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[Reelya]

This is patently wrong and uninformed. It is obvious to me that you had a bad experience with the game, which is not uncommon in M&F. Since you haven't bothered to think about what the changes introduced into the game actually do for the game

They added player houses, but didn't integrate that into the conversation / messaging system whatsover. The new "houses" system is the type of thing I'm talking about. It's an added-on feature that doesn't integrate (i.e. value add) with any existing game feature.

For example. Does the houses system integrate with

(1) the knight's offer system or vassal system? No

(2) the realms system, or the message system? No

(3) the military system or troop command system? No

It's just window-dressing and not a very well thought out "addition". I don't think it even links into the Crest/herald system either, which would seem like a clear fit. it's also very cumbersome, since you have to be in the original town the House was declared in to join, you don't have the option of joining just by being in the same town as the leader of the House or anything. Even when you create a child, I don't think they even get the option to start as a member of your House. These are all common-sense things you'd think about when adding in a new major system such as a family / House system.

The leader can join you into the house, but only be relocating the House to the current town they are in, then you can join that, but then the leader of the House would have to travel back to the actual original HQ of the House to reset it's capital to that location, because the only way you can join is the settlement action "View Local Houses". Adding this feature in was a lot of work for basically no value to the game because making a house is just a vanity effort and they're not actually useful for anything, nor are they easy to work with for a multi-player thing (the lack of any sort of messaging system for the House system makes them useless for cross-realm organizations for example).

It's similar with the new realms capital system:

This just adds a new building type, but other than a small food/resource boost for the building town, building a capital doesn't really add value to any other subsystem in the game. For example a useful thing that could have been added would have been the ability to build a capital and then go in that building and be able to set taxation to the capital from all subject towns. This would have improved play, because your realm or subrealm could collect taxes from your vassals, thus making it more viable and attractive to hand out land to new vassal knights, and removing the need to micro-manage a zillion trade-routes into the town in order to collect resources. This could have been achieved merely by building a system on top of the existing trade routes code, that auto-manages the taxation as additional trade routes.

If new things are added it's really necessary to sit down and show how they will improve at least one other subsystem in the game, and ideally any new major improvement should integrate with multiple other existing subsystems to make it a worthwhile addition.

[Yoink]

I think a game like this one, but with many more "roles" could in fact fit a *lot* more players in, with stuff to do, and that would actually make playing from one town as a lord turn into an interesting game, since you'd have traders coming and going, and so on.

Dammn, Reelya, why tf ain't you making games??
That whole post was pretty exciting.

[Reelya]

I think a game like this one, but with many more "roles" could in fact fit a *lot* more players in, with stuff to do, and that would actually make playing from one town as a lord turn into an interesting game, since you'd have traders coming and going, and so on.

Dammn, Reelya, why tf ain't you making games??
That whole post was pretty exciting.

I'm actually thinking about it. But the approach I'm thinking of would be to start with the low level "citizens" game, make that fun, then bolt the politics game on top of it. (rather than making a game about kings then trying to shoehorn players as citizens inside that)

[Yoink]

Yes! Ruling ain't that fun when what you're ruling over is vast swathes of nothingness with the occasional player character gadding about.   
An exaggeration maybe, but that's how I feel a lot of similar games end up being.    

[Reelya]

Another broken thing the devs added in is all the settlement permissions for building forts and stuff. But then he promptly gave up on finishing that and moved onto adding the battle orders and army supply options into the interface. And then didn't finish that either. And all that was added when there were *already* existing permissions that don't work (the trade permissions).

So now we've got a myriad of permissions to control who can build things inside and outside settlements, along with who can act as a trade delegate. But ... you can't actually build any of those things inside or outside the settlements, nor can you actually act as a trade delegate. But never mind, the devs have a new even better idea so forget about that old stuff!

This is what I'm talking about. Where are these mythical amazing things they've added recently? The only thing are they've added in all these stubs of code that don't do anything, yet instead of finishing them they move straight onto adding yet more half-finished and poorly conceived things that don't actually work. Most of the end results since Tom left is that they've added in tons of stubs and buttons and "features" which don't actually have any gameplay effect, all of which purely complicates the design as far as new players go because it's hard to tell what's an important thing and what is completely broken / non-existent.

The "traits" system is an example of that. Maybe instead of all those other things, making the traits system actually do something would have been a better idea. The traits system is broken and useless, but at least it was already there. Fix that instead of adding a pile more non-functional "improvements" and buttons everywhere.

Yet another example is that there was a bunch of code added for all types of election options, such as positions with periodic re-election. I set a bunch of those up, but apparently they never actually trigger and make the elections happen. So ... yet more unfinished new stuff I guess. Why not at least grey things out if they don't work?

[SaintofWar]

This is patently wrong and uninformed. It is obvious to me that you had a bad experience with the game, which is not uncommon in M&F. Since you haven't bothered to think about what the changes introduced into the game actually do for the game, not that I think you'd even understand them, I am not going to bother explaining them either. I will say this:

*golfclap* Great way to get new players to join the game, by showing up and being a dick towards people who disagree with you, and then talk down to them.

The only reason I got involved was because Andrew was getting a bad rep entirely undeserved. All the things being talked about here as unfinished or terrible are WIP and designed to integrate into the new GameRequest module which will eventually help you engage new players and hopefully let them stick to the game for longer. The army supply stuff and the coming changes to combat are going eviscerate the "Old Guard".

A large part of your complaints with the game go back to how it can be exploited. If you are automatically joined into a house, a player can exploit that, therefore total control is given to the leader of the House. The same goes for Capitals, taxation, permissions, etc.

Traits are something Tom added in. Elections are also Tom.

M&F was abandoned in mid-development. No, scratch that; It was abandoned in early development. It can be barely called a game at this point. New players being confused is unavoidable. At this point, the features being added in are RP tools for top level leadership. M&F doesn't work as a game without a large playerbase. All those "roles" you talked about are possible in M&F and exist in some way, but without the playerbase, they are unfeasible. Andrew has been working very hard to keep people who still play the game interested in the game. If we also decide to take off and quit the game, then it is truly dead. Whether he added those features for us or not, I don't know. But the bottom line is, he is the developer now, and he can do whatever the hell he pleases.

He has been asking for feedback and suggestions for years now, and in the absence of those he has been implementing the things he wants to implement. If you think you know what the game is missing, you are welcome to suggest these things to him *before* you call his decisions into question. Anyone can be a backseat developer.

[Reelya]

The army supply stuff and the coming changes to combat are going eviscerate the "Old Guard".

Not sure whether the logic is going to hold up here, at all. Currently large-scale attacks are largely limited by the supply system. Andrew wants to switch to a system where you designate a source city and get constant supply from that. You're going to see more armies marching around from the other side of the world and invading people, and being able to just keep on rolling on rather than having to stop to resupply. Tom made army supply work like this for a reason.

The big established empires are going to be the clear winners here. When Hawks invaded Ascalon, I hear the main thing that held them back was troop hunger. Without troop hunger they could have just steam rolled right through the heartland before Ascalon had time to alert people and group up. Constant supply chains will benefit those who gather together then launch mass surprise attacks, since you'll no longer be limited in how many troops can march together in your vanguard by what the local area can support.

[wereboar]

Rumour has it that Andrew is developing a new game now. So I wouldn't expect M&F to evolve much in the future.