Manor Lords poll kicks off community-wide debate as nearly 31,000 fans show up to debate what the city builder needs next - town walls, butchers, or bug fixes

03.06.2024 - 14:01 / gamesradar.com / Hirun Cryer

After the game's developer opened up a public vote, Manor Lords players are debating what the city builder's next update should focus on.

Yesterday, June 2, developer Slavic Magic opened up a poll in the official Manor Lords Discord server. The poll, as you can see below, will dictate what the city builder's next major patch should focus on, and the choices are either town walls, butchers, or simply bug fixes and quality-of-life/balance improvements. 

As you can probably imagine, it didn't take long for the entire thing to descend into one massive debate. "Honestly don't see what town walls will add. Some cosmetic value and defensive mechanics, I suppose. I'd rather flesh out the rest of the game," reads one player's comment under the Reddit post. 

Another player counters that town walls would greatly boost defense - "Just yesterday I got attacked and by the time the game told me I'm getting invaded the first building was already burnt down," they write. Another player, meanwhile, pointing to the historical facts, claims that walled towns were pretty rare back in the day, and so perhaps they shouldn't feature prominently in Manor Lords.

There's a big push for Butchers to win the poll for the update, though. "Butchers are going to fit in the existing production chain and be happy," claims one player, commenting on the Reddit post below, while another writes that there's apparently "there's also just not a ton of actual need for walls right now." That probably depends on who you'd ask, though.

There are also demands for features that just straight-up aren't in the patch poll. "Fuck all of that, what I want is to be able to just SEND INVENTORY TO MY OTHER VILLAGES without having to deal with this pack bullshit," writes one emphatic player, while other players point out that resources probably shouldn't be able to just teleport between regions and towns. That wouldn't be very realistic.

Right now, over 30,000 votes have been cast in the poll. Town walls have the lead with 46% of the vote share, while Butchers are in at 30%, and bug fixes/quality-of-life/balance improvements are trailing with 24% of the votes. There are still six days left to go in voting, though, so there's plenty of time for things to change.

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Slavic Magic - a solo developer, mind you - just recently revealed that he was "very stressed" after Manor Lords first official patch, so maybe go easy on the demands right now.

Over 50 hours later, one Manor Lords player builds a city so big that "the game is no longer really playable" and even the developer himself is "impressed."