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Lanrak wrote:
Hmmm.
IF GW plc KNOW what they are doing, WHY have they lost over 50% of their sales volumes in the last 8 years?

Why have other companies sprung up , and grow significant customer bases , by providing the type of games GW plc decided were not worth their time?

AN off-topic post that adds nothing to the thread.

GW revenues 2006 (couldn't find 2004 after quick look) : £115m.
GW revenues 2012: £131m.

Pretty good performance in a global downturn.

Other companies have sprung up? Great, more options for all of us, but there's no evidence they're eating GW's breakfast. Your post is exaclty as well-judged as the OPs.

Sure, but did you ever consider that their sales may have dropped, but revenue increased slightly due to an increase in price across the board?

Frankly, both your comment and the one you commented on are missing the whole picture. There's a thread on this board somewhere with the raw numbers providing the whole picture.

This thread is how GW sucks because Nids are unplayable in 6th.

It is a thread full of fail. The premise is completely incorrect. It's mildly entertaining as an example of people blaming GW for something that doesnt exist/ is not their fault, and that's about it.

Sure, you can send it further south with lots of vague information that is nothing to do with the subject of the thread, if you have lots of time to waste.

You sound particularly bitter about this, why not leave the thread then?

You helped de-rail the thread by responding to a post with numbers that weren't necessarily vague, but pulled out of context.

But hey, its easy to just say people 'blame GW' for their own failings instead of objectively looking at how the rules stack up and how the balance is among codices, and even inside them.

 Blacksails wrote:
You sound particularly bitter about this, why not leave the thread then?

You helped de-rail the thread by responding to a post with numbers that weren't necessarily vague, but pulled out of context.

But hey, its easy to just say people 'blame GW' for their own failings instead of objectively looking at how the rules stack up and how the balance is among codices, and even inside them.

I posted figures showing the claim is rubbish, so that this thread won't be used to float more disinformation.

But once again, to return to the original post, it claims Nids are no good in 6th.

Nids are one of the most competitive armies, and we have won 11 out of our last 12 games, including against Space Wolves and Tau - with a single flyrant list. In fact, we're having more fun in 6th than we did in 6th, with a faster, more flying force. We have detailed what changes we made to our nid army in 6th, and pointed out how there is a reasonably good choice of units for a competitive army. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear. I

Interesting how people who enjoy playing 40k are seen as bitter! Right, now I'm off to paint a Stompa...

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Nids are one of the most competitive armies, and we have won 11 out of our last 12 games, including against Space Wolves and Tau - with a single flyrant list. In fact, we're having more fun in 6th than we did in 6th, with a faster, more flying force. We have detailed what changes we made to our nid army in 6th, and pointed out how there is a reasonably good choice of units for a competitive army. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear.

I love that you used the Royal We. It implies the Hivemind.

 Blacksails wrote:
Sure, but did you ever consider that their sales may have dropped, but revenue increased slightly due to an increase in price across the board?

Frankly, both your comment and the one you commented on are missing the whole picture. There's a thread on this board somewhere with the raw numbers providing the whole picture.

16 million is a slight increase?

Lanrak wrote:
Hmmm.
IF GW plc KNOW what they are doing, WHY have they lost over 50% of their sales volumes in the last 8 years?

Source?

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
You sound particularly bitter about this, why not leave the thread then?

You helped de-rail the thread by responding to a post with numbers that weren't necessarily vague, but pulled out of context.

But hey, its easy to just say people 'blame GW' for their own failings instead of objectively looking at how the rules stack up and how the balance is among codices, and even inside them.

I posted figures showing the claim is rubbish, so that this thread won't be used to float more disinformation.

But once again, to return to the original post, it claims Nids are no good in 6th.

Nids are one of the most competitive armies, and we have won 11 out of our last 12 games, including against Space Wolves and Tau - with a single flyrant list. In fact, we're having more fun in 6th than we did in 6th, with a faster, more flying force. We have detailed what changes we made to our nid army in 6th, and pointed out how there is a reasonably good choice of units for a competitive army. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear. I

Interesting how people who enjoy playing 40k are seen as bitter! Right, now I'm off to paint a Stompa...

Again, no. The numbers you posted aren't the entire picture and actually do nothing to accurately back your claim.

I'm curious, your claim about nids being 'one of the most competitive' armies in 40k currently, is this based purely from your own experiences against a limited number of opponents? Is this based on tournament records with a number of opponents? Is this a very competitive environment with min/maxed lists designed to maximize a codex's strenghts?

Because many people, and most large recent tournament results, will disagree with you. Generally, Tau, Eldar, and Daemons are holding down the top spots according to many results from larger events across the country.

And no, people who play 40k aren't bitter; its the ones who dismiss any criticism of the game, and meet any such criticism with snide remarks and hand-waving.

I'm glad you're doing well and having fun. But many people who may play in a more competitive environment with a lot of strong Tau and Eldar lists, will likely have quite a bit of trouble using Nids. The codex imbalance is quite apparent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 spacewolved wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Sure, but did you ever consider that their sales may have dropped, but revenue increased slightly due to an increase in price across the board?

Frankly, both your comment and the one you commented on are missing the whole picture. There's a thread on this board somewhere with the raw numbers providing the whole picture.

16 million is a slight increase?

Over 6 years? Its not bad, but its not great either. And again, just quoting that number doesn't actually prove that their sales went up or down; there's more to that number. That's all I'm trying to say, go look at the big picture before jumping to conclusions.

 pretre wrote:

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
Nids are one of the most competitive armies, and we have won 11 out of our last 12 games, including against Space Wolves and Tau - with a single flyrant list. In fact, we're having more fun in 6th than we did in 6th, with a faster, more flying force. We have detailed what changes we made to our nid army in 6th, and pointed out how there is a reasonably good choice of units for a competitive army. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear.

I love that you used the Royal We. It implies the Hivemind.

I do apologise, I'm aware it makes me sound like Margaret Thatcher. Don't want to keep mentioning there's a Hivefleet Oblivion Sr and Jr. But I do like the thought we're connected to the Hive Mind.

Jr placed 6th in a recent Throne of Skulls with nids. We went for fun, not thinking it's the olympics or anything.

 Blacksails wrote:

And no, people who play 40k aren't bitter; its the ones who dismiss any criticism of the game, and meet any such criticism with snide remarks and hand-waving.

.

I merely posted that we're doing well with Nids, and they're quite competitive. No, that doesn't make me bitter, nor does it make all the poeple on tyranid hive who are enjoying playing, bitter. Of course there's complaint here and there, as is appropriate, but saying you enjoy playing tyranids isn't seen as shockingly provocative.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
I merely posted that we're doing well with Nids, and they're quite competitive. No, that doesn't make me bitter, nor does it make all the poeple on tyranid hive who are enjoying playing, bitter. Of course there's complaint here and there, as is appropriate, but saying you enjoy playing tyranids isn't seen as shockingly provocative.

You have to be careful about revealing that you enjoy things around here.

Around this time 2 years ago, I was like, "I'm actually enjoying my new Codex."

Big mistake. The more I tried to be optimistic, the more other people were like, "No, bad Pouncey. You are not allowed to enjoy this new Codex, it is bad, and you are bad for enjoying it. We will argue with you about why you should not enjoy it every time you say anything about enjoying it."

And it took a few weeks, but I broke. I broke so badly that I went from playing 1-2 games a week, to having played around 5 in the past 2 years. I couldn't look at my army without remembering all the negativity. It ruined my enjoyment of the game.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
You sound particularly bitter about this, why not leave the thread then?

You helped de-rail the thread by responding to a post with numbers that weren't necessarily vague, but pulled out of context.

But hey, its easy to just say people 'blame GW' for their own failings instead of objectively looking at how the rules stack up and how the balance is among codices, and even inside them.

I posted figures showing the claim is rubbish, so that this thread won't be used to float more disinformation.

But once again, to return to the original post, it claims Nids are no good in 6th.

Nids are one of the most competitive armies, and we have won 11 out of our last 12 games, including against Space Wolves and Tau - with a single flyrant list. In fact, we're having more fun in 6th than we did in 6th, with a faster, more flying force. We have detailed what changes we made to our nid army in 6th, and pointed out how there is a reasonably good choice of units for a competitive army. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear. I

Interesting how people who enjoy playing 40k are seen as bitter! Right, now I'm off to paint a Stompa...

And how many tervigons?

 spacewolved wrote:
16 million is a slight increase?

Once you account for inflation and changing exchange rates, yes. Once you look at profit numbers adjusted for those factors GW has shown small annual growth. And since this growth is happening at the same time as significant price increases the inevitable conclusion is that GW is losing sales volume and market share. They're successfully extracting greater profits from their customers through price increases and cutting costs, but they aren't really growing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:
Big mistake. The more I tried to be optimistic, the more other people were like, "No, bad Pouncey. You are not allowed to enjoy this new Codex, it is bad, and you are bad for enjoying it. We will argue with you about why you should not enjoy it every time you say anything about enjoying it."

You play SoB, right? Maybe the truth here is that the "codex" was just awful and had few, if any, redeeming qualities. Nobody is going to come to your house and crush your enjoyment of a codex just because they don't want to see you have fun, but if you defend a garbage product in a public forum you can't expect that everyone will just say "you're right, I'm so happy you're having fun".

And it took a few weeks, but I broke. I broke so badly that I went from playing 1-2 games a week, to having played around 5 in the past 2 years. I couldn't look at my army without remembering all the negativity. It ruined my enjoyment of the game.

Honestly, if you can't enjoy something because other people told you it isn't fun then you should probably avoid forums.

 Blacksails wrote:
Sure, but did you ever consider that their sales may have dropped, but revenue increased slightly due to an increase in price across the board?

Frankly, both your comment and the one you commented on are missing the whole picture. There's a thread on this board somewhere with the raw numbers providing the whole picture.

Yes they have lost sales, BUT they still keep making money. Even more money which just mind boggles me how they survive.

Doesn't matter if they lost sales. You may even be giving GW more credit. How does a company, have less sales, still stay in business and even make more money. Question is, how long will it last?

So while alot of people have stopped buying from GW, it's still not enough for GW to change it's ways. I guess they are happy with what they are making and where they are. Just curious now, what will it take for GW to change to the direction the Internet would like.

Davor wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Sure, but did you ever consider that their sales may have dropped, but revenue increased slightly due to an increase in price across the board?

Frankly, both your comment and the one you commented on are missing the whole picture. There's a thread on this board somewhere with the raw numbers providing the whole picture.

Yes they have lost sales, BUT they still keep making money. Even more money which just mind boggles me how they survive.

Economics. The prices they set adjust demand so they can still meet demand without reaching the "choke price" for the majority of their customers. It's actually a bit clever and tells me that whomever does their pricing is likely an economics major to keep this balance.

Davor wrote:
Doesn't matter if they lost sales. You may even be giving GW more credit. How does a company, have less sales, still stay in business and even make more money. Question is, how long will it last?

If they're smart, until supply consistently meets demand and then they'll either stop raising prices, or lower them (which they did both this year with bundles that saved money and not raising prices on most of their products, and then only raising prices on the new goods which are more complex and expensive to produce).

Davor wrote:
So while alot of people have stopped buying from GW, it's still not enough for GW to change it's ways. I guess they are happy with what they are making and where they are. Just curious now, what will it take for GW to change to the direction the Internet would like.

If I've learned anything in my Microecon class this semester it's that markets adjust slowly when they try to reach equilibrium. GW has been in a position where supply couldn't keep up with demand on a regular basis. It's been getting better, but it was still not good enough. Since they can't really afford to go out and just build a second production facility and have it ready fast enough to fix the issue (not to mention extra storage space, workers, ect...) their ability to supply is fairly inflexible, so they do the only thing they can do: raise prices. That stops when the demand drops to a point where it stops creating shortages.

On the subject of Nids, why is it that of all the armies in 40K, that one is the single most divisive army? Half the players claim their current codex sucks in 6th edition, and the other half says its performing spectacularly.

As for GW sales/revenue, if the figures previously posted are accurate, it almost indicates a consistent level of sales instead of actual growth, as the increased revenue could be attributed to the increase in prices. This is a bit impressive given that A) its a niche luxury market in a down economy, B) its a market that has a bit of a built in hard stop, as once a customer reaches that point of having built their army to a certain point, sales from said customer often slow down dramatically, and C) there is a very large and thriving second-hand market.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
If I've learned anything in my Microecon class this semester it's that markets adjust slowly when they try to reach equilibrium. GW has been in a position where supply couldn't keep up with demand on a regular basis. It's been getting better, but it was still not good enough. Since they can't really afford to go out and just build a second production facility and have it ready fast enough to fix the issue (not to mention extra storage space, workers, ect...) their ability to supply is fairly inflexible, so they do the only thing they can do: raise prices. That stops when the demand drops to a point where it stops creating shortages.

There's one major problem with this argument: GW isn't a conventional business. Maximizing profit from a small customer base is fine if you're selling bread, because nobody cares about buying the same bread as all of their friends. With games, on the other hand, you need a certain critical mass of players to be successful, and that's GW's biggest advantage. Right now if you walk into a random game store you're probably going to see lots of 40k/WHFB players and not much for any other games. So a new player who is interested in the hobby is going to default to GW unless they have a very strong preference for something else. But if the GW player base shrinks too much that new customer sees some other game as the default, and GW loses that sale. The result is that if GW drops below some unknown market share they will start a downward spiral into irrelevance as the gaming community as a whole switches to something else.

Davor wrote:
How does a company, have less sales, still stay in business and even make more money.

By increasing prices and cutting expenses. Instead of getting additional customers GW is focusing on maximizing efficiency and extracting the most profit possible from their existing customers. The problem with this strategy is that you can't do it forever. There's a limit to how much people will pay, once you've fired all your "extra" employees and moved everything to one-man stores you can't fire them all again, etc. So it can keep GW's profits up short-term until the current management cash their retirement checks, but long-term it's a bad business plan.

Just curious now, what will it take for GW to change to the direction the Internet would like.

Being bought by someone who isn't an incompetent idiot. GW's current management is incapable of making the necessary changes, and has no desire to do it even if they could. The only way to change this is for WOTC or some other major game company to buy GW after the inevitable collapse and replace all of the management and game designers.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
If I've learned anything in my Microecon class this semester it's that markets adjust slowly when they try to reach equilibrium. GW has been in a position where supply couldn't keep up with demand on a regular basis. It's been getting better, but it was still not good enough. Since they can't really afford to go out and just build a second production facility and have it ready fast enough to fix the issue (not to mention extra storage space, workers, ect...) their ability to supply is fairly inflexible, so they do the only thing they can do: raise prices. That stops when the demand drops to a point where it stops creating shortages.

There's one major problem with this argument: GW isn't a conventional business. Maximizing profit from a small customer base is fine if you're selling bread, because nobody cares about buying the same bread as all of their friends. With games, on the other hand, you need a certain critical mass of players to be successful, and that's GW's biggest advantage. Right now if you walk into a random game store you're probably going to see lots of 40k/WHFB players and not much for any other games. So a new player who is interested in the hobby is going to default to GW unless they have a very strong preference for something else. But if the GW player base shrinks too much that new customer sees some other game as the default, and GW loses that sale. The result is that if GW drops below some unknown market share they will start a downward spiral into irrelevance as the gaming community as a whole switches to something else.

That isn't an "arguement" though, it's what companies do. Microsoft does it, Apple does it, a company making widgets does it, some just do it more formally than others. I'll bet you that GW has someone who crunches the numbers on a regular basis and is paid to set prices. That or they have a computer program that does it like the Airlines do.

This is a real thing that every buisness does on some level and regardless of how big GW is they still fall under Microeconomics because their industry and market base is so small.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I'll bet you that GW has someone who crunches the numbers on a regular basis and is paid to set prices. That or they have a computer program that does it like the Airlines do.

Of course they have someone doing it. What I'm saying is that the standard methods for price determination don't work for GW because they're in a very different business. If you're a bakery you're perfectly happy going from 50% to 25% market share by doubling your prices, because nobody cares what brand of bread their friends are buying. Unless you make other changes you're likely to remain at that 25% market share indefinitely. If GW goes from 50% to 25% market share by doubling their prices they're likely to go from 25% to 0% market share because they lost the critical mass that their games depend on having. The remaining 25% of the market after price changes will start to listen to their friends telling them to join the new most popular game, and it's a downward spiral until all that's left is a handful of dedicated collectors with nobody to play against.

GW's problem seems to be that they have generic managers who think that you can just apply generic management strategies to any business regardless of what industry-specific facts might be relevant. And so they're applying a generic price optimization and cost cutting strategy to an industry where maintaining a critical mass of market share is vital to long-term survival. They won't learn until too late that increasing per-unit profit at the expense of market share is a suicidal move in the game industry, especially for a company like GW where they make mediocre products and depend on "all my friends play it" to get sales.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I'll bet you that GW has someone who crunches the numbers on a regular basis and is paid to set prices. That or they have a computer program that does it like the Airlines do.

Of course they have someone doing it. What I'm saying is that the standard methods for price determination don't work for GW because they're in a very different business. If you're a bakery you're perfectly happy going from 50% to 25% market share by doubling your prices, because nobody cares what brand of bread their friends are buying. Unless you make other changes you're likely to remain at that 25% market share indefinitely. If GW goes from 50% to 25% market share by doubling their prices they're likely to go from 25% to 0% market share because they lost the critical mass that their games depend on having. The remaining 25% of the market after price changes will start to listen to their friends telling them to join the new most popular game, and it's a downward spiral until all that's left is a handful of dedicated collectors with nobody to play against.

GW's problem seems to be that they have generic managers who think that you can just apply generic management strategies to any business regardless of what industry-specific facts might be relevant. And so they're applying a generic price optimization and cost cutting strategy to an industry where maintaining a critical mass of market share is vital to long-term survival. They won't learn until too late that increasing per-unit profit at the expense of market share is a suicidal move in the game industry, especially for a company like GW where they make mediocre products and depend on "all my friends play it" to get sales.

GW has been raising prices for well over 25 years now. If they were truly being that shortsighted and blind it'd done them in by now.

Every company that isn't being propped up the government or isn't a "not for profit" (which GW is neither) can not survive, especially in a global market place on the good will of its customers if it just goes raising prices for no reason. Someone in that company knows exactly what they're doing or they'd been sunk already.

We (as a community on the internet) have been bitching about prices before I even knew we had a community on the internet (so pre 2008 for me). I've heard claims that the complaints go back as far as Usenet BBS. If GW was really doing things that poorly do you think they'd still be around? Be honest now.

I'm betting what GW does is run a perpetual inventory system and they can see how long any 1 kit is sitting on the shelves and how much of them they have to cast to meet demand. And if they turn over rate is sufficent then they look at raising prices at the end of the fiscal year (where the effects can be seen more clearly without screwing with the numbers from the current fiscal year). Add in a small buffer for inflation on top of that and you get the yearly price increase.

The new kits are likely priced so they keep the same profit margin despite the higher piece count and complexity as similiar kits or kits they're replacing.

GW is doing marginal analysis and adjusting things marginally, they just do it at one time instead of all the time like a retailer would.

We can imagine that GW is screwing up because people are quitting but really those people have reached what they determine to their "choke price" and are quitting because they no longer find the value of the product to meet their expectations. That's fine because it happens all the time to every company.

GW doesn't have some kind of magical monopoly on the planet, the people moving to other game systems proves this. Because of this GW can't blindly rely on mass price increases for no reason and has to play it smart, like they've been doing. We can point fingers at them and call them names but when it comes to how they adjust prices they're doing just fine.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
GW has been raising prices for well over 25 years now. If they were truly being that shortsighted and blind it'd done them in by now.

The difference is that now they have significant competition that isn't raising its prices the same way, and they're raising prices everywhere. Individual models get more expensive, books get vastly more expensive, and everyone gets new overpowered $100 kits. 40k is more expensive than it's ever been compared to the alternatives, and it's only getting worse.

Every company that isn't being propped up the government or isn't a "not for profit" (which GW is neither) can not survive, especially in a global market place on the good will of its customers if it just goes raising prices for no reason. Someone in that company knows exactly what they're doing or they'd been sunk already.

You're assuming that the person making those decisions cares about long-term success. Price increases are a great plan if your only goal is to keep stock prices up long enough for you to cash your retirement check in a few years. It's not a great plan if you want GW to be around and still dominating the market in 20 years.

That's fine because it happens all the time to every company.

Again, GW is in a position that is very different from what most companies have to think about. For many products sales volume and per-unit profit are interchangeable. For GW they have to worry about keeping a critical mass of players, and if their market share drops too much their games will die regardless of how well optimized the prices are.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
GW has been raising prices for well over 25 years now. If they were truly being that shortsighted and blind it'd done them in by now.

The difference is that now they have significant competition that isn't raising its prices the same way, and they're raising prices everywhere. Individual models get more expensive, books get vastly more expensive, and everyone gets new overpowered $100 kits. 40k is more expensive than it's ever been compared to the alternatives, and it's only getting worse.

I wouldn't go as far as claiming some of the things you are here, but if GW was just maliciously raising prices they'd sink already. No company can raise prices forever and even GW isn't. They've only raised prices this year on paint, spray paint and new kits/books.

 Peregrine wrote:

Every company that isn't being propped up the government or isn't a "not for profit" (which GW is neither) can not survive, especially in a global market place on the good will of its customers if it just goes raising prices for no reason. Someone in that company knows exactly what they're doing or they'd been sunk already.

You're assuming that the person making those decisions cares about long-term success. Price increases are a great plan if your only goal is to keep stock prices up long enough for you to cash your retirement check in a few years. It's not a great plan if you want GW to be around and still dominating the market in 20 years.

And you're assuming GW would shoot itself in the foot for no reason. What reason would a PLC have for killing itself? Honestly now, maliciousness should never be the first answer to things.

GW says every year that they are trying for slow and steady growth. To date the only unexpected explosion that's occurred was the LotR line and they haven't recreated that yet.

 Peregrine wrote:

That's fine because it happens all the time to every company.

Again, GW is in a position that is very different from what most companies have to think about. For many products sales volume and per-unit profit are interchangeable. For GW they have to worry about keeping a critical mass of players, and if their market share drops too much their games will die regardless of how well optimized the prices are.

Just because GW isn't in the same position as the local diner down the road doesn't make them immune to the effects of markets. The only company that can be immune to that would be in a monopoly and we see that isn't the case.

If GW was really in trouble, like people claim it is, we'd be seeing some kind of change as to how the company is run. The stock holders would be mass-firing the board if they weren't doing their jobs and the company was tanking.

Face facts: GW isn't in some precarious position where they need to worry about every single pound, they're a company that's managing to still grow while controlling demand so that the growth is slow and steady. I mean hell, they basically doubled the dev team this year! A company on the brink of disaster doesn't have the ability to do that.

Nor do they have the ability to replace their depreciated equipment either (every 4 years on casting equipment by their financial statements) but they've bought new tooling in the last fiscal year and have better molding equipment.

GW isn't a company that's failing, and the fact that people keep trying to ascribe new and strange reasons to why they can't be doing well will always baffle me.

When they start to fail, it won't be someone on a message board talking about it, it'll be something that will actually be visible to everyone, not just those who want to chase shadows that aren't there.

And I'm still waiting for someone to actually prove GW has lost 50% of their customers in the last year as what was claimed before.

Nids are a underpowered army right now? I don't think so. Just go ask panzereader. He has done pretty well with nids in the recent past. Guess it must be you.

Nids are pretty potent and have been since the codex powers gave them a pretty big boost. The codex DOES have a ton of garbage units, but the new space marine codex is guilty of the same thing.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
And you're assuming GW would shoot itself in the foot for no reason. What reason would a PLC have for killing itself? Honestly now, maliciousness should never be the first answer to things.

It's not about malice, it's about priorities. If GW is concerned about the long run they need to worry about things like their lack of advertising, competition that keeps cutting into their claim to make the best models in the industry, a retail chain that is of questionable value, etc. These things cost money and don't necessarily guarantee success. On the other hand, if the only goal is to get another couple years of good investor reports before the CEO retires then those things aren't an issue and GW can play it safe, maximize profit from its existing customers, and ignore the future beyond that.

The stock holders would be mass-firing the board if they weren't doing their jobs and the company was tanking.

Not really, because GW's major shareholders (other than the CEO) are large investment banks that don't have any specialized knowledge about the gaming industry. As long as GW's annual reports have good numbers those banks are going to be satisfied. They just don't know or care enough to dig into the specifics of the gaming industry and realize that GW's long-term plans aren't very good.

And I'm still waiting for someone to actually prove GW has lost 50% of their customers in the last year as what was claimed before.

Nobody is going to prove that because GW losing 50% of their customers in a single year is an obviously stupid claim.

 Peregrine wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
And you're assuming GW would shoot itself in the foot for no reason. What reason would a PLC have for killing itself? Honestly now, maliciousness should never be the first answer to things.

It's not about malice, it's about priorities. If GW is concerned about the long run they need to worry about things like their lack of advertising, competition that keeps cutting into their claim to make the best models in the industry, a retail chain that is of questionable value, etc. These things cost money and don't necessarily guarantee success. On the other hand, if the only goal is to get another couple years of good investor reports before the CEO retires then those things aren't an issue and GW can play it safe, maximize profit from its existing customers, and ignore the future beyond that.

Yeah, you're making a lot of assumptions I'm not buying into. Kirby can't even do this on his own (as his acting as CEO is controlled by the other board members who can relieve him at any time) means that you're claiming that we have a conspiracy for a group of people to give one person a bigger paycheck.

I don't buy it.

And yes, that claim would count as assuming GW is being "malicious".

 Peregrine wrote:

The stock holders would be mass-firing the board if they weren't doing their jobs and the company was tanking.

Not really, because GW's major shareholders (other than the CEO) are large investment banks that don't have any specialized knowledge about the gaming industry. As long as GW's annual reports have good numbers those banks are going to be satisfied. They just don't know or care enough to dig into the specifics of the gaming industry and realize that GW's long-term plans aren't very good.

Banks still want results. If a company tanks it doesn't help them any favors.

 Peregrine wrote:

And I'm still waiting for someone to actually prove GW has lost 50% of their customers in the last year as what was claimed before.

Nobody is going to prove that because GW losing 50% of their customers in a single year is an obviously stupid claim.

You're right, I went back to page 1. It was 8 years not one. Still waiting for this evidence to make itself known.

 Paradigm wrote:
40k is not balanced for tournament play, but I'm pretty sure it's not intended to be. With 6th's additional special scenarios and passages on forging a narrative, I think it's pretty clear that GW are focusing more on the 'beer-and-pretzels' crowd than the tourney games.

From a personal view and my own experience, I find the codexes and their respective balance has far less impact than the player. Of course, if you are playing in the kind of meta where there is the expectation that you will bring the competitive lists, balance is more of an issue, but if you are playing in a more relaxed meta, almost every unit in every codex is useful (with a few notable exceptions) and there is a far less distinct variation in power levels.

No one I have ever played against has had any need to use what is perceived as 'the best' units, simply using what they want so long as it's 'good enough' to win a casual game. As such, we have never really had issues with one codex being significantly more powerful than another, or with one unit dominating the game. The contests come down to the better generalship (and a bit of luck) most of the time.

Note, I am not saying that I don't agree with tournament gaming, or that it is the 'wrong' way to play, just that if you are less bothered about using the armies in optimum setups then balance is far less of an issue.

QFT
GW do try to balance, but they don't do it at the level that really supports highly competitive play. With allies and Forgeworld models the number of potential combinations which can go into an 'overpowered' list is staggering.

Nids in 6th do have many perks to their army, but if you can't win with it, then just wait a few months, the new dex is just round the corner if rumours are true. Still, you might want to check your tactics because they are certainly not worthless now.
Warhammer is a game with fluctuating game balance. With codices being released one by one, as opposed to all at the same time, of course the older lists will run into problems with newer lists. This is not a failing of GW, but rather an inevitable part of being a business. If you are into super balanced competitive games, I'd recommend getting into online games such as starcraft, as they can change the rules to match balance much more efficiently if they are not running a business out of it.

My one gripe with GW over their effort is their proof reading. Did anyone read codex DA before it hit the shelves? They should hire a guy just to proof read and talk with the author to make sure everything is correct before printing. Day 1 FAQ's are a sign of sloppy work.
Perhaps just invite a small army of neckbeards to come and pick apart a codex before release.

Yay! another GW sucks, but I still play, thread!

Why does GW have to support competitve play? It's a game. Sometimes certain sides will have certain advantages and disadvantages. Even in chess, one side has advantages over the other. You know how they get over it? Not by whining, it's called skill.

The only thing that is a bit discouraging to me is when I look at tournament results. It seems to always be the same 2 or 3 armies in the top 25.

Niexist wrote:
The only thing that is a bit discouraging to me is when I look at tournament results. It seems to always be the same 2 or 3 armies in the top 25.

Until the next book comes out, then the new dexes rule. When the books came out slower, there was a little more.spread in the results because the new shininess had time to wear off and people had time.to learn how to counter new threats.