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 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Ugh.

Do not like. It's bad enough that some of the locals get themselves worked up into paranoid tizzies when they want to do games with certain number of units--now those guys are going to want it to be nothing but "balanced play".

Play the scenarios out of the books with points values to decide the forces. What's the downside?

The 'downside' is that they caved to the constant complaints about "I don't know how to play without points!".

You mean they took note of the biggest points of negative feedback and took steps to address it?

Crazy, I know

Thats a huge leap forward for GW in my eyes. I am really looking forward to seeing what they produce with this...

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Ugh.

Do not like. It's bad enough that some of the locals get themselves worked up into paranoid tizzies when they want to do games with certain number of units--now those guys are going to want it to be nothing but "balanced play".

Play the scenarios out of the books with points values to decide the forces. What's the downside?

The 'downside' is that they caved to the constant complaints about "I don't know how to play without points!".


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 VeteranNoob wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Ugh.

Do not like. It's bad enough that some of the locals get themselves worked up into paranoid tizzies when they want to do games with certain number of units--now those guys are going to want it to be nothing but "balanced play".

what? I have no idea what you're talking about here. You mean folks in UK?

Do you know what "local" means?

It means people within my immediate area.

HAHA, duh. sorry. I see what happened. I'm reading so much between these forums a litany of complaining, much about UK, GW, tournament, blah that when I saw your post I read it in that context. Totally my mistake. sorry

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

NoggintheNog wrote:
I'm guessing that sales are falling enough to make it worth doing this even if people feel short changed about books they have bought (some will even if they are not technically made redundant).

There is probably a much broader possible user base like myself, who bought the initial 2 player box and nothing since, who they are trying to get back. I also think they probably have lost a lot of players to kings of war, even if a lot of those use GW minis.

As a 40k player, who went through excitement for a skirmish game and then total disinterest for a 'points less' system, I'm really really excited to see points coming to this game and to actually be contemplating playing it. Given that I'm mostly reliant on pick up games and events, I can finally start building a force to be able to carry about and say 'hey, fancy a game at XX points?'.

I am so pleased with how GW seems to be changing direction lately.

As a disgruntled 8th edition WHFB player who enjoys the hell out of the "pointless" system--it really wasn't that hard to play pick-up games without a points system.

I can understand how it's offputting to some people, but I personally never had issues with getting/organizing games for AoS until the tournaments started doing these 'balancing' acts. Then all of a damn sudden, everyone's talking about limiting by Wounds or by number of unique Warscrolls or by tags or whatever other nonsense they come up with(had one guy try to say he wanted to limit based on the number of attacks a unit had!).


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 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Bottle wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Ugh.

Do not like. It's bad enough that some of the locals get themselves worked up into paranoid tizzies when they want to do games with certain number of units--now those guys are going to want it to be nothing but "balanced play".

Play the scenarios out of the books with points values to decide the forces. What's the downside?

The 'downside' is that they caved to the constant complaints about "I don't know how to play without points!".

You mean they took note of the biggest points of negative feedback and took steps to address it?

Crazy, I know

How many people actually playing AoS right now were complaining about lack of points? I can think of a few locally, but they were complaining because they're paranoid as hell about every little thing "potentially" being unbalanced.

I had a game yesterday where someone threw an entire Fyreslayer army(with multiple heroes) at my two Waywatchers and a Waystrider, complaining the whole time because he had wanted to 'balance' the game based upon the number of missile weapons in our lists.

 Kanluwen wrote:

How many people actually playing AoS right now were complaining about lack of points? I can think of a few locally, but they were complaining because they're paranoid as hell about every little thing "potentially" being unbalanced.

I had a game yesterday where someone threw an entire Fyreslayer army(with multiple heroes) at my two Waywatchers and a Waystrider, complaining the whole time because he had wanted to 'balance' the game based upon the number of missile weapons in our lists.

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. They are listening to the negative feedback of players that may actually have been playing the game if such a balancing mechanism worked but that otherwise aren't touching the game at all. This is GW reaching out to the lost customer base.

They are taking nothing away from the current game, only adding to it. Adding to it something that may make the player/customer base grow.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

NoggintheNog wrote:
I'm guessing that sales are falling enough to make it worth doing this even if people feel short changed about books they have bought (some will even if they are not technically made redundant).

There is probably a much broader possible user base like myself, who bought the initial 2 player box and nothing since, who they are trying to get back. I also think they probably have lost a lot of players to kings of war, even if a lot of those use GW minis.

As a 40k player, who went through excitement for a skirmish game and then total disinterest for a 'points less' system, I'm really really excited to see points coming to this game and to actually be contemplating playing it. Given that I'm mostly reliant on pick up games and events, I can finally start building a force to be able to carry about and say 'hey, fancy a game at XX points?'.

I am so pleased with how GW seems to be changing direction lately.

Same here!

This is great and, I think, bodes well for the future too.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:


You mean they took note of the biggest points of negative feedback and took steps to address it?

Crazy, I know

That's the way I'm taking this/looking at it too - bravo GW!

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:


You mean they took note of the biggest points of negative feedback and took steps to address it?

Crazy, I know

Exalted!

The might go from zero to hero on this. Here's hoping!

Yeah in a lot of ways the hysteria over "No points" was not as much of an issue as "No structure".

All points have even been as a way to price the killing/survival power of a particular set of wounds. In many way it could be easier to just cut out the middle man and go by wounds/keywords in the description for the purposes of balancing.

But whatever, GW is actually responding to criticism because they screwed up so bad. Hell, the last time they did that was the 6th Edition Dark Elf Army book.

My local game store recently started selling all Age of Sigmar stuff at 30% off of retail price.

I wonder, with the new support from Games Workshop (referring to the FAQ, and now Matched Play) if he'll bump the prices back up to retail price.

But, but, all those rumormonger posts saying points were never going to happen!



Glad to see GW took a serious look at this. The lack of points (or indeed, *any* balancing instrument other than "eh, that'll work") was a serious impediment to the success of a game that replaced GW's previous flagship product which had a points system.

I'll have to see how this all pans out. I enjoyed the more skirmish feel of AOS, but there simply hasn't been a community here that plays it (short of the GW one-man store a ways up north). Hopefully we'll keep seeing positives for AOS like the new Orc release and point systems- it might not be that far off before I actually have to pick it up!


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ziggurattt wrote:
My local game store recently started selling all Age of Sigmar stuff at 30% off of retail price.

I wonder, with the new support from Games Workshop (referring to the FAQ, and now Matched Play) if he'll bump the prices back up to retail price.

Same here, I keep seeing AOS stuff going up for significant sales because there simply isn't a market for it (where I am). These steps might actually help create one.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

How many people actually playing AoS right now were complaining about lack of points? I can think of a few locally, but they were complaining because they're paranoid as hell about every little thing "potentially" being unbalanced.

I had a game yesterday where someone threw an entire Fyreslayer army(with multiple heroes) at my two Waywatchers and a Waystrider, complaining the whole time because he had wanted to 'balance' the game based upon the number of missile weapons in our lists.

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. They are listening to the negative feedback of players that may actually have been playing the game if such a balancing mechanism worked but that otherwise aren't touching the game at all. This is GW reaching out to the lost customer base.

Oh please. Most of those people complaining online or in shops about the "lack of points" will find something else to complain about.
"There's no points!" has already become "Well, there's points--but the models are still too expensive!".

They are taking nothing away from the current game, only adding to it. Adding to it something that may make the player/customer base grow.

Sure, they're not taking anything away from the current game.

But what they might end up doing is further fragmenting the playerbase. It's already become the case where people tried to spring these tournament systems into casual play, at least in my personal experience.

Too many people have delusions of being top grade tourney players these days.

A points system would be good..................if GW were any good at all at points systems.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
A points system would be good..................if GW were any good at all at points systems.

They're outsourcing it.

I wish *I* could get 30% off Warhammer stuff. Or that they announced Silver Tower, points were not supposed to happen!

The lack of them was really baffling to me and a return is welcome, because it shows GW opening up a bit to fan demand. IF they manage to make a collaboration effort with a part of the community work in their favour (again) maybe we will see more support for fan favourites (again) outside of releases like Genestealer Cult and AdMech models.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
A points system would be good..................if GW were any good at all at points systems.

It would also be good if you read the whole post, in which case you would know that they are creating this in cooperation with all the big tournaments

So? Let the customer base complain about the model prices, maybe (as improbable as that sounds) that will lead to GW actually doing something about. Customers have the right to complain, and companies should learn to listen to their customer base if they want to keep afloat.

As for the possible fragmentation of the playerbase, I don't understand how that can be a bad thing for GW if they are expanding the customer base and having more players overall playing the game. What you'll have is a new playerbase forming up, not a splintering of the previous one.

In the end, you play however the damn you want - isn't that the spirit of AoS?

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh please. Most of those people complaining online or in shops about the "lack of points" will find something else to complain about.
"There's no points!" has already become "Well, there's points--but the models are still too expensive!".
.

Granted but the price was always part of it too. I mean premium pricing for a brand new game completely different from the one it was set to replace was....problematic. If your trying o build a new game with a new player base you need to price it in such a way to get people in the door. Then once you have that you can start raising the price.

Really cool that they're working with Heelanhammer and Facehammer on this. That's how I dreamed it would go down. I like the suggestion earlier in annual point books. Also, I would expect this document would make base to base measuring and whatnot.

And, more great podcast material!

I'm personally excited. I love the idea of skirmish fantasy but with some units ala 40k. One of my current favorite games is Wrath of Kings. And this would make AoS a perfect middle ground between it and KoW.

This means more local events will play it. This means more locals will come out and play it at stores. I'm lucky that I live in an area that embraced AoS but for every person who embraced it there are 5-10 who have sat on the sidelines or only played it at a structured event. This brings those people back and I'm one of them.

I based my fantasy mini's on rounds once AoS came out because I could get custom regiment bases for KoW. Now I can use the models in both games and double the amount of tournaments/events I can play in.

Good job GW. Kudos. So many good moves in a year. Good Job Mr. Roundtree. Way to change the thinking model of a company that's head has been up it's own butt for almost a decade now.

This has been a great month for GW! Just look at all the talk/excitement that happens when you show the fans you are actually listening.

I can't wait to get into the AoS tourney scene now.

Still waiting on 40k....

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh please. Most of those people complaining online or in shops about the "lack of points" will find something else to complain about.
"There's no points!" has already become "Well, there's points--but the models are still too expensive!".
.

Granted but the price was always part of it too. I mean premium pricing for a brand new game completely different from the one it was set to replace was....problematic. If your trying o build a new game with a new player base you need to price it in such a way to get people in the door. Then once you have that you can start raising the price.

Doesn't matter. Customers will always find a way to complain about a product. It's the seller's "job" to listen to the feedback and attempt to solve it accordingly, and this is what GW is doing.

Trying to diminish the first truly inclusive act that GW has done in years by simply saying that customers will never be pleased is failing to see the point (or maybe ignoring it altogether) on a catastrophic level.

I just think £5 for an infantryman and £20 for a cavalry is ridiculous, but I solve that problem the best way, ny not buying any of the figures.

That's the only language GW understand, in the end.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh please. Most of those people complaining online or in shops about the "lack of points" will find something else to complain about.
"There's no points!" has already become "Well, there's points--but the models are still too expensive!".
.

Granted but the price was always part of it too. I mean premium pricing for a brand new game completely different from the one it was set to replace was....problematic. If your trying o build a new game with a new player base you need to price it in such a way to get people in the door. Then once you have that you can start raising the price.

Price as a complaint made more sense under 8th edition, where battalion boxes were a joke(ooh boy, 24 Glade Guard and 12 Dryads plus 8 Glade Riders? Be still my beating heart!) in terms of actually starting an army. They made a concerted effort towards the end with the 'big' boxes(Dark Elf Warhost of Naggaroth, Dwarf Battleline, etc) to make a playable army in a single big box with a discount built-in.

Price as a complaint now, where many of the more irksomely priced units(Shadow Warriors, Executioners/Black Guard, Witch Elves, Black Orcs, etc) have either been reboxed with more models and a bit of savings built-in(Chaos Warriors, Chaos Knights, Skullcrushers, etc) or are part of the various "Start Collecting" sets that are stupidly good discounts.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh please. Most of those people complaining online or in shops about the "lack of points" will find something else to complain about.
"There's no points!" has already become "Well, there's points--but the models are still too expensive!".
.

Granted but the price was always part of it too. I mean premium pricing for a brand new game completely different from the one it was set to replace was....problematic. If your trying o build a new game with a new player base you need to price it in such a way to get people in the door. Then once you have that you can start raising the price.

Doesn't matter. Customers will always find a way to complain about a product. It's the seller's "job" to listen to the feedback and attempt to solve it accordingly, and this is what GW is doing.

Trying to diminish the first truly inclusive act that GW has done in years by simply saying that customers will never be pleased is failing to see the point (or maybe ignoring it altogether) on a catastrophic level.

I think you're missing the point though.

Now AoS will not be exactly how Kanluwen wants it to be, and I wonder if that is not actually the most important consideration here?

That's what the "maybe ignoring " bit is there for

As long as we can keep the round bases...

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Doesn't matter. Customers will always find a way to complain about a product. It's the seller's "job" to listen to the feedback and attempt to solve it accordingly, and this is what GW is doing.

Trying to diminish the first truly inclusive act that GW has done in years by simply saying that customers will never be pleased is failing to see the point (or maybe ignoring it altogether) on a catastrophic level.

To an extent, maybe I'm being biased by my own experiences. The majority of people that I've played AoS with? They didn't give two craps about the lack of points.

The ones who would take the time to complain about the lack of points or who would talk about "boycotting" the system and playing 9th Age or 8th edition still?
They're the same people who during 8th would take the most broken friggin' stuff and acted as though they had won big tournaments. We all know those kinds of people, the "big fish" who would keep coming back to play in small ponds to keep being the big fish.
Those guys played AoS once or twice, and then stopped showing up when their "killer combo" lists got shut down by someone who just threw random models from their collection down.

 Zywus wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh please. Most of those people complaining online or in shops about the "lack of points" will find something else to complain about.
"There's no points!" has already become "Well, there's points--but the models are still too expensive!".
.

Granted but the price was always part of it too. I mean premium pricing for a brand new game completely different from the one it was set to replace was....problematic. If your trying o build a new game with a new player base you need to price it in such a way to get people in the door. Then once you have that you can start raising the price.

Doesn't matter. Customers will always find a way to complain about a product. It's the seller's "job" to listen to the feedback and attempt to solve it accordingly, and this is what GW is doing.

Trying to diminish the first truly inclusive act that GW has done in years by simply saying that customers will never be pleased is failing to see the point (or maybe ignoring it altogether) on a catastrophic level.

I think you're missing the point though.

Now AoS will not be exactly how Kanluwen wants it to be, and I wonder if that is not actually the most important consideration here?

I still think you're missing the point. I'm in agreement with Kan here. In 40k they already had "apocalypse" in the game system as an 'optional' way to play. And no one did. So they rolled it into the main game to much "comping in tournament" and complaining. Then they release AoS without points, leaving it to the players to sort out their armies to play pick up games. Then tournaments try to "balance" it, and GW picks uthe mantle. But once they release an "official" points system for the game, no one, or very few people, will actually play the casual or original version. The "balanced" points system will be seen as "official" and thats all anyone will want to play.

In groups who have enjoyed playing the original AoS, their players will fragment as the original players will still play original, but some number will only play with points, thus fragmenting the system. Thats the point.

Even with external help, I'm going to be cautious around any claim of "balanced" as it pertains to AoS. It was nice to be able to play it with a handful of models if I wanted, now we'll see a growing "pool" as games get larger and larger to fit all the neat and balanced toys into army lists for tournaments. Again, cautiously optimistic, but I was already enjoying and will continue to enjoy the freedom of s pointsless system,

The price issue is being slowly addressed with the new starter sets and such. Its still not enough, but its a step in the right direction.

My personal issue, and reason I didn't get into AoS out of the box, is that I have very limited gaming time. Events are best but if not events then I need to know I can get a game in. No structure is a lot of work for most people. Especially GW players who (in the seeming majority) have only really played GW so points and structure is something they've always been handed.

This fixes that. Brings in people who were fence sitting. And most importantly will get people playing on game nights in stores because pick-up games can now happen again.

I get being unhappy with some of your local player base but less extrapolation to the entire community would probably be a good thing.