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There was some discussion in the 40K thread about an editorial that got posted. I thought I'd transplant my response to it here so as not to derail that thread.krushgroove posted:New Khaine stuff for WHFB End Times I think. Acebuckeye13 posted:I think this article really highlights the fundamental misunderstanding GW has of the game it's making, and really makes me concerned about the future of the game. I don't mind that GW wants their game to have a narrative, but I think that focusing on "Narrative" aspects of the gameplay hurts the game far more than it helps it. Any game can have a narrative-the last game of I played of Flames of War, I lead an American tank company against a dug-in company of Finns around a bridge. It was fun, it was memorable, and the "Narrative" around the battle evolved naturally. By contrast, trying to force each game to tell a story, as opposed to working out the game's many balance issues, just makes people remember the frustration of playing against a broken army or rules arguments far more vividly than whatever imaginary theatrics their models carried out. It doesn't help either that the article outright states that GW isn't looking on changing much with future codexes, which worries me even more. What's the point of even bothering to update the Codex, which only occurs once in several years, if you're not going to give people a new reason to play that army? I was disappointed with the Guard release because they didn't bother fixing the book's issues, and instead just changed around some points costs and added two new vehicles Guard didn't need and nobody asked for. Guard got out okay because the book already had a strong foundation, but it doesn't make me thrilled about what they're going to do with future codexes that are on a more shaky foundation. My own response to that article is that there are a lot of individual points on which the author isn't wrong. However, GW made the bed they're being asked to lie in. I can absolutely understand why Bob, middle manager in charge of points costs, doesn't want to put on his raincoat and wander onto the Internet to face the poo poo typhoon, but GW as a company absolutely can and should feel obligated to engage with the community, no matter how toxic, if they want to keep and/or retain the people who fall into that category. Obviously writing them off and focusing on the GW diehards is always an option, but that's a shrinking circle and it's largely because GW's own practices keep shunting more people into the toxic category (where 'toxic' is apparently implicitly defined as someone who will discuss the problems with GW without mincing words). There's also what seems to me to be a dishonest, or at least ignorant, attempt to frame anger at GW as being the result of general nerd toxicity. 'Gamer communities on the Internet, you can't make them happy,' etc. etc. The problem with that is that it ignores the differences in responses to different companies and games. To use the example that I keep pulling out because it keeps being necessary, any theory of GW hatred that falls back on 'lol nerds' has to explain why PP hatred doesn't appear to exist to nearly the same degree, and the answer can't be that GW and PP exist in parallel universes where sociological laws are different.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:03
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the chosen one posted:Something that sounded like the internal rumour mill talked about instances of lawyers trawling the internet for Things Employees Have Said in order to use it to back up legal cases against Games Workshop. If you have the patience to dig through online legal case files, you'll probably find examples of it, but I'll admit to not having a citation for this. Nice.
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Nov 19, 2014 23:43
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Whichever way GW decides to go, staying the course or launching a revamp campaign, I just hope it becomes obvious sooner rather than later. My gaming group got together last weekend and we had an actual discussion on whether to switch to 7th from 6th or not. That sort of dilemma never even existed until now and it was kinda eye-opening to have to weigh that choice. At this rate, it'll probably be revisited when a new Necron codex comes out as that is the oldest book and one of the most-played armies among us.
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Nov 20, 2014 05:22
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That article is hilarious. Awww, they're just so afraid of that mean old internet. That's why they don't need to do any market research or listen to any feedback. It says so many mean things about them!
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Nov 20, 2014 07:08
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They need to listen to the right side of the Internet. I know at least one FB group that's basically "say good of things or git". If you're a real fan, you won't complain.
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Nov 20, 2014 07:28
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If they do any market research then it'll be like the questionnaire on the website - only targetted at those who are still customers rather than asking ex-customers why they aren't any more.
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Nov 20, 2014 07:47
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JcDent posted:They need to listen to the right side of the Internet. I know at least one FB group that's basically "say good of things or git". If you're a real fan, you won't complain. In fairness, if you create a group to discuss cool hobby/fluff/games etc, the last thing you want is another discussion about how GW is the worst.
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Nov 20, 2014 08:02
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WAR FOOT posted:In fairness, if you create a group to discuss cool hobby/fluff/games etc, the last thing you want is another discussion about how GW is the worst. I'd say they have ta man up (or, uh, woman up in some cases) and face the possibility that fans of 40K the Setting and 40K the Game might not exactly be fans of GW. True, the discussion won't ameliorate the problem, but what will? Voting with vallets?
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Nov 20, 2014 08:39
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The concept that GW believes the internet to be a universally negative echo chamber based purely off how their company is treated online without considering literally any other gaming or miniatures companies is perfectly in line with everything else they do and a primary reason why they're a gigantic failure.
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Nov 20, 2014 08:49
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JcDent posted:They need to listen to the right side of the Internet. I know at least one FB group that's basically "say good of things or git". If you're a real fan, you won't complain. Sounds a lot like Palladium. IP obsessed. Wants echo chambers. Goes through staff at a swift pace. Still considers themselves to be way more important than they are as if it's still 1992-3 before Magic launched and basically changed the whole hobby gaming industry. (I guess you could say the WWW started up in that loose timeframe too really.) But at least ol Kevvy doesn't charge an arm and a leg for his unplaytested game rules surrounded by pretty art and cool if incredibly juvenile flavor text. And they even have their really cool value grab bags every year. And their equivalent of the Citadel Journal is still running at 68 or so quarterly volumes. Maybe it's not the same in the UK but here in the US GW is really losing market share to Privateer and X Wing. And CCGs are basically king. Magic owns all and no nerd shop would be nutter enough not to carry it and it's endless array of organized play plus tiny amount of space needed for both stock and play space. Having a rules correct electronic game that encourages people to play IRL helps too. ( though one local shop says it really doesn't bring in new blood. I guess after 4-5 years of the games it kind of wouldn't.) I've seen people asking to play the MLP ccg at various game shops. Hardly anyone asks about GW if at all. Even less when they see the sticker price. GW has to get with the times. Dawn of War is nearly a decade old now. Most of these indie games are kind of butt. Horus Heresy is milking it more than Dragonball Z. Their rules are overpriced and lovely, more like coffee table books than useful game materials. (I used a PDF editor to make a version of the current Chaos Marine book into something useful. 2/3rds of the book were gone. Am I the only person who kind of liked the early 15 dollar 3rd ed codexes? I pretty much bought them all and even got into Tyranids due to it!) I'd rather do something with my Warhams than constantly mention 2nd ed/Rogue Trader and generally fail to get anyone who wants to play smaller old school games that were actually fun. I so want to run that Book of the Astronomican Space Wolf-Ork campaign. The base dungeon fighting parts look so loving fun...
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Nov 22, 2014 22:40
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I was at the german con that hosts the german warmachine Masters today. The Tourny drew 64 players with 20 who still wanted in and was well organized. The rest of the hall also had some tabletops - i saw Malifaux, Dust Tactics, Battletech and even a friggin' Demonworld Tournament. I couldn't help but notice that not a single dedicated 40k table was in sight, though. It was really sad to see how little GW cares about their hardcore fans - apparently there used to be a 40k tourney there as well, but GW doesn't support it at all, so noone stepped up to host it.
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Nov 22, 2014 23:30
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Captain Rufus posted:God drat it, GW CCG is king in Japan like you wouldn't believe. Magic is big and Japanese CCGs are big (and strange). I have read some of the older White Dwarfs and some of the older rulebooks, and the amount of good will/general hobby advice is staggering in comparison to what you have now. Makes one shed a tear. Luebbi posted:I was at the german con that hosts the german warmachine Masters today. The Tourny drew 64 players with 20 who still wanted in and was well organized. The rest of the hall also had some tabletops - i saw Malifaux, Dust Tactics, Battletech and even a friggin' Demonworld Tournament. I couldn't help but notice that not a single dedicated 40k table was in sight, though. It was really sad to see how little GW cares about their hardcore fans - apparently there used to be a 40k tourney there as well, but GW doesn't support it at all, so noone stepped up to host it. GW seems to pretend that other games don't exist, just like video game devs when they push new "revolutionary" AAA features in games.
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Nov 23, 2014 04:56
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If my FLGS is any indication of general trends, 40k is in that phase where it's costing on inertia right before mass abandonment. Its already fighting to not be the least played table top game with the likes of Infinity and Malifax. Historicals get more table time (and the FLGS makes more money selling them). Star Wars: Armada is going to rule the roost once it comes out if the talk about the shop is anything be believed. The store is going get some (much needed) renovations and I wouldn't be surprised if the GW/40k inventory (Much it the same poo poo that has be moldering there for years) goes in the discount bin to make way for more star-wars stuff.
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Nov 23, 2014 05:24
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Yeah the sad part to me is actually the potential fracturing of the x-wing base with the release of armada. I can afford both as long as I trade my magic cards for my board game stuff anyway but it's going to be a pain now if I have to bring both around to see what people want to play. 40k and Fantasy aren't even on the radar. It's about Star Wars, heroclix/Star Trek, or dice masters nowadays.
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Nov 23, 2014 05:46
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Meanwhile, at GW: "Damed X-Wing and damned X-Wing Armada! If only we had thought of a spaceship game!" One thing about 40K is that it could technically cater for a lot of audiences: skirmishers could skirt around with Necromunda and Kill Team (with some HoR like improvements), people who want more dudes and maybe tanks could play vanilla, people who hate big minis and like individual Space Marines not being worth poo poo could play Epic, and then you'd have Aeronautica for fighter battles (I think. No idea what exactly aeronautica is) and BFG for spaceships. And FFG's 40K RPGs, and the only niche you didn't cover is 40K Transport Tycoon. But noooooooo, we have to drop the lines because we need to sell more expensive minis...
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Nov 23, 2014 09:18
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JcDent posted:Meanwhile, at GW: What do you do when some of your products are becoming more popular than your main line stuff? GW- "We cut off all support for them, of course!"  Don't consider why the specialist games are popular to adapt the main games, don't continue working on these other systems that your customers obviously enjoy, etc... For a company that charges as much as they do, stupid things like that really make you wonder if they were allergic to money or something.
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Nov 23, 2014 09:53
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JcDent posted:Meanwhile, at GW: Id play the poo poo out of a game about trying to keep the lumbering imperial industrial complex functioning to supply the endless galaxy spanning war.
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Nov 23, 2014 09:55
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Gough Suppressant posted:Id play the poo poo out of a game about trying to keep the lumbering imperial industrial complex functioning to supply the endless galaxy spanning war. I would actually say you have a much higher chance of seeing FFG do something like that than GW. Like legitimately, 40K Tycoon sounds like just the thing up their alley. Make it a semi-cooperative game where everybody's trying to work together to stave off Black Crusades and Tyrannid fleets and Ork invasions but also trying to score the most points and curry the most influence with the High Lords of Terra (by any means necessary, and if that means a few worlds burn here and there well, omelettes and eggs).
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Nov 23, 2014 10:32
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HiveCommander posted:This still stands out as one of the dumbest things that GW has ever done. They were literally in a position any other business would kill to be in; where their only major competitors were their own alternate product lines. GW doesn't do market research, which is why A)they figured they could just dump the Specialist Games line with nary an outcry; and B)why they are currently in deep poo poo now, as the general trend continues towards smaller-scale games (both literally in the case of Dropzone Commander; and figuratively in the case of WM/H, Infinity, Malifaux, etc.) and away from massive (and massively expensive) wargames where the armies take a lot of time to assemble and paint and set up before the game even starts. Though I do think Mantic is proving there's still an audience for larger-scale wargames out there; it's just that people are apparently finally getting fed up with GW's approach to it (both in terms of rules, and in terms of both time and money spent on prepping and playing).
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Nov 23, 2014 11:02
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Gough Suppressant posted:Id play the poo poo out of a game about trying to keep the lumbering imperial industrial complex functioning to supply the endless galaxy spanning war. gently caress yes. Power Grid 40k. Does your station run on coal, promethium or the souls of heretics?
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Nov 23, 2014 11:08
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400XX 
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Nov 23, 2014 11:13
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thespaceinvader posted:gently caress yes. Power Grid 40k. Does your station run on coal, promethium or the souls of heretics? Sydney Bottocks posted:GW doesn't do market research, which is why A)they figured they could just dump the Specialist Games line with nary an outcry; and B)why they are currently in deep poo poo now, as the general trend continues towards smaller-scale games (both literally in the case of Dropzone Commander; and figuratively in the case of WM/H, Infinity, Malifaux, etc.) and away from massive (and massively expensive) wargames where the armies take a lot of time to assemble and paint and set up before the game even starts.
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Nov 23, 2014 11:46
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HiveCommander posted:What do you do when some of your products are becoming more popular than your main line stuff? The specialist games were never, ever, at any point even close to more popular than the main lines. They were dropped because it wasnt worth devoting design team time to products that did not sell.
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Nov 23, 2014 12:21
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And people weren't playing them because it was hard to get the stuff for them. For example, when I played BFG/EpicA etc, to get most of the models I had to go to Warhammer World (yeah, I lived in Nottingham), order them from the shop there and wait 15 minutes or so for them to be brought up). Any other shop, you'd have to order them either online or in the shop and wait for them to get delivered. In Nottingham there was a pretty healthy EpicA community because it was so easy to get armies, but everywhere else it would be expensive and time consuming to get enough to make it worth playing. I don't know if the difficulty in getting the stuff was what killed specialist games or the other way around to be honest. They were a niche market but they did sell.
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Nov 23, 2014 12:27
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serious gaylord posted:The specialist games were never, ever, at any point even close to more popular than the main lines. How odd that this seems to have coincided with both the license to make the LOTR games, and the beginnings of the "sell less poo poo for more money" mode of operations that GW currently practices. Prior to that they were more than happy to devote time, money, and pages in WD to Mordheim, Gorkamorka, Inquisitor, etc. etc. When the LOTR games came out, all of that suddenly started to dry up.  Seriously, the Specialist Games in any other company's hands would very likely have been perfect "intro" or "feeder" games to get newer players introduced to the 40k/WHFB universes and get them interested in collecting armies for the bigger games. It's only GW that saw people buying a product that wasn't from the main lines as a problem that had to be eliminated.
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Nov 23, 2014 12:39
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: Kill Team would be a fantastic entry game to 40k if designed and marketed right, but GW is too stupid to realise this poo poo.
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Nov 23, 2014 12:46
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Tekopo posted:And people weren't playing them because it was hard to get the stuff for them. For example, when I played BFG/EpicA etc, to get most of the models I had to go to Warhammer World (yeah, I lived in Nottingham), order them from the shop there and wait 15 minutes or so for them to be brought up). Any other shop, you'd have to order them either online or in the shop and wait for them to get delivered. This conversation comes up every 50 pages or so. It was difficult to get the models because when they had dedicated shelf space in store, THEY DID NOT SELL. 'But all my friends played' you might say. Anecdotal. If the games sold as well as the people on the internet make you believe, they would still exist.
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Nov 23, 2014 13:01
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serious gaylord posted:This conversation comes up every 50 pages or so. Is there any reason why they didn't sell well though? EpicA had a very good rules system. Was it just the scale of the models that didn't make it sell well? Or because not enough people bought in and the WFB/40k communities were too entrenched into their own games? I mean, I wouldn't have bought in if I didn't know people that had bought in as well, the only reason why I got EpicA in the first place was because some people had armies and wanted to get a tournament in.
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Nov 23, 2014 13:20
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Tekopo posted:400XX I just had to spend precious minutes explaining this joke to my wife because it made me laugh so hard. Thanks a lot.
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Nov 23, 2014 13:37
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Tekopo posted:Oh yeah, I understand that, which is why I said I wasn't sure which way it was around. If you say that they didn't sell even when they were on the shelves, fair enough. There are loads of reasons it didnt sell that well. 40k and Fantasy started getting the amazing multi pose plastic kits. There wasnt that big a jump to the bigger games model wise. The epicA rules fractured the epic playerbase quite badly and Mordheim was incredibly, incredibly unbalanced. But the main thing has to be that the majority of the specialist games involved a campaign being run. You couldn't really just play a pick up game of Necromunda/Blood Bowl/Mordheim since half the fun was seeing how good/crippled your guys could get over a period of time. Battlefleet Gothic however was the best ruleset GW have ever released and it was criminal that they didnt know what to do with it so dumped it on the journal which ruined it.
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Nov 23, 2014 13:50
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Yeah, Gorka-Morka was good old fun but it was always so difficult to get people to commit to a campaign and forcing people to get games so they wouldn't get behind. I did play BFG as well and it was very good while it lasted. I sold my Imperial fleet to get a Tau one but never really got to play it, I think I still have some of those models around somewhere.
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Nov 23, 2014 13:55
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Paper Kaiju posted:I just had to spend precious minutes explaining this joke to my wife because it made me laugh so hard. Thanks a lot. We're not married, but could explain that to me? Yeah, I guess I understand the thing about campaign. Initial gangs aren't that different from one another and only start coming out in a campaign... something that people seem to be unwilling to do. You'd think that nerds, being somewhat tightknit groups that frequent same FLGS all the time, would be more up for something like that.
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Nov 23, 2014 14:13
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JcDent posted:We're not married, but could explain that to me?
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Nov 23, 2014 14:17
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I vaguely remember that back when BFG was in stores that (at least locally) the guys into space ship games were firmly committed other systems and hated GW/"That crap for kids" (all the older grognard types) or they didn't have any interest in spaceships (I guess BFG wasn't grimderp enough, or didn't satisfy their need for adolescent power fantasy wish fulfillment). Of course at the time this boiled down to, "GET AWAY FROM MY YOU STUPID KID" and "BFG is gay". My brother and I were the only ones buying stuff and that was right before we quit.
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Nov 23, 2014 14:51
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I'm not terribly sure what BFG offers over other spaceship game rules, other than the setting. Could someone enlighten me?
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Nov 23, 2014 14:54
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Panzeh posted:I'm not terribly sure what BFG offers over other spaceship game rules, other than the setting. Could someone enlighten me? When I've played it, the maneuver rules and the general facing, distance, strike craft, torpedo stuff were a lot of fun to use? Mind, I've never played any other spaceship models game. But the basic caveat, that the ships can't really stop and have to turn slowly while moving, made positioning a lot of fun. Unless you played Eldar, who just ignored all the rules that made the game actually fun to play and got to turn wherever they wanted whenevs.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:38
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Panzeh posted:I'm not terribly sure what BFG offers over other spaceship game rules, other than the setting. Could someone enlighten me? It's simple while having some decent depth. Remember when BFG came out the other starship games were Starfleet Battles and to a much smaller extent Silent Death. Both of these games were a mess as far as complexity goes. BFG seeemed to be based a lot on EpicA's bones, which is much simpler. I didn't like EpicA much (too much sameness when I was used to a lot of differentiation from Space Marine) but I did think it worked for BFG. I'd like it even better if there had been an easy way to keep track of all the stats on the figures themselves (click wheels?) so that you'd only need a simple stat sheet to play, ala WFB or 40K. I'd still say that it's a better game than X-Wing or the new Trek games in that it's not prepainted, which tends to do negative things to community IME. Haven't played either of those games though, so they may be super tight ruleswise. If BFG was still alive, the other practical reason would be that both of those games are on a timer, in that the licenses will be screwed with in a few years. This goes double for X-Wing, since a new movie is coming out and that was enough of a reason to drop the original Star Wars RPG line in the late 90s.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:40
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It really wasn't that the specialist games "didn't sell". The shelf stock for them moved about as slowly as most actual regular mandatory unmovable GW shelf stock did. It's that while the games did make money, and enough to support their cost, the investment potential of the big lines was too much for GW's management to not drool over. Consider: Let's say we have a team of five designers on a game not dissimilar to mordheim and some rear end-numbers. For every one dollar spent on them, a hundred are made back. (A lot of that gets eaten up by model production and so on, but call it a modest profit.) Move those same designers over to something like 40k wholesale. Every one dollar spent per designer is now making ten thousand dollars. Looking solely at the numbers, it's a no-brainer decision to do that. This ignores a whole lot of issues, like how keeping up multiple lines is overall a good thing for market and brand penetration, how putting all your eggs in one basket is a really bad idea, how the number getting bigger may just be a factor of the game being more popular and not an indicator of each designer dollar being spent better or more efficiently, how having multiple games that more than pay for themselves (think boardgame companies) are a great market dominance strategy, and so on and forth. If you're the type to look at the numerical factor becoming magically bigger by moving an element from column A to column B, it's a sensible idea. Sometimes it's even a legitimately good one. I don't particularly trust GW to have made good decisions here.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:42
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Night10194 posted:Unless you played Eldar, who just ignored all the rules that made the game actually fun to play and got to turn wherever they wanted whenevs. Eldar were basically a sailed fleet in a world of WW2 warships. It sort of worked in that BFG was WW2 in space vs. a "proper" starship game. If you're going to complain there, might as well say something about the necrons, who had special rules that were literally "ignore Eldar special rules". The balancing of the game went downhill as time went on, though I think the orks were a trap faction to begin with.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:44
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rkajdi posted:Eldar were basically a sailed fleet in a world of WW2 warships. It sort of worked in that BFG was WW2 in space vs. a "proper" starship game. If you're going to complain there, might as well say something about the necrons, who had special rules that were literally "ignore Eldar special rules". The balancing of the game went downhill as time went on, though I think the orks were a trap faction to begin with. I played a friend who had Necrons once. We never played BFG together again afterwards. Necrons were even worse than Eldar. And Tyrannids sucked, too. The basic Imperials vs. Chaos (or I vs. I or C vs. C) foundation was really fun, though. Of course, the other thing is, the whole reason I even got into BFG was because I bought a model to serve as the ship for a Rogue Trader game I was running in the shop, and found I liked painting and putting it together and the fleets were pretty cheap, so I bought a full Imperial fleet and eventually splurged on an Emperor because I wanted to make a cool flagship. That the game was really fun was more of a happy accident.
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Nov 23, 2014 15:45
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