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 Da Boss wrote:
In a discussion of a game played for fun, emotion is a perfectly valid way to look at the game. How it feels is important. It's not like we're optimising space rockets here.

I disagree. Give me a balanced game and I'll make it fun far more easily than I'll make a match between Tau and Harlequins fun. In the same way, I find watching sports can be fun but diving into the stats is even more rewarding.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Broodwar is a better game and more important historically than SCII. I can't prove it, but I don't think SCII had much impact on the growth of e-Sports into what they are today.

why don't you hold yourself to the same standard you seem to be expecting of others and back up your claims with some evidence hmm?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
In a discussion of a game played for fun, emotion is a perfectly valid way to look at the game. How it feels is important. It's not like we're optimising space rockets here.

I disagree. Give me a balanced game and I'll make it fun far more easily than I'll make a match between Tau and Harlequins fun. In the same way, I find watching sports can be fun but diving into the stats is even more rewarding.

I agree that, in general, a more balanced game is more fun, or at least easier to make fun. So on that, we're in agreement.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
why don't you hold yourself to the same standard you seem to be expecting of others and back up your claims with some evidence hmm?

Read the post. My hypothetical can't have any evidence because it requires a world where SCII was never released. It literally can't be proven because the data doesn't and cannot even exist. FFS if you want to debate me, debate the substance of my argument and not the flavor nuggets tossed in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
I agree that, in general, a more balanced game is more fun, or at least easier to make fun. So on that, we're in agreement.

I'm for balance and for Xenos and Chaos getting more cool and powerful options. I'm against excessive whining and people expecting GW to do things they're never going to do. I'm strongly against people being unwilling to back up their claims with data.

Karol wrote:

dogboy311 796430 11066407 wrote:Why because I’m not on the I hate GW train. I’ve played for years man. And have never had any issues with the game, or the company for that matter, maybe it’s because I understand it’s a game of plastic toy soldiers. Also again you have the choice too play this game, or too not play this game. People like the way the company works and have for years, or it would have failed a long time ago. Sorry you don’t like it, then quit, it’s an easy solution.

but if you pay for GW models shouldn't you expect a similar quality of product for similar money? It should not be okey that spending 900$ on one army gives you 3 years of fun, while spending the same on the other does not.

Holy crap man do the math!!! That’s less then 1$ a day. If you’re having fun at the price it’s all a win for you. If you are not having fun at that price it’s not a big loss by any means. I’m sure most people pay more then 900$ on coffee in 3 years. Lol. That’s the weakest rebuttal I have ever heard. Lol. Get over it, more GW fans and players love space marines then any other army. So they don’t feel the need too pump out new models for other armies at the same rate as marines. And if you don’t have fun. Nobody is making you play or spend money on this product.

But in the odd chance they are, blink 3 times,

dogboy311 wrote:
Holy crap man do the math!!! That’s less then 1$ a day. If you’re having fun at the price it’s all a win for you. If you are not having fun at that price it’s not a big loss by any means. I’m sure most people pay more then 900$ on coffee in 3 years. Lol. That’s the weakest rebuttal I have ever heard. Lol. Get over it, more GW fans and players love space marines then any other army. So they don’t feel the need too pump out new models for other armies at the same rate as marines. And if you don’t have fun. Nobody is making you play or spend money on this product.

But in the odd chance they are, blink 3 times,

You do realize that Karol is a student living in a nation where the average salary is ~3x less than what we have here in Canada, right? It's entirely fair that his evaluation of the cost of a game he enjoys (or used to enjoy) might be different than yours.

dogboy311 796430 11066580 wrote:

Holy crap man do the math!!! That’s less then 1$ a day. If you’re having fun at the price it’s all a win for you. If you are not having fun at that price it’s not a big loss by any means. I’m sure most people pay more then 900$ on coffee in 3 years. Lol. That’s the weakest rebuttal I have ever heard. Lol. Get over it, more GW fans and players love space marines then any other army. So they don’t feel the need too pump out new models for other armies at the same rate as marines. And if you don’t have fun. Nobody is making you play or spend money on this product.

But in the odd chance they are, blink 3 times,

the avarge income in my country is 1300$, although it is largely boosted by large cities like Warsaw. It also doesn't include more then 3 milion people that were made to become single entity companies, so their employers could cut costs. The 1300$ is a salary for a person with a degree, and with a stable job. If you work a regular job in my region of the country you make half of that. Now imagine you are 15. What do you think is 900$ a lot to you, if your parents do 2600$ monthly pre tax or not?

Canadian 5th 796430 11065963 wrote:
Ask Marine players about how it works. They buy products, they get the new products. It's the same with everything, Apple doesn't say the iPhone 11 sold well so we'll just not make the iPhone 12 this year, they say the iPhone 11 sold well let's see how many people we can get to buy a new phone next year too.

Nah, that's not how it works for non-Astartes factions. If the models sell, they figure the product is good and let it ride. They treat the factions fundamentally differently in this regard.

It's not exactly hard to tell how it works.

You have 2 kind of products:

- Books
- Models

A book is a product that sells to the vast majority of that faction's players.
A model is a product which sells to only a part of the faction, depending on how much you nailed it on looks and rules.

With marines, you can afford to release models after models, since the player base is so high that you will still get a good amount of sales.

With less popular factions, releasing models is a big gamble and it could very well end up in a loss. So you release mostly books for it, since you can more accurately predict the volume of sales.

The best way to release models for less played factions is to do that all at once, like they did with DG, Orks and Necrons. If you dump a huge amount of new models on one of those factions, you generate an influx of new players to that faction, which is going to be attracted in particular by those new models. Those same models released one by one wouldn't have reached the volume of sales they got by being lumped together. That's because a model here and there isn't attractive enough to make a player start a second faction. The impact of a big release is important for that.

In short, GW can keep this steady influx of small marine releases, but doing the same for the other factions is less remunerative. Also, don't expect chapter specific releases.

Non-SM factions will probably keep being ignored until all of a sudden they get hit with an Orktober.

I keep saying it but Marines have just finished rounding out their 2nd complete plastic army.
While Craftworld Eldar still have most of their models not even updated to plastic and a good few not even updated since the damn 90s!

How does this make sense?

Spoletta wrote:
In short, GW can keep this steady influx of small marine releases, but doing the same for the other factions is less remunerative. Also, don't expect chapter specific releases.

Non-SM factions will probably keep being ignored until all of a sudden they get hit with an Orktober.

I agree with the principle, but I don't think practically that's what's happened.

The issue isn't "steady influx of small Marine releases". If it was the odd Primaris Lieutenant here, a new unit of 3 bikers there then I think there would be less of an issue.
Instead in 2017, 2019 and 2020/21 Marines have had 3 waves of releases that are of a comparable scale (often larger) to the releases offered to any other faction. (You can, if you want, break these into around 6 "smaller" waves, but I think that's splitting hairs as we knew they were coming in a couple of months).

I think that releasing models is a risk, but since almost everything GW put out seems to sell out, I'm not sure how much of one it is. You have to push past "No one really wants Sisters" etc. (I find this doubly funny because a friend said this to me around 2018 and now he has an army of them.)

Releasing models is indeed a risk.

Models like Sly Marbo probably didn't pay for themselves.

I really like not having any sort of new models. Honestly this is all sad and boring. The LoL talk was fun though.

 dan2026 wrote:
I keep saying it but Marines have just finished rounding out their 2nd complete plastic army.
While Craftworld Eldar still have most of their models not even updated to plastic and a good few not even updated since the damn 90s!

How does this make sense?

Marines are a safe sell to a massive market
Eldar are a reasonably safe sell to a smaller market.

Simply a matter of what will safely return more $$.

Yeah everyone understands that.

As I've said previously that thinking makes increasingly less sense.

Hedonites of Slaanesh or the Gloomspite Gitz Sneaky Snufflers probably sell a fraction of what CWE still sells and yet GW still released them.

Nothing sells as well as Marines, yet other products and model lines do get made and they are profitable (outside of bombs like Fyreslayers).

Other model lines going unsupported is often more down to internal studio enthusiasm for a project just not being there. In fact the wealth of new AOS armies in recent years is more down to internal studio eagerness and enthusiasm to do them, despite OBR, Lumineth, Idoneth, Hedonites and Sons of Behemat not selling as much as Marines combined.

 Bosskelot wrote:
As I've said previously that thinking makes increasingly less sense.

Hedonites of Slaanesh or the Gloomspite Gitz Sneaky Snufflers probably sell a fraction of what CWE still sells and yet GW still released them.

Nothing sells as well as Marines, yet other products and model lines do get made and they are profitable (outside of bombs like Fyreslayers).

Other model lines going unsupported is often more down to internal studio enthusiasm for a project just not being there. In fact the wealth of new AOS armies in recent years is more down to internal studio eagerness and enthusiasm to do them, despite OBR, Lumineth, Idoneth, Hedonites and Sons of Behemat not selling as much as Marines combined.

Because the studio's are entirely separated and don't communicate or work together?
Which is made extra obvious when they release similar products like their army building apps or when they released mini rulebooks back in 8th. AoS was fully updated with all changes from Generals Handbooks and the 40k version was a literal copy of the original rulebook and out of date.

40k and AoS might aswell be made by different companies.

Fyreslayers did suffer from a pretty appalling series of flaws though.
1. Extremely limited army - barely any variation in what you could field, no cavalry or units other than very visually similar infantry, and a big monster.
2. Weird, polarizing design. The headgear being bigger than the little dwarf bodies and the odd visuals of the beards kinda being hair and kinda being fire is really gonna be a marmite design.
3. Extremely high price. They were costed like super premium kits that were gonna be highly desireable across the range, and didn't have the chops to support that. Even in ranges where everything is supporting certain releases stuff priced at that level often doesn't sell as much as it might otherwise do.
4. Stupid name and background - putting a y in the name is dumb, and having them be all about Ur-Gold is also dumb. People don't want dumb, one dimensional armies. Dwarves in WFB might have been stereotypical, but they absolutely ooze character from every aspect.

But 40K seems to be a much more conservative game. I'd say Ad Mech and Genestealer Cults were probably passion projects like you describe, but it seems to me that there is a lot of mandated "make more marines" coming from higher up and to me a lot of the designs do seem fairly phoned in and especially the awful naming scheme is uninspired and bland.

 Da Boss wrote:
2. Weird, polarizing design. The headgear being bigger than the little dwarf bodies and the odd visuals of the beards kinda being hair and kinda being fire is really gonna be a marmite design.

I'll grant you that the crests on the helmets can get a bit exaggerated. The helmets themselves are perfectly fine though. You can even build them without the helmets.

Beards of fire?? What dwarves are you looking at? As the owner of a FS army I can assure that NONE of the sculpts have beards that in any way resemble fire. My dwarves have assorted braided beards, and they have some unbraided beards, all very viking-esque looking. But there's no fire beards.... And I have all of the sculpts available.

Spoletta wrote:
Releasing models is indeed a risk.

Models like Sly Marbo probably didn't pay for themselves.

This is like... absolutely untrue.

There may be some flop here and there specially with fringe boxed products.

But just think about it.

Lets put for example the Mega Gargants. What costs GW to do the molds of those? Maybe 7-10k€ because they do them in house? Now lets add the cost of designing them, sculpting them, etc... lets put another 15k€.

25-30k€ for the Megagargant kit.

And then on release day you have guys that even when many people stayed away for the price, bought 2-3, even 5 or more (I have a friend that bought 3 on release day). You just need 100 guys like that on the PLANET to cover the up-front cost of releasing that kit.

GW is literally printing money. I doubt they have loses with any they produce. But thats not how corporations operate. If something causes you loses , someone really screwed up. In most cases is whats the most profitable of a ton of products where most of them are profitable enough. But in capitalism theres never enough profit.

Sly Marbo is a resin small miniature done for the biggest miniatures company on the planet with the biggest market. You have gremlings on their garages running whole business about selling small resin miniatures, and they can make a profit and GW didn't for Sly Fething Marbo?

 Galas wrote:


Sly Marbo is a resin small miniature done for the biggest miniatures company on the planet with the biggest market. You have gremlings on their garages running whole business about selling small resin miniatures, and they can make a profit and GW didn't for Sly Fething Marbo?

Yeah, and then you have this same company producing things like the Christmas LE Red Gobbo. IN PLASTIC. No rules, just a one off plastic gobbo - who had to be designed and have an entire mold made for it - to sell it once.
Clearly the cost of producing single minis, even in plastic, is not losing the company $.....

As for Sly? I'm sure that being a actual useful mini, in general ongoing release, has resulted in him outselling the Red Gobbo.

ccs: Maybe it's my own misunderstanding about the fire thing. Some of the hair is sculpted in weird ways that to me looks like it is trying to mimic flame, and I thought that was what they were trying to go for.
I agree that lots of contemporary kits are overpriced, but generally with a more broadly appealing design, background or general range to help people get over the sticker shock. I didn't see that for Fyreslayers. And I wanted to like them, elemental dwarves are really cool. I love Azers in dungeons and dragons. In fact I plan to convert some of my own from AoW plastic berskerkers.

I don't think the Fyreslayers are that bad as models - but there are very few of them, they were at ludicrously high prices (which have now, sadly, been normalised and even exceeded - but it is 5 years on or something) and views on AOS were at rock bottom. Wasn't there a brief moment a couple of years ago though when they were the top army in AoS though and seemingly everywhere competitively as a result?

Sure, but the truly competitive scene is tiny compared to nerds in their living rooms, so it really isn't reflection of the general population's choices.

 Da Boss wrote:
ccs: Maybe it's my own misunderstanding about the fire thing. Some of the hair is sculpted in weird ways that to me looks like it is trying to mimic flame, and I thought that was what they were trying to go for.

Well, the sculpt of alot of the non-braided beards & loose mustaches are mimicking motion as many of the dwarves are running/charging.
Wich is alot more dynamic that 99% of my WHFB dwarves....
I think what's throwing your perception is their hair & helmet crests being painted orange, on units called Fyresslayers. And I'm also sure it's GWs intent that your mind makes this connection - earthy tones, bronze/brass, alot of orange + a name that includes fire (though misspelled) all add up to nice simple marketing.
But the models do not have fiery beards.

 Galas wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Releasing models is indeed a risk.

Models like Sly Marbo probably didn't pay for themselves.

This is like... absolutely untrue.

There may be some flop here and there specially with fringe boxed products.

But just think about it.

Lets put for example the Mega Gargants. What costs GW to do the molds of those? Maybe 7-10k€ because they do them in house? Now lets add the cost of designing them, sculpting them, etc... lets put another 15k€.

25-30k€ for the Megagargant kit.

And then on release day you have guys that even when many people stayed away for the price, bought 2-3, even 5 or more (I have a friend that bought 3 on release day). You just need 100 guys like that on the PLANET to cover the up-front cost of releasing that kit.

GW is literally printing money. I doubt they have loses with any they produce. But thats not how corporations operate. If something causes you loses , someone really screwed up. In most cases is whats the most profitable of a ton of products where most of them are profitable enough. But in capitalism theres never enough profit.

Sly Marbo is a resin small miniature done for the biggest miniatures company on the planet with the biggest market. You have gremlings on their garages running whole business about selling small resin miniatures, and they can make a profit and GW didn't for Sly Fething Marbo?

Out of what you pay to the store, around 20% is what actually goes to GW.

Don't know in other countries, but in Italy it splits like this:

22% are taxes
Out of the remaining 78%, 55% goes to the shop.
We are now at 35% before expenses.

Out of those 35%, you have to cut 20% for miscellanous costs (advertising, administration and so on.)

We are now at 28%. On a 25$ character, this means that 7 dollars are finally going to GW.

Now you need to detract flat expenses for actually making sure that the model exists and is in that store.

Those kits need to be produced. Materials don't cost much, but machine time and power have a cost.
Then they need to be packed and stored, and this costs manpower.
You then need to transport them all over the world, and this is the biggest cost.

After summing everything up, it wouldn't be an exageration that GW has payed 2$ for that model.

The profit GW realized on that sell is 5$.

They need to sell 5k Sly Marbos for it to be worth it.

Spoletta wrote:

 Galas wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Releasing models is indeed a risk.

Models like Sly Marbo probably didn't pay for themselves.

This is like... absolutely untrue.

There may be some flop here and there specially with fringe boxed products.

But just think about it.

Lets put for example the Mega Gargants. What costs GW to do the molds of those? Maybe 7-10k€ because they do them in house? Now lets add the cost of designing them, sculpting them, etc... lets put another 15k€.

25-30k€ for the Megagargant kit.

And then on release day you have guys that even when many people stayed away for the price, bought 2-3, even 5 or more (I have a friend that bought 3 on release day). You just need 100 guys like that on the PLANET to cover the up-front cost of releasing that kit.

GW is literally printing money. I doubt they have loses with any they produce. But thats not how corporations operate. If something causes you loses , someone really screwed up. In most cases is whats the most profitable of a ton of products where most of them are profitable enough. But in capitalism theres never enough profit.

Sly Marbo is a resin small miniature done for the biggest miniatures company on the planet with the biggest market. You have gremlings on their garages running whole business about selling small resin miniatures, and they can make a profit and GW didn't for Sly Fething Marbo?

Out of what you pay to the store, around 20% is what actually goes to GW.

Don't know in other countries, but in Italy it splits like this:

22% are taxes
Out of the remaining 78%, 55% goes to the shop.
We are now at 35% before expenses.

Out of those 35%, you have to cut 20% for miscellanous costs (advertising, administration and so on.)

We are now at 28%. On a 25$ character, this means that 7 dollars are finally going to GW.

Now you need to detract flat expenses for actually making sure that the model exists and is in that store.

Those kits need to be produced. Materials don't cost much, but machine time and power have a cost.
Then they need to be packed and stored, and this costs manpower.
You then need to transport them all over the world, and this is the biggest cost.

After summing everything up, it wouldn't be an exageration that GW has payed 2$ for that model.

The profit GW realized on that sell is 5$.

They need to sell 5k Sly Marbos for it to be worth it.

Thats not how this works. Covering their operating costs is part of the equation and many of those costs are there because GW considers them worth it in other ways (Like their one man stores as marketing). You cannot put all those costs on a SINGLE kit to arguee that it should cover them.

And I don't know what kind of stores do you have there. Here, normal stores receive a 35% discount from GW. That means they are paying 65% of what one would pay direct from GW to then sell it to you normally at a 10-15% discount for a 15-20% margin. You are greately undervaluing what GW gains for each kit.

But I'll say again, GW would not do anything that it is not profitable. Maybe they have their math wrong sometimes but that happens with things like fringe boxed games, not with core 40k or aos products. Not in modern GW.

I'm giving you the numbers I know from friends that run stores.

It isn't a given that conditions are the same everywhere.

And yes, the overall manpower required to sell a product is meant to be counted as a percentage on the single kits. Who is paying for all of that stuff otherwise?

ccs wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
ccs: Maybe it's my own misunderstanding about the fire thing. Some of the hair is sculpted in weird ways that to me looks like it is trying to mimic flame, and I thought that was what they were trying to go for.

Well, the sculpt of alot of the non-braided beards & loose mustaches are mimicking motion as many of the dwarves are running/charging.
Wich is alot more dynamic that 99% of my WHFB dwarves....
I think what's throwing your perception is their hair & helmet crests being painted orange, on units called Fyresslayers. And I'm also sure it's GWs intent that your mind makes this connection - earthy tones, bronze/brass, alot of orange + a name that includes fire (though misspelled) all add up to nice simple marketing.
But the models do not have fiery beards.

Ewww, I can't stand to watch somebody be gaslit like this (even over something as insignificant as plastic army men).

Fyreslayers' beards are 1000% intentionally designed to mimic or recall the appearance of flames. No other GW Dwarven facial hair (or any facial hair in any GW range, regardless of whether the model is in motion) is sculpted with comparable undulating curves and an abundance of strands that curl and taper to points aimed in different directions.

You either took the original comment literally and assumed they were talking about beards made of actual flame, or you're numb to aesthetic motifs.

Edit: Your comment about mimicking motion is particularly deranged. A lot of Fyreslayer beards are splayed out roughly symmetrically, with a sense of forward motion. That movement is in complete contradiction to a model posed in an advancing gait. It does, however, call to mind the unpredictable motion of flame.

Edit 2: Thanks to today's Dakka front page, I actually noticed some GW hair that DOES resemble Fyreslayers' beards; Daemonettes scalp hair! Which is magically floating hair.

The idea that GW would produce/sell any product at a loss is completely asinine.