What do you think developer Slavic Magic needs to add next to Manor Lords? That’s exactly the question they posed to the game’s community recently, sparking a debate among butcher fans, rampart enthusiasts, and a fair few who fall somewhere in between these two ultra-orthodoxies.
Yes, after the concept of mourning was added to the game via a beta patch last week, we’ve barely had time for the body to cool and people are already arguing about where it should go next. To be fair though, this is just a manifestation of democracy, you know, the kind that might make you nostalgic for feudalism.
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All of this drama was sparked by a poll that Slavic Magic started on the game’s Discord server last weekend. The poll simply asked everyone whether the game’s next patch should focus on Ramparts, Butchers, or just more bug fixes, quality of life features, and balancing.
As of this writing, the former leads with 14,185 votes – 46% of the total votes, with Butcher receiving 9,412 and Repair receiving 7,437. While this may seem like a wall of a lead, a fierce propaganda counterattack from Butcher’s fellow players is gaining traction on the game’s subreddit.
“Feature walls take ages to get right and have countless weird edge cases that cause bugs and glitches. Next few votes will be ‘Fix the wall,'” one butcher advocate wrote in a pro-meat post. “Butchers will adapt to existing production chains and be happy. Quick implementation with minimal testing.”
Not to be outdone, the “wall builders” (not those people) expressed their views in some posts. “First of all, a butcher is a skilled worker. [I] “Looking forward to it, just not as much as Walls, and here’s why: you can already feed your people,” one wrote. “Butchers don’t add anything to our gameplay that we didn’t have before, it adds a new quest for a household (or many households), new visual effects for buildings, and some new resources to trade. Walls, on the other hand, add a huge visual impact to your city, archers can use it, and [a] Siege mechanics, which will introduce more things later that we don’t have in the game now.”
Basically, the driving force behind the split seems to be different views on the game’s current stage of development, namely whether the game is a great city-building game or a war simulation game, and different people tend to care more about one or the other.
There are also many who are not on either side, either because they just want a resolution or, like this player who raved about the river, are more interested in something that was not an option in the poll.
With a lot of time left in the voting, we’ll likely continue the “Walls vs. Butchers” debate. If you’re just getting started with Manor Lods, be sure to check out our newbie guide.
