TW Warhammer reviewers score hunt - comparing Rome 2 and Warhammer reviewer scoring over time

[alQamar]

Hi everyone,

I am pretty sure you will remember the enourmous controversy that Rome 2 had when launched, also because the big discrepancy between the reviewers and users view upon the game and expectations. Well imho I think it was most of all because expectations.

CA has followed a much more honest and open policy imho for Warhammer, but I am still interested to see how this deals out in figures. Namely scores about how reviewers of either side - so professional and amateurs rate the game overall and how the ongoing rating does well or not so well compared against Rome 2. I have collected the reviewer scoring for Rome 2 for a very long time, so I will be able to offer sustainable comparisons here.

As for the release of Rome 2 the difference upon the view of professional reviewers and customers couldn't have been bigger, back in the days.
The standing at metacritics.com was 81% to 39% at the end of week one after Rome 2 has been released.

But for now Warhammer deserves a new start.

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I will try to update this comparison of Warhammer and Rome 2 reviewer scoring once in a week or at least every two weeks.

Warhammer - Day of Launch (24.05.2016)
86 % - Source: Metacritics (reviewers) - 38 reviews (again)
74 % - Source: Metacritics (users) 100 reviews / votes
77 % - Source: Steam users - 3077 reviews / votes

Rome 2 - Day of Launch (03.09.2014)
85 % - Source: Metacritics (reviewers) - 38 reviews
58 % - Source: Metacritics (users) - 504 reviews
-- % - Source: Steam users - reviews / votes (not applicable)

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Rome 2 - today (24.05.2016)
76 % - Source: Metacritics (reviewers) - 71 reviews
42 % - Source: Metacritics (users) - 3715 reviews / votes
-- % - Source: Steam users - reviews / votes

Rome 2 Emperor Edition - today (24.05.2016)
76 % - Source: Metacritics (reviewers) - 71 reviews / votes
72 % - Source: Metacritics (users) - 3715 reviews / votes
77 % - Source: Steam users - 27992 reviews / votes
77 % - Source: Steam users (recently) - 476 reviews / votes

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The OP will not be updated for the sake of readability. I will post updates in the thread below.


If you are interested into more detailed stats about ownership, player retention etc., I can fairly recommend to have a look at the threads of the_eye over here and here

[alQamar]

Hey there!

I think we have already reached the peak of this day for Warhammer and it is doing really well. In the first few hours - most of all before the helpful announcements of CA Joey and the first hotfix the negativity was similar to Rome 2 but this turned into a good way for Warhammer on day one!

Warhammer - Day of Launch (24.05.2016)
86 % - Source: Metacritics (reviewers) - 45 reviews
74 % - Source: Metacritics (users) 100 reviews / votes
77 % - Source: Steam users - 3077 reviews / votes

Rome 2 - Day of Launch (03.09.2014)
85 % - Source: Metacritics (reviewers) - 38 reviews
58 % - Source: Metacritics (users) - 504 reviews
-- % - Source: Steam users - reviews / votes (not applicable)

The impressions of players and those of professional reviewers, at least based on comparing the scores seem to aid each other and show a lot more positiveness towards this launch. As for myself I am somehow disappointing not because the game but more because of a missed opportunity to keep up my technical posts, I've planned.

However Warhammer kept 113,077 people playing this game at the same time, just a little less compared to the 118,302 at the first day for Rome 2, so it seems also the hardcore fanbase has grown to a similar strenght again, compared to Attila.

See you back with updates to this in a couple of days.

[alQamar]

Hi everyone,
today I would like to compare the first week results based on review scores for Warhammer and Rome 2. As you can see Warhammer is really doing great. While the professional reviewer score (average) is stable, same it was with Rome 2, the user score of Warhammer keeps up to similar with the ones at release.




A quite remarkable thing: The little amount of reviews posted on metacritics.com (1526 vs 333 within the first week)

Now you might think, Warhammer has a smaller audience and player base, similar to what happened with Attila? But that's actually untrue. More likely people just seem to refrain posting their bad impressions and other trying to upvote the good sides this time.

When comparing the player retention of the first week things become pretty clear:

Rome 2 started with a daily peak of players around 118k at release day, Warhammer attracted 113k players at the same time.

Have a look at Rome 2, where the peak dropped by about 45k players at the same time
Warhammer on the other hand lost about 34.5k players within the first week.

The relative difference however is pretty much close with -38% to -34%.

I am not able to tell if this 35-40% drop is pretty normal, but perhaps the TWC member the_eye might have more insightful comparisons about that.

To be honest, 3 years ago I was pretty much shocked by this amount of players that stopped playing the game regularly in just a week of time. Now, given the quite good reviews from players and professionals alike, the question arised if this drop is even a normal behaviour after every game release.

[Abdülmecid I]

Interesting thread, product of clearly professional work. I think it's clear Warhammer, despite some obviously similar patters in the player retention trend, is more popular than its predecessor. However, I believe that equally useful conclusions can also be drawn from the first chart, which shows that even Metacritic, despite its various shortcomings, is a reliable tool to estimate a game's popularity, especially when compared with previous titles of almost identical content, like in the case of Rome II and Warhammer. Back in the "dreadful" September of 2013, many guys in the official forums claimed that the forums and the review sites were "infested" with whiners that had nothing better to do than complaining about the game, while the "vast, silent majority" was busy enjoying it. Your results about Metacritic, as well as my totally different experience in both twcenter and the official forums, during the releases of Rome II, Attila and Warhammer undeniably prove that this is simply not true. On the contrary, perhaps Internet activity is an accurate representation of the public opinion about a newly released game or more probably, about comparing the different views between various games' releases.

[alQamar]

Greetings TWC members and guests,

I am a little bit late to post, but here is comes the update for the second week after Warhammer's release day. And the figures and graphs compared to Rome 2 read pretty interesting (for me).

After all this time (till a short time) it seems to be sure that people, at least speaking for Warhammer, are not likely to use metacritics anymore. Have a look on how active metacritic was in 2014 and how few actually spend time to review Warhammer now. Instead the number of reviews posted on Steam are climbing like they climbed on metacritics.com in the past, of course on much higher base.
Let's compare the rows in the table below (Warhammer Steam Users: number of reviews vs. Rome 2 Metacritics user review).

I think the reason is very easy to find. The Steam reviews are much easier to access, more prominent to the Steam users and one does not need a seperate login to review the game. If there is anything better compared to metacritics, then it is that a user actually needs to own the game to be eligble to write a review.




What's also very interesting is the comparison about professional reviewers for each game.

In the second week after Rome 2 release a lot of negative and mixed reviews from professional reviewers, these contributed to lower the rating from marvellous 86% to "average" 79%. But why do I dare to say 79% is "average".
Well if you get into the world of figures about game ratings you might agree that professional reviewers have mostly a bit more positive view upon the games than users, *there are fewer exceptions*.
On Steam the setting will change at 70% from overall positive" to "mixed" starting at 69% or lower.

Generally I have found games that are scoring below 80% (either users or reviewers) are not the best ones. *If you check the link take your time to compare the professional rating to the user rating.^^ *

Interestingly even Attila, while CA made a good job to address most of the wishes from their fans, like better UI, family tree etc, has a reviewer score of 80% yet a user rating of 73% on metacritics, while on Steam it is just around 70%!

So buying such a game should be made with a bit of cautiousness. There are reasons why a good number of reviewers, even though by total numbers speaking about a minority of just 20%, are not positive about the game.
There might be technical issues, an unpolished game quality or simply the concept(s) of the game may lack here and there.

I think if you get familar with the table and the other stuff above you might understand my opinion and why the crucial change for good or average games and great games is placed at this 80% border.


There is another thing I would like to share with you. It is again about the player retention, that I have posted a week ago.

Again I am surprised that both games have so similar trends! Have a look on the graph:




Having a look at this, in my humble opinion we cannot simply make a conclusion that player stopped playing a game rather quickly because it is not good (like I really did in the past with Rome 2).

The user and professional reviewer ratings for Rome 2 and Warhammer couldn't be more divergent to each other, with a really good reputation for Warhammer, but still from the perspective of how owners care to play the game the interest seem to decline same fast. Pretty much interesting are the days on the last weekend, where the Rome 2 and Warhammer figures were actually the same (not relative but absolute). Taking the relative numbers in consideration, the activity of players in Warhammer is generally a bit higher. Sometimes up to 5% more players - again relative to the release day - play the game all at the same time compared to Rome 2 at the same day after release.

But how can the daily player peak contribute to the assumption that people aren't playing the game anymore? Well, this is actually a good question and I am sure that TWC member the_eye will update his Steam stats thread sooner or later to provide some statistical data, but before this is done, have a look at the global Steam achievements.


If you see that only 69 % of all player that OWN the game have actually managed to get a level 10 general (which is not too hard and a too far target, certainly not end game) there is a good portion of players that either do not play the game in the campaign mode (SP or MP coop / versus) or they haven't played the game far at all.

Having a look how less actually finished a campaign yet shows even more that within the last 2 weeks a minority of people (about 3-5% for each faction) achieved this. Note: MP campaigns are not accounted in this achievement. This said, we know that TW games are traditionally more single player campaign oriented.


I hope you liked my thoughts and they inspired you to think about it, perhaps doing your own researches and comparisons.

See you next time! Thanks for reading.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

Add Shogun II , I think to date apart the early versions is their best product with Rome II being the worst .

[Påsan]

Great summary. Very interesting actually.

Two things though: 1: People are by nature more likely to take the bother to review something when they have something to complain about. Which would explain the lack of user reviews.

Secondly people take a long time finishing campaigns. I got three running right now at 80-150 turns and I have not finished any of them, maybe i never will. Its a sandbox game so finishing campaign objective is not really very important.

[Frost, colonel]

Great summary. Very interesting actually.

Two things though: 1: People are by nature more likely to take the bother to review something when they have something to complain about. Which would explain the lack of user reviews.

Secondly people take a long time finishing campaigns. I got three running right now at 80-150 turns and I have not finished any of them, maybe i never will. Its a sandbox game so finishing campaign objective is not really very important.

I couldn't make up my mind who to play so I have all five faction campaigns running, most are like your in terms of turns in.

Thanks for the update alQamar, user reviews 2 weeks in says it all Warhammer 76%, RTWII 39%. Warhammer is fun with no major issue's well certainly for me anyway! Good job really as CA owed me after that RTWII debacle

[alQamar]

Add Shogun II , I think to date apart the early versions is their best product with Rome II being the worst .

Hey Prometheus, I really would have loved to! But back then when I started at TWC I was far away from being interested in things like player retention. My main interest are technical posts.

Great summary. Very interesting actually.

Two things though: 1: People are by nature more likely to take the bother to review something when they have something to complain about. Which would explain the lack of user reviews.

Secondly people take a long time finishing campaigns. I got three running right now at 80-150 turns and I have not finished any of them, maybe i never will. Its a sandbox game so finishing campaign objective is not really very important.

I completely agree with your thoughts. I've also considered that in the post one week ago people might tend to post rather negative things more than positive ones. Now that 2 weeks are over it is not like Warhammer lacks of amount of reviews. Steam has a lot of reviews, just metacritics has few now.

As for your second thought I fairly understand that people lack time to play through one campaign in just 2 weeks or maybe even failed the campaign because too high difficulty. The campaign lenght (turns) may vary a lot from player to player some just autoresolve all and some now etc etc. Still I think that it should not be too far away to get a lvl 10 general.

[M2TWRocks]

I completed a Greenskin long campaign. I think I was done right at 200 turns. I completed a single short campaign in Attila, none in Rome 2, I think a single campaign in Shogun 2, and a ton of campaigns in prior titles.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

TW:W certainly has some issues here and there but overall is a fun gaming experience with a solid launch, so 76% is just about right.

[Bran Mac Born]

As for player retention- the main thing that keeps player retention with these games is the mods. Without them the games would fall into a black hole and never return. If you can measure how many people play with mods vs vanilla I think that would be interesting. I my opinion the vanilla versions of these games are not very fun and are boring. Since CA keep dumbing down their titles and making them less immersive and with less features in them to bring in the casual gamer crowd. They should release "hard core" versions with more feature and more difficulty for the true Total War player. As is these games are for the kiddies

[alQamar]

This would be really interesting but only CA can have this data.

I am not sure if Civ or EU4 have better retention rates. A look into the the_eye's thread might be helpful. Seems he is busy as I am still expecting updates on some of his threads.

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[Lugotorix]

Retention will plummet- with the license constraints- replay value has a ceiling- that will only improve with expansions and DLC- I've completed campaigns as the VC and the Greenskins- plus a fairly long campaign as the Empire. In my opinion the game will never have the replay allure of a game like Attila.

[illathid]

Retention will plummet- with the license constraints- replay value has a ceiling- that will only improve with expansions and DLC- I've completed campaigns as the VC and the Greenskins- plus a fairly long campaign as the Empire. In my opinion the game will never have the replay allure of a game like Attila.

Meh, it already has better replay allure than Attila for me. I never could get myself to go more than 20 turn in Attila before getting bored, while I've completed a full Empire and Chaos campaign and just started a Empire legendary game. But opinions right?

[alQamar]

In such a short time? That's respectable. You achieved more than the most.

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[TheRomanRuler]

I think this game will grow more DLC and expansions and other content it gets. Rome 2 had more playable factions etc at launch and larger map.
When we have gotten all expansions, i am pretty sure this game has far more players than Rome 2 had when it got all expansions. And objectively i believe replayability will be better than in Rome 2 or Attila, but if people like historical titles more then they don't see it that way. And opinions matter a lot of course, objectively there are many great games that i simply don't care about for some reason.

But Warhammer Total War will surpass Rome 2 and even Attila, and possibly even next historical Total War game. Or that is what i believe will happen.

[Lionheart11]

please stop butt kissing CA or the games only going to get smaller.

[alQamar]

Well I am happy about reading your views upon the things but the retention is only a side effect I keep watching for some time.
What TheRomanRuler said might get true. As far we know Warhammer is planned as a triology and so we can expect plenty DLC and addons over time. Pretty much I think that these will be more comparable to Rome 2 Augustus or Attilas Age of Charlemagne or Shogun 2 FotS and not just mini campaign DLCs. This said I won't be able to make comparisons on such a long perspective as some when I stopped collecting the data for Rome 2.

What do you think about the quite different review score development and especially the amount of reviews.

Given that the amount of professional reviewers was the same for Rome 2 Warhammer it seems CA has a collection of reviewers they consider first.

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