the fan... that's what has brought us here.

There are many, many things I like about the game, but at the moment there are those that I don't like that tip the balance.

There are people who consciously pour out all their anger at the devs, in my eyes a totally wrong action but somehow valid as they are also attacking the product in a direct way. Taleworlds knows well that they alone have to prove their worth and bring the statement "We want Bannerlord to be the best game that TaleWorlds can create" to the summit, because that is their job/business and only the consumer is the legit judge; both the present and the future.

So, in SP... barring extremely remote surprises; the cards are already on the table. As for MP... oh boy... it needs a comprehensive restructuring from foundation to roof.

 

[Nodice83]

Fill the letter with sentimental platitudes and images of crying women. The secret to getting company statements is to get them emotional.
Also ask them about Mount Effect 1 while they are vulnerable.

Are you sure it is not "Mountless Space" or "Bladeariss"?

 

[Stromming]

Honestly the steam reviews speak for themselves. Why would the devs bother listening to the one percent (even if they are the hard-core fans) when their "vision" for the game has been so successful?

I have like 30-35 friends on steam that played this game so far.
Less than 5 have played more than 100 hours, and of the remaining, half barely even made it to 50 hours.

This game is NOT a success in terms of player / consumer happiness.

They advertised a game based off of promises and lies. Sold a metric crap ton during EA and is now proceeding to **** on it's existing PC player base so they can cater to console peasants and once again get that sweet money from people who will most likely also drop the game after an odd 30-80 hours when they finally realize that Bannerlord is far from a worthy successor to Warband.

And Armagan will swim in his money akin to Scooge McDuck.

 

[bonerstorm]

So it is abundantly and painfully clear that the vast majority of us are very very far from happy with TaleWorlds..... and we all know they seem to mostly ignore the grievances of the community. But the one clear example of actually getting a response from them recently was the open letter written to them by a mod overhaul team.

So collective action actually got through. They read it... and they actually replied.

Would it be worth doing the same thing more generally about, let's say, our top 10 complaints with Bannerlord and its development, complete with all our collective name or signatures?

So two questions :

1) Would you approve of doing this?
2) What would be your own personal top ten list of complaints?

I think this might actually be a positive way of dealing with how we all feel.

I am highly aware that this kind of topic will evoke strong opinions, please, please be nice !

I'm down with signing on to an open letter and collaborating towards one, but I'm not gonna be nice on my me-time. Most of you have BEEN nice for over a year while people like me lurked and reinstalled every few months to see if the game was fixed. It never got you anywhere.

What's the point, they will acknowledge it but nothing will ever come from it, there's been 2 years of dissatisfaction from fans and still we're ignored because it's their vision over anything and they won't budge

The point is that public, visible (ideally googleable) dissatisfaction from the fans means that they can't sell their console port or their space game. The more noise we make, the more likely they are to fundamentally change their design philosophy so they stop f***ing up.

The problem is the vast majority of people (Who aren't on the forums btw) are completely happy with the game and to Taleworlds it justifies the fact that their devs know 0 about the previous game.

Wrong. The vast majority are in denial. If you look at Reddit and Steam, you'll see tons of low-info gamers happily plodding along issuing their "bug reports" for things that were broken-on-arrival last year and exclaiming their urgent, fervent hope that the game won't suck in the future.

At best, they're dumb. More likely, they're terrified of sinking TW with the wave of negative criticism that they richly deserve... and I think that fear is overblown + counterproductive.

With a lot mods, it is a pretty decent battle sim.

It isn't. Not even mods can fix the fact that spears don't work (and work BETTER in loose formation than in shieldwall). BL is not a good combat sim.

TW still want to get money from consoles, and having a forum with tons of complains every day won’t be a good thing for them. While not all people visit forums, I am pretty sure that Armagan is not comfortable with his forum getting tons of complains every day. I know that every videogame’s forum is full of complains but I have never seen something like this where 9 of 10 posts are about disappointed people complaining.

Concerning this game, I have mixed feelings... This is the game I have invested more hours on it in my life (1300 hours or so), and I am not going to say that this is a bad game. What really annoys me is that this game could be easily x3 better if TW would hear its community a bit more.

I think the whole community does agree with:

- Diplomacy is currently nonexistent. People want a deeper diplomacy system.
- Armor effectiveness should be increased.
- Late game is boring as hell. There is not much to do aside endless wars and fighting loop.
- The game is not immersive at all.
- People miss some Warband/VC features which look not really hard to add to Bannerlord, but TW refuses to add them.
- High tier equipment is insanely overpriced.
- High tier units do not feel much better than low tier units.
- AI is mediocre at best. Especially sieges and cavalry AI.
- Battles last for seconds and there is not enough time to use any decent strategy.

I encourage the people to continue complaining until TW change their minds and start working on making this game great. I really do not care if I have to pay more money on DLCs, expansiones, etc, I just want to see TW investing more effort on this game which will give them much more profit than any silly space game.

THIS ^

That said... the only way that we have a prayer of unsucking Bannerlord is if we make this forum so filled with spite and snark and anti-TW memes and open letters that the gaming press turns this into the new Star Citizen or - even better - No Man's Sky.... a gaming lolcow so bad that they spend months writing articles about their spectacular failure. All I can say is... I'm doing my part!

Remember: No Man's Sky actually got good after Hello Games got rekt in the press.

 

[Namakan]

Remember: No Man's Sky actually got good after Hello Games got rekt in the press.

Did it though? Have you played it after that video came out or are you just going off the video?

 

[bonerstorm]

Did it though? Have you played it after that video came out or are you just going off the video?

GUILTY!

Totally just going off the video and I wouldn't buy that POS if you put a gun to my head.

But it is a case study in how fan rage is the only thing that makes your average game company at least attempt to stop sucking.

 

[stevehoos]

I am done being nice, they actually decided to remove the Command UI after routing. The idea being you have to hit your charge button before the game announces YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING now, have fun. I know they may change it back, but just how something so monumental dumb gets past these people for approval is beyond me. This is the kind of BS the team is doing? Make an actual robust feature for EA and maybe I will change my mind. I put one hell of a negative review on steam.

 

[Dabos37]

I am done being nice, they actually decided to remove the Command UI after routing. The idea being you have to hit your charge button before the game announces YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING now, have fun. I know they may change it back, but just how something so monumental dumb gets past these people for approval is beyond me. This is the kind of BS the team is doing? Make an actual robust feature for EA and maybe I will change my mind. I put one hell of a negative review on steam.

Negative reviews on steam won’t change much to be honest, mostly because there are tons of new players giving a positive review after 10 hours or less.

I was thinking about writing a negative review on steam but with 1300 hours invested in the game, it could look unfair from my side. Even when most part of these 1300 hours have been invested in testing stuff (running tons of snowballing tests in the midnight while sleeping).

Anyway, if we actually want to get the Armagan’s attention, stopping to play the game would hurt a lot. Bannerlord is going down in the top 100 steam rank. I am not sure about you but I rarely buy a game which is not present in the top 100 steam rank, even if it has good reviews.

 

[Mad Vader]

I rarely buy a game which is not present in the top 100 steam rank, even if it has good reviews.

So it's not enough if a game is good, it has to be trendy as well.

 

[Dabos37]

So it's not enough if a game is good, it has to be trendy as well.

Yes