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Call Angry Joe he has the force to turn peoples minds just look at the Chaos Pre-order DLC
That dude is such a d-bag. No one should listen to anything he says because just by clicking his vids you will lose brain cells :-|
lol...
"I'm gonna stomp 'em to dust. I'm gonna grind their bones. I'm gonna burn down dere towns and cities. I'm gonna pile 'em up inna big fire and roast 'em. I'm gonna bash heads, break faces, and jump up and down on the bits that are left.
Call Angry Joe he has the force to turn peoples minds just look at the Chaos Pre-order DLC
That dude is such a d-bag. No one should listen to anything he says because just by clicking his vids you will lose brain cells :-|
Pathetic how he trends towards movie reviews......well the other two review he just...strokes his short beard thing, agrees and makes a couple of short comments......
Auto resolving has been hugely improvement in warhammer 2, its far better compared to the first one, but it still needs some tweaking, especially the dark elves.
Its true that the dlc is grossly over priced, it cost 1/3 of the vanilla game but doesn't offer 1/3 of the content.
Funny how the OP managed to make himself sound like a cheapskate rather than being actually too poor to buy a game. Asking for free stuff and almost sounds like he is begging. Anyway, he always has the option to wait for price drop to get the dlc he likes. No need to rush.
I think CA is doing fine. It's hard trying to keep my expectations in check, but when I try to be objective and compare TWW with games made by other companies...that barely hold my attention for a week....
Well 400+ hours now and I'm still playing it as.much as I can, very happy with the quality so far and looking forward to everything in store.
Happy to pay full price for the DLCs if it will keep CA making more of them.
I normally don't comment on these threads, as I have no intention of buying TW Warhammer, for reasons completely unrelated to the game itself, my financial situation, or CA (I decided not to buy it before it was officially announced). But I decided to comment on this one.
I love this game, never bought any game that's $60 if I didn't think it was worth it. I bought all the DLCs at their full price.
Now here are the things that matter to a player like me: A healthy community of modders and players.
Total War: Warhammer is becoming like Diablo 3. A huge success that progressively alienated it's players with every update. Cmon Creative Assembly! What the heck are you doing? You can do better than this!
I understand that you want to make money and create more content while paying your staff. I know engineers and designers are not cheap, but consider your players. Say you don't care about poor players who can't afford your DLCs, then you don't care for the rest of your players. Why? You are alienating not just the people who can't and won't afford your DLCs, you are alienating players like me as well.
Games like these are fun with people playing it! With modders making awesome mods. Some of the best modders left the community for other games after you Beastman DLC that was $20+ at first. Read the comments http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=714796477
I just want to say that mods are not required to enjoy Total War. I have logged hundreds of hours across TW games without touching a single mod, ever.
Money to you means more than your players. Your success will be only short-term. I am not just talking about this one game, I am talking about your company as well. What happens when there are no players left to buy your games because of your reputation that you are building? You know what makes Blizzard and LoL so popular? They care so much for their players. They will and are enjoying much longer success then your company will unless you wisen up and make a change.
Ok, you just lost a lot of credibility there. You claim to know what CA's priorities are by saying they care more about money than players. Unless you have a case where the head of CA explicitly says that or an email is found that explicitly states that, it is simply your own judgement of the situation. Do not make such statements about a company you do not work for and have no intimate knowledge about how they operate.
If you divide the player base by DLC and make multiplayer incompatible, and you think people will pay for that continually. Think again. You are digging your own grave.
This is simply a false accusation. Every time a DLC is released, with the possible exception of the blood and gore DLCs, a patch to the base game is released that contains the essential files for the new DLC, with the primary purpose being to ensure that those who do not buy the DLC can still play online with those who do. They are not making the multiplayer incompatible or dividing the players with DLC, it is simply not true.
Think of a better way to monetize than DLC. Please. For $20, people can get a whole new game, some can buy 4 new games at $5. You live on Steam, adapt to the Steam alternative competition or die
.
There are hundreds of variables that can determine the price of a game on Steam. All of what follows is based on original prices, as sales are unpredictable. Yes people can get 4 new games for $5, but those games generally are indie games or very old games that may only appeal to certain niche players. The $20 games vary greatly. Some are excellent, some are trash, and a lot in-between. But many of them do not have the development resources as TW or other AAA titles. Others have a completely different design to Total War and cannot be compared. Saying that you can pay for, say Ultimate General Gettysburg at 14.99 and as low as 3.74 in a sale, therefore Warhammer is overpriced, is a terrible comparison. Show me another strategy franchise that plays very similarly to Total War in terms of "Turn Based fluid and flexible campaign combined with real time battles with thousands of detailed men (or monsters) on the battlefield at the same time". Total War is unique enough to stand on its own and be very successful on its own.
I know you are wondering how to get my and other player's money to keep the lights on. I get it. Here's a couple of ways:
If you want the $$$ for additional content and DLCs, make this game freemium. Base game free and DLC will be paid, at this point the only things that can save TW:W is a big influx of players. If you want to earn the players trust, I would recommend giving Beastman DLC away for FREE or at least at 90 percent discount as an apology to the players who left. People who could afford it already bought it, people who couldn't left. A lot of people just left because of principle. I am on a verge of leaving because the game is no longer fun, depending whether you respond to this message or just make us feel like you don't give a damn.
People will pay for content, but they won't pay for additional content if they already had to flush out $60 for the base game! You are not World of Warcraft or freemium MMO, what the f*** are you thinking? Whoever is your monetization lead. WAKE UP! $20 to you means nothing. For players around the world, that could be their whole month's savings.
HAHAAHA no. This shatters pretty much all of your credibility. To demand that a game like a base Total war game be released for free is absolutely insane. The total war model does not work for free-to-play games. In fact, no game that is not exclusively multiplayer should ever be free-to-play. Games cost money to make, as well as a lot of time and effort, and that is an understatement. This is especially true with Total War. There is a reason why they usually work on more than title at once, so that they can maintain a reasonable release schedule and not keep us waiting too long for the next game.
CA has given discounts to DLC in the past. They gave a Rome II DLC away for free for a week, a couple months after release, quite possibly to apologize to those who did not have a good experience with Rome II.
FYI, I played for all the DLC content for Rome II as soon as they were available after flushing out $60 USD for the base game, because I was a happy customer and had no reservations about paying for new content that I was very happy with.
But consider this. Total War games need a pretty good computer to run effectively. Those good computers are not cheap. I think it is not an unreasonable thing to say that many TW players who can afford the computer to play the game at great performance and graphics have enough money to pay for the DLC, especially at their own timetable.
Furthermore, all your updates break my game for some time. The latest one just broke it for good. I run a big modding collection for games I truly love and think they are worth the time to help other players. I want to play the game with mods and with people. I want to help you, the creators of this awesome game, BUT you break mod compatibility every update with the last one making it impossible for us to check compatibility because the game launches even though some mods are not compatible with each other. *facepalm*
As I know someone said earlier in this thread, the developer cannot be held accountable for problems like that from updates when you have a large amount of mods installed. One or two simple mods maybe, but that many and you are just asking for problems. That is your own fault. This is one of the reasons why I don't do mods, I don't want to risk screwing up my game. So I'm sorry, if you have a large amount of mods installed, these problems are likely due to them and not CA.
You cannot realistically expect CA to be able to ensure compatibility for every mod in a new patch from launch, that is an insane expectation.
Blood for Blood God DLC was great! Not that many game-breaking bugs. The community flourished even though you had haters. Beastmen DLC confirmed the hate and that's one nail to your coffin. Great content shouldn't come with more game breaking bugs than content. My game crashes now even on selecting a town, for no reason. Or the can't end your turn Chaos invasion. 100+ turns. Well, I have already gotten used to this. Re-create the game if you have having issues, mostly because of mods. Yes, that's the price I pay, but at least before Beastmen DLC, I had a way to figure out which mod caused the problem! Not I don't, so starting a new game won't fix anything.
Yeah, given the fact that you say you have a large collection of mods installed means that the problems you are experiencing cannot be blamed entirely on CA. And when your definition of a "Great" DLC is "not that many game-breaking bugs" tells me that you are relying too much on mods.
I highly advise you to go freemium, or significantly lower the cost of the base game if you plan on continual support for $20 a DLC pop. Make your DLC releases better with more testing. Like with CS:GO or League of Legends, character skins and designs are what people will pay for. Graphics, more battle maps, don't change the game dynamics and can be made compatible on multiplayer. Support your modding community and make some guidelines. Make this shift a priority for this game and any future games if you want a proven method of long-term success. Heck, combine freemium with a premium subscription model of a one, two, or even three dollars a month. Charge a lot of people, a little money and you will have a lot. That's what WhatsApp did and got acquired for $$,$$$,$$$,$$$.$$. Save yourself.
There is a reason why I generally buy Total War DLC immediately for games I do own. Warhammer is the exception as I stated above that I did not buy for reasons completely unrelated to the game itself or the practices of CA, or my financial situation, I can afford Warhammer.
I buy CA's DLC because they have never disappointed me. I pay what I see as a reasonable price for new content that spent the time and effort to make. I had a look at the information for the three DLCs available at this time for Warhammer. I very much love that CA doesn't release paid DLC that is just skins and aesthetic changes that do nothing to gameplay (blood being an exception, explained below). Those are not worthy of money like the stupid skin content for games like the recent Call of Duty games. CA's DLC actually adds stuff to the game and can add an extra couple dozen hours of gameplay in terms of the faction packs, and even more hours in terms of the mini-campaigns.
A subscription model would be a total disaster. As with Free-To-Play, such a policy should never be in place except with MMOs. A subscription for a game with a very prominent and strong single player is absolutely wrong.
The blood DLC is reasonably priced, as it is necessary for such content to be behind a pay wall to keep the game's content rating down
The Chaos Warriors pack, well it was pre-order free, but that has been debated to death. Now that it is not free, $7.99 actually keeps with the pattern for DLC that has been the case since Rome II, so this is not a new policy by any means.
Now, regarding the highly debated Beastmen DLC. $18.99 is the highest price I have seen for a single DLC in the history of Total War. But I don't think the criticisms are completely fair.
For one thing, the Beastmen DLC includes a mini campaign, which in the past have consistently been charged $14.99. That is already just under 79% the cost of the Beastmen. As for the rest, including the beastmen in the GC with all their new stuff and the new units and such is in some ways an equvilant to a culture pack which has been traditionally been 7.99.
If they charged the price of a mini-campaign plus the price of a culture pack and combined them, the beastmen would be just under $23
Plus, pricing for stuff may be largely determined by SEGA, their publisher. They want money too, and how much they want could be key in determining the price of content. I could be wrong, but that seems a reasonable assumption in my opinion.
Also, there is something that I think many people are forgetting or not seeing. Warhammer is in many ways a new territory for CA, and one of the critical ways it is new for them is the units and rules of the Warhammer universe.
They have never had to work with magic, monsters, flying units etc before. Therefore, this poses new challenges for them. In the past, they have mainly had to work with virtual humans and horses. Any land units beyond that were generally ether artillery or limited to certain factions, like elephants.
This poses great challenges both from an aesthetic standpoint, meaning the visual design of units, and a mechanical standpoint, meaning modeling the behavior in the game world of these massive and bizzare creatures I have been seeing, stuff which we have not seen anything like in TW before. Stuff that I personally don't see the appeal in for TW, but can see why people would like them.
Given that this is new territory for them, and stuff that they have to do for the first time, I think it might warrant paying a little more simply due to the risks involved and the extra work that the content team may have to do compared to stuff for past titles.
"we have officially entered into pre-whinning about our games."- Cogre
I will always respect differing opinions on here, so long as they are presented maturely and in a civil manner
"No Battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy"- Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder
I normally don't comment on these threads, as I have no intention of buying TW Warhammer, for reasons completely unrelated to the game itself, my financial situation, or CA (I decided not to buy it before it was officially announced). But I decided to comment on this one.
I love this game, never bought any game that's $60 if I didn't think it was worth it. I bought all the DLCs at their full price.
Now here are the things that matter to a player like me: A healthy community of modders and players.
Total War: Warhammer is becoming like Diablo 3. A huge success that progressively alienated it's players with every update. Cmon Creative Assembly! What the heck are you doing? You can do better than this!
I understand that you want to make money and create more content while paying your staff. I know engineers and designers are not cheap, but consider your players. Say you don't care about poor players who can't afford your DLCs, then you don't care for the rest of your players. Why? You are alienating not just the people who can't and won't afford your DLCs, you are alienating players like me as well.
Games like these are fun with people playing it! With modders making awesome mods. Some of the best modders left the community for other games after you Beastman DLC that was $20+ at first. Read the comments http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=714796477
I just want to say that mods are not required to enjoy Total War. I have logged hundreds of hours across TW games without touching a single mod, ever.
Money to you means more than your players. Your success will be only short-term. I am not just talking about this one game, I am talking about your company as well. What happens when there are no players left to buy your games because of your reputation that you are building? You know what makes Blizzard and LoL so popular? They care so much for their players. They will and are enjoying much longer success then your company will unless you wisen up and make a change.
Ok, you just lost a lot of credibility there. You claim to know what CA's priorities are by saying they care more about money than players. Unless you have a case where the head of CA explicitly says that or an email is found that explicitly states that, it is simply your own judgement of the situation. Do not make such statements about a company you do not work for and have no intimate knowledge about how they operate.
If you divide the player base by DLC and make multiplayer incompatible, and you think people will pay for that continually. Think again. You are digging your own grave.
This is simply a false accusation. Every time a DLC is released, with the possible exception of the blood and gore DLCs, a patch to the base game is released that contains the essential files for the new DLC, with the primary purpose being to ensure that those who do not buy the DLC can still play online with those who do. They are not making the multiplayer incompatible or dividing the players with DLC, it is simply not true.
Think of a better way to monetize than DLC. Please. For $20, people can get a whole new game, some can buy 4 new games at $5. You live on Steam, adapt to the Steam alternative competition or die
.
There are hundreds of variables that can determine the price of a game on Steam. All of what follows is based on original prices, as sales are unpredictable. Yes people can get 4 new games for $5, but those games generally are indie games or very old games that may only appeal to certain niche players. The $20 games vary greatly. Some are excellent, some are trash, and a lot in-between. But many of them do not have the development resources as TW or other AAA titles. Others have a completely different design to Total War and cannot be compared. Saying that you can pay for, say Ultimate General Gettysburg at 14.99 and as low as 3.74 in a sale, therefore Warhammer is overpriced, is a terrible comparison. Show me another strategy franchise that plays very similarly to Total War in terms of "Turn Based fluid and flexible campaign combined with real time battles with thousands of detailed men (or monsters) on the battlefield at the same time". Total War is unique enough to stand on its own and be very successful on its own.
I know you are wondering how to get my and other player's money to keep the lights on. I get it. Here's a couple of ways:
If you want the $$$ for additional content and DLCs, make this game freemium. Base game free and DLC will be paid, at this point the only things that can save TW:W is a big influx of players. If you want to earn the players trust, I would recommend giving Beastman DLC away for FREE or at least at 90 percent discount as an apology to the players who left. People who could afford it already bought it, people who couldn't left. A lot of people just left because of principle. I am on a verge of leaving because the game is no longer fun, depending whether you respond to this message or just make us feel like you don't give a damn.
People will pay for content, but they won't pay for additional content if they already had to flush out $60 for the base game! You are not World of Warcraft or freemium MMO, what the f*** are you thinking? Whoever is your monetization lead. WAKE UP! $20 to you means nothing. For players around the world, that could be their whole month's savings.
HAHAAHA no. This shatters pretty much all of your credibility. To demand that a game like a base Total war game be released for free is absolutely insane. The total war model does not work for free-to-play games. In fact, no game that is not exclusively multiplayer should ever be free-to-play. Games cost money to make, as well as a lot of time and effort, and that is an understatement. This is especially true with Total War. There is a reason why they usually work on more than title at once, so that they can maintain a reasonable release schedule and not keep us waiting too long for the next game.
CA has given discounts to DLC in the past. They gave a Rome II DLC away for free for a week, a couple months after release, quite possibly to apologize to those who did not have a good experience with Rome II.
FYI, I played for all the DLC content for Rome II as soon as they were available after flushing out $60 USD for the base game, because I was a happy customer and had no reservations about paying for new content that I was very happy with.
But consider this. Total War games need a pretty good computer to run effectively. Those good computers are not cheap. I think it is not an unreasonable thing to say that many TW players who can afford the computer to play the game at great performance and graphics have enough money to pay for the DLC, especially at their own timetable.
Furthermore, all your updates break my game for some time. The latest one just broke it for good. I run a big modding collection for games I truly love and think they are worth the time to help other players. I want to play the game with mods and with people. I want to help you, the creators of this awesome game, BUT you break mod compatibility every update with the last one making it impossible for us to check compatibility because the game launches even though some mods are not compatible with each other. *facepalm*
As I know someone said earlier in this thread, the developer cannot be held accountable for problems like that from updates when you have a large amount of mods installed. One or two simple mods maybe, but that many and you are just asking for problems. That is your own fault. This is one of the reasons why I don't do mods, I don't want to risk screwing up my game. So I'm sorry, if you have a large amount of mods installed, these problems are likely due to them and not CA.
You cannot realistically expect CA to be able to ensure compatibility for every mod in a new patch from launch, that is an insane expectation.
Blood for Blood God DLC was great! Not that many game-breaking bugs. The community flourished even though you had haters. Beastmen DLC confirmed the hate and that's one nail to your coffin. Great content shouldn't come with more game breaking bugs than content. My game crashes now even on selecting a town, for no reason. Or the can't end your turn Chaos invasion. 100+ turns. Well, I have already gotten used to this. Re-create the game if you have having issues, mostly because of mods. Yes, that's the price I pay, but at least before Beastmen DLC, I had a way to figure out which mod caused the problem! Not I don't, so starting a new game won't fix anything.
Yeah, given the fact that you say you have a large collection of mods installed means that the problems you are experiencing cannot be blamed entirely on CA. And when your definition of a "Great" DLC is "not that many game-breaking bugs" tells me that you are relying too much on mods.
I highly advise you to go freemium, or significantly lower the cost of the base game if you plan on continual support for $20 a DLC pop. Make your DLC releases better with more testing. Like with CS:GO or League of Legends, character skins and designs are what people will pay for. Graphics, more battle maps, don't change the game dynamics and can be made compatible on multiplayer. Support your modding community and make some guidelines. Make this shift a priority for this game and any future games if you want a proven method of long-term success. Heck, combine freemium with a premium subscription model of a one, two, or even three dollars a month. Charge a lot of people, a little money and you will have a lot. That's what WhatsApp did and got acquired for $$,$$$,$$$,$$$.$$. Save yourself.
There is a reason why I generally buy Total War DLC immediately for games I do own. Warhammer is the exception as I stated above that I did not buy for reasons completely unrelated to the game itself or the practices of CA, or my financial situation, I can afford Warhammer.
I buy CA's DLC because they have never disappointed me. I pay what I see as a reasonable price for new content that spent the time and effort to make. I had a look at the information for the three DLCs available at this time for Warhammer. I very much love that CA doesn't release paid DLC that is just skins and aesthetic changes that do nothing to gameplay (blood being an exception, explained below). Those are not worthy of money like the stupid skin content for games like the recent Call of Duty games. CA's DLC actually adds stuff to the game and can add an extra couple dozen hours of gameplay in terms of the faction packs, and even more hours in terms of the mini-campaigns.
A subscription model would be a total disaster. As with Free-To-Play, such a policy should never be in place except with MMOs. A subscription for a game with a very prominent and strong single player is absolutely wrong.
The blood DLC is reasonably priced, as it is necessary for such content to be behind a pay wall to keep the game's content rating down
The Chaos Warriors pack, well it was pre-order free, but that has been debated to death. Now that it is not free, $7.99 actually keeps with the pattern for DLC that has been the case since Rome II, so this is not a new policy by any means.
Now, regarding the highly debated Beastmen DLC. $18.99 is the highest price I have seen for a single DLC in the history of Total War. But I don't think the criticisms are completely fair.
For one thing, the Beastmen DLC includes a mini campaign, which in the past have consistently been charged $14.99. That is already just under 79% the cost of the Beastmen. As for the rest, including the beastmen in the GC with all their new stuff and the new units and such is in some ways an equvilant to a culture pack which has been traditionally been 7.99.
If they charged the price of a mini-campaign plus the price of a culture pack and combined them, the beastmen would be just under $23
Plus, pricing for stuff may be largely determined by SEGA, their publisher. They want money too, and how much they want could be key in determining the price of content. I could be wrong, but that seems a reasonable assumption in my opinion.
Also, there is something that I think many people are forgetting or not seeing. Warhammer is in many ways a new territory for CA, and one of the critical ways it is new for them is the units and rules of the Warhammer universe.
They have never had to work with magic, monsters, flying units etc before. Therefore, this poses new challenges for them. In the past, they have mainly had to work with virtual humans and horses. Any land units beyond that were generally ether artillery or limited to certain factions, like elephants.
This poses great challenges both from an aesthetic standpoint, meaning the visual design of units, and a mechanical standpoint, meaning modeling the behavior in the game world of these massive and bizzare creatures I have been seeing, stuff which we have not seen anything like in TW before. Stuff that I personally don't see the appeal in for TW, but can see why people would like them.
Given that this is new territory for them, and stuff that they have to do for the first time, I think it might warrant paying a little more simply due to the risks involved and the extra work that the content team may have to do compared to stuff for past titles.
Thanks for the clarification on the DLC and MP. I was wrong. Actually, I was wrong with a lot of my statements. But, that doesn't take away from the problems surrounding this product and CA.
You say the content is good and the pricing strategy is competitive. Sure, I give you that. Is that smart to follow the market? All the game publishing companies do these days is release one game after another year after year. Isn't that what CA is doing? They have to keep producing games, hit or miss titles, in order to stay alive. TWW is a hit, their pricing strategy is killing the product.
Who do you think has a better time, the companies that have to produce games from scratch every year or so, or something like Starcraft or Diablo which releases an awesome first game and then just adds content on top. I see TWW as having the potential of an awesome base game with additional content being worth spending extra money on.
Maybe, just maybe, the Warhammer community will support TWW through this deceleration. The hobby games is reportedly hitting $700M industry (2014) and I suppose it is increasing with more nerds among millennials, but that's more of a push to make this game much more of a long term success than a short term bang and bust. Maybe Steam is no the right platform for your game to exist in like D3 has it's own space for a reason. But, when bad things happen it affects the whole community. Realize that the most loyal fans of Total War or Warhammer stay because of other players.
You have made a great game CA with a lore rich environment which you can mine and create content almost infinitely, yet you are messing it up with following the practices of other unproven game publishers.
The Freemium was just an idea. Ideas are a diamond dozen. It's one way to solve the pricing problem that makes a lot of people feel betrayed and very loyal players who loved the game so much they created mods and contributed to the community are now leaving. That's a real problem plaguing this game. It's what makes me sad and could cause irreparable damage to this product lifetime. My idea might not be the brightest one, but the problem doesn't go away. There needs to be a change. Starcraft II has a free arcade version for playing multiplayer and paid everything else. I played arcade until I loved the game so much that I bought the whole game. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
CA has been around 1987, I can remember Shogun, Shogun 2, Medieval 2 and TWW. All the other ones were not worth my time to invest in. That's four titles in almost thirty years. The quality of the games indeed is improving as TWW is one of the best strategy games out there, even best games of 2015/2016. How long can you keep this up? Can you be one of the top gaming developers who stays relevant for years to come? Hardly, if your product shelf life is only a couple of months until it is replaced by something else. Shogun 2 was amazing for a lot of reasons, but primarily for its replayability in multiplayer. TWW has this opportunity for both SP and MP because of mods. Supporting the modding community should be a priority. I know it's not, and it's hard. You have done well until the Beastman DLC
Pre-Beastman DLC, the game crashed at launched when two mods were incompatible, mostly. Now, it doesn't for the most part. If there are any incompatibilities I can't check for that anymore. Should I blame the developers? They did built the game, bugs are their own. CA didn't write the mods, but they should provide a better modding support. At the bare minimum, as players we should be able to easily test which mods are compatible or not. Make a load order if necessary. Should CA support the modding community? At least they should make something solid, which they did, but broke things again. I point out these problems. The wise will listen.
EDIT: To all the "miniature" people out there! You have a one hundred percent tabletop experience of Warhammer 'without having to pay for the miniatures' for FREE on Roll20.net Please.
Oh I forgot, I also played TW: Rome, that makes it five games in thirty years.
You say that the pricing strategy is hurting TWW, well, other TW games did fine under this strategy, so perhaps it is not necessarily the pricing strategy, but maybe it is actually the influx of newer players that are not that familiar with Total War, and the inherently risky venture into a fictional realm that is hurting the game, if it is hurting as you say.
I don't see a continuation of their successful policies from earlier titles as being the cause, it is something unique to this title, and I am inclined to see it being ether the fictional setting or the influx of newer players.
From the latter part of your newest post:
CA has been around 1987, I can remember Shogun, Shogun 2, Medieval 2 and TWW. All the other ones were not worth my time to invest in. That's four titles in almost thirty years. The quality of the games indeed is improving as TWW is one of the best strategy games out there, even best games of 2015/2016. How long can you keep this up? Can you be one of the top gaming developers who stays relevant for years to come? Hardly, if your product shelf life is only a couple of months until it is replaced by something else. Shogun 2 was amazing for a lot of reasons, but primarily for its replayability in multiplayer. TWW has this opportunity for both SP and MP because of mods. Supporting the modding community should be a priority. I know it's not, and it's hard. You have done well until the Beastman DLC
The company was founded in 1987, and did various work on computer and video games since then, but they were not really known until 13 years later with Shogun Total War.
They have been keeping things up well for over a decade and a half (from the point of Shogun:TW's release) with a unique formula that no one has a comparison to at this time, I think they will be fine for the forseeable future, and I anxiously await their next historical title, which has been confirmed to be in development.
Also the way you just brush aside ETW, NTW, Rome II and Attila is a pretty condescending tone to take, especially with saying "That's four titles in almost 30 years". Refusing to acknowledge the stuff they made that was "not worth your time and investment" is not a very good tone to take when you are trying to get a message to them.
And with steam, the product shelf life of their products is much longer, you can buy the entire TW lineup on steam now, and games last much longer than they used to thanks to steam. For Total War, the "shelf life" is very long. People still buy and play Rome Total War and Medieval II total War, all TW games actually. And different gameplay styles and eras keep some games fresh and favorites for many people, which is why as of now Napoleon Total War stands as my favorite.
TW replayability has always been high in both SP and MP. Supporting modders is a good policy, but it should not take away at all from work on the main game.
Why do TW games last so long? They are quality products that offer unique and excellent gameplay. Warhammer is a venture out of their comfort zone by going for a completely fictional setting, and it remains to be seen for sure how successful it will be.
"we have officially entered into pre-whinning about our games."- Cogre
I will always respect differing opinions on here, so long as they are presented maturely and in a civil manner
"No Battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy"- Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder
Mods please change my name to a diamond dozen, lol
boyfights you are always here to confirmate every spark of originality or reason burns or acid bruises anyone, stop your gladiator love for agressions.
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0 · Disagree AgreeAn' den I'm gonna get really mean."
Grimgor Ironhide, Black Orc Warboss.
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0 · Disagree AgreeFunny how the OP managed to make himself sound like a cheapskate rather than being actually too poor to buy a game. Asking for free stuff and almost sounds like he is begging. Anyway, he always has the option to wait for price drop to get the dlc he likes. No need to rush.
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0 · Disagree AgreeWell 400+ hours now and I'm still playing it as.much as I can, very happy with the quality so far and looking forward to everything in store.
Happy to pay full price for the DLCs if it will keep CA making more of them.
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0 · Disagree AgreeI just want to say that mods are not required to enjoy Total War. I have logged hundreds of hours across TW games without touching a single mod, ever.
Ok, you just lost a lot of credibility there. You claim to know what CA's priorities are by saying they care more about money than players. Unless you have a case where the head of CA explicitly says that or an email is found that explicitly states that, it is simply your own judgement of the situation. Do not make such statements about a company you do not work for and have no intimate knowledge about how they operate.
If you divide the player base by DLC and make multiplayer incompatible, and you think people will pay for that continually. Think again. You are digging your own grave.
This is simply a false accusation. Every time a DLC is released, with the possible exception of the blood and gore DLCs, a patch to the base game is released that contains the essential files for the new DLC, with the primary purpose being to ensure that those who do not buy the DLC can still play online with those who do. They are not making the multiplayer incompatible or dividing the players with DLC, it is simply not true.
Think of a better way to monetize than DLC. Please. For $20, people can get a whole new game, some can buy 4 new games at $5. You live on Steam, adapt to the Steam alternative competition or die
There are hundreds of variables that can determine the price of a game on Steam. All of what follows is based on original prices, as sales are unpredictable. Yes people can get 4 new games for $5, but those games generally are indie games or very old games that may only appeal to certain niche players. The $20 games vary greatly. Some are excellent, some are trash, and a lot in-between. But many of them do not have the development resources as TW or other AAA titles. Others have a completely different design to Total War and cannot be compared. Saying that you can pay for, say Ultimate General Gettysburg at 14.99 and as low as 3.74 in a sale, therefore Warhammer is overpriced, is a terrible comparison. Show me another strategy franchise that plays very similarly to Total War in terms of "Turn Based fluid and flexible campaign combined with real time battles with thousands of detailed men (or monsters) on the battlefield at the same time". Total War is unique enough to stand on its own and be very successful on its own.
I know you are wondering how to get my and other player's money to keep the lights on. I get it. Here's a couple of ways:
If you want the $$$ for additional content and DLCs, make this game freemium. Base game free and DLC will be paid, at this point the only things that can save TW:W is a big influx of players. If you want to earn the players trust, I would recommend giving Beastman DLC away for FREE or at least at 90 percent discount as an apology to the players who left. People who could afford it already bought it, people who couldn't left. A lot of people just left because of principle. I am on a verge of leaving because the game is no longer fun, depending whether you respond to this message or just make us feel like you don't give a damn.
People will pay for content, but they won't pay for additional content if they already had to flush out $60 for the base game! You are not World of Warcraft or freemium MMO, what the f*** are you thinking? Whoever is your monetization lead. WAKE UP! $20 to you means nothing. For players around the world, that could be their whole month's savings.
HAHAAHA no. This shatters pretty much all of your credibility. To demand that a game like a base Total war game be released for free is absolutely insane. The total war model does not work for free-to-play games. In fact, no game that is not exclusively multiplayer should ever be free-to-play. Games cost money to make, as well as a lot of time and effort, and that is an understatement. This is especially true with Total War. There is a reason why they usually work on more than title at once, so that they can maintain a reasonable release schedule and not keep us waiting too long for the next game.
CA has given discounts to DLC in the past. They gave a Rome II DLC away for free for a week, a couple months after release, quite possibly to apologize to those who did not have a good experience with Rome II.
FYI, I played for all the DLC content for Rome II as soon as they were available after flushing out $60 USD for the base game, because I was a happy customer and had no reservations about paying for new content that I was very happy with.
But consider this. Total War games need a pretty good computer to run effectively. Those good computers are not cheap. I think it is not an unreasonable thing to say that many TW players who can afford the computer to play the game at great performance and graphics have enough money to pay for the DLC, especially at their own timetable.
Furthermore, all your updates break my game for some time. The latest one just broke it for good. I run a big modding collection for games I truly love and think they are worth the time to help other players. I want to play the game with mods and with people. I want to help you, the creators of this awesome game, BUT you break mod compatibility every update with the last one making it impossible for us to check compatibility because the game launches even though some mods are not compatible with each other. *facepalm*
As I know someone said earlier in this thread, the developer cannot be held accountable for problems like that from updates when you have a large amount of mods installed. One or two simple mods maybe, but that many and you are just asking for problems. That is your own fault. This is one of the reasons why I don't do mods, I don't want to risk screwing up my game. So I'm sorry, if you have a large amount of mods installed, these problems are likely due to them and not CA.
You cannot realistically expect CA to be able to ensure compatibility for every mod in a new patch from launch, that is an insane expectation.
Blood for Blood God DLC was great! Not that many game-breaking bugs. The community flourished even though you had haters. Beastmen DLC confirmed the hate and that's one nail to your coffin. Great content shouldn't come with more game breaking bugs than content. My game crashes now even on selecting a town, for no reason. Or the can't end your turn Chaos invasion. 100+ turns. Well, I have already gotten used to this. Re-create the game if you have having issues, mostly because of mods. Yes, that's the price I pay, but at least before Beastmen DLC, I had a way to figure out which mod caused the problem! Not I don't, so starting a new game won't fix anything.
Yeah, given the fact that you say you have a large collection of mods installed means that the problems you are experiencing cannot be blamed entirely on CA. And when your definition of a "Great" DLC is "not that many game-breaking bugs" tells me that you are relying too much on mods.
There is a reason why I generally buy Total War DLC immediately for games I do own. Warhammer is the exception as I stated above that I did not buy for reasons completely unrelated to the game itself or the practices of CA, or my financial situation, I can afford Warhammer.
I buy CA's DLC because they have never disappointed me. I pay what I see as a reasonable price for new content that spent the time and effort to make. I had a look at the information for the three DLCs available at this time for Warhammer. I very much love that CA doesn't release paid DLC that is just skins and aesthetic changes that do nothing to gameplay (blood being an exception, explained below). Those are not worthy of money like the stupid skin content for games like the recent Call of Duty games. CA's DLC actually adds stuff to the game and can add an extra couple dozen hours of gameplay in terms of the faction packs, and even more hours in terms of the mini-campaigns.
A subscription model would be a total disaster. As with Free-To-Play, such a policy should never be in place except with MMOs. A subscription for a game with a very prominent and strong single player is absolutely wrong.
The blood DLC is reasonably priced, as it is necessary for such content to be behind a pay wall to keep the game's content rating down
The Chaos Warriors pack, well it was pre-order free, but that has been debated to death. Now that it is not free, $7.99 actually keeps with the pattern for DLC that has been the case since Rome II, so this is not a new policy by any means.
Now, regarding the highly debated Beastmen DLC. $18.99 is the highest price I have seen for a single DLC in the history of Total War. But I don't think the criticisms are completely fair.
For one thing, the Beastmen DLC includes a mini campaign, which in the past have consistently been charged $14.99. That is already just under 79% the cost of the Beastmen. As for the rest, including the beastmen in the GC with all their new stuff and the new units and such is in some ways an equvilant to a culture pack which has been traditionally been 7.99.
If they charged the price of a mini-campaign plus the price of a culture pack and combined them, the beastmen would be just under $23
Plus, pricing for stuff may be largely determined by SEGA, their publisher. They want money too, and how much they want could be key in determining the price of content. I could be wrong, but that seems a reasonable assumption in my opinion.
Also, there is something that I think many people are forgetting or not seeing. Warhammer is in many ways a new territory for CA, and one of the critical ways it is new for them is the units and rules of the Warhammer universe.
They have never had to work with magic, monsters, flying units etc before. Therefore, this poses new challenges for them. In the past, they have mainly had to work with virtual humans and horses. Any land units beyond that were generally ether artillery or limited to certain factions, like elephants.
This poses great challenges both from an aesthetic standpoint, meaning the visual design of units, and a mechanical standpoint, meaning modeling the behavior in the game world of these massive and bizzare creatures I have been seeing, stuff which we have not seen anything like in TW before. Stuff that I personally don't see the appeal in for TW, but can see why people would like them.
Given that this is new territory for them, and stuff that they have to do for the first time, I think it might warrant paying a little more simply due to the risks involved and the extra work that the content team may have to do compared to stuff for past titles.
I will always respect differing opinions on here, so long as they are presented maturely and in a civil manner
"No Battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy"- Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder
The WWI Thread: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/30914/why-a-world-war-i-themed-total-war/p1
I'm skipping TW: Warhammer
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2 · Disagree AgreeYou say the content is good and the pricing strategy is competitive. Sure, I give you that. Is that smart to follow the market? All the game publishing companies do these days is release one game after another year after year. Isn't that what CA is doing? They have to keep producing games, hit or miss titles, in order to stay alive. TWW is a hit, their pricing strategy is killing the product.
Who do you think has a better time, the companies that have to produce games from scratch every year or so, or something like Starcraft or Diablo which releases an awesome first game and then just adds content on top. I see TWW as having the potential of an awesome base game with additional content being worth spending extra money on.
Maybe, just maybe, the Warhammer community will support TWW through this deceleration. The hobby games is reportedly hitting $700M industry (2014) and I suppose it is increasing with more nerds among millennials, but that's more of a push to make this game much more of a long term success than a short term bang and bust. Maybe Steam is no the right platform for your game to exist in like D3 has it's own space for a reason. But, when bad things happen it affects the whole community. Realize that the most loyal fans of Total War or Warhammer stay because of other players.
You have made a great game CA with a lore rich environment which you can mine and create content almost infinitely, yet you are messing it up with following the practices of other unproven game publishers.
The Freemium was just an idea. Ideas are a diamond dozen. It's one way to solve the pricing problem that makes a lot of people feel betrayed and very loyal players who loved the game so much they created mods and contributed to the community are now leaving. That's a real problem plaguing this game. It's what makes me sad and could cause irreparable damage to this product lifetime. My idea might not be the brightest one, but the problem doesn't go away. There needs to be a change. Starcraft II has a free arcade version for playing multiplayer and paid everything else. I played arcade until I loved the game so much that I bought the whole game. Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
CA has been around 1987, I can remember Shogun, Shogun 2, Medieval 2 and TWW. All the other ones were not worth my time to invest in. That's four titles in almost thirty years. The quality of the games indeed is improving as TWW is one of the best strategy games out there, even best games of 2015/2016. How long can you keep this up? Can you be one of the top gaming developers who stays relevant for years to come? Hardly, if your product shelf life is only a couple of months until it is replaced by something else. Shogun 2 was amazing for a lot of reasons, but primarily for its replayability in multiplayer. TWW has this opportunity for both SP and MP because of mods. Supporting the modding community should be a priority. I know it's not, and it's hard. You have done well until the Beastman DLC
Pre-Beastman DLC, the game crashed at launched when two mods were incompatible, mostly. Now, it doesn't for the most part. If there are any incompatibilities I can't check for that anymore. Should I blame the developers? They did built the game, bugs are their own. CA didn't write the mods, but they should provide a better modding support. At the bare minimum, as players we should be able to easily test which mods are compatible or not. Make a load order if necessary. Should CA support the modding community? At least they should make something solid, which they did, but broke things again. I point out these problems. The wise will listen.
EDIT: To all the "miniature" people out there! You have a one hundred percent tabletop experience of Warhammer 'without having to pay for the miniatures' for FREE on Roll20.net
Oh I forgot, I also played TW: Rome, that makes it five games in thirty years.
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0 · Disagree AgreeI don't see a continuation of their successful policies from earlier titles as being the cause, it is something unique to this title, and I am inclined to see it being ether the fictional setting or the influx of newer players.
From the latter part of your newest post:
The company was founded in 1987, and did various work on computer and video games since then, but they were not really known until 13 years later with Shogun Total War.
They have been keeping things up well for over a decade and a half (from the point of Shogun:TW's release) with a unique formula that no one has a comparison to at this time, I think they will be fine for the forseeable future, and I anxiously await their next historical title, which has been confirmed to be in development.
Also the way you just brush aside ETW, NTW, Rome II and Attila is a pretty condescending tone to take, especially with saying "That's four titles in almost 30 years". Refusing to acknowledge the stuff they made that was "not worth your time and investment" is not a very good tone to take when you are trying to get a message to them.
And with steam, the product shelf life of their products is much longer, you can buy the entire TW lineup on steam now, and games last much longer than they used to thanks to steam. For Total War, the "shelf life" is very long. People still buy and play Rome Total War and Medieval II total War, all TW games actually. And different gameplay styles and eras keep some games fresh and favorites for many people, which is why as of now Napoleon Total War stands as my favorite.
TW replayability has always been high in both SP and MP. Supporting modders is a good policy, but it should not take away at all from work on the main game.
Why do TW games last so long? They are quality products that offer unique and excellent gameplay. Warhammer is a venture out of their comfort zone by going for a completely fictional setting, and it remains to be seen for sure how successful it will be.
I will always respect differing opinions on here, so long as they are presented maturely and in a civil manner
"No Battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy"- Helmuth Von Moltke the Elder
The WWI Thread: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/30914/why-a-world-war-i-themed-total-war/p1
I'm skipping TW: Warhammer
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0 · Disagree Agreeor reason burns or acid bruises anyone,
stop your gladiator love for agressions.
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