Single Malt Strategy | Returns! | Creative Assembly Chaos | Ft Wolfpack345 and Finnish Jager | Ep81

hello everybody Wolfpack here and welcome to the single malt strategy podcast this is episode 81 and I am joined by my amazing co-host Tortuga power the historical gamer and Finnish Jagger who you have come to know and love well cut cut I we're going to have to that's that was awful we'll have to redo that damn oh was that really bad not great not terrible thank you thank you the historical gamer coming with the comrade deav quote as you can hear folks episode number 81 of the single Mall strategy podcast is off to a roaring start the chemistry here is just impeccable it's a sight to behold that's for sure yeah okay I just want to say though don't worry you're always a disappointment in my eyes so that's just that's fair so getting on with episode 81 do we have a particular topic that we're going through gang or is it just well we're going to do our usual you know the intro thing where we just talk about what we're playing lately okay well since I'm the host for this episode um I'm going to go with the least annoying person here today uh finish would you like would you like to discuss what you've been playing uh sure that's the highest praise anyone has given me this year I think the least annoying person among a group of four people who are all four quite annoying Let's uh let's all be honest I'm the least annoying of four annoying people is that what you're getting at yeah I'm the most annoying who are these am I going to be interrupted by another sound clip no all right what have I been playing recently um well since the NHL season has started you know I got started playing East Side hockey manager again been playing Minecraft which is it's all right called to Arms with Wolfpack played some World of Warships and even War Thunder uh Call to Arms I've been playing that as well obviously with finish great game looking forward to the new expansion coming out called Liberation what's Liberation about again Western front it's going from you know dday Landing in Europe all the way I think the German campaign is set during the Battle of the Bulge yeah they're adding the United States that's the that's the big thing and quite a few German vehicles and such so okay yeah that's pretty cool because it's always been just an Eastern Front focus and then they added like a Finnish winter War which is obviously still sort of Eastern front but right DLC at one point and so now they're going to actually be like hey you know those Western allies they like to think they were important let's let's include them yeah I think um the Western Front sells really well and will hopefully bring you know a lot of new people to the game Italy would be cool North Africa adding the British and then I I want Pacific I want some island hopping I think that would be a blast you just you just went you know no small ask there just give me everything no no small ass so developers I would like you to pretty much do every theater of the second world war pretty minor War not a whole lot going on there and you know let's why leave out Korea the Korean War I think I think the game would do really well with a Vietnam War style you know you could have yeah that'd be cool one one side trying to Ambush the other helicopters flying everywhere you know that that seems fun I'm I'm holding out for Yugoslav partisans DLC yeah that seems more feasible that would be actually kind of cool there is actually a mission in the German campaign where you're fighting off partisans and such like there there are a lot of steth missions and campaigns uh small unit tactics like they do a lot of awesome work in the actual campaign missions I do like the dynamic campaign a lot but um those cool set pieces in the story driven campaign are pretty sweet yeah looking forward to that that's really all I've been playing didn't mean to completely derail it finish if you had anything else you were going uh you were gaming no I think that's it just to make sure we just say a word about what they are I forgot the name of it east side hockey manager yeah yeah well I guess one speaks for itself that's just a a sports Sim manager just the same way football manager what kind of sports do you manage in that and then there's Minecraft that brand new game no one's ever heard of before by an indie developer yeah that that one's pretty yeah that one's a rare one hey speaking of what's the like how is the state of World of Warships I feel like last time I tried to play it it very much felt like it was sort of a Dying game sort of on the back end of being a thing and that was like I don't know six to 12 months ago the last time I tried to dabble around in it it felt like I was waiting forever for matches and just it didn't feel like you know when I had played it a lot three years ago or so it just felt much more vibrant and this kind of felt like hey it's a it's kind of an online services type game that's just petering out is kind of how it felt to me I think that's a relatively accurate assessment there's a ton of like the lower tier battles that are just not populated with players so the game fills it in with Bots I only played a handful of PVP maps or matches and and there was no bots in those but they were like tier six tier eight tier seven and it was fine but World of Warships you know you just have to just um forget that there's any sort of real real Naval Combat or whatever like the only realistic thing about it is how the historical ships look even then there's some uh some issues right like good eyes and out yeah yeah it doesn't even have the you know the yeah the right guns it has the uh the alternate kind of the planned gun did it give them the 15 in yeah they they were I think they were 15 the same as the Bismark yeah yeah because I know when they built the Gan now they were like they designed it so they could swap dual 15in turrets on instead but they had 11 iners available so that's what got got mounted and they never they never actually went through and and put the 15s on exactly yeah know I hear you if I'm if I'm looking for my accurate naval combat game I always go for aure Lane instead yeah me too yeah you were streaming that the other day weren't you yeah first time and I'll stream it every month or two or three cool cool um with War Thunder War Thunder looks like it's a great looking game but I was like I felt like I was even more disappointed in that game than World of Warships I comp you know this is we're going to get blasted in the comments but I completely agree at least War Thunder or um World of Warships you know what it is you know what you're getting into War Thunder I can't I'm confused War Thunder like has this it has this like gloss over it that it's realistic but your submarine crushes when it goes below 60 meters yeah it's stuff like that it's like people think War Thunder is you know more semy than it is it's like when you play World of Warships you're like yeah this is an arcade game and so is War Thunder really I mean but it was still fun to mess around with the they had a battle of the Atlantic mode which I uh conscripted finish to try with with me did War Thunder ever make its Naval Combat cuz I remember watching folks play with it and it felt like it was all inshore type stuff like destroyers Patrol boats like World of Warships always kind of went with we're going to go with the bigger ships and stuff even though again not trying to be realistic at least if you want like a bismar or something like that the few times I watched War Thunder it was like what the hell is this it's just like yeah so initially War Thunder started off with PT boats I think the heaviest thing they went to was like frig or maybe even Destroyers they've they've since changed that because well people aren't interested in really driving around in PT boats although I am I think that's actually kind of fun and now there are larger ships I yeah there's battleships yeah we looked at them there are battleships Arizona's yeah Arizona's in there um they have heavy Cruisers and such but I haven't I've honestly have very little time in War Thunder it's one of those things it's like it's too late for me to get into I feel like you know I'm so behind another game to grind through yeah and I I just don't I am not interested at that really well in War Thunder and world of world of whatever it felt like World of thund War Thunder was always like at least initially aircraft type stuff was sort of their specialty World of Tanks was like the big thing for the world of I think right and then world of expanded to ships and and War Thunder expanded to tanks yeah Naval was kind of the last thing that that War Thunder tried I think yeah that's correct uh and I don't I don't know that they ever had like an audience catch on in the way that tanks and aircraft did yeah no that's correct whereas I think world of World of Tanks definitely had a pretty sustained success with warships as well but they were always kind of lagging on the because I think they had a world of war planes also but I think that was always kind of like yeah I think that one yeah so it's interesting how the how the different companies approach these different sort of segments or areas in different orders and it almost see seems like the the the later that they approached it the less successful they were yeah I feel like my impression of War Thunder warships was it was really not a whole lot different than World of Warships it was like they're just kind of replicating that same model it's an arcade game mode you know and got your hit point system basically you're saling around third person mode there was nothing that made it feel different I will say I do like the way War Thunder hides their hit point system with their their kind of damage modeling like showing off where EX where your shells hit and stuff and hitting critical components or whatever yeah I like that too I'm pretty sure it's still a hit point system they just hide it but you know that's kind of that's kind of nifty it's something I never really got into mainly because I think initially it was planes and I didn't like flying in War Thunder I was still doing Isle 2 1946 yeah that's that's it really wow what a tangent so well but kind of on that related topic if if we're done going through the games that you were talking about finish yeah I'm done wolf you posted you posted a a screenshot in I think it was in your Discord of like it looked like at least 20 jugs or p-47s like lined up on an airst strip what was that can you that looked awesome oh yeah that was I two uh great battles so was that like an event so I do yeah so I do I fly with a group called FTC called flyington cans they do campaign missions every week right now they started a D-Day campaign and you have your virtual pilot and you keep track of his kills and stuff and if he if that pilot dies it's dead is dead that sort of thing but it's all with real players so yeah it's kind of fun definitely look into checking them out I have a few videos on it on the channel but yeah I I do enjoy it quite a bit all the missions are handcrafted and such so and it is impressive to see that many aircraft in Isle 2 so you guys how many how many p-47s were in that like how many were in the event I mean the server was maxed out so I think close to 80 people all in aircraft or anybody in like I'm assuming no one was you can't tank in Normandy yet can you yeah no one was tanking it was mostly players there are some um players who do like a GCI sort of position like coordinating aircraft and uh vectoring them to specific targets or whatnot but most of it is um players and planes yeah so you guys had like 40 aircraft on each side is this one was way more Allied heavy because I mean during during Overlord I guess it is Normandy yeah there like it's the campaign we started on June 6 and I mean the amount of sorties the Allies flew is astronomical compared to I think the Germans even flew in the hundreds I may be wrong there um I'm sure someone will let me know but uh yeah the the amount of Allied sorties is insane so there were maybe there weren't that many German players uh playing uh during that particular Mission were there any AI aircraft or all human I think they may throw some AI aircraft in these missions but generally it's mostly human yeah I don't know that just looked pretty pretty awesome to me the idea of having like dozens of human aircraft all flying off cuz I know I've played I2 a bit and the campaigns are interesting and you get a I feel like for the tank stuff you get a little bit more scale but like the air the air stuff is always relatively Limited in scale yeah there's quite a few aircraft and for any one individual pilot it's often more than you it's not like you're shooting down the whole the whole Air Force but like the idea of having 20 or 30 concentrated aircraft like in One Wing going to One mission and like an equivalent enemy group trying to stop you is is a bit more than what you typically see even in the even in the AI campaign stuff and that's really where I 2 great battle struggles compared to like I 2 1946 there's another content creator out there called Enigma he does a lot of flights emulator stuff he also does some Gates of Hell stuff he's been really good at hosting events and stuff through his Discord and they do some like 1946 events some I 2 1946 events and those are pretty massive seeing that many aircraft together um and the game running really well like I know they recently did it did an event with uh the channel Dash so operation what sebus it's where the Germans took tpet and moved her through the channel yeah Shor ganen now and then maybe like Admiral hipper or someone like that oh Shor and ganau yeah I'm sorry not tpet was just stuck in the Fjord rusting yeah yeah what was I thinking I'm sorry my nerd cred I was to say thank goodness we have finish here who can correct the historical inaccuracies I I said tpit and I was like that is not right like well actually can we cut that no we're gonna we're gonna show your your embarrassment can can can we pay to send Finnish to go watch the Napoleon Movie and tell us how bad it is you can pay me to do a lot of things to be honest 20 bucks is 20 bucks anyway sorry to to go off on a tangent I've just been seeing like my social media feed is filled with people who are like this thing is a [ __ ] travesty of everything anyone has seen about it so far and like I kind wow the language on this podcast well that is listed as explicit you [ __ ] so oh ho whoa oh sorry I thought it would be more dramatic if I dropped an fbom are we not boycotting il2 by the way are we are they Russian they're pro- Russian well yeah and they they had a hiccup on their Twitter which you know what speaking of which that's one thing uh the War gaming that's the one that does World of Warships right you know this one thing they've they've you know they've been pretty Pro Ukraine about the whole situation it's kind of cool to see ah I didn't know that that's that is cool that's uh World of Warships and World of Tanks yeah I don't even know where they're based I think gyen which does World of or War Thunder GES is uh is Russian based as well they're all Russians I don't know what are you going to do but gun hasn't come out and been like raw raw Russia the same way that that post like there was some sort of Scandal early on during the Russian invasion of Ukraine if I remember correctly wasn't there some like gun VP or like product manager or someone like high profile over there came out and was basically like Russia yeah Ukraine or Nazis or something like it was there was some really controversial social media post and that's exactly what happened with is 2 like the guy forgot to log out of his Twitter account really I think that's probably what happened and you know it happens to the best of us I I don't know that I've ever seen anything for War Thunder with aircraft but I don't know that preservation is quite the same scale but like the world of worship stuff if you go to a lot of different worship museums there's often some sort of collaboration there at least there was when I when I went to Yorktown in in um in South Carolina like four years ago they had all this like World of stuff that they were advertising there so they clearly had like a relationship with the museums there to try and like Leverage that but also support them oh yeah that's cool and to support that claim um when I went to the mikaza they had uh World of Warship stuff there too they also had a Zer Lane stuff there too but that's a different story well that's understandable I'd put AER Lane stuff there as well if I were running that museum like those Museum Runners know Their audience that's right get lap dances in this turret whoa whoa whoa my God okay we got to cut the last we got to cut the last 10 minutes I I also love that Tor guys on set a single thing I'm just waiting for it to become relevant I don't know I think this is all relevant Mr Mr Grinch I am just waiting for I can't talk about these things I'm not going to talk about something I don't know about okay okay do you want to talk about creative assembly there's there's Buzz going on there well you don't want to talk about what you've been playing lately oh I guess I should but let's let's finish what about wolf do we we even need to do that segment let's just let's just keep talking there's a good one no there's a really good one though it's going to bring up some you're going to want to hear the this one finish all right so wolf you've been playing is 2 obviously cuz that's like your job but have you been have you been playing anything else no no move on go do yourself who cares about wolf we're not supposed to let wolf finish I will say I I haven't been doing much flight Sim stuff on the channel or really in general but I'm getting my groove back I've been playing a lot of DCs actually I mostly have just been doing Isle 2 with that group um yeah cold water Silent Hunter those are good all that good stuff that's about it haven't been playing too much uh how excited are you guys that like all the games that were on our most anticipated list for 2023 haven't come out yet I was thinking about that the year still young baby by the time this airs it'll probably be like December 40th oh wait that's not a date December 40th my god did you say December 40th yes I did he he did but but anyway um what have I been playing I've been playing a little bit of arms trade Tycoon tanks the demo there that's the one finish I think this is a good conversation we got to talk about arms trade Tycoon I'm on the edge of my seat just sort of a refresher for those of you may who may be unaware arms trade Tycoon tanks is basically the concept behind the game is that you are a it's a tycoon game so like you build a company you build products you sell products and and design products and make money right like it's a traditional business tycoon Style game sort of the unique hook of arms trade Tycoon is in the title right instead of doing you know instead of running uh a company in like mainstream civilian areas You're Building tanks so you're running a Manufacturing Company it starts during World War I where you design World War I tanks speaking of historical inaccuracies you're You're Building tanks in 1914 but you design these tanks you sell them to to at least in the current version to the British to the British government and see how they perform and whatnot um The Game's been in a demo is state for quite a while I think they're in an alpha build now um um they did a they did a a Kickstarter and a demo two years ago I think yes and then they like re-engineered the whole game to be like hey instead of this 2D company map let's make it 3D and and now you can drive your tanks through this like training ground thing which felt like maybe someone had played sprocket and they thought that would be a good idea to include in the game which sprocket is like another game where you design tanks except void of the Tycoon aspect it's just design the tank drive it around and see what it does I really they have a lot of sort of baffling decisions I think on the design front it almost feels like they had an idea of a traditional tycoon game they got feedback from their initial supporters and they lost the plot that's kind of my my my two cents again the game's not finished yet this isn't a review I'm not saying it's going to be terrible because I actually do enjoy it but I just don't know that I've seen a ton of progress that they've made and I don't know that like the changes they've made add much like they they changed the map from a 2d map to a 3D map on the company screen and I think the 3D looks worse and looks less interesting than a basic 2D company grounds I don't need to drive my tank it's a tycoon game it's not a Sim game so like it just seems like they're making some weird decisions um that I think maybe they're listening to too many folks um I think that a lot of the things I was going to cover were included in the last 3 minutes of your little monologue there basically I agree it was a demo it was very good the idea is I think is extremely compelling game idea and I'd actually like to see this done you'd almost imagine that they had planned it this way with a name like I mean the name is just does not roll off the tongue let me try to get it arms trade Tycoon tanks but with a name like that you kind of hope that maybe there's an arms trade Tycoon chips something like that and I I honestly think that would be a very very interesting game um this does it's very reminiscent of gear City even automation to a degree which is the civilian side of things but you know you're building cars and selling them to people and to do that on a military on the military had things where you build a tank or I mean I would I think it'd be awesome if rule the waves met gear City and you were doing that for ships we may have mentioned this before Tortuga but like my dream like if I was to design a game the game that and I have written like 20 pages of notes on this so like whatever not it's not going to happen I don't have the skills to do it so my two cents to the developers I'll give you a free rebranding military industrial complex there's your name or military industrial tycoon or something like that right like the arms trade Tycoon is just a weird it's a weird with tanks at the end is weird um my idea was always to do it with Aviation but like there's no reason you can't do it with ships you could be a shipyard manager there's no reason you can't do it with Aviation you know or tanks so I I I agree it's an incredibly compelling concept it just feels like they're feels like they're stuck in neutral and I think there's there's a lot of interesting things they could do with it but it feels like they want to redesign the stuff that already felt like it was pretty well fleshed out and not focus on doing maybe some of the things they that they hadn't done yet I I kind of want to drill down into that a little bit without running our mouths on it the entire podcast but I I feel like this is it's such a fascinating situation that I've watched this happen almost because the the demo came out as you said it was 2 years ago cuz I looked it up it felt when I played the the recent Alpha closed Alpha that the game hadn't moved anywhere and then I had to look up how long ago was it that the demo which was really engrossing and it made me excited to play the next step in the game the demo ended like the the technology wasn't done Beyond like 1916 or something like that so it was naturally limited that you couldn't move on but I would love to have seen that demo just fleshed out with the later years and Polished they could have done some UI enhancements and that's one of my complaints is like for all the changes that they've made they didn't address very basic things that were were a problem in the demo did nobody talk about the load times the game is basically bouncing between research design engineering production and every time you click to a new place you face like it's not super long maybe a 5-second loading screen but when you go you click a new place you just select a research that takes about 5 Seconds means like half your time is spent in loading screens it's kind of ridiculous it's almost like you bought a house the upstairs was mostly finish and finished and you liked you liked kind of what you saw and the downstairs was a complete gut job and they've spent the last 2 years changing stuff upstairs but not necessarily making it better and leaving the whole down is completely void yeah I'm a critical person by Nature so I want to say that I still really enjoy the underlying concept and I'm still drawn to this game and I hope that it fix the things that bother me right now like the loading screens it's an alpha so there's time but the most bewildering thing is I don't understand what they've done for the last two years and I actually have a quote I can read from the one of the people on the team who has been very nice and my interactions with him are nothing but positive I actually asked at this point and try you know in a polite way what exactly has been done this is what the list is there has been a complete overhaul of the architecture to allow easy scaling to other eras and Nations okay I I mean that's obviously if it's architecture that's under the hood we're not going to see that so hopefully that's just true and things will be easier later I God willing okay everything is now full 3d Factory grounds facilities buildings and even every single tank modification I don't know that we needed that at all and that's what you and I were already talking about that the I think the 2D art looked better than the 3D world that they have built I think the 3D world that theyve built is very washed out Bland maybe it's more realistic looking but it's less interesting for a player to look at than I think what they had for the 2D Factory grounds before agreed thank I was I was going to ask you about your opinion on this finish you want to jump in Finish talk about your opinion on that all these things uh not yet okay well let me finish reading what their change list is cuz they also include players can try try their tanks on the trial range which is what you mentioned thg the sprocket like Edition this is the crucial thing and in general we tried to accommodate much of the feedback we got from the demo that's the thing right there isn't it TG that's that I think that that's what they probably got feedback and they listen to people and that's the problem is that when you listen to people you're just LED astray I don't listen to anybody and that's why I'm you got to listen to the right people I feel like we see it a lot of times there's a game that's in Early Access or whatever and they listen to the community and there's like a a small vocal you know minority yes that really has a vision for changing things and it gets changed to that and it's like you've made this game different to please you know a small group of people who are like commenting on your forums and it makes the game worse in my opinion it's probably hard to avoid right I saw that with um ultimate Admiral dreadnots too oh yeah good point I was going to say this is the exact same like I was going to use that as an exact example finish that is that is a brilliant comparison where you've been working on this game for how long like at its core what what's you know I guess the campaign is more fleshed out because the campaign didn't exist when they first launched but like the first version of The Campaign that they released to now it's like okay yeah I've seen some changes I don't know that any of the core problems or the core promises that you said you were going to deliver with the game that people were excited about like after at some point after two years people lose hope now this is a little different in that I think it's what it's a closed Alpha where you have to be like a Kickstarter person I think to get access to it or something like that so yeah quickly it's if the closed Alpha period has now ended and they say that the beta will be in another month so hopefully things are going to move quickly so we'll see yeah but I mean it just makes me you know it's interesting too because um it's uh it's another one of those situations where they found a publisher who's micros where his ultimate Admiral got bought out by stillfront so like both both games sort of started under a different ownership structure than where they are now or maybe not ownership but um partnership but yeah it just feels like feels exactly like ultimate Admiral where they spent two two years working on stuff and I don't think any of the core problems or issues were adjusted and actually this really does tie back to episode 78 tortugo and we had aias on and we talked about Early Access right like when you go to Early Access what's the objective that you have about early early access it shouldn't be to have your community design your game and that's kind of what it feels like is happening here yeah well I think Finnish hit the nail on the head right he said the vocal minority this is a it's really hard not to listen to the vocal minority because they're vocal right I mean if you have a forum I have not been on a games Forum in God knows how long but I have opinions on games I just usually Express them to people who aren't the developers or I I generally if for a game I might like really like it I don't have anything to say to them like great job but I I'm not going to go to your forum and say that I should probably but I don't but guess who are the people who you know the ones who are like super interested though I can almost say like it's almost like a Hearts of Iron 3 thing I love hearts of iron 3 but I feel like hearts of iron 3 was probably made because people who were like super gung-ho about Hearts iron 2 being much more detailed uh talked to Paradox and they kind of like LED Paradox down this super detailed path and it wasn't for everyone because it it was probably in some ways too detailed and but that's what happens the vocal minority the people who are most interested in it are usually they're going to skew things to an extreme that is just it's going to not be as playable or as interesting to the the main player base I don't work in game design obviously but but I do some product design work in my job and I think you know that's that's another one of those things when you do consumer insights and people tell you what they want if you don't come into that with like a very clear intent with what you're trying to do then it is very easy to get LED astray and I think I think that's what you see here right like I think if you're going to go to Early Access and we talked about this in that prior episode you you still need to have some authorial intent if you will you still need to be you need to have a vision for what it is you're trying to do and feedback can be very good but you need to have that doesn't change the core vision for your product right the feedback shouldn't change what are you trying to accomplish it might change some of the how you're trying to accomplish it but in this case it just feels kind of like like the the feedback is driving the bus and and without any Vision without any clear sense of no we're doing it this way because this is the experience we're trying to evoke you you just you get core architectural changes of going from 2D to 3D or other things like that which really don't move the the ball down the field to actually getting closer to finishing the game in my opinion yeah I think about this topic every once in a while for because of a certain uh certain project and it's like if you crowdsource ideas like I'd rather have those ideas come from the individuals who are I don't know making the game because they have a vision and they should push that Vision forward yeah I I briefly pulled up um your old video Tortuga and then thg's recent video there's some like graphic UI elements that I like with the new style but all the 3D stuff was it just looks unnecessary I bet when you watch that you're like oh wait the new one is way better than I thought who is this Tortuga guy he kind of sucks oh I hope I hope he leaves that in well I'm actually I'm looking at the video here and this Tortuga's video was one year ago and I gave it a a thumbs up like button one year ago so hey why did I just get a why did I just get a thumbs down on my on that video I will say we are being a little bit harsh on a game that has not even gotten into beta yet you did mention that Tortuga yeah it's an alpha they iron it out I mean I'm sure like all these 3D assets like H how many of them are placeholders no no I think it's more about two years yeah but I think this is stuff that we've talked about stuff that we talked about in The Early Access videos like if you're going to release a product for for people to judge and play it needs to be at a state that's acceptable I thought their demo was though that's the funny thing yeah the demo was about yeah I don't know I just feel I feel a little iffy about like they're not yet anyway outside of the kickstarter which is a little different they're not like selling this yet in terms of this is wait is this a Kickstarter game it was I mean they did a Kickstarter two years ago based off the demo that then they completely change but but anyway um I have a good segue to Kickstarter but we can wait well there is a particular so I fancy a first-person shooter I like my milsims things like post scriptum Squad hell let loose Arma that sort of thing and I and I have played those games with all four of you while there has been a new first person shooter on the Block which I've been looking forward to called burning lands it is a Vietnam uh FPS and uh it it started it launched its Kickstarter maybe like five days ago as of recording this and they have raised like $90,000 already right well the dev team quit oh my God the entire Dev team quit five days into the kickstarter they made it they made it pretty far yeah how much of the game got written in five days and uh well they they have been developing the game previously um they quit over like issues with the owner I believe of the company which is zero hour interactive but yeah they raised all this money and then the dev team came out and said we're not working on the game it's like this is like the problem with Kickstarter like that is yeah anyway that was just like something that dropped like this has all happened today and it's been it's been interesting because this is a game I was actually watching relative like I kept updates I kept looking at updates and such cuz uh it looked like they were going to allow you to fly Hue's and stuff with the joystick and stuff and I I appreciate that what was the goal for the kickstarter like I think they I think they met it it it says get get us to Early Access was 110,000 yeah and I think they did surpass that and then people are obviously cancelling their Kickstarter contributions which I would Esa if you if you put money into this game uh pull it out because I would not you would not invest in a game that doesn't have developers seems like a wise idea yeah well like even if they do settle the I think the developers are saying they're on strike like that sort of thing but that's still like that sort of turmoil and miscommunication like they should have figured that out before the kickstarter went up I'm pretty sure the developers came to the owner before the kickstarter went up and the owner put the kickstarter up anyway and then he bought like you know a new sports car like three days into the kickstarter when it was doing well oh man yeah it it sucked I was even looking at the kickstarter and I was like man I've I hope this game like I'll fund this game I was I was going to buy it what's the opposite of the wolf pack what's the opposite of the wolf pack seal of approval we already know the opposite of wolf pack is sheep solo yeah she's solo I saw I remember see hearing about burning lands and thinking it was interesting um I couldn't tell Bas and this was before the kickstarter I was like is this is this legit or is this just like another one of those cheap lowbudget Shooters that's going to just be BL I think it was legit I think the developers like who are working on the game actually had a vision and we're going through with it and I mean Rising Storm 2 like that that's a Vietnam FPS and I love that game that game's awesome I've played the heck out of that and speaking of that another game that was canned but it's coming back from the dead is a first-person shooter called 83 This was um tripwire and antimatter games I think anti matter tripwire was the publisher and this was um the publisher was sold or something like that and these are the same developers that did Red Orchestra Rising storm Rising Storm 2 Vietnam and yeah it's a cold war gone hot first person shooter and it looks like they're looking for uh Alpha testers beta testers for the game so excited to see that coming back because it looked pretty cool Cold War gone hot seems to be hot right now yeah I wonder why uh in terms of game development I remember that cuz yeah cuz Arma had reforger or whatever not that long ago which feels like it had a big surge of publicity and popularity around it and has vanished into nothingness but uh it's it's kind of coming back they've added helicopters to it recently more Vehicles they seem to be forming it up nicely and the more work they do on it the more faith I have for Arma four I hope it turns out to be awesome cuz I I did enjoy I mean we've played yeah we I played with Tortuga also we did like a for a while you were doing a lot of like Anastasia uh stuff in Arma too I I never liked Anastasia as much as like I like the handcrafted like small we did those those missions those were fun although I do have some pretty fond memories in Anastasia I couldn't remember if Tortuga if you were on the artillery if it was balugan but I remember there was one night we were playing and like someone like jacked an artillery while the rest of us were all assaulting an airport and we were trying to guide the artillery onto the enemy positions and I'm pretty sure we friendly fired the [ __ ] out of ourselves I also remember a specific Mission with wolf where uh we had to tell people to raise their hands it was the best goddamn Mission I've ever played oh my God I watched you guys play that one yeah yeah that's right oh gosh what With No Easy Day oh man yeah what a mission I feel like I played that with you that's like the only oh my goodness Mission I played I mean Tortuga's Channel started with an Arma video of him being a helicopter pilot you know in along In the Arms of an Angel he loved that little bird someone that little bird mission that's right oh yeah yeah that's right gosh all these me what happened what happened to this group we've splintered we've Grown Apart anyway that uh somehow we got on to Arma from uh from arms trade Tycoon I've also I played a little bit of yes your grace snowfall which I don't know how I feel about yet that game is also currently in a closed beta that is like a it's a it's an interesting like pixel art style game where you're a king and the primary sort of hook is that you're basically trying to manage your family and your kingdom petitioners come to your throne and ask for things and you have to manage resources while an external threat is on the way to come coming to get you and then you've also got to manage the politics of your family I adored yes your grace when it came out like two years ago and snowfalls the sequel I don't know maybe I'm in a different place in my life I don't know if maybe it's just like it's not as novel of a hook as it was previously what I've played in the Clos beta is it's not bad it's like a technically sound game but I don't know that it says I don't know just it doesn't have the same sort of hook to me as as the game originally did and I'm not entirely sure why I do feel like the family is not as interesting to engage with I think they had some really good writing in characters in the original and in this game it it doesn't feel like like your kids don't really do anything in the way that they did in the first one at least not through the first three hours that I played your wife is like doing something weird but like I don't know it just it doesn't feel it has the same sort of maybe the writing is not as good I guess that could be it too it's it it's not as well done I guess we'll see how it how it shapes out if I get into like the battles and the the later part of the story but at least so far I'm I'm playing through it it's not a bad game but it it's not as good I don't think as the original as the original was and so we'll see we'll see how it plays out what was the game suarin is that what y'all were discussing in the previous episode quite a bit yes yeah there's there's yes you're Grace is not it it's more like pixel art style play the game susin is more like visual novel style like choose your adventure but also I think the writing in susin is very well done I not that it's bad and yes your grace but I don't know that I'd put him on the same the same playing field susin has a DLC rizia coming later this year which I'm excited to play we haven't even gotten a uour to I think I'm pretty much done I don't you know I'm playing the the usual stuff but I think those are the two games that I've played that have been newish I've been playing a bit of Starfield too but we don't need to talk about that wolf are you still playing balers Gate 3 uh I'm kind of taking a little break from that I've been playing Warhammer 40,000 dark tide recently but yeah I do want to get back to Boulder skate I was hooked on that for a hot minute it honestly made me want to go back and play the older Boulders gate games are you watching all the romance scenes what's your thoughts on it next question next question oh yeah my thoughts on Boulders Gate 3 I I like it quite a bit it's fun uh it's quite good I was iffy on the turn-based combat I never played Divinity original sin or any other game by the studio actually but I do love the first two Boulders gate games and Ice windale even like I like ice Andale a lot I did enjoy those early Wizards of the Coast games and I guess bware did Boulders gate and who did interplay right did Ice windale I think but yeah no I I grew up playing those quite a lot and boulders Gate 3 is great love it lot to do you can do anything it's the closest you can get to playing DND D virtually Tortuga what about you I think you're the only one we haven't gotten to yet yeah I know just a one hour into the podcast getting over to Tortuga I get it what are you playing podcast I mean it's a shoot the [ __ ] podcast right like who you know it's been a while since our last episode we figured we should touch in I I didn't have a specific topic I wanted to talk about but I wanted I wanted to hang out with my friends uh so the I have another one of my games will bring up uh I think is one of the things I'd like to continue talking about I'll bring that one that one up last I want to say I played battle brothers recently finish knows about this um I was because I was streaming on Twitch but it just made me realize what a great game battle brothers is yes it's got to be I I don't know how it's actually kind of hard for me to play because like it's one of those games just like XCOM where the RNG rolles they can really just mess up your day and I I think people watching my stream know that I'm very familiar with that since I had to restart maybe four or five times before we got one that actually stuck but you know what the streaming aspect of it I'm I'm the kind of person maybe other people are like this sometimes where like I I might save scum I'm like really particular about a run going really well in my head I'm like I don't I don't want to waste time uh trying to get all the way back to this point what if I make a run that goes like to day 50 and then I die and I'll never know what happens at day 100 I I've been cured of that the streaming aspect where like I just forced myself to play like a I think the developers the game designers wanted me to play where I I just did my best but then if you fail you fail you live whatever it's so liberating so my message on battle brothers first of all for people who are interested in the Tactical RPG type games it's great get it and if you do and you're like me you you have to you have to let go it's it's just way more fun to play that game in a way where you accept that your people are dying and you fail and you start a new one it's it's great and they're actually coming out coming out with a new game Menace it's called Menace and that's uh supposed to be released in 2024 published by hooded horse who I think is like the number one publisher in my book right now I just want to say about battle brothers as a stream viewer of twitch.tv/ Tortuga power it's a ton of fun to watch like you named you named all the characters after like people in chat there was just like it's a very it was very high engagement so I love that it's a good stream game because you have people who end up kind of rooting for themselves or watching like what they want to see what happens to their character yeah I agree it has that kind of aspect to it maybe I'll have to try this out this actually does look kind of fun it's really good I you know what I love games that are brutal I don't enjoy having fun play a video gam that's why you play hell let loose on post cryptum yeah that's why I mean every game I play is just like punishing and I I I love that though yeah this is this is going to be that then I think you'll enjoy it have you speaking of just punishing games RPGs have any of you finished Kingdom Come Deliverance no no no okay I was just yeah I was just curious I know we've all kind of played it all kind of dabbled I haven't finished it either I've been I've been thinking about that game recently and that that was just another good game yeah very good game random segue yeah I mean it's great it's awesome I just haven't gotten around to completing it so I was I played it this spring I I got back into it big time started a new playthrough and I think I got like 30 hours into it so I played it a pretty good chunk but I didn't I didn't end up beating it yeah yeah I need to go back to that because I mean the combat in that's fun it's punishing which again I I really enjoy I feel like my main issue with the combat in that game is the way you like lock on to a to a character which makes the soft lock system yeah which makes I don't have a better way necessarily but it just makes the when you're fighting more than one person it feels like the game is fighting like the system is fighting against you in in some ways which makes sense I guess like part of that is I mean fighting multiple people would be insanely difficult right for sure but you wouldn't feel like I'm locked on the like I can't I can't shift over easily you know in the middle in the middle of a fight I see I see it's a very good game I just I think it's very long I think I don't know yeah I think it is you got you stick with Henry for a while yeah that's why I sto I'm probably like 60% through and I always tell myself I'll go back one day but see okay my problem my problem with RPGs I love them but I'll play 60% through 70% through or whatever I'll drop the game for a bit I've done this with pillars of Eternity I can't wait to see you finish your thought here I think I'm I think I'm the same but go but whenever I hop in what the [ __ ] going on and I go to my old party I'm like I don't remember what's what going on I I uh maybe I should I should just restart I should just restart and do it again exactly and then I get you know 60 70% of the way through again before I you know and the cycle repeats I do this every time with all these games yeah that's what I do with r of come I jumped back into it this year and I was like yeah one I kind of remember sort of but I really don't remember the details and then it's like but wouldn't it be just so much more enjoyable if I could remember all of it all the details let's just start it up and let's just play through it again I didn't finish the first time the second time or the third but this time baby we're going all in we're going to finish this time yeah yeah I know it's a gosh I do that with RPGs just because they're they're longer I mean I think that's does anybody not do that I guess is the question I'm sure there's some people out there who actually have you know long-term memory all right well let me segue over to a different topic altogether we haven't covered any kind of well I guess this is kind of related to maybe I just really like Tycoon games because uh but I I was playing a little bit of Planet coaster that is a good game are you going to stream that at all I want to watch that yeah I'll stream it um I'm trying to learn it so that I look less incompetent on camera it's my usual modus operandi but I would just say it's for anybody who likes Roller Coaster Tycoon it's a it's an easy recommend it's extremely well polished I I just I really like the game and it definitely scratches that Roller Coaster Tycoon itch although Roller Coaster Tycoon honestly I think has aged just fine and you can just play that too okay one other game I've been playing I think this could could could be a conversation piece as well is I was playing a little bit of Total War Rome remastered and which in my opinion is is not necessary you know what makes me angry about that do tell me I love Rome easy easy favorite Total War Game love it the remaster they just decided to take the most perfect you I ever in existence and Massacre it it is atrocious it's very strange I I I I mean I've noticed this too um so yeah I mean I'm not sure what they were thinking there yeah what were they thinking they did they use did they use the new UI like in their new games no it's not even that good it's worse it is it's bad it's like it's a mobile game oh I don't know you you make Rome one remastered who do you think's going to buy by that probably a lot of people who played Rome one you know I I don't think they'd be going for necessarily a brand new audience I would have been perfectly happy with a 4K version you know upscaled old school roome UI here's what happened though so Ferell in interactive is listed as one of the two developers on this they're the ones who ported this originally like before the remaster came to PC feral interactive made Total War Rome on tablets and they sold it on tablets oh right and then they did the remaster for PC so they probably took whatever they did for the tablet version and just said okay well let's put it on the PC and now call it a remaster like they weren't going back to the base game to do that they were just using the work that frell had already done and then whatever other changes they need to do to put it on PC and like it looks good graphically like everything's nice it's just that UI is just it's atrocious I don't think I'd even recommend remastered I have the original games and they play and I I I boot up remastered just I don't know why because it's installed pretty much I might not even recommend it though I might the original ones are on sale no yeah I don't think I would either like do they even sell the OG ones though on like steam like I'm sure they do on Gog or whatever but it's still on my Steam account so yeah but games can be delisted and they don't but yeah no I I agree I I that was really disappointing it's like how do you screw this up there's no price which to me means you can't buy you can't purchase it anymore damn but don't worry Pharaoh is great right what's going on with what's going on with creative assembly just what is going on with them yeah what the total war Series in particular I don't know I I think I think like Pharaoh like it was leaked that Pharaoh was supposed to be a DLC for another hit total war game called Troy um and then they spun it off into his own you know half-baked game and I guess that's the controversy I'm not in the loop about it I know there's a lot of drama going out on at se internally that's about it I mean I know they've recently upped their prices and I think a lot of people are upset about that I think it's just generally what ca's been doing in the past I don't know it feels like 12 years now so how is doesn't feel like uh new news but with their DLC policy and such has anybody been following like all the YouTube videos that different creators are posting talking about like supposed leaks from inside creative assembly about the direction that the are going you know I'll click on one every once in a while yeah yeah I guess I watch you know I click on it a few times when I'm like I don't know just for to have something on I listen to like YouTube videos when I'm doing chores or cleaning around the house or whatever but Finnish have you been following this at all no I I know nothing about this drama you have to fill me in or just send me a video yeah you probably know the most thg what about what about you tour to you what do you know I don't so I don't know that just like the problem is I watched one video and I don't remember half of it but that makes you an expert me too that's exactly that's exactly the position I'm in right now buddy post your hot takes to Twitter uh sir it's X now actually I me I don't so the gist of it seemed to be that like Total War developers are really upset with with sort of the direction that management has taken the series management is getting pressured to release games more regularly than used to and so what they're doing is rather than developing new games they're developing like variants of the previous game with new skins effectively like yeah so the whole thing was like you know Pharaoh is a is a fork off of the code for Troy I don't even know if Troy was the but I don't even know if Troy was which and then Troy was a fork off of the code for Warhammer yeah yeah that's it that's it yeah that's I I remember I but not even the newest Warhammer it was like Warhammer 2 forked off to cuz there's three warhammers right yeah but they're all pretty similar I think but but honestly like so I don't know I saw that and then sort of the other gist was like effectively like all these fail suns are just failing upwards and management is made up of all these folks who don't know what they're doing and you know like oh they're just it's capitalism blah blah blah they're just trying to make more money and release games more frequently it's a cash cow for Sega which that I kind of believe right like they're not putting any oh absolutely they're not putting any investment into it they're not developing new core features they're not developing new engines they're just milking the existing sort of all the hard work under the hood and they just keep reskinning these games and re-releasing these games and the pressure is to do it more and more and more and faster and faster and faster and they have not had like a real core release to the historical um side of the series since what three kingdoms four years ago like I wouldn't even consider that Three Kingdoms was a reskinned Warhammer I the last war the last total war game I was moderately excited for was Total War Atilla well but Atilla was a fork of of Total War Rome 2 wasn't it I know and that's even after they burned me with Rome 2 so like I guess you could say the last historical clean sheet design was probably Rome 2 which is was 10 years ago when did where is Warhammer in this cuz that's the last one I was excited about and I was actually very I I was happy about Warhammer the first Warhammer yeah I think that was 2016 holy crap first of all that's long but then when what came out Atilla came out after that Atilla was like a year after Rome 2 and Rome 2 was 2013 so Warhammer was the last war Warhammer was like the last like new thing for them right the most recent new to find new I would push back a little bit wolf on Three Kingdoms not being a clean sheet or new like so what this interested me with Three Kingdoms was their heavy Reliance on using having like war heroes or whatever act essentially as um act essentially as like generals do in Warhammer killing th like entire units like buffed I don't know it just that doesn't interest me I want a historical total war game I want my general to just be some dude Three Kingdoms to me was the last big historical release because it was the last historical release that like on its own You could argue was a complete like it's covering this era of History they hadn't covered it previously it was new units new like it wasn't just necessarily just reskin like because again they took the Warhammer aspect of Heroes so like there's this whole sort of narrative like superhero side of things that was new to the historical which I I don't like and that's fine I'm not saying it's good I'm just saying like to me that was the last like big historical release where it's like we are doing a proper total war game as like a big release in a historical setting like there was Rome 2 and then they did Atilla in so Rome 2 was 2013 AA was 2015 but Atilla was like very clearly a variant of Rome 2 it wasn't like you know it was it was a smaller version of it right like we're going to do this it was it was Rome 2's Barbarian Invasion and then like the next big historical release was was Three Kingdoms in 2019 there was this weird like Thrones of Britannia which it seemed like for a while and this and but this I think this goes back to sort of the criticism of management is like britania was supposed to be this it's even on the title card a total war Saga like the idea was we're going to release bite-size hisorical games of different eras so like you get way more historical eras right so like that was the concept behind it is britannia's this sort of hyperfocused campaign let's do a bunch of that right um and that's what Troy was right Troy was this focused Eastern aan campaign looking at you know at the the war in the movie or the book of The Iliad yeah they were doing like the Bronze Age collapse right was it even br's age collapse wasn't it just Troy like the the fight between the Greek Islands and Troy and then like Pharaoh I guess is theoretically supposed to be a new big game but again it's really just sort of another variant off of what had come before so other than maybe borrowing some of the Warhammer mechanics they haven't actually done anything new from uh we're going to reinvent the series we're going to do all these like actual New Design Concepts they just kind of keep kicking out the same thing with new skins that seems to be the general criticism and they're not in and I will say one thing about them not investing you could tell they weren't investing in new stuff for a good long while because the games were 32bit I think maybe until Warhammer 2 in 2017 oh my gosh are you serious yeah if you would go in and you would do like a you would do like a benchmark it would show like a ram limit that was basically based off XP like three gigs of RAM was effectively the limit I had no idea that's wild until fairly recently I I think in the last couple of years they upgraded to 64 bit but it was the under the hood architecture was 32 for a good long long while oh by the way I I checked the um Pharaoh set during like starting at the Bronze Age collapse gotcha so the the general criticism seems to be like developers are really frustrated business keeps making these decisions to kick out new games they're not like actually giving them the tools they need they're not really allowing them the time to like actually design a new proper historical game um and it's just sort of rehashing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and uh and and that like sort of CA is just sort of collapsing from within and a lot of the community especially in the content community space is really just losing losing interest in the series right like they're expected to keep buying the games and they're not doing anything new and so like why is anyone going to keep buying the series and you know business being disconnected from the actual the actual developers and and from the player base is leading to a lot of this this push back and this frustration against against the series um or the company and I don't know I guess I'd be curious what anybody else's take is on this Tortuga I don't know if you have any any opinions I just realized that the the Brewers manager was picked up by the Cubs that was the most exciting news this month um yeah that's hilarious by the way I I do love all the all the Brewers fans just coping but uh like THD frankly but no going back to going back I I will say know if I played Total War Warhammer I'd love it I I played tabletop Warhammer uh 40K and I used to play Fantasy with my brettonian you never played Warhammer I thought you both bought it and you were going to play it again no we talked about it but like everything our plans fell through but yeah no I know I know if I played Total War Warhammer I'd love it I love that stuff but I think of Total War Games I think back I think to Rome or the original Rome you know I mean I just that's the Total War I remember and I quite frankly love and all this new stuff like it just doesn't on the outside looking in the mechanics do not interested me and I guess I look for historical Total Wars like I love Shogun 2 I think Shogun 2 is awesome I think that game is you know as perfect as a total war game can get agreed yeah that's not that's my number two I mean I think it probably is my like right now I think my favorite total war game to play is Warhammer cuz it's the newest you know it has all the new stuff and it's also a lot fun Shogun 2 is probably if I don't know it's right up there still despite how dated it is and then Rome Total War is just cuz it's the original man it's the original love you'll never forget your original love yeah I can agree with that my hot take is Shogun 2 looks better than Rome 2 I agree that game looks phenomenal I love the art style and Shogun 2 like the art Direction like I think they nailed it it I don't know part of me wonders how much the release of the Warhammer series through the historical game games sort of onto the back burner oh I'd say it absolutely didn't and maybe sort of the cause of some of this right like espe because the focus of the community seems to mostly beyond the historical titles Rome 2 which had a lot of issues at at launch but but Rome 2 45,000 reviews on Steam pretty good number right a Tilla which was sort of a variant of that and certainly was not as popular 22,000 also worth mentioning when they did a ton of DLCs they were always Rome two not Atilla so like Rome 2 got a lot longer support and they had a like they were still releasing Rome 2 DLCs not that long ago I think there was like the crisis of the second century there was a rise of whatever like I think the last one looks like came out about I guess maybe not quite as recently as I was thinking but still about five years ago so they kept releasing they released 14 DLCs for Rome 2 they had a big update recently yeah they added like the family trees and stuff from Atilla into Rome 2 but in any event they released DLCs until 2018 so for 5 years they had 45,000 reviews on Rome 2 Warhammer the first one 30,000 so Rome 2 certainly more popular Warhammer 2 81,000 Steam Reviews I mean and there's your answer there's the reason they don't care about uh historical titles because they don't sell in comparison Warhammer 3 64,000 tro Troy a total war Saga 2,000 reviews well they really hit out of the park man I mean the it's I I I love history games I love those previous titles and I just said I think Warhammer right now is probably my favorite total war game to play for what it's worth Three Kingdoms does have 55,000 so like three kingdoms I think sold pretty well but still it was it was it was piggybacking toer Point uh wolf off a lot of the Warhammer stuff so but I but I would also I think one of the other things I just want to point out is like a lot of folks were like oh they're just trying to get us release variants of variants I don't think that's new like part of me wonders how much of this is just a disgruntled like how much of this is disgruntled devs as opposed to like is it everybody who's choosing to leak these things what are their agendas I'm not saying there aren't issues with the total war series I think we've expressed some concern here but I would also say like a lot of the the folks posting on YouTube are posting things that they're just sort of taking at face value and you're not wondering like all right so if this developer is saying something what's their agenda right like they may be this may be objective or it may be like they're not doing what I personally want them to do right like that doesn't necessarily mean the company's making horrible short-sighted decisions you know the idea of they're just building things off Forks off Forks like that's not yeah that's smart that's what they've always done they've always done this right like they used to do it in a DLC form but Total War Empire the big game Total War Napoleon the small variant built off a total war Empire Total War Shogun I mean Shogun 2 fall as Samurai y right exactly Total War 2 Total War Atilla they literally always have big game small game now maybe they're doing it more frequently now which I don't know that that's even necessar true there was four years between Atilla and Three Kingdoms and then there was two years there was 2 years between Three Kingdoms in Troy I guess now there's only been a year well I guess actually no two years between Troy and Pharaoh so like I don't know that they're really speeding up things that much on the historical side of I I certainly see the lack of investment again I mentioned like when I was doing uh doing some Benchmark stuff you could tell it was still 32 bits so like there are there are indications that maybe they haven't invested in the core mechanics they need to to bring the series up to date I think there's a good argument that they haven't innovated much on the historical side of things and that they need to if they probably want to get folks excited again um or maybe they just need to make a medieval 3 at the end of the day I I just wonder how much of these leaks are how much is this of this is genuine and how much of this is just a couple of disgruntled devs saying things to folks because their particular preferences of the way to run the business aren't occurring not to be like Total War Management's all great like I think they have I think they have their own issues but I do wonder I don't know like some of this doesn't feel new but what even if they're true what would you do about it yeah I don't I don't know I mean like the cost of development of games is only going up right so like I understand why folks would be like we need to make more money in order to keep making these games you know one of the things is are like the historical audience isn't growing at all which like maybe that's true right and that's why they went into the fiction stuff and they went into the warhamer stuff to appeal to a new audience is that bad you know like the dev might not like it but is it bad it's so funny I when I in 2016 I remember I was at a Games Workshop store playing 40K and talking about how the fact that total war is going to do fantasy is just like the worst move ever like I was like this is going to fail it's going to be crap if only I knew what it would turn into like it like it's just so funny thinking back I just don't know what people would do about this anyway like let's say they creat creative assembly I mean what's the it's it's good to like talk about these things and like make sure that creative assembly knows that there is some public push back that their perception is not like the perception of their development process is not good because they're reusing things too much you know that that's a natural thing basically this is like a market forces driven world right I mean to some degree I think I agree with people who are saying this is capitalism like if you have a game that is basically just printing money for you how if if it's your livelihood like we're thinking about it from a purist point oh God give us the best games but from a perspective that somebody's flutters eyes exactly but from the perspective that somebody's trying to feed their kids or I mean I'm sure it's greedy and it's you know it's you know buying their second Porsche or whatever I'm trying to get my stock to go up buddy exactly stockholders who's thinking about them Mr Incredible someone think of the shareholders but yeah that's the way it is though I mean when you have a successful business um it's really hard to get a business person not to keep sticking to the plan yeah imagine that uh that investor call exactly like okay I know we're pumping money but we're gonna pump the we're gonna pump the brakes real quick because some of the community is a little upset well I think you I think you position it in a way of like hey in order to maintain the audience that we have we've got to make investments in the future and this is the investment we have like I do think there are valid concerns of if you keep releasing the same game over and over and over again at some point you are going to lose the audience that you have they're going to think you're not doing enough to keep things interesting other developers will do stuff right like manner Lords right that's a game you're super excited about and you mentioned Hood hooded horse before Tortuga like yeah love them both there are other Studios who will come in and they will do things that will eat away at your margins they'll eat away at your audience if you're too complacent oh yeah I agree like if if you if you just keep the same product and keep pumping it like you're going to have an Apple 2 problem where like you haven't innovated and the rest of the industry has passed you by and you lose considerable market share at some point well I that's maybe true but it's a complicated problem I like who if I'm in the the closed door discussions of CA I don't have a recommendation for them like what's the recommendation come up with something good like okay well then what is that what does that look like are you winning son it's hard to uh dismiss the short-term gain I bet ca's been through this how many times now they've been in hot water with their Community how many times they'll get they'll do something they'll get a free DLC and uh it'll be water under the bridge and then they'll keep just slowly ramping it up again until it happens again I feel like this is cyclical like we talk about CA I feel like finish is over there in the corner just be like what am I on the boot lickers podcast they're all just like yeah you know they're doing what they need to do like it's it's all fine they's talking about they're talking about their thing um I I Wolfpack 345 love brand I love when brand deposits check into bank account you know um all the all this topic this discussion it's it reminded me like almost to a te with EA Sports um and they just their sports games that they publish every single year they're going to pump out the same product not make a whole lot of changes because a microtransaction game Mode's making them a bunch of money and they're not going to change that because you know it's making them a bunch of money so the investors the stockholders aren't going to demand changes and and gamers are angry so this is like the same situation it's yeah it's all these game companies are are dealing with this and is the community going to like force a change it doesn't like seem like it they don't have like any sort of power yeah and one of the other things also to mention that the the videos and the leakers were talking about like a key part of the decision- making apparently again this is all allegedly was that CA was saying was seeing BAS Bas on their data our audience is not growing we are not getting more historical players which I don't know if that's true between based on the timelines that were shared in those videos but so that was their their their conclusion is we're not getting bigger so we got to get more right like we got to publish more so we can so we can keep driving the revenue up which maybe um maybe that would explain why they went to Warhammer but I would also say I think ca's kind of painted themsel into a bit of a corner and the reason I say and not necessarily because of bad decisions but like total war is known as within the strategy space it is known as being the highest I don't know if production value is the right word but like the highest Fidelity of the Tactical War Gamers right yeah graphically easily and the problem with that is that does not leave you wiggle room right like if someone was to be like let's make a total war game with a bunch of new stuff and the way that we're going to get this Justified and the way that we're going to fund this is by cutting back on the graphics a bit because Graphics aren't getting cheaper it's getting more expensive right like the higher the production value gets pushed up the harder it gets for Mom and popop companies to compete at a graphical level there's like a level you can compete at but you're not going to compete with CA on graphical 3D Soldier you know things if you're like an IND an indie first I want to know who the mom and pop video game developers are I mean mom and like I don't know anything that par anything that anything that Matrix develops because a lot of their devs are actually part-time but I I hear you this just a funny this a funny term I I will say this if you ask me what I thought playing Total War in 15 years would be like at playing Rome one it's like what is Total War going to be in 15 years I would think the battles would be insanely massive wa like the amount of infantry we would have on screen would be like close to real life that's what that's what I was imagining not the same unit sizes we've had in Rome I think they'd have to completely change their way their order of battle works so that you could actually have like other war games that are more interested in being war games they have orders of battle in a way that like I can select a division and move them and like total war is too much each individual unit you raise is what you have to command like the UI would not support it but it's just like that's what like my young self had in my head I really like that wolf I I mean I think it's really cool I don't even know if I had the brains to put that thought together I was probably like oh my God this game's so good I didn't even think about what what I thought it would look like in 15 years so I'm glad you shared that I wish I even could add to that yeah I just always was thinking like gosh like one day we'll have battles that are close to real you know like I'll have this many people on on uh on the screen and just like that has never that has not happened I mean that was always my criticism there are other games that have tried to like scourge of War for all of its faults like it doesn't look great it's 2D Sprites like on a sort of 3D is map but they've got 100,000 Sprites on the map for the Battle of waterl that's not something that Total War does that being said I think where I was going with Total War painting themselves into the corner is they've gone so far down this like we're going to have the breaking Edge High you know High Fidelity stuff one it's hard when you're always at the edge of graphical rendering for your soldiers to be able to ever scale that up because the quality of the graphics keeps going up which means you never get that bandwidth within the tech to build larger scale I disagree okay fine that's what Innovation is I mean that's how how do you think that they do any of these things like new tech is about innovating and if creative assembly's next Dev team was given a task a high priority task to increase the number of High Fidelity individual soldiers they could do it I think the question I think it's a I think it's like a slider the question is like where do your priorities lie and it seems like their priorities for a long time have laid on the we will always air on the side of making the graphics look as good as possible within the current scale of of soldiers and as technology increases and Graphics get better they're not changing that priority mix I think you're right but I do think there is a level of tradeoff of hey maybe we just don't make the graphics look that much better but we go for scale like that's a different assignment than what they have right now and I will say I bet if they made their Graphics the same from another game and up the scale or even worse to up the scale they would be hearing about it and I think that's part of the problem they probably have looked at this though right I mean imagine I'm trying to imagine how maybe there's been modded versions of the total war games that allow you to control like 50 different units instead of I think the limit normally is 20 there are mods yeah there are mods that up the like um sizes of particular units I don't think you can change it so like in Rome two you can control up to 40 units if you have two armies go into a battle and in that they'll up the unit size but that's that's about it that's all they can really do when you control 40 though do people when they're in that situation start to start to realize oh wow you know controlling more than 20 is actually more taxing than I would like and maybe I wish it was down to 20 again I don't know I always loved it whenever I had a big battle well and didn't you like wasn't the limit at one point slightly higher if it was you had two armies like a reinforcing Army and then you could keep cycling in new units the as the other ones were routed off so like there were ways to have bigger battles but oh yeah I do remember that yeah but I think my more my point is by being the High Fidelity developer that sort of paints them into this corner of like this is what our customers expect and I think a de a Dev like hooded horse can come in and hey if we get the graphics 80% of the way there it's exponentially less expensive to do that but there aren't the expectations from the audience that it's going to look the way that total war is going to look and so we can do a lot of different interesting things at a lower budget and we can we can compete in that way and I don't know that Total War could have a strategic sort of reassessment of what they're doing in that same way without risking a lot in a way that a new entrant can yeah no that's that's fair I think that's kind of part of the part of the problem I don't know I I don't know that total war is fundamentally different than it has been but I I do think there seems to be a general consensus within a lot of game developers or game fans be it Paradox creative assembly uh Madden there just seems to be a general discontent with sort of complacency within some of the some of the elements of those games be it Call of Duty and yet people continue to buy the games so I don't know that anything is going to change until until people stop buying those games and I think people who are complaining like us right now are the vi vocal minority like we were complaining about earlier like the the number sheets don't lie I think it's a little different oh that it's different when it's us yeah we're better yeah yeah and I'm I'm I'm perfect that can't possibly be correct wolf I do think our causes better I I was separated into two things because we're not on the forums like driving we're not driving CA things this is kind of like the I would say the just the standard like uh complaining that people do about anything like are we still using Microsoft Word yeah but I mean it's for like 30 years people have been like man Microsoft Word is [ __ ] but actually you know what it's actually the best thing you have that's pretty good we're just going to complain about it and that's what we do right yeah that's what podcasts are all about complaining well the the core of this discussion was that competition creates Innovation that's absolutely true so you know this is a very Pro capitalist podcast shove it up their commy asses sir hell yeah brother hell yeah uh Happy Veterans Day by the way we're recording this on Veterans say thank you to all whove served and all who that will serve could be you listening you could be like I'm I'm about to serve this broadcast sponsored by the US Army hey if the US Army wants to sponsor us I'll cash those checks hell yeah I'd take a US Army sponsorship any day of the week we'll do it for free no we won't we won't do it for free Tortuga we will take money they got a big marketing budget you know the Pentagon just throws money at marketing they can give us something I don't know see I don't pay taxes so I feel like this is the only way I can give back listen if the if the if the US government poured as much money as they did into America's Army whatever that video game or whatever like they could they can pay that they can pay us American Ary yeah that was a good that was a good one man I don't think they put that much money into that game did they I mean it wasn't like it was probably like a for Tortuga you know my rating skill is pretty critical it was probably like a seven maybe even an eight out of 10 don't just don't just count don't just count the development budget they advertised the [ __ ] out of that yeah that's true because it's free it wasn't it free to play it was that was I mean the whole thing was like hey this is going to Let's recruit people through games like that was was the idea that's how they got paid well now the US Army has an Esports team like League of Legends I don't know how that fits I don't know what they I wonder I wonder if it's like OverWatch like he's over there playing as uh Diva it's Winston yeah Widowmaker you know Diva does does the US Navy have an Azure Lane team oh they they better that'd be awesome what I want to know what I want to know is what the coast what the Coast Guard team looks like I saw I saw this meme the other day that had a zoom Walt and then a F35 I think in the foreground and it was like the you know the Coast Guard when when the Air Force and the and the Navy are showing off their billion dollar toys and they're just happy to have like a cameo and there's like a tiny little like inflatable boat like in the corner just speeding along it's just like yeah poor Coast Guard I love the Coast Guard I love the Coast Guard nothing but respect for those guys and gals Ashton Kutcher made a movie about them didn't he I don't know who that is I don't know who that is he says he wasn't in the Barbie movie all right old man this is off the rails that's it Gamers it's 1201 yeah it's it's getting late so uh we're actually going to go ahead and wrap this episode up here I do want to thank our guests uh Finnish Jagger and uh Wolfpack 345 for coming on to the single malt strategy podcast once again uh and my trusty co-host Tortuga power as always until next time this is the historical gamer as always saying thank you very much for watching listening however you consume your podcasts uh if you do like this please don't hesitate to drop us a review or at least throw some Stars up on your podcast app of choice uh but until next time we're out

Channel: The Historical Gamer

Views: 2,502

Keywords: Call to Arms: Gates of Hell, War in the East, War in the East 2, Decisive Campaigns: Barbarossa, Decisive Campaigns, Strategy Games, Strategy, Wargames, Eastern Front, World War II, IL-2 Great Battles, Simulation, Simulation Games, Podcast, First Look, Discussion, Best Wargames, Top Wargames, Top Strategy Games, Steam, Matrix Games, Paradox Interactive, Game, Creative Assembly, Total War, Remaster, Hooded Horse, Manor Lords, Employee Revolt, Wolfpack345, Finnish Jager

Id: RaKQtqapkd8

Length: 79min 58sec (4798 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2023