Total War Hammer

[ecorcheur_brokar]

I call BS on that. They have taken the habit of putting DLC for a long time now and most of them don't require so much work. How much work do you need to add blood spilling on screen or replace male warrior by female warrior?

And if really it was too much work for the initial price of the game to have more than 4 races, why chose a major faction as DLC. It's the exact same pattern as taking out Greeks out of Rome. You could argue that a minor faction would sell less in DLC but taking out major faction is simply called "cut content".

[Bjord]

Lost my faith in CA & Co after Total War Rome II, what a load of shit that was.

[Xant]

We know we have a hill to climb after Rome II, and acknowledged that at the time. We also issued a massive free expansion to the game in order to further underline that.

Nice of them to say that. I think the explanation they gave is OK, still not going to buy anything from them.

[Grytviken]

Who wants to 1v1 me in Rome 2 Multiplayer, I got it working on my potato and im kicking butts and taking names



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[Angantyr]

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/164869-Total-War-WARHAMMER-Dev-Blog-%E2%80%93-Chaos-Warriors-Pre-orders-and-DLC

At least they are honest instead of throwing out a PR-response. And they make a good few points.

I don't doubt that some of them believe it themselves, but the argument is still nonsensical because they could just do more work with the same resources; it's not set in stone that you have to have x amount of funds to do x amount of work, just look how much quality content a small indie developer like Larian could make in Divinity Original Sin by hard work and dedication. Or how CD Project Red dealt with the whole DLC issue (and amount of quality content). And CA are veterans, basically have a monopoly, and so many good sales behind them it should be possible not having to buy several unit packs after you've paid for the fucking NTW collectors editions, or have more than four factions in Warhammer, or to not have the entire British Isles, Scandinavia and Northern Europe use the same generic placeholder units in Attila, or any of the other numerous money schemes they've exposed their customers to since ETW. CA used to be the one company I really wanted to support, back in the Shogun and Medieval I days.

[Butan]

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/164869-Total-War-WARHAMMER-Dev-Blog-%E2%80%93-Chaos-Warriors-Pre-orders-and-DLC

At least they are honest instead of throwing out a PR-response. And they make a good few points.

TL;DR = they need the additional money from DLC to economically support further content. Without DLC their budget let them support only 4 playable factions in the base game.


I would buy it if I had no experience in modding. I've use literally hundreds of mods, and participated in a few, which adds more content than CA ever had all Total Wars combined. Some of those mods were done by small teams of 1-3 people, using crazy restricted modding tools, in the space of weeks/months.
There is literaly no way, I say, NO WAY, that they dont have the possibility to support more than 4 playable factions for the base game price tag. Or they need to employ more passionate modders IMO.

Now I buy their "if we have more money, we can develop more stuff in the future". I totally do. But the problem is two fold:

- CA/SEGA milk their game engine for years, never develop a new one before its crazy outdated
- CA/SEGA use more development time releasing copy/paste DLC and even games (lets say it, Rome 2/Attila/Warhammer are born of the same mould) than they do finding innovative ideas about Total Wars


So, there is only two explanations for me:

- either Total War has stopped being normally lucrative enough to support a Total War-like game compared to 10 years ago, so they need to sacrifice their reputation in order to stay afloat financially
- or they are mind blowingly greedy as fuck (either CA or SEGA, or both)


In both cases, its bad for the Total War series in the future. I foresee a time where the majority of the players will have ceased being fanboys of this brand, and sales will stop being impressive, and it will die out. Because lets face it, most of the last games were commercial success and not much else 



The fact that Warhammer will not be moddable, which was like the only way I could play the last Total War games, adds insult to the injury.

Still, I love Warhammer so I think it will at least be a 7+/10 game for me, even if its broken and not innovative one bit.

[Leesin]

Butan, SEGA owns CA, CA is just a dev team that is owned/employed by SEGA. SEGA is the problem here, they bought out CA with the apparent goal of making SEGA more prominent in Europe, but what actually happened is that SEGA is controlled by greedy fucks that have no passion for the gaming industry nowadays and all they want is profit. Therefore they make strict deadlines with strict finances and they demand an ex amount of DLC is produced, this is why we started seeing day 1 DLC with the games being designed around the feel that without the DLC's you are actually missing part of the game.

Basically, CA were and some of its staff still are passionate about the Total War series, but seeing as SEGA owns it all now, they have to abide by all the guidelines SEGA sets them. I am confident they always fall short of what they want to deliver in terms of gameplay and features simply because SEGA is tight like Ebeneezer Scrooge and because they simply don't give them enough time to actually flesh out the features. It's sad, because it is a unique game series, but in SEGA's hands it has become and probably will continue to be a cash cow until they have driven it into the ground and see it fail like pretty much everything they were ever involved in. In fact it is brutally sad to see, because there is no other game out there that comes close to what Total War is, even if they are most often flawed and unfinished games.

The lack of modding tools/support for Warhammer TW is down to Games Workshop I think, they are very strict and tight with their IP being modified in any way, they are another greedy company that has destroyed its own games. That doesn't mean there will be no mods though, like combat overhauls etc.

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

This is pretty much true. The last game to not have day one DLC was Medieval 2 which Sega came in halfway through development.

Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2, Fall of the Samurai, Rome 2, and Attila have all had cut out factions released as day one DLC and faction pack DLC.

[Butan]

Butan, SEGA owns CA, CA is just a dev team that is owned/employed by SEGA.

Thats why I said CA, or SEGA, or both, is the problem    I dont pretend I know who is the guiltiest in terms of money milking.

Even if, like you say, CA is just SEGA employees, its not exactly like a dictatorship: there is some degree of independance/struggle/negotiations.

[ecorcheur_brokar]

This is pretty much true. The last game to not have day one DLC was Medieval 2 which Sega came in halfway through development.

Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2, Fall of the Samurai, Rome 2, and Attila have all had cut out factions released as day one DLC and faction pack DLC.

For me shogun was alright, the DLC were only minor factions or units.(and if I remember right there were no day-one DLC) They didn't take Oda out of the original game and Fall of the samourai expansion added so much content, it made sense to pay for it.

But since Rome 2, DLC really look like cut-content. Plus they started to make new DLC before even fixing the numerous bugs in their unfinished game.

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

Attila was the worst. They had a day 1 DLC faction pack which was a cut a paste job, then a week 1 DLC faction pack that was ANOTHER cut a paste job. All before their first patch...

[Leesin]

Thats why I said CA, or SEGA, or both, is the problem    I dont pretend I know who is the guiltiest in terms of money milking.

Even if, like you say, CA is just SEGA employees, its not exactly like a dictatorship: there is some degree of independance/struggle/negotiations.

From all I have read about the situation and statements over the past years from ex CA staff on TWcenter or outsiders who have interaction with SEGA/CA, the power the CA staff have in independance/struggle/negotiations is very little in the grand scheme of things, as a team they can communicate up the chain within SEGA what they need to function, like what staff and specialists, push for finances for certain expensive aspects of the game, and the time things could take in later development. But beyond that SEGA squeezes the timeline and finances as much as possible, as the sooner the game is released and the cheaper it is made, they are going to earn more profits in a shorter time period as the current team would again be occupied by working on the next game. The further the release date is pushed back to polish the game, the further the release date of the next game in the series will also be pushed back. Why? because SEGA saw Total War as a cash cow in Europe/USA and that's all it will continue to be while it's in their control.

CA isn't independent whatsoever, they are owned, controlled and financed by SEGA, any bad apples within SEGA get crapped on, SEGA's treatment of its staff that don't bend over on command is notoriously bad.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am not saying CA are completely exempt from criticism and are saints, but they basically just now work for SEGA and if they value their jobs they do as they're told, with new staff the passion for "CA" is a lot less than actually keeping their job working for SEGA on the TW games. I am sure it wasn't an easy decision to accept that SEGA has taken over and noticing them slowly destroy the games whilst just quietly carry on working to earn a living and work on the game you are passionate about, but it's the cowards decision when it comes down to what really is an art and entertainment form.

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

I think calling it a coward's decision is harsh. Sure they could just leave in protest but the video game industry is difficult enough to get a steady job in, if they've got one then most people would stick to it.

[Butan]

If your theory is true Leesin, I also think like Oujamaflip that its not being a coward. Some must not even have the vista to self-criticize CA or SEGA or even themselves, and probably the majority think that if they were not there, it would be the same or worse. Also the fact that the majority of AAA games operates with this kind of DLC policy, could easily convince you that there is no moral choice here.

Not to add, those that did cash out are probably off-radar, and those that stay are the sheeps.

I hope that one day, I will read in the news something like "developers from CA create their own studio, start Total War-like project".

[Uther Pendragon]