Releasing the game in this state feels like a slap in the face

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Hours played this hours played that, genuinely who gives a ****? The game is blatantly unfinished! This is not a matter of opinion. Multiplayer is barely functioning on release and barebones besides. Singleplayer is a wasteland battle simulator with dummy ai. If this is worthy of being called finished in your opinion then I envy your taste.

In my opinion this is not a release that should be praised or rewarded. This is a kick out the door and a console cash in, TaleWorlds are washing their hands of the responsibility. I suggest people who care about hours played try engaging with the actual arguments people are making rather than smugly pointing their finger at the hours played and declaring victory. Smug replies incoming I'm sure.
 
Hours played this hours played that, genuinely who gives a ****? The game is blatantly unfinished! This is not a matter of opinion. Multiplayer is barely functioning on release and barebones besides. Singleplayer is a wasteland battle simulator with dummy ai. If this is worthy of being called finished in your opinion then I envy your taste.

In my opinion this is not a release that should be praised or rewarded. This is a kick out the door and a console cash in, TaleWorlds are washing their hands of the responsibility. I suggest people who care about hours played try engaging with the actual arguments people are making rather than smugly pointing their finger at the hours played and declaring victory. Smug replies incoming I'm sure.

I agree. Anyone without blinders on could play Bannerlord and come to the immediate conclusion that the game is comically unfinished and utterly unready for a full release. If multiplayer isn't enough to convince them of that, nothing ever will. And good luck with the bolded.
 
@Orion i know this isn't the subject but i wanted to share, you can disable garrison recruitment via tabs afaik. When you alter the garrison wage slider to zero, it will not recruit and will disband the recruited troops i think.
 
Yep, it is in party screen. Each town/castle garrison is considered as party. You can disable auto-recruitment and set cap for wages.
So if your garrison wage is 1500/day and you set it to be 500, your imaginary garrison commander will get rid of all useless dudes until only X remains with total wage of ~500.
 
Some people seem to be satisfied with the current results. That's fine, enjoy yourselves, my response is to never give this company another cent for the rest of my lifetime unless something radically changes. I somehow doubt that however.

Since I already paid, I come around to keep tabs and see what's going on and even occasionally commiserate. Of course there will be mods to play this game and make it somewhat enjoyable, but there are of course the continual frustrations as well.

Ultimately however, I just will vote with my wallet. No reason to get emotional and argue with the Taleworlds defense force on these forums, and certainly no use begging decision makers who don't give a @#$^% to act like they do.
+1

Thing is if TW had turned things around I might have considered buying the game on console, just for the "couch experience". I'm not sure what TW is or has been doing to be honest. I mean they fixed troop jittering, armor protection is somewhat decent after 1.8, but why was all this done in like the last 6 months? It gives no time to test or evaluate what was changed, and they did not change armor values on any equipment to bring things in line, so it's not like they were busy doing that.

I suspect a great deal of the problem with TW is if I recall correctly they are or were funded by the Turkish government. And that's the problem, when you're on somebody's allowance there isn't much motivation to really go out and doing something worthwhile, is there?


What irks me the most is the time wasted. People can say oh well you spent so much time with the game, not being happy with it makes you hypocrite! There's lot of things I do that wastes time - like the 90+ minutes I spend commuting between work/home. Truthfully I play Bannerlord because it's a game I can easily pause (I give it credit for that, why I don't like the Souls games much anymore) which is something I do pretty frequently between household matters and taking calls for work. But it doesn't matter if it's 100, 1000, or 10,000 hours you've spent doing something - you're allowed to be critical of it. Though truthfully someone who simply exclaims "This sucks!" isn't helping anyone.

I bought the game back in May/June 2020 with the idea most of the things people had complained in March had been patched (LOL) and I certainly expected it to be finished game by 2021 since it seemed functional. It's quite sad that in late 2022 game is nothing close to what I'd call finished, way too many "placeholder" things yet. Again if this was October 2021 I might be more optimistic. Still if it wasn't in the patch notes, it wasn't fixed, hell maybe it even got broke (like being able to select multiple formations). My time wasted is my own foolishness, but I'd be remiss to not say TW has collectively been wasting everyone's time, and not in the good "fun" way that games are supposed to.


I can pretty much guarantee there will not be the same fanfare for a MB3 if it ever happens at this point. Which begs the question what is the future for TW then? Maybe they were smart and started working on another title, I sure hope so, otherwise I can't see how they'll be able to generate enough sales to stay afloat. Anyone defending TW and the state of Bannerlord at this point is doing so to TW's detriment IMHO.

I'm sure the powers that be would love nothing more then 100% praise, but what good will that do for the poor console schmuck who's sieging a castle/town for the 10th time - only for that one defending unit to get stuck in the wall? After how many times do you think they'll just ignore it by auto-resolving? Better question why is this still an issue after being pointed out many times?


Also who needs stairs? (This is Ab Comer castle Level 2 IIRC)
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Many decisions are made for the player on a regular basis, or are false choices where the player's input doesn't change the outcome. An obvious example of the former is the automatic recruitment/upgrading of troops in castle and town garrisons. Can't turn off recruitment, can't turn off upgrading, can't even decide what troops it upgrades into. If you don't fully stuff a garrison yourself (after emptying all of the trash out of it) then when you come back a month later it will be packed with units you often don't want. This actually creates a continually escalating problem for the player if they don't actively purge the garrison on a regular basis, as you still have to pay for all of these troops as they are recruited into the garrisons and upgraded, alongside their usual wages.

I don't think anyone has lived long enough to see a T1 Recruit placed in the Garrison reach T5 or T6. Certainly most people won't play that long... So kind of non-issue LOL. Auto-recruitment is an odd thing, but there's no real tutorial or explanation of it - which is the only real problem with it. Should be lots of optional tutorials to explain how things work on a basic level, but guess that's the realm of YouTube.

Ah those expensive game manuals!
For the latter, kingdom policies can make holding onto certain settlements a nightmare with the rebellion system. If you join a faction that wants to pass all of the policies which reduce town loyalty (like debasement of currency) then any foreign towns you wind up with are going to be stuck in a catch-22: an upgraded building can get your loyalty equilibrium out of the rebellion range, but your stacked loyalty penalties are so strong that you have to run the festival continuous project to stay out of rebellion range. Unfortunately, the AI seems to universally want some policies and never others. The support splits are almost entirely lopsided along the lines of 90:10 one way or the other, and they remain that way once the policy has passed. It's also a trap to choose a culture during character creation which matches the faction you join (except imperial) because the only way you're going to get settlements of your culture is if your faction loses some of their starting territories and retakes them. Congratulations on your new castle or town, you only got it because your faction couldn't keep hold of it the first time. The AI is firmly in the driver's seat and takes you along for a ride.

I don't even know why Policies are voted for, all it does is create frustration for the player since there's no "lobbying" process. They should just inherently be part of Kingdoms. Just another one of those things that misleads the player into thinking the game is "deep", even though it's not, and a large number of them still don't work right.

Look at the pre-battle formations/OOB update: we gained the ability to pre-position our troops and assign companions to them as leaders. We lost the ability to manually designate certain troop types into different groups, so you're stuck with broad classifications for troops which may have a common baseline but differing roles, or are the same role but different tiers. The prioritization toggles can sort-of alleviate that, but they don't work 100% and you still end up with troop types bleeding into different groups if their base class is the same (e.g. melee cavalry includes conventional cav like vlandian knights as well as skirmisher cav like aserai faris, which have differing engagement behavior). Also, companions can't be manually assigned to a specific group, they're stuck with whatever classification the game thinks is best for them when they're generated and that's what they are. Your brother is considered infantry even though he has riding skill and you can give him a horse.

What even is the point of the party screen now? All this could have been resolved by building a better party screen. Which is why this was created back in April 2020. You know adding filters to sort troops etc. Seriously why is it so hard to create some buttons to assign units to a formation and then add a slider for the ratio to be deployed at battle start? The only legitimately challenging thing in my mind's eye would be accounting for other parties when you're commanding an Army.
 
@Orion i know this isn't the subject but i wanted to share, you can disable garrison recruitment via tabs afaik. When you alter the garrison wage slider to zero, it will not recruit and will disband the recruited troops i think.

Well, that's a lesson learned for recruitment. Thanks for pointing me to that.

There's still no way to disable automatic upgrading of troops, though, and the wage limit doesn't reliably control that. There is no way to choose which troop types to auto-upgrade into, either.

I haven't thoroughly tested the auto-upgrading yet but every Aserai garrison I've left unattended for a while ends up with mostly infantry from the tribesman line, seemingly only getting archers via direct recruitment at the low rate they're available. It looks like it turns recruits into tribesmen into infantry consistently, ignoring other upgrade options, and if this is the method by which AI recruitment is handled (which I strongly suspect) then it would explain why so many Aserai armies I fight are full of infantry and faris (their noble troop) with barely any archers. The same seems to happen for the mamluke line, and once initial Aserai armies are defeated the only mamluke troops they seem to consistently have in any meaningful quantity are the infantry line. That mamlukes are available to recruit directly at tier 2 is sufficient to explain how there are a decent number of them in AI armies, though never more than the regular infantry.

If I had to guess, I would say the game doesn't look ahead to what projected wages will be before upgrading troops, either, and if this is the case then it could cause troops to be upgraded and push the garrison wages over the cap, resulting in disbandment of those or other troops. If this happens, what you end up with is a shrinking garrison of higher tier troops, but you get diminishing returns on some troop lines after a while so it's more valuable to have a larger number of second-best troops than a smaller number of the best troops. A clear example is Fians and Fian Champions, where the 100 bow skill difference hardly matters because Fians are already tied for the highest skill among tier 5 units and their weapons don't change from tier 5 to 6. The armor upgrade isn't really worth the near-50% increase in wages, so it's more cost-effective to have 50% more Fians than Fian Champions in a garrison.

Those two issues combined make the auto-upgrading a detriment to some factions because it means they aren't utilizing the breadth of their troop trees, and a detriment to the player because it means your garrisons are being reduced in size and strength over time as troops get upgraded into higher tier troops which are less cost-efficient.

I don't think anyone has lived long enough to see a T1 Recruit placed in the Garrison reach T5 or T6.
I'm sure some people have, but my issue with it is more about garrisoning troops I already have in my party which are ready to upgrade but which I have chosen not to upgrade. I made this mistake with some Vlandian spearmen at one point when I wanted to go out and recruit some more troops. About 30 out of the ~45 I had were ready to upgrade, I stuck them in a garrison to make space, came back and they were all billmen. I was specifically saving them to upgrade into infantry, though, so they would still have shields, and I take advantage of XP being shared across all troops of the same type so I upgrade my troops in batches rather than doing it as soon as each individual is ready. It's pretty hard to get 3 footmen upgraded when they're in a formation with 50 swordsmen, because those footmen will hardly get any kills. So I come back with another batch of squires to level up along with my spearmen only to find that they're all billmen I don't want. Back to the Fians as an example, imagine putting 100 Fians ready to upgrade into a garrison (1200 wages when you put them in) only to come back the next day and they're all Fian Champions (1700 wages) on their own. If you set a wage cap, does it just disband Fian Champions until it's back down to the cap? How many troops do you lose?

It's simply not a good system for the player, and if what I suspect is true then it's not good for the AI either.

[Edit]

Bonus fun fact, the current wage listed in the party tab of the clan menu does not match the wage expense listed in the tooltip when hovering over your money in the bottom-right bar. I suspect it shows the "raw" wage before any discounts are applied e.g. from perks and kingdom policies. If the intention is for the player to budget their expenses, it's made difficult by the fact that what you see is not what you get. Plus, there's still variability in wages from day to day, though if I remember correctly from a previous conversation I had it flip-flops between two specific values when all else remains constant because of how the calculation for payment of wages is performed.
 
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I'm sure some people have, but my issue with it is more about garrisoning troops I already have in my party which are ready to upgrade but which I have chosen not to upgrade.
^This is what I was going to say. My gameplay has degraded over many games to just using the garrison more like a trash can then a garrison. Anything useful has to remain in my party. Even prisoners can't be safely stored to recruit later causing me to carry a massive pile of 1 troops for later. IMO we need much more exact control over what the things we own or pay for, including prisons, garrisons and clan parties.
 
I mean. You're actually very sensible and I can agree with this comment, but for most people including me these are tiny almost non issues. Don't get me wrong, should be fixed, but such unimportant things that I wasn't even aware of since I've never had it happen or noticed, as well as reading them I wouldn't even really care if it happened.
OP also said that there were hundreds of other bugs reported since 1.9 that were never fixed. Many of them are major issues.

Here's two that I want to draw attention to:

This bug makes large army battles less rewarding and ultimately pointless for mercenaries or minor vassals, just a T5 troop sink.
It also happens to small party fights if at least 10 units got away, so it affects almost all phases of the game.

Two of the strongest infantry formations for countering cavalry got nerfed. Infantry are pretty much sitting ducks for horse archers.

Both threads immediately received a reply that QA was made aware of the issues. Since beta 1.9 they knew about these bugs.

I'm making my review negative so that I can hopefully save someone the future disappointment. This is an obvious sign of either incompetence or laziness, maybe both:
  • Both bugs are easy to reproduce so the editing and testing cycle should be straightforward.
  • The intended features worked properly before, so someone just has to look at what's been changed in the relevant parts of the code.
  • It's already been a month, and there's still no patch for TWO major bugs.
  • While fully aware of two major game breaking bugs, they just went ahead and proudly announced the game was released. That'll be $49.99, please!
Isn't that just disappointing? It's ridiculous too. If this is going to be their company culture from now on then it's best not to expect anything from them. It's also best to tell other people to stay away until TW can own up to their mistakes and earn back user trust.
 
Money. Everything, boils, down, to, money. They needed it, console release supplied it.
Well, this sums it up nicely and squarely. A bit too squarely though.

Im sure theres more to it, but it has to be most of the reason. I remember back in september 2020 TW was adamant that console versions were something to think only in the future. Then 2022 becomes all about console release... it feels wrong.

I love BL, and have much to agree and disagree on this thread - like entertainment's "purpose" as a time waster. Or that the game is as it is due to lack of competition... Oh boy... such economic liberal, narrow and infuriatingly incomplete views of the world... must... not... start discussion......

i still love the game, but it is very, very unfinished. I always expected a blog about release when they had the criminal enterprise system nearly finished...and honestly, the game now feels like what it should have been back in mid-2021. I dont feel insulted, but i agree that releasing the game as it is right now is insulting.

It needs a LOT of work still. Its not just "content to be added post-launch". This is just a big patch with the Release badge attached to it for financial reasons, possibly some contracts were about to expire and they demanded a release or something. I dont want to dwell on this, but it feels off and odd, so there is definitely a ton more work needed on this to make the game reach its end-beta stage.
 
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OP also said that there were hundreds of other bugs reported since 1.9 that were never fixed. Many of them are major issues.

Here's two that I want to draw attention to:

This bug makes large army battles less rewarding and ultimately pointless for mercenaries or minor vassals, just a T5 troop sink.
It also happens to small party fights if at least 10 units got away, so it affects almost all phases of the game.

Two of the strongest infantry formations for countering cavalry got nerfed. Infantry are pretty much sitting ducks for horse archers.

Both threads immediately received a reply that QA was made aware of the issues. Since beta 1.9 they knew about these bugs.

I'm making my review negative so that I can hopefully save someone the future disappointment. This is an obvious sign of either incompetence or laziness, maybe both:
  • Both bugs are easy to reproduce so the editing and testing cycle should be straightforward.
  • The intended features worked properly before, so someone just has to look at what's been changed in the relevant parts of the code.
  • It's already been a month, and there's still no patch for TWO major bugs.
  • While fully aware of two major game breaking bugs, they just went ahead and proudly announced the game was released. That'll be $49.99, please!
Isn't that just disappointing? It's ridiculous too. If this is going to be their company culture from now on then it's best not to expect anything from them. It's also best to tell other people to stay away until TW can own up to their mistakes and earn back user trust.
Welcome to Bannerlord. Not fixing game breaking bugs is TW's hobby. It took them two years to "fix" (kinda) siege ladders in a game that is about battles and sieges.
 
Im sure theres more to it, but it has to be most of the reason. I remember back in september 2020 TW was adamant that console versions were something to think only in the future. Then 2022 becomes all about console release... it feels wrong.
They were actively working on the console version in 2020 and said so. They said console release was only going to happen in the distant future but mexxico (for example) had been putting off working on console optimization since the summer of 2020:
I am not fan of spending time for console works. They want me to make optimization at these campaign ai codes since summer. I always delayed it to make single player at PC better first. But it seems I cannot run away from this anymore.

edit: It was also brought up in some of the old patch notes (or maybe the threads?) about how they'd done stuff to help with the future console release.
 
I can pretty much guarantee there will not be the same fanfare for a MB3 if it ever happens at this point. Which begs the question what is the future for TW then? Maybe they were smart and started working on another title, I sure hope so, otherwise I can't see how they'll be able to generate enough sales to stay afloat. Anyone defending TW and the state of Bannerlord at this point is doing so to TW's detriment IMHO.
they were working on or at least hiring for some space game some years ago, probably best they dont announce it for another 10 years
 
they were working on or at least hiring for some space game some years ago, probably best they dont announce it for another 10 years
Probably Ship & Shoot: Cyberlord, set in the distant future of 2040. Conquer the stars by stopping in your spaceship to accurately hit enemies in SPACE! Only it'll be released in 2042, so actually takes place in the past.

Frankly after this farce I refuse to buy anything from TW ever gain. Again I think without the nostalgia from M&B/Warband, TW has absolutely nothing going for them at this point. Kinda sad as I'm curious to see what Viking Conquest is like (get the impression it's a much better experience), but again don't want a single penny going to TW at this point. Suppose could hunt down the mod for Warband, but I doubt they are 1:1.
 
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