In Manor Lords, the economy system caused trouble. But the solution also seemed to be not quite right. Now the boss is reacting again.
This is the situation: The historical city-building game Manor Lords started as a great success on Steam and attracted plenty of attention.
However, while there was overall a lot of praise and strong reviews for the detail-oriented game, there were also criticisms. One of the biggest was the economy system: it allowed some players to become very rich very quickly by specializing in certain productions and then exporting them.
This led to a lot of money being made, which these players could then use to import a large amount of goods – but at the same time, they had no need to create their own production chains for these goods. This meant that they might have missed or deliberately ignored various game mechanics.
Developer solves problem too heavily, is changing it again – patch coming
Here’s how Manor Lords reacted: The game’s developer, Greg Styczen, who appears under the name “Slavic Magic” and also interacts with the community on Discord under this title, made a quick solution – although the developer stated that such “trade cities” were indeed intended (via Twitter).
Overall, the feature was too powerful, which is why Slavic Magic tried to implement a “quick fix”.
On Discord, the developer explains: The new mechanic stipulates that the price decreases when certain types of goods are sold in excessive quantities. So, there will be less money coming in over time.
At the same time, goods that were imported in large quantities became increasingly expensive. Thus, more money had to be spent.
A realistic solution, but one that led to dissatisfaction, because now players who relied on this system had significant problems. This, in turn, led to further reactions.
The new direction: Slavic Magic had players vote on Discord about how to proceed with the “solution”.
- Option A was to simply keep the solution
- Option B proposed to keep it but dial it back a bit because it was too strict
- And Option C would be to remove it and restore the old status
As of now, Option B is the clear frontrunner with 18,544 votes, while A (3,194) and C (585) are significantly behind. It was accordingly also announced on X that the patch will readjust the trade mechanics (via X.com).
When the patch will be released is currently still unknown. However, it is clearly visible that the developer is engaging with suggestions from the community and is trying to find quick solutions.
Recently, a player also suggested adding monuments or statues, as he wanted to honor his brave guards. Since these do not yet exist, the player found another way: he documented the epic course of his battle in Manor Lords through a Wikipedia article.
