Understanding why Your being review bombed (please read)

[dbuggy80]

I will start by listing nothing but facts. I have a few characters that I own so the numbers may be SLIGHTLY off but overall you have 92 people to choose from in the game. If I buy just the base game I get 28 people to choose from. That means 62 are locked behind a paywall. That correlates to 70% of the characters currently locked behind what someone is willing to pay.

But lets say that I'm overwhelmingly in love with the game and I'm committed to getting every playable character. You have the game set up to where I have to not only get the older games but than also buy those DLC's for the older games IF I want to get the characters that were released back then and play them in warhammer 3. It may not seem a lot for one or two and yes some are bundled which is nice. But I did the math and with the purchase of warhammer 3 which was released February 17th 2022, warhammer 1 (released may 24th 2016) & 2 (released on September 28th 2017) all three being 59.99 still (not counting sales) the total price of it all comes to $443.28 TOTAL.

Now that the facts are done you have to ask what new player would dumb that much money into a new game? Little to none, more none than little. It comes off as extremely greedy to your previously incredibly loyal fan base. If this was a free to play game these tactics would still be scummy(ish) but more understandable. But you pay $59.99 upfront for the game. You have an amazing game with BEAUTIFUL artwork that is easily some of the most intricate and complex that I've seen in gaming. The amount of design and attention to detail put in the most minute things amazed me. But the above tactics are just unacceptable to the overwhelming majority. Threatening to kill the game will do nothing, someone will have it up free with all paywalls removed.

I offer a solution. say something along the lines of this. Admit you made a mistake. You unknowingly kept outdated tactics such as needing to own the old games and their DLC's to have them in the current game. You did this in order to better help and establish lore and give them the full story. This accidentally made this not user friendly. You valued the highly complex and long hours your team dedicated to producing the projects, maps and characters and in doing so you over valued the worth of the overall product and then undervalued your long time fan base and for that we apologize. In order to show that we're serious about these issues and many other unmentioned (list some thing's you're going to fix) drop the price for all outdated products (warhammer 1 & 2) to something like $1-$3 or realistically free. Still charge for the game but 1 should be no more than $10 and 2 no more than $15. Than drop all the warhammer 3 DLC's to $3-$5 and make all changes permanent. Listen to the reasonable gripes and complaints of your customers and at least attempt to fix them.

[Risotto]

Nah.

[Triple G]

Originally posted by dbuggy80:

Listen to the reasonable gripes and complaints of your customers and at least attempt to fix them.

What´s the benefit of it?

[Reti]

Originally posted by Triple G:

Originally posted by dbuggy80:

Listen to the reasonable gripes and complaints of your customers and at least attempt to fix them.

What´s the benefit of it?

Reputation, long term monetary gain and a happy player base.

[Zeek]

I read this so you don't have to:

TL;DR: OP wants all the things for pennies on the dollar for some made up reasons.

[Falaris]

Originally posted by Zeek:

I read this so you don't have to:

TL;DR: OP wants all the things for pennies on the dollar.

Not sure that's how I read it. The whole thing about 'someone will have it up free with all paywalls removed' makes the argument closer to 'the loyal fanbase will pirate it if we don't get it for "realistically free". If we do, though, we might be a little grateful.'

It's kinda funny that he does this in the same article he calls CA greedy. Eye, meet mote.

[Chocbomb]

This came up on my wishlist today, i was excited.

I saw the price of DLC's.. i removed it from my wishlist.

[leandrombraz]

Last time I checked, the review bombing was because of the price of SoD and future DLCs, triggered mainly by how CA answered to the initial complaints, on top of the dissatisfaction people already had with the way CA is supporting the game (infrequent patches that introduce a lot of issues). Did I inadvertently enter a portal to an alternatively reality where the whole thing was about the price of older DLCs and the amount of DLCs that the game has? What else is different in this timeline? Also, how do I get back to my own?

[Falaris]

Originally posted by leandrombraz:

What else is different in this timeline? Also, how do I get back to my own?

Realize this: The OP writes one post every year. One nugget of insanity much like this one. No followup. It is more likely he's from the ALTernate timeline.

[leandrombraz]

Originally posted by Falaris:

Originally posted by leandrombraz:

What else is different in this timeline? Also, how do I get back to my own?

Realize this: The OP writes one post every year. One nugget of insanity much like this one. No followup. It is more likely he's from the ALTernate timeline.

Alternative timeline hiccup. Terrible condition. The poor guy must be going insane...

[Zeek]

Originally posted by Falaris:

Originally posted by leandrombraz:

What else is different in this timeline? Also, how do I get back to my own?

Realize this: The OP writes one post every year. One nugget of insanity much like this one. No followup. It is more likely he's from the ALTernate timeline.

Lol, this is actually funny and quite telling. Thank the Lord for Post History.

[SBA77]

And the boycott and review bombing is about bugs and the game being neglected they said...

Originally posted by dbuggy80:

I will start by listing nothing but facts. I have a few characters that I own so the numbers may be SLIGHTLY off but overall you have 92 people to choose from in the game. If I buy just the base game I get 28 people to choose from. That means 62 are locked behind a paywall. That correlates to 70% of the characters currently locked behind what someone is willing to pay.

But lets say that I'm overwhelmingly in love with the game and I'm committed to getting every playable character. You have the game set up to where I have to not only get the older games but than also buy those DLC's for the older games IF I want to get the characters that were released back then and play them in warhammer 3. It may not seem a lot for one or two and yes some are bundled which is nice. But I did the math and with the purchase of warhammer 3 which was released February 17th 2022, warhammer 1 (released may 24th 2016) & 2 (released on September 28th 2017) all three being 59.99 still (not counting sales) the total price of it all comes to $443.28 TOTAL.

Now that the facts are done you have to ask what new player would dumb that much money into a new game? Little to none, more none than little. It comes off as extremely greedy to your previously incredibly loyal fan base. If this was a free to play game these tactics would still be scummy(ish) but more understandable. But you pay $59.99 upfront for the game. You have an amazing game with BEAUTIFUL artwork that is easily some of the most intricate and complex that I've seen in gaming. The amount of design and attention to detail put in the most minute things amazed me. But the above tactics are just unacceptable to the overwhelming majority. Threatening to kill the game will do nothing, someone will have it up free with all paywalls removed.

I offer a solution. say something along the lines of this. Admit you made a mistake. You unknowingly kept outdated tactics such as needing to own the old games and their DLC's to have them in the current game. You did this in order to better help and establish lore and give them the full story. This accidentally made this not user friendly. You valued the highly complex and long hours your team dedicated to producing the projects, maps and characters and in doing so you over valued the worth of the overall product and then undervalued your long time fan base and for that we apologize. In order to show that we're serious about these issues and many other unmentioned (list some thing's you're going to fix) drop the price for all outdated products (warhammer 1 & 2) to something like $1-$3 or realistically free. Still charge for the game but 1 should be no more than $10 and 2 no more than $15. Than drop all the warhammer 3 DLC's to $3-$5 and make all changes permanent. Listen to the reasonable gripes and complaints of your customers and at least attempt to fix them.

....right

[Triple G]

Originally posted by Reti:

Reputation, long term monetary gain and a happy player base.

Hmm - i´m not interested in reputation or happy player base, but can i have some more details about the monetary gain? Like in actual numbers? How much more do i get when i go this way, instead of going the other way, which we have already calculated? And i guess You know that long term means 3-5 years - or do You mean longer than that? We need to make more gains every year to grow. So what´s the strategy to earn more money with cheaper products, when the happy player base is limited and the game is already out there for 7 years?

I´m not convinced.

[vSpawn]

да обновление говнище, убили игру вхламину... мало того что теперь все автобоями играется, так для усложнения игры они тупо сделали чтоб ИИ спамил армиями.... и все это ради нытиков рукожопных которым ачивки нужны, аказуалили вхлам... но чтоб чутка усложнить, мы лучше спамить будем, а ИИ как был тупым, так и остался... что с того, что я убивал 1-2 армии, теперья убиваю 10...и к столице иду не за 5 ходов скажем, а за 25, спасибо, что хоть не руками каждый бой... вобщем скучно и уныло.

[Raymond]

Originally posted by dbuggy80:

I will start by listing nothing but facts. I have a few characters that I own so the numbers may be SLIGHTLY off but overall you have 92 people to choose from in the game. If I buy just the base game I get 28 people to choose from. That means 62 are locked behind a paywall. That correlates to 70% of the characters currently locked behind what someone is willing to pay.

I will start by listing all the highest rated TW games that CA has made.
Total war Rome costed $50, it only had 11 factions
https://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions_in_Rome:_Total_War
Total war Medieval 2 costed $50, it only had 21 factions including the paid DLCs.
https://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions_in_Medieval_II:_Total_War
Total war shogun 2 costed $60, it only had 12 factions including including the paid DLCs
https://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions_in_Total_War:_Shogun_2
Shogun 2 Fall of the Samurai DLC, costed $60, has only 10 factions
https://totalwar.fandom.com/wiki/Fall_of_the_Samurai
Total war Napoleon costed $60, it's playable factions isn't even in 2 digits
https://wiki.totalwar.com/w/Factions_in_Napoleon:_Total_War.html


Total war warhammer 3 legit gives you more content for your $60 than they had ever did to people who bought their older titles. You are literally hating them for adding even more content into your game lmao.

Originally posted by dbuggy80:

But lets say that I'm overwhelmingly in love with the game and I'm committed to getting every playable character. You have the game set up to where I have to not only get the older games but than also buy those DLC's for the older games IF I want to get the characters that were released back then and play them in warhammer 3. It may not seem a lot for one or two and yes some are bundled which is nice. But I did the math and with the purchase of warhammer 3 which was released February 17th 2022, warhammer 1 (released may 24th 2016) & 2 (released on September 28th 2017) all three being 59.99 still (not counting sales) the total price of it all comes to $443.28 TOTAL.

Have you ever played medieval 2? Med 2 only has the same amount of content as 2 races in a TW:WH game, shogun 2 only has 1, rome has 3 races at best. We haven't even count the inflation that inevitably raised the development costs for new TW games, because with inflation each of the TW:WH games should cost at least $100.

Originally posted by dbuggy80:

Now that the facts are done you have to ask what new player would dumb that much money into a new game? Little to none, more none than little. It comes off as extremely greedy to your previously incredibly loyal fan base. If this was a free to play game these tactics would still be scummy(ish) but more understandable. But you pay $59.99 upfront for the game. You have an amazing game with BEAUTIFUL artwork that is easily some of the most intricate and complex that I've seen in gaming. The amount of design and attention to detail put in the most minute things amazed me. But the above tactics are just unacceptable to the overwhelming majority. Threatening to kill the game will do nothing, someone will have it up free with all paywalls removed.

It wasn't a threat, it's a choice for CA, and they have the right to refuse providing service to you. TW:WH games already offered you more content than the standard of what you paid for, the DLCs aren't even compulsory for you to play the game. CA don't owe you anything, you are not paying them charity when you paid for their games and their dlcs. The base game already given you more content that what it should give you, and none of the dlc are required to play the game nor do they not add content for you.

CA legit could have just kill the development for this game from the get go and just release the base game of TWWH3 as is, and work on other TW games that people are waiting for like TW Medieval 3. They wouldn't have to deal with you complaining about 62 legendary lords locked behind dlcs if they never spent time and resources making those 62 legendary lords. They wouldn't have to deal with this SoC drama if they never works overtime to release this dlc to begin with. In a matter of fact, they could have just dissolve their company, sold their IP and so they could work somewhere else in the industry as soon as they recovered their cost. They have all these choices they could make anytime, and you are complaining about them for making the one choice that actually benefit you.

Originally posted by dbuggy80:

I offer a solution. say something along the lines of this. Admit you made a mistake. You unknowingly kept outdated tactics such as needing to own the old games and their DLC's to have them in the current game. You did this in order to better help and establish lore and give them the full story. This accidentally made this not user friendly. You valued the highly complex and long hours your team dedicated to producing the projects, maps and characters and in doing so you over valued the worth of the overall product and then undervalued your long time fan base and for that we apologize. In order to show that we're serious about these issues and many other unmentioned (list some thing's you're going to fix) drop the price for all outdated products (warhammer 1 & 2) to something like $1-$3 or realistically free. Still charge for the game but 1 should be no more than $10 and 2 no more than $15. Than drop all the warhammer 3 DLC's to $3-$5 and make all changes permanent. Listen to the reasonable gripes and complaints of your customers and at least attempt to fix them.

Imagine your boss suddenly asking to lower your hourly wage from minimum wage to $3-$5/hour, all your unpaid wage made free, just because he felt that's the price that is fair FOR HIM, all while you have to apologize for not working hard enough. Will you take his "solution" to keep your job? Or will you just quit?

[Cacomistle]

They're spending money to provide updates to the game. Realistically, that means they need to monetize those updates.

If they charge $3-$5, they are extremely unlikely to get a return on investment. Why would they ever do that?

Now you, as a customer, likely don't care whether CA makes a profit. But, CA does care, so if you tell them "please stop making a profit" they are going to completely ignore you.

In other words, your solution is functionally useless. It will not make CA money.

What they could do is simply not raise prices 150% at a time. Chaos dwarves was a price raise, and some people were upset about it (that's naturally going to happen), but it was a small price raise so people ultimately accepted it and purchased anyways. SOC was too big of a price raise, so it got far more people upset.

I think they could also switch to a more microtransaction based model. For instance, lets say that they released 1 with a few units for 8$. People would probably logically understand that 1 faction for $8 means 3 factions for $24 (basically the same thing we have now), but $8 is not an emotionally triggering price point. So people would likely be upset. You can see now that people just don't even include the extra faction as part of the cost, and some people have reasoning behind that (no FLC lord, less content on each individual lord), but some people didn't even think that far through.

In other words, they'd end up losing the people who thought things through before being outraged about the current dlc, but the people who just see a high number and get mad would suddenly be fine with CA's actions. And I think the latter category is larger.

Now "more microtransactions" is a pretty pessimistic way of viewing things. I am not saying that because I love microtransactions (I don't), I am saying that because they work. The problem is, CA did nothing manipulative with the price of their last dlc. Its completely out in the open how expensive it is. This is where they failed, if you want to sell gamers a product for a high price you need to trick them, and gamers as a whole are easy to trick.

Of course alternatively they could increase quality, but increasing quality is harder than manipulative marketing, and its not like they intentionally put low quality out. But they did intentionally put out a statement saying they needed to raise prices to cover costs... which was an incredibly stupid statement because gamers don't care about their costs, so there was nothing good that could come from that statement. And nothing good did come, people took it as a threat.

And they might have to increase quality. I don't think the audience of this game has much overlap with the type of gamer who buys loot boxes or spends $500 on pay to win. They can get away with selling a large number of dlcs (and even that has led to a lot of complaints), which amounts to a very high box price for everything, but I think people would take notice instantly if they started going down the microtransaction routes that more manipulative companies do.


TLDR: they can't just lower prices. They need to either just generally be more competent, or be more manipulative. $3 prices just means they'd make no money.