Making sandbox games can be an ungrateful job

[momcilo94]

For the sake of comparison, let's take some of the Call of Duty games that have a similar price tag like Bannerlord. Making a story based singleplayer shooter game, even with multiplayer is much less demanding than making a sandbox game like Mount & Blade with so many elements involved.

Why?

To put the technicalities aside, the thing that differs most on the consumer side is player mindset. When people finish a story based game it's over and their expectations have been met because the story has been completed. Yet with a sandbox game, they keep wanting more and more. It's more similar to an MMO in that regard. Take a look at a game like World of Warcraft, people start treating it like it should be a never ending content pool, but in WoWs case it's justified because it has a monthly subscription to keep the development ongoing. There's people that sink in 50+ hours into Bannerlord and complain about lack of content and the price tag, what kept you playing then, was the 50 hours you spent in the game afk time?

The game needs more patches until it's in a completely finished state, yes. However, it already has a lot of content so don't disregard the time you already spent in the game so lightly. The main reason I wrote this is because I see a lot of whining, non constructive criticism going around. People need to have more awareness on the time it takes to develop things TW has set out to do, making sandbox games is hard and takes time and resources.

 

[Bloc]

it already has a lot of content

---

I was going to ignore this but no, It's hilarious to see there are still some people that are advising others what to do as if they know what they are talking about or authority to shut down people.

First of all, let's start with this:
Are those "whining" people insulting anyone? Are they cursing? Are they violating any forum rules? No. Did they pay for this game? Do they have all right to say/express however they feel in the forum? Yes. So they can say whatever they like.
When you claim people are "whining" it is simply triggering toxic behaviour in the forum. Also, people don't have to provide constructive criticism. They don't have to feel okay with this EA mess. They don't have to test the game and feel "oh okay" with every bug as if they are QA. You don't like what people say? Scroll down and continue.

I won't go into your irrelevant comparison with CoD, because it's pointless. But let's take another example, let's talk about Warband. First Mount&Blade game released in 2008. Warband released in 2010. After 2 years. 2 years of development. They were both sandboxes, they were both same game mechanics. Warband was superior to first M&B. Warband was their first Multiplayer experience, they didn't even had know-how. Yet, it was way better than Bannerlord's current state when it first came out. Was it perfect? Oh no, it was bad. But it was better than Bannerlord as first state. Bannerlord took 8+ years of development. Eight years. People have all right to say What the hell when you make people wait for 8+ years and showcase lots of stuff beforehand in your blogs, which wasn't included in the release or polished ( by polishing, I mean like, it feels like literally no QA tested smithing for example )

When a bunch of untrained modders starts to tweak your game, fixes your issues, polishes your features within same time range where you, as a company, add really weird unnecessary features, then people have all right to complain and "whine". Because it basically shows that you are either ignoring people's complains or you are not putting the effort that you should put into your own game. I mean Bannerlord doesn't have banners in the game officially for god's sake, stop using EA or Sandbox-complexity to defend this weirdness.

Even Taleworlds is not defending themselves about this. Taleworlds is a company and they have an internal roadmap. Doesn't matter if we like it or not. They have it and they are following it. You can effect that only with expressing your concerns about the game. You can say it's full of crap. This is a feedback for them as well. If they feel like why you are saying that, they can ask more information. And that's what Arda and others are trying to do nowadays. But if everyone all the sudden stops giving feedback or "whining" they can assume everything is alright. Because apparently they though in this way before releasing this half-product.
Regardless to that, numbers are crystal clear. Stats are going down. And they are aware of that now. And that's why they wanted to fix their codebase so that adding or fixing new stuff won't become more and more problematic after each patch.

If you still feel like you want to defend that claim, good luck with explaining already lost 238,898 players how hard to make a sandbox game because it's not call of duty

 

[froggyluv]

Despite the salty second post -the point stands. Sandbox is a tough genre as so many moving parts -things are bound to go wrong. Not absolving some seemingly poor management -but the company has given me enough gaming pleasure over the years to earn my patience and trust.

 

[eddiemccandless]

Are those "whining" people insulting anyone? Are they cursing? Are they violating any forum rules? No.

Have we been browsing the same forum? I see plenty of flaming/trolling/toxic threads and posts where people wish for the devs to be fired/die/give away their game/whatever, or burst a vein raging at people who disagree with them. They get removed by mods eventually, but they are here and still popping out every now and then.

You can say it's full of crap. This is a feedback for them as well. If they feel like why you are saying that, they can ask more information.

The problem is that the type of conversation that you mention would go like this:

Angry Poster231: Your game sucks.

Marda Taleworlds: Can you elaborate on that? Why do you think the game is bad and what can we do to improve it?

Angry Poster231: It's bad because it sucks. And you should feel bad. You suck.

While a better way to give feedback looks more like this:

Disgruntled Customer78: this thing about your game sucks. You should change it to be this, this and this.

For what I have seen your posts fall in the second category, so I am not sure how you are OK with people doing the first. And I am sorry, but the argument that past feedback was ignored is not justification to start flinging **** all over in the forum. If we provide good, constructive feedback on the game and they ignore it that is on them, if we degenerate into generic "this game sucks I hate you" complaints that's on us.

 

[Bloc]

Have we been browsing the same forum? I see plenty of flaming/trolling/toxic threads and posts where people wish for the devs to be fired/die/give away their game/whatever, or burst a vein raging at people who disagree with them. They get removed by mods eventually, but they are here and still popping out every now and then.

Yes, we are. I have seen plenty of people like that in the otherside of the discussion as well ( ie randomly defending the game without any argument)
Anyone that is not violating the forum rules are totally welcome to spit on or praise the game as long as they are following the rules. For those removed by mods, that's something else. Currently, both sides are flaming each other relentlessly.

The problem is that the type of conversation that you mention would go like this:

I disagree. When you look many of those people who are acting extremely aggressive, you can see that in the past they suggested something but some random dude tried to shut him down in a weird way. At the beginning, all the feedbacks were quite normal but bugs and hilarious patches that is not fixing anything changed the overall userbase impression toward the game and the company. And when you add up flamer fan boys to this situation, it increased their aggressive behaviour significantly.
Threads like this, for example, make absolutely no sense.

Why is it there's so many impatient, spoiled brats that can't comprehend what the meaning of early access is for a game?

You must also understand that not everyone is able to give constructive feedback. But even saying "this game sucks", also a feedback for them and believe me, it is way useful for Taleworlds to see some sort of communicative way of negative feedback rather than seeing nothing but a huge player base falloff.

 

[COOMER]

---

I was going to ignore this but no, It's hilarious to see there are still some people that are advising others what to do as if they know what they are talking about or authority to shut down people.

First of all, let's start with this:
Are those "whining" people insulting anyone? Are they cursing? Are they violating any forum rules? No. Did they pay for this game? Do they have all right to say/express however they feel in the forum? Yes. So they can say whatever they like.
When you claim people are "whining" it is simply triggering toxic behaviour in the forum. Also, people don't have to provide constructive criticism. They don't have to feel okay with this EA mess. They don't have to test the game and feel "oh okay" with every bug as if they are QA. You don't like what people say? Scroll down and continue.

I won't go into your irrelevant comparison with CoD, because it's pointless. But let's take another example, let's talk about Warband. First Mount&Blade game released in 2008. Warband released in 2010. After 2 years. 2 years of development. They were both sandboxes, they were both same game mechanics. Warband was superior to first M&B. Warband was their first Multiplayer experience, they didn't even had know-how. Yet, it was way better than Bannerlord's current state when it first came out. Was it perfect? Oh no, it was bad. But it was better than Bannerlord as first state. Bannerlord took 8+ years of development. Eight years. People have all right to say What the hell when you make people wait for 8+ years and showcase lots of stuff beforehand in your blogs, which wasn't included in the release or polished ( by polishing, I mean like, it feels like literally no QA tested smithing for example )

When a bunch of untrained modders starts to tweak your game, fixes your issues, polishes your features within same time range where you, as a company, add really weird unnecessary features, then people have all right to complain and "whine". Because it basically shows that you are either ignoring people's complains or you are not putting the effort that you should put into your own game. I mean Bannerlord doesn't have banners in the game officially for god's sake, stop using EA or Sandbox-complexity to defend this weirdness.

Even Taleworlds is not defending themselves about this. Taleworlds is a company and they have an internal roadmap. Doesn't matter if we like it or not. They have it and they are following it. You can effect that only with expressing your concerns about the game. You can say it's full of crap. This is a feedback for them as well. If they feel like why you are saying that, they can ask more information. And that's what Arda and others are trying to do nowadays. But if everyone all the sudden stops giving feedback or "whining" they can assume everything is alright. Because apparently they though in this way before releasing this half-product.
Regardless to that, numbers are crystal clear. Stats are going down. And they are aware of that now. And that's why they wanted to fix their codebase so that adding or fixing new stuff won't become more and more problematic after each patch.

If you still feel like you want to defend that claim, good luck with explaining already lost 238,898 players how hard to make a sandbox game because it's not call of duty

Trolling apart, I agree with everything written.
This is a really good post to a 'base level' thread, not to call it something else.
Call of Duty... Jesus...

 

[eddiemccandless]

Yes, we are. I have seen plenty of people like that in the otherside of the discussion as well ( ie randomly defending the game without any argument)
Anyone that is not violating the forum rules are totally welcome to spit on or praise the game as long as they are following the rules. For those removed by mods, that's something else. Currently, both sides are flaming each other relentlessly.


I disagree. When you look many of those people who are acting extremely aggressive, you can see that in the past they suggested something but some random dude tried to shut him down in a weird way. At the beginning, all the feedbacks were quite normal but bugs and hilarious patches that is not fixing anything changed the overall userbase impression toward the game and the company. And when you add up flamer fan boys to this situation, it increased their aggressive behaviour significantly.
Threads like this, for example, make absolutely no sense.


You must also understand that not everyone is able to give constructive feedback. But even saying "this game sucks", also a feedback for them and believe me, it is way useful for Taleworlds to see some sort of communicative way of negative feedback rather than seeing nothing but a huge player base falloff.

I agree with you that there is flaming from both sides, and I even agree that this thread is probably pointless. Anyone who exhibits that level of aggressiveness can not be reasoned with anymore, and this kind of thread will only fan the flames. But I have seen nonsensical people appear somewhat regularly from the very beginning myself (if anything, I feel that it's a little better now than it was at the beginning). And I think that we are talking about different people, because the individuals that I am thinking about are recruits who haven't really made any post that wasn't a show of indiscriminate anger and frustration towards the game. Which I honestly even understand, I am not happy myself, but come on now. We are not children.

And Taleworlds is very, very aware that Early Access is not going well. They would have to be blind not to see it at this point (and if they haven't everything is doomed and I don't think that low quality feedback is going to change their minds). My opinion is that they are doing what they can to get things back on track. Someone else might disagree, and that's fine. But let's be civil about this. It's a game, not a matter of life and death.

 

[momcilo94]

---

First of all, let's start with this:
Are those "whining" people insulting anyone? Are they cursing? Are they violating any forum rules? No. Did they pay for this game? Do they have all right to say/express however they feel in the forum? Yes. So they can say whatever they like.
When you claim people are "whining" it is simply triggering toxic behaviour in the forum. Also, people don't have to provide constructive criticism. They don't have to feel okay with this EA mess. They don't have to test the game and feel "oh okay" with every bug as if they are QA. You don't like what people say? Scroll down and continue.

Yes, that's why I made this thread.

I won't go into your irrelevant comparison with CoD, because it's pointless. But let's take another example, let's talk about Warband. First Mount&Blade game released in 2008. Warband released in 2010. After 2 years. 2 years of development. They were both sandboxes, they were both same game mechanics. Warband was superior to first M&B. Warband was their first Multiplayer experience, they didn't even had know-how. Yet, it was way better than Bannerlord's current state when it first came out. Was it perfect? Oh no, it was bad. But it was better than Bannerlord as first state. Bannerlord took 8+ years of development. Eight years. People have all right to say What the hell when you make people wait for 8+ years and showcase lots of stuff beforehand in your blogs, which wasn't included in the release or polished ( by polishing, I mean like, it feels like literally no QA tested smithing for example )

Point is people need to be aware of the development side of things, so they stop providing their criticism in an insultful way. 8 years is nothing for the scope of the game, and Warband and Bannerlord aren't the same on a technical level. Their only mistake was publishing that they started development because of impatient people. https://overmental.com/content/10-games-that-spent-the-longest-time-in-development-2-672

When a bunch of untrained modders starts to tweak your game, fixes your issues, polishes your features within same time range where you, as a company, add really weird unnecessary features, then people have all right to complain and "whine". Because it basically shows that you are either ignoring people's complains or you are not putting the effort that you should put into your own game. I mean Bannerlord doesn't have banners in the game officially for god's sake, stop using EA or Sandbox-complexity to defend this weirdness.

Putting cream on the cake isn't the same as making the cake.

Even Taleworlds is not defending themselves about this. Taleworlds is a company and they have an internal roadmap. Doesn't matter if we like it or not. They have it and they are following it. You can effect that only with expressing your concerns about the game. You can say it's full of crap. This is a feedback for them as well. If they feel like why you are saying that, they can ask more information. And that's what Arda and others are trying to do nowadays. But if everyone all the sudden stops giving feedback or "whining" they can assume everything is alright. Because apparently they though in this way before releasing this half-product.

My post was aimed at disrespectful criticism and lack of awareness, I didn't mention anything against constructive criticism.

Regardless to that, numbers are crystal clear. Stats are going down. And they are aware of that now. And that's why they wanted to fix their codebase so that adding or fixing new stuff won't become more and more problematic after each patch.

If you still feel like you want to defend that claim, good luck with explaining already lost 238,898 players how hard to make a sandbox game because it's not call of duty

Same people who already clocked in 50+ hours and expect more content to be produced by the speed of light to satisfy their unending hunger. If you want content to produced that fast, you need a reality check.

Gyazo

gyazo.com

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord · AppID: 261550

The horns sound, the ravens gather. An empire is torn by civil war. Beyond its borders, new kingdoms rise. Gird on your sword, don your armour, summon your followers and ride forth to win glory on the battlefields of Calradia. Establish your hegemony and create a new world out of the ashes of...

steamdb.info

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/your-bannerlord-ea-play-time.427265/

30+ hours median playtime for 5mil-10mil estimated players. Let that sink in.

 

[Younes]

8 years is nothing for the scope of the game, and Warband and Bannerlord aren't the same on a technical level.

There is no excuse to justify 8 years of development except bad management.

Taleworlds or not, any studio that takes 8 years to develop a game shouldn't be exempt from criticism

 

[Gambles]

This post comes off as someone who is like 12 and has never really experienced indie / smaller studio games.

Indie and small studios always gravitate towards sandbox games. It's pretty much the go to sub genre for small dev studios because you have to add a lot less "content". You can kind of just make an open world and say "Make your own fun!!" which can mean just about anything.

To sit there and say sandbox games are "more demanding" (totally disregarding the fact that developing games doesn't seem to work on a sliding scale like that) is just complete non-sense that can be immediately dismissed with one quick look at what small studios do.

 

[froggyluv]

This post comes off as someone who is like 12 and has never really experienced indie / smaller studio games.

Indie and small studios always gravitate towards sandbox games. It's pretty much the go to sub genre for small dev studios because you have to add a lot less "content". You can kind of just make an open world and say "Make your own fun!!" which can mean just about anything.

To sit there and say sandbox games are "more demanding" (totally disregarding the fact that developing games doesn't seem to work on a sliding scale like that) is just complete non-sense that can be immediately dismissed with one quick look at what small studios do.

Obtuse reasoning. Obviously scale and content of said Sandbox matters. Meaning i could give you a game which allows you to place Tetris shaped blocks anywhere you want and call it "sandbox".

Point of thread is people using the "8 years development is too long" but arent aware of the amount of moving parts required to get into alignment as compared to a Call of Duty/Farcry/GTA type rehash. Those AAA titles are all about slick production value -something much easier to timeline. Star Citizen and Arma are sandbox that come to mind -Arma 3 was finished 8 years ago -Bohemia has started their new engine for Arma 4 back then and there is no release date in sight. Star Citizen...we all know about their multi-decade timeline and they have AAA sized bank.

Edit: I just wanted to be clear i dont think the above exonerates what appears to be some lackluster managerial decisions- things that could easily be fixed (quality of life bugs) to help out their supporters testing enjoyments.

 

[Bloc]

8 years is nothing for the scope of the game, and Warband and Bannerlord aren't the same on a technical level. Their only mistake was publishing that they started development because of impatient people. https://overmental.com/content/10-games-that-spent-the-longest-time-in-development-2-672

8 years is a huge time range for game development. For any game, any person and any game studio.
I'm seeing that you are sharing this link for some reason in your posts to justify 8 years of development but this article is a huge click-bait. It's written by 4 y.o. kid apparently. For example, Diablo III and StarCraft are done by the same company. The same company that also delivered Warcraft III in 2002, World of Warcraft in 2004 and other bunch of WoW related games that is still played by hundreds. Same goes for Team Fortress II. Same studio released Counter-Strike Source in 2004, Day of Defeat in 2005, Counter Strike Condition Zero in 2004, Portal in 2007, Half Life 2 in 2004 and bunch of Half Life related stuff meanwhile. So none of these studios stalled around, waited 8 years without doing anything but showing blog posts that do not even make it to EA.

Putting cream on the cake isn't the same as making the cake.

Yes it is not. Because this sentence of yours doesn't make any sense in this context.
Try this "Putting sprinkles on a cake isn't same with putting cream on it, shaping it, making it look and taste better". Because in exact same time range, modders put cream on,shaped the cake and made it look more "edible" where TW only added a goddamn dropdown menu button to their own game and own engine and bragged about that in Facebook as if it's a huge feature.

Same people who already clocked in 50+ hours and expect more content to be produced by the speed of light to satisfy their unending hunger. If you want content to produced that fast, you need a reality check.

I think you are the one that needs a huge reality check. Because that content and fixes are already delivered by modders with extremely limited resources. If you are saying Taleworlds is not competent enough to do the exact same stuff in their own game and engine, there is nothing to discuss anyway. This aside, Level designers =/= Modellers =/= Engine Team =/= Gameplay team. Anyone with functioning eyes can see that there are mods out there used by people because it's a must mod for the game otherwise makes the game a crippled child.

Arma are sandbox that come to mind -Arma 3 was finished 8 years ago -Bohemia has started their new engine for Arma 4

Don't tweak around the truths to fit into your argument. Arma 2 released in 2009 and then Operation Arrowhead Standalone in 2010 and Arma 3 released in 2013. They developed an amazing game that still looks good today within 3-4 years. There is no Bannerlord scenario in this. Also, they are officially not working on Arma 4 And they even used that new engine partially in DayZ.

 

[Gambles]

Obtuse reasoning. Obviously scale and content of said Sandbox matters. Meaning i could give you a game which allows you to place Tetris shaped blocks anywhere you want and call it "sandbox".

Point of thread is people using the "8 years development is too long" but arent aware of the amount of moving parts required to get into alignment as compared to a Call of Duty/Farcry/GTA type rehash. Those AAA titles are all about slick production value -something much easier to timeline. Star Citizen and Arma are sandbox that come to mind -Arma 3 was finished 8 years ago -Bohemia has started their new engine for Arma 4 back then and there is no release date in sight. Star Citizen...we all know about their multi-decade timeline and they have AAA sized bank.

Alright not sure what's hard to understand or obtuse with my reasoning but you brang up two studios that are known for their super slow development time. I still play Arma 3 to this day and have played the series since the original Arma, Bohemia is notoriously clunky in all regards when it comes to development (they're also not developing arma 4) . And star citizen is trying to literally pull off almost the impossible and is totally incomparable to bannerlord.

However if you take a look around at games by smaller studios that aren't incompetent or trying to pull off the impossible you see stuff like: Elite Dangerous, Astroneer, Terraria, Minecraft, Rust, LiF, Albion, No Man's Sky, KSP and a **** ton of others. You can literally pick any genre, any sub genre, and see what small studios are doing and find an absolute ton of sandbox games that vary in scope in variety. Implying that a sandbox game needs nearly a decade of development to just have the framework of features complete is totally studio dependant in not inherent to the genre at all.

 

[froggyluv]

Don't tweak around the truths to fit into your argument. Arma 2 released in 2009 and then Operation Arrowhead Standalone in 2010 and Arma 3 released in 2013. They developed an amazing game that still looks good today within 3-4 years. There is no Bannerlord scenario in this. Also, they are officially not working on Arma 4 And they even used that new engine partially in DayZ.

Those in the know -know. First off Arma 2 and Arma3 are not on new engines and they carried over assets from their previous games. They are making Arma 4 they just wont release that information officially for many reasons. Ive been a member and modder since the original Operation Flashpoint and i can tell you - we once had a very good open relationship with not only the Devs but with Maruk and Ondrej - the two brother who created it themselves. They used to very much keep us in the loop but often times -budget, over ambition, deadlines etc would either hamper or out right destroy their plans (see fully destructible environments ). This often lead to forum wars and both the brothers and devs shied further and further away --eventually become outright antagonistic towards the community. They started the phrase "..the dogs continue to bark but the caravan must move on.."

THAT is exactly why they are not officially announcing Arma4 -yet...But it is known they are transferring it over to their new but modified Enfusion engine. So carry on -keep barking

Protip -dont google spite information on Arma 4 and bring in a PC Gamer article from 2018

 

[froggyluv]

Alright not sure what's hard to understand or obtuse with my reasoning but you brang up two studios that are known for their super slow development time. I still play Arma 3 to this day and have played the series since the original Arma, Bohemia is notoriously clunky in all regards when it comes to development (they're also not developing arma 4) . And star citizen is trying to literally pull off almost the impossible and is totally incomparable to bannerlord.

However if you take a look around at games by smaller studios that aren't incompetent or trying to pull off the impossible you see stuff like: Elite Dangerous, Astroneer, Terraria, Minecraft, Rust, LiF, Albion, No Man's Sky, KSP and a **** ton of others. You can literally pick any genre, any sub genre, and see what small studios are doing and find an absolute ton of sandbox games that vary in scope in variety. Implying that a sandbox game needs nearly a decade of development to just have the framework of features complete is totally studio dependant in not inherent to the genre at all.

Look at the post above -those times between OPFlash/Arma1/Arma2/DLC were on normal timelines. Its the sequel being brought over to a new engine that really seems to impact development time.

 

[momcilo94]

8 years is a huge time range for game development. For any game, any person and any game studio.
I'm seeing that you are sharing this link for some reason in your posts to justify 8 years of development but this article is a huge click-bait. It's written by 4 y.o. kid apparently. For example, Diablo III and StarCraft are done by the same company. The same company that also delivered Warcraft III in 2002, World of Warcraft in 2004 and other bunch of WoW related games that is still played by hundreds. Same goes for Team Fortress II. Same studio released Counter-Strike Source in 2004, Day of Defeat in 2005, Counter Strike Condition Zero in 2004, Portal in 2007, Half Life 2 in 2004 and bunch of Half Life related stuff meanwhile. So none of these studios stalled around, waited 8 years without doing anything but showing blog posts that do not even make it to EA.

It's not for a project of this size and everything they had to do. And development studios don't put same people on the same projects if it's dual development, one group of people works on one and the other on a different project. And yes, people can pump out games fast but it all depends on the scope and size on the project, like I already said, the amount of time they took is completely reasonable considering it's a complex sandbox game and they had to start over with the engine.

 

[froggyluv]

Really trying to determine what exactly is happening in a software company's timeline is a fools errand -especially in todays DLC climate. Its very possible that a company may "strip down" to a skeletal crew to support a game after a major release and/or deciding that the next few years they will keep themselves afloat with DLC's until they've milked/feel ready to start off on another major installment in their series. They may only keep a few of the main engine guys to work on the next iteration, waiting to bring in 3d models/asset builders later or the opposite, keeping only a few mission updaters and bug squashers. Theres a multitude of reasons a future title may be on a slow or fast track.

 

[Bloody Bill]

30+ hours median playtime for 5mil-10mil estimated players. Let that sink in.

Using steams time tracking means nothing since it doesn't track play but rather if the app is open or not (and steam can be bad about shutting down their apps). Also a lot of people start a game then have to do something then just don't get back to it for hours.(like every time the cat lady decides to visit here, that's 3 hours afk at a min).

 

[Blayde]

i mean it says early access and devs told ppl not to buy because it won't be the full experiance , i ll judge after the game released if its as fun as warband then they did great job.

 

[LeChat]

Yes it is not. Because this sentence of yours doesn't make any sense in this context.
Try this "Putting sprinkles on a cake isn't same with putting cream on it, shaping it, making it look and taste better". Because in exact same time range, modders put cream on,shaped the cake and made it look more "edible" where TW only added a goddamn dropdown menu button to their own game and own engine and bragged about that in Facebook as if it's a huge feature.

I guess the point was : they could have done another cake (same game, better graphics, some fixes), but moreover they are trying to add new possibilities, (better) modding tools, mechanics, ... that are more complex to implement in a sandbox for it to be balanced.