Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Old Discussion Thread

[Arthur_Pendragon]

Alright guys all jokes aside i know there is frustration but at the end of the day guess what. Talesworld is a very community driven studio at the end of the day yes they want our money and listen guys my guess is they couldve release a half assed sequel and gotten our money already. But no they are polishing it and making sure they deliver a finished product. Even their early access they are making sure its gonna be enjoyable. So at the end of the day yes i want more news but if they cant provide us with more news at the moment who am i to rush them? Its their game, their vision, their art, let them finish it. Imagine if someone had rushed Da vinci when he painted the monalisa?

 

[joei160.]

Man, it's been five long years, events, media and we still have not even a release date. That can't be happening with us...

so far so good @Joei160, you are keeping the new years resolution of asking about release only once a week! 

I am a man with deep respect for my own word. For all that I hold dear: the proletariat, class consciousness, the Mighty Soviet Union,

I SHALL KEEP MY NEW YEAR RESOLUTION OF ASKING ABOUT RELEASE ONLY ONCE A WEEK!!!!!!! 

 

[CaptainLee]

Alright guys all jokes aside i know there is frustration but at the end of the day guess what. Talesworld is a very community driven studio at the end of the day yes they want our money and listen guys my guess is they couldve release a half assed sequel and gotten our money already. But no they are polishing it and making sure they deliver a finished product. Even their early access they are making sure its gonna be enjoyable. So at the end of the day yes i want more news but if they cant provide us with more news at the moment who am i to rush them? Its their game, their vision, their art, let them finish it. Imagine if someone had rushed Da vinci when he painted the monalisa?

Giving out some... any information is not making them 'Rush the game'. The two are not really connected. Is providing a screenshot a month somehow cutting into their development schedule? Presumably the community manager does not code the game and engaging with the community is somewhat within his remit. He of course can only give what he is allowed to, though.

 

[578]

Alright guys all jokes aside i know there is frustration but at the end of the day guess what. Talesworld is a very community driven studio at the end of the day yes they want our money and listen guys my guess is they couldve release a half assed sequel and gotten our money already. But no they are polishing it and making sure they deliver a finished product. Even their early access they are making sure its gonna be enjoyable. So at the end of the day yes i want more news but if they cant provide us with more news at the moment who am i to rush them? Its their game, their vision, their art, let them finish it. Imagine if someone had rushed Da vinci when he painted the monalisa?

You are wrong to assume that a business which ships international will sweat at the vocal frustration of a minority. Forum members are a minority, most people who play games in general do not make forum accounts. It wont make them say ''oh f*ck we better rush the game because the people are getting upset' nor will it make them say ''Look at those poor people, lets give them something'. In the end of the day they do not really owe us anything, but they also know that we are loyal fans. You cant tell a company to give you something, but I agree that the lack of information is extremely retarded. Its been half a year.

 

[Cpt. Nemo]

Presumably the community manager does not code the game and engaging with the community is somewhat within his remit.

We covered this a while ago. He does help code the game.

 

[kalarhan]

Presumably the community manager does not code the game and engaging with the community is somewhat within his remit.

We covered this a while ago. He does help code the game.

work in the game != code the game. While we don't know what he does on his working hours (9 to 6pm), we do know from interviews he is part of the process. Maybe by participating in design discussion, being part of the testing (Q&A team), perhaps he was even trained as a game designer of some sorts (working on scenes, dialogs, modelling items, etc). There are many different positions/jobs involved in a studio of ~70 people developing a game.

now the "but he is CM so he should talk to us" is a decision from TW bosses, not his. So why don't you guys PM the Studio head to complain about it, instead of throwing tantrums against the one guy that can't change anything

 

[MrMundy]

Presumably the community manager does not code the game and engaging with the community is somewhat within his remit.

We covered this a while ago. He does help code the game.

No reason not to hit F12 once in a while, frankly.

 

[CaptainLee]

Even so I guess it's not (judging by his twitter feed) that he doesn't have the time to communicate and it is all spent desperately coding away. So what the likely conclusions to draw?

1. They don't have anything. Unless there has been a serious issue at TW, I'd say unlikely. The convention showcases seem to suggest a fairly advanced state. We know there were initial problems with the engine and some reworking but that was presumably in the past. Hard to say if it set them back sufficiently to alter a schedule.

2. They have set a date for a marketing 'blitz' and are keeping Bannerlord under wraps until then. Not a terrible strategy, and one that might work. It does call into question the large gap in blog release and inaccurate statements about future ones. The most likely.

3. They simply forgot, or don't care too much about releasing info on the forum. They see the forum as a minor platform (which in terms of numbers it is) and not worth releasing important info on. Creative Assembly have a similar shtick, with Reddit and twitter often having info way in advance of the official forums. Any info released is marketing info after all, whether they like it or not.

4. North Korea has infiltrated TW and this is a dastardly plot to destabilize NATO.

 

[PanzerDan86]

CaptianLee, I can see it being a mix of numbers 1 and 2 in your above post. Perhaps they do have a strict schedule to stick to, and there have been development problems on top of this. The fact that they aren't going to the next big gaming convention in February (forgot what it's called...gamescon? E3?) is cause for concern. That signals to me that they're having development issues.  I think they really wanted to show more regular information and would have stuck to their roughly quarterly update schedule but something is keeping them from doing that.  This could also explain the recent improvements to Warband as a stop-gap to buy more time to fix whatever is wrong with the development of Bannerlord.  We could also add to the mix the recent turmoil/unrest in Turkey as a factor as well.  Bottom line, we don't know what's going on at all because they won't tell us anything...but my guess is a mixture of points 1 and 2 in your post

 

[578]

My bet is on the internal problems theory too. They are out of schedule, not appearing in PC gamer convention this february, radio silence for half a year.

 

[The_BlackThorn]

I am also beginning to wonder if there might be a development issue. 6 months with no comms is very unusual for a project at this stage of the project ( gameplay videos released 6 months ago).

 

[JuJu70]

The engine guy left in Jan 2016, it may take quite some time for other engine guys to pick up and they may not necessarily have the same vision. So I'd say they showed old stuff but there was no (visible) progress so there is nothing to show.

 

[landpirate]

I think they should just polish up what they have now and publish it in its current state.  They can come up with an improved, expanded and more polished version a couple years down the line (the same way Warband followed M&BI).  No reason to just publish games 7 years apart every time.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

From: Ubisoft
To: Development teams
RE: deadline approaching

I think they should just polish up what they have now and publish it in its current state.

Publishing a game prematurely is never a good idea. "Polishing" a game up takes a huge amount of time and sometimes comprises the majority of development time.

unless it's the Witcher 3 in which case the game already has plenty of Polish in it.

 

[Druidic]

I think they should just polish up what they have now and publish it in its current state.  They can come up with an improved, expanded and more polished version a couple years down the line (the same way Warband followed M&BI).  No reason to just publish games 7 years apart every time.

Problem is they're so vague with what they actually have that we may either get a solid release or a release filled with holes for patches to fill up.

 

[stevehoos]

Something is up, that's a given.

 

[Do not look here]

unless it's the Witcher 3 in which case the game already has plenty of Polish in it.

In the name of Great Council of Poles I'm revoking your right to lay your eyes upon works of Sapkowski, Lem and Sienkiewicz.

 

[Jostino]

Guys, we are wasting time, just keep calm and wait.

 

[DanAngleland]

I am also beginning to wonder if there might be a development issue. 6 months with no comms is very unusual for a project at this stage of the project ( gameplay videos released 6 months ago).

We have not been without news for that long, Gamescom 2016 was in mid August, that is 4 months ago, not 6. 4 months is not at all unusual for Taleworlds. It is rather perverse that, after getting some flak for making blogs reviewing games convention appearances, their decision not to do a blog after Gamescom 2016 seems to have resulted in a blind spot in some peoples' memories- talking as if Gamescom 2016 never happened and only the time to the last blog counts.

Also they have not been completely silent in the mean time, Lust has posted a few times and the Steam page has been made. It is only correct to say we haven't had any substantial news about the game in 4 months; only Lust saying in October that 'early access' was unlikely to be out in 2016 and recently telling us that they are working a lot on the combat at the moment with a view to getting early access/testing happening.

People read too much into Lust saying that it was their goal to get the game to us in some form by the end of 2016. That doesn't mean it was a firm deadline; failing to achieve what they were aiming for doesn't mean something identifiable necessarily went wrong (it could have done, but I see no reason to jump to that conclusion), or that anything went wrong at all- it probably just means the inherently unpredictable process of refining and balancing various features to the point where they are suitable for public participation didn't go in their favour for a 2016 release- it could have done, but it didn't. That's the way I see it. I doubt Taleworlds are puzzled or fretting over not managing to get it out in 2016, they probably knew all along that it was possible it would take longer.

Something is up, that's a given.

Why? Because it's been four months since the last major news release by Taleworlds, a period that is perfectly average for Bannerlord? That makes no sense. People feel a need to believe that there is something definite and incontrovertible, even when there isn't.

 

[CaptainLee]

Guys, we are wasting time, just keep calm and wait.

Discussing the reasons why we are waiting I would hardly say is 'wasting time'. Surely bothering to post here at all is more conducive to that term with the current dearth of information.