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 Bottle wrote:
It only needs a balancing mechanic.

And some good guys that aren't immortal.

Yeah but that requires GW to put some actual effort into the game and to stop and think and realise that mary sue marines are not everyones cup of tea

It is failing, I have no hard evidence but from the discussions it is a mix of everything mentioned.

Disconnected the player base from the fluff they were accustomed to, not providing something better fluff wise.
Game balance is bad and exploits thrive.
Sigmarites were poorly received as a shoved in space marine look alike faction.
Funny rules were not considered funny (next time try making the game put the players in the mood to do the funny things and not force them to do so).
No point cost or balance in warscrols
Rubbed the veterans in the extremely wrong way.
Old factions re released with old models, so whats the point of redoing them?
Price while expensive is not really an issue, GW is expensive and most people accept it while complaining if the overall product is good.

What mystifies me is how this thing failed, it had all the ingredients to be great.
While I did not like the details (I actually hated most of them) the end time had strong themes that were captivating, the end in particular, two mortal enemies united, the dead protecting the living was a strong emotional theme, as mentioned above a strong post apocalyptic theme were defiant survivors fight for various reasons, the old gods desperately holding what little normality is left, even the sigmarites could fit as Sigmar chooses champions infusing them with his essence in desperation of turning the tide (making their loss something serious) would be a good buildup from such rich background would give players a connection from old to new and give the setting for a similar gameplay experience, instead the went with world went boom, reboot.

Warscrols is a brilliant idea, balance each warscroll make it a box and have it as a product, 10 sigmarites, 25 orks, 30 scaveslaves, 1 bloodthirster, 3 heroes all equal among themselves all 1 warscroll essentially the game points would be how many warscrolls one plays and the buyer would simply buy a warscroll ready from the self (assembly and painting needed, but you get what I mean) instead they went with em what we see....

Rules... the 4 pages is not a bad thing, the plethora of pasted on extra rules is, the "funny rules" are an anathema of game design, the exploits obvious from the first hour of release are, I don't know, signs of throwing the towel?

Finally if you are the size of GW and attempt to radically reboot everything, reboot everything, new models for everybody and even though you do not need to have the entire range ready on the go the "basics" should be available from day one for everybody.

The transition from 2nd to 3rd edition of 40k was not that bad, sure there were some complains, but the fluff was not nuked, the rules were not full of exploits, there were no competitive alternatives or competitors.

Nice assessment, Psychotic.

I think that last point is a very strong one: 40k was the biggest of big, while today there's a pretty thriving set of smaller companies known for good rules, rather than small companies that were relative gambles in the pre-internet days of word of mouth as the primary assessment.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
It is failing, I have no hard evidence but from the discussions it is a mix of everything mentioned.

Warscrols is a brilliant idea, balance each warscroll make it a box and have it as a product, 10 sigmarites, 25 orks, 30 scaveslaves, 1 bloodthirster, 3 heroes all equal among themselves all 1 warscroll essentially the game points would be how many warscrolls one plays and the buyer would simply buy a warscroll ready from the self (assembly and painting needed, but you get what I mean) instead they went with em what we see....

You know, that would have made a whole lot of sense and would have actually been simple, intuitive and potentially balanced.

And the time it took to think of that? Apparently more time than GW took. And I think it shows. AOS feels rushed and not well thought out.
As an author, it's the fluff that I especially find painful. I've heard better story ideas from teenagers at conventions. There is no emotional connection to the Sigmarines. They're faceless, have no personality and there is no real sense of urgency. If they die, they just respawn like Call of Duty. The world isn't fleshed out at all. The old Fantasy world was living and breathing. This just feels vague and unattached. They don't give us a reason to care about anything.

 judgedoug wrote:

I have experienced this firsthand. Most of the 40k and AoS players at the FLGS barely look or even know what Dakka and Warseer are - they get most of their news from like Spikey Bits or BoLS updates on their Facebook feeds. The AoS vibe is very very positive amongst them.

No idea what threats you are talking about. When I went over to BoLS forum today. Most of the threads started with a negative view but defended by a handful of die hard fans, not surprisingly as expected.

WFB was not hugely popular in my FLGS prior to AoS. However, the typical Friday night saw a handful of people playing it. There are less people seen playing AoS on a regular basis than there was WFB. From talking to some of the staff, it's not selling well either. There have been no events, no tourneys, and no groups for AoS specifically since it's launch. That's my completely unscientific take on it in my area.

PsychoticStorm wrote:[much awesome and a pretty consecutive summary of the issues with the game]

Have an exalt good sir, you have pretty much just pinpointed every issue with the system.

MWHistorian wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
It is failing, I have no hard evidence but from the discussions it is a mix of everything mentioned.

Warscrols is a brilliant idea, balance each warscroll make it a box and have it as a product, 10 sigmarites, 25 orks, 30 scaveslaves, 1 bloodthirster, 3 heroes all equal among themselves all 1 warscroll essentially the game points would be how many warscrolls one plays and the buyer would simply buy a warscroll ready from the self (assembly and painting needed, but you get what I mean) instead they went with em what we see....

You know, that would have made a whole lot of sense and would have actually been simple, intuitive and potentially balanced.

And the time it took to think of that? Apparently more time than GW took. And I think it shows. AOS feels rushed and not well thought out.
As an author, it's the fluff that I especially find painful. I've heard better story ideas from teenagers at conventions. There is no emotional connection to the Sigmarines. They're faceless, have no personality and there is no real sense of urgency. If they die, they just respawn like Call of Duty. The world isn't fleshed out at all. The old Fantasy world was living and breathing. This just feels vague and unattached. They don't give us a reason to care about anything.

Agreed. In the old fantasy world you had real living people fighting and dying, trying to defend their lands and loved ones. Victories and losses mattered, races plotted against one another and everything interacted. In this new one everyone good is protected by Sigmar Sues whom are immortal and indestructible beings but ooohhh they have faults you know, every time they respawn they lose a fragment of memory. Isnt that deep and meaningful people, just think on it, these brave immortals losing something they dont even need or use in the first place.
Its pathetic
It is not deep or meaningful and it just feels like yet more Marine fanselffeth.
I miss the days when if the good guy died he was dead. And he wasnt a nomarine with superhuman abilities, he was a regular human/elf/dwaf with a bit of armour and a shield to protect him and a sword/spear/axe/hammer to fight with. He was an average bod and yet he still donned his armour and went out to fight. Not THAT was a true hero.

 Bottle wrote:
It only needs a balancing mechanic.

And some good guys that aren't immortal.

There are the Sylvaneth, right? And the Lizar.... Seraphon! I wonder if there will ever be good-guy unenhanced humans, though. I guess they wouldn't survive very long in the current age

I have, to date, never seen anyone playing Age of Sigmar at my FLGS. To be fair, I had never seen anyone playing WFB either (I have since been told that the group that played WFB got blacklisted from the store for being a-holes or something, can't remember exactly what happened). The store stocks some AoS stuff, but I've never even seen any of it disappear off the shelves. I have to think in this area its a dismal failure.

Which is a shame because, unlike many, I actually like the Stormcast Eternals in spite of the fact that they are fantasy Spess Muhreens. Same with the Khorne Bloodbound guys; the models are great, the game...not so much.

It is failing in my area. I don't know if its the game, or if its just not of interest to people here. We used to have a huge group of Fantasy players but they died down around 6th ed Fantasy. One of the FLGSs in my area had about 100 AOS box sets when it came out, now they have about 90 left. I overheard the owner telling another person that the game is horrible and does not sell.

 Talys wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
It only needs a balancing mechanic.

And some good guys that aren't immortal.

There are the Sylvaneth, right? And the Lizar.... Seraphon! I wonder if there will ever be good-guy unenhanced humans, though. I guess they wouldn't survive very long in the current age

Not sure on the Sylvaneth but Seraphon are, unfortunately, technically immortal as they are *wince* dreams. Unless the Slann are stupid and decide to Deepstr- I mean magically beam down from their magical spaceships to get their fat froggy faces in range of an axe.

After reading through this thread, it appears that the "sky is falling" for AoS.
I've never seen a table top game with such a poor core rule set.
Lack of missions and no framework for army design put the final nail on the coffin.

Why is it Failing?
Once upon a time, there was a popular game called Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It had lots of players and hundreds of different miniatures to collect and paint. Then one day, Games Workshop, the creator of the game, decided to change the game a bit, instead of releasing an updated edition like everyone expected.
They made changes and more changes. They changed the background, they changed the mechanics, they gutted the point system, and even did away with the army books. They changed everything their fans loved about the game, and then acted like the players were supposed to be thrilled and amazed with the shiny new game they had distilled from their former masterpiece.
It did not work out as expected, no, not at all.
The players were shocked. While some stood and stared, others wept, while a few feigned delight with the new game. Long-time players were in denial, and sought to devise a system to balance the lopsided parody of their beloved game. Tzeentch himself would have been proud of the cacophony of thousands of voices all offering opinions at once, then being shouted down only to cry out again.
Yet no common ruleset was to be forthcoming, and the creators silently released a new fortress and some half-hearted new figures for their ill-conceived new game, as if everything were business-as-usual.
But it was not to be so. Players began to accept that their beloved hobby-game was gone. They began to look at other games from other companies, and for alternate rules which could once again allow their prized armies a chance to do battle. Of course, some just played the game as it had been before that fateful July day, others simply walked away from it all. In one extreme case, an army collection was burned in protest of the foul new pariah.
The final chapter of our tale is not yet written. Will the creators repent of their misguided tinkering? Or will the once-proud company crumble into a shadow of it's former self?
Or will a new game rise, like a phoenix from the ashes of the former passtime?
Time will tell.



Moral: If it aint broke, Don't fix it.

It is far from unsalvageable and definitely not a trainwreak, GW has a huge loyal fanbase that has carried them and still does, this is their biggest asset, not the models, not the fluff and it has proven quite elastic and abuse tolerant, less than what GW believes but more than most believe it is sane to be.

Rules can be changed or improved especially if they are given away from free and generate some loyalty points in the process, new sculpts can be made fast, other companies with smaller budget and team of artists have faster output than GW, the biggest issue IS the fluff, but, GW sits on the goldmine that is black library authors, love them or hate them, they do a decent job and can, in my opinion, find a way to save it without completely re writing it, or find a way to completely re write it without people noticing it (on the subject it still amazes me they do not use them for their main products).

The problem is it needs more money time and effort than GW is known on giving and if they had spend that beforehand they could have reach to such a point with less money time and effort.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 snurl wrote:

Moral: If it aint broke, Don't fix it.

It was broken and the falling sales are a huge indicator of that, I do not blame them for trying to fix it, the moral is that if you try to repair a car, try the end result be a car, even a better car, not a refrigerator.

No matter how cool it may keep things, it will not go anywhere.

To be honest, if AoS is failing, I believe it's more because of a lack of communication with their loyal customers. Seriously, they need to show more things for the future of the product line - and certainly not in the way they do now with weekly White Dwarf. Having too much 40k in a row without knowing when the next new release for AoS will come is extremely frustrating.

But that's not new.

Getting the "Old WFB Guard" angry was a really bad move. Word of mouth became extremely negative in some locations because of that.

When you have a business where you don't do active publicity outside and rely on word of mouth from players, that's a pretty big Damocles sword ready to fall above your head.

GW lost a lot of loyal fanbase when they destroyed WFB (and the Old World, by the way - no matter what others can say, AoS universe is completely and utterly different). Many of them felt litteraly betrayed by the people from GW - and treason can only be punished with death, as 40k fans know it well.

 Sarouan wrote:
To be honest, if AoS is failing, I believe it's more because of a lack of communication with their loyal customers. Seriously, they need to show more things for the future of the product line - and certainly not in the way they do now with weekly White Dwarf. Having too much 40k in a row without knowing when the next new release for AoS will come is extremely frustrating.

But that's not new.

Getting the "Old WFB Guard" angry was a really bad move. Word of mouth became extremely negative in some locations because of that.

When you have a business where you don't do active publicity outside and rely on word of mouth from players, that's a pretty big Damocles sword ready to fall above your head.

GW lost a lot of loyal fanbase when they destroyed WFB (and the Old World, by the way - no matter what others can say, AoS universe is completely and utterly different). Many of them felt litteraly betrayed by the people from GW - and treason can only be punished with death, as 40k fans know it well.

I can't help but wonder how different the reception of AoS would have been if the day after the last End Times was released and we all saw the world blow up Warhammer TV put out a video where one of the remaining big name designers from the studio (there is still some left other than Jervis.. right?) came out and told us that a new game was coming to replace WHFB.

They could have explained that this was the whole plan from the beginning of end times. They could have explained that it would be a much more casual game, they could have spoken about how it will be free rules but with campaign books that create and ongoing story.

Instead we had to wait months with no idea what was going on except that the world was blown up and then came rumours of no point values and space marines in fantasy and the fan base was just a powder keg waiting to be set off by those rumours.

I don't think the Khorne stuff helped that much. There was nothing about it that said brand new game.

For such a flagship game, you would think they'd go beyond generic Chaos, and golden space marines that came in 3 different sizes.

If GW had released those Khorne models anytime in the last 10 years for WHFB, nobody would have blinked an eyelid.

The whole thing just felt meh.

Just one more nail in the coffin for GW.

When their own "end times" arrive it will be well deserved.

They will reap the sins they sowed

Jings, okay James.

PsychoticStorm wrote:

 snurl wrote:

Moral: If it aint broke, Don't fix it.

It was broken and the falling sales are a huge indicator of that, I do not blame them for trying to fix it, the moral is that if you try to repair a car, try the end result be a car, even a better car, not a refrigerator.

No matter how cool it may keep things, it will not go anywhere.

Aye, that. Or: it was broken. It's just that GW tried fixing it with a hammer.

A war hammer.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
Not sure on the Sylvaneth but Seraphon are, unfortunately, technically immortal as they are *wince* dreams. Unless the Slann are stupid and decide to Deepstr- I mean magically beam down from their magical spaceships to get their fat froggy faces in range of an axe.

Wait, wait, wait, what? They're dreams? I...just...wow. What were they thinking?

Only the Slaan survived getting on their pyramids and flying off into space so they summon armies of lizard men out of their memories now.

Dafuq? Wow, I thought there were jokes about dreams. That's absurd.

I mean, kinda' ballsy to try that, but mostly stupid since it's not so cool as to be worth doing it.

In that case then Slaan should be able to also just wish away their enemies. Roll 4+ at the start of the battle to see if you win?

Yep. This is what I meant about needing non-immortal good guys. So far we have the Sylvaneth being the closest thing to a mortal...

Give me some humans, Aelves and Duardin please!

 Necros wrote:
In that case then Slaan should be able to also just wish away their enemies. Roll 4+ at the start of the battle to see if you win?

No no, in accordance with the behavioural rules that are in the game, you have to sing "If you wish upon a star" before being able to claim victory.

The problem with the thought process of "GW should have just made a 9e WHFB and kept loyal WHFB fans happy" is that WHFB accounted for something like 5% of GW's revenue. Seeing as it takes up 30%-40% of the GW models shelf space in most stores that carry it, this just doesn't make sense.

In my humble opinion, part of Fantasy's failure long before AoS's arrival can be attributed to the same reason that it's really hard for other companies to break into the "Space Marine Market" -- 40k just provides a better setting to provide the type of things that people who go crazy about the type of kits that excite people who like building Space Marines want -- zillions of cool weapons options, and everything from wee tiny grots to giant stompy robots, troop carriers, giant guns, and all that stuff. I don't think that any model love could have grown Fantasy to the level of sales that 40k enjoys.

Obviously, I'm not saying that 40k is what everyone wants, but a lot of the people who must choose between what Fantasy battle offers and what 40k offers just think 40k is a better intersection of what scratches their itch. A lot of other people go to non-GW properties, either for the game, or because the just don't like the GW style of models.

So, then, what is success?

It really doesn't matter how many people hate the game. It really doesn't matter that most of the people who loved WHFB hate AoS, because that number of people and what they bought year after year was so small that it couldn't sustain the catalog, shelf space, and gaming space. What matters is enough people love AoS and keep buying books and models to keep it alive, in a way that was sadly NOT true of WHFB in its last years. Did WHFB die off because of poor decisions by GW? Perhaps, perhaps not, but either way, that's not the subject of this thread.

I'm certainly not saying that AoS is a success -- or a failure. Frankly, I have no idea. But for sure, WHFB has NOT been successful in the last decade, and GW couldn't justify its existence. So it either had to chase the WMH crowd, which I think is a waste of time for GW, or to go look for another niche. Whether that group of players can keep AoS alive? We'll find out in a few years, I suppose. A lot of it will depend on whether GW can create the same sort of excitement for new AoS product that it does with 40k releases.

 Talys wrote:
What matters is enough people love AoS and keep buying books and models to keep it alive, in a way that was sadly NOT true of WHFB in its last years.

Is that actually true, though? Aren't a lot of these so called "limited" releases sticking around a lot longer than they should, or not selling out at all?

 Grimskul wrote:
in accordance with the behavioural rules that are in the game, you have to sing "If you wish upon a star" before being able to claim victory.

Beautiful.

 Talys wrote:
The problem with the thought process of "GW should have just made a 9e WHFB and kept loyal WHFB fans happy" is that WHFB accounted for something like 5% of GW's revenue. Seeing as it takes up 30%-40% of the GW models shelf space in most stores that carry it, this just doesn't make sense.

Proof?

 infinite_array wrote:

 Talys wrote:
What matters is enough people love AoS and keep buying books and models to keep it alive, in a way that was sadly NOT true of WHFB in its last years.

Is that actually true, though? Aren't a lot of these so called "limited" releases sticking around a lot longer than they should, or not selling out at all?

It's about as true as all the percentages that he posted in the same thread. But hey...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Korinov wrote:

 Talys wrote:
The problem with the thought process of "GW should have just made a 9e WHFB and kept loyal WHFB fans happy" is that WHFB accounted for something like 5% of GW's revenue. Seeing as it takes up 30%-40% of the GW models shelf space in most stores that carry it, this just doesn't make sense.

Proof?

Anecdotal, pretty much.