I agree with the OP.
For those saying that "early access is the release, and it was a buggy release etc" - they only released in early access because community has pressured them into doing so, increasingly more as time passed. Before that they kept saying "we will release it when we feel it's in a good state", but people turned deaf and kept asking for it NOW, and that was the result. Now the community is asking for content in the same manner (it's because they have been fed mods like candy during warband times - when they got bored of a mod, they immediately jumped to another - endless candy - forming this impatient community that always seeks something new NOW). Nothing has changed community-wise, from prerelease to postrelease. The only mistake devs have made was to announce the game so early. If they didn't mention it at all then everyone would have lived their lives normally, playing warband now and then. But since they made the mistake of leaking it now everyone is acting like they lived every moment of their life, survived and breathed solely for Bannerlord release during those 8 years, which is really silly.
Early access is not a full release by any means. This game has been in early access for a year and it's getting ripped to shreds on the forum like it's been so for 10 years, even though there are games that are in early access for multiple years and haven't made all that much progress at all. Games full of bugs and performance issues. It literally doesn't matter how much content a game has if the bugs destroy the experience anyway.
I bought some old games that have some bugs that were never even fixed, and those companies keep releasing new games to this day. And even though I liked the concept of some I had to give up on them because not even community fixes worked. So bannerlord devs fixing bugs and performance issues is good progress in itself, and they fixed a lot. Even Valheim devs stated that they will first focus on bugs and performance (and it was a smooth release, I didn't encounter any bugs). So even a smaller game like Valheim needs some time dedicated to performance and fixes (and it's a 1GB game with singleplayer and multiplayer shared - multiplayer only gets difficulty increase per player, and it has maximum 10 players per server, it has been developed for over 3 years as well, and they made it in Unity - an already existant engine). 1 year EA is really not that long for a game of Bannerlord's size (it's a 40+ GB game, with separate singleplayer and multiplayer, with over 1000 npcs on the screen at the same time in battles, a living world, and servers that have over 100
players, and they also created their own engine from scrap). There are still lots of improvements and fixes needed, and content, but it's a game on a bigger scale and more complex, and thus needs more time - logically.
If they stay in EA for the rest of 2021 and added some new content I bet people would be happy with it and all this negativity would look so silly, even with the design choices they don't agree with. But anyway, people should keep voicing their feedback, because maybe some things they don't like will change, but the negativity is not really helping, and may even deter developers from reading their feedback in the first place.
So with all that said, the "8 years in development" argument I see so often really doesn't impress me, personally... I'll give example of some games that have been in development for similar or longer time: Starcraft 2 (7 years), Prey (really cool game, 11 years), Diablo 3 (eh, but 11 years), Duke nukem forever (15 years?). You can safely say that development takes time. Some games have been in early access for so long too. 7 days to die, a game I own, has been EA for like 7-8+ years (and there have been some questionable changes and I don't even enjoy playing it at all anymore... and it only got like a big update each year pretty much, really slow progress.
I blame this idea that developers just snap their fingers and make a full-fledged game instantly on all of the Call of Duties and similar games which have been copy+pasted every year with just some different stories. Because of that kind of money-grabbing garbage people think that in 1-2 years you can make a full and perfect game easily - this company can do that, so why can't everyone else? Even if Bannerlord devs were inefficient in their work (and you can say that and it's perfectly fine), it already happened anyway, it's the past now. Let's move on to more constructive topics to discuss, better worded feedback, and let's wait and see what happens in time. I really hope the game will stay in EA for the rest of this year and we get more improvements like we have been. The game deserves a good memorable full release.
