It's actually more disappointing than it is angering to see community members fight over meaningless stuff, but it's also disappointing that nothing is quite being told as it should be. There are a lot of sides that argue about Bannerlord, but the most prominent ones are "Bannerlord needs some work" side and "Go back to Warband" side. I'm not going to get into which one has what type of people because it would just be triggering and discrediting people's opinions while praising others, which in some cases will be valid and in some cases it won't be.
What's actually wrong with Bannerlord? The core mechanics that sold the amazing and ambitious game called Warband are not as stable anymore. You have a large influx of people buying the sequel because they enjoyed the first one, and these people will buy the sequel or look forward to playing the sequel just because it's an improvement over Warband. Is it an improvement over Warband? Surely, in many regards, from performance to technology to graphics to audio design to modding tools to the engine itself to scenes to animations to models and textures and so on. But there are also some things that are not an improvement over Warband, and if you want examples, you can feel free to look up Noudelle's thread where countless of contributions have been brought. Why have these countless threads and novels written about certain mechanics? Because some people have tried them in a plethora of contexts and have concluded that they can be tweaked to work better.
These people were used to the Warband system, this is true, and it is normal for them to prefer a mechanic similar to what is familiar, but this is not why they prefer it. Many people, myself included, prefer the way some mechanics worked in Warband because they simply worked better. I kicked someone in Warband and risked a stab or someone running around me and slashing me in the back in order to get a stun and a hit on the enemy. This is not possible anymore because the kick stun is incredibly short. There is a delay on swinging, which completely destroys any sort of attempted timing while holding a swing. It also minimized the ability to pressure people into giving up defense by holding. There are various examples given in countless posts and threads made by active community members. Some of the mechanics hurt gameplay the way they are right now. The game isn't fluid. If in Bannerlord I can call bull**** over me glancing into an enemy at a completely normal angle which should produce normal damage, in Warband I cannot, because it didn't happen. The game was relatively stable in its mechanics.
Bannerlord was an ambitious game, as was Warband for its time. This game isn't Mordhau, as some people like to compare it, the combat system is more complex and requires a lot of tweaking. I don't think Taleworlds were ready to make such a complex game in such a short time, with all of the features and mechanics they planned. Game development is tough and time consuming, and poor Armagan and other developers are probably going into depression over these unstable and inconsistent issues that the game has, and early access was probably a good business decision to keep the game going, because at this point, it would probably have been given up otherwise. While I think people should understand Bannerlord has to be developed with proper feedback from the community, so should Bannerlord understand this. You cannot have hardstuck visions of a game if they're not what the community wants. Some mechanics have already been labelled as causing more harm than good, or adding nothing to the game, such as stances. There also needs to be more communication. The community is here, they give daily feedback, but the only answers we really receive is a patch changelog every couple of weeks with changes. Please, raise up the communication. Have someone from the combat team address these issues, have them talk to us, to the people who are actively trying to help this game get better. You only need one person to come and say, "hey, we did this because X" or "hey, your suggestion is really good, and we're looking into it". Someone has to give feedback, or you cause the impression that you're simply not listening.
Nobody wants a Warband 2.0, not TaleWorlds, not anyone, but as of right now, Bannerlord is not a very good candidate for the public market, and this is my honest opinion. New players are going to have a rough time in multiplayer, singleplayer will be the only thing they will really enjoy, and that's fine, as a lot of people focus on the singleplayer aspect of the game. Classes were added and the main argument was to facilitate the introduction of new players into the game. Has it, though? Sure, players don't have to choose equipment anymore, but they still have perks, and there will be a perk meta if there isn't already (although, some classes clearly have only some perks that are worth taking). Another argument was that they wanted every player to be able to pick whatever class they want, not only the "skilled" player with a lot of gold from kills, but then again, it kind of goes against the argument of "building effective teams", as new players will not usually cooperate with others because they are still learning and they want to explore the game for themselves, meaning they will choose classes based on what they feel like playing, ruining the game for themselves and for others. This will lead to them being absolutely destroyed because they went lancer and 1v1'd an enemy lancer without knowing the proper release timing on the lance and just died in 20 seconds from spawning, his experience ruined by constantly dying every time he tries this. Moreover, he's limited by gold now, so he has to go peasant class against the first wave of good enemy units. I would be surprised if the majority of these players didn't quit after their first Skirmish match. From a development standpoint, classes were a waste of time and money. Almost every single update, there has to be some sort of class or perk tweaking, because they're just never spot on, mostly due to lack of proper communication. It would have saved so much more time to just let people make their own classes with free equipment selection, like Warband's.
In any case, TL;DR, nobody wants a Warband 2.0, but some mechanics were done better in Warband than they are in Bannerlord, and this is not a singular opinion, but the opinion of many people. Do you think Warband was bad and Bannerlord was good? Good! Give arguments as to why and contribute in a healthy forum debate, but don't attack people and tell them to go play Warband, that's just petty. Communication and reaction to feedback should also be a priority from TaleWorlds to the community, especially as Early Access is coming. Tell us why you think your mechanics should work the way they do and why you think our arguments are bad, or vice-versa (which is pretty much already done). People need to see their opinions are taken into account.
In any case, sorry for the rant, but after spending so many hours of my life into enjoying TaleWorld's products and seeing this wave of disappointment and anger, I had to write something.