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Blood Bowl III released last night (Brutal Edition - those who paid extra to get it two days early ).

I've bounced off the tabletop version of this game a few times - it seems to check all my boxes (no measurement, fast play, tactics based) but involves a lot of record keeping and just seems hard to break into. I've been waiting for the digital version using the current rules to hopefully get into it!

So, who is playing, or who will be in two days? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! From reading playtest and early comments, I know it's buggy, but wondering much more about how it plays, if it's faithful to the tabletop version, etc

Eh. I knew it was happening, but didn't want to rebuy 2 after BB1, and wasn't sure that this would be any different, beyond starting over with fewer teams.

Does it have a decent dice log this time? Is there a roadmap for the pile of DLC?

There is a roadmap, and is a good reason why you don't print roadmaps... I saw it and immediately thought I should wait...

Oh, oh wow. Haha. Just looked that up.

https://i.redd.it/wqttua7y1dja1.png

New season passes every three months introducing 1 new faction and some basic game features. Rejoin games will take 6 months? Readability optimization will take 3? Pausing? Its... turned based still, right?

What a gak-show. No wonder this title was so quiet.
Nope.




Also:
https://www.pcgamer.com/blood-bowl-3-is-a-hot-mess-and-not-just-because-of-its-game-breaking-bugs/

Utter disaster.

Oh no! That does not sound good >.<

It's like an early access game or a paid beta at this point in time. It was not ready to be released at all.The potential is still there, but at the moment BB2 is the better game. The controls for BB3 are clunky and unintuitive (not sure if that's the case on PC, i'm on ps5). I'd wait at least 3-6 months before considering buying this.

Thanks for the tip,Thargrim!! I downloaded Blood Bowl 2 instead, and it's awesome!

Works great on Steam Deck, too, although I had to force it to launch with Proton (just an option under settings in the Steam interface) and use a Community Layout for controls.

Thanks again

Voss wrote:
Oh, oh wow. Haha. Just looked that up.

https://i.redd.it/wqttua7y1dja1.png

New season passes every three months introducing 1 new faction and some basic game features. Rejoin games will take 6 months? Readability optimization will take 3? ?

So, the official release is tomorrow, but real BB rules get added in May, then August, and then 'updated rules from the boardgame' in November. Come back for the actual release then, it seems.
I hope the 'updated' rules are not just anything realesed since the starter set.

Pausing? Its... turned based still, right?

The main game is stated as being "A turn-based strategy game". If there is a Blitz mode like in BB2, I expect it refers to that. Was that multiplayer, or just solo? The networking coding might be too fiddly, and they dropped it from release to get out out of the door.

 Skinnereal wrote:

Voss wrote:
Oh, oh wow. Haha. Just looked that up.

https://i.redd.it/wqttua7y1dja1.png

New season passes every three months introducing 1 new faction and some basic game features. Rejoin games will take 6 months? Readability optimization will take 3? ?

So, the official release is tomorrow, but real BB rules get added in May, then August, and then 'updated rules from the boardgame' in November. Come back for the actual release then, it seems.
I hope the 'updated' rules are not just anything realesed since the starter set.

Pausing? Its... turned based still, right?

The main game is stated as being "A turn-based strategy game". If there is a Blitz mode like in BB2, I expect it refers to that. Was that multiplayer, or just solo? The networking coding might be too fiddly, and they dropped it from release to get out out of the door.

What i take from this roadmap is 'Come back Christmas 2023 for a complete game' - Pausing? Basic Readability options? Resuming Games? These are not 'nice add-ons' to have 6-9 months after release, but pretty basic parts of even games that are 5 or 10 years old... Looks like an early cash-in on what amounts to an open beta at best.

I'd expect the price of making games is going up, and the shareholders are forcing them out to get the money in to keep writing the.
See Cyberpunk 2077 and other for that.

Cross-platform looks to be an easy-drop option. 40k: Darktide still doesn't have it, AFAIK

 Skinnereal wrote:
I'd expect the price of making games is going up, and the shareholders are forcing them out to get the money in to keep writing the.
See Cyberpunk 2077 and other for that.

Cross-platform looks to be an easy-drop option. Darktime still doesn't have it, AFAIK

It's all about engineering a predictable stream of cash - unlike the old model of 'Sell a complete game on date X for unpredictable amounts of cash' the distributors now want to catch people with a low-ish buy-in and repeated transaction either via in-game stores or season pass models, preferably both. It nicely smoothes out the cash flow and shifts risk away from your couple of launch weeks, instead distributing it over longer periods of time. If your sales don't match expectations in the launch model, you're mostly frakked, if your sales start to drop in a season model you can either turn up the marketing, do some sales or events, or cancel the remaining seasons and can still come out modestly ahead.

Its surprising how inconsistent that is, though.

I'm not particularly interested in Shadow of Mordor: Wizarding edition, but I was still shocked when the Hogwarts Legacy devs announced that there aren't plans for DLC. My impression was the customer base had already lined up with their wallets, waiting.

Really, I'm feeling burnt out on the DLC model. Covid didn't help with the games industry, but I'm really tired of waiting for a finished product. The Assassin's Creed Valhalla announcement of the last patch actually raised my interest in that game. Its done now, so its safe for purchase... if I want it.

Now that it's fully out and can be reviewed, it's pulling in a 23% review score on Steam! Not sure I've ever seen a major release like this that low

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1016950/Blood_Bowl_3/

So yeah, good call on suggesting going with BB2, instead

This game needs to crash hard so companies don't get the idea that games missing key features are the future.

M.

I played BB3 yesterday, and had few niggles, no bugs.
The AI stalled and 'thought' for about a minute about what to move in 2 turns. It never timed out though, as once it got playing that turn, it got done quickly (as AIs (ugh, dirty word) can).

It really needs polish.
And I am not saying there are no bugs, but I didn't experience any, in the single game I played.

They sell a $7 skin for an Ogre that has a bad 2D animated flame element.

Seven dollars.

And buying it doesn't get you that cosmetic for any Ogre, it just gives you one. You can use it on any Ogre you might have, but only ever once at a time. Want two of them like that and you have to buy it again.

There are, I believe, 6 points of customisation per player. The basic items cost 75c each, for one. So that's roughly US$4.50 per player. Say you have 16 players, so that's US$72 to outfit your team so that they aren't all identical clones! And how many teams can one have at any given time? And, again, keep in mind, buying these cosmetics doesn't unlock them, it gives you a finite amount.

And the other teams that have yet to be released have been datamined - they're "on disc DLC" that's in the game already, but isn't available until you give up $$$.

I hope this game fails. I hope this game fails so hard the miscreants who made these idiotic, dishonest and predatory decisions are black listed in the gaming industry.

See I can understand parcelling out content in DLC and even day one DLC elements. Even back in the "Golden" days of the 90s there were game elements developed for expansions in the core game (Diablo 2 I think has two or three parts of additional characters that were never released in its files somewhere).

That said when you add all the different parts together. The glitchy launch; the lack of effective updates from the beta; the insane DLC decoration policy*; the reduced core content etc... Added all together it reeks of a game that was not polished nor invested in enough to be ready for launch and was loaded to the hilt with monetizing tactics.

The sad thing is if they'd invested LESS in the monetizing; put a few more factions in the core game and responded to beta feedback they would liekly have earned way more

Yet again the monetizing greed blinds upper suits to the fact that monetizing only ever works on a solid core product.

Heck there's regular reports that even those buying the DLC are finding that there's a bug which causes your purchased cosmetics to vanish once equipped to a player.


*which honestly feels more like an MMO RPG character type of deal than a turnbased game with some decorative features.

That roadmap is just amazingly trash. It's literally just basic features that should be in the base game parcelled out over nine months.

It's like they genuinely forgot that to have a popular game and sell DLCs over time the base game needs to be good. It's extremely obvious this was never going to work. It's like whoever made these decisions was brand new to the industry and didn't do any research.

Or the only game they played was DLC Quest

https://store.steampowered.com/app/230050/DLC_Quest/

 Overread wrote:
See I can understand parcelling out content in DLC and even day one DLC elements. Even back in the "Golden" days of the 90s there were game elements developed for expansions in the core game (Diablo 2 I think has two or three parts of additional characters that were never released in its files somewhere).

I remember the additional classes that technically weren't part of Diablo (I believe you could access them after the Hellfire expansion came out - Barbarian and Bard, I believe, were two of them, back when the only classes were Warrior, Rogue, Mage and the expansion Monk) but cut or unfinished content is very difficult to feature-complete aspects of the game that's right there on the disc (so to speak) but completely locked out without additional purchase.

And that's how you can tell these games are nothing but money siphons for stupid people. The upcoming Suicide Squad from Rocksteady is the same thing. The store works on day one, but many of the core features don't. I even think back to that aborted attempt at a 40k MMO. You better believe the cash store worked before the game did, with its $30 bolter skins and other such nonsense. Who cares if the game was scarcely functional - please just buy more stuff!!!

It's a shame because I enjoyed BB1 and 2 although I didn't play much of 2.

I don't see a way in which games won't be like this in the future really.

Here's the thing the solid core rolling DLC pattern works for gamers and developers well. Paradox are honestly fantastic for this.

If the game keeps getting healthy sales they keep adding DLC to the packet. The result is massive games like Crusader Kings 2. Another great example from another studio is Warhammer Total War which has the biggest roster of unique (visual and mechanical) factions of any RTS game since probably the 2D sprite era of gaming.


Again there are ways that it can work for both sides.



Having all of the DLC/micro elements and none of the core game functionality though is NEVER going to properly work. Yes there are examples of games that launched in terrible states that then got fixed up. However in almost all those cases its an insane amount of work and means the company has to fight every step of the way to survive. It's rare to make it to the end and much more common that a LOT of refund requests (which cost to process) and a lot of bad publicity will kill the game and often as not the developer company behind it.

Bought it. Tried it. Refunded it.

It's not... bad per-say, but the fact that "you can earn cosmetics etc. through gameplay, but not just yet. But you can buy them right now!" even crossed their mind as a good idea was what caused me to ditch it. I'll quite likely buy it in a year when they've had a good, long think about what they did.

 Graphite wrote:
Bought it. Tried it. Refunded it.

It's not... bad per-say, but the fact that "you can earn cosmetics etc. through gameplay, but not just yet. But you can buy them right now!" even crossed their mind as a good idea was what caused me to ditch it. I'll quite likely buy it in a year when they've had a good, long think about what they did.

It's like Darktide all over again - serious bugs and limited core gameplay on release day, but the cosmetics store and assorted nickle-and-dime things worked just fine, including carefully crafted high-pressure-tactic things like rotating discount sets and so on. It may not even be related, i.e. totally different teams work on each, but it just looks sleazy and cash-grabby right out of the box.

After reading several articles about the dumpster fire that is BB3 I checked on the Xbox store and the Legendary Edition of BB2 was only $6.

Kind of annoyed that the campaign doesn't let you play the team of your choice but other than that $6 for all the teams, arenas, and individuals seemed like a better way to go than the new one.

So, what do you guys think - any hope on the horizon, or is this pretty much DOA?

Or maybe just on life support and not likely to be resuscitated until next year...?

Well as far as DOA goes, this caught my eye today:
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-warhammer-games-every-warhammer-game-ranked/

It includes some very tangential 'warhammer fantasy' games.
BB3 barely makes it to #21 on the list (of 29) and barely squeaks ahead of the mobile game sequel, Warhammer Quest 2, and falls behind 1991's HeroQuest.

The most notable aspect is BB3's write up is in past tense. The top 3 are in present tense and two of those three are 5/6 years old.

They backtracked on cosmetics. Now you buy one and it's unlimited, not one use on one guy at a time.

Of course, they still released a game that came with with a fully armed and operational real money store before basic features were ready to go, so screw 'em.

 RiTides wrote:
So, what do you guys think - any hope on the horizon, or is this pretty much DOA?

Or maybe just on life support and not likely to be resuscitated until next year...?

Honestly right now I'd say its dead.

Now they can salvage it if they want. It sounds like they have already started by giving people cosmetics that apply for more than one character. However they've a lot of basic core features to add; and a lot of community ground to rebuild not to mention likely changing some of their monetizing systems to be far less predatory.

They could do it, I've seen worse games get polished up to a good standard.
I've also seen games just as bad that never got fixed up or took so long that everyone moved on even once it was fixed; or games that limp on for ages but never get anywhere and some where the developer works on it for a bit then (either quietly or openly) drops it).

A big part is how the publisher end handles things and the company's cash-flow. If they can maintain operational cashflow and have good projections for sales after they fix things then they might be ok; however if the launch was what they were banking on and its backfired hard; then they could end up having to close support and move on or close down entirely because they lack the capital and investment potential to secure enough finances to keep the lights on.

Ugh >.<

Thanks again for the input guys... saved me the money buying this, just a shame since I was looking forward to it for years!