An Open Letter to CA on the State of Total War (Oct 2023)

[TheVenge]

I love the Total War formula, and I’m a long time fan of your franchise, though not as long as some; I’ve played almost everything from Medieval II on. I have thousands of hours in your historical titles, and thousands more in what I lovingly have nicknamed “Total Warhammer”. Even so, I don’t claim to be the beating heart of the fan community, because I know from experience that there are enough stripes and differences within your fan base that there’s simply no single position that everyone agrees on, except perhaps that at the end of the day, we actually want CA to succeed. Because if CA loses, then we all lose.

Still, I hope this message nonetheless strikes a chord with a critical mass of us, because I believe some decisive action needs to be taken as soon as possible.

Perhaps obviously, your brand is in trouble: the launch of Total War Pharaoh has not gone well, a major project (Hyenas) was recently canceled after years of development, and steadily declining player numbers in Warhammer 3 – just to name a few. This is not a victory for disgruntled fans, because at the end of the day the only reason we’re disgruntled or even using our voice loudly is we CARE.

The million dollar question would seem to be “why” the brand is in such trouble, but it doesn’t take much skimming through the fan communities out there before it clearly coming down to a lack of attention on the right things. The cost of DLCs, yes, but that is probably secondary and incidental to the attention deficit.

With regard to the lack of attention, there’s a lot to say. Since Rome II, there have been many false starts and tepid launches, a major game (Three Kingdoms) has basically been abandoned, and now tragically Warhammer 3 – the final installment in this ambitious and successful series – is suffering under the weight of many long-standing bugs and general inattention. It seems that even Warhammer is at risk of being abandoned, a situation which is frustrating and perplexing to behold given the massive and raw interest in the IP and of course in your game.

From the beginning of Total Warhammer, we players understood that we would be given a complete experience in that world, and in the days of Warhammer 1 and 2, our expectations and CA’s delivery were more or less matched up. The high active player base was a testament to this. Forget the misstep of the Realm of Chaos campaign; such things happen and the fan base can get over this if the game gets the right attention.

But it hasn’t and, as I said above, we’re watching CA simultaneously spend a great deal of time and money on projects that most of us don’t care about (Hyenas) or a Total War saga-esque historical title (Pharaoh). The row over DLC price is just a symptom of the greater problem I’m laying out here; if we’re honest everything is more expensive for us these days – food, gas, and yes even payroll at CA due to market forces – but I don’t think we’d be generally having this pricing conversation if our relationship was in a good place.

Please give existing titles the care and polish they deserve. Please ensure that any DLC you release has matching content for the price. We all, in one way or other, want CA to rebound from this and give us what we’re paying for. It will be a long road, but it’s still doable, and anything less I believe will lead to places none of us want to go for Total War.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[TheVenge]

Well, the formatting got all messed up. :/ I can't figure out how to edit or even delete it so I can re-post. Guessing edit only is allowed with in X minutes?

[alhoon]

Edit is allowed with more posts. I have informed the moderators in case they can help you.

[TheVenge]

Thanks for the help sir.

[AnthoniusII]

Thanks for the help sir.

My dear friend your conserns are fair and also your observations. Let me tell you a"faiy tail" about how the TW series have been driven to downfall.
Once uppon a time CA (SEGA did not yet bought the CA) there were 2 separated game developing teams one in UK and one in Australia. The last one is responsible for the titles Shogun I , MTW 1, Rome I and when M2TW was about to eneter the last phase of development the UK department wanted more active paticipation in the game's evolution. The result was that the Australian branch quite and the UK one release M2TW with many missing features of the previus titles and many errors that leaded to 5 patches to reach to a descent level. After that CA/UK desided to find help in the modding community and called to "arms" many famous modders and end up to a 2 modder short list.
The choice of the worst of the two ones carry the burden of constant failures untill today . SEGA bought CA but kept the failed UK team with the worst modder that became in charge with the devestating results you see even today.
I can not tell names because its not allowed but back then there was a furius movement against CA's final choice proven that those that protested were right.
In order CA/SEGA (NOW) to hide the lack of the developers abillities in developing new games CA called again many modders and later we learnes that some of them were payed real good to make positive reviews in failed and unfinished games. The rest are history as in your post describe.

[BlizzieM]

With regard to the lack of attention, there’s a lot to say. Since Rome II, there have been many false starts and tepid launches, a major game (Three Kingdoms) has basically been abandoned, and now tragically Warhammer 3 – the final installment in this ambitious and successful series – is suffering under the weight of many long-standing bugs and general inattention. It seems that even Warhammer is at risk of being abandoned, a situation which is frustrating and perplexing to behold given the massive and raw interest in the IP and of course in your game.

I recently saw a youtube video (I don't remember who was behind it, unfortunately) that basically corroborates with this, stating that the tech powering these games is aging, and there really isn't development on the core technology of TW and Warscape engines anymore, and the games are basically just forked from one another ad infinitum. From a development stand point this is really bad to say the least, because you just keep acquiring technical dept and never really fix any underlying issues. Add to that the fact there's practically one of these games almost every year at this point, and the old tech guys from CA are long gone, you have recipe for disaster in both creative and technical sense.

If I was running this show I'd probably would do two things. One that every fan of this series can agree with (and is pretty similar to one youtuber Andy's Take laid out in his channel), and one that is... perhaps a little bit more controversial.

1) Take longer time with one big, historical tittle: After the support period for whatever the newest game happens to be has ran it's course, put series on hiatus for couple of years, and use it to develop the next grand scale Total War game. Whether it ends up being either Medieval 3, Rome 3 or Empire 2 doesn't make too big of a difference as long as it's the big tittle with grand scope, where all the core features and some bigger additions over the years that fans love from the past tittle to create the best tittle you can and that you can support for a long time. You could even change the tittle format back to X: Total War to signify the return to the series basics.

Now that the relatively uncontroversial take is out of the way, here's my hot take.

2) Ditch TW Engine and Warscape and replace them with engine from third party: As a bit of a background I am a game development student with some experience on the field, so I hope I can give a good justification for this opinion. Basically the current engine and game creation tools are obsolete according the sources mentioned in that one youtube video I mentioned earlier, and with the experienced older employees gone, updating the old tech is a tall order at this point. Building your own game engine is really hard and time consuming, and as tailor made as they can be, the added costs and development time really aren't worth it at the end of the day if that same effort can be use to things I mentioned at the part one. What I would do in this situation is license Unreal Engine, even if it's not the most obvious choice at the first place. Whilst it would take considerable amount of work to build foundations for a game like Total War, it would still take less time than revamping the old engine I'd wager. Plus because someone else is upgrading the core engine for your behalf, all you really need to do is create basic foundation template for your game and upgrade it to the new engine version when ever that is necessary (and UE is surprisingly backwards compatible so the work of keeping core assets up to date would be relatively easy). All the new tech additions to the core engine would be really easy to incorporate when ever there's a new game. In addition the tools are modern and widely used in the industry so there's a good change any new hires to the team are at least familiar with the tools which also speeds up the game creation process considerably.

Hope any of these are helpful or at least insightful. We'll see if any of these ever get picked up on.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

Switching to unreal is a bold gamble but not the worst thing I've heard actually. Could be something to look at. Clearly they need something radical to get out of the development rut of reusing eldritch code again and again. That's one of those ideas I'd try with a smaller title and put the full weight behind one big historical title only after it's sure not to flop at the engineering level. In other words I wouldn't take both chances at the same time.

[Flinn]

I recently saw a youtube video (I don't remember who was behind it, unfortunately) that basically corroborates with this, stating that the tech powering these games is aging, and there really isn't development on the core technology of TW and Warscape engines anymore, and the games are basically just forked from one another ad infinitum. From a development stand point this is really bad to say the least, because you just keep acquiring technical dept and never really fix any underlying issues. Add to that the fact there's practically one of these games almost every year at this point, and the old tech guys from CA are long gone, you have recipe for disaster in both creative and technical sense.

Watched a video recently (in Italian) that basically says the same. It's an interview to a former CA employee.

[BlizzieM]

Switching to unreal is a bold gamble but not the worst thing I've heard actually. Could be something to look at. Clearly they need something radical to get out of the development rut of reusing eldritch code again and again. That's one of those ideas I'd try with a smaller title and put the full weight behind one big historical title only after it's sure not to flop at the engineering level. In other words I wouldn't take both chances at the same time.

That does makes some sense. However, I feel that due the massive undertaking rebuilding everything with a new engine is I'm not sure doing smaller tittle first is something SEGA would approve of, especially after the flop that was Hyenas. These situations tend to be ones where the parent company takes the tighter leash on things at which point the studio either has to make a big comeback or sink. CA might not be there quite yet but one more failed/underwhelming project can quickly make situation much more bleak. Which sucks both for the fans but especially the big majority of average workers on the studio who really can't make these bigger decisions yet have to suffer most of the fallout from when things go south.

That said, some smaller game that ties to the next bigger tittle and acts as a prequel/independent expansion to said tittle might be a good compromise. If they're going to do 40K next, a game based on Horus Heresy would probably work quite well since in the end of the day it's pretty much different Space/Chaos Marine factions fighting with each other.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

That does makes some sense. However, I feel that due the massive undertaking rebuilding everything with a new engine is I'm not sure doing smaller tittle first is something SEGA would approve of, especially after the flop that was Hyenas. These situations tend to be ones where the parent company takes the tighter leash on things at which point the studio either has to make a big comeback or sink. CA might not be there quite yet but one more failed/underwhelming project can quickly make situation much more bleak. Which sucks both for the fans but especially the big majority of average workers on the studio who really can't make these bigger decisions yet have to suffer most of the fallout from when things go south.

That said, some smaller game that ties to the next bigger tittle and acts as a prequel/independent expansion to said tittle might be a good compromise. If they're going to do 40K next, a game based on Horus Heresy would probably work quite well since in the end of the day it's pretty much different Space/Chaos Marine factions fighting with each other.

You're probably right. As much as my thinking comes from an abundance of caution, CA may have no choice but to jump in all the way from the start. Which is how every flop at release has happened - how it recovers from that has always been a mixed bag. I'm not sure they could suffer that either, never mind the herculean effort of building on an entirely new engine and then going to unexplored heights. I'd hope for a workflow miracle that it's a 'why didn't we do this all along' and it goes super well.

Exploring a sci-fi total war with a new engine and smaller setting is perhaps the best way to go about it, as you suggest. It wouldn't be small in significance but in execution it doesn't have to be a huge game and that might be what CA needs to get it right. I can't say a warhammer 40k game is what I would dream of but it's a path they could take and there's merit to a 'teaser title' followed by a more fully realized release. That would give the engine stability to make mythical entries like Empire 2 or Medieval 3 pack the punch they need.

[AnthoniusII]

Re building everything on a new engine is quite impossible (but is it?). Take as example the codes od Shofun I and Medieval Total War 1 that never apeared again. Same happened to Rome I features that never apeared again also.
I have heard the rumors that for the 1st case it was a "copyrights" issue between CA and former CA-Australia that created both 1st games. But while we complained in Medieval 2 Total War that Rome I FEATURES DID NOT REACH being part of the game , things got worst with the new TW ganeration games staring from Rome II. Its quite bizzare though that when Rome II was under development the head master was a Rome I moder that claimed that what we can get in Rome II was the far we could despite the upjection of Darth Vader that claimed that "coding" is the key to have and ironic responce from Lustens that never explained us why why bought TW carbages!
Darth Vader created his own video games while Lustens still hides ...avoiding to give answers.
If you think that "translasting" coding from a game engine to an other is impossible then how coders make the same thing to real weapons. The best axample was the Greek ToR-M1 AA weaponns that had Russian code to fanction, A greek company created a "translator" that actually translates the Russian codes to NATO ones and Greek ToR-M1 are the onlt 100% Russian AA system that works peefectly with NATO systems.
Conclusion. EVERYTHING can be copied and translated to new game engines. The problen is the CA developing team that does not qualify for that task ,something I shout since day 1 of Rome II release!

[BlizzieM]

Re building everything on a new engine is quite impossible (but is it?). Take as example the codes od Shofun I and Medieval Total War 1 that never apeared again. Same happened to Rome I features that never apeared again also.
I have heard the rumors that for the 1st case it was a "copyrights" issue between CA and former CA-Australia that created both 1st games. But while we complained in Medieval 2 Total War that Rome I FEATURES DID NOT REACH being part of the game , things got worst with the new TW ganeration games staring from Rome II. Its quite bizzare though that when Rome II was under development the head master was a Rome I moder that claimed that what we can get in Rome II was the far we could despite the upjection of Darth Vader that claimed that "coding" is the key to have and ironic responce from Lustens that never explained us why why bought TW carbages!
Darth Vader created his own video games while Lustens still hides ...avoiding to give answers.
If you think that "translasting" coding from a game engine to an other is impossible then how coders make the same thing to real weapons. The best axample was the Greek ToR-M1 AA weaponns that had Russian code to fanction, A greek company created a "translator" that actually translates the Russian codes to NATO ones and Greek ToR-M1 are the onlt 100% Russian AA system that works peefectly with NATO systems.
Conclusion. EVERYTHING can be copied and translated to new game engines. The problen is the CA developing team that does not qualify for that task ,something I shout since day 1 of Rome II release!

The truth about translating a game to different engine is a bit complicated than that however.

True you can recreate game mechanics and such pretty faithfully and relatively easily. However the issue is that the underlying engine and how it works dictates a lot of how the game's physics, path finding algorithms, AI and such work. Bar for total 1:1 recreation down to the every bit of engine code, the resulting game's going to have some differences from the original game. Some subtle (like in case where pathfinding in both engines are ultimately based on A* algorithm), some drastic (engine/game A uses state machine based AI, engine/game B is using behavior trees).

Not to say CA shouldn't do it, but just to point out the game feel of this hypothetical UE based TW game will be different from the Warscape tittles.

If I may put my game dev hat on for a moment tough, what I would love to see in the AI front of the game is adoption of Goal Oriented Action Planning (GOAP for short). What GOAP does is basically adopting different states AI could be in, but instead of rigidly defined transitions between states (say, move unit to the right place -> take line formation -> hold line and fire) it removes these transitions and instead the AI has to decide which path, or plan, it should take based on the available states it has, and assigning them a cost value based on risk vs reward, taking the less costly plan it can find.

This would theoretically create a cunning AI that can be highly reactive and devise very complex yet effective tactics in battle, which would make even the most experienced general worried how they're going to get trough the battle they're currently playing. If you want an example of a game that uses it quite well, the original F.E.A.R. is a really good example of a game based on GOAP.