CA response

[Beregond]

lots of corporate bs and shamefur PR in that response, nothing else.

[GussieFinkNottle]

The explanation sounds entirely reasonable, you can see it from their perspective and I don't imagine they're lying about the way they had the development budgeted. But...
may I remind you they are charging 50 quid for this game. That's with no add-ons. I might be more sympathetic if they weren't outrageously gouging their fans who they claim to care so much about.

[HigoChumbo]

if you are so sure paradox can make better games than ca, why don't they? this game series was created by CA back in 2000, 15 years of releases should be more than enough for paradox, the "better" game devs to clone it. I would love some competition for CA go on, make it happen. think dingy paradox is up to the challenge?

I doubt Paradox is attempting to clone Total War (at least in their major releases, aka Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings/Hearts of Iron, they did publish something similar with King Arthur II), and with that idea in mind, given that we can only really compare the campaign maps, then yes, the campaign gameplay of paradox games is just so much better than any TW I've ever played. TW campaign is simplistic and boring. Just a platform to give battles a certain narrative. Just think of how boring it would be if you auto-resolved all battles, the only incentive to keep playing is the completionist urge to paint the entire map in your colour's faction. Paradox games are fun with no battles, and your goal is rarely to conquer the entire map... but to survive as good as you can.
Also, in TW I've never felt the absolute fear I feel in EU4 when it looks like France is about to invade me.

It should be CA the ones copying those games, since unlike Paradox with the battles, TW games do have a campaign side of the map which would improve vastly if it burrowed some features from games like EUIV. Using your same argument, they've had 15 years to make a decent diplomacy, for instance, and they are still light years behind Paradox in that aspect.


TW is about the battles. Period.

It had nothing to do with that? Their stance (unless I've misunderstood and I don't necessarily endorse it btw) is that the base game's budget didn't allow for chaos to be properly fleshed out as a playable faction, but they wanted it to be in the game at release so they did it as a DLC which gave them an extra chunk of cash to work on the DLC with..

That's not the idea I got. I think Chaos was going to be unplayable since the beginning. For the first game at least they were meant to be the AI antagonist, it was clear to me that they were going to be the scripted end-game challenge TW games have had since Shogun 2. It's been as good as confirmed since the very launch of the cinematic trailer.

Chaos Warriors are probably either an afterthought or just a way of making more money early, but I doubt they were ever meant to be part of the main release.

[Manu La Canette]

I doubt Paradox is attempting to clone Total War (at least in their major releases, aka Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings/Hearts of Iron, they did publish something similar with King Arthur II), and with that idea in mind, given that we can only really compare the campaign maps, then yes, the campaign gameplay of paradox games is just so much better than any TW I've ever played. TW campaign is simplistic and boring. Just a platform to give battles a certain narrative. Just think of how boring it would be if you auto-resolved all battles, the only incentive to keep playing is the completionist urge to paint the entire map in your colour's faction. Paradox games are fun with no battles, and your goal is rarely to conquer the entire map... but to survive as good as you can.
Also, in TW I've never felt the absolute fear I feel in EU4 when it looks like France is about to invade me.

It should be CA the ones copying those games, since unlike Paradox with the battles, TW games do have a campaign side of the map which would improve vastly if it burrowed some features from games like EUIV. Using your same argument, they've had 15 years to make a decent diplomacy, for instance, and they are still light years behind Paradox in that aspect.


TW is about the battles. Period.




That's not the idea I got. I think Chaos was going to be unplayable since the beginning. For the first game at least they were meant to be the AI antagonist, it was clear to me that they were going to be the scripted end-game challenge TW games have had since Shogun 2. It's been as good as confirmed since the very launch of the cinematic trailer.

Chaos Warriors are probably either an afterthought or just a way of making more money early, but I doubt they were ever meant to be part of the main release.

True. But for Warhammer fantasy world, I'd rather go in a HoMM approach for the campaign map. Not in its design, but in what you can get from there. It would be cool in Warhammer TW to be able to visit unique locations on map, trigger events, fight random armies defending loot or villages and so on... Just my own personal view.

[Aquila_Mars]

I agree with this ^

There is the game -Fallen Enchantress- where if you go to certain areas of the map, events and legendary monsters appear to fight you. That'd add a lot of flavor to the campaign map I think.

A reason to steer clear away from further north where chaos gates reside for example. No one wants an army of demons to be disgorged onto them. or do they?

[Greasy Dave]

Here's my two pence worth. - I posted something similar in the original thread.
Interesting posts.

They say that it's not possible for budgetary reasons to fill the game with the same amount of content as earlier games (all of the factions in games like Rome and M2TW became unlocked after defeating them) and need to sell it to us piece by piece. Fair enough. That's their position. I can't see their bank balance -so I will have to accept that.

The important thing though, for producers of products is to not only think about their costs and profits but also what customers can afford to pay . I know Business management 101 - but it needs to be said.

Personally, it's not possible for me for budgetary reasons to buy the extra content as DLC. I do not consider the price to quality/novelty ratio of the ones they've been trying to sell me since Rome 2 as worth it. Secondly, because they're no longer coming with the base game, this has a knock on effect, I struggle to consider the base games as giving value for money. Couple that with the fact that Rome 2 took 1 year from release to become playable and Attila CAI still contains many of the bugs that plague Rome 2 - I currently find the price they charge for content to be beyond my purse.

There is something else they don't seem to be quite understanding about this "Chaos DLC" issue. To be perfectly honest, I still feel a lot of resentment towards CA concerning the state of Rome 2 at release. I'm going to ignore that emotion. I'm going to be rational. My rational brain tells me, I allowed myself to be hyped by the marketing of Rome 2. I was suckered into buying the game as a pre-order. I was very angry about the state of the game I received. I felt cheated and fooled - i decided I wouldn't be cheated again. And I hoped CA would recognise how poorly that particular marketing startegy was received by its player base and NOT do it again.

Three years later, and here they are doing it again! Repeating it! They write that they like pre-orders because the help create a "buzz" and "hype" about new games - yet they don't seem to see how that can make their customers resentful at best? CA is repeating the marketing strategy - an important faction being sold separately and included in the pre-order bait - that so many of us were suckered by, as though they have learnt nothing from the Rome 2 debacle? They can talk about the economics of it till their blue in the face- but what they seem to be either willfully or cluelessly overlooking is the psychological impact such a policy has.

In a nutshell - this the DLC policy and the pre-order policy does 2 things. Forget the economics, the pre-order DLC policy antagonises the customers who pre-ordered Rome 2 because it appears to show that CA isnt actually listening to us (if they were they wouldn't have even considered doing this) . And the DLC policy, personally, makes the games unaffordable for me.

I wish them the best of luck in the future. I'm afraid, I'm no longer one of their loyal regular customers.

[BalrogOfMorgoth]

The thing that bug me the most is that they don't even explained why they announced the DLC 6 months before the release of the main game.

We know more about the DLC roster than the Empire's one! This is some terrible way to promote something.

This is a good thing that they shew they are aware of the contreversy, but still, they didn't do anything to fix it.

[Saurus]

The thing that bug me the most is that they don't even explained why they announced the DLC 6 months before the release of the main game.

We know more about the DLC roster than the Empire's one! This is some terrible way to promote something.

The thinking (however wrong!) was that we are of course going to talk extensively about all the playable factions in the next 6 months, and so getting the pre-order up early means that as people see a bit of information or reveal over the next 6 months that they finally think "yeah I'll preorder", it will be there and ready for them to take advantage of.

That point will be different for everyone of course.

With hindsight, while there's been loads of info on Empire and Dwarfs already, absolutely we should have put out more detail, otherwise yes the impression is that Chaos Warriors are more 'complete' at this point, which isn't necessarily correct.

We are pulling some stuff together at the moment to illustrate the rosters of the playable races, will absolutely get to showing them off soon.

[Frost, colonel]

I'm quite divided on CA's response, I would like to believe they are sincere, and can understand that they feared that whatever response they gave would only inflame things.

Not entirely happy about this line; "To get that investment from SEGA (who are always supportive in backing us)" And yet who was responsible for the far to early release of RTWII?
Yes if we are careful we could return the product, but after the poor release of RTWII, having such an important faction of the game as pre-order or pay if you don't seems unfair to the older fans, in fact I think insulting seems fair to me. It is at best not a very sincere move.

I sincerely hope that TW.Warhammer is very good, both for CA's reputation and the fans who are eager for the release. One would fervently hope that lessons have been learned by Sega/CA, because there will be little patience for anything else. Added to this hopes from the Warhammer fans will be high, I truly hope it will be an excellent effort for every one concerned.

I would like to give them my support and pre-order, as I have been a big fan since their very first release, infact bought my first PC to play Shogun 1, but remain quite divided on said subject.

To be fair they have said they will even put back release if they need to to make sure there are reviews out before release. If they stick to this and reviews are out , say 2 weeks in advance of launch then fair enough, as long as those reviewers include peeps we can trust then again fair enough. Under these terms I would pre-order in those last 2 weeks.

[Frost, colonel]

Rome 2 is a very solid game now, but imagine how much better it could have been if you had let us get our hands on a piece of it a couple of months early and actually play test it. Instead of relying on big channels to form an opinion (not so people like Lionheart and Angryjoe who aren't afraid of telling you what's wrong) but people like IGN etc who will play for a few hours and tell us how good it is. I know this is a different genre and totally different game but take a look at Halo 5. They had a Beta nearly 10 months early and look how drastically the game changed from player feedback.
People are always going to be upset about chaos but if you show us how good the game can be before launch maybe some people will be happier to preorder the game.

What do you guys think about this?

What do I think about us playing RTWII and us helping CA by pointing out the bugs? I think they had a dead line, the AI, partic battle was exceedingly crap in places. There wasn't time to fix it(the reason they had capture the flag, as they were so dam desperate), they didn't want us to see it because we wouldn't of pre-ordered it, although they could of said, "hey guys we need your financial support, please buy and we promise to fix it through patches."

But whilst the fans like me would of helped, most of CA's sales probably come from casual buyers, who may well not of being supportive, so CA felt the need to lie because they didn't believe they would get enough support for their problems, they would of just lost lots of sales when word got out how buggy the game was, there would of being very unsympathetic videos on youtube taking the piss.

The worst thing was they lied about the AI, see Angry-joes review of RTWII regarding the AI.

[Aanker]

I still won't preorder/buy until the reviews are out and essentially vindicate the game from any release fails, but if CA lives up to its promise (of showing much more non-DLC content) at least that's a start.

[Person012345]

To be fair they have said they will even put back release if they need to to make sure there are reviews out before release. If they stick to this and reviews are out , say 2 weeks in advance of launch then fair enough, as long as those reviewers include peeps we can trust then again fair enough. Under these terms I would pre-order in those last 2 weeks.

I think it can be fairly certain that angryjoe will get a pre-release review copy and as long as you bear in mind that he'll be fairly excited for the game and factor that into what he says then he should be relatively trustworthy.

If he doesn't and other big outlets do, that will be a huuuuuuuge red flag, CA are very aware of who joe is.

[Manu La Canette]

I was just thinking: one big option we should have to deal with game industry as customers is class actions.

This kind of lawsuit is possible to deal with companies that purposely rushes broken products, see how it sells, and if there's further money to get out of it, then they fix it 6 months later.

This is exactly what's happening here, and what happened to Rome II. It's only working in game industry BECAUSE of preorder. Preorder is the guarantee editors need to cash in a broken game, and making people pay to fix it later. Because patching is one thing, but a lot of content that should be in core game is also sold as DLC.

Class actions, with customers represented as a group of people, made companies think twice about this stuff in USA. But I don't know if this kind of lawsuit is even possible if the company is said in UK or Europe. I don't know. I don't even know if that's possible in France... But we definitely need stuff like this.

[Aquila_Mars]

I won't trust a word of the reviewers like IGN after the Rome 2 debacle, unless some youtubers I trust in get the game in advance I'm not pre-ordering (or buying the game) unti their reviews are out. Lets hope they'll keep to their word.

[DavidtheDuke]

I won't trust a word of the reviewers like IGN after the Rome 2 debacle, unless some youtubers I trust in get the game in advance I'm not pre-ordering (or buying the game) unti their reviews are out. Lets hope they'll keep to their word.

You can only trust people on this forum and/or watching LPs at this point, Rome 2 reviews were hilariously off the mark.

[petertel123]

TW warhammer II by paradox. it will have 2 factions only. every dlc would have some dingy units and maybe a new faction. the game will have dlc for 2 years. they praise paradox games but crap on chaos dlc? that.

oh, did I mention that it will require a minimum of 1 year of patches to be crash free and playable?

what paradox games have you been playing? In all paradox games I've played all factions were playable from the start, and EU4 was playable and enjoyable from day 1.
OT: if they allow people to review the game before release, with enough time to cancel pre-orders, I'm okay with that.

[Frost, colonel]

I think it can be fairly certain that angryjoe will get a pre-release review copy and as long as you bear in mind that he'll be fairly excited for the game and factor that into what he says then he should be relatively trustworthy.

If he doesn't and other big outlets do, that will be a huuuuuuuge red flag, CA are very aware of who joe is.

Yep he's one of the one's I trust, even pointing out the silly quick battles in his RTWII review. As you say if peeps like him are not reviewing, it's time to be concerned.

What isn't that important to me in a review is how closely CA can stick to the Warhammer lore side of things etc, because I'm quite ignorant of these things I can't really be disappointed, it's general game play info I need.
But a good review from someone who knows all the law stuff etc will be a nice credit for CA to have.

[Totalheadache]

Classic case of "it will take us x amount of time and needs extra work so therefore we need to charge x".

Could mean anything and how do we know exactly the figures etc. A typical response from a company expecting you to believe them....

I tell you what Mr.Mike Simpson nice try but you aint fooling me.

I call .

(havent we seen this before with games companies making excuses for why they do dlc or why a game was released in an unfinished state etc).

How about no excuses and releasing a game that the public wants? This is so easy to do just look at kickstarters and games devs who actually listen to their public and also release decent dlc. By this I mean which is released after and adds significant content.

Take the witcher3...so far the DLC has been great and I have several more hours of it to go.

[craziii]

what paradox games have you been playing? In all paradox games I've played all factions were playable from the start, and EU4 was playable and enjoyable from day 1.
OT: if they allow people to review the game before release, with enough time to cancel pre-orders, I'm okay with that.

I am talking a hypothetical paradox made TWW II. thought it was pretty clear. Attila had youtube fan reviews 1 week before release. and ca just stated they are going to do the same thing with warhammer. of course they are just reviews. you might want to wait for twitch streams and ask your questions in real time.

I doubt Paradox is attempting to clone Total War (at least in their major releases, aka Europa Universalis/Crusader Kings/Hearts of Iron, they did publish something similar with King Arthur II), and with that idea in mind, given that we can only really compare the campaign maps, then yes, the campaign gameplay of paradox games is just so much better than any TW I've ever played. TW campaign is simplistic and boring. Just a platform to give battles a certain narrative. Just think of how boring it would be if you auto-resolved all battles, the only incentive to keep playing is the completionist urge to paint the entire map in your colour's faction. Paradox games are fun with no battles, and your goal is rarely to conquer the entire map... but to survive as good as you can.
Also, in TW I've never felt the absolute fear I feel in EU4 when it looks like France is about to invade me.

It should be CA the ones copying those games, since unlike Paradox with the battles, TW games do have a campaign side of the map which would improve vastly if it burrowed some features from games like EUIV. Using your same argument, they've had 15 years to make a decent diplomacy, for instance, and they are still light years behind Paradox in that aspect.

TW is about the battles. Period.

I never claimed paradox is trying to clone tw series, I was saying since so many of the guys posting here is stating how paradox is such a good dev, better than ca etc, para should make a clone of tw series. show ca how it is done, how to make a tw game right. never thought I had to explain my own mocking posts. well there it is.

I would love to see paradox make a clone of any TW game since rome I. maybe then paradox fanbois will finally quiet down. If the clone is truly better, I would also become a paradox fanboy and be happy about it when that happens I would humbly stfu and help you guys praise paradox.

TW games are not just about the battle, it is the 3D campaign map combined with battles that make up the magic. if it is just the battles, paradox clones of the battle portion would have been best sellers just like tw games. omfg, paradox can only make clones/games that is half of any tw games? oh noes. I was looking forward to become a paradox fanboy!

when the entire game is about the campaign map + info panels, it better be well made. and why would ca make a clone of paradox games when it is just a tiny market compare to their own tw series? incentive bro, there is non in cloning a paradox game.

the only real threat for tw games is the new mount and blade game with better graphics. that is a game worth salivating for. could you imagine a TW game that lets you control unit formations/attacks/battlefield and lets you take control of any single soldier on the battlefield?

That is what I want in the next tw game mechanic evolution. I want everything right now + the ability to take control of any soldier to fight in first or 3rd person M&B 2 is a huuuge contender for my money and time.

[RandomPerson2000]

From what I read at the CA response at the end of Mike'blog it seems that he is threatening the community to cut all pre order dlc and sell them as paid dlc.
Here is the section of the blog which is stated
Section of Mike's blog from total war forum
So is adding chaos as a pre-order incentive "cut content"? I think the opposite is true. If we didn't add it to the pre-order, it would have been DLC later on and not in the game at release.

We thought we'd done well. Maybe there is a better solution - we're listening to all suggestions for the future. Maybe pre-orders are becoming so toxic they will stop working altogether. You'd hope not though, as it quite simply means those incentives will end up just being paid DLC after launch.


Pre-orders create buzz, improve sales and give the whole studio confidence in what we’re doing. They genuinely let us give you something for nothing, and you can't lose – if you aren’t happy with the final game, you should explore your refund rights. Even if you don’t pre-order, you get Chaos as an Ai opponent.#


Note
I hope this comment doesn't get deleted since some of the stuff in this post is from another total war forum