DLC for Total War Troy

HistoryOfMortals

I know this may be too early for a DLC, but I think some people know that CA tend to put DLC after the release of the game in short period of time like what happened in Three Kingdoms Total War with the Yellow Turban DLC and Warhammer with its Chaos Faction DLC. So I was thinking what kind of DLC that may be fit after the release of the game, or maybe should CA just wait for a moment for the release of the DLC to not make the same mistake in the past where most players reacted negatively with the DLC being put shortly after the release. What do you guys think? What kind of DLC that may be fit in this game if CA decided to put the DLC shortly after Troy Total War game release?

Tayvar

It's ready when it's ready, CA should not release a half-baked DLC for Total War Saga: Troy. The Chaos Faction DLC was highly controversial, Chaos Warriors deserve a much higher quality DLC.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/404010/Total_War_WARHAMMER__Chaos_Warriors/

Captain_Rex#1635

I think we will only get Culture packs like the Amazon DLC.
- Thracians
- Ethiopians
- Crete
- Luwians
- Phrygians

Fossoway

ArneSo said:

I think we will only get Culture packs like the Amazon DLC.
- Thracians
- Ethiopians
- Crete
- Luwians
- Phrygians

I doubt Troy will get that many DLC, tbh.

Boicote

I would like to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age, with same apocalyptic atmosphere from Attila: Total War. But probably it won't happen.

Captain_Rex#1635

Boicote said:

I would like to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age, with same apocalyptic atmosphere from Attila: Total War. But probably it won't happen.

That would require a completely new game and also has nothing to do with Troy and the Iliad

Captain_Rex#1635

Fossoway said:

ArneSo said:

I think we will only get Culture packs like the Amazon DLC.
- Thracians
- Ethiopians
- Crete
- Luwians
- Phrygians

I doubt Troy will get that many DLC, tbh.

5 DLCs don’t seem to be that unrealistic.

Jam#4399

ArneSo said:

I think we will only get Culture packs like the Amazon DLC.
- Thracians
- Ethiopians
- Crete
- Luwians
- Phrygians

Only Crete is on Achean side....

Boicote

ArneSo said:

Boicote said:

I would like to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age, with same apocalyptic atmosphere from Attila: Total War. But probably it won't happen.

That would require a completely new game and also has nothing to do with Troy and the Iliad

The Wrath of Sparta campaign had nothing to do with Rome...
But, yes, it's very unlikely to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age.

Tayvar

Boicote said:

ArneSo said:

Boicote said:

I would like to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age, with same apocalyptic atmosphere from Attila: Total War. But probably it won't happen.

That would require a completely new game and also has nothing to do with Troy and the Iliad

The Wrath of Sparta campaign had nothing to do with Rome...
But, yes, it's very unlikely to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age.

The Eight Princes DLC would be a better example, and that DLC was very unpopular.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1102310/Total_War_THREE_KINGDOMS__Eight_Princes/

Whiskeyjack_5691#3558

I doubt we'll get a lot of DLC for Troy, given that it's a Saga title. Maybe one more Culture pack like the Amazons introducing a faction on the Achaean side, and maybe 1 or 2 Warhammer-style "Lord Packs", introducing a new hero for each side.

And I think that would be a generous guess. It all depends on how successful the game is and how many players stick with it.

Fossoway

ArneSo said:

Fossoway said:

ArneSo said:

I think we will only get Culture packs like the Amazon DLC.
- Thracians
- Ethiopians
- Crete
- Luwians
- Phrygians

I doubt Troy will get that many DLC, tbh.

5 DLCs don’t seem to be that unrealistic.

Considering the lack of players interest and the bad will that Troy garnered from the Epic deal, it kinda is.

At best, I can see maybe one or two more DLCs, but if the sales are bad (actual sales, not the free money from the first day on Epic), CA will drop further development like they did for ToB.

I don't like trashtalking Troy or being overly pessimistic, but I can't see Troy having that much post-launch content

Jam#4399

But there are still characters waiting in line...

Diomedes, Ajax, Iodemeneus

Rhesus, Memnon, ???Midas of Phrygia???

Anyways, hope to see Free-LC as well...

Bugmansxxx

Whiskeyjack_5691 said:

I doubt we'll get a lot of DLC for Troy, given that it's a Saga title. Maybe one more Culture pack like the Amazons introducing a faction on the Achaean side, and maybe 1 or 2 Warhammer-style "Lord Packs", introducing a new hero for each side.

And I think that would be a generous guess. It all depends on how successful the game is and how many players stick with it.

We will get as much DLC as is profitable to make. If we buy CA will sell.

AdmiralJello

Tayvar said:

Boicote said:

ArneSo said:

Boicote said:

I would like to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age, with same apocalyptic atmosphere from Attila: Total War. But probably it won't happen.

That would require a completely new game and also has nothing to do with Troy and the Iliad

The Wrath of Sparta campaign had nothing to do with Rome...
But, yes, it's very unlikely to see a campaign about the collapse of the Bronze Age.

The Eight Princes DLC would be a better example, and that DLC was very unpopular.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1102310/Total_War_THREE_KINGDOMS__Eight_Princes/

Yeah, 8P was unpopular because it was disconnected from the main game and didn't add what people wanted: more scenarios and characters for 3K era.

Assuming Troy does well (which I hope it does), the DLC should expand on the existing game. That could also mean a map extension to add more Bronze Age factions, that could mean making more Greek and Trojan heroes playable, that could mean adding off-map players like Memnon who entered the fray, etc.

I think all of those would be well-received because they'd actually add to and enhance the main campaign, not be a separate campaign with nice mechanics but lacking character/personality that made the main one shine.

LESAMA#5456

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

Captain_Rex#1635

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

LESAMA#5456

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

Yes it can. It all depends on how many people buy the game after day 1. Please don’t try me out on business practices.

Captain_Rex#1635

LESAMA said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

Yes it can. It all depends on how many people buy the game after day 1. Please don’t try me out on business practices.

No the Epic deal makes it impossible to flop because CA already got it’s money.

It’s absolutely irrelevant how many will buy the game because CA will get the money anyways.

PERICLES1789

I think we will be fixed with the number of orders of the DLC on the Amazons. If the number of players who download for free and buy the DLC follows the previous civilization6 then it will be a winning bet for the development studio.
The difference is that Civilization6 was already a successful game before Operation Epic Games. We will see the quality of the game, and the reception of a new audience. Not to mention the reception of traditional fans.

Sheikh_Nimr#9382

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

Yes it can. It all depends on how many people buy the game after day 1. Please don’t try me out on business practices.

No the Epic deal makes it impossible to flop because CA already got it’s money.

It’s absolutely irrelevant how many will buy the game because CA will get the money anyways.

How do you know the details of the contract with Epic? Can you please share them?
Anyway, the game can flop, in regards of expectations. Judging from the feedback, the limited interest and the equally unambitious scope, it's almost certain that the game is not going to perform particularly well. Personally, I'd be surprised if they release anything else apart from the Amazons. If they do, it's obviously not going to be 5 DLCs, maximum is 3, with the Amazons included. Biggest candidate is Ajax (CA itself even implied so) accompanied with another Achaean lord. Originally, I'd say Nestor, but now that Diomedes is one of the first factions in the ending turn, I guess he looks like the stronger candidate.

LESAMA#5456

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

Yes it can. It all depends on how many people buy the game after day 1. Please don’t try me out on business practices.

No the Epic deal makes it impossible to flop because CA already got it’s money.

It’s absolutely irrelevant how many will buy the game because CA will get the money anyways.

And how do you recon the deal looks like? Ca will only get payed by epic for the first day downloads. How much downloads do we expect day 1 and how many copies will be actual sold after day one? It’s clear that the revenues of this title will be depending heavily on day 1 sales. Afterwards You can do the math and make an estimation about the costs for developing a game like this.

Let’s assume the amount of dlc’s will be based upon the total popularity of the game meaning, first day downloads + additional purchases after day one (which will be limited) + number of players playing the game After x days + general consensus community about the game after x days. As said i think the game will be abandoned quickly by the majority of the players as the battles clearly suck, it fails to make a choice for either historical or fantasy, it’s only available on epic the first year, ca in general doesn’t aim for saga titles to receive a lot of love after release and the modding community is limited. If we see more than 1 or 2 dlc’s i would be highly surprised.

That said i do really like the campaign part based upon recent videos but still won’t be buying the game. If on steam I probably would have. My only hope is that the recourse part will be taking into consideration for future titles.

Fossoway

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

Yes it can. It all depends on how many people buy the game after day 1. Please don’t try me out on business practices.

No the Epic deal makes it impossible to flop because CA already got it’s money.

It’s absolutely irrelevant how many will buy the game because CA will get the money anyways.

I think you misunderstand being profitable and being popular.

Troy will definitely be profitable due to the Epic deal, but being popular is another thing entirely. Did you not see the lukewarm reception of the playerbase, or the anger that the Epic deal brought? Add to that the lack of mods, no crossplay, the multiplayer that is dead on arrival, etc - those things tend to keep people away.

It's all about demand. If the playerbase is here and sticks to Troy, CA will continue to make DLC. If not, they'll drop it harder than Sisyphus' boulder, no matter how much money they made from the Epic deal.

LESAMA#5456

And than still... I don’t expect epic to buy an x amount of copies in advance. Deal is probably based on amount of copies sold on the first day. Now i don’t know what the amount will be but let’s assume it’s 100k copies the first day at a price of what 40,-? That’s like 4mln turnover. If we than take into account that the number of copies sold will be lower in the days after launch due to the epic deal (where epic probably will receive a higher % after day 1), I would hardly call this a game changer for ca/sega.

toskyrun#2614

unfortunately I agree. maybe August 13 will be a boom in downloads, but
then ... until the steam exit at least.
Surely there will be the blood dlc, perhaps ajax.


I played with Tob 200 hours to finish him off with all the factions and then I left him. i guess troy gives roughly the same hours of fun.

Captain_Rex#1635

Fossoway said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

Yes it can. It all depends on how many people buy the game after day 1. Please don’t try me out on business practices.

No the Epic deal makes it impossible to flop because CA already got it’s money.

It’s absolutely irrelevant how many will buy the game because CA will get the money anyways.

I think you misunderstand being profitable and being popular.

Troy will definitely be profitable due to the Epic deal, but being popular is another thing entirely. Did you not see the lukewarm reception of the playerbase, or the anger that the Epic deal brought? Add to that the lack of mods, no crossplay, the multiplayer that is dead on arrival, etc - those things tend to keep people away.

It's all about demand. If the playerbase is here and sticks to Troy, CA will continue to make DLC. If not, they'll drop it harder than Sisyphus' boulder, no matter how much money they made from the Epic deal.

From a business perspective it doesn’t matter at all if the Game is popular or not. 3k was super successful but looking at current player numbers it is quite unpopular. So was it a flop? No of course not because it was the most successful game CA ever released.

CA is a profit oriented company so that’s the only important factor for them. The epic deal secured that the game will be successful at start. Otherwise Ca wouldn’t have done it. It will be free at launch and enough people will grab it.

Also keep in mind that they considered ToB as quite a success for them. Saga games are not comparable with Major titles like WH, Rome 2 or 3k.

LESAMA#5456

ArneSo that doesn’t say s**t about dlc unfortunately

Tayvar

ArneSo said:

Fossoway said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

ArneSo said:

LESAMA said:

The game will flop so expect nothing and perhaps your lucky.

The game literally can’t flop

Yes it can. It all depends on how many people buy the game after day 1. Please don’t try me out on business practices.

No the Epic deal makes it impossible to flop because CA already got it’s money.

It’s absolutely irrelevant how many will buy the game because CA will get the money anyways.

I think you misunderstand being profitable and being popular.

Troy will definitely be profitable due to the Epic deal, but being popular is another thing entirely. Did you not see the lukewarm reception of the playerbase, or the anger that the Epic deal brought? Add to that the lack of mods, no crossplay, the multiplayer that is dead on arrival, etc - those things tend to keep people away.

It's all about demand. If the playerbase is here and sticks to Troy, CA will continue to make DLC. If not, they'll drop it harder than Sisyphus' boulder, no matter how much money they made from the Epic deal.

From a business perspective it doesn’t matter at all if the Game is popular or not. 3k was super successful but looking at current player numbers it is quite unpopular. So was it a flop? No of course not because it was the most successful game CA ever released.

CA is a profit oriented company so that’s the only important factor for them. The epic deal secured that the game will be successful at start. Otherwise Ca wouldn’t have done it. It will be free at launch and enough people will grab it.

Also keep in mind that they considered ToB as quite a success for them. Saga games are not comparable with Major titles like WH, Rome 2 or 3k.

Yes the epic deal secured that the game will be successful at start, emphasis on start, making DLCs is a further investment, the DLCs are not done for free, despite what some anti-DLC "fans" might be thinking, also goodwill have some weight, if a game totally unpopular it's not good.

RafSwi7#7492

What we know is that Thrones of Britannia, which has 160,000 - 260,000 estimated players (according to Playtracker) did not received any further DLC beyond "Blood and Gore" DLC pack.

Other Total War titles that had plenty DLCs has such numbers of estimated owners:

• Rome II: 1,400,000 - 1,500,000
  
• Warhammer I: 1,900,000 - 2,000,000
  
• Three Kingdoms: 3,100,000 - 3,900,000
  
• Warhammer II: 1,100,000 - 1,200,000
  

It can give us an idea, what numbers should Troy have to justify more post launch content (CA surely have an estimate of what % of owners will buy DLC content).

Now, the question remains what numbers Troy can reach. I think that we can agree that it SEEMS that Troy will be more popular than ToB (which for many seemed to be just a standalone DLC for Attila). In case of Saga games which have lower budget (Troy will also have lower costs in Bulgaria), it does not necessarily mean that Troy need to reach around 1,000,000 owners to have more DLCs. I would not be surprised if it needed to have around 400,000 - 600,000 copies sold or even less.

Now about the Epic deal. Year ago we have learned (from financial reports o Remedy's parent company) that Epic has paid for Remedy's Control (also like Troy, one year Epic Store exclusive game) 10.45 million dollars. If CA got the same amount of money and considering that Saga titles cost around 40 dollars it would mean that they would be paid for around 250,000 copies. However, one can suspect that CA and SEGA, received more considering that Total War is more prominent brand and unlike Control, Troy will be free on the first day. There was other game, called Ooblets (farming/animals collecting game) which also became Epic exclusive and their devs claimed two things:

• They have got some cash money upfront from the deal.
  
• Epic offered devs a minimum guarantee on sales that matched what devs hoped to earn if they were just selling their game across all stores.
  

We won't know for sure, we don't have any financial info from CA or any estimates from them how many copies they wanted to sell with Troy. Still, there is a possibility that Troy MIGHT be already more commercially successful than Thrones of Britannia.

There are also some rumors talking about the possibility that Epic will pay CA for each free claimed copy. I don't think we had any confirmation about these rumors but devs must somehow be compensated for "free copies" (if they weren't paid earlier for exclusive rights). Here, the main question is - how many free copies can be claimed by Epic users. On this we also have some data. In 2019 Epic offered 93 titles for free and these were claimed in 200 million free copies, which gives on average around more than 2,000,000 copies per offered title (surely there were games that have been claimed much more or less depending on their popularity). As you can see, even with half of this figure, Troy would reach the numbers of "main" titles.

Considering that CA is entering the market that has over 80 million active users, I doubt that they plan to "abandon" Troy shortly after release, which would give bad first impression to players on Epic store (considering that for many Troy will be their first Total War title).

In the end we do not know the specifics of Epic deal with CA/SEGA, so we can only guess.

Still, based on all of this I am rather optimistic that it will receive much more DLCs than ToB.

For me, I would be happy to see at least these DLCs (some might happen as FLC):

• Blood and gore DLC (not confirmed yet, but every Total War had one so I guess such DLC will also be a thing for Troy)
  
• Amazons DLC (already confirmed to be post-launch DLC)
  
• Achaeans DLC with Ajax and Diomedes (in best scenario with Nestor and Idomeneus too)
  
• Trojan allies DLC with minimum Memnon (Aethiopians) and Rhesus (Thracians).
  

LESAMA#5456

Rafswi7 I like your post especially while you produce some actual figures which contributes to the overall discussion.

There are some big question marks however:
1) if epic sold 200mln free copies that would mean an investment of a couple of billion which a highly doubt. This would mean that the average price per claimed free copie is significantly lower which would also be reflected in the result of ca.
2) the number of owners of different total war titles are not comperable to Troy as Troy will reach it’s sales peak on the first day being for free while the other titles have had multiple months/years to reach those numbers. Troy sales will drop dramatically in the weeks after It’s initial launch as it’s not for free anymore and it’s epic exclusive. This is also the reason why I think it will fail if one would only look at the p&l not taking into account other more qualitative factors which could also been seen as successful.
3) sales numbers are also influenced by an active mod community which prolong the lifespan of the vanilla product. Troy lacks this support.
4) the overall public opinion about this title is already mixed with positive sounds around the campaign mechanics but some serious criticism around the battles. And let’s face it if the battles suck the game will suck.

To conclude I would be highly surprised if Troy sellS more than 250.000 copies. IMO ca made a huge cluster f**kup with the epic deal which seems just lazy cash grabbing instead of the intention to support this game for very long. It seems attractive to give it away for free. Problem what that could be that the fans grap it the first day and than it’s the full price.... which will not help to attract new gamers. Off course it’s all guessing but I highly doubt the Troy fans will see more than a blood dlc.

HistoryOfMortals

Yeah, let's hope that Troy won't make the same mistake as Thrones Of Britannia shall we?

Btw, I heard that the sneak peek of the DLC would be the Amazons Units and Buildings. That's kinda a bit off from the theme itself in Troy isn't it?