Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[Tyranicon]

Those people have always been entry level dumbo jobbers that simply serve as a barrier between the devs and the community, because devs also can't handle criticism or regular old Internet bantz. They are mouthpieces of whatever the higher ups want to say.

I'm much rather devs interact with the playerbase than some glorified social media intern.

Much more entertaining that way.

 

[Fedora Master]

WOW NOBODY COULD HAVE POSSIBLY PREDICTED THIS

 

[Lacrymas]

We knew this from the start, the devs never hid it.

 

[Fedora Master]

We knew this from the start, the devs never hid it.

In a sense your beloved Troy is killing the studio. How does this make you feel?

 

[Gromoer]

Chorfs underperformed and wasnt profitable or wasnt as profitable as they wanted.

It’s not chorfs that underperformed, it’s the TWarhammer 3 that is:

Spoiler

 

[Lacrymas]

In a sense your beloved Troy is killing the studio. How does this make you feel?

I don't think Troy has anything to do with this. It's all on CA's business decisions after WH3 came out. Pharaoh would've been much better as DLC for Troy and it would've probably sold the same amount, just without the gleeful Schadenfreude at Pharaoh's failure. It's ridiculous to me that anyone at CA thought turning Pharaoh into a standalone game was a good idea. People like redemption stories, so why not develop it as a Troy DLC and market it as the first step towards a unified Bronze Age game that has both historical and mythological modes? Troy is already in a good state, it just needed some spring cleaning and Pharaoh's inclusion as DLC would've been a great excuse to do it, so people might've been more inclined to try it and see that for themselves, especially in light of how bad WH3 is. I dislike calling people stupid because it's usually not the case, but I'm convinced there are really dumb people in CA's management. They are so stupid and short-sighted they can't even be greedy properly. I'm also taking into account the abysmal, extremely baffling treatment of WH3.

 

[Average Manatee]

Strange to hear that Chorfs underperformed. They were both well designed and had lots of big overpowered artillery and blunderbusses and stuff that people normally love. Have to wonder if CA just had unrealistic expectations, or sort of decided "this is how much money we need to continue working on Hyenas so that's what we need to make".

 

[Fedora Master]

Warhammer has run its course. Even Im tired of it. They can't milk it forever.

 

[Lacrymas]

Either they set out with unrealistic goals, which is the least likely imo, or it undersold due to a variety of reasons, like people being disappointed in WH3 in general or thinking Chorfs are overpriced (which they are). Or both, like in my case. I've never hid my opinion that Total Warhammer is a bad game and I think a lot of other people are slowly starting to realize it too. The honeymoon is over, this is the third game in the series which has been basically the same without any noticeable or much needed improvements. What they did change made the game worse because they don't understand why the things they are changing are bad in the first place. Or maybe they do and it would require ungodly amounts of work to fix them, but why bother when the pigs are already at the trough? They started off with a bad foundation (Rome 2) and it all went downhill from there. I don't think CA is going to get out of this rut, not without investing a lot of money into gameplay and engine improvements, which essentially means they won't get out of this rut. I was going to go on a tangent about how we are witnessing CA's last breath, but imo CA will probably keep on existing after announcing and releasing that WH40k TW game they are working on even though it's going to be the same shitty battles all over again because people have no self control.

 

[thesheeep]

A new engine WOULD be their best bet, but it is also pretty clear that nobody with a lot of technical knowledge about engine programming is at CA anymore.
I don't think they could write a new engine, even if they wanted to.

Just look at what this "hotfix" did:

Whoever implemented the "fix" very obviously had no clue how the normal unit behavior worked and so just implemented a kind of "keep sending them away every X seconds", which is now fighting with the normal behavior code.

My guess is that they've been in this state of hotfixes upon hotfixes without a real understanding of the engine for many, many years by now.
And at this point, the engine is in a state where things are kept together by hopes and prayers.

It's kind of what happens when your tech leadership sucks, you create no documentation and you don't pay what little talent you have to remain in the company.
A bunch of interns playing catch-up with an ever-increasing mountain of inherited tech debt.
I've seen projects like that elsewhere in IT, there's just no winning unless the company can affort to only work on the tech debt for half a year to a year - and currently, CA doesn't look very solvent at all.

 

[Lacrymas]

^ hilarious. We are seeing the last vestiges of this engine fighting with itself and struggling to work. Maybe it's not the engine but the awful code it has vacuumed up over the years, but the final result is the same, especially if nobody competent can untangle the mess.

 

[Average Manatee]

I played around with it a bit and I think its a different problem. There's two modes. There's the "in combat" mode where if you tell them to disengage they'll do so and ignore needing to stick together. Then there's the the "out of combat" mode where they have to stay together. The problem is that its very quick to transition to the "out of combat" mode if there's only 1 or 2 cav stuck and they haven't taken a hit recently. It works fine for a while when multiple cav are stuck deep inside the unit but falls apart when both the infantry and cavalry are moving rather than fighting.

 

[Gromoer]

I can’t quite recall how cav behaved in the times of med2. No better I believe?

 

[Lacrymas]

I can’t quite recall how cav behaved in the times of med2. No better I believe?

A lot better actually, let me tell you.

 

[Gromoer]

I can’t quite recall how cav behaved in the times of med2. No better I believe?

A lot better actually, let me tell you.

Please do. I rarely used one for I always admired massive lines of heavily armored infantry. What’s the main difference, separate models didn’t get stuck in the enemy formations?

 

[Average Manatee]

The main thing in older games is that morale mattered and cav charges (especially from behind) annihilated it. The actual pathing issues were exactly the same, you just didn't notice it because cycle charging wasn't really a thing, you charged once and usually that was enough.

 

[Lacrymas]

The mass of cavalry was also generally higher than in contemporary TWs, so they could cleanly go through infantry.

 

[Average Manatee]

Or rather, infantry mass was still humanlike rather than fantasy levels of Orks and such wearing inch thick armor.

 

[Sunri]

Cavalry felt more sluggish, in med II

 

[Fedora Master]

"I DUN LIEK FANTASY GAEME"

 

[Space Satan]

 

[Cyberarmy]

This is actually sad but also it was about time. They started to hotfix the game like they never did before. I wonder how this will effect Thrones of Decay.

 

[Lacrymas]

The hotfixes are bandaids and sand in the eyes at this point. They need to do a serious overhaul if this game is to be salvaged, but they won't do that. Especially since it seems to be taking them two weeks to fix a single issue.

 

[Fedora Master]

The DLC itself was never the issue, it's "fine" for what it is. The price hike and the general attitude CA has towards its customers and its flagship title are the problem.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

The DLC itself was never the issue, it's "fine" for what it is. The price hike and the general attitude CA has towards its customers and its flagship title are the problem.

DLC itself was a combination of shit nobody asked for (Yuan Bo, another Tzeentch LL so soon) and missed opportunities (Kislev DLC adding baba yaga beast units instead of filling out the orthodox side of their roster), it'd be shit even if it was the standard $10.