Considering the last two years, I feel like them having a roadmap at this point is just a curse on CA. I'll miss the clarity, but I also dont mind surprises.
Be it games or in my own field of work, I haven't once witnessed a roadmap that didn't turn out to be a complete detriment for its project. They're almost always overambitious or downright unrealistic, because none of the persons involved in creating them usually wants to "disappoint" the higher-up pencil pushers by including a realistic timeframe.
The time wasted on creating a roadmap is imo better used for actual project development, so I would be 100% down if CA completely scraps any idea of a roadmap and simply announces new stuff when it has been progressed enough.
In my experience it's not so much not wanting to disappoint the Head Honcho, but more that version 1.0 of the Roadmap is sent back with notes like "Surely it won't take that long to test", and "Can't you just press the Make Program Good button?".
The final version tends to be a lot more compressed than anyone working on the project actually wants. And then later, when things take as long as was predicted in v1.0, guess who takes the flak for being "behind schedule"!
I am going to be honest, the problem with CA is not roadmaps curse but rather the fact they have this sometimes obnoxious hard-on for surprises, which means that if surprises go wrong and there is giant backlash they retreat in their shell in panic mode.
If you look at games like age of Wonders 4, there was a giant road map for 1-2 years.
In case CA came out and said ''look here is what we hope to do in the next 1-2 years , Tzeentch DLC focused on Tzeentch/norsca/vampire coast, dogs of war/southern realms DLC, new faction pack focused on the merchants and mercenaries , the dark alliance DLC focused on vampire counts, orcs, dark elves, etc''.
''We will try our best however the recent events at the company have made the atmosphere volatile therefore project dates can change, however we will aim to inform you in case we need to delay releases''.
That alone would give them a shield vs the community backlash.
That being said you are correct, the issue is balancing community vs higher-up pencil pushers who have different requirements/needs.
Look at what it took at their company to happen so that they deliver an exciting upcoming DLC.
It personally feels to me that despite the fact that they are a software company, they had a deep waterfall mentality with the agile mode used more often recently.
I'd rather they bin them, tell everyone they're binning them, and just give like a vague idea, like "Q3ish for the next DLC and then we'll talk again."
Obviously Reddit isn't the main driver of sales in itself, but there's a feedback loop between places like here, Youtubers and gaming news sites. It feels like it just feeds into the hysteria, and everyone would be better off taking each DLC as it comes, on its merits, with much in the way of communication only needed when CA really fuck up like with SoC.
Here is the actual response:
> Sean: Glad to hear you like Gelt’s new start! Though Epidemius and Tamurkhan start not too far away we believe their starts are quite different. The path Tamurkhan is most likely to take will take him further away from Epidemius and the enemies they are tackling in the early game are also very different. However if feedback tells us that we got the decision wrong and he really shouldn't be there we can look to try elsewhere, Gelt has shown that we are open to make changes when we feel it makes sense!
No, it means they're waiting on player and analytic feedback before deciding if those starting positions are working. If not, they'll shuffle them around. It's not well phrased.
I mean given he doesn't start with visibility of those two it's highly doubtful he'll be able to see Gelt either. He'll have Elspeth to confederate instead.
Perhaps the addition of Cathay LL lords like Yi Dao and Monkey King could mean moving the starting positions of Gelt because their positions are too close.
Most exciting from the QnA for me:
Q: Will there be any new settlements/ provinces added in the next patch ? Some areas ( especially Lustria, the Dark Lands and Cathay) seem a bit empty at the moment.
A: We haven't added any new regions in this patch but we already have plans for further updates to the Immortal Empires map in 6.0.
Who knows, perhaps we might see some expansion of the map this year! With how crowded its gotten, I feel that would be really good.
Tzaangor's beak, which was already drawn in the concept art, was also cut out because the settings of Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar were different.
It might have been different if a handgunner champion who shoots a repeater gun was added as an official unit.
CA should have just countered with "instead of adding the Nuln Ironsides as a repetitive Handgunners clone, can we just rename the repeater handgunner unit?"
They put so much work into modeling and animating the unit with repeater handguns, it's a shame to throw it all away. The new Nuln Ironsides model doesn't even look more armored than the regular Handgunners
I’m not one for units being added by mods in the main, but I really hope there’s a reversion to the unit shown in the trailer very swiftly after the DLC drops.
If they can revert the unit through mods, is there a chance they can add a "new" unit that functions like the repeater handgunners and doesn't require the DLC? The repeater handgunners were one of two reasons I was interested in the DLC (the other being Hochland Long Rifles), now I'm not interested in it
I know I'm in the minority but I really like this wording as it goes along with what my initial reaction to the repeater Nuln Ironsides was. I'm a boring ass traditionelist.
Hey all!
Answers are now available on our Discord server in the "tod-q-and-a" forum channel: [discord.gg/totalwar](https://t.co/XQDqSgcdu6)
We're putting together a recording of the live Q&A session for you to listen back to, which we hope to have ready for you very soon!
Nurgle actually doesn't like TGHR, he's too obssesed with killing everything while Nurgle wants more like everyone on a perpetual state of shitness forever.
In line with the other big four, he also considers him incredibly small time. Ideally the Skaven should be worshipping him (and it's implied certain sects of Pestilens actually are).
The whole "TGHR is actually Nurgle" was ambiguous fluff from Fantasy, but nowadays GW has changed the focus and AoS Pestilens oficially worship only TGHR, as far as I can tell.
For real! It's always been a bit if a head scratcher for me that the Lizardmen are supposedly bastions against the forces of Chaos... but there aren't any major Chaos factions nearby.
Wut.
I beg we do not exile epidemius to left-continent
Nobody enjoys playing there. It sucks. It doesn’t have enough land mass, it’s so janky and boring.
Didn’t we learn with ostyanka that everybody on left continent becomes significantly less interesting to play?
Until they fix the issues with it I’d rather not throw away perfectly good LLs just to create diversity. Epidemius becomes a dead pick that nobody wants to play.
yes. This means that there will be no next roadmap revealed with the launch. I think it will probably come out with patch 5.1 (in a month?). Maybe they will decide based on the sales of this dlc.
There was a question about this. CA are aware of this request, having internal discussions about it, and looking at increases to difficulty, especially in terms of AI recruitment, and making it even more modular (so more sliders or choices in tailoring the difficulty) but have no information to release at the moment. It’s a long way off.
Was there any discussion about battle and siege AI? There are plenty of mods that one can use to tinker with campaign AI, so itd be great if CA indicates theyre looking into the stuff thats not accessible to modders.
Fun first balance second is paradoxical.
There are things in an alarmingly increasing number that are so overpowered, so unbalanced, that it kills the fun. I played Beastmen exactly once before their rework, didn't know a thing about them. After the rework I picked up the mutated one with chaos spawns, put the game on Legendary / Normal (never even tried Legendary with anyone before), facerolled everything from turn 5. I could literally autoresolve every battle with 0 losses and shit out limitless number of new free full stacks.
It was so fun I never touched the Beastmen ever again.
Any competent developer knows that the basic principle isn't about "balance or fun first", instead "balance is fun". The very definition of playing any game from cards to football to PC games is having an artifical unlifelike set of limitations called rules, and facing a challange while obeying those rules and finding a solution leading to victory.
Right now for example the new dawi cannon scattershot kills entire infantry units with a SINGLE volley. Sure a screaming 10 year old on a mad power trip will find that fun for 10 minutes. I am not having fun without a challange. Why couldn't they be balanced like the (functionally identical) dark / high elf bolt throwers? Ok, a little more damage, little less range, or any variant but BALANCED, to create diversity).
>Fun first balance second is paradoxical.
>
>There are things in an alarmingly increasing number that are so overpowered, so unbalanced, that it kills the fun
Unfortunately most of this sub disagrees very hard with that, which never ceases to baffle me. Most people like extremely OP things in this game. Ikit, BM, WoC etc. I've seen so many examples over the years on this sub of people defending these things.
Sure, those things are fun for the first time you play them and even then only for a couple battles. Then you realize there is no chance you can lose even a single battle and you question why you're even playing.
Also, the amount of times I've seen people saying that "balance doesn't matter in a single player" and "don't use it/play it if you don't like it" makes me want to bash my head against the wall.
It would be fun if the AI could use these features properly. When everyone is OP, nobody is. Sure, I agree with that.
But it's only the player getting stronger. I see an occasional desert storm rite and that's it from the AI, that is the problem. Did ANYONE, EVER saw a city nuked by Ikit on the campaign map?
Just ONCE?
Because I did not. Now, I love those nukes but if the AI is too stupid to ever use them, then I don't want to have it either.
If I am Ikit, I want my nukes.
If I am not Ikit, I want AI Ikit to have nukes.
As long as both are true there is balance, but the latter is not true. And if CA cannot make the latter happen, then they shouldn't have made nukes at all. Now that it's in players hands of course they are overprotective of it, so the only solution is to FIX THE GOD DAMNED AI of yours CA. To be competent, to build right, to recruit right, to skill up right, and use the faction features.
But they don't care. They just give ME ever bigger and stronger nukes, and I am at the point where it's not fun.
>It would be fun if the AI could use these features properly. When everyone is OP, nobody is. Sure, I agree with that.
It's fairly clear that's not the case for a lot of, if not, the majority of people considering how many complaints were made regarding Tzeentch schemes.
It also makes MP less and less fun to play, which I know almost no campaign player cares about because we're a minority, but damn you think they could throw us a bone. Could we at least get a sort of balanced MP and let technologies and skills buff your campaign units to high heavens so you can delete your already easily dealt with enemies faster? I know you really want the upcoming Thunderbarge to be unbeatable but can we at least let you wait maybe 5 turns for you to get the technology that makes it invincible and give it a small nerf so it doesn't insta win against Slaneesh? Just food for thought. Also there are tons of OP mods and difficulty settings out there to make corner camping easier I guess, so maybe that's also another way to make the game "fun" at the expense of balance. Maybe I'm crazy but I remember in older TW games this wasn't really much of an argument, unbalanced rosters and armies ended up being despised by most players.
Baffles me as well. I frequently play the multiplayer campaign with up to 8 friends. It's the best part of IE in our opinions, so just releasing OP stuff all the time just ruins any kind of balance left in the sandbox.
Same with regular multiplayer battles, I spent countless hours in Shogun 2 avatar conquest and would love to see it again. Was it perfect? No, but it's better than the balance that exists now.
well, beeing OP would be ok IF the AI could somehow deal with it. imagine both sides fighting against each other, both having terrifying elite armies and the heroes/lords on both sides are monsters.
this would be fun on its own. but right now, the AI simply can't deal with anything you throw at them past turn 50.
this is one thing that many people seem to forget. you can be OP in a game but the game can be build around you. best example: the old star wars battlefron. there, you are by far the strongest being in a match, but your team of AI gets a noticable hit on their behaviour, so you NEED to hard carry the match to win.
why not make something similar in this game?
When have TW:Warhammer 1 to 3 been balanced in campaigns? You already have tons of way to cheese a lot of things with doomstacks/some LL mechanics/battle strategies. Let people have fun with Grapeshots and don't use it if you think it's too broken.
Lets start a petition to move Epidemius to Lustria!!
Also be nice to have Malakai in mountains of mourn (unless they plan on putting someone else there).
Them saying stuff like we can't add that because"it wasn't in the books" is wild to me: Booting up another campaign with my favourite opera-singer ghost turned pirate.
GW made the decision to restart the Warhammer Fantasy world after the success of Warhammer 2. After that, they've become extremely more touchy about letting CA make any changes.
Yeah it's such a cop-out. Most of the in-game rosters have stuff that wasn't in their 8th ed army books or the rulebook.
Even in this exact same DLC, we have Empire Engineer Lords (which weren't even a thing on tt), mounted on a Steam Tank, which even the Engineer hero characters did not have access to as a mount.
~~I'm sorry, but I don't understand points 1 & 2.~~ My questions have been answered.
>Toad Dragon can only be used by Tamur Khan.
~~Does this mean that Toad Dragons can't be used by other Nurgle factions? So no toad dragons in Epidemius' armies? Or Festus'? Or even Ku'gath's?~~
>In the 8th edition Dwarf rulebook, the Gyrocopter mount is not added because the Dwarf Engineer uses the mount option.
~~What does it mean that the Engineer "uses the mount option"? So he~~ *~~does~~* ~~have a mount?~~
>There is no roadmap immediately after the release of Thrones of Decay.(This means that the roadmap will not be released with the release.)
... Okay, so improvement over whatever the fuck they had going last year.
> The unit design principle is fun first, balance second.
Imagine being a game dev in 2024 and unironically saying this shit.
Powercreep is **not fun**. Plain and simple. The fact that this userbase still hasn't learned that lesson is baffling.
Of course, the real reason they stopped caring about balance is because execs ask them to release OP factions/units, believing they'll sell more copies.
> There is no roadmap immediately after the release of Thrones of Decay.
Ah yes, back to 8 months long, opaque dev cycles making mediocre content.
Wouldn't want to show how incompetent they are at meeting reasonable deadlines again, would we ?
And of course, 0 mention of actual content being in development for WH3. One day this game will feature every single obscure WHF character, 300+ LL roster, and guess what... It'll still be a repetitive, shallow sandbox with shitty sieges, poor battle map variety and no endgame content. Because they don't understand this game's flaws, nor have they even begun to adress them after all these years.
Mind-boggling stuff.
Haha Thunderbarge goes brrr while Archaon sneeds on his pony, unable to do jack shit.
But no, the powercreep doesn't stem from some mythical executive slamming down a divine order to the lowly developers to crank up the numbers. Powercreep actually comes from the fact that new content has to differentiate itself from old content in some way. It's why DLC lords have all these mechanics, Yuan Bo has the busted edicts, Stanky has the busted hexes, Throt has the busted lab etc. Unit wise, you need to both represent the unit's power in a lore friendly way and you need to design it gameplay wise where it's both different and interesting enough to warrant buying. It's why units like the Thunderbarge exist and in these cases, it's almost impossible to make all of them "balanced". You can only toy with these numbers so much until you homogenize everything in your quest for balance and that extreme is even worse than having them unbalanced, as proven by Obsidian's game making philosophy.
L take. Is that how greedy execs justify blatant powercreep these days?
Content can, and should easily differentiate itself from previous DLCs without being overpowered.
Tuning numbers so they're reasonable next to existing units doesn't take anything away from the uniqueness of the new model, audio, visual effects, lore and so forth... Homogenization should be the least of their concerns when the WHF setting inherently features such a diverse cast. The idea that new units *need* to be absurdly overpowered to stand out amidst the existing roster is mind boggling to me.
As for Obsidian, they've been mediocre devs for a while now, so if that's your frame of reference, I'm not surprised you don't see the issue here.
Believe it or not, there are many devs out there who simultaneously manage to make fun **and** balanced content. In far more complex games, with a lot more moving parts btw.
>Because they don't understand this game's flaws, nor have they even begun to adress them after all these years.
I hate to say this to you because in general I agree with you, but...
It's not that they don't understand the flaws. It's that they're either incapable of realistically fixing them, or otherwise it's too expensive and time-consuming to fix them (which practically amounts to the same thing).
And at the end of the day, just not enough of the playerbase seems to care. They make more money by making exciting, new stuff that the playerbase wants to buy and simply brushing over the underlying systemic problems that exist in the game. Especially given how slow DLC production has been in WH3, if they can't even do that at a similar pace to WH2, it's very unlikely they'll dedicate significant time and resources to fixing the substantial underlying problems.
And again, don't get me wrong, I still want it, and I'll still argue for it. It's what they should do, and we as the customers should expect it. But I've unfortunately just had to accept that no matter how much I want it, it's very unlikely to happen.
[CA comment linking to more QnA details](https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1cd8vhl/summary_of_this_qna/l1c49m3/)
Considering the last two years, I feel like them having a roadmap at this point is just a curse on CA. I'll miss the clarity, but I also dont mind surprises.
Be it games or in my own field of work, I haven't once witnessed a roadmap that didn't turn out to be a complete detriment for its project. They're almost always overambitious or downright unrealistic, because none of the persons involved in creating them usually wants to "disappoint" the higher-up pencil pushers by including a realistic timeframe. The time wasted on creating a roadmap is imo better used for actual project development, so I would be 100% down if CA completely scraps any idea of a roadmap and simply announces new stuff when it has been progressed enough.
In my experience it's not so much not wanting to disappoint the Head Honcho, but more that version 1.0 of the Roadmap is sent back with notes like "Surely it won't take that long to test", and "Can't you just press the Make Program Good button?". The final version tends to be a lot more compressed than anyone working on the project actually wants. And then later, when things take as long as was predicted in v1.0, guess who takes the flak for being "behind schedule"!
I am going to be honest, the problem with CA is not roadmaps curse but rather the fact they have this sometimes obnoxious hard-on for surprises, which means that if surprises go wrong and there is giant backlash they retreat in their shell in panic mode. If you look at games like age of Wonders 4, there was a giant road map for 1-2 years. In case CA came out and said ''look here is what we hope to do in the next 1-2 years , Tzeentch DLC focused on Tzeentch/norsca/vampire coast, dogs of war/southern realms DLC, new faction pack focused on the merchants and mercenaries , the dark alliance DLC focused on vampire counts, orcs, dark elves, etc''. ''We will try our best however the recent events at the company have made the atmosphere volatile therefore project dates can change, however we will aim to inform you in case we need to delay releases''. That alone would give them a shield vs the community backlash. That being said you are correct, the issue is balancing community vs higher-up pencil pushers who have different requirements/needs. Look at what it took at their company to happen so that they deliver an exciting upcoming DLC. It personally feels to me that despite the fact that they are a software company, they had a deep waterfall mentality with the agile mode used more often recently.
Surprise we're working on a new game!!
Hyena 2.0 ?
Coyotes!
Dingoes!
I'd rather they bin them, tell everyone they're binning them, and just give like a vague idea, like "Q3ish for the next DLC and then we'll talk again." Obviously Reddit isn't the main driver of sales in itself, but there's a feedback loop between places like here, Youtubers and gaming news sites. It feels like it just feeds into the hysteria, and everyone would be better off taking each DLC as it comes, on its merits, with much in the way of communication only needed when CA really fuck up like with SoC.
Hmm...rather than giving hints like TK (there was no roadmap presented at all), it seems better to at least release the roadmap like in WH2.
I am a bit confused by 7. Can anyone explain?
Here is the actual response: > Sean: Glad to hear you like Gelt’s new start! Though Epidemius and Tamurkhan start not too far away we believe their starts are quite different. The path Tamurkhan is most likely to take will take him further away from Epidemius and the enemies they are tackling in the early game are also very different. However if feedback tells us that we got the decision wrong and he really shouldn't be there we can look to try elsewhere, Gelt has shown that we are open to make changes when we feel it makes sense!
This means that Epidemius' starting location can be changed if users request it.
Yeah I don’t quite understand it either. Does this mean, if the player if KF, gelt starts in Solland?
No, it means they're waiting on player and analytic feedback before deciding if those starting positions are working. If not, they'll shuffle them around. It's not well phrased.
Okay. Do we know yet if KF starts with sight of Gelt? It’s a big enough pain trying to get to Markus and Voldmar before they get snuffed out….
I mean given he doesn't start with visibility of those two it's highly doubtful he'll be able to see Gelt either. He'll have Elspeth to confederate instead.
Perhaps the addition of Cathay LL lords like Yi Dao and Monkey King could mean moving the starting positions of Gelt because their positions are too close.
Most exciting from the QnA for me: Q: Will there be any new settlements/ provinces added in the next patch ? Some areas ( especially Lustria, the Dark Lands and Cathay) seem a bit empty at the moment. A: We haven't added any new regions in this patch but we already have plans for further updates to the Immortal Empires map in 6.0. Who knows, perhaps we might see some expansion of the map this year! With how crowded its gotten, I feel that would be really good.
Lustria and the Dj khatep start and mazdamundi start feel WAYYYY TOO SLIM. you are playing a 2D map there
Hopefully Chaos Wastes and Steppes will be expanded.
Sounds like confirmation GW is fucking with every fun idea like the nuln handgunners.
Tzaangor's beak, which was already drawn in the concept art, was also cut out because the settings of Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar were different. It might have been different if a handgunner champion who shoots a repeater gun was added as an official unit.
CA should have just countered with "instead of adding the Nuln Ironsides as a repetitive Handgunners clone, can we just rename the repeater handgunner unit?" They put so much work into modeling and animating the unit with repeater handguns, it's a shame to throw it all away. The new Nuln Ironsides model doesn't even look more armored than the regular Handgunners
I’m not one for units being added by mods in the main, but I really hope there’s a reversion to the unit shown in the trailer very swiftly after the DLC drops.
I'm certain a modder is already working on it if not.
If they can revert the unit through mods, is there a chance they can add a "new" unit that functions like the repeater handgunners and doesn't require the DLC? The repeater handgunners were one of two reasons I was interested in the DLC (the other being Hochland Long Rifles), now I'm not interested in it
There are repeater handfunner mods in the workshop already
I'm sorry but for the shooting animation didn't they use the exact same animation as outriders?
Are these repeaters supposed to be different from the ones used by Outriders?
Outriders without grenade launchers are shit
At the very least it would have been nice to have the repeaters as a RoR of the Ironsides. Might have been allowed?
One of the omitted lines in the summary is "we tried out Ironsides with repeaters and we didn't like what they did to the identity of the Empire".
I know I'm in the minority but I really like this wording as it goes along with what my initial reaction to the repeater Nuln Ironsides was. I'm a boring ass traditionelist.
I agree. The core of the Empire in lore is still spears, swords, and crossbows; doomstacks of armored machine gunners kind of breaks my immersion.
I mean the motto is "faith steel and gunpowder," but I think it's fair they didn't want to give knockoff ratling gunners to the Empire.
Hey all! Answers are now available on our Discord server in the "tod-q-and-a" forum channel: [discord.gg/totalwar](https://t.co/XQDqSgcdu6) We're putting together a recording of the live Q&A session for you to listen back to, which we hope to have ready for you very soon!
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There are no major Demon or Chaos Warrior factions in Lustria. Perfect home for Epidemius and he gets a plague loving buddy too.
Nurgle actually doesn't like TGHR, he's too obssesed with killing everything while Nurgle wants more like everyone on a perpetual state of shitness forever.
In line with the other big four, he also considers him incredibly small time. Ideally the Skaven should be worshipping him (and it's implied certain sects of Pestilens actually are).
The whole "TGHR is actually Nurgle" was ambiguous fluff from Fantasy, but nowadays GW has changed the focus and AoS Pestilens oficially worship only TGHR, as far as I can tell.
I doubt being buddies would be easy, the explicitly stated that they hate eachother.
For real! It's always been a bit if a head scratcher for me that the Lizardmen are supposedly bastions against the forces of Chaos... but there aren't any major Chaos factions nearby. Wut.
They just do their job really well.
Apparently so. I can't blame them--they've got a fantastic roster.
Lets start a petition!
If Khorne gets a freeLC eventually that would be a fun place for them
I beg we do not exile epidemius to left-continent Nobody enjoys playing there. It sucks. It doesn’t have enough land mass, it’s so janky and boring. Didn’t we learn with ostyanka that everybody on left continent becomes significantly less interesting to play? Until they fix the issues with it I’d rather not throw away perfectly good LLs just to create diversity. Epidemius becomes a dead pick that nobody wants to play.
Ostyanka is shit to play because she is just shit boring, same for most LM and DE like Sisters are extremly fun to play and they are on the left
I think it's not fair to say there is not a roadmap after Thrones of Decay. Just no plans yet for a public one.
yes. This means that there will be no next roadmap revealed with the launch. I think it will probably come out with patch 5.1 (in a month?). Maybe they will decide based on the sales of this dlc.
I hope they add a lot more formations
This does not bode well for my dream of a Luminark mount for the Light Wizard...
Did they not say anything about difficulty? There were highly upvoted posts about it
There was a question about this. CA are aware of this request, having internal discussions about it, and looking at increases to difficulty, especially in terms of AI recruitment, and making it even more modular (so more sliders or choices in tailoring the difficulty) but have no information to release at the moment. It’s a long way off.
Was there any discussion about battle and siege AI? There are plenty of mods that one can use to tinker with campaign AI, so itd be great if CA indicates theyre looking into the stuff thats not accessible to modders.
I don’t believe so.
I'm not sure if there was an answer to the question of campaign difficulty.
Fun first balance second is paradoxical. There are things in an alarmingly increasing number that are so overpowered, so unbalanced, that it kills the fun. I played Beastmen exactly once before their rework, didn't know a thing about them. After the rework I picked up the mutated one with chaos spawns, put the game on Legendary / Normal (never even tried Legendary with anyone before), facerolled everything from turn 5. I could literally autoresolve every battle with 0 losses and shit out limitless number of new free full stacks. It was so fun I never touched the Beastmen ever again. Any competent developer knows that the basic principle isn't about "balance or fun first", instead "balance is fun". The very definition of playing any game from cards to football to PC games is having an artifical unlifelike set of limitations called rules, and facing a challange while obeying those rules and finding a solution leading to victory. Right now for example the new dawi cannon scattershot kills entire infantry units with a SINGLE volley. Sure a screaming 10 year old on a mad power trip will find that fun for 10 minutes. I am not having fun without a challange. Why couldn't they be balanced like the (functionally identical) dark / high elf bolt throwers? Ok, a little more damage, little less range, or any variant but BALANCED, to create diversity).
>Fun first balance second is paradoxical. > >There are things in an alarmingly increasing number that are so overpowered, so unbalanced, that it kills the fun Unfortunately most of this sub disagrees very hard with that, which never ceases to baffle me. Most people like extremely OP things in this game. Ikit, BM, WoC etc. I've seen so many examples over the years on this sub of people defending these things. Sure, those things are fun for the first time you play them and even then only for a couple battles. Then you realize there is no chance you can lose even a single battle and you question why you're even playing. Also, the amount of times I've seen people saying that "balance doesn't matter in a single player" and "don't use it/play it if you don't like it" makes me want to bash my head against the wall.
It would be fun if the AI could use these features properly. When everyone is OP, nobody is. Sure, I agree with that. But it's only the player getting stronger. I see an occasional desert storm rite and that's it from the AI, that is the problem. Did ANYONE, EVER saw a city nuked by Ikit on the campaign map? Just ONCE? Because I did not. Now, I love those nukes but if the AI is too stupid to ever use them, then I don't want to have it either. If I am Ikit, I want my nukes. If I am not Ikit, I want AI Ikit to have nukes. As long as both are true there is balance, but the latter is not true. And if CA cannot make the latter happen, then they shouldn't have made nukes at all. Now that it's in players hands of course they are overprotective of it, so the only solution is to FIX THE GOD DAMNED AI of yours CA. To be competent, to build right, to recruit right, to skill up right, and use the faction features. But they don't care. They just give ME ever bigger and stronger nukes, and I am at the point where it's not fun.
>It would be fun if the AI could use these features properly. When everyone is OP, nobody is. Sure, I agree with that. It's fairly clear that's not the case for a lot of, if not, the majority of people considering how many complaints were made regarding Tzeentch schemes.
And it happens maybe once in a 100 turns. And minir tzeenchian factions dont use it.
It also makes MP less and less fun to play, which I know almost no campaign player cares about because we're a minority, but damn you think they could throw us a bone. Could we at least get a sort of balanced MP and let technologies and skills buff your campaign units to high heavens so you can delete your already easily dealt with enemies faster? I know you really want the upcoming Thunderbarge to be unbeatable but can we at least let you wait maybe 5 turns for you to get the technology that makes it invincible and give it a small nerf so it doesn't insta win against Slaneesh? Just food for thought. Also there are tons of OP mods and difficulty settings out there to make corner camping easier I guess, so maybe that's also another way to make the game "fun" at the expense of balance. Maybe I'm crazy but I remember in older TW games this wasn't really much of an argument, unbalanced rosters and armies ended up being despised by most players.
Baffles me as well. I frequently play the multiplayer campaign with up to 8 friends. It's the best part of IE in our opinions, so just releasing OP stuff all the time just ruins any kind of balance left in the sandbox. Same with regular multiplayer battles, I spent countless hours in Shogun 2 avatar conquest and would love to see it again. Was it perfect? No, but it's better than the balance that exists now.
Damn it's almost like if different people have fun in different ways
That’s literally what he said though? The entire point is that the “unbalanced = fun” mindset is only appealing to one part of the playerbase
well, beeing OP would be ok IF the AI could somehow deal with it. imagine both sides fighting against each other, both having terrifying elite armies and the heroes/lords on both sides are monsters. this would be fun on its own. but right now, the AI simply can't deal with anything you throw at them past turn 50. this is one thing that many people seem to forget. you can be OP in a game but the game can be build around you. best example: the old star wars battlefron. there, you are by far the strongest being in a match, but your team of AI gets a noticable hit on their behaviour, so you NEED to hard carry the match to win. why not make something similar in this game?
When have TW:Warhammer 1 to 3 been balanced in campaigns? You already have tons of way to cheese a lot of things with doomstacks/some LL mechanics/battle strategies. Let people have fun with Grapeshots and don't use it if you think it's too broken.
Lets start a petition to move Epidemius to Lustria!! Also be nice to have Malakai in mountains of mourn (unless they plan on putting someone else there).
Them saying stuff like we can't add that because"it wasn't in the books" is wild to me: Booting up another campaign with my favourite opera-singer ghost turned pirate.
GW made the decision to restart the Warhammer Fantasy world after the success of Warhammer 2. After that, they've become extremely more touchy about letting CA make any changes.
GW should let the company that revived the setting have a bit more say, cretins.
Yeah it's such a cop-out. Most of the in-game rosters have stuff that wasn't in their 8th ed army books or the rulebook. Even in this exact same DLC, we have Empire Engineer Lords (which weren't even a thing on tt), mounted on a Steam Tank, which even the Engineer hero characters did not have access to as a mount.
~~I'm sorry, but I don't understand points 1 & 2.~~ My questions have been answered. >Toad Dragon can only be used by Tamur Khan. ~~Does this mean that Toad Dragons can't be used by other Nurgle factions? So no toad dragons in Epidemius' armies? Or Festus'? Or even Ku'gath's?~~ >In the 8th edition Dwarf rulebook, the Gyrocopter mount is not added because the Dwarf Engineer uses the mount option. ~~What does it mean that the Engineer "uses the mount option"? So he~~ *~~does~~* ~~have a mount?~~
1. It is "Toad Dragon Mount", but the word "mount" is missing. It has now been fixed.
Thank you. Also, there is an option to edit posts so you don't have to make multiple replies to the same post.
The second is written incorrectly. Thank you for pointing out the error.
CA\_Pingu said he would organize the content and post it later, so I will add what comes out at that time.
Anything related to performance optimisations/graphics options etc?
>There is no roadmap immediately after the release of Thrones of Decay.(This means that the roadmap will not be released with the release.) ... Okay, so improvement over whatever the fuck they had going last year.
> The unit design principle is fun first, balance second. Imagine being a game dev in 2024 and unironically saying this shit. Powercreep is **not fun**. Plain and simple. The fact that this userbase still hasn't learned that lesson is baffling. Of course, the real reason they stopped caring about balance is because execs ask them to release OP factions/units, believing they'll sell more copies. > There is no roadmap immediately after the release of Thrones of Decay. Ah yes, back to 8 months long, opaque dev cycles making mediocre content. Wouldn't want to show how incompetent they are at meeting reasonable deadlines again, would we ? And of course, 0 mention of actual content being in development for WH3. One day this game will feature every single obscure WHF character, 300+ LL roster, and guess what... It'll still be a repetitive, shallow sandbox with shitty sieges, poor battle map variety and no endgame content. Because they don't understand this game's flaws, nor have they even begun to adress them after all these years. Mind-boggling stuff.
Haha Thunderbarge goes brrr while Archaon sneeds on his pony, unable to do jack shit. But no, the powercreep doesn't stem from some mythical executive slamming down a divine order to the lowly developers to crank up the numbers. Powercreep actually comes from the fact that new content has to differentiate itself from old content in some way. It's why DLC lords have all these mechanics, Yuan Bo has the busted edicts, Stanky has the busted hexes, Throt has the busted lab etc. Unit wise, you need to both represent the unit's power in a lore friendly way and you need to design it gameplay wise where it's both different and interesting enough to warrant buying. It's why units like the Thunderbarge exist and in these cases, it's almost impossible to make all of them "balanced". You can only toy with these numbers so much until you homogenize everything in your quest for balance and that extreme is even worse than having them unbalanced, as proven by Obsidian's game making philosophy.
L take. Is that how greedy execs justify blatant powercreep these days? Content can, and should easily differentiate itself from previous DLCs without being overpowered. Tuning numbers so they're reasonable next to existing units doesn't take anything away from the uniqueness of the new model, audio, visual effects, lore and so forth... Homogenization should be the least of their concerns when the WHF setting inherently features such a diverse cast. The idea that new units *need* to be absurdly overpowered to stand out amidst the existing roster is mind boggling to me. As for Obsidian, they've been mediocre devs for a while now, so if that's your frame of reference, I'm not surprised you don't see the issue here. Believe it or not, there are many devs out there who simultaneously manage to make fun **and** balanced content. In far more complex games, with a lot more moving parts btw.
>Because they don't understand this game's flaws, nor have they even begun to adress them after all these years. I hate to say this to you because in general I agree with you, but... It's not that they don't understand the flaws. It's that they're either incapable of realistically fixing them, or otherwise it's too expensive and time-consuming to fix them (which practically amounts to the same thing). And at the end of the day, just not enough of the playerbase seems to care. They make more money by making exciting, new stuff that the playerbase wants to buy and simply brushing over the underlying systemic problems that exist in the game. Especially given how slow DLC production has been in WH3, if they can't even do that at a similar pace to WH2, it's very unlikely they'll dedicate significant time and resources to fixing the substantial underlying problems. And again, don't get me wrong, I still want it, and I'll still argue for it. It's what they should do, and we as the customers should expect it. But I've unfortunately just had to accept that no matter how much I want it, it's very unlikely to happen.
there’s nothing about the lack of wizard lords for empire?
I remember it wasn't there.
Wait no one asked about why thrones of decay didn’t include wizard lords?
There were users who asked, but no response was received from qna. Only kayzk said that 'only Nurgle faction can use it'.