I don't think the learning curve and feature creep is a bad thing. Even after six years it keeps me interested as there is always something new to learn. The most compelling games take a minute to learn and a lifetime to master and BM fits that bill (and that's just the game system, you could spend two lifetimes gaining complete knowledge of every character, every realm, every religion). That is what keeps many people playing.
You see, I think that perhaps feature creep and increasing complexity has made the game more inaccessible and does a lot to turn off players of all stripes, old and new. I mean, it's natural that any game will lose players over time, but there are a lot of veterans who've disappeared even as new people have joined. Granted, I remember from my time on the discussion list the cloud of melodrama that some players were determined to leave under. I know we veterans don't have all the answers and a lot of the time we should simply be ignored outright, but it would surely be better to know in more detail why others amongst us, those who had been around three, four, five years have disappeared. Not just whether veterans make good feature requests.
I came to BattleMaster from a game that was like and unlike BM. It was dying after a successful couple of years because the economy system was overhauled and massively overcomplicated, it added an extra layer of buildings, an extra layer of resources before you could get to buildings and resources you had before. It sucked the pace, fun and life out of the game, began the haemorrhaging of players and the final nail in the coffin was the owner resorting to a pay to play main game in desperation. I'm not saying BattleMaster is going anything like the same way, but it's a truth there has been a long term decline in the membership that wasn't arrested even by the SlashDot spike.
The BattleMaster of today is
incredibly complex compared to the game I started playing. Everything was so much simpler. When I started, you were automatically a Knight of a Duchy. That was the start and end of the hierarchy system. No oaths to worry about. Taxes were distributed centrally. Only the Banker had control of taxes assigned according to arbitrary values like Prestige. Likewise, only the Banker had to fiddle with the flow or management of food. There were but five available government systems where everyone's role was clearly defined. Back then, if you had 10 regions and 14 nobles, you could make a gambit for four more regions without worrying about maintenance. War flowed much more easily. Likewise policing of atmosphere and RP is more stringent and that hasn't helped the atmosphere.
Now, I adore many of the changes that have come. Guilds, Religions, Armies. I especially love that we have a much better defined and respected hierarchy system. But the current tax system, where lords hold the strings, you either see lords hoarding or lords and Knights both being dirt poor. Nobles aren't any better off now than when dozens of realms struggled with 100-150+ nobles each. The necessity of Lords having a couple of Knights has probably had the most profound negative effect on the game of anything that's been introduced to BattleMaster. Realms can't do things. Maybe too much power has been thrown down the hierarchy as well. Maybe there's too much politics, too much freedom for Joe Anybody to get a lordship or whatever. Once it was obscenely difficult to advance, now you just have to enter your name in a lordship referendum and without saying anything, you can win. The magic of advancement, of power, is gone.
Of course, these are just the tangible game mechanics we're talking about. Alongside that, we've had a sort of creeping culture change. The dynamics of personal interaction are different now. Most discussion is couched explicitly in either political interaction or martial interaction. Beyond that, you have either silence or small pockets of RP here and there. The opening of more and more avenues for political advancement, the stagnation of realms that can't expand or with nobilities that likewise, can hardly change due to pressures all across BattleMaster. It's conspired to make the game much quieter and formal than it once was.
I'm not sure BattleMaster is as compelling a game as it used to be and I think it's going to take more to change that than changing descriptions of the game or trying to engage new players more aggressively. A handful of players doing that isn't going to change the wider culture. It took a long time for me to start roleplaying and joining in realm-wide discussions and it only happened after
months of watching other players do the same. I think either some things should maybe reverted or looked at again, or some things in the pipeline should be brought forward. Like an Estates overhaul or the mooted population and wealth rebalancing.
I've enjoyed this game for so long. But I think if I'd started playing now, I would struggle to enjoy it as much. Sure, I'd probably have made a beeline for fame, for power same as the first time, but the hooks from player-to-player interaction aren't nearly so strong any more - everything is much more individualist now - and the mechanics make it that much harder to just get on and get stuck in now. Of course, it's easy to sit back and judge from where I'm sitting and it's just one opinion. But certainly, to me, BattleMaster felt much livelier, much different in my first three years to these last three.
