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Maxwell Lord posted:That is a really desperate-looking starvation measure. I'm sure they'll save some money by laying off whoever was in charge of that, but the hit to their media presence is not insignificant either. They have to have the dumbest marketing and product departments in the history of the loving planet. How can a company not legitimately understand the relationship between encouraging painting and sales of paint? How do they not understand that helping retailers will create more places for people to play 40k and in turn increase sales? Seriously this company's incompetence makes me so angry
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# ¿ Jun 5, 2014 18:21 |
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2024 22:07 |
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Maxwell Lord posted:To me what's really troubling about it is that it comes across as a "counting pens" maneuver, one of those things where a company starts trimming minor costs everywhere without addressing deeper problems. This reminds me of a story--did you know the original Xbox was made to sell Windows? Most purchases of Windows are made by people purchasing a new PC. If you look at the people buying new PCs the most frequently (and Microsoft did), one of the key segments of that group is gamers--power users who frequently buy or build new PCs in order to play the latest games, which require better and better hardware. In the late 90s, the PlayStation2 was luring PC developers away (even before its launch), creating a fear that flagging PC game sales would lead to lower sales of Windows, so the DirectX team at Microsoft took apart a bunch of Dells and made a prototype console that would run DirectX ("Xbox" is short for "DirectXbox") and serve as an attractive 2nd platform for PC developers who could continue to make PC games but also have a console to release them on. Now, Microsoft is not the world's smartest company, and they gently caress up fairly often when it comes to branding (firing their ad agency was long overdue). But it's worth noting that their most-loved product (by a country mile) was originally conceived as part of a long-term strategy to sell their flagship product, Microsoft Windows. Not only could you argue that it was a success in that regard--PC gaming is doing pretty well--but it also became one of the most profitable parts of their business. Now Games Workshop is no Microsoft (though I'd argue their brand is about as well thought-of). But my point is that even with the dumb things that Microsoft does, they still think about the long term, and acknowledge that some of their big plans are gonna fail. Games Workshop seems so focused on the short term that it's hard to imagine they are even aware that there are long-term business ramifications to consider. Edit: Also, because I haven't done this yet, I'm gonna call the long, slow wheezing death -- Acquired for their IP in 2Q 2016
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# ¿ Jun 6, 2014 01:49 |
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JerryLee posted:Yeah, once I can buy a mini rulebook from ebay, I'll probably play again. Until then I'm in stasis or playing with people who will agree to use 6E/let me borrow a copy of 7E. You can actually just print out a 1-page list of rules changes for 7th and use that with a 6E rulebook. I've already done this and it works fine.
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# ¿ Jun 6, 2014 12:02 |
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S.J. posted:Just here to remind everyone, since I saw someone use the term 'marketing' in the last few pages, that GW does not actually have a marketing department of any kind. that would actually explain a lot
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# ¿ Jun 11, 2014 21:41 |
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Randalor posted:I'm not sure what's worse, that almost half the codexes are Imperium of Man books, that they don't include Orks, who I thought was another big moneymaker for them, or that they listed Codex: Eldar twice. Not only does it not include Orks--the next loving release--it also doesn't even have the extra slot to put the Ork codex in when you get it. I would also like to point out that if this were a full set of mini-codexes with a mini-rulebook, I'd have already preordered it.
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# ¿ Jun 14, 2014 19:03 |
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JerryLee posted:Yeah, Hasbro would not make WH worse because that would be pretty hard for anyone to do without deliberately trying, but they're not absolute saints. Magic is obviously their golden child, but even there a lot of the stuff they've had to do to get it to its current on-paper success has been a mixed blessing, depending on who you ask. The D&D case is another instructive one, where in their attempt to fix some issues with their product they threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater and ended up creating an edition war. I'm not sure how much of that is Hasbro and how much of it is Wizards of the Coast though. Wizards has its own execs that will make decisions about the D&D brands, and they owned it before being acquired by Hasbro. They're certainly capable of making bad decisions about a brand or hiring brand managers without Hasbro, like every other company. Hasbro being chiefly responsible when it's really unlikely they actually have anything to do with say, game design at best puts Wizards on a pedastal they don't deserve (and makes the odd assumption that they aren't also a company and also interested in the exact same outcomes as Hasbro) and at works shows a kind of remarkable ignorance in the way businesses work. They way people talk about businesses in the game industry always makes me wonder how many of them have white collar jobs. That said, I do think that any GW acquisition by Wizards would be more likely to follow the DnD path than the MtG path, but Wizards could "save" the game by deciding it wanted to promote a tournament environment, which isn't really possible with DnD. Taking that seriously leads to a whole host of benefits for the community and the rule design.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2014 12:49 |
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Chill la Chill posted:Wow, I'm really surprised that many of you believe that not only did WOTC do badly with D&D, but also planned the edition war and subsequent fallout more than the brilliant marketing team at Paizo and Lisa Stevens did. Pathfinder's current success is the result of Wizards deciding to discontinue the Dragon and Dungeon magazines and replace them with DnD Insider, which last I checked, isn't a product people are gushing about. Those editors and writers had to find some way to put all that 3.5e experience to work. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Jun 22, 2014 |
# ¿ Jun 22, 2014 14:24 |
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serious gaylord posted:This is going to shock you, but GW upper management largely don't care what goes on in the stores as long as they meet their targets. There was no need to 'sign off' on anything. It was a decision made by each store manager. You're definitely right about thist. Stores like the Greenwich village shop still allow pick-up games so it's probably not a corporate mandate. Not allowing them is dumb as hell though and if you think it's a good idea you're wrong. The tiny contingent of toxic gamers that you keep expressing distaste over is far outweighed by the retail benefits of having enthusiastic customers in the store engaging with the product and brand, showing off assembled, painted, or converted miniatures to other customers. GW having retail stores only makes sense in 2014 if they also provide a place for players to play the game, since playing the game is the one thing that you can't do online and something that other game shops struggle with due to the amount of space required to host tables, store scenery, etc.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 11:22 |
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One of the smartest things I've seen in retail was a practice we were taught while I was at Games Workshop, actually--we were asked to learn the names of all of our regulars, and encouraged to give them a "Norm!"-like greeting whenever they came in, ensuring that a. other players would know their name, and that b. the store would feel like "their" place. That was back when the stores were encouraged to let gamers hang out and paint/play/etc though.serious gaylord posted:I would speculate that they will be shrinking their store numbers quite drastically over the next 2-3 years. We might see a return to 'Flagship' stores in the big cities, and the smaller one mans disappearing. This wouldn't be a huge surprise. The retail stores can't continue to be profitable if they're going to be shittier, less well-stocked versions of the GW online store and game shops don't exactly thrive even when they have revenue from other, better-selling/higher-margin games to keep them afloat. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Jun 27, 2014 |
# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 11:46 |
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Yeah and that underscores the importance of Games Workshop focusing less on selling product through their stores and more on creating a great space for consumers to engage with the brand through gaming and painting. If you can't make that work, then tabletop wargames in general are hosed.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 12:42 |
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What idiot thought that policy would make good economic sense?
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2014 16:39 |
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El Estrago Bonito posted:I don't like GW but I don't see why people are annoyed that people wanted you to use the current rules? The Magic analogy doesn't really hold up here. Also you don't pay hundreds of dollars for the rulebooks to Magic so it's not a big loss when the rules change.
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# ¿ Jul 21, 2014 22:52 |
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The difference here -- and why the analogy doesn't hold -- is that Magic has specifically created formats that allow players to play with older cards. Once your cards are no longer Standard-legal, you can play with them in Modern, Legacy, or Vintage (barring some minor exceptions for the Banned & Restricted list). There is no analog for this from Games Workshop, where new editions invalidate older ones unless your opponents are willing to use older rules. When M15 comes out, the M14 cards are still playable, albeit in different formats (major rule changes to the stack and mana burn happen so rarely that they really don't hold up against GW codex/edition changes). Sure, you could all agree to play 6th edition or 4th or w/e but to Moola's point most 40k gamers aren't down with this.
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2014 02:06 |
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Len posted:What do you mean? $50 for an ebook is a totally good deal right? That the physical books don't come with a download code or at least a goddamn coupon for the digital versions is one of the dumbest things Games Workshop does.
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# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 18:59 |
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Daedleh posted:To be fair, fully interactive ebooks apparently cost more than regular books to produce because of the extra programming on top. Of course, once the fixed cost of developing the ebook has been paid off then the materials cost is £0 and everything after is pure profit, but there's still that initial outlay to pay off. This assumes the books have to be fully interactive. They don't, and digital versions can cost as little as 0 additional dollars to create as pdf versions of the paper books are a natural byproduct of producing the file to send to printers. All that extra bullshit is just to justify a $50 price tag for a digital book (that they still fail to justify). And I'm willing to bet that you'd sell more copies at say, $20 to people who got a $30 off coupon with their codex than at the straight $50 price. At that point it becomes a solid upsell to clients who would have otherwise not paid for two copies of the codex. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jul 23, 2014 |
# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 19:31 |
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Kai Tave posted:Ultimately the only answer to "how much should X cost?" that matters is "how much will people pay us for it?" GW is well-versed in that particular equation having relied upon it for years. Now maybe they've hit the point where it turns out that people aren't willing to pay as much as GW wants them to. Unfortunately this isn't necessarily the case -- GW is likely worried that if they price the digital codex less than the hardcover, no one will buy the hardcover, not that people are lining up to buy either the digital copy or two copies of the same book (print and digital). Their digital-first supplements, to my knowledge, did not sell well. VVV Yeah I think it's ultimately that they don't want the digital book to cannibalize print sales, and they don't think that people will still buy the print one for table use if the digital one is cheaper, possibly due to the proliferation of tablets. This isn't necessarily incorrect. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Jul 23, 2014 |
# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 19:36 |
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Kai Tave posted:I think the "digital sales will cannibalize hardcopy sales" worries are vastly overblown given, as moths says, people will want the book at the table anyway. For all that nerds are supposedly gadget lovers, tabletop nerds have a fixation on books that borders on the pathological. That and, to be honest, flipping through a book to find the rule you need or whatever can be quicker than looking it up on a tablet, especially if the digital copy isn't very well indexed for quick searching. It doesn't matter if their worries are vastly overblown -- it is still something they are worried about. It's no different from Broadcast and Cable networks worrying about making their shows available for streaming online will cannibalize viewership for their shows on TV or magazines worrying about websites stealing print readers. It's still a legitimate concern and something they have to figure out, but yeah, obviously they need to find some kind of middle ground that will encourage customers to buy both. JerryLee posted:In their actual case this might be more correct than one'd think, but if you unpack it I'm pretty sure the actual cause of that would be that GW poo poo is already so price inflated that people are looking to save money however they can, similar to how people probably don't actually prefer lovely models from ebay that they need to bathe in super clean for a week. Yeah I mean, I agree with you on the idea that the root cause is probably the price of the books being too high to begin with. Everyone I know who plays (and was interested in 7th) was clamoring for a mini rulebook for 7th immediately but the only release for months was a massive, 3-hardcover book set at a price point in excess of $100 where one of the books was essentially a hundred pages of advertising for Games Workshop products. My tolerance for buying new heavy-rear end hardcover books is already pretty loving small. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jul 23, 2014 |
# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 19:48 |
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In many ways, Games Workshop's issues echo those of Dungeons and Dragons, where you can play continually with a single investment (in the case of D&D, the core books where you pay $50 every what, ten years? Unless you are dedicated to buying tons of supplements you're done after that). Once you have that army complete, the reason to buy new product is either to a. build an entire new army, or b. buy updated content for your current army, which tends to come in the form of new rules. Those posters talking about selling their armies might not get back into the game at any price point, and even if they did it doesn't necessarily mean more revenue for Games Workshop unless the rules hit a price point that's ~just right~ for doing so. Even then, what incentive does that player have to buy a new version of a unit they already bought and painted? As much as I hate Games Workshop's policies, I don't envy the market they're trying to work with. But then this is where investment in a competitive scene comes in handy, as it can help create turnover or demand for new product to stay current. Ultimately they need more products like Flyers, or Apocalypse that lead to new additions for existing armies in addition to generating support for new armies.
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# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 20:24 |
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Daedleh posted:If it's just a flat PDF, yes. If you're adding functionality, such as rules highlighting, linking etc then no. I don't know how complex GWs ebooks are since I've never used them. Adding rules highlighting and linking is trivial. Add-ons like custom army builders are what require craploads of work above and beyond standard PDFs. Bottom line is that Games Workshop has complete control over the costs involved in the product and there's more demand for a cheaper frills-free digital codex than a full-price one with some extra stuff.
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# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 21:30 |
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The Gate posted:Yeah, I mean...assuming GW uses Adobe Acrobat I could highlight and link a codex in a day. I have zero previous experience actually doing this, but since I am 1) computer literate and 2) not a complete moron, I feel confident this is possible. Also, I've done similar in Word. It's literally just a couple buttons on the pane. This would cost GW perhaps $100-$150 dollars in someone's hourly pay. Assuming it took 8 hours, which it might not. Adding popups and whatever, who the gently caress cares, it's literally just flash with no practical use besides actually hiding the rules you want to see until you click them. It's actually annoying. If they could hide and expand rules magically in a physical copy, so it was lower page count, that would be one thing, but I don't give a gently caress if they save some pages in a purely digital document. It makes no sense! The industry standard is InDesign, which essentially is for making print layouts and pdfs. I use it a fair amount to do publishable reports and I used to do more print layout stuff back in my graphic design days. There's also Quark, but I don't know how much use that gets these days. It's actually even easier to embed links and expandable text in InDesign than it is to do in Acrobat, and you can do it more elegantly. And yeah, agreed on hiding content until you click on it. They also do scrolling sidebars and call-out boxes, which are equally obnoxious.
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# ¿ Jul 24, 2014 00:39 |
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Thundercracker posted:No, it's quite insane. You're supposed to obfuscate bad news with impenetrable corp speak ( see Microsoft and the xbone), not make analogies suitef to bad warhammer novels Typically a company's PR/Marketing team has a heavy hand in crafting investor messaging, working in close concert with Finance to make sure that all the statements are OK with regard to being forward-looking/etc. If you don't have a good PR or Marketing team, this is the result you are going to get.
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# ¿ Jul 29, 2014 15:19 |
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Broken Loose posted:In 2014, for the amount of models used in a game of 2nd Edition 40k, it is unacceptable to buy a game the length of the average game of 2nd Edition 40k, hilarious random events or not. 2nd was such a loving mess that by the time 3rd rolled around, we were actively choosing to play without psykers to reduce the length of the average game by an hour. That 3rd doubled the number of models while halving the time required for a game was a huge step forward. I loved Necromunda but it could really benefit from a similar streamlining. At its core, randomness in a game is a mechanism for leveling the playing field: Games with no randomness, such as chess, reward skill to the level that an inferior player will seldom, if ever beat a superior player. The more randomness you introduce, the more you are leveling the playing field between those groups, where you have say, Paper Rock Scissors or just rolling dice on the other end. Great games generally fall closer to the "chess" end of the spectrum because they are more rewarding to learn and provide more reward for that investment. Introducing randomness has its benefits -- it helps newer players, and it creates uncertainty in the outcome that can make the games more exciting. But the downside is that the more randomness you introduce, the less skill will be rewarded, making the game less rewarding for skilled players and ultimately, competitive play. So what a good game does is choose where to add randomness, because the best random aspects--as per some of the examples that have already appeared in this thread--are ones where players have to respond to the randomness but can predict or influence certain outcomes. In Magic, the randomness of decks is a "good" example -- you can influence this via deckbuilding and card selection, and the game is about using your resources and the cards you get. A "bad" Magic example is the Miracle mechanic, which rewards a player for getting one particular card at random. Likewise, randomness in shooting and combat results are perfectly fine in 40k and similar systems--you want combat outcomes to be uncertain to a point, but also predictable. If my 8 Berserkers are in assault range of a unit of 4 guardsmen, that should be a slam dunk even with bad (but not abysmal) rolls. The bad randomness comes into play with things like psychic powers and warlord powers, which takes one of the key elements of the game--choosing your army and its capabilities--and takes it out of your hands. As a result you no longer have control over how effective those units are, and can get completely different unit values for the same unit cost game-to-game.
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# ¿ Jul 30, 2014 21:21 |
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Not a viking posted:Thats what I'm in the procesa of doing. Gonna sell of my emperors children. They won't see another update for a long time, most likely.
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 13:40 |
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serious gaylord posted:They dont have any of the old boxes left, so they can either A) Waste a considerable amount of money on pretty boxes for direct order stuff. Or B) Not waste money on boxes to ship things to peoples houses in. Yeah but as a customer why should I care about GW's waste, their margins, or their costs? All I care about is the quality of the end product and what I pay for it. I don't care what the cost to a steakhouse is for fancy plates and silverware but I am going to judge the presentation of the meal.
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 22:25 |
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serious gaylord posted:Ah yes, the good old 'They need to show they give a poo poo by making poor decisions that benefit very little of their customer base. I don't have a problem with the white boxes, but the argument that players should care about GW's costs is weak at best--they're a company, and customers don't and shouldn't care about their costs beyond how they impact the price and quality. I think one of the reasons you run into so much antipathy in this thread (other than the fact that it's inherently an anti-GW thread) is that a good portion of the time you are making the argument that customers to sympathize with the company they are buying products from and consider the cost of (decision X). But that's not their role in the marketplace. Imagine these same arguments, but replace "Games Workshop" with "Coke" and think about telling people that Coke shouldn't spend money on the packaging for say, cans you buy in 12-packs. Why should they prefer or be OK with blank cans at the same price because the cost to Coke is higher?
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# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 23:50 |
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Moola posted:Cheers m8 this means a lot. I am literally making GBS threads my pants with rage over this post. rkajdi posted:Weird thing is the most vocal person I've ever heard about this was an ex-GW rep over on TWF. Guy is hella odd with his gaming stuff (i.e. every figure has to be exactly what it is, no crazy conversions or proxies-- claimed it used too much of his brain power to keep track of things) and was big on doing everything 100% by the book, so take it as you will. It doesn't sound like he has a lot to work with to begin with though. I mean I get liking WYSIWYG for your opponents' armies, but seeing really cool imaginative stand-ins is great fun and I'd rather have more people to play against with proxies than a small base of the wealthiest, shittiest hams.
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# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 21:52 |
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serious gaylord posted:Well I'm sorry, but the entire tone of the last few posts was just that. Well thank god you were here to sort things out
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 00:48 |
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Scut posted:While it's not an official Lego product, Mobile Frame Zero is about as slick of a product as I've ever seen that turns Lego into wargaming minis. I've only perused the ruleset but it seems to use some clever standardization of components so that you can design a mech that is styled however you desire but the key elements that relate to stats will be clear to your opponent. This looks hilarious. May give it a shot.
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 03:53 |
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enri posted:The problem with the whole 'write rules to be able to sell more models -> sell more models' is one of those things that once you've realised you're being manipulated in that way, you can't un-realise it and it turns you into a gigantic cynical bastard. Oh to be innocent and naive again. All the rules are written to sell more models though. Hell, they should be. Rules for flyers were made to sell Flyers, which is fine. Flyers are alright. But when you start writing rules intended to move more models with no consideration for the game itself, the narrative they've built, or balance, then it's a problem. That's when you see Imperial psykers summoning daemons, no real restrictions on allies (or allies to begin with, though I see the appeal of the 6th ed matrix and it has led to some cool army concepts), and unbound lists (why have 3 dreadnoughts when you can have 7?). Fix posted:Those are Aussie prices, of course. $640 US for 14 models. Average $45 per model. Drop pods sell for $37 retail. Space Wolf Venerable Dreadnoughts sell for $54 for some reason. No one anywhere can name that reason. Hm... Dreadnoughts are $54, Drop pods are $37.25... that means... Holy poo poo! Are you telling me that if I drop the small sum of $638.75 to buy those 14 models from the manufacturer right now I can save $0 on my order? SIGN ME THE gently caress UP
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 11:32 |
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Yea like, I know when Warmachine releases a new book that JUST HAPPENS to have a lot of cool models, they want me to go 'oooh shiny' and buy them, but I also know that most of the time those models are fairly decently thought out, fit the theme of the book, usually cover some gaps in the army they go with, and generally feel like they have some purpose other than only taking my money from me. For me these changes erode the mechanical and thematic differences between factions, and make the game a shittier game. Daemons aren't as cool if every army with a psyker can summon them. You don't have to consider your faction's mechanical strengths and weaknesses if you can just ally in forces that completely compensate for those weaknesses. You don't have to worry about making a meaningful decision between heavy support choices--just put all of them on the table!
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2014 17:56 |
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Indolent Bastard posted:What a staggeringly ugly army, with a few nice pieces here and there. Agreed. What's the point of having all that if you're going to half-rear end it so badly? The Gate posted:FYI, these things don't really exist in 99% of GW stores in the US, because they've replaced almost all of them with tiny 1 man shops that have no personnel or table space for more than a game or two. Yeah most of the US stores I've seen can't really support more than two games at a time, and are poorly-equipped to run their events and tournaments. serious gaylord posted:New York GW Case in point, the NYC GW has two tables. If they clear their demo table, move some product, and set a piece of plywood across the middle of those, they can make three, which I've seen them do. It doesn't work that well, and there isn't a lot of room to move around during these events. TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Aug 13, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 17:06 |
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fool_of_sound posted:Why does GW feel the need to maintain it's own stores? I know tons of LGSs carry GW products and have Warhammer tables available. The ones that I'm familiar with hold Warhammer events from time to time as well. Is it really all just to try to force people to buy Citadel models so that they can play at all the events? It's all about margin. If they sell the product in their own stores, either online or at a retail location, all of the revenue is theirs. Highest possible margin. If they sell product through another store, that store gets a cut. The mere thought of this causes executives at games workshop to poo poo their pants with rage, so their plan over the last ~15 years has been to gradually remove as many of these "competing" lower-margin sales avenues as they safely can, operating under the assumption that consumers will just naturally go to GW directly for the product that's no longer available through web retailers or in sufficient stock at their local store. It's not potentially the worst idea with regard to online product, but most B&M stores are connected to some kind of online store now because it's 2014. Furthermore, GW stores have become progressively worse places to game over the last 15 years and were never amazing. Ultimately GW, like Wizards with Magic, depends on B&M stores where people play the games to drive sales and long-term stickiness with the hobby. It's not a hobby that consumers in densely-populated urban areas can play in their homes due to the space, time, and money required to build, store, and host a table, not to mention the difficulty in connecting with a community of other players without central hubs for gaming activity. It's a delicate ecosystem and some companies know how to cultivate and manage it (Wizards) and some companies actively attempt to hurt it (guess who). TheChirurgeon fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Aug 13, 2014 |
# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 21:10 |
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WAR FOOT posted:GW Drybrushes are seriously some of the best around for their price. Coarse, short hairs on the cheapest brush in their range is quite excellent. GW drybrushes are the only brushes they make. Even the ones labled "Standard brush" are such dogshit as to be unusable for any other task.
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# ¿ Aug 26, 2014 15:57 |
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petrol blue posted:
The thing is, I'd actually be kind of OK with the Centurions and the Taurox and the Wolfjet and the Dogsled being unfeasible if they looked really cool but they just look retarded as hell for reasons above and beyond the lack of functionality.
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# ¿ Oct 1, 2014 13:35 |
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Dark Millennium introduced Strategy cards, which were randomly drawn before the game and were completely broken. Virus outbreak was the worst offender, as not only an insanely strong effect, but one that only worked on like, 4 armies, including Orks and Guard. They were terrible.
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# ¿ Oct 2, 2014 05:09 |
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Direwolf posted:I think the point is that they literally had this service and it wasn't worth it. All the Daves in the world didn't make up for the cost and expense of maintaining their bits service. They should just turn this over to Forgeworld. FW is already doing this to an extent (though primarily focused on 30k stuff right now) and producing higher-quality bitz than you'd get if GW put old poo poo back into production, and the price/cost structure could be set up accordingly.
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# ¿ Oct 16, 2014 15:36 |
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Warhammer is a game that needs store location support more than most, given how much space is needed to play a game of Warhammer and how time consuming (and costly) it can be to create scenery. Games Workshop stores could be the premier place to have a great experience playing Warhammer or Warhammer 40k, but the stores themselves, at least those in the US, do not have the size, manpower, hours of operation, or support to be great gaming locations.
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# ¿ Oct 26, 2014 16:40 |
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Panzeh posted:The problem is, most US stores have gaming space and a smorgasboard of random(often GW) terrain. The retailers might make sense in the UK, but in the US they have literally no advantages over US retailers competitively. Hobby game stores are a suckers' game and the fact that GW runs them is hilarious. Well yeah, and additionally those stores sell other games, are open longer hours (and don't close for lunch breaks), typically have more space, and don't give you any flak about unpainted models or having models from other game systems. I don't understand how a store can make money if it doesn't sell Magic: the Gathering these days. From what I understand, card game sales make up the bulk of hobby store revenue.
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# ¿ Oct 26, 2014 21:05 |
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serious gaylord posted:Of course its being put against the big two. The entire reason specialist games got dropped were that they werent financially viable enough to devote design, manufacture and release time to. If they cant sell well enough to even remain in stores when they were still having new releases and rules updates what was the point in continuing with them? While I don't doubt that they didn't sell well enough to have been worth it for GW to continue production, I do disagree that they wouldn't make money these days--just because GW likely did't make *enough* on them doesn't mean that someone else couldn't. It'd be interesting to see them sell/lease the license to a game like Necromunda. I'm pretty sure that someone else could make decent money off some of the well-loved skirmish games with lower overhead costs and new rules. Unlikely to ever happen, though.
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# ¿ Nov 23, 2014 23:36 |
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2024 22:07 |
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S.J. posted:"These days" doesn't matter if the product wouldn't of survived the time from them to now, and it wouldn't have. I'm not sure what to make of this--the games didn't survive for a number of reasons, but few of those preclude them from being successful now. Space Hulk didn't "survive" as a continual product, but it's clearly in high demand every time it's re-released. The biggest issue with Necromunda/Mordehim/Blood Bowl/Gorkamorka was probably less that adoption was poor and more that spend per player was significantly lower than the larger games: Conceptually, you only need the rules and a single gang/team to play, with some occasional additions to your gang/team as a campaign calls for it. An average Necromunda player is going to buy what, a basic rulebook/set and 8-15 models? 40k and Fantasy in theory have the same problem, but Games Workshop puts an assload of work into finding ways to encourage players to buy more units that aren't necessarily cost-effective at the skirmish game scale. This isn't unlike the problem that WotC has with something like Dungeons & Dragons, where in theory you need a single set of 3 books for each edition. A modern company taking on Necromunda would need low overhead costs and a way to encourage players to either buy more gangs or more campaign/rules content, the latter of which would likely be an easier sell.
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# ¿ Nov 23, 2014 23:55 |