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If GW went to only PDF-style codexes I would probably cry. The same reason I struggle with Kindle books is the same reason I don't want a game with only PDF rule books. Unless you want eye problems you'll need a big screen like an iPad so that's about £200 plus you need to keep it charged all the time. Also, how am I supposed to slam my codex closed in victory after proving someone wrong over a minor detail? Or hit them with it if they cheat?
Also, the indexes were god-awful. For a game that relies on background and subfactions within armies with their own rules/characters/special units, it was absolute trash to use them when months before nearly every army in 40k had subfaction rules. The indexes might have been perfect for a tournament setting but zero background, art, or images of models meant they got chucked as soon as my codexes were released. I gt rid of my 6/7th ed codexes because of the art/background/models only recently and only because I needed space for new codexes and books.

Interesting answers. I can only speak from the perspective of a chaos player (I am not making everything about my faction, I know other factions are hurting as well for a update). But as a 1ksons player I find it in bad taste to not release a updated codex or at least a mini-dex to bring the army up to 9th standards.

The new edition has gutted the faction and its probably at the near bottom of the heap. And knowing its going to be a long while before a update makes me just want to shelve it.

As I have said, I know other factions are hurting as well.

It just seems to me that at least doing a index at editions start seems to be something that should be done with the way they have chosen to release things.

Now im looking at three options. I either play it how it is (terrible), start a new army (which GW would love) or just give up on the hobby.

A index would have prevented this. Anyhow, great answers all. Thanks for replying!

It would be entirely possible to do this if desired. Complaints about generating money in a big glut ignore the fact that this is how a lot of retailers work; seasonal and generate a lot of money around Christmas for example. And while it may seem expensive at first glance to buy all the books in one go (who actually would do that?) it's probably counter-weighted by the amount of people who buy one book, get comfortable with an army, then don't switch because they have settled into "their guys". Releasing all the books together incentivises people to make multiple purchases early on in order to try out multiple factions. It also mitigates the problem of a book coming out with is subsequently found to be lacklustre. In a mass release, by the time the player base has figured this out it would likely be too late.

The logistics of it is pretty easy as well. Amazingly enough retailers are quite good at handling and managing stock levels. With modern analytics it's even easier to make predictable estimates of demand, e.g. you're probably not going to stock as many Tyranid books as you would SM. Or even just Blood Angels for that matter. If they sell out that's not as big of a deal as it might sound as it creates an artificial sense of demand which in turn does two things; i) it makes the product look more popular than it might actually be, and ii) it incentivises people to purchase the product quickly when back in stock, in order to avoid missing out. In turn this expectation of demand, both initially and in the long run, can generate significant pre-orders, which in turn helps with calculating order quantities.

As for development cycles, staff do not just sit around idley because something has been released. By the time the product is approaching its release date the staff involved in making it will have moved onto the next project, e.g. the next evolution of AoS.

Arguably the main reason not to do it like this is simple; the risk of failure. If you spend an enormous amount of time and money preparing for the next edition of a game, only for that game to drop like a lead ballon on release, then you're in trouble. You've poured an immense amount of resources, years of work, into something that people then turn their noses up at. Staggering the releases gives GW breathing space to figure out what went wrong and adapt, killing off bad ideas and incorporating newer, more viable ones. You lose the big "Hollywood blockbuster" effect by doing it staggered, but you gain the advantage of not producing a "Waterworld" style flop.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Honestly - 40k sells no matter what they do. So all of their little shifty business practices can just be removed.

Want to make more money? Follow this strategy.
Release every codex right now (at the start of the eddition) then create a supplement exactly where you planned to release the offical codex in a delayed patern.

You will create twice the army buzz and everyone will be able to play their armies.

Its a good thing you don't run GW because that would run the company into the ground. Even before COVID GW was struggling to produce enough product to fulfill its demand, now you want it to produce and release what, 30+ times its normal release volume, all at once? Even if you just say "we're only going to drop books, no minis", you're still talking 30+ times the number of books that need to be distributed and shipped all in one go. Its madness, not only would GW be unable to meet that demand, but stores wouldn't be able to absorb it. I don't know if you've ever worked at an LFS or talked to someone who owns one, but most stores are strapped for cash and even just covering GWs regular rapid-fire release volume can be financially strenuous, but now you want them to order and stock 30 different books all in one go?

And back to those minis for a sec - we already know GW isn't going to release a rulebook to the world with rules for minis that it isn't putting on sale within a few weeks of the books release. We know why they won't, and I can't say I blame them. So now you're going to release 30 bland codexes with no new content and listen to the community whinge and whine about it for 6 months until you release a new wave of models which you either then need to sell them all a new codex for - in which case its whinge and whine about how quickly their $50 purchase was invalidated - or release a $50 supplement book - in which case its whinge and whine about how expensive the book is and how heavy and cumbersome the library of books they need in order to play their game is.

There is no good solution here, really, but I think we can all suck it up and be patient grown-ass adults and wait for our turn. If it wasn't for COVID GW would have probably released around 16 9th ed. codexes by now (based on the pace of 8th edition - 16 codecies in 9 months), thats more than fast enough.

The logistics of it is pretty easy as well. Amazingly enough retailers are quite good at handling and managing stock levels. With modern analytics it's even easier to make predictable estimates of demand, e.g. you're probably not going to stock as many Tyranid books as you would SM. Or even just Blood Angels for that matter. If they sell out that's not as big of a deal as it might sound as it creates an artificial sense of demand which in turn does two things; i) it makes the product look more popular than it might actually be, and ii) it incentivises people to purchase the product quickly when back in stock, in order to avoid missing out. In turn this expectation of demand, both initially and in the long run, can generate significant pre-orders, which in turn helps with calculating order quantities.

Mom and pop brick and mortars ain't Amazon, chief. Most FLGS don't have any sort of data collection or analytics to speak of, and if they do its only very basic and their stuff has no idea how to read them or extract meaningful data outputs from them.

Not to mention, that isn't how customers operate in small stores.
Most don't do anything if a specific item they're looking for isn't in stock. They just leave.

It doesn't make an item seem more popular or 'create demand,' it makes them think the store is bad, and they'll just get it somewhere else (particularly online) or not at all. And the next time something they want comes out, they may not even bother to check.

What they could do though, is have the books all worked on around the same time for some parity of design and power between the factions. That takes no real space aside from drive space to store the work on the crunch of the books. They can trickle them out as they will but so long as they all end up making people feel good, don't dwarf each other and feed into power creep I don't think people would be nearly as annoyed as GW leads to them being quite often.

Saying gamers need constant new is wrong, new models sure, updated models sure, I for one would be happy as heck to not need bunches of books to play my one faction. So long as the stuff I have is good and feels good, I'm plenty engaged and can focus on other stuff they should want me doing, like new models, or army expansion, etc.


Edit: On small stores having analytics ? Lol, No. They have best guesses if anything. Lack of product equates to loss of sales. Not all customers care for ordering an item, even if it costs less to do so. Very few customers are informed and pre order even if I do. Fewer still can understand why small stores can't match the prices of say Amazon. Not having an item in stock because a place can't be bothered to make enough, is a bad thing for small stores and not a good thing.

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
What they could do though, is have the books all worked on around the same time for some parity of design and power between the factions. That takes no real space aside from drive space to store the work on the crunch of the books. They can trickle them out as they will but so long as they all end up making people feel good, don't dwarf each other and feed into power creep I don't think people would be nearly as annoyed as GW leads to them being quite often.

Controlling power creep and not one-upping each other is a basic part of their job.

The problem with the approach you're describing is... what, then, do the designers do for the lifetime of the edition? Rules are done. Army books are done. So... do you fire them for the next 3-4 years and then hire them back for the next edition, or do you have them sitting around doing effectively nothing for that period? Have them push out jank filler content that may or may not sell? All of these are pretty poor options (and most make the workplace pretty hostile for the designers- like its the computer game industry or something).

 vict0988 wrote:

GW could have kept the Index model and supplemented with collector's guides containing crusade rules, lore, art, dioramas, painting, modelling, terrain-making tutorials and their release could be accompanied by White Dwarf campaign reports using new crusade rules.

Privateer Press tried this - the rules for the minis were free online or through War Room, and the books became lore, art, and painting only.

You know what happened?

People stopped buying the books because the important stuff - the rules - were already readily available without having to purchase a $40+ book. PP doesn't publish game books anymore.

GW does what makes GW the most money, not what's best for the game balance. The only way they would ever considering moving to a simultaneous release model was if people started boycotting their releases until they did, and we all know how realistic that is.

Voss wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
What they could do though, is have the books all worked on around the same time for some parity of design and power between the factions. That takes no real space aside from drive space to store the work on the crunch of the books. They can trickle them out as they will but so long as they all end up making people feel good, don't dwarf each other and feed into power creep I don't think people would be nearly as annoyed as GW leads to them being quite often.

Controlling power creep and not one-upping each other is a basic part of their job.

The problem with the approach you're describing is... what, then, do the designers do for the lifetime of the edition? Rules are done. Army books are done. So... do you fire them for the next 3-4 years and then hire them back for the next edition, or do you have them sitting around doing effectively nothing for that period? Have them push out jank filler content that may or may not sell? All of these are pretty poor options (and most make the workplace pretty hostile for the designers- like its the computer game industry or something).

Simple, they do what GW is going to do anyways, actually work on going over what they've made, see what works, and what doesn't to tweak the releases as they roll out or ideally before they are released in some cases. Also, be able to buff or alter things in their inevitable PA like books to stir up hype during an edition. That should all give them plenty of work to do. As well they can start work on the next edition and codex drops for that as I'm sure that starts well in advance of its announcement to us. There is plenty of work rules designers can do that isn't just slowly spoon feeding us codex drops.

GW's entire model is based on continually stirring the pot to keep people buying new things. The fact that the balance is upset by each new codex release is a feature, not a bug. That's the whole point of the model. Every few months something new comes out that will prompt people to chase whatever the new meta develops into. If you release all the books at once in a balanced state, you destroy your own business model.

Which is exactly why its bad for game health and good for their bottom line and why it won't change but should, at least for us, the players of the game.

There is no such thing as "game health" to GW that isn't simply a different way of saying "the bottom line." If GW is making lots of money, the health of the game is good. If it isn't, the health of the game is bad.

No amount of anger is going to change this. Gone are the days when GW was a company of gamers for gamers. It's now a multi-billion dollar multinational firm that has one focus and only one focus: making as much money as possible. As long as the way it currently operates - constant rules releases to stir the pot, regular price rises at every opportunity - continues to produce the spectacular results it has over the last 3ish years, there is not a snowball's chance in hell of them changing course. The only way you can register your disagreement that they care about is to stop buying GW products entirely, and to email them to let them know why you are doing it. They don't care about your unhappiness, they care about your money.

-- I think you have some remarkably outdated views about small retailers there, "chief". Analytics in this scenario would be more done at GW's end though, as they're the ones that have to know how many books of each type to print. As for the small stores themselves, it's actually quite easy to pull up transaction histories from a computer, not to mention a record of its order history. They're probably not going to get the numbers bang on, but they'll have a pretty good idea of "x sells well here, as does y, but z not so much."


-- It's pretty well proven that it does. And even small stores can hold a surprising amount of stock (boxes of books really don't take up much room). And if the stock is gone that's actually a good thing for the store. The point of stock is not to keep it on the shelves to look pretty, the point is to sell it. If you're selling out faster than you can restock, that's generally a positive.

Yep, the unfortunate thing about all these crappy marketing techniques - stirring the pot, creating the impression of shortages, etc - is that they absolutely work. Marketing techniques that treat customers like easily led sheep often produce surprisingly effective results.

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
Which is exactly why its bad for game health and good for their bottom line and why it won't change but should, at least for us, the players of the game.

A steady influx of new rules and models is not bad for game health. Badly balanced rules and models are. Change is good as it keeps the game from becoming stale. It is when the change is unbalancing that it become a problem.

 alextroy wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
Which is exactly why its bad for game health and good for their bottom line and why it won't change but should, at least for us, the players of the game.

A steady influx of new rules and models is not bad for game health. Badly balanced rules and models are. Change is good as it keeps the game from becoming stale. It is when the change is unbalancing that it become a problem.

Change is good is a real neat catch phrase, but no change is not always good. Badly balanced tends to be how they like to drop change as opposed to the balanced fresh air that people really want. Stale as well is a real catch phrase but sometimes things can be very good and people actually like it to stay the same for a longer period of time.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Voss wrote:It doesn't make an item seem more popular or 'create demand,' it makes them think the store is bad, and they'll just get it somewhere else (particularly online) or not at all. And the next time something they want comes out, they may not even bother to check.

-- It's pretty well proven that it does. And even small stores can hold a surprising amount of stock (boxes of books really don't take up much room). And if the stock is gone that's actually a good thing for the store. The point of stock is not to keep it on the shelves to look pretty, the point is to sell it. If you're selling out faster than you can restock, that's generally a positive.

Not for customers trying to find something it isn't.
The most common interaction I've seen over the years in retail environments is customers come in, browse around, and leave.
The second most common is they browse around, ask for what they're looking for, and get irritated when told its out of stock. If the store offers to order it, the usual response is 'no, never mind' (or ruder), and they leave.
The third is they'll come looking for something around the time its released. A couple weeks after that, bar the odd drop in, its shelf decoration.

And I don't know what indie stores are like where you are, but for the last decade, keeping lots of stock on hand hasn't been a priority for most of the game stores I've been in. Even the ones that go hard on GW products don't have 'boxes of books' laying around.
They don't have merchandise in the back room, and what's on the shelves is it. They don't want to hold a 'surprising amount of stock.' Its money tied up in things that aren't selling, and for a lot of game stores, they can't afford that. Its a very difficult balancing act for most game stores. Most don't manage it for more than a few years.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 alextroy wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
Which is exactly why its bad for game health and good for their bottom line and why it won't change but should, at least for us, the players of the game.

A steady influx of new rules and models is not bad for game health. Badly balanced rules and models are. Change is good as it keeps the game from becoming stale. It is when the change is unbalancing that it become a problem.

Models no. Rules, absolutely its a problem.
Its important to keep in mind 'game health' and 'company profits' are not the same thing.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Spoiler:

chaos0xomega wrote:Mom and pop brick and mortars ain't Amazon, chief. Most FLGS don't have any sort of data collection or analytics to speak of, and if they do its only very basic and their stuff has no idea how to read them or extract meaningful data outputs from them.

-- I think you have some remarkably outdated views about small retailers there, "chief". Analytics in this scenario would be more done at GW's end though, as they're the ones that have to know how many books of each type to print. As for the small stores themselves, it's actually quite easy to pull up transaction histories from a computer, not to mention a record of its order history. They're probably not going to get the numbers bang on, but they'll have a pretty good idea of "x sells well here, as does y, but z not so much."

Considering I actually moonlight for a small retailer and am very close with multiple store owners and managers in the local area - no, no I really don't. You seem to have over-optimistic views of how small retailers operate. Most of the ones in this area are still operating the same computers and POS/inventory management systems they were running in the early 2000s - in one case its the same system they used in the mid/late 90s. Not everyone has a Square reader hooked up to an ipad or a Shopify POS terminal that can pump data, and many of those that do don't actually have their inventory configured and tagged properly in their databases in order to generate meaningful data outputs. Out of the 5-6 shops in the area that I'm on good enough terms with to "talk shop" and know first-hand how they manage their systems, only one is actually set up to take advantage of technology and analytics to its full potential, and go figure its the one that was opened 2-3 years ago by a dude with deep pockets who was able to hire the right consultants and experienced management staff needed to make all that possible. The others all have been kicking around for 15-30+ years and don't have the in-house knowledge or the financial ability to modernize tot he point needed to actually do what you propose.

The answer is that drip feed codex releases facilitate power creep, which facilitates people buying new armies to replace their old armies on the fly. AOS is starting to rotate models out of stock as the editions progress, this isn't an accident.

"There is no good solution here, really, but I think we can all suck it up and be patient grown-ass adults and wait for our turn."

Not sure where you meant to go with this. All I can say is it is easy to say something like this when your faction is popular and gets quick updates. I have no idea what factions you play so I am saying this in more of a general manner than directed at you.

Having to go an entire edition with a previous editions codex is neither fun or something one should "suck up". I understand that GW wants us to own multiple armies. But when they cant treat their mono army customers with respect and at very least release a index which fix's horrific problems...why should I care to own more? I guess it does not matter. Irate customers are the minority and the studio would get along just fine without us.

This edition it is Thousand Sons who got the shaft. Its always the case each edition that one or two armies do not translate. As I said. A mini-dex would have and will save their customers of these products a good bit of grief.

As with my faction, GW basically has said...Yea, your line does not sell as well. We know we broke you with the edition changes but we cant be bothered to fix it. That is not hyperbole, its exactly what has happened.

Ok I am fully in ranty-whine mode. Shutting it off. Apologies.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Spoiler:

chaos0xomega wrote:Mom and pop brick and mortars ain't Amazon, chief. Most FLGS don't have any sort of data collection or analytics to speak of, and if they do its only very basic and their stuff has no idea how to read them or extract meaningful data outputs from them.

-- I think you have some remarkably outdated views about small retailers there, "chief". Analytics in this scenario would be more done at GW's end though, as they're the ones that have to know how many books of each type to print. As for the small stores themselves, it's actually quite easy to pull up transaction histories from a computer, not to mention a record of its order history. They're probably not going to get the numbers bang on, but they'll have a pretty good idea of "x sells well here, as does y, but z not so much."

Spoiler:

Voss wrote:It doesn't make an item seem more popular or 'create demand,' it makes them think the store is bad, and they'll just get it somewhere else (particularly online) or not at all. And the next time something they want comes out, they may not even bother to check.

-- It's pretty well proven that it does. And even small stores can hold a surprising amount of stock (boxes of books really don't take up much room). And if the stock is gone that's actually a good thing for the store. The point of stock is not to keep it on the shelves to look pretty, the point is to sell it. If you're selling out faster than you can restock, that's generally a positive.

You are just straight wrong on that. While I'm sure some places find that all amazing, actually working for a small business I can say it doesn't work that way and see the sales that go out the door when GW short stock us or someone comes in and can't get something and buy it online. Boxes of books can take up a lot of space when you carry lots of different kinds of products so I don't know if we are talking the same kinds of small stores. If people feel like they can't even get an item because it's far too rare, they will just stop looking for it in the store period that is a net loss for the store. Not every store has a sole selling point of warhammer products but I can say for sure product scarcity is a net loss for the store in general, patience isn't a virtue most people have these days. GW is one of those product lines the informed consumer can hopefully stay ahead of but for the casual buyer ? It can be off putting to not find items in stock because they just didn't send enough. That isn't at all raising value or quality for us.

 Yarium wrote:
It's about money, both on costs and revenues. If you have to design and create codexes for EVERYONE simultaneously, then you need to spend a lot on putting together at the same time. This means either more people, or the same people for longer, and no new releases for a long time whilst you design it all. Then you need to actually print and store all these items before shipping it all out.

That's a big commitment on the cost end.

Once all released, the "newness" factor on sales only happens the 1 time. Lots of folks get really excited and there's a big sales bump as everyone buys their 1 new codex, maybe 2. A bunch of people also buy their new models. But a lot of folks can't afford to dump on everything new all at once, so they hold off. This cap's the potential revenues from this model of release. Over time, GW has to design everything again for the next big release, so again there'll be a long drought between releases. In this time period, new players will still come and go, but likely only at the same level as normal between releases.

So, in effect, you likely spend 1000% more money to release in this style, while at best only getting 300% the revenue from a normal release. That's likely doing this whole thing below cost - which is not a sustainable business model.

I thought something similar to this. But then I thought a bit more and theorised that there is an additional to this, in that they could do this with the codexes, the one release, but everything else could just go on as normal.

They could still tease out the model release and use book-bloat for those that aren't in the one-dump codex release. They do this already, so it really wouldn't change much.

Although, they do seem to be changing for 9th (e.g. new sisters stuff teased before codex release).

 Just Tony wrote:
The answer is that drip feed codex releases facilitate power creep, which facilitates people buying new armies to replace their old armies on the fly. AOS is starting to rotate models out of stock as the editions progress, this isn't an accident.

It also facilitates leaving the hobby.

"I dropped the game because the game is in a healthy state and GW hasn't stirred the pot for 9 months" - nobody

"My army is crap, I want a new codex, SM are too good, Ynnari are unbeatable, etc. etc. so I'm quitting." - tonnes of people.

People did not stop playing in 6th and 7th more than in 5th because GW failed to stir the pot enough. Every new codex was more powerful than the last, that must be why everybody loved it and people kept buying and GW stock soared to record h... No, the game almost died. The pot getting stirred once every 12 months and then an emergency Errata released in March + drip feeding of new models with beta rules is not enough for people to get bored with the hobby if it is actually playtested. A new more unbalanced faction being released to beat the old unbalanced faction is not that interesting, the game is still mostly the same, you've got your armies, they are most likely still bad and they are still getting beat by the one or two most OP factions that people are band-wagoning.

I work for a company with over 50k employees, worldwide operations and a big corporate structure in an extremely heavy regulated sector.

For large companies getting anything done takes time. Like the imperium, the wheels grind slowly. Projects easy take 3+ years and nothing turns on a dime.

Gw is a tiny company by comparison. The core studio is what? 100 people. Maybe 200? (Been there, or rather been near there,to warhammer world). This is not just people writing codices. You've got artists, colourists, editors, it, qa, tech writers, regulatory, sales, marketing, accounting, proofreading, logistics let alone the management structure etc.

Why don't they do. 30 books at once? Workload. Bandwith. Simple as. Anything done at that level takes time. A colossal amount of hours goes into each individual codex. It's nowhere near as simple as some people think. Even.discussions about the layout, the fonts used, the art/pictures and down to the double entente on page 17 can take weeks to sort out.

Let's ignore that and consider the manufacturing/printing considerations, logistical condiderations, storage considerations etc.

That they do what they do and make an ip we love is commendable. Go work in the industry. Experience it. It'll open your eyes.

GW is a public company, meaning they have to show shareholders good results. If they release everything at once, they'll get a huge sales spike for 2-3 months and then basically nothing for the rest of the year. That's TERRIBLE for public companies.

It's much better for them to show smaller, but more spread numbers throughout the year. That signalizes a healthy business and attracts investiments.

Because of that, they'll never release everything together.

 Vector Strike wrote:
GW is a public company, meaning they have to show shareholders good results. If they release everything at once, they'll get a huge sales spike for 2-3 months and then basically nothing for the rest of the year. That's TERRIBLE for public companies.

It's much better for them to show smaller, but more spread numbers throughout the year. That signalizes a healthy business and attracts investiments.

Because of that, they'll never release everything together.

How is "everything but matched play rules" the same as "basically nothing"?

I find the premise that GW couldn’t handle printing and stocking 20 sets of new codexs at the same time very weird. This is a large corportation, publicly traded, making tons of profit due to their massive margins. They could absolutely handle the logistics and design effort, if they thought this would make them more money.

They don’t do it because it is less profitable. Rotating the spotlight and slowly feeding releases leads to people buying more, for the reasons stated in the thread.

Does the current model hurt game balance? Yes, codex creep is obvious.
Are they engaging in planned obsolescence practices to support this approach? Clearly, see primaris and AoS.
Is this likely to change? No, because lots of consumers favor hype over quality.

As long as we have consumers that willingly fall into marketing ploys and embrace dodgy marketing, we will have companies exploiting all the cognitive biases and limitations we have.

I have yet to meet a thoughtful adult who doesn’t recognize that GW is just abusing their market power and brand recognition in every way they can. It is not only minis, their hobby supplies are eye watering expensive and designed not to last (paint bottles?).

Something lost in all of this is that 9e is very well balanced with itself and another half dozen 8e books. Yeah, a few armies are trash but a lot of armies can be made to work well enough with a revamped list and some allies.

Why don't they? Because GW. And since it doesn't matter and the fanboys still eat up everything they publish, why would they do what's best for the game and profit?