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auticus wrote:
People play what other people are playing. Thats really the bottom line.

AOS and GW have a cycle that feeds itself simply off of the headcount.

The worst game in the world will do fine if players continue to play it because other people are playing it. Its a self feeding cycle.

There is much truth in this. Non-digital games require at least one opponent. If you can't find anyone to play your favorite game with, you don't get to play it. People are also reluctant to try something different because they like to be part of the herd, making it difficult for new, unfamiliar games to gain traction.

GW stores, for example, were designed to isolate their customers from other games. I know from experience that once you start hanging out at one it makes it difficult to pick up other games you are interested in, as "your place" only carries GW. So you find yourself putting up with their crap (for far too long).

Then you have the problem at any LGS of wanting to play game A, but only games B, C, and D have a player base there, and your LGS doesn't even stock game A to begin with.

auticus wrote:
Its most definitely not impossible. Unless we want to get pedantic and start talking about perfect balance. For clarity I am not talking about perfect balance.

I'm not even talking perfect balance. I'm talking about, at the least, every faction being able to go against every other faction and have a balanced chance of winning (that is, optimal army list vs optimal army list should have a roughly 50% win ratio over a large number of games and players). You can do that with 4 factions. You can't do it with 30.

 Sqorgar wrote:

auticus wrote:
Its most definitely not impossible. Unless we want to get pedantic and start talking about perfect balance. For clarity I am not talking about perfect balance.

I'm not even talking perfect balance. I'm talking about, at the least, every faction being able to go against every other faction and have a balanced chance of winning (that is, optimal army list vs optimal army list should have a roughly 50% win ratio over a large number of games and players). You can do that with 4 factions. You can't do it with 30.

It is generally very difficult to get 30 factions to place in the top 8 of a major tournament.

TBH the last page or so of this thread is why I think once AR glasses/goggles become a thing that's more affordable you'll see a sharp death of tabletop wargaming.

No need to find local players, you can play online but still have the visible and verbal interaction.

No need for companies to constantly put out new models to get people to buy stuff -- just charge a monthly fee to play.

I think a lot of other table top games will still be around after that tech boom (like RPGS and boardgames) but I have a hard time thinking miniature games will stay physical.

You think the tactile experience of building, painting and holding miniatures is negligible?

Or the AR/VR is a fad that ebbs and flows on the key premise of 'this time it wont suck; and 'oh thats 'new'', and mini-wargaming simply doesn't have the reach of face shoots like FortNight or GreyBrown Military dust up 84

VR has a very long way to go before it can deliver a game experience comparable to an afternoon wargaming session. UI/UX would be an immense challenge and the ergonomics/pixel density of modern headsets simply aren't good enough for extended wear. The truth is a digital tactics game will pretty much always be preferable as a PC game on a traditional 2D screen due to UX concerns, barring some radical innovations in player input/VR display technology.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
You think the tactile experience of building, painting and holding miniatures is negligible?

I think the hobby aspect will stay around as that's art but for actually playing most games, Ya, physical won't survive in the long run. Probably won't be for a very long time (10-15 years at the minimum) but it will happen. With how much money Microsoft, Apple and Google are all dumping into AR right now we're bound to see a more consumer friendly version of the hololense sooner then later.


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barboggo wrote:
VR has a very long way to go before it can deliver a game experience comparable to an afternoon wargaming session. UI/UX would be an immense challenge and the ergonomics/pixel density of modern headsets simply aren't good enough for extended wear. The truth is a digital tactics game will pretty much always be preferable as a PC game on a traditional 2D screen due to UX concerns, barring some radical innovations in player input/VR display technology.

I don't think the UI/UX would be as big of a challenge as you state and extended wear that depends on the person. I can currently play PSVR skyrim for hours with no motion sickness (with all the protections against it turned off) but I know others can't. With AR it's less of an issue though weight is as everything is becoming self contained and the batteries are going to be heavy.

 LunarSol wrote:
It is generally very difficult to get 30 factions to place in the top 8 of a major tournament.

Who said anything about tournaments? I'm saying that regardless of what faction you pick and what faction you play against, if both players play optimally, neither side will have a distinct advantage. If there is a game where your faction is always at a disadvantage to another faction, the game can not be said to be balanced (at the very least). Tournaments are a terrible way to determine the true balance of a game system.

For instance, in Rock-Paper-Scissors, over a large number of games, you should come out winning 33% of the time, losing 33% of the time, and getting a tie 33% of the time. But if your opponents know you can't throw Paper, then you will lose 50% of the time and tie 50% of the time (and win 0% of the time). If your opponent knows you will always throw Rock, you will lose 100% of the time.

A lot of 40k seems to be factions that can't throw Paper or only throws Rock, with tournaments largely obscuring this imbalance by not knowing which one you will face next. People won't create lists that use Scissors at all (won't win without paper, always lose to rocks), and often, the winning move is to have a Paper-only army and hope the match up gives you only Rock-only opponents (since one side can't throw paper, rocks will dominate against them and thus that imbalance will be more common and you are more likely to encounter it). So, despite the game being extremely unbalanced, in general, the tournament scene has a completely different balancing mechanism that yields different results, often factoring in imbalances or exploiting them.


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 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Or the AR/VR is a fad that ebbs and flows on the key premise of 'this time it wont suck; and 'oh thats 'new'', and mini-wargaming simply doesn't have the reach of face shoots like FortNight or GreyBrown Military dust up 84

I don't think VR is a fad - and I say that as the biggest VR doubter there was until I got my hands on a PSVR. I, however, do not think it will replace actual miniature gaming. I do miniatures because it is hard and time consuming to make and paint, and because I have something to show for it when the TV is turned off.

It's worth pointing out that VR has been around since the 80s. I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare at a mall demo when I was a kid. They've been refining it for decades and it is almost there as a consumer product. Believe me, if VR was a fad, it would've died as a concept back when you were walking around flat shaded 8 polygon rooms at 4 fps.

I myself am a games designer and I know that you can get a lot better balance than what GW does. The idea that you can't have balance is not a true one to me.

Kings of War currently has 21 factions and has pretty solid balance. Not perfect balance, but a good player can take a faction and do well with it.

That same good player would get crushed if they played in the GW gameverse with a non optimal army.

For balance to be achieved you have to dial back on the listbuilding importance.

auticus wrote:
I myself am a games designer and I know that you can get a lot better balance than what GW does. The idea that you can't have balance is not a true one to me.

Kings of War currently has 21 factions and has pretty solid balance. Not perfect balance, but a good player can take a faction and do well with it.

That same good player would get crushed if they played in the GW gameverse with a non optimal army.

For balance to be achieved you have to dial back on the listbuilding importance.

My impression over the years is that GW did too less play testing.
Play testing should give a better understanding of the game and so may lead to a more balanced game.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
TBH the last page or so of this thread is why I think once AR glasses/goggles become a thing that's more affordable you'll see a sharp death of tabletop wargaming.

No need to find local players, you can play online but still have the visible and verbal interaction.

No need for companies to constantly put out new models to get people to buy stuff -- just charge a monthly fee to play.

I think a lot of other table top games will still be around after that tech boom (like RPGS and boardgames) but I have a hard time thinking miniature games will stay physical.

Right.
Because video games made board games obsolete.....and ebooks made books obsolete....and how radio was killed long ago.....

Fact is, half the appeal of a miniatures game is the physicality and the hobby aspect.
If you take that away, how is it any different than just playing a video game of the same game?
Last I checked, video games haven't replaced TT gaming and I don't see that happening for the foreseeable future.

The whole point of a physical game is to interact with others in the flesh. If I wanted to play video game version instead, there are plenty of options.

Physical gaming isn't going anywhere soon.

auticus wrote:
I myself am a games designer and I know that you can get a lot better balance than what GW does. The idea that you can't have balance is not a true one to me.

BETTER balance, sure, but given that actual balance is a practical impossibility with such expansive games, at some point, you have to draw a line and say "good enough balance". While that line is different for everybody, given the popularity of 40k, it's probably safe to say that 40k's balance is not negatively impacting the game (or at least, not enough of a flaw to drive away a significant number of players). Despite 40k being so unbalanced, a lot more balanced games have come and gone with nary a shrug.

Most players don't care about balance, and it is almost never the reason a successful game declines.

Kings of War currently has 21 factions and has pretty solid balance. Not perfect balance, but a good player can take a faction and do well with it.

That same good player would get crushed if they played in the GW gameverse with a non optimal army.

I haven't played Kings of War, but my experience with Mantic products is that Mantic generally has very little variation to its game elements. Deadzone, for example, only has a handful of stats that have a small variation window (most models are +/- 1 for the stats). Walking Dead too. It's easier to balance something when similar units are roughly equal in power.

I also assume that the games you play with KoW are a lot more limited in scope and nature. With 40k, you can have a battle with 300 infantry troops going against a handful of giant robots and psychic Primarchs on a barren field filled with acid pools and craters while being bombarded by airships flying across the field. How do you balance a scenario like that? You can't. So, is a successful game the one that allows such grandiose scenarios or one that limits them in the name of balance?

For balance to be achieved you have to dial back on the listbuilding importance.

I have a sneaky suspicion that, at least to 40k players, list building is more important to them than actual balance. In fact, I think they actively enjoy the fact that list building intentionally unbalances the game.


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 wuestenfux wrote:
My impression over the years is that GW did too less play testing.
Play testing should give a better understanding of the game and so may lead to a more balanced game.

40k is such an expansive game with so many units, scenarios, and ways to play that they could playtest for 30 years using a small number of playtesters and still not find everything that one DAY of general release will expose. And I'm guessing that their focus was not solely on Matched Play, and that play testing was less about finding the perfect balance for that particular subset of games and more generally trying to figure out if they have a set of game rules that work in most cases, that gives them the design space to support an extensive line of growing products, and whether or not "game bugs" can lead to unfun, unplayable, or unwinnable situations unintentionally.


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 Ghool wrote:
The whole point of a physical game is to interact with others in the flesh.

Bow chicka wow wow.

Most players don't care about balance, and it is almost never the reason a successful game declines.

I think one of the biggest mass exoduses from whfb 7th edition came precisely from the horrible imbalance. At least that was the case in my region.

Though in general I agree. Dumpster fires of balance are largely ignored by a good number of players. So long as everyone around them is still playing the game.

I have a sneaky suspicion that, at least to 40k players, list building is more important to them than actual balance. In fact, I think they actively enjoy the fact that list building intentionally unbalances the game.

I also fully agree. The intended audience for both AOS and 40k are towards people that enjoy busting the game and having one sided games and winning in the listbuilding phase.

auticus wrote:
I think one of the biggest mass exoduses from whfb 7th edition came precisely from the horrible imbalance. At least that was the case in my region.

Wasn't into miniatures then, so didn't see it happen, but I suspect that wasn't the main reason they left, just the one that became the most obvious.

For instance, I don't think WMH mk3 went down due to balance issues, though that's probably the main thing I hear from the players that left. In my opinion, what happened is that change was the worst possible thing that could happen to a game which had a huge learning curve and rewarded players with mastery of its idiosyncrasies. When the game changes like that, mastery of the previous edition actually becomes an obstacle to winning and having fun - and since the majority of mk3 players were master mk2 players (mk2 didn't suffer casuals), they were constantly and totally frustrated by playing the game. They went from top of the game to basically a new player, and maybe wanted to skip a new learning curve that could take months and go back to having the fun they did in mk2.

But you can't put that sort of thing into words, so nebulous and poorly defined things like "balance" are blamed, or they blame things which were obviously bad and offensive decisions (killing the forums and press ganger program), despite the fact that those decisions didn't directly affect them (the forums were avoided by most players anyway and expert players with a reliable group don't need a press ganger). Privateer Press then goes, okay, we'll fix the balance - hey, why isn't anyone coming back? Turns out, fixing the balance issues actually does the exact same thing that creating a new edition does - it sets everybody's masteries back, pushing them even further from their goals for playing the game. Now I see people saying the CID program is why they left WMH.

Point is, emotions are fickle and we don't always know where they come from. What seems like the reason for our anger may actually just be a flimsy justification for it.

Well the extent of the exodus in 7th was that demons were pretty much the only viable army and that that was garbage, so people left for other games like warmachine.

That was the most common phrase posted and uttered.

At any rate, balance definitely matters to players- at least to a point. People naturally want to feel like they have a chance to win, even in more "casual" games. Getting stomped just because your favorite army that you lovingly and painstakingly converted and painted has lackluster rules is not a good feeling, it's a major turn-off. That was the problem with 7th 40k, right? We all hated that whoever placed the most broken toys on the table won.

Sure, some of the fun of any game is breaking it. I do that with Magic from time-to-time, creating crazy synergies- deck/list building is part of the fun. But I think Magic gets away with it a bit more because the game is much more intrinsically interactive than WH. Lots of hidden information- not knowing exactly what is in your opponent's hand, most of your "army" is buried in your deck and the precise order of cards is unknown, some spells and abilities can be used on your opponent's turn, and some card's abilities care about your opponent's actions/cards. WH games just don't have that kind of element. 40k 8th is particularly bad on that front because there was an intention that players do not care what abilities their opponent's units have, and doing that will naturally make the game less interactive as a result.

Blastaar wrote:
At any rate, balance definitely matters to players- at least to a point. People naturally want to feel like they have a chance to win, even in more "casual" games. Getting stomped just because your favorite army that you lovingly and painstakingly converted and painted has lackluster rules is not a good feeling, it's a major turn-off. That was the problem with 7th 40k, right? We all hated that whoever placed the most broken toys on the table won.

Sure, some of the fun of any game is breaking it. I do that with Magic from time-to-time, creating crazy synergies- deck/list building is part of the fun. But I think Magic gets away with it a bit more because the game is much more intrinsically interactive than WH. Lots of hidden information- not knowing exactly what is in your opponent's hand, most of your "army" is buried in your deck and the precise order of cards is unknown, some spells and abilities can be used on your opponent's turn, and some card's abilities care about your opponent's actions/cards. WH games just don't have that kind of element. 40k 8th is particularly bad on that front because there was an intention that players do not care what abilities their opponent's units have, and doing that will naturally make the game less interactive as a result.

One of the complaints about 8th is that it is very CCG like in the whole lack of interaction or even caring what the other player is doing, all the strongest CCG decks aimi to limit interaction to an absolute minimum and just carry out 'the plan'

One of the complaints about 8th is that it is very CCG like in the whole lack of interaction or even caring what the other player is doing, all the strongest CCG decks aimi to limit interaction to an absolute minimum and just carry out 'the plan'

I fully agree with this assessment. I feel both AOS and 40k are this to a "T". I think with minor editing you could make both 40k and AOS rulesets work with just cards instead of models.

The only reason WHFB died was because of IP reasons. You can't IP elf, but you can Eldoneth (or whatever).

I have a feeling the same was planned for 40K for their less than IP-able brands like Space Marines. However, they saw what a nightmare happened with AoS/WHFB and they decided to just make Primaris to slowly phase out the un-IPable Space Marine.

That is my crazy, tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theory. WHFB had to die due to IP and 40K was on the same fast track until AoS did not launch smoothly.



Now, why do popular games decline, I am guessing for the same reason as empires. For a lot of little reasons that all add up to big drops in players.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
At any rate, balance definitely matters to players- at least to a point. People naturally want to feel like they have a chance to win, even in more "casual" games. Getting stomped just because your favorite army that you lovingly and painstakingly converted and painted has lackluster rules is not a good feeling, it's a major turn-off. That was the problem with 7th 40k, right? We all hated that whoever placed the most broken toys on the table won.

Sure, some of the fun of any game is breaking it. I do that with Magic from time-to-time, creating crazy synergies- deck/list building is part of the fun. But I think Magic gets away with it a bit more because the game is much more intrinsically interactive than WH. Lots of hidden information- not knowing exactly what is in your opponent's hand, most of your "army" is buried in your deck and the precise order of cards is unknown, some spells and abilities can be used on your opponent's turn, and some card's abilities care about your opponent's actions/cards. WH games just don't have that kind of element. 40k 8th is particularly bad on that front because there was an intention that players do not care what abilities their opponent's units have, and doing that will naturally make the game less interactive as a result.

One of the complaints about 8th is that it is very CCG like in the whole lack of interaction or even caring what the other player is doing, all the strongest CCG decks aimi to limit interaction to an absolute minimum and just carry out 'the plan'

They often do, but I would argue that due to the nature of some of these rulesets, there is always a chance or a way to turn things around, even if it relies on niche cards or a tailored deck. Even the most broken deck needs some level of good play to be effective; I wouldn't say even storm is identical to scatter bikes and wraith knights in 7th. (It helps in CCGs that switching "armies" is so much easier/desirable) I do not find a comparable situation to 40k in terms of in-game action.

I think the complaint about being CCG-like is perhaps a tad overstated, but highlights an issue of expectations- CCGs are heavily abstracted, and crushing the other player can be quite satisfying. But in a war-game or battle game, as GW games have been marketed as at various times, it's fair that players would expect some level of simulation and battlefield tactics, maneuver in particular.

Limiting interaction as a strategy is, to an extent fine and perfectly legitimate. Designing the ruleset from the ground up based on the principle of nearly playing solitaire with minis, is not. If I as a player could execute moves, abilities and so forth to limit my opponent's interaction, that is one matter- the problem is there are few to no moves to make to begin with.

 Easy E wrote:
The only reason WHFB died was because of IP reasons. You can't IP elf, but you can Eldoneth (or whatever).

I have a feeling the same was planned for 40K for their less than IP-able brands like Space Marines. However, they saw what a nightmare happened with AoS/WHFB and they decided to just make Primaris to slowly phase out the un-IPable Space Marine.

That is my crazy, tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theory. WHFB had to die due to IP and 40K was on the same fast track until AoS did not launch smoothly.

That's... absurd. It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of the trademark issues GW faced. The name "space marine" is too generic and too broad to be used as a trademark covering all the forms of entertainment that 40k operates in (the term also predates 40k by some time). That's why they changed the name to Adeptus Astartes. There's never ever been a problem with the models themselves, which is why they were simply renamed but are otherwise still available. If they still wanted to keep WHFB, they could've done the exact same thing and simply renamed the factions and models.

The Primaris marines were introduced because GW models have gotten larger and more detailed, making the 10 ft tall Space Marines look like Squats when standing next to newer models. It's weird for a race of giant superhumans to only come up to the nipples on a Harlequin.

They replaced WHFB with a more 40k-like miniatures game because mass battle games fell out of style and games like 40k were several orders of magnitude more popular and successful. I don't know why they replaced the WHFB universe with the AoS universe, but if I had to guess, it had less to do with generic elves being untrademarkable and more to do with generic elves being boring as gak. It's hard to stand out in an ever crowded marketplace with a boring as gak universe. I mean, if you are going to be a pale imitation of Lord of the Rings, it probably isn't a great idea to also sell a Lord of the Rings game right next to it...

Most likely, the Old World was replaced because it was generally IP unfriendly, as it was based on a fantasized copy of Europe/Earth. The new realms are far easier to claim copyright on the names and identity, as well as GW can make them much more fantastic than mundane.

Which is kind of sad, as Warhammer was originally a dark reflection of our (medieval) world, before Chaos and Magic had disappeared to the mists of time. It started as a low magic, gritty sort of world that you’d find in the likes of Conan or something written by Lovecraft. Conversely, AoS is high magic and high energy adventure - something you’re more likely to find in the works of Harry Potter or other in vogue Young Teen fantasy works.

High fantasy is also vastly more commercialized and marketable today to the masses.

 Stormonu wrote:

Which is kind of sad, as Warhammer was originally a dark reflection of our (medieval) world, before Chaos and Magic had disappeared to the mists of time. It started as a low magic, gritty sort of world that you’d find in the likes of Conan or something written by Lovecraft.

And how do you communicate such a setting through 3" tall models? Low magic, gritty worlds are great for fluff, but make exceptionally boring models. "ooh, this model is a vampire that is posing as high society, secretly using his immortality to accrue wealth over multiple generations in order to subtly manipulate the strings of government towards his own nefarious ends, but his dark and secretive motivations are known only to him" - uh, okay. Is that, like, a +3 to hit?

Meanwhile, "ooh, this model is an immortal warrior who wields a sacred hammer, forged in the fires of a dying sun towards the purpose of defeating the dark enemies of chaos or despair. It glows with an ethereal light, as if blessed by the gods themselves, its very existence crackling with preternatural might." - Is that a +3 to hit? - "Your god damned right it's a +3 to hit".

The answer for me was iconography. All the old WHFB armies had very specific icons or symbols associated with them that gave them identity beyond their historical antecedents. Usually these devices dovetailed nicely with the supernatural powerhouses in the army (such as gryphons, dragons, etc.) but I feel in the older plastics they were used too sparingly, making the models seem too historical.

The stories written in the Old World did most of the heavy lifting, making that setting live and breathe for customers like me. I was emotionally invested in the setting in a way I have been unwilling to invest in many setting since then, from AoS to Mantica to Confrontation AoR. So, while the AOS minis are more exciting and unique, they don't yet mean anything to me in the same way that Karl Franz or Gotrek or Finubar do.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

Which is kind of sad, as Warhammer was originally a dark reflection of our (medieval) world, before Chaos and Magic had disappeared to the mists of time. It started as a low magic, gritty sort of world that you’d find in the likes of Conan or something written by Lovecraft.

And how do you communicate such a setting through 3" tall models? Low magic, gritty worlds are great for fluff, but make exceptionally boring models. "ooh, this model is a vampire that is posing as high society, secretly using his immortality to accrue wealth over multiple generations in order to subtly manipulate the strings of government towards his own nefarious ends, but his dark and secretive motivations are known only to him" - uh, okay. Is that, like, a +3 to hit?

Meanwhile, "ooh, this model is an immortal warrior who wields a sacred hammer, forged in the fires of a dying sun towards the purpose of defeating the dark enemies of chaos or despair. It glows with an ethereal light, as if blessed by the gods themselves, its very existence crackling with preternatural might." - Is that a +3 to hit? - "Your god damned right it's a +3 to hit".

Unfortunately, I don't have a good answer for that (partly because I only followed WHFB tangently via the RPG). But it was in the game more along the lines of the Perils of casting spells and the fact that you had "mundane" forces on the good guys side and terrifying, grotesque monstrosities on the other. But that doesn't translate well to sales, because everyone wants the fantastic stuff, not the humdrum forces that get beaten up - or is held down with drawbacks for their magical prowress. Back in the eighties, this sort of thing worked (somehow) in an age of movies like Krull, Conan the Barbarian and Excalibur. Now, you couldn't get away with it due to (great) movies/books like Harry Potter, Eragon and host of other high fantasy works, thus the AoS style.

 wuestenfux wrote:

auticus wrote:
I myself am a games designer and I know that you can get a lot better balance than what GW does. The idea that you can't have balance is not a true one to me.

Kings of War currently has 21 factions and has pretty solid balance. Not perfect balance, but a good player can take a faction and do well with it.

That same good player would get crushed if they played in the GW gameverse with a non optimal army.

For balance to be achieved you have to dial back on the listbuilding importance.

My impression over the years is that GW did too less play testing.
Play testing should give a better understanding of the game and so may lead to a more balanced game.

You are assuming GW wants balance...Rather than swinging meta up and around periodically so that players are constantly rushing over to buy new models to replace the ones that got invalidated.

GW cares not one bit about balance. It does not care what's even top currently. What it cares is that what's top now is different to what was top 6 months before.


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 Sqorgar wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

Which is kind of sad, as Warhammer was originally a dark reflection of our (medieval) world, before Chaos and Magic had disappeared to the mists of time. It started as a low magic, gritty sort of world that you’d find in the likes of Conan or something written by Lovecraft.

And how do you communicate such a setting through 3" tall models? Low magic, gritty worlds are great for fluff, but make exceptionally boring models. "ooh, this model is a vampire that is posing as high society, secretly using his immortality to accrue wealth over multiple generations in order to subtly manipulate the strings of government towards his own nefarious ends, but his dark and secretive motivations are known only to him" - uh, okay. Is that, like, a +3 to hit?

Meanwhile, "ooh, this model is an immortal warrior who wields a sacred hammer, forged in the fires of a dying sun towards the purpose of defeating the dark enemies of chaos or despair. It glows with an ethereal light, as if blessed by the gods themselves, its very existence crackling with preternatural might." - Is that a +3 to hit? - "Your god damned right it's a +3 to hit".

It's posts like this that makes me very depressed about current generation

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
The only reason WHFB died was because of IP reasons. You can't IP elf, but you can Eldoneth (or whatever).

I have a feeling the same was planned for 40K for their less than IP-able brands like Space Marines. However, they saw what a nightmare happened with AoS/WHFB and they decided to just make Primaris to slowly phase out the un-IPable Space Marine.

That is my crazy, tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theory. WHFB had to die due to IP and 40K was on the same fast track until AoS did not launch smoothly.

That's... absurd.

....is it? I mean, after all I am just asking questions.

After losing a case about the IP nature of the term Space Marine and the trademark-ability of GW's IP then suddenly the Old World is thrown out and replaced by AoS, and new names are rolled out as Adeptus Astartes and Primaris? Sure, absurd is a word you could apply.

Good thing we live in an absurd world.

<Puts tinfoil hat on>

Edit: As far as why games decline, all "successful" games live in a very thin margin or error that balances the popularity of the game via the profitability of a game. GW has the resources, base, and wherewithal to bludgeon past missteps or issues, while smaller companies do not. A relatively small mistake could kill a company like Aline Dungeon and therefore kill Al Quiet on the Martian Front, while the same mistake would barely cause a blip on GWs bottom line.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:


You probably don't want to use AOS as your example - sales stats show it outperforming WHFB in it's prime

Yup.

Seems like the exact opposite. AoS would be the first and best example on how to turn a failing, stale, beyond its prime carcass circled only by some super-nostalgic hobby-flies into a blockbuster success, despite (or, arguably, because) breaking some eggs to make that particular omelette.

Not to mention that "lessons learned from AoS" arguably ALSO saved 40K (and thus ultimately the company) from the 2014 to 2016 or so slump and new-player-unfriendly bloat. There's rightly been lots of praise for GW Nu-CEO turning a corner on company policy, etc.. , but it would've been a mute effort without both main games themselves turning a corner on the AoS watershed under GW old-CEO and thereby opening the path to the new GW golden age.

I think you're misunderstanding my examples with AOS - I was treating it as the death, after the slow decline, of WHFB.

I've found that in most games, there's generally a golden age after the first couple expansions where it feels like there's tons of content, lots of players, lots of strategy, and the game has meat on its bones, then the content gets slowly more and more bloated and players lose interest for other games, then there's one catalystic failure point that spells the pure death of the game.

Example would be monsterpocalypse. Its golden age was the first two expansions, where each faction had 4-6 monsters and full unit rosters. Then interest declined with the third expansion which totally broke the game balance of the "build the city phase" by introducing faction-aligned buildings and introduced the splitter monster concept which was generally disliked. Then the game finally went the way of the dodo with the fourth expansion which was the release of 6 entirely new factions who had the double problem of only having 1/3 of the roster of the existing factions (meaning not too many people wanted to actually play them) and there was the prospect to existing players of none of their new stuff ever getting anything new again. Thus the game died at that point.

AOS was that catalyst for the death of fantasy. AOS in itself is a successful game in nearly all respects EXCEPT for being a success at re-integrating the small existing WHFB fanbase, who I've found by and large despise AOS still.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
The only reason WHFB died was because of IP reasons. You can't IP elf, but you can Eldoneth (or whatever).

I have a feeling the same was planned for 40K for their less than IP-able brands like Space Marines. However, they saw what a nightmare happened with AoS/WHFB and they decided to just make Primaris to slowly phase out the un-IPable Space Marine.

That is my crazy, tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theory. WHFB had to die due to IP and 40K was on the same fast track until AoS did not launch smoothly.

That's... absurd.

....is it? I mean, after all I am just asking questions.

After losing a case about the IP nature of the term Space Marine and the trademark-ability of GW's IP then suddenly the Old World is thrown out and replaced by AoS, and new names are rolled out as Adeptus Astartes and Primaris? Sure, absurd is a word you could apply.

Good thing we live in an absurd world.

<Puts tinfoil hat on>

Edit: As far as why games decline, all "successful" games live in a very thin margin or error that balances the popularity of the game via the profitability of a game. GW has the resources, base, and wherewithal to bludgeon past missteps or issues, while smaller companies do not. A relatively small mistake could kill a company like Aline Dungeon and therefore kill Al Quiet on the Martian Front, while the same mistake would barely cause a blip on GWs bottom line.

There is almost no doubt that GW is using new space marine products to consolidate the image of what a Space Marine looks like for IP purposes.

The biggest thing to look for is the proportions and the appearance of the helmet - the two biggest deviances, Space Marine Scouts and Space Marine Terminators are being replaced by the MUCH more IP friendly designs from Primaris that all include much more normal Marine proportions and the helmet, which they can claim to be an iconic feature of the SM product.