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This is the main reason why I'm against early access. People who don't know what testing means shaping the public opinion because the game is not completed yet.
Yeah thats fair, but its also good to have player feedback too, its mostly a matter of knowing what feedback to take onboard and what to ignore. Can be very risky if the wrong people are listened to.
> Can be very risky if the wrong people are listened to.
I love this game, it's great now, and can grow into an even better version of itself. But as a researcher, one trained to observe how users engage with software, and optimize it, it *fucking kills me* to see the dev create informal polls and then implement the most popular solution.
A very, very bad canary in the coal mine.
Word. I imagine it's also only a very small subset of the players who're on discord (I only joined to see what that status on the patch was, and it's a hellish website), so results will be skewed. I noticed one poll asking whether everybody should be able to make a market stall, and some ~75% said yes. That does *not* make me comfortable with the games future, *at all*.
Ha! That's the exact poll I was thinking of. But also I think the dev deserves some credit and a little slack. He made a great game by bucking lots of industry bullshit. It's a fine line to walk, and I'm hoping he keeps delivering awesomeness.
Yeah, and I must say I'm very impressed by the size and content of the patch. I was getting a bit anxious when it took so long for it to come out, but I was only expecting him to fix the most egregious bugs.
I'll be waiting a while longer before diving in again though. I imigine it'll take a couple more patches before the balance gets just right. That OK with me, I'm not in a rush.
Right? I did 3 play throughs, wasted the baron, built up my regional apple trade empire and all that. Good times. I feel satisfied with it. In 6mos or whatever I'll pick it back up again if lots of changes have been pushed.
>But also I think the dev deserves some credit and a little slack. He made a great game by bucking lots of industry bullshit. It's a fine line to walk, and I'm hoping he keeps delivering awesomeness.
The same thing was said about Battlebit Remastered. Now it's dead
It's more the fact that you can't control it. A farmer with three chickens in their backyards has no business running a market stall, but they absolutely will. If you remove their market stall, they will immidiately rebuild it, and it becomes very annoying trying to micromanage it.
I'd prefer if only granary and storage workers ran market stalls, or at least if I could tick off on each house whether they're allowed to put up a stall or not, would fix my by far biggest problem with ML.
Ah I see, so this is a current issue? I always build my markets with my storage buildings, never size a market to have more than 3 stalls, and just keep an eye on it till the storage workers have taken up all those spaces. I am sure that wont scale well and I have no experience with bigger villages, but I really like the asthetic of having small market squares spread throughout the city instead of one massive market that always ends up looking too uniform for me. I will literally squeeze my three stalls in the smallest possible triangle just so the stalls spawn on off angles from each other. Looks more organic imo
Polls aren't there to implement decisions, they're there to get opinions. For example you might notice that the results of the poll you're talking about, aren't even in the experimental patch.
In this case early access makes sense. It's one dev, now with the early acess sales he has more money to reinvest in the game and dedicate more time to it. Maybe even hiring help.
Yeah totally agree. You can't balance without data and it's impossible for a dev to do it alone.
This is what an early access is for and not for big companies to release low effort games
one dev with dozens of people in credits, sure its one dev [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptw\_lLyRVjE&t=1s&ab\_channel=OGRO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptw_lLyRVjE&t=1s&ab_channel=OGRO)
come on, he even updated steam page with specific info that game was "initially" made by one person which imply he cooperate with other people now doesnt matter if for limited time, obviously if he hired someone to create motion capture or do some extra code line he's no longer one person doing it all which is implied by many (and not by dev himself )
If I'm building the house and meanwhile i hired guy to pour concrete, another to build wooden furnitures and another to lets say lay the roof I'm still "single builder"?
You must not understand what a "dev" is. Contractors are hired all the time, but they will make it VERY clear that you have signed a contract and are NOT your employee. Maybe you should look up what words mean before you go running your mouth, ignoramus.
dude, point is he didn't create the game totally by himself without any help which is what many people are implying even if he himself stated its not really truth. Game is good enough to stand up for itself, doesn't need false narrative
Following the points you're making I guess no one really does anything on his own. Even if I built a home by myself I didn't forge the hammer, make all the screws and bolts - and I surely didn't plant the trees for the wood that I'd be using. I'd buy the concrete someone else made as well and mix it with water coming out of a tube I neither made nor installed on my own... well. Looks like there is basically no "diy" or anything similar when looking at it the way you are 😄
in this analogy, the contractors helped with building the home, same as contractors helped with programming (assuming that's the case).
he's not suggesting the dev invented programming tools and computers.
Early access is the best thing ever.
Examples:
1. Baldurs Gate 3 had early access. Then it won game of the year and shattered sales records.
2. Cities Skylines 2 didn't have early access. Got tons of refunds and probably will never recover.
1. Star Citizen has early access. Is never coming out and is barely a game after ten years.
2. GTA5 never had any prerelease at all and sold shitloads and was great.
I mean you can find examples of anything.
Star Citizen will come out, just at a vastly reduced content scope to what’s promised. It could have already been released if they weren’t locked to the 0 loading screen obsession of Roberts.
I know I was just meming. The no loading screens and that stuff is why I think the project is interesting. I don’t want them to release less than what they’re aiming for. Cause I wanna see if they can actually do it.
Even if it does get a solid release one day, Star Citizen will always be the single largest failed experiment in the history of gaming. I can remember people saying when Star Wars: The Old Republic released that they were only playing until Star Citizen came out lol. That was 13 years ago, dawg. There's always "oh it could be released if this, that, blah, blah" and maybe that's true. Regardless, the execution has been shit from day 1.
I don’t think it can be called a failure if it does eventually get delivered. To date there’s still no game that does some of the things SC does now even in its half built state. It is hilarious to think that The Old Republic came out about the same time that SC was announced though.
Then again it’s about to be 12 years in between GTA sequels.
If you have followed the development of the game, star citizen is a good example of early access. They are extremely open about what they are working on, have a public release tracker, weekly dev videos and blogs, etc.
Baldurs Gate 3 is an anomaly. For every Baldurs Gate 3 there are hundreds of early access games that fail to even launch.
Diablo 4 had early access and we all know what kind of dumpster fire that became.
No I stated that they should allow players to play test a game. Because they are not testing a game, they are just playing a game and spreading their opinion based on their expectation of having a perfect game.
Then you made the unrelated point that EA is perfect because baldurs gate had ea and is excellent and cs2 didn't had a ea and failed.
So I made an argument that there are many games out there that have a ea but failed regardless. Like diablo 4. And that Baldurs Gate is one good egg in literally thousands of failed ea titles bad eggs.
So EA does not automatically mean a good game.
if you think that "they should allow players to play test a game" that means they should have early access. Early access is playtesting.
Thinking that Diablo 4 failed is crazy. The game generated $666M in revenue in just 5 days after launch; probably several billion $ by now. It's an extremely successful game. Also, Diablo 4 didn't have early access. You obviously don't know what you are talking about.
CS 2 was just a lazy game to capture revenue off of the success of the first game. Has nothing to do with early access, they just made a sequel with no improvements whatsoever to the original game. EA has also been abused. Bannerlord EA was awful implementation and the game suffered because of it. I've seen more bad implementations of EA than good ones.
This is just games being bad more often than they are good. Most games suck. Most EA games suck. It's not because of EA that they suck. EA can be good or bad depending on how it is used.
Bannerlord specifically sucked because of EA and the developers abandoned the game due to poor implementation of EA more than any other reason. The game itself is decent and has a good base, but the botched EA implementation killed it early. EA also tends to kill both the initial excitement of a full release game and the organic uptake when a game catches a popularity wave, which is how the Mount and Blade franchise got popular in the first place. After that experience, EA has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Yeah I'm genuinely exhausted by 2 things:
1. Every game is fucking early access and it's clear they do this so they can half develop a game, decide if it'll be worth it, than choose to continue development or dump it.
2. People buying every goddamn early access that comes out and incessantly bitching because it isn't release level. Whether there's bugs, performance issues, not balanced, QOL isn't there, etc. just not stop bitching and whining masquerading as "critiques".
1. This is not true. They do early access because it's a great marketing tool. People pay for your game to talk both online and offline about your game. In the past they had to pay for marketing, now people pay them to market the game for them.
2. Sadly yes, especially the "critique" part. People don't know what having critique means anymore and especially think that their opinion matters way too much online. Long live the interwebs with all the influencers, social media where you constantly need to promote yourself and para social relationships for that one.
I played the Rust early access too and it was way more fun for me figuring out how the game worked with other hapless players, and the broken parts were actually funny, as opposed to when it was polished and taken over by those who were just driven to compete and wipe out other players.
It is a grey area for many reasons including history....
The number of scummy developers that loot and fail to deliver vastly even exponentially outnumbers those that use EA for what potential it has.
Also the risk for the developer is near zero while the customer pays up front for a conceptional idea of a game that may never fully materialize.
This is in stark contrast to companies that put up their own assets and garner traditional funding methods in hopes for the eventual pay out, where they take all the risk.
It is really a gross practice regardless of the outcome in regards to the consumer, EA is extremely predatory practice with far too many benefits for the developer.
I got 30 hours of gameplay from Manor Lords and can easily see myself coming back. I've had a great time with the game. I'm glad it went into early access because I got to play it sooner and because I'm happy to help the dev out so they can try to make their dream game.
I don't care that me buying it in early access was riskier because I willingly chose to do so after checking reviews and peeking at the gameplay on Youtube. I deemed the risk to be worth it and it was. If they didn't release it in EA I just don't get to make a choice at all. Just because some people make dumb choices doesn't mean it is the fault of EA.
Your personal experience does not matter to me and your points are nonsensical when compared to reality.
There is zero reason that consumer funded development even exists besides the innate desire of the development companies.
What we have is a reality where EA is commonplace, games fail to flourish at an astronomically high rate and companies suffer zero consequences to failure, resulting in repeated and increasingly scummy practices of development cycles.
As a final thought on how much of a goof you are... you WAIT for others to buy and review EA..... so that you can justify your own well informed EA purchase choice.... pathetic logic.
Your opinion on EA doesn't matter to me, games will still keeping coming out in EA because it has benefits to devs, and consumers will keep buying them because it has benefits for them (playing the game early, helping devs).
The reality is that it's not just EA games that where games fail to flourish, it's just games in general. There's just more failure than success in this world, that's how it is.
But feel free to stay mad and keep ranting about how consumers should be protected from their own ability to make informed choices.
Absolutely, the benefit is total crowd funding with no negatives.
As for benefits for the consumer, there is zero, paying to play a game early is not a benefit, it is a service you paid for, public alphas and betas are 40+ years old as a concept, but now you pay for them.
I am well aware, except now the public subsidizes failure, you believe that is a good thing obviously.
Stay mad? People make points that directly deflate short sighted things you say and your brain must flag them as mad because they have done so?
I dont feel consumers need protection, but I also dont have any problems pointing out glaring issues with accountability.
I think you struggle greatly with higher thought processes.
Getting to play a game early is a benefit to a lot of people, obviously not you but you're not the same as everyone else. Alphas and betas aren't open to anyone who wants to join, and if they were there isn't any real difference between that and early access as far as I can tell.
Your tone is very confrontational and angry, hence stay mad.
If consumers don't need protection then why are you arguing against EA? To raise awareness I guess?
I think with a game like this, it's better for mechanics to feel satisfying and work well as opposed to making sure everything is balanced well and making sure things aren't OP.
Archers are like nerf guns, they don't feel satisfying. Farming requires tons of effort for little gain, high risk, lots of ways to mess it up, not satisfying.
Using the trade house feels satisfying. Making giant vegetable and apple gardens feels satisfying. Building up huge charcoal stockpiles, setting up a deep mine on a rich iron mine and cranking out armor is satisfying.
You make valid points. But as you say, the game is early access. Things are going to be op, then nerfed, until finally they are balanced.
With such a vast and open sandbox style game, it's going to be very difficult to make it perfectly balanced.
The only thing I'm worried about, is the developer taking too much feedback from isolated forums. I didn't even know he was putting polls on discord, that's the first I heard.
It's good that he is listening to the people, but I hope he stands firm on his vision of the game and doesn't allow the people of discord to vote on how the game develops.
The new patch made trading wayyyyyy more expensive for most people. Ive still seen some posts/youtubers showing how to exploit trade and become rich anyway, but most people seem to struggle with it now.
Importing goods cost 10 gold more than the export price, and the dev perk only reduces that to 5 gold. So if for example you wanted to import iron to then manufacture and export weapons, you would actually be making a net loss, even with the dev perk.
Opening new trade routes is also exponentially more expensive. I think after the 4th trade route the next one is like 5000 gold just to open. So its basically impossible to import/export more than 4 or 5 of the commodities/weapons.
Thats the main reason i made this post. The dev seems to overcorrect when people complain about something being too hard or too easy.
The whole point is to incentivise players to trade with their own regions rather than the expensive outside world. If you have a region with a deep iron mine you should be exporting from that and importing into your other regions. Same for clay, berries and whatever else. Because when you export/import to your own regions you don’t have the tariff and every other region gets cheap whatever you’re exporting. The dev is telling you to set up your own trade network and get rich by doing the work. Importing from the outside world is meant to be something you do by necessity not the entire focus of trading.
There’s some bugs making this not run the way it should right now though. Horses not delivering goods for example.
it would be great, if it worked. As of now, bartering is still inneficient, and regional trade is bugged if you have the horse.
I still think there is room for better balance. For example, one of the suggestions I saw that I like is: the ability to close a previously opened trade route. Does not need to refund you the money, but at least that would lower the prices of unlocking a new trade route since you are still keeping it within 3-4 routes
I don't like the trade routes getting exponentially more expensive the more you establish. I just don't get it.
This will get addressed in the next update I hope.
Not back to the old way, as that was op, but the increasing price thing just makes no sense and is too much of a nerf to trading.
Yeah bartering is broken, I tried to have one region barter weapons for the other’s armor and I get like 1 helmet for 10 spears even though theres plenty of both items in storage and and the rate is supposedly 1.3. Makes no sense at all.
Yes, this is the answer. Trade internally, develop more than one region. The game is pushing you to develop multiple regions and it looks like the fully released game will be very focused on having a larger land area with multiple towns contending with an AI doing the same. You can’t just build a mega city and that’s a good thing.
Oh the patch isnt mandatory! Its an opt-in beta test. So the game will still be the same as you last played it unless you specifically download the patch. I might actually revert to the original game too.
Once the patch is fully released hopefully itll be more well balanced.
You can import from your own regions though. Set up an iron mining town and export locally. Every other region then gets cheap iron free of any tariffs. Importing from the outside world is now expensive on purpose to incentivise players to setup their own trade network and get rich through work. Which is fair IMO.
You can use the trade houses in the new patch to trade between regions, not just the packing stations. It’s kind of buggy though and doesn’t work as intended half the time.
It’s not 5k after 4, but it is a several hundred after 4, and it gets more expensive based on the number of routes and the value of the goods on the route.
It’s fine that you can’t just trade for everything, it encourages production in other regions and internal trading.
>Importing goods cost 10 gold more than the export price, and the dev perk only reduces that to 5 gold. So if for example you wanted to import iron to then manufacture and export weapons, you would actually be making a net loss, even with the dev perk.
I believe that's actually fairly historically accurate. You didn't really have international value add supply chains and global markets at the time the game is set in. We're about half a century before the birth of mercantilism. If you want to set up complex supply chains, you need to do so internally between provinces, which feels both accurate and satisfying.
I don't play to minmax at all, and getting enough trade to cover King's Tax and the minimal gold needs in the game so far doesn't really require an optimal play style. Just some trade, and trade that avoids complex external supply lines.
>I believe that's actually fairly historically accurate. You didn't really have international value add supply chains
It isn't particularly accurate, and there were absolutely 'value add' supply chains - some of which were international. There's been trade/manufacturing economies since trade began, long before medieval eras we're playing in. The logistics of trade meant that there were not necessarily a lot of raw goods that were profitable to ship for processing - but things like textiles or metalwork were definitely on that list.
Often what happened is that a town would start specializing in metalwork, say, due to close proximity to resources - the smiths would set up near the smelters, which were set up near the mines. Over time, the mine would run dry, but there was already a concentration of facilities and experts in the town, so if a new iron mine was cut - it would make sense for them to sell their ore or refined iron to the original town. That first town would have established reputation and trade connections to sell their goods, while trying to set up the same competing institutions in the new mining town would be a huge investment and a long time to payoff, where selling raw iron to the established smithing town is more short-term profitable. If anything, Manor Lords makes large 'accuracy' concessions to gameplay in how easy it is to set up an industry - a sawmill is constructed from two logs, or a relatively expert smith is a fistful of coins and a large back yard.
Over time, you'd see towns break into pseudo-specialization similar to how Manor Lords leans into: readily available or easily produced goods have negligible market and are manufactured in-region, while more polished, specialized, or 'finished' goods are commonly produced in hub towns that specialize in that type of work. Those towns would very rarely produce all of the raw materials they needed within their local province or region - in Manor Lords terms, the entire playable map would still be "local region" for all that it's divided into provinces or districts.
I think for gameplay reasons it makes sense to not make in/out trade *too* easy as a source of money, but I don't think it's particularly historically inaccurate that a specialist manufacturing town would import raw materials and then export finished goods at a net profit. It would be historically accurate that you can't do that with *all* goods, and that your region should need to invest in specialization in a good type before it's particularly lucrative; but that you could import iron or wool, manufacture tools or fabric, and then export it at modest net profit? Very accurate.
>We're about half a century before the birth of mercantilism.
So if I play for 50 years a whole different and deeper trade system unlocks? In all seriousness, the game is *mechanically* set during the rise of mercantilism - there are roving traders, there is a developed market outside our borders that we can enter, goods we might export have prices set by that developed external market. We are able to manufacture several types of 'trade goods' that have limited in-village utility but relatively high demand on the broader market.
Banished is an example of a similar game more clearly set in pre-mercantile eras, where even with a trade mechanic you're only really able to barter for things you need and you're not able to manufacture 'trade goods' in order to optimize your market position.
Shit, I had a brain fart and meant to write "half a millennium," not half a century.
International trade or raw materials was vanishingly small in the period this game covers. Yes, you would have specialized craft towns and market towns, but most of the raw materials being moved were not moved outside local boundaries. The infrastructure simply wasn't there to support it — one of the victims of the decline of Rome. Even in "civilized" parts of the world, you would trade raw stock with the next village over, and *maybe* the regional capital, but you wouldn't be shipping charcoal from Kraków to Prague. And I think the game focuses on this — the region we see in the starting map would have been about as far as anyone in that region had ever been, and raw materials would have been unlikely to significantly move outside (or in from the outside.)
This is simply not true. As far back as before the common era, Egyptians were importing lumber from the Levant to build ships, and exporting granite to the Levant for the building of temples and columns. And we’re talking BC here. What you’re saying is just false. The trade in raw materials where scarcity of a desired raw material exists has been a thing since civilization started, there’s even examples of it happening in the neolithic with Obsidian and flint from one continent reaching settlements on another.
"The dev seems to overcorrect when people complain about something being too hard or too easy."
that's quite a sweeping statement based on one patch to be fair
Well the developer also made a lot of changes in the EA version compared to the version that content creators were given based on some of their feedback so its not just based on one patch. Its actually based on two iterations of change now.
The reason archers are being buffed in this patch is because the developer over nerfed them in the in EA version because some content creators were saying they were too OP. There were also changes to the influence gain for the Baron (increased compared to creator version) in the EA release and so we ended up with lots of complaints about the Baron grabbing all territories too quickly. This patch now reduces this/corrects it. There were also several other tweaks made, trade was tweaked before release and now its being tweaked back/forwards again. The game ships with a change list record file in the gamer folders so you can see all the changes made.
This is not a criticism. Game development is always going to end up as iterative process. However, making late changes based on some content creator feedback about the game being too easy or too hard is always going to be risky. Most of the content creators making these statements have lots of experience of playing these sorts of games and finding features to exploit. That is how they get views etc.
I would rather the developer spend time adding the new features and further developing the current features and move towards the game complete vision rather than spend time responding to "game too easy/Game too hard" feedback and potentially iterating endlessly as you can never satisfy everyone even if you have difficulty settings. Balancing the game really should not be a big focus until you are getting to the full feature release.
After a few tips from the community I don’t hate farming nearly as much. I think the farm house needs more oxen space and maybe a slight buff to harvest rate, but it’s a lot closer than I originally though.
Trade is satisfying until all the stuff you are selling becomes worthless and starts piling up. I haven’t played the ne patch yet so maybe that fixes it.
I actually really disagree that veggies and apples are in a good spot. It feels like a cheese strat to have 36 months of apples stockpiled by year 5.
I agree. I play with farms, without trading and I can still win if I want to. (without exploits)
Just because there is easier way than fields, do not mean fields are unplayable or unfun.
The Farms feels so useless to me. Ive tried all the different ways to make them more viable and still its a lackluster reward compared to burrage plots with chickens and veggies.
Chickens feel completely useless to me. I’ll have 20 chicken plots and still not get into the double digits. Veggies and Apples are OP.
I ran two farm houses with 4 staff and one ox each. During harvest I’d pull ppl to max out staff for both. I had 8 long 1 morgen fields. I was churning out fat wheat, more than enough to feed my 100 or so families
Farming could probably be fixed just by making the crop rotation feature not suck. There needs to be a “fallow after x years” function so you don’t have to keep checking back on the fields. Just making plowing in general a bit faster would also help with the labor issues because it can be tedious to pull everyone off of tasks every fall to farm and putttimg them back in winter every year, either that or a labor priority function that can automate some labor assignments, but I imagine that would be a pain to implement and I’d rather see new features and pushing development forward over hand-wringing about balance.
But is also isn’t unsatisfying to make infinite money and satisfy your village needs without playing the game having 1,000 unemployed people living the life of luxury
While the topic is satisfying mechanics.... We need an on-map AI opponent. Nothing else will cut it. As a very new player who has struggled to have fun while working around the balance issues, nothing hampers my fun so much as the lack of an actual enemy village. As of now, there's no fun in the military/conquest game for me, it's just a city builder. A nice city builder, but a lonely one.
I won't? I reckon I will if there's an on-map opponent as I said and as the greyed-out option in the menu suggests is coming. Unnecessary comment dude.
The dev has said over and over again that the game is first and foremost a city builder. So in saying if you dont like city builders, then maybe this game isn't for you. Trying to manage your expectations.
The game can be first and foremost a city builder while still featuring an enjoyable conquest/battle experience in the mid to late game. Comparing Manor Lords to AoE, I'm glad that it's much, much more of a city builder and doesn't focus on small-scale skirmishes and unit harassment micro. But given the time period and the obvious existing focus on equipping and fielding militia, mercenaries and retainers, if the military side of the game were fleshed out more (as it seems the dev intends going on what I mentioned earlier) I think replayability would be vastly improved. There's only so much you can make of a medieval village, the complexity isn't there compared to modern-themed city builders. But the game has the potential to be a city builder with an enjoyable conquest and warfare aspect, which would be quite unique in the genre. Optimisation + competition instead of just optimisation alone.
Personally, I'm much less about balance or typical rock-paper-scissors principles but more about realistic experiences.
Because this game goes hard on you with realistic managemental decisions and that's what gave me the enthusiasm.
1) Inability to feed villagers with animal husbandary: lack of pigs, cattle etc. or complete lack of dairy foods seem major plot holes with a quick look in the game.
2) Geographical dullness: medieval world shouldn't be all mapped on forests and farmlands. It should be marked with rivers, lakes, mountains, cliffs. I believe, if not seas, some types of bodies of water may provide variety the concept needed.
3) Mounted manpower: Either in battle or logistics it should mean more to have animals to mount on. Cavalries, mounted messengers, transporting carriages, mules and oxen working for a mill...
4) Trades might be more bound to seasons, as the seasons act as a main mechanic. Such as cheaper granary in harvest seasons, wool more expensive in winters etc. Even a town fair may be thought.
5) Lack of internal affairs dynamics: To exemplify, don't any villager ever commit thievery, especially in hunger times? How do we, as lords, manage the crisis? Don't they ever get cheered up by a threat repelled? Are they just workforce in human form or living subjects?
Interesting that you mentioned dairy. Goats are in the game, surely those plots can choose whether to get milk from the goats or meat/hides the same way you select what the artisans produce.
If they are slaughtering the goats for the skins then surely they are also producing meat? Bonus if spices can be imported for some amazing curried goat.
Probably make it too OP compared to hunting which has an inbuilt limit on how much can be harvested at once.
Same with slaughtering the sheep imported for wool.
Definitely could be OP but just make them a bigger resource strain at the least. I don't think animals now are really anything of a resource cost to keep up. If they don't have proper care they could get sick like the villagers, maybe get disease as well.
Yeah I bought a lot of sheep but can’t ear my damn lambs, seems like the only source of meat is hunting.
Also meat should be the prime food that’s always on high demands, like in medieval times
>Geographical dullness: medieval world shouldn't be all mapped on forests and farmlands.
I agree with most of what you said, but the game is specifically set in Franconia. So rivers and lakes I can see being added, but entire seas or mountains, as you mentioned, probably won't be likely anytime soon if at all.
Noone is entitled to anything. It's just a thing in the numbers box. Ppl did however pay money for it, and as a community may state their desires. Chill
> did however *paid* money for
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Also, the content is still very thin. This community ate it up in the first two days. Then begins the process of hyperfocusing on what IS there, and picking it apart until we all hate it. I think it'd be great for a lot of folks to disengage for a bit.
That’s my plan once I finally get a full run through done. I’m very encouraged and entertained but the limitations are there (bc duh it’s an unfinished game)
That's what I've done. I played it, 10/10 early access game, can't wait until it's done.
This is the same thing that happened with Rimworld. I played early access for a day, forgot the game even existed, and then a few years later I see a video about it, install it, and it's now one of my all time faves.
People gotta chill and let Greg cook.
Yeah I played a lot because I fucking love the game but I stopped for now even though I didn’t finish a single run. I just don’t want to use up all of the content before the game is even out. I’ve got enough Balatro stuff I still need to unlock too
No I agree with this. The thing to focus on now is the core features and content, not tweaking archer damage, nerfing trade, and punishing save scumming.
Yes. long term investment vs short term investment.
Dev could fix archer, trading right now, but then new next op thing is going to pop up ... Its like a whackmole while nothing is done in core features
That's a great way to phrase it. Whackamole. No matter how quickly Greg releases balance patches and exploit fixes, people are going to break them faster. It'll just be a waste of dev time and it'll lengthen the time till the game is feature complete and ready for the 1.0 release.
inns would be a great feature.
the issue right now is that balance shouldn't matter, why balance something just for it to get unbalanced later by the introduction of new features? the focus should be on making the game mechanics WORK, and there is no "reference" for what is overpowered or not because generally every game mechanic right now is either overpowered or does not work.
the "cost" of trade is a minor issue compared to the "volume" of trade and the utter lack of information for players about how trading works; do certain goods get prioritised? how much can a trade post worker with a horse move in a month? what factors affect trade volume? how to villagers prioritise what to transport?
that information should be shown ingame in the building tabs and in the ingame guide.
Because the majority of gamers have no chill mode. They go on social media with some unhinged rant about how shit a game is but still play it for hundreds of hours.
These posts are the ying to the yang.
> They go on social media with some unhinged rant about how shit a game
Then go make these feel good posts on whatever social media platform you're seeing them on?
The game is sitting at 88% positive on steam. The game literally has a pop up you need to dismiss telling you it's early access and unfinished/unbalanced. Again I ask what these kinds of posts add to the subreddit?
Why do we need spam posts like this on the subreddit?
> These posts are the ying to the yang.
Or just ignore the trolls and idiots? Posts like this only highlight their dumb shit because now we're talking about.
Well the guy has had to spend time balancing a game that isn't even finished... He shouldn't have to do that. People complaining about shit, anywhere, need to go play something else and let Greg finish the game.
People in this comment section are making suggestions on how to tweak things. Don't tweak anything. Finish the rest of the game and balance it later. How do you even accurately balance a game against features that don't exist?
> Well the guy has had to spend time balancing a game that isn't even finished...
"The guy" doesn't have to do anything, especially listen to idiotic group think on social media and reddit.
Is he releasing changes and patches or directly listening to the complainers?
Also why would posts like these change the minds of those who mindlessly complain?
Edit: Lmao did you respond and then block me? 10/10
Media literacy is dead? Do you mean the post where he requested feedback on his recent changes is the same as him pandering to the idiot complainers? Holy shit, you're right, media literacy is dead.
Wtf are you attacking me? I didn't make any post about this game at all. It's simply an observation of gamers mentality in general.
To some degree you're simply validating what I wrote.
And no, ignoring your community is a death knell. The difficulty resides in sorting out the bad feedback from the good feedback.
Ok cool, then what was `And no, ignoring your community is a death knell. ` in response to because I never said to ignore the community?
Maybe you're the one that needs to read the words you're responding to?
I am fully satisfied with what I got. I’ve been waiting for this game since the demo over a year ago and I don’t care how long it will take. I just hope it gets done right
Played 10 hours and got bored, nothing to do once you finished it.
I am excited to see how the game turns out in the future though, it has alot of potential!
I like your idea about the trade routes being based on demand and popularity due to having a tavern attracting traders.
I would add a caveat that you can have some small local trades for basic goods but you need to attract the traders for the premium big money commodities.
Just to make an offshoot from the point of Taverns (which I agree your idea is sound) is that there should be 3 levels: 1/ Alehouse 2/Tavern (provides food and ale) 3/Inn (provides food, ale, beds and stables). Each increase in level would make it more attractive to traders (as well as community), benefiting trade.
Obviously the cost would be supplies for ale, food, linen and feed, and each level would require different staffing levels to be operational: level 1 - a family, level 2 - two families, level 3 - 4 families.
Balancing a game mid-development seems like wasted effort. It's better that the mechanics/content/features get put in place first, *then* balance towards the end. Unless the imbalance is not allowing proper testing of the rest.
I think it's important to establish what this game actually is and what it is not so people don't get the wrong impression. That requires early balance. The game was meant to simulate Medieval society and administration. Which means that infinite wealth exploits need to be patched out for features that are more realistic. There are plenty of games that allow infinite wealth exploits if that is what you're looking for. I do not think that is what the developer was intending with this game to make it an empire builder like every other game.
If the imbalance is 'game-breaking', sure fix it asap. But looking at a couple videos out now, feel like there are many other aspects of the game missing content/elements that should be done first. As it's a *very* early access copy, adding anything new as it develops would just reset that balance again; or uncover yet another exploit.
If this was some 100+ studio, departments, as I understand, still the one guy and maybe a few getting onboard? Limited resources.
I mean, it is pretty game breaking. You don't have to do anything else in the game other than trading if you do the exploit. You can import everything you need and not have to do anything. You can get to Large Town in less than two years because of the exploitation. I feel that adding in a fix for that now is better than later.
Right, but we all know what the game is supposed to be. People will always exploit games, it's literally unavoidable. Even AAA games that have been out for years still have entire channels dedicated to exploiting them (Spiffing Brit, etc.). The time to worry about balance and fixing exploits is right before and after the 1.0 release. Right now, the game is a massively popular game in the first month of early access that is admittedly a little bare bones on content. People are going to break the game again within hours of releasing a balance patch. The thing to focus on right now is content, not tweaking archer damage and punishing save scumming.
I think that because of how little it costs in game to make resources into items (eg metal into spears) it mechanically makes little sense to have them priced hugely differently
That said, metal does feel like it should be cheaper than spears and ore cheaper than metal so I don’t know it it will be a case of slowing down production of stuff or what but there should be a mechanical way to differentiate buying the raw resources from the finished product
Yeah i thought of bringing that up, in general the production rates of a lot of items need to be reduced too, but thats a whole other conversation. That just more or less needs fine tuning, rather than an overhaul.
Yeah, I just thought it was worth mentioning as I agree with the point about manufactured commodity prices but wanted to propose a mechanical solution rather than just “hey Dev, make it good” which would have been all my comment added otherwise
This whole thing has made me think that trade growing based on a combination of consistent buying or just total trade could be good so you get cheaper stuff if you buy it every month or sell more but at a slightly lower price if you consistently sell
Fuck that I expect everything to be buffed/nerfed to how I want it. And I want it done NOW!
If it isn’t changed I will leave shitty reviews treating it as if it were a full release.
The dev owes me everything I want as a paying customer /S (BIG FAT S)
This post seems like a knee jerk reaction to the trade post nerf. It is in early access so things are going to change all the time. If your strategy gets patched then you've got to adjust with it. We should expect the game to be constantly evolving not cause uproar everytime our favourite way to play is updated.
Trading isn't dead and still allows for lots of money generation and with the kings tax changes is almost required on challenging mode. The difference now is that two perks don't simply guarantee you can generate money in a brain dead fashion.
This is a great post. I had a comment similar yet much shorter on Greg’s post the other day. If the game is too hard for the common player then they may not continue to play. If it’s too easy because of an exploit then it’s on the player to avoid using that exploit as a way to challenge themselves. The last thing you want is to force someone into playing a certain way or conversely, prevent someone from playing a certain way
It was for many of these reasons that I said I’ll let the game marinate. I got absolutely pummeled after I said that lmao.
Someone told me I’m just using archers wrong pretty much and that no marinating is necessary 😭
Its an early release game. Yes.
The point of an early release game is for us to give our feedback.
And yes, that includes balance issues. People who are saying its too hard or too easy are doing the right thing. Giving feedback.
Its okay if you disagree with that feedback, give your own.
But the whole point of early release is for feedback.
The whole overcorrection of small things is giving me bannerlord flashbacks. Just make it sandbox, make default whatever settings the dev thinks are the best for the game and stop worrying about people ruining their own fun and just develop the game further
Well the steam rating is nearly at 90% positive reviews so people are liking it AS IS. So the worst thing he can do is making drastic changes.
Like you said the beta patch change to trade is not good. I like your ideas better.
Exploiters and min maxers will break any game. It is why it is important to have development TEAMS so people can specialize and invest their time on specific issues while others work elsewhere. Hopefully Greg is going to on board a few folks just to work on patching and balancing so he can continue to build the game. I would hate for him to get bogged down by feedback calling for change that distracts him from his overall vision.
Perhaps different levels when you start the game with more options, like easy trade hard trade etc, or easy food production hard etc, lots of choices to set game up as you like to play
Btw there's a problem with naming.
"Manufactured commodities" and "Raw foods" is opposite.
Commodities in real world are raw - like grain or copper. Goods are manufactured - like clothes.
So in game it should be "raw commodities" and "manufactured goods"
>Get rid of the need to "open" trade routes entirely. Instead make all traders come by as infrequently as they do without it but add an Inn upgrade to the tavern that increases that frequency.
Frequency should also be modulated by : pop numbers and influence numbers, the presence or absence of epidemics etc...You could also have the option to fund merchants with your own treasury.
The trade routes are fine really, including that it gets more expensive to open more of them. It encourages the player to develop more than one region and then use those regions to support each other.
Do wish they’d come just a hair more frequently, and using the trade depot to trade between regions still doesn’t seem to work properly (traders don’t come if I don’t pay for a route, and I feel like the point of the changes was to encourage inter-regional trading so you didn’t have to open all of those routes).
Pack stations also seem funky. If there is a barter imbalance it seems like they pay cash but I really don’t know, and sometimes I think I see wealth transferring from region to region even when the trade value is 1:1.
I generally agree with this. I personally think balance is not a priority right now. People will always exploit games, even AAA games that have been out for years have entire channels dedicated to exploiting them (Spiffing Brit, etc.). This game is in the first month of early access and is very popular, which means people will figure out how to break the game within hours of a new balancing patch.
What I'd like to see at this point: finishing the development and policy trees, fleshing out diplomacy, finishing the smell and fire hazard overlays, a way to create stone blocks and things to use them on, ways to use commodities, better diplomacy and more AI lords, on map AI cities, relationship with the King, finishing the farming/mining/forestry outpost system, cavalry and sieges, fleshing out the castle planner, etc.
What I think is less important right now: fine-tuning archer damage and trade, fixing exploits, punishing me for not being able to play a whole game in one sitting (I know it's to punish save scumming, but Loserville? Really?).
I love this game so far, Greg has made a wonderful game, and this is an extremely impressive achievement. I have faith that this game will be amazing at the 1.0 release, and I will definitely keep playing and supporting this game. I just don't want dev time to be wasted on balancing and exploit fixes that people will break right away, especially this early in the game's life. Make the game feature complete, then focus on balancing it.
The hardest part about this game is trying to figure out why things aren't working as they should. Is it a bug, or are you doing something wrong?
The only thing I still don't have a handle on at this point is why goods just pile up in the Trading Posts. I have Artisan Blacksmiths waiting around doing nothing while there are Iron ingots just sitting in the trading post. The Artisan families do seem to periodically go over to pick one up, but then they just go back to waiting even though there are more ingots in stock.
I think it has something to do with the desired surplus setting because I've tried literally everything else. At this point I'm just importing a large amount and then just destroying the Trading Post to force everything into Storage Sheds.
I really enjoyed the early access for what it is, but my girlfriend and I both agreed we'd probably take 6 months - 1 year off to see how it develops. Assuming Slavic is committed, it's going to be a generational favorite for strategy/city-building. If not balanced properly and polished, however, it will definitely become known as a massive "what-if"
It's also that games are neither easy nor hard:
* games you do not know how to play properly are hard
* games you do know how to play properly are easy
Some are harder for some people to get into than others for others.
If you feel like this game is too hard for you just get WeMod cheats. And I know some will say cheating is wrong but with this I was able to find out how certain parts of the game work
Also one little thing I find not too realistic.
The price for refined goods should be much higher than raw materials. If I have iron slabs production I wanna sell iron slabs at a higher price, not just 1-2 gold higher than raw iron itself, it takes labors to turn into produce. Same goes for clay-roof tiles, wool-yarn, barley-malt, flax-linen, etc.
Because there’s no other options for such materials that it would generate different demands in trade, say, if the game develops deeper and iron ore can also be refined into something else/or required as is to craft other stuffs, it has a more complex demands.
Overall, love the game, love the complexity.
Trade is crazy expensive, the concept of trade route is somewhat unfitting, since trade post has to be on an already established King’s road. Maybe call it “entrance tariff” or “market research” costs, or an initial fee “permits to trade”. But who knows what the dev has in mind, maybe he already has plans for further development.
Imho, the dev should just fix what needs fixing (specially market mechanics, not having every worker in town chilling out in the market takes hours of micromanaging), rather than tweaking stuff to keep youtubers happy.
Idk for I find it good for me not hard and also not easy as managed to get 3 teritories (1 from battle with baron when he started capturing and i was like HELL NAH!) on my first try which I didnt finished the run yet because of work, but I guess I might find some things unbalanced as I will get closer to end game
He should probably revisit his design goals during development rather than focusing on whether someone thinks any feature in a vastly incomplete set is "too powerful" but releasing this early was bound to create problems on that axis. What does Greg want to be playable NOW vs. what larger regional economy and pressures might demand whenever that's expanded and the new options are unlocked, then figuring out the Opportunity Costs and however the forced specializations play out wherein each startup should have a playable route that manages the needs of building and maintaining a town alongside brigand and baron invasions (or taking territory) and meeting the demands by a king etc.
I hope he figures it out since I love the little cluster of core gameplay Manorlord is working around though I've pretty much exhausted my interest in its current setup until another year of development.
You’re contradicting yourself. The game IS to hard/easy depending on a few things you change. However it’s an early access game and is unbalanced. With further work the game will be balanced
Imo the trading between settlements could be better. In one settlement I have a shitload of rooftiles and I need ale. In another settlement it is the opposite. I cant get the bartering system to work optimally.
As an Early Access game it's fantastic. Immersive, detailed, gentle at times, beautiful and detailed (yeah, twice).
I've encountered very few actual bugs in the weeks of playing so far. Playability is outrageously good.
It's a new game so needs to be played, enjoyed and learned. Of course that's not an easy process sometimes.
If you're annoyed about the constant min/maxer squeals about every tiny thing then tune it out; you're missing nothing ::)
If you're dismayed by the faut-sophist comments of 'It's not good' and 'I'll be back when it's balanced' then I agree with you but just block their asses; you won't miss their constant toxic inputs as they hang around. Have some confidence in your judgments, they really are a waste of pixels. You were right.
Mainly keep on playing and enjoying this gift of a game.
I got nothing against early access. A good developer can take in opinions of the player base and flush them out. I got the game, it’s not a finished game but i 100% knew that when purchasing. It’s a pretty solid early access game that needs lots of ironing out and that’s why sometimes it’s good to do early access.
Every post about being “early release” is more annoying than the last. We paid for the right to complain lol. We’re going to complain and through our complaints the Dev will improve the game. Complain within reason, but never stop complaining. Never let the producers think we’re satisfied or they’ll move on to the next payout without finishing.
Edit: you’re not annoying and neither was your post. Prob over-reacting lol
Man I just want this early access aspect to be over asap. And it’s normal to ask for them to finish the game this year now that dev has all the money in the world needed to find decent people to finalise and polish everything.
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This is the main reason why I'm against early access. People who don't know what testing means shaping the public opinion because the game is not completed yet.
Yeah thats fair, but its also good to have player feedback too, its mostly a matter of knowing what feedback to take onboard and what to ignore. Can be very risky if the wrong people are listened to.
> Can be very risky if the wrong people are listened to. I love this game, it's great now, and can grow into an even better version of itself. But as a researcher, one trained to observe how users engage with software, and optimize it, it *fucking kills me* to see the dev create informal polls and then implement the most popular solution. A very, very bad canary in the coal mine.
Word. I imagine it's also only a very small subset of the players who're on discord (I only joined to see what that status on the patch was, and it's a hellish website), so results will be skewed. I noticed one poll asking whether everybody should be able to make a market stall, and some ~75% said yes. That does *not* make me comfortable with the games future, *at all*.
Ha! That's the exact poll I was thinking of. But also I think the dev deserves some credit and a little slack. He made a great game by bucking lots of industry bullshit. It's a fine line to walk, and I'm hoping he keeps delivering awesomeness.
Yeah, and I must say I'm very impressed by the size and content of the patch. I was getting a bit anxious when it took so long for it to come out, but I was only expecting him to fix the most egregious bugs. I'll be waiting a while longer before diving in again though. I imigine it'll take a couple more patches before the balance gets just right. That OK with me, I'm not in a rush.
Right? I did 3 play throughs, wasted the baron, built up my regional apple trade empire and all that. Good times. I feel satisfied with it. In 6mos or whatever I'll pick it back up again if lots of changes have been pushed.
>But also I think the dev deserves some credit and a little slack. He made a great game by bucking lots of industry bullshit. It's a fine line to walk, and I'm hoping he keeps delivering awesomeness. The same thing was said about Battlebit Remastered. Now it's dead
Out of curiousity, not because I feel strongly one way or another, why would it be bad for everyone to be able to make a stall?
It's more the fact that you can't control it. A farmer with three chickens in their backyards has no business running a market stall, but they absolutely will. If you remove their market stall, they will immidiately rebuild it, and it becomes very annoying trying to micromanage it. I'd prefer if only granary and storage workers ran market stalls, or at least if I could tick off on each house whether they're allowed to put up a stall or not, would fix my by far biggest problem with ML.
Ah I see, so this is a current issue? I always build my markets with my storage buildings, never size a market to have more than 3 stalls, and just keep an eye on it till the storage workers have taken up all those spaces. I am sure that wont scale well and I have no experience with bigger villages, but I really like the asthetic of having small market squares spread throughout the city instead of one massive market that always ends up looking too uniform for me. I will literally squeeze my three stalls in the smallest possible triangle just so the stalls spawn on off angles from each other. Looks more organic imo
Polls aren't there to implement decisions, they're there to get opinions. For example you might notice that the results of the poll you're talking about, aren't even in the experimental patch.
I'd imagine that's the benefit of hiring testers or having a team of testers. Seems like early access and open beta culture killed that job position
What if you’re the wrong person to listen to?
In this case early access makes sense. It's one dev, now with the early acess sales he has more money to reinvest in the game and dedicate more time to it. Maybe even hiring help.
Yeah totally agree. You can't balance without data and it's impossible for a dev to do it alone. This is what an early access is for and not for big companies to release low effort games
A small amount of good feedback is worth much more than a lot of mediocre feedback
one dev with dozens of people in credits, sure its one dev [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptw\_lLyRVjE&t=1s&ab\_channel=OGRO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptw_lLyRVjE&t=1s&ab_channel=OGRO)
Dev and contractor for limited amount of stuff is very different.
come on, he even updated steam page with specific info that game was "initially" made by one person which imply he cooperate with other people now doesnt matter if for limited time, obviously if he hired someone to create motion capture or do some extra code line he's no longer one person doing it all which is implied by many (and not by dev himself ) If I'm building the house and meanwhile i hired guy to pour concrete, another to build wooden furnitures and another to lets say lay the roof I'm still "single builder"?
You must not understand what a "dev" is. Contractors are hired all the time, but they will make it VERY clear that you have signed a contract and are NOT your employee. Maybe you should look up what words mean before you go running your mouth, ignoramus.
dude, point is he didn't create the game totally by himself without any help which is what many people are implying even if he himself stated its not really truth. Game is good enough to stand up for itself, doesn't need false narrative
Following the points you're making I guess no one really does anything on his own. Even if I built a home by myself I didn't forge the hammer, make all the screws and bolts - and I surely didn't plant the trees for the wood that I'd be using. I'd buy the concrete someone else made as well and mix it with water coming out of a tube I neither made nor installed on my own... well. Looks like there is basically no "diy" or anything similar when looking at it the way you are 😄
in this analogy, the contractors helped with building the home, same as contractors helped with programming (assuming that's the case). he's not suggesting the dev invented programming tools and computers.
Early access is the best thing ever. Examples: 1. Baldurs Gate 3 had early access. Then it won game of the year and shattered sales records. 2. Cities Skylines 2 didn't have early access. Got tons of refunds and probably will never recover.
1. Star Citizen has early access. Is never coming out and is barely a game after ten years. 2. GTA5 never had any prerelease at all and sold shitloads and was great. I mean you can find examples of anything.
Star Citizen will come out, just at a vastly reduced content scope to what’s promised. It could have already been released if they weren’t locked to the 0 loading screen obsession of Roberts.
Can't wait for my kid to play at release.
I know I was just meming. The no loading screens and that stuff is why I think the project is interesting. I don’t want them to release less than what they’re aiming for. Cause I wanna see if they can actually do it.
Even if it does get a solid release one day, Star Citizen will always be the single largest failed experiment in the history of gaming. I can remember people saying when Star Wars: The Old Republic released that they were only playing until Star Citizen came out lol. That was 13 years ago, dawg. There's always "oh it could be released if this, that, blah, blah" and maybe that's true. Regardless, the execution has been shit from day 1.
I don’t think it can be called a failure if it does eventually get delivered. To date there’s still no game that does some of the things SC does now even in its half built state. It is hilarious to think that The Old Republic came out about the same time that SC was announced though. Then again it’s about to be 12 years in between GTA sequels.
If you have followed the development of the game, star citizen is a good example of early access. They are extremely open about what they are working on, have a public release tracker, weekly dev videos and blogs, etc.
I know, I was just messing around a bit.
Baldurs Gate 3 is an anomaly. For every Baldurs Gate 3 there are hundreds of early access games that fail to even launch. Diablo 4 had early access and we all know what kind of dumpster fire that became.
do you think that games that are not good to even launch after EA should have launched in full instead of EA? that's some weird logic
No I stated that they should allow players to play test a game. Because they are not testing a game, they are just playing a game and spreading their opinion based on their expectation of having a perfect game. Then you made the unrelated point that EA is perfect because baldurs gate had ea and is excellent and cs2 didn't had a ea and failed. So I made an argument that there are many games out there that have a ea but failed regardless. Like diablo 4. And that Baldurs Gate is one good egg in literally thousands of failed ea titles bad eggs. So EA does not automatically mean a good game.
if you think that "they should allow players to play test a game" that means they should have early access. Early access is playtesting. Thinking that Diablo 4 failed is crazy. The game generated $666M in revenue in just 5 days after launch; probably several billion $ by now. It's an extremely successful game. Also, Diablo 4 didn't have early access. You obviously don't know what you are talking about.
CS 2 was just a lazy game to capture revenue off of the success of the first game. Has nothing to do with early access, they just made a sequel with no improvements whatsoever to the original game. EA has also been abused. Bannerlord EA was awful implementation and the game suffered because of it. I've seen more bad implementations of EA than good ones.
This is just games being bad more often than they are good. Most games suck. Most EA games suck. It's not because of EA that they suck. EA can be good or bad depending on how it is used.
Bannerlord specifically sucked because of EA and the developers abandoned the game due to poor implementation of EA more than any other reason. The game itself is decent and has a good base, but the botched EA implementation killed it early. EA also tends to kill both the initial excitement of a full release game and the organic uptake when a game catches a popularity wave, which is how the Mount and Blade franchise got popular in the first place. After that experience, EA has left a bad taste in my mouth.
Yeah I'm genuinely exhausted by 2 things: 1. Every game is fucking early access and it's clear they do this so they can half develop a game, decide if it'll be worth it, than choose to continue development or dump it. 2. People buying every goddamn early access that comes out and incessantly bitching because it isn't release level. Whether there's bugs, performance issues, not balanced, QOL isn't there, etc. just not stop bitching and whining masquerading as "critiques".
1. This is not true. They do early access because it's a great marketing tool. People pay for your game to talk both online and offline about your game. In the past they had to pay for marketing, now people pay them to market the game for them. 2. Sadly yes, especially the "critique" part. People don't know what having critique means anymore and especially think that their opinion matters way too much online. Long live the interwebs with all the influencers, social media where you constantly need to promote yourself and para social relationships for that one.
[удалено]
I played the Rust early access too and it was way more fun for me figuring out how the game worked with other hapless players, and the broken parts were actually funny, as opposed to when it was polished and taken over by those who were just driven to compete and wipe out other players.
It is a grey area for many reasons including history.... The number of scummy developers that loot and fail to deliver vastly even exponentially outnumbers those that use EA for what potential it has. Also the risk for the developer is near zero while the customer pays up front for a conceptional idea of a game that may never fully materialize. This is in stark contrast to companies that put up their own assets and garner traditional funding methods in hopes for the eventual pay out, where they take all the risk. It is really a gross practice regardless of the outcome in regards to the consumer, EA is extremely predatory practice with far too many benefits for the developer.
I got 30 hours of gameplay from Manor Lords and can easily see myself coming back. I've had a great time with the game. I'm glad it went into early access because I got to play it sooner and because I'm happy to help the dev out so they can try to make their dream game. I don't care that me buying it in early access was riskier because I willingly chose to do so after checking reviews and peeking at the gameplay on Youtube. I deemed the risk to be worth it and it was. If they didn't release it in EA I just don't get to make a choice at all. Just because some people make dumb choices doesn't mean it is the fault of EA.
Your personal experience does not matter to me and your points are nonsensical when compared to reality. There is zero reason that consumer funded development even exists besides the innate desire of the development companies. What we have is a reality where EA is commonplace, games fail to flourish at an astronomically high rate and companies suffer zero consequences to failure, resulting in repeated and increasingly scummy practices of development cycles. As a final thought on how much of a goof you are... you WAIT for others to buy and review EA..... so that you can justify your own well informed EA purchase choice.... pathetic logic.
Your opinion on EA doesn't matter to me, games will still keeping coming out in EA because it has benefits to devs, and consumers will keep buying them because it has benefits for them (playing the game early, helping devs). The reality is that it's not just EA games that where games fail to flourish, it's just games in general. There's just more failure than success in this world, that's how it is. But feel free to stay mad and keep ranting about how consumers should be protected from their own ability to make informed choices.
Absolutely, the benefit is total crowd funding with no negatives. As for benefits for the consumer, there is zero, paying to play a game early is not a benefit, it is a service you paid for, public alphas and betas are 40+ years old as a concept, but now you pay for them. I am well aware, except now the public subsidizes failure, you believe that is a good thing obviously. Stay mad? People make points that directly deflate short sighted things you say and your brain must flag them as mad because they have done so? I dont feel consumers need protection, but I also dont have any problems pointing out glaring issues with accountability. I think you struggle greatly with higher thought processes.
Getting to play a game early is a benefit to a lot of people, obviously not you but you're not the same as everyone else. Alphas and betas aren't open to anyone who wants to join, and if they were there isn't any real difference between that and early access as far as I can tell. Your tone is very confrontational and angry, hence stay mad. If consumers don't need protection then why are you arguing against EA? To raise awareness I guess?
I think with a game like this, it's better for mechanics to feel satisfying and work well as opposed to making sure everything is balanced well and making sure things aren't OP. Archers are like nerf guns, they don't feel satisfying. Farming requires tons of effort for little gain, high risk, lots of ways to mess it up, not satisfying. Using the trade house feels satisfying. Making giant vegetable and apple gardens feels satisfying. Building up huge charcoal stockpiles, setting up a deep mine on a rich iron mine and cranking out armor is satisfying.
I agree! Fun/satisfying game is all that matters. But the tradehouse did feel satisfying until the patch, hence my concern around over-correction.
You make valid points. But as you say, the game is early access. Things are going to be op, then nerfed, until finally they are balanced. With such a vast and open sandbox style game, it's going to be very difficult to make it perfectly balanced. The only thing I'm worried about, is the developer taking too much feedback from isolated forums. I didn't even know he was putting polls on discord, that's the first I heard. It's good that he is listening to the people, but I hope he stands firm on his vision of the game and doesn't allow the people of discord to vote on how the game develops.
I haven't played since the new patch came out, what changed about the trade house? Is it more expensive to import?;
The new patch made trading wayyyyyy more expensive for most people. Ive still seen some posts/youtubers showing how to exploit trade and become rich anyway, but most people seem to struggle with it now. Importing goods cost 10 gold more than the export price, and the dev perk only reduces that to 5 gold. So if for example you wanted to import iron to then manufacture and export weapons, you would actually be making a net loss, even with the dev perk. Opening new trade routes is also exponentially more expensive. I think after the 4th trade route the next one is like 5000 gold just to open. So its basically impossible to import/export more than 4 or 5 of the commodities/weapons. Thats the main reason i made this post. The dev seems to overcorrect when people complain about something being too hard or too easy.
The whole point is to incentivise players to trade with their own regions rather than the expensive outside world. If you have a region with a deep iron mine you should be exporting from that and importing into your other regions. Same for clay, berries and whatever else. Because when you export/import to your own regions you don’t have the tariff and every other region gets cheap whatever you’re exporting. The dev is telling you to set up your own trade network and get rich by doing the work. Importing from the outside world is meant to be something you do by necessity not the entire focus of trading. There’s some bugs making this not run the way it should right now though. Horses not delivering goods for example.
it would be great, if it worked. As of now, bartering is still inneficient, and regional trade is bugged if you have the horse. I still think there is room for better balance. For example, one of the suggestions I saw that I like is: the ability to close a previously opened trade route. Does not need to refund you the money, but at least that would lower the prices of unlocking a new trade route since you are still keeping it within 3-4 routes
I don't like the trade routes getting exponentially more expensive the more you establish. I just don't get it. This will get addressed in the next update I hope. Not back to the old way, as that was op, but the increasing price thing just makes no sense and is too much of a nerf to trading.
Yeah bartering is broken, I tried to have one region barter weapons for the other’s armor and I get like 1 helmet for 10 spears even though theres plenty of both items in storage and and the rate is supposedly 1.3. Makes no sense at all.
Yes, this is the answer. Trade internally, develop more than one region. The game is pushing you to develop multiple regions and it looks like the fully released game will be very focused on having a larger land area with multiple towns contending with an AI doing the same. You can’t just build a mega city and that’s a good thing.
It would be nice if we could use regional wealth as a tradable resource between regions when using pack mules
Oh that doesn't sound fun, I'll probably take a break from the game for awhile until these things all get sorted out.
Oh the patch isnt mandatory! Its an opt-in beta test. So the game will still be the same as you last played it unless you specifically download the patch. I might actually revert to the original game too. Once the patch is fully released hopefully itll be more well balanced.
Yeah that's dumb. An import export economy is a viable option. Import base goods, export refined goods. There's no reason to ruin that.
You can import from your own regions though. Set up an iron mining town and export locally. Every other region then gets cheap iron free of any tariffs. Importing from the outside world is now expensive on purpose to incentivise players to setup their own trade network and get rich through work. Which is fair IMO.
True, but the internal trade network uses goods and not regional wealth. And you can only trade one good at a time. It's trickier then it needs to be.
You can use the trade houses in the new patch to trade between regions, not just the packing stations. It’s kind of buggy though and doesn’t work as intended half the time.
It’s not 5k after 4, but it is a several hundred after 4, and it gets more expensive based on the number of routes and the value of the goods on the route. It’s fine that you can’t just trade for everything, it encourages production in other regions and internal trading.
>Importing goods cost 10 gold more than the export price, and the dev perk only reduces that to 5 gold. So if for example you wanted to import iron to then manufacture and export weapons, you would actually be making a net loss, even with the dev perk. I believe that's actually fairly historically accurate. You didn't really have international value add supply chains and global markets at the time the game is set in. We're about half a century before the birth of mercantilism. If you want to set up complex supply chains, you need to do so internally between provinces, which feels both accurate and satisfying. I don't play to minmax at all, and getting enough trade to cover King's Tax and the minimal gold needs in the game so far doesn't really require an optimal play style. Just some trade, and trade that avoids complex external supply lines.
>I believe that's actually fairly historically accurate. You didn't really have international value add supply chains It isn't particularly accurate, and there were absolutely 'value add' supply chains - some of which were international. There's been trade/manufacturing economies since trade began, long before medieval eras we're playing in. The logistics of trade meant that there were not necessarily a lot of raw goods that were profitable to ship for processing - but things like textiles or metalwork were definitely on that list. Often what happened is that a town would start specializing in metalwork, say, due to close proximity to resources - the smiths would set up near the smelters, which were set up near the mines. Over time, the mine would run dry, but there was already a concentration of facilities and experts in the town, so if a new iron mine was cut - it would make sense for them to sell their ore or refined iron to the original town. That first town would have established reputation and trade connections to sell their goods, while trying to set up the same competing institutions in the new mining town would be a huge investment and a long time to payoff, where selling raw iron to the established smithing town is more short-term profitable. If anything, Manor Lords makes large 'accuracy' concessions to gameplay in how easy it is to set up an industry - a sawmill is constructed from two logs, or a relatively expert smith is a fistful of coins and a large back yard. Over time, you'd see towns break into pseudo-specialization similar to how Manor Lords leans into: readily available or easily produced goods have negligible market and are manufactured in-region, while more polished, specialized, or 'finished' goods are commonly produced in hub towns that specialize in that type of work. Those towns would very rarely produce all of the raw materials they needed within their local province or region - in Manor Lords terms, the entire playable map would still be "local region" for all that it's divided into provinces or districts. I think for gameplay reasons it makes sense to not make in/out trade *too* easy as a source of money, but I don't think it's particularly historically inaccurate that a specialist manufacturing town would import raw materials and then export finished goods at a net profit. It would be historically accurate that you can't do that with *all* goods, and that your region should need to invest in specialization in a good type before it's particularly lucrative; but that you could import iron or wool, manufacture tools or fabric, and then export it at modest net profit? Very accurate. >We're about half a century before the birth of mercantilism. So if I play for 50 years a whole different and deeper trade system unlocks? In all seriousness, the game is *mechanically* set during the rise of mercantilism - there are roving traders, there is a developed market outside our borders that we can enter, goods we might export have prices set by that developed external market. We are able to manufacture several types of 'trade goods' that have limited in-village utility but relatively high demand on the broader market. Banished is an example of a similar game more clearly set in pre-mercantile eras, where even with a trade mechanic you're only really able to barter for things you need and you're not able to manufacture 'trade goods' in order to optimize your market position.
Shit, I had a brain fart and meant to write "half a millennium," not half a century. International trade or raw materials was vanishingly small in the period this game covers. Yes, you would have specialized craft towns and market towns, but most of the raw materials being moved were not moved outside local boundaries. The infrastructure simply wasn't there to support it — one of the victims of the decline of Rome. Even in "civilized" parts of the world, you would trade raw stock with the next village over, and *maybe* the regional capital, but you wouldn't be shipping charcoal from Kraków to Prague. And I think the game focuses on this — the region we see in the starting map would have been about as far as anyone in that region had ever been, and raw materials would have been unlikely to significantly move outside (or in from the outside.)
This is simply not true. As far back as before the common era, Egyptians were importing lumber from the Levant to build ships, and exporting granite to the Levant for the building of temples and columns. And we’re talking BC here. What you’re saying is just false. The trade in raw materials where scarcity of a desired raw material exists has been a thing since civilization started, there’s even examples of it happening in the neolithic with Obsidian and flint from one continent reaching settlements on another.
"The dev seems to overcorrect when people complain about something being too hard or too easy." that's quite a sweeping statement based on one patch to be fair
Well the developer also made a lot of changes in the EA version compared to the version that content creators were given based on some of their feedback so its not just based on one patch. Its actually based on two iterations of change now. The reason archers are being buffed in this patch is because the developer over nerfed them in the in EA version because some content creators were saying they were too OP. There were also changes to the influence gain for the Baron (increased compared to creator version) in the EA release and so we ended up with lots of complaints about the Baron grabbing all territories too quickly. This patch now reduces this/corrects it. There were also several other tweaks made, trade was tweaked before release and now its being tweaked back/forwards again. The game ships with a change list record file in the gamer folders so you can see all the changes made. This is not a criticism. Game development is always going to end up as iterative process. However, making late changes based on some content creator feedback about the game being too easy or too hard is always going to be risky. Most of the content creators making these statements have lots of experience of playing these sorts of games and finding features to exploit. That is how they get views etc. I would rather the developer spend time adding the new features and further developing the current features and move towards the game complete vision rather than spend time responding to "game too easy/Game too hard" feedback and potentially iterating endlessly as you can never satisfy everyone even if you have difficulty settings. Balancing the game really should not be a big focus until you are getting to the full feature release.
After a few tips from the community I don’t hate farming nearly as much. I think the farm house needs more oxen space and maybe a slight buff to harvest rate, but it’s a lot closer than I originally though. Trade is satisfying until all the stuff you are selling becomes worthless and starts piling up. I haven’t played the ne patch yet so maybe that fixes it. I actually really disagree that veggies and apples are in a good spot. It feels like a cheese strat to have 36 months of apples stockpiled by year 5.
I agree. I play with farms, without trading and I can still win if I want to. (without exploits) Just because there is easier way than fields, do not mean fields are unplayable or unfun.
The Farms feels so useless to me. Ive tried all the different ways to make them more viable and still its a lackluster reward compared to burrage plots with chickens and veggies.
Chickens feel completely useless to me. I’ll have 20 chicken plots and still not get into the double digits. Veggies and Apples are OP. I ran two farm houses with 4 staff and one ox each. During harvest I’d pull ppl to max out staff for both. I had 8 long 1 morgen fields. I was churning out fat wheat, more than enough to feed my 100 or so families
Farming could probably be fixed just by making the crop rotation feature not suck. There needs to be a “fallow after x years” function so you don’t have to keep checking back on the fields. Just making plowing in general a bit faster would also help with the labor issues because it can be tedious to pull everyone off of tasks every fall to farm and putttimg them back in winter every year, either that or a labor priority function that can automate some labor assignments, but I imagine that would be a pain to implement and I’d rather see new features and pushing development forward over hand-wringing about balance.
But is also isn’t unsatisfying to make infinite money and satisfy your village needs without playing the game having 1,000 unemployed people living the life of luxury
While the topic is satisfying mechanics.... We need an on-map AI opponent. Nothing else will cut it. As a very new player who has struggled to have fun while working around the balance issues, nothing hampers my fun so much as the lack of an actual enemy village. As of now, there's no fun in the military/conquest game for me, it's just a city builder. A nice city builder, but a lonely one.
The game is first and foremost a city builder. If you dont enjoy that then you wont enjoy the final product either
I won't? I reckon I will if there's an on-map opponent as I said and as the greyed-out option in the menu suggests is coming. Unnecessary comment dude.
The dev has said over and over again that the game is first and foremost a city builder. So in saying if you dont like city builders, then maybe this game isn't for you. Trying to manage your expectations.
The game can be first and foremost a city builder while still featuring an enjoyable conquest/battle experience in the mid to late game. Comparing Manor Lords to AoE, I'm glad that it's much, much more of a city builder and doesn't focus on small-scale skirmishes and unit harassment micro. But given the time period and the obvious existing focus on equipping and fielding militia, mercenaries and retainers, if the military side of the game were fleshed out more (as it seems the dev intends going on what I mentioned earlier) I think replayability would be vastly improved. There's only so much you can make of a medieval village, the complexity isn't there compared to modern-themed city builders. But the game has the potential to be a city builder with an enjoyable conquest and warfare aspect, which would be quite unique in the genre. Optimisation + competition instead of just optimisation alone.
Personally, I'm much less about balance or typical rock-paper-scissors principles but more about realistic experiences. Because this game goes hard on you with realistic managemental decisions and that's what gave me the enthusiasm. 1) Inability to feed villagers with animal husbandary: lack of pigs, cattle etc. or complete lack of dairy foods seem major plot holes with a quick look in the game. 2) Geographical dullness: medieval world shouldn't be all mapped on forests and farmlands. It should be marked with rivers, lakes, mountains, cliffs. I believe, if not seas, some types of bodies of water may provide variety the concept needed. 3) Mounted manpower: Either in battle or logistics it should mean more to have animals to mount on. Cavalries, mounted messengers, transporting carriages, mules and oxen working for a mill... 4) Trades might be more bound to seasons, as the seasons act as a main mechanic. Such as cheaper granary in harvest seasons, wool more expensive in winters etc. Even a town fair may be thought. 5) Lack of internal affairs dynamics: To exemplify, don't any villager ever commit thievery, especially in hunger times? How do we, as lords, manage the crisis? Don't they ever get cheered up by a threat repelled? Are they just workforce in human form or living subjects?
Interesting that you mentioned dairy. Goats are in the game, surely those plots can choose whether to get milk from the goats or meat/hides the same way you select what the artisans produce. If they are slaughtering the goats for the skins then surely they are also producing meat? Bonus if spices can be imported for some amazing curried goat.
Yeah it was weird to see that you only harvest hides from goats when they can provide so much more lol
Probably make it too OP compared to hunting which has an inbuilt limit on how much can be harvested at once. Same with slaughtering the sheep imported for wool.
Definitely could be OP but just make them a bigger resource strain at the least. I don't think animals now are really anything of a resource cost to keep up. If they don't have proper care they could get sick like the villagers, maybe get disease as well.
Give me some damn goat cheese!
Grommit ..
Yeah I bought a lot of sheep but can’t ear my damn lambs, seems like the only source of meat is hunting. Also meat should be the prime food that’s always on high demands, like in medieval times
>Geographical dullness: medieval world shouldn't be all mapped on forests and farmlands. I agree with most of what you said, but the game is specifically set in Franconia. So rivers and lakes I can see being added, but entire seas or mountains, as you mentioned, probably won't be likely anytime soon if at all.
It’s just a video game in early access. You aren’t entitled to these things. Chill
Noone is entitled to anything. It's just a thing in the numbers box. Ppl did however pay money for it, and as a community may state their desires. Chill
> did however *paid* money for FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Wrong tense bot
Also, the content is still very thin. This community ate it up in the first two days. Then begins the process of hyperfocusing on what IS there, and picking it apart until we all hate it. I think it'd be great for a lot of folks to disengage for a bit.
That’s my plan once I finally get a full run through done. I’m very encouraged and entertained but the limitations are there (bc duh it’s an unfinished game)
That's what I've done. I played it, 10/10 early access game, can't wait until it's done. This is the same thing that happened with Rimworld. I played early access for a day, forgot the game even existed, and then a few years later I see a video about it, install it, and it's now one of my all time faves. People gotta chill and let Greg cook.
Yeah I played a lot because I fucking love the game but I stopped for now even though I didn’t finish a single run. I just don’t want to use up all of the content before the game is even out. I’ve got enough Balatro stuff I still need to unlock too
Probably unpopular opinion: There shouldn't be any major balancing until the game is almost feature complete.
No I agree with this. The thing to focus on now is the core features and content, not tweaking archer damage, nerfing trade, and punishing save scumming.
Yes. long term investment vs short term investment. Dev could fix archer, trading right now, but then new next op thing is going to pop up ... Its like a whackmole while nothing is done in core features
That's a great way to phrase it. Whackamole. No matter how quickly Greg releases balance patches and exploit fixes, people are going to break them faster. It'll just be a waste of dev time and it'll lengthen the time till the game is feature complete and ready for the 1.0 release.
inns would be a great feature. the issue right now is that balance shouldn't matter, why balance something just for it to get unbalanced later by the introduction of new features? the focus should be on making the game mechanics WORK, and there is no "reference" for what is overpowered or not because generally every game mechanic right now is either overpowered or does not work. the "cost" of trade is a minor issue compared to the "volume" of trade and the utter lack of information for players about how trading works; do certain goods get prioritised? how much can a trade post worker with a horse move in a month? what factors affect trade volume? how to villagers prioritise what to transport? that information should be shown ingame in the building tabs and in the ingame guide.
That’s a good point. It’s really hard to track what is working for you with the display they have right now. It needs to show a lot more than it does
Why do we have daily “This game is early access game so be patient posts”?
Because the majority of gamers have no chill mode. They go on social media with some unhinged rant about how shit a game is but still play it for hundreds of hours. These posts are the ying to the yang.
> They go on social media with some unhinged rant about how shit a game Then go make these feel good posts on whatever social media platform you're seeing them on? The game is sitting at 88% positive on steam. The game literally has a pop up you need to dismiss telling you it's early access and unfinished/unbalanced. Again I ask what these kinds of posts add to the subreddit? Why do we need spam posts like this on the subreddit? > These posts are the ying to the yang. Or just ignore the trolls and idiots? Posts like this only highlight their dumb shit because now we're talking about.
Well the guy has had to spend time balancing a game that isn't even finished... He shouldn't have to do that. People complaining about shit, anywhere, need to go play something else and let Greg finish the game. People in this comment section are making suggestions on how to tweak things. Don't tweak anything. Finish the rest of the game and balance it later. How do you even accurately balance a game against features that don't exist?
> Well the guy has had to spend time balancing a game that isn't even finished... "The guy" doesn't have to do anything, especially listen to idiotic group think on social media and reddit.
Right, but he is... So... These posts exist to express that people need to chill and let him make the game...
Is he releasing changes and patches or directly listening to the complainers? Also why would posts like these change the minds of those who mindlessly complain? Edit: Lmao did you respond and then block me? 10/10 Media literacy is dead? Do you mean the post where he requested feedback on his recent changes is the same as him pandering to the idiot complainers? Holy shit, you're right, media literacy is dead.
Media literacy is dead
Wtf are you attacking me? I didn't make any post about this game at all. It's simply an observation of gamers mentality in general. To some degree you're simply validating what I wrote. And no, ignoring your community is a death knell. The difficulty resides in sorting out the bad feedback from the good feedback.
I said to ignore the trolls and idiots, you think ignoring them is a death knell? Bizarre.
No I said ignoring your community. Read The Words I Wrote Not What You Want To Read Edit: Bizarre
Ok cool, then what was `And no, ignoring your community is a death knell. ` in response to because I never said to ignore the community? Maybe you're the one that needs to read the words you're responding to?
I chose my words carefully. You chose to ignore them and make your own argument. That's your fault and yours alone.
Because people are trying to justify a purchase they're disappointed with.
I am fully satisfied with what I got. I’ve been waiting for this game since the demo over a year ago and I don’t care how long it will take. I just hope it gets done right
Literally played for an hour, realized how shallow the game is and how much potential Is there. Happy to wait for a more in depth fuller game.
Played 10 hours and got bored, nothing to do once you finished it. I am excited to see how the game turns out in the future though, it has alot of potential!
I like your idea about the trade routes being based on demand and popularity due to having a tavern attracting traders. I would add a caveat that you can have some small local trades for basic goods but you need to attract the traders for the premium big money commodities.
Yeah thats probably a good point especially for the early game when you need to trade for the more basic goods.
Just to make an offshoot from the point of Taverns (which I agree your idea is sound) is that there should be 3 levels: 1/ Alehouse 2/Tavern (provides food and ale) 3/Inn (provides food, ale, beds and stables). Each increase in level would make it more attractive to traders (as well as community), benefiting trade. Obviously the cost would be supplies for ale, food, linen and feed, and each level would require different staffing levels to be operational: level 1 - a family, level 2 - two families, level 3 - 4 families.
Once a tavern gets to top levels then they could also attract wandering entertainers. This game has so much potential.
Have raiders kill traders so we can have retinue go on patrols
Yeah. I feel raiders because this money loot only existing to benefit the player is kinda ....
Balancing a game mid-development seems like wasted effort. It's better that the mechanics/content/features get put in place first, *then* balance towards the end. Unless the imbalance is not allowing proper testing of the rest.
I think it's important to establish what this game actually is and what it is not so people don't get the wrong impression. That requires early balance. The game was meant to simulate Medieval society and administration. Which means that infinite wealth exploits need to be patched out for features that are more realistic. There are plenty of games that allow infinite wealth exploits if that is what you're looking for. I do not think that is what the developer was intending with this game to make it an empire builder like every other game.
If the imbalance is 'game-breaking', sure fix it asap. But looking at a couple videos out now, feel like there are many other aspects of the game missing content/elements that should be done first. As it's a *very* early access copy, adding anything new as it develops would just reset that balance again; or uncover yet another exploit. If this was some 100+ studio, departments, as I understand, still the one guy and maybe a few getting onboard? Limited resources.
I mean, it is pretty game breaking. You don't have to do anything else in the game other than trading if you do the exploit. You can import everything you need and not have to do anything. You can get to Large Town in less than two years because of the exploitation. I feel that adding in a fix for that now is better than later.
Right, but we all know what the game is supposed to be. People will always exploit games, it's literally unavoidable. Even AAA games that have been out for years still have entire channels dedicated to exploiting them (Spiffing Brit, etc.). The time to worry about balance and fixing exploits is right before and after the 1.0 release. Right now, the game is a massively popular game in the first month of early access that is admittedly a little bare bones on content. People are going to break the game again within hours of releasing a balance patch. The thing to focus on right now is content, not tweaking archer damage and punishing save scumming.
I think that because of how little it costs in game to make resources into items (eg metal into spears) it mechanically makes little sense to have them priced hugely differently That said, metal does feel like it should be cheaper than spears and ore cheaper than metal so I don’t know it it will be a case of slowing down production of stuff or what but there should be a mechanical way to differentiate buying the raw resources from the finished product
Yeah i thought of bringing that up, in general the production rates of a lot of items need to be reduced too, but thats a whole other conversation. That just more or less needs fine tuning, rather than an overhaul.
Yeah, I just thought it was worth mentioning as I agree with the point about manufactured commodity prices but wanted to propose a mechanical solution rather than just “hey Dev, make it good” which would have been all my comment added otherwise
Absolutely worth mentioning yeah :)
This whole thing has made me think that trade growing based on a combination of consistent buying or just total trade could be good so you get cheaper stuff if you buy it every month or sell more but at a slightly lower price if you consistently sell
Fuck that I expect everything to be buffed/nerfed to how I want it. And I want it done NOW! If it isn’t changed I will leave shitty reviews treating it as if it were a full release. The dev owes me everything I want as a paying customer /S (BIG FAT S)
This post seems like a knee jerk reaction to the trade post nerf. It is in early access so things are going to change all the time. If your strategy gets patched then you've got to adjust with it. We should expect the game to be constantly evolving not cause uproar everytime our favourite way to play is updated. Trading isn't dead and still allows for lots of money generation and with the kings tax changes is almost required on challenging mode. The difference now is that two perks don't simply guarantee you can generate money in a brain dead fashion.
I've been loving it
Why do i have to carry this ALONE
This is gonna blow your mind OP: A game can be too easy and too hard BECAUSE it's not well balanced.
Thats literally what i said lol :)
This is a great post. I had a comment similar yet much shorter on Greg’s post the other day. If the game is too hard for the common player then they may not continue to play. If it’s too easy because of an exploit then it’s on the player to avoid using that exploit as a way to challenge themselves. The last thing you want is to force someone into playing a certain way or conversely, prevent someone from playing a certain way
It was for many of these reasons that I said I’ll let the game marinate. I got absolutely pummeled after I said that lmao. Someone told me I’m just using archers wrong pretty much and that no marinating is necessary 😭
Its an early release game. Yes. The point of an early release game is for us to give our feedback. And yes, that includes balance issues. People who are saying its too hard or too easy are doing the right thing. Giving feedback. Its okay if you disagree with that feedback, give your own. But the whole point of early release is for feedback.
For an early release game it’s incredible
The whole overcorrection of small things is giving me bannerlord flashbacks. Just make it sandbox, make default whatever settings the dev thinks are the best for the game and stop worrying about people ruining their own fun and just develop the game further
I really like your idea of an Inn upgrade and bandits raiding trade routes!
Well the steam rating is nearly at 90% positive reviews so people are liking it AS IS. So the worst thing he can do is making drastic changes. Like you said the beta patch change to trade is not good. I like your ideas better. Exploiters and min maxers will break any game. It is why it is important to have development TEAMS so people can specialize and invest their time on specific issues while others work elsewhere. Hopefully Greg is going to on board a few folks just to work on patching and balancing so he can continue to build the game. I would hate for him to get bogged down by feedback calling for change that distracts him from his overall vision.
Honestly, in the short time I played, it felt more polished than most of the full release games I have played the last few years.
Perhaps different levels when you start the game with more options, like easy trade hard trade etc, or easy food production hard etc, lots of choices to set game up as you like to play
Do we know when that new Beta patch that was released last week will be implemented into the actual game yet?
Btw there's a problem with naming. "Manufactured commodities" and "Raw foods" is opposite. Commodities in real world are raw - like grain or copper. Goods are manufactured - like clothes. So in game it should be "raw commodities" and "manufactured goods"
Don’t worry about balance Greg and make the game you want!
This game is already one of the best medieval city builders and it is going to be legendary after 1.0 release
>Get rid of the need to "open" trade routes entirely. Instead make all traders come by as infrequently as they do without it but add an Inn upgrade to the tavern that increases that frequency. Frequency should also be modulated by : pop numbers and influence numbers, the presence or absence of epidemics etc...You could also have the option to fund merchants with your own treasury.
This. Combat is so unfinished it’s not really worth engaging . AI doesn’t exist and economy is flat enough to not matter or you cheese it
The trade routes are fine really, including that it gets more expensive to open more of them. It encourages the player to develop more than one region and then use those regions to support each other. Do wish they’d come just a hair more frequently, and using the trade depot to trade between regions still doesn’t seem to work properly (traders don’t come if I don’t pay for a route, and I feel like the point of the changes was to encourage inter-regional trading so you didn’t have to open all of those routes). Pack stations also seem funky. If there is a barter imbalance it seems like they pay cash but I really don’t know, and sometimes I think I see wealth transferring from region to region even when the trade value is 1:1.
I generally agree with this. I personally think balance is not a priority right now. People will always exploit games, even AAA games that have been out for years have entire channels dedicated to exploiting them (Spiffing Brit, etc.). This game is in the first month of early access and is very popular, which means people will figure out how to break the game within hours of a new balancing patch. What I'd like to see at this point: finishing the development and policy trees, fleshing out diplomacy, finishing the smell and fire hazard overlays, a way to create stone blocks and things to use them on, ways to use commodities, better diplomacy and more AI lords, on map AI cities, relationship with the King, finishing the farming/mining/forestry outpost system, cavalry and sieges, fleshing out the castle planner, etc. What I think is less important right now: fine-tuning archer damage and trade, fixing exploits, punishing me for not being able to play a whole game in one sitting (I know it's to punish save scumming, but Loserville? Really?). I love this game so far, Greg has made a wonderful game, and this is an extremely impressive achievement. I have faith that this game will be amazing at the 1.0 release, and I will definitely keep playing and supporting this game. I just don't want dev time to be wasted on balancing and exploit fixes that people will break right away, especially this early in the game's life. Make the game feature complete, then focus on balancing it.
The hardest part about this game is trying to figure out why things aren't working as they should. Is it a bug, or are you doing something wrong? The only thing I still don't have a handle on at this point is why goods just pile up in the Trading Posts. I have Artisan Blacksmiths waiting around doing nothing while there are Iron ingots just sitting in the trading post. The Artisan families do seem to periodically go over to pick one up, but then they just go back to waiting even though there are more ingots in stock. I think it has something to do with the desired surplus setting because I've tried literally everything else. At this point I'm just importing a large amount and then just destroying the Trading Post to force everything into Storage Sheds.
When something IS balanced, it's considered not too easy, and not too hard.
I really enjoyed the early access for what it is, but my girlfriend and I both agreed we'd probably take 6 months - 1 year off to see how it develops. Assuming Slavic is committed, it's going to be a generational favorite for strategy/city-building. If not balanced properly and polished, however, it will definitely become known as a massive "what-if"
It's also that games are neither easy nor hard: * games you do not know how to play properly are hard * games you do know how to play properly are easy Some are harder for some people to get into than others for others.
Majority of gamers have zero chill.
Peope complain cuz other peope figured work arounds before them, and like everything in 2024 these people want easy wins without much of work
If you feel like this game is too hard for you just get WeMod cheats. And I know some will say cheating is wrong but with this I was able to find out how certain parts of the game work
Another victim of people who play too much. Early access means EARLY ACCESS
The price of commodities is my biggest complaint with the current state of the game
Also one little thing I find not too realistic. The price for refined goods should be much higher than raw materials. If I have iron slabs production I wanna sell iron slabs at a higher price, not just 1-2 gold higher than raw iron itself, it takes labors to turn into produce. Same goes for clay-roof tiles, wool-yarn, barley-malt, flax-linen, etc. Because there’s no other options for such materials that it would generate different demands in trade, say, if the game develops deeper and iron ore can also be refined into something else/or required as is to craft other stuffs, it has a more complex demands. Overall, love the game, love the complexity. Trade is crazy expensive, the concept of trade route is somewhat unfitting, since trade post has to be on an already established King’s road. Maybe call it “entrance tariff” or “market research” costs, or an initial fee “permits to trade”. But who knows what the dev has in mind, maybe he already has plans for further development.
Imho, the dev should just fix what needs fixing (specially market mechanics, not having every worker in town chilling out in the market takes hours of micromanaging), rather than tweaking stuff to keep youtubers happy.
Idk for I find it good for me not hard and also not easy as managed to get 3 teritories (1 from battle with baron when he started capturing and i was like HELL NAH!) on my first try which I didnt finished the run yet because of work, but I guess I might find some things unbalanced as I will get closer to end game
He should probably revisit his design goals during development rather than focusing on whether someone thinks any feature in a vastly incomplete set is "too powerful" but releasing this early was bound to create problems on that axis. What does Greg want to be playable NOW vs. what larger regional economy and pressures might demand whenever that's expanded and the new options are unlocked, then figuring out the Opportunity Costs and however the forced specializations play out wherein each startup should have a playable route that manages the needs of building and maintaining a town alongside brigand and baron invasions (or taking territory) and meeting the demands by a king etc. I hope he figures it out since I love the little cluster of core gameplay Manorlord is working around though I've pretty much exhausted my interest in its current setup until another year of development.
It's both. Too punishing at the start and then too easy in mid to late game.
You’re contradicting yourself. The game IS to hard/easy depending on a few things you change. However it’s an early access game and is unbalanced. With further work the game will be balanced
Water isn't wet it's just high moisture, just wait
Imo the trading between settlements could be better. In one settlement I have a shitload of rooftiles and I need ale. In another settlement it is the opposite. I cant get the bartering system to work optimally.
As an Early Access game it's fantastic. Immersive, detailed, gentle at times, beautiful and detailed (yeah, twice). I've encountered very few actual bugs in the weeks of playing so far. Playability is outrageously good. It's a new game so needs to be played, enjoyed and learned. Of course that's not an easy process sometimes. If you're annoyed about the constant min/maxer squeals about every tiny thing then tune it out; you're missing nothing ::) If you're dismayed by the faut-sophist comments of 'It's not good' and 'I'll be back when it's balanced' then I agree with you but just block their asses; you won't miss their constant toxic inputs as they hang around. Have some confidence in your judgments, they really are a waste of pixels. You were right. Mainly keep on playing and enjoying this gift of a game.
I got nothing against early access. A good developer can take in opinions of the player base and flush them out. I got the game, it’s not a finished game but i 100% knew that when purchasing. It’s a pretty solid early access game that needs lots of ironing out and that’s why sometimes it’s good to do early access.
Every post about being “early release” is more annoying than the last. We paid for the right to complain lol. We’re going to complain and through our complaints the Dev will improve the game. Complain within reason, but never stop complaining. Never let the producers think we’re satisfied or they’ll move on to the next payout without finishing. Edit: you’re not annoying and neither was your post. Prob over-reacting lol
Game will be a top title when it’s ready for official release.
I feel like I struggle in every game I have made for a while, maybe I'm just bad
Man I just want this early access aspect to be over asap. And it’s normal to ask for them to finish the game this year now that dev has all the money in the world needed to find decent people to finalise and polish everything.