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"So they don't want to sell GK kits?"
They don't want to sell GK kits *as badly as they want to sell other kits*.

They want your money just like they want anyone else's money. However, they see a higher ROI on other things than GK.

Karol wrote:
So they don't want to sell GK kits? They want all GK players to buy a new army? If they do, then why don't they say it, that they are slowly phasing out the army or don't plan to support it, and don't do those stunts where GK are mentioned as fixed, along side a SoB codex and all the narrative/open stuff.

Not saying they are but... business wise... GK are the old space marines and it's very much possible a lot of the marine players might flock to them as Primaris come in... GK becomes a heaven for old marine players until GW gets around to "fixing" them by adding primaris GK... So making GK bad stops this from happening and encourages players to buy the new marines... however, if they just said "Okay, we want you to stop buying GK" that would not only piss off a hell of a lot of people but it would also stop a lot of potential sales of stock they're trying to get rid of. So by nerfing them slowly into oblivion they can continue to sell the models to the hundreds of players still holding onto hope while also selling models as competitive GK players move to another faction. Not saying at all this is happening but if I was a games company who only cared about money and not making a good product and money... this is what i would do.


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Just want to say I find it super funny how on Twitch right now orks are fight "ASTRA MILITARUM".... they have 2 knights... -_- To me this is not "ASTRA MILITARUM" this is soup!

I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.

1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.

2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.

In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models. Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.

That's how it reads to me too lolman1c, so I'm certain my poor grey noodles are doomed to get cut.

 Elbows wrote:
I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.

1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.

2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.

In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models. Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.

When I say something for a fact I get told I'm crazy so I keep it reeled back like a conspiracy theory.

 Elbows wrote:
I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.

1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.

2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.

In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models. Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.

If it is their job to make money, it is the player's job to be mad when the company does not give you exactly what you want. We are obligated to pur own best interest, and if you prefer the game be more balanced, then it is your obligation to tell the company that you want better.

Nobody is faulting GW for wanting money. They are instead faulting them for not delivering a product that reached their standards.

 lolman1c wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Robin literally just confirmed that IK wasn't in the wild when they started working on CA.

The conspiracy stuff is really obnoxious.


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hobojebus wrote:
, not when your pushing out codex after codex so fast.

And we have...two left now? Last year was pretty exceptional in terms of releases.

This is no excuse! They should have delayed CA until they had a clear idea of how everything interacts. Right now it feels like they're trying to patch a game version that came out 7 or 10 updates ago while the current updates are bringing lots of bugs with them.


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Pandabeer wrote:
Just a little something: There was no way Ork points costs were going to change in CA, the codex was way too recent for that.

Nobody here said they were... we were hoping that the codex would take into account CA as they were probably wrote at the same time but obviously they didn't has PK and now more expensive than PF and so are several more weapons of the same profile. We know GW wants them to be the same price as they have changed them to be the same twice now.

This is exactly it. It's great they're patching the game. But they're patching the game from months ago, not the game as it currently stands. They're always going to be chasing their tails trying to fix stuff that has already changed because they respond so slowly.

Well I've watched that podcast and one of them who owns a store says that CA is actually killing the market big time then I heard from someone else that it's also hurting GW big time...

Basically, nobody wants to buy anything from the stores because they're waiting for CA... This, in its self, isn't bad but it is super bad when it happens at the biggest selling time of the year, Christmas. Nobody bought anything from the stores when they should have been selling boat loads... and apparently this might also be affecting GW as people wait for CA they spend their Christmas present money on other things as they become impatient so when CA comes out they have less money to spend on GW.... CA should be left until summertime or just before Black Friday (i think someone said this above). This way they get all the data they need from play testers and they don't strangle their own market!

I myself will not be buying CA though because A. I have Battlescribe. and B. I refuse to pay for points. And I refuse to pay for fixes to the game!

Karol wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:


I have to agree that GW doesn't intentionally make OP rules for new releases but more so that their ability to figure out balance without vocal feedback from the player base is quite abysmal. If you want to see what blatant "rules to boost sales" looks like then just flip back to the Necron codex of 7th and the codex/supplement releases followed. There efforts to stimulate sales with blatant power creep (it sure as heck worked for those Necron sales) was slowly killing the game and 8th is the (unfortunate) byproduct of GW trying to fix the mess they themselves created. I think GW is aware of the risk/reward of OP releases but as long as the sales figures look good by acting like balance matters and not resorting to blatant power creep then they won't go down the selling power route too heavily (paying money for CA to get points decreases does signal that selling power is marketable). If numbers stagnate or drop then I would expect to see some of those more extreme changes to keep the numbers looking good for investors.

I do think that the way the community seems to buy basically anything GW puts out is sending them the message that putting out gak with their brand slapped on it will sell well enough to justify its production.

Lets say they did have a reverse creep in mind when they started 8th ed. It would have been ok, if they kept the style. But somehow they have IG or eldar and GK in the same game. I don't think they are fixing anything, the book seem too random in power level. The gaps in power are so big, that something crazy like designers writing armies they like with better rules as better, seems possible. And that would be crazy considering this a huge company.

I think it'll remain to be seen if ALL marine equivalents suck. The more elite marines (Deathwatch, vanilla vets, thousand sons, plague marines) seem like they got pretty substantial boosts.

What did the plagu marines or 1ksons get? Serious question, I only seen the leak, and it didn't look as if anything got cheaper.

Thousand Sons, Death Guard, and pretty much all elite marine-equivalents got 2pt per model drops, in the case of the tsons their weapon upgrades went down significantly (Terminators also got a hefty drop).

Deathwatch are the ones I think to watch. To Death...watch. Storm shields on every guy AND a marine equivalent that can actually put out some appreciable alpha-strike damage and do something that other units don't do (poison 2+ woundspam). The Tsons and DG are interesting to me because theyre actually reasonably durable, with the Tsons getting their 5++ and the "+1 to all save types vs 1 damage weapons" making them really tough to remove with lasguns.

Thousand Sons and Guardsmen standing there and shooting each other in the face actually goes in favor (in terms of points of models killed) of the thousand sons even if the guardsmen have FRFSRF. Same with storm shield deathwatch vs guardsman. That's not even considering the guardsman to be a "5.5" point model, which I usually do because I give them FRFSRF so there's a 30-point commander for every 20 guard, upping their points effectively by 1.5ppm.

The real key I think is that units that can get the (now massively cheap) storm shields or another source of good defense that works against anti-elite firepower are now able to remove what was before a glaring weakness and can participate in a slugfest with screen units successfully.You can still level your overcharged plasma against a full squad of 20ppm deathwatch veterans with storm shields, but you're going to be a lot less happy about it.


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Heh. You know, that's a thought. Proxy your GK as Death watch with storm shields (that's their "psychic barrier!")

They got good narines, they got far and away the best termies, armed with roughly the same stuff.

It wasn't really a marketing move.

When the points were updated in 8th edition, most of the prior edition armies clocking at 1850 became little over 2000 (ranging anywhere from 100~300 points). The average number of models as a result was reduced compared to that of prior editions.

The point change merely re-sets the average model count to closer to how it was in editions prior - meaning all CA does is allowing you pull out those models off the shelves again.

Maybe, just MAYBE GW could push sales for another box or so, but not as exaggerated as this post/TLW podcast seems to suggest.

Isn't w40k targeting people like me though? Ones that started in 8th ed, and who do not have 3-4 armies to fall back on, if one does not work.

Yep.

They don't want to sell you a single army, they want you to buy from other ranges too. That's how they're targeting you.

Power levels creeping and being obviously uneven is, IMO, an obvious marketing decision taken to spur sales amongst the competitive meta crowd.

Again, they're a business. They exist to take your money. They're not your friend.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Yep.

They don't want to sell you a single army, they want you to buy from other ranges too. That's how they're targeting you.

Power levels creeping and being obviously uneven is, IMO, an obvious marketing decision taken to spur sales amongst the competitive meta crowd.

Again, they're a business. They exist to take your money. They're not your friend.

This is the problem, as my partner (a business woman (yes, she makes the money)) says... GW seem to be really in it for the short term but this is extremely bad for their financial future. They need a fine balance of wanting money and making the consumer happy with the illusion of friendship. Especially in this modern world where more and more nerdy companies are coming up that seem like better alternatives and seem more like they care about me (I know they never do but the feeling of it makes me buy more of their stuff). Years ago I would have never have thought I'd be playing anything other than 40k, but now I play a huge range of different games because alternatives do exist from companies that offer free rules, that offer models at a reasonable price and have games that seem somewhat balanced. Don't get me wrong, I love 40k (mainly as a hobby rather than a game) but games and other companies have got my attention now and I'm spending about 50% of what I used to on GW because of this.

On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.

15 years is both a long and super short amount of time in the business world.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.

8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.

FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.

 skchsan wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.

8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.

FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.

I had predicted that Games Workshop's stock bump wouldn't last maybe a year ago. Expect it to start recovery around February before it spirals. Though, that assumes Games Workshop does nothing to deal with it, and that's not going to happen. They'll have noticed and be making actions designed to recover stockholder's faith in the long-term success of the company.

 skchsan wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.

8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.

FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.

Oh, well, that shallow and simplistic analysis proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

There's definitely nothing at all currently going incredibly badly in Britain that would impact a company that makes a fair-share of its revenue from exports.

My parrot died, my grandad died, therefore my grandad was a parrot. They're called syllogisms.

Darsath wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.

8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.

FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.

I had predicted that Games Workshop's stock bump wouldn't last maybe a year ago. Expect it to start recovery around February before it spirals. Though, that assumes Games Workshop does nothing to deal with it, and that's not going to happen. They'll have noticed and be making actions designed to recover stockholder's faith in the long-term success of the company.

Who knows what British stocks are going to do next year?

Watched also the original podcast.

Inspired me to do some calculations, the thing is after I appreciate Castellans weapons its gravely underpriced compared to post-CA18 Land Raider.

I picked out point costs from battlescribe for the total cost of Knight:
Plasma Decimator = 7 plasma gun equivalents (can be argued higher because double range)
Volcano Lance = 7.5 Lascannon equivalents
2x Twin Siegebreaker Cannon = 4 Autocannon equivalents
2x Shieldbreaker Missile = 1 Lascannon equivalent (but offers ++save removal so it's more valuable in reality)
2x Twin meltagun = 4 meltagun equivalents

So counting this together we arrive to conclusion that Knight Castellan pays 218.5 points for W 28, T8, 3+, 5++ body.
Meanwhile Land Raider pays 200 points for W 16, T8, 2+, X++ body.

Castellan pays 7.80 points per T8 Wound
Land Raider pays 12.5 points per T8 Wound
Counting the Knight Castellans cost using Land Raiders points per W ratio I arrive that Castellan with above loadout should cost 735.5 points (funnily close to the absolute maximum of 750 given in Long War's podcast)
Vice-versa using Castellan's ratio Land Raider should cost 125 points for it's body. And as Land Raider got -40 pts decrease in 1.5 years we can expect roughly balanced Land Raider 2021 or so.

Should I add that Castellan can leave melee and fire weapons afterwards and can fire heavy weapons after moving without the -1 to hit penalty. Land Raider is missing both of these attributes and does not have invulnerable save so it should pay less for it's wounds.

So there, Knight Castellan is gravely undercosted relative to Land Raider. Knight Codex is 0.5 years old, no adjustments, meanwhile Codex CSM is out 1.5 years, pitiful balances and Land Raiders still unplayable as long as you can get units like Knight Castellan for that point-power-ratio.

Sort of as if they want to push sales of the Castellan in preference to sales of Land Raiders (which a lot of people already possess), eh?

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Yep.

They don't want to sell you a single army, they want you to buy from other ranges too. That's how they're targeting you.

Power levels creeping and being obviously uneven is, IMO, an obvious marketing decision taken to spur sales amongst the competitive meta crowd.

Again, they're a business. They exist to take your money. They're not your friend.

They don't have to be my friends, and I don't have any problems with them making money. But they are selling a product that doesn't work. No where in any rule book does it say that GK can't be played mono. In fact when 8th ed started GW said that they want to bring back focus to mono armies, in the last CA GK had a focus article about how they are going to be made bettter. they even said how they would get better. But they didn't deliver any of the stuff they promised, the point drops do not make people want to try out paladins,purfires, or any of the other GK options. All they "fixed" was making stuff that was already taken cheaper, and GW said they are going to nerf such units.
If a w40k was a car or a shoes, you could demand a refund, because they stuff GW sells was sold not working.

GW, needs a major updating... like... what happened to that 40k app they said they were going to make? That seemed to have gone all dark and they refuse to talk about it now. XD

Karol wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Yep.

They don't want to sell you a single army, they want you to buy from other ranges too. That's how they're targeting you.

Power levels creeping and being obviously uneven is, IMO, an obvious marketing decision taken to spur sales amongst the competitive meta crowd.

Again, they're a business. They exist to take your money. They're not your friend.

They don't have to be my friends, and I don't have any problems with them making money. But they are selling a product that doesn't work. No where in any rule book does it say that GK can't be played mono. In fact when 8th ed started GW said that they want to bring back focus to mono armies, in the last CA GK had a focus article about how they are going to be made bettter. they even said how they would get better. But they didn't deliver any of the stuff they promised, the point drops do not make people want to try out paladins,purfires, or any of the other GK options. All they "fixed" was making stuff that was already taken cheaper, and GW said they are going to nerf such units.
If a w40k was a car or a shoes, you could demand a refund, because they stuff GW sells was sold not working.

You've tried this 'logic' before.

GK work perfectly well for the vast majority of people who aren't into the competitive scene. What you've done is you've bought a Yugo to race at Le Mans and now you're upset you're losing.

Caveat emptor, innit? Again, GW want you to spend your money on another army. You're claiming this is some sort of grand deceit because they don't do what you want them to do, but the fact is that you could easily have researched and made a better decision.

Seriously though, I haven't bought both CA yet. I look at my Oculus Rift... I paid high amount for it and I hear when it first came out it wasn't up to the standards I would have expected... The kit/hardware itself was amazing (40k models) but the software(or in 40k's scene the rules) was just not working. However, it was a new product and people gave it a chance and I could see they were hard at work fixing that (look at EA the most evil games company there is (literally evil, not even business evil... they have done illegal stuff out of the wazooo!) even they actually have a dedicated team working to patch their games and bring out an update once a week). And now the Oculus Rift is amazing and I have almost 0 complaints with both the hardware and software. However, imagine if I had bought this product for £400 and plugged it into my computer and a message came up saying "Okay, we fixed some of the issues that came out 8 months ago, we're still working on this stuff though maybe we'll fix it twice a year... That will be £60 for you to even install the full software to use the product". They would be shut down! The only reason 40k is continuing to get away with selling patches to their game is because old dedicated players are used to doing it... However, as soon as we all refuse to buy CA and just use Battlescribe then they might start doing it has a free pdf and just sell fluff and rules in CA. However, I say that... knowing how spoiled and out oft ouch GW can be they'd probably just sue battlescribe, lose the law suit and then only allow us to see points if we go into GW and pay the staff £10 to see a special screen with points on it that changes every day.

GK work perfectly well for the vast majority of people who aren't into the competitive scene. What you've done is you've bought a Yugo to race at Le Mans and now you're upset you're losing.

Dude I don't play in tournaments. And I get destroyed by people playing eldar, IG, tyranids or chaos. Only time I had a more or less balanced game was when I played against a guy with a primaris army made out of starter boxs, no Gulliman. But then the guy switched to DW, bought a castellan and custodes and the fun was gone.
I don't know what a yugo or le mans means.

Caveat emptor, innit?

???

Again, GW want you to spend your money on another army. You're claiming this is some sort of grand deceit because they don't do what you want them to do, but the fact is that you could easily have researched and made a better decision.

dude I get it. they want to make money. I have no problem with that. But this is like making an army bad and not fixing it, just to make people spend more money. If a company made phones that would break down on purpose, they would get sued. And I did research, I checked their site, asked the store owner. Played a few games and first asked on 4chan, when everyone just insulting polish people, and then here. And If I remember right, the first advice I got was people making fun about people that start GK.


Ah and since the time I started, and GW said themselfs that they know that GK are not that good, GW had put out 2 CAs and 4 FAQs. They fixed nothing. I would understand them not fixing stuff, if they had a policy of no errata/no faq, and CA did not exist.

For clarity, nothing I say should be interpreted as giving GW a free pass. They do make unjustifiable mistakes and they are sometimes incompetent.

I just don't think either applies here.


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You don't have to play in tournaments to be part of the competitive crowd.

So by your own statements you were told GK weren't appropriate for your needs, bought them anyway and now you want to blame GW for that?

Caveat emptor means 'buyer beware'. It's a broad legal principle that states that ultimately the responsibility for ensuring the product you buy fits your needs rest upon you, not the retailer.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
For clarity, nothing I say should be interpreted as giving GW a free pass. They do make unjustifiable mistakes and they are sometimes incompetent.

I just don't think either applies here.

Yes, I completely agree with you. Keeping Castellan unbalanced (or altenatively keeping the other options unbalanced, whichever way one wants to see the situation) relative to many other options makes financial sense and as we are talking about publicly traded company doing business in highly competed open markets is sound choice financially.

Yes, CA is most definitely more of a money making exercise than a balance one.

Returning maximum shareholder value is mandated by law by s. 172(1) of the Companies Act 2006 in the U.K. (and by other companies/corporations acts in other jurisdictions), so GW are literally under orders to extract everything they possibly can from us.