Warhammer Realms of Ruin needs more development time

I noticed the negative feedback on the Steam forum:
  1. A Disappointment
  2. Really disappointed
  3. review of this game/demo as an AoEII/SC2/WC3/Dota2 player.
  4. Demo Feedback: pros, cons, confusion.
  5. Story mode feedback. You just don't have enough units to control the map.
  6. Game feels tooooooo slow
  7. There is no skill ceiling when, you lock units into death ball combat or retreat.
  8. Units are locked in combat
This video: Demo Overview | Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin got - merely 2.5K views in 1 day

The graphics are nice and the music is good, yet the gameplay is poor. The units are too slow, no cover mechanics, no base building, simplistic strategy capturing victory points, not enough unit and building variety, no true sight, low unit limit, no bonus for veteran units, no micro-management of moving an individual unit, not responsive enough, no coop, price is probably too high. The game is slow, because the unit movement is slow (update: the devs increased movement by 30%), and they have a ton of health. The units need more animations, because when every unit in a squad does the exact same animation (e.g. reload) simultaneously, it's robotic and breaks immersion. Block units instead of individual units is anti-micro strategy. These block units are locked in combat so individual units cannot be repositioned. If you press retreat they'll run all the way back to base. People who are into Warhammer prefer strategy with depth, grittiness and building a base.

Fdev could ignore the player feedback, but they'll risk another ED Odyssey style debacle. By omitting RTS features that made Dawn of War and DoW2 great, RoR could flop like DoW3. Frontier should strive for high quality rather than a mediocre game that sells few copies. So delay the release, put more time in development to make major game design improvements.

Fdev appointed game designers from different genres to design RoR. RTS is not their forte and neglecting player feedback results in a mediocre game. Fdev should hire expert game designers who have proven themselves with best-selling and acclaimed RTS titles.
 
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Game generated only 1500 peak players on Steam weekend release :unsure:.
Feels like the price was to high for people and the content was to little like you said Cosmos.
 
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I notice that 79% of reviews on Steam are positive (at time of writing).
The review score is cratering, it's down to 73% now. Early reviews were absurdly high for this stinker because it had both a demo and an early release period. The demo chases off some people who would have rated it negatively, and the early release period does similar where people who hated it will have refunded before it was possible to leave a review, so the only full playthrough reviews that can be posted right at launch will be from this group that has been filtered to be almost 100% positive.

Starfield is another example of that, gaming early review scores with an early release period where you can't review it, leading to it launching over 90% despite being the worst Morrowind total remake ever. Steam should stop this abuse by enabling reviews during the early release period.

Sigmar is just a bizarre game because the problems are obvious to anyone who has ever played an RTS and has enough intelligence to eat and breathe on their own, and yet they chose this direction then spent years building a bad game. Who was the dude sitting at the conference table saying, "we need a slow RTS with a low skill ceiling where units can't disengage and there's no base building"? Why didn't anyone stop them?
 
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Without any hidden malice; have any of you who have written in this thread, apart from talking about Steam reviews, bought and played the game?

I personally like it, and I like it a lot; I like AoR and I like this RTS, and precisely what I like the most is its "slow" pace. I won't deny that it has some things to improve, and let's hope it will do it with next patches, but at the beginning it's just what I expected, and just what Frontier has been announcing and showing in these months. Whoever may feel "cheated" or "surprised" by something (for example with the no base building) is simply because they haven't bothered to watch any FDEV stream or tested the demos.

The only thing that happens is that, nowadays, with all the GamePass issue, it seems that it has become a crime to try to sell a game that you've been working on for 3 years for 60€...

But well, everyone has their own opinion, of course.

I personally hope the game sells well; because I think it's a good game, and for the benefit of FDEV.
 
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RoR currently has a mixed score; 66% positive of 760 user reviews on Steam. The concurrent player stats are abysmal:
  1. 184 - 24-hour peak
  2. 1,556 - all-time peak
  3. 105 - playing 45 min ago
According to a German magazine RoR is doing so poorly that Frontier could lose 32 million pounds in 2024.

On the official RoR YouTube channel, the launch trailer got 18k views in 2 weeks despite a significant marketing campaign. The Conquest Mode video got merely 3.5K views in 13 days.

Frontier did not hire a top RTS game designer and launched RoR prematurely while neglecting much player feedback. RoR is a console-ified, watered-down, MOBA tactical game which most Warhammer and RTS fans simply don't want to play. The price tag is too high for what's offered. Real time tactical games are a niche. If Frontier made a more traditional RTS with base building and QOL features then it would've probably been a commercial success.

Player thoughts:
  1. Is this a bad game?
  2. this game failed
  3. State of the game
 
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RoR currently has a mixed score; 66% positive of 760 user reviews on Steam. The concurrent player stats are abysmal:
  1. 184 - 24-hour peak
  2. 1,556 - all-time peak
  3. 105 - playing 45 min ago
According to a German magazine RoR is doing so poorly that Frontier could lose 32 million pounds in 2024.

On the official RoR YouTube channel, the launch trailer got 18k views in 2 weeks despite a significant marketing campaign. The Conquest Mode video got merely 3.5K views in 13 days.

Frontier did not hire a top RTS game designer and launched RoR prematurely while neglecting much player feedback. RoR is a console-ified, watered-down, MOBA tactical game which most Warhammer and RTS fans simply don't want to play. If Frontier made a more traditional RTS with base building and QOL features then it would've probably been a commercial success
Yep Frontier is quiting everything atm from their Foundry project to this latest RTS game. Construction and Managment simulators (CMS for short) is what their focus now ( Not Elite Dangerous either). Should have sold the company few years ago, while they were at the peak. Now they are at the bottom trying to survive.
 
Yep Frontier is quiting everything atm from their Foundry project to this latest RTS game. Construction and Managment simulators (CMS for short) is what their focus now ( Not Elite Dangerous either). Should have sold the company few years ago, while they were at the peak. Now they are at the bottom trying to survive.

Yes, Frontier is more experienced in making good CMS games (Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo). They made a smart move by publishing decent games and acquiring Complex Games.

RoR had 1482 concurrent players on Steam on 17 November 2023. On 1 December it declined to 64 concurrent players. :LOL: :poop:
 
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Realms of Ruin has been shortlisted as one of 10 Longlist category: British Game of 2023 by @BAFTA. There are merely 10 games in that category while the whole list is 60 games.

RoR has an average metascore of 67 on Metacritic. It's so unpopular that only 9 Users bothered to rate it with a mixed user score of 6.9. There must be better British games that were a critical and commercial success in 2023.

Frontier's other game F1 23 is more deserving of the award: Metacritic metascore of 82, but the user score is 6.2 based on 52 user reviews.
 
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DoW1 and DoW2 is where I learned my way into WH40K. It also defined Relic's appeal in RTS. The LoS and cover mechanics were defining the genre where so little studios dared tread anymore.
This game looks flashy with decent cinematics, but I don't know anything what it's gameplay brings. Currently I'm playing some BF Gothic Armada 2 to supplement my Rogue Trader playthrough. Gothic Armada isn't really bad - it's just that it plays like a shot aimed at MP market, failed and could have been so much better for SP.
A lot of these games do - and RTS is a natural for MP. It's just I want rather watch things explode and have my hold the line moments without worrying about CPMs.
And with Frontier discontiniung the publishing division I doubt this is getting any far.
 
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