Hey folks,
The time has come for us to talk more about what’s coming to Total War: WARHAMMER III in Patch 6.1, and today we have one of our talented Designers here to shed some light on the changes and additions you can expect to see when it arrives in mid March.
Before we hand over the mic, we’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has opted in to our Campaign AI Beta on Steam over the past few weeks. We’ve had some great feedback that we’re already hard at work parsing through, and will be closing this current round of Beta testing this Friday 28th February at 11:00 GMT. The Beta feedback survey will remain open until Sunday 2nd March at 21:00 GMT, so if you haven’t already, please do take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us and have your voice heard to help shape the future of Campaign AI. We’ll be in touch in the near future with an update on our next steps, and hopefully set a date for the next Beta round.
With that said, it’s time to hand over to Will to talk more about what’s coming with 6.1 in mid March. Enjoy!
— Steve Coleman // Senior Community Manager
Patch 6.1 Dev Blog
Greetings!
This time around you get me, William Håkestad, Game Designer, here to talk about the upcoming content for the 6.1 patch.
So up front, let’s talk why. Alongside the release of 6.1 we’re planning to change how Shadows of Change is sold by splitting the three Legendary Lords into standalone packs that can either be purchased individually or as a bundle. So we’re taking this opportunity to also revisit a pain point that was raised with the original release.
One of the consistent messages we heard loud and clear from the community was that not enough attention had been given to the existing content in lieu of new content. So we’re taking a crack at equalizing that a bit now.
As a heads up, each of the pieces of content in this article are at various stages of development, which limits what we can say confidently or what images we have to show for specific features. And the specifics are liable to change as we continue to chisel out what works, what doesn’t work and what our code department will let us maverick Designers get away with.
Kislev
Our headliner for this content drop is Kislev, who we identified as the most in need of a deep review and rethink.
Our focus here is on uplifting the entirety of Kislev, interrogating their core features and bringing them up to snuff, rather than focusing on a specific faction or character. So without too much preamble.
Court & Orthodoxy
Up front, the supporter race is no more. When we started looking at how we wanted to approach Kislev in a 2.0 core feature set, we concluded that we want to wipe the slate clean, keep the themes and ideas intact but shed the baggage of the existing system. The core of the new feature is still building support for the two dominant institutions within Kislev, but the end goal and process are significantly changed.
Work in progress!
In the new system, you will accrue support for either side of the conflict via a variety of actions, including fielding relevant units, using thematically aligned agents, constructing buildings and dedicating your atamans. As you raise your support, you will receive boons from these major factions, presenting you a secondary progression mechanic that lets you get powerful benefits.
Curry favour with the Orthodoxy to improve your common line troops, strengthen your economy and improve your invocations. And support the Ice court in order to improve your elite infantry, spellcasting and hero usage.
A key change here however is that this is no longer a race, instead supporting only one side of the conflict can cause rising unrest, and invite disorder into Kislev. In the face of the growing threat of chaos, Kislev must seek unity. Therefore players are encouraged to balance the support they curry for each of the factions, you may favor one, but favoring them too strongly incurs the wrath of the other.
Devotion
Another aspect of the Kislev feature set we’re taking a crack at. Devotion is moving from a factionwide resource to a provincial one, replacing Control for Kislev. Representing the fervor of the local populace, it acts much like Control, but can be spent on local invocations to temporarily boost the local province, or to empower an army temporarily. A core tenet of the Kislev approach is that they are strongest at home, and prefer well settled core territories.
A high level of Devotion also allows Kislev to counteract the penalties of climates, allowing them significant settling flexibility, in exchange for a slow ramp up to suitability, and making the territory unsuitable for using invocations (as these would immediately make the province take climate penalties again.)
(All pictures in this article are WIP and do not represent the final product!)
Atamans
While the core idea of atamans is strong, we felt like we could go further. So here’s a shortlist of things we’re looking at for atamans.
Ataman’s can no longer be permanently recruited onto the campaign map as a standard lord to lead an army.
We felt this muddied their identity as garrison commanders and didn’t fit the spirit of the feature.
Atamans now enable a new feature for settlements, tentatively called “Garrison Sally Attack” where you can command settlements managed by them to engage enemies within a limited distance, as if the settlements themselves were armies. Of course, the capital of the province is lead by the Ataman himself, who takes the field with the garrison during this attack.
Ataman’s now have a unique battle loadout, dropping the offensive dual weapon loadout of the standard boyar for a more staunch shield, axe and pistol kit.
Ataman’s now have a skill tree, and gain experience while administrating settlements, allowing them to improve their governing, strengthen their garrisons and dedicate themselves to the sects to improve your support.
Tech tree
The Kislev tech tree is getting a full refresh, being reorganized and revamped. Subdivided into a triplet layout centered around three core gameplay pillars of Kislev.
Our goal here is to significantly open up your choices, making Kislev have a quite open and navigable tech tree, with many possible starts and short paths to end of the line techs. With a variety of new and improved technologies.
Staunch!
Technology is no longer locked behind owning the Kislev capitals. As we felt this heavily incentivized early infighting in Kislev.
Tzeentch - Fragments of Sorcery
While Kislev is our main offering in this patch, we’ve also got something for Tzeentch to chew on. Our focus this time around is on Kairos, who represents our intended standard Tzeentch experience. It’s clear to us that the original Fragments of Sorcery implementation wasn’t quite up to snuff. So here’s our take two.
From a gameplay angle, the feature needs little explanation. The core promise of the fragments of sorcery feature was versatility to build your own composite lore. And the design quickly narrowed in on a true “any combination you want” feature that completely did away with the idea of an ancillary slot, and moved the decision making to its own tab of the character detail panel.
While we’re at it, how about we draw back the curtain a bit and showcase how a feature is visually concepted. Following the core concepting and preliminary technical documentation, we start with what’s called a mockup. Usually the first ones are made by the feature designer, who puts together a visual focused primarily on functionality, to take to the UI/UX teams for refinement.
Not every first idea makes it past this phase, and a mockup is particularly helpful for considering the hypothetical UX flow of a feature. For example, here is the first mockup of the hypothetical build a lore panel for Kairos. Hold onto your pants.
Can you believe I never put “amazing technical artist” on my CV?
Obviously, while this outlines a lot of technical requirements for the feature, it also highlights the flaws of a design translated from the original technical specs perhaps a bit too closely. Information overload is saying it lightly. But a little bit of refinement goes a long way.
The second take, after I was done wincing at the first mockup, looked like this.
This core idea of matching the visuals of the in-battle spell wheel struck a cord, and the combination of the technical specs and this mockup went to UI/UX, who quickly whipped up our first graybox.
These grayboxes are interactive, and can be used to trial the intended flow, letting us pretend to use the feature in a controlled environment to see how it feels to navigate.
Happy with the overall direction, we moved the feature to sketch the layout including investigating our art direction.
We prototyped a couple different visual styles.
But this idea of a massive central eye watching your cursor was a bit of visual flair we never let go.
Early versions of the selection interface.
Everything is a process, and at each stage, stakeholders from design and UI came together to weigh in on the direction. Keeping the things we liked and discarding or improving the things we didn’t.
Here you can see one of the key feedback points being handled, making the holders for the spell icons feel more integrated in the outer ring.
The twin heads of Kairos know 4 lores a piece, and the UI is designed to evoke this bit of lore.
The selection wheel is rendered both without any elements and fully loaded.
Why not the Changeling?
The Changeling is a complicated topic, we've been keeping an eye on a lot of the discussion surrounding him (and have had some pretty intense ones internally!) but here's where we stand today.
The Changeling has resonated strongly with people in both negative and positive ways, we've seen a lot of intense discussion surrounding topics like challenge and what a campaign needs to have in order to be a "Total War" campaign (a fascinating topic in itself!). But while the conversation has very passionate people calling for significant change, the consensus isn't so clear.
We see his fans, the people who revel in the departure from the regular structure of a campaign and the freedom from typical threats and concerns. We also have to respect the data, which shows us that he sits close to a 50/50 split on play rate with Kairos, and that he enjoys regular, middle of the road popularity on new campaign pick rates.
Internally, we've taken to calling him a "marmite" faction, you love him or hate him. And we've decided that for 6.1, we'll be leaving things as they are for the changeling, not every campaign can be for everyone.
Does this mean we'll never change the changeling? (Pun somewhat intended)
Probably not, he's a bit of a wildcard and there's definitely some rough edges to deal with, but we felt that for 6.1, our focus should be on raising the elements that make Kairos unique. Instead of risking losing the magic that makes the Changeling work for his fans.
This isn't an end to the conversation, and we'd love for those passionate discussions to continue, rest assured that we read them and discuss them.
Free units
And as a further little goodie for this patch, we’ve also got a pair of new units for you to enjoy.
Usually, if there’s an army book image or an early concept, we use that as the placeholder image for the unit.
Unfortunately, this time around you get more of my beautiful art.
Nan-Gau Grenadiers
For Cathay, who was part of the original Shadows of Change, we have a new human unit to add some specialist tools to your army building. The Nan-Gau Grenadiers are a relatively cheap grenade slinging infantry, vulnerable due to their lower entity count but armed with a significant stockpile of grenades to disrupt and destroy massed enemies. They also carry a specialist Stun Grenade, which (at a baseline!) allows them to significantly impair the combat ability of all enemy units in a large radius once per battle.
The Grenadiers move around the battlefield, supporting allied troops with stun bombs and scattering infantry with volleys of grenades.
Gnoblar Flingers
Hailing from the same Gnoblar Army List that gave us the Pigback Riders for Omens of Destruction, the Gnoblar Flingers are a cheap, weak ranged unit for the Ogres, that engage at significantly longer ranged than the hand thrown weapons of the trappers.
Most akin to a Skavenslave slinger (if by the barest smidge, a little braver) these malicious Gnoblars exist to harass enemy units from the safety of the back line. Particularly adept at annoying brave halberd units who eschew a shield in order to take on the large Ogre threats this faction normally fields.
Afterword
And that’s about it, I hope you enjoyed some insight into the things we’re looking at for 6.1. This article doesn’t cover everything being changed. (we’re looking at some further minor tweaks to a couple things such as the Ice Court character recruitment feature.) But it showcases our major hits.
We hope to get this content to you soon, and are excited to read your thoughts.
— William Håkestad // Game Designer
