Total War: Pharaoh

Doggie2k said:
I have to admit i voted with my wallet ages ago! After buying Thrones on a steam sale and realising it was a massive pile of ***** and not enjoying it where as I should have enjoyed it because I really love the vikings time period I realised that CA and total war is dead to me. This is coming from someone who was front row center at CA's Rome 2 total war reveal at Brighton, forgave them for the poor release of empires, Loved Shogun 2 to bits and was a orginal shogun 1 player when it first came out!! Even Rome 1 had me at the time.

These days they seem to be more interested in copying the Chinese Communist party and the current Russian government propaganda in misinformation and censorship then actually creating a proper fun game that people can get behind.... sad times really, hope they can sort it out but I think its end days for CA as progessive company.
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It's tragic because having a genre leading niche IP just wasn't enough, they had to chase more $$$$, so they ended up having a core hardcore fan base that's hates them, and the other 95% of gamers that still don't care, they hit on WH and made a massive succes of it - no question (but again really that's down to a having another large baked in WH fan base, not dragging that many agnostics in) and they ended up ******* the niche WH people off too. If they'd have got the rights to LOTR, and made a LOTR series that would have been even bigger...the point being it's baked in kind of person that will play a good strategy game for years...

What they've failed to realise is, is that actually your niche of Historical "nerds" for want of a bettter term, and your WH "nerds" are 95% of the people who will buy your games and will happily buy your DLC - if it's good. There's no real consumer base outside of that core.

I'll compare that to Paradox, who have defenitely tried to reach more people but have essentially stayed in their lane (not that they're perfect) - but they're in a far better state than CA is right now, where CA now appeal to no-one.

But we told them, we told them for 10 years - just make the games we want. But no.

I think the strength of the modding community around TW games even ones going back 20 years, shows the appetite was always there, it just wasn't enough for them, now they have nothing. Now they're reduced to banning anyone on forums who doesn't tow the line...

Paradox released a stinker in Imperator: Rome - but they didn't double down on it, they moved on and made CKIII - which has been huge. But what they did do, instead of attacking the community, was, they left the game in a good state and let the cmmunity make the best of it, with a dedicated mod team (Invictus) - the game is good now, but it exists in a tiny corner of the internet for people just to have fun with it, no public beef. Just - "We'll take this over now, thanks" - Everyone is happy.

CA just haven't been smart enough, they haven't understood their product or their audience, and instead of listening to them they fought them - and lost.

It's just one of those cases where in the end - The internet is undefeated, and your customers are always right when they speak en masse.
 
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I hate to say it but I think we are seeing the end Creative Assembly and maybe Total War. Like a Russian general trying to get he's infantry moving forwards their walking into one landmine after the next with almost every action they take.

Bloody western video game publishers and developers have really turned toxic over the last decade. Misleading game trailers that boarder on the fraudulent, day one DLC (content striped from the base game and resold as DLC), broken game engines, game breaking bugs, unoptimised game code, disrespectful attitudes towards fans and customers.

If some of these companies took a leaf out Nintendo's book and gave us finished and complete games like Super Mario Brothers Wonder I would be more keen to pay full price for a game rather them wait a year until it was on a heavy discount on Steam.
 
Total war as a franchise has been flashing this behaviour for some time tbh. I think the problem is the studio money men forcing out content on a pre determined schedule. Nothing comes out polished anymore but they've got away with it because theres no 1:1 rival.
 
My goodness how this franchise of TW games have changed over the decades, whilst I did not care much for Shogun it was the MTW that grabbed me, in a big way. The rest is a rather chequered history.
If there hasn't been enough issues for CA of late I am now noting on YouTube a video "LEAKED: Pharaoh WAS just a Troy DLC" that just seems to continue the not so great news not just for the game Pharoah, that has enough challenges, but also for CA. I can't embed the video here as there are a few swaries.
So sad, they had / have a most unique type of game with the TW series, I very much liked Time Commanders, and an amazing fan / modding base.
 
www.youtube.com

LEAKED: Pharaoh WAS just a Troy DLC

I remember hearing bit of a massive ruckus around this. Am I right or does @TheGreatBookofGrudges deserve an apology now too? Was this guy openly gaslit? Am ...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

No surprises there really, so it went from being a DLC, to a SAGA game, to a full HTW title (well, a full price tag title anyway). CA are really in the financial ****. The SAGA games had as few as 10 people working on them.
 
Apex said:
www.youtube.com

LEAKED: Pharaoh WAS just a Troy DLC

I remember hearing bit of a massive ruckus around this. Am I right or does @TheGreatBookofGrudges deserve an apology now too? Was this guy openly gaslit? Am ...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

No surprises there really, so it went from being a DLC, to a SAGA game, to a full HTW title (well, a full price tag title anyway). CA are really in the financial ****. The SAGA games had as few as 10 people working on them.
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One of the channels was claiming a high % of the team that was working on Pharaoh were previously community modders. I can't remember the names but I recognised one from Rome Total War days. I'm not taking anything away from modders but if that's who you are using them it's obvious the type of content that's being produced.

Pharaoh could easily be the poster child for all that's wrong with AAA game releases of 2023.
 
A message here regarding WH III and Pharoah..

www.totalwar.com

A Message from Total War’s Leadership Team - Total War

Dear Total War fans, I’m Roger Collum, Vice President at Creative Assembly, and writing on behalf of our Total War leadership team. It has been a difficult few months, and we recognize that we have made mistakes when it comes to our relationship with you all. It’s been a constant conversation...
www.totalwar.com www.totalwar.com

With a new pricing of this game at £29.99, altho you can buy it at half of that, and now only have one version able to buy, as noted in the link above, it seems that damage limitation and repairs are underway.
 
Jim99 said:
I'd probably try it for £7.49, even £29.99 feels like a lot to me for this.
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Could be worse though. At least CA have recoingised they have made mistakes and have made this token gesture, a lot of companies like Disney, EA, Epic et el will discredit themselves, bury their heads in the sand and enter the whole whelm of 'doubling down' and making things worse.
 
Freddie1980 said:
Could be worse though. At least CA have recoingised they have made mistakes and have made this token gesture, a lot of companies like Disney, EA, Epic et el will discredit themselves, bury their heads in the sand and enter the whole whelm of 'doubling down' and making things worse.
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Yeah definitely.

To my mind, the fact that at a senior level they're acknowledging there's a problem is a big step towards actually releasing some good games. Perhaps all of the complaints from customers and the poor commercials of Pharaoh have made Sega realise that if they just keep going down this path they'll destroy one of their most successful franchises. I think possibly before this they felt like they could endlessly release comparatively low effort Saga games and people would buy them no matter what.

For me though it's more about what happens with the next release than me actually expecting Pharaoh to become a really good game.
 
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Freddie1980 said:
Could be worse though. At least CA have recoingised they have made mistakes and have made this token gesture, a lot of companies like Disney, EA, Epic et el will discredit themselves, bury their heads in the sand and enter the whole whelm of 'doubling down' and making things worse.
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The thing is though this is only after "doubling down" for 10 years, and with the in company in finacial ruin. They wanted to make the kind of Historical TW games they wanted, not what the community wanted.

If they'd have listened...
 
Apex said:
The thing is though this is only after "doubling down" for 10 years, and with the in company in finacial ruin. They wanted to make the kind of Historical TW games they wanted, not what the community wanted.

If they'd have listened...
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Why would they listen when their three most commercially successful games in 35 years of trading all launched between 2017 and 2022? As far as anyone at CA could reasonably tell, they were doing well.

Their success blinded them the their underlying issues. And IMO this is a situation which would have gone on festering for years if they hadn't got greedy. Shadows of Change would have sold reasonably well at £7.99. Pharaoh would likely have shifted a similar number of units to other recent small releases if they were honest about the scope of content on offer and launched it at £29.99 (or delayed it a year to turn it into a game worth £59.99). But instead, they got greedy and charged elevated prices for lacklustre content, likely chasing the inevitable losses made by Hyenas.

I expect they will turn things around with Warhammer. They've already vastly improved the update cycle, and now just need to maintain that & deliver better value on the DLC front. On the historical side, I'm less positive. Next year will probably just bring improvements and new content to Pharaoh, with the next big game (Empire 2?) out in 2025 or 2026.
 
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Posted over in the deal thread (thanks) but a heads up that this is now £9.99 at CD Keys....

www.cdkeys.com

Total War: PHARAOH PC (Europe & UK)

Buy Total War: PHARAOH PC (EU) ✔️ CD Key ✔️ Instant download ✔️ Fantastic price ✔️ Digital Download ✔️
www.cdkeys.com www.cdkeys.com

getting to a decent price where it is worth a buy...?

I'm not sure, even at that price...! No cavalry, not to be expected I understand, and a less than remarkable reception. I'll need to take a look at what it offers in more detail, and what they might wish to add to it. IIRC "Thrones of Britannia" didn't have much of a commitment from them.? Maybe I'll need to go back to that one, not bothered since release.
 
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Coming late to this thread so might have missed some messages, but I feel like I am on the few still liking CA and TW series? I did enjoy all Warhammer series and Troy as well... I haven't played Pharaoh because it seems a bit too limited (region wise) to me, but otherwise all releases lately seemed good to me...
 
gazref said:
Total war as a franchise has been flashing this behaviour for some time tbh. I think the problem is the studio money men forcing out content on a pre determined schedule. Nothing comes out polished anymore but they've got away with it because theres no 1:1 rival.
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the AI never seemed to evolve with the series imo.
 
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