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Backfire wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Backfire wrote:
Which I suppose is ironic as PP seems to gradually become more GW-like.

How?

Hmm, their new gimmick is big, overpriced monster models, sound familiar...? Also, their recent models have been increasingly cartoonish, they are gradually giving up metal (which was once a point of pride for them), also, didn't they recently have a PR debacle with a fan site? I guess what's coming next is secretive publication policy and sloppily written rulebooks...

Hmm, their new gimmick is big, overpriced monster models, sound familiar...?

Battle Engines and Colossals/Gargantuans? The things that are mostly referred to as underpowered? When you say gimmick do you mean a type of sales tactic? I see these as just another option. Definitely not an auto-include

Also, their recent models have been increasingly cartoonish

Subjective

they are gradually giving up metal (which was once a point of pride for them)

That's true, they were all about full metal miniatures, but I can see why they would switch some of their larger items to plastic. Without plastics they wouldn't have been able to create the extremely useful 3-jack plastic sets.

also, didn't they recently have a PR debacle with a fan site?

Team Covenant? I'm not sure what exactly that was all about, but I wouldn't pick a side if the only people doing the talking were those that were supposedly wronged.

Backfire wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Backfire wrote:
Which I suppose is ironic as PP seems to gradually become more GW-like.

How?

Hmm, their new gimmick is big, overpriced monster models, sound familiar...? Also, their recent models have been increasingly cartoonish, they are gradually giving up metal (which was once a point of pride for them), also, didn't they recently have a PR debacle with a fan site? I guess what's coming next is secretive publication policy and sloppily written rulebooks...

"New Gimmick"? Gargossals have been in development since Mk1 (they were meant to be in Apotheosis IIRC) and have been being developed in the background since Superiority.

They are considerably not overpriced in the context of the game, both in price and points. This really does not need explaining further.

Yes, they also said they'd deplete the world of metal by 2006 and reinvented the wheel by covering it in spikes and rolling it over your grandma's house. Your point?

The thing with the site in question was between Wolflair (the makers of Army Builder) and PP.
PP did not go after anyone here. Hardly a "PR debacle" on the scale we see from GW.

As for your last "points".

But, as we all know:

I forgot one more parallel: White knights rushing in to defend the company against detractors.

Ho, ho.

Backfire wrote:
I forgot one more parallel: White knights rushing in to defend the company against detractors.

Ho, ho.

So all you can come back with is ad hominem?

I'm done.

The only edition of any of the Warhammer games that was put together correctly was the WFB 5 ( ? ) edition.. the one that Toumas Perinin wrote. Remember it had the Ravening Hordes in the WD issue?
ALL those armies were balanced with one another because ONE person wrote them ALL!!
Not the current " New guy in shipping? -- Alright High Elves army book ? Here ya go!!"

Backfire wrote:
I forgot one more parallel: White knights rushing in to defend the company against detractors.

Ho, ho.

I think Grimtuff covers my response nicely

FarseerAndyMan wrote:
The only edition of any of the Warhammer games that was put together correctly was the WFB 5 ( ? ) edition.. the one that Toumas Perinin wrote. Remember it had the Ravening Hordes in the WD issue?
ALL those armies were balanced with one another because ONE person wrote them ALL!!
Not the current " New guy in shipping? -- Alright High Elves army book ? Here ya go!!"

6th ed.

It was also apparently the worst thing ever for the game when he left GW as the rest of the dev team had to interpret what he meant with some of the rules when making further changes.

They NEED to hire people to break their army books. I remember it being something of a tradition within my local store with a certain friend of mine and ex-staffer who could break any army within an hour. It showed there was (and still is) a serious problem with GW's army book writing.

As far as I'm concerned Mantic fills this role nicely. Kings of war is a really nice ruleset.

Hey Grim-- was it 6th, i just couldnt remember.

I agree , hire TFG and have him and his powergaming buddies try to break the rules.

I guess the thing of it is..once you and your friends have found a play style, stick with it.
This edition of 40K is made for gamers, not lawyers. And when you can accept that the game gets much more fun.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Backfire wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Backfire wrote:
Which I suppose is ironic as PP seems to gradually become more GW-like.

Team Covenant? I'm not sure what exactly that was all about, but I wouldn't pick a side if the only people doing the talking were those that were supposedly wronged.

From what I've heard, they deserved every bit of what they got.

The biggest problem is viewing it as a balanced game rather than a way to artificially modify sales...

Couple of current situations that lead me to believe this:

1. Carnifex nerf. Every tyranid player and his uncle were playing carnifexes so limit their options and increase their cost then add a plethora of 6 W MCs and suddenly carnifexes are crap.

2/ Nerf the broadside. Again every Tau player probably played 4 to 6 of these with S10 railguns... Nerf it down to S8 and it suddenly looks like crap comparitively.

3. Flyer rules. Really, this feels so much like a poor add on but we are talking sales of 80$ models here... lets make them awesome.

4. Reduce the cost of troops thereby players will buy more. Certainly the reduction in cost of SM, CSM, Tau are all contributing but the mother of all cost reductions was the Orc Boy 9 to 6. Can anyone say 100 boys instead of 60.

5. Lessened but it still exists - new codex-itis. The latest codex seems to supplant all the previous ones through new broken units and/or cost reductions.


A solid game-first company would start with a base and develop it from there... Say 15 points for a marine and then look at the relative value of various troops so is a Grey hunter with counter attack and free special weapons a 15 pt or 16 pt figure? Is a CSM without ATSKNF worth 15 , 14 or 13?

Wow.......

How on earth did this turn into yet another GW vs PP discussion? Seriously?!?

The topic has nothing to do with that, Its about whether GW should just give up on rules writing and farm it out.....

 Laughing Man wrote:
From what I've heard, they deserved every bit of what they got.

Would you be able to fill me in?

Fafnir wrote:Not to mention that most competitive players actually want a well written, balanced ruleset.

Great, well that's 2% of the wargaming fanbase sorted, then...... But what about the 98% of non-competitive players....?

BryllCream wrote:Outsourcing any kind of creative work is generally a bad idea

Hold on, what?

In most creative fields, where the ideas and the quality of the personnel matter above all else (since it's all to do with the judgement/talent of individuals), you'll generally find that the most talented people either run their own companies or work freelance, because there's much more money to make. I can't think of a single creative industry (web design, filmmaking, graphic design, advertising, art department) where better products are produced by in-house teams. You'll ALWAYS get better, more varied, more daring ideas by outsourcing to people who are good enough to make a living freelance....

I was referring to overseas, I didn't make myself clear.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Not to mention that most competitive players actually want a well written, balanced ruleset.

Great, well that's 2% of the wargaming fanbase sorted, then...... But what about the 98% of non-competitive players....?

I'm sure they'll be so disappointed

Ideally GW or whomever they turned the rule generation over to (FFG Maybe, sense they already have rights to a lot of the IP), would reboot the entire game. The major problem that exists is (IMHO) 3 fold:

1) You have a SciFi shooter based on a Fantasy game. The two are in a lot of ways exclusive to eachother as the tactics of the day are dictated by the weapons that exist. Can you imagine if our soldiers still lined up Civil War style to fight? So why is out SciFi game played out like a ridged Medieval War type game? A reboot would allow the group writting the rules to create a game that melds the fluid environment of modern war (or in this case futuristic war) with the game itself.

2) Codex creep. The problem here is that it is self-generating. Lets say a new Eldar Codex comes out, well now inorder for people to more interested in buying the new Eldar models they have to make the codex more powerful then whatever came out last, otherwise people would simply say "Yes it's a new codex, but the rules are feth and so I'm gonna stick with my SM because their codex was good." So each subsequnt rulebook has to be better then the previous rules to get people to buy them. By rebooting the rules they could generate all of the applicable codex at the same time, thus ensuring that no codex is so much more powerful then any other. It would obviously take some time to write a coesive codex for each army, but I wouldn't mind if it meant that at the end of 2014 every army had equal potential. (And an up-to-date rule book)

3) Model shock. GW is a model company and thus while the do make some money on codex (rule) sales, the bulk of their income is from the sale of models. Inorder to push there new models, they have to release rules for the models, and that means a new codex which means see point 2. This also is what causes their sales to fluctuate so badly because they have a huge spike when a new set of models comes out and it trickles off until they release another bulk of models. Instead they should look at what already exists, create balanced rules for these models and then release models over the year until the next codex is released.

So my plan would work like this: All the current codex and rules are re-written all at once (lets say by Dec 2014) by the same people who work on all of the codex collectively. After that any models that are releast in the following year are ether remakes of models that already exist but badly need updated (you know who you are), or new models. New models would come with their own rules insert that would be included to the new codex at the end of the year. Each Decemeber every army recieves a new codex with the updated models in it, allowing them to adjust new rules without having to release an FAQ 2 days after writting a codex.

This way every army stays balanced, every model recieves its fair dues, and you would only have to deal with any poorly written rules for a maximum of 12 months. On top of that, each released model acts like a small preview to that years codex without having to hide all of their IP for months waiting for a release, thus midigating leakage.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Not to mention that most competitive players actually want a well written, balanced ruleset.

Great, well that's 2% of the wargaming fanbase sorted, then...... But what about the 98% of non-competitive players....?

Yeah, a well written balanced rule set would crap all over non-competitive players. It's only ever competitive players who post in YMDC and ask questions.

I'd wager 93 out of that 98% would be happy with that regardless if how competitive they play. The last 5% you'll never please anyway.

Why don’t they outsource it? To answer that question we only need turn to the venerable Jedi Master Yoda:

“Control! Control! [They] must [have] control!” – Yoda, a casual gamer. I think he was talking about GW he said that to Luke.

@Imperal - that's a really lovely thought, but it would be a logistical nightmare publication wise. Further, they'd just be sitting on product that wasnt making them money.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And it definitely won't be FFG. If FFG wanted to pursue making miniatures games, they wouldn't have allowed the Dust contract to expire.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Fafnir wrote:Not to mention that most competitive players actually want a well written, balanced ruleset.

Great, well that's 2% of the wargaming fanbase sorted, then...... But what about the 98% of non-competitive players....?

Because a concise, cogent, well written and balanced ruleset with little room for interpretation that puts everyone on an even platform would completely destroy the experience for non-competitive players, right?

Imperial Deceit made some good points.
Let me redirect the codex every year concept to:

Every new edition is launched with an army list book.
They did this with 3rd edition and every army then in print was covered.

Every year there's a campaign book. The campaign book introduces either new units or updates current units in the army list.

Everybody gets candy when the annual campaign book comes out and the balance is better.

PS - We all know GW will never take any of the actions discussed including farming out their rules development.
Above is just magic-thinking.

privateer4hire wrote:
Imperial Deceit made some good points.
Let me redirect the codex every year concept to:

Every new edition is launched with an army list book.
They did this with 3rd edition and every army then in print was covered.

Every year there's a campaign book. The campaign book introduces either new units or updates current units in the army list.

Everybody gets candy when the annual campaign book comes out and the balance is better.

PS - We all know GW will never take any of the actions discussed including farming out their rules development.
Above is just magic-thinking.

So what sells in the intermediary?

Well in the intermediary people will still buy models/codex it's just the sales will not be as high. That's where my idea of releasing new models with new rules comes in, then you just add them to the codex or campaign book or whatever at the end of the year. Plus then the rules can be edited on an as needed bases instead of whenever they get around to redoing individual codex.

Imperial Deceit wrote:
Well in the intermediary people will still buy models/codex it's just the sales will not be as high.

yeah, that wont Fly.

That's where my idea of releasing new models with new rules comes in, then you just add them to the codex or campaign book or whatever at the end of the year. Plus then the rules can be edited on an as needed bases instead of whenever they get around to redoing individual codex.

Edited on as as needed basis? So they just keep releasing FAQs? I think you're really underestimating how much would be involved with what you're proposing.

 cincydooley wrote:

Imperial Deceit wrote:
Well in the intermediary people will still buy models/codex it's just the sales will not be as high.

yeah, that wont Fly.

That's where my idea of releasing new models with new rules comes in, then you just add them to the codex or campaign book or whatever at the end of the year. Plus then the rules can be edited on an as needed bases instead of whenever they get around to redoing individual codex.

Edited on as as needed basis? So they just keep releasing FAQs? I think you're really underestimating how much would be involved with what you're proposing.

Yep a better and easier way to do what your proposing would be to do it all at the start of a new addition. Heck GW could even take there time and extend the 5 year cycle out a year or two and give themselves plenty of time for play testing and adjustments.

 darefsky wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

Imperial Deceit wrote:
Well in the intermediary people will still buy models/codex it's just the sales will not be as high.

yeah, that wont Fly.

That's where my idea of releasing new models with new rules comes in, then you just add them to the codex or campaign book or whatever at the end of the year. Plus then the rules can be edited on an as needed bases instead of whenever they get around to redoing individual codex.

Edited on as as needed basis? So they just keep releasing FAQs? I think you're really underestimating how much would be involved with what you're proposing.

Yep a better and easier way to do what your proposing would be to do it all at the start of a new addition. Heck GW could even take there time and extend the 5 year cycle out a year or two and give themselves plenty of time for play testing and adjustments.

I addressed that in my first post. This isn't about doing what they are doing now in a faster pace, it's about maintaining the system after a complete reboot that still allows them to introduce new models. Also I know that it "won't fly", hence why I immediately addressed this in the following lines. It's not about releasing a constant stream of FAQs, it's about a producing a new model, and simply adding a slip of paper with a stat line and special rules attached. All of the fluff can wait for the end of year updates. So for the future, read the entirety of someones post before you jump to conclusions and one line rebutles (a generous description in this case.)

The only thing you've said that I can see them doing is including rule sheets in boxes. And even that's tenuous at best when you have a magazine and a digital platform you can release them in. I think they SHOULD, but that doesn't mean they will. Besides, what you're proposing is no different than the splash releases GW has been doing the past 18 months. Fliers, Demon splash releases, etc. Those splash releases would likely not be enough on their own to drive the numbers the shareholders have become accustomed to.

In order to do what you proposed release wise, they'd have to change their entire business model which, as a public company, isn't going to happen. Privateer can trickle releases out and miss deadlines and launch dates because they're not beholden to shareholders. GW can't. Privateer is also operating under a completely different set of expectations from these types of communities. MonPoc disappears/is discontinued? Barely a murmur. Specialist games are dumped? Internet shitstorm.

But that's really besides the point. Would it be ideal to do a Mark II for 40k 7th edition? Probably. But the scope of what would be required by GW is much larger than the undertaking Privateer had to (in sheer terms of point values they'd need to rewrite) and it would require them to either hire a significant amount of testers or allow a closed public beta to occur with NDAs in place. Fiscally, right now the first makes little sense. And based on GWs corporate culture, it's very unlikely the 2nd would ever happen.

Internet wish listing is great and all, but it's significantly more impactful if you offer some ideas that could reasonably happen considering all we know about GW and how they conduct business.

Hire testers? Play testers don't have to get paid.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Hire testers? Play testers don't have to get paid.

Right. Maybe I didn't address that well enough. For GW they could either hire testers or have a closed beta with NDAs. The first, like I said, is fiscally unlikely. The 2nd seems unlikely based on precedents set by GW. I can't see them opening up their beta as broadly as, say, PP did for MkII.