Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Azreal13 wrote:
There isn't a single commercial enterprise that wouldn't be in some way better if it possessed more, pertinent, information about its customers and potential customers.

I agree with you completely, Az. Knowledge is always good, even if you choose to act contrary to it.

It doesn't change my point, however, that it doesn't change anything, and is of less value, if you're determined to do your one thing, and not veer from that, unless you have to (or unless leadership changes).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Talys wrote:


In much the same way, GW is serving one specific niche: people who like the GW aesthetic, who don't mind paying a relatively high price, who highly value the miniatures/modelling aspect of the hobby, who don't have space issues, who prefer to play with like-minded groups, who like big models, and who like to game the way GW likes to write its games.

That's a really stupid way to run a business, narrow down the customer base to "those that will buy our stuff no matter what and screw everyone else." That guarantees a shrinking customer base and will stagnate and die. You have to grow and they seem to be doing their hardest to do the opposite of that.

I think that if you ignore large market segments, other companies will jump in and take advantage of that and in the long run, this can be bad for your business. I think this is essentially the story of PP's success.

Really, I think the only reason that GW has managed its level of success is that wargaming and miniatures is such a small industry just not potentially profitable enough to justify people investing big money in it, so GW has only largely had to compete with less-well funded competitors that won't invest the kind of money necessary to have explosive growth. Plus, it's not that easy to grow from a small to a midsize company, a challenge I'm sure a lot of companies in the gaming industry have trouble overcoming.

 Talys wrote:
In much the same way, GW is serving one specific niche: people who like the GW aesthetic, who don't mind paying a relatively high price, who highly value the miniatures/modelling aspect of the hobby, who don't have space issues, who prefer to play with like-minded groups, who like big models, and who like to game the way GW likes to write its games.

Most of that applies to the hobby as a whole.

who don't mind paying a relatively high price. The hobby - as in wargaming, not games workshop - is expensive for what you get. Some are cheaper, some are more expensive, but the hobby is expensive. GW is just on the ludicrously high end.

who highly value the miniatures/modelling aspect of the hobby. Any wargame with miniatures draws people who appreciate miniatures and modelling. Hobbies outside of wargaming have this too. Nothing is unique to GW in this regards outside of model aesthetics.

who don't have space issues. If you're gaming at home, you need space. If you're storing things at home, you need space. Any wargame requires space at home. GW games don't need much more space than other games if you store things intelligently until you start buying titans, which is a very, very, very small portion of the playerbase.

who prefer to play with like-minded groups. Again, any group playing a specific game is gaming with like-minded people. If I'm playing Malifaux, I'm playing with people who like what Malifaux offers.

The only GW specific parts of that are people who like GW's aesthetic, how GW writes their games, and large models (because no other games companies seem to want to put their foot in that ring).

 -Loki- wrote:

who prefer to play with like-minded groups. Again, any group playing a specific game is gaming with like-minded people. If I'm playing Malifaux, I'm playing with people who like what Malifaux offers.

I'd disagree, and say that GW, with it's policy of "Our way or you aren't welcome" has introduced an added layer here. Unlike say, Infinity, X-wing or Warmahordes, 40k runs into issues where the rules are so imbalanced and polarizing that you need to have people who will agree to extensive houseruling to play. These other games you just read the rulebook and turn up. Worst issue you will find is that there is a casual vs competitive player split. 40k it is possible to play in a way that is casual, but massively unfun for other players (Eldar bikes spring to mind- a "Fluffy the Three-headed-dog list"). Then there is stuff like titans, which are impressive models, but change how the game plays. As such, you need to find like-minded players who agree how to handle the games quirks.

Yeah... while I agree with the rest, GW games take a lot more negotiating now that the rules are so screwy. With Malifaux, I say "how many points, and do you want my A game or something weird I've been trying?" Done.

puree wrote:

For example, if you want a tactical mediaeval/fantasy game with a balance system, formations, and command and control, you know from reading AoS that the rules don't have them, so there's not much point playing it.

Very vague and hence meaningless list of things, but it has all of those IMO. Of course those who start angry will not look to see what systems are there, but just go with their bias.

What balance mechanism do you mean?

I mean a points system or a list system or a unit strength system ora random system, or some system that helps the players develop at least roughly fair battles.

Formations? It has units with coherency rules, and it has larger battalion formations with special rules. It has formations. You can put them in rectangle blocks or triangles etc. Do you really mean it isn't a block game with the extra layer of complicated block rules?

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It may surprise people to learn this, but one afternoon, months ago, boredom inspired me to develop a plan for a pre-Empire WFB game, and I ended up emailing it to GW.

Needless to say it got no reply...

The basic premise was a Mordheim style skirmish game, but with room to expand for bigger battles - much in the same manner as war of the ring expanded upon the LOTR skirmish game.

Being pre-Empire, it was set just at the time of Sigmar's birth and had the various tribes having their own character and abilities. For example, the tribes that worshipped Ulric would have beserker abilities, and the tribes that had contact with the Dwarves would have better weapons, the dwarves passing on their smithing skills.

Orcs were more 'feral' than before. Dwarves were there, Elf players would have been happy, undead players would have had a more unified structure being under Nagash's control, Skaven would have been there, Beastmen, and Chaos Warriors, led by Krell, would have been proper looking barbarians corrupted by Chaos.

Hell, even the Bretonnians could have been squeezed in, and Ogres and Chaos Dwarves!!!

It would have had a unique look to it IMO and existing players could have used their armies.

Naturally, of course, GW spurned this golden opportunity.

This would have been pretty cool, I gave AoS an honest go I read all the released background books so I could understand the setting and still couldn't love it, it is for me too deep fantasy but not enough the fantasy worlds I love. What you describe would have pushed the game and setting around a little keeping it within the general feel but freshening it up. All the warscrolls etc etc could still have been introduced. I don't think it would have feasible to have run both games but something like this more traditional fantasy setting would have I think been more popular. But I know that had they did what you suggested many people would moan that they just copied 30k to the letter would still have burned their armies

 oni wrote:
Sure... GW could have done a better job introducing AoS, but it's my point of view that the player community is to blame for AoS's "failure to launch". Too few people were willing to try something new, to try the game rules as designed; instead rushing to develop a point system to apply to a game specifically designed not to need it. Where did this leave us... A fragmented player community who can't agree upon how to play the game and thusly avoids playing it altogether.

It's not the players job to like a game. GW released a crappy game with expensive models no one asked for while getting rid of a game people DID ask for.

In response to the op, absolutely. They should have set the game in the distant past like they did with the Horus Heresy, when Sigmar united the human tribes to found the Empire and fought against the Orcs and Chaos.

Instead we got a mess of a game that nuked the classic Warhammer setting and timeline that everyone's come to love over the last three decades or so.

 -Loki- wrote:

who don't have space issues. If you're gaming at home, you need space. If you're storing things at home, you need space. Any wargame requires space at home. GW games don't need much more space than other games if you store things intelligently until you start buying titans, which is a very, very, very small portion of the playerbase.

I would submit that the amount of space you need to store 40k armies is humongous compared to anything other than a historical. When you look at signatures of lots of people.. whether it's 2k, 9k, 15k, 20k points on multiple armies -- that's can fill a closet, neatly packed, or a whole wall or room of showcases. Plus, there's a big difference between needing a small kitchen table to play on, and needing a 6x4 or larger table as an ideal playing space.

The person who has a basement (or a friend with one), who has/wants to play on a large gaming table and fill it up will just be happier than the guy who has the constraint of playing on a coffee or kitchen table.

 -Loki- wrote:
The only GW specific parts of that are people who like GW's aesthetic, how GW writes their games, and large models (because no other games companies seem to want to put their foot in that ring).

There's also the shifting meta. GW changes up its game, in my opinion, a lot faster than most other games. If you're in a group that follows the latest stuff, you need to be happy constantly changing up your army and models (which, for most people, means buying and modelling more miniatures). I don't think this is a *negative*, because some people like that, either because they already have large collections, or they enjoy the chance to add different models to it and changing things up. But if you don't, or aren't able to, 40k is just an exercise in frustration.

Exactly right. That's part of why I stopped 40K. I realised GW were never going to "finish" the rules and let me stop buying stuff. It was going to be running up the down escalator for the next 20 years if I continued, and no better game at the end of it. (Actually the game got worse, IMO.)

I know some people see changes in 40K as a positive thing, refreshing the game and introducing new challenges. To me, if I want refreshment and new challenges, I will buy a different game. It comes to the same thing, you have to spend more money, but you get more variety of choice.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Exactly right. That's part of why I stopped 40K. I realised GW were never going to "finish" the rules and let me stop buying stuff. It was going to be running up the down escalator for the next 20 years if I continued, and no better game at the end of it. (Actually the game got worse, IMO.)

I know some people see changes in 40K as a positive thing, refreshing the game and introducing new challenges. To me, if I want refreshment and new challenges, I will buy a different game. It comes to the same thing, you have to spend more money, but you get more variety of choice.

This sounds like an odd thing to be mad at a company about. If any company stops making new products they're going to die. GW HAS to keep adding things, changing them, resculpting, re writing...

I will criticize GW for making bad games, and for the fiction being dull, and for overcharging for rules and models, and for being actively hostile to their ostensible fans, but not for trying to avoid bankruptcy in the same way that every company ever has done. It's fair enough to not be interested in buying new stuff for a game every few years, but strange to think they're wrong for having new releases.

GW don't make new products, they just make changes that aren't improvements to the same range of products they have had for years.

Where's the mass battle game, the flying game, the naval game? All canned years ago, while they now try and cram these incompatible elements into the mass skirmish rules rather than perfect those.

 tomjoad wrote:

I will criticize GW for making bad games, and for the fiction being dull, and for overcharging for rules and models, and for being actively hostile to their ostensible fans, but not for trying to avoid bankruptcy in the same way that every company ever has done. It's fair enough to not be interested in buying new stuff for a game every few years, but strange to think they're wrong for having new releases.

Except for the fact that they have very few "new" releases, and instead are essentially constantly releasing re-hashed versions of older items. The biggest "new" things GW have done in recent years are Knights, AdMech, and AoS. In most cases, their releases are re-used assets, never improved, and often times split so that what might have been in one book or release now comes in multiple releases.

Other companies come out with actual, new products.

7 months in, these are the facts AoS is selling badly even worse than WHFB, all stores except the xmas virgins missed targets by up to 50% and thats not just sigmar's fault, not a single archeon model has been sold at my local GW since release.

Ive been playing sigmar now at least once a week since launch and i've given it a thorough testing in all its forms, The core 4 pages of rules are weakly constructed with no footing in reality as to why a certain mechanic exists, for instance why is it random who's turn it is next? what is the reason behind this other than to just be random, why can i charge past other units into ones further back without penalty just because i rolled the right distance, why do the bad guys not at least hit me as i go past? Why does it not matter if i charged in the flank or the rear, surely that would effect such a battle. why are we alternating which unit strikes in which order, surely wouldn't a human be faster than a dwarf and an elf would be faster than a human and a vampire would be faster than all, why is battle shock boring, surely army can rout all at once? surely it would be fun to pursue them, oh know just remove models as you go with no real explanation as to where they went. the list of questions goes on and on.

The War-scrolls, where to start with these, firstly there boring so many set 3+ 4+ rolls to be made that they all start to sound the same after a while with so many different special rules that are all just about the same when you boil them down and as for the actual battle tomes that contain a few extra rules omg i hope no one wasted there money on these, heres a rule in one of them that some wont know about, if a unit has - save then no matter what it has no save, no mystic shields no terrain bonus, just RAW no save = no save.

When it comes to using player made point systems i feel that your wasting your time with this as the whole game will fight against any kind of restriction you put in place. and even though some systems like PPC do a good job at giving points to models in the end if your forces are too equal with all the game mechanics still in place you might aswell role off at the start to see who wins.

They should realized that the customer is always right hence why 9th age is a beautiful system that cares not where the mini's come from as long as they conform to the game mechanics, my god if they made mini's for it i'd buy them with that attitude behind it.

tomjoad wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Exactly right. That's part of why I stopped 40K. I realised GW were never going to "finish" the rules and let me stop buying stuff. It was going to be running up the down escalator for the next 20 years if I continued, and no better game at the end of it. (Actually the game got worse, IMO.)

I know some people see changes in 40K as a positive thing, refreshing the game and introducing new challenges. To me, if I want refreshment and new challenges, I will buy a different game. It comes to the same thing, you have to spend more money, but you get more variety of choice.

This sounds like an odd thing to be mad at a company about. If any company stops making new products they're going to die. GW HAS to keep adding things, changing them, resculpting, re writing...

I will criticize GW for making bad games, and for the fiction being dull, and for overcharging for rules and models, and for being actively hostile to their ostensible fans, but not for trying to avoid bankruptcy in the same way that every company ever has done. It's fair enough to not be interested in buying new stuff for a game every few years, but strange to think they're wrong for having new releases.

I think what KK's referring to is that the desire for some people to have a game (and an army) that's "done" -- so you have all your models for that game, and now, you either play that game, start a new army within that game, or move onto a new game, with fresh, new models.

It's simply not the business model of 40k (or WMH, to be fair). The 40k model is analogous to CCGs, even though it predates them -- keep rebooting the game by adding more to it and changing it. It's not like all your old models (or cards) are useless; after all, you can still use your tactical marines and harlequin troupe from 1989. But there's plenty of new things that you "have to have" because the fans of the game are snapping up that new stuff and to stay competitive, you need new stuff too. Or sometimes, more of old stuff that you never got before.

Putting aside the business reasons why this might be a good idea -- at the end of the day, I don't really care about that, as that contributes nothing to my fun -- I would rather play one wargame that I really love for 25, 50, or more years, than several in that period, because I get really attached to my models and armies. Plus my armies take so long to complete (2-4 years... some of them more...) that all my friends would have moved onto a different game before I ever got to play with a model, lol.

Incidentally, I treat computer games totally differently. I burn through them and never look back: I've played a couple of games where I've blown 5,000+ hours to build a top-ranked ladder toon, but when I'm done, and I could care less what happens. People can have my stuff, or ebay it, or whatever. Zero connection to it. To a lesser extent, my WMH armies are like this too -- I spend relatively little time painting them, I play them a little, and then they get put in a display case; but with the exception of the odd character model I really love, I don't have much attachment to them. But a trusty Sergeant that got a lucky Krak grenade off and ended up scoring a game win by 1 Victory Point? I'll remember his name, he'll always have a spot in my heart, and I'll bring him out every now and then for kicks.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
In response to the op, absolutely. They should have set the game in the distant past like they did with the Horus Heresy, when Sigmar united the human tribes to found the Empire and fought against the Orcs and Chaos.

Instead we got a mess of a game that nuked the classic Warhammer setting and timeline that everyone's come to love over the last three decades or so.

I'm firmly in the camp that one of the reasons for the change was IP protection. By creating a new universe you get rid of orks, elves, and dwarves- all of which can be made by competitors. Setting the game in the warhammer universe's past wouldn't have accomplished this.

Note that I don't think this was a good idea creatively or financially.

 theHandofGork wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
In response to the op, absolutely. They should have set the game in the distant past like they did with the Horus Heresy, when Sigmar united the human tribes to found the Empire and fought against the Orcs and Chaos.

Instead we got a mess of a game that nuked the classic Warhammer setting and timeline that everyone's come to love over the last three decades or so.

I'm firmly in the camp that one of the reasons for the change was IP protection. By creating a new universe you get rid of orks, elves, and dwarves- all of which can be made by competitors. Setting the game in the warhammer universe's past wouldn't have accomplished this.

Note that I don't think this was a good idea creatively or financially.

Nor will it work for this purpose.

Calling dwarfs 'duardin' does not change the fact that dozens of companies make dwarfs, and... sorry.. if it's short, grumpy, and has a beard, folks are going to call them dwarfs.

A Dwarf, by any other name, will smell as sweat.

GW just does not get how IP works....

The Auld Grump, though it looks like they have at least given up on the 'We sue!' response....

Also, it has absolutely no impact on companies that were previously making "compatible with" products.

GW didn't understand what it could protect before Chapterhouse, and it still doesn't.

Duardin? Sounds like they ripped off Dungeons and Dragons...D&D calls evil underdark Dwarves Duergar.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Also, it has absolutely no impact on companies that were previously making "compatible with" products.

GW didn't understand what it could protect before Chapterhouse, and it still doesn't.

They hire their lawyers for their 'attitude', not their knowledge of the Law.

It doesn't help that the name changes pretty much universally sound worse than the originals.

Ironically, when you go to the website, they're still called Dwarves. Or Dwarf / Dwarfs

As to the faction names, they're a mixed bag, for me. Sylvaneth, I always liked. Seraphon actually kind of grew on me. Aelves, I hate.

While the copyright might certainly be an issue, I think it's also one of perception. People who aren't fans could really care less, but people who are fans -- they might be more inclined to think of Seraphon as something other (or more) than lizardmen, and therefore buy Seraphon models, rather than bipedal lizards from competitors.

1.) Don't announce the death of WHFB until AoS had some time to take root.

2.) Make it more about the game as opposed to just the models. Good models are awesome, but there are plenty of options for models alone, the appeal of GW has never been just the game or models, but rather the combination of great models that have a game behind them, and AoS was so far from being a game that it just didn't matter.

GW is the miniature equivalent of "Graphics are more important than game play!" at least in their field you can argue graphics are more important than game play, but the extremes are never good and there should be a better balance.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


Calling dwarfs 'duardin' does not change the fact that dozens of companies make dwarfs, and... sorry.. if it's short, grumpy, and has a beard, folks are going to call them dwarfs.

A Dwarf, by any other name, will smell as sweat.

GW just does not get how IP works....

The Auld Grump, though it looks like they have at least given up on the 'We sue!' response....

Agreed. I would point out just how big GW not-dwarfs are though, Everything got biggerized it seems.

 theHandofGork wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


Calling dwarfs 'duardin' does not change the fact that dozens of companies make dwarfs, and... sorry.. if it's short, grumpy, and has a beard, folks are going to call them dwarfs.

A Dwarf, by any other name, will smell as sweat.

GW just does not get how IP works....

The Auld Grump, though it looks like they have at least given up on the 'We sue!' response....

Agreed. I would point out just how big GW not-dwarfs are though, Everything got biggerized it seems.

Everything got biggerized except their market... Which got buggerized.

I took a look at the new Not-Dwarf Not-Troll-Slayers-No-Sir figures... went 'meh' and moved on.

I actually like them a good deal less than the troll slayers that they replaced.

Which is a shame - with Mordheim coming back, I might have been interested, but not those figures, and certainly not at that price.

The Auld Grump

I actually like them a good deal less than the troll slayers that they replaced.

Which is a shame - with Mordheim coming back, I might have been interested, but not those figures, and certainly not at that price.

You raise a good point actually about Mordheim returning.

Will players, new and old alike, take to the new Mordheim if its done in the modern AoS setting and aesthetic?

Or will they bring back the classic Mordheim setting, rooted in the old Warhammer Fantasy world?

I know I certainly won't be interested in an Age of Sigmar Mordheim, and I've never even played Mordheim or the old Warhammer Fantasy.

-

 Bottle wrote:
I would think the only specialist game less likely to return than Mordhiem is Warmaster.

Although I do think there will be a dozen miniatures a side skirmish fantasy game in the future. Frostgrave shows the success of Mordheim can be repeated with a novel idea for a setting. In the infinite vastness of the Mortal Realms there should be lots of scope to come up with a new city for the setting.

Oh hell no. I would literally rather they never bring it back than have them soil one of the best parts of WHF as a setting with AoS rubbish. Mordheim was a novel idea for a setting, it doesn't need to be "improved". Regardless, there's no reason other than sheer bloody mindedness on the part of GW to change the game's setting, it was already set in "the past" even before all the End Times nonsense. I'm not saying they won't be that stupid, but it really would be sheer idiocy; the whole point of bringing back the SGs is you have a built-in starting customer base of nostalgia-driven evangelists, if you change the setting then you lose that. Further with Mordheim specifically they have a chance to win back some of the folk AoS drove away, but again that means staying in the Old World.

-

I was there for Mordheim and we bought it and played for 2 months before giving it up. To be honest I thought it was horrible and my group wondered why they didn't just release a true fantasy skirmish.

 Kenshinzo 7 wrote:
I was there for Mordheim and we bought it and played for 2 months before giving it up. To be honest I thought it was horrible and my group wondered why they didn't just release a true fantasy skirmish.

Gdub did have a true fantasy skirmish game it was called Lizardmen skink army.

I look at those gorgeous models and say "Where were they when I played Fantasy? I was stuck gluing 5 piece skeletons together! " To me, its the models carrying AoS certainly not the rule set or books, even if the artwork in those books is absolutely beautiful eyecandy. I like the suggestion that Gdub should have done AoS like 30k (they still could have pushed square AND round bases!). I sit back admiring the models for AoS but not having a legit point cost for models would drive me nuts.

I thought a lot of the reason AoS was created was copyright protection since they lost that big lawsuit a while back?