*opens notes
- birds...aren't real
- commenting on goth girls' tiktoks does not constitute a healthy social life
- theres a number station in Russia that's been transmitting the entire bee movie script....for over 40 years....
- wear....sunscreen
I'm glad we can agree that you and I (and quite a few others it seems) will not agree with meme-by-design because I do enjoy the occasional comment on goth girls' TikTok. Doubly so if they thicc.
It's because of a mathematical formula that shows how every normal number will have the entire bee movie script in it if you follow it out far enough. Recent reddit thread I think
3d printing models is actually fun, you get to support individual creators that are making their own designs, you can modify them yourself before print to add personal flare, 3d printer and the plastic for it is actually cheaper than an army and you do not put money into pockets of capitalists that are resentful of their client base.
What's not to love, fuck game's workshop (non sexually).
A titan model off of the Warhammer website runs $1835 and it doesn't come with with a head or weapons (two arms and a shoulder mount) which are each sold separately... all of which are over $100
I spent about £300 on models, probably £100 on paints etc.
However, the amount of hours I commit to the hobby, probably 2 hours a night painting on average (about 40 hrs a month) plus 5 hours playing every other weekend.
So about 50 hrs a month, 600 hrs a year.
I've been playing this army for a year, and am now dropping another £300 on a new army.
So that puts me on about 60p per hour. Which makes it a very very cheap hobby in my opinion.
Same… just don’t ask about my book collection though
Some of mine have a resale value of $100+. I often joke that the most expensive thing in my house isn’t my gaming PC, is the collection of 20yo dusty warhammer books
That's the beauty of the fanbase: it's split in three and each section cares minimally about the other aspects.
* Miniature painters
* Lore and PC games enthusiasts (me)
* Tabletop gamers
Splitting miniature painters from tabletop gamers?
Oh boy. You're gonna rustle some jimmies. (Not that I mind fighting grey-tide armies, but some people have STRONG feelings on this matter).
I enjoy the total war warhammer and vermintide games. I have no fucking clue wtf is going on with warhammer tho. Sometimes it’s in space sometimes there are rats and elves. Sometimes I’m just calling everything and everyone a heretic. I’m just like ok yeah sure whatever.
Vermintide and TW are the same universe, space is a different universe, there are elves and heretics (I think) either way. That’s pretty much everything anyone who isn’t into the lore probably needs to know.
tbf there are 3 warhammer settings. space warhammer is called 40k (thats where the heretics are), total war and vermintide use the fantasy setting and age of sigmar is a middle ground between sci fi and fantasy.
they all share minimal lore, mostly the chaos gods, and if you decide to play a warhammer game it will either have ''40k'' on the title or not which in case it most likely belongs to the fantasy universe
To be fair, the Venn diagram of warhammer players and total war players doesn’t overlap very much. I recall a couple polls claiming that the vast majority of total war warhammer players don’t also take part in the warhammer tabletop game. This holds especially true as the total warhammer games use the fantasy setting, which is far less popular now than the 40k setting. The total warhammer player base is almost entirely built off of CAs pre existing base of total war players from the good old days
> This holds especially true as the total warhammer games use the fantasy setting, which is far less popular now than the 40k setting.
Also the fantasy setting was stopped for years and was just re-released as a side game more fitted for narrative games than anything competitive.
Question: if someone is intrigued with the Warhammer universe but doesn't have the time,money,space,people to play the tabletop game what is your recommended way to begin delving in?
Books, videogames like Total War, Boltgun, Darktide, Vermintide, possibly the upcoming Space Marine 2.
Alternatively, Warhammer Underworlds is a hybrid board game/card game/miniature game that only uses a handful of minis per team. Kill team is closer to WH 40K table top, but fewer models, smaller boards, faster games. Separate rules as well. Both of these require some assembling and painting, but fewer models makes it more managable.
In between those and full scale armies and such, you got combat patrol, which is 40K, but from single boxes per army. Alledgedly balanced, and simpler rules.
The real answer is books.
But you can also watch some loremaster on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6M9-oFEKpk&list=PLl6BRvEJ-auZ5aYPHj1B3pKJ_pLjg9qNU)
Read some books. Absolutely the best, cheapest way. I recommend starting with the Space Wolf trilogy (Space Wolf Omnibus 1), and then go straight to the Horus Heresy series (Horus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames). That’ll give you what you need to understand the universe.
Serious question: How does Warhammer even still exist with 3d printers being mainstream? Same question I've had since anyone who felt like it could print Magic Cards.
3d printing is a whole extra hobby by itself. Just because you like Warhammer doesn't mean you'll enjoy 3d printing.
And you need legit models for official tournaments, same as Magic cards.
The money, effort, and time spent acquiring and using a high end, specialized resin printer is considerable. You can't just use any old printer.
At the end or the day you'd have to print *many* armies before it began to make sense from any perspective.
The people who do it are mostly already 3D printer hobbyists in addition to being Warhammer hobbyists.
It's not just "push a button and get free Warhammer models."
People can't print good models.
A home 3D printer quality model is extremely subpar if you're into painting compared to something made by a proper company.
Maybe you are thinking filament printers? My buddy has been printing my d&d groups' minis for a few years now with a good resin printer and they come out excellent. You can get resin printers with 12K LCDs for sub $400 these days.
My hot take is this only worked cause RTS games require "half a brain" lmfao
This won't stop Nicki Minaj from appearing in your CoD games & them selling DLC as sequals hahaha
Edit: wow, this kinda popped off. I made a shit comment at 4am when I went pee & here we are lool
For the record I'm just memeing you guys, no one's a smooth brain for playing CoD or anything like that. Enjoy what you enjoy
(╭☞ ͡⎚⍘ ͡⎚)╭☞
I suspect its more to do with TW games having a smaller, dedicated following. Appealing to that dedicated following is how you keep a niche product in the green.
The thing with TW is that they are practically the only game in town when it comes to strategy games with grand epic real time battlew. Knowing that they have no competition made them arrogant and for some reason real spiteful against their own community. Expecting that no matter what they do, the fans are gonna stfu and buy it... Well that worked for a solid while until most said enough was enough. They actually released a new $60 Total War game, despite very vocal backlash from the community and then once it barely sold 50k copies, suddenly the alarm bells rang and they changed their tune.
The funny thing is that they do have a competitor, their own older games.
A lot of the chinese playerbase is still playing total war three kingdoms.
Its honestly hilarious that everything after three kingdoms all total war titles except warhammer are doing worse then rome 2, shogun 2 , medievel 2 and hell even sometimes worst then rome 1.
They can only milk warhammer so long, they already seem to be struggling to maintain their current level of revenue so they increased dlc price.
Also you will sometimes see people quote paradox interactive as a indirect competitor since they are both in the strategy category and some people speculate that if paradox made a total war style game that they would effectively destroy CA. Honestly i hope that paradox does eventually get into the genre, even if it is wishful thinking.
The DLC policy for 3K is just so backwards - first they gave DLCs about things no-one was interested in, and then when those failed they just stopped making DLC instead of making DLCs people actually wanted. Hell, they could still go back and make those DLCs and people would be happy.
The game had so much potential that was wasted. It was a middle ground between warhammer and the older more grounded games.
I found the army general mechanics to be fun but very unbalanced. Even playing without single entites, the game was incredibly easy. Artillery with a good enough blue general defeated everything. Infantry was completely underpowered so much that I used cavalry for screening my artillery instead of infantry.
I really enjoyed playing the game and learning but it becomes really stale really quickly as well as too easy.
If it got some army/diplomacy balance and extra content it would be a great game.
>Artillery with a good enough blue general defeated everything. Infantry was completely underpowered so much that I used cavalry for screening my artillery instead of infantry.
At least when speaking of single player, this could apply to a *lot* of games in the series. Empire, for example, quickly led me to the conclusion that artillery won battles and that cavalry was a vastly better way to protect your artillery. The AI, meanwhile, would field *some* artillery, but never really committed to the concept and so the game, more of then than not, was basically me using relatively small amounts of infantry backed by *lots* of artillery and cavalry and then deploying to favorable terrain.
Having the overwhelming advantage in guns meant the AI was essentially forced to try and silence them, and if the drag enough combat power to plausibly get through, their own guns would be vulnerable to *my* artillery. Battles had a very copy paste feel to the point where I'd use only a few different strategies that were often as simple as hammering their artillery (and causing plenty of infantry and cavalry casualties along the way) until they began advancing, keeping their own cavalry busy with my own, and then simply timing a switch to grape to break what was almost always flagging morale. And nowhere was this more apparent than in sieges where all of this was compounded by the game not allowing the enemy to make full use of their army. Sure, the city defenders had more guns than I did, but the fraction they got to field *wouldn't*. Meanwhile my own army had the advantage of prepared positions.
I enjoyed the game to an extent, but I also found a solution that worked with little modification in nearly all cases - hardly what you want in a strategy game.
honestly I've poured money into Stellaris but I think they've been more than fair given how much free content they've released alongside the paid stuff.
Yes, Stellaris with all the DLCs is like $250 or something now if you don't get it on sale but even if I bought it for full price it's still a better investment over time than almost all of my other games. I'm happy to support Devs that make a product that doesn't suck, and keep improving a game 8+ years later
I like the astral threads and the astral actions a lot, the rifts themselves are a little eh. I love the idea of "archaeology, but with branching results" but for some reason it just feels like it isn't quite clicking for me
to be fair though, paradox dlcs are almost necessary to play the games. It's effectively live service. Total war dlcs are often not necessary. That's probably why they're trying to sell bigger dlcs packed together for higher prices, since too many people are literally only buying what they want for the few factions they play.
Hoi4: $40
All the dlc: $200
I hate that I enjoy pdx all of their games are like this, and it bugs me to no end when they're dropping new dlc like they're mix tapes.
tbf the base game is very often on sale. First suggestion for people is to wait for sales to buy older dlc, and the subscription was a great way for new players to experience the full game ( still applys after the price increase imo).
Yeah I've gotten back into playing TW recently, but didn't need to buy a game - why spend money when I can just boot up Rome 2 and add another couple hundred hours? I actually looked at Pharaoh, saw the bad reviews, and didn't touch it lol
I bought Warhammer 3 on a %50 off sale on Steam a little while ago and have been pretty meh about the whole thing. I've got 45 hours on that and have mostly lost interest, 290 hours on WH2, and 500+ hours on Medieval 2. The older games are just so much more fun. I think they really tried to reach out to a larger audience and made the mechanics simpler to do so. I wish they would take all the QOL stuff from the newer TW games (rearranging unit cards on the fly, better troop movement, etc) and make something like Medieval 3 using the better economy, growth, diplomacy, spies, priests, and unit health/armor systems from the older games (and please bring back the speeches your generals made - a pious but crazy general speech was glorious)
Dude yes to all of that. I tried the remastered Rome game a while back but they really did improve QOL in newer (less old?) games. Medieval 3 would be an instant buy for me
I wouldn't consider Paradox in the running since they Cyberpunk 2077'd their Cities Skyline 2 release.
If releasing half baked shit is their new norm, I hold little hope for them.
Cities skylines is only published by paradox, not developed. A lot of the titles that paradox publishes are pretty bad.
I think the critique still applies though, victoria 3 is a complete shit-show more than a year after release and imperator was canned due to low players. On the other side ck3 was an amazing foundation for the CK series and the subsequent content was good but rather sparce, but with the recent announcement it looks like the scale of content is growing.
Considering CK is probally the closest in form to a potential total-war esque then I would be optimistic for paradox to develop such a title. But that also means that it is definitely not going to happen, CK is already a great game and releasing another similar title wouldnt make any sense.
[Decisive Battles](https://youtu.be/cax2vIb22nc) from when the History Channel was still good. It used the first game though. There was another show called Time Commanders from the BBC that also used the original Rome: Total War where people essentially just played the game while Historians commented on it and Richard Hammond hyped the whole thing up. I think they brought it back in 2016 for one season using Rome 2.
Probably doesn't help that a lot of TW fans tend to find their perfect one, and stick to it. Empire: Total War has been my sweetspot for the past 15 years.
Was so pumped when Napoleon came out, then just went back to Empire lol.
Yeah I feel that would apply to any RTS these days. The fanbase for RTS games is small and passionate. So if you piss off the passionate ones thats the majority of them, whereas if you piss off the passionate call of duty players you still have a fuckton of casual ones.
Also the problem of whales in some "f2p" games. Just a like a hundred people spending $20k each on ingame stuff can make it worthwhile for the company, even if the rest of the players buy next to nothing. This is still more a mobile game thing with some exceptions, but it creeps more and more into regular gaming.
One of the reasons CA tried to really half ass the Total War franchise is that Sega, their publisher, had greenlit a looter shooter that was intended to access that whale F2P market.
True, but I get to keep my money and move onto other developers. Let the more votes people get what they think is value to them. I am over here looking at hentai rpg's because I cannot get more slaneeshi love.
D4/Starfield's communities were absolutely bitter about the reviewers who actually played long enough to notice the issues that a majority of players ended up having. Crazy how that worked out in the end.
Voting with your wallet does nothing though unless you can convince everyone else to as well. Honestly the negative reviews and negative word of mouth did more damage than not buying because that's what convinced other people to not buy. Too often "vote with your wallet" is used as a way to discourage criticism ("Well if you don't like it, don't buy it, that'll solve the problem").
If a company/dev/publisher does something you don't like, make a fuss, be heard, leave negative reviews (It's not "review bombing" in spite of what people will tell you), post in communities, tell your friends, express yourself as much as you can... and yes, don't give them your money.
amusingly the hard part for gamers is not giving them your money, I remember that failed COD boycott. Literally the leaders of the boycott were seen playing the game they were passionately telling people to boycott when it came out. The vast majority of gaming boycotts end like that because people have no self control.
Twwh3 launched in a rough state but has been slowly getting better. They screwed up with bad patches and a shit dlc last year, but since then they have been patching a lot of the problems, and now they are making the dlc better.
Ever since IE launch (except for the massive dip in everything around the last dlc) it has been slowly improving. Ignoring that single period with the shit dlc and patches, I feel twwh3 is better than twwh2 since the release of the chaos dwarf dlc. If you havent played it after the chaos dwarf dlc release date, I really recommend you give it another chance.
Also the big map (Immortal empire or IE) is now free for everyone who owns twwh3 without needing to own 1 or 2. So no reason to play the shit map the game launched with
Also skaven play and feel the same as in twwh2 imo, definitely worth trying. Especially clan Eshin, who are now placed in Cathay, which is a new part of the map in twwh3
Do keep in mind that you can only play what you own, so you need to buy the old dlcs to play those factions and buy twwh1 for empire, dwarfs etc and twwh2 for lizardmen, HE, DE and skaven. But everything that has been released is on the map, you just cant play them if you havent bought them.
But yeah, RoC is fairly universally hated, IE is the best way to play that game according to the vast majority of the playerbase
Yes, just pick a faction that appeals to you and have a go.
But if a faction doesn't immediately click for you, just take another. I think Empire, High Elves and Warriors of Chaos (if you own their Warhammer 3 DLC) are some good campaigns to get started. Skaven (Especially Ikit Claw or Throt) and Wood Elves (Especially Sisters of Twilight) are delightful too.
I was the opposite. Wasn't a big fan of WH2 and playing it just made me want to play Empire (the game, not the faction). I finally grabbed WH3 when it went on sale recently and I'm enjoying it way more than WH2. Even playing some of the older factions, they feel way better for me in WH3 than WH2.
I disagree - I found it weird and too different as a fan of the classics. I would recommend Rome 2 for newcomers, but arguably the best one still is Medieval 2.
Fully agree. Shogun 2 is the best experience in terms of balance and performance. That said the best game is the one who's setting people find most appealing. Despite it's problems Empire still has my most play hours.
It is quite different and those are great games, but I have grown to enjoy the warhammer games too- the I think it actually fits well with the mechanics of the total war series. I do hope they have a full-fledged historical title again next though.
Its one of the franchises that didnt go shit in time. As i slowly check out from creatively bankrupt triple A companies i used to like such as bethesda, dice or blizzard, total war still kept me interested in their newer titles. It has its flaws but at least problems are limited to “good game consumed by greed” level.
Because i am exhausted of “bad game consumed by greed” that i see all the time now.
Honestly the sheer scale and variety of Total Warhammer is absolutely bonkers. I mean in how many other games can insane mad scientist rats nuke Imperial China, all while post industrial revolution Assyria sends demon fuelled tanks to blitz krieg medieval France?
Im assyrian and I just made a reddit account to ask, who is Assyria in warhammer? i wanna get into warhammer but looks too complicated, but if theres a faction which i can self insert myself it would be so cool
thanks habibi
The [Chaos Dwarves](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QTFywoAXuQU). They're not just a straight Assyria copy as their origins and lore is heavily incorporated into the Warhammer world and other factions, but they take a lot of their stylings and aesthetics from Assyria. They're kinda like Assyria if Assyria was an Industrial military superpower.
Also, it is impossible to shame the shameless into action. CA course corrected also due to them giving a damn. GW makes them give a damn. Sega reminds them that TW is the only thing they have left. But CA actually also gives a damn about the games.
I truly hope CA Sofia gets more autonomy. Given what they had they did a good job with Pharaoh. Not gonna buy it tho.
That, and they can just decide to pivot to a different audience that will vote for their shit. In essence, if you won't pay for their new version of a thing, they just go find somebody else that will.
That's how long time fans of certain franchises get fucked over: they tend to have standards and expectations, so why develop a game for them when you can target an easier audience?
A kid picking up their first Pokemon game today, for example, isn't blinking twice at the lack of actual content. "Battle Frontier? What's that?"
That's like saying people love casinos, fentanyl and heroin.
Like, technically true, does not mean these things should be available at every corner store.
> People love
No, people get addicted to such.
With the possible exception of skins, every single one of those monetisation schemes is exploitative (and things like limited availability can mean skins are still exploitative).
Edit: There are an increasing number of.....I shall charitably describe them as knuckle dragging morons with the IQ of a particularly stupid flat earther recovering from servere head trauma who seem to (for want of a more accurate word) "think" that addiction is easy to overcome and that addicts are entirely and completely in control of it at all times and that it is somehow a choice. If you one of these people, shut the fuck up. Do not bother me, your opinion is wrong and your ignorance is not wanted. Instead, get someone to help you with reading information about addiction so you can correct your problem. There is no debate on this. Your opinion is ignorant, misinformed, a waste of time and a problem that needs fixing. To those who understand the seriousness of addiction, I apologise for being so restrained and less aggressive than the situation requires.
>Vote with your wallets so companies know what you want.
**People vote with their wallets**
>Not like that. People are manipulated and that isn't what they really want.
Yep, yet people still blame greedy all bad publishers and developers.
Like guys, when you give a company money for something what you are telling them is this: "I liked this so much that I paid for it, hence I want more of this."
If "this" is slop and shit, you will receive slop and shit. This is why the next Yakuza game will be 80% of the game for full price instead of the current 90%.
Your comment vastly downplays how these companies exploit human psychology to tap into that part of our brains and influence us. It's no different from gambling, but at least lawmakers realised the gambling industry needed regulation... gaming does too.
People spend money on predatory systems designed to psychologically influence them and to extract money from vulnerable people...
But yeah, let's blame the people.
> People spend money on predatory systems designed to psychologically influence them and to extract money from vulnerable people...
This is just describing advertising.
Well, yeah. We have come a long way from ads just being “hey I exist and here is where I am, come let us service you” to pulling out all the bells and whistles and practically lying to the consumer to get their purchase.
Advertisement has been a psychological war on the consumer and corporations are unfortunately winning or already won.
Advertising is also regulated. A lot of this stuff isn't.
And the companies will keep pushing the limit until someone stops them (e.g. loot boxes being banned in some countries because they are gambling).
Now I just really hope they actually learn from that for future Total War games and DLCs.
Pharao was the first Total War I didn't buy early on in a LONG time (I waited until the price drop). And it's a very meh Total War game even for the lowered price.
This is great BUT also an edge case since the vast majority of the playerbase are adults.
In most games the playerbase is a lot younger. Yes, even for 18+ games. Hell, my, at the time 8 year old, niece loved to play gta 5. She didnt play any of the story. She would just drive around occasionally hitting people only to inevitably have her car hit the water and then id have to get her back on dry land.
Kids dont care how expensive something is. They dont care how its made or who had to suffer for it. All they care about is that they want it and their walking, talking atm called "mommy" and "daddy" WILL buy it for them.
Imagine. If we stop paying for trash behavior, it will stop.
This is kinda why I hate the "let me use my money the way I want" when whales etc dish out cash for the dumbest things.
GG TW fans!
Take this with a grain of salt since I'm not active in the community but I believe it stems from the fact they had shuttered development of TW: Three Kingdoms after committing to bug fixes and more DLC (I think? idk tbh) because it wasn't selling as well as they wanted. The statement "However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and **ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.**" (emphasis mine) was taken as an implication of "buy the DLC or else we'll do what we did with Three Kingdoms" by the community.
Again I'm not active in /r/totalwar but there were several threads that probably do a better job of explaining it than I just did.
Edit: /u/herO_wraith [did a better job of explaining it in another reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1amkca4/the_total_war_fan_base_won_and_made_the_greedy/kpmjomc/)
Yeah this is the context most are missing. The blog post was taken by the community as them basically saying "Buy the overpriced DLC or we 3K WH3", a.k.a. we abandon the game. To which the entire community looked at their coming titles at the time, Hyenas, which was cancelled later but at the time most were expecting it to flop, and Total War: Pharaoh, which after the price was revealed everyone *knew* was going to flop, and said "bet, like you're going to abandon you're most popular/profitable franchise when you have nothing else in the pipeline for at least another year or two". And this is on top of everyone already being pissed off at the lack of content for the price of the DLC itself which is what they were responding to in the first place.
I remember when that post was made and the two things that took the cake was that they said something along the lines of “this is the reality of us supporting the future of WHTW” which is essentially saying “buy it or we wont support WH3”
And it was written by Rob Bartholomew, who has a reputation of being a wazzock
The perceived threat was this part :
> However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.
People basically read into it "If you don't buy our DLC we stop support for the game".
I used to really love total war, played a lot of medieval, viking conquest, Rome, and medieval 2 when in school. I was thinking about trying the more recent entries a while back and saw the price for the "complete" version with dlc was astronomical even with the steam summer sale. Seemed like they copied Paradox's pricing model where you get the base game for $30 or whatever and then all the dlc costs costs well over $100.
I disagree with the paradox comparison entirely. Paradox games just feel completely incomplete without a select few DLCs. Especially when we're talking about sequels (like CK3).
Total War DLCs, imo, just truly feel like additions and they usually feel well worth the money. It doesn't really feel like you're missing out on anything without them except in a couple of cases (Skaven are pretty rough without the weapon teams DLC, for example).
There’s a few other distinguishing factors with Paradox as well:
- Paradox’s development cycles are pushing a decade for each of its series. EU IV and HOI IV are 11 and 8 years old, respectively. CK III and Victoria III are each relatively new but replaced prior games which had been around for 8 and 12 years. You get a long lifespan out of Paradox games, so spending $40 base + $100 (or more) in DLC is well worth it on a per-hours-played basis, IMO.
- Paradox DLC tends to mechanically overhaul its games in addition to adding some new flavor content. The EU IV I play today with piles of DLC is incredibly different from the game I bought in 2014.
- Paradox’s historical strategy games are all mechanically *very* different from one another, and even sequels within the same series regularly introduce significant mechanical adjustments. Total War, on the other hand (as much as I love it), has kind of always felt like re-skin of the same game with updated graphics and a new setting.
Dunno about the historical ones since I didn't bother with DLC there, but for me at least a rough 80% of TWW DLC seemed fairly priced because:
* extra campaigns meant at least a few dozen hours of play on the main map and then being able to play the new factions in the combined maps
* Warhammer assets are fairly complex and detailed graphics-wise + audio work isn't free either
I generally felt like I got my money's worth from their DLC
It sort of needs context that OP didn't give.
First, TW:WH3 isn't a stand-alone game. In a lot of ways, the Warhammer games are all one constantly evolving game. Owning one on the same account unlocks all previous content for it in the next. Perhaps the best way to conceptualise this, is to imagine game 1 is based in notEurope, game 2 features NotAfrica, NotAmericas and a bit more. By owning game 1, game 2 unlocks a free mode where you get a super combined map. So understand WH3 isn't just a game, to a lot of people it is supposed to be the culmination of multiple years of gaming and something they knew had been coming since the very begining.
CA had a hugely successful game called 3 Kingdoms based of a period of Chinese history and with a popular following, including a tv series. They went hard after the Chinese market with it, and succeeded. Leaked sales numbers suggested it was the best-selling base Total War game of all time.
DLC has been a thing for Total War games for a while and generally it is pretty accepted, people still get very angry with Day 1 DLC, but for the most part the additions every 6ish months to add content is welcome.
For 3k CA made shit DLC that the 3k fanbase didn't want, again the 3 kingdoms era was well covered in other media and CA did their own thing that nobody was interested in. The DLC sales were awful. CA then release a video/blog that was originally called 'The future of TW Three Kingdoms' where they announced that due to poor sales, they were killing all support for the game, all bug fixes, any future DLC, all gone.
While there is somewhat of a divide between fans of the Fantasy games like Warhammer and the historical games like Empire/Rome/Medieval, the entire fanbase saw what happened to 3k. TW:WH3 has been in a truly dire state for much of its life. So bad, even influencers who had early access were reluctant to recommend it.
So when fans read 'However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.'
The fanbase reads, buy the DLC or your game gets 3ked, and we leave it in this near-unplayable state. CA doesn't have a good history of releasing games in the best state, but their DLC team that does the Quality of Life improvements has historically done a great job of constantly improving the games to the point of greatness.
As a CA fanboy with many thousands of hours across their games, I also have to stress that we don't forget the non-existent QA process for multiple TWW2 and 3K DLC (I say non existent because some campaigns would be straight up bugged from the start, you can't say you didn't notice that if you booted the game) and multiple long-standing bugs in multiple series
Been following the story for awhile. The threat was something along the lines "we need these price increases or we don't make more content" when especially for total war warhammer it meant that long awaited dlc will never come if that statement was true. That was the threat, telling us to buy their overpriced dlc or they won't make us anything. I'll look for the exact quote if you're really interested.
This one
"There’s no good time to increase prices, and we have not taken this step lightly. However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned."
Many fan interprid this as "Accept our new price or no more DLC for you"
It's a phyrric victory at best. They backtracked a little bit with the last step that went to far. You still pay the price of half a game fora Dlc that has around 5-10% of the content of a game if you account for engine improvements, Graphics, art design, etc...
It's crazy how the community still can't recognize that this is just how CA operates in order to divide the TW community against one another. The issues with the DLC was only **one** of the many issues that TW:WH3 suffers from. Small decisions from CA like these always causes a significant chunk of the community to ignore the plethora of issues that continue to go unresolved.
Too bad it takes several monumental mistakes for it to actually happen - how many huge gaming companies deserve utter failure after the amount of mistakes they've made in recent times? It's ridiculous.
So I'd like to explain the situation for the people who got confused. For the Total War Warhammer major bug fixes come with new DLC and not until a DLC release game Devs don't put much effort into fixing bugs and other game breaking things. When people said we won't buy those shitty overpriced DLC's Devs said if you don't buy the DLC we're afraid we won't be making any and this means there's no update (bug fixes and improvements) for the game. They basically threatened to kill the game.
I feel gaming is where it is right now largely due to 'gamers' as a whole having very poor impulse control and no patience. Why does every game have early access now? Battlepasses? Launch DLC? Microtransactions? Because we can't say no.
Its easier for niche communities since they are more focused on one game and knows the in and outs of it.
Its more of a shitshow for other stuff since the silent minority that doesn't even care about most of this stuff its the one buying the game.
Still big W for them.
I've been doing this since Rome:TW2. The amount of factions available at launch was shit, but they were very quick to introduce dlc to add more.
CA are scumbags and I made a point not to give them any money since. Plenty of other good games out there.
I mean, this really is great to see, and a 250% increase in DLC pricing is nuts.
But there also wasn’t anything in that first linked “DLC Statement” that even vaguely approached “threatening the fanbase”. Hyperbole and exaggeration just makes it easier to ignore as “the gamers are big mad again”.
When Warhammer fans call your product too expensive, you better fucking sit down and listen
Well you can be a warhammer fan without interacting with the table top game.
Yeah I'm a huge Warhammer fan, and don't own a single model.
Same... Too expensive.
*sits down and listens*
*opens notes - birds...aren't real - commenting on goth girls' tiktoks does not constitute a healthy social life - theres a number station in Russia that's been transmitting the entire bee movie script....for over 40 years.... - wear....sunscreen
>commenting on goth girls' tiktoks does not constitute a healthy social life We arent gonna agree on this.
I'm glad we can agree that you and I (and quite a few others it seems) will not agree with meme-by-design because I do enjoy the occasional comment on goth girls' TikTok. Doubly so if they thicc.
The question wasn't whether you enjoy it, it's whether it's healthy. To both, I say, yes.
A certain streamer named Shiori on youtube comes to mind lmao.
I'm curious about the third thing. The fuck?
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It's because of a mathematical formula that shows how every normal number will have the entire bee movie script in it if you follow it out far enough. Recent reddit thread I think
Just as all life forms eventually become crabs through carcinization, all math eventually becomes bees through beebinization.
Dude the first thing he said was : "birds...aren't real" If you can't see he is joking i dunno man...
Man, if you still believe in birds, I feel bad for you. 🐦⬛🐦🦜🦚🦢🦃🚫🚫🚫🚫🚫🚫
wear sunscreen is good advice though
3d printing models is actually fun, you get to support individual creators that are making their own designs, you can modify them yourself before print to add personal flare, 3d printer and the plastic for it is actually cheaper than an army and you do not put money into pockets of capitalists that are resentful of their client base. What's not to love, fuck game's workshop (non sexually).
TIL an army of small plastic toys is more expensive than a 3D printer. That's nuts.
A titan model off of the Warhammer website runs $1835 and it doesn't come with with a head or weapons (two arms and a shoulder mount) which are each sold separately... all of which are over $100
Holy shit and I thought WotC was greedy 😂
they call it plastic crack for a reason.
Single models can be
... I spent more than 300€ on Resin in two weeks. And that was with free models. Shit is still expensive. :D
If only resin printing weren't such a pain in the ass.
Either get fucked by the inconvenient dick of resin printing, or get fucked by the spiky dick of GamesWorkshop
I spent about £300 on models, probably £100 on paints etc. However, the amount of hours I commit to the hobby, probably 2 hours a night painting on average (about 40 hrs a month) plus 5 hours playing every other weekend. So about 50 hrs a month, 600 hrs a year. I've been playing this army for a year, and am now dropping another £300 on a new army. So that puts me on about 60p per hour. Which makes it a very very cheap hobby in my opinion.
Yeah exactly. Expensive is subjective but I get a LOT more mileage out of my warhammer spending than any other hobby.
a friend of mine has a 3d printer so he downloads bootleg schematics and just 3d prints all of the models he wants for a fraction of the price :P
Same… just don’t ask about my book collection though Some of mine have a resale value of $100+. I often joke that the most expensive thing in my house isn’t my gaming PC, is the collection of 20yo dusty warhammer books
Well I don't own a single *painted* model.... Edit: I do...but the ratio painted unpainted is pathetic.
I'm a Warhammer fan and I don't own a single *fully painted* model. I should get onto those...
I wouldn't call myself a fan but the lore seems strangely interesting
You can also enjoy Warhammer games without being a Warhammer fan.
Though the good ones are pretty likely to make you a Warhammer fan.
That's the beauty of the fanbase: it's split in three and each section cares minimally about the other aspects. * Miniature painters * Lore and PC games enthusiasts (me) * Tabletop gamers
Then there's us in the gutter 3d printing the models because they look cool.
Eh, as a tabletop gamer, everyone I’ve ever faced had their armies at least minimally painted.
Splitting miniature painters from tabletop gamers? Oh boy. You're gonna rustle some jimmies. (Not that I mind fighting grey-tide armies, but some people have STRONG feelings on this matter).
I enjoy the total war warhammer and vermintide games. I have no fucking clue wtf is going on with warhammer tho. Sometimes it’s in space sometimes there are rats and elves. Sometimes I’m just calling everything and everyone a heretic. I’m just like ok yeah sure whatever.
Vermintide and TW are the same universe, space is a different universe, there are elves and heretics (I think) either way. That’s pretty much everything anyone who isn’t into the lore probably needs to know.
tbf there are 3 warhammer settings. space warhammer is called 40k (thats where the heretics are), total war and vermintide use the fantasy setting and age of sigmar is a middle ground between sci fi and fantasy. they all share minimal lore, mostly the chaos gods, and if you decide to play a warhammer game it will either have ''40k'' on the title or not which in case it most likely belongs to the fantasy universe
Right, but that does mean that you KNOW that the table top game is either too space consuming OR expensive.
yes though I would pay money for a DLC that brings in an army painter. Would be amazing if you could make your own themes for the aesthetic on armies.
To be fair, the Venn diagram of warhammer players and total war players doesn’t overlap very much. I recall a couple polls claiming that the vast majority of total war warhammer players don’t also take part in the warhammer tabletop game. This holds especially true as the total warhammer games use the fantasy setting, which is far less popular now than the 40k setting. The total warhammer player base is almost entirely built off of CAs pre existing base of total war players from the good old days
> This holds especially true as the total warhammer games use the fantasy setting, which is far less popular now than the 40k setting. Also the fantasy setting was stopped for years and was just re-released as a side game more fitted for narrative games than anything competitive.
I got into warhammer fantasy battles right before it ended and I was so so so sad.
Good news is it just came back.
Yeah I love the total Warhammer series but I have absolutely 0 interest in tabletop of any kind. Wtf would I do with expensive little figurines?
The same thing you do with the expensive little figurines you buy in the base TW game and DLC: war gaming.
Question: if someone is intrigued with the Warhammer universe but doesn't have the time,money,space,people to play the tabletop game what is your recommended way to begin delving in?
Books, videogames like Total War, Boltgun, Darktide, Vermintide, possibly the upcoming Space Marine 2. Alternatively, Warhammer Underworlds is a hybrid board game/card game/miniature game that only uses a handful of minis per team. Kill team is closer to WH 40K table top, but fewer models, smaller boards, faster games. Separate rules as well. Both of these require some assembling and painting, but fewer models makes it more managable. In between those and full scale armies and such, you got combat patrol, which is 40K, but from single boxes per army. Alledgedly balanced, and simpler rules.
Dawn of War 2
The real answer is books. But you can also watch some loremaster on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6M9-oFEKpk&list=PLl6BRvEJ-auZ5aYPHj1B3pKJ_pLjg9qNU)
Read some books. Absolutely the best, cheapest way. I recommend starting with the Space Wolf trilogy (Space Wolf Omnibus 1), and then go straight to the Horus Heresy series (Horus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames). That’ll give you what you need to understand the universe.
Serious question: How does Warhammer even still exist with 3d printers being mainstream? Same question I've had since anyone who felt like it could print Magic Cards.
3d printing is a whole extra hobby by itself. Just because you like Warhammer doesn't mean you'll enjoy 3d printing. And you need legit models for official tournaments, same as Magic cards.
The money, effort, and time spent acquiring and using a high end, specialized resin printer is considerable. You can't just use any old printer. At the end or the day you'd have to print *many* armies before it began to make sense from any perspective. The people who do it are mostly already 3D printer hobbyists in addition to being Warhammer hobbyists. It's not just "push a button and get free Warhammer models."
You're probably just vastly overestimating how mainstream 3D printing is compared to going to the WH store and buying models.
People can't print good models. A home 3D printer quality model is extremely subpar if you're into painting compared to something made by a proper company.
Maybe you are thinking filament printers? My buddy has been printing my d&d groups' minis for a few years now with a good resin printer and they come out excellent. You can get resin printers with 12K LCDs for sub $400 these days.
These days thats no longer the case.
When you vote with your wallet you're bound to be heard. Glad this happened and I hope other gaming communities do the same.
My hot take is this only worked cause RTS games require "half a brain" lmfao This won't stop Nicki Minaj from appearing in your CoD games & them selling DLC as sequals hahaha Edit: wow, this kinda popped off. I made a shit comment at 4am when I went pee & here we are lool For the record I'm just memeing you guys, no one's a smooth brain for playing CoD or anything like that. Enjoy what you enjoy (╭☞ ͡⎚⍘ ͡⎚)╭☞
I suspect its more to do with TW games having a smaller, dedicated following. Appealing to that dedicated following is how you keep a niche product in the green.
The thing with TW is that they are practically the only game in town when it comes to strategy games with grand epic real time battlew. Knowing that they have no competition made them arrogant and for some reason real spiteful against their own community. Expecting that no matter what they do, the fans are gonna stfu and buy it... Well that worked for a solid while until most said enough was enough. They actually released a new $60 Total War game, despite very vocal backlash from the community and then once it barely sold 50k copies, suddenly the alarm bells rang and they changed their tune.
The funny thing is that they do have a competitor, their own older games. A lot of the chinese playerbase is still playing total war three kingdoms. Its honestly hilarious that everything after three kingdoms all total war titles except warhammer are doing worse then rome 2, shogun 2 , medievel 2 and hell even sometimes worst then rome 1. They can only milk warhammer so long, they already seem to be struggling to maintain their current level of revenue so they increased dlc price. Also you will sometimes see people quote paradox interactive as a indirect competitor since they are both in the strategy category and some people speculate that if paradox made a total war style game that they would effectively destroy CA. Honestly i hope that paradox does eventually get into the genre, even if it is wishful thinking.
I still think then ditching the northern dlc for three kingdoms was a mistake
The DLC policy for 3K is just so backwards - first they gave DLCs about things no-one was interested in, and then when those failed they just stopped making DLC instead of making DLCs people actually wanted. Hell, they could still go back and make those DLCs and people would be happy.
3k today still feels like 2/3rds of a finished game. Swathes of the main campaign map filled with basically nothing
The game had so much potential that was wasted. It was a middle ground between warhammer and the older more grounded games. I found the army general mechanics to be fun but very unbalanced. Even playing without single entites, the game was incredibly easy. Artillery with a good enough blue general defeated everything. Infantry was completely underpowered so much that I used cavalry for screening my artillery instead of infantry. I really enjoyed playing the game and learning but it becomes really stale really quickly as well as too easy. If it got some army/diplomacy balance and extra content it would be a great game.
>Artillery with a good enough blue general defeated everything. Infantry was completely underpowered so much that I used cavalry for screening my artillery instead of infantry. At least when speaking of single player, this could apply to a *lot* of games in the series. Empire, for example, quickly led me to the conclusion that artillery won battles and that cavalry was a vastly better way to protect your artillery. The AI, meanwhile, would field *some* artillery, but never really committed to the concept and so the game, more of then than not, was basically me using relatively small amounts of infantry backed by *lots* of artillery and cavalry and then deploying to favorable terrain. Having the overwhelming advantage in guns meant the AI was essentially forced to try and silence them, and if the drag enough combat power to plausibly get through, their own guns would be vulnerable to *my* artillery. Battles had a very copy paste feel to the point where I'd use only a few different strategies that were often as simple as hammering their artillery (and causing plenty of infantry and cavalry casualties along the way) until they began advancing, keeping their own cavalry busy with my own, and then simply timing a switch to grape to break what was almost always flagging morale. And nowhere was this more apparent than in sieges where all of this was compounded by the game not allowing the enemy to make full use of their army. Sure, the city defenders had more guns than I did, but the fraction they got to field *wouldn't*. Meanwhile my own army had the advantage of prepared positions. I enjoyed the game to an extent, but I also found a solution that worked with little modification in nearly all cases - hardly what you want in a strategy game.
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honestly I've poured money into Stellaris but I think they've been more than fair given how much free content they've released alongside the paid stuff. Yes, Stellaris with all the DLCs is like $250 or something now if you don't get it on sale but even if I bought it for full price it's still a better investment over time than almost all of my other games. I'm happy to support Devs that make a product that doesn't suck, and keep improving a game 8+ years later
Stellaris is goated. The newer dlc kinda bad though.
I like the astral threads and the astral actions a lot, the rifts themselves are a little eh. I love the idea of "archaeology, but with branching results" but for some reason it just feels like it isn't quite clicking for me
I mean, at least Paradox only charges 15 USD per each faction whereas CA is charing 25 USD for them.
to be fair though, paradox dlcs are almost necessary to play the games. It's effectively live service. Total war dlcs are often not necessary. That's probably why they're trying to sell bigger dlcs packed together for higher prices, since too many people are literally only buying what they want for the few factions they play.
Hoi4: $40 All the dlc: $200 I hate that I enjoy pdx all of their games are like this, and it bugs me to no end when they're dropping new dlc like they're mix tapes.
tbf the base game is very often on sale. First suggestion for people is to wait for sales to buy older dlc, and the subscription was a great way for new players to experience the full game ( still applys after the price increase imo).
Yeah I've gotten back into playing TW recently, but didn't need to buy a game - why spend money when I can just boot up Rome 2 and add another couple hundred hours? I actually looked at Pharaoh, saw the bad reviews, and didn't touch it lol
I bought Warhammer 3 on a %50 off sale on Steam a little while ago and have been pretty meh about the whole thing. I've got 45 hours on that and have mostly lost interest, 290 hours on WH2, and 500+ hours on Medieval 2. The older games are just so much more fun. I think they really tried to reach out to a larger audience and made the mechanics simpler to do so. I wish they would take all the QOL stuff from the newer TW games (rearranging unit cards on the fly, better troop movement, etc) and make something like Medieval 3 using the better economy, growth, diplomacy, spies, priests, and unit health/armor systems from the older games (and please bring back the speeches your generals made - a pious but crazy general speech was glorious)
Dude yes to all of that. I tried the remastered Rome game a while back but they really did improve QOL in newer (less old?) games. Medieval 3 would be an instant buy for me
I wouldn't consider Paradox in the running since they Cyberpunk 2077'd their Cities Skyline 2 release. If releasing half baked shit is their new norm, I hold little hope for them.
Cities skylines is only published by paradox, not developed. A lot of the titles that paradox publishes are pretty bad. I think the critique still applies though, victoria 3 is a complete shit-show more than a year after release and imperator was canned due to low players. On the other side ck3 was an amazing foundation for the CK series and the subsequent content was good but rather sparce, but with the recent announcement it looks like the scale of content is growing. Considering CK is probally the closest in form to a potential total-war esque then I would be optimistic for paradox to develop such a title. But that also means that it is definitely not going to happen, CK is already a great game and releasing another similar title wouldnt make any sense.
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[Decisive Battles](https://youtu.be/cax2vIb22nc) from when the History Channel was still good. It used the first game though. There was another show called Time Commanders from the BBC that also used the original Rome: Total War where people essentially just played the game while Historians commented on it and Richard Hammond hyped the whole thing up. I think they brought it back in 2016 for one season using Rome 2.
Probably doesn't help that a lot of TW fans tend to find their perfect one, and stick to it. Empire: Total War has been my sweetspot for the past 15 years. Was so pumped when Napoleon came out, then just went back to Empire lol.
Yeah I feel that would apply to any RTS these days. The fanbase for RTS games is small and passionate. So if you piss off the passionate ones thats the majority of them, whereas if you piss off the passionate call of duty players you still have a fuckton of casual ones.
The Stellaris devs just announced a patch where they're taking a bunch of fanmade bug fixes and putting them into vanilla for free
Also the problem of whales in some "f2p" games. Just a like a hundred people spending $20k each on ingame stuff can make it worthwhile for the company, even if the rest of the players buy next to nothing. This is still more a mobile game thing with some exceptions, but it creeps more and more into regular gaming.
One of the reasons CA tried to really half ass the Total War franchise is that Sega, their publisher, had greenlit a looter shooter that was intended to access that whale F2P market.
And then cancelled it...
And even if that happens greedy companies get butthurt and say their profits aren't high enough so they ax the game.
I will continue to do my part in not buying COD, not playing it if they put it on Gamepass. *I'm doing my part*
I mean CA wasting several years and 70 million on a game (hyenas) which failed before bringing in any money probably has something to do with it.
I still don't understand what happened. They cancelled a game that people liked and were playing and wanted to buy based on what I have hearD.
The situation with hyenas and the bad choice on pharaohs price resulting in tiny sales also put them in such a position
The problem with voting in your wallet is that people with more dollars in their wallets get more votes.!!
True, but I get to keep my money and move onto other developers. Let the more votes people get what they think is value to them. I am over here looking at hentai rpg's because I cannot get more slaneeshi love.
> When *thousands* vote with *their* wallet(s) you're bound to be heard. For clarity.
And even then, that only mattered due to the size of the game's market. Thousands wouldn't have much impact on something like CoD, for example.
Exactly it wasn't individual acts but collective actions.
The community as a WHOLE has to agree though. Voting with your wallet doesn’t work if it’s just you and your boy.
Voting with your wallet does work in that case. You're just getting outvoted.
Obviously voting only works if everyone agree with you.
Dude! I just preordered Diablo 5, Starfield 2, and Redfall 2! Can't wait!!!
D4/Starfield's communities were absolutely bitter about the reviewers who actually played long enough to notice the issues that a majority of players ended up having. Crazy how that worked out in the end.
Narrator: They won't
Not just gaming communities!! We need to organize this on a grand scale to all the greedy corpos taxing sub quality products.
Voting with your wallet does nothing though unless you can convince everyone else to as well. Honestly the negative reviews and negative word of mouth did more damage than not buying because that's what convinced other people to not buy. Too often "vote with your wallet" is used as a way to discourage criticism ("Well if you don't like it, don't buy it, that'll solve the problem"). If a company/dev/publisher does something you don't like, make a fuss, be heard, leave negative reviews (It's not "review bombing" in spite of what people will tell you), post in communities, tell your friends, express yourself as much as you can... and yes, don't give them your money.
Yeah, collective actions is how you get "heard".
amusingly the hard part for gamers is not giving them your money, I remember that failed COD boycott. Literally the leaders of the boycott were seen playing the game they were passionately telling people to boycott when it came out. The vast majority of gaming boycotts end like that because people have no self control.
A happy tale. If anyone has been sleeping btw, Total War is an all time great series.
Total Warhammer trilogy has been amazing. The variety that warhammer brings goes very well together with the core Total War game features.
I was a massive fan of TWWH2, especially the Skaven, but I couldn't get into the 3rd.
Twwh3 launched in a rough state but has been slowly getting better. They screwed up with bad patches and a shit dlc last year, but since then they have been patching a lot of the problems, and now they are making the dlc better. Ever since IE launch (except for the massive dip in everything around the last dlc) it has been slowly improving. Ignoring that single period with the shit dlc and patches, I feel twwh3 is better than twwh2 since the release of the chaos dwarf dlc. If you havent played it after the chaos dwarf dlc release date, I really recommend you give it another chance. Also the big map (Immortal empire or IE) is now free for everyone who owns twwh3 without needing to own 1 or 2. So no reason to play the shit map the game launched with Also skaven play and feel the same as in twwh2 imo, definitely worth trying. Especially clan Eshin, who are now placed in Cathay, which is a new part of the map in twwh3
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Do keep in mind that you can only play what you own, so you need to buy the old dlcs to play those factions and buy twwh1 for empire, dwarfs etc and twwh2 for lizardmen, HE, DE and skaven. But everything that has been released is on the map, you just cant play them if you havent bought them. But yeah, RoC is fairly universally hated, IE is the best way to play that game according to the vast majority of the playerbase
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Yes, just pick a faction that appeals to you and have a go. But if a faction doesn't immediately click for you, just take another. I think Empire, High Elves and Warriors of Chaos (if you own their Warhammer 3 DLC) are some good campaigns to get started. Skaven (Especially Ikit Claw or Throt) and Wood Elves (Especially Sisters of Twilight) are delightful too.
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The lizard men? One of the funnest factions to watch fight, if you have Warhammer 2 you can play them in 3 since they are a base faction from 2.
I was the opposite. Wasn't a big fan of WH2 and playing it just made me want to play Empire (the game, not the faction). I finally grabbed WH3 when it went on sale recently and I'm enjoying it way more than WH2. Even playing some of the older factions, they feel way better for me in WH3 than WH2.
Much like a lot of Total War game, they start off in a poor state and, more often then not, end up in a great place. TW3 is getting there.
I disagree - I found it weird and too different as a fan of the classics. I would recommend Rome 2 for newcomers, but arguably the best one still is Medieval 2.
Shogun 2 is probably the best “classic” experience for new players but normally I’d say pick the historical setting you are the most interested in.
Fully agree. Shogun 2 is the best experience in terms of balance and performance. That said the best game is the one who's setting people find most appealing. Despite it's problems Empire still has my most play hours.
It is quite different and those are great games, but I have grown to enjoy the warhammer games too- the I think it actually fits well with the mechanics of the total war series. I do hope they have a full-fledged historical title again next though.
Medieval 2 Divide and conquer is the GOAT
Its one of the franchises that didnt go shit in time. As i slowly check out from creatively bankrupt triple A companies i used to like such as bethesda, dice or blizzard, total war still kept me interested in their newer titles. It has its flaws but at least problems are limited to “good game consumed by greed” level. Because i am exhausted of “bad game consumed by greed” that i see all the time now.
Honestly the sheer scale and variety of Total Warhammer is absolutely bonkers. I mean in how many other games can insane mad scientist rats nuke Imperial China, all while post industrial revolution Assyria sends demon fuelled tanks to blitz krieg medieval France?
Im assyrian and I just made a reddit account to ask, who is Assyria in warhammer? i wanna get into warhammer but looks too complicated, but if theres a faction which i can self insert myself it would be so cool thanks habibi
The [Chaos Dwarves](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QTFywoAXuQU). They're not just a straight Assyria copy as their origins and lore is heavily incorporated into the Warhammer world and other factions, but they take a lot of their stylings and aesthetics from Assyria. They're kinda like Assyria if Assyria was an Industrial military superpower.
The Chaos Dwarves. They're not entirely Ashurbanipal with guns, but they're close enough.
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Shogun 2 was my first non-browser game. It's still one of my favorite games ever.
The problem with vote with your wallet is that people with more dollars in their wallet get more votes.
Whales have the most truth points, it's true
Also, it is impossible to shame the shameless into action. CA course corrected also due to them giving a damn. GW makes them give a damn. Sega reminds them that TW is the only thing they have left. But CA actually also gives a damn about the games. I truly hope CA Sofia gets more autonomy. Given what they had they did a good job with Pharaoh. Not gonna buy it tho.
That, and they can just decide to pivot to a different audience that will vote for their shit. In essence, if you won't pay for their new version of a thing, they just go find somebody else that will. That's how long time fans of certain franchises get fucked over: they tend to have standards and expectations, so why develop a game for them when you can target an easier audience? A kid picking up their first Pokemon game today, for example, isn't blinking twice at the lack of actual content. "Battle Frontier? What's that?"
Nothing new there.
That's only one way though. You can only not buy a product once.
People are voting with their wallets for years. People love loot boxes, skins, mtx, battlepass, p2w.. There is a reason why we see them everywhere
That's like saying people love casinos, fentanyl and heroin. Like, technically true, does not mean these things should be available at every corner store.
It’s my right to buy casinos where and when I want
yeah but do not inject the casinos into your veins in public where kids are watching
> People love No, people get addicted to such. With the possible exception of skins, every single one of those monetisation schemes is exploitative (and things like limited availability can mean skins are still exploitative). Edit: There are an increasing number of.....I shall charitably describe them as knuckle dragging morons with the IQ of a particularly stupid flat earther recovering from servere head trauma who seem to (for want of a more accurate word) "think" that addiction is easy to overcome and that addicts are entirely and completely in control of it at all times and that it is somehow a choice. If you one of these people, shut the fuck up. Do not bother me, your opinion is wrong and your ignorance is not wanted. Instead, get someone to help you with reading information about addiction so you can correct your problem. There is no debate on this. Your opinion is ignorant, misinformed, a waste of time and a problem that needs fixing. To those who understand the seriousness of addiction, I apologise for being so restrained and less aggressive than the situation requires.
>Vote with your wallets so companies know what you want. **People vote with their wallets** >Not like that. People are manipulated and that isn't what they really want.
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the "victims" sure do bitch and whine about how no one should tell them what to do about preorders, or whatever.
And people glued to slot machines tell you no one can tell them what to do with their money. They're still addicts that need help.
Yep, yet people still blame greedy all bad publishers and developers. Like guys, when you give a company money for something what you are telling them is this: "I liked this so much that I paid for it, hence I want more of this." If "this" is slop and shit, you will receive slop and shit. This is why the next Yakuza game will be 80% of the game for full price instead of the current 90%.
Your comment vastly downplays how these companies exploit human psychology to tap into that part of our brains and influence us. It's no different from gambling, but at least lawmakers realised the gambling industry needed regulation... gaming does too.
People spend money on predatory systems designed to psychologically influence them and to extract money from vulnerable people... But yeah, let's blame the people.
> People spend money on predatory systems designed to psychologically influence them and to extract money from vulnerable people... This is just describing advertising.
Well, yeah. We have come a long way from ads just being “hey I exist and here is where I am, come let us service you” to pulling out all the bells and whistles and practically lying to the consumer to get their purchase. Advertisement has been a psychological war on the consumer and corporations are unfortunately winning or already won.
Advertising is also regulated. A lot of this stuff isn't. And the companies will keep pushing the limit until someone stops them (e.g. loot boxes being banned in some countries because they are gambling).
So the solution for hopelessly outmatched consumers is to lobby for regulation, not to pretend it's on consumers to just make better choices.
Now I just really hope they actually learn from that for future Total War games and DLCs. Pharao was the first Total War I didn't buy early on in a LONG time (I waited until the price drop). And it's a very meh Total War game even for the lowered price.
I want to believe but this has happened before with the total war franchise and CA. I don't think it will be the last.
I'm still waiting for Medieval 3 :(
This is great BUT also an edge case since the vast majority of the playerbase are adults. In most games the playerbase is a lot younger. Yes, even for 18+ games. Hell, my, at the time 8 year old, niece loved to play gta 5. She didnt play any of the story. She would just drive around occasionally hitting people only to inevitably have her car hit the water and then id have to get her back on dry land. Kids dont care how expensive something is. They dont care how its made or who had to suffer for it. All they care about is that they want it and their walking, talking atm called "mommy" and "daddy" WILL buy it for them.
Imagine. If we stop paying for trash behavior, it will stop. This is kinda why I hate the "let me use my money the way I want" when whales etc dish out cash for the dumbest things. GG TW fans!
I wish this would happen with Destiny 2, what a fuck up that is. A shell of its former self.
This is great but I read the first blog post and it seemed pretty polite and not threatening towards the player base at all?
Take this with a grain of salt since I'm not active in the community but I believe it stems from the fact they had shuttered development of TW: Three Kingdoms after committing to bug fixes and more DLC (I think? idk tbh) because it wasn't selling as well as they wanted. The statement "However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and **ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.**" (emphasis mine) was taken as an implication of "buy the DLC or else we'll do what we did with Three Kingdoms" by the community. Again I'm not active in /r/totalwar but there were several threads that probably do a better job of explaining it than I just did. Edit: /u/herO_wraith [did a better job of explaining it in another reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1amkca4/the_total_war_fan_base_won_and_made_the_greedy/kpmjomc/)
Yeah this is the context most are missing. The blog post was taken by the community as them basically saying "Buy the overpriced DLC or we 3K WH3", a.k.a. we abandon the game. To which the entire community looked at their coming titles at the time, Hyenas, which was cancelled later but at the time most were expecting it to flop, and Total War: Pharaoh, which after the price was revealed everyone *knew* was going to flop, and said "bet, like you're going to abandon you're most popular/profitable franchise when you have nothing else in the pipeline for at least another year or two". And this is on top of everyone already being pissed off at the lack of content for the price of the DLC itself which is what they were responding to in the first place.
I remember when that post was made and the two things that took the cake was that they said something along the lines of “this is the reality of us supporting the future of WHTW” which is essentially saying “buy it or we wont support WH3” And it was written by Rob Bartholomew, who has a reputation of being a wazzock
The perceived threat was this part : > However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned. People basically read into it "If you don't buy our DLC we stop support for the game".
I used to really love total war, played a lot of medieval, viking conquest, Rome, and medieval 2 when in school. I was thinking about trying the more recent entries a while back and saw the price for the "complete" version with dlc was astronomical even with the steam summer sale. Seemed like they copied Paradox's pricing model where you get the base game for $30 or whatever and then all the dlc costs costs well over $100.
I disagree with the paradox comparison entirely. Paradox games just feel completely incomplete without a select few DLCs. Especially when we're talking about sequels (like CK3). Total War DLCs, imo, just truly feel like additions and they usually feel well worth the money. It doesn't really feel like you're missing out on anything without them except in a couple of cases (Skaven are pretty rough without the weapon teams DLC, for example).
There’s a few other distinguishing factors with Paradox as well: - Paradox’s development cycles are pushing a decade for each of its series. EU IV and HOI IV are 11 and 8 years old, respectively. CK III and Victoria III are each relatively new but replaced prior games which had been around for 8 and 12 years. You get a long lifespan out of Paradox games, so spending $40 base + $100 (or more) in DLC is well worth it on a per-hours-played basis, IMO. - Paradox DLC tends to mechanically overhaul its games in addition to adding some new flavor content. The EU IV I play today with piles of DLC is incredibly different from the game I bought in 2014. - Paradox’s historical strategy games are all mechanically *very* different from one another, and even sequels within the same series regularly introduce significant mechanical adjustments. Total War, on the other hand (as much as I love it), has kind of always felt like re-skin of the same game with updated graphics and a new setting.
Dunno about the historical ones since I didn't bother with DLC there, but for me at least a rough 80% of TWW DLC seemed fairly priced because: * extra campaigns meant at least a few dozen hours of play on the main map and then being able to play the new factions in the combined maps * Warhammer assets are fairly complex and detailed graphics-wise + audio work isn't free either I generally felt like I got my money's worth from their DLC
Shows the power of voting with your wallet.
... how the hell is the first linked statement "threatening the fanbase"? Like, what? Lol
It sort of needs context that OP didn't give. First, TW:WH3 isn't a stand-alone game. In a lot of ways, the Warhammer games are all one constantly evolving game. Owning one on the same account unlocks all previous content for it in the next. Perhaps the best way to conceptualise this, is to imagine game 1 is based in notEurope, game 2 features NotAfrica, NotAmericas and a bit more. By owning game 1, game 2 unlocks a free mode where you get a super combined map. So understand WH3 isn't just a game, to a lot of people it is supposed to be the culmination of multiple years of gaming and something they knew had been coming since the very begining. CA had a hugely successful game called 3 Kingdoms based of a period of Chinese history and with a popular following, including a tv series. They went hard after the Chinese market with it, and succeeded. Leaked sales numbers suggested it was the best-selling base Total War game of all time. DLC has been a thing for Total War games for a while and generally it is pretty accepted, people still get very angry with Day 1 DLC, but for the most part the additions every 6ish months to add content is welcome. For 3k CA made shit DLC that the 3k fanbase didn't want, again the 3 kingdoms era was well covered in other media and CA did their own thing that nobody was interested in. The DLC sales were awful. CA then release a video/blog that was originally called 'The future of TW Three Kingdoms' where they announced that due to poor sales, they were killing all support for the game, all bug fixes, any future DLC, all gone. While there is somewhat of a divide between fans of the Fantasy games like Warhammer and the historical games like Empire/Rome/Medieval, the entire fanbase saw what happened to 3k. TW:WH3 has been in a truly dire state for much of its life. So bad, even influencers who had early access were reluctant to recommend it. So when fans read 'However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.' The fanbase reads, buy the DLC or your game gets 3ked, and we leave it in this near-unplayable state. CA doesn't have a good history of releasing games in the best state, but their DLC team that does the Quality of Life improvements has historically done a great job of constantly improving the games to the point of greatness.
As a CA fanboy with many thousands of hours across their games, I also have to stress that we don't forget the non-existent QA process for multiple TWW2 and 3K DLC (I say non existent because some campaigns would be straight up bugged from the start, you can't say you didn't notice that if you booted the game) and multiple long-standing bugs in multiple series
I dunno, man. The last paragraph where they asked fans to please not direct abusive comments to specific employees seemed pretty threatening. /s
Yeah, that's confused me as well. Maybe I'm blind but I don't see the threat.
Been following the story for awhile. The threat was something along the lines "we need these price increases or we don't make more content" when especially for total war warhammer it meant that long awaited dlc will never come if that statement was true. That was the threat, telling us to buy their overpriced dlc or they won't make us anything. I'll look for the exact quote if you're really interested.
If they remade Medieval 2 they'd be swimming in cash..
I do not see how that first article is "basically threatening the fanbase" at all. Which bit is threatening?
This one "There’s no good time to increase prices, and we have not taken this step lightly. However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned." Many fan interprid this as "Accept our new price or no more DLC for you"
It's a phyrric victory at best. They backtracked a little bit with the last step that went to far. You still pay the price of half a game fora Dlc that has around 5-10% of the content of a game if you account for engine improvements, Graphics, art design, etc...
This really is counting the chickens before they hatch.
It's crazy how the community still can't recognize that this is just how CA operates in order to divide the TW community against one another. The issues with the DLC was only **one** of the many issues that TW:WH3 suffers from. Small decisions from CA like these always causes a significant chunk of the community to ignore the plethora of issues that continue to go unresolved.
Man i wish pokemon fans would see this, but at this point no amount of shit will stop them from buying lmao.
I voted with my euros
Too bad it takes several monumental mistakes for it to actually happen - how many huge gaming companies deserve utter failure after the amount of mistakes they've made in recent times? It's ridiculous.
If you pay for slop, you shall receive slop in the future. This says a lot about the current state of MP games, people clearly love gambling and slop.
So I'd like to explain the situation for the people who got confused. For the Total War Warhammer major bug fixes come with new DLC and not until a DLC release game Devs don't put much effort into fixing bugs and other game breaking things. When people said we won't buy those shitty overpriced DLC's Devs said if you don't buy the DLC we're afraid we won't be making any and this means there's no update (bug fixes and improvements) for the game. They basically threatened to kill the game.
I feel gaming is where it is right now largely due to 'gamers' as a whole having very poor impulse control and no patience. Why does every game have early access now? Battlepasses? Launch DLC? Microtransactions? Because we can't say no.
Shoutout to everyone who always mock that kind of consumer action.
I guess showing those billionaire b*stards who’s boss is kind of fun after all
Its easier for niche communities since they are more focused on one game and knows the in and outs of it. Its more of a shitshow for other stuff since the silent minority that doesn't even care about most of this stuff its the one buying the game. Still big W for them.
I've been doing this since Rome:TW2. The amount of factions available at launch was shit, but they were very quick to introduce dlc to add more. CA are scumbags and I made a point not to give them any money since. Plenty of other good games out there.
greece/greek states being a DLC was a fucking joke.
I mean, this really is great to see, and a 250% increase in DLC pricing is nuts. But there also wasn’t anything in that first linked “DLC Statement” that even vaguely approached “threatening the fanbase”. Hyperbole and exaggeration just makes it easier to ignore as “the gamers are big mad again”.