Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin RTS discussion

[Gitzdee]

Ah k thanks. Didnt see any console reviews on metacritic so i figured it wasnt released yet.

[Baron Klatz]

On 11/22/2023 at 12:06 PM, Gitzdee said:

Ah k thanks. Didnt see any console reviews on metacritic so i figured it wasnt released yet.

Yeah I think they’re waiting for the physical editions to drop in February.

Which does seem to be their big product market as GameSensor has the game grossing at $800,000 on PC sales alone at 20,000 players which going by Steam & Crossplay only a small percentage are PC players(1500).

 

Did an impressive $700,000 in 3 days too.

https://gamesensor.info/news/warhammer_age_of_sigmar_realms_of_ruin_sales_three_days_on_steam
 

https://gamesensor.info/app/1844380
 

In other news, Frontier will soon be putting out a major patch to fix several main issues people have been experiencing(they already patched the console bugs)

Interesting reviews & gameplay by the former CA employee who went by Simone & Cody Bonds

And just a fun fight here

 

Also this guy is doing faction break downs that seem pretty good. Give them some clicks.

 

Lastly Pete the Wargamer shows how to kitbash your own Sigrun! ⛈️ 

 

Plus Vincent is having fun with the painter

 

Also Frontier have been asking for people’s custom maps to show on Twitter. If y’all have some fun ones but no Twitter account I’ll post them there for you and give credit.  
 

Edit: just rose to $900,000 one day after I posted that.

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by Baron Klatz

[CommissarRotke]

On 11/25/2023 at 2:13 PM, Baron Klatz said:

Also Frontier have been asking for people’s custom maps to show on Twitter. If y’all have some fun ones but no Twitter account I’ll post them there for you and give credit.  

you know i got so excited for the devs' map tool, then after loading it up realized that meant a minimum time spent to learn how to use it 😅

[The Lost Sigmarite]

Just saw this.

https://www.ign.com/articles/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-realms-of-ruin-flops-frontier-shares-tank-nearly-20

Also they're right, the Steam reviews have gotten from positive to mixed. What the hell happened ?

[Baron Klatz]

16 minutes ago, The Lost Sigmarite said:

Just saw this.

https://www.ign.com/articles/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-realms-of-ruin-flops-frontier-shares-tank-nearly-20

Also they're right, the Steam reviews have gotten from positive to mixed. What the hell happened ?

Very angry RTS fans wanting Dawn of War 1 clone. You can see the majority of the negative reviews bashing on it for not having base building.

This is in part why RTS is niche because the fanbase is volatile as heck(and this comes from some who has been in strategy game forums & mod projects for well over a decade and a half.

Smart move would’ve been to also wait to release the game in Summer instead of November as a majority of players are going to holiday sales instead.

example from Reddit today:

”I wanted to get it as someone who is new to the RTS genre and Warhammer, but it also released in November which might be the busiest time of the year for someone who loves video games. If it had released during the summer, it might have been more convenient but I could be alone in that.”

It’s a poor situation but at least Frontier has gone on to say they’re going to continue support and try building up sales with more content(which yeah, they love DLC’s)

Also they just dropped the new patch today:

 

Edited November 27, 2023 by Baron Klatz

[CommissarRotke]

1 hour ago, The Lost Sigmarite said:

Just saw this.

https://www.ign.com/articles/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-realms-of-ruin-flops-frontier-shares-tank-nearly-20

Also they're right, the Steam reviews have gotten from positive to mixed. What the hell happened ?

i'll take the censor L for this, but god ****** dammit am I absolutely sick of "success" for games, movies, and TV now REQUIRING this ****** immediate full court sweep or else it's a complete loss. things are just straight up not allowed to exist outside of the initial 2-week release for games/movies and 1-month streaming for shows.

edit: oh look what the top comment of that article is saying, glad I'm not theonly one sick of it. the article itself also states Frontier's issues have been building up so the headline feels like a misleading correlation.

Edited November 27, 2023 by CommissarRotke

[The Lost Sigmarite]

1 hour ago, CommissarRotke said:

edit: oh look what the top comment of that article is saying, glad I'm not theonly one sick of it. the article itself also states Frontier's issues have been building up so the headline feels like a misleading correlation.

Remember, it's IGN, pretty much says everything there is to know about the article's quality.

[Baron Klatz]

57 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

edit: oh look what the top comment of that article is saying, glad I'm not theonly one sick of it. the article itself also states Frontier's issues have been building up so the headline feels like a misleading correlation.

Yeah, the article (and now Reddit posts) make it sound like the 20% shares lost was all on RoR but it’s because they already had several games with poor launch sales this year + a lot of layoffs because like other companies they over-hired during quarantine.

It’s just not been Frontier’s year in general.

 

Also agreed, we’ve tons of examples of games with bad launches that pulled themselves up after years to become really decent(Cyberpunk, No Man’s Sky, etc) which you can even put the first releases of the Dawn of War series in that category.

Gamers only think in very short term though(even backwards with how much they’ll bash AAA games because they fell to 1k players after being out for 4 years).

 

But all in all we need to see how things play out next year. Physical releases + more hero packs + AoS4 hype + whatever more content they have planned for the long term support.

RoR can fight its way up just like AoS did. 💪 ⛈️ 

[CommissarRotke]

another one

https://www.wargamer.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-realms-of-ruin/doesnt-deserve-hate

[Overread]

On 11/27/2023 at 5:05 PM, Baron Klatz said:

Very angry RTS fans wanting Dawn of War 1 clone. You can see the majority of the negative reviews bashing on it for not having base building.

This is in part why RTS is niche because the fanbase is volatile as heck(and this comes from some who has been in strategy game forums & mod projects for well over a decade and a half.

Smart move would’ve been to also wait to release the game in Summer instead of November as a majority of players are going to holiday sales instead.

example from Reddit today:

”I wanted to get it as someone who is new to the RTS genre and Warhammer, but it also released in November which might be the busiest time of the year for someone who loves video games. If it had released during the summer, it might have been more convenient but I could be alone in that.”

It’s a poor situation but at least Frontier has gone on to say they’re going to continue support and try building up sales with more content(which yeah, they love DLC’s)

 

Thing is come the summer the market is less saturated because everyone has gone outside. Right now is the height of the market for a lot of indoor/geek hobbies in terms of people being a captive audience. So its a double edged sword - everyone else is flooding the market too ;but your customers are also the most active right now. 

 

As for the game, my impression off the demo isn't just that it "lacks base building". It's that it just fundamentally isn't fun compared to other RTS games on PC. Again I come back to the point that the game is made for consoles and they've honestly made it well for consoles. The problem is that RTS for Console and RTS for PC are fundamentally different beasts. Slower unit movement into combat; simpler combat setup during fights; auto locking close combat and a bunch of other things (including map design) all favour a slower and less responsive controller control scheme; rather than a faster mouse and keyboard. 

I tried the demo and it just wasn't engaging nor fun. It ran well (got a bit chopping zoomed in though, but likely would be patched out with post launch optimising patches); it looks pretty; things like the photo mode in the level editor show that they really wanted to do well with this game. But fundamentally it feels more console rts/moba instead of pure pc rts. 

I think they were bold and brave to go for a console rts game and perhaps they'd have done better if it was a diablo style game instead of RTS. 

[Beliman]

7 hours ago, Overread said:

my impression off the demo isn't just that it "lacks base building". It's that it just fundamentally isn't fun compared to other RTS games on PC

Lucky you, most of this problems were fixe'd !

It's still a weird game, with some "unique" mechanics that you need to practice, a clunky macro with a lot of focus on micro.

I'm not completely sold with sword-shield-ranged. Even if it works, Imho, I want to see more unit variations, with better factions based on the options you have and not what they are missing (tzeentch being a good example).

[Tonhel]

I don't know if this was posted:

Link: https://www.eurogamer.net/planet-coaster-developer-frontier-refocusing-on-sims-after-low-sales-of-warhammer-rts

So I wouldn't expect anything for it anymore. I do love their Planet Zoo game. 

 

[SunStorm]

I was interested in the game, but I cannot justify spending £50 to buy something that I don't have the time to play right now. There are so many other big time-sink games that came out recently that are already competing with hobby time and RL duties.

Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077:Phantom Liberty, Starfield, etc all coming out close to it's release date I think has likely had an impact on sales. 

I'm likely to pick it up if it goes on sale next year in a quieter period. 

[Tonhel]

9 minutes ago, SunStorm said:

I was interested in the game, but I cannot justify spending £50 to buy something that I don't have the time to play right now. There are so many other big time-sink games that came out recently that are already competing with hobby time and RL duties.

Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077:Phantom Liberty, Starfield, etc all coming out close to it's release date I think has likely had an impact on sales. 

I'm likely to pick it up if it goes on sale next year in a quieter period. 

Yeah, to buy a game on Steam at full price it has to be exceptional like BG3, otherwise it's placed in the wishlist and I will maybe buy it when it is at 50-75% discount like most  games I buy on Steam. 59 euro is just way to much for a medicore RTS.

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Tonhel said:

I don't know if this was posted:

Link: https://www.eurogamer.net/planet-coaster-developer-frontier-refocusing-on-sims-after-low-sales-of-warhammer-rts

So I wouldn't expect anything for it anymore. I do love their Planet Zoo game. 

Sad to hear.

Not gonna lie, my main issue with the game is mainly the gameplay. Evertyhing seems to be from good to awesome: units, maps, campaign, modes, etc...

But the gameplay goes in the opposite direction of other RTS: no base builging, locked combats that you use resources to go away to your base, small roster of units, basic resources, small number of heroes without customization, clunky controls, etc...

I'm not saying that this is a bad approach, but it's risky and probably will turn away other RTS players. Being an AoS games means that there will be a community probably trash-talking about your game too.

 

Btw, the game is fun to play, it's that it requires a lot from the player to "click".

[Ejecutor]

1 hour ago, Tonhel said:

I don't know if this was posted:

Link: https://www.eurogamer.net/planet-coaster-developer-frontier-refocusing-on-sims-after-low-sales-of-warhammer-rts

So I wouldn't expect anything for it anymore. I do love their Planet Zoo game. 

 

I've hear as well someone in a whats app group saying that their plan to raise what they've earned from the game were payed DLCs focused on new factions. It is not the best case but those that enjoyed the game maybe get more content.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Ejecutor

[CommissarRotke]

3 hours ago, Tonhel said:

So I wouldn't expect anything for it anymore. I do love their Planet Zoo game. 

pretty sure the full meeting mentioned Realms of Ruin was still getting content, and GW would absolutely not hinge their AOS license on a developer that wouldn't provide post-release support.

[Tonhel]

48 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

pretty sure the full meeting mentioned Realms of Ruin was still getting content, and GW would absolutely not hinge their AOS license on a developer that wouldn't provide post-release support.

There is content and content. There will be dlcs that probably add a unit here or there, or a couple of reskins, maybe a new map. Stuff like that (easy money), but real expansions that add new armies and etc.. I don't think so. The game flopped or atleast the initial release.
Their focus will be back on sims. Planet Zoo is an amazing game, so I have no problem that the focus is again in that direction.

This seems clear to me:

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Tonhel

[CommissarRotke]

if adding new units still requires rigging new skeletons, I don't really see why new factions are off the table. I think their success with Planet Zoo's animal animations have got to be why GW wanted Frontier to bring tabletop models to life. they are so good literally thinking about the game makes me want to play it 😂

the "focus" mention felt more like they will not develop *new* non-sim games, not that they're dropping support for RoR, Elite Dangerous, etc. i don't think we'll truly find out until after the new year though.

 

[madmac]

3 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

if adding new units still requires rigging new skeletons, I don't really see why new factions are off the table. I think their success with Planet Zoo's animal animations have got to be why GW wanted Frontier to bring tabletop models to life. they are so good literally thinking about the game makes me want to play it 😂

the "focus" mention felt more like they will not develop *new* non-sim games, not that they're dropping support for RoR, Elite Dangerous, etc. i don't think we'll truly find out until after the new year though.

 

Honestly, yeah. Making new armies is not nearly as big an expense as you would think. A small team of programmers and animators can produce new content for an existing game more or less indefinitely without much trouble. That's why the dlc model has taken over the game industry to begin with, it's easy money compared to the huge expense and risk of making and marketing a new game. CA employees hundreds of people and only like a dozen or so of them work on TWW DLC.

[JackStreicher]

It’s sad it flopped. The economic situation of most people is at an all time low and (at least for me) there’s been too much releases across all my hobbies to buy into the game yet.

🤷🏼‍♂️

i hope it’s still around when I get to it.

[Ejecutor]

3 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

pretty sure the full meeting mentioned Realms of Ruin was still getting content, and GW would absolutely not hinge their AOS license on a developer that wouldn't provide post-release support.

They cannot do much more about it if this would happen, I am afraid.

[Baron Klatz]

Finally getting our Christmas Angel vs Thanksgiving Turkey fight! 💥 

Also Goonhammer had an interesting interview with Gav Thorpe about it:

https://www.goonhammer.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar-realms-of-ruin-interview-with-gav-thorpe-and-sandro-sammarco/
 

 

[Beliman]

It seems that the 1st Hero DLC is already on

[Baron Klatz]

Yep! Dlc unlocked today as well as a patch further smoothing the game out:

One thing though is there’s been a bug with PlayStation not unlocking the Dlc if already bought. They said they will have a patch for that later today.

Edit: Patch Notes link, pretty decent.

https://www.aosrealmsofruin.com/update-notes/1-1

Edited December 11, 2023 by Baron Klatz