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I love how the trailer on Steam still says 2020, they couldn't even be assed to make another few trailer frames for Steam, kind of says it all.


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 Overread wrote:
I think that hurts smaller games like Britannia and Troy. That said I think that the idea being the Saga games is to give a TW experience on a smaller country scale instead of at the global scale. Development wise I think they are a smaller quicker turn around project designed to both turn a short term profit inbetween big games and also as a dump=ground for skilled staff to work on a smaller side project inbetween big ones when staff in key roles don't have any work on the big projects. Big projects move slower and there's likely a good few staff that end up trapped in a deadzone between them. An animator might have finished one games work and the other isn't ready for them - saga/smaller titles likely give room for those staff to keep working toward a profitable investment instead of losing them or keeping them with no real work for them.

I kind of feel that CA is not big enough to also make Saga games, now that its basically them trying to push out a game every year at this rate. It really shows as well, Britannia was left to die in a ditch in my opinion. Bugs spanning multiple games, serious bugs in Three Kingdoms and Warhammer that take weeks if not months to fix. It feels like a lot of staff get shifted around and a skeleton crew is left to hold the fort until the game is up for its round of DLC and resources flow back in.

The idea was brilliant, the execution seems to be pretty lacking.

Voss wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
I love how the trailer on Steam still says 2020, they couldn't even be assed to make another few trailer frames for steam, kind of says it all.

I will say that there are some hints that this was a Sega decision that they couldn't say no to, so it may have caught them off guard.

They did just update the steam release date to 2021. It said 2020 an hour ago. And they took down the trailer you're referencing. Just a few screenshots now.

I can't believe that they would not get a moments notice though. Negotiations must have taken a while and they could have pushed back the announcement slightly. The Steam page actually went up with the trailer saying 2020, but the release date window next to it saying 2021.

Maybe I'm just in a mood, because now that CA and SEGA have cracked to the Epic store, I'm just a little bit more nervous about Warhammer 3.

Totally true, the fact that GW is involved with Warhammer also makes it more rigid in platform, plus the huge amount of people owning 1 and 2 on Steam of course.

Whatever the decision making process was, eventually we might find out. The press release indicates they knew some time in advance, but it seems likely that they were contractually obligated to keep silent.

Yeah, I really don't understand the AoS decision, what has Frontier ever done to merit making an RTS? CA dropping Warhammer 3 like a rock and moving on after release has me nervous as well. There is so much potential that might go to waste on an amazing game.

As for Saga, I agree, like I said on the last page it just seems to leave them too thin on the ground. There are real problems not being looked at for months or more because even patching is on the DLC cycle for the major games by now.

I'm not sure that Total War and Fortnite players even touch each other on the Venn diagram, mostly because the impression I have gotten from friend and family that Fortnite is mainly focused on their 10 year old siblings/cousins/what have you.

As for Warhammer 3, I'm not worried (yet), but as its a great game, anything that threatens a great post-release lifespan is a bit of a downer to imagine.

 Trondheim wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
It's highly unlikely that CA will do anything untoward with TWWH3. When the first Warhammer game was released, it became far and away the best selling TW game of all time. It would be incredibly foolish to risk that.

For a studio like CA that specializes in niche games, disrupting the customer chain is reckless and dangerous.

I may suffer from a distinct lack of trust towards major companies, due to my line of work but I would not be shocked if CA did what I described, but I do hope you are correct.

They are likely contractually obligated to make a third game depending on their licensing agreement, however (worst case scenario) that would not prevent them from purposefully gaking the bed if wanting to do so during development.

I think the Skull Throne sale is over, if only I could resist the great Warhammer DLC to make it to a sale

Given previous dates, about three weeks left to the summer sale..

The problem with giving it away for free on Epic after an exclusivity deal is the optics to me. Britannia died a slow death, but with a guaranteed bag of money and giving it away for free to start with, you create the idea that Troy will be dead on arrival. CA got their investment out with this deal, will there be incentive to actually make it work?

Yeah, going on sale really early just creates the incentive for people to wait for the next sale, giving the idea that the full price is overpriced. There is a reason that most games, like those of CA take 1-2 years to start getting included in sales. Real fans or people who can't wait pay full price, others have to be patient and wait quite a while. It also creates the impression that the game might be terrible, why else dump the regular price so quickly? Are they trying to make a quick buck before abandoning it etc. etc.

But Epic in the case of Paradox gave a huge discount on a game that wasn't even released yet, far bigger than a pre purchase discount of 10%. After such a massive discount before release, why even bother buying it full price when Epic might decide next week that its worth (lets say) 75% less? People stop buying and start waiting, because the time to sale period is massively compressed and full price is no longer 'worth' it.

True, but Epic can afford it because A. their service in regards to the consumer is absolute garbage and B. its being funded by Fortnite money.

In regards to point A, Steam has come a very long way and offers quite the service to consumers in regards to convenience, they handle a lot of aspects and you can build a whole community only based on what Steam provides. The cut is bigger for publishing on Steam, but as of now, Steam is much more user/consumer friendly. Plus it has a far larger market. Publishing on Epic is worth it because you recoup costs through the exclusivity deal, but if you don't reach an audience, what kind of future do you have?

To point B, once Epic has a captive market for users or Fortnite is no longer the next hot thing, this might become unsustainable, unless they keep their platform so bare bones (currently people go to Steam to use as a forum for games released on Epic with 1 year exclusivity) that they can keep doing it. That is a big if.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
If an indie dev needs Epic/CCP money to complete there game, then I get the appeal.

Ubisoft and SEGA do not need extra cash.

Plus the bigger publishers already get a bigger cut based on how well sales do on Steam. This is them just squeezing margins to their fullest effect.

I think part of the problem is this practice of selling to Epic at the last possible second. If they announce these things well in advance then I would just shrug. Now its a a game you might look forward to coming out in 3-4 months on your preferred platform and suddenly having the rug pulled out from under you (perfected by Phoenix Point and Metro Exodus). It leaves a bad taste. What I'm really curious to see is how many Epic exclusives have the balls to release full price on Steam a year later. Some bigger titles coming up this year I believe.

I know Epic is deliberate, I mean on the side of the developers and the publishers. Because they catch the flak for it, Epic doesn't, because people who already dislike Epic won't move over because of that one game going exclusive.

My problem is that Epic is terrible in regards to the costumer (and all the hacking problems and the lack of care from Epic, the oopsie declaration that Epic still copied your Steam files to send as data). They have the piles of money, but seemingly just don't care about using it to develop a product attractive to me as a costumer. If Epic wasn't so shady in how it operates I wouldn't have that much of a problem if it offered a better option over Steam, but it just runs on burning money instead of an actual offer.

Voss wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And Ubi has the hide to lie about Steam being greedy and unsustainable.

well atleast ubisoft doesn't willfully destroy studios to paoch developpers

That's Bethesda's bag. That's how they picked up Arkane and a couple others (allegedly)

This is almost industry standard at this point, given that you can level the same accusations at EA and 2K. Game development really seems to be a gak industry to work in, it really needs to unionize.

Voss wrote:
Truthfully, Troy doesn't hold much interest for me. If they'd gone full on mythological I'd be far more interested than this ahistorical nonsense approach they decided to take.
Its puzzling that they want to take critters but just make them normal units, but still run around with demi-god style heroes that can crush entire formations.

If I'm bored with WH2, I'll honestly just find something else rather than pick this up.

Agreed, this approach is so terrible. Like the Cyclops, don't they realize how much even an elephant skull weighs? How can anyone effectively function with that thing stuck on their head? I'm still holding out hope for a legit Bronze Age TW game.

My take away from that video is that its supposed to be the "truth behind the myth", yet those characters are fething Space Marines. I'm not sure what truth there is to that

I can barely tolerate giant Karl Franz in Warhammer, here it seems to be giants galore.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
My take away from that video is that its supposed to be the "truth behind the myth", yet those characters are fething Space Marines. I'm not sure what truth there is to that

Nothing, honestly it feels Like the game Design Team was Split into 2 parties but non could pull through their vision Leading to a game that is
"Weder fisch no vogel"
Aka neither Fisch nor bird , basically it Lacks a vision too historical for a total war age of mythology (which i would looooveeee) not a Bronze age total war ( which i would also looooveeee)

Basically sega dumped this in epic to replenish their rubles, screwed their Fans over for their little con job aswell and have has once again shown that their quality controll is arbitrary as all hell....

We say neither fish nor meat (vis noch vlees)
I think part of it is that they put CA Sofia on it, which is basically a very green studio with only one(?) RTW2 DLC under its belt. That might explain the impression that it was divided into two games, as it seems to pretty heavily copy aspects of Three Kingdoms (to cut corners?).

I would absolutely love either a full on fantasy or historical version. Perhaps once this game is heavily discounted and heavily modded by fans to be a normal historical title, I might give it a go on Steam, vanilla looks awful. What has me worrying about this is that it seems to be a direct copy paste job of Three Kingdoms romance edition. I hope these types of hero units aren't going to become the new normal, I would like to have full on historical titles in the future.

Voss wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
My take away from that video is that its supposed to be the "truth behind the myth", yet those characters are fething Space Marines. I'm not sure what truth there is to that

I can barely tolerate giant Karl Franz in Warhammer, here it seems to be giants galore.

See, I don't have a problem with it in Herohammer since, well, its such a big part of the experience and doesn't make any pretense at not being fantasy. Spearman #5 just doesn't stand up to anybody with an actual name.
But when the tagline behind a semi-historical game is 'the truth behind the myth,' AND they're drilling down to play rock/paper/scissors with Light, Heavy and Medium infantry, its really out of place.

My only problem in Warhammer is that the characters are physically gigantic, sticking out head and shoulder over the normie humans. I don't have a problem with them being OP, because magic, magic items and real gods.

In Troy they have none of that, it some guy (who could easily play in the NBA) in boxershorts in a skull mask casually killing dozens of people. Instead of making it into a special group, its one dude. Nothing in the Illiad ever pointed to this. The main characters were exceptionally skilled, but not 8 foot monstrosities doing this, they should have attached them to bodyguard units.


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Not Online!!! wrote:
And yet Achilles still looses against hector as above shown in the heroic duel ability he has to force one...

Clearly Hector hit his weak spot for massive damage

Here you cab see a pretty good Warhammer size comparison of Karl Franz and normal humans:
https://amp.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/4kcec5/height_difference/

As for the promotional material, I hardly trust it anymore. Both RTW2 with that misleading siege of Carthage and how Warhammer sieges were first represented versus how they actually were. With actual campaign streams I can accurately judge it.

Sure, but there is a fine line between a trailer that creates hype/interest and one that's misleading. I would put the RTW2 one firmly in the misleading camp and that was back when these previews by streamers/youtubers weren't that big yet. Given that CA has edged that line quite a bit, I hold off on judging content until, as you say, the more informative stuff comes out.