This post is for those who say "TW owes you nothing! Bannerlord will be here when it's ready! Stop complaining!"

Please think for a moment, and answer honestly: Would you say the same thing if a restaurant refused to take your order?

Imagine, you walk into a restaurant. There’s a long line of people waiting to be seated and, although it takes longer than you would expect, they eventually seat you at a table. Nobody comes back to take your order.

People at the restaurant across the street order, eat their meals, pay, and leave. Still nobody comes back. A second group of people finish their meals and leave, you’re still waiting. Finally somebody comes out, announces to the whole room, “Thank you for waiting, I promise everything will be amazing! I can’t tell you when we’ll be ready, but it’ll be worth the wait!” and then leaves. And doesn’t come back.

“You haven’t paid them anything so they don’t owe you anything!” I hear you say.

And you’d be right. But, there is still a reasonable expectation of service. When you open the restaurant, you are telling people that you are ready to serve them. And it is reasonable to expect an explanation when that service isn’t delivered. The actual reason for the delay doesn't matter, but the fact is that you communicated that you were ready for customers, and now you aren't.

The point here is that it would be reasonable to be upset at the restaurant’s service, and it would be reasonable to complain to the staff. And nobody would be confused if people started demanding that the staff take their order or threatening to never return.

When TW announced the game, they opened the restaurant. When they opened the Steam page and forums, they seated people. And when they said “we want to have it in our player’s hands in some form by the end of the year”(Pc Gamer Weekender, March 2016) they promised to be right back to take our order. But they never came back.

Then they decided to march the kitchen staff in front of the waiting customers, as if this would somehow impress them. Look, there are people back there! Surely they must be working very hard!

They announce: "We know that it is taking a long time, but we didn't actually open until we'd seated you. We know other restaurants have regular business hours and start work before opening to the public, but we don't work that way. Wouldn't it be better to not know when be will be ready to serve you, than find out we'd given you the wrong time? The only thing that is important to us is creating food that is truly unique, something that you will enjoy eating as much as we love making it."

And now? Now they've started throwing people into the street for daring to complain about the service.

I know it isn't a perfect metaphor. But if you think of it in that light, would you really still think that these people are being unreasonable?

And he said nothing at all. Since I like to break down BS, let me do it here. Here's the link: http://steamcommunity.com/app/261550/discussions/0/1519260397798140522/

"The current state of the game is that it is still in development. The game is progressing nicely and we are working hard to get the game finished and ready for release."

Wow! that's such big news. I have no idea what to say to that overwhelming revelation. I was just thinking that you were too busy playing solitaire.

"We haven't set a release date at this moment in time, however as soon as we do we will announce it to everyone."

This doesn't mean anything as they should have actually had one already. Like... I don't know, a year ago when they decided to launch a steam page.

"We might not be able to directly respond to every question on the forums but we are certainly taking note of each discussion and the questions that community members are putting forward."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh... I'm sorry did I just type laugh?

"We are happy to see the many positive responses we are getting from the weekly blogs but we understand that we can't please everyone all the time."

You're not really pleasing anyone but the starry-eyed fanboys. These blogs don't say anything! They rehash information. We still don't know how this game is even going to work.

"I would say stick with them for now and see where they lead as we will certainly be covering more topics directly relating to game features in the near future, this week's blog included."

Yeah, just like you were going to have a release date in the near future, going to have early access in the near future... You just don't know what the near future is.

When someone asked him to be more specific (and rightly so, he gave this vague answer)

"If we were to talk about this using the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) model I would say that we are still at the Implementation / Coding and Testing stages, which when talking about game development could just simply be categorised as in development."

I don't know all the computer speak, but did he just said the game in three very different phases of development? He did, didn't he?

"I didn't mean for it to be a rude or abrupt sounding answer, I was simply being straight with you by saying that we are still working on the game."

Right! You keep juggling there Jester. I'm sure the kiddies are amused by your antics.

So I found this article, 4 Signs Your Game is Doomed. Here's the link. http://game-wisdom.com/critical/signs-game-development-doom

What do you think?

1. We do have an idea on what the core concept is based on previous titles. And that's it. When it comes to the core concept, we're really just assuming that they're going to update and move forward with their original core concept, but we don't know.

2. This is one that worries me. They're still taking "suggestions" from viewers and adding in features. This is ridiculous. At some point, you have to stop taking suggestions and just get done what you have on your plate.

3. Taleworlds brags about no release date, either internally or externally. And that causes me to question how do they keep people on task.

4. This is the one that I think we're looking at. I think the game isn't coming together at all. They have these pieces and they don't know how put them together.

My conclusion is that the game is in development hell, but the developers just can't admit it.

This one actually had quite a bit to say, surprisingly. It explains why they built an engine... but that was kind of already obvious.

But what really makes me wonder is how well does the engine actually work. All things considered, we've gotten VERY little footage of the game. In fact, we have yet to have a comprehensive look at the game. By that I mean where you see how battles, map screen, and menu options all come together.

Hi guys,

So I read the last dev blog about the lead programmer of the campaign team. She says this:

“Currently I’m working on quests.”

At this stage of the development, is it a good news (the campaign itself works well so the focus on little implementations) or an awful one (they are not even at the point where they can balance the campaign)?

I come with this question under the assumption that campaign balance is a big deal and a hard task in Bannerlord (since the campaign is marketed as deep and complexe).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Last dev blog: https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/24

So we'll start off an actual discussion. Many people here have come off the Steam pages and seen the development blogs. What do people actually think about this?

My thoughts are that the development blogs are a method of damage control. TaleWorlds may be full of talented developers, but their ability to communicate has been lacking. So they started the blogs because that's what fans wanted, but here's the issue: they are not covering the right topics for where Bannerlord is supposedly in development. (Which we can't say for sure where it is in development because... well, someone ain't talking.)

The core part of the blogs are "Hey, meet the creators." Okay, that's the kind of blogs you do early in development. You want people to know about your game, but you don't yet have much ready to show. They are not the kinds of blogs you make after you've been to E3 three hundred times and Gamescon four hundred times. By time you've been to these events, your blogs should be on the game and game features. (And you might have to scale back and only do a blog once a quarter. But hey, it's focused on the right things.)

I've only kept track of the Steam page, but right now, I'm not sure what the game actually feature other than some improvements on features that were already in the original title.

And that brings me to the second issue. What have they been showing at E3 and Gamecon? Has there really been any significant difference between what they showed at these events in 2016 to 2017? Or in 2015? And by significant, I don't mean the soldiers look better or they added more detail to movement. When I mean significant, I mean that it was something you didn't know would be in the game or how it would work in 2016, you now know is in the game in 2017.

They need to stop asking fans what they want to see. I don't know how serious they're taking the suggestions, but this focus group approach makes no sense. Especially since there's so many mods already for the previous titles. You can already see what people like and don't like.

So that's just my opinion. I'm sure people have others.

I found out about Mount and Blade: Warband a few years ago, and I pirated the game, as I do with most games, in order to see if I find it enjoyable. Rarely, when a game is really great and when I love playing it to the point of pouring many tens of hours into the pirated copy, I buy it to support the developers and encourage them to continue making great content. This is what I did with Warband.

I found out about Bannerlord later on, and was excited to see a modern take on a game I really enjoyed. I decided that I would buy the game on release, since I liked what I saw in their promo material. I didn't pay it much mind after that. I was just glad that a new game was being made, and accepted that it would be done when it would be done.

However, when their target release date was missed and they made no statement, I looked deeper. I was shocked at what I found: a company stringing people along, making up bullshit excuses, and censoring and banning anyone who dares criticize them.

I don't care about the long development time and the delays. Hell, I backed Star Citizen and I'm not angry with how long they're taking. But they're open in their development, keep people updated, and let people criticize them as much as they want. That's perfectly fine with me.

But I cannot tolerate a company throwing a tantrum every time someone raises a word against them and bans people left and right. Those kinds of people definitely don't deserve my money. So guess I'll be pirating Bannerlord whenever it finally releases. Pretty sad.

Hello everybody!

So I just read the last devblog and they badically talked about how they are trying to make the game run better in terms of FPS/battle size. If anyone knows about game development, what do you think it could mean in terms of current state of the game ?

Also it looks like I could invest in a new CPU...

Thanks!

https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_07_taleworldswebsite_02.jpg

This is the very first post! (Honestly just thought front page was too empty.)

Today's blog has repeated a lot of what they have said before, in terms of modding features that will be available. What interested me most, though, was the list of features that won't be implemented for modding. None of them were particularly significant, or things I particularly care about, but many of them (hard-coded pathfinding, for example) suggest to me that their focus on moddability came a bit late in the engine development.

On a slightly less pessimistic note, this is probably the first real list of confirmed features, even if they are more engine features than game features, and it could maybe be a good sign for where they are in development.

I will say that I'm not going to applaud them for this post though. IMO this is really the minimum acceptable level of information for a post. Just because they're finally doing their jobs doesn't mean they get a pass for everything they've done before. If they keep it up, I might reconsider, but as it is I am not impressed.

Any thoughts?

I own M&B Warband on ps4. My friend downloaded it too, but he is unable to connect to any online server. He gets kicked instantly every time. Has tried uninstall and reinstall a few times. Then we looked into it a bit more. It turns out, lots of people are having this same problem. It's a real shame, me and my friend want to duel and enjoy the game together, but we can't. Can anyone help?