‘Manor Lords’ dev looking to fanbase for future of “overpowered” trade system

29 April, 2024

'Manor Lords' screenshot

Medieval strategy game Manor Lords released in Early Access last week, and developers are already looking to the fanbase to help shape the future of the game.

Manor Lords is the work of one-person developers Slavic Magic and is already proving to be a hit on Steam. Over 170,000 users were playing the game concurrently over the weekend (according to SteamDB), and Manor Lords is currently the second most popular game on Steam based on sales, with close to 18,000 positive reviews.

However Slavic Magic’s Greg Styczeń has taken to Discord (via PCGamesN) to ask fans about the future of Manor Lords’ trade system.

“When press and content creators got the build two weeks ago, they often said that the trade is OP and that it’s too cheesy/exploity to just sell one type of good and make your town rich that way,” Styczeń said in a post. He went on to explain how he added a “quick fix” in the form of the oversupply mechanic.

As it stands, if a player’s region only sells one type of item, the price will keep falling until the exports stop completely. Likewise, if a player only imports one item, the price will keep rising. “I was never quite sure about it since I thought specialising regions in producing certain goods is how the game should be played,” Styczeń added.

He went on to say there are other ways to ensure players have what they need to build what they want “but there is a risk players just won’t have to build production chains if they can basically import everything without any consequence” which would mean they wouldn’t interact with certain gameplay mechanics”.

He then asked fans if they wanted the global market supply mechanic to stay as it was, to nerf it or to remove it completely, with a majority currently voting to keep it as it was.

Speaking about the decision to put Manor Lords through a year-long Early Access period, Styczeń said: “We love considering and implementing ideas from players, and we will use Early Access to both expand and improve the game. Early Access provides a great way of involving players in the development process, and we are looking forward to working with the community to make a better game together. We want to hear all suggestions, bug reports, and player feedback in order to make a better game together.”

In other news, Battlestate Games has apologised for locking a new Escape From Tarkov PvE co-op mode in a £215 Unheard edition of the game that caused outrage within the community.

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