Why mods can fix and improve the game but devs can t?

[Masakari]

And for what is all the money?
I think its not for the game.
7 Years for this title? With how many working on it?
Thats it what critical users would like to know.
If they say "yeah we used all the winnings for buying houses and getting rich. But we still have fun programming 1 or 2 Days in a week and making this Game." Then its ok for me. Sounds legit and well, its THEIR money.
But i have the feeling that Players here defends them like they are hard working slaves.
As said before. The easiest bugs or unbalanced things got modded in 2 Days from unpaid Modders. And they werent able to do it in 7 years?!
Wow!

 

[Monkey]

tbh a lot of current issues could be fixed easily. They were not fixed till now, because the focus of the developer's team was at absolutely another long-term development stuff. And the reason for that - they did not intended to release the game now. Everyone understand they did it only because of situation with coronavirus in the world (everyone is at home playing games now - you cannot imagine better time for gaming industry). I cannot blame TW for this, marketing is marketing.

But I have to admit, they should change the focus, as the game is already released. EA or not, the focus should be changed now to make the game somehow playable and to avoid potential dissatisfaction.

The crashes, the bugs, the missing features and the constant save-breaking patches don't bother me at all. I signed up for that.
The good aspects of this game, like the battles themselves, for instance, which are atmospherically and graphically amazing, along with the absolutely stunning scenery, make me believe this is indeed a long-term project with a really high potential

I don't mind waiting and I don't care how long it takes as long as they don't stop working on it. Anybody with any degree of perfectionism (which to a certain degree is always desirable in order to really do things well) knows that doing things well always takes longer than expected.

I just hope the circumstances don't press TaleWorlds into rushing a "finished" product and throwing it to the modders along with tools no matter how good such tools might be. They should stay true to their philosophy and make it good. We waited so long. Do we really want them to rush things up and spoil what could otherwise have been an epic game?

 

[Bannerdog]

Is it really possible to revert TWW2 models to BL?

I'm not sure I understand the question...

 

[Maximum997]

I'm not sure I understand the question...

Yea, english is not my first language.

In total war rarhammer 2 there are a lot of cool models of armor and weapons. And is it actualy possible to transfer this models and textures from one game to another?

 

[Bannerdog]

Yea, english is not my first language.

In total war rarhammer 2 there are a lot of cool models of armor and weapons. And is it actualy possible to transfer this models and textures from one game to another?

I have no idea, sorry.

 

[Bridge_Troll]

Big brain topic.

I work as Software developer myself. First fact for you: it's not "the devs". There are a lot of different positions that are involved in releaseing a single feature even more so a full game. It's not a bunch of neckbeards that send giphys around in a cellar(giphys might be true tho). I'm sure you are aware of that but looking at your post you seem to just ignore that. It's not necessarily a developer who decides which features get implemented next or which bugs should be fixed first or maybe in two weeks. There is a big chain of different people and interations that goes into the lifecycle of software development that you might not even notice on first glance. An example what I am used to at work, this is more or less the full list of positions/people that could be involved in creating a single feature

• Stakeholder
• Project Manager
• Project Owner
• Developer Team(s)
• QA
• IT-Guys/DevOps
• IT/data-Security
• privacy/legal security
• Marketing/Community
• Concept/Draft team
• Graphics/Design team
• Support/Helpdesk/Customer affairs
• The Client, in this case, you ?
  
• ....
• Also the boss is peaking into every position, obviously

Taleworlds might have a complete different approach, non the less there is a lot of people and even more work involved than you can imagine. And they do their work! Patches come out regularly and they are active with the community.

I also don't unterstand the EA outrage. Call it what you want, EA, beta, alpha-pre-release-candidate-your-grandmothers-name-before-marriage etc. it all symbols the same thing: "Software is not ready yet". What you become by buying software in such a state is called "tester". If you find bugs, you report them so taleworlds can prioritize them and then fix them. You can obivously just play the game if you want, but you are very likely to find bugs, that's the whole point. That is literally the point, can you understand that? Help the devs to find bugs and develop the game.

There is only one thing I would hold against Taleworlds: Why did you guys write your own engine? Instead you should've invested that time so your developers could learn an existing engine which has a big community, support, more features, better implementation, more stable/better tested in production etc. Imo that was a bad decision, hopefully this will not take it's toll in the future.

 

[lukri]

The main problem is that they don't talk. (Besides @mexxico, ty for that btw.)

No roadmap. No official featurelist. The devblogs are mostly useless and vague. The featurelist on the website is one of the most vague featurelists I've ever seen (pretty sure on purpose). The very long developement time. And so much more...

Early Access Schmearly Access or not.

That's not a good look and doesn't give much confidence/trust.

Everybody skipping this one little reply here but he is talking the truth. Crashes, bugs who cares? This is why we are in EA, but missing every other little post we need. Where is the roadmap? Where is the future you guys want to reach? When will you release the game??? After removing the bugs but adding 0 new feature? What and when? Post plans.

What i think the biggest problem here that if we review this game alone it is a decent 7/10 but compared to warband and Viking Conquest as released titles it is 4/10. Like VC have a lot of cool ideas (i know it is coming from a mod but is is released), story, units, battles improved a lot, houndreds of hour to play. You can be a bandit lord but here in bannerlord there is no such things. Please do not come with that modders will make it better and they take their time to create modding tools. I do not care i payed for vanilla and i want the vanilla to be full game(now it is totally not one). If they want it then sell it to modders and modders can sell their games to us and i would accept that. My only hope that this game sells well and hope devs want to make a lot more feature and things to do but no roadmap so they could abandon it right now and nothing would happen.

 

[Monkey]

Big brain topic.

I work as Software developer myself. First fact for you: it's not "the devs". There are a lot of different positions that are involved in releaseing a single feature even more so a full game. It's not a bunch of neckbeards that send giphys around in a cellar(giphys might be true tho). I'm sure you are aware of that but looking at your post you seem to just ignore that. It's not necessarily a developer who decides which features get implemented next or which bugs should be fixed first or maybe in two weeks. There is a big chain of different people and interations that goes into the lifecycle of software development that you might not even notice on first glance. An example what I am used to at work, this is more or less the full list of positions/people that could be involved in creating a single feature

• Stakeholder
• Project Manager
• Project Owner
• Developer Team(s)
• QA
• IT-Guys/DevOps
• IT/data-Security
• privacy/legal security
• Marketing/Community
• Concept/Draft team
• Graphics/Design team
• Support/Helpdesk/Customer affairs
• The Client, in this case, you ?
  
• ....
• Also the boss is peaking into every position, obviously

Taleworlds might have a complete different approach, non the less there is a lot of people and even more work involved than you can imagine. And they do their work! Patches come out regularly and they are active with the community.

I also don't unterstand the EA outrage. Call it what you want, EA, beta, alpha-pre-release-candidate-your-grandmothers-name-before-marriage etc. it all symbols the same thing: "Software is not ready yet". What you become by buying software in such a state is called "tester". If you find bugs, you report them so taleworlds can prioritize them and then fix them. You can obivously just play the game if you want, but you are very likely to find bugs, that's the whole point. That is literally the point, can you understand that? Help the devs to find bugs and develop the game.

There is only one thing I would hold against Taleworlds: Why did you guys write your own engine? Instead you should've invested that time so your developers could learn an existing engine which has a big community, support, more features, better implementation, more stable/better tested in production etc. Imo that was a bad decision, hopefully this will not take it's toll in the future.

I always assumed the whole combat (all the body control, for example, and the way damage is tied to physics, relative speed etc) and probably other things as well would be harder to implement in a mainstream commercial engine because of the many features that are unique to the franchise. Is that not the case? Though I'm familiar with writing simple code, I lack the experience and vision of a professional developer. What would make them spend so many resources into a brand new engine? Performance? I was quite impressed by the audiovisual quality of the game and absolutely amazed with the scenery. I still delight in just looking at the scenery and listening to the hundreds of hooves galloping. The game's performance in that regard, though there's always the occasional (mostly minimal) stutter, is way above what I expected.

 

[Sidhwen_Khorest]

What would make them spend so many resources into a brand new engine? Performance?

Having your own engine is great if its a good engine, people will pay for that kind of technology. I mean just look at the source engine and how much money that made steam. This could benefit them majorly in the long run.

I bet it would have been easier and quicker for them to create the game in an existing engine if only that they would spend less time on basic things and debugging those basic things. normally engines are pretty modular so the "unique" things in the game are still possible. Look at chivalry 2, similar combat style and implemented on the unreal engine.

 

[Sneakydude]

Again another topic that directly relates to Early Access fixes to help the Devs fix the game, or implement changes in those mods to fix the existing game without due credits to those Mod devs. You see a perfect example of a game called ARC, back when it was first out, we had mods coming out to fix the game completely. For so long things didn't work right, not enough content etc... then the Devs put them in the game without proper credit. Basically grabbed and taken for themselves to give to customers. Then we had DLC being done before the game was truly playable without crashing. It was a royal mess.

Bannerlord is playable, yes we have bugs, without mods.

Can i ask what are the most important mods to use? I have 0 installed... I really like Bannerlord, but yes it needs lots to complete it.

 

[XT-ended_2L]

Big brain topic.

I work as Software developer myself. First fact for you: it's not "the devs". There are a lot of different positions that are involved in releaseing a single feature even more so a full game. It's not a bunch of neckbeards that send giphys around in a cellar(giphys might be true tho). I'm sure you are aware of that but looking at your post you seem to just ignore that. It's not necessarily a developer who decides which features get implemented next or which bugs should be fixed first or maybe in two weeks. There is a big chain of different people and interations that goes into the lifecycle of software development that you might not even notice on first glance. An example what I am used to at work, this is more or less the full list of positions/people that could be involved in creating a single feature

• Stakeholder
• Project Manager
• Project Owner
• Developer Team(s)
• QA
• IT-Guys/DevOps
• IT/data-Security
• privacy/legal security
• Marketing/Community
• Concept/Draft team
• Graphics/Design team
• Support/Helpdesk/Customer affairs
• The Client, in this case, you ?
  
• ....
• Also the boss is peaking into every position, obviously

Taleworlds might have a complete different approach, non the less there is a lot of people and even more work involved than you can imagine. And they do their work! Patches come out regularly and they are active with the community.

I also don't unterstand the EA outrage. Call it what you want, EA, beta, alpha-pre-release-candidate-your-grandmothers-name-before-marriage etc. it all symbols the same thing: "Software is not ready yet". What you become by buying software in such a state is called "tester". If you find bugs, you report them so taleworlds can prioritize them and then fix them. You can obivously just play the game if you want, but you are very likely to find bugs, that's the whole point. That is literally the point, can you understand that? Help the devs to find bugs and develop the game.

There is only one thing I would hold against Taleworlds: Why did you guys write your own engine? Instead you should've invested that time so your developers could learn an existing engine which has a big community, support, more features, better implementation, more stable/better tested in production etc. Imo that was a bad decision, hopefully this will not take it's toll in the future.

Good post for anyone who do not understand how corporate deparments work. I am working as IT Director, but I am too lazy to explain all of this lol Thanks for brief explanation.
Still, my previous statement stands - they should do slight refocus in order to avoid dissatisfaction and also, what is more important not to let the hype around the project to disappear. I hope they understand it.

 

[Sidhwen_Khorest]

they should do slight refocus in order to avoid dissatisfaction and also, what is more important not to let the hype around the project to disappear. I hope they understand it.

In my hot take I think a major content patch should be pushed before the end of april, otherwise people might totally lose it. my guess is they have a team working on that patch but who knows, we will see.

 

[Maximum997]

Can i ask what are the most important mods to use?

Important:
Faster dialogs. Skip all dialogs before battles.(Even with SSD it is annoying as hell)
Faster time - adds x8 time that is very useful in sieges\waiting

Very useful:
Unit stat fixes - some toops are garbage becouse some spearmen has 220 bow and 20 polearm for example. This mod can fix it.
Better quicksaves. Separate quick save and manual save slots.
Detailed Charachter creation. If you want to roleplay Sir Mountain or a dwarf.
Companion respec - uf you want your companions to ever lvl up.

隐藏: And my favorite:

Dismemberment. I just cant play without it

And of course bannerlord tweaks to customise your game as you want.

 

[Sneakydude]

Good post for anyone who do not understand how corporate deparments work. I am working as IT Director, but I am too lazy to explain all of this lol Thanks for brief explanation.
Still, my previous statement stands - they should do slight refocus in order to avoid dissatisfaction and also, what is more important not to let the hype around the project to disappear. I hope they understand it.

Yes i totally agree, but sometimes there is one elimate that gets forgotten that can effect the whole process. That is the Marketing-Media can hype stuff up that the project team can not resolve or fix fast enough. We orginally saw lots in Bannerlord media videos that hyped up a potential AAA game from the start. I dont think i am alone thinking this was the same as M&B orginal. I didn't play warband enough. Massive delays, and what we see today is Early Access. Not saying it wont be complete, but i am sure we do not have 100+ people on it full time either. 8 Years in Dev, engine people dont realize is a lot of work. I really am enjoying this game though, with 0 mods. I will start to install some, to test it out.

 

[XT-ended_2L]

Yes i totally agree, but sometimes there is one elimate that gets forgotten that can effect the whole process. That is the Marketing-Media can hype stuff up that the project team can not resolve or fix fast enough. We orginally saw lots in Bannerlord media videos that hyped up a potential AAA game from the start. I dont think i am alone thinking this was the same as M&B orginal. I didn't play warband enough. Massive delays, and what we see today is Early Access. Not saying it wont be complete, but i am sure we do not have 100+ people on it full time either. 8 Years in Dev, engine people dont realize is a lot of work. I really am enjoying this game though, with 0 mods. I will start to install some, to test it out.

I dont want to involve into their insights, nor I have any accurate information, but, such delays happen only when the company face the loss of the important/leading staff members. Handover process could take months + acclimatization + full involvement. Now imagine these new guys leave right after they finally involved into process... You have to keep your profs in the basement lol

 

[Rbtparker13]

I love this game. Yet I didn't buy it just so I can sit around and let all the fun things about this game get destroyed while I couldn't defend my castle manually without the game crashing until very recently.

 

[Bridge_Troll]

I always assumed the whole combat (all the body control, for example, and the way damage is tied to physics, relative speed etc) and probably other things as well would be harder to implement in a mainstream commercial engine because of the many features that are unique to the franchise. Is that not the case? Though I'm familiar with writing simple code, I lack the experience and vision of a professional developer. What would make them spend so many resources into a brand new engine? Performance? I was quite impressed by the audiovisual quality of the game and absolutely amazed with the scenery. I still delight in just looking at the scenery and listening to the hundreds of hooves galloping. The game's performance in that regard, though there's always the occasional (mostly minimal) stutter, is way above what I expected.

I actually heard that point quite often now, that the M&B franchise is so unique, that you would require to do everything from scratch for it to run properly. Most current engines give you full access to their low level layers or actually are open source, so most of the time, your imagination is the limit(and your customers hardware). Also, besides the actual engine itself, the biggest time investment probably also revolves around tooling. Providing a good sort of interface between developer, 2d artist, 3d artist, story/quest writers, gameplay scripter, ui designers etc. is a huge task. So while the engine is one part, creating programs for non-developers to interact with your engine in a meaningful way takes a lot of resources. Most engines provide that as is.
I'm not suggesting that their engine is inferior or anything of sorts, but production-proven engines did something right. Developed and tested by industry experts and implemented/used by big tec companies, they are already battle-proven. Extendibility through open source and a super big knowledge base through community and proven concepts around such a engine should make them attractive.

So ye, don't really understand the Taleworlds decision to take on such a monolithic task. It's great, they did create an engine, I just hope it's not all Spaghetti.

Simply put, engines are supposed to be about re-usability. Either you write one engine and use it for many applications or write it to sell it, a mix of both for all I care. If your engine is so special that it only provides accessible functionality for one application, that sort of misses the point of trying to create reusable components, especially if the engine is such a huge system as it is in game development.

?or M&B 3 confirmed ?

 

[TheWitchIzalith]

Taleworlds can t make things for money, but moddlers can make it for free.
Almost everything is missing or broken in this game can be fix by mods. The peace/war button is not working but there is a mod who does it...it is just an exemple.
You will say It is EA. EA is just an excuse to sell a game that you cant finish.
But can you use mods? No, because the next minor and useless patch will break your save. Why? You cant accept that somebody does a better work than you?
So Taleworlds, fix the game. Accept the fact that some people have better ideas. Respect us as clients and gamers.

And for people who will defend developers - Wake up.
Yes, I m a hater. I hate liars and scammers.

I think it is EXCEPTIONALLY important to note, someone from Turkey (where the developers are from) brought up, that not only are they Working during a Quarantine and global Pandemic.

But there was also the Start of a Civil war in Turkey, ISIS Terrorist attacks, an influx of mass amounts of Refugees as a result of the two aforementioned issues, + The Global Pandemic.

It is an exceptionally "First World Problem" for you to whine about the state of EA and call it a money grab from a company that is putting out tremendous amounts of work, under the social conditions in their homeland. They have plenty of other things to worry about.

Their focus is obviously on other sections of the game. And their work environment is hardly what one would call comfortable given the circumstances.

Modders are also a super-devoted group of people, almost to an over zealous religious degree. For them it is a hobby they love, not a job. I know people who are still to this day modding games over 10 years old, so communities of 500 ish players can continue to play games long abandoned by the Developers. (Warhammer Online, Dawn of War 2 Elite Mod, Blood Bowl 1 & 2).

Modders would be modding like mad, regardless of EA or not. Because thats what they love to do.

 

[Bob Gnarly]

It blows my mind seeing people who defend 55$ apha test.

Only one good thing - more time for modders to create really good game.

Did you just ignore the big warning on Steam detailing that this was an unfinished product? No one forced you to buy into a game in development, yet you're here, sooking, looking for someone else to blame...

 

[ar181]

I admittedly know nothing about game development, but I imagine it also makes a difference that modders can be myopically focused. They generally focus on one or two changes and then make them. Consider that for each change the devs make they have to consider how it will interact with any future systems. For example, the button that isn't working that op mentioned might be intentionally disabled as it is part of another feature or system that they are working on. Why waste time fixing things in the short-term that you know are going to change when you add x new feature. Also consider that for every mod you love there are probably at least a few that you look at and go "nah" - even for the most popular mods. The devs have to cater to broad tastes. There are plenty of changes where people have said something like "I can't believe this hasn't been done" and I've felt pretty glad that it hasn't been done because I like it another way. Modders don't have to consider these things. Also modders are great, but they haven't yet developed the vast new systems and content people have asked for. Also devs are just people. It is possible that a modder might look at a small piece of the game they don't like and figure out a better way to do it especially if they have more time to invest in that. As we all know, there are very talented modders out there

And in regards to a roadmap - as much as fans ask for them (and yest admittedly I would love every little detail on the development), I don't think you actually see games companies release them very often. And when you do, they are often very vague, simplistic or don't come to fruition. And the reason for that, I would assume, is that systems and plans are constantly changing, some ideas may be dis-guarded, new ones introduced, deadlines missed, unforeseen problems, conflicting opinions and visions within the team etc. etc.,. Even at this stage in development I doubt it's a case of "we are going to do x, y, and z in this order and then boom it happens. Providing too much specific information to fans then just leads to a world of hurt as people wonder why things are missing, not on time etc.

They have provided a broad outline of additional things that are going to be included in the final product and they may provide more detail at some point. Now if this stuff isn't in the final release (with some reasonable allowances for changes to the project) then yes I will be upset with Taleworlds.