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If I owned games workshop I would liquidize all the assets, shut down all the stores, and sell the IP rights to Uwe Bolle.


Just to spite you all.

Kilkrazy wrote:Judging between Classic Battletech (I gave up playing before the Clans came out) and 40K I would say 40K is a significantly more complicated game in many ways.

I've bolded the important part of your sentence there KK. Once upon a time, back when BattleTech was still called BattleDroids, there were 3 types of Lasers, one type of Autocannon, a few different short and long ranged missile launchers, the mighty PPC and 'Mechs topped out at 75 tons. The game was simple back then.

It's no longer "back then". To put into perspective just how complex and granular the rules for BattleTech are, let me give this example:

If you wanted to have a game where 'Mechs were fighting inside the cargo hold of a massive wet-navy vessel as it spiraled out of control in a lake made of acid, whilst being chased by a building that can move, during an earthquake and a hurriane whilst it is snowing, where the atmospheric pressure was low enough to give 'Mechs with jump jets a boost, there was an infestation of insects clogging the air, all the 'Mechs had experimental weapons, and the objective of the fight was to pick up Infantry and throw them across the cargo-hold, there are rules for that. There aren't just rules for cyclones, there are rules for all 5 catagories of cyclones.

I'm not going to go too much further into this (don't want to get into another argument with ol' Shummy), but yeah, BattleTech has come a along way in complexity. The list of different weapon systems and ammunition types alone, the sheer quantitiy of 'Mechs, the optional rules fill three books, each over 400 pages. No. 40K is not as complex as BTech. Not in its wildest dreams. More convaluted perhaps, but not more complex.

BYE

Gentlemen, please stick to the topic.

(don't want to get into another argument with ol' Shummy)

I was already writing one up when I saw that!

You and your clix games.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:2: Redevelop 40k to a detail level roughly that of Battletech, and refocus 40k away from Space Marines, emphasize all armies roughly equally. Emphasize campaign and narrative type games through supplements.

Funny... I didn't see "Sink the company" as one of your stated goals, because refocusing the game away from Space Marines and making it as ludicrously complex as BattleTech is would do just that.

ludicrously complex? It took me less time to pick up Battletech then get everything for 40k nailed down. Once you get past one or two fiddly bits its much less "gamey" than 40k, and certainly not as bad as 40k 2nd Edition. I'm not talking about necessarily including all the crap about customizing battlemechs and calculating battle value by hand, or rules for different atmospheres and temperatures (which are *special rules* that one need not use, they are just there if one *wants* a much more varied battle) and such, but rather more the move to a system that allowed more wiggle room for D10's and 2d6 rolls rather than just using 1D6 for everything, as well as a decent modifiers system. The basic rules for Battletech are only like 60something pages, toss maybe a dozen more for weapons and equipment, and they do a lot more than GW manages with their equivalent page space.

Hell, even including all the crazy rules, its only 102 pages, compared with 40k's what, 80something for a ruleset that is orders of magnitude less powerful (in terms of what they can portray)?

Like it not, Space Marines are 40K. Once they're not the centre, 40K ceases to be as a viable main commercial product.

I hardly think that if Space Marines simply didn't get pushed at the expense of all other armies that 40k would collapse. Up until the new SM codex came out, vanilla space marines definitely were not the most popular army, in my experience (which, while obviously subjective, extends to several metropolitan areas) Chaos, Eldar and Tau have generally been more popular than SM's. People just seem to be picking up SM's right now because of their slowed codex and new kits.

I'm not saying take SM's out of 40k. I'm not saying don't promote them or that they are not important. I'm saying that they are oversupported, taking away from other armies, which probably has something to do with the fact that SM's *are* the most popular thing. If other armies didn't have to suffer in terms of support just so SM's can be pushed, maybe they'd be a little bit more popular. It's a self perpetuating cycle at this point that needs to be broken.




Maybe my experience is different because the majority of the UK market may be 12 year old kids? I've been told this a lot, but most of the players here are generally college aged or older, with the occasional high school kid, generally with more gaming experience than just 40k. Once in a blue moon a 12-13 year old will wander in, buy a couple things, play a game or two, and forget about it and go back to Pokemon.

I think the perceived majority over here is 12-13 year olds, simply because most gamers shop in GW's, which serve as a recruiting ground. Ergo, there are always dozens of the little sods kicking about.

However, the actual main body of games is about the same as the US. At least, in my experience working for GW.

1) I would fully support specialt games and make plastics for all of them. (Plastic blood bowl teams, necromunda gangs, mordheim warbands, ect...)

2) I would sell the stuff at Wal - Mart. If more people see the prodects theres more of a chance you will get a spur of the moment buy and this has the potential to get more people hooked on the games. I mean people buy model car stuff from Wal -Mart, not to big a leap to Games - Workshop stuff.

3) I would fire everyone involved with the way White Dwarf is now published. This magazine used to be something to look forward to every month. Now its just a disappointment to spend 8 bucks on something thats not even fun to read on the crapper.

4) I think tournament play is one of the best aspects of the game so I would promote it to the fullest. There would be a grand tournament every month, the rules would be balanced well enough for tournaments (you cant get it perfect but we'll try), and we wont ignore the fact that a lot of people do enjoy the tournamentas and want descent support for them.

5) I would bring back the forums on the games - workshop site and use the posts (not the rants) as guides to designing the games.

Thats by bit. Hope I inherit the company somehow.

GW used to sell boxed games and starter sets in Toy R Us.

Get Rick Priestley back would definently be #1, preferable with a team of the original firesouls of the game.

Squats and Chaos Dwarfs would be pretty high on the prio list also.

Definently sack JJ(the root to most evil atm) and get some better face outwards.

More playtesting!! Actually put some real work into the rules. The game sells because of the rules, without them the minis are next to worthless.

Get more organized tournaments, game-roadshows and other ways for people to get more into the game.

ShumaGorath wrote:If I owned games workshop I would liquidize all the assets, shut down all the stores, and sell the IP rights to Uwe Bolle.


Just to spite you all.

Spite? You mean reward. I would watch a Uwe Boll 40k film. He would "get" 40k and what it was about: homoerotic space paladins, "scary" bugs, and funny green rednecks. 40k's a parody of stuff. Uwe Boll would be perfect.

Uwe Boll is a parody of a film director.

Kilkrazy wrote:GW used to sell boxed games and starter sets in Toy R Us.

They tried selling the LotR boxed sets in gaming stores and book stores here in Canada but it never took off. In fact, I will forever regret not picking them up for half price. It was the old Fellowship of the Ring boxed set. Also, Battletech doesn't have sword fights.

If I ran GW I would dump everything and put our efforts into creating more terrain packs like these:



in fact, someone already beat me to it:

Kilkrazy wrote:Uwe Boll is a parody of a film director.

That's why he's perfect.

My browser says:

"If I owned Games Workshop ... Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Vaktathi wrote:1: Fire Alessio & Tom Kirby. (one can't write decently balanced or thought out rules for crap and puts out retardedly oversimplified, quick and dirty, unbalanced products, the other debt finances company payment of dividends to double his salary)

2: Redevelop 40k to a detail level roughly that of Battletech, and refocus 40k away from Space Marines, emphasize all armies roughly equally. Emphasize campaign and narrative type games through supplements.

3: Issue *real* FAQ's every few months, on a scale roughly that of INAT FAQ.

4: Change production schedule from one army codex every couple months, to "New Edition, new book with all armies included, release update books with new sublists, units, FAQ's, and updates every year"

5: Bring Specialist Games out of the attic and back where they should be.

Hmm...

1. They're replacable, so this doesn't matter.

2A. add lots of detail for the sake of detail, but remove playability.

2B. shut down the key profit center of the company

2C. focus 90% of resources on non-profit-making activities

3. focus new product development resources on non-profit-making maintenance

4. move revenue from a semi-steady stream to one big bang every 5 years?

5. push games that require minimal purchase of high-margin product (minis)

Seriously, if you were in charge, GW would be bankrupt within a year at most. Unless it were a release year. In that case, they would have huge dividend for the year, and then immediately go bankrupt afterwards.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

1. They're replacable, so this doesn't matter.

hopefully it will result in better rules and management however, especially in the case of Kirby burdening the company with increased debt that it really shouldn't be taking on just so he can issue dividends to double his income.

2A. add lots of detail for the sake of detail, but remove playability.

How so? I don't think 40k is any easier to pick up or less playable than Battletech as is, and in fact I think BT plays much better. There's a reason Battletech is coming back after FASA's shutdown.

2B. shut down the key profit center of the company

Did I say discontinue Space Marines? No, I didn't. My point was to emphasize the other armies as well, instead of emphasizing one line at the expense of all the others. I think many of the other races have just as much potential as Space Marines, they just don't receive the necessary support. Overemphasizing one product (Space Marines) to the extent they are cannibalizes the other lines, and has resulted in a self perpetuating cycle of Space Marines being the most popular because they get the most support resulting in them being the most popular meaning they get more support keeping them the most popular etc. ad nauseum.

2C. focus 90% of resources on non-profit-making activities

Which would be? Campaign supplements can be very profitable. Look at the way other games do it. They release a set of rules, scenarios, sometimes map packs, additional models, etc, and they give a fairly balanced narrative campaign to play through. It works well for many other games, I don't see why it wouldn't for 40k.

3. focus new product development resources on non-profit-making maintenance

Product maintenance and update along with customer support are very important. Just because it doesn't produce an explicit shelf product doesn't mean it doesn't add value for the firm.

4. move revenue from a semi-steady stream to one big bang every 5 years?

not quite, Super big bang every 4-6 years, big release every year or 6 months, no products get left behind (Dark Eldar, etc) and all the updates and FAQ's can be included.

5. push games that require minimal purchase of high-margin product (minis)

They may not require the sheer quantity of mini's, but they also don't require the constant support and codex releases that the "core" games do. Lower total revenue maybe, but it doesn't mean they aren't still profitable. I'd be willing to bet their RoI is actually higher than the core games.

2a. Clearly, we disagree over the merits of BT. I will go on record saying that I don't want 40k turned into Clix.

2b. GW can't let the SM profit slack, or they fold up. And while I sure they would love to see IG and Tau reach SM proportions, that won't happen anytime soon.

2c. Aside from Apocalypse, supplements don't drive much in the way of sales. Apoc says to buy as much as you can, which is different from saying: play in cities / jungles / whatever. GW supplements need to sell minis, or they're no good.

3. You say that, but new product is a money-maker and maintenance is a money-loser. You put the most effort into new sales. That's business 101.

4. I can't see this working, because you now need a much larger staff to handle the big push. So you're going to hire all these playtesters for 6 months every 5 years, then lay them off with nothing to do? I mean, you can't afford to keep them for the 4 years without a major release.

5. SG has good ROI because they've stopped investment, so it's pure return.

Playtesting can be done partly by computer modelling and also by recruiting enthusiasts to play beta test games. This would be easy to organise on the Internet -- look at the response they used to have from the World Campaigns. The point is that GW don't care because they sell enough rules and figures while doing very little testing.

JohnHwangDD wrote:2a. Clearly, we disagree over the merits of BT. I will go on record saying that I don't want 40k turned into Clix.

BattleTech ain't a Clix game John.

You're thinking of MechWarrior: Dark Age, which is a totally alien thing. BattleTech has been around longer than 40K, and it is not a pre-painted mini CMG.

BYE

JohnHwangDD wrote:2a. Clearly, we disagree over the merits of BT. I will go on record saying that I don't want 40k turned into Clix.

Wait, are we referring to two different things? There's BattleTech, and then there's MechWarrior: Dark Age, which one were you referring to? I'm referring to BattleTech (or *classic* BattleTech), which is far and away better than MWA.

2b. GW can't let the SM profit slack, or they fold up. And while I sure they would love to see IG and Tau reach SM proportions, that won't happen anytime soon.

If they gave them even a quarter the promotion effort they gave SM's, I'm sure they'd see a rather healthy RoI. I'm not saying dump Space Marines. I'm saying they need to give some of the other races added support, as they could also be even more popular with just a little more face-time, rather than just being the Space Marines artillery support or the Space Marines anime fan Alien Enemy. Pushing SM's to the extent they do over the other races cannibalizes possible profits from them, and also turns off other gamers to Space Marines (the number of fantasy games at my local store has increased drastically since SM's came out, after seeing a couple game days of nothing but SM vs SM battles, it pretty much killed 40k, at least for the last couple weeks). GW shouldn't dump space marines, but they should also stop kicking their other lines in the balls to promote Space Marines. That's a problem for any business.

2c. Aside from Apocalypse, supplements don't drive much in the way of sales. Apoc says to buy as much as you can, which is different from saying: play in cities / jungles / whatever. GW supplements need to sell minis, or they're no good.

Supplements can themselves be rather profitable. They don't take much development time, a couple days of scenario setup, maybe a day or two for writing backstory, a couple more for playtesting, and off to the editors. Designing campaign supplements (like Battletechs) doesn't take much development time, isn't exactly super intensive to produce, and could be sold at a rather healthy margin. It's worked very well for other games (like BattleTech), I don't see why it wouldn't work for GW if they could do it right.

3. You say that, but new product is a money-maker and maintenance is a money-loser. You put the most effort into new sales. That's business 101.

Maintenance takes up money, but it needn't just be an expense, it is also often an investment. Keep a product updated and clearing up problems helps keep customers happy and stops them complaining. In doing so, they feel more comfortable continuing to buy your product, and won't leave to a competitor or drop the thing entirely. I for one have cut back on buying 40k stuff because the stuff just doesn't seem like they put any effort into it, and I know I'm not the only one. Granted while I myself don't make up the vast customer base, I'm sure that if GW were to put more effort into their FAQ's other than having Alessio throw something out in 2 minutes after coming up with random crap on the fly, people would be a little more enthusiastic about 40k if they are becoming jaded with it (a not insignificant number of players I might add). These players may not necessarily stop playing the game as a result of poor product maintenance, but they certainly aren't buying as much either.

If 5th had been done a bit differently (i.e. BS modifiers instead of 4+ cover, no S4 defensive weapons) and their FAQ's not been totally slowed (e.g. IG don't get to use the new dedicated transport rules...) I'd probably have bought several more tanks for a couple of my armies and another IG army by now. As is, the only thing I've bought that I hadn't intended to buy anyway before 5th came out was a box of CSM's to stick my extra flamers on.

Besides, given that GW has a paid, full time development staff, you'd think they could come up with decent support and FAQ's if volunteers and fans could come up with the INAT FAQ. Taking a week wouldn't impact other product development all that much, especially given how little time relative to the overall release timetable each army needs, and they could put out a pretty damn good FAQ that would clear up a lot of issues and keep players happy rather than just putting out the crap they do now.

4. I can't see this working, because you now need a much larger staff to handle the big push. So you're going to hire all these playtesters for 6 months every 5 years, then lay them off with nothing to do? I mean, you can't afford to keep them for the 4 years without a major release.

You wouldn't need any more staff than they currently have? More design staff? No, they just work on a little part of each race at the same time instead of doing one at at time every few years. More sales staff? No. And lets be honest, GW doesn't do playtesting now as is, so thats out the window. Furthermore, playtesting can be done for free by volunteers, many games do this, and it works fine.

And you wouldn't go 4 years without a major release, you'd do a *major* release *every* year or 6 months, that brings out 1-2 things for each race, updated rules, maybe new missions, and then every 4-6, you'd do a *really* big release.

5. SG has good ROI because they've stopped investment, so it's pure return.

They haven't stopped investment, they still come out with new mini's every once in a while (BFG admech, plague fleets for instance), they just don't *need* as much to keep the games going. They do a really good in-depth FAQ every year, and release a little something every once in a while, and the product still sells, maybe not in huge quantities, but if its stuck in the online only arena, that's also a self-perpetuating cycle as well.

I'm sure BFG's total investment has paid for itself rather well probably.

Hmmm.....


1. Slowly take the focus away from the Space Marines so that other armies will have a chance. Not like, "Hey guys no more Space Mureenz lolz!" at a board meeting or something. But quite subtly, remove the focus from them, and put more focus on other armies. I mean, seriously, if you play Imperial Guard or the Inquisitorial Forces you probably have deep pockets...and exploiting that is good. However, in the long run have all armies get equal support.

2. Release things like AoBR at places like Target/Wal-Mart whatever. Sure I guess it attracts more kiddies or whatever, but it could very well work.

3. A lot of other people have touched upon this, but I'd have like the top 10 from 'Ard Boyz or said huge tournament, and one of their "prizes" if you will would be the opportunity to break the heck out of upcoming codex's.

4. Fix White Dwarf. Again, a lot of people have touched upon this. But it sucks pretty badly. I'm sure that even the biggest fans of Games Workshop would agree with this. Perhaps more subtly have product placement? I don't know. And perhaps, at the back of the magazine, have a little blurb that says, "In order to find stores that sell GW product near you, visit our website". And have the GW website (if it doesn't have this yet) have a store locator.

5. Bring back the Squats!
Nah just kidding, it's not worth it. On the topic of the GW Website, dear Lord is it awful. I'd definitely change it. I hate pretty much every aspect of the darn thing.

Vaktathi wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:2a. Clearly, we disagree over the merits of BT. I will go on record saying that I don't want 40k turned into Clix.

Wait, are we referring to two different things? There's BattleTech, and then there's MechWarrior: Dark Age, which one were you referring to?

Mechwarrior *is* Battletech. Either that or somebody's really slipped on their IP protection.

Vaktathi wrote:

2b. GW can't let the SM profit slack, or they fold up. And while I sure they would love to see IG and Tau reach SM proportions, that won't happen anytime soon.

If they gave them even a quarter the promotion effort they gave SM's, I'm sure they'd see a rather healthy RoI. I'm not saying dump Space Marines. I'm saying they need to give some of the other races added support, as they could also be even more popular with just a little more face-time, rather than just being the Space Marines artillery support or the Space Marines anime fan Alien Enemy.

I suspect that SM only get the support that their current and past sales merit. That said, I'd love to do a Space Marines hip hop fan Alien Enemy army...

Vaktathi wrote:

2c. Aside from Apocalypse, supplements don't drive much in the way of sales. Apoc says to buy as much as you can, which is different from saying: play in cities / jungles / whatever. GW supplements need to sell minis, or they're no good.

Supplements can themselves be rather profitable. They don't take much development time, a couple days of scenario setup, maybe a day or two for writing backstory, a couple more for playtesting, and off to the editors.

If it were that easy and profitable, you don't think GW would do it? Or do you think that there would be playtesting and rules coherency issues. Like in 3E when GW would make new stuff up for each WD and leave it for the players to sort out. You don't remember the whole Chapter Approved / Trial Rules / Index Astartes rules fiasco, when you never know what the hell was going on?

Vaktathi wrote:

3. You say that, but new product is a money-maker and maintenance is a money-loser. You put the most effort into new sales. That's business 101.

Maintenance takes up money, but it needn't just be an expense, it is also often an investment. Keep a product updated and clearing up problems helps keep customers happy and stops them complaining.

I for one have cut back on buying 40k stuff because the stuff just doesn't seem like they put any effort into it, and I know I'm not the only one.

If 5th had been done a bit differently

Besides, given that GW has a paid, full time development staff,

Don't be ridicoulous. This is the internet. Nothing can stop the complaining.

That's too bad you're missing out. I think 5th is easily as much fun as when 3E was released.

If 5E had been done like you suggest, it'd be a worse system overall, a retrograde step back towards WFB, rather than a progressive step away from WFB.

Question: How many man-hours do you think went into the INAT FAQ, and how big do you think GW Development staff is? If GW dev staff is a half-dozen people, and they spend a week, like you say, then you're saying that the INAT FAQ only required a grand total of 240 man-hours to put together. I would suspect that the INAT FAQ took a *lot* more time than that.

Vaktathi wrote:

4. I can't see this working, because you now need a much larger staff to handle the big push. So you're going to hire all these playtesters for 6 months every 5 years, then lay them off with nothing to do? I mean, you can't afford to keep them for the 4 years without a major release.

You wouldn't need any more staff than they currently have?

playtesting can be done for free by volunteers, many games do this, and it works fine.

And you wouldn't go 4 years without a major release, you'd do a *major* release *every* year or 6 months, that brings out 1-2 things for each race, updated rules, maybe new missions, and then every 4-6, you'd do a *really* big release.

Given that the GW fanbase has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to hold the IP when it is shared with them, by NDA or otherwise, you think GW can depend on external playtesters for quality feedback? And keep in mind that external playtest needs to be coordinated and professionally evaluated. On the scale that you're asking, that's a pretty big job.

If GW is to release their IP out like that, it would have to be contracted and paid beta, with *serious* legal penalties for IP release / leakage. If you think GW is heavy-handed now, I can't imagine how they'd have to react to something of that scale.

I just can't see how this works. The resources don't exist to do this in the physical (TTG) realm. TTG isn't MMO. You can't just do new patches and stuff.

Vaktathi wrote:

5. SG has good ROI because they've stopped investment, so it's pure return.

They haven't stopped investment, they still come out with new mini's every once in a while

I'm sure BFG's total investment has paid for itself rather well probably.

If that's the sort of support you're thinking of (1 stealth release annually / biannaully), OK, sure. Also, I agree that the SG games have paid for themselves - but that payoff was within the first year while it was an active game.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Mechwarrior *is* Battletech. Either that or somebody's really slipped on their IP protection.

Here's the story.

Battletech was created by FASA, played with plastic and metal mini's (and sometimes cardboard standups with Mech pictures on them) that is played on hexmaps (although the Master Rules come with rules for 40k style terrain play) and is not a clix game. It's generally played with 3-15 BattleMech's on each side. It's kinda similar to Rogue Trader in many respects in terms of the detail portrayed, although not as complex as RT by any means.

Mechwarrior is an RPG much like D&D, as well as a series of PC games that simulate BattleMech combat.

MechWarrior Dark Age is a Clix type game that WizKids put out after they bought the IP from FASA after it shuttered its doors (the company was apparently doing just fine from all indications, they just thought that the industry wasn't going anywhere so they decided to close while things were still good, a rather stupid decision I think). It takes place like 150 years or something after the last printed events in the BattleTech storyline, is *WAY* dumbed down, the storyline was *raped*, and the mech's generally look slowed. It bears no resemblance to BattleTech in any way other than some of the faction and mech names are the same. The rules, mini's, playstyle, everything is different.

*HUGE* differences there.

I suspect that SM only get the support that their current and past sales merit.

I'm sure they'd remain popular regardless, but I'm also pretty sure that the amount of support they get strangles other armies when just a little bit of extra resources could make some of the other armies much more iconic as well.

That said, I'd love to do a Space Marines hip hop fan Alien Enemy army...

Well, for the Brits, I'd imagine that Orks are about as close as that gets

If it were that easy and profitable, you don't think GW would do it?

You'd think, but GW's focus has always been on "Edition, Army, Army, Army, Army, Edition, Army, Army, *RANDOM SUPPLEMENT*, Army, Army, Edition, etc". Aside from Apoc, the only real other supplements for 40k recently was Cities of Death. That came out, and essentially was a Splash release, and after a couple months GW never mentioned it again.

Apoc itself probably didn't require a huge amount of developer time for coming up with the rules, half the "new" things already existed from FW, and they didn't put a whole of time into recosting everything (generally just rounded it up or down to the nearst hundred or five hundred points) and its been a great success. Apoc Reload came out (which they obviously didn't spend a huge amount of dev team time on either given all the issues with) and still has sold fairly well (at least from what I've seen).

I think a lot of potential exists there. Just because they haven't done it doesn't mean it wouldn't be profitable. Plenty of businesses fail to implement or produce things that would be value enhancing because they are stuck in a certain mindset or schedule.

Or do you think that there would be playtesting and rules coherency issues.

Playtesting scenario's shouldn't take too much development effort, if it is they are doing it wrong, and Scenario rules should apply strictly to the Scenario and as long as its not poorly designed, shouldn't have a problem.

Like in 3E when GW would make new stuff up for each WD and leave it for the players to sort out. You don't remember the whole Chapter Approved / Trial Rules / Index Astartes rules fiasco, when you never know what the hell was going on?

Again, poorly implemented, especially when they didn't tie it all together in one place. Also not quite what I'm getting at. Imagine a campaign book, it comes with a couple special characters for an IG army and a Tau army, along with some predesigned scenario missions and a general campaign structure, some fluff, and some special rules for each army and a couple of the missions that apply to that scenario campaign. None of this would apply to "tournament/pickup" style games, it would be something that people could pick up for $15-30 and be maybe 50 pages, buy a splash character or two, and spend a two or three weekends playing through 6-8 games, with an Apoc scenario at the end to top it all off. Granted its something many gamers could do themselves, but still something that GW could put out and make a profit on.

Don't be ridicoulous. This is the internet. Nothing can stop the complaining.

Of course not, but I hear just as much, if not more complaining, at the places I play at as well. *THAT* is what GW should be worried about. Intarwebz whining is a constant, it will always be there. When the talk consistently carries over to the FLGS, there's a problem. Again, its a subjective observation, I have no idea what places outside the US west coast are like, but I'm operating off my own observations of what information I can glean.

That's too bad you're missing out. I think 5th is easily as much fun as when 3E was released.

I didn't say I wasn't playing, I'm just not *buying* as much. I still play every saturday and most wednesdays, I'm just not as enthusiastic about starting new 40k projects is all.

If 5E had been done like you suggest, it'd be a worse system overall, a retrograde step back towards WFB, rather than a progressive step away from WFB.

How so? How would BS modifiers be a bad thing? It's not only a much more realistic and intuitive method, but much more balanced as well (i.e. that 4+ cover doesn't mean squad for Space Marines taking 10 heavy bolters of fire from an IG HW platoon, so sitting in that building doesn't apparently affect the IG gunners aim, but oh man, Orks in the open with Grots in front of them? Man, half the IG shooting just got negated!). The cover saves was just something they threw out in 15 seconds and called it good.

I think fantasy's shooting system is actually much more intelligently designed than 40k's, although still not quite perfect.

Question: How many man-hours do you think went into the INAT FAQ, and how big do you think GW Development staff is? If GW dev staff is a half-dozen people, and they spend a week, like you say, then you're saying that the INAT FAQ only required a grand total of 240 man-hours to put together. I would suspect that the INAT FAQ took a *lot* more time than that.

For gathering questions, designing and editing the document, etc, you may be right. But for actually answering the questions, a full time paid developement staff should be able to get that done in a week. The questions should be able to be gathered from suggestions from customers, their own experiences, etc. The document itself can be given to a technical writer to fix up once the questions are paired with the answers, and an afternoon can be given to straightening everything out after its done at the writers.

Assume it takes a 2 days to compile questions from experience and customer suggestions (16 hours of work, say a couple dozen issues for each army) then another say 3 days (24 hours) to answer them (they are the developers, they know the intent and the RAW, it really probably shouldn't even take that long unless playtesting is involved for something really quirky, and needn't spend much time haggling about themselves at to the RAW or RAI, they already know both) and then a couple days for a technical writer to throw it together and someone to work up a couple new diagrams and pictures, another 4-8 hours to look over it to make sure the questions and answers came out allright, then maybe another day at the technical writers to fix any issues, throw it into a PDF, and send it to the IT department to upload to the website.

All in all, 6 work days (48 hours) for the development team themselves, assuming 6 people, 288 man-hours.

Do that once a year and GW suddenly goes from crap FAQ and rules support to having amazing rules support. It may not mean much to 13 year old kids, but for older gamers, it really would mean a lot.

Vaktathi wrote:
Given that the GW fanbase has demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to hold the IP when it is shared with them, by NDA or otherwise, you think GW can depend on external playtesters for quality feedback?

That's a seperate issue entirely. Even after cutting their external playtesting, the leaks keep occuring with the same regularity. Furthermore, I don't think that such leaks have exactly *hurt* GW either, instead I typically see them building excitement and anticipation for releases. I don't really see such leaks impacting sales either, as most people play in FLGS's and its not exactly acceptable to walk in with a laptop or PDF printout in such situations.

And keep in mind that external playtest needs to be coordinated and professionally evaluated. On the scale that you're asking, that's a pretty big job.

Well, yeah, especially considering they aren't doing any now. If they were, it wouldn't really be a huge step up.

I just can't see how this works. The resources don't exist to do this in the physical (TTG) realm. TTG isn't MMO. You can't just do new patches and stuff.

Aside from a couple solid playtesting groups of maybe 10 people each, I really don't see why it would be such a huge deal. Hell, it could just be GW staff from various departments playing games in their off-time.

If that's the sort of support you're thinking of (1 stealth release annually / biannaully), OK, sure. Also, I agree that the SG games have paid for themselves - but that payoff was within the first year while it was an active game.

They don't need a ton of support, just something to get them out there. The fact that they are not being played has much to do with that they aren't in stores, they aren't featured in GW publications almost at all, have almost nil support at events (relatively speaking), even before being relegated to their current position, and just generally have always had poor support. Give them some *decent* face time in WD and events, and at least have something in the stores showing that it *exists* and I think they'd do much better.

Should I grab the two of you a room key?

1. Whore out as much of the intellectual property as I could.


2. Work with developers and FLGS to sponsor gamesworkshop tournaments , special events, and contests and offer exclusive miniatures.


3. Get someone to make a team FPS of Necromunda a la Call of Duty 4. Holy christ why has this not been done.


4. Focus more on my intellectual properties supplement and support my core base of customers of the hobby.

1:Make all IG in plastic

2:Make unnoficial armies more acceptable

3:Make close combat weapons in 40k actually do something!

4:Orks? What orks?

5: Aircraft in the normal 40k rulebook

1. More disclosure. Announce new releases around six months in advance. Unless you plan to drop a big surprise.
2. Plastic Kroot hounds.
3. Make more starter kits like AOBR, I'd love to see a Tau/ Imperial Guard set.
4. More non-human armies.
5. Turn White Dwarf into a real modeling and gaming magazine, not just a catalog. More how-tos and chapter approved units.

1--Disclosure, as it seems to be the biggest thing that folks get worked up about here. If you don't know what's coming, how can you get excited?
2--Well...I'd make alot of the Forge World accessory kits available through regular channels as plastics. They seem to sell well enough for Forge World, so why not convert them over to plastic and make 'em even more mainstream?
3--Look into scaling Marine/Ork/Chaos Marine models against the Guardsmen; 'true scale' Marines as standard. It just might be doable.
4--Ensure that not only do 'official' Games Workshop stores sponsor events; but try harder to arrange things with FLGSes. Supply them scenery or prizes or heck, help them find a way to have playable tables that would draw people in; rather than just green mats. (The gameboard seems to have filled this niche, and I'm interested to see how it does locally).
5--White Dwarf content not being ads for the flavor of the month. New releases still in the front, maybe a few pages for the new releases' photos or the like just to show that there *is* something new.
6--Set up a forum where the model sculptors and the fans can interact; I.E. Dream Pod 9's set up of showing off the WIPs and getting feedback.


Probably more, but alot of it has been covered already.

6) Make the Slann team (and the other proposed teams,Chaos Pact and Underworld Creepers) official with or without minis. Although you shou8ld make them.

well by the look of most of this... alot of people don't grasp the idea of a business- GW would go under in a matter of weeks sadly