Is the sequel still going to be completely open, no innate plot/story? No objectives whatsoever? That's what turned me off from the original, too open, I never knew where to go or what I was doing, I felt like an aimless wanderer. I need some direction. I guess you can get quest mods but meh.
I think the whole point, and the uniqueness of the game, as well as why it is so popular, comes from the fact that it is that open-ended and sandbox. You can do whatever the heck you want within the world's confines once you understand the basic game mechanics. I mean, I think it is way more open ended than TES, and some people are turned off and/or don't understand TES' "freedom", so I understand why some might not enjoy this open-ended sort of thing. I couldn't understand why reviewers kept saying the game had a steep learning curve - I found it pretty easy to understand, even if I'm not that great at it 9Coming from games like TES, the Sims, and SimCity, however, where open-endedness is the name of the game, Mount and Blade was easy for me to pick up) - but now I understand what they mean is that the open-endedness of the game can be daunting for those who are more used to more structured, story-heavier games. Anyhow, I'd rather not have them build in a "main quest" or some sort of plot or story, as I feel this would ruin the whole basis and appeal of the game in the first place.
What I do think the sequel needs, and what I think will reduce the sense of aimlessness, is to provide more variety. Have more quests, first of all, and not just "kill X doodz" or "bring this letter to X". Have a greater variety of character customization in terms of background (I find creating your character at the beginning of the game largely unimportant and irrelevant save for the male-female distinction), as well as different personalities for the NPCs. Perhaps also tweak the mechanics so the player has different career options - make trade more lucrative, allow players to fight as a common soldier (as some mods have done), etc. And, have more variety amongst the different factions - at some point the factions aren't wholly different, sure they have different advantages and disadvantages militaristically, but they're essentially big blobs ruled by a king with 3-4 cities - perhaps have factions of varying strengths, more pronounced military advantages/disadvantages, different mechanics in the internal politics. Stuff like that.
The base game feels like a extremely good foundation, gameplay-wise, a foundation that has been improved upon by a lot of mods, but we'll see how much improvement we get in this sequal on that foundation.