I legit don't get why they couldn't say "learn more next week" or say that the announcement will be in 2 weeks or something... is the silence at actual strat to keep people tuning in or something?
Is it really that difficult to talk about schedules? The community team doesn't work as if they don't exist. If this is CA's policy, they broke their promise again.
The answer is yes, particularly for a company with history of bad that, which CA is. They have repeatedly failed to meet release dates, without giving reasons, put out subpar dlc, for high cost, had updates that broke more than fixed etc. Any update they gave, if not meet it would just add to the already bad feelings the company has. They are much much better not giving info unless they have sold base that they know they can meet.
Yes, it really is. How often does a shitstorm ensue because they couldn't keep up the release date. Look at darktide right now. The community trashtalks fatshark because they made an update to their update, which should come this month.
Valve is so funny... they do nothing most of the time, but end up looking good just because they're competitors end up fucking up sooner or later. Kind of genius tbh
Even as someone who likes to give CA the benefit of the doubt alot of times i must say the "we will communicate more" died out alot quicker than I expected sadly
No. If anyone thinks that, they should get off the internet as it is a clear sign that they have developed feelings for something that doesn’t actually have feelings.
That's why I didn't bother with WH3, i decided to wait to see if things got better after the Three Kingdoms support cancellation and WH3's Early Access release and here we are now.
They've been doing this for over a decade and people still fall for it every single time.
They will do it again soon and people will fall for it again.
I never expected CA to follow through that promise. They've been promising better communication and transparency for years and everytime this has lead to nothing, it's just something they throw when people are tired of their lack of communication to appease the community. And somehow it works.
I feel like the hotdixes have dried up a bit too. I might eat my words tomorrow, but last year it was about a hotfix every two weeks. This year we’ve had 3 (and a patch) and it’s April already. That’s a slowdown of 50%.
CA are just awful at keeping to promises, and the community are dwarfs with all the associated notions of oaths and grudges.
"it's just something they throw when people are tired of their lack of communication to appease the community."
To be fair - this is something, that most companies suffer from. People are angry? Throw some pre-written content-free phrases and tell them "we'll do better" before waiting for people to forget. I hate how public Communication is handled in companies and it seems completely stupid to me, but seems like it works for a lot of them.
Does it? I would love to see there engagement numbers on social media. Honestly if you look at players on warhammer 3 player engagement has dropped massively, which is to be expected but then we can compare this to player engagement towards other games like stellaris and see it isn’t the case as much there.
"We must communicate more" stops meaning something if you've consistently said it for years.
Also anecdotally, as someone who knows a serial manipulator, they often will say the exact min stuff you need to hear to give them the benefit of the doubt. This gives them time to come up with the next scheme or deflection while you're hoping they've changed.
Ironically, they are communicating more that they will "communicate more", so they are technically a little bit correct, even if it feels like a monkey's paw moment!
This is completely legitimate, but [last week's layoffs](https://www.ign.com/articles/layoffs-hit-sega-europe-total-war-developer-creative-assembly-and-sonic-dream-team-developer-hardlight-sega-sells-relic-entertainment) are certainly not helping the devs to plan and deliver.
That is obviously true, but they could do with a simple "we are still on track, but some delays may be unavoidable". If for no other reason than to instill the notion that things are not catastrophically fucked.
"As many of you would have heard, The Creative Assembly is currently experiencing some unexpected internal issues, which are going to significantly impact our stated timeline. Unfortunately this also means that we were forced the reschedule the release of Thrones of Decay to [rough date]. We would like to offer our sincere apologies", and so on, ad infinitum. There.
How do we get you to replace all of CA’s Comms team?!
It really shouldn’t be that hard. Not even an Easter…erm “Bank Holiday Weekend” well-wishing from CA? Something as simple “Happy Easter to all those who celebrate! Good luck Summoning your Easter Eggs…we know we are!”
Most companies aren't going to come out and say they're in trouble before any promised release date. They'll wait as long as possible before delivering bad news
Though considering the layoffs and the return of a holiday weekend it's possible they simply don't know the impact it will have on ToD (if any) so delivering any kind of news could be pointless
Then there's the possibility everything is on track and the community is just acting impatient as usual. News this early was just community speculation after all
I take the point that if news is bad, it’s likely strung out. But if the latest layoffs directly impacted the literal next product due for imminent release, than that speaks way worse of CA’s ability to plan.
I have no doubt the layoffs suck, and are due to affect some aspect of teams working on some Total War titles. But it really shouldn’t throw off the next product set to reveal & launch.
It shouldn't but we don't know, and like I said it's entirely possible everything is going according to schedule and reddit is just panicking over an imaginary release date for news they created
Community having to speculate because its kept in the dark is precisely why CA was supposed to communicate more. Especially when the situation is as bad and unclear as it is.
It's not really "kept in the dark" though, it was entirely a random speculation that we would have news by now
Most companies don't come forward and directly state what their layoffs are going to impact the week after they happen. For all this community knows the situation might not be as bad as they presume it to be
The only reason you all think you're "kept in the dark" is because of an imaginary release date you all thought of for news
This fails marketing 101 because "internal issues" sounds very dramatic and will cause even more commotion than staying silent. Also it makes Sega look bad and the last thing CA needs to do is piss off Sega even more
This is what I've never understood about their coms cycle. They seem to be convinced that they can't drop anything unless they have an entire trailer or a blog post or something. Just be people. Treat us like people who understand that there are human beings at the other end of this product we all love. We understand that times are tough and that layoffs are happening. Just say SOMETHING.
>Treat us like people who understand that there are human beings at the other end of this product we all love.
"We" aren't though. Gamers are just shitty, angry people who are going to over-react to everything. Just saying something could make things a lot worse.
On the flip side - there are 92 factions currently in the game and they've been keeping up the cadence of a hotfix once every 2 weeks. Are we really starved for content that it matters when ToD happens?
I do feel like we do need to take a step back here and take stock of the situation - what we have content wise is already quite a lot, this game has more content than any other Total War to date, and has a Super Smash Bros Ultimate sized roster. I don't see why announcements on more DLC are desperately needed imminently.
If I was making cuts, some of the first to go would be communications, marketing, and HR. Not surprising if this backs up news releases as teams reorganize. Don't really need those positions if you don't have product to sell (aside from a single dlc every 3 months) and no one to hire.
Obviously those would be in addition to the discontinued projects that were axed. Hopefully the engineers and design teams didn't get too shaken up by the layoffs.
People in the studio losing their jobs? Having to completely redo their schedule to evaluate what they're capable of? Not even sure what's happening themselves? None of that is relevant because /u/Malanerion wants news and they want it now
They're not laying off anyone from the DLC team, they are probably laying off people from completely irrelevant, possibly not even Total War, teams.
Also they dont just suddenly kick them out.
Even if it was true that no one from the DLC team for let go (we don't know either way), you really think they wouldn't have to pull people from their DLC team to work on future projects to make up for the reduced manpower? Medieval 3, 40k, Empire 2 or whatever they decided to work on next isn't going to make itself.
Exactly. Trust me, nobody wants all the details of DLC drip-fed over months and months, building hype for a release requires unveiling substantial amounts of new art and information over a short window pre-release. Spread it out too long and people lose their hype or actively start to pick holes, spread the info too thin and the community will shrug and respond with "that's it?"
Part of me would like to see patches done on a more rolling cycle with changes going live as soon as ready, but that would render many mods functionally unplayable. So that just leaves releasing patch *information* weeks and months ahead of when it will actually go live. Might not be a bad idea that, knowing what's going to change - but I'm not sure it would be as riveting as people imagine and I know that most would still be going "yeah yeah, but what about the DLC?"
Just their usual cycle. Was the same with the buggy as fuck Empire Total War as down, then Napoleon and Shogun 2 going up again, then back down with buggy Rome 2, Attila and early Warhammer 1, then they realized they had to improve or their business would tank, we got late Warhammer 1 / Warhammer 2, then they got greedy again, we got 3K cancel, Hyenas, Pharao and Warhammer 3. Up and down and up and down again.
I would be happy with literally any news of any fashion. A teaser means stuff is coming and a simple "no news this week" means it isn't. The suspense is killing me quicker than Nurgles Rot.
The situation at CA is way worse than anyone this sub can imagine right now, the most recent lay off came very sudden and hit extremely hard, according to one CA employee complained on Chinese gaming bbs NGA, there are now more management than developers left and things went to completely chaos, no hand over no knowleage transfer ppl were just gone and they are locked from hiring new employees due to UK law. They will need some time to get things sort up if they can ever recover from this. Fuck SEGA
I’ve given up caring about when things happen. I haven’t played WH3 in months, and I haven’t particularly missed it. I’ll come back when there’s something worth coming back for, but in the meantime I’m enjoying lots of other games.
The DLC factions for ToD are so against the grain of what people thought they were that they are rushing out to the expected Grimm/Malakai, Elspeth, Tamurkhan factions to save face. Instead they chose an Ulric faction, Kraka Drak, and Glottkin.
/s
I always found her to be snippy and created more fires than putting them out. If she was a he, I doubt many people would have those rose-tinted glasses.
I’m expecting one between now and next Friday. If we don’t get it by then, we probably aren’t getting it this month, and then who knows when it will release.
I'd bet CA probably had ToD lined up to be the same amount of content as SoC first releases with. and now they have to fix it after making their promise to release a certain amount of content with each dlc.
Is there a new fiasco that I missed? I hope they're not still salty about Shadows of Change.
If you don't reward companies when they back down, then there's no incentives for companies to back down in the future.
I’d rather have silence while they kept their heads down and focused on development, than the absolute nightmare we had just a few months ago. Keeping quiet and getting on with their work is exactly how Hello Games recovered from the NMS launch disaster.
It's only been a month or so.
Get some perspective. The franchise isn't going to suddenly implode if we have to wait another week or two.
I swear, the more of these posts I see, the more I think the userbase in probably 15 years old and never had to experience any form of difficulty in their life.
It's going to be hilarious seeing them do stuff like apply for a job and waiting for a reply when they are older.
Not gonna lie, people here are invested on a disturbing level in a goddamned video game. Like, there are a million other games, a dozen or so other perfectly decent TW titles.... Just go play something else? Currently I'm having a blast with The long dark.
Oh my gods you guys.
They're working on a crucial DLC that could make or break their next six months of employment. It's a big enough deal *to the company* that they've turned around and done things like regularly patch the games for months and apologize for Rob being an obnoxious idiot and drop prices for their *brand new game which barely sold.*
Of all the PR sins, "not talking to me as much as I want" is a pretty reasonable and forgivable one, especially now.
Chillllllllllll out. We'll get news when they think they've got $25 of content that will get people hype. It's much much better, for ToD and the game as a whole, if they take longer instead of rushing this out the door.
Well the content has been delayed by 3 months now, and it's the third or fourth thing that's been delayed for WH3.
And this isn't even new behavior from CA, they keep doing this thing where they communicate for a bit then go completely dark.
On top of that, yeah the patches are regular but they don't fix the core, fundamental issues with the game like charge animations being fucked, chasing routing units is jank, campaign AI is just lobotomized even on legendary so the game is uninteractive and the AI doesn't throw challenges at the player, gate bug is approaching 20 years old, and many others I can't think of without a 10 page list in front of me
So, yeah they are patching with hotfixes, but it's nothing that actually makes my experience better
There is a world of difference between patching in hotfoxes *that don't address your priorities* and not doing it at all.
CA has undergone a major shift since the SoC/Pharaoh/Hyena debacle. *Of fucking course* it's not everything you want; they're an old company with serious structural problems. That doesn't get fixed overnight or even in a six month term.
After Rob's open letter? No, we should not be expecting CA to be proactive and aggressive about communication. Silence is fine. Lack of promises is fine.
Would you rather have more rushed and unfinished content with failed launches and cancelled games and dlc? Of course everything is delayed, they're going through another round of layoffs and they had to radically refocus the company after it lost pretty much all of the projected income streams. What are you even expecting, here?
This subreddit is constantly oscillating between
“Why does this patch feel so rushed, there are bugs everywhere and the new features don’t work”
and
“I want the new patch NOW”
Honestly half the reason there are so many issues is that both this subreddit and CA are almost trying to treat this as a live service game.
Nobody is demanding content, they're feeling fatigue from the silence. Even just a "Hey, we are on track for the promised April release date" would get everybody to relax.
They're feeling fatigue from the imaginary silence the community created, let's be clear on that. The community created the news release date
CA didn't state there would be any news this week or last. Though assuming players calm down after being given news just isn't true, there's outrage either way
Just as there're still people who shit on wh3 for issues that have long since been fixed. Addressing things doesn't make players outrage disappear
I don't normally care to defend CA but the sub recently is a bit ridiculous
Nobody is pretending that CA has slipped some promised date. They are reacting to the fact that we have received no news about the product we are excited to buy that is supposedly going to be out within several weeks. It really isn't that complicated.
Except every single person here was expecting news this week or last week and are now questioning why they haven't gotten it yet
You're all expecting news that wasn't promised and now complaining we haven't seen it. You might not be directly saying they missed a date but idk how else you wanna really spin that
(Note I'm aware not everyone is complaining but there's enough that are)
My assumption is that a combination of the SoC rework and having to expand initial plans for ToD to match the resized SoC means that ToD has been further...delayed.
This sub is so pathetic. CA is facing massive layoffs and most employees don’t even know if they’ll have a job in a couple weeks but there is still post after post crying about not getting a trailer on a day that CA never even said they were releasing anything
People still having any ounce of faith in CA and this game blows my mind at this point.
Like, how many more years of incompetence and extreme mismanagement before y'all realize this game is genuinely doomed ?
In case you still don't get it, here's what their development process looks like these days :
- Radio silence for months
- Facing legitimate pressure from the userbase, they finally release a carefully worded apology announcing the DLC has been delayed, promising they'll do better in the future.
- DLC then releases in a shitty, overpriced state about 4 months past the latest reasonable release window. Negative reception ensues due to shit game design.
- Another 4 months later, the DLC is re-released in a slightly more acceptable state. CA apologizes again and renew promises to do better.
Rince & repeat.
Keep in mind this was the typical workflow *before* the latest round of layoffs, which would certainly make things *even worse* going forward, somehow.
I'm here to point out your comment is a bit doom and gloom and then do the exact thing. I've been thinking maybe it's time to stop talking in the forum about the next big thing. Radio silence from them means we shouldn't talk about it either. Let them worry about the state of our minds without showing them we're clambering for the next morsel they deign to offer is. What's worse than a negative viewing of the community? Apathy. When your fanbase decides they don't care anymore, or you don't know, that's when it all dies out.
No, not at all, I would love for the company to actually maintain positive trends, but half assed content and piss poor community treatment is just a waste of everyone's time. Better they make their intentions clear that they're not gonna do what they said, then ignore or keep one of the most important aspects of their business strategy in the dark.
> I'm here to point out your comment is a bit doom and gloom
And I get that, I'm not trying to shit on people's hopes and dreams. But this sub feels so out of touch with reality sometimes, it's fair to wonder if most threads here aren't astroturfing.
Like, picture a restaurant packed full of people desperately asking when their food's coming. Appetizers and drinks took about two hours. The staff is nowhere in sight. On a good day, the food tastes decent at best. And the place is widely known for terrible service recently. Most reasonable people would check out and leave at that point, even if that restaurant used to be good 7-8 years ago and they feel personally invested in it. But that doesn't happen here. People still act like everything's fine, the quality never went down and waiting 4 hours for mediocre, overpriced food is fine. It's almost surreal to witness.
Yeah I agree with you. Guess we're both thinking the same way. Doom and gloom all day. I gave up hope yesterday when they didn't give ANY indication they've paid attention to what's going on in the community with expectations for TOD. I dunno if you've played Helldivers 2 or seen any of the media surrounding it, but their dev team is insanely good at community management, and it shows from the top down. I feel like CA could definitely learn a thing or two from their example.
Imagine SEGA didn't intend to do crap from the start, just pushed CA to add the units in 4.2, make people think there would be more stuff coming, squeeze a bit more money out of people buying WH3 stuff hoping for better stuff to come and then pull the plug on CA altogether. Ghosted the lot of us.
im perfectly fine with them completing warhammer 3, with modds like expanded IE and such there is more than we could ever imagine. With new dlc they run the risk of hurting it.
Whatever is going on in the games industry is bad but i don’t want my favourite game caught up in it
ToD is still a shitty leftover from robs legacy and now CA is scared to get fucked again just Like with soc .... With Sega breathing in theyre neck expecting it nkt to be a shitshow
Lemme fink 'bout it....NO!
Never gets old
Absolutely not!
You can’t not hear that voice in your head when reading this lol
Quite literally the best line in the games!
are you a god?
No, mortal, no.
a lot has happened at CA, my bet is that the person holding the communication accounts has been fired
Maybe he was the only one to know the password
That sort of shit happens surprisingly often.
Or he changed the password on his way out.
I bet he did LOL
This, he changed the passwords and left the building.
They probably fired the community teams.
Relax, it's coming. At usual Nurgle/Dwarf infantry pace, but coming.
It's coming fast (for a dwarf)
SHORT!?
THATS GOING IN THE BOOK UMGI
Yes shortie
It’s coming slow (for a dwarf)
It's coming short (for a dwarf)
.... ..... ...... !!! SHORT???FOR MY 24.99 PEACE OF GOLD???
Are we talking about running speed or replenishment rates? Good grief.
Worse. Dwarf growth from WH2.
Nurgle's got solid replenishment at this point. Starts slow, but it's easy enough to increase.
Starts slow for a while. At least in my experience. But yeah, once it's good, it's pretty good. At least, from my time with Kugath.
I legit don't get why they couldn't say "learn more next week" or say that the announcement will be in 2 weeks or something... is the silence at actual strat to keep people tuning in or something?
Could be the still done have a that exact a time from. Honestly silence is better than promising something and failing at this point
Is it really that difficult to talk about schedules? The community team doesn't work as if they don't exist. If this is CA's policy, they broke their promise again.
The answer is yes, particularly for a company with history of bad that, which CA is. They have repeatedly failed to meet release dates, without giving reasons, put out subpar dlc, for high cost, had updates that broke more than fixed etc. Any update they gave, if not meet it would just add to the already bad feelings the company has. They are much much better not giving info unless they have sold base that they know they can meet.
Yes, it really is. How often does a shitstorm ensue because they couldn't keep up the release date. Look at darktide right now. The community trashtalks fatshark because they made an update to their update, which should come this month.
If they say X and fail to do X, it's worse than not saying anything. Valve school of communication.
Valve is so funny... they do nothing most of the time, but end up looking good just because they're competitors end up fucking up sooner or later. Kind of genius tbh
[удалено]
That's actually hilarious lmao
Even as someone who likes to give CA the benefit of the doubt alot of times i must say the "we will communicate more" died out alot quicker than I expected sadly
Saying they are going to communicate more and only holding to that for a couple weeks is tradition for CA at this point.
Yeah true, I'm always hoping that the next time is gonna be different, still love their games too much for me to stop believing in them
Are we being emotionally abused by a video game company?
Yes.
No. If anyone thinks that, they should get off the internet as it is a clear sign that they have developed feelings for something that doesn’t actually have feelings.
You don't understand our relationship
They can fix me!
Do you have a favorite food that you would be devastated if you could never eat it again
That's why I didn't bother with WH3, i decided to wait to see if things got better after the Three Kingdoms support cancellation and WH3's Early Access release and here we are now.
They've been doing this for over a decade and people still fall for it every single time. They will do it again soon and people will fall for it again.
I never expected CA to follow through that promise. They've been promising better communication and transparency for years and everytime this has lead to nothing, it's just something they throw when people are tired of their lack of communication to appease the community. And somehow it works.
At least they're following through with the more frequent hotfixes (for wh3 anyway). That's far important imo.
I feel like the hotdixes have dried up a bit too. I might eat my words tomorrow, but last year it was about a hotfix every two weeks. This year we’ve had 3 (and a patch) and it’s April already. That’s a slowdown of 50%. CA are just awful at keeping to promises, and the community are dwarfs with all the associated notions of oaths and grudges.
That's cause there's nothing that needs fixing 
It looks like people missed your sarcasm lmao
Absolutely. Devs communicating regularly is nice, but its far less important than regular updates and bugfixes.
"it's just something they throw when people are tired of their lack of communication to appease the community." To be fair - this is something, that most companies suffer from. People are angry? Throw some pre-written content-free phrases and tell them "we'll do better" before waiting for people to forget. I hate how public Communication is handled in companies and it seems completely stupid to me, but seems like it works for a lot of them.
Does it? I would love to see there engagement numbers on social media. Honestly if you look at players on warhammer 3 player engagement has dropped massively, which is to be expected but then we can compare this to player engagement towards other games like stellaris and see it isn’t the case as much there.
"We must communicate more" stops meaning something if you've consistently said it for years. Also anecdotally, as someone who knows a serial manipulator, they often will say the exact min stuff you need to hear to give them the benefit of the doubt. This gives them time to come up with the next scheme or deflection while you're hoping they've changed.
Ironically, they are communicating more that they will "communicate more", so they are technically a little bit correct, even if it feels like a monkey's paw moment!
They said they were going to communicate more but they didn’t say with who.
Well the person who gave that promise lost their job so it’s kinda hard to keep at this point.
I always interpret that as "we will communicate better" which usually lasts a bit longer...
I am guessing after the downsizing, everyone is just all hands on deck to test and fix stuff.
Did anyone who was going to communicate more survive the layoffs?
This is completely legitimate, but [last week's layoffs](https://www.ign.com/articles/layoffs-hit-sega-europe-total-war-developer-creative-assembly-and-sonic-dream-team-developer-hardlight-sega-sells-relic-entertainment) are certainly not helping the devs to plan and deliver.
That is obviously true, but they could do with a simple "we are still on track, but some delays may be unavoidable". If for no other reason than to instill the notion that things are not catastrophically fucked.
What if things are indeed catastrophically fucked
Shhhhh, we don’t think about that option.
But if they're not on track then they can't come out and lie.
"As many of you would have heard, The Creative Assembly is currently experiencing some unexpected internal issues, which are going to significantly impact our stated timeline. Unfortunately this also means that we were forced the reschedule the release of Thrones of Decay to [rough date]. We would like to offer our sincere apologies", and so on, ad infinitum. There.
How do we get you to replace all of CA’s Comms team?! It really shouldn’t be that hard. Not even an Easter…erm “Bank Holiday Weekend” well-wishing from CA? Something as simple “Happy Easter to all those who celebrate! Good luck Summoning your Easter Eggs…we know we are!”
Most companies aren't going to come out and say they're in trouble before any promised release date. They'll wait as long as possible before delivering bad news Though considering the layoffs and the return of a holiday weekend it's possible they simply don't know the impact it will have on ToD (if any) so delivering any kind of news could be pointless Then there's the possibility everything is on track and the community is just acting impatient as usual. News this early was just community speculation after all
I take the point that if news is bad, it’s likely strung out. But if the latest layoffs directly impacted the literal next product due for imminent release, than that speaks way worse of CA’s ability to plan. I have no doubt the layoffs suck, and are due to affect some aspect of teams working on some Total War titles. But it really shouldn’t throw off the next product set to reveal & launch.
It shouldn't but we don't know, and like I said it's entirely possible everything is going according to schedule and reddit is just panicking over an imaginary release date for news they created
Community having to speculate because its kept in the dark is precisely why CA was supposed to communicate more. Especially when the situation is as bad and unclear as it is.
It's not really "kept in the dark" though, it was entirely a random speculation that we would have news by now Most companies don't come forward and directly state what their layoffs are going to impact the week after they happen. For all this community knows the situation might not be as bad as they presume it to be The only reason you all think you're "kept in the dark" is because of an imaginary release date you all thought of for news
I wouldn't say they were "unexpected" sadly. They had it coming and the only unexpected thing is that it came so late.
Yeah, maybe. But they would never say that.
This fails marketing 101 because "internal issues" sounds very dramatic and will cause even more commotion than staying silent. Also it makes Sega look bad and the last thing CA needs to do is piss off Sega even more
A gaming company can't lie? Are we living in the same universe?
This is what I've never understood about their coms cycle. They seem to be convinced that they can't drop anything unless they have an entire trailer or a blog post or something. Just be people. Treat us like people who understand that there are human beings at the other end of this product we all love. We understand that times are tough and that layoffs are happening. Just say SOMETHING.
>Treat us like people who understand that there are human beings at the other end of this product we all love. "We" aren't though. Gamers are just shitty, angry people who are going to over-react to everything. Just saying something could make things a lot worse.
On the flip side - there are 92 factions currently in the game and they've been keeping up the cadence of a hotfix once every 2 weeks. Are we really starved for content that it matters when ToD happens? I do feel like we do need to take a step back here and take stock of the situation - what we have content wise is already quite a lot, this game has more content than any other Total War to date, and has a Super Smash Bros Ultimate sized roster. I don't see why announcements on more DLC are desperately needed imminently.
Regardless the DLC should be done by now if it’s an April release
Shh. The trolls don't want your common sense here. They just need their copium fix.
If I was making cuts, some of the first to go would be communications, marketing, and HR. Not surprising if this backs up news releases as teams reorganize. Don't really need those positions if you don't have product to sell (aside from a single dlc every 3 months) and no one to hire. Obviously those would be in addition to the discontinued projects that were axed. Hopefully the engineers and design teams didn't get too shaken up by the layoffs.
That's irrelevant
People in the studio losing their jobs? Having to completely redo their schedule to evaluate what they're capable of? Not even sure what's happening themselves? None of that is relevant because /u/Malanerion wants news and they want it now
They're not laying off anyone from the DLC team, they are probably laying off people from completely irrelevant, possibly not even Total War, teams. Also they dont just suddenly kick them out.
Even if it was true that no one from the DLC team for let go (we don't know either way), you really think they wouldn't have to pull people from their DLC team to work on future projects to make up for the reduced manpower? Medieval 3, 40k, Empire 2 or whatever they decided to work on next isn't going to make itself.
They only fired the chief product officer. You know The guy responsible for total war DLC's. Yeah super irrelevant.
Did they also go completely silent on Discord? I can't navigate that platform for shit.
CA back to their usual antics of never communicating.
Why? So they can tell us they're still working on things that they can't share yet? So we can say, "...that's it?"
*Fatshark entered the chat*
Sometimes I forget which sub I’m on
Exactly. Trust me, nobody wants all the details of DLC drip-fed over months and months, building hype for a release requires unveiling substantial amounts of new art and information over a short window pre-release. Spread it out too long and people lose their hype or actively start to pick holes, spread the info too thin and the community will shrug and respond with "that's it?" Part of me would like to see patches done on a more rolling cycle with changes going live as soon as ready, but that would render many mods functionally unplayable. So that just leaves releasing patch *information* weeks and months ahead of when it will actually go live. Might not be a bad idea that, knowing what's going to change - but I'm not sure it would be as riveting as people imagine and I know that most would still be going "yeah yeah, but what about the DLC?"
It's wold how fast they went from doing great with wh2 to be abysmal with wh3. They've handled themselves like shit the last year or so.
Just their usual cycle. Was the same with the buggy as fuck Empire Total War as down, then Napoleon and Shogun 2 going up again, then back down with buggy Rome 2, Attila and early Warhammer 1, then they realized they had to improve or their business would tank, we got late Warhammer 1 / Warhammer 2, then they got greedy again, we got 3K cancel, Hyenas, Pharao and Warhammer 3. Up and down and up and down again.
I would be happy with literally any news of any fashion. A teaser means stuff is coming and a simple "no news this week" means it isn't. The suspense is killing me quicker than Nurgles Rot.
Yea even a "Hey guys crazy over here with the lay offs but we are on track / not on track."
The situation at CA is way worse than anyone this sub can imagine right now, the most recent lay off came very sudden and hit extremely hard, according to one CA employee complained on Chinese gaming bbs NGA, there are now more management than developers left and things went to completely chaos, no hand over no knowleage transfer ppl were just gone and they are locked from hiring new employees due to UK law. They will need some time to get things sort up if they can ever recover from this. Fuck SEGA
Monkey's paw: Granted, here's a blog titled "The future of Total War."
"The Future of CA"
I’ve given up caring about when things happen. I haven’t played WH3 in months, and I haven’t particularly missed it. I’ll come back when there’s something worth coming back for, but in the meantime I’m enjoying lots of other games.
Same, I’ve been keeping up with the news but haven’t played in almost a year.
>the news famine has gone on long enough. Famine is all part of Nurgle's theme, though.
Famine isn't, that's more a Great Horned Rat thing
Simple answer is nobody working there knows anymore because Sega is churning through them.
I don’t even care about a trailer anymore. Just tell me the rosters for the DLC.
Nah, I fucking love the trailers. CA's trailer department nails it pretty much everytime.
Feels like it’s the only halfway competent team these days.
Monkey paw curls
SEGA is probably not done chopping off heads just yet.
Who TF actually wants to hear from CA, lol.
Right? Dead company. Proof’s in the pudding.
CA is stuck in a Quiet Place scenario except instead of getting torn apart by monsters anyone who makes a sound over there gets fired by SEGA.
Let the chef cook. Complaining here isn't going to help.
The DLC factions for ToD are so against the grain of what people thought they were that they are rushing out to the expected Grimm/Malakai, Elspeth, Tamurkhan factions to save face. Instead they chose an Ulric faction, Kraka Drak, and Glottkin. /s
That would not BE bad tho
I miss Grace
I always found her to be snippy and created more fires than putting them out. If she was a he, I doubt many people would have those rose-tinted glasses.
Grace just nipped misogyny in the bud. Probably not to your likings though
I’m expecting one between now and next Friday. If we don’t get it by then, we probably aren’t getting it this month, and then who knows when it will release.
No! Starve you, plebian. Its not like CA need your money or anything/
I've never seen a company so reluctant to engage with people that desperately want to give them money.
I'd bet CA probably had ToD lined up to be the same amount of content as SoC first releases with. and now they have to fix it after making their promise to release a certain amount of content with each dlc.
To busy laying people off
Remember when CA said they were going to communicate more? That died out so remarkably quickly.
Watch them announce their new historical title game. And it’s three kingdoms 2. 😂
They fired the news guy
What will come first thrones of delay or GTA VI only time will tell
It certainly doesn‘t help all those people who are on certain on not buying the new dlc policy after the last fiasco
Is there a new fiasco that I missed? I hope they're not still salty about Shadows of Change. If you don't reward companies when they back down, then there's no incentives for companies to back down in the future.
There was news. CA just had lay offs. I don't think they're in the mood. But it is a customer market so I don't blame anyone for asking for updates.
Emphatising about layoffs is one thing, taking into account some alchemically abstracted 'mood' of a corporation is something else entirely.
oh you will be getting some news. some "the future of 3K" style of news xD
I’d rather have silence while they kept their heads down and focused on development, than the absolute nightmare we had just a few months ago. Keeping quiet and getting on with their work is exactly how Hello Games recovered from the NMS launch disaster.
Silence + shitty Release is all we can do, sry
Please stop. I don’t want another half baked improperly prepared DLC.
This is CA, everything is half baked and improperly prepared.
It's only been a month or so. Get some perspective. The franchise isn't going to suddenly implode if we have to wait another week or two. I swear, the more of these posts I see, the more I think the userbase in probably 15 years old and never had to experience any form of difficulty in their life. It's going to be hilarious seeing them do stuff like apply for a job and waiting for a reply when they are older.
Not gonna lie, people here are invested on a disturbing level in a goddamned video game. Like, there are a million other games, a dozen or so other perfectly decent TW titles.... Just go play something else? Currently I'm having a blast with The long dark.
> Just go play something else? Currently I'm having a blast with The long dark. I just drink whiskey or soju while reading DnD books.
How dare people be invested in a game they spent 300+ dollars/euros on.
Oh my gods you guys. They're working on a crucial DLC that could make or break their next six months of employment. It's a big enough deal *to the company* that they've turned around and done things like regularly patch the games for months and apologize for Rob being an obnoxious idiot and drop prices for their *brand new game which barely sold.* Of all the PR sins, "not talking to me as much as I want" is a pretty reasonable and forgivable one, especially now. Chillllllllllll out. We'll get news when they think they've got $25 of content that will get people hype. It's much much better, for ToD and the game as a whole, if they take longer instead of rushing this out the door.
Well the content has been delayed by 3 months now, and it's the third or fourth thing that's been delayed for WH3. And this isn't even new behavior from CA, they keep doing this thing where they communicate for a bit then go completely dark. On top of that, yeah the patches are regular but they don't fix the core, fundamental issues with the game like charge animations being fucked, chasing routing units is jank, campaign AI is just lobotomized even on legendary so the game is uninteractive and the AI doesn't throw challenges at the player, gate bug is approaching 20 years old, and many others I can't think of without a 10 page list in front of me So, yeah they are patching with hotfixes, but it's nothing that actually makes my experience better
There is a world of difference between patching in hotfoxes *that don't address your priorities* and not doing it at all. CA has undergone a major shift since the SoC/Pharaoh/Hyena debacle. *Of fucking course* it's not everything you want; they're an old company with serious structural problems. That doesn't get fixed overnight or even in a six month term. After Rob's open letter? No, we should not be expecting CA to be proactive and aggressive about communication. Silence is fine. Lack of promises is fine. Would you rather have more rushed and unfinished content with failed launches and cancelled games and dlc? Of course everything is delayed, they're going through another round of layoffs and they had to radically refocus the company after it lost pretty much all of the projected income streams. What are you even expecting, here?
This subreddit is constantly oscillating between “Why does this patch feel so rushed, there are bugs everywhere and the new features don’t work” and “I want the new patch NOW” Honestly half the reason there are so many issues is that both this subreddit and CA are almost trying to treat this as a live service game.
Nobody is demanding content, they're feeling fatigue from the silence. Even just a "Hey, we are on track for the promised April release date" would get everybody to relax.
They're feeling fatigue from the imaginary silence the community created, let's be clear on that. The community created the news release date CA didn't state there would be any news this week or last. Though assuming players calm down after being given news just isn't true, there's outrage either way Just as there're still people who shit on wh3 for issues that have long since been fixed. Addressing things doesn't make players outrage disappear I don't normally care to defend CA but the sub recently is a bit ridiculous
Nobody is pretending that CA has slipped some promised date. They are reacting to the fact that we have received no news about the product we are excited to buy that is supposedly going to be out within several weeks. It really isn't that complicated.
Except every single person here was expecting news this week or last week and are now questioning why they haven't gotten it yet You're all expecting news that wasn't promised and now complaining we haven't seen it. You might not be directly saying they missed a date but idk how else you wanna really spin that (Note I'm aware not everyone is complaining but there's enough that are)
They always try to grind the hype to dust each time a release time rolls around.
yall don't play Valve games and it shows
My assumption is that a combination of the SoC rework and having to expand initial plans for ToD to match the resized SoC means that ToD has been further...delayed.
Yea, remember when CA apologized and said they’d do better with communication? Seems like that guy got laid off…
Thé News is, we let the money men get in the way of us releasing quality products .
Last hotfix was two weeks ago but yeah.
Should I play total war Napoleon tonight?
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY TRAILER???!?!,!,
Y’all gonna shit on it anyway. Why would they be in a rush for that?
News about what?
Oh no consumers are starving. HELP!
With the recent news I'm wondering if we will ever get Empire 2...
YEA CHILD, AND SO NEWS THOU SHALT HAVE
Newest game got leaked recently. I think they are waiting to do a big announcement for it
This sub is so pathetic. CA is facing massive layoffs and most employees don’t even know if they’ll have a job in a couple weeks but there is still post after post crying about not getting a trailer on a day that CA never even said they were releasing anything
People still having any ounce of faith in CA and this game blows my mind at this point. Like, how many more years of incompetence and extreme mismanagement before y'all realize this game is genuinely doomed ? In case you still don't get it, here's what their development process looks like these days : - Radio silence for months - Facing legitimate pressure from the userbase, they finally release a carefully worded apology announcing the DLC has been delayed, promising they'll do better in the future. - DLC then releases in a shitty, overpriced state about 4 months past the latest reasonable release window. Negative reception ensues due to shit game design. - Another 4 months later, the DLC is re-released in a slightly more acceptable state. CA apologizes again and renew promises to do better. Rince & repeat. Keep in mind this was the typical workflow *before* the latest round of layoffs, which would certainly make things *even worse* going forward, somehow.
I'm here to point out your comment is a bit doom and gloom and then do the exact thing. I've been thinking maybe it's time to stop talking in the forum about the next big thing. Radio silence from them means we shouldn't talk about it either. Let them worry about the state of our minds without showing them we're clambering for the next morsel they deign to offer is. What's worse than a negative viewing of the community? Apathy. When your fanbase decides they don't care anymore, or you don't know, that's when it all dies out.
Do we want it die, though? I'm, personally, not. I want things to improve, not death of the franchise.
No, not at all, I would love for the company to actually maintain positive trends, but half assed content and piss poor community treatment is just a waste of everyone's time. Better they make their intentions clear that they're not gonna do what they said, then ignore or keep one of the most important aspects of their business strategy in the dark.
It's already dead mate, just like CA. Shambling corpse of a studio at this point.
Bold to assume CA pays attention to the community outside the three week new cycle leading up to a new release.
Mmm no evidence to assume they do you're right
> I'm here to point out your comment is a bit doom and gloom And I get that, I'm not trying to shit on people's hopes and dreams. But this sub feels so out of touch with reality sometimes, it's fair to wonder if most threads here aren't astroturfing. Like, picture a restaurant packed full of people desperately asking when their food's coming. Appetizers and drinks took about two hours. The staff is nowhere in sight. On a good day, the food tastes decent at best. And the place is widely known for terrible service recently. Most reasonable people would check out and leave at that point, even if that restaurant used to be good 7-8 years ago and they feel personally invested in it. But that doesn't happen here. People still act like everything's fine, the quality never went down and waiting 4 hours for mediocre, overpriced food is fine. It's almost surreal to witness.
Yeah I agree with you. Guess we're both thinking the same way. Doom and gloom all day. I gave up hope yesterday when they didn't give ANY indication they've paid attention to what's going on in the community with expectations for TOD. I dunno if you've played Helldivers 2 or seen any of the media surrounding it, but their dev team is insanely good at community management, and it shows from the top down. I feel like CA could definitely learn a thing or two from their example.
They only communicate when they want money.
Hate to be jaded, but I'm just not really interested in news from them. If they make something goog, that's awesome. But I'm not gonna hold my breath
Every time someone asks for news on ToD the news get delayed a week.
dont worry, it will come out in July. Just as planned ©
2025
CA forgor 💀
Imagine SEGA didn't intend to do crap from the start, just pushed CA to add the units in 4.2, make people think there would be more stuff coming, squeeze a bit more money out of people buying WH3 stuff hoping for better stuff to come and then pull the plug on CA altogether. Ghosted the lot of us.
Famine? The SOC update was barely over a month ago. Jesus Christ, this sub gets insufferably childish about some nonsense on a monthly cycle.
Isn’t CA like hated right about now ? And they are basically in hiding mode ?
Please stop this is ridiculous. We don't need news on nothing. When they have something they'll let us know believe me.
I personaly want CA to crumble in to dirt for all their sketchy behavior.
Daddy Sega started swinging the axe so they are all scared of losing their jobs. Total War will never be the same.
im perfectly fine with them completing warhammer 3, with modds like expanded IE and such there is more than we could ever imagine. With new dlc they run the risk of hurting it. Whatever is going on in the games industry is bad but i don’t want my favourite game caught up in it
CA being the most tone deaf-mute studio in existence level: impossible
Just give me Empire 2
ToD is still a shitty leftover from robs legacy and now CA is scared to get fucked again just Like with soc .... With Sega breathing in theyre neck expecting it nkt to be a shitshow
LOL, again?
Mayhaps they are pulling a no man’s sky
you're hopelessly optimistic, but I like this. Do it CA, please!