The reality is for some of us this has been a 20+ year relationship with Total War.. It's taken A LOT to get to me to the position where I'm likely to never buy another product from CA.
Same... getting Shogun 1 for my birthday as a kid was the birth of a very long and largely very enjoyable relationship that appears to have come now to a disappointing and unpleasant end... (and gradual, it must be said, this latest outrage is more of a "big fat final drop" scenario than anything else).
The games from Total war franchise have been in decline for a while. Games often keep coming out with smaller scopes (apart from Warhammer that keeps adding more and more ). Even then Warhammer has had some awful DLCs.
It's sad, CA were trying to chase the e-sports crowd, we saw it with TW:Arena then Hyenas... They seem to be trying to streamline gameplay to the point of stripping away any depth TW games had and what made them special. Not including well liked features from forerunner titles that would've made a better game. Battles have been reduced to fast rock/paper/scissor spectacles with not much strategy or tactics involved other than pumping out doom stacks.
The fact they said that "the right to discuss is a privilege" is not only one of the most classist and elitist things I've ever heard, but also insanely ridiculous when you remember that they are telling that to the people that literally feed them and who want nothing but for them to do good. This whole situation is honestly mind blowing.
Add to that the part where they outright claimed they do not ban anyone without good reasons, in what was at least in part meant to be an apology for banning lots of people without good reason...
@@ArbaaltheundefeatedYou know, I think I'm starting to understand why CA communicates so little as is so opaque. It is better to shut up and look like an idiot than to speak up and confirm you are an idiot.
When you live in a world where people tell you nonsense like your words can enact physical harm on someone. CA telling you you have to talk about what they want you to talk about isn't surprising.
First : the righ to discuss is a privilege is not wrong on a private forum like steam. Sure it's not really smart to claim it that way even if it's true. Words can push other people to harm physically other people. Trump cultists are a pretty good exemple. A group of people can even push someone sane to suicide. That's why there are limits to freedom of speech.
I dunno the fact that there wasnt an immediate turn around and apology after what happened is enough to keep me away, now. The fact theyre showing hard evidence that theyve learnt nothing and the same entitled arrogance tells me theres nothing worth staying for
@@Scottx125Productions They outright claimed not to do what it was meant to be an apology for *in* the "apology", so yeah. One of the paragraphs quite late in the post literally claimed they do not ban people lightly and it is only ever done after multiple warnings, careful consideration and in accordance with guidelines, a blatantly, demonstrably untrue statement. In other words, blatantly lying about an aspect of what they were supposedly apologizing for.
@@Scottx125Productions It's a classic corporate fauxpology. "We're sorry you feel that way" energy. Unsurprising, considering the one making it was the same EA 'community manager' responsible for the Battlefield 2042 community management fiasco.
It didn't start with shadow of change, it was inflamed by it. They had been asked to improve ai in siege maps of Warhammer for example , what they gave was self contructing towers and capture points. They were asked to make PVP more fun and they added more capture points. They were asked naval battles or interconnected regional campaign maps for immortal empires what they gave was a copy paste of mortal empires. For other games everything looked like a mod overhaul instead of a new game. They don't give the necessary modding tools to sell paid mods again and again. Their greed for money made them spam bad games instead of making a good one. They had been spending the trust what they have earned long ago and shadows of change intersected with the time they were bankrupt on that department. They were wanrned on what was coming and they refused to care and now they are paying the price. I will no longer buy TW spams.
Personally I'm just done with this shitshow of a company at this point. After all their repeated, unacceptable mistakes, after the price gouging, the months of cowardly radio silence, the quality drops, the PR threats, the disgusting corporate decisions, after all of that they now have the gall to insult their community directly as well. All of their behaviour has made it clear to me that this company as a whole - not just corporate leadership - views its fans as nothing but walking wallets that should only ever speak when spoken to. I'm out. Genuinely out. Hope they either make concrete amends for the next couple years at this point or simply go under - that way the IP might at least potentially end up in the hands of a studio that still cares.
I'm glad we've moved past the point where discussion is about the "poor innocent devs" and the "evil upper management". There is a culture of contempt for the players that pervades every level of CA, and while there are certainly individuals who are passionate and care about the product, there are also many who don't.
Not just CA mind you, for a while people always chalked up these kinds of things to "Upper Management Meddling" in games. But recently it has been shown in multiple Game Dev companies that developers themselves are either passionless, entitled to having audience like their creation, or contemptuous of the game they are developing.
Yes, and it is also not even a bad thing as such. People can like or love their job, they want to do it well, but it is at the end of a day a job. A lot of people remember CA as a smaller studio, but it’s impossible for all 900 of them to be passionate. It’s not even good vs bad, some people might have solid ideas, but that would be too hard, or wouldn’t be worth the effort. In a well run company, you aren’t putting out bangers every time, you’re ocasiónale putting out great stuff, but mostly avoiding shitting the bed.
CA making these at best very questionable decisions regarding TWW3 is really painful, considering there is no series quite like total war AND considering that it seems like CA is having major issues developing new games - No idea at all who thought that spending a hundred mil on Hyenas, a looter shooter in 2020s was a good idea?
@@etienne8110Probably tbh. The problem that many suits have (personal experience working under some) is that they focus on numbers. For example they see that Fortnite earns a lot of money, but ignore the fact that the market is saturated, there is no longer a pool of consumers to pick from, you have to take from established titles. Which is waaaaay harder than taking from a pool of people not invested into anything. Hyena makes no sense to me, they have had to ignore literally every other fact on the table. I dunno why either CA or SEGA cannot just focus on Total War more, invest in it. Because they have people that will literally throw money at them. Guessing it is the classic "it makes money, yes. But it does not make the amount we want", which side note is more or less what I was told at my last job and made me quit. I worked as a programmer for a company that seemed more focused on short term benefits instead of focus long term. Which funnily enough seems to be very close to this situation with TW. It is not unique. Edit: Not just Hyenas, but Pharaoh makes no sense either, it is not a TW many asked for, so why make it to begin with? A lot of TW titles as of late makes not much sense to me, and it is the Saga titles for the most part. And Troy and Pharaoh are Saga titles as well imo. They were supposed to be the smaller versions in a small scope, but what has happened is that they remove the Saga on it and say it is a main title while it is actually just a Saga title but for full price.
They forgot that they will be battling with those who already build an experience and a reputation from year 2000's a small MB of FPS games, to now large GB's of file; That you know now they are experts of that genre of game. Like Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Arma, Battlefield, fortnite which they acumulated their success because of the years of experience developing and upgrading their game brand. CA I think is new on this genre, they forgot they start from Strategy game this total war series. Now, they jump to FPS which they don't have any experience and they want some share of players to FPS which is now too crowded and already have loyalty, demanding on graphics, and effects and you know is equals to very expensive to make. They cancel hyenas because they know what they built was buggy and cannot compete with the already strong foundation company. And comeback to now total war what they have started from a long time, on what they already have experience, but changed its gameplay.
It feels like the end, man. I was so excited when WH 1 was announced, I got a lot of enjoyment from the series, but it really didn't feel like it was quite there with Chaos being so under-developed. WH 3 was supposed to be the great completion, a game that'd keep me occupied for the forseeable future. Instead, we got a mess of a game, and all of the daemon factions have pretty bad campaigns. TW:WH has been part of my life as a single guy in my studies, all the way up til now where I'm married and a father, and to see it go out in such a pathetic (and self-inflicted) manner is a real shame. I'm just glad that my life moved on before CA revealed themselves to be ran by incompetent chimpanzees.
I'm going to pick up warhammer 3 at some point, but I avoided due to all the issues and my experience during a free access weekend was crashes and performance issues
@@phillipspassmore If you've not played WH 2 for hundreds (or in my case a couple thousand) of hours, WH 3 will probably give you a good amount of fun. For me and anyone who has invested a ton of time into WH 2, WH 3 just doesn't offer enough to make it feel like a new game; I was burnt out on 2, and since 3 is basically just 2 with new (badly designed) races it got old real fast. Might be worth looking at if they get some more DLC out and actually rework daemons!
That's my experience also man. I was super excited when it was announced and even build a computer especially to play it. Started playing it before I got married and now I'm hitched with a kid with another baby on the way. It's sad to see a thing that was such a part of my life for so long die such a sad death.
Was this not expected? I paid full price for total warhammer 3 and i played it 2 hours and never played it again and i will never buy another CA game again. Some people just don't understand how bad a studio can become if it's not stoped by its fans
I think this is good because it will end CAs hegemony on this genre and even if at the start competitors will not produce high quality product they will find a way to grow into immersive games. CA was a huge tree that blocked the sunlight for all the saplings. Now new trees will grow under the sun.
They're doubling down even harder than Wizards of the Coast did at the beginning of the year. That shows you how corrupted the business side has become. Their focus on short term gain to show shareholders the biggest numbers possible rather than anything long term is pretty pathetic.
Great to hear a in a video about this topic from you. It’s important that we all make our voices heard and discuss about the franchise. We all want Total War and it’s community to be better (we are fans of this series afterall).
If CA put the time and energy they spend on hating their customers into working on their games instead, they'd be making good games and *not* looking at the possible end of their existence as a company.
my biggest gripe with Phraoh is that it was the perfect opportunity to introduce a new engine, with the bronze age being very limited in unit choices. but without a new engine why would you play "Ooops! All Tomb kings, without the cool bits"
0:30 No, if people keep buying their products they are to blame as well. The only reason CA developed and could afford this behavior is because people keep buying anything they give. It's specially bad with Warhammer. All this complaining did absolutely nothing. When did they start panicking and firing people? When people didn't buy Pharaoh. Money is the only thing that matters.
Calling out Volound is kinda silly here. The dude was right. Im a far right Republican and hes a friggin commie and I'll say he was absolutely right about total war. The dude has NUMEROUS videos going in depth as to how and why the game series is worse. Its not "oh TW is crap cuz its crap". Its "arrows aren't as good anymore because it no longer matters if the arrow hits the shield or the guy because the shield is now technically just a part of the model and thus still takes damage despite not having been hit. Plus they all share health so he might not have been hit at all and yet still take damage". He was right about RUclipsrs constantly shilling the game who have now turned around and bash CA all to save face to keep making money. Hell i watched one dude legit suggest suggest that the best way to fix the issues with SoC... was to NOT TALK ABOUT THEM. Id consider that shilling for sure. And id say the bigger total war channels started becoming less and less the ones who genuinely loved the series (Pixilated Apollo being the biggest example) but instead a bunch of yes men who served as damage control. They just... happened to get views. Conveniently became the first guys to have unreleased content for games. As for volound himself, I personally had no idea who the dude was till around the end of WH2. And even then i heard he was a just a troll. Watched a couple vids just to see if it was as bad as people say. The crazy thing that i found was that he's not saying anything people haven't already been thinking for years. I didn't have to watch his vids to know that guns in WH3 are shit. I played Empire. I played Napoleon. I played medieval 2. I already KNEW they were shit in WH3. But back during early WH1 and WH2 people would trash you for that. My guess is he didn't get popular by convincing people that the game is bad or spewing nonesense about it, but because he was one of the ones speaking up on it back before it was popular. Can he be a jackass to people he disagrees with? Yea. Overly negative? Slightly. But he was right for damn sure. And I believe him when he says CA basically yeeted him and others for nothing more than being critical given what theyre now doing to their entire fanbase. And i dont think CA will get trust back. My personal last hope for the franchise was the "secret project" being Empire 2 or Medieval 3 or a total overhaul for a fully packaged group of all the old total wars sold at a discount. Instead rhey had a "drag queen inspired" shooter clearly meant to move away from the TW series. They were gonna abandon the fanbase entirely. I wont say certain here, but its very likely WH3 will be the last total war i buy.
@@Costin_Gaming A commie yes, a jackass yes, but he's been more correct on the series than some others as of late. If enough pressure was mounted from more reasonable voices earlier, this might have all been avoided.
CA looking at the burning wreck that is Total War game IP: We probably should do something about that. Could someone bring water? CA management brings a bucket full of clear liquid and throws it towards the flames. CA: Why is the fire only getting bigger? The fandom looking depressed from the sidelines: Because you threw gasoline at it.... again.
I'm at a point where even though I've spent a tremendous amount of money on this company (Which was used to create a garbage game that didn't even come to market and no one asked for) I prefer that they close the studio, that no one ever talk about Total War again and that Fire everyone. That's how angry I am, I'd rather have spent all my money for nothing than see this company continue to function this way.
I will be honest. CA is dead, total war is dead. CA killed the franchise and it is all CA fault. And they have an audacity to ban people, because of the different opinions. Players are pointing out the problems, like overpriced DLCs for TWW3, which we can all agree with, that paying nearly 30 euros or dollars for Shadows of Change or Chaos Dwarfs is too much. Or pointing out the overpriced Pharaoh. This game should not cost 60 euros, instead it should cost 30 euros, like Shogun 2. There are of course multiple reasons, I just mentioned the thing, which triggered many people, and it is overpriced DLCs and game, which is basically nothing, just SAGA, like Troy or Thrones of Britannia, and they are asking for 60 euros/dollars for that product. BTW Great video, really liked it.
You know there I was, seeking to wash my within the shower and I thought of this astounding analogy. With all the controversy and chaos that's been ensuing, increasingly so, I got to thinking...if a Wal-mart Manager saw the customer service line wrapping outside the front entrance, the RETURNS line to be specific, and went up to a customer and asked what was wrong and they showed him/her the rotten...leafy advertised product, with moldy, hardened, and crusty Avocados and the Walmart manager decides to EJECT the customer outside of the store, what happened? He saved Walmart the immediate sale of an atrocious product, however, then most likely lost a customer to perhaps Grocery Outlet, 99 cent store, or maybe even the dollar tree. Moral of the story, regardless of how unimportant the Wal-Mart manager makes you feel for not desiring to purchase their soiled product, do know that no matter how much delicious Pomegranate Raspberry dressing you throw on those Crusty Avocado products, it's still moldy! Honestly had a few other analogies but that one I could actually coherently type out. Just want some good leafy greens yo! BTW, this comment was banned for posting in the Total War Subreddit
Great games and content require great people and ideas. No amount of money, influence, or power will sustain the artistry needed to keep this franchise alive. CA has sold its soul and needs to acquire a new one. Good luck with that.
Why is volund a douchbag when hes the only one spouting the real deal you can also compare the actions of ea ubi actiblizz and more and string them all together with volunds info hes spewing real stuff not held back by any contracts. Makes no sense that the guy calling them out the hardest is the bad guy id say hes damn well righter than everyone
Fortunately he isn't the only one, as we also have Nasmr, Dishonorable Daimyo, and now LegendOfTotalWar. Even Bellular News reported on Volound's leaks.
Banning people, the words "privilege" and "inclusively" in the same paragraph... Doesn't that ring a bell? I think a certain type of culture has spread at CA...
"customers? screw that, ESG is the new hotness, lets put all our money into drag-queen shooters from 2004" Also I don't know who volond is, but I know for 100% that if one person in a youtube community calls another a jackass, then the first one is the jackass 100% of the time.
Where does "inclusively," a woke term, enter into a discussion about CA and TWW3. It's this "canned," corporate speak that shows how disinterested they are about dialogue.... "Yeah, you're free to say what you like....oh, as long as we agree and allow it to be said." Censorship is a slippery slope....
Maybe it always was inevitable. Once a game (series) grows too large, the passion within a company makes place for maximizing profits. "Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
Even taking into account things like inflation and rising cost, the closest nearby dlc of similar scope was Warriors of Chaos which 1. offered a lot more content, and 2. was sold for $15.99. Even undertaking the assumption that they offer the same amount of content (which they do not), is the public seriously expected to believe that inflation ROSE $10 IN ONE YEAR? Can you IMAGINE the panic in government and the media?! Because Champions of Chaos was released almost EXACTLY 1 year prior.
I would say that a major reason why Pharaoh flopped so hard is that it lacks a wow-factor/it does not really seem exciting, or well, a reason why someone would buy it outside of them being REALLY into ancient Egypt. The map is not amazing, the unit variety is not great, and the fantasy crowd is also guaranteed to not be too into it. Really like your point about "what is the next major TW release?" because at this point I am VERY skeptical about if a historical TW game can even get successful enough to warrant being the next big franchise after warhammer. And if it cannot? What fantasy franchise would be interesting enough/large enough, and willing to tie their brand to CA?
If CA made Medieval 3 total war, it would sell very well. Honestly probably one of the top sellers for whatever year it comes out. So would Rome 3. Medieval 2, a nearly 20 year old game had the same player count as Pharaoh at launch. There are always tens of thousands of people playing older historic titles. The problem with Pharaoh is that only a small niche cares for that time period, the scope of the game was too small for a game trying to pass as more than a saga and none of the faction leaders were really relatable to the majority of CA's target audience. I would have bought Pharaoh if it was priced like a Saga. Maybe $25-$30. No way I'm paying $60-$70 for what is basically a saga set in a time period that I have lukewarm interest in.
Anyone else had a problem when they did the definitive edition for empire and napoleon, i keep getting frequent crashing, clean uninstall didn't even work
Honestly the problem started when they began scaling back the additional free content like removing FLC LL in game 3, then removing the free race reworks (because the miniscule changes they made to Kislev, Cathay and Tzeentch added together don't even equal a single rework). The company clearly blew money and development on Hyenas, then tried to recover their losses by scalping Warhammer players and then got angry when the fans rejected the outrageous price rise given the lack of content being offered. Honestly with Total War Warhammer they effectively had a gold Ferrari and they have managed to crash said car into a wall and tried to repair it by dousing it in gasoline...
The most mind-blowing thing is that despite CA having dropped the balls for years now, there is still 0 competition. Corporations are so lacking in ambition and boldness, they are content with CA cornering a market they have done everything in their power to lose. The video game industry is an absolute disgrace.
Having played since Shogun 1 I think Sega getting involved was a problem. I loved Shogun 2 but haven’t played a historical game much since. I bought Rome 2 bu have hardly played it. Warhammer is great and is an amazing achievement, but still has a lot of issues keeping interest in a long campaign.
Totally agree. When I heard SEGA were the new publisher my heart sank. Felt like CA we’re selling their soul to the devil. SEGA would push TW to the masses resulted in dumbed down, watery versions of their predecessors. I’ve seen exactly this happen over the years
I have a question if CA made money off the Shadow of Change dlc price hike was it really a disaster? I see how it was a PR nightmare but if it made money won’t this be the new standard moving forward?
If GW decides to take away the Warhammer license from CA like Disney took Star Wars away from EA to protect their IP from negative associations... CA would be done at that point. They've dissapointed and alienated their historical fans by not making the grand historical global map titles fans want from a TW title instead making, these saga-esque games. And they've pissed off the Warhammer fans with the price hike for less content. That's not even going into the other office scandals involving CA recently.
Being a jackass doesn't give you integrity. As for me shilling for CA? Genuinely fuck right off there: I've been highly critical about CA both on my channel and places like TW Center for over a decade. Blood Pack? Warriors of Chaos Day 1 DLC? Yep, DLC prices, yep, focusing on major DLC issues with Shadows of Change or Pharaoh before launch? Yep.
You are literally the reason why the community is as bad as it is right now! Stop dividing the community with comments like that. If you want change, don’t turn back on your comrades. Critizise CA for that, NOT other content creators!
The only thing that I want from this entire shithole is for someone to completely remake the game from the ground up using a whole new game engine and showcase it around for free lmaoooooo
Its so hard for me to suppress my hope for TWWH3 to be taken seriously and offer us a completed climax of the series.... I want it so bad...... I fear I know better though.... they removed the IE beta tag but we all know IE is STILL in beta....... fck....
If you've been part of the content creator platform/shilling operation then you have been part of the problem for longer than you have been part of the solution. There can be no mistake: CA sponsored and partnered content creators have been the cutting edge of the degradation of TW. You did this. You, and every other unpaid salesman for low quality crap.
Yea, and I didn't notice until recently that a number of the big partners will not even pick up on this drama because they play the games on stream for a week or two and then forget about the franchise; IE: Strippen and ItmeJP.
The problem is that most people is ok with a little bit of censorship, if you don't see the problem with it you are the problem. Freedom of speech is absolute, because any line you draw will benefit whoever draws it and harm the others. The last time I checked words still didn't have a physical effect on others, the listener always decides which amount of power to give to whatever it listens to.
Freedom of Speech is not absolute in any country, even the US which is extremely liberal on this has limitations. As for words not having an effect: Verbal abuse is a thing. If there's anything that every content creator has in common and have stated publicly on numerous occasions is this: We suffer enormous abuse every day. It's part of the job, but I for one ain't gonna tolerate it any longer. It's that simple. There is a mountain of difference between that stance and what CA did.
@@Costin_Gaming A democracy is as much democracy as its freedom of speech, this is why the US is not a democracy anymore. A real democracy should be able to actually vote on ending democracy itself it is its nature to allow any idea to be voted. Despite the naturalist ideology of Law, laws will never be objectively good, laws are just rules the people decide to enforce, so anything goes, thats why democracies are a thing, necaise they recognize that no law will benefit everyone and that some are going to dislike some laws and will have to tolerate them for the sake of peaceful living. So, any idea should be allowed to be heard and voted, that is democracy, as I said, the problem is that most people is ok with a little bit of censorship, they preffer to censor some ideas in order to avoid talking about the ideas they don't like to talk about. Just think about it, if an idea is so crazy or degenerate to be worthy of even mention it, why do you need to censor it? And words will never harm anyone, abuse is only a thing because the verbaly abused decides to be a victim, I don't mind you calling me crazy for defending my ideas, I believe I am right because I base my believes in the truth, and last time I checked words can't physically harm any one. Just to clarify, fraud or lying to get soemthing unlawfully is not censorship, in those cases words are just the mean to get something, just as a knife can be use to commit a crime, words can be used to commit crimes.
I've seen this phenomenon of outrageous people's mindset many times in higher up positions of a large companies. My 2 cents would be, do psyche evals for people who want to speak publicly for your conpany. It would save your asses full stop. "Discussing is a privilege", excuse me? Have y'all drank paint thinner instead of coffee? 😂😂😂
I do not think that CA would give cheaper next DLC, this is in human nature of money hungry people (they will create new company and new games and that is it). Just from human psihology I would say that Total war was in very bad position!
If only all the money burned for Hyenas, had been put to make a new rock-solid engine for TW and possibly some spin-offs like Spartan Total Warrior, if the engine is flexible enough...
As a former development support engineer I know first hand that it takes years and years to develop a new engine from scratch and a crap load of money, think hundreds of millions of dollars. If they could use one of the prebuilt engines for their projects I think they would have, but there is likely a huge performance problem in all of the standard engines with displaying the number of troops on screen at the same time. Most engines simply can’t handle it. This means they are sort of stuck patching the existing engine. I am not saying they shouldn’t, but do not expect any new games for 5 to 10 years while they do it.
@@Mad_Sailor01 they already made 3 engines, for S1 and M1, for R1 and M2, and the current engine since Empire. Yes, of course they would need time to make it, especially if they want a solid core to avoid repeating the mistakes of the current engine which is patching up current existing features. Had they been smart, they would have worked on that instead of burning 100 millions on Hyenas for years. For the scale, the power of current hardware could be fully used. The scale of battles barely changed in over 20 years, the main improvement was with FOTS allowing to control 2 armies at once instead of being limited to just 20 units. The rest of the processing power now wasted in poor optimisation seems to go mainly to prettier graphics. For the campaign, comparing to what Paradox manages to do in somewhat real-time (functionally very quick day-to-day or hour-to-hour turns), they also can do much better.
@@Mad_Sailor01 Former CA devs talked about the massive amount of tech debt the current engine has accrued and how the team aren't allowed to work on it. A brand new engine isn't needed; heavy maintenance on the current engine is what is needed, and the developers need to be allowed the time necessary to fix it. As it stands, the brand team are calling the shots, and that is the problem. Another big issue is that it seems most of the passionate employees have already left, so we're stuck with dispassionate drudges who probably don't care enough to do anything but receive a paycheck.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart the current engine has some massive drawbacks. Limited slots for buildings severely limits the strategic freedom (don't get me started on limiting the amount of armies you can field...), and all the damage calculation being a spreadsheet makes battles feel weak. With the current processing power, instead of an arrow, all numbers processed, causing this amount of damage to an unit, how about calculating depending on where it actually lands (shield armour...) then the damage based on that ? Battles would feel much better and look better, imagine having the only killing shots actually find holes in the armour (or being strong enough to pierce it) while other arrows bounce off it. The battle terrain being based on the campaign terrain was also a big plus for the R1M2 engine. If you're 2 or 3 tiles away from the shore you could see it in the distance, you could see distant mountains, you could accurately plan where to be relative to rivers. Since Empire it has been a randomised map based on the overall region, or if it isn't it doesn't feel like it. Such system should come back for a new engine. The tech debt is a problem but a new engine would allow considerable improvements.
Yeah CA is certainly not the Pokemon company who can churn out a new game each year and no matter HOW bad it is (see Scarlet and Purple) it will STILL sell millions of copies. I'm only a fantasy player and honestly, the only game I own is Warhammer 1, 2 and 3 (and honestly I only really played 3) I'm not interested in any of the others but still am flabbergasted on what they're trying to pull here. I do own all DLC for the Warhammer franchise up to this point and I wasn't really interested in Thrones of Decay to begin with (all 3 races are of no interest to me) and if it comes out and I see online that the content isn't good, I will certainly skip it. Right now I'm on an adventure and exploration trip through the workshop, there are so many interesting and amazing Mods that would put the paid DLC's to shame which allow me to have an amazing replayability probably for years to come as long as the game itself is accessible regardles of what happens to the Developer :x
I’ve been playing TW since 2000, the first Shogun and since Shogun 2, possibly earlier, there’s been a steady decline in the quality/depth/innovation of their games. I’m done. I won’t be purchasing another TW game. RIP CA
They say you cant criticize the game without having bought and played it. BS. I just have to see how expensiv this Troy, heck, reskined Rome2 it is and how expensiv the DLCs got for less content. Or how they charge for blood in a game about war when other games have the option to turn it off and on by default. Imagen Mortal Combat starting to censore fatalities and just sell you the "uncensore mod".
I'm not gonna buy another title from them unless they fire the person who wrote that "entitled" post. Disgusting and entitled behavior to attack the hand that feeds them.
Its not just mass ban waves. Its mass ban waves against your own FANS! This is not group of trolls, they are not enemies. They are the fans who have bought and stuck by your product for years, some even decades. And then when you spit in their faces, threaten them and try to misconstrue the narrative as YOU the big corporation, being the victim while painting them as the undesirables. Well damn, and then when they try to let you know they dont like being treated that way and voicing their concerns, you ban them and take away their voices ? CA should be grateful they the TW community is relatively forgiving and calm, coz this crap would not fly in many many others. The fact that this community has finally had enough after this long time of being mistreated for the sole sin of "daring to ask for more good content and basic standard of quality" thats been lacking for years is beyond absurd. CA deserves everything that is coming their way and more, its been long overdue!
I only want the Walls for basegame Warhammer 3 back. Without having to MOD them in. They have been part of the game for a long time. Can't just have them removed from one day to another to solve an entirely different problem which it didn't even achieve.
What CA did with Hyenas isn't something odd/not heard of BUT, companies that did that kind of move had other/many/etc established money sources (aka. old Blizz, cancelled Starcraft Ghost tpp action game and there was a lot of game done/playable to maybe release a demo.. but they dropped it and never released.. BUT they had WoW, Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft to rely on - aka multiple huge cash-cows and been established as a giant/trend-setter for long time). I think CA suffers from thinking that it's bigger than it actually is (which is not that big). Because they diminished themselves with lackluster releases, greedy politics, tech debt, not going towards projects that they proved themselves with/were well received - aka Alien Isolation team should've been doing a sequel, expansion, or some Aliens FPP game, and/or proper direction which they utterly lacked from what we can learn about Hyenas - nobody knew wtf are they doing, just they are doing something. Anyway, we could talk a lot. But that will always be only speculation, moot talking because we can only observe/react to what CA's gonna do next and frankly I'm pretty neutral. They proved with Total Warhammer 2 that they can do great things, hotfix, patch, release new lords/races to play/interact with, give cool FLC's so yeah they can do amazing stuff. But they can also do some utter stupid garbage moves (aka Hyenas, Pharaoh, Shadows of Change, lack of support overally for Total Warhammer 3, dumbing down the whole Total War game)
Volound has a lot of passion for the old Total War and just doesn't like where it has gone, he actually remind me a little of you, critical to CA's faults a lot, though he doesn't give CA props at all since he doesn't really like where Total War has gone
If Creative Assembly wants to regain the trust of consumers, they will have to fix all the accumulated problems of the Warscape game engine and create a new historical Total War game, which will represent the entire world, as it was in Warhammer III, and not a separate region, like Europe, Africa and Middle East, as was the case in previous parts of the series. As for the era, the most anticipated is the Middle Ages, then the Gunpowder and Antique. Although my favorite remains the Bronze Age, which was so terribly represented in Pharaoh.
@@twilightrodriguez5340 This phrase was relevant before the Creative Assembly crisis. The next project is literally the return of trust or the death of the company. Too many mistakes have been made. Too many problems have accumulated.
Not touching their games until there is hard evidence that they clean the rot from their company, overhaul their approach to game development and customer interaction, and actually overhaul their engine (or create a new one) to remedy the issues and the insane tech debt that have been around since Empire (and manifested most noticeably in Rome 2). Fundamentally broken engine that--when compared to Rome 1 and Medieval 2--has terrible combat even if working as intended. It's a miracle that WH1 and WH2 were any good, but I'm glad I avoided WH3 because it sounds like the magic waned for that game. Getting my money is a privilege CA, which I may choose to bestow on you in exchange for a good product. It's not an entitlement you receive for pumping out trash with a 'Total War' brand name slapped onto it.
Nothing else, the past few weeks have reminded the player base just how thin skinned ppl working at ca are and the level of disdian they have for their consumer base.
CA's been an ass company since Rome II came out. Could see the warning signs back then on the forums with how they treated people with dissenting opinions or open criticism of their work and massive array of bugs that typically lasted 1.5 - 2 years before being ironed out. They were lucky to ride the coattails of the Warhammer IP, that those Warhammer games reached peak function pretty fast compared to their older historic games, and that the fanbase stays consistent. But everything else they've done since Warhammer started and slightly before, has pretty much been ass in comparison. If they keep up this attitude of ignoring what their old fans want, they're going to end up in a very bad place financially. I'm not too worried. If they end up going out of business, so be it. It'll suck to lose the TW franchise temporarily, but that'll leave a void open for possibly higher skilled dev teams to make something similar, but improved.
Total war is going to be a dead series to people. They are literally switching to the whale model which means less people will enjoy the game over all. Pharaoh looked like hot shit.
I was excited for Pharaoh. However, I also know that they have a track record of releasing broken games. So I waited only to find the game was very shallow so avoiding buying. I've still not jumped to warhammer 3. It's on my list, but I was waiting for the massive map, only for a free weekend to hit performance bugs and crashes... so waited for more stability patches.
They need to go balls to the wall with Warhammer and the new game engine. Bring all the best devs back to the team and spend some of that money on marketing because they have a gem here. People will come back if you give them a good reason to. Huge pay wall to get everything so you need More sales on previous releases near Christmas time. more FLC for the poor people, if there engaging in the game then your winning. Fix bugs and iron out kinks ftw..it’s not rocket science
Oh sure besides the bad balance, crappy DLC quality that was made to be nickel and dime people, horrible performance, dumb AI, crap campaigns mechanics. Oh and a UI that doesn't handle modern resolutions well, great game, 10/10
All I want from CA is a Custodian Team. Even the price or the DLC isn't as big an issue for me as this. A funded and dedicated custodian team is by nr1 ask for forgiving CA. Nothing more or less.
There are some people in total war community, unsubbing from content creator just by covering the drama with CA, and calling them toxic. I have seen Toxic positivity and white knight company and contribute the most to a game downfall then any negativity towards a game. The thing with Volound is that we hope he not right with about everything because according what he saying. His source say that rob is waiting the SOC change drama to blow over and keep the price the same
Manorlord is coming soon enough anyways. BTW how many people criticize Rockstar all day but own every each one of their games? As ex. AAA dev teams like CA know that. Assassin's creed could be another example.
As i see it, i saw lots of light sauce critizism from launch and atleast to imortal empire and afterward, while the base game seem to mainly get worse and worse, irritation turn to anger and anger ends with hate or indiffrence But CA dont want to heard negative reviews, polite or not They just ppl to throw money at them CA is so lucky that people still accept their BS
I don't think you should put Bellular in the same camp as Volund. Bellular is not a Total War channel but from what I have seen do good Ness sections about gaming and Total War is an interesting subject, I don't Micheal and the team will go IGN clickbait, but tell the story.
Oh I agree on that point, still Bellular is the kind of person who thrives on shit talking companies. I don't think they are anywhere near the same level.
@@Costin_Gaming I don't see it as negativity for negativity's sake as he also take up when companies do good things. The big problem in the gaming industry is that it is shit who see gamers as nothing but annoying wallets. Sadly it is almost only indies that seem to apriciate gamers as valued customers.
Very fitting that Total War dies like the great empires it represented in their games. Not from outside forces but from within, they've collapsed.
The reality is for some of us this has been a 20+ year relationship with Total War.. It's taken A LOT to get to me to the position where I'm likely to never buy another product from CA.
Same... getting Shogun 1 for my birthday as a kid was the birth of a very long and largely very enjoyable relationship that appears to have come now to a disappointing and unpleasant end... (and gradual, it must be said, this latest outrage is more of a "big fat final drop" scenario than anything else).
Same. And i stopped buy8ng everything at shadows of the change. Pharoah is the first new release i've not bought at launch.
The games from Total war franchise have been in decline for a while.
Games often keep coming out with smaller scopes (apart from Warhammer that keeps adding more and more ). Even then Warhammer has had some awful DLCs.
lets be real. once total war 40k comes out, you'll be the first in line lol
It's sad, CA were trying to chase the e-sports crowd, we saw it with TW:Arena then Hyenas... They seem to be trying to streamline gameplay to the point of stripping away any depth TW games had and what made them special. Not including well liked features from forerunner titles that would've made a better game. Battles have been reduced to fast rock/paper/scissor spectacles with not much strategy or tactics involved other than pumping out doom stacks.
The fact they said that "the right to discuss is a privilege" is not only one of the most classist and elitist things I've ever heard, but also insanely ridiculous when you remember that they are telling that to the people that literally feed them and who want nothing but for them to do good. This whole situation is honestly mind blowing.
Add to that the part where they outright claimed they do not ban anyone without good reasons, in what was at least in part meant to be an apology for banning lots of people without good reason...
Yeah that's insane. I bet it was some blue haired, pro communist, soy karen who wrote that statement.
@@ArbaaltheundefeatedYou know, I think I'm starting to understand why CA communicates so little as is so opaque. It is better to shut up and look like an idiot than to speak up and confirm you are an idiot.
When you live in a world where people tell you nonsense like your words can enact physical harm on someone. CA telling you you have to talk about what they want you to talk about isn't surprising.
First : the righ to discuss is a privilege is not wrong on a private forum like steam. Sure it's not really smart to claim it that way even if it's true.
Words can push other people to harm physically other people. Trump cultists are a pretty good exemple. A group of people can even push someone sane to suicide. That's why there are limits to freedom of speech.
I dunno the fact that there wasnt an immediate turn around and apology after what happened is enough to keep me away, now. The fact theyre showing hard evidence that theyve learnt nothing and the same entitled arrogance tells me theres nothing worth staying for
It wasn't even much of an apology tbh..
@@Scottx125Productions They outright claimed not to do what it was meant to be an apology for *in* the "apology", so yeah. One of the paragraphs quite late in the post literally claimed they do not ban people lightly and it is only ever done after multiple warnings, careful consideration and in accordance with guidelines, a blatantly, demonstrably untrue statement. In other words, blatantly lying about an aspect of what they were supposedly apologizing for.
@@Scottx125Productions It's a classic corporate fauxpology. "We're sorry you feel that way" energy.
Unsurprising, considering the one making it was the same EA 'community manager' responsible for the Battlefield 2042 community management fiasco.
It didn't start with shadow of change, it was inflamed by it. They had been asked to improve ai in siege maps of Warhammer for example , what they gave was self contructing towers and capture points. They were asked to make PVP more fun and they added more capture points. They were asked naval battles or interconnected regional campaign maps for immortal empires what they gave was a copy paste of mortal empires. For other games everything looked like a mod overhaul instead of a new game. They don't give the necessary modding tools to sell paid mods again and again. Their greed for money made them spam bad games instead of making a good one. They had been spending the trust what they have earned long ago and shadows of change intersected with the time they were bankrupt on that department. They were wanrned on what was coming and they refused to care and now they are paying the price. I will no longer buy TW spams.
Personally I'm just done with this shitshow of a company at this point.
After all their repeated, unacceptable mistakes, after the price gouging, the months of cowardly radio silence, the quality drops, the PR threats, the disgusting corporate decisions, after all of that they now have the gall to insult their community directly as well. All of their behaviour has made it clear to me that this company as a whole - not just corporate leadership - views its fans as nothing but walking wallets that should only ever speak when spoken to. I'm out. Genuinely out.
Hope they either make concrete amends for the next couple years at this point or simply go under - that way the IP might at least potentially end up in the hands of a studio that still cares.
I'm glad we've moved past the point where discussion is about the "poor innocent devs" and the "evil upper management". There is a culture of contempt for the players that pervades every level of CA, and while there are certainly individuals who are passionate and care about the product, there are also many who don't.
Not just CA mind you, for a while people always chalked up these kinds of things to "Upper Management Meddling" in games. But recently it has been shown in multiple Game Dev companies that developers themselves are either passionless, entitled to having audience like their creation, or contemptuous of the game they are developing.
Yes, and it is also not even a bad thing as such. People can like or love their job, they want to do it well, but it is at the end of a day a job. A lot of people remember CA as a smaller studio, but it’s impossible for all 900 of them to be passionate. It’s not even good vs bad, some people might have solid ideas, but that would be too hard, or wouldn’t be worth the effort. In a well run company, you aren’t putting out bangers every time, you’re ocasiónale putting out great stuff, but mostly avoiding shitting the bed.
@@liofalba 100%. We wouldn't expect every single worker at any other company to have the attitudes we assume developers have.
I don't think the guy writing codes or the one making the animation has something to do with any of the issues.
To be frank people like the devs are pretty much considered expendable by the company in the first place
CA making these at best very questionable decisions regarding TWW3 is really painful, considering there is no series quite like total war AND considering that it seems like CA is having major issues developing new games - No idea at all who thought that spending a hundred mil on Hyenas, a looter shooter in 2020s was a good idea?
Probably some suits saying "my kid is all about fortnite, we should make one too, that s where the money is, trust me on this."
@@etienne8110Probably tbh. The problem that many suits have (personal experience working under some) is that they focus on numbers. For example they see that Fortnite earns a lot of money, but ignore the fact that the market is saturated, there is no longer a pool of consumers to pick from, you have to take from established titles. Which is waaaaay harder than taking from a pool of people not invested into anything.
Hyena makes no sense to me, they have had to ignore literally every other fact on the table. I dunno why either CA or SEGA cannot just focus on Total War more, invest in it. Because they have people that will literally throw money at them.
Guessing it is the classic "it makes money, yes. But it does not make the amount we want", which side note is more or less what I was told at my last job and made me quit. I worked as a programmer for a company that seemed more focused on short term benefits instead of focus long term. Which funnily enough seems to be very close to this situation with TW. It is not unique.
Edit: Not just Hyenas, but Pharaoh makes no sense either, it is not a TW many asked for, so why make it to begin with? A lot of TW titles as of late makes not much sense to me, and it is the Saga titles for the most part. And Troy and Pharaoh are Saga titles as well imo. They were supposed to be the smaller versions in a small scope, but what has happened is that they remove the Saga on it and say it is a main title while it is actually just a Saga title but for full price.
They forgot that they will be battling with those who already build an experience and a reputation from year 2000's a small MB of FPS games, to now large GB's of file; That you know now they are experts of that genre of game. Like Counter Strike, Call of Duty, Arma, Battlefield, fortnite which they acumulated their success because of the years of experience developing and upgrading their game brand. CA I think is new on this genre, they forgot they start from Strategy game this total war series. Now, they jump to FPS which they don't have any experience and they want some share of players to FPS which is now too crowded and already have loyalty, demanding on graphics, and effects and you know is equals to very expensive to make. They cancel hyenas because they know what they built was buggy and cannot compete with the already strong foundation company. And comeback to now total war what they have started from a long time, on what they already have experience, but changed its gameplay.
It feels like the end, man. I was so excited when WH 1 was announced, I got a lot of enjoyment from the series, but it really didn't feel like it was quite there with Chaos being so under-developed. WH 3 was supposed to be the great completion, a game that'd keep me occupied for the forseeable future. Instead, we got a mess of a game, and all of the daemon factions have pretty bad campaigns. TW:WH has been part of my life as a single guy in my studies, all the way up til now where I'm married and a father, and to see it go out in such a pathetic (and self-inflicted) manner is a real shame. I'm just glad that my life moved on before CA revealed themselves to be ran by incompetent chimpanzees.
I'm going to pick up warhammer 3 at some point, but I avoided due to all the issues and my experience during a free access weekend was crashes and performance issues
@@phillipspassmore If you've not played WH 2 for hundreds (or in my case a couple thousand) of hours, WH 3 will probably give you a good amount of fun. For me and anyone who has invested a ton of time into WH 2, WH 3 just doesn't offer enough to make it feel like a new game; I was burnt out on 2, and since 3 is basically just 2 with new (badly designed) races it got old real fast. Might be worth looking at if they get some more DLC out and actually rework daemons!
That's my experience also man. I was super excited when it was announced and even build a computer especially to play it. Started playing it before I got married and now I'm hitched with a kid with another baby on the way. It's sad to see a thing that was such a part of my life for so long die such a sad death.
Was this not expected? I paid full price for total warhammer 3 and i played it 2 hours and never played it again and i will never buy another CA game again. Some people just don't understand how bad a studio can become if it's not stoped by its fans
I think this is good because it will end CAs hegemony on this genre and even if at the start competitors will not produce high quality product they will find a way to grow into immersive games. CA was a huge tree that blocked the sunlight for all the saplings. Now new trees will grow under the sun.
Unless Microsoft buys them
I agree first Capitalism must be dealt with.@@TheCraftywomble
@@TheCraftywomble That would be one of the worst possible outcomes. Microsoft is killing Minecraft; they'll definitely kill Total War.
The battle you are using to fill your video is way more interesting than any gameplay I've seen from paraoh lol.
They're doubling down even harder than Wizards of the Coast did at the beginning of the year. That shows you how corrupted the business side has become. Their focus on short term gain to show shareholders the biggest numbers possible rather than anything long term is pretty pathetic.
Except unlike with WotC, this isn't a case of ESG score chasing. ...Well, Hyenas was, at least.
Great to hear a in a video about this topic from you. It’s important that we all make our voices heard and discuss about the franchise. We all want Total War and it’s community to be better (we are fans of this series afterall).
I imagine it'd be easier to just make a good DLC than it is to do all this.
If CA put the time and energy they spend on hating their customers into working on their games instead, they'd be making good games and *not* looking at the possible end of their existence as a company.
my biggest gripe with Phraoh is that it was the perfect opportunity to introduce a new engine, with the bronze age being very limited in unit choices.
but without a new engine why would you play "Ooops! All Tomb kings, without the cool bits"
"Playing the game doesn't entitle you to criticism"
Uhhh yea it does.
0:30 No, if people keep buying their products they are to blame as well. The only reason CA developed and could afford this behavior is because people keep buying anything they give. It's specially bad with Warhammer. All this complaining did absolutely nothing. When did they start panicking and firing people? When people didn't buy Pharaoh. Money is the only thing that matters.
Calling out Volound is kinda silly here. The dude was right. Im a far right Republican and hes a friggin commie and I'll say he was absolutely right about total war.
The dude has NUMEROUS videos going in depth as to how and why the game series is worse. Its not "oh TW is crap cuz its crap". Its "arrows aren't as good anymore because it no longer matters if the arrow hits the shield or the guy because the shield is now technically just a part of the model and thus still takes damage despite not having been hit. Plus they all share health so he might not have been hit at all and yet still take damage".
He was right about RUclipsrs constantly shilling the game who have now turned around and bash CA all to save face to keep making money. Hell i watched one dude legit suggest suggest that the best way to fix the issues with SoC... was to NOT TALK ABOUT THEM. Id consider that shilling for sure. And id say the bigger total war channels started becoming less and less the ones who genuinely loved the series (Pixilated Apollo being the biggest example) but instead a bunch of yes men who served as damage control. They just... happened to get views. Conveniently became the first guys to have unreleased content for games.
As for volound himself, I personally had no idea who the dude was till around the end of WH2. And even then i heard he was a just a troll. Watched a couple vids just to see if it was as bad as people say. The crazy thing that i found was that he's not saying anything people haven't already been thinking for years. I didn't have to watch his vids to know that guns in WH3 are shit. I played Empire. I played Napoleon. I played medieval 2. I already KNEW they were shit in WH3. But back during early WH1 and WH2 people would trash you for that. My guess is he didn't get popular by convincing people that the game is bad or spewing nonesense about it, but because he was one of the ones speaking up on it back before it was popular.
Can he be a jackass to people he disagrees with? Yea. Overly negative? Slightly. But he was right for damn sure. And I believe him when he says CA basically yeeted him and others for nothing more than being critical given what theyre now doing to their entire fanbase.
And i dont think CA will get trust back. My personal last hope for the franchise was the "secret project" being Empire 2 or Medieval 3 or a total overhaul for a fully packaged group of all the old total wars sold at a discount. Instead rhey had a "drag queen inspired" shooter clearly meant to move away from the TW series. They were gonna abandon the fanbase entirely.
I wont say certain here, but its very likely WH3 will be the last total war i buy.
I call him out precisely because he's a bloody commie and a jackass to boot.
@@Costin_Gaming A commie yes, a jackass yes, but he's been more correct on the series than some others as of late. If enough pressure was mounted from more reasonable voices earlier, this might have all been avoided.
Even if they make Empire2 or Med3 it will be bad. There is no chance for them to be good.
@@maximum9977
Agreed
What has being a commie got to do with criticising video games? 😂
CA looking at the burning wreck that is Total War game IP: We probably should do something about that. Could someone bring water?
CA management brings a bucket full of clear liquid and throws it towards the flames.
CA: Why is the fire only getting bigger?
The fandom looking depressed from the sidelines: Because you threw gasoline at it.... again.
I'm at a point where even though I've spent a tremendous amount of money on this company (Which was used to create a garbage game that didn't even come to market and no one asked for) I prefer that they close the studio, that no one ever talk about Total War again and that Fire everyone. That's how angry I am, I'd rather have spent all my money for nothing than see this company continue to function this way.
I will be honest. CA is dead, total war is dead. CA killed the franchise and it is all CA fault. And they have an audacity to ban people, because of the different opinions. Players are pointing out the problems, like overpriced DLCs for TWW3, which we can all agree with, that paying nearly 30 euros or dollars for Shadows of Change or Chaos Dwarfs is too much. Or pointing out the overpriced Pharaoh. This game should not cost 60 euros, instead it should cost 30 euros, like Shogun 2.
There are of course multiple reasons, I just mentioned the thing, which triggered many people, and it is overpriced DLCs and game, which is basically nothing, just SAGA, like Troy or Thrones of Britannia, and they are asking for 60 euros/dollars for that product.
BTW Great video, really liked it.
You know there I was, seeking to wash my within the shower and I thought of this astounding analogy.
With all the controversy and chaos that's been ensuing, increasingly so, I got to thinking...if a Wal-mart Manager saw the customer service line wrapping outside the front entrance, the RETURNS line to be specific, and went up to a customer and asked what was wrong and they showed him/her the rotten...leafy advertised product, with moldy, hardened, and crusty Avocados and the Walmart manager decides to EJECT the customer outside of the store, what happened? He saved Walmart the immediate sale of an atrocious product, however, then most likely lost a customer to perhaps Grocery Outlet, 99 cent store, or maybe even the dollar tree.
Moral of the story, regardless of how unimportant the Wal-Mart manager makes you feel for not desiring to purchase their soiled product, do know that no matter how much delicious Pomegranate Raspberry dressing you throw on those Crusty Avocado products, it's still moldy!
Honestly had a few other analogies but that one I could actually coherently type out.
Just want some good leafy greens yo!
BTW, this comment was banned for posting in the Total War Subreddit
CA: Breathing is a privilege, not a right, and if you cant conduct yourself in a fitting manner, we will take it away from you!
Great games and content require great people and ideas. No amount of money, influence, or power will sustain the artistry needed to keep this franchise alive. CA has sold its soul and needs to acquire a new one. Good luck with that.
Why is volund a douchbag when hes the only one spouting the real deal you can also compare the actions of ea ubi actiblizz and more and string them all together with volunds info hes spewing real stuff not held back by any contracts. Makes no sense that the guy calling them out the hardest is the bad guy id say hes damn well righter than everyone
Fortunately he isn't the only one, as we also have Nasmr, Dishonorable Daimyo, and now LegendOfTotalWar. Even Bellular News reported on Volound's leaks.
Banning people, the words "privilege" and "inclusively" in the same paragraph... Doesn't that ring a bell? I think a certain type of culture has spread at CA...
"customers? screw that, ESG is the new hotness, lets put all our money into drag-queen shooters from 2004"
Also I don't know who volond is, but I know for 100% that if one person in a youtube community calls another a jackass, then the first one is the jackass 100% of the time.
CA - “Ban anybody that say it looks like a good but no better Troy”
Where does "inclusively," a woke term, enter into a discussion about CA and TWW3. It's this "canned," corporate speak that shows how disinterested they are about dialogue.... "Yeah, you're free to say what you like....oh, as long as we agree and allow it to be said." Censorship is a slippery slope....
Maybe it always was inevitable. Once a game (series) grows too large, the passion within a company makes place for maximizing profits.
"Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
Pharoah is 100 percent a chunck of troy resold destiny style
Even taking into account things like inflation and rising cost, the closest nearby dlc of similar scope was Warriors of Chaos which 1. offered a lot more content, and 2. was sold for $15.99. Even undertaking the assumption that they offer the same amount of content (which they do not), is the public seriously expected to believe that inflation ROSE $10 IN ONE YEAR? Can you IMAGINE the panic in government and the media?! Because Champions of Chaos was released almost EXACTLY 1 year prior.
Hope they go bankrupt.
I can’t believe CA who were on a winning streak with WH2 have messed up this badly.
Downfall started when they start supporting pride
I would say that a major reason why Pharaoh flopped so hard is that it lacks a wow-factor/it does not really seem exciting, or well, a reason why someone would buy it outside of them being REALLY into ancient Egypt. The map is not amazing, the unit variety is not great, and the fantasy crowd is also guaranteed to not be too into it.
Really like your point about "what is the next major TW release?" because at this point I am VERY skeptical about if a historical TW game can even get successful enough to warrant being the next big franchise after warhammer. And if it cannot? What fantasy franchise would be interesting enough/large enough, and willing to tie their brand to CA?
If CA made Medieval 3 total war, it would sell very well. Honestly probably one of the top sellers for whatever year it comes out. So would Rome 3. Medieval 2, a nearly 20 year old game had the same player count as Pharaoh at launch. There are always tens of thousands of people playing older historic titles. The problem with Pharaoh is that only a small niche cares for that time period, the scope of the game was too small for a game trying to pass as more than a saga and none of the faction leaders were really relatable to the majority of CA's target audience.
I would have bought Pharaoh if it was priced like a Saga. Maybe $25-$30. No way I'm paying $60-$70 for what is basically a saga set in a time period that I have lukewarm interest in.
Maybe if they can lease lord of the rings IP, i'd love a lord of the rings total war game
@@josephr4761 You're forgetting something crucial: A Medieval 3 made by CA would play just like Warhammer and Pharaoh.
Freedom!...not censorship
Anyone else had a problem when they did the definitive edition for empire and napoleon, i keep getting frequent crashing, clean uninstall didn't even work
Saw a screenshot of someone being banned for a comment supporting the censorship lmao
Honestly the problem started when they began scaling back the additional free content like removing FLC LL in game 3, then removing the free race reworks (because the miniscule changes they made to Kislev, Cathay and Tzeentch added together don't even equal a single rework).
The company clearly blew money and development on Hyenas, then tried to recover their losses by scalping Warhammer players and then got angry when the fans rejected the outrageous price rise given the lack of content being offered.
Honestly with Total War Warhammer they effectively had a gold Ferrari and they have managed to crash said car into a wall and tried to repair it by dousing it in gasoline...
The most mind-blowing thing is that despite CA having dropped the balls for years now, there is still 0 competition. Corporations are so lacking in ambition and boldness, they are content with CA cornering a market they have done everything in their power to lose. The video game industry is an absolute disgrace.
Having played since Shogun 1 I think Sega getting involved was a problem. I loved Shogun 2 but haven’t played a historical game much since. I bought Rome 2 bu have hardly played it. Warhammer is great and is an amazing achievement, but still has a lot of issues keeping interest in a long campaign.
Totally agree. When I heard SEGA were the new publisher my heart sank. Felt like CA we’re selling their soul to the devil. SEGA would push TW to the masses resulted in dumbed down, watery versions of their predecessors. I’ve seen exactly this happen over the years
I have a question if CA made money off the Shadow of Change dlc price hike was it really a disaster? I see how it was a PR nightmare but if it made money won’t this be the new standard moving forward?
This. The basis of succes is always money in companies, no matter how big or small.
It was a short-term financial success, it was also a customer relations disaster.
Shrinking your playerbase is not exactly a great move if you intent to keep releasing dlc
@@victorneistrup7277 We'll see about that, won't we?
@@kidnamedfinger2625 Well that's good to hear at least. Maybe it'll show the execs, but i doubt it XD
If GW decides to take away the Warhammer license from CA like Disney took Star Wars away from EA to protect their IP from negative associations...
CA would be done at that point. They've dissapointed and alienated their historical fans by not making the grand historical global map titles fans want from a TW title instead making, these saga-esque games. And they've pissed off the Warhammer fans with the price hike for less content. That's not even going into the other office scandals involving CA recently.
Volund has more integrety then most off the youtubers shilling for CA.
You included.
Being a jackass doesn't give you integrity.
As for me shilling for CA? Genuinely fuck right off there: I've been highly critical about CA both on my channel and places like TW Center for over a decade.
Blood Pack? Warriors of Chaos Day 1 DLC? Yep, DLC prices, yep, focusing on major DLC issues with Shadows of Change or Pharaoh before launch? Yep.
You are literally the reason why the community is as bad as it is right now! Stop dividing the community with comments like that. If you want change, don’t turn back on your comrades. Critizise CA for that, NOT other content creators!
friendly reminder that CA is gods gift to the earth, and i pray they never change
SHT UP ROB@@barcotics1880
why did this comment have to be posted lmao
342 people were playing Pharoh when I just checked. xD
Rome 2 is great - with mods. xD
It started with Rome 2, not Shadows of Change.
The shit game, lies, getting youtube vids and channels taken down.. this is CA's SOP.
MANOR LORDS!!!!!!
The only thing that I want from this entire shithole is for someone to completely remake the game from the ground up using a whole new game engine and showcase it around for free lmaoooooo
Its so hard for me to suppress my hope for TWWH3 to be taken seriously and offer us a completed climax of the series.... I want it so bad...... I fear I know better though.... they removed the IE beta tag but we all know IE is STILL in beta....... fck....
It can stay the $25 buck all three factions need a full update and the three from the last dlc need a free update to fix the last mess
CA should’ve focused on Warhammer 3 and their major historical title.
If you've been part of the content creator platform/shilling operation then you have been part of the problem for longer than you have been part of the solution. There can be no mistake: CA sponsored and partnered content creators have been the cutting edge of the degradation of TW. You did this. You, and every other unpaid salesman for low quality crap.
Yea, and I didn't notice until recently that a number of the big partners will not even pick up on this drama because they play the games on stream for a week or two and then forget about the franchise; IE: Strippen and ItmeJP.
Exactly.
The problem is that most people is ok with a little bit of censorship, if you don't see the problem with it you are the problem. Freedom of speech is absolute, because any line you draw will benefit whoever draws it and harm the others. The last time I checked words still didn't have a physical effect on others, the listener always decides which amount of power to give to whatever it listens to.
Freedom of Speech is not absolute in any country, even the US which is extremely liberal on this has limitations.
As for words not having an effect: Verbal abuse is a thing. If there's anything that every content creator has in common and have stated publicly on numerous occasions is this: We suffer enormous abuse every day. It's part of the job, but I for one ain't gonna tolerate it any longer.
It's that simple.
There is a mountain of difference between that stance and what CA did.
@@Costin_Gaming A democracy is as much democracy as its freedom of speech, this is why the US is not a democracy anymore. A real democracy should be able to actually vote on ending democracy itself it is its nature to allow any idea to be voted. Despite the naturalist ideology of Law, laws will never be objectively good, laws are just rules the people decide to enforce, so anything goes, thats why democracies are a thing, necaise they recognize that no law will benefit everyone and that some are going to dislike some laws and will have to tolerate them for the sake of peaceful living.
So, any idea should be allowed to be heard and voted, that is democracy, as I said, the problem is that most people is ok with a little bit of censorship, they preffer to censor some ideas in order to avoid talking about the ideas they don't like to talk about. Just think about it, if an idea is so crazy or degenerate to be worthy of even mention it, why do you need to censor it?
And words will never harm anyone, abuse is only a thing because the verbaly abused decides to be a victim, I don't mind you calling me crazy for defending my ideas, I believe I am right because I base my believes in the truth, and last time I checked words can't physically harm any one.
Just to clarify, fraud or lying to get soemthing unlawfully is not censorship, in those cases words are just the mean to get something, just as a knife can be use to commit a crime, words can be used to commit crimes.
Considering how scummy the WH2 dlc system was its amazing they managed to make it worse with WH3
I've seen this phenomenon of outrageous people's mindset many times in higher up positions of a large companies.
My 2 cents would be, do psyche evals for people who want to speak publicly for your conpany. It would save your asses full stop. "Discussing is a privilege", excuse me? Have y'all drank paint thinner instead of coffee? 😂😂😂
I do not think that CA would give cheaper next DLC, this is in human nature of money hungry people (they will create new company and new games and that is it). Just from human psihology I would say that Total war was in very bad position!
Remember when EA do its wrong, when CA does its a ok.
CA has former EA execs running the show now. Rob Bartholomew and Adam Freeman, to name a few. This is no coincidence.
Already uninstalled WH3. Likely never going to buy another CA product again unless they dramatically change and apologize to their customers and fans.
RIP to my favorite series of games.
CA have an army of metsuke to try and crush this revolt
Yup u called it yup, tw on hold for a long time to come, the price point alone bro demands more respect by CA
If only all the money burned for Hyenas, had been put to make a new rock-solid engine for TW and possibly some spin-offs like Spartan Total Warrior, if the engine is flexible enough...
As a former development support engineer I know first hand that it takes years and years to develop a new engine from scratch and a crap load of money, think hundreds of millions of dollars. If they could use one of the prebuilt engines for their projects I think they would have, but there is likely a huge performance problem in all of the standard engines with displaying the number of troops on screen at the same time. Most engines simply can’t handle it. This means they are sort of stuck patching the existing engine. I am not saying they shouldn’t, but do not expect any new games for 5 to 10 years while they do it.
@@Mad_Sailor01 they already made 3 engines, for S1 and M1, for R1 and M2, and the current engine since Empire.
Yes, of course they would need time to make it, especially if they want a solid core to avoid repeating the mistakes of the current engine which is patching up current existing features. Had they been smart, they would have worked on that instead of burning 100 millions on Hyenas for years.
For the scale, the power of current hardware could be fully used. The scale of battles barely changed in over 20 years, the main improvement was with FOTS allowing to control 2 armies at once instead of being limited to just 20 units. The rest of the processing power now wasted in poor optimisation seems to go mainly to prettier graphics. For the campaign, comparing to what Paradox manages to do in somewhat real-time (functionally very quick day-to-day or hour-to-hour turns), they also can do much better.
@@Mad_Sailor01 Former CA devs talked about the massive amount of tech debt the current engine has accrued and how the team aren't allowed to work on it. A brand new engine isn't needed; heavy maintenance on the current engine is what is needed, and the developers need to be allowed the time necessary to fix it. As it stands, the brand team are calling the shots, and that is the problem. Another big issue is that it seems most of the passionate employees have already left, so we're stuck with dispassionate drudges who probably don't care enough to do anything but receive a paycheck.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart the current engine has some massive drawbacks.
Limited slots for buildings severely limits the strategic freedom (don't get me started on limiting the amount of armies you can field...), and all the damage calculation being a spreadsheet makes battles feel weak. With the current processing power, instead of an arrow, all numbers processed, causing this amount of damage to an unit, how about calculating depending on where it actually lands (shield armour...) then the damage based on that ? Battles would feel much better and look better, imagine having the only killing shots actually find holes in the armour (or being strong enough to pierce it) while other arrows bounce off it.
The battle terrain being based on the campaign terrain was also a big plus for the R1M2 engine. If you're 2 or 3 tiles away from the shore you could see it in the distance, you could see distant mountains, you could accurately plan where to be relative to rivers. Since Empire it has been a randomised map based on the overall region, or if it isn't it doesn't feel like it. Such system should come back for a new engine.
The tech debt is a problem but a new engine would allow considerable improvements.
No more dlc packs! Release a full freaking game.
Yeah CA is certainly not the Pokemon company who can churn out a new game each year and no matter HOW bad it is (see Scarlet and Purple) it will STILL sell millions of copies.
I'm only a fantasy player and honestly, the only game I own is Warhammer 1, 2 and 3 (and honestly I only really played 3) I'm not interested in any of the others but still am flabbergasted on what they're trying to pull here.
I do own all DLC for the Warhammer franchise up to this point and I wasn't really interested in Thrones of Decay to begin with (all 3 races are of no interest to me) and if it comes out and I see online that the content isn't good, I will certainly skip it.
Right now I'm on an adventure and exploration trip through the workshop, there are so many interesting and amazing Mods that would put the paid DLC's to shame which allow me to have an amazing replayability probably for years to come as long as the game itself is accessible regardles of what happens to the Developer :x
I’ve been playing TW since 2000, the first Shogun and since Shogun 2, possibly earlier, there’s been a steady decline in the quality/depth/innovation of their games. I’m done. I won’t be purchasing another TW game. RIP CA
They say you cant criticize the game without having bought and played it. BS. I just have to see how expensiv this Troy, heck, reskined Rome2 it is and how expensiv the DLCs got for less content. Or how they charge for blood in a game about war when other games have the option to turn it off and on by default.
Imagen Mortal Combat starting to censore fatalities and just sell you the "uncensore mod".
CAs forgotten game Stormrise was pretty bad as well.
I'm not gonna buy another title from them unless they fire the person who wrote that "entitled" post. Disgusting and entitled behavior to attack the hand that feeds them.
Love how they said play instead of bought or purchased, utter scum...
Its not just mass ban waves.
Its mass ban waves against your own FANS!
This is not group of trolls, they are not enemies. They are the fans who have bought and stuck by your product for years, some even decades.
And then when you spit in their faces, threaten them and try to misconstrue the narrative as YOU the big corporation, being the victim while painting them as the undesirables.
Well damn, and then when they try to let you know they dont like being treated that way and voicing their concerns, you ban them and take away their voices ?
CA should be grateful they the TW community is relatively forgiving and calm, coz this crap would not fly in many many others. The fact that this community has finally had enough after this long time of being mistreated for the sole sin of "daring to ask for more good content and basic standard of quality" thats been lacking for years is beyond absurd. CA deserves everything that is coming their way and more, its been long overdue!
Can't wait to buy all the dlc at 80 percent off after CA dies within its own dumpster fire.
I only want the Walls for basegame Warhammer 3 back. Without having to MOD them in. They have been part of the game for a long time. Can't just have them removed from one day to another to solve an entirely different problem which it didn't even achieve.
CA needs a big fat dose of competition.
What CA did with Hyenas isn't something odd/not heard of BUT, companies that did that kind of move had other/many/etc established money sources (aka. old Blizz, cancelled Starcraft Ghost tpp action game and there was a lot of game done/playable to maybe release a demo.. but they dropped it and never released.. BUT they had WoW, Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft to rely on - aka multiple huge cash-cows and been established as a giant/trend-setter for long time). I think CA suffers from thinking that it's bigger than it actually is (which is not that big). Because they diminished themselves with lackluster releases, greedy politics, tech debt, not going towards projects that they proved themselves with/were well received - aka Alien Isolation team should've been doing a sequel, expansion, or some Aliens FPP game, and/or proper direction which they utterly lacked from what we can learn about Hyenas - nobody knew wtf are they doing, just they are doing something.
Anyway, we could talk a lot. But that will always be only speculation, moot talking because we can only observe/react to what CA's gonna do next and frankly I'm pretty neutral. They proved with Total Warhammer 2 that they can do great things, hotfix, patch, release new lords/races to play/interact with, give cool FLC's so yeah they can do amazing stuff. But they can also do some utter stupid garbage moves (aka Hyenas, Pharaoh, Shadows of Change, lack of support overally for Total Warhammer 3, dumbing down the whole Total War game)
Volound has a lot of passion for the old Total War and just doesn't like where it has gone, he actually remind me a little of you, critical to CA's faults a lot, though he doesn't give CA props at all since he doesn't really like where Total War has gone
What did I miss? I’m returning to the game and I’m seeing that the company is going down hill.
If Creative Assembly wants to regain the trust of consumers, they will have to fix all the accumulated problems of the Warscape game engine and create a new historical Total War game, which will represent the entire world, as it was in Warhammer III, and not a separate region, like Europe, Africa and Middle East, as was the case in previous parts of the series. As for the era, the most anticipated is the Middle Ages, then the Gunpowder and Antique. Although my favorite remains the Bronze Age, which was so terribly represented in Pharaoh.
Keep dreaming buddy.
@@twilightrodriguez5340 This phrase was relevant before the Creative Assembly crisis. The next project is literally the return of trust or the death of the company. Too many mistakes have been made. Too many problems have accumulated.
@@100gendos I don't have faith in CA,I see this as the total collapse of this company,Suits and terrible management ruined this company,
Didn't find anything fresh from this take vs what other people have been saying for awhile
Not touching their games until there is hard evidence that they clean the rot from their company, overhaul their approach to game development and customer interaction, and actually overhaul their engine (or create a new one) to remedy the issues and the insane tech debt that have been around since Empire (and manifested most noticeably in Rome 2).
Fundamentally broken engine that--when compared to Rome 1 and Medieval 2--has terrible combat even if working as intended. It's a miracle that WH1 and WH2 were any good, but I'm glad I avoided WH3 because it sounds like the magic waned for that game.
Getting my money is a privilege CA, which I may choose to bestow on you in exchange for a good product. It's not an entitlement you receive for pumping out trash with a 'Total War' brand name slapped onto it.
If thrones is even mid, much less as disappointing as SoC the game will die, the company too maybe
Nothing else, the past few weeks have reminded the player base just how thin skinned ppl working at ca are and the level of disdian they have for their consumer base.
Creative disassembly
Long as they leave what have already made on Steam...
How do you say your company is run by fascists without actually saying it's run by fascists?? .... "CA" "hold my beer"
"Fascist" ...You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
CA's been an ass company since Rome II came out. Could see the warning signs back then on the forums with how they treated people with dissenting opinions or open criticism of their work and massive array of bugs that typically lasted 1.5 - 2 years before being ironed out. They were lucky to ride the coattails of the Warhammer IP, that those Warhammer games reached peak function pretty fast compared to their older historic games, and that the fanbase stays consistent. But everything else they've done since Warhammer started and slightly before, has pretty much been ass in comparison.
If they keep up this attitude of ignoring what their old fans want, they're going to end up in a very bad place financially. I'm not too worried. If they end up going out of business, so be it. It'll suck to lose the TW franchise temporarily, but that'll leave a void open for possibly higher skilled dev teams to make something similar, but improved.
Total war is going to be a dead series to people. They are literally switching to the whale model which means less people will enjoy the game over all. Pharaoh looked like hot shit.
I'm most disappointed in the lack of flc lords. If you were starting the series at square one, twwh2 is much better value with all its free content.
I was excited for Pharaoh. However, I also know that they have a track record of releasing broken games. So I waited only to find the game was very shallow so avoiding buying.
I've still not jumped to warhammer 3. It's on my list, but I was waiting for the massive map, only for a free weekend to hit performance bugs and crashes... so waited for more stability patches.
They need to go balls to the wall with Warhammer and the new game engine. Bring all the best devs back to the team and spend some of that money on marketing because they have a gem here. People will come back if you give them a good reason to. Huge pay wall to get everything so you need More sales on previous releases near Christmas time. more FLC for the poor people, if there engaging in the game then your winning. Fix bugs and iron out kinks ftw..it’s not rocket science
What does "disagree inclusively" even mean? lol CA really hit the bottom.
10:54 Rome 2 IS good now. The Warhammer games are the ones that aren't good.
Oh sure besides the bad balance, crappy DLC quality that was made to be nickel and dime people, horrible performance, dumb AI, crap campaigns mechanics.
Oh and a UI that doesn't handle modern resolutions well, great game, 10/10
@@Costin_Gaming It doesn't have ass ladders though so Rome2 > Warhammer 1,2,3
All I want from CA is a Custodian Team. Even the price or the DLC isn't as big an issue for me as this.
A funded and dedicated custodian team is by nr1 ask for forgiving CA. Nothing more or less.
There are some people in total war community, unsubbing from content creator just by covering the drama with CA, and calling them toxic. I have seen Toxic positivity and white knight company and contribute the most to a game downfall then any negativity towards a game.
The thing with Volound is that we hope he not right with about everything because according what he saying. His source say that rob is waiting the SOC change drama to blow over and keep the price the same
Well he also says Rob is fired which we probably won't get confirmations of until this years (quarter) ends.
Manorlord is coming soon enough anyways.
BTW how many people criticize Rockstar all day but own every each one of their games? As ex.
AAA dev teams like CA know that.
Assassin's creed could be another example.
As i see it, i saw lots of light sauce critizism from launch and atleast to imortal empire and afterward, while the base game seem to mainly get worse and worse, irritation turn to anger and anger ends with hate or indiffrence
But CA dont want to heard negative reviews, polite or not
They just ppl to throw money at them
CA is so lucky that people still accept their BS
I don't think you should put Bellular in the same camp as Volund. Bellular is not a Total War channel but from what I have seen do good Ness sections about gaming and Total War is an interesting subject, I don't Micheal and the team will go IGN clickbait, but tell the story.
Oh I agree on that point, still Bellular is the kind of person who thrives on shit talking companies.
I don't think they are anywhere near the same level.
@@Costin_Gaming I don't see it as negativity for negativity's sake as he also take up when companies do good things.
The big problem in the gaming industry is that it is shit who see gamers as nothing but annoying wallets.
Sadly it is almost only indies that seem to apriciate gamers as valued customers.
We need Medieval 3 or empire 2!
Trust me, you don't want either of those things from this company.
"worst TW game" what did you think of TW Warpath? is TWP worse than that one?
CA need to sell of total war to paradox or some real dev who isnt a grubby waste