I'm sorry but I finally give up, what the hell are TW doing? Nothing new in 3 weeks. Whoever is managing this team needs the boot.

[dukester]

There isn't a contradiction there. He said he found mods, some of which were presumably total conversions that gave a whole new game to play.

My bad. 'Confusion' might have been a better fit.
Although 'contradiction' is not completely out of place, since Abelardo says in one paragraph that he doesn't understand what people expect from the game in terms of longevity and play time, and then says in another paragraph that he's clocked 1.5k hours in the game. If you've played the (original) game for so many hours, how can you not understand why people expect to play this game for a long time. I'd say that's a kind of contradiction (but I'm not a native speaker so I accept I might be off here).
The fact that he played so long because of a total conversion mod doesn't make people's expectation to play the new game for long using base game unreasonable, IMO, because like I said in my previous post it is quite natural to expect the next version of the game to be an improvement over the original one, no?

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

To be honest, most of the people that I see being all doom and gloom and aaaaah we have been scammed they ran away with our money are actually new accounts. People from the old and ancient guards know that eventually TW is bound to come around (you know, in a year, or two, or seventeen), so they might be annoyed but they don't go quite that far.

Actually most of the regular people who posted here 1-2 years ago, including modders and MP veterans, have all gone and given up on bannerlord entirely. I'm one of the only people who posted regularly before bannerlord was announced who still actually posts. There was a lot more anguish at the state of the game in the months before the beta started, and then even more when old players got their hands on the beta.

 

[Sir Keyser Soze]

While I am not so doom & gloom view as you, I think your post & scores like it are a result of poor communication with the community by taleworlds. They have not provided a roadmap or any other similar document that tells EA testers what to expect in the coming months. I am not sure how they expect community to test the game when they will not really interact with us. Playercount is down from 250K at peak on release to ~ 15-20K concurrent. While it should be expected that not every player will stick around following release, a factor of 10 reduction does not bode well. Perspective, warband had 10 - 15K consistent player count for years.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Actually most of the regular people who posted here 1-2 years ago, including modders and MP veterans, have all gone and given up on bannerlord entirely. I'm one of the only people who posted regularly before bannerlord was announced who still actually posts. There was a lot more anguish at the state of the game in the months before the beta started, and then even more when old players got their hands on the beta.

Well I see a lot of old timers posting still, most of them don't approve of how things are going, but I haven't seen any of them accusing TW of scamming us and running away with our money. I can not speak on the opinion of the people who don't post anymore, of course.

 

[Memoefe]

Contradiction much?

Not everyone can afford (or is interested in) playing a new game every 3 days. This is the type of game that is expected to be played many times over many hours (as you are the witness to that).
Why is it unreasonable to expect for the sequel to contain more than the original game? Isn't it natural (or at least desired) for things to move 'forward'?
On the other hand, we have no right to expect anything from volunteer modders as if it's a given. Mods are nothing but a nice, free BONUS and shouldn't enter into a conversation about the state of the game except as a suggestion to developers of what players would be interested in seeing in the base game if it's aligned with the dev's vision of the product.

You are comparing an EA game vs a second release (from m&bto m&b warband) of a fully finished and polished game. This game isn't out yet, its still in beta. Do you remember when original game was in beta? TW is a passionate studio and they love their game.

 

[Bloc]

its still in beta

It's in EA. The beta phase has passed and they choose to do it MP Beta without actually listening any input from Beta Players. Plus, this game is under development for more than 8 years.
So, yes, you can't compare it with Warband because Warband wasn't in EA/Beta/Demo phase for half a decade.

 

[Memoefe]

It's in EA. The beta phase has passed and they choose to do it MP Beta without actually listening any input from Beta Players. Plus, this game is under development for more than 8 years.
So, yes, you can't compare it with Warband because Warband wasn't in EA/Beta/Demo phase for half a decade.

EA in essence is either pre-alpha, alpha, or beta or other pre-release format of the game. My statement stands.

A quote from wikipedia:

Early access, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alpha, alpha, and/or beta, while the developer is able to use those funds to continue further development on the game.

 

[dukester]

This game isn't out yet, its still in beta.

Then how can Abelardo say to NordicWill that he's supposed to already have gotten 'value' out of his purchase? That's what I was commenting on.

 

[Bloc]

EA in essence is either pre-alpha, alpha, or beta or other pre-release format of the game.

Yes because normal companies usually do either Beta or release/sell their Beta in Early Access.
Based on your claim that ".game is in Beta", it means that their Beta wasn't actually a beta. So you are claiming that Beta was actually not Beta but something else?

 

[dukester]

EA in essence is either pre-alpha, alpha, or beta or other pre-release format of the game. My statement stands.

Your statement doesn't stand.
1) The Wikipedia quote says "such as" which means it's not an exhaustive list.
2) Beta testing already happened for this game.
3) Beta may be private or public and one may or may not be paid to do beta testing, but in any case one never pays to do beta testing.
You may call this state Gama or Release Candidate (although it's too early for that) or most accurately Early Access For Full Price, but not beta. That train has already left the station.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Yes because normal companies usually do either Beta or release/sell their Beta in Early Access.
Based on your claim that ".game is in Beta", it means that their Beta wasn't actually a beta. So you are claiming that Beta was actually not Beta but something else?

I mean, to be fair the beta did not involve single player at all, so I don't know that it can even be considered a real beta in that sense. Most of the current game mechanics were not tested there.

 

[Bloc]

I mean, to be fair the beta did not involve single player at all, so I don't know that it can even be considered a real beta in that sense. Most of the current game mechanics were not tested there.

Well, they called it Beta, didn't they? And if you do PR of your cool game features in every blog and suddenly decide to make a Beta only for Multiplayer, this gives only one signal to everyone. Singleplayer is good enough, we just need some community feedback to fix MP issues.
And when your game is not even capable of having proper siege battles - let alone new features - then you cannot cover behind your "But its EA" shield as a company. Bannerlord is in bad shape at the moment. They could test all these in their SP Beta as well, but they choose not to.

 

[Killer Kitten]

I never attribute malice to anything that could be explained by just stupidity. And TW doesn't have good project management. I figured this out years before the game was released when they said, "We don't give a release date because we don't have one" and "We don't want to give a release date in case we can't make it." Those are two sentences that scream "We're totally not on top of this."

 

[Memoefe]

Yes because normal companies usually do either Beta or release/sell their Beta in Early Access.
Based on your claim that ".game is in Beta", it means that their Beta wasn't actually a beta. So you are claiming that Beta was actually not Beta but something else?

Beta was beta. It was closed beta tho. This one is Early access which means paid beta. Hint is in the name Early Access. It early to call this final.

Your statement doesn't stand.
1) The Wikipedia quote says "such as" which means it's not an exhaustive list.
2) Beta testing already happened for this game.
3) Beta may be private or public and one may or may not be paid to do beta testing, but in any case one never pays to do beta testing.
You may call this state Gama or Release Candidate (although it's too early for that) or most accurately Early Access For Full Price, but not beta. That train has already left the station.

1) It says "pre release" before saying such as. Which means game is not released yet.
2) Multiple phases of beta can happen during development. For example EA (Electronic Arts) like to do closed beta the open, beta then the release. In our case its closed beta, paid beta which is EA the the release.
3) Yes you can make players who are too exited to wait pay for a beta. Which you did and were warned that product was incomplete. And you are technically a tester. Nobody forced you to buy this, or it was'nt a suprise to anyone that this game was incomplete.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

The only thing that makes a beta a beta, or an alpha an alpha, is if the developers say it is. The wikipedia article may cite a few vague descriptions but most of the time these aren't really followed, especially in video game PR where the terms can be used to manage expectations rather than actually estimate how far the game is in production.

 

[Revverie]

Just for the record, saying 8 years of development to criticize this game makes no sense and its based on misinformation. They werent just 8 years of making the game from scratch, since in 2015 they finished their engine and moved completely to it, which means a HUGE stepback, not to talk about the difficulty of building an engine and working on a new one too. To give you an example, Bethesda is still launching 2020 games in an engine thats 15 year old but updated, so imagine what a AAA videogame company still using an old engine means. This guys went far enough to build their own engine to make this game, instead of just grabbing unity like every indie company out there. This costs money, resources, people working on it, whoever wants to call TW scammers can suck my dong, even if they were 8 years then fkin imagine how much passion you need to have to invest so much time on it. Even if I dislike many aspects of this game I still believe in this company and all the hours I've spent on this game were already worth my penny.

 

[dukester]

1) It says "pre release" before saying such as. Which means game is not released yet.
2) Multiple phases of beta can happen during development. For example EA (Electronic Arts) like to do closed beta the open, beta then the release. In our case its closed beta, paid beta which is EA the the release.
3) Yes you can make players who are too exited to wait pay for a beta. Which you did and were warned that product was incomplete. And you are technically a tester. Nobody forced you to buy this, or it was'nt a suprise to anyone that this game was incomplete.

Yes, there's much grey area with these terms, it's not like they're defined by an ISO standard or something.
But look at what else Wikipedia says about Beta:
- A Beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs.
- Beta testers tend to volunteer their services free of charge but often receive versions of the product they test, discounts on the release version, or other incentives.
So this game is most accurately described as being in Alpha at the moment, in terms of how far it is in its development cycle.
The fact that the developers already held a closed "Beta" and then started charging players for an Alpha-state game just mixes up things even more.

1) When have I claimed I considered the game to be in final state? (which I believe is what you're implying here, since the game has definitely been 'released', because ANYONE can have access to it at any time in exchange for money, which is like the definition of 'released')
2) True, but according to my experience, which is in line with what Wikipedia says above, the Beta is a feature-complete product with missing/non-finalized text, textures, cut-scenes and stuff like that (in reasonably small numbers).
3) First, you can't MAKE anyone do s**t, otherwise it's called violence. Second, sure they can set a price for entering the 'testing' phase, but how moral/immoral that is is up for debate. The fact they held a testing and called it "Beta", after which they started charging full price for further testing might lead people to rightfully assume the game is 'almost complete' (see point 2). Third, again, you're quoting me, but who are you really replying to? Where have I said I was surprised the game was incomplete?

 

[Sir Keyser Soze]

Just for the record, saying 8 years of development to criticize this game makes no sense and its based on misinformation. They werent just 8 years of making the game from scratch, since in 2015 they finished their engine and moved completely to it, which means a HUGE stepback, not to talk about the difficulty of building an engine and working on a new one too. To give you an example, Bethesda is still launching 2020 games in an engine thats 15 year old but updated, so imagine what a AAA videogame company still using an old engine means. This guys went far enough to build their own engine to make this game, instead of just grabbing unity like every indie company out there. This costs money, resources, people working on it, whoever wants to call TW scammers can suck my dong, even if they were 8 years then fkin imagine how much passion you need to have to invest so much time on it. Even if I dislike many aspects of this game I still believe in this company and all the hours I've spent on this game were already worth my penny.

Agree, and personally I feel that the engine is quite robust. I think it will handle mods & even larger battles very well. The most intensive task that it has struggled with have been pathfinding. That has seemed to have got better in method & performance since launch.

 

[dukester]

... instead of just grabbing unity like every indie company out there.

And what's wrong about 'grabbing Unity'?
If Unity (or any other existing engine) could have enabled them to achieve what they wanted, it would have been beyond foolish (major waste of resources) not to use that engine (reinventing the wheel and all that).
I'd imagine at the time they started work on their own engine, Unity was unable to fulfill their needs.

Edit: the choice of engine is a business decision for a serious developer. Has nothing to do (and SHOULD have nothing to do) with passion.

 

[froggyluv]

Just for the record, saying 8 years of development to criticize this game makes no sense and its based on misinformation. They werent just 8 years of making the game from scratch, since in 2015 they finished their engine and moved completely to it, which means a HUGE stepback, not to talk about the difficulty of building an engine and working on a new one too. To give you an example, Bethesda is still launching 2020 games in an engine thats 15 year old but updated, so imagine what a AAA videogame company still using an old engine means. This guys went far enough to build their own engine to make this game, instead of just grabbing unity like every indie company out there. This costs money, resources, people working on it, whoever wants to call TW scammers can suck my dong, even if they were 8 years then fkin imagine how much passion you need to have to invest so much time on it. Even if I dislike many aspects of this game I still believe in this company and all the hours I've spent on this game were already worth my penny.

Dude your a quality poster.

Before and after a AAA company makes their first hit game via their own personal engine -they rarely deviate from it as you risk calamity branching out or revising to much legacy code. Also agree on the sentiment towards TW -dont like some of their design choices, admire others but overall they have my trust. Trust being relative to other developers ive believed in - in the past