CA has had a very rigid DLC policy so far, it's either Race Packs with a whole new faction or a Lord Pack with 3 units and a Lord for each faction involved.
This has worked wonders for the most part, but I think once the dust settles after game 3, we might end up looking down the barrel of an endless stream of Lord Packs until the partnership runs out, unless they start building factions up from scratch which would likely take them 8 months to a year to produce (Vampire Coast took 6 months with the material already in place).
Another issue is the fact that alot of things are being left behind, as they introduce more and more factions with unique backstories and armies that can't exactly be implemented with a simple lord pack. Some lord pack units don't even reflect the faction that's being introduced, as we just saw with the Warp Grinders and Poison Wind Globodiers. I suppose we could pray for free updates but there's no consistency in the quality and quantity of the update we'll get, or that they'd even want to without the profit incentive.
With this in mind, I think that CA should Break the dichotomy of DLC types and start experimenting with new kinds of content drops.
The question is, what should they do? Would you like new types of DLC content? And if so, what would it be?
I've had 3 types of new DLC in mind.
1.
Sub-FactionsAs I just stated, there are some factions that are just too unique to be done justice with a mere 3 units, some even came in the base game or as FLC with little to no unique units and I'd love CA to take another look at them and make them as unique and fleshed out as they deserve to be.
Kemmler, Clan Eshen and Clan Moulder, Wissenland, the Cult of Ulric, Tehenahuin, Tamurkhan and so on are all sub-factions that had entire supplements and/or campaigns centred around them. With a little extra sprinkled on top, CA could even make them into mini race packs just centered around this one part of the races culture.
These sub-factions have their own strengths and weaknesses separate from the main faction, their own lords and heroes, their own heraldry, reskinned units, different tactics and mechanics, the list goes on.
I'd kill for a Tehenahuin DLC with more types of Skinks, Nagarythe with Shadow warrior heroes, lords, infantry with the proper heraldry and armour, Skarsnik with Crooked Jabbers as a basic spear front like unit, more Squigs etc.
3.
Character Packs and Model Diversity.You may or may not be aware that almost every main faction in Warhammer has a token Bodyguard/flag bearer type hero and a token assassin hero:
Schwartzhelm and Luthor Huss, Oxyotl and Chakax, Kouran Darkhand and Shadowblade, Prince Apothas and Tomb Herald Nakaph, Boregut Facebeater, Ska Bloodtail and Snikch/Executioner Viskit (basically any Eshen character) Caradryan and Korhil, Armand d'Aquitaine etc.
And beyond this, many factions have more lords missing than could support a Lord Pack (especially Bretonnia and the Empire).
Id love for CA to give us smaller DLC's with a few missing characters alongside some basic updates to lord/hero/unit diversity or some other basic stuff like that. So, for example, they could give us a DLC with Shadowblade, Kouran Darkhand and Rakarth/tullaris alongside some more model variants to the Death hags, Dreadlords, Beastmasters and basic units (like, new face models, armour and general tweaks to make each general/hero more unique and make every unit feel more diverse).
This is especially needed for the Old World races. Empire Generals and Captain's are meant to have different armour, weapons and specialisations for each province, right now they all have to share the same stock face. Alot of the Wood elf units are literally just one guy/girl copy pasted for the whole thing.
Getting more diverse units alongside some beloved heroes would be a great way to ensure the quality of the game goes up all round and stop hero characters from being forgotten and never implemented.
3.
Expansion Packs (specifically for Cathay)
In my opinion, the far East is a waste of time for Warhammer 3...on release! It's something they'd have to work on extensively over the course of years to bring Ind and Cathey to life (if they even bother). If they added the far East to the base game it would just be full of placeholders and a waste of resources. They'd have to squish the campaign map of WH3 down like they did with ME, so we'd be getting less of the Darklands for a bunch of empty space...
I think WH3's main campaign should be a super focused and detailed map of the badlands, chaos wastes and darklands, with a little of the old world off to one side. Then if they feel up for it, they could release a new campaign pack expansion with Cathay, hobgoblins, Ind and the Hung/Tong as main factions (which they could then add to ME).
The problem with the WE and BM campaign packs was that they didn't add to the main experience, they were side content that was self contained. Giving us a far East campaign would be like a mini Warhammer 4 and all of the factions could then be integrated into ME to give us a full world map! This would be the best way to implement all this content and give CA the option to not even bother with them if they want to.
But enough about me, I'm interested to hear what you think, do you want CA to break the Dichotomy? If so, what would you love to see them do/what are you desperately missing from the game that might not come if they stay the course with the content structure they have now? Let me know
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Just like in shogun 2, CA could bring campaigns inspired on warhammer fantasy universe, the war of the beard for example
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0 · Disagree AgreeThe War of the Beard
The time of the 3 Emperor's with Magnus the Pious, Gorbad Ironclaw and the Chaos invasion of that time period with Asavar Kul the prior everchosen, Valnir the Reaper, Cnut the Bloody, Sven Bloody Hand and all the characters from back in the day.
Maybe even go back to Sigmars day, it's a real exciting prospect.
but i think they should do that after giving us content for the base game of WH3. We don't want them to repeat the mistake they made with 3k, where they laid this great foundation in a brilliant time period and then used to DLC to jump to completely different settings instead of working on the base game first.
Vampire Counts
Bretonnia
Lizardmen
Dark Elves
High Elves
Skaven
Greenskins
Dwarfs
Wood Elves
Beastmen
Missing Factions Series
Dogs of War part 1
Dogs of War part 2
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0 · Disagree AgreeAlso, I called it a "campaign pack" because it would literally be another campaign like the base game of WH1, the Vortex of WH2 and the base game of WH3. It's a section of the map cornered off for its own little storyline with its own factions and stuff like that.
Vampire Counts
Bretonnia
Lizardmen
Dark Elves
High Elves
Skaven
Greenskins
Dwarfs
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Beastmen
Missing Factions Series
Dogs of War part 1
Dogs of War part 2
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3 · Disagree Agreei do think they could potentially do cathay, ind probably not. if any far east race would to come my bet is for hobgobos
#givemoreunitsforbrettonia, my bret dlc
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0 · Disagree AgreeOriginally those came with mini campaigns but that wasn't popular so CA switched to bringing 4 LL and no mini campaign.
As for the original question... don't know.. "Legendary hero packs"? Kinda like your idea 2.
Thou "more LP" could cover that.
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0 · Disagree AgreeGood thing about the Hobgobbos is we don't need the far East to get them, they exist in the centre basin of the dark lands and hold a great deal of land between the Northern Ogre Kingdoms and the Chaos wastes up north.
CA could avoid putting the far East part of the map into the game all together and we'd still get Hobgobbos ^^
Vampire Counts
Bretonnia
Lizardmen
Dark Elves
High Elves
Skaven
Greenskins
Dwarfs
Wood Elves
Beastmen
Missing Factions Series
Dogs of War part 1
Dogs of War part 2
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1 · Disagree AgreeFair enough, I renamed it
Vampire Counts
Bretonnia
Lizardmen
Dark Elves
High Elves
Skaven
Greenskins
Dwarfs
Wood Elves
Beastmen
Missing Factions Series
Dogs of War part 1
Dogs of War part 2
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1 · Disagree AgreeAn example could be "dark elf invasion" scenario, maybe based off the book series "Defenders of Ulthuan/Sons of Ellyrion". Without spoiling, the basic premise is that there is a massive dark elf invasion on Ulthuan. The books feature most of the big name high elves and many dark elves aswell, so such a pack could include new LLs and units.
The main point however, would be that the factions involved in the scenario would start very differently. For the "dark elf invasion" scenario, both high elves and dark elves would start mostly unified, and there would be a great number of additional mechanics involved aswell. The high elves would have mechanics tied to mustering their forces, perhaps recalling aid from the colonies, awaking dragons etc. The dark elves would have mechanics for mobilizing, perhaps convincing chaos tribes to join the invasion etc.
This scenario could be played as either of the involved factions, or as any other on the map, so you could enable the "dark elf invasion" scenario while playing as the empire for example. In that case you might have incentive to aid one side, since the if the dark elves won it would create a great imbalance on the rest of the map, as they already start quite strong in that scenario.
Such "scenario packs" could be great ways of offering replayability to the game, while still remaining optional. Perhaps you could even choose to randomize which scenarios were active or not, so you would not know if this game would feature "dark elf invasion", "green tide", "Great chaos invasion", or any other scenarios. There could be options for some to be active at the same time aswell.
Also, while the mechanics and starting setup of the scenarios would be optional and not active unless you chose to, they could still bring new content such as LLs and units to the base game aswell.
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1 · Disagree AgreeThat would be a perfect solution to the problem of the Bretonnian Civil war!
I'm sure many people like myself really enjoy the way Bretonnia is set up at the moment and don't want CA to be like "right, crunch time!" And just completely trash that whole part of the map by adding in Mallobaude and the Civil war. If we went your route, then we could get the best of both worlds, by allowing us to basically turn the civil war on and off before we start a campaign.
I think CA could use your idea to implement alot of the End Times stuff actually, like Tyrion turning bad, the High Elf Civil war they had going on and all those kind of big events.
Vampire Counts
Bretonnia
Lizardmen
Dark Elves
High Elves
Skaven
Greenskins
Dwarfs
Wood Elves
Beastmen
Missing Factions Series
Dogs of War part 1
Dogs of War part 2
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0 · Disagree AgreeSo you could play a southlands only campaign, a lustria only campaign etc? For slightly shorter games.
Naturally you'd then still enhance the scale of the continent you're on, with more minor settlements in provinces but you could play in unsmushed Brittonia or the unsmushed southern realms.
Possibly scenario-like packs such as a besieged Ulthuan that is from turn 1 already under attack from greenskins, dark elves, norsca etc.
The empire portion of the mortal realms shows just how much room for detail there is in areas of the map if given more space to breathe.
(Alternatively, I'd kill for a map editor.)
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3 · Disagree AgreeI wouldn't mind a new kind of DLC dedicated to themes though.
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0 · Disagree AgreeI’d happily pay 60 € for a pack that gives different armor for the empire (not a fan of the conquistador look), colorful skinks etc.
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1 · Disagree AgreeWould like to see them make a return.
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0 · Disagree AgreeI want to see Nuln and Middenland.
I’d love some small pack that adds single units like Ludwig Schwarzhelm or Aenur the Sword of Twilight as LH’s to the game.
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1 · Disagree AgreeAnd recycled skeletons and animations that effectively allow the VC to raise the dead of any race.
Basically hyper favoritism for Undead and Skaven that would cause heads to explode so hard that their simultaneous detonations would open a warp rift to the Warhammer Fantasy universe.
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0 · Disagree AgreeI'll pretty much buy any DLC put out for the WH series though so the more the better lol. I'd still like some more race packs for the minor races (DoW, Araby, and Kislev please) over anything right now.
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4 · Disagree AgreeI’d like to see more campaign packs. I feel they could do more things like Vortex, that would then make the Vortex race more interesting as it’s not the ONLY story driven option.
Applying this to Warhammer 3
A Kislev campaign holding back the tides of chaos
A more detailed Cathay map with Skaven, Greenskin, and Txentch Cults causing issues amongst others
For Daemon fan bois, an all chaos free for all in the Southern Wastes
These would come with their own goodies of course that’s be shared, which is something we’ll need as finding 4-5 units for each of two factions is going to become increasingly difficult. I feel the mini-campaigns in game one had fixable issues,
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0 · Disagree AgreeCampaign level ships and battles, with flying monsters, magic and sea creature allies.
Will never happen, but worth throwing into the pot
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2 · Disagree Agree