Hi everyone!
I'm Mitchell Heastie, Design Director on Total War: WARHAMMER III, and today I want to share with you some of the things I've been working on. This will be a developer diary that gives you a look into what is coming as part of Patch 5.2 and this time around I'll also talk a little bit wider than that about what to expect going forward for our updates and how you can help shape them.
First though a bit of backstory. When I think back to the very first DLC we ever made for the Total War: WARHAMMER trilogy, Call of the Beastmen, there was a moment where Rich and I discussed adding the moon cycle mechanic to the race. At the time this seemed like a tiny addition, and indeed it was compared to the kind of features we do now, but I always consider that moment monumental as for me it was the first instance of us pushing a boundary, trying to do something a little bit different that we hadn't done before, to add more than was originally planned, and we did it just because it was cool, we thought players would like it and we wanted the DLC to be as special as it could be.
I think it's that moment that set us on a path to try to do more for all new content, to keep pushing our own expectations for what new content for the game could be, to always be on the lookout for what special idea we could do next, and I really do believe it's that precedent that created a mindset for what got us here now with the absolutely insane scale of content we have. This way of working, to always be pushing, meant that over the years we tried a lot of new things, some that didn't work so well, others that were massive successes, but all the while our content was growing in scope and complexity, and we were learning.
This you will all know by now has had a few effects; I think our content got better over time, which is fantastic, but this improvement has meant that the content we created in the past grows more outdated as time progresses, either because it was made without the knowledge, lessons, or technology we now have. This is where your, and our, desire for the old content to be reworked or updated comes from - not failure, but progress and success. It's something we've been cognizant of for a long time, hence our many reworks and updates, and it's something we want to continue to do going forward.
I think it's a blessing to be able to have such a vivid view of how you as a designer, and as a team, have improved in your craft over the better part of a decade, but of course that does mean we have some work to do. Let's talk about that work.
Updates Going Forward
You will have heard the team talk about "What's Next" in our recent YouTube video aptly titled "Total War: WARHAMMER III - What's Next?", watch that here if you haven't already. In that video you'll have heard among other things that our plan is to bring more to our game updates that fall in-between our DLC releases, just like Patch 5.2 does! These updates will allow us to tackle the things we are less likely to do as part of an upcoming DLC - as you will have gleaned from my intro this will be things like updating older features, or at times even updating races, but primarily focused in areas of the game that we recognise haven’t been priorities in the past, or were likely to be in the future.
It's also extremely important for us that we're reacting to what you want, particularly when looking to update older content, but more on that in a bit. Alongside updating older content, I also want to make sure for each update we're providing something new, sometimes that will be something really small, or in the case of Patch 5.2 something a bit bigger as you'll see in just a moment - but for every release I'm hoping we can provide you a fresh experience in some way.
It's important to note that these aren't DLC-level additions or changes, and while we have people dedicated to these updates (including me) the wider team is hard at work developing the DLCs that make these updates possible. Deciding what goes into each of these updates is very much centered around what players are asking for, but also what we have planned and are making in the future, and the feasibility of developing these ideas. For you as a player that could mean you see the number 2 and 3 things on your personal wishlist added, updated or fixed, but you wonder why we've not tackled number 1. That could be because we have plans to do it going forward elsewhere or because it's simply too difficult to tackle in one of these updates for any number of reasons - almost never because we're unaware or haven't seen your feedback. It's not an exaggeration to say that sometimes what might be number 1 on your wishlist may take the same effort as the 9 other items in your top 10, it's something we as developers are constantly grappling with and hopefully we can communicate why we choose to do certain things going forward (just as I will in this dev diary!)
The Content
Patch 5.2 will come with bug fixes and other smaller changes and additions, but primarily it has 4 major components (and a few surprises I won't mention here):
- A new feature for the Dwarfs - The Deeps
- A rework of the Chaos Cult feature
- A new small "global" feature – Unusual Locations
- An update to Cathay's Ivory Road feature
In the spirit of this being a developer diary I'll go through the top 3 today as those are what I've been developing, but for the Ivory Road update you can expect changes that bring it more in line with the Chaos Dwarfs convoys feature.
You likely know this already but what you're about to see is a work in progress - all text, art, balancing…well in-fact pretty much everything you see is not only possible to change, but at this stage quite likely to. We're showing you things a bit earlier than we normally would, hopefully you enjoy that but do keep in mind it comes with more caveats! Oh, and if you're wondering why there are pink icons in places, it's what we use as our placeholder while our artists are hard at work, and its bright pink so it's super obvious!
The Deeps - New Dwarf Feature
"Dwarfs? They just had an update!" That's what you're thinking, yes I can read minds, and as I mentioned I'll give you some idea of why we choose what we do: in this case there was a fair amount of feedback for Dwarfs based on their last update that some consider their overall playstyle to be fairly aggressive and focused on an expansionist or "wide" playstyle. Not too surprising given this is Total War after all, but it is a fair point that the fantasy of Dwarfs is a more defensive and "tall" one (trying my hardest to avoiding any short jokes here...).
Ultimately the aim with this feature is to provide more opportunity for playing taller, perhaps investing more in fewer settlements and making what you do have tougher to take, and the best thing is, if you want to keep doing what you're doing this feature is optional! It really is playstyle dependent, and I like to think this feature rounds off one of the last rough edges of Dwarfs and we wanted to take this chance to do that before we move on to other areas of the game.
So what's the feature all about? All Dwarf factions will have access to "The Deeps", essentially the deeper locations in their holds. In gameplay terms these provide you more room to build with extra building slots and a completely separate building tree that allows a few different bits of gameplay with things you can't do with your traditional building options - there are some limiting factors though and heavy investment is required to develop your Deeps, this isn't just a pure power spike for the Dawi.
You'll gain access to the Deeps in any settlement you own by constructing the "Great Gate", the entrance that links the surface world with the Deeps. It's important to note though, digging to such depths is costly and time consuming, you're going to need permission from the High King to be expending such resources, and you'll need to develop your existing Deeps locations before you can expand to more. Belegar and Thorgrim have a small bonus in this regard though, Belegar because he's already received permission to go reconquer Eight Peaks, and Thorgrim because he is the High King, duh!
Below you can see the building tree of the Deeps, I won't go through every building, but I'll show you a couple of cool ones. Before that though eagle eyed viewers will notice the build slots appear blocked, and that is because they are! There are a number of quirks involved with expanding downwards, notably "Blocked Tunnels" which need to be dealt with (again there are trade-offs to using the feature!). There are also some stranger things you can discover in the Deeps, but I'll leave those for you to find...
Just two of the building choices you'll have include the Guild Foundries for those who (like me) enjoy a nice bit of turtling, and also you can now seal your hold to become the most defensive stubborn little settlement in all of the Old World, just as it should be, good luck displacing a sufficiently annoyed Dwarf.
I'll leave it at that as a top-level overview of the Deeps, be sure to look out for more details in our patch notes for this update. Hopefully you're excited to give the feature a go!
Chaos Cults - Feature Rework
We just saw something new with the Deeps feature and as I mentioned earlier we're looking to both add and update where possible. So next up we'll talk about the rework of the Chaos Cults feature coming in Patch 5.2. Worth noting before we jump in, everything you see applies to all 4 Chaos Gods who utilize Cults.
Why Chaos Cults? Well, we've seen a lot of feedback on Cults since their inception in WARHAMMER III's release, and in truth they never really hit the mark. There's a number of things I'd highlight as the cornerstones of the issues; availability, interactivity and usefulness - let's go through each of those.
Availability of Cults was an issue because the requirements of high corruption to spawn a Cult was too difficult to achieve just in general, but also even harder to specifically target locations with corruption if there was somewhere in particular you wanted Cults to appear. We're tackling this by doing away with the corruption trigger of Cults entirely, and instead the method of spreading Cults will now be the Cultist agent for all of the Chaos factions - this was how it worked for Slaanesh before and it's just the optimal gameplay to be honest so it's present for everyone now! Ultimately the fantasy is that Cults create the corruption, not the other way around.
You'll see all Cultists now have the "Establish Chaos Cult" agent action, but there's also something extra - the Cult Magus. The Cult Magus is a new campaign-only version of the Cultist agent, and they can create special Cult locations that have extra building options and innate benefits - like all other campaign-only agents they'll disappear when using their agent action, as you can imagine the Cult Magus is now managing the Cult he's just established so you can't reuse him. You'll get a new Cult Magus from establishing and sufficiently developing a standard Chaos Cult.
The design for the interactivity level of Cults clearly erred on the side of passiveness at release - spawning them was largely out of your hands and once established not much could dislodge them. We've flipped that on its head to make them more interactive both when using them and indeed when they're used against you. It'll be no surprise we do this with the Discoverability feature first used with the Skaven Under-Cities. Essentially building more makes you more discoverable to the region owner, with certain buildings making you more or less discoverable, some revealing you instantly and others simply destroying the Cult. As the region owner you can discover Cults in the usual ways, with agents or buildings - and once a Cult is discovered it can be removed in the usual way.
The usefulness of the existing Cults was hit or miss, certain building options were great, others less so. Cults now have more than doubled in their building choices, and they also come with 2 slots instead of 1 (or 3 in the case of a Cult established by a Magus). The buildings are broken down into 4 categories, the machinations of a cult focused more on ongoing benefit from the cult's presence, corruption which is of course focused on corrupting the region, rituals which are focused on providing one off benefits usually resulting in destruction or discovery of the cult, and finally the Cult Magus' unique building options which come with a ritual that is stronger than all others and the Cult Magus chambers which can help hide your cult. Below you can see the Tzeentch Cult buildings - obviously ignore the missing icon issues!
All Cults now have access to the teleportation ritual, previously only Khorne could do this, but it was one of the few people really enjoyed so now it’s available for everyone. There are 36 buildings across all Cults, too many to show here, but in general you'll see Tzeentch focused on his many tricks and Grimoires, Khorne on war, killing and Skulls, Slaanesh on seduction of course, and Nurgle on plagues and how to benefit more from them. Some examples of the building choices:
That's a brief overview of the Chaos Cult rework. Cults are an interesting design challenge so let us know if you have new ideas for what Cults can offer, as we can always make additions or changes in future updates based on how players are using them.
Unusual Locations - New Mini Feature
This last feature is something small, something a bit different and unlike what we've done elsewhere in the game - it's also the section you're least going to want spoilers for as you can discover the content yourselves through your campaigns!
So what is it? Well, I'm a huge fan of worldbuilding content in games, especially if they have lore as rich as Warhammer's does, and from a gameplay perspective I've always wanted to make the world feel a bit more alive - this is hopefully a start to doing more for both of those things (and I want to keep working on those going forward).
With the addition of this feature there are now various unique, and perhaps strange, locations that can appear at your settlements, some will be Cults, some various Orders, or perhaps something entirely different - none of them linked to any existing factions. They'll situate themselves at your settlement as a building at various points throughout your campaign, and all come with effects and in many cases trade-offs, events, traits, items, or otherwise. Something akin to landmarks but bringing more interactivity, uniqueness, and flavour to your campaigns.
Certain instances of these Unusual Locations will only appear in certain places; others can appear in many places and you'll be able to remove them if you want much like you can other unwanted visitors. There are 20 in total so far, and I'd like to add more going forward, as this batch are mostly focused on the Old World and the races therein. I'll leave you with two simpler examples just so you have a rough idea of what to expect.
In the first example you've discovered the grave of a Grail Knight, well-kept and providing some relief of corruption in the nearby area - those who visit the site to pay their respects may gain a unique trait. The second example sees you having to make a decision as one involved in the politics of the Empire - this Cult clearly offers benefits, if you're willing to manage its corrupting influence.
Here’s a couple more icons as a teaser, I won’t spoil what they are exactly but will instead let you all speculate until release!
My hope with this content is that as you're going about your business playing your campaigns, every now and then you'll come across something unique or interesting to deal with and to distract you if only for a moment from your more traditional gameplay. I think the more we can have that happen the better, as it will provide more variety to your experiences.
Shaping Future Updates
Hopefully you've enjoyed this overview of the some of the main content coming in Patch 5.2 and hopefully it's as exciting for all of you as it is for us. For me personally it's been a blast making it, and I'm looking forward to speaking to you all more going forward with our future updates - let us know if you want more developer diaries in this format!
I mentioned at the start you can help us shape our future updates, so how can you do that? It's pretty simple really, we have a wonderful team here at Creative Assembly who are dedicated to gathering your feedback from all platforms where you share it. It may not always be visible, but I can promise you it does reach us developers. We will continue looking to action the feedback that you present us with, through our updates, fixes, and improvements - but of course with the caveat of development feasibility that I mentioned earlier. If you'd like to share your thoughts on what you want to see next then please do, you can do this in any number of places such as our official forums and the Total War Discord, though our teams are everywhere and they see it all eventually.
Thanks so much for reading! I look forward to when you can get your hands on Patch 5.2, and in particular to seeing your comments and feedback, on not only this update but future ones too.
Cheers,
Mitch Heastie
Design Director – Total War
