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I understand the need to have a non-combined map campaign for people who only own 1 or 2 out of the three games but yeah, they doubled down on the worst aspects of the vortex lol
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May 1, 2022 19:48
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Sasgrillo posted:I just don't understand why, after all the criticism Race for the Vortex received, that they went and made another narrative campaign with all of the same issues plus a whole bunch more. Maybe it's bullshit but I get the impression that CA's dev teams are very compartmentalized and there's little to no communication between teams. The dudes who made WH2's Vortex campaign did their thing and made WH3, without ever asking the dudes handling WH2's DLC what they learned from feedback & metrics. Though that lack of communication is also present elsewhere. For example Katarin not having her sled was blamed on working-from-home and the design people not being able to talk to the art people. Which is just 
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May 1, 2022 19:54
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Sasgrillo posted:I just don't understand why, after all the criticism Race for the Vortex received, that they went and made another narrative campaign with all of the same issues plus a whole bunch more. Yeah, that's kinda the most frustrating part, they already went through this, people didn't like it, they were very vocal they didn't like it, they did it again and both modes will end up discarded by the player base as soon as the big map is out while they still have to maintain both versions and spend tons more time on it. Some of the bad design could be fixed by simply not making it a race, it's crazy that they never thought it would be incredibly frustrating to the playerbase to be 1 turn behind a AI who got into the realm first and end up being kicked back out or losing your 130+ turn campaign because you didn't prioritize the race above everything else.
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May 1, 2022 19:55
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Sasgrillo posted:I just don't understand why, after all the criticism Race for the Vortex received, that they went and made another narrative campaign with all of the same issues plus a whole bunch more. Post-launch DLC still had narrative campaigns through, and were received positively. They've probably decided that the broader audience doesn't want pure sandbox map painting. Troy also has a more focused campaign and it sounded like Three Kingdoms 2 is going in that direction as well. [Edit] Like, what percentage of players actually play multiple rounds of the grand campaign vs doing each narrative once and then putting the game down? That kind of player isn't posting about the game, but I suspect they're there. ZeusJupitar fucked around with this message at 20:18 on May 1, 2022 |
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May 1, 2022 20:16
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Most people do have a positive reaction to the short story campaign tutorial with Yuri though, it's a lot different then other things they have done, but it's very on-rails and so easy as to be nearly impossible to lose with no replay value in the slightest.
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May 1, 2022 20:32
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Lt. Danger posted:part of Belakor's plan is that everyone fighting over Ursun gives him a bunch of souls to turn into soul grinders for his army, so not inconceivable that he secretly leads the non-player factions into the race If my evil plan required me to trick people into fighting each other over who gets to get to me so I could gain ultimate power, I probably would tell them a fake bullshit way to get to me instead of giving them a step by step instruction manual about how to break into my house and murder me.  ZeusJupitar posted:Post-launch DLC still had narrative campaigns through, and were received positively. They've probably decided that the broader audience doesn't want pure sandbox map painting. Troy also has a more focused campaign and it sounded like Three Kingdoms 2 is going in that direction as well. The actual play numbers for the narrative campaigns they did in TWW1 DLC were so abysmally low that they decided to stop doing them. That's the entire reason why TWW2 race packs had 4 lords instead of 2 lords and a narrative campaign like the Beastmen/Wood Elves did in TWW1. The lesson from that was specifically "if the player has an option to play a focused narrative experience or to use their new toys on a big campaign map, they will almost always choose the latter, so we might as well save the effort and put it into more toys".
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May 1, 2022 20:54
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you can just stop playing until ie comes out. it's ok. you don't have to yell about it online.
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May 1, 2022 21:02
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Yelling opinions angrily into the void about video games is often more popular than the video games themselves.
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May 1, 2022 21:16
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I've never played a ME campaign, probably won't play IE either.
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May 1, 2022 21:28
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ZeusJupitar posted:Post-launch DLC still had narrative campaigns through, and were received positively. They've probably decided that the broader audience doesn't want pure sandbox map painting. Troy also has a more focused campaign and it sounded like Three Kingdoms 2 is going in that direction as well. Yeah, it seems like the lesson they learned wasnt that narrative campaigns are bad (and they aren't) but that the Vortex was bad (kinda). And because they learned the wrong lesson they made similar mistakes. Same thing from the short on-map narrative things they did with WH1 DLC. I think that the RoC would be much less badly reviewed if they were the DLC and not the main release, and didnt impair the map-painting quite so much. Like imagine if that was JUST Katarin's campaign (without the survival battles maybe) and it's pretty great, imo. The repetition and similarity across all the factions undermines the general replayability and THAT is what hurts most, I think.
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May 1, 2022 21:41
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Ravenfood posted:Yeah, it seems like the lesson they learned wasnt that narrative campaigns are bad (and they aren't) but that the Vortex was bad (kinda). And because they learned the wrong lesson they made similar mistakes. The oddest thing of it all to me honestly is how good the tutorial is and how bad it hands off to the campaign.
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May 1, 2022 21:59
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TaintedBalance posted:The oddest thing of it all to me honestly is how good the tutorial is and how bad it hands off to the campaign. Yeah, I think it just stems from the fact that the tutorial is built to be a relatively constrained, narrative tutorial. The campaign wants to emulate that but also has to cater to the normal TW gameplay, and it just didn't mesh well.
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May 1, 2022 22:14
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Here is my theory. Early game is more fun due to restrictions on the player and AI. Smaller armies, no doom stacks, less land to protect. The game gets worse as each of these expand. What I am saying is bring back dark omen or the army cost cap mod.
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May 1, 2022 22:22
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While we are at it make max army size 15 units or less.
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May 1, 2022 22:23
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Third World Reagan posted:While we are at it make max army size 15 units or less. *hoots, hollers*
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May 1, 2022 22:30
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Wasn't there some overly complicated way to limit army sizes in WH2? Anyway I hope they unlock all the factions for multiplayer before August so they don't kill that part of the game. Also so they include some kind of DLC check so I can recruit rattling gunners from my most trustworthy allies in campaign.
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May 1, 2022 23:23
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I definitely have more fun fighting with smaller armies, that's why stuff like the Cathay caravan fights or empire ally defense battles are so cool. It would be neat to have every race have some kind of mechanic like that, where you get to play smaller, more focussed fights. Like for example with vampire coast, instead of heroes doing the treasure maps, you could have a little bespoke army like the caravan that you send out to dig it up, and fight battles against a variety of factions to get the treasure.
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May 1, 2022 23:23
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I will say that I think, at least at first, that they did partially succeed at their goal of making there be some challenges late-game. That first Kislev campaign never felt like I had anything under control throughout almost the entirety of the campaign and it was a very nice change from the other games where after 30 turns the campaign feels pretty much safe. E: smaller armies would be great.
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May 1, 2022 23:25
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Mercrom posted:Wasn't there some overly complicated way to limit army sizes in WH2? There was and it was kinda buggy at times. I found limiting myself and the AI with mods to like 14,000 gold and 15,000 gold with not much increase for leveling the best way. Every fight was smaller and an uphill struggle. You could have an elite army of like 6-8 guys or a large army of 17 weenies. Your LL on a dragon tanked your army size.
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May 1, 2022 23:35
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Third World Reagan posted:While we are at it make max army size 15 units or less. you can make that change yourself right now, all TW games in fact. the AI and player are both effected. You just need to start a game, save it on turn 0. Then use the extremely old but somehow still functional ESF editor to edit your save. It's worked since Napoleon with some tweaks. I think these 5 year old reddit instructions should still work for WH3: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/72vqx6/anyone_know_if_editsf_will_work_with_warhammer_2/ Captain Beans fucked around with this message at 23:40 on May 1, 2022 |
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May 1, 2022 23:38
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Ravenfood posted:Yeah, it seems like the lesson they learned wasnt that narrative campaigns are bad (and they aren't) but that the Vortex was bad (kinda). And because they learned the wrong lesson they made similar mistakes. The problem with this takeaway is that it literally should make zero sense as a takeaway. Yes, the post-Vortex factions all had narratives, but they were almost universally of the "interact with it just as much as you want, and is basically entirely ignorable if you don't want to interact with it" variety. Like, if you're playing a Tomb Kings or Vampire Coast game there's technically an overaching narrative storyline for them, but you're not actually competing against anyone and you can just not do it if you don't want to. It's not like there are any penalties or effects to not hunting down the books of the dead. Similarly with lord packs, where the vast majority aren't really on any sort of timer and are more just a few quest battles once you've advanced the narrative enough - and you can just choose not to advance the narrative with little to no effect. The only one where you're really on a timer is Eltharion, and people mildly make fun of that one since you can win it in like 10 turns if you want to. So if their takeaway was somehow that Vortex design that at least somewhat necessitated paying attention to it was bad, but narrative campaigns that you don't have to interact with are good, and then created the RoC design where it's far more intrusive than even Vortex, how the hell did someone come to that conclusion? Like, before the hotfix it was completely incapable of being ignored due to being invaded every cycle regardless of what you were doing, and even post-hotfix that can happen because the AI is absolutely miserable at controlling them in their lands - meaning every cycle the provinces around you look like an utterly corrupted hellscape from which you're still invaded from.
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May 2, 2022 02:02
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Cease to Hope posted:A secret agenda means that Cathay has a reason to race Kislev rather than help them. It's a weak justification, though. So the actual reason that Cathay wouldn't actively help Kislev is because the Cathayans are just as big egotistical pricks as the High Elves. It's beneath them. And, oddly enough, with some justification... why should motherfucking DRAGONS give a poo poo about some provincial god dying? There's a good chance that all the dragon kids are actually older than Ursun; it's a certainty that the Emperor and Empress are. They care about their own little corner of the world and not much else, for the most part. IIRC we don't actually know why the Emperor ever bothered caring about the humans under his control in the first place. Most of the kids only do it because they want brownie points with daddy and/or mommy. So, yeah, if they thought they had a vested interest in the soon-to-be-corpse of a god they probably wouldn't bother checking with the worshippers of said god first. Now, on the other hand there's a good argument to be made that the Empire probably would come to assist if asked. The Dwarves probably would too, as mercenaries if nothing else. There's even some groups of Wood Elves that quietly hide out in some of the Kislev forests that might suddenly show up if the poo poo was truly hitting the fan. Cathay, however, is probably a Catch-22 situation: they would never deign to lower their defenses unless the alternative would invite the End Times, but if the End Times are coming they cannot afford to spare anything off the Wall.
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May 2, 2022 05:42
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The intro cutscene pretty much affirms that: Ying straight up says she's above the need to rescue Ursun in order to stick it to Chaos because she's a Dragon with a capital D, not a god. They're so arrogant that Zhao confirms as much that Ursun doesn't trust them, and by helping rescue him they could probably get him to say where the lost sister was. This thing between Dragons and Gods GW and CA are exploring with Cathay has potential for some real cool poo poo, IMO.
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May 2, 2022 05:50
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It really sucks for said immortal dragon-gods that the MacGuffin that can (and does) destroy the world is hidden in some podunk town in northern not-Germany and when fate of the world will be decided they will have absolutely no say in it.
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May 2, 2022 05:56
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Lt. Lizard posted:It really sucks for said immortal dragon-gods that the MacGuffin that can (and does) destroy the world is hidden in some podunk town in northern not-Germany and when fate of the world will be decided they will have absolutely no say in it. It's almost like that entire storyline and the attendant business moves were ill conceived and slapdash.
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May 2, 2022 06:44
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The issue with the narrative campaign- Okay there are many issues but the one right now that comes to mind is that it's a Bad narrative. I've mentioned before up and down and all around but the narrative is generic as hell, not in its simplicity but in the fact that nothing that happens matters to YOUR faction. It's shared between all factions. It's not about your faction, it's about Be'lakor and the Advisor. Your legendary lord doesn't matter, there is no narrative about your faction.
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May 2, 2022 06:56
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It's so stupid it loops back to great that the Cathay storyline ends with "Your Dragon is in another castle."
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May 2, 2022 08:03
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I didn't realise how bad I wanted Warhammer Oregon Trail until I played Cathay. In hindsight it's an obvious mesh and is sick as hell. I hope they drop the total warhammer 4x style gameplay and just work on more caravan routes and updates. With the storyline it kind feels pretty weird. I can't get invested in storylines where you've got to pickup corrupted items and steal souls as the good guys and you're pushing through the whole thing like, "If I had any options here I wouldn't be doing this. This feels like the laziest trap of all time."
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May 2, 2022 08:23
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Caravans is pretty much dark omen / shadow of the horned rat and they need that back.
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May 2, 2022 08:29
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wiegieman posted:It's almost like that entire storyline and the attendant business moves were ill conceived and slapdash. I still can't believe they doubled down on AoS instead of realizing that it was a mistake and making it an alternate time line. Just add a little blurb about it all being the fevered dream of a man in tcheezntches labyrinth and redo it properly now that you're expanding the world more.
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May 2, 2022 08:45
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The caravan system seems to have almost universal love and praise from everyone who has used it and it isn't even that complicated, you lock in a path and every turn or two you get a dilemma with usually two choices and most of that time one of those choices is fight ogres. But it works really well and you grow attached to your grizzled veteran caravans full of the hobos you picked up on events along the way and it would be very easy for CA or modders to expand on it with more varied enemy army compositions or writing up more events and choices. I would really like to see modders get to work on expanding the caravan system for the rest of the factions, for evil factions you just rename "trade" to "adventure" or "raid" and use the same system for a adventuring party raiding a cave or ruin for treasure with a boss fight at the end or a raiding party to go sack a countryside on the other side of the world and bring back the loot.
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May 2, 2022 09:06
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I had a real neat moment where as Zhao Ming, Greasus inevitable declared war on me and I had to beat the poo poo out of his invading armies to force a white peace. In the meantime, sending caravans out was suicide. It was a moment in Total War where I finally had a reason not to draw out a war despite having clear advantage because I could make so much more money sending caravans through the Ivory Road again instead of waiting for Greasus himself to pay up and looting his armies and settlements.
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May 2, 2022 09:15
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wiegieman posted:It's almost like that entire storyline and the attendant business moves were ill conceived and slapdash. Didn’t AoS massively increase sales for GW compared to old warhammer fantasy? Seems like it was a pretty smart move tbh
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May 2, 2022 09:16
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Yeah but it was still a weird move compared to just making affordable fantasy. It sells more cuz you can play a game without spending a thousand bucks on one army. At WHFB's end it was 50 dollars for ten garbage infantry that you needed 40 of, and that whole unit could be deleted by one spell. It's been posted about before here but GW had a good decade where they were unbelievably stupid at making money. I bet space marines still sell more than all of AoS.
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May 2, 2022 09:26
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Collapsing Farts posted:Didn’t AoS massively increase sales for GW compared to old warhammer fantasy? Seems like it was a pretty smart move tbh The same management that decided to blow up the old Warhammer Fantasy setting also turned Age of Sigmar into unmitigated disaster. It took a pretty massive infusion of new blood into leadership positions of GW to course correct and make Age of Sigmar successful. So the people that made Age of Sigmar successful would most likely made the old Warhammer Fantasy successful as well. And they seem to agree, considering the amount of support Total War: Warhammer recieves from them and the decision to launch the whole "Warhammer: The Old World" thing.
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May 2, 2022 10:06
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Collapsing Farts posted:Didn’t AoS massively increase sales for GW compared to old warhammer fantasy? Seems like it was a pretty smart move tbh
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May 2, 2022 10:14
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"jewel like objects of wonder" "marketing is otiose in a niche" They were also apparently shite to work for. Lots of one-man shops in malls where you had to literally close up and kick everyone out to go take a piss. On top of the obnoxious sales targets. The one employee had to basically harass you when people wanted the shop to be more of a chill club environment. It's not like people commonly have money and space for a decent gaming table and terrain, let alone multiple very different ones. Warhammer 3 is a return to form for the franchise, in a way, lol. Some business student could do a thesis on how dumb this franchise has typically been.
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May 2, 2022 10:38
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Anyone else think the terrain corruption effects in 3 look pretty bad when you have an adjacent province uncorrupted and it abruptly stops at the border?
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May 2, 2022 12:47
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Anyone else think the terrain corruption effects in 3 look pretty bad when you have an adjacent province uncorrupted and it abruptly stops at the border?
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May 2, 2022 13:21
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Anyone else think the terrain corruption effects in 3 look pretty bad when you have an adjacent province uncorrupted and it abruptly stops at the border? That's actually a very good representation of Daemonic corruption.  See in RL you can see how the corruption very suddenly ends at Ostermann's Jewelry.
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May 2, 2022 13:28
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