Lesser Scholar's brief return and comments

[Lornloth00]

Lesser Scholar the modder and maker of modding tutorials makes a brief return to explain his absence and his criticism of Taleworlds, Bannerlord, the community and its development. I'm just the messenger so don't shoot me if he says some harsh things about the game and its progress.

 

[D0c1]

kind of what he said in the video for in case some of you don't want to open it because you're at work or whatever.

- took in ukrainian refugees

- didn't like people asking for modding help

- armor is wrong

- they didn't fix basic things like dmg types and armor being bad and archers being the best

- autoresolve while speedrunning being the best option (i assume and this is a he means late big assumption game)

- the map being bad

- the economy not making sense. workshop, towns and castles placements not making sense

- control zones of castles being after a natural boundary: basic lack of attention to detail

- the skill system. moat critical fall for bannerlord for him. characters don't matter.

- most attributes and skills don't matter so characters are the same so companions are boring

- "worst downgrade in bannerlord from warband is how the companions are boring in bannerlord"

- handcrafted vs autogenerated. back stories are bland.

- companion stats don't matter except stewardship

- there are no reason to talk to any character nobles, notables or companions.

- uninteresting quests

- maybe nitpicky but you walk into a village as a nobody and they decide to give you a bunch of horses or herd for nothing

- slaughtering animals and selling them for more than what they're worth. surely the peasants would've done that was profitable

- crafting system. always bad but they made worse over the years even though it was easy to fix by making good materials unobtainable from basic weapons and making good weapons locked behind the skill instead of the unlock system and making daggers balanced in terms of materials they give

- english community management was very bad they never tell what they're working on. they don't respond to criticism. they don't take feedback very well.

- slow development. code too bad. they kept introducing more bugs

- general disrespect for the community like when they break the caravans and they don't answer the cries for help

- it felt like the community stuff was disconnected from development. they did stuff nobody asked for like voice lines.

- they were doing stupid changes affecting mods that nobody asked for.

- they kept changing stuff to different folders that doesn't achieve anything but break mods

- how do you make a hotfix that breaks API for modders!

- (17:38 listen from here. i think it's better) (he imagines) they wanted to make modding easier in bannerlord so they introduced patterns into the code and some of them work. everything is done dynamically. like items prices instead of being set, there is an interface for calculating the value of the item then there is indirection and the actual value of the item is calculated somewhere else.
this is very basic second system problem (he feels like) they over engineered the system that nobody wanted that nobody asked for.
instead of over engineering they should have embraced actual reflection through harmony and let people have more control and simplify the architecture by a lot.

- working with the engine was draining because everything was so indirect. where you think something is done is never done there. it's always some extra level of indirection to somewhere else through some interface. it takes a lot of time and energy

 

[Lesser_Scholar]

kind of what he said in the video for in case some of you don't want to open it because you're at work or whatever.

- took in ukrainian refugees

- didn't like people asking for modding help

- armor is wrong

- they didn't fix basic things like dmg types and armor being bad and archers being the best

- autoresolve while speedrunning being the best option (i assume and this is a he means late big assumption game)

- the map being bad

- the economy not making sense. workshop, towns and castles placements not making sense

- control zones of castles being after a natural boundary: basic lack of attention to detail

- the skill system. moat critical fall for bannerlord for him. characters don't matter.

- most attributes and skills don't matter so characters are the same so companions are boring

- "worst downgrade in bannerlord from warband is how the companions are boring in bannerlord"

- handcrafted vs autogenerated. back stories are bland.

- companion stats don't matter except stewardship

- there are no reason to talk to any character nobles, notables or companions.

- uninteresting quests

- maybe nitpicky but you walk into a village as a nobody and they decide to give you a bunch of horses or herd for nothing

- slaughtering animals and selling them for more than what they're worth. surely the peasants would've done that was profitable

- crafting system. always bad but they made worse over the years even though it was easy to fix by making good materials unobtainable from basic weapons and making good weapons locked behind the skill instead of the unlock system and making daggers balanced in terms of materials they give

- english community management was very bad they never tell what they're working on. they don't respond to criticism. they don't take feedback very well.

- slow development. code too bad. they kept introducing more bugs

- general disrespect for the community like when they break the caravans and they don't answer the cries for help

- it felt like the community stuff was disconnected from development. they did stuff nobody asked for like voice lines.

- they were doing stupid changes affecting mods that nobody asked for.

- they kept changing stuff to different folders that doesn't achieve anything but break mods

- how do you make a hotfix that breaks API for modders!

- (17:38 listen from here. i think it's better) (he imagines) they wanted to make modding easier in bannerlord so they introduced patterns into the code and some of them work. everything is done dynamically. like items prices instead of being set, there is an interface for calculating the value of the item then there is indirection and the actual value of the item is calculated somewhere else.
this is very basic second system problem (he feels like) they over engineered the system that nobody wanted that nobody asked for.
instead of over engineering they should have embraced actual reflection through harmony and let people have more control and simplify the architecture by a lot.

- working with the engine was draining because everything was so indirect. where you think something is done is never done there. it's always some extra level of indirection to somewhere else through some interface. it takes a lot of time and energy

Very good summary, thank you!

Just to clarify, I was mostly ok with people asking for modding help, and answered maybe 50-75% of the requests I got. The part that I didn't like was that 95% of these requests were just Hit & Run, and I never saw those people interact with my community in any other way.

I know it is possible to build a nice community around Bannerlord, because Flesson has done that. I think I wasn't deliberate enough in this regard.

 

[Lornloth00]

Hero characters are empty shells that don't have much impact on anything and have no story to them. Warband had more of this than Bannerlord. I figured there would be quests for hero characters that would help them stand out by this point since there are so many Warband mods with stories and quest in them. All the devs have to do is just copy ideas from Warband mods and popular Bannerlord mods to complete Bannerlord. I love the game but it is more like an arcade game of vapid endless wars.

 

[Martino2727]

The worst part is that we were complaining about companions since the begining. I remember being active in the Early Access days making tons of suggestions, countless large documents and ideas to solve these issues, EVERYONE was doing this, everyone with different great ideas. They implemented none of this, kept their boring and terrible system the same. I'm not saying we know better than the Devs, but when a whole community is talking about the same issue, it's not just a coincidence.

 

[Lornloth00]

The worst part is that we were complaining about companions since the begining. I remember being active in the Early Access days making tons of suggestions, countless large documents and ideas to solve these issues, EVERYONE was doing this, everyone with different great ideas. They implemented none of this, kept their boring and terrible system the same. I'm not saying we know better than the Devs, but when a whole community is talking about the same issue, it's not just a coincidence.

The thing with the companions like with all of the characters in this game is that they just need better quest that matter and more dialogue to flesh out the game. Better quest would make a great difference in this game.

 

[niekdegrijze]

Very good summary, thank you!

Just to clarify, I was mostly ok with people asking for modding help, and answered maybe 50-75% of the requests I got. The part that I didn't like was that 95% of these requests were just Hit & Run, and I never saw those people interact with my community in any other way.

I know it is possible to build a nice community around Bannerlord, because Flesson has done that. I think I wasn't deliberate enough in this regard.

Thank you for your tutorials!