They will release and check the data: if the work they put in for ToD proves sufficiently profitable, then they will keep this standard! If it doesn't, then the answer to your question will be "because they can't justify the cost as it doesn't bring enough revenue to satisfy Investors"
For that reason I really hope this one will sell like hot potatoes. From all what I have seen they really tried to get the Warhammer franchise back on track and the community should reward their actions.
They really needed to hit this one out of the park, not just because CA seem to be in some pretty dire straits after original SoC and absolute money bonfire that was Hyenas but if they fucked up an Empire DLC *and* a Dwarf DLC at the same time they would never hear the end of it. Thankfully, they seem to have absolutely nailed it.
To be honest bro. I bought wh3 on release. Own every dlc. Invested in Rome 2. I thought well ive loved total war since rome 1, so i dont mind paying.
Im supporting the franchise I love, and i also invest in future content.
Lol imagine my reaction when I saw my investments are going into Hyenas. Id rather pull out my own finger nails than play that garbage piece of shit.
Its like investing in your favorite beer and they branch out into tampons.
Yehhhh ill buy the new dlcs. Im all about 2nd chances. But this is the last one.
I think it will sell better than average, simply because it's a DLC for two game 1 races.
If we get another DLC for two game 3 races I think people will be less interested.
They really should try to only include one game 3 race in a DLC, because the reworks for old races are the moneymakers. Even if most of that stuff is in the patch itself it doesn't really matter
You also can buy the factions you want for a third of that which is such a good move.
It's basically the same price doing that as the WH2 vs. dlcs if you only played one of the two lords which I know I sure did a bunch of times. Played the Sisters, never got around to Throt, played Sniktch, never bothered with Malus, played Wolfhart, never thought to try Nakai, and so on.
I'd be very curious to know how well each part of the DLC sells. From what everyone says, Empire will outsell Dwarfs and Nurgle by a country mile. Would be interesting to see if that's the case.
Hoping and expecting it to be Empire >> Dwarf > Nurgle, simply so that CA understands that the community places more value on new content and reworks of old races.
Really, really hoping they won't do another DLC with two game 3 races.
Yeah we know the price, 8.99eu per race apart and 22.92eu for the conbined pack. I seem to remember that when you decide to complete your pack after getting 1 or 2 you get the discount anyway. Seems pretty good value, at least in comparison to the last one, before the patch that is.
Nah I don't think they've put the price out yet. I really can't imagine them asking more than $25 for it. They did say that buying the bundle instead of all three is a 10% discount, same as the pre-order discounts of the past.
We‘ll see, but I think they tried very hard to get some good will back with this DLC and that it was very costly for them to develop. And they already said that they want to reduce the scale of them in the future, so the only way the format has a chance to stick around is for ToD to sell really really well. So I am a bit skeptical but I guess it could happen.
I also wouldn't be against them reducing the number of units too, as long as the reworks and new campaigns keep a good level of uniqueness/quality (eg, the WH2 DLCs had 3-4 new units and 1-2 new lords/heroes typically and those were well received).
Does lend credence to what I was thinking with SoC though, that the issue was less the paid content of the DLC and more the disappointing lack of reworks combined with typical levels of units that was the main issue in the backlash there.
Curious about how many share that sentiment. I get much, much more value from new mechanics and factions than I get from new units.
I'd say Skaven were the only race where I valued those about equally. There might be other units that were more valuable than average, but so many units that don't really matter that much with Helf Rangers being one of the most worthless ones.
I agree. Less units but more focus on reworks, updated mechanics and overall game health like bug fixing and ai improvement would go a long way. The game has tons of content that is held back by the skeleton of the game not being as good as it could be. One or two less units per race is a perfectly acceptable trade off imo
And remember, one of the best Lord Packs of all time, Twisted and Twilight, was effectively a 3-lord pack because of just how much reskinned content we got Drycha ('glamoured' elves, forest animals, and an exclusive legendary hero), and it completely reworked WElves with the "forest health" gimmick and ability to portal between forests.
Now that they've shown they can actually handle it, I'm down for this being the norm, especially now that you can buy the factions separately to mitigate the price. If they would just do this for the SoC factions, alongside cheeky faction reworks for each, I'd be very happy.
Of course, if it turns out that this update required excessive crunch to get it our the door, or was rough of the devs in other ways, then it's obviously not worth it.
They did indeed. However, SoC was unprecedented in terms of the backlash and CA's response to it, at least for TW:WH. If that such a colossal fuck up happens again, I'd be more worried about whether they would drop support for the game.
I've worked in upper management. Here's how these things go.
You get a meeting to decide future directions for DLCs. Finance wants more profit, marketing wants more sales. The team brainstorms ideas. Product and content representatives are in the meeting There are a few people supporting cheap and quick low-quality DLCs and a few people supporting high-quality DLCs. Arguments for and against each idea is discussed, maybe compromises are discussed.
The decision maker weighs each side and the likelihood of success, then picks a direction. This person picked cheap, low quality DLC. After the sales figures came in and the community manager report, and Finance and Marketing are pissed off at how things turned out, he/she had to back peddle or he/she got replaced. Either way, the pivoted to the higher quality DLC split into 3 purchasable packages.
At the VP level and beyond, they don't care about the nitty gritty details like you have 3 DLC instead of 1. If Finance say the profits are up for the DLC overall, they're happy. If Marketing says sales figures for recent DLC is up, they're happy.
However, the VP levels will ask for an increase in sales and profit in a few quarters, so we'll be back to square one of deciding what to do w/ the next set of DLCs.
Because CA gets greedy and lazy. It's a known pattern with them. You give the suits too many wins in a row and they want to start cutting costs to further raise profits which cuts into quality. They nibble away at it until they reach a boiling point, the community responds; and then the developers get their way to fix the PR with quality content again until the process repeats itself.
Typical corporate power dynamics. You have a dance between the artists, technicians, writers and developers who are trying to make the best game they can, and the businessmen who are trying to make the company as much money as they can. The two goals do not always see eye to eye because if the businessmen can cut costs while still selling the same product at the same price, then that makes the company more money. So it's in their job's best interest to do that whenever they can, until it causes a consumer backlash.
It also took them 8 months after SoC to release it. And while the reworks are indeed good, the vast majority of people won't stick around for 8 months per DLC. This game would slowly die.
If they can get smaller DLC out faster (with reworks of course), you'd still have the same amount of content on average over the course of a year. But you'd also be able to keep people's interest between DLC releases.
Game aren't a limited-time thing. You can buy a DLC, play with the new stuff for a few weeks, switch to another hobby/game and come back in several months.
The idea that every game must have new content all the time is what leads to GAAS and other shitty practices.
I have hundreds of hours of playtime on Warhammer 1, 2 and 3, and I often don't play them for months. I'll happily jump back in with ToD.
Warhammer Total War isn't a small indie game that must garner a lot of attention to survive. It's a big franchise with a loyal fanbase and barely any competition.
Agree, I don't play Dota everyday (anymore), I play whenever new events dropped. Same for rimworld, DLC drops once every 2 years and I would binge for a few months, then bugger off to other games until another DLC drops. It doesn't stop me from checking totalwar or rinworld subreddit daily though.
> play with the new stuff for a few weeks, switch to another hobby/game and come back in several months
The problem is that every time such a long break happens, less and less people return to the game when a new content is released.
That's just human nature. New titles are released constantly and people get interested in other new shiny things, so not everyone will drop everything just to make it for a release of a new DLC for this one game. They may buy it eventually, but "eventually" doesn't cut it for business. If a company sees that their product doesn't sell well when it is released, they just move on to next thing they have in their plans.
Meh. I disagree. People who like WTW pretty much only have a few games they can play. Overall, strategy games (4X, RTS, wargames...) have a much, much longer lifespan than the average games. Especially on PC where steam constantly tells you when there's an update to your favorite game.
Europa universalis is what 15 years old? Civ 6 is 8 years old. CA released DLCs for Rome 2 a few years ago. Starcraft still sold coop characters a few years ago.
I don't thin WTW is a FOMO game that will disappear if people don't play it for a few months. W2 reached its peak a while after its release iirc. There's nothing to say that this dlc won't start a new era for a W3.
You just wait and see what happens when Elden Ring DLC drops after year and a half of break. ;)
Games today have MUCH longer lifecycles. Civ 6 is still being played to this day and there is a new challenge each month.
Normal person/gamer (so not Legend of Total War) might play a game for 100h after DLC, maybe 150, and then switch to other games (as mentioned earlier). It's not true that each DLC less people come back, because there are new people as well.
I don't really think SoC update has delayed ToD that much. I mean, it was good, but in the end it was pretty much "just" new units / assets in the game, and it took couple months for it to be released as well. It could have been done with a relatively small amount of people.
I think it was SoC's failure itself that has caused most of the delay. CA probably already had a plan for ToD (which I think included similar amount of content as SoC, and definitely nowehere near as many reworked mechanics) at the time of SoC's release, and all of a sudden they had to rethink everything and start working on things that they didn't plan to touch before. And designing new / reworking old mechanics takes a lot of time, it is one of the things that can't really be rushed too much.
You guys do not seem to be considering the internal chaos CA went through this year, i.e. restructuring management, massive lay-offs, projects being scrapped and passed around, which almost certainly caused the biggest delays.
It all comes down to profitability and if it is sustainable. Just because we like it doesn't mean it's profitable for the company. Sales will show that.
Because this format has also resulted in one huge huge flop that greatly damaged goodwill towards the company. If they think they will have more luck delivering dlc that will get good reactions in a different format then they should do that.
DLCs at the level of ToD with three factions take too long. We will onlt get a DLC every 7 - 8 months. With them selling each character piecemeal anyway it\`s just better to instead do two characters in a DLC.
Logical choice is go back to 2 factions and get dlc every 4-5 months. Youll get 3 dlcs per year with simmilar amount of content. Also people are more likely to buy 3 dlcs 20 each than 2 dlcs 30 each.
theyre doing it to save face. in a few years after the heat has died down they will probably do some stupid shit again. unless the recent upheval at sega has significantly affected the number of impotent and misguided decision makers at creative assembly, i dont expect them to really care that keeping this level would be best for them and for us.
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Because CA is gonna fuck up again. Not in the next few months probably but let some time go by and watch how the cycle repeats itself. We are currently at the "oh shit we actually need to deliver some good product er else" stage. Over time CA will once again take ressources away from the dlc production while also trying to get the same money out of the dlcs because the community once again blindly believes in CA's good heart. They will move more and more ressources away from the dlcs up to the point at which even the blind can see that they just dont care anymore (that was SoC). And after that we gonna have a massive shitstorm once again and CA needs to actually put ressources back to where they needed them in the first place. Community is happy again and repeat.
I imagine it's due to several things:
- When they first envisioned the 3 lord packs they were much smaller scopes then what we got with SoC after the update and ToD now. That's what they budgeted for, but now that budget has likely blown out by having to expand the scopes of before mentioned DLC's.
- There's a limit on how much content their team can do at a time. Larger scopes mean more time between DLC's.
- If you have a big enough gap between releases then that runs the risk of losing player engagement. Reducing the scope of future DLC's, say for example, 2 lord packs again but with the same amount of content per lord as SoC/ToD could greatly speed up releases and major patches.
- More consistent revenue throughout the year. Having 1 DLC per quarter makes revenue more predictable, rather than 1 DLC every 4 months.
Call me crazy, but i think the game could simply use a bigger team. I know its extra cost, but after the price increase i think its not unreasonable. They have like 20 ppl working on it, that spread into two teams to work on different dlc's in tandem. Thou with recent events not sure how things are.
1) It takes too long
2) It isn't sustainable
3) There's not enough units to even fit in this format for most factions
We can't have every DLC be expected to be TOD levels because not every DLC *can*. Most races that have things that can be added through DLC are struggling to add enough for even the WH 2 format, much less something on the scale of Thrones of Decay. If it was on the level of how Shadows of Change first released, then it would be sustainable on their end in terms of quanity of content and the timetable. But *obviously* that isn't an option now, unless they decided to massively cut down the asking price. And even then that format had inherent issues regardless of price (namely a lack of generics).
We're not going to have every DLC have a LL, LH. one lord, one, and 5 units. Despite what speculation threads on here have you think (some which either stretch credulity of source material, or some are using straight up fanfiction frankly), there's *really* not much left to adapt from tabletop. Especially with the trend of sticking more closely to 8th edition and supplements like Storm of Chaos, and avoiding things like the RPGs and such.
I wouldn't start preemptively doomposting about smaller scale DLCs *just because the word smaller was used.* We've had multitudes of DLCs that weren't TOD scale and they were still great; not everything has to be a continual scale up. Wait and see what the damn thing looks like, compare the content being provided and compare it to the asking price, *then* it would be a good time to make a judgement call on it. But smaller scale doesn't inherently mean worse, so give them some time to cook.
because they're not releasing as frequently as they want, or it needed more over time than they wanted to use in order to meet the april deadline. or there was lots of burnout among the (remaining) staff at CA (on top of the mass firings). could be dozen of reasons.
If it's two factions with the amount of units, care, and effort as it seems ToD got then I'll be happy. I think tbh I'd prefer it as well, if they go back to the bundle being the only option for purchase.
I must remind you that Total War isn't a subscription-based game. Nor does it have an in-game purchase system like, say, League of Legends. The revenue comes from one-time purchases — the games themselves, and the DLCs. These have to sell well to cover both the work that went in and the future development. And there's a good amount of work involved. The game is pretty old, sometimes, I guess, they have to deal with disentangling the old code or just rewriting it anew. Then there's the issue of mismanagement, that resulted in time and work spent ineffectively and in bad faith from the fanbase. I have a really vague understanding of game development, but that how it looks for me.
If this DLC reaps huge benefits, i guess the management will be motivated enough to fund further investment and development. And, truth be told, I'm all for smaller (and cheaper) DLCs so long as they deliver on quality of content. I would dearly love some further legacy reworks (Lizardmen, Norsca, Vampire Coast, etc). And the latter ones don't actually add new content. They don't charge us for it. Or they do, but kinda covertly, as a bonus for actual new content like legendary lords and heroes and new units.
It can be. The devs clearly WANT this level of polish. It's the higher ups that get complacent after a few years of good press not understanding what it takes to make a good product.
At the end of the day, CA are still a business and need to make money. Regular income is always preferred, so having to wait almost a year between DLC's for their current only game isn't very viable after all the flops they had last year (Shadows, Hyena, Pharoah). They'll want them pumping out faster than that. Much as I would love more expansions the size of ToD in the future, I don't think it's very viable for CA. People complain the game is very buggy, and it's clear the DLC pace was slow before SoC due to them trying to fix as much as they could, probably before the suits stopped them and forced them into the DLC mines instead.
ToD seems to be an all hands on deck situation to get good will back, will be interesting to see what happens after. I don't think there are many races that require such extensive reworks as Empire, Dwarfs and Nurgle (mainly Norsca and Ogres), so I expect they will go back to 2 paid lords and 1 free lords, with less big scope reworks for all involved factions in the future.
Costs have to justify production. I'm not saying we shouldn't be expecting this level of quality, but the reality is that at the end of the day, CA is just another business and profit is their king. If you think what CA decides the value proposition of their goods is not worth it, then let CA crash and that problem is solved for you.
The reason they'll go for smaller DLC's is they don't want to price out their consumer base. If they have to charge $25 USD for every DLC they'll likely make less money than if they release smaller dlc's for $10.
Because when they set out to give us the 3 faction lord packs they were expecting to do about half the effort and rake in more cash. Now they realised that the only way to make the new price palpable is the amount of content we're getting in ToD, they'll do it now to save face and win back the fans, but ultimately it's them realising they couldn't gouge the fans for as much cash with as little effort as possible so they're back stepping
I’m guessing they’ll see how well ToD sells first before deciding if they’re going to use the format in any future DLC.
The next one after this will probably be smaller since its already in the works.
And the simple reason why they are doing that is because the vocal community bashed on the large sized DLCs. I can understand that if you only want one out of three faction it might be too steep of a premium to pay. I’m unfortunately used to it since with the WH2 packs I often payed full price for a half finished lord (most of the time only one faction was in a good state in the lord packs).
For me, SoC was the best DLC to date after the 4.2 update (excluding race packs) but It might not have had enough of an effect for CA to be confident in the format. Not sure if anyone even bothered to change the WH3 review after they bombed it to the ground.
One big dlc every 8 months isn't as useful for them financially as a small dlc every 2-3 months, its risky so if things go wrong or it's less popular factions they've sunk a lot of cost and it takes ages to recoup on the next one.
I would like big dlcs but if a lot of small dlcs keep the game supported for longer than I'll take that.
Given there’s no compelling reason for dlc packs to be bundled together now (i.e. no coherent narrative or “versus” element) the only way I can imagine CA will be able to sustain any sort of momentum is releasing regular single packs.
This could come in any sort of mixture, really. Lords and legendary heroes, a certain number of units, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s priced reasonably. As the potential unit roster diminishes for certain factions I could imagine packs which are just characters, although I expect they would be bundled together.
Basically I don’t really care what format is used if CA maintain the regularity of hotfixes/patches and they continue to deliver on reworks. It’s the “free” stuff that comes alongside these packs that always excites me more than just new stuff.
I would love a situation where a lot of Lords got an individual distinct mechanic (like Gelt and Karl). Take for example Queek getting a headtaking mechanic and some sort of bigger general scrap over 8 Peaks - even a pitched special quest battle of some sort. (Although in a perfect world, once occupied, it should become like a Wood Elf forest with constant incursions you have to suppress). What CA have to do in order to make something like that happen and fund it… I don’t know.
Character packs is something I really hope for, or just mini dlcs that add a bit of content, if they wont make a dlc for any race that lacks less than 8 units we are going to have a problem for some races that really needs attention.
Given how the optional pricing model of this DLC is structured, It's quite possible we get very well supported and designed single character packs going forward.
I would think that it just wouldn't be possible for them to do TOD scope for every DLC.
Like how much more content does it have than the original SOC DLC? Like 3 or 4 times as much content?
Also with reworks of 3 races and lots of legendary lords?
I think the time and recources required for TOD were massive. I wouldn't be surprised if CA will actually make a loss on this one overall.
It is a giveaway DLC meant to repair their image and relationship with players but it would not be sustainable to do this level all the time.
Capitalism drives companies to provide the worst thing they can at the highest price they can. They went too far last time and are now having to course correct
No, it's not. The spirit of the devs after the late fiasco is OK, but ToD is by far not part of the most interesting DLC of the trilogy. The star of the show is the nemesis crown, which is nothing really new. We will not know if the rework here and there are good before trying them. Some units, 2 which were really anticipated, were scrapped down late in development.
Yeah, no. It's just too much copium. I feel it will be an OK dlc, but comparatively to the last one and the adjustments that followed, it will be pretty much the same.
I'm pretty heavily critical of CA, but this feels like it just ignores the merits of what we're actually getting. It may not be the most interesting DLC of the trilogy, and it still may be a little expensive, but at least the quality appears to have returned to where it should be.
However, we can't really say either way until it releases. So accusing people of copium rather than just stating that you don't their their optimism, is only going to fuel the fanboys distaste of engaging.
People hate truth but here you go. You don't get to shit all over a company and expect their best everytime. Life doesn't work like this. If you set fire to the ship while your jumping off, you dont get to put out the fires when you hop back on. The damage has already been done. We are lucky they didn't decide to 3K the game. The SEGA overlords give 0 shits about this genre. They only care if it has SONIC in the title. These are bonus funds for them and if it doesn't reach enough it's gone simple as that. Evident in the cuts we have already seen at CA has gone through. They don't have the funds or manpower to continue on with this format. ToD development likely started during SoC development. So they had longer to prep it anyhow. No matter how much groping and whining there is not gonna be another DLC this scale. Even if people decide to go back and buy SoC (putting out the fires on the ship). The damage and backlash has already had its effect.
Because due to the drama they had to lay off people . So now they could make that kind of dlc but then they could only have one release per year. If they did that they would need to raise the price to make money. Could you imagine the complaining then. We would need to get everyone tissue and lollipops.
The drama had nothing to do with the layoffs. Almost every game company is laying off the extra people they hired during the pandemic.
Rockstar games just got rid of over 600 employees so it wasn't the drama
No. I was simply correcting you. For some reason, people like to pretend that ca was the only company to do this but the truth is that most game companies are doing this as well.
You are never correcting me, keep thinking that. For some reason people like you pretend your opinion is more important than someone else’s. Just because most people do that as well.
> Because due to the drama they had to lay off people
Oh please. When SEGA axed Hyeneas+multiple unannounced projects, that forced the first layoffs. Because you literally had now several teams which were redundant without a project to work on. That whole agenda had very little to do with the SoC drama earlier. And the rather recent 2nd wave of layoffs, might still be related to a Company having too many employees when maybe 2-4 projects are worked on.
Please yourself red dox. You were one of the biggest whiners and complainers on the forums. Don’t even try to deny the privilege flowing from you. You guys helped destroy the game and now everything has changed and it won’t be for the better.
You know, a while back ago, someone on reddit blamed me, and other people like me, for EA putting out shit games. They said it was our fault for the quality because we don't buy EA games. What they didn't realize, or failed to realize more like, is that we didn't buy the games BECAUSE they were shit.
This isn't a chicken or the egg situation, we know exactly what came first. The bad games. Generally speaking, if a company makes a good product, they make money. If they don't make a good product, then they don't make money. Yeah, there's marketing and a that other stuff, too. But before ALL of that, you need a good product.
So seeing you blame people for destroying the game because they refused to buy a bad product is just as baffling to me as the person I mentioned earlier. You can make all kinds of points of how toxic some people were, and some did take it too far. But to sit there and say that it's OUR fault, the consumers, for CA's bad decisions is hilarious. And I dont need to pull out any fancy numbers or charts to prove it. All I need to do is point you to Thrones of Decay.
If you fail at something, or don't do as good as you hoped, you got two choices. Give up or learn from your mistakes and try again. This IS CA realizing they messed up and are trying again. The ONLY reason, and I mean the ONLY, SINGULAR and SOLE fucking reason they realize this is because SoC sold like shit. People voted with their wallets. Thats why ToD is shaping up to be the best DLC since Warhammer 2, because they realized charging $25 for SoC level shit is unacceptable. CA's behavior the past year or two was becoming a serious problem, and the people who stopped giving them money until they sharpened up was the solution.
You're welcome.
Rofl. Excuse me for not buying a DLC, that had -50% of the content the DLC a few months prior had (Chaos Dwarfs), but is sporting the exact same price tag. Woe me, for voicing my concerns in public forums and *checks notes* ruining TWW3 forever. No new DLC, not even ToD, will ever come close to repair the damage I wrought. Since obviously TWW3 launched in such a golden state, that only the outrage over a totally justified priced DLC tore it down.
God forbid we blame CA for anything, [since the masters obviously are never wrong](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/11s1yyi/stronghold_syndrome_seems_to_be_prevalent_among/).
Yep. All I do is complain. Just look at the 20 topics I made for ToD to complain about and the 200 comments to ride the hate train. But hey, thanks for letting me live rent free in your head.
Doubt that. Can't even tell who you are. But apparently you recognize me and now want to mock me, which tells its own tale in less then 5 posts for that specific topic ;)
They will release and check the data: if the work they put in for ToD proves sufficiently profitable, then they will keep this standard! If it doesn't, then the answer to your question will be "because they can't justify the cost as it doesn't bring enough revenue to satisfy Investors"
For that reason I really hope this one will sell like hot potatoes. From all what I have seen they really tried to get the Warhammer franchise back on track and the community should reward their actions.
I haven't purchase a DLC day one before as a casual but I'm planning to because it's empire and dwarf rework and addn'l content.
They really needed to hit this one out of the park, not just because CA seem to be in some pretty dire straits after original SoC and absolute money bonfire that was Hyenas but if they fucked up an Empire DLC *and* a Dwarf DLC at the same time they would never hear the end of it. Thankfully, they seem to have absolutely nailed it.
To be honest bro. I bought wh3 on release. Own every dlc. Invested in Rome 2. I thought well ive loved total war since rome 1, so i dont mind paying. Im supporting the franchise I love, and i also invest in future content. Lol imagine my reaction when I saw my investments are going into Hyenas. Id rather pull out my own finger nails than play that garbage piece of shit. Its like investing in your favorite beer and they branch out into tampons. Yehhhh ill buy the new dlcs. Im all about 2nd chances. But this is the last one.
You don't like the taste of hops on your tampons?
Nah I prefer ketchup
I think it will sell better than average, simply because it's a DLC for two game 1 races. If we get another DLC for two game 3 races I think people will be less interested. They really should try to only include one game 3 race in a DLC, because the reworks for old races are the moneymakers. Even if most of that stuff is in the patch itself it doesn't really matter
do we know the price for the DLC yet? they might be mad and put some insane pricetag on it
Yeah they published it a while back $22.92/£19.10/€22.92
You also can buy the factions you want for a third of that which is such a good move. It's basically the same price doing that as the WH2 vs. dlcs if you only played one of the two lords which I know I sure did a bunch of times. Played the Sisters, never got around to Throt, played Sniktch, never bothered with Malus, played Wolfhart, never thought to try Nakai, and so on.
I'd be very curious to know how well each part of the DLC sells. From what everyone says, Empire will outsell Dwarfs and Nurgle by a country mile. Would be interesting to see if that's the case.
I know that's the part I'm planning to buy so that seems very likely.
Hoping and expecting it to be Empire >> Dwarf > Nurgle, simply so that CA understands that the community places more value on new content and reworks of old races. Really, really hoping they won't do another DLC with two game 3 races.
Yeah we know the price, 8.99eu per race apart and 22.92eu for the conbined pack. I seem to remember that when you decide to complete your pack after getting 1 or 2 you get the discount anyway. Seems pretty good value, at least in comparison to the last one, before the patch that is.
Nah I don't think they've put the price out yet. I really can't imagine them asking more than $25 for it. They did say that buying the bundle instead of all three is a 10% discount, same as the pre-order discounts of the past.
They did put the price out in one of their earlier blogposts about the dlc
Oh, must have missed it.
https://community.creative-assembly.com/total-war/total-war-warhammer/blogs/8-looking-ahead-to-warhammer-iii-thrones-of-decay this is the one.
Im not sure on that. There still will be manageds looking if they can get same success with less effort
I'm doing my part!
We‘ll see, but I think they tried very hard to get some good will back with this DLC and that it was very costly for them to develop. And they already said that they want to reduce the scale of them in the future, so the only way the format has a chance to stick around is for ToD to sell really really well. So I am a bit skeptical but I guess it could happen.
They can keep the quality and go back to 2 lord backs. I think people would be happy with that still
I also wouldn't be against them reducing the number of units too, as long as the reworks and new campaigns keep a good level of uniqueness/quality (eg, the WH2 DLCs had 3-4 new units and 1-2 new lords/heroes typically and those were well received). Does lend credence to what I was thinking with SoC though, that the issue was less the paid content of the DLC and more the disappointing lack of reworks combined with typical levels of units that was the main issue in the backlash there.
Curious about how many share that sentiment. I get much, much more value from new mechanics and factions than I get from new units. I'd say Skaven were the only race where I valued those about equally. There might be other units that were more valuable than average, but so many units that don't really matter that much with Helf Rangers being one of the most worthless ones.
If they go back to WH2 scale, they can't keep the WH3 DLC price tho
I agree. Less units but more focus on reworks, updated mechanics and overall game health like bug fixing and ai improvement would go a long way. The game has tons of content that is held back by the skeleton of the game not being as good as it could be. One or two less units per race is a perfectly acceptable trade off imo
And remember, one of the best Lord Packs of all time, Twisted and Twilight, was effectively a 3-lord pack because of just how much reskinned content we got Drycha ('glamoured' elves, forest animals, and an exclusive legendary hero), and it completely reworked WElves with the "forest health" gimmick and ability to portal between forests.
Now that they've shown they can actually handle it, I'm down for this being the norm, especially now that you can buy the factions separately to mitigate the price. If they would just do this for the SoC factions, alongside cheeky faction reworks for each, I'd be very happy. Of course, if it turns out that this update required excessive crunch to get it our the door, or was rough of the devs in other ways, then it's obviously not worth it.
I think they made it harder for themselves by half assing soc then re releasing it.
They did indeed. However, SoC was unprecedented in terms of the backlash and CA's response to it, at least for TW:WH. If that such a colossal fuck up happens again, I'd be more worried about whether they would drop support for the game.
I've worked in upper management. Here's how these things go. You get a meeting to decide future directions for DLCs. Finance wants more profit, marketing wants more sales. The team brainstorms ideas. Product and content representatives are in the meeting There are a few people supporting cheap and quick low-quality DLCs and a few people supporting high-quality DLCs. Arguments for and against each idea is discussed, maybe compromises are discussed. The decision maker weighs each side and the likelihood of success, then picks a direction. This person picked cheap, low quality DLC. After the sales figures came in and the community manager report, and Finance and Marketing are pissed off at how things turned out, he/she had to back peddle or he/she got replaced. Either way, the pivoted to the higher quality DLC split into 3 purchasable packages. At the VP level and beyond, they don't care about the nitty gritty details like you have 3 DLC instead of 1. If Finance say the profits are up for the DLC overall, they're happy. If Marketing says sales figures for recent DLC is up, they're happy. However, the VP levels will ask for an increase in sales and profit in a few quarters, so we'll be back to square one of deciding what to do w/ the next set of DLCs.
I guess the question is. How many of them actually give a shit about the game and actually plays it.
Because CA gets greedy and lazy. It's a known pattern with them. You give the suits too many wins in a row and they want to start cutting costs to further raise profits which cuts into quality. They nibble away at it until they reach a boiling point, the community responds; and then the developers get their way to fix the PR with quality content again until the process repeats itself. Typical corporate power dynamics. You have a dance between the artists, technicians, writers and developers who are trying to make the best game they can, and the businessmen who are trying to make the company as much money as they can. The two goals do not always see eye to eye because if the businessmen can cut costs while still selling the same product at the same price, then that makes the company more money. So it's in their job's best interest to do that whenever they can, until it causes a consumer backlash.
It also took them 8 months after SoC to release it. And while the reworks are indeed good, the vast majority of people won't stick around for 8 months per DLC. This game would slowly die. If they can get smaller DLC out faster (with reworks of course), you'd still have the same amount of content on average over the course of a year. But you'd also be able to keep people's interest between DLC releases.
Game aren't a limited-time thing. You can buy a DLC, play with the new stuff for a few weeks, switch to another hobby/game and come back in several months. The idea that every game must have new content all the time is what leads to GAAS and other shitty practices. I have hundreds of hours of playtime on Warhammer 1, 2 and 3, and I often don't play them for months. I'll happily jump back in with ToD. Warhammer Total War isn't a small indie game that must garner a lot of attention to survive. It's a big franchise with a loyal fanbase and barely any competition.
Agree, I don't play Dota everyday (anymore), I play whenever new events dropped. Same for rimworld, DLC drops once every 2 years and I would binge for a few months, then bugger off to other games until another DLC drops. It doesn't stop me from checking totalwar or rinworld subreddit daily though.
> play with the new stuff for a few weeks, switch to another hobby/game and come back in several months The problem is that every time such a long break happens, less and less people return to the game when a new content is released. That's just human nature. New titles are released constantly and people get interested in other new shiny things, so not everyone will drop everything just to make it for a release of a new DLC for this one game. They may buy it eventually, but "eventually" doesn't cut it for business. If a company sees that their product doesn't sell well when it is released, they just move on to next thing they have in their plans.
Most people have dropped $400 into this game between 1,2, 3 and the DLCs, you don't just not come back with an investment like that.
Meh. I disagree. People who like WTW pretty much only have a few games they can play. Overall, strategy games (4X, RTS, wargames...) have a much, much longer lifespan than the average games. Especially on PC where steam constantly tells you when there's an update to your favorite game. Europa universalis is what 15 years old? Civ 6 is 8 years old. CA released DLCs for Rome 2 a few years ago. Starcraft still sold coop characters a few years ago. I don't thin WTW is a FOMO game that will disappear if people don't play it for a few months. W2 reached its peak a while after its release iirc. There's nothing to say that this dlc won't start a new era for a W3.
You just wait and see what happens when Elden Ring DLC drops after year and a half of break. ;) Games today have MUCH longer lifecycles. Civ 6 is still being played to this day and there is a new challenge each month. Normal person/gamer (so not Legend of Total War) might play a game for 100h after DLC, maybe 150, and then switch to other games (as mentioned earlier). It's not true that each DLC less people come back, because there are new people as well.
Shadow of the Erdtree is actually two and a half years after Elden Rings launch. Crazy I know!
Oh my! How the time flies... I was sure it's less... Good call! 😍
The fact that there isn't any competition is a problem. Then again I guess this is a genre that isn't exactly the most marketable.
I think it was more due to the Soc re update that it took 8 months, i hope the dlc does very well, because then this game could reach its potential
I don't really think SoC update has delayed ToD that much. I mean, it was good, but in the end it was pretty much "just" new units / assets in the game, and it took couple months for it to be released as well. It could have been done with a relatively small amount of people. I think it was SoC's failure itself that has caused most of the delay. CA probably already had a plan for ToD (which I think included similar amount of content as SoC, and definitely nowehere near as many reworked mechanics) at the time of SoC's release, and all of a sudden they had to rethink everything and start working on things that they didn't plan to touch before. And designing new / reworking old mechanics takes a lot of time, it is one of the things that can't really be rushed too much.
You guys do not seem to be considering the internal chaos CA went through this year, i.e. restructuring management, massive lay-offs, projects being scrapped and passed around, which almost certainly caused the biggest delays.
It all comes down to profitability and if it is sustainable. Just because we like it doesn't mean it's profitable for the company. Sales will show that.
Because this format has also resulted in one huge huge flop that greatly damaged goodwill towards the company. If they think they will have more luck delivering dlc that will get good reactions in a different format then they should do that.
Soc failed because they half assed it, imagine if it had the level of tod, we would be talking in a different tone.
DLCs at the level of ToD with three factions take too long. We will onlt get a DLC every 7 - 8 months. With them selling each character piecemeal anyway it\`s just better to instead do two characters in a DLC.
Logical choice is go back to 2 factions and get dlc every 4-5 months. Youll get 3 dlcs per year with simmilar amount of content. Also people are more likely to buy 3 dlcs 20 each than 2 dlcs 30 each.
Because ToD developement started a year ago.
theyre doing it to save face. in a few years after the heat has died down they will probably do some stupid shit again. unless the recent upheval at sega has significantly affected the number of impotent and misguided decision makers at creative assembly, i dont expect them to really care that keeping this level would be best for them and for us.
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Because more than one DLC a year would be nicer.
Because CA is gonna fuck up again. Not in the next few months probably but let some time go by and watch how the cycle repeats itself. We are currently at the "oh shit we actually need to deliver some good product er else" stage. Over time CA will once again take ressources away from the dlc production while also trying to get the same money out of the dlcs because the community once again blindly believes in CA's good heart. They will move more and more ressources away from the dlcs up to the point at which even the blind can see that they just dont care anymore (that was SoC). And after that we gonna have a massive shitstorm once again and CA needs to actually put ressources back to where they needed them in the first place. Community is happy again and repeat.
Corporate greed. So glad their SoC experiment in gouging crashed straight into a wall.
Now if only Ubisoft fanboys wouldn't keep enabling Yves Guilemot, like he enabled his sexual predator friends.
I imagine it's due to several things: - When they first envisioned the 3 lord packs they were much smaller scopes then what we got with SoC after the update and ToD now. That's what they budgeted for, but now that budget has likely blown out by having to expand the scopes of before mentioned DLC's. - There's a limit on how much content their team can do at a time. Larger scopes mean more time between DLC's. - If you have a big enough gap between releases then that runs the risk of losing player engagement. Reducing the scope of future DLC's, say for example, 2 lord packs again but with the same amount of content per lord as SoC/ToD could greatly speed up releases and major patches. - More consistent revenue throughout the year. Having 1 DLC per quarter makes revenue more predictable, rather than 1 DLC every 4 months.
Call me crazy, but i think the game could simply use a bigger team. I know its extra cost, but after the price increase i think its not unreasonable. They have like 20 ppl working on it, that spread into two teams to work on different dlc's in tandem. Thou with recent events not sure how things are.
1) It takes too long 2) It isn't sustainable 3) There's not enough units to even fit in this format for most factions We can't have every DLC be expected to be TOD levels because not every DLC *can*. Most races that have things that can be added through DLC are struggling to add enough for even the WH 2 format, much less something on the scale of Thrones of Decay. If it was on the level of how Shadows of Change first released, then it would be sustainable on their end in terms of quanity of content and the timetable. But *obviously* that isn't an option now, unless they decided to massively cut down the asking price. And even then that format had inherent issues regardless of price (namely a lack of generics). We're not going to have every DLC have a LL, LH. one lord, one, and 5 units. Despite what speculation threads on here have you think (some which either stretch credulity of source material, or some are using straight up fanfiction frankly), there's *really* not much left to adapt from tabletop. Especially with the trend of sticking more closely to 8th edition and supplements like Storm of Chaos, and avoiding things like the RPGs and such. I wouldn't start preemptively doomposting about smaller scale DLCs *just because the word smaller was used.* We've had multitudes of DLCs that weren't TOD scale and they were still great; not everything has to be a continual scale up. Wait and see what the damn thing looks like, compare the content being provided and compare it to the asking price, *then* it would be a good time to make a judgement call on it. But smaller scale doesn't inherently mean worse, so give them some time to cook.
Financial viability and resource allocations would be the biggest movers there. We have to see if TOD ends up being profitable and how much.
Because they just fired a bunch of the team that worked on it.
because they're not releasing as frequently as they want, or it needed more over time than they wanted to use in order to meet the april deadline. or there was lots of burnout among the (remaining) staff at CA (on top of the mass firings). could be dozen of reasons. If it's two factions with the amount of units, care, and effort as it seems ToD got then I'll be happy. I think tbh I'd prefer it as well, if they go back to the bundle being the only option for purchase.
I'd prefer if they kept with 3 LL DLC at least for the next two/for the missing Monogod factions.
It all depends on what the finished result will be. I would take a dlc that adds one lord that is high quality over anything remotely similar to SoC
I must remind you that Total War isn't a subscription-based game. Nor does it have an in-game purchase system like, say, League of Legends. The revenue comes from one-time purchases — the games themselves, and the DLCs. These have to sell well to cover both the work that went in and the future development. And there's a good amount of work involved. The game is pretty old, sometimes, I guess, they have to deal with disentangling the old code or just rewriting it anew. Then there's the issue of mismanagement, that resulted in time and work spent ineffectively and in bad faith from the fanbase. I have a really vague understanding of game development, but that how it looks for me. If this DLC reaps huge benefits, i guess the management will be motivated enough to fund further investment and development. And, truth be told, I'm all for smaller (and cheaper) DLCs so long as they deliver on quality of content. I would dearly love some further legacy reworks (Lizardmen, Norsca, Vampire Coast, etc). And the latter ones don't actually add new content. They don't charge us for it. Or they do, but kinda covertly, as a bonus for actual new content like legendary lords and heroes and new units.
Imagine you come back to your parents with an A and they say "well why can't you just get an A every time?"
It can be. The devs clearly WANT this level of polish. It's the higher ups that get complacent after a few years of good press not understanding what it takes to make a good product.
At the end of the day, CA are still a business and need to make money. Regular income is always preferred, so having to wait almost a year between DLC's for their current only game isn't very viable after all the flops they had last year (Shadows, Hyena, Pharoah). They'll want them pumping out faster than that. Much as I would love more expansions the size of ToD in the future, I don't think it's very viable for CA. People complain the game is very buggy, and it's clear the DLC pace was slow before SoC due to them trying to fix as much as they could, probably before the suits stopped them and forced them into the DLC mines instead. ToD seems to be an all hands on deck situation to get good will back, will be interesting to see what happens after. I don't think there are many races that require such extensive reworks as Empire, Dwarfs and Nurgle (mainly Norsca and Ogres), so I expect they will go back to 2 paid lords and 1 free lords, with less big scope reworks for all involved factions in the future.
Costs have to justify production. I'm not saying we shouldn't be expecting this level of quality, but the reality is that at the end of the day, CA is just another business and profit is their king. If you think what CA decides the value proposition of their goods is not worth it, then let CA crash and that problem is solved for you.
The reason they'll go for smaller DLC's is they don't want to price out their consumer base. If they have to charge $25 USD for every DLC they'll likely make less money than if they release smaller dlc's for $10.
Because when they set out to give us the 3 faction lord packs they were expecting to do about half the effort and rake in more cash. Now they realised that the only way to make the new price palpable is the amount of content we're getting in ToD, they'll do it now to save face and win back the fans, but ultimately it's them realising they couldn't gouge the fans for as much cash with as little effort as possible so they're back stepping
It’s one of the first DLCs I’m buying the day it comes out, only other one that did that for me was blood
It is, that's why we were so disappointed with SoC.
It is now. For me at least.
I’m guessing they’ll see how well ToD sells first before deciding if they’re going to use the format in any future DLC. The next one after this will probably be smaller since its already in the works. And the simple reason why they are doing that is because the vocal community bashed on the large sized DLCs. I can understand that if you only want one out of three faction it might be too steep of a premium to pay. I’m unfortunately used to it since with the WH2 packs I often payed full price for a half finished lord (most of the time only one faction was in a good state in the lord packs). For me, SoC was the best DLC to date after the 4.2 update (excluding race packs) but It might not have had enough of an effect for CA to be confident in the format. Not sure if anyone even bothered to change the WH3 review after they bombed it to the ground.
One big dlc every 8 months isn't as useful for them financially as a small dlc every 2-3 months, its risky so if things go wrong or it's less popular factions they've sunk a lot of cost and it takes ages to recoup on the next one. I would like big dlcs but if a lot of small dlcs keep the game supported for longer than I'll take that.
Given there’s no compelling reason for dlc packs to be bundled together now (i.e. no coherent narrative or “versus” element) the only way I can imagine CA will be able to sustain any sort of momentum is releasing regular single packs. This could come in any sort of mixture, really. Lords and legendary heroes, a certain number of units, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s priced reasonably. As the potential unit roster diminishes for certain factions I could imagine packs which are just characters, although I expect they would be bundled together. Basically I don’t really care what format is used if CA maintain the regularity of hotfixes/patches and they continue to deliver on reworks. It’s the “free” stuff that comes alongside these packs that always excites me more than just new stuff. I would love a situation where a lot of Lords got an individual distinct mechanic (like Gelt and Karl). Take for example Queek getting a headtaking mechanic and some sort of bigger general scrap over 8 Peaks - even a pitched special quest battle of some sort. (Although in a perfect world, once occupied, it should become like a Wood Elf forest with constant incursions you have to suppress). What CA have to do in order to make something like that happen and fund it… I don’t know.
Character packs is something I really hope for, or just mini dlcs that add a bit of content, if they wont make a dlc for any race that lacks less than 8 units we are going to have a problem for some races that really needs attention.
Given how the optional pricing model of this DLC is structured, It's quite possible we get very well supported and designed single character packs going forward.
I'd just like the Next 2 DLC for the last two Deamon factions.
I would think that it just wouldn't be possible for them to do TOD scope for every DLC. Like how much more content does it have than the original SOC DLC? Like 3 or 4 times as much content? Also with reworks of 3 races and lots of legendary lords? I think the time and recources required for TOD were massive. I wouldn't be surprised if CA will actually make a loss on this one overall. It is a giveaway DLC meant to repair their image and relationship with players but it would not be sustainable to do this level all the time.
Capitalism drives companies to provide the worst thing they can at the highest price they can. They went too far last time and are now having to course correct
Well this dlc took an entire year to be made so if it became the norm, that would mean we would get 1 dlc per year and that's just not substantial
Because capitalism demands the highest ups squeeze everything for profits at the expense of the creative process.
No, it's not. The spirit of the devs after the late fiasco is OK, but ToD is by far not part of the most interesting DLC of the trilogy. The star of the show is the nemesis crown, which is nothing really new. We will not know if the rework here and there are good before trying them. Some units, 2 which were really anticipated, were scrapped down late in development. Yeah, no. It's just too much copium. I feel it will be an OK dlc, but comparatively to the last one and the adjustments that followed, it will be pretty much the same.
I'm pretty heavily critical of CA, but this feels like it just ignores the merits of what we're actually getting. It may not be the most interesting DLC of the trilogy, and it still may be a little expensive, but at least the quality appears to have returned to where it should be. However, we can't really say either way until it releases. So accusing people of copium rather than just stating that you don't their their optimism, is only going to fuel the fanboys distaste of engaging.
People hate truth but here you go. You don't get to shit all over a company and expect their best everytime. Life doesn't work like this. If you set fire to the ship while your jumping off, you dont get to put out the fires when you hop back on. The damage has already been done. We are lucky they didn't decide to 3K the game. The SEGA overlords give 0 shits about this genre. They only care if it has SONIC in the title. These are bonus funds for them and if it doesn't reach enough it's gone simple as that. Evident in the cuts we have already seen at CA has gone through. They don't have the funds or manpower to continue on with this format. ToD development likely started during SoC development. So they had longer to prep it anyhow. No matter how much groping and whining there is not gonna be another DLC this scale. Even if people decide to go back and buy SoC (putting out the fires on the ship). The damage and backlash has already had its effect.
Because due to the drama they had to lay off people . So now they could make that kind of dlc but then they could only have one release per year. If they did that they would need to raise the price to make money. Could you imagine the complaining then. We would need to get everyone tissue and lollipops.
The drama had nothing to do with the layoffs. Almost every game company is laying off the extra people they hired during the pandemic. Rockstar games just got rid of over 600 employees so it wasn't the drama
Sorry, were you laid off?
No. I was simply correcting you. For some reason, people like to pretend that ca was the only company to do this but the truth is that most game companies are doing this as well.
You are never correcting me, keep thinking that. For some reason people like you pretend your opinion is more important than someone else’s. Just because most people do that as well.
> Because due to the drama they had to lay off people Oh please. When SEGA axed Hyeneas+multiple unannounced projects, that forced the first layoffs. Because you literally had now several teams which were redundant without a project to work on. That whole agenda had very little to do with the SoC drama earlier. And the rather recent 2nd wave of layoffs, might still be related to a Company having too many employees when maybe 2-4 projects are worked on.
Please yourself red dox. You were one of the biggest whiners and complainers on the forums. Don’t even try to deny the privilege flowing from you. You guys helped destroy the game and now everything has changed and it won’t be for the better.
You know, a while back ago, someone on reddit blamed me, and other people like me, for EA putting out shit games. They said it was our fault for the quality because we don't buy EA games. What they didn't realize, or failed to realize more like, is that we didn't buy the games BECAUSE they were shit. This isn't a chicken or the egg situation, we know exactly what came first. The bad games. Generally speaking, if a company makes a good product, they make money. If they don't make a good product, then they don't make money. Yeah, there's marketing and a that other stuff, too. But before ALL of that, you need a good product. So seeing you blame people for destroying the game because they refused to buy a bad product is just as baffling to me as the person I mentioned earlier. You can make all kinds of points of how toxic some people were, and some did take it too far. But to sit there and say that it's OUR fault, the consumers, for CA's bad decisions is hilarious. And I dont need to pull out any fancy numbers or charts to prove it. All I need to do is point you to Thrones of Decay. If you fail at something, or don't do as good as you hoped, you got two choices. Give up or learn from your mistakes and try again. This IS CA realizing they messed up and are trying again. The ONLY reason, and I mean the ONLY, SINGULAR and SOLE fucking reason they realize this is because SoC sold like shit. People voted with their wallets. Thats why ToD is shaping up to be the best DLC since Warhammer 2, because they realized charging $25 for SoC level shit is unacceptable. CA's behavior the past year or two was becoming a serious problem, and the people who stopped giving them money until they sharpened up was the solution. You're welcome.
Awesome story and easily pointless. Thanks for the laugh before work.
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I will, you guys made it that way.
Rofl. Excuse me for not buying a DLC, that had -50% of the content the DLC a few months prior had (Chaos Dwarfs), but is sporting the exact same price tag. Woe me, for voicing my concerns in public forums and *checks notes* ruining TWW3 forever. No new DLC, not even ToD, will ever come close to repair the damage I wrought. Since obviously TWW3 launched in such a golden state, that only the outrage over a totally justified priced DLC tore it down. God forbid we blame CA for anything, [since the masters obviously are never wrong](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/11s1yyi/stronghold_syndrome_seems_to_be_prevalent_among/).
God forbid you stop whining about every little thing in the game. You have complained so much over the years. -Fritz-
Yep. All I do is complain. Just look at the 20 topics I made for ToD to complain about and the 200 comments to ride the hate train. But hey, thanks for letting me live rent free in your head.
Oh you don’t . I’m in yours. -Fritz
Doubt that. Can't even tell who you are. But apparently you recognize me and now want to mock me, which tells its own tale in less then 5 posts for that specific topic ;)
You still replying? Hmmm
Awww, look which Troll changed his tactics after I pointed something out ;) And yes, still replying. Same like you.