Creative Assembly Statement regarding the Total War DLC

[76561199238047981]

Hello everyone! Sharing a message from Creative Assembly regarding the recent pricing discussions surrounding the Total War DLC:

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Hi everyone. I’m Rob Bartholomew, Chief Product Officer here at Creative Assembly.

First off, I’d like to thank you for making your voices heard over the past week. Hopefully longer-term Total War fans know that even when we’re quiet, we’re always listening to everything you have to say to us. We’ve had many conversations about it internally and would like to shed some light on the situation.

Last week, we revealed the latest DLC for Total War: WARHAMMER III – Shadows of Change, bringing The Changeling, Yuan Bo, Mother Ostankya and more to the game. The teams have been hard at work on this for some time and we are excited for you to get your hands on it.

To get right into it: our costs are up. Unfortunately, that means that prices have to rise. We know any increase is going to be tough, which is why our prices have remained fairly stable over the past few years. The downside is that any increase today is going to be more noticeable.

There’s no good time to increase prices, and we have not taken this step lightly. However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned.

That said, we do need to challenge ourselves to ensure that this cost still offers good value. Ultimately, that’s up to each of you to decide and we’ll keep trying to balance that. Of course, we want more people to play, we want to continue to deliver content you’re excited to see, and we want to do that for as long as we can.

To share more on WARHAMMER III specifically, here is an update from Rich Aldridge, Senior Game Director:

With Shadows of Change, we wanted to somewhat break the mould of past DLCs to ensure that we could bring you as much content variety as possible. You all have your favourite lords, heroes and races to play, and restricting our products to a single race or faction hasn’t always met your expectations. We also hoped this would improve the pace at which we’re able to get content to you, which has been a challenge.

I’m really excited by what we’ve created in Shadows of Change and Update 4.0. The Changeling plays like no other in the series. Scheming and tricking your enemies into conflict with one another whilst leeching off other settlements feels great and we really hope it opens up new gameplay opportunities.

I’m equally itching to see how you get on with Yuan Bo the Jade Dragon and Mother Ostankya, two new characters for the series and WARHAMMER world, both of whom have their own agendas and are ruthless in their actions.

Talking of the patch, it offers a host of fixes as you might expect, including Nakai once again being able to use his Kroxigors, Bretonnian vows now progressing correctly in campaign for Damsels, ranged units no longer running headfirst into melee when out of ammo, and Cathay Legendary Lords now having magical items. But that’s just a few of the changes. Look out for our full patch notes closer to release.

To wrap up, I can’t stress enough how much the team and I want the best for the game, and to provide you with fun and memorable experiences. Changing the content formula, and making other improvements behind the scenes, is designed to help us to do exactly that. We’ll keep assessing and iterating as we stay on this path.

Thanks as always for your support and voicing your concerns. Both are important to us. I hope you enjoy Shadows of Change once it’s in your hands.

So, to recap - we know this is a tough change for some of our players. We know this may mean some of you wait for future discounts or sales. And we know that this explanation does not make the situation any easier. But it’s important for you to hear from us and we hope that, if nothing else, this helps clarify why this decision has been made.

Finally, we need to ask you again to stop directing abuse at individual team members. Frustrated as you may get, these are human beings who spend many hours representing you and your voices within the studio. All of our work gets easier when they are treated with respect.

- Rob Bartholomew, Chief Product Officer, Creative Assembly

[TalElmar]

nice deflection you have here. Costs are up, fine. What about the quantity and quality of new content?
As for the fixes, just more vague promises at the moment.

[Defmonkey]

I have been a player from the start and have supported through all DLC to date. I don't think the issue so much is with having 25 euro / dollar DLC, but the concerns lie more with the amount of content offered for its price.

There have also been many technical issues, problems with balance and bugs that have been outstanding for a very long time. It makes it difficult for players to consider investing further into a game when it is not on solid foundations.

The art team and development team look like they have done a good job and shaking up the DLC arrangement and variety is a great idea, but i feel there has to be a bit more on offer for the 3 factions here. I'm sure many people would be happy to continue support for the game but it just is falling a little bit short unfortunately.

[DarkStar]

I expected something in regards to deflecting the price increase. But seriously whoevers threatening or being rude to the CA devs and CMs seriously, grow up. Nothing justifies that.

But the price increase isn't reflected in the quantity and quality of the content and much more so in the fixes. If your really listening to the community it surely isn't showing.

Nobody wants to hear your sob story CA, of why you 'have' to increase prices. We want results and fixes and then maybe the price increase would be justified.

[777395]

Stop working on Hyenas then and you'll have more money. Don't ransom continued support of WHIII because you can't operate a business. I'm not buying Bing Chilling and Mama Stank for $25; i'm happy to let this game die but you know this is your cashcow.

[Beje]

Pretty much what I expected. "it iz what it iz guys" At least it made them reconsider the content being offered here, I hope at least. Once again the price is not the issue, but the amount of content is. Moving from 2 LL to 3 LL packs is def something I can get behind, but not at the expense of getting fewer units now per LL.

Still, I think they can make up to the community and win some major brownie points with a very simple and small FLC that adds 1 generic hag lord for Kislev, 1 generic hero that can fight for Cathay (be it melee or gunpowder ranged) and 1 generic lord or hero for Tzeentch whatever they need most (didn't play them as much, not sure what they lack). Nothing crazy, nothing special, just some more options for generic lords and heroes. Would be a small effort for them I believe and it would regain some trust from the community. Especially if the patch lands well and doesn't break anything new.

Just an idea, I'm just a dude that loves WH, but I know for sure something like this would please me and help me regain some trust with CA. I'm running out of copium here boys, do something.

[Defmonkey]

Originally posted by Beje:

Pretty much what I expected. "it iz what it iz guys" At least it made them reconsider the content being offered here, I hope at least. Once again the price is not the issue, but the amount of content is. Moving from 2 LL to 3 LL packs is def something I can get behind, but not at the expense of getting fewer units now per LL.

Still, I think they can make up to the community and win some major brownie points with a very simple and small FLC that adds 1 generic hag lord for Kislev, 1 generic hero that can fight for Cathay (be it melee or gunpowder ranged) and 1 generic lord or hero for Tzeentch whatever they need most (didn't play them as much, not sure what they lack). Nothing crazy, nothing special, just some more options for generic lords and heroes. Would be a small effort for them I believe and it would regain some trust from the community. Especially if the patch lands well and doesn't break anything new.

Just an idea, I'm just a dude that loves WH, but I know for sure something like this would please me and help me regain some trust with CA. I'm running out of copium here boys, do something.

This

Edit: The warhammer 3 factions are lacking and missing options with their lords & heroes, this would really help the factions out. Also to note, skill trees for the current Cathay heroes are also very small. etc etc.

[capt.death12]

What you don't get it we are not going to buy it until it goes on like a 50 percent sale. And if it doesn't were are not going to buy it. Your full on losing money and you should be smart enough to know it. And your killing your brand name with this non apology. Lower the price, say your sorry, and we will buy it.

[cb4n28]

Originally posted by Defmonkey:

Originally posted by Beje:

Pretty much what I expected. "it iz what it iz guys" At least it made them reconsider the content being offered here, I hope at least. Once again the price is not the issue, but the amount of content is. Moving from 2 LL to 3 LL packs is def something I can get behind, but not at the expense of getting fewer units now per LL.

Still, I think they can make up to the community and win some major brownie points with a very simple and small FLC that adds 1 generic hag lord for Kislev, 1 generic hero that can fight for Cathay (be it melee or gunpowder ranged) and 1 generic lord or hero for Tzeentch whatever they need most (didn't play them as much, not sure what they lack). Nothing crazy, nothing special, just some more options for generic lords and heroes. Would be a small effort for them I believe and it would regain some trust from the community. Especially if the patch lands well and doesn't break anything new.

Just an idea, I'm just a dude that loves WH, but I know for sure something like this would please me and help me regain some trust with CA. I'm running out of copium here boys, do something.

This

It's a nice thought, but FLC content for the SoC factions isn't likely to be available before launch. At least not anything that wasn't slapped together unless it is something they were already working on. It's possible that Hag Generals were already on the way I suppose, but seems unlikely. FLC related to SoC probably won't happen for a few months at least, if it ever does.

If they maybe had some FLC already in the pipeline related to a previously released DLC (*cough* Chaos Siege Giant *cough*) that is something that could come more quickly as a way to try to smooth things over a bit, but that's a bit if.

The fact is, the price and the content of the DLC are almost certainly not going to change. I don't know what more than a statement like this people think is going to happen as a result of all this agitating and review bombing in the short term. If you aren't satisfied with the content and the price, don't buy it and it will likely be on sale sooner than it would otherwise. That's kind of the extent of it. It's very unlikely that some major change will happen to a DLC like this within the span of a couple weeks.

Long term, the outraged response to SoC's price increase may affect future DLCs. The most likely thing would be less content for a lower price for the December DLC or delaying the DLCs on the roadmap to get more into them at the same higher price point. I'm sure the community would react to either of those outcomes in their typical measured and reasonable way.

I also think we might see fewer monsters and unique animations. The community has been pretty loud and clear hear that they preferred CoC's approach of more units overall, but more reskins and recycled assets. SoC appears to have more unique models with all the big single entity monsters and stuff, which is more labor intensive per unit and more expensive. If the price goal for future DLCs is where Chorfs and SoC are and the community is clearly stating that they are fine with the price but only if there is lots of content and one of the primary drivers of determining the amount of content is raw unit counts irregardless of whether they are reskins or recycled assets, then the logical thing is to do more reskins and recycled assets to increase the quantity of units.

[Krude]

I will not be buying anything more from Creative Assembly, I will not be buying new games going forward from them, this communication response was about as bad as it gets.

Also: I haven't seen any abuse towards the CA team, in fact, I have seen nothing but a better approach to addressing this criticism from the community, especially on reddit, saying to do this in a positive way because we all learned from the past. So I'm not giving the benefit of doubt to the developers on that, it just feels like trying to manipulate it's audience into feeling pity, and let's be absolutely clear that what those supposed bad apples say and do has NOTHING to do with me or the fine people here who are upset with this, so don't pin their actions on us thank you very much.

The FIXES are for content we already PAID for, this isn't part of a service we need to continue paying for, it's something OWED to us by LAW (at least in my country I believe thanks to some laws including the Consumer Rights Act, a product sold must be working as intended or compensation can be had). You've already got a modder whose addressed the tzeentch changes as being something they can do alone in less than a week (they also plan to do their own version of it) so it's not like much effort was put into that.

If I had to sum up this response; "no sorry nothing is going to change in fact this is the way forward, let us try to generate pity by bringing up some unseen thing irrelevant to the reader or context of this criticism, oh btw this dlc is worth it because of the patch coming with it that should fixing the bugs in content that we sold to you previously, aren't you happy, you should be happy and give us your money kek"

Also in case anyone reading this doesn't know much about inflation, inflation is absolutely not the reason for this price increase and pretending otherwise is wild.

Congratulations Creative Assembly, you lost a customer today. I will not be buying pharoah, I will not be buying this dlc, not even on sale.

Remember this decision because if you are seriously set in stone about continuing this way, this is administration/chapter 11 kind of stuff that when you look backwards you'll be kicking yourself for.

Remember THQ? they made a product no one cared for, released content that was lacking and went bankrupt, sound familiar? History DOES repeat itself.

[IonizedMercury]

Are you going to fix the game and rebalance it so that people who are TW veterans can have some immersion and challenge for a change? Right now the game is unplayably dull thanks to the terrible pacing and the neutering of so many core mechanics.

Because I care about that heckuva lot more than content. Content without an interesting base game is a waste of my time and money.

[Toomadtoplay]

ill say the same things i said on twitter:

your company has a yearly revenue in the HUNDREDS of MILLIONS LMAO. asking more for less while asking us to be reasonable PUH-LEASE

thousands of hours in tw1 and 2, 100% achievements in both games, sad that this is where the buck stops for me

[Eldi]

Just please make 4.0 good and don't introduce any more bugs.
Please

[Easy AI]

Prices are up
Content is down
Bugs don't get hotfixed for months

This is a joke of a statement

[Exet Bot]

"However, this is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned."

Is this blackmail? If nobody buys the dlc, are you going to stop developing for twwh3 like you did for three kingdoms?
Seeing the "success" of pharaoh and the negative hype for hyena I don't think your company has thought this through.

[supersexygranpa]

hm I have been part of this games series since the beginning, since Warhammer 1 and I remember well there has always been controversy and discussions about the pricing model. To me it looks like there has always been a balancing act between making the profit people happy and making the customers happy, with the actual content creators put in the middle. Its a shame, since the people behind creating the games so far have put out amazing content and have been improving the content that has been put out there, there hasnt been anything out there like the WoC rework, the Chorf DLC and the Changeling campaign looks absolutely promising to say the least! On that note a heartfelt thank you to everyone involved creating this and Im happy I have been supporting you throughout the years! Yeah there have been bugs and flaws, personally Id hope for a timely Norsca update, but the game has become so huge its understandably become hard to manage. With a larger team, with more resources invested the issues making players unhappy could be resolved quicker. Of course this would increase the cost maintining the game as well. And I believe herein lies the heart of the issue. Perhaps indeed the profit margin has shrunk due to rising costs - on the other hand personally it is hard for me to imagine that the correct strategy to cover those costs is by raising the DLC price to such a high extent that a majority of players cant or isnt willing to afford it - the majority of the players too had economically challenging years very likely. Havent there been many best case practises on the gaming market that have shown that a lower price with a solid quality content product draws a lot more people to it, incurring a much higher revenue than a considerably lower amount of people purchasing the product at a higher price? I believe a lot of people feel thus the pricing to be unfair in a sense that its ultimately a strategy of cashing in, accepting to alienate a lot of potential customers, maximizing short term profits. Personally I believe it was a decision that the content creators themselves had little to no say in, rather some top level management person felt like it was an opportune moment to make profits off of the inflation. If Im wrong, Id love to have some sort of explanation to understand the sitaution better. I really hope you can keep creating content for the fans to enjoy, ultimately it has been a great couple of years with hopefully more to come!