Traditional TW or Warhammer? Praise or boycott?Innovation or Stagnation?

[DeliCiousTZM]

With the announcement of the new Total war, many of us are feeling either excited or disappointed. I happen to be excited, but my experience isn't justified, not yet. Creative assembly has let us know, that they wouldn't make a Total war Warhammer unless they had the manpower and funding to do their traditional total war and Warhammer at the same time. This puts people ate at an unease because...We dont believe it, we don't believe that CA is capable of producing a full fledged Historical total war game and Warhammer at the same time. And to be fair, they haven't really convinced me with the release of Attila, whether you like or didn't like Attila, Attila did not become the Standard bearer for Total war, Rome II still is(Because it is the most played total war game currently).

I will use the word feel, because it more accurately represents the current state of doubt i have. Not think, nor know.

I feel that if two big budget total war games are being developed at the same time eating up 50/50 of CA resources, that it can't be flushed out and great. I feel like one project needs to take the lionshare of focus, and focus is what i feel is currently lacking. We have Kingdoms,Arena,Alien,Warhammer,(unamed Total war game). So when Creative assembly tells us that we can rest easy knowing that nothing will hinder the development of the traditional Historical Total war game, i don't rest easier, in fact i become more alarmed.

But what does it all boil down too? What are the "anticipated cracks in the foundation". Innovation and stagnation. For Warhammer total war, i expect Innovation, i expect a game rich with new gameplay elements. What i don't expect however is size, replaybility and descent mod support. For the traditional total war i expect stagnation, i expect that instead of looking to the future as they did with Rome II, they will look into the past, they will look to Shogun2. Relatively smallscale,cheap but tried and true. And when most people sit there playing a version of Avatar conquest, people will say. "This isn't enough anymore"


For many years i have been a player as well as an advocate for multiplayer campaign. And the outcry for something more then 2-player MPC has been loud, not only as one of the most wanted features for Rome II. But as a concept, a natural step in Total wars evolution. Something many traditional players fear, "the shift", the shift into something Total war has never primarily been.... a multiplayer experience. But to me this is a blessing for the traditional player as well, as more focus is given to the Strategic aspect of the game, more focus is given to make it more intricate,harder and more balanced on the campaign map, to add further depth and make the game feel alive, to make it vibrate. I have experienced and seen this.(Praise jesus).

But with all these focus given to polish and sell the total war experience as it were 5 years ago, i ponder will we ever experience a new total war we will fall in love with? Or is this an experience to be watered down and sold to the masses.

[DavidtheDuke]

1 and 5 for me. My only fig leaf of hope is maybe the Warhammer games are especially passionate and talented moreso than the historical ones.

[Abdülmecid I]

Alright, first of all, it doesn't matter if CA can release two TW titles simoultaneously. Of course they can, but they don't want to, because it'd be financially disastrous. They'd have to almost double the expenses and gain much less, since many gamers can't or wouldn't need to pre-order both titles. So, you spend more and you gain less, that's why video-game companies don't spam games every year. How much will it influence historical TW will depend on Warhammer's success. There's not going to be any historical TW before 2017 and, in the worst scenario, Attila was the last one, if WH turns out an immense success. My personal estimation is somewhere in the middle, with historical TW being released more rarely than they used to, but that's not necessarily bad.

[Garensterz]

I feel that if two big budget total war games are being developed at the same time eating up 50/50 of CA resources, that it can't be flushed out and great. I feel like one project needs to take the lionshare of focus, and focus is what i feel is currently lacking. We have Kingdoms,Arena,Alien,Warhammer,(unamed Total war game). So when Creative assembly tells us that we can rest easy knowing that nothing will hinder the development of the traditional Historical Total war game, i don't rest easier, in fact i become more alarmed.

Realistically, the problem here is Rome 2 didn't even lived up to most of the TW players expectations, even though CA increased 40% more budget (obviously it's for marketing) for the game itself, it still (in general) came out buggy as hell, they stripped out so many important features from it's predecessors, they added ridiculous features such as the automatic transpo ships etc, and the game still remains unfinished, in terms of fleshing out most wanted bugs such as the siege AI and sea battles etc. So what makes you think that CA focusing on 1 project will make sort of a difference? They already made this twice, they focus on 1 project and still screws up and yet leaves the game empty just like Empire and Rome 2.

What I will suggest for CA is, they can go for any total war concepts they want, fantasy or historical as long as they make their games moddable as possible. What Attila has proven me is, the TW3 engine is really capable on doing incredible things (which Rome 2 didn't deliver) that pre TW3 engines can't. I'm not really a modder so I can't really explain the mechanics deeply enough, but basing it from experience and very very long times of playing Total war games, it sure really feels that way atleast for myself.

Edit: So my answer to the poll is, maybe both games will neither be as developed. Im basing this only from their past on how they develop their games nowadays, The kind of mindset for being uninspired on developing. I wouldn't question their financial status, because I know CA already profited so much after selling all these games, especially the Rome 2 scam. I'm sure CA already doubled the crew after that, so developing 2 games at the same time wouldn't be much of a problem for them, financially.

[Musteline]

i voted neither will be as developed, but not because they are both being developed, just because i don't trust them to do a good job anyways, just like i don't trust any other dev anymore.

[HigoChumbo]

they added ridiculous features such as the automatic transpo ships etc,

I don't think that was a ridiculous feature for itself. The problem is the way it was implemented (transport ships being substitutes to proper navies). But I'd say it's somewhat fixed. Transport fleets are slower and can be easily outmaneuvered by proper fleets, transports are much weaker and very easy to sink if you don't protect them with actual battle ships and, if the AI worked properly (which is the issue there), it would be suicidal to cross the sea with a transports without protection because they would be easily sunk by the enemy fleet.

In any case, all this is maybe somewhat fitting the Roman setting, since back then ships were more land combat platforms than actual gunboats.

[Huberto]

With the announcement of the new Total war, many of us are feeling either excited or disappointed. I happen to be excited, but my experience isn't justified, not yet. Creative assembly has let us know, that they wouldn't make a Total war Warhammer unless they had the manpower and funding to do their traditional total war and Warhammer at the same time.

I'm not sure that's what they've said. I don't believe CA has confirmed that they are going to release historical games at the same frequency while they are doing their Warhammer trilogy. They've said historical games are their main thing and that they will always be made by the main TW team.

Anyway, I agree with folks that believe that the TW team cannot manage more than one TW title release in a year. I also happen to believe strongly that the historical games will suffer -- both in design and in completeness due to the introduction of fantasy, f2p, mmo, i.e. everything CA is doing instead of making and improving their historical war games. Above all, Warhammer is going to wreck historical TW games, at least for the next 2-3 years, because of how work intensive it undoubtedly is. So we either won't get historical games, or we'll get bad ones.

Finally, count me as someone who sees Attila as a uninspired effort, so perhaps 1/2 baked historical games in the age of fantasy is already underway.

[Carl Jung was right]

I sincerely hope CA devs sit down and play a campaign of Europa Barbarorum or Stainless Steel from start to finish. Then they will know what core fans want and how to avoid utterly screwing everything up and being a huge disappointment. Forget the corporate game design mentality. Stop trying to ape Blizzard with their cheap gimmicks and assembly line RPG tropes. Stop trying to be Apple or Microsoft and create a nice and neat looking app that impresses investors who have squat understanding behind the appeal of the TW franchise as bridging the gap between real time and grand strategy games. Cautious play that rewards long term planning, immersive atmosphere that makes actions within the game seem and feel as if they're done in-world. You want to forget you're just playing a game, you want to feel as if you're part of a real narrative created by your choices. Yes, this means making some tough decisions and risks. The biggest of these in my opinion, is the difficult task of incorporating the fantasy Warhammer brand into the framework of open ended grand strategy aspect of TW games which features diplomacy, intrigue and management. This is not a facet of Warhammer canon, where events often follow a certain clearly defined narrative progression. Regardless, the CoW mod team more or less successfully integrated the Warhammer world into a Med II setting, although of course, with inevitable detriment to the relationship with the canon.

Technically speaking the Warhammer world is very similar to Medieval Europe. One of the things that makes the franchise work so spectacularly, is precisely because it borrows so much from history, reflecting real world cultures. There's absolutely no reason why development can't take a similar design approach as a hypothetical Medieval III. That is to say, rather than making another Diablo on steroids, why not create a living breathing fantasy world reflecting the things which we've come to expect from the franchise?

Don't be stupid, CA, and don't take your gamers as such. Don't repeat what doesn't work - like for example the severely abstracted and restricted building and recruitment system of Empire - Attilla. Listen to your fans, learn from modders who expanded, built upon and perfected the core mechanics of your games, and most importantly, learn from past mistakes and successes.