Warhammer Total War: Warhammer III

[underground nymph]

And the most important question left unaddressed: when will TWW3 stop being boring

 

[thesheeep]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1142710/discussions/0/3185737967877503080/

TLDR: "Dear fans, thank you for your continued sucking of our dicks. We may release a hotfix this week, if we don't find the hotfix to be breaking things too much. We're not promising anything, but we may do it."

This is how you talk to sheeple that you've been conditioning for decades. There are no limits to their impudence, because it's sheeple on the other end. Meek wankers.

The more fixes in a build, the more risk that it can cause problems with other elements in the game or with the platforms where the game is released. This is another reason we’re keeping the builds as narrow and focused as possible.

Wow, imagine that! Then maybe it's best to simply postpone buying your broken product until there is no "risk" any more that it breaks.

At least they ARE communicating faster than several months after a bug has been found...
Small steps, you know.

Maybe one day they'll reach an actually useful state with their communication.

 

[AwesomeButton]

At least they ARE communicating faster than several months after a bug has been found...
Small steps, you know.

Maybe one day they'll reach an actually useful state with their communication.

Maybe so. I haven't been tuning into the obligatory outrage outpour around this specific release. I remember the panic around Rome 2 though, and this time around the reaction seems pretty weak, considering the issues I've been reading about here.

 

[Lacrymas]

The technical issues aren't as all encompassing as they were in Rome 2 though, so it doesn't generate as much rage.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The technical issues aren't as all encompassing as they were in Rome 2 though, so it doesn't generate as much rage.

Yep, I think so too:

BTW, I watched this Mortismal Mandalore review of WH3. What impressed me most was his calmness when he went on to talk about the sieges. I remember times when TW community members would become outraged when they are being sold a $60 game that is partially non-functional with regard to what it has been marketed as

Only when they are served battle unit models with invisible faces is when normies start making long-winded 1hr long videos about the appalling state of the gaming industry.

 

[zapotec]

Oh there will be blood when Mortal Empires II will not be released in the following months.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

The technical issues aren't as all encompassing as they were in Rome 2 though, so it doesn't generate as much rage.

m8, the warhammer fanbase that's left got cucked out 20+ years ago and will take the dick no matter how girthy so long as it has this fucking IP. And the historical fanbase of TW with any backbone tapped out after Atilla was abandoned.
What's left is a fanbase wearing gimpsuits, playing a total war game where the most pressing concern in battle is swatting and building towers.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Reject Games Workshop, embrace Parabellum.
Or literally anyone else, fuck GW.

 

[Average Manatee]

After playing all the factions I feel like Skarbrand is the only one well designed at the moment in general and for the campaign objective.

- You have massive movement speed buffs so you can just kind of run around in chaos realms doing everything, and run around in general
- You aren't really based on holding tons of territory, just capitols, so chaos portals constantly spawning enemies that raze your buildings basically don't matter and you aren't distracted needing to constantly run around and defend shit.
- Skulls are actually a semi-relevant resource you have to manage.
- It seems to be the only faction that has a tech tree that isn't complete shit. Other factions have stuff like +2% replenishment and +5% campaign movement speed while Skarbrand gets the full normal 5%/10%. It's also like 3x as big as most other factions (which is ridiculous, you'll never complete it).
- Blood army mechanic lets you play with a few high tier units immediately rather than wait until turn 80.

Granted he's also massively overpowered so maybe that's why he makes the campaign bearable too. Kind of put an end to the slaanesh rivalry by wiping them out 15 turns before the first chaos rifts appeared.

I have to say I'm a bit confused by how motorbikes heal themselves in melee but bloodthirsters don't.

 

[Lacrymas]

Skarbrand is a horde by any other name, that's why he works the way he does. He's one dimensional though, something which can be said about basically every faction, he's just more upfront about it like Taurox.

 

[FreeKaner]

Factions mechanics are well-designed and diverse in general.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I played this for a bit but the performance is pretty annoying. I have a decent machine (Ryzen 7 3800x, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM) but I'm getting like 50-60fps on the tutorial map and 60-70fps in battles (sometimes it dips into low 50s). This on 1080p. Is this normal? I feel like I should be able to push these numbers in 1440p at least.

What's particularly weird is that my CPU utilization never goes above 25%. GPU solid 100%. I guess CA's engine is still a piece of unoptimized garbage.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's normal in the sense nobody has decent performance because of reasons. They said they are working on optimization, but whether that will bear fruit remains to be seen.

 

[tabacila]

I played this for a bit but the performance is pretty annoying. I have a decent machine (Ryzen 7 3800x, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM) but I'm getting like 50-60fps on the tutorial map and 60-70fps in battles (sometimes it dips into low 50s). This on 1080p. Is this normal? I feel like I should be able to push these numbers in 1440p at least.

What's particularly weird is that my CPU utilization never goes above 25%. GPU solid 100%. I guess CA's engine is still a piece of unoptimized garbage.

This might help you optimize stuff:

Source: https://www.game-debate.com/news/31...phics-options-every-video-setting-benchmarked

 

[underground nymph]

Factions mechanics are well-designed and diverse in general.

Why do you so shamelessly shill for this game which obviously has failed in so many aspects that even the reddit fanboys are unable to effectively cope anymore?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Factions mechanics are well-designed and diverse in general.

Why do you so shamelessly shill for this game which obviously has failed in so many aspects that even the reddit fanboys are unable to effectively cope anymore?

Guy might just enjoy the game despite its flaws. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[FreeKaner]

Why do you so shamelessly shill for this game which obviously has failed in so many aspects that even the reddit fanboys are unable to effectively cope anymore?

Reddit fanboys make criticisms that amount to "this game is badly designed because its release campaign is an objective-focused scripted narrative that has low replayability" and "chaos realms are too difficult and punishing thus badly designed." Even worse, some are "siege maps are badly designed because they are too big and difficult" or that "I can lose this campaign if I don't actively pursue its objectives, unlike Vortex campaign where I could just do nothing and win at the end with my overpowered doomstack".

Giving in to such demands and not arguing otherwise is basically agreeing that appeasing a certain playerbase that just wants to comfortably blob with no obstacles or complications and turning the game into EU4 is a good thing, never be able to lose and never face any pressure while playing the game. Especially when it is coming from people who lack the mental faculties to comprehend or the self-control to wait 1-2 months to play the blobbing campaign that they said will release.

I criticize the game, for example the AI & mass are bugged. Performance is terrible. I think UI art is terrible. Tech trees, character traits etc. are lacking the balance passes that WH2 made, seemingly designed in parallel. However criticizing the game for the right things they did because the masses cannot deal with is basically saying CA had it right with Warhammer 1 & 2 where they made siege maps into just small maps with 1 wall, that Vortex was good because it had no pressure and was impossible to lose or that a strategy game having strategic pressure is bad.

All these basically motivate CA to not spend time and effort on these features because player base doesn't want them. CA went ahead and added minor settlement battles to 200+ settlements, entirely spending the resources to redesign 3 games worth of assets to make them bigger and more intricate then we have people saying this is actually bad because it is too complicated.

Else campaign mechanics, Cathay gets campaign mechanics like a Silkroad caravan, harmony or compass while Slaneesh gets to seduce enemy units in battle or establish cults and use devotees to forcefully vassalize. On what standard is this bad campaign design? The game has more complicated and distinct mechanics for factions than games like EU4 / CK2 which supposedly focus only on the campaign mechanics, it's more intricate and in-depth when it's not even the game's selling point. Especially talking about how this or that campaign mechanic is bad because it doesn't let you expand like a total war game when that campaign is coming, in 1 month, and we know this, everyone knows this.

I am not shilling for the game, I am simply flabbergasted by what people are saying. If people's arguments essentially amount to "Just give me a campaign where I can blob in flat small maps with my overpowered units then unfortunately CA might as well go ahead and do that. Thankfully this is the last game in trilogy, god forbid if CA went with the trouble to revamp all the sieges in Warhammer 2 by Warhammer 3 CA might have removed them altogether and just added small flat maps as map painters demand.

 

[Sunri]

Why do you so shamelessly shill for this game which obviously has failed in so many aspects that even the reddit fanboys are unable to effectively cope anymore?

Reddit fanboys make criticisms that amount to "this game is badly designed because its release campaign is an objective-focused scripted narrative that has low replayability" and "chaos realms are too difficult and punishing thus badly designed." Even worse, some are "siege maps are badly designed because they are too big and difficult" or that "I can lose this campaign if I don't actively pursue its objectives, unlike Vortex campaign where I could just do nothing and win at the end with my overpowered doomstack".

Giving in to such demands and not arguing otherwise is basically agreeing that appeasing a certain playerbase that just wants to comfortably blob with no obstacles or complications and turning the game into EU4 is a good thing, never be able to lose and never face any pressure while playing the game. Especially when it is coming from people who lack the mental faculties to comprehend or the self-control to wait 1-2 months to play the blobbing campaign that they said will release.

I criticize the game, for example the AI & mass are bugged. Performance is terrible. I think UI art is terrible. However criticizing the game for the right things they did because the masses cannot deal with is basically saying CA had it right with Warhammer 1 & 2 where they made siege maps into just small maps with 1 wall, that Vortex was good because it had no pressure and was impossible to lose or that a strategy game having strategic pressure is bad.

All these basically motivate CA to not spend time and effort on these features because player base doesn't want them. CA went ahead and added minor settlement battles to 200+ settlements, entirely spending the resources to redesign 3 games worth of assets to make them bigger and more intricate then we have people saying this is actually bad because it is too complicated.

Else campaign mechanics, Cathay gets campaign mechanics like a Silkroad caravan, harmony or compass while Slaneesh gets to seduce enemy units in battle or establish cults and use devotees to forcefully vassalize. On what standard is this bad campaign design? Especially talking about how this or that campaign mechanic is bad because it doesn't let you expand like a total war game when that campaign is coming, in 1 month, and we know this, everyone knows this.

I am not shilling for the game, I am simply flabbergasted by what people are saying. If people's arguments essentially amount to "Just give me a campaign where I can blob in flat small maps with my overpowered units then unfortunately CA might as well go ahead and do that. Thankfully this is the last game in trilogy, god forbid if CA went with the trouble to revamp all the sieges in Warhammer 2 by Warhammer 3 CA might have removed them altogether and just added small flat maps as map painters demand.

I'm the only one liking art? I don't know why people were expecting edgy 90 stuff when GW left it long ago.

 

[FreeKaner]

I'm the only one liking art? I don't know why people were expecting edgy 90 stuff when GW left it long ago.

I think the UI is too bland, the minimalistic single-color vector design is anathema to what a Warhammer-based game should be like. It should have more art in general, removing the city-capture art is inexplicable for example when the art is already present in WH1 and WH2 factions. Similarly UI design should use more design elements to highlight different factions you are playing, using more baroque decorations, statues, demonic stuff and such. This used to be common in strategy games like warcraft 3 where the UI is entirely different for different factions. There is this cargo cult of minimalism that plague game UIs, especially UIs of strategy games & RPGs which doesn't need the extra space on the screen.

 

[underground nymph]

Why do you so shamelessly shill for this game which obviously has failed in so many aspects that even the reddit fanboys are unable to effectively cope anymore?

Reddit fanboys make criticisms that amount to "this game is badly designed because its release campaign is an objective-focused scripted narrative that has low replayability" and "chaos realms are too difficult and punishing thus badly designed." Even worse, some are "siege maps are badly designed because they are too big and difficult" or that "I can lose this campaign if I don't actively pursue its objectives, unlike Vortex campaign where I could just do nothing and win at the end with my overpowered doomstack".

Giving in to such demands and not arguing otherwise is basically agreeing that appeasing a certain playerbase that just wants to comfortably blob with no obstacles or complications and turning the game into EU4 is a good thing, never be able to lose and never face any pressure while playing the game. Especially when it is coming from people who lack the mental faculties to comprehend or the self-control to wait 1-2 months to play the blobbing campaign that they said will release.

I criticize the game, for example the AI & mass are bugged. Performance is terrible. I think UI art is terrible. However criticizing the game for the right things they did because the masses cannot deal with is basically saying CA had it right with Warhammer 1 & 2 where they made siege maps into just small maps with 1 wall, that Vortex was good because it had no pressure and was impossible to lose or that a strategy game having strategic pressure is bad.

All these basically motivate CA to not spend time and effort on these features because player base doesn't want them. CA went ahead and added minor settlement battles to 200+ settlements, entirely spending the resources to redesign 3 games worth of assets to make them bigger and more intricate then we have people saying this is actually bad because it is too complicated.

Else campaign mechanics, Cathay gets campaign mechanics like a Silkroad caravan, harmony or compass while Slaneesh gets to seduce enemy units in battle or establish cults and use devotees to forcefully vassalize. On what standard is this bad campaign design? Especially talking about how this or that campaign mechanic is bad because it doesn't let you expand like a total war game when that campaign is coming, in 1 month, and we know this, everyone knows this.

I am not shilling for the game, I am simply flabbergasted by what people are saying. If people's arguments essentially amount to "Just give me a campaign where I can blob in flat small maps with my overpowered units then unfortunately CA might as well go ahead and do that. Thankfully this is the last game in trilogy, god forbid if CA went with the trouble to revamp all the sieges in Warhammer 2 by Warhammer 3 CA might have removed them altogether and just added small flat maps as map painters demand.

How about you stop cherrypicking and let’s talk about how CA haven’t introduced any interesting strategic layer except global buff/debuff? How meaningless the strategic layer and diplomacy are now by the time rifts start opening. How player is effectively isolated from the campaign main goal in terms of interfering with the enemies’ progress. How uninteresting the Kislev unit roster is. How they didn’t address cheesy doom stacks and race to tier V.

I’ve spent 500 hours in TWW2 and endless time in other Total Wars, but with this one I’m fed up after 30 hours.

Guy might just enjoy the game despite its flaws. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This:

Factions mechanics are well-designed and diverse in general.

Doesn’t seem to me as a neutral statement of a guy who just enjoy the game.

 

[Sunri]

Why do you so shamelessly shill for this game which obviously has failed in so many aspects that even the reddit fanboys are unable to effectively cope anymore?

Reddit fanboys make criticisms that amount to "this game is badly designed because its release campaign is an objective-focused scripted narrative that has low replayability" and "chaos realms are too difficult and punishing thus badly designed." Even worse, some are "siege maps are badly designed because they are too big and difficult" or that "I can lose this campaign if I don't actively pursue its objectives, unlike Vortex campaign where I could just do nothing and win at the end with my overpowered doomstack".

Giving in to such demands and not arguing otherwise is basically agreeing that appeasing a certain playerbase that just wants to comfortably blob with no obstacles or complications and turning the game into EU4 is a good thing, never be able to lose and never face any pressure while playing the game. Especially when it is coming from people who lack the mental faculties to comprehend or the self-control to wait 1-2 months to play the blobbing campaign that they said will release.

I criticize the game, for example the AI & mass are bugged. Performance is terrible. I think UI art is terrible. However criticizing the game for the right things they did because the masses cannot deal with is basically saying CA had it right with Warhammer 1 & 2 where they made siege maps into just small maps with 1 wall, that Vortex was good because it had no pressure and was impossible to lose or that a strategy game having strategic pressure is bad.

All these basically motivate CA to not spend time and effort on these features because player base doesn't want them. CA went ahead and added minor settlement battles to 200+ settlements, entirely spending the resources to redesign 3 games worth of assets to make them bigger and more intricate then we have people saying this is actually bad because it is too complicated.

Else campaign mechanics, Cathay gets campaign mechanics like a Silkroad caravan, harmony or compass while Slaneesh gets to seduce enemy units in battle or establish cults and use devotees to forcefully vassalize. On what standard is this bad campaign design? Especially talking about how this or that campaign mechanic is bad because it doesn't let you expand like a total war game when that campaign is coming, in 1 month, and we know this, everyone knows this.

I am not shilling for the game, I am simply flabbergasted by what people are saying. If people's arguments essentially amount to "Just give me a campaign where I can blob in flat small maps with my overpowered units then unfortunately CA might as well go ahead and do that. Thankfully this is the last game in trilogy, god forbid if CA went with the trouble to revamp all the sieges in Warhammer 2 by Warhammer 3 CA might have removed them altogether and just added small flat maps as map painters demand.

How about you stop cherrypicking and let’s talk about how CA haven’t introduced any interesting strategic layer except global buff/debuff? How meaningless the strategic layer and diplomacy are now by the time rifts start opening. How player is effectively isolated from the campaign main goal in terms of interfering with the enemies’ progress. How uninteresting the Kislev unit roster is. How they didn’t address cheesy doom stacks and race to tier V.

I’ve spent 500 hours in TWW2 and endless time in other Total Wars, but with this one I’m fed up after 30 hours.

Guy might just enjoy the game despite its flaws. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This:

Factions mechanics are well-designed and diverse in general.

Doesn’t seem to me as a neutral statement of a guy who just enjoy the game.

I mean you played this game already for 500h it's okay if you are bored with a base version without DLC wait for mortal empires.

 

[FreeKaner]

How about you stop cherrypicking and let’s talk about how CA haven’t introduced any interesting strategic layer except global buff/debuff? How meaningless the strategic layer and diplomacy are now by the time rifts start opening. How player is effectively isolated from the campaign main goal in terms of interfering with the enemies’ progress. How uninteresting the Kislev unit roster is. How they didn’t address cheesy doom stacks and race to tier V.

I’ve spent 500 hours in TWW2 and endless time in other Total Wars, but with this one I’m fed up after 30 hours.

Strategic layer exists, it is the fact that expansion comes at expotentailly greater cost as your main army has to be within the chaos realm to win objectives. You can interfere with enemies progress, you can attack them within chaos realms, easiest with Khorne and Nurgle, Khorne realm even rewards you for doing so since it counts towards your own progress. However it's possible even in other two. You can also use the rifts to teleport to enemy cities to destroy them while their army is occupied in chaos realm, particularly if they are in slaneesh or tzeentch realm as it will take them multiple turns to get back. There are plenty of strategic elements to campaign mechanics of factions and they are entirely distinct. Unfortunately because of scope of the game means they can only fit so much to release but they consistently expanded factions in past.

They vastly improved maps, diplomacy and UI functionality

Kislev unit roster could indeed use some more variety. I am especially bothered by seeming lack of variety in non-kossar non-guard units, there are none really except horse archers. However they generally diversify rosters as game expands. This is true to a degree with Cathay as well. They could really add more "normal" units to act as anchor to more "interesting" units. There is no reason why Kislev and Cathay can't have regular musketmen and crossbowmen for example aside from the fact "Empire already has them". Kislev can also use regular spears & shields and swords & shields.

TW3 chaos campaign is very focused and scripted narrative campaign, it is not meant to be the sandbox mode. If you want the sandbox experience and indeed some campaigns mechanics would work much better in sandbox mode such as Cathay and Ogres, then just wait 1-2 months for immortal empires. There is no reason for the base campaign to be "immortal empires but smaller".

 

[zapotec]

Imho it was a bad idea to made another separate campaign instead of finishing mortal empires II at release.

 

[Average Manatee]

Reddit fanboys make criticisms that amount to "this game is badly designed because its release campaign is an objective-focused scripted narrative that has low replayability" and "chaos realms are too difficult and punishing thus badly designed." Even worse, some are "siege maps are badly designed because they are too big and difficult" or that "I can lose this campaign if I don't actively pursue its objectives, unlike Vortex campaign where I could just do nothing and win at the end with my overpowered doomstack".

Literally no one relevant (i.e. not reddit) thinks sieges or the chaos realm are too difficult. What they are is too easy, too prevalent, and too time wasting. Like 2/3rds of your lords time is spent walking back and forth in chaos realms fighting easy battles then when you get back to the mortal realm you have to wait 5 turns in a capitol to lose a trait before 10 turns later its off to the chaos realm again. Sieges are basically effortless to win defensively unless the enemy is attacking your garrison with multiple stacks and offensively I've only had some small problems winning with nurgle because he's so slow to do everything. But almost all battles end up as sieges now that take 2x as long as normal battles, you'll not be able to use half your army due to the clutter, and you'll almost never fight a straight up battle. I think across my whole skarbrand campaign the only field battles I had were the starting one, battles where I sally out vs. rebels, and maybe 5% field battles with normal AI armies..

The game is called Total War. I expect to make war on my enemies and conquer the map, not play grabass in the chaos realm with them every 30 turns.

Strategic layer exists, it is the fact that expansion comes at expotentailly greater cost as your main army has to be within the chaos realm to win objectives. You can interfere with enemies progress, you can attack them within chaos realms, easiest with Khorne and Nurgle, Khorne realm even rewards you for doing so since it counts towards your own progress. However it's possible even in other two. You can also use the rifts to teleport to enemy cities to destroy them while their army is occupied in chaos realm, particularly if they are in slaneesh or tzeentch realm as it will take them multiple turns to get back. There are plenty of strategic elements to campaign mechanics of factions and they are entirely distinct. Unfortunately because of scope of the game means they can only fit so much to release but they consistently expanded factions in past.

Yes, and this makes it so there's no strategic reason to expand. Why pick fights on the campaign map against an AI that can hire 10 armies while you can only hire 2 (which means that with your lord in the chaos realm you are hopelessly unable to defend a large empire), when instead you can just rush through the chaos realm to pick up the victory tokens?

 

[FreeKaner]

As for UI, look at these two images:

Night elf UI is made with trees and leaves, it uses the edges of UI creatively as branches and isn't afraid of using some of the space for decoration:

Orc one also uses wood prominently but instead of trees it is lumber with iron studs as well as metal plates, including tusks with iron circles.

They have even different shape in silhouette. These sort of stuff adds so much character compared to this which looks like mobile design:

There is no character, no features to it. Every faction has same bland vector design, it is made as minimalistic and "functional" (in quote marks because aesthetics is a function in a visual medium) as possible. Graphic designers joining the cargo cult of mobile bank app design as if that would or should be applicable to a game. It's singular color red with its shades and even the supporting gold & brown are reddish in hue.

 

[FreeKaner]

The game is called Total War. I expect to make war on my enemies and conquer the map, not play grabass in the chaos realm with them every 30 turns.

Sure, wait for immortal empires. I wouldn't want to play a focused scripted narrative campaign endlessly. I completed it once with ogres and checked out other factions. I'll probably complete the narrative campaign once with most of the factions and not replay it much. Likely with Kislev and Daemons of Chaos to continue the narrative from prologue. Immortal campaign is where you paint the map. Why would the chaos campaign be a "mortal empires lite"?