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 Cruentus wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
I don't think AOS is for non competitive players, I think its for people that don't want to think too much while they play. They don't want to agonize over every move and think strategies several turns in advance.

That just happens to be the opposite of what I want. I'm not a tournament going guy. Never been to one. It's the story that's most important to me.

But I need a good game that reflects the fluff behind it.

I don't think GW knows its player base or why people buy what they buy.
Not doing market research is unintelligent.

And as a 15 year player of WHFB (3+ armies) and 40k (5+) armies, I'd respectfully disagree on AoS. Played it with my Brets, and it "felt" like the Brets in the fluff. It included some thinking and consideration of when and when not to charge (some units work better on the defense), and the ebb and flow of the combats, the flexible movement, all felt much more natural than the square block, argue over a millimeter, let me get my protractor games of WHFB in the past (8th did some nice things for the "fiddly" in WHFB, but botched others). I play AoS more regularly than I did WHFB, and we're already making up a campaign between Empire, Orks, and Brets.

I'm not GWs target audience - I'm older, with discretionary income - but I still like their models, and games, and I still buy them. I also have 30+ sci-fi, fantasy, historical rulesets on my shelves, and keep coming back to GW for sci-fi and fantasy. The others don't scratch the itch, and none have the background and immersion I find with GW.

So, yeah, people are different, and some of us even like GWs product. Shocker I just don't post here or even lurk much anymore, because its the same old, same old GW bashing, over and over and over and over....yawn...

How many times did you shout "For The Lady?"

 Talys wrote:
It's actually amazing that after 30 years, nobody has unseated them as the largest game company. In many markets this would be quite unusual.

And yet GW isn't as big as it once was, and they have more competition than ever. Why aren't they destroying everything in their path? With their IP and their plastics technology and, yes, even their albatross retail network, nothing should be able to stand against them. Yet there they are - all these smaller fish, getting bigger and bigger as the big shark swims past obvious meals.

 Azreal13 wrote:
What, you think you're Spartacus?

Impossible. I'm Spartacus!

 Azreal13 wrote:
Other people send other users very different messages.

No kidding. You ain't special Talys (but you are entertaining). We're getting messages 'bout you too.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
In the case of Everyone vs. Talys, I find in favor of Everyone. Court of Dakka adjourned. Everyone wearing a white floured wig is awarded the "no contempt of court" award.

I like to imagine that in the Court of Dakka, every time Az or Blacksails or anyone replies to Talys the first thing Talys does is this:

 Talys wrote:


I've actually answered this question (more than once), but here's the short version:

1. Smaller scale = less models = less revenue = less profit. GW wants you to own a collection of thousands of miniatures, not game with 30

2. Part of the attraction of 40k (to people like me) is that there is everything from grots to jets to titans in the same game. But that's terrible for balance. I see it. But I don't care. I like it. I would love to see a Reaver titan in a game, dying for my buddy to put his together; I don't care if it is totally unbalanced (or not). It's just cool.

3. Better internal balance = less scrambling after whatever the new meta is. That means less buying new models. GW switches up the rules every few years, presumably by fans and non-fans alike, so that you end up buying everything.

So their shrinking sales kinda started when they start pandering more to the casual crowd and less to the competitive crowd.

Yeah, seems like it's just coincidence.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
In the case of Everyone vs. Talys, I find in favor of Everyone. Court of Dakka adjourned. Everyone wearing a white floured wig is awarded the "no contempt of court" award

lol thanks for quoting that HB -- I hadn't seen it

As much as I would like to take credit, my GW purchases last year didn't total to about $200,000,000. So I'm not quite "Everyone". It's just that most people who are happily playing their GW games and models are doing that instead of posting on threads that have become banal. As Cruentus put it, most everyone I know who is happy with GW doesn't post or lurk here because it's a lot of GW bashing, and they're having fun doing what they do.

The ratio in real life obviously isn't reflective of the online animosity, because if so, GW's sales would be much lower than they are. I still maintain that GW's revenue attributable to 40k has not decreased through the years, and likely has increased (with significant decreases in LoTR and Fantasy revenue). I also maintain that eventually, GW will get it right and get another game out there that is a hit, whether it's AoS or something else. It might take them another 30 years, but it'll happen eventually.

I didn't even have a Dakka account until last year (though I did lurk... very infrequently). I only popped one open because I went from working 100 hours a week to about 20 in a sort of semi-retirement and I have too much time on my hands.

I find it equally entertaining to see people cry repeatedly, year after year, that GW is going to go out of business, and the same gripes about prices and space marines, and all that. If I'm convinced of one thing, it's that GW has the means to survive for quite a long time, and that anyone thinking it will go out of business soon is just disconnected with reality

You may jest that I live in some alternate reality HBMC -- but I suspect that quite a lot of folks worldwide share such a reality where they actually... gasp... like GW stuff!

12 years ago GW sold £190 million of games. Last year they sold £119 million.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
12 years ago GW sold £190 million of games. Last year they sold £119 million.

Right -- nobody has ever argued that GW is making less money now than it did at its peak (if they did, they'd be pretty silly). The question is, 12 years from now, will they sell £19 m of games, £119m of games, or £190m of games? I don't that think the answer is obvious.

The question is why people think GW is unintelligent.

 Talys wrote:

Spoiler:

Selym wrote:

 keezus wrote:

 Talys wrote:
The GW 40k model is highly profitable because (a) completeness for a faction runs into thousands of dollars and (b) completeness for multiple factions runs into TENS of thousands of dollars and (c) there are people willing to spend this. I suspect that if 40k had rules and scale as popular in the competitive community as WMH, 40k would make much less money than it does for GW.

I think you are missing the point.

1. I don't understand why you would need to be "faction complete". There is no requirement to own everything available in the army before moving to a new army. (Nevermind that even in WM/H, faction complete is thousands of dollars).
2. Why would 40k as a competitive system generate less money? Players were buying like fiends when there were Grand Tournaments. Ask players in competitive WM/H whether they are faction complete. I think the response will surprise you. Instead of going faction complete, most go with the builds that they like in multiple factions.

Any sales should be good sales right? Not sure why GW uses the "Turn and Burn" strategy basically shooing veterans out of the system-and-don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out.

Evidence for this can be found in a much-disdained comparison with competitive trading card games. Tourney players are not strangers to laying down £50+ for a single deck-changing card with which to compete, even compared to a price of <£2 for a normal card (allowing for variation as I'm not an expert on card prices). Would they do this for a love of the card? Probably not. To win? Hellz yea.

But $100 is a drop in the bucket. There are people that spend 100 times that in a year on CCGs, that never play with their collector cards. Likewise, completionists (like myself) own, and usually have painted, at least a one of every model of the factions they collect, and as many of the models for units as are useful. You don't want to know how many drop pods I've painted since they've come out... and a blue drop pod is different from a red drop pod which is different from a grey one.. and a dark red one with black markings is different from a bright red one with silver markings... et cetera. Drop pod for a command squad? It's gotta look different. Calgar is going to be in it? OMG. Better make it epic.

The huge sales come not in wanting a functioning battle force, which is a few hundred dollars, but in complete collections, which start at thousands and go into $10,000+ over years -- and then multiples of those for each faction, and multiples of those for each reboot.

Incidentally, I never said that a competitive 40k would make less money; I said a competitive game in the scale of WMH (model count) would probably make less money, because if you take the game reason to build massive armies away, then some people (like me) won't.

Fair point, but what I think many 40k players find most attractive in 40k (besides the setting) is the spectacle of watching your personally painted collection beating the snot out of someone else's personally painted collection. The game has been edging slowly towards company-scale games, and it probably wouldn't hurt to have rules tailored to better suit 1500-3000 points battles.
And to cover the part of the market that consists of low-investing wargamers, make a ruleset that better fits the 250-1000 points area.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talys wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
12 years ago GW sold £190 million of games. Last year they sold £119 million.

Right -- nobody has ever argued that GW is making less money now than it did at its peak (if they did, they'd be pretty silly). The question is, 12 years from now, will they sell £19 m of games, £119m of games, or £190m of games? I don't that think the answer is obvious.

We can reliably guess that in the next year or two, unless GW hits a nail (any nail) on the head, they're going to continue to fall.

 Selym wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Incidentally, I never said that a competitive 40k would make less money; I said a competitive game in the scale of WMH (model count) would probably make less money, because if you take the game reason to build massive armies away, then some people (like me) won't.

Fair point, but what I think many 40k players find most attractive in 40k (besides the setting) is the spectacle of watching your personally painted collection beating the snot out of someone else's personally painted collection. The game has been edging slowly towards company-scale games, and it probably wouldn't hurt to have rules tailored to better suit 1500-3000 points battles.
And to cover the part of the market that consists of low-investing wargamers, make a ruleset that better fits the 250-1000 points area.

Right -- watching the spectacle of your models, the spectacle of your opponents models, and the terrain -- is a HUGE part of the game draw for me. And "company scale" is exactly where it's at; after all, look at Gladius (a full company), and even so, you have room to spare at 1850 points, 2000-3000 point games, which are not uncommon.

To cover the low end, there is Kill Team, which is actually a really decent set of rules for 200 point games played on a small surface. The same rules work really well up to about 500 points. Though I would argue that for games of that size, WM/H gives your commander (warcaster) a lot more interesting options, but KT is a lot of fun to play. Locally here, there is a group that plays it regularly -- but generally speaking, a lot of people don't even know about it, and GW does nothing to promote it.

In a way, think that GW is afraid that such scale games would become popular with 40k, because it takes away the motivation to build the larger armies for some people who are on the fence, and would *probably* be happier playing a small scale game, but like the 40k lore, models, or scene.

Regarding hitting some / any nail, I think AoS will be enough of a nail that the next half-year won't be at least a little better, but I also highly doubt it will be a raging success in 6 months. The real test is whether the game is popular enough with the folks that like it to be a revenue driver several years from now. If it grows, GW should be very happy.

There are also rumors of Horus Heresy later this year, which will almost certainly make GW a whole bunch of money; but if it's a great game unto itself, it could be a great long-term product line, too (essentially, to replace LoTR). The move to make FW more accessible will also generate a lot of income from its core customers; I believe that the #1 reason that most fans who are not price-sensitive that love but don't buy FW models comes from shipping fees, long deliveries, and customs brokerages.

 Talys wrote:


I've actually answered this question (more than once), but here's the short version:

1. Smaller scale = less models = less revenue = less profit. GW wants you to own a collection of thousands of miniatures, not game with 30

2. Part of the attraction of 40k (to people like me) is that there is everything from grots to jets to titans in the same game. But that's terrible for balance. I see it. But I don't care. I like it. I would love to see a Reaver titan in a game, dying for my buddy to put his together; I don't care if it is totally unbalanced (or not). It's just cool.

3. Better internal balance = less scrambling after whatever the new meta is. That means less buying new models. GW switches up the rules every few years, presumably by fans and non-fans alike, so that you end up buying everything.

I think the scale part of your argument is a bit of misdirection, as most people are generally happy with the scale of an 'average' 40k game, in that it represents an over strength platoon or two, or under strength company. The issue that people have is then taking that and cramming in increasingly larger models into those standard games. So its not really that people want the scale to shrink, but to make the scale at least make sense (limit superheavies in some way, like the HH game).

It'd be fairly straightforward to balance the game from grots up to superheavy tanks anyways. Baneblades and their ilk are very reasonable, so it shows it can be done. What it would mean is that less of the more common superheavies would see the table as they'd be nerfed to be as scary as the baneblades, which I feel is probably the best baseline for the power level of a superheavy anything. Point is, its more than doable to balance the game much better than it currently is while retaining the ability to field anything from grots to massive battlewagons and a marine company with support. It'd take work, and it wouldn't perfect, but even a tested and updated point system would be very much welcome.

Better internal balance wouldn't mean a perfect internal balance. In fact, having better balance would mean the devs understand the game's meta and overall balance, thus allowing them to finely tune the game and shift it the right amount at the right time in order to keep it interesting but not so far and drastic as to invalidate armies. Plus, there's nothing stopping them from adding a new balanced unit that looks cool and/or adds a new unique ability or capability to the army. People would still scramble all over it. Besides, GW's current scheme isn't even a good representation of this idea, as many of their changes over the years have equally benefited old collections, or new units are released with terrible rules and no one will buy them except as a painting project.

You think?

I constantly read here that scale is an issue because it's a barrier to entry due to (a) cost and (b) time involved in buinding 70 - 100 or more models... for a start.

For me, I think the internal balance issues all have to do with force multipliers rather than putting the right number of points onto single units. Of course, GW could do a better job of assigning the right points to units, and perhaps buffing/debuffing some models. Nobody's gonna argue that one.

But the real game-breakers are for example: Draigo is not scary. Centurions are not scary. Draigo + Centurions are ZOMG GTFO. Tigurius with Invisibility isn't bad at all. But stick him with something that is really hard to kill? And that thing becomes mathematically nearly *impossible* to kill. There are and endless number of combinations where you take two reasonable units, stick them together and you have something that is just too good.

Now, take those all out, and the game is STILL about trying to squeeze more efficiency out of points. To me, in a perfect points system, the value of your army would be reflective of its holistic potential to perform in a specific environment. So 5 imperial knights in a really tight urban map with streets not wide enough for them to maneuver would mean the knight household would be of low value, for instance. But of course, we will never get this

So in lieu, when our group plays, we apply experience that takes in various factors (including player ability, terrain, and combinations of models) to try to even out the fight and get a good game going, rather than focusing on "my list is better than your list, HA!". Also, we are merciless in simply house ruling anything we don't like. Which, I totally understand, is untenable for pickup games with strangers.

Well they did just update forgworlds site to the same crappy one GW are using, so that's another point in the 'unintelligent' column.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Well they did just update forgworlds site to the same crappy one GW are using, so that's another point in the 'unintelligent' column.

Why is that unintelligent?

Because they paid 4 million pounds for a site that every other company their size would pay 100,000 for. And let's not forget that they hired the then CEO and current Chairman's wife to oversee its development who has no executive IT experience unless you count her experience as an athletic club sponsor and secretarial work for said chairman's shell company.

Only a genius company makes those kinds of decisions!

 agnosto wrote:
Because they paid 4 million pounds for a site that every other company their size would pay 100,000 for. And let's not forget that they hired the then CEO and current Chairman's wife to oversee its development who has no executive IT experience unless you count her experience as an athletic club sponsor and secretarial work for said chairman's shell company.

Only a genius company makes those kinds of decisions!

The true face of Geesicus Dubsicus

 agnosto wrote:
Because they paid 4 million pounds for a site that every other company their size would pay 100,000 for. And let's not forget that they hired the then CEO and current Chairman's wife to oversee its development who has no executive IT experience unless you count her experience as an athletic club sponsor and secretarial work for said chairman's shell company.

Only a genius company makes those kinds of decisions!

Don't forget the horrible design of the website itself, some of the blame there has to lie with the management for approving it

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
Because they paid 4 million pounds for a site that every other company their size would pay 100,000 for. And let's not forget that they hired the then CEO and current Chairman's wife to oversee its development who has no executive IT experience unless you count her experience as an athletic club sponsor and secretarial work for said chairman's shell company.

Only a genius company makes those kinds of decisions!

Don't forget the horrible design of the website itself, some of the blame there has to lie with the management for approving it

That's what you get when you hire for attitude, well, relation in this case instead of ability. They hired a secretary with no background in IT for a job that required a Project Manager and/or Business Analyst. Granted the vendor more than likely had people doing that job but, big but here, a responsible company doesn't depend on a vendor to do all of the work without having someone internal able to check the work and make sure that they get what they want out of it.

I don't ask my secretary to do my bookkeeper's work or run HR and I certainly wouldn't ask her to run the network systems or design a website. It's not that she's not capable of doing these things, with proper support, it's that she has no background or training to do it.

 jah-joshua wrote:
going by my reading of the forums, if GW tried to please everyone, they would be so busy chasing all of the different ideas that each individual has of their perfect product that they would never acomplish anything...

Eh... You can't please everyone - true... but you could silence at least 80% of the critics just by fixing the gakky rules.

In regards to GW being unintelligent about/with AoS, it has hit a note with some people:

I got me a poll going

 Talys wrote:
By this, I mean that Age of Sigmar appeals to casual players in an extraordinary way: it ATTEMPTS to appeal to casual players to the exclusion of all other players, something that very few games have tried in the past.

I fixed that for you.

The main issue with AoS is that they replaced their fantasy tactical game with what is in essence a storytelling mechanism with models bolted on, disguised and marketed as a tactical game. Sandbox style environments are great for storytelling as they provide no limits for your imagination. The fact that to play AoS as a tactical game requires an undocumented house rules phase when joining the play group, and a negotiation phase before the game - The ruleset is not just sloppy... it's fething incomplete.

AoS out of the box is really "Fancy-Model-Mass-STORYTELLING-Battlefield-Melee". IMHO, its more suitable for those looking to recreate epic storytelling battles, and not those looking for a tactical experience. Casual or hardcore designations are totally irrelevant.

 Blacksails wrote:

 Talys wrote:


I've actually answered this question (more than once), but here's the short version:

1. Smaller scale = less models = less revenue = less profit. GW wants you to own a collection of thousands of miniatures, not game with 30

2. Part of the attraction of 40k (to people like me) is that there is everything from grots to jets to titans in the same game. But that's terrible for balance. I see it. But I don't care. I like it. I would love to see a Reaver titan in a game, dying for my buddy to put his together; I don't care if it is totally unbalanced (or not). It's just cool.

3. Better internal balance = less scrambling after whatever the new meta is. That means less buying new models. GW switches up the rules every few years, presumably by fans and non-fans alike, so that you end up buying everything.

I think the scale part of your argument is a bit of misdirection, as most people are generally happy with the scale of an 'average' 40k game, in that it represents an over strength platoon or two, or under strength company. The issue that people have is then taking that and cramming in increasingly larger models into those standard games. So its not really that people want the scale to shrink, but to make the scale at least make sense (limit superheavies in some way, like the HH game).

It'd be fairly straightforward to balance the game from grots up to superheavy tanks anyways. Baneblades and their ilk are very reasonable, so it shows it can be done. What it would mean is that less of the more common superheavies would see the table as they'd be nerfed to be as scary as the baneblades, which I feel is probably the best baseline for the power level of a superheavy anything. Point is, its more than doable to balance the game much better than it currently is while retaining the ability to field anything from grots to massive battlewagons and a marine company with support. It'd take work, and it wouldn't perfect, but even a tested and updated point system would be very much welcome.

Better internal balance wouldn't mean a perfect internal balance. In fact, having better balance would mean the devs understand the game's meta and overall balance, thus allowing them to finely tune the game and shift it the right amount at the right time in order to keep it interesting but not so far and drastic as to invalidate armies. Plus, there's nothing stopping them from adding a new balanced unit that looks cool and/or adds a new unique ability or capability to the army. People would still scramble all over it. Besides, GW's current scheme isn't even a good representation of this idea, as many of their changes over the years have equally benefited old collections, or new units are released with terrible rules and no one will buy them except as a painting project.

I would add ref number 3: this can easily be argued to cause the reverse. Sure imbalance and changing imbalance will cause some people to run out to get the latest hotness but what about all the people that are put off by such shenanigans? You just spent a lot of money on units x, y and z, build and paint them up and a new dex comes out that reduces x to a barely average unit at best and y and z get heavily nerfed so that either they are not effective in the game anymore or their abilities have changed enough they don't work in your army. For many gamers this happening a lot puts them off and they don't want to have to now buy units a, b and c to feel like they have a decent army. Maybe they would have been willing to buy new units to add to their army but don't what to have to replace their army so they stop buying. And GW's changes and new units don't always make people want to run out an buy it. Look at the pyrovore! When 5th ed nids were a rumour I had hoped for a heavy flamer/melta-stream type unit (for heavy armour) but the pyrovore had terrible rules. GW produced a new model (and I liked the model) and I expect they wanted to sell it and if the rules were good I would have bought one but like many others I did not. And after the 6th ed nid dex I did not again. The bad game balance and regularly shifting balance put me off buying more models, even if I liked them, and put me off 40k itself, so GW makes less or no money from people like me. With balanced rules for the game and dexes, people like me are happy and buy models to add to their army and start new armies while good game balance doesn't stop those that love everything GW from buying everything anyways. The only reduction may be those (and IMO not so many) that would be willing to dump most of an army (or the whole army) and buy up whatever they see as OP this year to win tourneys or whatever. But with a balanced game that does add new units and where the rules are updated after 4+ years - these people will still buy units to add to their armies to look for ways to find new strategies to win their games and find the best counters for other new units.

GWs lousy balance and their clear lack of concern for their customer ref the game has caused me to barely spend anything on GW product (absurd prices also put me off) when I was planning to not only add units to my armies but start another one. Fantasy was the same. I have a dwarf army but I wasn't a big fan of 7th ed and 8th ed put me right off with the horrible balance so I stopped playing when I was planning to build an ogre army - again lost revenue for GW. And seeing Fantasy turn into AoS IMO their strategy of not caring about game balance and happily burning customers that spent large amounts of money on their models trashed their own product. And with no market research/communication with their customer base to really understand what is going on, I think there is good reason to think GW makes a lot of poor decisions. Yes GW is still making money, though a lot less, but will it continue to decline? I think so.

 keezus wrote:

 Talys wrote:
By this, I mean that Age of Sigmar appeals to casual players in an extraordinary way: it ATTEMPTS to appeal to casual players to the exclusion of all other players, something that very few games have tried in the past.

I fixed that for you.

The main issue with AoS is that they replaced their fantasy tactical game with what is in essence a storytelling mechanism with models bolted on, disguised and marketed as a tactical game. Sandbox style environments are great for storytelling as they provide no limits for your imagination. The fact that to play AoS as a tactical game requires an undocumented house rules phase when joining the play group, and a negotiation phase before the game - The ruleset is not just sloppy... it's fething incomplete.

AoS out of the box is really "Fancy-Model-Mass-STORYTELLING-Battlefield-Melee". IMHO, its more suitable for those looking to recreate epic storytelling battles, and not those looking for a tactical experience. Casual or hardcore designations are totally irrelevant.

Complete with making 'Pew! Pew!' noises during play... encouraged by the scrolls....

The Auld Grump

@Ventus - I can certainly sympathize with Tyranid players getting the short end of the stick. For that matter, I find that the vast majority of disaffected players play the "forgotten child" factions that seem to rarely get their day in the sun and get shafted either by bad codex or unfavorable edition (or both).

A lot of Imperial Guard players, Tyranid players, CSM; blood angels; that kind of thing. You see proportionately fewer Eldar and Space Marine players that are unhappy -- I'm not saying *none*, just, proportionately.

I must be a masochist, because the last two factions I spent time modelling and playing are Dark Eldar and Blood Angels At least nobody can call me TFG when it comes to list building.

With the "popular factions" most commonly, stuff comes out, there are good rules to support it, and eventually with an edition change, something else becomes better, and after many years, sometimes it comes back around. I mean, look at Space Marine / Dark Angel scouts -- who would have thought they'd be rebalanced to WS4/BS4 again?

With GW, they clearly play favorites in terms of factions. I mean, at least, it seems like that based on decades of observation. I don't think it's lack of concern for the customer, so much as it is, "we think this faction should be more powerful, and therefore, it is." Strange logic, I know.

On the other hand, since Codex Necron in January 2015, all the books have been pretty solid, and comparable with each other (except maybe Harlequins, but I always considered them an Eldar subfaction anyhow).

Just to clarify, the books have only been solid in that they're fairly well balanced externally with the best available power builds. Plenty of internal balance issues and obvious dead weight units, on top of the new codex format (model pictures everywhere).

The real question is if the recipe will be changed in the next few books.

I can only hope they stop putting so many fething pictures of models, both to save the massive amount of basically wasted pages, and devote their efforts to top quality art and fluff (and obviously rules, but who's holding their breath?).

<Mandatory complaint about price too>

Talys, I wasn't trying to suggest that most of their new units have lousy rules like what happened with the pyrovore. But GW is all over the place. Look at the models. GW makes a lot of beautiful models. When GW decided to make the hive tyrant into a plastic kit nids players everywhere rejoiced. Having wings included was awesome and IMO they are beautifully done. But this is a model that is designed to be used in their game of 40k. GW made devourers the goto weapon for a few editions for flyrants and they still are, yet they decided to not put in one set, let alone two. Now that might not seem like a big deal but paying an absurd price and not getting all the parts for a new kit is inexcusable. To top it off, if I wanted to make a legal build of arming my flyrant with bonesword and lashwhip and stranglethorn cannon I would have to convert the model out of the box - inexcusable. Why? Because the tyrant has two sets of sockets for biomorphs but the wings are made to take the upper set, leaving only one set for two different legal weapon options. This is a disgrace. It is their game and their model - the kit is new and the 6th ed nid dex is relatively new yet this doesn't work. Paying an absurd price I expect better.

When I buy a new car I expect all the parts - I don't expect to pick it up at the lot and find that two wheels are wooden (well there is a tire store down the road - get them there if you need them). Or the passenger seat is missing and there is an orange crate in its place (you can always install a seat yourself if you want).

And missing parts are common in many other kits - even space marine kits. I could excuse an old kit from more than a decade ago that hadn't been updated yet but all the new stuff should work out of the box with all the parts.

And ref different armies get different amounts of love - I agree with your point, but even SM sometimes don't get much new - there might be little to add and if you add too much one year than what room does that leave you in the future? Nids did get two lousy dexes in a row, but they did get dataslates and formations added (of course costing more for your rules)(and nids do have some strong units -dakka flyrant) but nids have gotten a lot of love with regard to new models (just not balanced and compiled in one dex rules). This is good and bad. Going from the 4th ed nid dex to the 5th ed nid dex GW added a huge amount of units. For example MCs went from 2 unit entries to about 10. that is 5 times! The 6th edition nid dex lost a few units (eg parasite, doom, pod) but gained others (eg haruspex, exocrine) and still more were added over the next year (toxicrene, maleceptor, pod back again with different entries), For modellers sure its great. But so many units completely unbalances the army when the philosophy behind the army; how it operates is confused and messed up. It leaves little room to add in future without further confusion when the units that are there have poorly balanced rules internally and their roles are unclear. Look at the last SM dex - did they even get one new unit? There needs to be some consistency and sense to what is being done. Just throwing out a new model does not make all the problems go away and if the new rules are a mess then sales will not be so good for it - I don't imagine the toxicrene sold many kits. This is not the sign IMO of a company that is making intelligent long term decisions on the viability of 40k.

 Ventus wrote:
tl;dr

Ya... But Ventus... the PP doesn't give customizable options for its units, and Corvus Belli doesn't have models for half the range! /usual apologist rhetoric. Ergo... Everything Is OK.

 Talys wrote:

I wish the faction that I'm spending at least $5,000 on right now (Blood Angels -- and the final tally will probably be twice that) didn't suck so badly

I am genuinely envious talys.

That said, thus alone is proof you live in a completely different world to the rest of us talys. At least $5,000? Thst you sre so casual and so 'easy' with such sums just blows my mind, and suggests you are maybe a little bit out of touch with the concerns and realities of the average gamer. Christ man, to most people, putting 500 dollars or even pounds towards the hobby is a massive investment and often, can't get done because of other commitments. For me, the £100 odd pounds I put towards the usariadna starter is my wargaming budget for about two or three months, and I consider myself fortunate that I can do this.

I don't begrudge you your position (and apparent luck) in life, and I'd still genuinely love to meet you and play a game with you, but I've often thought that your own perception was so heavily skewed by your own situation that you failed to grasp the realities for a lot of us are quite different.

So skewed he can't see how skewed it is when people point out to him that it's skewed!

My view is this,
There are people who enjoy GW products DESPITE the 'lack luster rules'.
These people do not play . or think the rules are not all that important.(They just agree to play a game in a mutually acceptable way.)
These people are the only one currently buying GW products.

On any servey on any forum I have seen that asks why do you enjoy GW products, NO ONE ever said the rule sets were the most important factor in picking GW products.

Most say the inspiring back ground and art , got them inspired to buy in to GW plc.

And lots of posts over the last few years have made it quite clear people have quit GW plc because the rules are 'lackluster' and do not provide well defined balanced game play suitable for random pick up games. And those customer thought this was important .
(Or because of the falling sales volumes due to gamers leaving, and prices rising , they no longer see GW plc products as value for money.)

So perhaps if GW plc actually did meaningful market research, they might find that writing well defined rules that allowed better internal and external balance to provide enjoyable random pick up games.

Would actually attract more customers, and improve sales volumes.And reduce the need to raise retail prices every year.And result in growing their market share!

I believe GW plc is run in an unintelligent way, because they do no meaningful market research.
They have no idea who their customers are or who they could be.They have no idea what their customers actually want.
They have no idea how their chain of B&M stores affect their sales per channel.
Just that the B&M stores are loosing them EIGHTEEN MILLION POUNDS every year!

GW plc corporate management tell everyone they know best,but have NO DATA to back it up!

@Talys.
Most sensible financial comments on GW plc stated that if they continued to raise RRP to counter falling sales volumes . GW plc would start loosing profit in 5 to 10 years.This has happened.

The GW plc will be 'out of business next year' predictions were unfounded.
BUT were based on frustration with GW plc for not addressing core issues highlighted by the C.E.O/Chairman in 2007.

I think you've got something Lanrak.

Essentially, taking what you say at face value, it instantly appears to me that the models, art and background are the priority in terms of recruiting new customers, but it's the rules which serve to retain them.

Both are equally important I feel.