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hobojebus wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
There is zero evidence to support this, unless you're in possession of information beyond that included in the financial reports?

It's in the report last time model sales were down 5% the report before that it was 4%, added to the 10% from the two reports before that they have lost overall 19% of their model sales.

That's their core business that's shrinking.

Where did the last report say model sales were down 5%? If I recall correctly revenue from sales went down 0.9% last year and there was no info in there to translate it to "model sales".

Just checked, the previous year was 3.6% and the year before that 8.2%.

Multiply that out and it's 12.5% in total.

As far as I'm aware GW don't offer any numbers to isolate "model sales" from "sales revenue".

wuestenfux wrote:
Indeed, the 4th CSM codex has been one of the worst codices ever. Uninspired, unimaginable, un...

It could have been worse. You could have gotten the Tyranid treatment.

Byte wrote:I'm dont champion GW in any way. Thats whats so weird about this conversation. Ive said their prices suck. Ive said I dont buy retail, only used, Ive said their marketing and business approach arent the best. Heck, Ive even said that I don't care about their profit margin or returns. Yet, here I find myself with a cape with GW on it slung on my back. Bizarre. There is a section of gamers that do demonize GW. Yet they trudge on. Thats all I said.

You were very quickly told why people had an issue with what you said. You repeated a dismissive assertion that people have read on these forums for a long time. And when someone called you on it and showed that it's actually not the case (they are unhappy with specific things GW has done wrong and are don't just generic "haters." ).you got all dramatic about putting someone on ignore. And then you couldn't help yourself and you just had to read and reply to people you just dramatically declared to be on your ignore list.

As for your original statement, GW did not just "rumble on." Since the LOTR bubble burst they have closed multiple national divisions, laid off hundreds of employees, had declines in their core business that were only made up for by video game revenue and currency fluctuations, and totally gutted their interior support staff to the point that you have local store employee -> continent wide manager -> board of directors. In the last report Rountree admitted this was a mistake and they are rebuilding their European retail team to include more regional staff.

GW "rumbled on" for all defintions of "rumble on" that include massive lay offs, closing of national offices, shrinking market share and falling and stagnating revenue and profit.

Another thing I noticed is you painted people with a board brush saying that people have been predicting GW's demise for decades or whatever, but no one is really doing that in this thread. Or for similar threads on dakka going back years. Every now and again a single poster will be more definite in the predictions of GW's demise (Wayshuba and his death spiral come to mind) but it's been years now when people come into threads and say "people have been predicting GW's doom for years and they are still here!" and everyone looks around and goes "who the feth is predicting GW's doom here?" I think the vast majority of those with a negative view of GW's future prospects think GW is on a slow decline into irrelevancy, not a collapse of their business.

They'll figure out the direct sales thing enough and hike their prices enough that a core audience of chumps (ex employees have reported GW has a culture that can be very dismissive of their own customer base) will buy their products at very high prices and they'll have good margins but a much lower overall level of revenue. A few years back I was saying that Forge World proves that GW has a core group of customers that will pay a lot for a model and they will bring their regular plastic prices in line with Forge World. They've now done that. And Forge World's sales continue to grow, so they're going to keep putting their prices up. Fortunately for GW, Rountree recognized that while they have high prices, they need products at lower price points as well.

It's not all just haters and fanboys. People are talking about specific reasons for their opinions.

-

I started playing non collectible miniatures six years ago and I remember everything was about Warhammer 40K and Fantasy. Other games like Warmachine and Infinity were not well known.

Now, we have a boom of other games:

X-Wing
Dropzone Commander
Infinity
Malifaux
Warmachine
Kings of War
Bolt Action
Dystopian Wars
many more...

The money invested on these games did not went to GW and I think the youtube revolution gave a boost to all these other games.

I have collect games workshop for the past 25 years and watch a number of friends drop out of the GW hobby over those years..
Most left was because of bad rules or having to buy the new miniature to keep competitive.. but now you have to much competition
to be the company that GW once was.. I would say half the players that play xwing or warmachine are not new players they
came from other games.. most cut their teeth on GW and left for what ever reason.. GW hemorrhaged players in the past few years
and newer players are not making up for those losses

The sad truth I was a fan boy and big supporter of GW up till last year, The breaking point being the release of Age of Sigmar and
the splitting up of the white dwarf magazine .. on top of the sky rocking cost of models... It forced me to end my monthly subscription
and walk away from them for other games, I still have my stuff and will keep it till I die.. now there is no feelings for any new releases
and my hobby money is allotted to other things.

What would bring me back... honestly they are on the right path.. nice starter boxes.. lower model count games, but now there
is this fear, they could return to old at any moment.. so the trust is not there... plus the new fantasy world is too spacey for me..
I liked the grit of the old world and not everyone on the battlefield was veteran battle lords

Personally I love Warhammer, I don't love GW and that is how it has always been.

I will call out GW for their bs while also defending Warhammer for how awesome it is.

I think the issue for me IMO is that people equate the company with the game. Personally nothing has beat warhammer for me in what I enjoy and like about miniature gaming.

I like to think most people look at GW like your best friend who got addicted to drugs, you put up with them for a long time and tried to help, eventually you got fed up. Now they are clean and trying to get their act together but we are wary.

 Leth wrote:
I think the issue for me IMO is that people equate the company with the game. Personally nothing has beat warhammer for me in what I enjoy and like about miniature gaming.

40k is a very, very badly balanced game. Atrocious. The fact that competitive groups need to come up with their own comp systems, FAQs and 'house rules' to make tournament somewhat balanced says a lot about the game. I haven't seen any other mainstream game that required so much outside input to make it balanced. That alone drives people away. It's got nothing to do with not liking the Warhammer universe or disliking the game because the parent company is terrible and has everything to do with whether it's worth even trying to play the game.

So people move on. They find games they can enjoy just as much, and lets face it, it's not the nineties anymore. The market is saturated with good, well balanced games, and with GW driving so many sales to direct while having fewer and fewer of their own retail outlets forcing people online or to independent stores, and then treating independent stores worse than ever, that competition is going to be front and centre.

There's only so many times you can spend half an hour setting up your army only to see it be systematically taken to pieces simply because you either chose the weakest army (hint - there shouldn't be a 'weakest', or even 'strongest' army) or chose units that are weak (hint - there shouldn't be 'weak' and 'strong' units) before you start wandering around the tables, watching people play those competing games and having fun and eyeing the product on the shelves.

The main problem with people defending GW's games (see, not GW themselves) is they make up broad brush assumptions about those who are dissatisfied to justify their continued support of the game rather than accept that they may have valid criticisms.

Which isn't a surprise, human nature being what it is. Much better to have the other people be wrong than admit you've hitched your wagon to a lame horse. A very expensive, very time consuming wagon.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Which isn't a surprise, human nature being what it is. Much better to have the other people be wrong than admit you've hitched your wagon to a lame horse. A very expensive, very time consuming wagon.

Which is an opinion. I never said that other games were worse or better objectively. Personally I have tried other games and while the rules may be tighter the entire experience of playing the game is not as fun. I don't have a universe that is even close to the experience I get with 40k. For others that is not as important but for me it is a part of the calculation

I said that just because GW makes poor decisions doesn't mean that warhammer 40k in its entirety is bad. Now you may have a different opinion and that is perfectly fine and valid. However it does not mean that it is universal and should be presented as such. It's far easier to assume everyone shares your opinion in your echo chambers than to assume that there is a wide variety of views and opinions and that yours might not necessarily be in the majority.

In regards to balance I agree, 40k is not balanced and it gets very frustrating. However GW made a decision that they were going to increase the number of options, make it so you can play whatever game you want to play, at the expense of balance. However this places the onus of deciding what type of game you want to play on the players to decide. Hence many tournaments creating a series of rules to say "this is the game we are going to play at this event". If I am going to my local shop I always ask "what type of game do you want to play today?" And use a list accordingly, this works for me, however I 100% respect that does not work for others and so this is not the game for you.

It is the nature of diversification that individuals will find something that is more appealing than the current offering. Nothi wrong with jumping ship. However it is equally human nature to create a justification for why they are jumpi ship that offsets the sunk cost mentality. One of the easiest ways to rectify this conflict is to demonize what they used to do as bad rather than just say "it doesn't work for me anymore". The more that was invested, the stronger the demonization of the old ways. We see it all the time in almost every walk of life outside of just hobbies, no reason it would be any different here.

 Leth wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Which isn't a surprise, human nature being what it is. Much better to have the other people be wrong than admit you've hitched your wagon to a lame horse. A very expensive, very time consuming wagon.

Which is an opinion. I never said that other games were worse or better objectively. Personally I have tried other games and while the rules may be tighter the entire experience of playing the game is not as fun. I don't have a universe that is even close to the experience I get with 40k. For others that is not as important but for me it is a part of the calculation

That's a valid point, though personally I've never understood it. Aside from reding the background, which other games are starting to get respectable quantities of, I've never felt connected to the fluff when I'm playing. I don't throw my Tyranids down and think 'man, this is just like the assault on the polar bases on Macragge!'. I'm just shooting the gak with my opponent while having fun pushing figures around the table and rolling some dice.

The problem comes that the imbalances are so bad in 40k that even in such a casual environment, they're game breaking. If it comes down to not enjoying the 3 hours I spend with a friend every few weeks playing the game due to those imbalances, or just picking something I get less frustrated with due to tighter rules, GW's games fall by the wayside.

 Leth wrote:
I said that just because GW makes poor decisions doesn't mean that warhammer 40k in its entirety is bad.

Warhammer 40,000 as a setting is good, and they've done good games in it. That's why I have nearly 3000pts of Tyranids languishing in a cupboard. The game, as it is right now, has gotten so atrociously bad that it's not worth playing. The great thing is I can still read novels or play Dawn of War and enjoy the setting.

 Leth wrote:
Now you may have a different opinion and that is perfectly fine and valid. However it does not mean that it is universal and should be presented as such. It's far easier to assume everyone shares your opinion in your echo chambers than to assume that there is a wide variety of views and opinions and that yours might not necessarily be in the majority.

I never said I was in a majority. I was merely criticising the use of broad generalisations to dismiss people criticising Games Workshops games rather than trying to refute them.

People criticise 40k, and all I ever see is 'well, all you guys just hate the company'. No, people criticise the game because the game has gotten so amazingly terrible of late that they can't find the enjoyment in it they used to anymore.

 Leth wrote:
However GW made a decision that they were going to increase the number of options, make it so you can play whatever game you want to play, at the expense of balance.

No they didn't. GW decided that they were going to put zero effort into making good rules out of a combination of "the rules don't matter" and saving money. We as players got nothing in return. There is nothing about having lots of options and customization that inevitably leads to poor balance, you can have those things and still have a balanced game if you are willing to invest the effort required to do it right.

 Leth wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Which isn't a surprise, human nature being what it is. Much better to have the other people be wrong than admit you've hitched your wagon to a lame horse. A very expensive, very time consuming wagon.

Which is an opinion.

Of course it is, but it is an opinion informed by years of observation and widely supported by the whole concept of the sunk cost fallacy.

I never said that other games were worse or better objectively. Personally I have tried other games and while the rules may be tighter the entire experience of playing the game is not as fun. I don't have a universe that is even close to the experience I get with 40k. For others that is not as important but for me it is a part of the calculation

One of the best things GW ever did for their business is engender the belief that their universe and rules were somehow wed to one another.

I said that just because GW makes poor decisions doesn't mean that warhammer 40k in its entirety is bad. Now you may have a different opinion and that is perfectly fine and valid. However it does not mean that it is universal and should be presented as such. It's far easier to assume everyone shares your opinion in your echo chambers than to assume that there is a wide variety of views and opinions and that yours might not necessarily be in the majority.

Dakka is many things, an echo chamber it is not. Besides, who's arguing that 40K is bad in its entirety? There's much good about 40K. Little of it has anything to do with the game, but there is good, certainly. There's certainly a much better case for 40K being objectively worse as a strategy game than most of its competition, and much of what is bad, GW has had ample opportunity to address, but chosen not to, or, worse, simply ignored. Which is one of the main bug bears with the company I read.

In regards to balance I agree, 40k is not balanced and it gets very frustrating. However GW made a decision that they were going to increase the number of options, make it so you can play whatever game you want to play, at the expense of balance. However this places the onus of deciding what type of game you want to play on the players to decide. Hence many tournaments creating a series of rules to say "this is the game we are going to play at this event". If I am going to my local shop I always ask "what type of game do you want to play today?" And use a list accordingly, this works for me, however I 100% respect that does not work for others and so this is not the game for you.

That's rubbish. Firstly the assumption that GW somehow chose to make an unbalanced game and secondly that somehow choice is mutually exclusive to balance. What you're trying to sell as a feature is actually a bug.

It is the nature of diversification that individuals will find something that is more appealing than the current offering. Nothi wrong with jumping ship. However it is equally human nature to create a justification for why they are jumpi ship that offsets the sunk cost mentality. One of the easiest ways to rectify this conflict is to demonize what they used to do as bad rather than just say "it doesn't work for me anymore". The more that was invested, the stronger the demonization of the old ways. We see it all the time in almost every walk of life outside of just hobbies, no reason it would be any different here.

Yeah, this is about GW, not 40K specifically, although that's a distinction without a difference for many, and there are plenty of completely legitimate reasons to have issue with GW and their conduct completely independently of any of their product.

Congratulations on dressing up the "haters gonna hate" argument in some extra flowery language, but the same rebuttal still applies. If those people were just demonising for their own sake, they wouldn't be able to back that up with evidence and logical, objective aguments that they do.

Except that those "logical and objective arguments" have as a basis a specific value which is personal. For example many people think GW models are over costed. Well that is a subjective value of an item which is 100% how an individual values certain aspects of an item. If it is over costed and you buy it then you are an idiot. If it is more than you want to pay for an item that is a completely different story. Micro economics 101

Also yes unique options and balance are relatively opposite. The more you have of one the less you will be able to have of the other. The shear number of options and interactions makes it borderline impossible to balance without additional restrictions. Am I saying that is the best way to do it? No, I am saying that is the decision they went with.

When did I say anything even remotely like haters gonna hate. I specifically said that people's views are valid and if they no longer like a product that is completely understandable. Way to feel attacked when I said nothing of the sort. Haters have legitimate reasons for not liking GW however the extent of the Vitriolic responses seems very high for people who don't like it. I got less value, they made my army less useful. So you stop buying/investin in it. Same with everything else in life, doesn't mean I sit around complaining about it all day.

I hated playing war machine, didn't like the models, the lack of customization, the way the rules played. I didn't like how the fluffy armies I tried to play kept gettin completely smashed. I did not get my value from that game. Yet I dont spend a single moment going out of my way to post on privateer press forums or in warhahordes threads about how much I didn't like it to those who still enjoy it. That seems to be a nearly exclusive 40k/GW phenomenon. I have no problem talking about warmahordes, hearing about new stuff that is coming out for them without getting angry or talking about how bad my experiences were with the entire system.

 Leth wrote:
Also yes unique options and balance are relatively opposite. The more you have of one the less you will be able to have of the other. The shear number of options and interactions makes it borderline impossible to balance without additional restrictions. Am I saying that is the best way to do it? No, I am saying that is the decision they went with.

This is not true at all. Having lots of options means you probably have to do more playtesting to get everything balanced, but it doesn't mean that balance is impossible. MTG has way more potential interactions between its ~15,000 unique cards than 40k does between its relative handful of units, and yet MTG has much better balance. The difference is that GW throws together whatever garbage someone comes up with in 15 minutes and calls it a codex, while WOTC spends months designing and playtesting a new set to make sure that everything works right and is willing to ban cards after they're printed if it is necessary to correct a balance problem.

 Leth wrote:
Except that those "logical and objective arguments" have as a basis a specific value which is personal. For example many people think GW models are over costed. Well that is a subjective value of an item which is 100% how an individual values certain aspects of an item.

Except you can assess the cost of a model in the context of other similar sized models made by the same processes. Whether they are worth the premium is a subjective thing, whether they are more expensive than the completion is entirely objective.

Also yes unique options and balance are relatively opposite. The more you have of one the less you will be able to have of the other. The shear number of options and interactions makes it borderline impossible to balance without additional restrictions. Am I saying that is the best way to do it? No, I am saying that is the decision they went with.

This is simply not true. The more options you have, the more effort it will take, but GW have made zero effort.

When did I say anything even remotely like haters gonna hate. I specifically said that people's views are valid and if they no longer like a product that is completely understandable. Way to feel attacked when I said nothing of the sort. Haters have legitimate reasons for not liking GW however the extent of the Vitriolic responses seems very high for people who don't like it. I got less value, they made my army less useful. So you stop buying/investin in it. Same with everything else in life, doesn't mean I sit around complaining about it all day.

"Haters" dont need a legitimate reason, however, "critics" are a lot more common, and they generally do. Your argument was people create reasons to dislike GW because they don't play GW games any more. It was, essentially, still "haters gonna hate."

I hated playing war machine, didn't like the models, the lack of customization, the way the rules played. I didn't like how the fluffy armies I tried to play kept gettin completely smashed. I did not get my value from that game. Yet I dont spend a single moment going out of my way to post on privateer press forums or in warhahordes threads about how much I didn't like it to those who still enjoy it. That seems to be a nearly exclusive 40k/GW phenomenon. I have no problem talking about warmahordes, hearing about new stuff that is coming out for them without getting angry or talking about how bad my experiences were with the entire system.

That's cool. I didn't much care for Infinity either, didn't feel compelled to go shouting it about either. But, critically, Corvus Belli don't go around doing stuff that seems utterly antagonistic to its customers (if it did, I'd probably comment in a thread on that too, even if I didn't play Infinity) and Infinity wasn't a game I once enjoyed that, thanks to Corvus Belli, had now become a game that I didn't, and I didn't become frustrated at Corvus Belli for failing to do the simplest things that a business really should be doing if it is serious about continued success.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Leth wrote:
Also yes unique options and balance are relatively opposite. The more you have of one the less you will be able to have of the other. The shear number of options and interactions makes it borderline impossible to balance without additional restrictions. Am I saying that is the best way to do it? No, I am saying that is the decision they went with.

This is not true at all. Having lots of options means you probably have to do more playtesting to get everything balanced, but it doesn't mean that balance is impossible. MTG has way more potential interactions between its ~15,000 unique cards than 40k does between its relative handful of units, and yet MTG has much better balance. The difference is that GW throws together whatever garbage someone comes up with in 15 minutes and calls it a codex, while WOTC spends months designing and playtesting a new set to make sure that everything works right and is willing to ban cards after they're printed if it is necessary to correct a balance problem.

Months of testing and they still release cards that they ban (nice of the that) because they are unbalanced (presumably after much. "oMG OP" from the paying players). And that's a card game that doesn't deal with 3 dimensions on top of faction rules and has historically been one of the most risably money driven games I've heard of.

As you say balance is impossible but as a counter point to some of the criticisms of GW it falls flat on its face.

 notprop wrote:
Months of testing and they still release cards that they ban (nice of the that) because they are unbalanced (presumably after much. "oMG OP" from the paying players).

They only ban cards very rarely, and only a very small percentage of the total number of cards in the game. For example, in Standard (the most popular format) there are currently zero cards banned. And really, the occasional ban is a strength of WOTC's method, not a weakness. Playtesters are human, in a complex game mistakes are occasionally going to happen. The question then is what you do about those mistakes. When WOTC lets a game-breaking balance problem slip through playtesting or some card from 10 years ago gains a new interaction with the latest cards WOTC steps in to fix the problem. When a similar thing happens in a GW game GW does nothing about it until maybe the unit gets new rules in the next codex (which you have to buy).

So, really, the existence of bans in MTG is only a problem for the straw man of 100% perfect balance. Getting to 99% is more than enough for most people and would be a significant step up from the almost nonexistent balance in 40k right now. And games like MTG have demonstrated that you can have very good balance in an extremely complex game.

And that's a card game that doesn't deal with 3 dimensions on top of faction rules and has historically been one of the most risably money driven games I've heard of.

Neither of these differences are significant. 40k's rules are broken when rules interact with each other, units have the wrong point costs, etc. The very limited 3d state of the game is rarely a factor in these problems, and shouldn't make the game any harder to balance. I can't think of a single balance problem right now that exists because the game is 3d. And, if anything, the faction rules make it easier to balance 40k because it limits which combinations of units are likely to exist (since nobody uses unbound). In MTG, on the other hand, any one of those 15,000 cards (outside of a very short ban list) can be in a deck with any other card. Just considering two-card pairs that's 225 million potential interactions to balance. If you want to consider three-card interactions that number goes up over 3 trillion.

Never tell me the odds 3PO!

The point is that even with the rather more linear framework of a card game there are still imbalances. Decrying game balance seems pointless, the question should be is it fun?

Allot of people think so.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Leth wrote:
Also yes unique options and balance are relatively opposite. The more you have of one the less you will be able to have of the other. The shear number of options and interactions makes it borderline impossible to balance without additional restrictions. Am I saying that is the best way to do it? No, I am saying that is the decision they went with.

This is not true at all. Having lots of options means you probably have to do more playtesting to get everything balanced, but it doesn't mean that balance is impossible. MTG has way more potential interactions between its ~15,000 unique cards than 40k does between its relative handful of units, and yet MTG has much better balance. The difference is that GW throws together whatever garbage someone comes up with in 15 minutes and calls it a codex, while WOTC spends months designing and playtesting a new set to make sure that everything works right and is willing to ban cards after they're printed if it is necessary to correct a balance problem.

MTG held up as an example of balance, really?

The designers even explained that they do not aim for balance in card design but for love instead.

 StygianBeach wrote:
The designers even explained that they do not aim for balance in card design but for love instead.

{citation needed}

This claim rather directly contradicts the fact that they spend months on extensive playtesting and development for each set they make with the intent of making sure everything is balanced. They certainly start with love in the conceptual stage of design, but love doesn't mean a card can't have the appropriate mana cost/rarity/etc. They will work very hard to make a concept work by adjusting the details if they love it enough, but they have said over and over again that if a card can't be balanced or has rule clarity/function problems that can't be resolved R&D says "that's too bad" and throws it out.

Yeah, listening to Rosewater's podcast, I get the sense that the development team on a given set can be pretty merciless. And they have procedures in place to ensure that things don't get through just because they were someone's pet idea (like having separate design teams and development teams).

If anyone wants one of the most balanced game experiences in their life, get 2 of all the commons and 1 of each uncommon from the current two sets and shuffle them up and make "packs" and draft it with 4-8 people. I only leave the rares out because it still works without them and they can be more expensive on the secondary market, include 1 per random pack if you want to.

I played 40k for a years and then got into WM/H and was like "Wow, GW is bad at game development.". Then later I got into MTG and modern board games and was like "Wow Privateer is bad at game development.". Now when it comes to miniature wargaming, I tend stick to rules made by people who do don't also sell miniatures so I know the rules are standing on their own merits and are not just marketing tools used to drive miniature sales.

Capt. Camping wrote:The money invested on these games did not went to GW and I think the youtube revolution gave a boost to all these other games.

Same for me, my money went else where in stead of GW. I don't think Youtube revolution gave a boost to all the other games. It was GW poor and horrible decisions they have made that made people want to go to other game systems.

I know if GW have better rules, more fun rules and FAIR BALANCE my money would have never went to PP, Dropzone Commander and other games. These companies gave what people wanted, and GW didn't give people what they wanted. Pretty simple sadly.

Hmmmm... picked up some Deathwatch to stick my toe back into 40k
I really know how to pick armies that suck.
They definitely are not "complete" in themselves.
BUT I LIKE Deathwatch from the fun they were in the past.
I knew this was going to be a bit of an uphill battle with the "Sternguard" stealing their thunder with the special ammo.

One lesson learned that is really killing GW is "Do not make rules for models you do not have.".
These mixed groups with bikes and jump packs and then a strange mix of leaders who cannot pick said bikes or jump packs because they have not made the model yet.

So there are a few holes in selection for that army, strange choices where the "best equipped" marines in the universe have less selection than vanilla SMs.
Plus the special rules for DW is worse than the Imperial Fists for shooting misses.

Plus their flyer is happily advertised as a troop transport that can fly in and deliver troops "like a drop pod"... ummm no.
I defy anyone to use it for that purpose.
Fly in from reserve, hover, deploy troops at the earliest 3rd turn (2nd if starting on landing pad).

Again, you write a bunch of fluff, people get all excited that the new army comes out and the silly gits cannot write any rules to reflect the fluff they describe!

Let me pause for a moment:


It is a similar feeling I got with Skitarii where certain elements seem incomplete or "broken" (not in a good OP way).
The models are awesome but you scratch your head as you try to get decent use of them on the table.

GW made some bad decisions. Rules in particular are a big problem. They're getting really clunky and more often than not they're hard to keep track of. Balance is also an issue which seems to come up, as evidenced by the previous posts.

Price hiking, degrading rules quality, and removing a core product doesn't exactly please the customer base.

But GW is the big kid on the block still (not remotely as big, and I'd even argue not as involved with the community at large) in terms of notoriety and for a lot of people GW represents something different. It's changed a lot over the years, and thus it's the best possible target for vitriol.

 Cryonicleech wrote:
It's changed a lot over the years, and thus it's the best possible target for vitriol.

You never hear people complain more than when they are used to a certain level of service and then you take it away.
It USED TO be pretty clear many of the more public employees were fans of the game as well as the provider of services.
The view the past couple years is that upper management could barely restrain themselves of making fun of their customers.

I am happy with many good choices they have been making recently, the various game / starter packages is a good step at addressing need and making great "pick-up" games to get people into the 40k universe without buying a full army.

BUT my continuing gripe is they release new models and try to fit the rules to the models made and no further.
So if they rush an army out the door you get these "incomplete" armies that are not fleshed out: they NEED allies in order to function.
I despair to ever see complete armies with inherent strengths and weaknesses ever again: we can mix and match to suit if you do not have a favorite army that is less than optimal.

But like the advent of the first "Apocalypse" rules, they are bent and determined for you to be able to play "anything you want!!!" because it is cool BUT you will never ever have a "proper" competitive game.

 notprop wrote:


The point is that even with the rather more linear framework of a card game there are still imbalances. Decrying game balance seems pointless, the question should be is it fun?

Allot of people think so.

There's no accounting for taste.

It seems to be there's a lot of people who don't find an unbalanced game any fun as well.

But you do get the delineation between WOTC "we tried, we made a mistake, we've done our best to put it right" attitude and GW's "we didn't try, we don't care, sort it out yourselves" even if you do subscribe to the slightly dubious notion that Magic is somehow easier to balance.

@Talizvar "The view the past couple years is that upper management could barely restrain themselves of making fun of their customers" --I think one of my biggest problems reading this thread is the notion of a company hating its fanbase. And not that you specifically said this, looking at the thread itself. It seems absurd to me. Losing touch with or not collecting and using feedback, sure, OK. But actively operating to hate their customers...I doubt it. Especially when you interact with the staff. Better yet, go to Warhammer World and see the staff, hobbyists and gamers who enjoy this hobby. I just don't see how any company can operate like that, especially for so long. (Don't bother with the financial report here )

There's so much Bullgak on the internet (especially for gamers) so I just personally dont buy into that line. Can't speak for what goes on behind those magical walls as I'm not in there and who knows what happened over the past decade but the past two years have been promising, even great this year so far imo. I'm hoping it continues on this trend. As for 40K getting it's oversized, angry rules pimple popped, I agree, the gal could shed a couple hundred pounds. Looking forward to seeing what the new campaign brings. I don't care for competitive 40K so admittedly I run into these crazy situations less often, and we have great gaming groups so we just keep it enjoyable and don't try to abuse the things that are clearly problematic. Also I agree with you on rules and new model releases.

Please excuse my formatting, dunno what happened. My response is in green.

Edit: Fixed, thanks!

 Azreal13 wrote:

But you do get the delineation between WOTC "we tried, we made a mistake, we've done our best to put it right" attitude and GW's "we didn't try, we don't care, sort it out yourselves" even if you do subscribe to the slightly dubious notion that Magic is somehow easier to balance.

I don't think GW is quite so nonchalant about the rules for 40k, but it isn't a huge stretch, either. I'm inclined to agree, mostly. Like many others, I have experience with MMOs and there is always some level of imbalance among factions, classes, etc. But for the games I stuck around with (Asheron's Call, WoW), the devs continually tweaked the game in an effort to balance things out, and thereby improved the game and retained customers by making them happy - or as happy as possible, I guess. There was never a perfect state of balance, but they were genuinely trying.

Is this a perfect analogy for GW and 40k? No, it's an entirely different product with a different business model, but it illustrates a company's commitment to acknowledging the voices of its customers and responding by giving them what they want - in a sense. That is a whole other topic that need not be fleshed out right now, but I think you all get my point.

I think it goes without saying (but I will anyway) that companies have to make money, have responsibilities to their stakeholders, etc. But this is a game we play, and we're not all just model collectors. Yes, we still buy tons of expensive toys because they look cool and we love the universe, but a fun and well-designed gaming experience is a crucial element to the product that isn't even neglected per se, but executed rather poorly. I'm sure it's challenging, and I'm not going to pretend I could do better if suddenly hired to do the job, but it feels like there is no cohesive vision for the game's rules, and a huge part of that is imbalance.

I think it's accurate to say GW isn't about hyper-competitive gameplay with their system, and that's fine. Players will always min/max and such if they're so inclined. Don't care, go for it; what I'm saying is look at the 7th edition Eldar and Tyranids codices. Feel free to disagree, but they weren't even written on the same planet. They seemingly have totally different visions, philosophies, what have you, guiding gameplay with those factions. Is balance even remotely a part of it, with any new rules? I think the frequency of updates and the format by which they do so hinder the overall possibility of balance, but I have no idea how they even operate. If it was purely "new model should get amazeballs rules to sell sell sell," I'd say even that is inconsistent.

There is something to be said about a company's right to release a product, and then leaving it up to the customers to buy it or not; plenty of long-term hobbyists leave when the system they prefer changes too much, which will happen. But when people are essentially saying, "If you put more effort into better gameplay, rules, and balance, then I would give you more of my money," how is that not worth it?

Maybe I'm totally wrong and most people have no problem with the rules and balance of the game, but I can't help but feel (based on the very existence of this thread, for example) that there's some kernel of truth here.

 Wolf_in_Human_Shape wrote:
Please excuse my formatting, dunno what happened. My response is in green.

It's because you have one too many "quotes" and not enough "end quotes", remove the quote that says "quote=notprop 700313 8867823 d0ffbde7bf9bb9b1f98fa6c20273c376.jpg"

You can believe what you want, but it was evident in the fact that they:

1) Continue to raise prices for no real reason, including when moving to Finecast and then Plastic, which are cheaper materials than metal (case in point: Other companies produce high quality plastic/resin/metal miniatures for typically lower prices)

2) Ignored the aspect of their games that were competitive to push the notion of having a "collection" sitting on a shelf somewhere with "rules" that occasionally made them get brought out

3) Continually pushing the game larger and larger to sell more and more, despite it causing a breakdown in the rules

4) Retreating from social media instead of dealing with criticism

5) Suing/threatening to sue anyone who so much as posted points costs, despite that not being something you can copyright, not to mention going after people for "Space Marine" which they didn't even invent (see: Spots the Space Marine debacle)

6) Turning their beloved magazine into little more than a catalog designed to sell more product instead of showcase the hobby

7) Adamantly stating that the hobby is only buying their figures; not building, modeling or painting, certainly not playing, but just being a GW customer.

8) Gutting support for GW stores from hobby centers to one-man shops that barely have enough room for games.

Should I go on? I won't deny that there's a lot of hatred online, but believe me most of it is very well founded towards the GW of the past.