Chaos Warriors Race IS pre-order DLC

[Manu La Canette]

The comparison is faulty since you aren't actually $160 worth of dlc as a bonus for pre-ordering EUIV. What was the actual pre-order bonus for EUIV? Buy one get one free is equivalent to 50% off, it's simply math.

Pre-order bonus for EUIV, like I remember it, was a skin pack for French & English medieval units. I also think you could somehow get polish hussars skins and a special unique building... But yeah that's cosmetic stuff mostly, and only for like 5% of the game. That's not an entire part of the game :/

[Huberto]

EU IV was $39.99 US at release, not $60. Moreover, the EU IV "base game" was available three/four months after release for $10 US (Steam Sale, Christmas 2012). I don't condone Paradox's nickel and dime DLC, but let's be clear the price point to get in is more affordable and some of the DLC is really good. It's a different approach but one I wish CA/SEGA would consider instead of trying to put out a quote/unquote new game every year.

PC games that cost a lot need to have a very loyal, niche audience that will shell out hundreds, or feature twice the content of regular games, or both. I am assuming that what is coming next April is a lot like a normal Warscape game, like Empire, Shogun 2, Rome 2. What's different this time is that the core audience, the WH enthusiasts, are accustomed to reaching deep into their wallets.

This is why CA/SEGA's business practices are going to be especially aggressive. CA/SEGA is counting on you guys to shell out, big-time. They are moving the business practice slider to extreme to take advantage of your passion.

[Brachra]

I can agree with that viewpoint huberto, as a wh40k and whfb/AoS player and collector. I've been way overcharged for my love of wh for ages. Like I said in an earlier reply, this isn't just about total war with this game. It's warhammer....and many of us really want a WH game like total war. I may not be enjoying the dlc thing, or costs.....but it's what's available and I'd rather spend a bit more money than get nothing at all.

[Fredrin]

PC games that cost a lot need to have a very loyal, niche audience that will shell out hundreds, or feature twice the content of regular games, or both. I am assuming that what is coming next April is a lot like a normal Warscape game, like Empire, Shogun 2, Rome 2. What's different this time is that the core audience, the WH enthusiasts, are accustomed to reaching deep into their wallets.

This is why CA/SEGA's business practices are going to be especially aggressive. CA/SEGA is counting on you guys to shell out, big-time. They are moving the business practice slider to extreme to take advantage of your passion.

It's a good point, Huberto. They will obviously be factoring in extreme devotion from a lot of Warhammer fans when they price up the game and DLC packs.

The problem is there is a big gulf between these guys and the huge swathe of Rome II players for whom the memory of appalling release followed by wave after wave of poor value DLC is still relatively fresh in their minds. The more they adapt their pricing strategy to zealous Warhammer fans, the more it will ignite rage among unhappy Total War fans, so they really need to tread carefully here. Much more carefully than they have already ... day 6 and still not a word from CA despite a huge negative reaction.

[Frost, colonel]

What's different this time is that the core audience, the WH enthusiasts, are accustomed to reaching deep into their wallets.
This is why CA/SEGA's business practices are going to be especially aggressive. CA/SEGA is counting on you guys to shell out, big-time. They are moving the business practice slider to extreme to take advantage of your passion.

I thought GW have a rep for being very aggressive as well to add extra spice to this pricing formula. We have 2 of the ultimate milkers on our backs, Sega and GW, what jolly fun.
It will be interesting to add up the price of this game in it's 3 parts with the total amount of DLC they will make available. Will each of the main 3 Games be £50? And I suspect a total of at least 15 DLC's between the 3 main games? I think I will have a stabby quess at a grand total of £225-250 all in.

Now what is interesting is, in order to generate sales with the next 2 main installments and all the DLC's, then the first one has to be good, surely another RTWII launch would be a shot in the foot to them, so are we more or less guaranteed a great initial game, despite peoples fears of that lovely old gaming engine??????

[Aquila_Mars]

There is one thing they are ignoring though. Warhammer fans are not always OCD types

in example, I'll definitely buy Bretonnia if it is a dlc, but I couldn't give two turds about skaven personally. Or Tomb Kings. If I get my hands on Bretonnia I'll only play Bretonnia. There are other warhammer fans out there similarly obsessed with one faction/race in the setting. Everything else will be like an extra to those people.

I've bought many warhammer games till now, each time giving a sigh with disappointment. Here I'm hoping Warhammer Total War will deliver what I've been waiting for. And that is, as Huberto said, what they'll be aiming for I'm afraid. And honestly I've been paying for overpriced models and bitz and pieces for years. This DLC is stuff is like nothing when compared to it. And honestly as core as Chaos is to Warhammer, I don't care at all that I can't play them if I don't pre-order. But I put myself in the shoes of people who are obsessed with chaos as I'm with Bretonnia. So I understand and amplify their rage at this. I don't know what can be done though, as long as people keep rewarding this practice, in the future we'll be buying factionless games where you'll have to pay for each and every faction.

Has to stop...

[spanish_emperor]

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT PRE-ORDER (I understand it is long but please read)

I don't understand why anyone would pre-order based on hype. All that you have seen is trailers which in no way reflect the end product either in graphics, animations or scenarios displayed. This we know for certain thanks to the experience of Rome 2 Total War. The only thing that is true of them is that the unit exists in the game (hopefully) but that doesn't necessarily mean it will be in your game since it may be part of a pre-order that comes after release even if the unit belongs to a playable faction, or it may be part of a faction that is unplayable. In essence, a trailer is merely a demonstration of an unrealistic over-the-top representation of the game at its most ideal condition which you will never be able to replicate. The same holds true of "in-game" trailers where developers "play" the game which is really scripted and where graphic levels are beyond what those available in the real game which must later be tweaked to be compatible with laptops and other low-res computers of customers.

Trailers as well as other pre-release content are merely hype, very little of them is true. If someone was selling me milk but asked that I pay for it before I had even seen it, let alone taste it, and to entice me he showed me a video of the product, regardless of how well the video may be made I would not give my money away. Would you? Well that is exactly what the pre-order hype train is about. It’s a promise, nothing more. The only reason someone would pre-order is if they trusted the seller; in other words, trust and pre-order go hand in hand. Yet why are people pre-ordering when CA's history concerning pre-orders is anything but trustworthy? You may say they have changed but at this point you have no proof of this and your claims are mere conjecture. The company would first have to behave in a way that would regain the trust of its customers. You wouldn't keep buying that milk that wasn't exactly milk unless you saw them change their ways first so why would you retrust a company that has yet to fix the mess of R2TW in any suitable way? They say insanity is repeating the same mistakes with the expectation of experiencing a different outcome. Pre-ordering to me fits that definition. However, there must be a psychological reason behind this behavior and there is: trailers and pre-release content are not meant to reveal the true extent of the game just like a politician's pre-election rhetoric is not meant to represent his true beliefs or what he will do once elected. They are merely being used to play or manipulate with your emotions and give you a feeling of excitement that will result in you pre-ordering the game and paying for something you may not be interested in the future or may not meet your expectations. I ask: have you ever done something in the heat of the moment that later turned out to be good and didn't regret? Don't most good things come to those who wait and suppress their craving and yearnings? Persistent pre-order customers will naturally defend their actions because of a tendency to reject assertions that challenge their behavior and beliefs and may be overly optimistic because they want to be overly optimistic that it becomes a self-fufilling prophecy. They tend to look or remember merely the good aspects and reject or downplay the negative ones. In other words, they believe what they want to believe which is reinforced by confirmation bias. Others may pre-order (pre-purchase) based on popularity: most people buy a product because of indirect peer pressure. As their friends talk about the newest trailer that they have seen, etc they fuel the hype train and its popularity making it more likely that more and more people will purchase the product.

However, this post is meant to be more about explaining why pre-ordering is a bad idea, despite what the overly optimistic and gaming industry might say.

One of the ways in which TW, and indeed other games, have managed to get customers to pre-order is by offering free content (which should be part of the core game) to customers. In marketing this is a devious but excellent strategy to get extra money because first of all they are paying for something they have yet to play or even seen in non-scripted action.

One of the reasons to be against pre-ordering is that it provides an industry with profits without having to do any real work. By the time the game is released they have already acquired a large percentage of their overall sales. This allows them to cut features, do less work or invest less in the development of the game knowing that they have already reached the margins they were aiming for. Consequently, the game is inevitably worse than it would otherwise have been. If they only became aware of their profits after the game had been released companies would leave no rock unturned to make sure their game would be as good as possible in order to sell as many games as possible. Thus, profits depended largely upon the product rather than the hype. Now there is no incentive to make the game any good, so long as it is not extremely bad they can get away with it and so the target becomes mediocrity and the funds are diverted towards advertising and marketing instead of development. In the 1970s, psychologists Mark R. Lepper and David Greene from Stanford and the University of Michigan chose to determine the effects of expected rewards on humans. Children who knew that they would be rewarded for their drawings spent less time drawing and placed less energy towards making creative and sophisticated drawings. [1] Other studies confirmed it applied to adults too. One famous experiment includes Skinner’s operant conditioning experiment where a rat would be rewarded with food pellets by pressing a lever. Skinner discovered that if the pellets were given only at certain time intervals (say every 10 minutes) – in other words they expected the reward – the rat would naturally not press the lever until the ten minutes neared but if pellets were given based on the number of times the lever was pulled (say 1 every 10 pulls) then they would put more of an effort, and even more for variable-ratio schedules – if the rewards were given unexpectedly. [2] We can apply this to the gaming industry in a similar way: if the company staff already know they have large sales they are unlikely to put much effort into developing the game; if they realize that sales depend on how much they work they are likely to put more effort, but if the number of sales varies and cannot be predicted they will work even harder to ensure they get the highest possible sales. Yet this is exactly what pre-ordering does: it incentivizes the developers and the gaming company to put less effort into their work and be less creative because they already know what the reward will be before the work is completed. This is also the reason companies do not invest large resources after the game has been released to fixing it in any significant way - they already have your money and they know sales more than 3 months after release diminish to a whimper and any good patch take more than 3 months to release. The patches are simply there to make it seem that they are doing something about it, minimizing the loss of face and reputation and preventing you from returning it and getting a refund, sorry it’s the truth.

Another reason why pre-ordering is bad is because it encourages the company to pursue the strategy of artificial scarcity that force us to pre-order in fear that we will lose or miss out on the offer or content. While CA does not say the "free" pre-order content will be excluded to those who have not pre-ordered it, it becomes quite reasonable to assume this is exactly what would happen or there would be no reason to pre-order it in the first place. The effect can be summarizes as follows:

"Psychologist Stephen Worchel illustrated [artificial scarcity] with a study involving cookies unlike those that Steam’s website deals in. Posing as a consumer products survey, the experimenters offered subjects a chocolate chip cookie from one of two jars. One of the jars had many cookies in it. The other had only a few. People reported the cookies from the mostly empty jars as more delicious, more desirable, and more expensive. This despite that the cookies in both jars WERE THE SAME COOKIES." [3]

Because the psychology behind artificial scarcity is most effective when the "free" or "limited time only" product is a core element it is only natural that companies gradually move towards limiting core aspects for those who pre-order or pay extra only. In fact, we just saw this with Total War: Warhammer with the Chaos faction. The threat exists, and is entirely plausible, that customers may get used to such activity and accept it years down as the norm, especially the earlier generations. At this point companies may move to simply charge players for core content - this is the road we are heading. I know apologists will claim there is nothing wrong with this since they are adding content but the truth is they are not. This content would already be in the game regardless! The only thing it does is convince the gullible that it is new or additional content when it is not, just like they convince them that it is free when it is not.

Pre-ordering is also bad because it relies on the concept of 'sunk cost' whereby you have already invested your money in something. While pre-ordering these days is getting more digital and you don't necessarily have to invest $10 on the pre-order that you know you will never be able to redeem, you still have a sense of sunk cost in terms of time spent. You do not want to have to waste your time returning the game when you can merely play it here and now. Nevertheless, the concept of sunk cost has really taken a new meaning with the invention of DLC (Downloadable Content) so that you have already invested a substantial amount of money on purchasing the game and paying that extra $5 feels necessary to get the “complete” game. Then they release a “new” DLC a month later and so on so that in the end the real game has cost twice the original yet, unless you’re keeping count, you won’t realize it.

Note, there is nothing wrong with pre-ordering if 1. you trust the seller; or 2. you have seen or experienced the game in a demo (coincidentally, nobody does demos now - guess why!). Let’s get back to rewarding games based on content and the gaming experience not on popularity and hype.


[1] http://www.spring.org.uk/2009/10/how...motivation.php
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
[3] http://www.psychologyofgames.com/201...s-summer-sale/

[Brachra]

That's the thing though.... you may not want to play anything but bretonnia. And tbh I'd probably play beastmen or lizard men mote often than any other but what if the dlc is required to add npc factions ad well? If I'm only gonna 0lay one race then I at least want every other race in there opposing me. Either way, I will have to buy them all

[spanish_emperor]

EU IV was $39.99 US at release, not $60. Moreover, the EU IV "base game" was available three/four months after release for $10 US (Steam Sale, Christmas 2012). I don't condone Paradox's nickel and dime DLC, but let's be clear the price point to get in is more affordable and some of the DLC is really good. It's a different approach but one I wish CA/SEGA would consider instead of trying to put out a quote/unquote new game every year.

PC games that cost a lot need to have a very loyal, niche audience that will shell out hundreds, or feature twice the content of regular games, or both. I am assuming that what is coming next April is a lot like a normal Warscape game, like Empire, Shogun 2, Rome 2. What's different this time is that the core audience, the WH enthusiasts, are accustomed to reaching deep into their wallets.

This is why CA/SEGA's business practices are going to be especially aggressive. CA/SEGA is counting on you guys to shell out, big-time. They are moving the business practice slider to extreme to take advantage of your passion.

Europa Universalis represents one of the best practitioners of DLC. While I hate DLC, EU do so in a respectable manner in that, as you have pointed, they provide DLC that is not "core" related, that is good and value for money and that plays to the tastes of the customer. This means it is not essential. The fact CA uses "core" related content for their DLC demonstrates that they are lazy - sorry CA but you are. "Core" related content is not the only hyped content around. Take the Greek factions in TWR2: sure its hyped and it was always going to be popular but you could have included Imperial legionaries instead, made Athens or Sparta more detailed in scope as a faction, etc. All this requires extra work and would have been respectable DLC choices but you instead choose to take out dull factions and sell them as extras based solely on their names (their units and campaign gameplay were similar to other factions).

[Frost, colonel]

That's the thing though.... you may not want to play anything but bretonnia. And tbh I'd probably play beastmen or lizard men mote often than any other but what if the dlc is required to add npc factions ad well? If I'm only gonna 0lay one race then I at least want every other race in there opposing me. Either way, I will have to buy them all

That would indeed be very cunning of them is the DLC was adding the none playable factions as well. I would not be interested in several of the factions to play, but I like the idea of varied foes, partic with varied cultures.

[Frost, colonel]

Hey spanish_empero,

I agree fully with your post, but a few more paragraphs would indeed make it less daunting and easier to read.

[Aquila_Mars]

I doubt they'll sink so low as to make none-playable factions into DLC... That'd be a "new level of low". Imagine that, no beastmen to hunt unless you pay 8€. I shiver at the thought. Brrrr

[Manu La Canette]

I doubt they'll sink so low as to make none-playable factions into DLC... That'd be a "new level of low". Imagine that, no beastmen to hunt unless you pay 8€. I shiver at the thought. Brrrr

Thing is they officialy stated that they will eventually achieve to implement, one way or another (but they mainly talked about factions released at launch of each of the 3 different games, and DLCs), every single faction of the main army books from the TT. Means that the Beastmen will most likely be in a DLC attached to the first game, most likely with Skavens and perhaps another Chaos faction, I don't know. Now that doesn't mean there won't be any Beastmen at launch, but their roster will most likely be very scarce, and the DLC will unlock them and bolster their units adding new one, I guess.
Now Skavens would be an interesting DLC on the other hand, because it needs a lot of work considering they are supposed to dwell underground: why not introducing a subterran view of the campaign map you could switch from, just like in HoMM games, so as a Skaven player, you could strike from behind, lay waste, and get back to the subterrans and so on...

[Aquila_Mars]

The way they handled the dwarf undepass thing, I'm not keeping my hopes up for an underground campaign map, but hey. They might surprise us with the 2nd and 3rd games.

[bigdaddy1204]

I'm not going to be buying Total War Warhammer as I don't like fantasy. But some people in this thread really need to look at the older games in the series, perhaps they are too young to remember.

In 2002, CA released Medieval Total War. This game was brilliant. There was no DLC. They actually gave you 3 separate campaigns in one - the Early, the High and the Late campaigns - with the vanilla game. The factions were well-researched, and all had attention to detail and unique units. The historical flavour was strong, the description text brought the period to life, battles were a challenge. The expansion pack, Viking invasion, added an entirely new campaign map and a whole set of new factions in a completely different time period, and is widely considered the high-point of the Total War series.

Now compare the quality of work with later games. Medieval 2 was a marked step down in quality compared to the original game. The graphics were better, but in other respects the game was inferior, particularly in the way certain factions were treated and the attention to historical detail, as well as major flaws in battle mechanics. From there we moved on to Empire, which I didn't buy but which by all accounts was a disaster, and the launch of Rome II is well known (infamous, even).

But reflect on what they offered us in 2002, and then compare with what you are being offered now. Think about it.

[Charerg]

May be I'm being naive but if this price is actually necessary for the game to be produced and with a tonne of DLC instead of a full and rich base game why can't CA just talk to the fans and explain things.

I don't know what the average player can afford for a game. I don't player other games, just CA's. It wouldn't bother me if it was £100, if it was any good. I suppose that not everyone could afford a £100 game, so DLC is basically there if you want it, when you can afford it.

I do know from the straight lies CA told us about upping the budget on RTWII's AI by 40% and how great it was and the actual launch, that they can't be trusted so no pre-orders from me.
If CA really can't give us a game financially without it being£50, and then still needing to break it down into as much DLC as they can, just to make it financially viable so be it. But what's wrong with them explaining that. If it was my company I would explain how things are, other companies state reasons for price increases, British Gas do(but then still go on to make vast yearly profits).

The problem I have is what is financially necessary for them, and was is cutting back on initial game content to make more money on as DLC, is it greed or need?

Thing is, normally a game's profits come from quantity of products sold, not from the products being very pricey. If you reduce your customer base down to a small group, it wont help if the game costs 200 €. It's usually a lot more effective to sell the base game relatively cheaply, so that as many as possible buy it, and then try to generate extra income via DLC. If the quantity of products sold is sufficiently high, the initial price doesn't need to be astronomical. But frankly the new business policy seems to be all about short-term profits in exchange for long term losses, because losing customers via shady business practices and setting of high prices will inevitable lead to the amount of total customers decreasing in the long run.

Compare to say, Halo 5 which came out recently. No doubt this was a very expensive project to develop. Nevertheless, it doesn't cost any more than other consol games. Furthermore, if you buy the game you get the full product regardless of whether you pre-ordered or not. There is a pre-order bonus consisting of a loadout weapon and a custom sking for multiplayer. However, all pre-order bonuses can be unlocked in the game via just playing it. This is something that I would consider reasonable and good business practice.

For whatever reason, CA/Sega seem to think that repeatedly screwing over their playerbase won't have negative effects in the long run via reducing the growth of the franchise's playerbase (or even decreasing its size). Furthermore, it's hurting the company's reputation as a "trustworthy" developer, as this recent debacle is even worse than EA's business practices. I don't know if GW is demanding a 50% cut of the profits, or what is going on here.

[Frost, colonel]

I don't know if GW is demanding a 50% cut of the profits, or what is going on here.

I would like to have been a fly on the wall when these things were agreed. GW's ruthless business practice goes way back, I remember a friend involved in the trade telling stuff prob 20yrs ago, since then I heard they got worse.
But we are not going to get Warhammer any other way, high prices and DLC city here we come, just leave out the bit where you treat us like you don't give a crap, please.

[bigdaddy1204]

But we are not going to get Warhammer any other way, high prices and DLC city here we come, just leave out the bit where you treat us like you don't give a crap, please.

You know they are going to treat you bad. They have done it every time for the last ten years. There's no reason to think they are going to change now.

On the plus side, Medieval 2 is still moddable. I'd say anyone interested in Warhammer might be better off going back to Medieval 2 and making a Warhammer mod. Look at the awesome mods that already exist for Medieval 2 - we have Broken Crescent, Stainless Steel and Third Age Total war.

[Frost, colonel]

You know they are going to treat you bad. They have done it every time for the last ten years. There's no reason to think they are going to change now.

On the plus side, Medieval 2 is still moddable. I'd say anyone interested in Warhammer might be better off going back to Medieval 2 and making a Warhammer mod. Look at the awesome mods that already exist for Medieval 2 - we have Broken Crescent, Stainless Steel and Third Age Total war.

I thought we had the call of Call of Warhammer for MedII

[bigdaddy1204]

I thought we had the call of Call of Warhammer for MedII

Well, there ya go then!