Playerbase shrinking rapidly -10% in the last month

[Dabos37]

Yes, they seem a bit better than us in terms of keeping players at game. After first 3 months 20% of their players still playing game and this ratio was 10% at us.There can be coorelation between keeping at game ratio and user review rating - their rating is 93% ours is 87%.

Yep, plus it is actually pretty good for Bannerlord taking into account that this game is an unfinished product and we had tons of bugs the first days which could impact pretty negatively, while CK3 is a finished product which was relatively well polished at release.

Keep up good work and please, let us taste 1.5.6 ASAP

(For dissatisfied people in the forum: Of course, there is still a huge margin for improvements and I am not saying that the game is perfect, and I think there are pently of reasons for complain and hopefully devs deal with all of them)

 

[cyresdog]

I do not know reasons but one reason can be language barrier. Only 5-10% of our company has native English - of course 95% knows English but it is not easy for them to discuss all features / design decisions easily maybe. So when we write here we can make grammer mistakes or it can be hard to discuss deep design related topics or they can fear about making mistakes giving wrong informations. Of course this is only one side reason. Another reason is most stuff is specialized in only one area and people has less information about how things are working in other areas and when you write something new questions can come consequently which they cannot answer.

I always try to bring other devs to here. Today in campaign team one another dev asked me how to post images on forum maybe he will start posting too.

Thanks for the reply, and i can understand that a language barrier can cause problems, but just sometimes a simple reply like "noted" would show a lot on these forums.
Just a sign that you guys see our concerns and/or ideas, i mean after all its EA, and there was not much, can barely say any, Cooperation between TW and the Community in the almost 9 months of EA.
I hope you can understand from our perspective why it gets extremely frustrating

 

[relam10]

Yes... we had Duh aswell, but he suddenly stop posting, dunno why

I wouldn't care about lack of info if the game progress at a good pace, but since we had barely content in 9 months of development, I think me and all community would be glad to hear more deep thoughts from Armagan (since I think he is the one that decide whats' in and what's out).

Nothing to say about Mexxico, as always, our saviour.

 

[HugoTheFrenchMan]

Thanks for the reply, and i can understand that a language barrier can cause problems, but just sometimes a simple reply like "noted" would show a lot on these forums.
Just a sign that you guys see our concerns and/or ideas, i mean after all its EA, and there was not much Cooperation between TW and the Community in the almost 9 months of EA.
I hope you can understand from our perspective why it gets extremely frustrating

Yeah I think so too just like a noted would be good I see the devs constantly on the forums looking at threads and suggestions but there is hardly ever a reply and I can only do this due to being very active on the forums but for people who aren't it's much harder to know what is happening

 

[cyresdog]

Yeah I think so too just like a noted would be good I see the devs constantly on the forums looking at threads and suggestions but there is hardly ever a reply and I can only do this due to being very active on the forums but for people who aren't it's much harder to know what is happening

Yea i don't think that anyone expects to get a detailed description how something works, and why it doesn't work or w/e.
If that is legit the reason why some devs are afraid to post, then no biggie, i personally don't wanna learn how to code from these forums.
But for example, there are things in this game that got scrapped (Troop Placement from the Tactics tree and Banner Editor are the first that come to my mind rn), a clear why, but a simplified why... I don't know if that makes sense.
Because right now it just feels whoever is in charge for that just takes the way of least resistance.

 

[scarface52]

Troop Placement from the Tactics tree

They did answer that if you are actually wondering.

We have plans for more intuitive and detailed way of deploying/creating formations before battles... Think of it like the siege deployment stage but now you can modify formations and you can do this before normal field battles.

 

[cyresdog]

They did answer that if you are actually wondering.

Okay that is my bad then, i am sorry.
But too find those informations you have to dig through hundreds of posts. A nice thread would be something like the sticky "what perks work" thread.
An FAQ one. Or atleast a roadmap that gets updated on a monthly basis, that is not hidden beneath dozens of posts.

 

[MArdA TaleWorlds]

I always try to bring other devs to here. Today in campaign team one another dev asked me how to post images on forum maybe he will start posting too.

Here's the post.

 

[mexxico]

Here's the post.

Good

 

[Lightning12]

 

[Earth Dragon]

Yeah, everyone I know who is into this type of game or has this on their wish list hasn't even bought it yet because they're waiting for full release.

Which is fair enough. Why wear yourself out on a game that needed extensive play to get the economy, leveling pace, war declarations, and snowballing figures out/where you wanted them.

I can get annoyed like anyone else that this game is getting the layers much slower then we thought we’d get them. But at the same time, preventing people from being able to get the AI to trade you all assets for nothing are procedural issues that needed to be fixed.

yeah, I hope we get Camelry in the Aserai tree.

Yeah I hope towns become a little more dynamic in there productions (getting there)

Yeah, I hope more sliders (like no companion death in battles) get added.

Yeah, I hope we get to declare a base of operations prior to controlling a castle/town.

Yeah, I hope the “House” functions add a lot more RPG elements.

Yeah, I hope armor and equipment becomes more regional then it is right now (saddles, bows, Shields are still just blobbed together)

Yeah I hope shops become more dynamic. (Adargas come from tanners in Aserai towns. Wicker Shields and Camel Saddles come from Weaveries).

I can go all day. But the main answer to the OPs concern is this game has only seen fine tuning of the systems people have already played, and there is a huge steam sale to push gamers in every other direction. As soon as the game drops some House and Legacy systems and finishes more RPG elements, players will come back and give it another spin. But when we are still a couple patches away from getting all the skills implemented, and then another couple patches fine tuning what gives you XP where and how much, forgive players for putting this game on pause.

most people love the base gameplay that’s presented. These forums tend to draw people on that are frustrated with an aspect of the game, and then when they post their concern and someone else tells them to shut up, we have constant doom and gloom meltdowns

 

[sniparsexe]

Okay that is my bad then, i am sorry.
But too find those informations you have to dig through hundreds of posts. A nice thread would be something like the sticky "what perks work" thread.
An FAQ one. Or atleast a roadmap that gets updated on a monthly basis, that is not hidden beneath dozens of posts.

Here's what you should do, make a list of the devs, mexxico AVRC etc. and check their comments every night. This is what I do and I pretty much know everything they shared

 

[relam10]

Okay that is my bad then, i am sorry.
But too find those informations you have to dig through hundreds of posts. A nice thread would be something like the sticky "what perks work" thread.
An FAQ one. Or atleast a roadmap that gets updated on a monthly basis, that is not hidden beneath dozens of posts.

Gyazo

gyazo.com

Gyazo

gyazo.com

This is my stalking list.

(There are some more active devs on MP, but since I will never play MP, Im don't follow them)

 

[cyresdog]

Here's what you should do, make a list of the devs, mexxico AVRC etc. and check their comments every night. This is what I do and I pretty much know everything they shared

Did that already thanks to someone else on here who explained that feature to me and told me some names who to follow.
But to be fair, you can't expect everyone on here to stalk developers just to get information about the Early Access progress, i mean lets stay realistic here the communication is already at an absolute bare minimum, and to scrap every tiny bit of info from several different people together should not be the standart to settle for.
I don't even expect that FAQ thread to be an open discussion, make it a closed thread that just gets updated once a month and thats fine. That way we get a nice collective information page. For regular, hardcore and casual forum visitors

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Did that already thanks to someone else on here who explained that feature to me and told me some names who to follow.
But to be fair, you can't expect everyone on here to stalk developers just to get information about the Early Access progress, i mean lets stay realistic here the communication is already at an absolute bare minimum, and to scrap every tiny bit of info from several different people together should not be the standart to settle for.
I don't even expect that FAQ thread to be an open discussion, make it a closed thread that just gets updated once a month and thats fine. That way we get a nice collective information page. For regular, hardcore and casual forum visitors

I would agree if this wasn't an unofficial official lol forum, it just isn't anyone's job to do that. Keep in mind that moderators here are just volunteers from the community. The TW community managers are really just here to ensure we have the information for patches and any official announcements, im almost positive they aren't required to do anything more than be the official mouth piece for TW (which honestly gives less room to talk considering how often it has backfired, and quite often they don't know the nitty gritty details to the questions we ask).

So it falls unto the community to do it. Feel free to volunteer and make a thread compiling their comments. When other members took the initiative to keep track of the perks changing it got pinned and is basically the "official thread" for that info, but again community members keep up with it not TW.

 

[cyresdog]

I would agree if this wasn't an unofficial official lol forum, it just isn't anyone's job to do that. Keep in mind that moderators here are just volunteers from the community. The TW community managers are really just here to ensure we have the information for patches and any official announcements, im almost positive they aren't required to do anything more than be the official mouth piece for TW (which honestly gives less room to talk considering how often it has backfired, and quite often they don't know the nitty gritty details to the questions we ask).

So it falls unto the community to do it. Feel free to volunteer and make a thread compiling their comments. When other members took the initiative to keep track of the perks changing it got pinned and is basically the "official thread" for that info, but again community members keep up with it not TW.

That is quite weird to hear. So TW has legit no "offical official" way of communication at all?

 

[Lord Grindelvald]

It feels weird that that i have to explain this to people, i thought the community would be a little bit more Adult.

Your own signature is testament to that.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

That is quite weird to hear. So TW has legit no "offical official" way of communication at all?

They use this for that, the tech forums works very well

 

[Orion]

We were told before that the developers can reply in the forums whenever they want. But mexxico seems to be one of the few, if not the only one who cares about the game and the community.
I mean he has more connections to the community than their very own community managers

That's simply not true. Callum was in a competitive clan in early Warband days, and William was an accomplished modder & forum moderator here before joining the company. Other devs have come from the community as well, mostly from the modding side, such as Duh and nijis. MArda has been kicking around the forum for ages and was our "inside man" for a while because he visited the studio sometimes.

It's great that mexxico and a few others post regularly now, but it's not a new thing for TW to only have a couple of devs active on the forum. Back in the Warband and original M&B betas it was usually just Armagan.

To say that TW doesn't care about the community is an insult to those devs that were drawn from it and who still maintain ties to it, as well as those devs that regularly post on the forum. I'm no fan of their snail's pace or stubbornness about certain features & mechanics, but in my 15 years of activity here I have never once had cause to question if they cared about their work and the people who play it. You may want to broaden your perspective.

 

[cyresdog]

That's simply not true. Callum was in a competitive clan in early Warband days, and William was an accomplished modder & forum moderator here before joining the company. Other devs have come from the community as well, mostly from the modding side, such as Duh and nijis. MArda has been kicking around the forum for ages and was our "inside man" for a while because he visited the studio sometimes.

It's great that mexxico and a few others post regularly now, but it's not a new thing for TW to only have a couple of devs active on the forum. Back in the Warband and original M&B betas it was usually just Armagan.

To say that TW doesn't care about the community is an insult to those devs that were drawn from it and who still maintain ties to it, as well as those devs that regularly post on the forum. I'm no fan of their snail's pace or stubbornness about certain features & mechanics, but in my 15 years of activity here I have never once had cause to question if they cared about their work and the people who play it. You may want to broaden your perspective.

Well I try to broaden my perspective but what they show us is little intersction except for maybe a handful, hard to track informstion scattered around the forum and you never know if they even read what gets posted on here.
Some say they do, but I imagine it always as if we are in a conversation face to face, and you just never reply to what I say. Could be that you listen to my words but God knows if you really do.
And I might be among the loudest on here with that, but I am not the only one and there are many on here who would like to see just tiny responses. Small signs of "we actually care and try" instead of, what you already said, stubbornness and playing deaf.

I have been in many EAs but having one where its so incredibly hard to get answers from the developers is my first time. And I would put it on the same level as Warcraft 3 reforged open beta. And we all know how that turned out.
Its almost impossible to screw up bannerlord as much as WC3R but they just block themself from having an almost infinite amount of feedback and ideas if they ignore the forums.
Less and less people are active on here, and with every player that leaves equals one less person who could have incredible ideas and feedback.

And that is just self destruction at its finest.
I know game studios who would kill for such an insane emotional bond to a game from their players. But TW seems to take it for granted