Think about this like an adult: From a marketing standpoint, why would you admit that your product was sub-optimal? Marketing is all about making your product look good so people buy it. If you admit that your product isn't as good as it could've been, that's counter-productive. People could read that and think, "Hmm, the game must not be very good if the devs have had to issue an apology, so I won't spend my money on it." It's one thing if there are people whining on the forums. I'd wager nearly every game in existence has caused some whining. It's another thing if the developer publicly says "Sorry guys, we ****ed up." And TW isn't just a few people with a dream anymore, they're a company, which is why they have PR and marketing people whose job it is to make sure the game keeps selling and the money keeps rolling in. Frankly, their coffers might need the replenishment, after paying a team to develop a game for 10 years. I think I read somewhere they had over 100 employees now (correct me if I'm wrong). That's a lot of people who have worked a lot of hours. And don't forget the technology, the software, the research, the office building they're in... **** costs money, yo. A lot of money. Even if the devs wanted to say something, they have to think about how a statement like that could affect them, and make decisions from a business standpoint.
Also, what other people have said about entitlement. There are some seriously entitled people on this forum. I get that you're pissed off, but seriously, calm down. Sometimes games disappoint. It's upsetting when it's the game you've been excited about, but unfortunately it happens. And it's easy to get caught up in the lynch-mob effect where you're angry, so you read a bunch of posts from other people who are (even more) angry, which makes you even angrier and you feel even more like you're right and you get further and further into the rage and drama. I remember getting caught up in that when the last Skyrim DLC got delayed for 1 or 2 months. Huge drama. People were so pissed off. I was too. And you know what, in hindsight, we were all a bunch of entitled pricks. There's a lot more to life than one video game. There's a lot more to gaming than one video game. Take a mental step back and look around, broaden your perspective. Find the next game you're looking forward to playing. Go for a walk and get some fresh air. Think about where you want to live, places you want to see, jobs you might enjoy having. Think about that girl or guy you haven't had the courage to try your luck with, and the next time you see them, go for it. Bannerlord's just another video game.
honestly? I think the desperation of frustrated players comes from the fact that the entire industry's shoehorning crap after crap and good game releases have been almost non-existant since late 2000s. The illusion is that this hasn't happened because this degradation of the industry was slow and few people noticed when it begun (I was among those few). I'd make pleas at the start of this trend for ppl to be more demanding and less complacent with dumbdowns and less gameplay, along with somewhat asking that everyone joined some sort of uproar to stop the DLC nonsense.
Now, over a decade later, we're shoehorned endless DLC with full game price tags and less content than former expansions, games are being released incomplete and dumbed-down even if compared to their own franchise, console focus has destroyed most if not all PC RPG&ARPG video game jems (Dragon Age, Diablo, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, even Vampire Bloodlines which was so overboard that even the publisher fired the developer and there has been a complete cut of news about this sequel for over a year). Warband was a mix of RPG RTS and Arcade-ish Combat, responsible for introducing the entire model in which countless medieval combat games were built upon, ie: Mordhau, War of the Roses, Chivalry, even Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been heavily influenced by it. Yet we are seeing the same pattern emerging here, and that's bad news for us. If TW succeeds at hooking braindead gen Zers who have been feeding the industry for the past decade, we're in for a permanent low-quality standard within their releases which means another beloved franchise destroyed by crap yet massive public that has no standards what-so-ever.
That's generally how I personally perceive when I see backlash and whinning, doesn't mean I adhere to it, I simply criticize the game, give suggestions and feedback, complain when nothing's done about it and move on. In fact I was so sure BL had way too high chances of being bad, mediocre at most, that I've stepped away for nearly 2 years and came back now for no logical reason other than boredom. I kept showing up in the forums, reading some feedback, asking a few questions than I'd disappear for many more months, that cycle lasted from 2020 up til last month. Yet, I'm still trying to "help" by flexing my criticism left and right, pointing out towards more educated guesses over what's going on and keeping a level head about it, it's not like the money I spent on this game's gonna hurt me at all, at most I'll have had half-arsed fun with a half-arsed game for more hours than wasting my money on a crap movie in a theater that I've been mislead into believing was good, which currently is very likely to happen with this woke dementia that has happened all over the USA, specially Hollywood (that doesn't mean my country doesn't have it's fair share of woke idiots) and I say that being a left-winged sob...
In the end, it's likely that even if the game sucks, the engine seems to hold, and as long as the engine holds that means mods can fix it. It's not ideal, I'd rather pay modders for the game than the developer in cases like this (but I refuse to pay twice for anything), but it is what it is. I could probably mod the game into a marvel, but that would require too much time, too much effort, and that I re-learnt a lot of forgotten knowledge since I've stepped away from game development around the time the industry went into this steep fall (over a decade ago), so I'd rather not unless I'm overtaken by some unforeseeable passion about it (very unlikely).
Anyway, I can understand both sides, I'm not going to go brainless "I hate you X developer" over any of TW's staff because they've never shown to be a-holes like some public figures from AAA companies ("Toad Howaward" for example), I do find it discouraging, though, because if they fail with BL, I'll not be here for anything else ever again, TW will simply be "just another one" and life goes on. At least the meme in my signature will hold forever
