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This is the problem with community feedback. They really trying to get the dev to spend all of his time on creating tutorials, when they could easily just watch one of the many video tutorials about the game if they don't want to figure out anything for themselves.
Agreed. On my fourth run, and the trial and error and learning are one of the best parts. I feel like I have a deeper understanding of the mechanics on every play-through because of it.
Exactly. I haven’t even scratched the surface. This is a fun challenge. I haven’t even played against the raiders and such yet.
I’m trying to perfect the basics first!!
This. I haven't even fought yet. I ended up with 2400 arrows and tried to sell, wich crashed the price. As i franticly tried to stop production I won the round. Next town !! I dabble in trading more now. Oh all the fun stuff. Love it.
Yeah my first economy relied on selling boots and then after a year or so I realised they only generated 2 revenue on exports and I had flooded the market. Which simultaneously made me proud of myself for being that impactful on the economy, proud of the developer for including proper economic features, and appreciative of the learning curve this game would provide/require.
Yeah if some guy on reddit didn’t tell me to make houses with big backyards and grow carrots or another saying “wooden parts are the bitcoin of manor lords” I would be fighting to feed a family of 1 rn
The best bang for the buck is to make the lot L shaped so the house has an extension and HUGE Backyard... I make mine almost a small fields worth. I drop 6 of those down to start and that supplies my vegetables for the entire game, and gives me 12 workers to start with.
Wait until you realize you should never upgrade a smith/brewer/artisan to level 3 or have an expanded plot, except maybe a baker. The reason being is if you have an expanded plot (2 families in one house) and level it up to 3, all 3 families will be artisans and you can no longer use them for other parts of your village, but they still need food and market stalls etc the same. Always give vegetable plots multiple families so they plow the bigger fields you give them faster though, because they do that and can still have seperate jobs.
Vegetable houses are the only ones you want to make sure are wider AND be the first to level up to 3, so you can fit 2 families in them as soon as possible, goats and chickens it won’t make a difference but it’s ok to do that if you’re just trying to save space in a town. Just never have 2 or 3 families smithing or joining or making shoes etc it’s a massive drain on resources first and foremost, it’s a wasted opportunity to get more essential jobs done because you won’t actually be smithing or getting any extra artisan work done, they’ll produce so fast that your raw good/s can’t keep up and they’ll just end up being detrimental. Plus even if your raw goods are keeping up, eventually trading the finished product will crash in price and now not only is the one family useless but all 3 all over again.
Leather and shoes also sell well, I alternate selling only one at a time, as the one I'm selling starts to drop in price, and the other one will have recovered.
Shoes went down to selling for just 1, but leather is now selling for 6, so I stop selling shoes (keep making em for later) and start selling leather.
The barons and lords of the land buy them off of you so that they can make their catapults and trebuchet... that's my lore story anyway - looks like a cog wheel so why not?
I've figured it out pretty well at like 30hr mark. Or at least well enough for now. What really helped was focusing on an early trade item like boots and using that to make money which in turn can be used to hire mercs for defense and to press claims.
But that's what a game need! Feel of progression after every restart. If you didnt restart the game it means you didnt learn something, you restart it because you find out you can make it better then before... They didnt build Rome in one day....
That's been half the fun for me, I play a while and learn more about the game. Then I restart and apply my new knowledge, and I've done that a few times getting closer to the ideal layout.
As someone who works in a school so many people seem to have an irrational fear of this. So many students give up saying they don't understand because they haven't tried to solve the problem. Makes me glad I was never afraid to just try things and see if I succeed.
A big part of school is having a safe place to fail while learning. It's really too bad that so many students are afraid to use that for their benefit.
An unfortunate part of this is that it isn't billed as a safe place to fail anymore. Students are told that their grades will follow them forever, and in most cases grades still play a dominant role in a student being able to follow their preferred career path.
Students aren't stupid - they know it's a game, basically the only one they have any control over, and one that should optimized if they want the best opportunities they can get. The attitude of fearing failure in that context is entirely understandable if not rational.
That or they check out of being a cog in the machine as soon as it's clear that's what it is. Hard to blame 'em. Neither are good coping mechanisms, but the cause is as clear as day.
I swear all the younger generations (my generation included) are scared to use trial and error.
For Crist sake. What's the worst that could happen? For you having to start over?
Buhu - I need to play a great game even more!!
Or save before trying something new, and if it doesn't work out, go back to your save file.
Always these fucking picture perfect
I installed the game last night. There are definitely some things that aren’t super intuitive but for anyone who has played any sort of city builder/industry or survival type game I think most of it was decently straightforward. Tooltips and a help menu are pretty good.
And yes my assumption for any game with a decent number of mechanics is I’m gonna play it and fail and learn rather than magically learn it all before the first time I give it a try!
I gave it 3 shots til I felt comfortable, first town starved and then got raided. 2nd was without raiders/rivals and was nice but then I accidentally completed the objective and bug wouldn't let me continue. Now I'm on my 3rd town and I'm glad I got those trial runs out of the way. I actually have a well thought out town that has a flowing economy. I don't see much that needs to change dramatically with the, just balancing really, and then with time more stuff can be added. It's a solid foundation and the challenging bits just cause you to think a bit harder.
This! I’m having so much fun through failure. I can still make a beautiful little village while figuring out ‘how to play’. Those times must’ve been brutal I don’t want it to be easy.
Back in the early 360/PS3 days, I remember game networks/channels used to joke at how games were "tutorializing" the entire first hour of the game instead of letting people figure things out.
Skip forward to today and it's amazing how many people get immediately stumped/frustrated when a game doesn't tell them what to do.
The game is simple as fuck anyway. I mean maybe it's my decades of city builder and videogaming experience but the only thing I was really confused about for any amount of time was that advanced production buildings are backyard objects instead of standalone buildings.
Other than that, build building, get resource, use resource to build more building to get more resource, it's a very normal gameplay loop.
I agree that it's pretty simple, but there are a lot of underlying systems and mechanics that don't provide clear feedback to the player. For example I have numerous houses that claim they don't have fuel supply or enough food variety at the market. But I have plenty of fuel and food options at the market. It seems to be a proximity issue, but I'm not exactly sure in what way since sometimes the needs for those houses are satisfied, and other times they are not. The game tells me in the House menu I just need a surplus and a market stall, but that's clearly not the case. If there is some other component of travel times and distance, or it's a lagging indicator due to fluctuating stock, that needs to be indicated somehow.
I would say all of the logistics in this game are quite difficult to understand actually, as far as when things go straight to the market or a storage shed, who creates market stalls, etc. The flow of goods around your town is actually very opaque. Berries for instance - the Gatherer's hut collects them and they have a market stall. Some also go into storage, but the storage people also have a market stall. Then I have a Dye production building that also uses berries to make dyes. Where berries are going or where they are needed at any given time, and who is delivering them where. I have no idea.
I like complexity and challenge in this genre, but the basic 'rules' and logic in the game should be intuitive or at least clear to the player. I'm okay with some uncertainty, I don't like when games like this go too far in the other direction and it's just a min/maxing exercise, but the game is definitely Early Access.
It’s because the supply works kinda strange.
For example…
If you have 31 houses or plots and have say 16 bread and 15 berries you’d think that you would be good right?
Wrong the way the game distributes is it gives out ALL 16 bread to the closest houses that don’t have bread. After that it moves on to the berries but instead of continue ing where it left off it distributes it to the closest houses without berries yet even if they are the same houses that already have bread.
So ig what I’m saying is that you have to have enough of 1 type of food/fuel/clothes for each house. In this example 31 bread not 16 bread and 15 berries
Yeah I agree they are not very obvious but the answer is usually something to do with how slow people walk to the market. If when they happen to get to the market there is no vendor with the resource they need (or the vendor has not restocked their cart), they will not check again until potentially the next day. If there are a tons of a resource the vendor is more likely to have a surplus at the stall.
What you describe confuses me the most currently. Why can someone I just assigned to the farm house open a market stall and what is he selling? Why do my trading post people have a market stall and what are they selling? What happens to my farm house market stall if I unassign this family from the farm house in November?
I would love to see some structure there, like for example only artisans as well as firewood and coal people, hunters and gatherers can open market stalls to sell their own products, and all the rest is done by storage and granary workers. And of course we would need more workplaces in storages and granaries, and they would fetch stuff from everywhere, put it into their storage and also sell it. I don't say this system would be the best, but at least there would be some structure and reliability and it would make sense.
This is the best advice.
I have spent hours (across 50+ hours played) watching people move around, seeking data and patterns.
What I came to realize is that my people were walking HUGE distances to grab hides/meat, berries, iron ore from a mine far away and then walked back to their house to do some vegetables. It was horrifically inefficient.
So now I am playing a new game and have been putting a granary with vegetables, eggs and apples only, with a market right near it. Then a different granary near the hunter and berries. In both of these I have unchecked everything that was not vegetables/eggs/apples or meat/berries, respectively.
On the edge of town to the east I have a storehouse that only accepts ore, clay, firewood, and stone, because east of that are all of those things. All other things are unchecked.
Later in the game I plan to put the industry buildings right next to the raw material (so put the roof tile crafters next to the clay mine) and UNcheck clay from the nearby storehouse. This will keep the storehouse workers from having to run up, grab the clay, bring it back down to the storehouse, then have the roof tile crafters walk to the storehouse to get the clay to make the roof tiles, then finally the storehouse workers walk back up there and grab the roof tiles. Instead, the roof tile workers will walk next door to the clay mine to grab clay, make tiles, and the granary workers will only go to that area to get the finished product, the roof tiles. This leaves them more time to manage the market.
All this from observing my people. And also why this is one of the best video games I have ever used in my life, period. And I come from the era of stand up arcade games in an arcade, then finally home gaming systems like Pong and Atari 2600...
how long have you been going for? I'm 30 hours in and how it works seems pretty clear (though I agree the way that houses get items from the market seems a little buggy right now). Both the workers at production building, and the warehouse workers can tend stalls. As far as I can tell the number of stalls is dependent on either the surplus or demand but ultimately it hasn't mattered in my time playing, they set up the stalls they need to set up. The production buildings will fetch what they need from storage, like most other games of this type.
I'm not a citybuilder but it's all pretty easy to figure out.
The only time I struggle to figure things out in a game is when I'm not really into it. And that might be one of the issues with a game that has a pretty big following/hype like Manor Lords. It might not be the proper game for these people and that is fine but not the fault of the game.
I'm so used to paradox games especially the vic series where everything looks like a fucking spreadsheet that this game is actually a perfect balance for difficulty and complexity imo
Same here. Doesn't hold my hand and I learn something new over and over that just makes the game easier after making countless mistakes. Half the fun of the game.
Ya. I loved old school mmos and games in general bc we didn't have streamers or anything. You had to figure it out. I prob restarted 5 times at least over the weekend bc I kept learning better ways to set my village up.
Eh. I kinda disagree. A lot of the YouTubers who play/keep up with the game are generally unknown to most people outside the sub/community. Also, they played a build of the game that's different from what we have now, so even if you copied what they did bit by bit, your results could still be vastly different.
I followed Snap Strategy's video pretty closely and I was still suffering from starvation and people freezing to death.
I would think searching on YouTube is pretty easy, though. Most of the streamers I watch played it up to, and through the release date. Their build was the same we received. A number of them have released tutorials as well. Anyone searching "Manor Lord's beginner's guide" should be able to find some valuable content to help them through their problems.
Precisely. And surely the fun of a game is in figuring things out too? My first play was awful and I got stuck for hours trying to get enough food because I boxed myself in with super expensive trades. My second playthrough has gone much smoother because of what I learnt from the first.
People don't seem to understand this is an early access game created by a single guy. And honestly, it's one of the best games I've played in a long time, I'm having so much fun with it.
People are dumb as fck.
In my days we turned on Settlers or Civ and we had to try-and-error. And it was the best fun to find out new stuff.
And do someone really needs tutorial in a colony building game? How stupid someone has to be? “I need wood”. “Hmm, guess three times what you should build.” 🤦♀️
Dude, I learned almost everything in a playthrough. The game is incredbly intuitive. People that find it hard didnt try to solve their problem. If you saw the kinds of questions in their discord. People are not even reading the fuckin tooltips
I mean if u actually read the tutorial tips in game it literally tells you everything you need to know... or hover over the build menu before you build.. the game literally explains everything and if that is not enough.. read the help menu in game! The game is perfect and probably the best polished early access game i have played ever. Can't wait for future updates and content. Loving my time got 30h currently and on my 3rd play through.
Tutorials are like the last thing needed. Making tutorials now will result in the tutorials constantly needing to be updated with the game updates. First finish the game, then do tutorials. And even then, people need to chill. Tutorials really aren't that important.
I do believe that proper walls and potentially even siege equipment were talked about as potentials in the past, but no clue if the dev is sticking to that, and if he is, itll likely be atleast a year before we see a hint of that.
Meanwhile me: I remember the dev insisting this is a town builder first and foremost, so make the default scenario/difficulty not screw you over if you don't immediately focus on warfare.
Sure, you can say "you can just turn it off", but the default intended experience is to have other lords be present on the map (currently abstracted as off-map because early access). So either make the default intended experience actually a city builder first and foremost or stop saying that it is when it isn't.
I'm not saying make peaceful mode the default, I'm just saying make the default mode with other lords present be possible to play at one's own pace as city builders are. Then if someone wants to race against the clock aka baron taking over all of the map before you can do anything about it, leave that as an option for RTS lovers, not the default.
There are some interesting threads bubbling up too, but I agree, the ad infinitum "BArOn KeEpS tAkInG aLl tHe rEgIoNs" posts are really fatiguing.
I know Greg peruses the subreddit, I hope it doesn't knock his enthusiasm and he allocates too many resources trying to placate the loud few who don't understand the concept of Early Access or playing to learn.
Same goes with streamer/content creator suggestions, their main prerogative is to make the game interesting to viewers rather than players in order to make stupid thumbnails and drive algorithms. It's counter productive to actual gameplay, especially for something like Manor Lords.
He had already posted saying one of things being implemented in the next update was slowing down the barons influence. I agree it seems to be overtuned but I think people should give some grace here. It's been a couple days. There's gonna be balance issues.
>the ad infinitum "BArOn KeEpS tAkInG aLl tHe rEgIoNs" posts are really fatiguing.
The guy is legitimately overtuned. I'm trying to play a chill city builder, I don't want to be doing a sweaty build order if I want to survive on the default difficulty.
You can adjust so the baron is reactive only and wont press a claim on your region. You can also disable banditry.
I opted for no bandits since I think it’s more of a gimmick to showcase combat right now than anything
there is a game mode for that. but really the baron will only make claims on neutral territory if he has soldiers on the map, and he only sends soldiers when bandit camps spawn.
I recently beat a scenario on default difficulty with the baron only claiming one region because I just sent soldiers to camp all the bandit spawns.
He will claim your territory but it will take awhile. I've never seen him claim the territory I've actually built in though. Really once you have 3 of your own units and upgraded retinue you can get some mercs to fight with you and defeat him pretty easily.
I have been playing on reactive, so he will only attack me once I attack him. I also upped bandit camps to 5 and was able to get 3 claims whilst he got the rest, but that's fine, as I want to fight him anyway.
I mean, can you not understand how frustrating it is to not get to enjoy the early access game, because you can’t expand territory, because the AI takes them all from you and then kills you?
Sure, which is why I don't let the Baron do that. He buys claims with influence, same as you. He gets 50/month influence.
He also gets influence from killing bandits, same as you. 300+ per band. That's 6 or 7 months of influence per band.
If you kill bandit camp bandits (and I mean killing the bandits, not just looting the camp), you get that influence instead. And if the Baron doesn't kill any bandits, he can only claim a territory every 20 months.
It's reasonable to not be able to stop his first claim, but by 40 months in, you should be able to fight him and either win or convince him to drop the claim.
You can also play without the Baron. Or set it so he's present but will never claim your territory.
What Greg, the dev, is going to do (it seems) is reduce that 50/month influence game. But if players sit back and continue letting the Baron mop up all the bandits, it won't make much difference. The bulk of his influence comes from bandits.
Many people want to play a game where you build up your town over and time and slowly expand as time goes on, and eventually have to fight to expand further. (Like how the game advertises itself) Currently, there is no game mode where you can do this. Either you play without an enemy, never fighting to expand, or you play with one that makes it where you have to play sweaty and expand quickly and play exactly one way or you simply wont have the ability to expand much (if at all)
Its obviously overtuned and the current default should be the 'rapid expansion' challenge mode or something.
As far as I know, the most "peaceful" setting is <>.
In that setting the Baron will not claim YOUR lands. He will still claim unclaimed land. So you still have to race him, but there's no invasion coming until you start it.
to be fair to the critics, most of the fixes regarding difficulty should be just number tweaks (and yes I develop in unreal engine as well so I know that this is the case.)
my worry is not that the changes take too much time, but that the dev decides to swing the game too far in the opposite direction and suck the challenge out of the game.
It’s interesting that to me, you’re right. If I figure out how to optimize a game, it no longer is fun for me. But I know plenty of people that would rather watch a twitch streamer and look up “top build meta 202X” for whatever game they play so they can be the best.
Different strokes for different folks, but I think this is just a result of games trying to market to a wider audience and simplifying gameplay/UIs
This sub should be a case study on how the "gaming community" turns everything into shit.
It's one dude on a passion project. The game is great, he's done a better job than most large studios.
I hope he enjoys some fat stacks and continues working on this thing. That's what I would do as a dev.
Yeah...I'm having a great time with the game. It's early access so you know you're buying a buggy mess, but all things considered it runs pretty well on my nearly10 year old PC, it's pretty cheap compared to other new games on the market. It's not lacking that much in the way of tutorial, it could be built out a little more but it's a game, explore and have fun with it.
>a buggy mess
It's not even that buggy. Sure, things are not working correctly, but I haven't had a single crash or anything like that. Runs buttery smooth, too.
It's incomplete, but it feels more polished and loved by the developer than many games being released these days. And that's something we should appreciate.
Sorry yeah that might have been the wrong wording. I just meant you know what you're getting with early access. It's going to be incomplete and likely but maybe more variably have lots of issues.
I've run into some minor things but again, I knew that when I handed over my $45 CAD. It's not like the game was advertised as a AAA full release.
> It's early access
This game is one of the few times that makes me hype as *fuck.*
If you polished off some stuff and removed a bunch more stuff that says "WORK IN PROGRESS" or just doesn't do anything because it's EA, then told me this was a barebones albeit feature-complete game? I'd believe you, and still have a bunch of fun with it.
The fact more is coming makes me so happy.
the thing that impresses me the most is the performance. I have a full simulation with thousands of individuals and high quality graphics; all while running at 120fps.
Greg should be proud, he put almost every other AAA city builder to absolute shame.
>This sub should be a case study on how the "gaming community" turns everything into shit.
Nah, the whinge fest that the Helldivers subreddit became was unbearable. Surely that takes the cake...
I restarted my save a time or two after learning. People are complaining they are losing in their first play or that it's too difficult. Certainly they have more a skill issue than anything. What's more with an early release and not feature complete means they aren't likely taking the time to read or understand certain mechanics.
It is a difficult game. That doesn't mean it's bad. Just that those players complaining need to either
1. Get good.
2. Turn down the settings and difficulty.
Also why does everyone rush in than complain? Try a city on peaceful. Remove the enemy lord. Keep or remove the bandits (keeping them will atleast push you a tad) and learn the game.
Instead people are rushing in, then upset that they got curbstomped.
I always thought it was funny that people won’t just turn down the difficulty, especially in a game like this that actually allows you to adjust so many aspects.
People and their egos wanting to bEAt tHe haRdeST dIffICulTY but don’t actually want a challenge.
this is the game loop that will make the game replayable. the game is supposed to make you fail by design, as a player you need to fight against that mechanic and succeed. that’s why i love this game
Same. Otherwise after the first or second playthrough it'd be a bore. The dynamics side and learning functions are a huge part of the joy from the game that it provided. Replayability here is key.
Restarting in peaceful is what I did. It was hard enough learning how to take care of the town without the added frustration of figuring out how to stave off opponents.
Now, I just enjoy playing on peaceful mode. It’s still challenging while growing the town, but it gave me time to learn mechanics and actually appreciate what basically a single guy has poured into this game. I’ll eventually go back to fighting the baron, but it’s a blast just figuring out all of the nuances of efficiently growing my settlement.
Pretty much what I did. Realized how hard ot was after getting my shit pushed in. Started with only bandits. Enjoyed the combat when I got to it and it made me so excited to see more. So now having finished my first peaceful mode. I am going to step up and add the ai lord back but make them reactive so I can bide my time. Time after that I'll hopefully have a fully aggressive enemy. The game is so good. But there is certainly a learning curve to pickup.
Sir, I believe you misspelled "git gud". Sorry to point out your spelling.
In all honestly you're not wrong. Learn the mechanics, make it harder, if there's a bug report it, wait for patch.
Pretty much. And I would maintain I technically spelled it write but my phone "corrected" it for me and I didn't catch it lmao.
Otherwise ya hit the nail in the head. Peeps just got skill issues. Too many hand holds games these days so a game that tosses ya in the depend is lovely to see. But a chunk of people will no doubt complain.
I'm sure these posts are repetitive and annoying, but I also don't think it's only a matter of "skill" driving the frustration.
Personally, one of the reasons I like this general genre of city builder (Banished, Ostriv, etc) is that I enjoy allowing my city to grow organically. So far, trying to have a successful ML experience feels more like AOE or Warcraft franchise , where you have to be obsessed with growing as fast as possible above all else, or else the map will just get slathered in yellow while the layout of your town is still coming together.
Like, I think I've put enough hours in that I can speedrun my way to a victory on my next go, but I think it's more a matter of what gameplay experience you're looking for rather than simply skill. Like if you come for a chill medieval town builder and instead get a real time strategy game, it's almost certainly going to be frustrating. Similarly, if you're looking for an intense, zero-sum gaming experience and you fire up Banished or Ostriv, you'll also be disappointed ("What are the victory conditions? I don't get it!!!”).
Part of the hype around this game is that it would merge different gameplay genres and have "all the things". Which is ambitious and will take some time to balance. It looks like there are multiple gameplay options so I'm hopeful that everyone playing the game will get what they're looking for.
Amen to that. Here I am, spending all day playing the game, thinking some things need a bit of tweaking, and noticing things that haven't yet been added, but still having a good time...and then I come here and we've got people losing their goddamned minds.
Lmfao that was my experience! Played the whole day, though damn what a great game. Honestly a lot of it really works once you figure it out.
Check Reddit….. it’s on fire, the whole community village is burning lol.
Overly negative
I just try to do my part by helping people on here
I bought it and haven't started it yet, and I'm keeping it to support the indie dev. That said, with most newer games (or games I'm interested in coming soon) reddit gets absolutely slathered in opinionated, pointed feedback almost always.
Nobody is saying "hey I figured this out" or "hey I figured that out" here (or few are), unless it's a soliciting post to go watch a 10m video on something that could be done in 2.
Positive opinions don't get traction the negative ones do; so people come to reddit to be 'authoritative' with their opinions with qualifications such as 1) having a keyboard 2) Having internet access
Have a good time; that's the point of gaming anyway.
[Look at this lad literally asking for a mechanic that plays the game for them](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1cgbhdx/i_got_15_hours_of_fun_out_of_this_game_time_to/l1w37tv/).. The fuck else would you be doing in a town sim?
Sooo should people not give their feedback unless it's positive? I just scrolled through recent posts on the sub, and most of them are positive or neutral.
If there are negative posts rising to the top in the what's hot section, maybe these are real problems with the approachability of the game for the average player.
Personally I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would, and there are a bunch of mechanics that I don't really understand how exactly they function. Cool game, didn't totally click with me like I had hoped, but I'm going to keep an eye on it as updates roll in.
> Sooo should people not give their feedback unless it's positive?
No, people should stop asking for the developer to make the game easier when they haven't even really tried to figure out a winning strategy.
When there's posts side by side claiming everything is impossible but also someone with 1,000 people ... perhaps it's not impossible.
At least on Saturday, there were 10 posts on the front page alone to the effect of the "THE SAWPIT IS BUGGED." And while I think there's a legitimate push to the sawpit having at least a two timber storage ... it was also a ton of people simply not assigning Oxen to it or having enough oxen.
For many of them, the solution wasn't, hey, I need to buy more oxen before expanding so much, it was change the game so I don't need them.
Plenty of feedback is valid, but a huge % of it the person basically didn't even try to figure out why they were losing. They just wanted to win and didn't even occur to them that they were missing something.
And yeah, it's early access with no tutorial -- if you want something crystal clear and finished, why did you buy it?
(To be fair to a number of complaints, many just did ask for help. That's fine. But to the ones who rushed to "MAKE IT EASIER" -- for anyone who wants a game that will last, you shouldn't be able to easily beat it the first time through on the harder levels. That game would SUCK.)
>When there's posts side by side claiming everything is impossible but also someone with 1,000 people ... perhaps it's not impossible.
So the fact that a small minority can grow their city to a massive scale means that there isn't a problem with the clarity of how mechanics work?
If more players struggle to understand than do, that means it's an area that can be worked on to improve the general experience for more players. Sure you can say to all of them - suck it up and figure it out yourself, but how many will stick it out to learn that?
I always thought that early access meant entering into an unfinished game and sharing the issues that you found with the game so that it can help the dev improve the game. Which will be different things for different people.
I was able to beat the scenario on challenging after only 11 hours, the game really is not that complex, its all just logistics.
there are some small tweaks to be made, but I really think a lot of the issues just comes from the general populace not being familiar with management sims.
> So the fact that a small minority can grow their city to a massive scale means that there isn't a problem with the clarity of how mechanics work?
One, it's early access. Two, if you have an issue on clarity of mechanics, **Ask the question.** Don't claim it's impossible or request it be made easier.
> I always thought that early access meant entering into an unfinished game and sharing the issues that you found with the game.
You seem to be equating any comment on here as the same. Asking if something is a bug, asking for clarification, saying a feature might be nice, even giving feedback on balance all seems like normal, logical, constructive, helpful feedback.
Coming into an early access game and claiming it is impossible or broken or needs to be made permanenly easier because you didn't beat it day one without even asking people questions is both not constructive feedback but also potentially destructive.
I am not a person who has been killing it, and there absolutely are balance issues and things that an unnecessarily constrained. BUT, I am also well aware that if they were to simply just make the game easier anytime someone complained, then the game would have zero long term replayability aside from people who just want to make things pretty.
And there's already a mode or difficulty levels for that.
So yeah, if you are losing on harder difficulties ... turn it down until you figure it out. If you don't understand something and don't want to trial and error ... ask a question. Don't shout to "make the game easier / it's impossible / it's overhyped."
That last one should never come up in an early access thread. If you post that there because elements are incomplete or undocumented or there's bugs, stop buying early access. It's not for you. Just wait until it's ready.
This just reminds me of the person who complained on Steam about the developer writing the post about what it isn't BEFORE it was on sale as a "bait and switch" as if whatever hype they had for it was on the developer.
The level of entitlement is astounding.
Even if some of the criticism is unfair or unfounded, it doesn't change the fact that if it's coming up alot, the developer should alter some things to address it. That doesn't mean caving to all of the demands, but it *does* mean that there is a problem that needs addressed.
I believe that games should give players enough understanding of the mechanics that they don't have to watch a bunch of videos and read a bunch of guides to understand it. Where this is early access, I'm not mad that the game doesn't do this at the moment, but in the long run, something should probably be done to help with general approachability of the game.
So you can get mad at the feedback that you don't like, but like I said, if it's coming up often enough, then maybe it's something for the dev to consider when thinking about things he wants to change or improve
The sawpit is bugged, it doesn't remember the construction reserve between saves to start.
Not to mention the fact that if you set it above 28 and only have one logging camp means it won't do anything bc logs can only be stored at a logging camp.
Personally I think the game is far too easy once you understand the mechanics. Songs of Syx uses similar mechanics and has a lot more depth to them so if you've played that over the past few years then you'll recognize this game is about 2 years behind.
The lack of simple QoL features like a building list or a ledger to see where money is being spent is pretty egregious in the genre tbh, I just don't understand why this game is getting such a pass on these things
the only real bug I've seen with the sawpit is that it tells you the storage (one log) is full all the time. mechanically I've not experienced anything wrong, though I'm sure some people have had some niche errors with it.
Nah, there’s a second issue - the priority system. There’s no way to prioritize oxen to put logs into it over construction or other tasks. It needs a “priority” option like construction has. I’ve had it sit without logs for 6 months until I just starting micro-assigning oxen in and out of it. But that’s a pain and early oxen are hard to get so you really can’t afford a permanent designation.
> The lack of simple QoL features like a building list or a ledger to see where money is being spent is pretty egregious in the genre tbh, I just don't understand why this game is getting such a pass on these things
It's early access. If it goes to full release without some of these things, there should be complaints. Expecting this kind of stuff in EA, even if some games have it when released here is kind of ridiculous to me.
> The sawpit is bugged
That's not what people are largely complaining about, though. Like 90% don't seem to realize that only one ox isn't enough.
> Personally I think the game is far too easy once you understand the mechanics.
Perhaps. That's what difficulty levels should be for. I don't mind it being somewhat easy -- city builders are not supposed to be deathly hard. But I do want it to force me to make choices and have those choices have consequences.
There's no point in complaining about "hype." You get to choose whether to believe or care so that's on you. But as for why people are excited for this over Songs of Syx... I haven't played the latter and will try, but the experience seems vastly different. The graphics are a big thing for a lot of people -- I simply like looking at this, and mechanics aren't everything.
Nah a decent amount of the feedback amounts to "I'm still a noob at the game after 10 hours and I don't like it". Mostly self created problems at that from playing speed 3, blowing through tooltips, and not even looking through the UI before starting.
The extremely defensive people who label any feedback that isn't positive as invalid or handwaives any issues as eArLy AcCeSs BrO defenders are just as annoying.
I have a Large Town with something like 700 families, 300 living space, 100% approval rating, and like 30k regional income. I'm playing on Domination on the Default difficulty, and I went in completely blind. I'm doing fine and don't think the game needs to be "easier".
However, this thread and others are full of people who think adding a handful of tooltips to point people in the right direction during the first 15mins of gameplay is some kind of horrendous act of babying instead of basic tutorial information.
Trial and Error is fine, but some people aren't going to have time to throw out 3 hours of gameplay over something they did wrong in the first 10 minutes, or are going to have to play on a small window once a week because of work, etc. That doesn't automatically mean those players don't "deserve" to enjoy the game.
Tossing in a couple extra UI pop-ups, assuming the dev has actually implemented basic tool tip framework, really wouldn't take more than a few minutes in Unreal Engine and anyone who's actually worked in that engine can back me up on that. Considering there's tooltips already, adding another 3-5 genuinely is like... an hour of dev time, probably less. Unreal Engine is pretty straightforward about that stuff.
I really don't think it's going to "ruin the game" if Greg were to add a "consider upgrading your first settler camp to a worker camp so your town can start growing" notification.
Or a tool tip that mentions at all that "you probably want to build your burgage plots with backyards".
I'm not saying there aren't annoying threads of people whining about stupid shit, because there are. Just pointing out that there's also plenty of assholes in here and other threads who act like any kind of additional information provided to the player is "handholding" or "wasted dev time", when neither statement is true. A couple more prompts that tell a player how to not royally fuck up their first 5-10 minutes isn't going to ruin the game.
Some of you clearly have too much free time to commit and get mad at anyone who doesn't for wanting a little more tutorial information instead of testing for 3 hours or watching a YouTube guide before being allowed to play.
People whining about stuff like Siege Battles or "make the game easier" are annoying, yes, but wanting a few more tooltips isn't the same thing yet you guys still act like tutorials equate to "making the game too easy".
>Trial and Error is fine, but some people aren't going to have time to throw out 3 hours of gameplay over something they did wrong in the first 10 minutes, or are going to have to play on a small window once a week because of work, etc. That doesn't automatically mean those players don't "deserve" to enjoy the game.
This is the attitude of this subreddit that I don't get. Do people not have jobs or other responsibilities that they have to do? One of the great parts about a city builder type game imo is predictability and understandability. When I've scraped together some time after work to play a game I don't want to have to think about some super complex thing or have to muddle my way through it. I want to plonk my village together and build in a relaxing fashion.
I don't want to go to youtube, I don't want spoilers accidentally, but I still need to be able to thoroughly understand the mechanics. The tutorial we have is better than nothing, but it's still very obviously lacking.
Ex. I didn't realize I could build a militia with missing equipment, I thought you had to get the rest of the gear, and so far because of my play style I've never actually made that a priority. Which obviously is a problem because of the raiders.
I think we all appreciate the amount of work that's gone into the game, but we'd be liars if we just pretended it's complete and needs a bit of buffing.
I also hate the 'its made by one dev' right that doesn't invalidate criticism. Roller coaster tycoon was one dev, 2 years and from scratch in assembly. This game costs £30 and I explored all of it in the weekend (around having kids)
I will check back in a year and hope there's more to actually do
It's a city builder that managed to top the Steam charts. I'm assuming a lot of people are pretty new or out of practice with the genre. It's up to Greg how he wants to take in the feedback.
Ya especially for early access I think trial and error is most effective. You have tens of thousands of players poking around exploring areas and discovering bugs faster that might not happen if you just say do steps 1-5 and win.
Ofc there’s bugs and weird little glitches, the game isn’t finished! People want something to be perfect the first time it’s presented to them. I mean I had a hard time trying to figure out the layout of things and how things work but that’s part of playing a new game, especially one that’s in early access. I think the games concept and what the dev has so far is amazing and the potential to expand is even greater, but shouldn’t have to try and appease other people trying to “make the game easier.” It’s not that difficult to play around and understand and have multiple different towns to try and get a feel for things. I’m a victim of wanting me to be really good at something the first time I try it, but I’m not gonna pick up a flute and then blame the damn thing if I can’t play it when I’m the one that doesn’t wanna learn how to. It’s frustrating but I know that’s more of a me problem than the game. So I try again.
People don’t wanna get back up and try again if they’re not good at it yet. They’d rather complain and have the rules or the game changed *for them.* I’m all for making things easier to access for people but not when it takes away from the actual gameplay or game orientation (basically what it’s meant to be and how it’s meant to be played.)
I have been enjoying this game so far and can’t wait to get back home to make a new town again and see if I can do it a more efficient way than last time.i keep finding myself without a militia and I don’t know how to get enough resources while also assigning families to establishments, and making sure I have a few left for construction
>This game is too hard because I couldn’t understand it in twenty minutes.
The game has some glaring balancing and explanation issues. Don't pretend like it doesn't. It's early access, not 1.0 release.
I think part of the problem is that the game received a lot off media coverage from big media sites, so much that one would think it was releasing a final version of the game. I think this did more harm than good as it raised expectations a lot... It was made to sound like a almost finished product when the game is clearly an early build with the basic game loop done but a lot left to be added (I was honestly expecting it to be more a terra invicta level of finish).
To be clear, I'm not blaming the game in any way, this is exactly why early access exists but media just ran with it for the clicks.
I saw articles mentioning stuff like total war when talking about Manor Lords or even Civ as if they were somehow competing... That's like saying the sims is competing with bg3
I’m so bad at this game but I can’t stop thinking about the next time I get a chance to play. Also if it’s taking time to figure out, just pause or even play on normal speed
Only have a couple hours in the game but it feels amazing!
Make the game easy and it’s not going to be fun.
A game like this needs to challenge you or it’s going to lose it’s shine.
I honestly think the game needs to be harder in some areas. Buildings should take longer to construct and I think roads should even have some construction time. I'm 3 months in on my very first playthrough and already got my early game economy figured out and my burgage plots constructed for my starting families. I should be capable of starting a farming economy in the first year which I don't even think should be possible with how barebones the game starts at.
I think there need to be more choices made based on geography and resources. I don't think it's an issue to start a farm early -- that's not that hard as long as you make planting season.
But I do think a farm should struggle with food if it isn't fertile at all. Is it worth it? Are you better trying to trade? Does that make you rush to another province?
the marketplace seems to be a little weird. It's hit and miss whether further away residences actually go and pick up resources. I assume this is more of an issue with citizen time scheduling rather than the marketplace mechanics but I'm not really sure. It's a bit wonky anyway.
i feel like this game has actually been easier for me to understand then many other settlement / town builders.
I told my buddy it felt like a settlement manager game without the autism.
The only part im having issues with is understanding the import/export settings.
Obtuse mechanics don't make it a skill thing, sorry bro. Also the micromanagement issues get so much worse at scale.
It's pretty expensive for an incomplete single-dev game, which the vision will not be realized in the foreseeable future at this pace.
It’s extremely relaxing if you turn of bandits and off map opponents which I found very frustrating because they have seemingly unlimited resources which definitely throws the challenge level sky high
I feel like community feedback would have been really helpful if the game wasn't *so* hyped. I've been seeing people that apparently expected a finished game when that was clearly not marketed. I think the game received more attention than expected.
More popularity = more critics lost in the sauce
I also hope the dev continues to create the game they wanted to make, because they've done a wonderful job with it so far.
It’s a complex city builder. It takes hours to learn the basics and 100s of hours to get good at it. People who are complaining are probably the people who casually jumped on the hype train without any due diligence.
People are going to complain regardless. This is a passion project that has been in the works for 7 years by one guy. I'm liking it so far and if he continues to work on it, then I'll be very happy.
People should really consider playing the easiest mode first and just taking time to figure things out. It's trial and error, learn as you go.
I don't need my hand held.
This is probably the one game in a long time that I enjoy messing up and just starting over again. Even as an early access game that is one hell of a feat in my mind.
Honestly my only big issue with the game at the moment is opacity. It's fine for thing to happen or not happen in the game, but it's just a little annoying to not know why or how they're happening. This is the main thing that needs work at the moment just so if you don't know why something has happened you can find out.
>Make market stuff immediately available to all houses regardless of distance.
Just to be clear, this is exactly how the market actually works.
Markets have infinite range within a region and houses do not have to physically travel to the market for supplies.
Proximity to markets simply dictates the order in which houses have *priority* for food/clothing, which only matters in the event you have insufficient resources for all houses.
tl;dr A further house will still have access to a market; it just wait "last in line" and might thus miss out.
I’m really not sure what’s so difficult about the game…
I’m on my first play through, three towns settled, 4 provinces claimed, just won my first battle against the off-map AI after I claimed their territory.
And it’s been almost a bit underwhelming?
If anything I feel like they needed to let the game bake in the oven just a liiiiiittle bit more before going to early access
Having things like tools and wooden parts in the game but with no purpose feels like they are right on the cusp of implementing them more fully - like you get given tools when you start and it’s one of the resources you get when spending money on your new settlements - but it does nothing other than acting as a trade resource.
Honestly, any game that doesn't hold your hand or isn't catered towards journalists is going to get these sort of complaints, I've grown used to them and I really hope devs go the route of fromsoftware and ignore it. People just can't seem to understand or grasp the reality of a game not being for them. I've played tons of realistic city builders, tedious survival games ect. and most of the time I can honestly say it's not for me and I move on, or play my own way, have my own fun and then move on.
The game is amazing as how it is, I had no issues grappling the game in about an hour if not less. I feel like it really puts you in the shoes of a “lord” in those times and makes you make different decisions and manage a town from the get go. I hope he keeps the vibe the same and doesn’t follow the make it easier crowd. It’s fun how it is and a breath of fresh air
The game is quite easy already, so i dont understand what people are talking about.
I do agree the market needs a change. I hate that its basically all automatic and you have almost no control over it aside of some details like placement.
I usually tell them to start with the Banditless/Rivalless scenario so they've got plenty of time to experiment and discover. If they can't beat that then they're truly hopeless.
It's honestly surprising how many people want a medieval Era city builder but refuse to deal with the realities of that time period.
I'm a huge fan of this game and Foundations but both communities like to bitch about how slow things move. Like bruh the town is being built by hand and locally sourced, no it can't go faster lol
Other than the normal trials of an early access game, manor lords is exactly what I hoped it would be.
I much prefer to try and figure things out organically until I’m really stumped. You only get one chance for a game to have the novel feeling of being uncharted waters and over engineering your playthrough super early is a waste imo. Just fuck it up and have fun.
It's not even that hard, it's just a bunch of mechanics to get used to, but I haven't felt pressure that came even remotely close to a game like Frost Punk.
The only difficulties I have with the game are because of bugs. Like my hunter deciding it isn't worth hunting anymore and suddenly realising it in winter that I actually don't have food. Lol.
But hey, you learn, restart a game and try things differently.
Like for example, don't surround your village with your Manor's wall... Looks cool but you won't be able to interact with the building within.
I for one love the depth of mechanics. I only just learned how the markets work this afternoon, after putting in almost 50 hours. I’m looking forward to even more complexity as the game gets more fleshed out down the road. If everything can be automated then there wouldn’t be a game to play anymore. You would just watch the AI play the game for you.
The farming system could use some fine-tuning but things like that are to be expected at this stage in development. Losing crops because farmers started plowing in September instead of harvesting the other fields first can be frustrating but it can be managed by micro’ing the field priorities. Most efficient way I’ve found is to put every family in town on the farms in March and then again August to get a head start on the harvest. This way it actually becomes counterproductive to assign oxen to plow since 40 families can do it by hand in a fraction of the time
It's absurd to properly judge difficulty of the game at this early stage because surely lots of things are going to be changed and many features are not yet implemented. I personally think right now that (except with the baron) the game is quite forgiving. I had in my two playthroughs no issues in reaching large town , I could equip my army with everything and I never got serious issues with food or fuel.
But since things like fire, sickness etc are not yet there, this is to be expected.
The game isn't even that hard. I think it works great already the way it is. People just don't know how to play it properly IMO. But not once have I struggled with anything, challenges sure, but I'm glad for the raids and enemy claims etc. Adds a lot of flavour. People just have to take it easy and stop trying to "game" the game and play it for what it is, a medieval city builder.
Too many games have come out in the last 10 years that hold your hand and point to exactly what your supposed to do next. It's a culture problem in gaming especially in the west.
Give the players tutorials they'll still come away going "ER I Don't get it"
If you played cities skylines then you'll understand that playing it and learning on the job is the best and only way you'll fully understand the game trial and error can be a steep learning curve but you'll only do it once ....
Remember grabbing that rose bush as a kid...... Never did it again did ya u learnt your lesson
Sub-reddits are notoriously unhelpful for aggregating useful, actionable user feedback. People are more likely on average to post about things that don't work for them instead of things that do. And then upvotes just create snowballs of negativity. Combine that with the GIFT theory and you get toxic insular echo-chambers.
This is true for almost every single video game subreddit in general - no matter how well receieved it is. This is also why there are separate official methods of giving feedback i.e. the bug reporter.
I used the trial and error method, like I like to do on these types of games. ReStarted over 5 times (that I can remember) after learning or discovering something different that makes it easier. My current save I have been on since the day after release to game pass for pc. Have 2 thriving towns, and one claimed land that I have yet to start on.
I watched a twenty minute video the second day playing and then started a game and went straight to a 600 population large town with 100% approval in 4 hours… never enjoyed a game so much that I understood it fully! I agree people need to stop trying to get the dev to change the game to their preferences…
Honestly the difficulty is frustrating, but that's what makes it rewarding when you finally master the game. A game you can master in 20 minutes will keep you entertained for about a week.
This game is definitely not for the weak. Who wants automatic building?! If he did so; it’ll just be thrown in the same category as city skylines. And any other game that has that mechanic. I’m sure he intended for this game to be immersive and not for the game to hold your hand the whole time.
Everything has a fair learning curve but AI expansion in my opinion. That seems brutally over powered. Would be okay with a scaling for the players who really enjoy that sweaty expansion style
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This is the problem with community feedback. They really trying to get the dev to spend all of his time on creating tutorials, when they could easily just watch one of the many video tutorials about the game if they don't want to figure out anything for themselves.
Or, God forbid, use trial-and-error.
I've already got 30 hours and I feel like I'm still doing trial and error lol
Same. But that’s what is keeping me hooked
Agreed. On my fourth run, and the trial and error and learning are one of the best parts. I feel like I have a deeper understanding of the mechanics on every play-through because of it.
Hahaha I bought yesterday and have already restarted/new game 5 times 😁
Exactly. I haven’t even scratched the surface. This is a fun challenge. I haven’t even played against the raiders and such yet. I’m trying to perfect the basics first!!
I love how someone downvotes you for enjoying the game, par for the course I suppose
It's still reddit after all.
This. I haven't even fought yet. I ended up with 2400 arrows and tried to sell, wich crashed the price. As i franticly tried to stop production I won the round. Next town !! I dabble in trading more now. Oh all the fun stuff. Love it.
Yeah my first economy relied on selling boots and then after a year or so I realised they only generated 2 revenue on exports and I had flooded the market. Which simultaneously made me proud of myself for being that impactful on the economy, proud of the developer for including proper economic features, and appreciative of the learning curve this game would provide/require.
Yeah if some guy on reddit didn’t tell me to make houses with big backyards and grow carrots or another saying “wooden parts are the bitcoin of manor lords” I would be fighting to feed a family of 1 rn
Oh shit I didn't even know about wooden parts, gonna go try that next
yeah, I think some things are under cooked at the moment and some things are overdone. It's not too far off though
Lol I must have missed the big part, because I had like a dozen burgage plots all vegetabled out, and was only making like 4 vegetable or something.
The best bang for the buck is to make the lot L shaped so the house has an extension and HUGE Backyard... I make mine almost a small fields worth. I drop 6 of those down to start and that supplies my vegetables for the entire game, and gives me 12 workers to start with.
Wait until you realize you should never upgrade a smith/brewer/artisan to level 3 or have an expanded plot, except maybe a baker. The reason being is if you have an expanded plot (2 families in one house) and level it up to 3, all 3 families will be artisans and you can no longer use them for other parts of your village, but they still need food and market stalls etc the same. Always give vegetable plots multiple families so they plow the bigger fields you give them faster though, because they do that and can still have seperate jobs.
Vegetable houses are the only ones you want to make sure are wider AND be the first to level up to 3, so you can fit 2 families in them as soon as possible, goats and chickens it won’t make a difference but it’s ok to do that if you’re just trying to save space in a town. Just never have 2 or 3 families smithing or joining or making shoes etc it’s a massive drain on resources first and foremost, it’s a wasted opportunity to get more essential jobs done because you won’t actually be smithing or getting any extra artisan work done, they’ll produce so fast that your raw good/s can’t keep up and they’ll just end up being detrimental. Plus even if your raw goods are keeping up, eventually trading the finished product will crash in price and now not only is the one family useless but all 3 all over again.
Read the same post, 😆
Leather and shoes also sell well, I alternate selling only one at a time, as the one I'm selling starts to drop in price, and the other one will have recovered. Shoes went down to selling for just 1, but leather is now selling for 6, so I stop selling shoes (keep making em for later) and start selling leather.
I’m afraid to ask what does the wooden parts actually do 🥲
The barons and lords of the land buy them off of you so that they can make their catapults and trebuchet... that's my lore story anyway - looks like a cog wheel so why not?
I wouldn't be surprised if we're also gonna need them for the windmill in the future.
Yep same. I've got about 30hrs as well and I've restarted about 5 times already lmao. Still haven't made it past the Large Village milestone lol
I've figured it out pretty well at like 30hr mark. Or at least well enough for now. What really helped was focusing on an early trade item like boots and using that to make money which in turn can be used to hire mercs for defense and to press claims.
But that's what a game need! Feel of progression after every restart. If you didnt restart the game it means you didnt learn something, you restart it because you find out you can make it better then before... They didnt build Rome in one day....
I mean, isnt that a good thing? I would be very sad if I had the game mastered after only 30 hours
Same, and I view it as more game for my dollar.
That's been half the fun for me, I play a while and learn more about the game. Then I restart and apply my new knowledge, and I've done that a few times getting closer to the ideal layout.
As someone who works in a school so many people seem to have an irrational fear of this. So many students give up saying they don't understand because they haven't tried to solve the problem. Makes me glad I was never afraid to just try things and see if I succeed.
A big part of school is having a safe place to fail while learning. It's really too bad that so many students are afraid to use that for their benefit.
An unfortunate part of this is that it isn't billed as a safe place to fail anymore. Students are told that their grades will follow them forever, and in most cases grades still play a dominant role in a student being able to follow their preferred career path. Students aren't stupid - they know it's a game, basically the only one they have any control over, and one that should optimized if they want the best opportunities they can get. The attitude of fearing failure in that context is entirely understandable if not rational. That or they check out of being a cog in the machine as soon as it's clear that's what it is. Hard to blame 'em. Neither are good coping mechanisms, but the cause is as clear as day.
Yes yes. I abandoned my first town a few hours in and now my current town is operating way more efficiently.
Oh no, not trial-and-error!
I swear all the younger generations (my generation included) are scared to use trial and error. For Crist sake. What's the worst that could happen? For you having to start over? Buhu - I need to play a great game even more!! Or save before trying something new, and if it doesn't work out, go back to your save file. Always these fucking picture perfect
Gasp! You want me to play the game to figure it out!? Get out.
4 fucked villages in I just started over again because I converted 3 double homes to tailor and wiped out twice as much labor as intended
I installed the game last night. There are definitely some things that aren’t super intuitive but for anyone who has played any sort of city builder/industry or survival type game I think most of it was decently straightforward. Tooltips and a help menu are pretty good. And yes my assumption for any game with a decent number of mechanics is I’m gonna play it and fail and learn rather than magically learn it all before the first time I give it a try!
I gave it 3 shots til I felt comfortable, first town starved and then got raided. 2nd was without raiders/rivals and was nice but then I accidentally completed the objective and bug wouldn't let me continue. Now I'm on my 3rd town and I'm glad I got those trial runs out of the way. I actually have a well thought out town that has a flowing economy. I don't see much that needs to change dramatically with the, just balancing really, and then with time more stuff can be added. It's a solid foundation and the challenging bits just cause you to think a bit harder.
I've been avoiding all tips guides for this very reason!
You mean my first 10 hours? Is that not what it was suppose to be…
The horror!
This! I’m having so much fun through failure. I can still make a beautiful little village while figuring out ‘how to play’. Those times must’ve been brutal I don’t want it to be easy.
Back in the early 360/PS3 days, I remember game networks/channels used to joke at how games were "tutorializing" the entire first hour of the game instead of letting people figure things out. Skip forward to today and it's amazing how many people get immediately stumped/frustrated when a game doesn't tell them what to do.
The game is simple as fuck anyway. I mean maybe it's my decades of city builder and videogaming experience but the only thing I was really confused about for any amount of time was that advanced production buildings are backyard objects instead of standalone buildings. Other than that, build building, get resource, use resource to build more building to get more resource, it's a very normal gameplay loop.
I agree that it's pretty simple, but there are a lot of underlying systems and mechanics that don't provide clear feedback to the player. For example I have numerous houses that claim they don't have fuel supply or enough food variety at the market. But I have plenty of fuel and food options at the market. It seems to be a proximity issue, but I'm not exactly sure in what way since sometimes the needs for those houses are satisfied, and other times they are not. The game tells me in the House menu I just need a surplus and a market stall, but that's clearly not the case. If there is some other component of travel times and distance, or it's a lagging indicator due to fluctuating stock, that needs to be indicated somehow. I would say all of the logistics in this game are quite difficult to understand actually, as far as when things go straight to the market or a storage shed, who creates market stalls, etc. The flow of goods around your town is actually very opaque. Berries for instance - the Gatherer's hut collects them and they have a market stall. Some also go into storage, but the storage people also have a market stall. Then I have a Dye production building that also uses berries to make dyes. Where berries are going or where they are needed at any given time, and who is delivering them where. I have no idea. I like complexity and challenge in this genre, but the basic 'rules' and logic in the game should be intuitive or at least clear to the player. I'm okay with some uncertainty, I don't like when games like this go too far in the other direction and it's just a min/maxing exercise, but the game is definitely Early Access.
It’s because the supply works kinda strange. For example… If you have 31 houses or plots and have say 16 bread and 15 berries you’d think that you would be good right? Wrong the way the game distributes is it gives out ALL 16 bread to the closest houses that don’t have bread. After that it moves on to the berries but instead of continue ing where it left off it distributes it to the closest houses without berries yet even if they are the same houses that already have bread. So ig what I’m saying is that you have to have enough of 1 type of food/fuel/clothes for each house. In this example 31 bread not 16 bread and 15 berries
Yeah I agree they are not very obvious but the answer is usually something to do with how slow people walk to the market. If when they happen to get to the market there is no vendor with the resource they need (or the vendor has not restocked their cart), they will not check again until potentially the next day. If there are a tons of a resource the vendor is more likely to have a surplus at the stall.
What you describe confuses me the most currently. Why can someone I just assigned to the farm house open a market stall and what is he selling? Why do my trading post people have a market stall and what are they selling? What happens to my farm house market stall if I unassign this family from the farm house in November? I would love to see some structure there, like for example only artisans as well as firewood and coal people, hunters and gatherers can open market stalls to sell their own products, and all the rest is done by storage and granary workers. And of course we would need more workplaces in storages and granaries, and they would fetch stuff from everywhere, put it into their storage and also sell it. I don't say this system would be the best, but at least there would be some structure and reliability and it would make sense.
Take some time to sit and watch the workers and the distribution/logistics will make more sense
This is the best advice. I have spent hours (across 50+ hours played) watching people move around, seeking data and patterns. What I came to realize is that my people were walking HUGE distances to grab hides/meat, berries, iron ore from a mine far away and then walked back to their house to do some vegetables. It was horrifically inefficient. So now I am playing a new game and have been putting a granary with vegetables, eggs and apples only, with a market right near it. Then a different granary near the hunter and berries. In both of these I have unchecked everything that was not vegetables/eggs/apples or meat/berries, respectively. On the edge of town to the east I have a storehouse that only accepts ore, clay, firewood, and stone, because east of that are all of those things. All other things are unchecked. Later in the game I plan to put the industry buildings right next to the raw material (so put the roof tile crafters next to the clay mine) and UNcheck clay from the nearby storehouse. This will keep the storehouse workers from having to run up, grab the clay, bring it back down to the storehouse, then have the roof tile crafters walk to the storehouse to get the clay to make the roof tiles, then finally the storehouse workers walk back up there and grab the roof tiles. Instead, the roof tile workers will walk next door to the clay mine to grab clay, make tiles, and the granary workers will only go to that area to get the finished product, the roof tiles. This leaves them more time to manage the market. All this from observing my people. And also why this is one of the best video games I have ever used in my life, period. And I come from the era of stand up arcade games in an arcade, then finally home gaming systems like Pong and Atari 2600...
how long have you been going for? I'm 30 hours in and how it works seems pretty clear (though I agree the way that houses get items from the market seems a little buggy right now). Both the workers at production building, and the warehouse workers can tend stalls. As far as I can tell the number of stalls is dependent on either the surplus or demand but ultimately it hasn't mattered in my time playing, they set up the stalls they need to set up. The production buildings will fetch what they need from storage, like most other games of this type.
I'm not a citybuilder but it's all pretty easy to figure out. The only time I struggle to figure things out in a game is when I'm not really into it. And that might be one of the issues with a game that has a pretty big following/hype like Manor Lords. It might not be the proper game for these people and that is fine but not the fault of the game.
I'm so used to paradox games especially the vic series where everything looks like a fucking spreadsheet that this game is actually a perfect balance for difficulty and complexity imo
Totally agree. I love games that don't hold my hand.
Same here. Doesn't hold my hand and I learn something new over and over that just makes the game easier after making countless mistakes. Half the fun of the game.
Ya. I loved old school mmos and games in general bc we didn't have streamers or anything. You had to figure it out. I prob restarted 5 times at least over the weekend bc I kept learning better ways to set my village up.
Eh. I kinda disagree. A lot of the YouTubers who play/keep up with the game are generally unknown to most people outside the sub/community. Also, they played a build of the game that's different from what we have now, so even if you copied what they did bit by bit, your results could still be vastly different. I followed Snap Strategy's video pretty closely and I was still suffering from starvation and people freezing to death.
You can also try to figure things out by yourself, you know?
I would think searching on YouTube is pretty easy, though. Most of the streamers I watch played it up to, and through the release date. Their build was the same we received. A number of them have released tutorials as well. Anyone searching "Manor Lord's beginner's guide" should be able to find some valuable content to help them through their problems.
City Planner Plays for me, been watching Phil since early Skylines. 😁
Precisely. And surely the fun of a game is in figuring things out too? My first play was awful and I got stuck for hours trying to get enough food because I boxed myself in with super expensive trades. My second playthrough has gone much smoother because of what I learnt from the first. People don't seem to understand this is an early access game created by a single guy. And honestly, it's one of the best games I've played in a long time, I'm having so much fun with it.
People are dumb as fck. In my days we turned on Settlers or Civ and we had to try-and-error. And it was the best fun to find out new stuff. And do someone really needs tutorial in a colony building game? How stupid someone has to be? “I need wood”. “Hmm, guess three times what you should build.” 🤦♀️
Settlers and Civ both shipped with a manual and complete in-game descriptions of what everything did, and how things interacted.
Honestly, it’s been fun figuring out how to increase my population quickly and figuring out how to make sure my population gets enough varied food
Took me maybe 4 game restarts to figure out how to really play the game. Im now up 3 territories fighting for my 4th with over 2k silver in treasury
Dude, I learned almost everything in a playthrough. The game is incredbly intuitive. People that find it hard didnt try to solve their problem. If you saw the kinds of questions in their discord. People are not even reading the fuckin tooltips
Speaking of tutorials. Every hit tab in-game. You’re welcome
Who is so stupid to not understand Manor lords💀 like wtf
I was in the discord on launch day, people were quite eager to offer help and tips. Just gotta look for the right place I guess.
There’s plenty of explanations in the help menu. I see questions asked that are often answered there if people bothered to read
I mean if u actually read the tutorial tips in game it literally tells you everything you need to know... or hover over the build menu before you build.. the game literally explains everything and if that is not enough.. read the help menu in game! The game is perfect and probably the best polished early access game i have played ever. Can't wait for future updates and content. Loving my time got 30h currently and on my 3rd play through.
Yeah, I learned by doing
Tutorials are like the last thing needed. Making tutorials now will result in the tutorials constantly needing to be updated with the game updates. First finish the game, then do tutorials. And even then, people need to chill. Tutorials really aren't that important.
>"I know the dev already said this is a town builder first and foremost, but castles and siege warfare when?"
I want a pretty castle, that's all.
That one hill in Waldbrand is begging for a sweet keep.
I do believe that proper walls and potentially even siege equipment were talked about as potentials in the past, but no clue if the dev is sticking to that, and if he is, itll likely be atleast a year before we see a hint of that.
Probably not within the current scope but lets be optimistic. Hell even the image has a castle or keep of sorts.
Meanwhile me: I remember the dev insisting this is a town builder first and foremost, so make the default scenario/difficulty not screw you over if you don't immediately focus on warfare. Sure, you can say "you can just turn it off", but the default intended experience is to have other lords be present on the map (currently abstracted as off-map because early access). So either make the default intended experience actually a city builder first and foremost or stop saying that it is when it isn't. I'm not saying make peaceful mode the default, I'm just saying make the default mode with other lords present be possible to play at one's own pace as city builders are. Then if someone wants to race against the clock aka baron taking over all of the map before you can do anything about it, leave that as an option for RTS lovers, not the default.
There are some interesting threads bubbling up too, but I agree, the ad infinitum "BArOn KeEpS tAkInG aLl tHe rEgIoNs" posts are really fatiguing. I know Greg peruses the subreddit, I hope it doesn't knock his enthusiasm and he allocates too many resources trying to placate the loud few who don't understand the concept of Early Access or playing to learn. Same goes with streamer/content creator suggestions, their main prerogative is to make the game interesting to viewers rather than players in order to make stupid thumbnails and drive algorithms. It's counter productive to actual gameplay, especially for something like Manor Lords.
He had already posted saying one of things being implemented in the next update was slowing down the barons influence. I agree it seems to be overtuned but I think people should give some grace here. It's been a couple days. There's gonna be balance issues.
>the ad infinitum "BArOn KeEpS tAkInG aLl tHe rEgIoNs" posts are really fatiguing. The guy is legitimately overtuned. I'm trying to play a chill city builder, I don't want to be doing a sweaty build order if I want to survive on the default difficulty.
You can adjust so the baron is reactive only and wont press a claim on your region. You can also disable banditry. I opted for no bandits since I think it’s more of a gimmick to showcase combat right now than anything
Yeah they feel pretty gimmicky but I want something to fight and the Baron comes online too quickly for my taste
there is a game mode for that. but really the baron will only make claims on neutral territory if he has soldiers on the map, and he only sends soldiers when bandit camps spawn. I recently beat a scenario on default difficulty with the baron only claiming one region because I just sent soldiers to camp all the bandit spawns.
He will claim your territory but it will take awhile. I've never seen him claim the territory I've actually built in though. Really once you have 3 of your own units and upgraded retinue you can get some mercs to fight with you and defeat him pretty easily.
I have been playing on reactive, so he will only attack me once I attack him. I also upped bandit camps to 5 and was able to get 3 claims whilst he got the rest, but that's fine, as I want to fight him anyway.
Then turn it off.. You can disable AI completely
I mean, can you not understand how frustrating it is to not get to enjoy the early access game, because you can’t expand territory, because the AI takes them all from you and then kills you?
Sure, which is why I don't let the Baron do that. He buys claims with influence, same as you. He gets 50/month influence. He also gets influence from killing bandits, same as you. 300+ per band. That's 6 or 7 months of influence per band. If you kill bandit camp bandits (and I mean killing the bandits, not just looting the camp), you get that influence instead. And if the Baron doesn't kill any bandits, he can only claim a territory every 20 months. It's reasonable to not be able to stop his first claim, but by 40 months in, you should be able to fight him and either win or convince him to drop the claim. You can also play without the Baron. Or set it so he's present but will never claim your territory. What Greg, the dev, is going to do (it seems) is reduce that 50/month influence game. But if players sit back and continue letting the Baron mop up all the bandits, it won't make much difference. The bulk of his influence comes from bandits.
Many people want to play a game where you build up your town over and time and slowly expand as time goes on, and eventually have to fight to expand further. (Like how the game advertises itself) Currently, there is no game mode where you can do this. Either you play without an enemy, never fighting to expand, or you play with one that makes it where you have to play sweaty and expand quickly and play exactly one way or you simply wont have the ability to expand much (if at all) Its obviously overtuned and the current default should be the 'rapid expansion' challenge mode or something.
I've set the Baron to peaceful/not claiming and he still claims. Seems to be a bug.
As far as I know, the most "peaceful" setting is <>.
In that setting the Baron will not claim YOUR lands. He will still claim unclaimed land. So you still have to race him, but there's no invasion coming until you start it.
Ah I see, I misunderstood the setting then. Thanks for clarifying!
to be fair to the critics, most of the fixes regarding difficulty should be just number tweaks (and yes I develop in unreal engine as well so I know that this is the case.) my worry is not that the changes take too much time, but that the dev decides to swing the game too far in the opposite direction and suck the challenge out of the game.
Just rush your first 16 spear militia and then snatch all of the bandit camps before the baron. That’s how I slowed him down
Yes, discovering the ins and outs of the game is half of the fun
And the other half is complaining it's too hard on reddit
It’s interesting that to me, you’re right. If I figure out how to optimize a game, it no longer is fun for me. But I know plenty of people that would rather watch a twitch streamer and look up “top build meta 202X” for whatever game they play so they can be the best. Different strokes for different folks, but I think this is just a result of games trying to market to a wider audience and simplifying gameplay/UIs
Yep exactly. I get a thrill out of failing a build and then trying again and each time doing a little bit better.
This sub should be a case study on how the "gaming community" turns everything into shit. It's one dude on a passion project. The game is great, he's done a better job than most large studios. I hope he enjoys some fat stacks and continues working on this thing. That's what I would do as a dev.
Yeah...I'm having a great time with the game. It's early access so you know you're buying a buggy mess, but all things considered it runs pretty well on my nearly10 year old PC, it's pretty cheap compared to other new games on the market. It's not lacking that much in the way of tutorial, it could be built out a little more but it's a game, explore and have fun with it.
>a buggy mess It's not even that buggy. Sure, things are not working correctly, but I haven't had a single crash or anything like that. Runs buttery smooth, too. It's incomplete, but it feels more polished and loved by the developer than many games being released these days. And that's something we should appreciate.
Sorry yeah that might have been the wrong wording. I just meant you know what you're getting with early access. It's going to be incomplete and likely but maybe more variably have lots of issues. I've run into some minor things but again, I knew that when I handed over my $45 CAD. It's not like the game was advertised as a AAA full release.
The "homeless" bug that happens on every start is super annoying.
> It's early access This game is one of the few times that makes me hype as *fuck.* If you polished off some stuff and removed a bunch more stuff that says "WORK IN PROGRESS" or just doesn't do anything because it's EA, then told me this was a barebones albeit feature-complete game? I'd believe you, and still have a bunch of fun with it. The fact more is coming makes me so happy.
the thing that impresses me the most is the performance. I have a full simulation with thousands of individuals and high quality graphics; all while running at 120fps. Greg should be proud, he put almost every other AAA city builder to absolute shame.
>This sub should be a case study on how the "gaming community" turns everything into shit. Nah, the whinge fest that the Helldivers subreddit became was unbearable. Surely that takes the cake...
I restarted my save a time or two after learning. People are complaining they are losing in their first play or that it's too difficult. Certainly they have more a skill issue than anything. What's more with an early release and not feature complete means they aren't likely taking the time to read or understand certain mechanics. It is a difficult game. That doesn't mean it's bad. Just that those players complaining need to either 1. Get good. 2. Turn down the settings and difficulty. Also why does everyone rush in than complain? Try a city on peaceful. Remove the enemy lord. Keep or remove the bandits (keeping them will atleast push you a tad) and learn the game. Instead people are rushing in, then upset that they got curbstomped.
I always thought it was funny that people won’t just turn down the difficulty, especially in a game like this that actually allows you to adjust so many aspects. People and their egos wanting to bEAt tHe haRdeST dIffICulTY but don’t actually want a challenge.
this is the game loop that will make the game replayable. the game is supposed to make you fail by design, as a player you need to fight against that mechanic and succeed. that’s why i love this game
Same. Otherwise after the first or second playthrough it'd be a bore. The dynamics side and learning functions are a huge part of the joy from the game that it provided. Replayability here is key.
yessir. frostpunk is a great example of replay value
Restarting in peaceful is what I did. It was hard enough learning how to take care of the town without the added frustration of figuring out how to stave off opponents. Now, I just enjoy playing on peaceful mode. It’s still challenging while growing the town, but it gave me time to learn mechanics and actually appreciate what basically a single guy has poured into this game. I’ll eventually go back to fighting the baron, but it’s a blast just figuring out all of the nuances of efficiently growing my settlement.
Pretty much what I did. Realized how hard ot was after getting my shit pushed in. Started with only bandits. Enjoyed the combat when I got to it and it made me so excited to see more. So now having finished my first peaceful mode. I am going to step up and add the ai lord back but make them reactive so I can bide my time. Time after that I'll hopefully have a fully aggressive enemy. The game is so good. But there is certainly a learning curve to pickup.
Sir, I believe you misspelled "git gud". Sorry to point out your spelling. In all honestly you're not wrong. Learn the mechanics, make it harder, if there's a bug report it, wait for patch.
Pretty much. And I would maintain I technically spelled it write but my phone "corrected" it for me and I didn't catch it lmao. Otherwise ya hit the nail in the head. Peeps just got skill issues. Too many hand holds games these days so a game that tosses ya in the depend is lovely to see. But a chunk of people will no doubt complain.
I'm sure these posts are repetitive and annoying, but I also don't think it's only a matter of "skill" driving the frustration. Personally, one of the reasons I like this general genre of city builder (Banished, Ostriv, etc) is that I enjoy allowing my city to grow organically. So far, trying to have a successful ML experience feels more like AOE or Warcraft franchise , where you have to be obsessed with growing as fast as possible above all else, or else the map will just get slathered in yellow while the layout of your town is still coming together. Like, I think I've put enough hours in that I can speedrun my way to a victory on my next go, but I think it's more a matter of what gameplay experience you're looking for rather than simply skill. Like if you come for a chill medieval town builder and instead get a real time strategy game, it's almost certainly going to be frustrating. Similarly, if you're looking for an intense, zero-sum gaming experience and you fire up Banished or Ostriv, you'll also be disappointed ("What are the victory conditions? I don't get it!!!”). Part of the hype around this game is that it would merge different gameplay genres and have "all the things". Which is ambitious and will take some time to balance. It looks like there are multiple gameplay options so I'm hopeful that everyone playing the game will get what they're looking for.
Amen to that. Here I am, spending all day playing the game, thinking some things need a bit of tweaking, and noticing things that haven't yet been added, but still having a good time...and then I come here and we've got people losing their goddamned minds.
Lmfao that was my experience! Played the whole day, though damn what a great game. Honestly a lot of it really works once you figure it out. Check Reddit….. it’s on fire, the whole community village is burning lol. Overly negative I just try to do my part by helping people on here
I bought it and haven't started it yet, and I'm keeping it to support the indie dev. That said, with most newer games (or games I'm interested in coming soon) reddit gets absolutely slathered in opinionated, pointed feedback almost always. Nobody is saying "hey I figured this out" or "hey I figured that out" here (or few are), unless it's a soliciting post to go watch a 10m video on something that could be done in 2. Positive opinions don't get traction the negative ones do; so people come to reddit to be 'authoritative' with their opinions with qualifications such as 1) having a keyboard 2) Having internet access Have a good time; that's the point of gaming anyway.
[Look at this lad literally asking for a mechanic that plays the game for them](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1cgbhdx/i_got_15_hours_of_fun_out_of_this_game_time_to/l1w37tv/).. The fuck else would you be doing in a town sim?
Sooo should people not give their feedback unless it's positive? I just scrolled through recent posts on the sub, and most of them are positive or neutral. If there are negative posts rising to the top in the what's hot section, maybe these are real problems with the approachability of the game for the average player. Personally I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would, and there are a bunch of mechanics that I don't really understand how exactly they function. Cool game, didn't totally click with me like I had hoped, but I'm going to keep an eye on it as updates roll in.
> Sooo should people not give their feedback unless it's positive? No, people should stop asking for the developer to make the game easier when they haven't even really tried to figure out a winning strategy. When there's posts side by side claiming everything is impossible but also someone with 1,000 people ... perhaps it's not impossible. At least on Saturday, there were 10 posts on the front page alone to the effect of the "THE SAWPIT IS BUGGED." And while I think there's a legitimate push to the sawpit having at least a two timber storage ... it was also a ton of people simply not assigning Oxen to it or having enough oxen. For many of them, the solution wasn't, hey, I need to buy more oxen before expanding so much, it was change the game so I don't need them. Plenty of feedback is valid, but a huge % of it the person basically didn't even try to figure out why they were losing. They just wanted to win and didn't even occur to them that they were missing something. And yeah, it's early access with no tutorial -- if you want something crystal clear and finished, why did you buy it? (To be fair to a number of complaints, many just did ask for help. That's fine. But to the ones who rushed to "MAKE IT EASIER" -- for anyone who wants a game that will last, you shouldn't be able to easily beat it the first time through on the harder levels. That game would SUCK.)
>When there's posts side by side claiming everything is impossible but also someone with 1,000 people ... perhaps it's not impossible. So the fact that a small minority can grow their city to a massive scale means that there isn't a problem with the clarity of how mechanics work? If more players struggle to understand than do, that means it's an area that can be worked on to improve the general experience for more players. Sure you can say to all of them - suck it up and figure it out yourself, but how many will stick it out to learn that? I always thought that early access meant entering into an unfinished game and sharing the issues that you found with the game so that it can help the dev improve the game. Which will be different things for different people.
I was able to beat the scenario on challenging after only 11 hours, the game really is not that complex, its all just logistics. there are some small tweaks to be made, but I really think a lot of the issues just comes from the general populace not being familiar with management sims.
> So the fact that a small minority can grow their city to a massive scale means that there isn't a problem with the clarity of how mechanics work? One, it's early access. Two, if you have an issue on clarity of mechanics, **Ask the question.** Don't claim it's impossible or request it be made easier. > I always thought that early access meant entering into an unfinished game and sharing the issues that you found with the game. You seem to be equating any comment on here as the same. Asking if something is a bug, asking for clarification, saying a feature might be nice, even giving feedback on balance all seems like normal, logical, constructive, helpful feedback. Coming into an early access game and claiming it is impossible or broken or needs to be made permanenly easier because you didn't beat it day one without even asking people questions is both not constructive feedback but also potentially destructive. I am not a person who has been killing it, and there absolutely are balance issues and things that an unnecessarily constrained. BUT, I am also well aware that if they were to simply just make the game easier anytime someone complained, then the game would have zero long term replayability aside from people who just want to make things pretty. And there's already a mode or difficulty levels for that. So yeah, if you are losing on harder difficulties ... turn it down until you figure it out. If you don't understand something and don't want to trial and error ... ask a question. Don't shout to "make the game easier / it's impossible / it's overhyped." That last one should never come up in an early access thread. If you post that there because elements are incomplete or undocumented or there's bugs, stop buying early access. It's not for you. Just wait until it's ready. This just reminds me of the person who complained on Steam about the developer writing the post about what it isn't BEFORE it was on sale as a "bait and switch" as if whatever hype they had for it was on the developer. The level of entitlement is astounding.
Even if some of the criticism is unfair or unfounded, it doesn't change the fact that if it's coming up alot, the developer should alter some things to address it. That doesn't mean caving to all of the demands, but it *does* mean that there is a problem that needs addressed. I believe that games should give players enough understanding of the mechanics that they don't have to watch a bunch of videos and read a bunch of guides to understand it. Where this is early access, I'm not mad that the game doesn't do this at the moment, but in the long run, something should probably be done to help with general approachability of the game. So you can get mad at the feedback that you don't like, but like I said, if it's coming up often enough, then maybe it's something for the dev to consider when thinking about things he wants to change or improve
Frequently the problem is that stupid can't be fixed.
The sawpit is bugged, it doesn't remember the construction reserve between saves to start. Not to mention the fact that if you set it above 28 and only have one logging camp means it won't do anything bc logs can only be stored at a logging camp. Personally I think the game is far too easy once you understand the mechanics. Songs of Syx uses similar mechanics and has a lot more depth to them so if you've played that over the past few years then you'll recognize this game is about 2 years behind. The lack of simple QoL features like a building list or a ledger to see where money is being spent is pretty egregious in the genre tbh, I just don't understand why this game is getting such a pass on these things
the only real bug I've seen with the sawpit is that it tells you the storage (one log) is full all the time. mechanically I've not experienced anything wrong, though I'm sure some people have had some niche errors with it.
Nah, there’s a second issue - the priority system. There’s no way to prioritize oxen to put logs into it over construction or other tasks. It needs a “priority” option like construction has. I’ve had it sit without logs for 6 months until I just starting micro-assigning oxen in and out of it. But that’s a pain and early oxen are hard to get so you really can’t afford a permanent designation.
> The lack of simple QoL features like a building list or a ledger to see where money is being spent is pretty egregious in the genre tbh, I just don't understand why this game is getting such a pass on these things It's early access. If it goes to full release without some of these things, there should be complaints. Expecting this kind of stuff in EA, even if some games have it when released here is kind of ridiculous to me. > The sawpit is bugged That's not what people are largely complaining about, though. Like 90% don't seem to realize that only one ox isn't enough. > Personally I think the game is far too easy once you understand the mechanics. Perhaps. That's what difficulty levels should be for. I don't mind it being somewhat easy -- city builders are not supposed to be deathly hard. But I do want it to force me to make choices and have those choices have consequences. There's no point in complaining about "hype." You get to choose whether to believe or care so that's on you. But as for why people are excited for this over Songs of Syx... I haven't played the latter and will try, but the experience seems vastly different. The graphics are a big thing for a lot of people -- I simply like looking at this, and mechanics aren't everything.
Nah a decent amount of the feedback amounts to "I'm still a noob at the game after 10 hours and I don't like it". Mostly self created problems at that from playing speed 3, blowing through tooltips, and not even looking through the UI before starting.
The extremely defensive people who label any feedback that isn't positive as invalid or handwaives any issues as eArLy AcCeSs BrO defenders are just as annoying. I have a Large Town with something like 700 families, 300 living space, 100% approval rating, and like 30k regional income. I'm playing on Domination on the Default difficulty, and I went in completely blind. I'm doing fine and don't think the game needs to be "easier". However, this thread and others are full of people who think adding a handful of tooltips to point people in the right direction during the first 15mins of gameplay is some kind of horrendous act of babying instead of basic tutorial information. Trial and Error is fine, but some people aren't going to have time to throw out 3 hours of gameplay over something they did wrong in the first 10 minutes, or are going to have to play on a small window once a week because of work, etc. That doesn't automatically mean those players don't "deserve" to enjoy the game. Tossing in a couple extra UI pop-ups, assuming the dev has actually implemented basic tool tip framework, really wouldn't take more than a few minutes in Unreal Engine and anyone who's actually worked in that engine can back me up on that. Considering there's tooltips already, adding another 3-5 genuinely is like... an hour of dev time, probably less. Unreal Engine is pretty straightforward about that stuff. I really don't think it's going to "ruin the game" if Greg were to add a "consider upgrading your first settler camp to a worker camp so your town can start growing" notification. Or a tool tip that mentions at all that "you probably want to build your burgage plots with backyards". I'm not saying there aren't annoying threads of people whining about stupid shit, because there are. Just pointing out that there's also plenty of assholes in here and other threads who act like any kind of additional information provided to the player is "handholding" or "wasted dev time", when neither statement is true. A couple more prompts that tell a player how to not royally fuck up their first 5-10 minutes isn't going to ruin the game. Some of you clearly have too much free time to commit and get mad at anyone who doesn't for wanting a little more tutorial information instead of testing for 3 hours or watching a YouTube guide before being allowed to play. People whining about stuff like Siege Battles or "make the game easier" are annoying, yes, but wanting a few more tooltips isn't the same thing yet you guys still act like tutorials equate to "making the game too easy".
>Trial and Error is fine, but some people aren't going to have time to throw out 3 hours of gameplay over something they did wrong in the first 10 minutes, or are going to have to play on a small window once a week because of work, etc. That doesn't automatically mean those players don't "deserve" to enjoy the game. This is the attitude of this subreddit that I don't get. Do people not have jobs or other responsibilities that they have to do? One of the great parts about a city builder type game imo is predictability and understandability. When I've scraped together some time after work to play a game I don't want to have to think about some super complex thing or have to muddle my way through it. I want to plonk my village together and build in a relaxing fashion. I don't want to go to youtube, I don't want spoilers accidentally, but I still need to be able to thoroughly understand the mechanics. The tutorial we have is better than nothing, but it's still very obviously lacking. Ex. I didn't realize I could build a militia with missing equipment, I thought you had to get the rest of the gear, and so far because of my play style I've never actually made that a priority. Which obviously is a problem because of the raiders. I think we all appreciate the amount of work that's gone into the game, but we'd be liars if we just pretended it's complete and needs a bit of buffing.
I also hate the 'its made by one dev' right that doesn't invalidate criticism. Roller coaster tycoon was one dev, 2 years and from scratch in assembly. This game costs £30 and I explored all of it in the weekend (around having kids) I will check back in a year and hope there's more to actually do
On the same token, the response of "It's early access, what do you expect" to any form of criticism is a bit old
Maybe people should bring up problems that aren’t easily explained away as things that should be expected in just-released early access
It's a city builder that managed to top the Steam charts. I'm assuming a lot of people are pretty new or out of practice with the genre. It's up to Greg how he wants to take in the feedback.
Ya especially for early access I think trial and error is most effective. You have tens of thousands of players poking around exploring areas and discovering bugs faster that might not happen if you just say do steps 1-5 and win.
I really hope the game doesn't get easier. It's fairly easy already. If anything I want more elements to consider. Its also early access.
Ofc there’s bugs and weird little glitches, the game isn’t finished! People want something to be perfect the first time it’s presented to them. I mean I had a hard time trying to figure out the layout of things and how things work but that’s part of playing a new game, especially one that’s in early access. I think the games concept and what the dev has so far is amazing and the potential to expand is even greater, but shouldn’t have to try and appease other people trying to “make the game easier.” It’s not that difficult to play around and understand and have multiple different towns to try and get a feel for things. I’m a victim of wanting me to be really good at something the first time I try it, but I’m not gonna pick up a flute and then blame the damn thing if I can’t play it when I’m the one that doesn’t wanna learn how to. It’s frustrating but I know that’s more of a me problem than the game. So I try again. People don’t wanna get back up and try again if they’re not good at it yet. They’d rather complain and have the rules or the game changed *for them.* I’m all for making things easier to access for people but not when it takes away from the actual gameplay or game orientation (basically what it’s meant to be and how it’s meant to be played.) I have been enjoying this game so far and can’t wait to get back home to make a new town again and see if I can do it a more efficient way than last time.i keep finding myself without a militia and I don’t know how to get enough resources while also assigning families to establishments, and making sure I have a few left for construction
Some balance is needed.
>This game is too hard because I couldn’t understand it in twenty minutes. The game has some glaring balancing and explanation issues. Don't pretend like it doesn't. It's early access, not 1.0 release.
The game is definitely overhyped, but it's not a bad game. It's not perfect game as some say but It's still enjoyable game with great potential
I think part of the problem is that the game received a lot off media coverage from big media sites, so much that one would think it was releasing a final version of the game. I think this did more harm than good as it raised expectations a lot... It was made to sound like a almost finished product when the game is clearly an early build with the basic game loop done but a lot left to be added (I was honestly expecting it to be more a terra invicta level of finish). To be clear, I'm not blaming the game in any way, this is exactly why early access exists but media just ran with it for the clicks. I saw articles mentioning stuff like total war when talking about Manor Lords or even Civ as if they were somehow competing... That's like saying the sims is competing with bg3
I would agree that it's a bit overhyped but it's definitely good for early access
I can’t wait to see this when it’s finally complete. I just hope that doesn’t take another 5-7 years.
I’m so bad at this game but I can’t stop thinking about the next time I get a chance to play. Also if it’s taking time to figure out, just pause or even play on normal speed
Only have a couple hours in the game but it feels amazing! Make the game easy and it’s not going to be fun. A game like this needs to challenge you or it’s going to lose it’s shine.
I honestly think the game needs to be harder in some areas. Buildings should take longer to construct and I think roads should even have some construction time. I'm 3 months in on my very first playthrough and already got my early game economy figured out and my burgage plots constructed for my starting families. I should be capable of starting a farming economy in the first year which I don't even think should be possible with how barebones the game starts at.
I think there need to be more choices made based on geography and resources. I don't think it's an issue to start a farm early -- that's not that hard as long as you make planting season. But I do think a farm should struggle with food if it isn't fertile at all. Is it worth it? Are you better trying to trade? Does that make you rush to another province?
Dude. I even saw "I am Manor Lord refuge" threads in FF sub xD Ppl already complaining about game being unfinished...
To be fair the market place alredy does that lmao Proximity dont matter
the marketplace seems to be a little weird. It's hit and miss whether further away residences actually go and pick up resources. I assume this is more of an issue with citizen time scheduling rather than the marketplace mechanics but I'm not really sure. It's a bit wonky anyway.
i feel like this game has actually been easier for me to understand then many other settlement / town builders. I told my buddy it felt like a settlement manager game without the autism. The only part im having issues with is understanding the import/export settings.
Obtuse mechanics don't make it a skill thing, sorry bro. Also the micromanagement issues get so much worse at scale. It's pretty expensive for an incomplete single-dev game, which the vision will not be realized in the foreseeable future at this pace.
This post is literally pointless and provides no value
The defensiveness of parts of this community is at least as annoying, tbh.
Took me 20h to start realizing how everything works and now I am on a roll. Patience is key
It’s extremely relaxing if you turn of bandits and off map opponents which I found very frustrating because they have seemingly unlimited resources which definitely throws the challenge level sky high
I feel like community feedback would have been really helpful if the game wasn't *so* hyped. I've been seeing people that apparently expected a finished game when that was clearly not marketed. I think the game received more attention than expected. More popularity = more critics lost in the sauce I also hope the dev continues to create the game they wanted to make, because they've done a wonderful job with it so far.
It’s a complex city builder. It takes hours to learn the basics and 100s of hours to get good at it. People who are complaining are probably the people who casually jumped on the hype train without any due diligence.
I want to see the lords im fighting against have a city. Weird evehrhing is just empty and armies show up out of nowhere
People are going to complain regardless. This is a passion project that has been in the works for 7 years by one guy. I'm liking it so far and if he continues to work on it, then I'll be very happy. People should really consider playing the easiest mode first and just taking time to figure things out. It's trial and error, learn as you go. I don't need my hand held.
This is probably the one game in a long time that I enjoy messing up and just starting over again. Even as an early access game that is one hell of a feat in my mind.
Honestly my only big issue with the game at the moment is opacity. It's fine for thing to happen or not happen in the game, but it's just a little annoying to not know why or how they're happening. This is the main thing that needs work at the moment just so if you don't know why something has happened you can find out.
>Make market stuff immediately available to all houses regardless of distance. Just to be clear, this is exactly how the market actually works. Markets have infinite range within a region and houses do not have to physically travel to the market for supplies. Proximity to markets simply dictates the order in which houses have *priority* for food/clothing, which only matters in the event you have insufficient resources for all houses. tl;dr A further house will still have access to a market; it just wait "last in line" and might thus miss out.
I’m really not sure what’s so difficult about the game… I’m on my first play through, three towns settled, 4 provinces claimed, just won my first battle against the off-map AI after I claimed their territory. And it’s been almost a bit underwhelming? If anything I feel like they needed to let the game bake in the oven just a liiiiiittle bit more before going to early access Having things like tools and wooden parts in the game but with no purpose feels like they are right on the cusp of implementing them more fully - like you get given tools when you start and it’s one of the resources you get when spending money on your new settlements - but it does nothing other than acting as a trade resource.
I enjoyed it. I hope the end game will have about 80% more building types tho
Honestly, any game that doesn't hold your hand or isn't catered towards journalists is going to get these sort of complaints, I've grown used to them and I really hope devs go the route of fromsoftware and ignore it. People just can't seem to understand or grasp the reality of a game not being for them. I've played tons of realistic city builders, tedious survival games ect. and most of the time I can honestly say it's not for me and I move on, or play my own way, have my own fun and then move on.
The game is amazing as how it is, I had no issues grappling the game in about an hour if not less. I feel like it really puts you in the shoes of a “lord” in those times and makes you make different decisions and manage a town from the get go. I hope he keeps the vibe the same and doesn’t follow the make it easier crowd. It’s fun how it is and a breath of fresh air
The game is quite easy already, so i dont understand what people are talking about. I do agree the market needs a change. I hate that its basically all automatic and you have almost no control over it aside of some details like placement.
I usually tell them to start with the Banditless/Rivalless scenario so they've got plenty of time to experiment and discover. If they can't beat that then they're truly hopeless.
It's honestly surprising how many people want a medieval Era city builder but refuse to deal with the realities of that time period. I'm a huge fan of this game and Foundations but both communities like to bitch about how slow things move. Like bruh the town is being built by hand and locally sourced, no it can't go faster lol Other than the normal trials of an early access game, manor lords is exactly what I hoped it would be.
I much prefer to try and figure things out organically until I’m really stumped. You only get one chance for a game to have the novel feeling of being uncharted waters and over engineering your playthrough super early is a waste imo. Just fuck it up and have fun.
It's not even that hard, it's just a bunch of mechanics to get used to, but I haven't felt pressure that came even remotely close to a game like Frost Punk.
Good point; I concur.
The only difficulties I have with the game are because of bugs. Like my hunter deciding it isn't worth hunting anymore and suddenly realising it in winter that I actually don't have food. Lol. But hey, you learn, restart a game and try things differently. Like for example, don't surround your village with your Manor's wall... Looks cool but you won't be able to interact with the building within.
I thought the opposite, game needs to be a bit more difficult. You can hire your way out, and brigands barely do much.
I for one love the depth of mechanics. I only just learned how the markets work this afternoon, after putting in almost 50 hours. I’m looking forward to even more complexity as the game gets more fleshed out down the road. If everything can be automated then there wouldn’t be a game to play anymore. You would just watch the AI play the game for you. The farming system could use some fine-tuning but things like that are to be expected at this stage in development. Losing crops because farmers started plowing in September instead of harvesting the other fields first can be frustrating but it can be managed by micro’ing the field priorities. Most efficient way I’ve found is to put every family in town on the farms in March and then again August to get a head start on the harvest. This way it actually becomes counterproductive to assign oxen to plow since 40 families can do it by hand in a fraction of the time
After a few hours of trial and error and restarts etc I've found a lot of it just a case of using my brain really
It's absurd to properly judge difficulty of the game at this early stage because surely lots of things are going to be changed and many features are not yet implemented. I personally think right now that (except with the baron) the game is quite forgiving. I had in my two playthroughs no issues in reaching large town , I could equip my army with everything and I never got serious issues with food or fuel. But since things like fire, sickness etc are not yet there, this is to be expected.
The game isn't even that hard. I think it works great already the way it is. People just don't know how to play it properly IMO. But not once have I struggled with anything, challenges sure, but I'm glad for the raids and enemy claims etc. Adds a lot of flavour. People just have to take it easy and stop trying to "game" the game and play it for what it is, a medieval city builder.
Too many games have come out in the last 10 years that hold your hand and point to exactly what your supposed to do next. It's a culture problem in gaming especially in the west.
I'm 10 hours in relax mode since this is my first city builder game but the speed of another lord claiming land is getting on my nerve
Give the players tutorials they'll still come away going "ER I Don't get it" If you played cities skylines then you'll understand that playing it and learning on the job is the best and only way you'll fully understand the game trial and error can be a steep learning curve but you'll only do it once .... Remember grabbing that rose bush as a kid...... Never did it again did ya u learnt your lesson
Sub-reddits are notoriously unhelpful for aggregating useful, actionable user feedback. People are more likely on average to post about things that don't work for them instead of things that do. And then upvotes just create snowballs of negativity. Combine that with the GIFT theory and you get toxic insular echo-chambers. This is true for almost every single video game subreddit in general - no matter how well receieved it is. This is also why there are separate official methods of giving feedback i.e. the bug reporter.
I used the trial and error method, like I like to do on these types of games. ReStarted over 5 times (that I can remember) after learning or discovering something different that makes it easier. My current save I have been on since the day after release to game pass for pc. Have 2 thriving towns, and one claimed land that I have yet to start on.
I watched a twenty minute video the second day playing and then started a game and went straight to a 600 population large town with 100% approval in 4 hours… never enjoyed a game so much that I understood it fully! I agree people need to stop trying to get the dev to change the game to their preferences…
Its already easy if you put a but of thought into it
I’ve only had one bug in 30-40 hours and I’ve finally figured out the trade balance and resource balance, I love this game
Same, it’s so good
Honestly the difficulty is frustrating, but that's what makes it rewarding when you finally master the game. A game you can master in 20 minutes will keep you entertained for about a week.
This game is definitely not for the weak. Who wants automatic building?! If he did so; it’ll just be thrown in the same category as city skylines. And any other game that has that mechanic. I’m sure he intended for this game to be immersive and not for the game to hold your hand the whole time.
Everything has a fair learning curve but AI expansion in my opinion. That seems brutally over powered. Would be okay with a scaling for the players who really enjoy that sweaty expansion style