Info about Ancient Warfare 3:

Official game description:
Dive into a sandbox full of action and customization! Choose from different game modes like deathmatch, conquest, king of the hill, zombie survival and many more. Create your own scenarios in the custom battle editor. Choose your rules, change the environment, place units, objects or traps, choose your equipment and fight or just relax and spectate a battle.
Content
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Explore content from different eras starting in the stone age, medieval ages, WWI, WWII and the modern era up to futuristic sci-fi content. 3400+ units, 1100+ objects and 580+ equipment items await you.  
In addition, the Steam Workshop integration allows you to share your creations and choose from 23000+ battles, 5900+ prefabs, 25000+ units, 2200+ campaigns and various equipment items and objects to use them in your own creations!
In-game editors
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The central idea behind the game is to let players customize everything and create their own content!  
In the custom battle editor you can place units, objects and other items to create your own scenarios with various game modes and settings for each object and unit to adjust their behavior.
Custom units
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The custom unit editor allows you to create detailed and complex units with various equipment slots and settings like color adjustments for armor and clothing items.
Custom items
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The custom equipment and object editors allow you to import your own models into an easy to use in-game editor to create custom melee and ranged weapons, grenades, shields, armor, clothing and environment, consumables and various other functional objects to use them in the battle editor or to create more unique looking custom units.
Scripting Engine
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To give players even more control, there is an event based visual scripting engine which can be used to create custom behavior and rules for battles, units, objects and the player.

Release date: 26 Jan, 2024

Categories: Sandbox Creation, Battle Simulation, Mod Support, Map Editor, Character Customization, Mini-game Collection, Strategic Combat


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Unparalleled Creative Sandbox (weight 1): The game offers immense creative freedom, allowing players to design and build virtually anything, from custom units and weapons to complex scenarios and entire campaigns. Its robust modding support and scripting options provide endless possibilities for user-generated content.
- Easy Controls & Accessibility (weight 0.81): The game is noted for its easy-to-learn controls, particularly for unit and object placement, making it accessible for new players. This ease of use contributes to the overall fun and creative experience.
- Active Development & Quality (weight 0.41): The game benefits from consistent updates and active development, with developers frequently adding new features and responding to community feedback. Reviewers praise the game's overall quality, art style, and ongoing improvements.
- Versatile Battle Simulation (weight 0.36): Players can create and participate in diverse battles across various historical eras, customizing units, weapons, and environments. The game functions as a comprehensive battle simulator, allowing for detailed recreation of historical events or imaginative combat scenarios.
- Supportive Community & Workshop (weight 0.2): The game boasts a friendly, active, and helpful community, particularly on platforms like Discord. The Steam Workshop is a vibrant hub for user-created content, offering a vast array of maps, units, and scenarios for players to download and enjoy.
- Intuitive Map & Level Editor (weight 0.2): The game features an easy-to-use and effective map editor, allowing players to manipulate terrain, place structures, and design detailed environments. Specific features like the dynamic lighting system are highlighted for their convenience and quality.
- Extensive Content & Assets (weight 0.14): The game provides a massive and diverse collection of in-game assets, including units, weapons, and equipment spanning various historical eras. This extensive content, combined with community creations, offers players a wide range of options for their custom scenarios.
- Superior to TABS (weight 0.07): Reviewers frequently compare the game favorably to Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS), citing its more advanced features, deeper components, better map creation, and lower price point as key advantages.

Common complaints:
- Performance & Polish Issues (weight 0.39): Many reviews highlight significant technical problems including poor optimization, frequent lag, crashes, and numerous bugs. Additionally, the game lacks overall polish, with clunky controls, basic visuals, and unrefined mechanics.
- Missing Core Features (weight 0.21): The game is criticized for lacking essential features such as online multiplayer, a campaign mode, and direct unit control. There's also a notable absence of localization for several languages, limiting accessibility for non-English speakers.
- Steep Learning Curve (weight 0.18): Many players find the game, especially its visual scripting system, difficult and confusing to learn due to a lack of clear tutorials or online resources. This steep learning curve means significant time investment is required before the game becomes enjoyable.
- Poor AI Performance (weight 0.18): A recurring issue is the game's artificial intelligence, described as static, dumb, and prone to poor pathfinding. Specific problems include units making illogical choices, friendly fire incidents, and robotic, slow movements, often forcing players to compensate.
- High Price for Content (weight 0.15): The game's price is considered too high relative to the amount of content and features it currently offers. This suggests a poor value proposition for many players.
- Restrictive Map Editor (weight 0.07): The in-game map editor is criticized for being restrictive, with issues like limited object snapping and glitches in terrain creation. This impacts user creativity and contributes to a lack of quality community-made maps.
- Infrequent Updates (weight 0.03): Players desire more frequent updates, indicating a concern about the game's ongoing development and the pace at which new content or fixes are being introduced.
- Inferior to TABS (weight 0.03): The game is frequently compared unfavorably to "Totally Accurate Battle Simulator" (TABS), with reviewers finding it less fun and more difficult to mod. This highlights a perceived lack of polish or engaging gameplay compared to a similar title.

Gameplay feedback:
- More Tool Than Game (weight 0.06): The game is often perceived as a powerful set of creative tools or a game engine rather than a traditional game with a predefined story or progression. This emphasizes its open-ended sandbox nature.
- Blocky Graphics Style (weight 0.06): The game features a distinctive Minecraft-like blocky aesthetic for characters and environmental objects. This schematic style is often described as cute.
- Accessible, No Grind (weight 0.03): The game is noted for being easy to pick up and play, without the need for traditional progression systems or grinding. This allows players to immediately dive into its creative and simulation aspects.
- Similar to TABS (weight 0.03): Many reviewers frequently compare the game's core concept and gameplay loop to Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS).
- Infinite Replayability (weight 0.02): Due to its extensive sandbox and creation tools, the game offers virtually infinite playtime. Players can continuously create new scenarios and content, ensuring long-term engagement.

Performance notes:
- Good Performance, Low Requirements (weight 0.09): Many players report that the game is well-optimized and runs smoothly even on older or less powerful PCs, including laptops, with stable frame rates. This includes quick asset loading and good performance during large-scale battles (e.g., 50 vs 50).
- Performance Dips with Objects (weight 0.06): While generally well-optimized, some players on weaker PCs have reported performance issues, particularly when a large number of objects are present on screen. This suggests potential optimization challenges in highly dense environments.

Recommendations:
- Overall Positive Recommendation (weight 0.29): Many reviewers express a general positive sentiment, recommending the game as fun, good, and worth the price. This indicates a strong overall satisfaction among a large portion of the player base.
- Technical Issues/Low Value (weight 0.07): Some players reported persistent issues that led to refunds, while others felt the game was not worth their time or money. This suggests potential technical problems or a lack of engaging content for some users.
- Consider Sale Purchase (weight 0.02): One reviewer suggested purchasing the game only when it is on sale, implying that while the game may be enjoyable, its full price might be a deterrent or that its value is better at a discount.
- Appreciation for Development (weight 0.01): One reviewer expressed satisfaction in being able to support the ongoing development of the game, indicating appreciation for the project's progress or potential rather than specific gameplay features.
- Encourage Personal Trial (weight 0.01): One reviewer suggested that others should try the game for themselves, indicating a neutral stance and encouraging individual experience rather than providing specific feedback on game features.
- Overly Enthusiastic Praise (weight 0.01): One review expressed extreme, hyperbolic praise, calling the game the "number one game of the year forever." This type of feedback lacks specific details and is not constructive.

Other player notes:
- Improved creative tools/coding guide (weight 0.03): Players desire a comprehensive guide for the game's coding system to make it accessible to non-programmers. They also wish for more precise control over object placement for better creative freedom.
- Add Russian language support (weight 0.02): There is a request for the inclusion of Russian language localization. This would make the game more accessible to a broader audience.
- New custom game modes (weight 0.02): Players are interested in the addition of new, user-definable game modes. This would allow for more diverse gameplay scenarios and replayability.
- Uniform customization options (weight 0.02): Players are requesting more comprehensive customization options for uniforms. This would allow for greater personalization and role-playing opportunities.
- Add WW2 artillery (weight 0.02): There is a desire for the inclusion of artillery units specifically for World War 2 themed content. This would enhance historical accuracy and gameplay variety in relevant scenarios.
- Prioritize tank fixes (weight 0.02): Players suggest that developers should focus on fixing existing issues with tanks rather than introducing new ones. This indicates a desire for improved functionality and balance of current vehicle mechanics.
- Declining player community (weight 0.02): The game's community is reportedly shrinking, which could impact multiplayer experiences and overall engagement. This suggests a potential concern regarding player retention.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.38): Players express satisfaction primarily due to the game's extensive creative freedom and robust customization tools, enabling them to create and share user-generated content like maps and units. This is complemented by strong community support, ongoing developer updates, and the game's overall quality, performance, and value, which together provide a highly engaging and long-term enjoyable sandbox experience.
- Joy (weight 0.11): Joy stems from the game's inherent fun factor, particularly through its extensive creative freedom and robust tools that enable players to design and enjoy their own content, such as custom units and battle scenarios. The overall quality of the game and the satisfaction of seeing creations come to life also contribute significantly to this positive emotion.
- Disappointment (weight 0.09): Disappointment arises from the game's technical shortcomings, including poor AI performance, persistent bugs, and a general lack of polish in areas like graphics and animations. Players also express frustration over missing or poorly implemented features, infrequent updates, and the game not meeting their personal expectations for fun or value.
- Appreciation (weight 0.09): Players appreciate the game's high quality, extensive customization options, and sandbox nature, which provide immense creative freedom. Significant appreciation is also directed towards the developers for their active support, frequent updates, and responsiveness to the community, as well as the vibrant and helpful Steam Workshop community.
- Frustration (weight 0.08): Frustration primarily stems from persistent technical issues such as bugs, poor performance, and optimization problems that hinder gameplay. Players also report difficulties with clunky or unclear controls, problematic AI behavior, and the absence of expected features or tutorials, making the game challenging or unenjoyable to play.
- Excitement (weight 0.08): Excitement is driven by the game's vast creative freedom and limitless possibilities within its sandbox environment, allowing players to design and experience diverse and epic battle scenarios. The extensive content creation tools, mod support, and the game's overall quality and potential further contribute to this enthusiasm.
- Desire (weight 0.02): Players express a strong desire for specific missing features, most notably the inclusion of a multiplayer mode and additional language localizations. There is also a general wish for more quality-of-life improvements and content like uniform customization or historical artillery.
- Mild frustration (weight 0.02): Mild frustration arises from minor technical glitches such as bugs, performance issues on less powerful hardware, and lag when many units are present. Players also note issues with AI behavior and the learning curve or restrictions within the game's creation tools, like scripting and the map editor.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement is primarily caused by the game's unique and often silly elements, such as unrealistic ragdoll physics, which contribute to a lighthearted and entertaining experience.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.01): Nostalgia is triggered by the game's ability to evoke childhood memories, particularly those associated with playing with plastic army men or toy soldiers, creating a sense of familiar enjoyment.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm stems from the game's high overall quality, its enjoyable creation features, and its strong performance as a battle simulation game, making it a favorite among players.
- Concern (weight 0.01): Concerns are raised regarding the game's accessibility, specifically its potential difficulty for younger players and its hardware requirements. There is also some concern about the size of the game's community.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger is primarily caused by persistent and unresolved technical issues, particularly with controls and AI, which remain problematic despite updates, leading to a perception of overall poor game quality.
- Optimism (weight 0.01): Optimism stems from a strong belief in the game's future potential and the expectation that ongoing updates will address current issues and further enhance its already good quality.
- Gratitude (weight 0.01): Gratitude is expressed for the developers' responsiveness to feedback and updates, as well as for the game's role in fostering personal skill development.
- Inspiration (weight 0.01): Inspiration is drawn from the game's potential to facilitate skill development and its broader positive influence on players.
- Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration is directed towards the developers for their work and the impressive depth and capabilities of the game itself.
- Hope (weight 0.01): Hope is expressed for future game updates, particularly for the potential inclusion of a multiplayer mode.
- Amazement (weight 0.01): Amazement is evoked by the game's impressive versatility, extensive creative potential, and its high overall quality and rich features.
- Creativity (weight 0.01): The emotion of creativity is directly caused by the extensive freedom provided within the game's sandbox environment, allowing players to design and build their own content.}