Comment by cultureswitch

Mount & Blade 2 was released very early and despite constant improvement (they keep patching it at a strong pace), it's only slowly evolving.

It was even downright unfinished on release, with many game systems claiming to be doing something actually being simply unimplemented.

But despite all that it was and is still fairly playable and enjoyable, even at release. A game only needs a great core gameplay loop to succeed, even if large parts of it are completely broken.

Interestingly, Taleworlds make their own engine with fairly unique capabilities. 200 players can fight in fast paced, precise melee combat on a single server. Even more than in fast-paced shooters, it can be extremely frustrating for players when the game doesn't behave in exactly the way that you would expect (for example, standing undefended just a few centimeters away from the reach of an opponent's swing, or relying on interrupting their attack with your own landing 100 milliseconds before). They've made their own scripting language for everything related to policy. So this scripting language is what modders interact with. And it is absolutely atrocious as a language, but it serves the purpose well enough.