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Dawn of war franchise is 75% discount on steam , I think thats one of the ways to support DOW 3
2 years ago
HELLDRAGON
I bought DOW 2 and DOW 2 chaos rising on steam discount today. I hope relic will consider the money the fans invest and send it straight to enhance DOW 3
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Comments
Dullahan
I did support DoW1/DoW2 and DoW3 with my money and all I got from it was DoW3 abandoned 6 months after release.
Relic isn't seeing another penny from me.
Socite
10* months. Still, valid argument.
Dullahan
Last real patch was in October. They just waited until February to admit it. I suppose we did get some final cosmetics though.
Gorb
Just wondering the logic behind singling out Relic here.
Opinion post.
Draconix
Me too have all DoWs with all expansion for the first two, and even wanted at least a single one for Dow3, but sadly, Sega didn't allowed Relic to release a expansion due to weak sales.
Not sure what will be next after AoE4's release, but I surely will not buying it, simply cause that Age of Empires franchise is not in my taste so much. But I will wait for Coh3 if there will be announced. But especially I wish to see new DoW or equally interesting to me new WH40K RTS in future.
Dandalus
Get reasonable, RELIC won't work on DoW3 anymore because someone bought their old games.
r_benb
Just to be clear, 1) we're a team with Sega and Games Workshop - no decision was forced on us, 2) sales were not the only metric we looked at to make this decision. I know it's tempting to create juicy stories but it's not fair to any of the people involved.
Decepticats
Draconix
Ah okay I understand. Still, it pains me, albeit slighty but still, that you decided to abandon Dow3 so quickly.
I get that it had a bad sale, but if you wanted to focus on other titles, then you could give at least a single new race, thought I get that you where focusing on other feedback then. But if I recall, Petroglyph also abandoned Grey Goo for other project but it gaved to this game a new faction before leaving.
So I get that you had no time to make new race for Dow3, but well. Still, if you ever will make Dow4, at least I would like to continue its story from point, where Dow3 ended and even include all 3 races from Dow3 with Necrons added, so Dow3 could have serve own role as a bridge between Retribution and Dow4. And oh, I want to see base building and large scale battles back alongside reworked Elites system too.
Wardragon_100
Hey @r_benb would be possible for you to fix any more of the bugs in this game in particular the hit-and-run doctrine for orks as the unit affected by this doctrine has a bug after it scrap upgrades that stops it from getting a shield and only the speed boost. Is it possible to update the in game Codex to put in new information such as the new elites stats such as health and more information about what upkeep is as at the moment there is not much information on it. Hope you're having a nice day
Wardragon_100
As you talk about in your relic post that there would be the possibility of smaller content additions can you say for example what could be besides cosmetics as people on this forum want to know in order to inform you What they want put in and what you can possibly do with limited resources you have at the moment for this game
Valiant
Post removed... nothing that should be said in here. Apologies.
r_benb
Hey! I don't have any new information to share with you at this point. I will note that we're still reviewing and cataloging bugs for when we're able to give them attention, so thanks for flagging them still.
Decepticats
@R_benb What strategies have you guys developed to combat the apparent brigading on steam and social media that is occurring even now almost a year after release prompted only by a sale on your games? Is a more active social media presence in the cards for this or future titles to help govern the message?
It seems cruel and unfair that a great game like DoW3 is being buried by a ridiculous propaganda war by a few loud, negative voices. I spent an hour+ in the queue tonight and couldn't get a single match. DoW3 really is awesome how it is, but I dunno how we convince people of that without further support against such an overwhelming tide of absurd negativity.
Lakaoum
No, Grey Box released the expansion and new race cause they still beleived in their game. They organize a huge tournament invite player to their studio and invite casters too (rotterdam and Huk). They reveal the Shroud during that tournament, and im sure they beleive the game will growth a lot with that race. Last thing was it was free to the actual owner of the game.
Draconix
Hmm. Interesting. But it seems that Grey Box has already left this game for other projects, even on Twitter pages there aren't community streams for a long time. Not to mention that Petroglyph is now focusing on other titles. First they released 8-Bit RTS games and now they are making Forged Battalion. But honestly, would be very nice to me, if Petroglyph would team up with Grey Box again for Grey Goo's sequel.
Lakaoum
@Draconix Yes GreyBox has even shot down the official forum. The game is turning on the discord channel, and tournaments with cash prize are organized by unofficial member. What I was saying is that when shroud was announced they thought it will save the game. Sadly, future will be different.
I still play grey goo a lot, and the last tournament was really fun and entertainning to watch. (it was possible even on a dead game cause, we have the observatory mode ^^ )
(if you want more news, contact me by pm, im really active on grey goo community)
Ill buy some keys of dow3. just to support dow3. perhaps even a crowfunding could be done to let the actual players pay for what they want to be add (observatory mode, new race ...) It will be the first time that a AAA RTS receives add on with crowfunding. But it could be interesting to see how much money they can raise .
Dullahan
They decided to accept responsibility for the decision to stop post-release support for the game or future content and thus I will blame them for it to the fullest.
To quote directly: "Hey guys,
Tough morning...we've been reading your comments for the past five hours or so and collecting our thoughts to share.
We know you're disappointed and we are too. This hasn’t been an easy decision to make but it's one we take responsibility for within the studio. "
Gorb
Fair enough!
GenDrameron
Hy R_BENB.
I know very little chance of the game getting an add-on. say within a year, but if there was a chance or any opportunity to talk about it?
Specifically because I really like the game, I would like to pay this much more if I get at least as much content with no more than three but only two species.
Socite
Obviously I can't speak for relic but I assume that if Relic were to consider returning to DoW3, they would need a few successful games under their belt before they can justify trying to bring back a failed game. I doubt they're really considering the possibility right now, as their focus will be on AoE4 and whatever their other project is. If they do succeed (which I hope they do) I'd certcertainly love a return to DoW3 - it got a lot more criticism than it deserved IMO, and some of it flawed, though I feel like they wouldn't want to try to bring back DoW3. Regardless, all we can really do is speculate, and probably for a long time.
Sval_Komtaree
A couple of months ago the concurrent player peak was around 300-500 each day. At the time of this post it's 794 and i often see it rise above 1000. If this trend were to continue would Relic consider changing it's plans for DOW3?
Socite
I imagine that it would have to stay up for a while, which would be tricky with no upcoming content and the fact that this surge in players is likely due to the sale.
Decepticats
I hope it stays high. I will certainly keep logging in and playing as much as I can. I think if we even got a bugfix and/or balance patch that would push the numbers up nicely for quite a while.
Valiant
Hi,
I think the persistence or the level of negative feedback stems not just from DoW3 being perceived as a bad game but more importantly from the way that a social media presence -as you are suggesting- was rolled out and implemented. It looked and felt like a scripted promotional campaign. It probably was and that is actually a clever thing to plan for. BUT I feel like the team or the one(s) responsible for the marketing made a big mistake or misinterpreted the effect and workings of social media. It's not a hardcore marketing tool, it's a place to interact with your followers/customers.
For example: when the trailer was released, there was great enthusiasm. Then the first gameplay video's appeared and some very serious questions were asked and remarks were posted. When reading the top comments on these video's, the general opinion was highly critical. There was a lot of positive feedback too but the general opinion was very negative on some key features (just go read the first 10 posts or 'most agreed with' posts under the youtube video's). However, I feel that the posted concerns were never seriously addressed. Even worse, a next video would start by saying things like:"Thank you for the overwhelming positive feedback!" while in reality, it was exactly the opposite! The campaign lost all credibility. Things like having guests (magazine reporters, important social media figures, ...) over who then only sound positive and do not at all address the points of criticism they should be well aware of, that only makes matters worse and even more incredible.
This comes across as insulting and belittling to 'the fans'. Instead of sending the message "we have heard you and we have taken your opinions seriously", you send the message that you don't seem to care or haven't taken in the feedback from your followers at all or are dead set on your idea of what the game should be like (which is something that can work in the end when you are really trying to change course on an existing franchise but in this case proved fatal). In the end, the social media campaign looked ridiculous, forced and unbelievable (literally).
And something from my personal experience. About a year before the release of DoW3, two people were hired to work with the community, to feel it's pulse. At first, I was really happy with this as I finally could work with developers to fix a problem that was plaguing one of the Legacy games (a bug that made hosted games invisible for online multiplayers in Soulstorm). A smart move in preparation for the release of the new game but also something that worked and was highly appreciated. At first, there was great communication between me and Relic, through these 'community workers'. And all of a sudden, probably and understandably when the DoW3 campaign took off, I received no more answers to messages nor emails -while they had specifically said that they were interested in some ideas. When I did get a response after some time, it was highly unprofessional and flat out rude. That is like the worst case scenario for this well meant effort. In the end, this positive strategy achieved the opposite, negative effect as well.
Creating a hype is something to be careful about and I feel that this is where the strategy has gone wrong completely. A social media campaign can be (has to be) scripted to some degree but you need to be able to respond/adapt to the feedback you are getting! You can't just ignore very strong negative criticism from such a big part of your followers and keep rolling out the marketing campaign as planned. You need to be able to be more 'fluid'. In the end, instead of creating a positive hype, a negative one was created for a lot of people. Instead of feeling like our opinions mattered, we got the message:"we don't care or think that you are wrong and we will stuff this down your throat the way we think it is right. You will see the light." I'm paraphrasing a bit... This is why I think the remaining general opinion is highly negative on the DoW3 story. This doesn't only reflect on the product but also on the company. A lot of credibility was lost.
This general opinion can only be reversed by a dedicated campaign of communicating honestly and directly with 'the fan base', good follow up and customer service. In my opinion it is definitely worth it, maybe even necessary, to make a very conscious and dedicated investment in this.
Thank you,
Valiant
P.S. I have a lot of respect for people who try and realize a project like DoW3. All the hard work, money and dedication that goes into this is staggering. If any of the people that have been working on it are anything like me, there will be a lot of love for what has been accomplished. I can imagine that now a lot of hearts are broken and that there is a lot of disappointment in the offices.
I want these products to succeed! I just think that a lot of things have been done very wrong and that this is why this product failed in the end, maybe more than the game being bad or not.
Decepticats
@Valiant I agree. And the key piece I think you did not mention is that those negative posters were sent there by "reaction vids" which is something I think Relic was woefully unprepared for.
They showed the trailer and the reaction vids were "OMG SO AWESOME!" and tons of people were directed to the trailer through that.
Then they showed gameplay, and the reaction vids from notable WH and WH40K youtubers was very negative. So they first influenced their fans to think negatively with their videos, then directed them tacitly to the gameplay vid to post negative comments. Which then colored the perception of others coming just to the gameplay video. Further, if someone watched the gameplay vid and was kinda on the fence about it, they'd see in their recommended vids while watching it "WHY DoW3 SUCKS!" and tons of other such vids.
The modern PR/CR landscape has COMPLETELY changed from what it was even just a few years ago. And we're seeing this play out time and time again with games that in the past would have done well enough. Negativity gets clicks. Anger is an emotion that's being sold to people without them realizing it.
That's really what happened to DoW3. The game is really good. The hate for it was not earned, it was manufactured.
r_benb
Interesting questions, for sure, and ones that the whole games industry is thinking about. The best way I can answer this for now is to say that we're investing in player engagement earlier in our process. Working directly with players to shape our approach should help us build a stronger foundation before we get to the point of announcements, first looks, and social media campaigns. It starts there.
When it comes to managing negative voices, I don't think there's as clear of an answer. No game can be all things to all people, meaning, there's always going to be someone who doesn't like what we do and feels strongly about sharing that perspective with the world. Let's be real, whether it's been about a video game, a restaurant, a movie, or a song, all of us have done that before, right? And could your mind have been changed if that company tweeted at you? Maybe, but probably not...
Again, it comes back to investing in working with players more closely and earlier -- to do right by them, to be clear about how they're informing the choices we make, and to be clear about the game we're making and who it's for from the get-go. To me anyway, that seems like a more positive and productive way of moving forward than picking fights with people.
Valiant
@Decepticats : I don't think that viewers were directed and influenced by youtubers at first. That may have come later. I was having my own doubts about certain aspects of the game and I was reading those comments before I saw tubers post their commentaries.
I have seen some good and honest criticisms from tubers at the start of 'the campaign'. It wasn't all vitriolic. In the beginning, the commentators I watched were worried but definitely not negative, still hoping for the developers to take the feedback with them to the meetings to maybe make changes. Those videos probably have made more people speak out, or even as you say influenced people to feel more negative about the game. In my point of view though, the negative feedback was evident and written before, with commentators basing themselves on those comments instead of the other way around. A lot of people agreed on several aspects of the game not to be the way they'd like (jumping Gabriel, animations being a little bit too cartoony or the visuals lacking some of the typical WH40K atmosphere as was beautifully portrayed by the trailer, the way certain maps were setup/built, ...).
Only when it was apparent that things were more or less definitive and almost none of the criticism was given a retort, did the words of the tubers turn very sour. Some time after the game was released and it was clear what it was meant to be, I watched casts of mostly disappointment. I didn't see anything terribly flaming or too harsh.
But maybe I avoided some of the bad ones by chance and by being selective by nature... I can only speak from my experience of course. I followed it pretty closely though.
I really can't buy your argument of negativity being sold and being successful. That wouldn't have worked if the game was actually liked by the people who played it in the end. The game started with a sizable player base but dropped off after a while. That can't be cause to the negative tubers. If you like a game, you like it. So the issues are with the game in my opinion.
I tried the beta and there were some things I really found difficult to like. So I didn't buy it.
Greetings,
Valiant
Dandalus
Well said @Valiant
Decepticats
@r_benb
I agree with everything you've said. And definitely you couldn't change one of those loud Youtuber's minds. But addressing the criticism, correcting it assertively in a social media setting resets the tone. It gives defenders something to link back to for evidence of the developer's involvement and active role (Relic in this case). And it shows (as you say) pre- and post-launch that your team is engaged with the community so people who would defend the game feel more confident and those who haven't fully formed their opinion see a different narrative taking shape.
I firmly believe what happened to DoW3 was a snowballing of the Economy of Negativity. Yes, the game was different to either of its predecessors, but not by that much. It actually does a superb job of blending the two. And even if it had been DoW1 HD or DoW2++ I really think the same thing would have happened. I base that largely on the fact that it seemed to be starting to happen to Total War: Warhammer 1 as well before it's release. Every little thing that LOOKED out of place or LOOKED like it might be greedy or sneaky or just "wrong" according to lore enthusiasts threatened to boil into the kind of thing DoW3 faced. And when the Warriors of Chaos DLC fiasco happened, it was months of negativity on their subreddit (particularly from Warhammer fans, the same people who would be following DoW3) before order was restored.
@Valiant
You must have missed the worst of them. It's the same Youtubers that were posting the initial negative comments and things too. The graphics were never cartoony, never silly. That's a criticism that is always lobbed by someone looking to discredit and demean but lacking anything of substance. So they point to color saturation or a lack of brown and grey hues. Silly.
Besides, everything in DoW3 has always been approved by Games Workshop and so is more canon than whatever the imaginations of these commenters was about what 40K should be. Youtubers and Twitch streamers are incentivized to hate things. It is easier to get clicks with an emotional attack on something than it is to get clicks when you're being optimistic or even-handed about a thing.
The mere fact that every one of these negative posters calls it a "Gabriel Backflip" shows the prevalence of the smear campaign. Nobody is even bothering to check for themselves which way he flips (he flips forward) just regurgitating a negative opinion they saw on Youtube or read on Reddit. Another repeated verbatim attack on DoW3 is that the races all play identically. This was invented by a Youtuber and repeated ad nauseum by haters. But anyone with even a tiny bit of playtime on DoW3 knows that the races in DoW3 play more differently than any of the races in any of the previous games. It demonstrates perfectly that people were not making up their own minds independently and coming to the same conclusions. They were just repeating an attack they heard and drowning out any positivity with unsubstantiated hate.
Recall also that there was only one main DoW subreddit before DoW3's first gameplay trailer (/r/dawnofwar) but after the gameplay trailer a second (/r/dawnofwariii) had to be created for people who were still excited about the game to be able to post without being shouted at and downvoted to hell. The negative voices pursued to that community in short order as well as to these forums.
There was just no where for someone who liked DoW3 to post without being attacked by the same few people or their acolytes repeating the same false statements.
It's sad because DoW3 remains the best RTS game on the market, IMO.
Edit: My point in bringing that up is that it shows that this wasn't just individuals disliking something. It was a concerted effort. When I don't like something, I just ignore it. There's lots of TV shows I don't like or movies/games that might even be sequels to ones I liked that I dislike and I just ignore them. It's very simple. I just say "Oh that's not for me. Oh well." That people felt COMPELLED to hunt down positivity about DoW3 and attack those posting it shows it was something different. People had been incited and stirred up by popular agitators. That's something different altogether to contend with and it is very new in the CR/PR landscape to deal with.