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 Eldarsif wrote:
...GW could actually listen to playtesters, hire game developers who want a competitive game, and more, but they choose not to...

It's a very simple problem. They're making a lot of money putting absolute minimum effort into the rules, so they have no incentive to make them better. It's sort of like how everyone loves Bethesda to death despite the fact that their games are unplayable until the community patches two years later and buys everything they make, so they have no incentive to properly test anything.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
...GW could actually listen to playtesters, hire game developers who want a competitive game, and more, but they choose not to...

It's a very simple problem. They're making a lot of money putting absolute minimum effort into the rules, so they have no incentive to make them better. It's sort of like how everyone loves Bethesda to death despite the fact that their games are unplayable until the community patches two years later and buys everything they make, so they have no incentive to properly test anything.

That is true. And the way to fix it is to not give them your money. You can help perpetuate it or you can sit back and watch the rubes who do.

Yep and what sucks is, and I was saying this at the start of 9th, get is basically bring in the worst aspect of MTG.
New series drops, your old decks suck, but these new boxes to build the new meta decks.

 Ordana wrote:
Yeah, Agree with basically all of this, there is without a doubt a giant Old Guard problem within GW.

I'm not convinced of this. The "old guard" of GW are Andy Chambers, Rick Priestly, etc. I don't think there's many of them left in the company that are actually leading design efforts.

I work in a design field professional (not game design, but there are analogues). Design gets challenging the more corporatized and design by committee things become. I think the "old guard" had an advantage in that they were the ones designing, iterating, and testing it all directly themselves. There was a tighter group playtesting and balancing and making sure everything was operating under the same design philosophy. This isn't to say it was all perfect back then, but it was a more coherent system.

But now... I have the mental image of some younger smooth-talking designer with a padded resume convincing all the hire ups about how awesome 40K would be if it was more like Magic TG. And then you get management asking for all sorts of delivery assurances, and competing personal interests, and no time for deeply playtesting or just slowing down to think through the design. So stuff just gets by as best it can - and the poor designer is trapped in the middle of all this crossfire without the experience and corporate clout to do it better.

It's not the old guard. Its the suits. It's always the suits.

ccs wrote:

 FabricatorGeneralMike wrote:


No they where not. I played from RT until the end of 98 when they switched over to 3rd, I NEVER saw a armourcast/Forgeword USA model. The community in Vancouver was pretty big at the time. This was when Mark Dance was placing in Golden Demon's era. The only time I even heard about 40k scale titans was a game they did at a UK games day where they did epic in 40k scale, with titans and marines/infantry on 5 man bases. The GW manager told me about it and showed me his pics he took of the game.
Owning Armourcast/Mike Basi/ Forgeworld USA was a pipe dream for most people because of the price and availability. That is VERY disingenuous to say those models where 'common' during second edition era.

OK, so they weren't common in Vancouver & you were all poor/unwilling to pay the asking price.


Meanwhile, here in Ohio USA? Especially on the tables of shops near universities?
They weren't all that uncommon. Though, just as with today's stupid expensive FW stuff, there were "tiers". The smaller pieces - the Wave Serpents, the Falcons, the drop pods, the tyranid things, the ork Spleen-bustas or whatever they were called, etc? Those were pretty normal sights on tables. Wouldn't break your budget either.
Then you had the superheavy guard tanks & the Warhounds. And finally in the "rare" catagory we had the Reiver titans, Phantoms, & the Mega-Gargant.
But they were all present & being played.....

Especially since a Warhound back then was 1/5 the cost of the FW version was when introduced. It was much easier to afford than now.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Yeah, Agree with basically all of this, there is without a doubt a giant Old Guard problem within GW.

I'm not convinced of this. The "old guard" of GW are Andy Chambers, Rick Priestly, etc. I don't think there's many of them left in the company that are actually leading design efforts.

I work in a design field professional (not game design, but there are analogues). Design gets challenging the more corporatized and design by committee things become. I think the "old guard" had an advantage in that they were the ones designing, iterating, and testing it all directly themselves. There was a tighter group playtesting and balancing and making sure everything was operating under the same design philosophy. This isn't to say it was all perfect back then, but it was a more coherent system.

But now... I have the mental image of some younger smooth-talking designer with a padded resume convincing all the hire ups about how awesome 40K would be if it was more like Magic TG. And then you get management asking for all sorts of delivery assurances, and competing personal interests, and no time for deeply playtesting or just slowing down to think through the design. So stuff just gets by as best it can - and the poor designer is trapped in the middle of all this crossfire without the experience and corporate clout to do it better.

It's not the old guard. Its the suits. It's always the suits.

The lead designer you are imagining is Robbin Cruddace.

https://1d4chan.fandom.com/wiki/Robin_Cruddace

Thats his 1d4 chan article.

Ignore the tongue in cheek stuff and look at his list of accomplishments.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Yeah, Agree with basically all of this, there is without a doubt a giant Old Guard problem within GW.

I'm not convinced of this. The "old guard" of GW are Andy Chambers, Rick Priestly, etc. I don't think there's many of them left in the company that are actually leading design efforts.

I work in a design field professional (not game design, but there are analogues). Design gets challenging the more corporatized and design by committee things become. I think the "old guard" had an advantage in that they were the ones designing, iterating, and testing it all directly themselves. There was a tighter group playtesting and balancing and making sure everything was operating under the same design philosophy. This isn't to say it was all perfect back then, but it was a more coherent system.

But now... I have the mental image of some younger smooth-talking designer with a padded resume convincing all the hire ups about how awesome 40K would be if it was more like Magic TG. And then you get management asking for all sorts of delivery assurances, and competing personal interests, and no time for deeply playtesting or just slowing down to think through the design. So stuff just gets by as best it can - and the poor designer is trapped in the middle of all this crossfire without the experience and corporate clout to do it better.

It's not the old guard. Its the suits. It's always the suits.

The old guard as we mean it doesn't have to be the designers themselves. It can (and probably is) the management above them.
Its not the designers who are against an actual working army app (I assume so anyway). They aren't the ones hiring the grad school temp that threw that p.o.s together. Its not the designers that canned digital codexes.

There is a layer of management in GW that absolutely against any form of change and adapting to the 21st century. I can certainly see the designers (or others within GW) having had to draw blood from a stone to get the higher ups to accept the quarterly balance updates they plan to do going forward.

 Lance845 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
...GW could actually listen to playtesters, hire game developers who want a competitive game, and more, but they choose not to...

It's a very simple problem. They're making a lot of money putting absolute minimum effort into the rules, so they have no incentive to make them better. It's sort of like how everyone loves Bethesda to death despite the fact that their games are unplayable until the community patches two years later and buys everything they make, so they have no incentive to properly test anything.

That is true. And the way to fix it is to not give them your money. You can help perpetuate it or you can sit back and watch the rubes who do.

I keep telling you thick-headed people that GW makes all most all of its $ off me by selling me models I like....
I promise, when they stop making models I want, they'll make A LOT less from me. They don't seem to be in any hurry to stop doing this though.
Of course GW has no way of knowing & doesn't care WHY I buy their models. There's nothing I can do about how they interpret the sales data on their end. All they see is "Sold x more $ worth of 40k/AoS/? kits to shop xyz this month".
So I guess I'll just keep on perpetuating this problem of rules for the rest of you.

As for the games? While I'm generally enjoying our Crusades, I could completely take or leave playing current 40k. If I never played another game of 9th? {shrug} There's plenty of other games (and editions) to be played come game time.

That's good for you, and hell I'm the same way, but we are a minority in the market. As of late GWs getting a lot of their money from the tournament league, rules being written specifically for tournament play, the fact that LVO is getting bigger and bigger each year is further proof of that fact.

The constant update to rules is proof of that.
The constant FAQs show that. The game.is what drives the models.

For every hard core fan of the hobby in terms of models and painting there are probably a dozen who are in it for the game primarily.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
That's good for you, and hell I'm the same way, but we are a minority in the market. As of late GWs getting a lot of their money from the tournament league, rules being written specifically for tournament play, the fact that LVO is getting bigger and bigger each year is further proof of that fact.

The constant update to rules is proof of that.
The constant FAQs show that. The game.is what drives the models.

For every hard core fan of the hobby in terms of models and painting there are probably a dozen who are in it for the game primarily.

The rules & hype might be heavily aimed at Tournament play currently, but the tourney scene is NOT what's keeping GW rolling. There's a helluva lot of Warhammer (and other GW games) being played by people who'll never see a tournament table. Not even one at a local shop. Little private groups of 2-5 people give or take, often playing at home. Always has been. What you see playwise at the shops & events/tourneys? Tip of the iceberg.
And that equates to an incredible amount of models being sold.

I have to agree. The local game shops on average (five of them) had about 20 visible tournament players in each (some cross playing in different stores) - so say... there were about 60-80 regular tournament players of 40k in the city I left.

Each store owner would also mention that for those 20 visible tournament players, there were about 200-300 sales in a month from people you've never seen before or from the hobbyist guys that never played public games.

This is why the rules and whack balance can be as horrid as they are.

ccs wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
That's good for you, and hell I'm the same way, but we are a minority in the market. As of late GWs getting a lot of their money from the tournament league, rules being written specifically for tournament play, the fact that LVO is getting bigger and bigger each year is further proof of that fact.

The constant update to rules is proof of that.
The constant FAQs show that. The game.is what drives the models.

For every hard core fan of the hobby in terms of models and painting there are probably a dozen who are in it for the game primarily.

The rules & hype might be heavily aimed at Tournament play currently, but the tourney scene is NOT what's keeping GW rolling. There's a helluva lot of Warhammer (and other GW games) being played by people who'll never see a tournament table. Not even one at a local shop. Little private groups of 2-5 people give or take, often playing at home. Always has been. What you see playwise at the shops & events/tourneys? Tip of the iceberg.
And that equates to an incredible amount of models being sold.

auticus wrote:I have to agree. The local game shops on average (five of them) had about 20 visible tournament players in each (some cross playing in different stores) - so say... there were about 60-80 regular tournament players of 40k in the city I left.

Each store owner would also mention that for those 20 visible tournament players, there were about 200-300 sales in a month from people you've never seen before or from the hobbyist guys that never played public games.

This is why the rules and whack balance can be as horrid as they are.

Exactly this. It has been this way since I got into the game in 2nd. Even some of the shop regulars who I hanged out with back then were painters/hobbyists who never played a game in their life. They were there for monthly painting competitions and had their hobby focus on winning Golden Demon, not GT. Since I got back to 40K in the middle of 7th, my group is 3-5 people who play and another few of friends who collect and paint. And due to internet prices and availability of everything being better we are completely invisible from FLGS standpoint. During those 6+ years I set my foot in FLGS once, to buy a pot of paint I desperately needed for the same evening.

So I've just done some research on the "Large Scale Models in 2nd Edition" issue.

2nd ed hit the market in 93. Armorcast came into existence in 95. Until Armorcast happened, the only other producer of large scale 40k models is Biasi Studios. So for the first two years of 2nd? Little to no large scale, even in the UK. Armorcast grew pretty quickly; their first year was probably pretty obscure, but certainly in some places, they'd be on the map by 96. But 2nd edition only lasted until 98, which was the same year Armorcast lost the licensing for 40k (along with Biasi) which paved the way for the birth of FW, also in 98.

So of 5th's five year life span? Two years without big toys, 2 years of reasonable market penetration for big toys and a transition year between the two, as big toys were gaining popularity. If you had a GW in your city between 96-98, you probably knew about Armorcast. If you didn't have a GW store in your city, it's a crapshoot based on how big your FLGS is or how many FLGS's there were.

Vancouver is not a small town- they might have had a GW from 96-98, but maybe not. Not sure how many FLGS's they had or how big any one them were. Here in Ontario, you'd definitely have seen SOME armorcast in Toronto between 96-98. We had one store in London (Nexus Hobbies) that had a few of the pieces for display, but I didn't see a lot of people buying them or playing them.

So Greater Toronto Area? Likely seen on some tables. The corridor between Toronto and London? Likely the same. Anywhere else in Ontario? Not likely. I'd guess it would be similar in the vicinity of Montreal. The GTA, Vancouver and Montreal would have been the places in Canada most likely to see Armorcast. Anywhere else? Probably a longshot.

I can't speak for the States or the Brits.

As for other topics in the thread:

The tourney scene is definitely A driver of sales, but I don't know if it's THE driver of sales. Consider: a churn and burn tourney player might buy 3-5 armies worth $1500-$2000 each. This would be in a compressed time frame- maybe over one edition, maybe over two.

Now lets take a look at the Narrative/ Casual Lifer. They may only spend $500 per year. But speaking for myself, 've been that guy for 32 years. In that time, I've turned dozens of other people on to this hobby. Some became meta-chasing tourney folk. Some have been Narrative/ Casuals for two decades now.

Tourney players drive FAST sales. They buy 2K Meta armies in a single purchase, plus maybe 500-1k in sideboard models and play until they get bored or there's new hotness. Narrative Casuals have kept the game alive since before large tournaments existed. Some of us own full Chapters or Hive Fleets. It doesn't have to be a competitive piece for us to buy it. You'll never get as much out of us in any one year as you do that tourney player, but we are probably more likely to be there two decades from now.

And how many of each player type are there? Given that Tournaments tend to be restricted to large urban centers, I would say that there are probably more Casuals than there are tourney players. I'm not even sure there are GT's in Canada, and if there are, it's Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. And I gotta tell you, if you live in a large urban center where these events occur, it's going to skew your perception of how important they are to the survival of the hobby. But the number of Canadians jumping on planes to play in tournaments that only happen in other countries is the smallest fraction of Canadian players that you can find.

Forums are also echo chambers for the tourney-minded, so they too inflate the importance of the scene to the health and survival of the hobby.

Is GW marketing to tourney players? Absolutely.

But Crusade Mission Packs outnumber GT packs more than 2:1, and for every "New Hotness: tourney kit, there's a throwback model- sure it's a store anniversary model, but we're getting our 3rd Inquisitor in 2 editions; we've got Rogue Traders, SoS are finally playable Independently of Custodes, and Rogue Traders got Crusade rules. You can't tell me that any of that was done to cater to Tourney players.

And if you DO try to tell me it was done for tourney players, maybe you'll have to take it up with my Zoat- perhaps in a battle from the Tactical Deployment Mission Pack.

Can't say I've ever seen an Armorcast model in the flesh.

Oh man- the Tyranid ones were crazy cuz they were based on the epic models- one looked like a triceratops/ slug and another was a burrowing thing- only the top of its carapace and two arms designed to hurl bile pods were visible above the table surface- totally weird stuff.

I always wanted a 40k scale Dactylis, and getting an Armorcast Exocrine was something I wanted for a very long time, as it was my fav Epic Tyranid unit. Thankfully GW made a new version of that bug.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Can't say I've ever seen an Armorcast model in the flesh.

Supposedly my 2 Tigersharks are armorcast. Should I post pics?

Tau Tigersharks? I don't think Armorcast had the 40k license when the Tau came about.

 Tokhuah wrote:
The low hanging fruit would be periodic updates based on the meta. But GW cannot even do that without creating another money grab with Chapter Approved. But the financial part is just the ugly, not the bad. The bad is, choosing to tie rule fixes to a production schedule, including physical copies to distribute, means that every Chapter Approved is dated at release. Failing on this simple thing shows me there is no hope... so stop hoping. But why not buy the cool models for other games? The problem with GW is their rules and accessories, that you do not even need to buy to enjoy the models.

I agree. I have a bigger problem with the points adjustments being a reaction to a meta from 8-10 months ago that no longer exists. $40 is insane for a balance pass printed in a pamphlet but that isn't even the most egregious part of this whole debacle. In the future, they should make the points a free PDF so they can update them 10 mins before release if they feel the need to, and make the missions a $20 book. I think the reaction would be a complete 180 from what we're seeing now had they done it this way. At this point I can't tell what they hate more, trees or their customers.

 Ordana wrote:
The old guard as we mean it doesn't have to be the designers themselves. It can (and probably is) the management above them.
Its not the designers who are against an actual working army app (I assume so anyway). They aren't the ones hiring the grad school temp that threw that p.o.s together. Its not the designers that canned digital codexes.

There is a layer of management in GW that absolutely against any form of change and adapting to the 21st century. I can certainly see the designers (or others within GW) having had to draw blood from a stone to get the higher ups to accept the quarterly balance updates they plan to do going forward.

we see 2 different problems here, those "old guard" you think of blocking innovation and adept to the changing market, and the other "old guard" that messes up the design

first problem is, I don't think it is the old guard, as in "those people who played 40k themselves for fun and ingored Kirby talking about that playing the game is not part of the job so does not happen during work time", neither in the managment nor in the design team is the reason as they are not there any more

but the the new people are "old school", they grew up within GW and are trained in the ways the company think its best, with the idea of "GW is the Porsche plastic models" (everyone wants one but not everyone can afford one and it does not matter how good it drives because it is a Porsche)

you have manager who do not change a running system, because as long as profits increase there is no need to change anything but if there is a cloud on the horizon they get panic and overreact
and you have designers who just do what the managers want, only mind their own projects and have no feelings torwards the game outside of "it is just a job"

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Blackie wrote:


Still, I think 9th is superior in any possible way except a couple things: there weren't massive models in those old editions (I despise massive models, lol)

Really? Cause this is a 2nd Ed era model.

Lol.

How many of those gargants did you see in 3rd, 4th and 5th? On average games I mean.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't confuse popularity with goodness!

I don't. But I know that good is subjective. What's good for you might not be good for others, maybe the majority. And vice versa.

But who's to say the majority knows what's best?

If something was created, marketed to a specific group for a specific reason, then suddenly charged to appeal to the majority. To that original group, those changes will not be seen as good.

It's always a matter of personal preference, there's no such thing of objectively better or worse in the context of gaming, and probably in any context.

I play since 3rd and loved that edition, I still think it's a good game. So I might be considered part of the "original group" but I vastly prefer current 40k.

 Blackie wrote:
How many of those gargants did you see in 3rd, 4th and 5th? On average games I mean.

Given that they only made about 300 of the things and that they were as rare as hen's teeth even back then, probably not very much.

An Armorcast Great Gargant really was a poor choice of example of "See? 40k had big models back then as well!!!".

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Yeah, Agree with basically all of this, there is without a doubt a giant Old Guard problem within GW.

I'm not convinced of this. The "old guard" of GW are Andy Chambers, Rick Priestly, etc. I don't think there's many of them left in the company that are actually leading design efforts.

Old guard doesn't have to be the OG designers themselves and the old guard doesn't need to be perpetuated by the old designers. The problem is that when a company grows on a certain reputation/style it will do a lot to retain that and the old guard within will directly or indirectly enforce that. So when new designers are hired the old guard is likely to instill into those people the same virtues that drove them, and any new designer that does not follow that rule(or play proper office politics) might see themselves losing a job because they "didn't fit the culture".

So when the old old guard leaves, the next generation takes over, but since they were indoctrinated by those who came before they will most likely continue the same problems as before even if there are slight modifications. In the long run it means that it ends up being some sort of a telephone game, but instead of sentences it is corporate culture.

Now, suits can also be old guard and with how the recent updates in CA and such are approached it does feel like the suits are an older generation that doesn't want things to get digital.

In the end we have no way of telling what is what unless someone opens up about the inside culture.

Worth noting that Andy Chambers left GW specifically because 3rd Ed was successful and the suits wouldn't allow him to further iterate on the rules.

That was back in, what, 2005? And the game hasn't fundamentally changed since.

Man the game(s) were far from perfect back then but the designers were allowed to show off raw talent in a way they never would be these days.

Dai wrote:
Man the game(s) were far from perfect back then but the designers were allowed to show off raw talent in a way they never would be these days.

How and why?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Can't say I've ever seen an Armorcast model in the flesh.

I have they are glorious, guy I know even has an old fire prism pretty sure the barrel is wood lol

But the old armor cast have this total like....thing to them that's great. He is old guard and does all his eldar painting in the 80s style


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

Dai wrote:
Man the game(s) were far from perfect back then but the designers were allowed to show off raw talent in a way they never would be these days.

How and why?

Older games were not decided by turn 1 like they were in more recent editons, ranges were not nearly as long as they are now, 24" was pretty far I'm older editons.
Cover made a bigger difference, over watching worked different. It was a lot more infentey based less big toys, like seeing a LR on the table is what it's like to see someone field a bane blade, or Magnus/mortarian.
Also did not have all the wombo combo strats we see now

Yeah I remember spending Turn 1 & 2 mostly maneuvering before each army started shooting. Very different from today where most armies have weapons that can reach across the table (of course the min. board size has shrunk as well)

Thankfully this can be fixed, and I'm working on fixing it for my table.

Big. Los blocking. Centerpiece

Making a big 2x2 raised platform in the center board as like an imperial landing/check point that's got ramps on 2 sides and is tall Enlufh to block Los for knights. Fixes a LOT of turn one alpha strike

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Thankfully this can be fixed, and I'm working on fixing it for my table.

Big. Los blocking. Centerpiece

Making a big 2x2 raised platform in the center board as like an imperial landing/check point that's got ramps on 2 sides and is tall Enlufh to block Los for knights. Fixes a LOT of turn one alpha strike

That's not fixing it though, that's slapping some duct tape on the problem and hoping it sorts itself out.