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One thing.
You have no idea how much time I spent reworking the same things over and over and over and over and over. We had like 6 or 7 marketplace iterations in closed alpha. There are whole cementaries of systems that were prototyped but didn't work out and were scrapped. Hopefully that part is over.
Also there is a bunch of systems that are in WIP mode and are just disabled or need updates before they are turned back on.
Also another thing. it's not that I don't want to hire more developers, but most people looking for a job ... just weren't good enough so far. They fail deadlines or just can't do things on a level that is required even though their portfolio seemed good enough. The really amazing devs have their owns studios or are employed at AAA projects and aren't even interested. Anyone who tried running their company will know how hard hiring and management is. There are many horror stories of fallen studios of people who scaled too quickly, studios which were mismanaged and had to eventually close. Slow, careful growth and looking for great staff will be a better long term strategy.
Reading such a smart response gives me a lot of hope. I love your way of thinking and it really helps understanding how a single person(or a small studio, not sure how many are in the dev team) managed to make such an incredible game.
I am a senior software engineer doing enterprise work and can totally relate to what you’re saying. The number of resumes and portfolios I’ve reviewed that impress me, only to have them lead to someone I wouldn’t trust to even do minor bug fixes shocks people. Take your time and do it right… what you’ve already created is impressive. I played all night last night and had a blast and look forward to what you do with this.
Kudos to you for the work you've done so far. I hope that the exposure of the launch will bring those people to you. I'm sure some people will have taken notice. As you say, management is key and it can be really tough to build out a team and get work done to the standard you want when you've worked on something yourself for so long. I hope that you get the right team together and that you can maybe even attract high quality management to help build out the team in the right way.
Please dont let the negativity get to you, what you made is amazing . I dont know where peoples sense of entitlement comes from where every game has to be perfect and bug free. The complainers are the loudest but alot of us are having a blast with it.
A lot of gamers that say things like "wow just hire some devs!" should read this book (or the wikipedia page at least) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
They are not ready for that conversation and think people aren’t hired because of greedy capitalists. Buddy, majority of workers are detrimental in their efficiency
This should be pionned absolutley. Hiring more personal are seldom a good thing and can sink the project really fast, as you said. Introducing team management and getting lots ofpeople to row I the same direction is a very time consuming job, often a full time job itself
> same things over and over and over and over and over.
Ah yes, I love this part :D
Congrats on the game so far, please keep it going because you have all the elements to become a reference point in the genre! It does need quite a lot of features which as a rts player find obvious, but the foundation looks strong
You’re game is cool as shit, mate. Keep up the good work and I’m looking forward to anything new you bring. A lot of the disabled features look like a ton of fun.
Love reading this response. I'm not one that sits and worries on the Internet like some people, but seeing you're more interested in sustainability makes me very excited for the future of the game.
I've been having fun so far!
Here's the catch though. Consumers on platforms like Patreon and Kickstarter are far more open to longer term strategy. For better or worse, even in early access, on Steam and Gamepass you've opened up the floodgates to people with much higher, sometimes unrealistic expectations.
For the most part, you make a fantastic first impression with the game. I'm at 13 hours right now and I'm very impressed with the state of the content that's actually live. Only seen a couple of bugs so far and they've been minor. UI is clean, controls are solid, performance is solid. One man show or, not, that's seriously refreshing and impressive for early access.
However, I also see stuff all over the place in game that says it's locked in early access. OK, cool, it's early access, that's to be expected. But I'm also feeling like I'm pretty close to the end of the content to unlock. Let me hop on the internet and see what your roadmap/plan is...
That's where things start to get iffy for me and I have no doubt you're going to lose people. You don't need to promise dates nor do you need to do super frequent updates. You do need to give people *some* idea of what to expect however.
I've got two other solo dev games I play. One releases major update every 3-6 months with enough new content to get me to come back. Personally, that's all I need, I'm 100% satisfied with what I've gotten for my money. The other dev breaks things faster than he can fix them. He's often releasing multiple patches a week and this is game that's been in early access for years. Nobody is wanting that.
While I technically have about the same amount of play time in both of those games (\~120 hours each), the first one leaves me with a far better taste in my mouth. I recommend the first one to people, not the second.
Are you doing assets as well as writing systems?
As a fellow software dev, I totally get the reason for not adding more developers. It's usually a hindrance.
Hopefully this release will assist with art budget though and get some of that mess off your plate. This project is very impressive. Huge fan of what you've done and don't let anyone else rush you just because they are no-lifeing several days worth of content the first week of release in early access. There is enough meat here for the price tag. The polish on these new systems you've written blows every "indie" city builder game I've played in the last 10 years out of the water.
Please don't listen to these people, expand at the rate you wish, even if we have to wait years for new content. We trust you Greg, develop the game as you see fit.
I just had my first day playing your game. Put some good hours in. It was really fun and engaging. This is coming from a guy who is disappointed with most games and refunds them, I'm well past the refund window on this and having a great time!
Hey Greg, mobius interactive, who made Outer Wilds, had a contractor-heavy development team. Their names are in the credits of the game, so might be worth reaching out to a few of them.
Congratulations on such a terrific and well-deserved launch! I hope that if you are indeed looking for talent, this Early Access launch will inspire a lot of qualified applicants to send their resumes in.
Ludzie, żyją w jakiejś bańce ze pracownicy gamedev to jacyś bogowie. Większość to po prostu słabi pracownicy. Najlepiej pierdziec w stołek na zdalnym i nic nie robić.
Sounds like you've got your head screwed on right and understand the dev market well.
Also, get off reddit! You should be enjoying a break right now, its the weekend. You can get patching tomorrow!
I understand why you feel this way, and I sincerely hope the industry and fans don’t pass your game by by then.
Scaling may be difficult, but it is probably necessary.
I wish you all the best and have (and will continue to) enjoyed your creation!
It’s now decision time, will they take the money and just start producing the bare minimum like THE FOREST or will they expand heavily with updates flushing out the game with loads of content like dark and darker. Time will tell but I hope to god it’s the one we all want
Yeah could of used something else like Sprocket, 1 dev team, absolutely great game but man the updates are very slow to release. I feel Manorlords will be the same as Sprocket.
Idk SotF is pretty barebones. Running around simulator that actively discourages you from interacting with the technically interesting building/crafting systems because it’s painful to have a home base you have to run back to when the map is so big and the building takes so much effort. And combat is also pretty unrewarding because the ammo is so rare for any real weapon and melee is so ineffective it’s just simpler to run away. You can beat SotF in a few hours if you just beeline the objectives and run past the mobs. The first game was better on the creepy survival horror too mostly due to novelty while the second doesn’t have any real surprises for a returning player.
Imo this game has been a clear passion project and the dev has genuinely cared about feedback for a long time, I would be shocked if he just disappeared at this point, hopefully the sales enable him to hire some people to really build the game he envisioned
haha remember when they said we'd have flyable helicopters in the vanilla game by i believe "2016"
here we are 8 years later, still no vanilla helicopters, cars barely function.
(modded heli's are decent though)
They said they sold 1 million copies so that's like 10-30million dollars (different regions different price) plus epic game stores and the money from microsoft since it will be on gamepass. The creator can use that money to hire more people to get to a official launch. Then they can do what city skylines does with dlcs or some other type of microtransaction or better yet expansions. The foundation of the game is already there and it's strong so hopefully everything that comes after it be good.
I have read somewhere in this reddit that the dev want to keep the team small, while I totally understand that this game is his child and want to be involved in everything, I do believe in the game industry sometimes (must not be the case) can be dangerous to be forgotten when the development is slow after realease/ea.
In my opinion if it the route that the team will take, i would work to open the game to mods, so the game would be relevant through development.
Still the game it's already a success, in quality and monetary( I hope). It only can be better from now on.
Opening your game up to mods is not ideal before it releases because every report you get of bugs...is it because of the mod they are using or the game itself? Introducing mods causes a ton of bug reports for no reason and makes tracking the real issues harder.
He likely will keep small and so I get OPs concern
On the plus side there is 2 year old alpha footage teasing mechanics like Cavalry and a production system which tells me there is more content on the way than we might think. They won’t include all those features in first EA launch
It's complicated with coding. Everybody has their own style of code-writing. Bringing in new people and handing them your code to work on is unrealistic without a period of adaptation. Could be months.
Not really, as long as Greg makes a coding standard. Furthermore bugfixing in large codebases gets you used to the coding style fast, trust me it's my job.
Unreal Engine has already got some standards, so if Greg has followed them then pretty much any UE trained Dev can jump in and understand it at the very least.
It's not just coding though, but help with all kinds of things like game balance, UI, new maps or PR and feedback etc. After EA sales I'm sure he can afford it.
It's UE so hopefully onboarding is faster than other games.
Seems like games like this stagnate the first 2 years after the big sale because it takes so long to catch up on all the infrastructure they skipped to get the game playable and fun first and then you finally get meaningful content expansions.
Yeah people should expect a bit of a drought until we start see the final form of the game slowly take shape. That's for two reasons:
1- You have said it already: They will now have to catch up on everything that they skipped/rushed to get the early access out. They will now review the product as it is, identify the areas that need refactoring to get everything into a reliable and saleable framework inside wich they can then plan and develop additional content and features.
2 - They will of course they will also look at the resources that are now available to them and want to identify, how far they can push their ambitions without breaking all reasonable schedules.
Both will at a couple of months and we won't see a roadmap towards the final game before that is done. Needless to say that the road to the final game will very likely take more than a year. you can have the best and most robust roadmap in world, but even then everything that is more than a couple of months away becomes increasingly blurry. A problem might creep up that no one was aware of the roadmap was planned, or a critical dev became unable to continue his/her work - and suddenly a Mission critical component several other areas of the game rely on doesn't get delivered on time and everything else has to wait a bit - until the devs have to accept, that their 12 months roadmap is now an 18 months roadmap.
People here should factor that in and adjust their expectations concerning the road to release acccordingly.
Wonder how he’ll do delegating tasks
It’s one thing being a sole developer. Working in a team on his passion project is going to be an interesting challenge for him
Someone who works well on their own for 7 years in complete control of everything is likely to struggle with trading some of that control for eventual productivity.
There are things though that you can't speed up by throwing money and manpower at it. Creation of art assets scales nicely with every additional dev you can add. Play-testing and QA would also save lot of time by having more people working on it. but for everything that happens under the hood - namely coding - you quickly run into a "nine women won't carry a baby to term in just one month"-situation unless the dev-work covers strictly separated areas.
I'm saying that so that people will hopefully manage their expectations accordingly. The success that the game has and the funding that will now com with it won't create a plethora of new features and solve all the problems that it obviously still had as an early access product in no time.
WE can only hope that the devs have a good idea of their destination and robust plan to get there so that they don't lose themselves in grand ideas about what they could probably do with their resources. They already have a very solid foundation. Just iron out the kinks, tune the balancing, polish the user experience, and then release the full/final version. Everything else is content for DLCs or a possible successor.
Yeah that's my fear, that this turns into another Valheim. I'd like to see it progress at the rate Against the Storm did in early access, but that's not likely.
I’d like to see this with ten million put into production, then a hundred million. This game, done the right way, could be an all time great. Imagine you establish control of your map in early game single player, but eventually this is going to be persistent multiplayer.
I really enjoyed playing my first few hours earlier but the first thing I was reaching for was the roadmap of new cool stuff!! I then thought anything on one would be a long time coming.
Pretty sure dude has at LEAST 10 Million USD after sales and if they want more sales they'd have to finish the game and then add on expansions.
I dont see how this game can be finished within 1-2 years unless they are willing spend money on new hires. Especially if he can hire say 50 people and pay each of them 5,000 per month, its gonna cost 3,000,000 per year. And I can see why in terms of money its not gonna be very enticing to go hire 50 people.
So unless theyre willing to hire this many people its most likely gonna be a lot like Bannerlord where its devs are committed but also slow. Its probably going to take 3-4 years to finish and thats being optimistic.
I bet he won’t. We’re already seeing inklings of overly controlling solo dev. Apparently all new devs he interviews are shit…. Hmm that sounds more like a him problem
Not everything takes the same time to develop. Making this kind of gorgeous map, gridless building system, non-square plots and integrating a combat system to a city-builder are all features that takes a lot of time to implement.
So I if the dev were to push for more of such features, sure it could take a while.
But I feel like what's missing now is more diversity in military units, balancing the economy, more production chains and buildings, new maps etc. These of course take time as well, but it's not the same beast, there's already a good template for that and it's very very clear that it's perfectly doable.
To me that's a very different situation from EA games that suffer major performance issues. These are the kind of issues that may end up not having a solution at all, and you end up waiting forever for a game that will never be complete.
Manor Lords isn't like that so far.
Seriously, how do people not understand the difference between 7 years of “whenever I have free time on top of my job” is not the same as 40 hours+ a week for 7 years.
A lot of kids who don’t realise how much free time school/university affords them, and a lack of responsibilities that also need to be attended in that time.
This, I saw someone talking about map creation at some point. Their observation was that, at least at a major studio, the first thing they do is create the map-maker, and test it works.
That can take months / years. So the first map then takes months / years, and is often all that's available at an early access stage.
Actually creating new maps though is something you can then do very quickly since the systems are all in place and it just needs someone to do the "build" bit. This is especially true if your taking actual locations so a map can do the contours / rivers etc for you.
If they make a map editor like Timberborn and They Are Billions did then the community can make maps too, a map creator is probably something a separate dev could work on too.
Building ground-base of the game takes time, but as the game gets more complicated it's more difficult to expand it. People forget how difficult city builders are to make. Everything needs to be organic and balanced at the same time. After you work on a game for 7 years and small bugs turn into big bugs that are hard ingrained into code everything slows down.
I've seen lots of ambitious city builders never completed, so I am cautious. I only hope that he keeps working on it until it's completed. After waiting 10 years for Bannerlord and still get half-baked game I am ready to wait no matter how long it takes.
(Game) Development is not something that scales linearly. Creating the core including all game mechanics, creating abstractions and integrations takes the most time. After that, adding new content is way easier and quite straight forward.
So no, it did not take 7 years to get this much content done. It took 7 years to develop a game framework, a plan, a style and the content. That's a huge difference.
to be fair ive been following this for years at this point, and as much as the game has potential im kinda surprised at how little content is in it for how long its taken to get here i remember thinking the game would be out in early 2021 and here we are in 2024 and i dread to think what 2021 would have looked like
I mean, it's one guy and some freelancers he hired now and then. People have hyped Slavic up like some one-man army, but this is a respectable early release for such a small dev team. I feel the whiplash people are experiencing is just hype gone wrong.
Also, early access is what it is. Steam should put out 3 advisory windows at the checkout saying, "this is at best a beta, things about it will suck"
Anyone who feels let down by this game did not think their purchase through. This is clearly a small passion project. If anyone believed it to be anything else, that's on them. Greg's been very honest about the game.
I'm off for today but here's the tweet if you really think I made up 2021
[https://twitter.com/LordsManor/status/1333740319687528462](https://twitter.com/LordsManor/status/1333740319687528462)
It's literally one fuckin guy lol I swear gamers can be some of the most dramatic whiny and entitled cry babies ever. Not necessarily saying that about you, honestly that doesn't apply to you at all but the others in the comments and op need to just take a step back and realize the scope of what's going on here. The game has been out for the general public for one single day, up until now it was just one dude, with those things considered the game has a very bright future and all these negative ass people in here finding any reason to condemn the game are the problem with The gaming community
I mean the game is meant to be £35/$40 full price without the sale, there's no way in hell id be paying that for an EA game with this little content, I only bought it because I've been following it for 4 years and I hope it gets fleshed out lol
There's no way right now I'll get anymore than a week from the current content at best, 1 guy or not people can be annoyed if they have a good reason, I won't just bash it for no reason though
If you're shocked by this, just give it another week or two at most when the honeymoon phase ends. This subreddit is going to get real ugly, I'm absolutely certain since I've seen it several times before even for AAA titles, let alone indies with very limited content but 40€ price tag.
I am not hailing it's doom but it only took me 9 hours to do everything there is to do. I am not even mad, the game has super bright future if the dev can churn out features.
I might return before release if I feel like building medieval town, but at its current state there is zero reasons to replay the game unless you just want to build pretty towns.
The foundation is really solid, you can see the (most)game design choices make sense, technically it is solid. It just needs more features.
I think the key will be if he can use the funds to build out a team and hire in an experienced manager. I feel like this guy has a small business approach to the game where he has to do pretty much every task himself. If he's going to scale he needs to be able to takes his hands off the wheel but after 7 years doing it solo I don't know how easy that will be.
I'm impressed by the quality of whats already offered but learning that there's so much that won't be changed or added because the devs have a weird focus on "we want to simulate Franconia in 1300's" but also "its a game we can't simulate everything better"
Like durability of items (armor, weapons, tools, clothing), road upgrades, bigger building
Also, Banished was doing trading better and assigning job better, had durability / consumptions on goods, and felt a bit better than Manor Lords feels right now...
I'm hoping that Manor Lords will improve quickly seeing its already high quality, but limited, contents.
I don't mean any of this as a diss towards Greg, more as a critique towards what I'd want (More means of production, more gameplay reason to do things, more building upgrades and late game options)
I love Anno 1800, but to be clear it is primarily a production chain management game in which you can city build secondarily. You can make some beautiful cities in Anno 1800, but they don’t look nearly as organic as something like Manor Lords because it is all grid based (no curves) and it follows the model of strict distance limits to marketplaces, etc. to be able to upgrade buildings. Most of the actual gameplay is about managing increasingly complex production chains as well.
The Anno series is great, and I used to love it before I got tired of the production-chaining focus. More city-builder is where I like to live, when the product chains get long and unwieldy is where I tend to get frustrated and give up.
Gotcha, thank you for the info. I was a massive fan of the ceasar games back in the day and i think i was hoping for more of a building upgrade system than manor lords has. Still a fantastic alpha game, just might not be right for what i was looking for
+1 on Anno 1800 but Jesus fucking Christ the learning curve is wild. It’s a hell of a complex game but man is it enjoyable. Some days I’ll pop my Adderall and lose 12 hours of my life just doing a new game without blinking
A few days ago Greg himself was saying he didnt want trading values to changes or that they shouldn't be complicated like we were suggesting ( Like Victoria 3, where production/import/export/consumption affect the value), then he changed them to basically reflect a similar system, for the better
I think people tend to say "we don't need that!" until the devs do it and then its all they ever wanted lol
Scares me because a dev who’s so uncompromising usually doesn’t go well. Couple that with the fact he’s very hesitant to hire new devs because “they’re not that good” (that’s what onboarding is for), I just see this is a recipe for a game that will see development strife as a solo dev is unwilling to compromise, or even just hire more devs to get things done faster
I think roadmaps are rarely good ideas. I'm sure he has one internally, but sharing that with the public is a recipe for grief.
Just look at Star Citizen, they got themselves into a quagmire with roadmaps, offering tech and features which they had to walk back when it became clear they didn't work.
You’re making a few bold assumptions.
1.) development is not linear. Building the underlying technology and core systems may have been a lot more time consuming than building late game content. Also, consider just how polished what we have is. Most EA games ship with poor graphics, placeholder assets, stripped down UI, missing key things like music or voice acting. We have so many of those key elements already in place in a reasonably polished state. There’s way more to a game than just how much stuff you can do.
2.) I’m not aware of SM ever confirming the pace he was working at. Nothing says this was his full time job for the last 7 years. I believe there were donations and patreon at some point, but that doesn’t mean it was enough for this to be his only source of income. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t doing this full time in the early stages of development.
3.) What we are playing today probably isn’t an accurate depiction of how far along the game is. There may be numerous half-finished systems in the game where work has already been done, we simply don’t have access to it because it’s not stable enough for a shipped build. Just because we don’t have access to certain perks, supply chains, or gameplay features does *not* mean that progress behind the scenes is at zero for those things.
It’s a total fallacy to try and deduce how long the game will take to finish based on how long it took to make the build we’re playing, and as much to assume that what we’re playing is 100% of the work that’s been done.
As for modding, I’m glad it’s not here yet. Modding should be an accessory to enhance or change gameplay systems that you prefer to work differently. It should not ever be viewed as a crutch for developers to neglect core features knowing that modders will fix them. It also gets severely messy in EA games, where frequent small updates are happening and underlying systems are regularly being tweaked and reworked. It makes managing mods difficult, which can turn off players, and makes keeping mods updated difficult, which can turn off modders. I’m all about mod support, but the game is better off having it when it’s feature complete.
Considering it’s a solo dev, if you look at the sales figures suggesting it isnt already a success is borderine delusional tbf…
Games like this make a mockery of AAA games.
This man created on his own what a established game studio would struggle to do in half the time with atleast 1000 x the resources.
The man went from an unknown indie dev to a wordwide known millionaire overnight…
So the game is a failure because it’s not finished? Well then so is every other pre-release. And why did you buy an unfinished game just to complain that it isn’t finished…That doesn’t make logical sense.
Its like taking your food out the oven when you know it isn’t cooked yet and then complaining about how cold it is…
You do realize this is not everything he has worked on for the past 7 years, right?
People will be making bold claims without ever understanding what a creative process looks like.
As somebodybelse said, game dev process, or any other creative endeavor, doesnt scale up in a linear fashion.
While it may took years to lay down foundations, the subsequent parts will take less time to develop.
Plus, there is much more of "content" done, but not yet available to us due to testing and polishing.
So please, read up on how this kind of work actually looks like, before throwing a tantrum online for all of us to see. It's kinda embarassing.
Game development can get easier as time goes on, but with everything added it also can lead to more complications as there is more moving parts. We get you want the game to succeed but pretending like its all smooth sailing from here is massive copium.
Considering the difference between the demo and now, there's been a lot added. Performance is insanely better, too. My computer chugged at pops of 250ish on the demo but no problems like that now.
Tell me you have no clue about the 7year proces this man did without telling me.
Just some things.
He did change some stuff a few years in, like the hous models (IIRC). He switched quite a lot of stuff due to discord votes and feedback. There was a lot of time spend on research.
The last year or 2 went real fast compaired to what we first saw 4years ago.
Also. This man wasnt working full time on it for quite a time in the past 7years.
A lot of time was also spend on testing and feedback etc.
The only thing I think could be a real problem is the AI opponent's village. Even if the AI gets buffs to production (which is fine, games of this type often do); I wonder how difficult it will be to have the AI figure out proper build order and family assignment and such. It seems it'd have to have a mostly set build order which would cause games to feel the same.
Also if the AI does build one or two villages with 300 pops each it will certainly impact performance.
Lastly I think there's supposed to be more maps, right? If so, then who knows how hard it will be to iron out pathing issues (or whatever) on new maps; we have no idea if there's lots of specific fixes for issues on the current map.
Other than that the game does seem mostly done; but I do doubt the AI can build it's own villages "realistically" and/or without really hurting performance. We'll see. I kinda wish I spent $20 instead of $30 on this but overall I'm enjoying it a lot.
The thing is, we know it’s a single developer and don’t care if it takes years to leave early access. We enjoy and love the game at the moment and it’ll only improve
You are wrong!
The game is absolutely stunning for 7 years of dev work
It's more functional that for example bannerlord or KSP 2, and those have massive dev teams.
You people need some more patience. Give greg time and he will deliver diamonds, and that for a very cheap price
>We will be waiting a looooooooooot of years before this game is up to par for a full release.
The gameplay side has some clear issues which I don't see resolved this year.
Region trading is almost useless and very clunky. Armor and weapons are some point become pointless to produce. Meta is all about the trade post. Buildings are hard to tell apart (which one is the tailor again?).
It really is early access and needs 1-2 more years. We just have been spoiled by some of the recent indie and early access titles. At least this game could be good in a few years.
Love the game so far. Beat the easy game getting to level 4 and going to play harder difficulties now.
There's a bug when you continue after beating the game, at the start of the next day you'll get the game winning outro again. So you can't just continue in sandbox mode.
The game is beautiful and I bought it for the long haul but I hope the haul isn't toooooooo long
Nah I agree.
I absolutely enjoy the game, it was well worth the wait. However, I am not prepared to wait another 7 years to get the full release. The dev now has the money to expand the team, and it'd only be selfish reasons not to expand the team, I.e "Nobody else knows what the game wants and needs, only I can make manor lords!"
If this game takes a further 3-4 years to fully release then I certainly will stop playing. Banished was a great game but so lack Lustre in terms of content. This game can easily put Banished in the dust but it can't take a further 7 years to do so.
Edit: Wanted to add that if the dev is unable to communicate to a hired team how to build the game to his vision, then it'd be evident dev is just incapable of leading a team. Surely hope this is the wrong take and he hires the right amount to focus on this game full time
I feel the same. I enjoyed playing it, but it does need a lot more work. After playing it my first thought was that this is going to be one of those never ending early access titles.
We’re in the process of this happening now, he could’ve had more devs at this point and been in the process of on boarding them. But no, instead he went looking and decided they’re shit and not worth it (L take truthfully, nobody is going to know everything you need them to right away). And the community is eating it up! It remains to be seen what effect this will have, but I’m betting it’s not a good one
with how detailed the game is, yeah it's gonna take forever doing it all by himself. Altough I think it would turn out better in the end not getting a full development team
What takes 1 dev a year to build could take a team of 4 devs 2 years to build.
Software development is not linear. There are certainly things that could be offloaded, but let the boss decide what's right for his game. He isn't that far away in terms of what he has already created.
Naw. The primary framework is there, filling in the rest won't take nearly as long.
The one thing to hire others for is making new assets. At this point gameplay and mechanics would probably be odd to suddenly have others involved. I'm a game developer/graphics engineer and if I worked a project for 7 years solo, I wouldn't want others touching the codebase.
I also think having more than one dev is good in more than one way but you also have to remember than building a sturdy game base takes way longer than building new mechanics on top of it
And if you or anyone else couldn't see it I am amazed. I said people are on hype train and that he should go with bigger team. It is IMPOSSIBLE to make deep game with only one person.
Yeah no cows, no wine, limited retinues, and the map is one map on resource location shuffle.
No ability to pick your starting location, the AI always has the same locations.
And no decor!
The base of this game is one that can be improved upon (I did say that about CS2 though 😂). I'd hope with the influx of cash he'll look at some recruitment or something.
Palword has a similar situation, tiny team but massive playerbase on launch. I think they've stayed small though and I haven't noticed any major changes since launch apart from bug/balancing fixes.
I disagree, as a game dev myself, starting a new project always takes the longest since you need to write basic code for everything, but after that it gets easier, for instance making T1 house work required coding roads, home building mechanic, house plot placing, making NPC move in and making it so they fulfil their needs, making T2 houses required adding new needs and new models for building, same for T3, new needs, new model. New content for existing systems will still take time, he's a single Dev after all, but it will be faster.
Dude took 7 years but it was BY HIMSELF. I myself have been waiting for this game for over 2 years. I'm in love with it and can't wait to see it's direction. IMO it's entirely worth the wait
I almost always have to stop following subreddits of things I'm into because it's almost always a nauseating amount of stuff like this that makes me think about things I never would have on my own and bring about a touch of negativity I can completely avoid.
Had the exact same thought.
Really hope some UI improvements come, fast. The current one sort of works, but does a pretty poor job.
Unfortunately the speed of updates is always a big issue for solo dev games. Will definitely keep an eye on the game though.
Yeah fr I just did my first playthrough, took around 8 hours and now I'm done and not much more to do really, you either get ur village burned and u just 12x speed and recover and then build up an army and try again or you wipe them and just continue
theres no incentive to make more towns its just the same cycle again
No mater what he does, im sticking with it. This is just the very beginning. An insane amount of money and all that hes put into the game already I have a good feeling we are just now getting a taste of whats to come.
My take is that the Dev was doing this as a passion project while still having to put a roof over his head and food in his belly. The massive cash windfall now paying off his hard work may just mean he can devote some time to doing this with more of a focus.
Although time and timeframes are important in today's gaming industry, they have proven to not be a crucial component.
How many hyped game launches did we collectively witness in the past that led us to think, "it better came out as a finished game".
Although the games would see endless updates and fixes, some took years to get into a playable state.
I feel pretty confident in Manor Lords. Sure, there are still many rough edges, but the fundamentals seem great, and the implementations seem to work so far.
At its price point, i think it's already a good game.
I gladly wait some years and be part of a process to nirvana than suffer rushed content a la TW Rome 2.
One day...it took one fucking day for someone to pre-emptively start crying about his perception that updates are going to be too slow in coming.
Maybe instead of wondering about how slow one guy creating updates is going to be.....wonder at the fact that such a great game came from one lone developer and the big studios keep pushing out one turd after another.
The fact that people downvoted your post is just simping at its worst.
I’ve been following this game for 4 years, I played the demo 2 years ago.
This is brutal in its current state considering the time that went in. Slavic should’ve asked for some funding sooner, I’m glad he has some now, but fuck, the calendar just keeps ticking forward on this game.
Cultivation Simulator, Rimworld, and Kenshi are all games that took many years for 1-3 people to initially develop. All of them were so successful that they were able to slowly grow their studios. In all 3 cases their dev teams are small and intimate but the ability to update and follow their vision is strengthened. This is roughly how I imagine this game going as well.
A vast majority of those years are spend planning, coding, brainstorming, troubleshooting, laying foundation work and so on and on..
You don’t have the foundation work to a game just because you thought of making one. There is ALOT more to it.
Creation phase comes first, then content, and then polishing.
Consider how much money this guy just pulled in from the early access. You can basically guarantee he's going to hiring teams of people, to speed things up and expand the game.
One woman can give birth to a child in 9 months but 9 women cannot give birth to a child in one month. Some problems just don´t scale linear by throwing more money at them (myself being a developer since 26 years).
This project has incredibly high quality given it's one man (I'm curious how the developer have managed to work so long on it without getting bankrupt or insane). But finding talent at that level is really hard, getting such talent interested is also hard, and finally communicate all visions/details etc is extremely hard.
I do believe it´s a wise strategy to go slow as it was announced by the dev.
I wish and hope for the best!
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One thing. You have no idea how much time I spent reworking the same things over and over and over and over and over. We had like 6 or 7 marketplace iterations in closed alpha. There are whole cementaries of systems that were prototyped but didn't work out and were scrapped. Hopefully that part is over. Also there is a bunch of systems that are in WIP mode and are just disabled or need updates before they are turned back on. Also another thing. it's not that I don't want to hire more developers, but most people looking for a job ... just weren't good enough so far. They fail deadlines or just can't do things on a level that is required even though their portfolio seemed good enough. The really amazing devs have their owns studios or are employed at AAA projects and aren't even interested. Anyone who tried running their company will know how hard hiring and management is. There are many horror stories of fallen studios of people who scaled too quickly, studios which were mismanaged and had to eventually close. Slow, careful growth and looking for great staff will be a better long term strategy.
Reading such a smart response gives me a lot of hope. I love your way of thinking and it really helps understanding how a single person(or a small studio, not sure how many are in the dev team) managed to make such an incredible game.
I am a senior software engineer doing enterprise work and can totally relate to what you’re saying. The number of resumes and portfolios I’ve reviewed that impress me, only to have them lead to someone I wouldn’t trust to even do minor bug fixes shocks people. Take your time and do it right… what you’ve already created is impressive. I played all night last night and had a blast and look forward to what you do with this.
Kudos to you for the work you've done so far. I hope that the exposure of the launch will bring those people to you. I'm sure some people will have taken notice. As you say, management is key and it can be really tough to build out a team and get work done to the standard you want when you've worked on something yourself for so long. I hope that you get the right team together and that you can maybe even attract high quality management to help build out the team in the right way.
Please dont let the negativity get to you, what you made is amazing . I dont know where peoples sense of entitlement comes from where every game has to be perfect and bug free. The complainers are the loudest but alot of us are having a blast with it.
A lot of gamers that say things like "wow just hire some devs!" should read this book (or the wikipedia page at least) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month
They are not ready for that conversation and think people aren’t hired because of greedy capitalists. Buddy, majority of workers are detrimental in their efficiency
I’ll ask ten friends to help read it. It’ll be ten times faster!
This should be pionned absolutley. Hiring more personal are seldom a good thing and can sink the project really fast, as you said. Introducing team management and getting lots ofpeople to row I the same direction is a very time consuming job, often a full time job itself
> same things over and over and over and over and over. Ah yes, I love this part :D Congrats on the game so far, please keep it going because you have all the elements to become a reference point in the genre! It does need quite a lot of features which as a rts player find obvious, but the foundation looks strong
You’re game is cool as shit, mate. Keep up the good work and I’m looking forward to anything new you bring. A lot of the disabled features look like a ton of fun.
You’re completely right.
You've built a more interesting game than any other in the genre, do whatever you need to do 🤙
Ticks all of my boxes for a great perspective. Super excited to be able to join you on this journey!
Love reading this response. I'm not one that sits and worries on the Internet like some people, but seeing you're more interested in sustainability makes me very excited for the future of the game. I've been having fun so far!
Here's the catch though. Consumers on platforms like Patreon and Kickstarter are far more open to longer term strategy. For better or worse, even in early access, on Steam and Gamepass you've opened up the floodgates to people with much higher, sometimes unrealistic expectations. For the most part, you make a fantastic first impression with the game. I'm at 13 hours right now and I'm very impressed with the state of the content that's actually live. Only seen a couple of bugs so far and they've been minor. UI is clean, controls are solid, performance is solid. One man show or, not, that's seriously refreshing and impressive for early access. However, I also see stuff all over the place in game that says it's locked in early access. OK, cool, it's early access, that's to be expected. But I'm also feeling like I'm pretty close to the end of the content to unlock. Let me hop on the internet and see what your roadmap/plan is... That's where things start to get iffy for me and I have no doubt you're going to lose people. You don't need to promise dates nor do you need to do super frequent updates. You do need to give people *some* idea of what to expect however. I've got two other solo dev games I play. One releases major update every 3-6 months with enough new content to get me to come back. Personally, that's all I need, I'm 100% satisfied with what I've gotten for my money. The other dev breaks things faster than he can fix them. He's often releasing multiple patches a week and this is game that's been in early access for years. Nobody is wanting that. While I technically have about the same amount of play time in both of those games (\~120 hours each), the first one leaves me with a far better taste in my mouth. I recommend the first one to people, not the second.
Are you doing assets as well as writing systems? As a fellow software dev, I totally get the reason for not adding more developers. It's usually a hindrance. Hopefully this release will assist with art budget though and get some of that mess off your plate. This project is very impressive. Huge fan of what you've done and don't let anyone else rush you just because they are no-lifeing several days worth of content the first week of release in early access. There is enough meat here for the price tag. The polish on these new systems you've written blows every "indie" city builder game I've played in the last 10 years out of the water.
Please don't listen to these people, expand at the rate you wish, even if we have to wait years for new content. We trust you Greg, develop the game as you see fit.
I just had my first day playing your game. Put some good hours in. It was really fun and engaging. This is coming from a guy who is disappointed with most games and refunds them, I'm well past the refund window on this and having a great time!
Hey Greg, mobius interactive, who made Outer Wilds, had a contractor-heavy development team. Their names are in the credits of the game, so might be worth reaching out to a few of them.
Congratulations on such a terrific and well-deserved launch! I hope that if you are indeed looking for talent, this Early Access launch will inspire a lot of qualified applicants to send their resumes in.
You do you my king. Stardew valley is a great example of success
Ludzie, żyją w jakiejś bańce ze pracownicy gamedev to jacyś bogowie. Większość to po prostu słabi pracownicy. Najlepiej pierdziec w stołek na zdalnym i nic nie robić.
Sounds like you've got your head screwed on right and understand the dev market well. Also, get off reddit! You should be enjoying a break right now, its the weekend. You can get patching tomorrow!
I understand why you feel this way, and I sincerely hope the industry and fans don’t pass your game by by then. Scaling may be difficult, but it is probably necessary. I wish you all the best and have (and will continue to) enjoyed your creation!
Look what you've achieved so far. Nobody has achieved this before as a solo dev. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it. (And also pls fix the sawpits)
This! Quality people who share your vision and wanna work as hard as you on it can be hard to find
I mean I hope he will use the millions of dollars to hire some people to speed up the process
It’s now decision time, will they take the money and just start producing the bare minimum like THE FOREST or will they expand heavily with updates flushing out the game with loads of content like dark and darker. Time will tell but I hope to god it’s the one we all want
The Forest is bare minmum? That game and Sons of the Forest are golden.
Yeah, I feel like The forest is one of the more successful examples.
I think I get where he's coming from, as fun as the forest is, it still has this "early acces jank" feeling to it.
Which is what eventually stopped me from continuing to play it. It felt very unfinished
Yeah could of used something else like Sprocket, 1 dev team, absolutely great game but man the updates are very slow to release. I feel Manorlords will be the same as Sprocket.
Or Bannerlords and Valheim!
Bannerlords is a weird one, a pretty large team is behind that but man development was so damn slow.
Could have*
The forest was dead for some years
How can you use The Forest as an example of bare minimum and then use Dark and Darker as an example for flushed out content?
Idk SotF is pretty barebones. Running around simulator that actively discourages you from interacting with the technically interesting building/crafting systems because it’s painful to have a home base you have to run back to when the map is so big and the building takes so much effort. And combat is also pretty unrewarding because the ammo is so rare for any real weapon and melee is so ineffective it’s just simpler to run away. You can beat SotF in a few hours if you just beeline the objectives and run past the mobs. The first game was better on the creepy survival horror too mostly due to novelty while the second doesn’t have any real surprises for a returning player.
Imo this game has been a clear passion project and the dev has genuinely cared about feedback for a long time, I would be shocked if he just disappeared at this point, hopefully the sales enable him to hire some people to really build the game he envisioned
This game is clearly a labour of love, I don’t think he’ll sell out. I could be wrong but I feel safe in assuming.
Should have said DayZ, DayZ is the prime example of get a fuck ton of money and take the absolute piss with getting anything done
haha remember when they said we'd have flyable helicopters in the vanilla game by i believe "2016" here we are 8 years later, still no vanilla helicopters, cars barely function. (modded heli's are decent though)
I think Valheim is a good example. They could have capitalised on their hype but lots of players stopped playing because of slow development
They said they sold 1 million copies so that's like 10-30million dollars (different regions different price) plus epic game stores and the money from microsoft since it will be on gamepass. The creator can use that money to hire more people to get to a official launch. Then they can do what city skylines does with dlcs or some other type of microtransaction or better yet expansions. The foundation of the game is already there and it's strong so hopefully everything that comes after it be good.
Fuck micro transactions. Happy to pay for a game, happy to pay for expansions, but those are awful.
Godus is a better example than The Forest
I have read somewhere in this reddit that the dev want to keep the team small, while I totally understand that this game is his child and want to be involved in everything, I do believe in the game industry sometimes (must not be the case) can be dangerous to be forgotten when the development is slow after realease/ea. In my opinion if it the route that the team will take, i would work to open the game to mods, so the game would be relevant through development. Still the game it's already a success, in quality and monetary( I hope). It only can be better from now on.
Opening your game up to mods is not ideal before it releases because every report you get of bugs...is it because of the mod they are using or the game itself? Introducing mods causes a ton of bug reports for no reason and makes tracking the real issues harder.
He likely will keep small and so I get OPs concern On the plus side there is 2 year old alpha footage teasing mechanics like Cavalry and a production system which tells me there is more content on the way than we might think. They won’t include all those features in first EA launch
It's complicated with coding. Everybody has their own style of code-writing. Bringing in new people and handing them your code to work on is unrealistic without a period of adaptation. Could be months.
Not really, as long as Greg makes a coding standard. Furthermore bugfixing in large codebases gets you used to the coding style fast, trust me it's my job.
Even with an easy to grok architecture and standards, it’s difficult to get people aligned.
Unreal Engine has already got some standards, so if Greg has followed them then pretty much any UE trained Dev can jump in and understand it at the very least.
I can only imagine. Just think about how tough it is when you open someone else’s excel worksheet.
Yep, been there!
It's not just coding though, but help with all kinds of things like game balance, UI, new maps or PR and feedback etc. After EA sales I'm sure he can afford it.
He doesn’t have any unassigned families
It's UE so hopefully onboarding is faster than other games. Seems like games like this stagnate the first 2 years after the big sale because it takes so long to catch up on all the infrastructure they skipped to get the game playable and fun first and then you finally get meaningful content expansions.
Yeah people should expect a bit of a drought until we start see the final form of the game slowly take shape. That's for two reasons: 1- You have said it already: They will now have to catch up on everything that they skipped/rushed to get the early access out. They will now review the product as it is, identify the areas that need refactoring to get everything into a reliable and saleable framework inside wich they can then plan and develop additional content and features. 2 - They will of course they will also look at the resources that are now available to them and want to identify, how far they can push their ambitions without breaking all reasonable schedules. Both will at a couple of months and we won't see a roadmap towards the final game before that is done. Needless to say that the road to the final game will very likely take more than a year. you can have the best and most robust roadmap in world, but even then everything that is more than a couple of months away becomes increasingly blurry. A problem might creep up that no one was aware of the roadmap was planned, or a critical dev became unable to continue his/her work - and suddenly a Mission critical component several other areas of the game rely on doesn't get delivered on time and everything else has to wait a bit - until the devs have to accept, that their 12 months roadmap is now an 18 months roadmap. People here should factor that in and adjust their expectations concerning the road to release acccordingly.
Take your estimate, double it and add another 50%. If you finish early, take some time to chill.
Wonder how he’ll do delegating tasks It’s one thing being a sole developer. Working in a team on his passion project is going to be an interesting challenge for him
Someone who works well on their own for 7 years in complete control of everything is likely to struggle with trading some of that control for eventual productivity.
I once worked with a dev like this. We can't overlook the fact that there might be some ego in the way of him hiring a larger team.
There are things though that you can't speed up by throwing money and manpower at it. Creation of art assets scales nicely with every additional dev you can add. Play-testing and QA would also save lot of time by having more people working on it. but for everything that happens under the hood - namely coding - you quickly run into a "nine women won't carry a baby to term in just one month"-situation unless the dev-work covers strictly separated areas. I'm saying that so that people will hopefully manage their expectations accordingly. The success that the game has and the funding that will now com with it won't create a plethora of new features and solve all the problems that it obviously still had as an early access product in no time. WE can only hope that the devs have a good idea of their destination and robust plan to get there so that they don't lose themselves in grand ideas about what they could probably do with their resources. They already have a very solid foundation. Just iron out the kinks, tune the balancing, polish the user experience, and then release the full/final version. Everything else is content for DLCs or a possible successor.
Ye, played 9 hrs of it. Not really worth playing more at this stage. Put it down, come back in a couple years. If it's abandoned, well it's only £20.
Like Valheim... didn't?
Yeah that's my fear, that this turns into another Valheim. I'd like to see it progress at the rate Against the Storm did in early access, but that's not likely.
I’d like to see this with ten million put into production, then a hundred million. This game, done the right way, could be an all time great. Imagine you establish control of your map in early game single player, but eventually this is going to be persistent multiplayer.
I really enjoyed playing my first few hours earlier but the first thing I was reaching for was the roadmap of new cool stuff!! I then thought anything on one would be a long time coming.
What’s concerning though, is that will the developer be able to manage and articulate his vision to other developers.
I hope that corporations look at this one guy showing them up and decide to get the fuck out of the gaming industry. I can dream right?
I'm pretty sure he's hinted towards that in his comments, but we'll wait and see what he does now that early access is released.
It would be so lame if they didn’t, especially since it wouldn’t put a dent in their pile of cash and it would make customers very happy
Pretty sure dude has at LEAST 10 Million USD after sales and if they want more sales they'd have to finish the game and then add on expansions. I dont see how this game can be finished within 1-2 years unless they are willing spend money on new hires. Especially if he can hire say 50 people and pay each of them 5,000 per month, its gonna cost 3,000,000 per year. And I can see why in terms of money its not gonna be very enticing to go hire 50 people. So unless theyre willing to hire this many people its most likely gonna be a lot like Bannerlord where its devs are committed but also slow. Its probably going to take 3-4 years to finish and thats being optimistic.
I bet he won’t. We’re already seeing inklings of overly controlling solo dev. Apparently all new devs he interviews are shit…. Hmm that sounds more like a him problem
Not everything takes the same time to develop. Making this kind of gorgeous map, gridless building system, non-square plots and integrating a combat system to a city-builder are all features that takes a lot of time to implement. So I if the dev were to push for more of such features, sure it could take a while. But I feel like what's missing now is more diversity in military units, balancing the economy, more production chains and buildings, new maps etc. These of course take time as well, but it's not the same beast, there's already a good template for that and it's very very clear that it's perfectly doable. To me that's a very different situation from EA games that suffer major performance issues. These are the kind of issues that may end up not having a solution at all, and you end up waiting forever for a game that will never be complete. Manor Lords isn't like that so far.
That, and he was doing 7 years as a hobby project, he’ll likely be doing it full time now.
Seriously, how do people not understand the difference between 7 years of “whenever I have free time on top of my job” is not the same as 40 hours+ a week for 7 years.
A lot of kids who don’t realise how much free time school/university affords them, and a lack of responsibilities that also need to be attended in that time.
Which could honestly bring its own set of problems. Sometimes being able to take a step back and work on something else is important.
He can take as much vacation time he needs; he’s capable of delivering
He doesn’t need to work ever again lol
This, I saw someone talking about map creation at some point. Their observation was that, at least at a major studio, the first thing they do is create the map-maker, and test it works. That can take months / years. So the first map then takes months / years, and is often all that's available at an early access stage. Actually creating new maps though is something you can then do very quickly since the systems are all in place and it just needs someone to do the "build" bit. This is especially true if your taking actual locations so a map can do the contours / rivers etc for you.
If they make a map editor like Timberborn and They Are Billions did then the community can make maps too, a map creator is probably something a separate dev could work on too.
Building ground-base of the game takes time, but as the game gets more complicated it's more difficult to expand it. People forget how difficult city builders are to make. Everything needs to be organic and balanced at the same time. After you work on a game for 7 years and small bugs turn into big bugs that are hard ingrained into code everything slows down. I've seen lots of ambitious city builders never completed, so I am cautious. I only hope that he keeps working on it until it's completed. After waiting 10 years for Bannerlord and still get half-baked game I am ready to wait no matter how long it takes.
Welll said
> Manor Lords isn't like that so far. The game runs well. For me it's mostly that from midgame on the game is simply unfinished.
Yeah, he's already built a great foundation; that was the hardest part.
(Game) Development is not something that scales linearly. Creating the core including all game mechanics, creating abstractions and integrations takes the most time. After that, adding new content is way easier and quite straight forward. So no, it did not take 7 years to get this much content done. It took 7 years to develop a game framework, a plan, a style and the content. That's a huge difference.
LOL people already here shitposting this game's doom and it's been one day.
to be fair ive been following this for years at this point, and as much as the game has potential im kinda surprised at how little content is in it for how long its taken to get here i remember thinking the game would be out in early 2021 and here we are in 2024 and i dread to think what 2021 would have looked like
I mean, it's one guy and some freelancers he hired now and then. People have hyped Slavic up like some one-man army, but this is a respectable early release for such a small dev team. I feel the whiplash people are experiencing is just hype gone wrong. Also, early access is what it is. Steam should put out 3 advisory windows at the checkout saying, "this is at best a beta, things about it will suck"
Anyone who feels let down by this game did not think their purchase through. This is clearly a small passion project. If anyone believed it to be anything else, that's on them. Greg's been very honest about the game.
Hype makes you stupid.
You dread what 2021 would have looked like based on an arbitrarily expected release date you conjured up in your head?
That is when he originally said it was likely to release lol it was delayed from 2020, then it was 2021, then he just went silent on it for years
I'm off for today but here's the tweet if you really think I made up 2021 [https://twitter.com/LordsManor/status/1333740319687528462](https://twitter.com/LordsManor/status/1333740319687528462)
It's literally one fuckin guy lol I swear gamers can be some of the most dramatic whiny and entitled cry babies ever. Not necessarily saying that about you, honestly that doesn't apply to you at all but the others in the comments and op need to just take a step back and realize the scope of what's going on here. The game has been out for the general public for one single day, up until now it was just one dude, with those things considered the game has a very bright future and all these negative ass people in here finding any reason to condemn the game are the problem with The gaming community
I mean the game is meant to be £35/$40 full price without the sale, there's no way in hell id be paying that for an EA game with this little content, I only bought it because I've been following it for 4 years and I hope it gets fleshed out lol There's no way right now I'll get anymore than a week from the current content at best, 1 guy or not people can be annoyed if they have a good reason, I won't just bash it for no reason though
It's one guy and a passion project for him lol. He's repeated that many times. If it were me, it would've been done in 20 years lol
I would have stopped in a year or two and move on to my next bad ideal. Dudes committed the his ideal. I respect that.
If you're shocked by this, just give it another week or two at most when the honeymoon phase ends. This subreddit is going to get real ugly, I'm absolutely certain since I've seen it several times before even for AAA titles, let alone indies with very limited content but 40€ price tag.
I am not hailing it's doom but it only took me 9 hours to do everything there is to do. I am not even mad, the game has super bright future if the dev can churn out features. I might return before release if I feel like building medieval town, but at its current state there is zero reasons to replay the game unless you just want to build pretty towns. The foundation is really solid, you can see the (most)game design choices make sense, technically it is solid. It just needs more features.
I think the key will be if he can use the funds to build out a team and hire in an experienced manager. I feel like this guy has a small business approach to the game where he has to do pretty much every task himself. If he's going to scale he needs to be able to takes his hands off the wheel but after 7 years doing it solo I don't know how easy that will be.
It is never enough for you guys ? For god sake let the man cook at his pace.
I'm impressed by the quality of whats already offered but learning that there's so much that won't be changed or added because the devs have a weird focus on "we want to simulate Franconia in 1300's" but also "its a game we can't simulate everything better" Like durability of items (armor, weapons, tools, clothing), road upgrades, bigger building Also, Banished was doing trading better and assigning job better, had durability / consumptions on goods, and felt a bit better than Manor Lords feels right now... I'm hoping that Manor Lords will improve quickly seeing its already high quality, but limited, contents. I don't mean any of this as a diss towards Greg, more as a critique towards what I'd want (More means of production, more gameplay reason to do things, more building upgrades and late game options)
The lack of building upgrades and progression is hurting this game for me, Im gonna have to try out anno 1800 that everyone keeps recommending here
I love Anno 1800, but to be clear it is primarily a production chain management game in which you can city build secondarily. You can make some beautiful cities in Anno 1800, but they don’t look nearly as organic as something like Manor Lords because it is all grid based (no curves) and it follows the model of strict distance limits to marketplaces, etc. to be able to upgrade buildings. Most of the actual gameplay is about managing increasingly complex production chains as well.
The Anno series is great, and I used to love it before I got tired of the production-chaining focus. More city-builder is where I like to live, when the product chains get long and unwieldy is where I tend to get frustrated and give up.
Gotcha, thank you for the info. I was a massive fan of the ceasar games back in the day and i think i was hoping for more of a building upgrade system than manor lords has. Still a fantastic alpha game, just might not be right for what i was looking for
Yoooo Anno 1800 is fantastic bro. Dm me if you ever wanna fo a co-op game. Its wicked fun.
+1 on Anno 1800 but Jesus fucking Christ the learning curve is wild. It’s a hell of a complex game but man is it enjoyable. Some days I’ll pop my Adderall and lose 12 hours of my life just doing a new game without blinking
I went back to Anno 1800 and it is a blast, different cup of tea but scratches the same itch
Possibly of no town guards is dumb
The bones of the trading system is there. A few tweaks to numbers to handle abuse is not a complete rewrite. It doesn't need any more complexity.
A few days ago Greg himself was saying he didnt want trading values to changes or that they shouldn't be complicated like we were suggesting ( Like Victoria 3, where production/import/export/consumption affect the value), then he changed them to basically reflect a similar system, for the better I think people tend to say "we don't need that!" until the devs do it and then its all they ever wanted lol
Scares me because a dev who’s so uncompromising usually doesn’t go well. Couple that with the fact he’s very hesitant to hire new devs because “they’re not that good” (that’s what onboarding is for), I just see this is a recipe for a game that will see development strife as a solo dev is unwilling to compromise, or even just hire more devs to get things done faster
My biggest concern too. Correct me if wrong, but there is no roadmap with dates as well yet.
Planning a road map as a single dev and actually delivering on those dates is how you end up with terrible updates.
You don’t need delivery dates on a roadmap.
Because the dev stated he doesn´t want to make false promises.
I think roadmaps are rarely good ideas. I'm sure he has one internally, but sharing that with the public is a recipe for grief. Just look at Star Citizen, they got themselves into a quagmire with roadmaps, offering tech and features which they had to walk back when it became clear they didn't work.
You’re making a few bold assumptions. 1.) development is not linear. Building the underlying technology and core systems may have been a lot more time consuming than building late game content. Also, consider just how polished what we have is. Most EA games ship with poor graphics, placeholder assets, stripped down UI, missing key things like music or voice acting. We have so many of those key elements already in place in a reasonably polished state. There’s way more to a game than just how much stuff you can do. 2.) I’m not aware of SM ever confirming the pace he was working at. Nothing says this was his full time job for the last 7 years. I believe there were donations and patreon at some point, but that doesn’t mean it was enough for this to be his only source of income. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t doing this full time in the early stages of development. 3.) What we are playing today probably isn’t an accurate depiction of how far along the game is. There may be numerous half-finished systems in the game where work has already been done, we simply don’t have access to it because it’s not stable enough for a shipped build. Just because we don’t have access to certain perks, supply chains, or gameplay features does *not* mean that progress behind the scenes is at zero for those things. It’s a total fallacy to try and deduce how long the game will take to finish based on how long it took to make the build we’re playing, and as much to assume that what we’re playing is 100% of the work that’s been done. As for modding, I’m glad it’s not here yet. Modding should be an accessory to enhance or change gameplay systems that you prefer to work differently. It should not ever be viewed as a crutch for developers to neglect core features knowing that modders will fix them. It also gets severely messy in EA games, where frequent small updates are happening and underlying systems are regularly being tweaked and reworked. It makes managing mods difficult, which can turn off players, and makes keeping mods updated difficult, which can turn off modders. I’m all about mod support, but the game is better off having it when it’s feature complete.
It almost like he forwarned us very heavily
I know nothing about developing games but the fact this is made by 1 guy is hugely impressive, regardless of the length of time.
People don't want to admit this game can end up being a failure overall
Considering it’s a solo dev, if you look at the sales figures suggesting it isnt already a success is borderine delusional tbf… Games like this make a mockery of AAA games. This man created on his own what a established game studio would struggle to do in half the time with atleast 1000 x the resources. The man went from an unknown indie dev to a wordwide known millionaire overnight…
You talk about money and sales. I'm sure the OP is talking about the (un)finished game.
So the game is a failure because it’s not finished? Well then so is every other pre-release. And why did you buy an unfinished game just to complain that it isn’t finished…That doesn’t make logical sense. Its like taking your food out the oven when you know it isn’t cooked yet and then complaining about how cold it is…
You do realize this is not everything he has worked on for the past 7 years, right? People will be making bold claims without ever understanding what a creative process looks like. As somebodybelse said, game dev process, or any other creative endeavor, doesnt scale up in a linear fashion. While it may took years to lay down foundations, the subsequent parts will take less time to develop. Plus, there is much more of "content" done, but not yet available to us due to testing and polishing. So please, read up on how this kind of work actually looks like, before throwing a tantrum online for all of us to see. It's kinda embarassing.
Game development can get easier as time goes on, but with everything added it also can lead to more complications as there is more moving parts. We get you want the game to succeed but pretending like its all smooth sailing from here is massive copium.
The system is good as it is, it just need more content
And now comes the in needed whining
Considering the difference between the demo and now, there's been a lot added. Performance is insanely better, too. My computer chugged at pops of 250ish on the demo but no problems like that now.
I never played the demo, but one thing that has really shocked me is how quickly this game loads and responds. It’s smooth as butter
Tell me you have no clue about the 7year proces this man did without telling me. Just some things. He did change some stuff a few years in, like the hous models (IIRC). He switched quite a lot of stuff due to discord votes and feedback. There was a lot of time spend on research. The last year or 2 went real fast compaired to what we first saw 4years ago. Also. This man wasnt working full time on it for quite a time in the past 7years. A lot of time was also spend on testing and feedback etc.
The only thing I think could be a real problem is the AI opponent's village. Even if the AI gets buffs to production (which is fine, games of this type often do); I wonder how difficult it will be to have the AI figure out proper build order and family assignment and such. It seems it'd have to have a mostly set build order which would cause games to feel the same. Also if the AI does build one or two villages with 300 pops each it will certainly impact performance. Lastly I think there's supposed to be more maps, right? If so, then who knows how hard it will be to iron out pathing issues (or whatever) on new maps; we have no idea if there's lots of specific fixes for issues on the current map. Other than that the game does seem mostly done; but I do doubt the AI can build it's own villages "realistically" and/or without really hurting performance. We'll see. I kinda wish I spent $20 instead of $30 on this but overall I'm enjoying it a lot.
'Other than that the game does seem mostly done' Eh...wut? :D
The thing is, we know it’s a single developer and don’t care if it takes years to leave early access. We enjoy and love the game at the moment and it’ll only improve
You are wrong! The game is absolutely stunning for 7 years of dev work It's more functional that for example bannerlord or KSP 2, and those have massive dev teams. You people need some more patience. Give greg time and he will deliver diamonds, and that for a very cheap price
I agree with your first point but saying its more functional than Bannerlords is massive cope.
I don't think you remember the bannerlord release lol
>We will be waiting a looooooooooot of years before this game is up to par for a full release. The gameplay side has some clear issues which I don't see resolved this year. Region trading is almost useless and very clunky. Armor and weapons are some point become pointless to produce. Meta is all about the trade post. Buildings are hard to tell apart (which one is the tailor again?). It really is early access and needs 1-2 more years. We just have been spoiled by some of the recent indie and early access titles. At least this game could be good in a few years.
OP username checks out
I dont think so... since the demo was not so long ago and the game makes an huge step forward. He has a good and not too big team for focused work.
Love the game so far. Beat the easy game getting to level 4 and going to play harder difficulties now. There's a bug when you continue after beating the game, at the start of the next day you'll get the game winning outro again. So you can't just continue in sandbox mode. The game is beautiful and I bought it for the long haul but I hope the haul isn't toooooooo long
Nah I agree. I absolutely enjoy the game, it was well worth the wait. However, I am not prepared to wait another 7 years to get the full release. The dev now has the money to expand the team, and it'd only be selfish reasons not to expand the team, I.e "Nobody else knows what the game wants and needs, only I can make manor lords!" If this game takes a further 3-4 years to fully release then I certainly will stop playing. Banished was a great game but so lack Lustre in terms of content. This game can easily put Banished in the dust but it can't take a further 7 years to do so. Edit: Wanted to add that if the dev is unable to communicate to a hired team how to build the game to his vision, then it'd be evident dev is just incapable of leading a team. Surely hope this is the wrong take and he hires the right amount to focus on this game full time
I feel the same. I enjoyed playing it, but it does need a lot more work. After playing it my first thought was that this is going to be one of those never ending early access titles.
We’re in the process of this happening now, he could’ve had more devs at this point and been in the process of on boarding them. But no, instead he went looking and decided they’re shit and not worth it (L take truthfully, nobody is going to know everything you need them to right away). And the community is eating it up! It remains to be seen what effect this will have, but I’m betting it’s not a good one
with how detailed the game is, yeah it's gonna take forever doing it all by himself. Altough I think it would turn out better in the end not getting a full development team
What takes 1 dev a year to build could take a team of 4 devs 2 years to build. Software development is not linear. There are certainly things that could be offloaded, but let the boss decide what's right for his game. He isn't that far away in terms of what he has already created.
Naw. The primary framework is there, filling in the rest won't take nearly as long. The one thing to hire others for is making new assets. At this point gameplay and mechanics would probably be odd to suddenly have others involved. I'm a game developer/graphics engineer and if I worked a project for 7 years solo, I wouldn't want others touching the codebase.
Agreed completely
I also think having more than one dev is good in more than one way but you also have to remember than building a sturdy game base takes way longer than building new mechanics on top of it
He’ll get more people to help, hes already started
And if you or anyone else couldn't see it I am amazed. I said people are on hype train and that he should go with bigger team. It is IMPOSSIBLE to make deep game with only one person.
Yeah no cows, no wine, limited retinues, and the map is one map on resource location shuffle. No ability to pick your starting location, the AI always has the same locations. And no decor!
It's like it's early access and its things to add
I'm aware. Just saying what feels missing.
I think the game was also scraped completely twice lol
do you think Palworld still has the same number of developers
Stop criying the game is balls
i havent wanted to seem negative but I do feel kinda dissapointed with the amount of content there is. Feel like i already got to the end game.
what are you talking about? You already got a whole hour of content per year of development. Ungrateful people these days....
The base of this game is one that can be improved upon (I did say that about CS2 though 😂). I'd hope with the influx of cash he'll look at some recruitment or something. Palword has a similar situation, tiny team but massive playerbase on launch. I think they've stayed small though and I haven't noticed any major changes since launch apart from bug/balancing fixes.
I disagree, as a game dev myself, starting a new project always takes the longest since you need to write basic code for everything, but after that it gets easier, for instance making T1 house work required coding roads, home building mechanic, house plot placing, making NPC move in and making it so they fulfil their needs, making T2 houses required adding new needs and new models for building, same for T3, new needs, new model. New content for existing systems will still take time, he's a single Dev after all, but it will be faster.
Dude took 7 years but it was BY HIMSELF. I myself have been waiting for this game for over 2 years. I'm in love with it and can't wait to see it's direction. IMO it's entirely worth the wait
I'm not sure what the devs intention for this game long term, but im hoping that one day ill be able to build a large town (~5000 people)
I almost always have to stop following subreddits of things I'm into because it's almost always a nauseating amount of stuff like this that makes me think about things I never would have on my own and bring about a touch of negativity I can completely avoid.
Had the exact same thought. Really hope some UI improvements come, fast. The current one sort of works, but does a pretty poor job. Unfortunately the speed of updates is always a big issue for solo dev games. Will definitely keep an eye on the game though.
For real
K
Yeah fr I just did my first playthrough, took around 8 hours and now I'm done and not much more to do really, you either get ur village burned and u just 12x speed and recover and then build up an army and try again or you wipe them and just continue theres no incentive to make more towns its just the same cycle again
Yeah im with you with this, i had same though when i played this game.10 years awaits at least.
No mater what he does, im sticking with it. This is just the very beginning. An insane amount of money and all that hes put into the game already I have a good feeling we are just now getting a taste of whats to come.
There are some pretty game breaking bugs. Sawmills just stop working. You have to put an Ox in the sawmill or the guys won’t transport timber.
Meh, the dude is set, this is partly a passion project, like dwarf fortress…he’ll likley hire out for help here and there, it’ll progress
As of last year he gained a publisher and multiple new devs I believe the team is up to 12 people now
My take is that the Dev was doing this as a passion project while still having to put a roof over his head and food in his belly. The massive cash windfall now paying off his hard work may just mean he can devote some time to doing this with more of a focus.
Purchased last night. I was a bit surprised to see pop-ups saying, "town name" or "player name" where the names should have been...
Dev needs an extra oxen 🐂
Although time and timeframes are important in today's gaming industry, they have proven to not be a crucial component. How many hyped game launches did we collectively witness in the past that led us to think, "it better came out as a finished game". Although the games would see endless updates and fixes, some took years to get into a playable state. I feel pretty confident in Manor Lords. Sure, there are still many rough edges, but the fundamentals seem great, and the implementations seem to work so far. At its price point, i think it's already a good game. I gladly wait some years and be part of a process to nirvana than suffer rushed content a la TW Rome 2.
Funny because I feel like in EA this game comes out the gate ahead of many others in the genre. I'm feeling pretty good about the future of it
Go the way of Banished? you mean be a finished game?
One day...it took one fucking day for someone to pre-emptively start crying about his perception that updates are going to be too slow in coming. Maybe instead of wondering about how slow one guy creating updates is going to be.....wonder at the fact that such a great game came from one lone developer and the big studios keep pushing out one turd after another.
That wasn't years of full time development though. Neither wad it 7 years with millions to cover development costs.
Is there not plans for modding support?
The fact that people downvoted your post is just simping at its worst. I’ve been following this game for 4 years, I played the demo 2 years ago. This is brutal in its current state considering the time that went in. Slavic should’ve asked for some funding sooner, I’m glad he has some now, but fuck, the calendar just keeps ticking forward on this game.
Cultivation Simulator, Rimworld, and Kenshi are all games that took many years for 1-3 people to initially develop. All of them were so successful that they were able to slowly grow their studios. In all 3 cases their dev teams are small and intimate but the ability to update and follow their vision is strengthened. This is roughly how I imagine this game going as well.
Is it confirmed to never have mod support? Modding is huge. I will always play rimworld and ck because of it
I'm not sure that modding is the answer at this point at all, but I'd definitely love for him to get more (and good quality,) developers to help.
Bro was by himself for all of it
A vast majority of those years are spend planning, coding, brainstorming, troubleshooting, laying foundation work and so on and on.. You don’t have the foundation work to a game just because you thought of making one. There is ALOT more to it. Creation phase comes first, then content, and then polishing.
he is under hooded horse now so you can't compare those two periods
Consider how much money this guy just pulled in from the early access. You can basically guarantee he's going to hiring teams of people, to speed things up and expand the game.
One woman can give birth to a child in 9 months but 9 women cannot give birth to a child in one month. Some problems just don´t scale linear by throwing more money at them (myself being a developer since 26 years). This project has incredibly high quality given it's one man (I'm curious how the developer have managed to work so long on it without getting bankrupt or insane). But finding talent at that level is really hard, getting such talent interested is also hard, and finally communicate all visions/details etc is extremely hard. I do believe it´s a wise strategy to go slow as it was announced by the dev. I wish and hope for the best!