This game sucks

[danEN]

That's your area of expertise Dan. I'm not the one with dyslexia, stop projecting.

don't discredit yourself, your replies have been pretty special

arguing with you is like arguing with a pigeon

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Edit: public opinion about something is usually a good measure of its worth and can be quantified. This includes politicians, quality of products and services, including computer games. So mass surveys about games are a very good indicator of a game's quality. The problem with Steam reviews is the binary grading that heavily distorts the results towards 100%. More usual 5-stage grading like the 5 star system are much more accurate, but would produce lower ratings and Steam isn't interested in precise ratings, it wants to sell you games.
If you think the public is wrong about a game's quality, you'll need to back that up with serious arguments that border on scientific objectivity, or you'll just have another contrarian or elitist opinion that can't be taken seriously by gentlemen and scholars of the forums.

One of the many problems with this approach is that "quality" is hihgly temporally relative. Bannerlord came out in an era with almost no good big budget games. I haven't bought or played any new games since about 2015, but for a "normal" person who plays mostly new games, Bannerlord is probably a nice surprise and a change of pace from an industry that has completely given up on large scale battles or sweeping campaigns. People like it because it's basically unique, not because it's good.

It's just like The Sims 4 or 2K (the NBA game), both incredibly "popular", but only because of their monopolistic hold on an entire genre. Incidentally, both games also have vocal minorites very mad at the game, and their views are actually held by most of the people playing them, but your average normie isn't as optimistic as the loud nerd and doesn't think the game can get any better, so they just shut up and play it. But I can guarantee you that if even a mediocre challenger appeared, the image of these games would collapse. It's already happening with The Sims, with some indie game called Paralives that got announced some time ago, and like the invasions of the Huns, all the Roman coloni are binding their heads and adopting hunnic hairstyles and fleeing to the steppes.

 

[Ser Jon]

You're free to have your own opinions, but why do you continue to expect more?

I told my story because I came to Warband/VC very late, and thought it was just special enough to sink *unseemly hours* into the modded engine.

If I was some cultureless schmuck who expected my money's worth from a video game company in the year of our lord post-2000, then maybe I would have the opinion that BL 'sucks', but, here we both are.

Edit: no, on 2nd thought delete your account and system32, because you expect MORE than your money's worth.

I wasn't specifically just addressing your comments. I've seen it multiple times here, that we should "just be happy" with what we got. That's part of the reason we got the game as it is, because they know people are just going to shrug and accept it.

 

[five bucks]

At least for me, the frustration isn't with the game in isolation. It's a fun timewaster if you don't care about roleplay. But what makes it such an annoying experience is all the easily avoidable, really poor design decisions that I know even I could have done a better job with. There are literally hundreds of them, and I can't play the game without thinking "why the hell did they do that?" a thousand times. What makes it so annoying is that there is potential for a much less schizophrenic and grindy game than this, but with the current direction of development that is almost certainly never going to happen. 10+ years of development and some truly ingenious technical artists who managed to get 1000 vs 1000 battles at 60fps, all ruined by a campaign so poorly designed, sloppily tested and thoroughly unenjoyable that it boggles my mind.

Well said, sums up my feelings also.

A lot of people defending this game have internalised the Early Access mindset, judging the game by what they think it will be eventually with all the overhaul mods they dream of. But nothing has fundamentally changed about the game since release and it's a pipe dream to think they'll pull out a secret gigapatch that removes all the bad design.

My remaining hope is seeing stuff like the rework to blunt damage/cavalry charges, which was actually quite sensible and improved the experience a lot.

Hopefully they get whoever was responsible for that onto armour, relations, personality traits, voting, etc.

 

[monoolho]

Thats the sad thing: most problems have been solved, or at least workarounded by modders. Which means that either a) they didnt test it enough, or b) they didnt care enough, to make a a game which faults are easily and quickly addressed by someone with enough free time and limited access to the games resources.
Given the amouny of money spent on it, and still seeing bad design, ita because the game is being badly designed, or armagan is a dictator only wanting his own personal vision of the game, not with creative freedom, but rather with narrow minded thought processes (i use armagan as a general term for the overarching director of the project).

Or TW has paid a lot of money to Tom Howard to learn how to develop a game with bethesda, by making a barebones platform and leaving it up to the creative coders with free time to actually develop, test and incorporate new features into the game.

I still like the game very much, and being removed from it by 2 years has greatly improved my perception of it, but i cant help but notice those flaws kentucky mentions,both in and around the game. We get the scope. Magnitude and complexity of the game are certainly overwhelming, but some flaws are really unforgivable. They can stoll fix most everything, but will they? And even IF they do, it doesnt erase these greedy and counterintuitive choices. Thats the big problem with market mentality: its all about short term profits over everything else, and if the company doesnt achieve that, they risk losing money and everything. Its profit for the sake of.profit for the sake of profit with the threat of bankruptcy of they fail to profit more than the previous quarter. Its basocally a pyramod scheme that ends up with lobbying for coal power in spite of rising temps and sea levels. Its profit just releasing a half-baked game for consoles to get ths big christmas sales. In spite of alienating the community around it, harming the games and the companys image and loyalty by getting a bit more of sales. I dunno, tw may be having financial troubles,.or fears it because they signed contracts with sony and ms, but it doesnt change the fact that focusing on these short term profits.now harms the game immesurably.

Its a corporate culture of breeding such behaviour more and more. And art, games and society are harmed because of it, under that guise of magical thinking that "the market will regulate itself" and "theyll just fix it and make it better, bro, have patience"

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Given the amouny of money spent on it, and still seeing bad design, ita because the game is being badly designed, or armagan is a dictator only wanting his own personal vision of the game, not with creative freedom, but rather with narrow minded thought processes (i use armagan as a general term for the overarching director of the project).

I've heard a lot over the last 10 years about Armagan wanting every decision to go through him, but it really, really doesn't come across in the game itself. I actually wish he was more of a dictator. Allowing all the developers to have creative freedom is a recipe for total disaster. Video games are a Stalinist endeavor.

I've read the entire code base of Warband many times, and the impression I get is that the developers thought of something, brought it to Armagan, and he mostly just said "yeah okay, go code it" and it never got reviewed or tested or integrated into the game beyond that. There are game mechanics that were clearly only attempted in an afternoon, and as a result nobody knows about them because they don't even work. Most modders will tell you a story about some feature they never knew existed until they modded the game. There is also a ton of stupid stuff like village buildings, siege starve-outs and lord defections that were never tested or thought about for more than two seconds, so they're just useless or broken. It's mostly a fluke that Warband is a fairly coherent experience. Most of the truly ridiculous stuff can just be ignored because of how badly it's coded.

While Bannerlord is less haphazard than this, there are still all these mechanics that seem like they were decided on democratically rather than based on a singular vision. I bet if you made a poll on reddit or the forums in 2014, you would get unanimous support for smithing, or an influence system, or the generation mechanic, or a main questline etc etc. However in practice all of these things make the game worse. A developer, like a painter or filmmaker, has to make painful decisions to cut stuff out that might seem good on the surface, but hurts the overall experience. Armagan seems to be unable to do that.

 

[Apocal]

I wasn't specifically just addressing your comments. I've seen it multiple times here, that we should "just be happy" with what we got. That's part of the reason we got the game as it is, because they know people are just going to shrug and accept it.

TW left serious bugs unfixed for years in WB and people sing that game's praises.

Thats the sad thing: most problems have been solved, or at least workarounded by modders. Which means that either a) they didnt test it enough, or b) they didnt care enough, to make a a game which faults are easily and quickly addressed by someone with enough free time and limited access to the games resources.
Given the amouny of money spent on it, and still seeing bad design, ita because the game is being badly designed, or armagan is a dictator only wanting his own personal vision of the game, not with creative freedom, but rather with narrow minded thought processes (i use armagan as a general term for the overarching director of the project).

You don't need to use Armagan as a general term; it is almost for certain specifically him. Like, seriously: it was almost certainly Armagan who shot down alliances in the autumn of 2020. Maybe for good reasons (with only six factions, alliances between two basically let them tear apart anyone they go to war with, as-is) but most of the community was asking for it yet when it came down to it, he apparently said no. Probably the same or similar with detailed party and kingdom controls too.

Its a corporate culture of breeding such behaviour more and more. And art, games and society are harmed because of it, under that guise of magical thinking that "the market will regulate itself" and "theyll just fix it and make it better, bro, have patience"

It isn't a "corporate" culture pushing things towards a barebones design but superb mod support. Most of the really big corporate publishers want a long tail with their games, so they get more consistent income than the feast-and-famine cycle. It's why they do stuff like season passes, MTX, scheduled DLCs, etc. They also don't want players to be able to just develop those minor features for themselves, so they usually restrict modding, sometimes in really egregious and petty ways.

 

[danEN]

TW left serious bugs unfixed for years in WB and people sing that game's praises.

a game made 13 years ago by a small indie company at the time shouldn't be held to the same standards though, this is a AAA priced game now

 

[Ser Jon]

TW left serious bugs unfixed for years in WB and people sing that game's praises.

Not entirely the same thing, come on. It's a little more passable because they were a small team, but Bannerlord took ten years, a full engine rewrite, and then two years in early access, to account to less than what WB was and to this day, post "release" be swamped with more and more bugs each branch release. And MP is practically inoperable. To make the comparison is to ignore the massive differences in environment surrounding the two titles...

 

[froggyluv]

Warband also had insanely good Multiplayer

 

[Apocal]

a game made 13 years ago by a small indie company at the time shouldn't be held to the same standards though, this is a AAA priced game now

Not entirely the same thing, come on. It's a little more passable because they were a small team,

And where would they have learned that lesson? Certainly not from WB. If anything, even stuff past that point taught them the opposite: that the vocal forumoids will eventually forget even a shambolic release (Viking Conquest).

 

[monoolho]

It isn't a "corporate" culture pushing things towards a barebones design but superb mod support. Most of the really big corporate publishers want a long tail with their games, so they get more consistent income than the feast-and-famine cycle. It's why they do stuff like season passes, MTX, scheduled DLCs, etc. They also don't want players to be able to just develop those minor features for themselves, so they usually restrict modding, sometimes in really egregious and petty ways.

I see the point and agree, but see this in bigger companies. I cant see the same principle being applied by TW. Might be ignorance on my part, or lack of commitment here in the forums, but i just see the old ways

 

[Apocal]

I see the point and agree, but see this in bigger companies. I cant see the same principle being applied by TW. Might be ignorance on my part, or lack of commitment here in the forums, but i just see the old ways

Of all the complaints that could be reasonably leveled at TW, I don't think they are greedy. If they were just looking for cash, they could've released Bannerlord in 2016. It was essentially finished at that point and, judging from what was shown then vs. now, more or less the same game. It cost them money to sit on the game for years and years and years, endlessly tinkering and overhauling the systems. Anyone with business sense -- and not just a cutthroat MBA -- would've cut it off and released.

The game has been out for two years at this point and we had exactly one official whiff of any sort of DLC: the elephant leak in one of the patches. Which was probably a team's downtime project. That's how unconcerned they are with money.

edit: Actually, they could've just remastered Warband in 2016 and people would've lapped it up, especially if it didn't break many/any mods.

 

[danEN]

And where would they have learned that lesson? Certainly not from WB. If anything, even stuff past that point taught them the opposite: that the vocal forumoids will eventually forget even a shambolic release (Viking Conquest).

you would've thought they learnt a lesson from all the people who told them the game has serious issues through closed beta and early access

instead they listen to the average game is good comment without a single detail on what actually makes it good, matter of fact the only positive comment i've seen about this game is the battles are good, i genuinely can't think of another aspect i've seen praised

 

[monoolho]

Of all the complaints that could be reasonably leveled at TW, I don't think they are greedy. If they were just looking for cash, they could've released Bannerlord in 2016. It was essentially finished at that point and, judging from what was shown then vs. now, more or less the same game. It cost them money to sit on the game for years and years and years, endlessly tinkering and overhauling the systems. Anyone with business sense -- and not just a cutthroat MBA -- would've cut it off and released.

The game has been out for two years at this point and we had exactly one official whiff of any sort of DLC: the elephant leak in one of the patches. Which was probably a team's downtime project. That's how unconcerned they are with money.

edit: Actually, they could've just remastered Warband in 2016 and people would've lapped it up, especially if it didn't break many/any mods.

With that i agree wholly, it has been my stance for years. My belief is that TW signed good contracts for console release by the end of 2020, and their delivery has been... lukewarm. Better than EA for sure, but still lacking lots of content. Thats what can be seen as greedy in TW.
But i see old ways in the point of trying to get sales for their ideal game, instead of a planned long-release of the main game and DLC. And thats bittersweet: TW doesnt seem like paradox' greed, with constant drip-fed release, but at the same time, they have no communication on long-term plans, which led to the belief that "the game is done", they are commited to the promise of the full game, and thats it. It leads many to believe theyll release the bandit career, some other stuff and they are finished with the game.

 

[maximus1541]

Dev kill mp

 

[Ser Jon]

And where would they have learned that lesson? Certainly not from WB. If anything, even stuff past that point taught them the opposite: that the vocal forumoids will eventually forget even a shambolic release (Viking Conquest).

What lesson are you talking about? And as far as I've seen, people still talk about VC that way, but the point is that WB having its issues is nowhere near comparable to Bannerlord having its issues. One was a game made with far less funding, in far less time, with a much smaller team over a decade ago.

 

[Apocal]

What lesson are you talking about?

This one:

That's part of the reason we got the game as it is, because they know people are just going to shrug and accept it.

Being able to coast on a broken product, by and large based on the unpaid work of modders.

 

[Ser Jon]

This one:

Being able to coast on a broken product, by and large based on the unpaid work of modders.

Oh, well, like I said... different thing and thus unfair to compare, which would mean there's not really something to learn. Smaller team, older gamer, less funding. It's much more understandable that Warband escaped its release with bugs and issues because of that, nor was it that the player base "let it go" because even to this day, we still discuss its numerous issues.

 

[Apocal]

Oh, well, like I said... different thing and thus unfair to compare, which would mean there's not really something to learn. Smaller team, older gamer, less funding. It's much more understandable that Warband escaped its release with bugs and issues because of that, nor was it that the player base "let it go" because even to this day, we still discuss its numerous issues.

I'm referring to the attitude ("Who cares? Mods'll fix it.") more than the product.