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$150 still isn't very much, especially stretched out over 6 months.

M.

(I still think point corrections should be free, because they're errata. Also removes one possible excuse for a player not having updated their list.)

 Infantryman wrote:
$150 still isn't very much, especially stretched out over 6 months.

M.

And if you're not making a ton of money, so your leisure dollars per month is $30?

That's over 80% of your money just on rules right there.

If they release a free PDF _After_ CA has come out, I'll be pretty pissy...
If they release one after pre-orders have gone live, I'm still going to be pissy.

Buy this book! It has essential points changes in! [And other stuff you didn't want much.]

Lol. Jokes on you! The point changes are free. Thanks for the money, chump!

If they were going to release the points for free, telling us in advance would have been the only fair move.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Infantryman wrote:
$150 still isn't very much, especially stretched out over 6 months.

M.

And if you're not making a ton of money, so your leisure dollars per month is $30?

That's over 80% of your money just on rules right there.

I'm not one for dictating people how to live their lives, but if your leisure dollars are $30/mo, you have bigger issues ongoing.

M.

 Infantryman wrote:
$150 still isn't very much, especially stretched out over 6 months.

Oh pull the other one.

This isn't about absolute cost, it's about relative cost. Show me another game which would require this much spend for just the rules with no components or game aids?

 Infantryman wrote:
$150 still isn't very much, especially stretched out over 6 months.

M.

(I still think point corrections should be free, because they're errata. Also removes one possible excuse for a player not having updated their list.)

Not everyone is as fortunate as you with disposable income.

- In before "well this is an expensive hobby so too bad"

The points updates should probably be freely available, since it's a replacement to an item people have already purchased. But from what we've seen that's a tiny fraction of what's in the book. The other stuff like new scenarios, campaign rules, custom vehicle rules, etc should earn them money if it's good.

I think what people are mad about is the bundling, the feeling like if they want the balance pass they are going to have to buy the other stuff regardless of interest or quality. The truth is the people who buy the book will at least be somewhat interested in the other content, because if you are not interested in the content you'll just get the point updates from battlescribe.

 Grimgold wrote:

I think what people are mad about is the bundling, the feeling like if they want the balance pass they are going to have to buy the other stuff regardless of interest or quality. The truth is the people who buy the book will at least be somewhat interested in the other content, because if you are not interested in the content you'll just get the point updates from battlescribe.

Most have jumped the gun and assumed that the point values won't be provided by Errata/FAQ. They might not, and if they don't and all someone is interested in is the point changes only, you can already view them online so print it out and stick it into your codex and be happy.

EDIT: Not directly pointed at you, but they in general

 Melissia wrote:

 Overread wrote:
So after years of saying we'd pay for better rules and balance support from GW we'll turn around and say that, actually, we'd rather not?

Where are the better rules for Sisters, exactly? Two of our better units got nerfed rather nastily, and it's not like we're top tier right now-- you don't see us winning tournaments. And Orks barely even got touched, though what did get buffed badly needed it-- you're not gonna see a huge wave of Ork wins. Codex Marines got an enormous, unprecedented buff, but a lot of other armies barely even got touched, or worse got nerfed-- and several armies didn't get touched at all.

So you want me to pay for a book that does nothing but make my army worse when it's not even all that powerful to begin with, or that doesn't even include my army in it... while the book buffs already strong armies to hell and back?

I mean damn, don't get me wrong. The primaris changes were for the most part needed. But lots of other units and even whole armies were flat out overlooked. If, as it seems, all they really wanted to do is make primaris cheaper, they could have done that with a FAQ and not charged for it.

Wait, where's this "enormous, unprecedented buff" for codex marines? Guilliman, Razorbacks, and Stormravens all got nerfed. You can argue that they didn't get nerfed enough (I'd probably say that about Guilliman personally) but they definitely didn't get buffed.

They throw all sorts of cool stuff into these books and people cut out the 6 pages of points changes and never look at it again, SMH.

If you don't want the rest of the book, save the pages that leaked, or wait for battlescribe to update.

It's cool, I tend to think they won't add it as an errata/FAQ, no reason to waste book pages on it if you are going to put it online for free. It's also the "Killer App" that the old chapter approved were missing, the lack of which caused them to sell so poorly.

It will be a 30 buck book once a year that acts as a balance pass. To Be clear I'm willing to spend 30 bucks a year for GW to take an active hand at balance even if I don't get a physical book out of the process. The fact I will get a book and it will have some nonsense rules for narrative I might use for a chuckle while playing beerhammer is just icing on the cake.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
If they release a free PDF _After_ CA has come out, I'll be pretty pissy...
If they release one after pre-orders have gone live, I'm still going to be pissy.

Buy this book! It has essential points changes in! [And other stuff you didn't want much.]

Lol. Jokes on you! The point changes are free. Thanks for the money, chump!

If they were going to release the points for free, telling us in advance would have been the only fair move.

Did GW release them for free? It's my understanding that people got copies early and leaked them, presumably without GW permission.

I don't personally mind paying for balance changes in order for GW to keep it up.

It's not about how much money you have. It's about not being a allowing yourself to get gouged for a substandard product. It leaves a poor taste in the mouth of the customer and dissuades new people from the hobby. If they were smart, they would be thinking about making sure that the barrier of entry stays low.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Overread wrote:
So after years of saying we'd pay for better rules and balance support from GW we'll turn around and say that, actually, we'd rather not?

Where are the better rules for Sisters, exactly? Two of our better units got nerfed rather nastily, and it's not like we're top tier right now-- you don't see us winning tournaments. And Orks barely even got touched, though what did get buffed badly needed it-- you're not gonna see a huge wave of Ork wins. Codex Marines got an enormous, unprecedented buff, but a lot of other armies barely even got touched, or worse got nerfed-- and several armies didn't get touched at all.

So you want me to pay for a book that does nothing but make my army worse when it's not even all that powerful to begin with, or that doesn't even include my army in it... while the book buffs already strong armies to hell and back?

I mean damn, don't get me wrong. The primaris changes were for the most part needed. But lots of other units and even whole armies were flat out overlooked. If, as it seems, all they really wanted to do is make primaris cheaper, they could have done that with a FAQ and not charged for it.

Wait, where's this "enormous, unprecedented buff" for codex marines? Guilliman, Razorbacks, and Stormravens all got nerfed. You can argue that they didn't get nerfed enough (I'd probably say that about Guilliman personally) but they definitely didn't get buffed.

Melissia is doing something called 'creative interpretation of the truth' here.

The 2 units she's talking about are Celestine, who stayed exactly the same points but had her cost shifted from her gemini to herself, which is 10000000000% fair and punishes only NON SoB armies that take her.

The other was a repressor, which was easily the best transport in the game (even including the Stormraven) and was somehow only 90 pts despite being better than tranports 2x more expensive by an enormous margin. It's now 110, making it 7pts more expensive than our second cheapest immolator loadout, which is still a bit generous tbh.

On the awesome side, exorcists were made a cheap, solid backline piece to help dealing with heavy infantey (sisters weak point this edition) We saw drops in pistol weapons and melee weapons that heavily improve seraphim/canonesses, gained a relic that makes canonesses pretty dam dangerous for 58pts and a strategem that makes killing any of our characters stupidly dangerous. We came out the best of any of the armies that were really, really good before.(If you're not winning with sisters it's on you, not the army.)

Flipside, the primaris buffs.

EVERY UNIT THAT SAW BUFFS IN PRIMARIS MARINE ARMIES WAS UNUSABELY TERRIBLE BEFORE AND AREN'T ALL THAT GREAT NOW.

Pure primaris armies make 8thed Grey Knights look like 7th edition Craftworld Eldar. They're TERRIBLE. The hellblaster is easily the best primaris units and they're STILL worse than standard devastators/sternguard. Primaris marines were quietly the worst army in the game and all this change does is put them on par with Necrons/0Commander Tau/Grey Knights. That's IT.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Infantryman wrote:
$150 still isn't very much, especially stretched out over 6 months.

Oh pull the other one.

This isn't about absolute cost, it's about relative cost. Show me another game which would require this much spend for just the rules with no components or game aids?

GW: it was our intent to provide players with a sense of acomplishment and pride for buying 3 books......

No, because I am buying it for the campaign rules, cities of death missions, planetstrike missions, apocalypse special rules, fortification dataslates, 6 new eternal war missions, 6 new maelstrom missions, AND the point changes.

Only thing I'm not worried about at all is the landraider design rules, and that is going to be fun for three of my buddies anyway. Totally worth $35 bucks, in my opinion.

 Overread wrote:
GW isn't a new start-up company which can factor in free rules releases into their pricing structure and which likely has the rules writer also being the company manager or any one of a half dozen other roles in the company. GW is a larger company with larger overheads who are making a larger investment in staff time to refine rules after the community has requested/screamed for them.

Big companies have started to favour free rules method as it's been steadily increasing sales.

Heck at this stage we don't even know if GW is even going to release a 9th edition. They could easily just make 8th edition THE edition and shift into a continual rolling update of balance adjustments; collating it all together every few years with updated codex releases (which also come with fluff and such too).

Yea right. GW has said this "THE edition and no more eva!" pretty much every edition. You can bet your house and first born child that there will be 9th

edit: Disclaimer: By 9th I mean next edition. Juuuust in case GW does apple/power armour and next edition is actually called 10th

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
You know this thing only costs 20 quid?

You know, that was my response to people when they were grumbling about indexes as new codexes were rolled out much quicker than many expected.

But, were I to buy CA, which is looking pretty shakey right now, we're talking

New Rules £35
New Index £15
New FW Index £15
New Codex £25
CA £20.

So that's potentially £110 on rules in less than 6 months for one army. Daemons are due shortly and if I want to be able to play them, then that's another £25.

"Just get it from Reddit" isn't really a valid counter, as "just take it" can be applied to pretty much anything, and I always buy at discount, but that only saves so much.

I agree. Imagine an army that still doesn't have a codex yet like Orks or, even a better example, SW. A player must buy the index and CA which will be completely invalidated with the future release of the codex. But CA gave them some buffs, even significant ones to the wolves, so those players are tempted to buy the book. Of course you may find the leaked pages on the internet but it's illegal to post them on a site and even if everyone does that I'm not ok in suggesting: find those pages on internet and don't buy the book. It's essentially like saying: don't buy the movie's dvd, download the torrent from a site.

 Blackie wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
You know this thing only costs 20 quid?

You know, that was my response to people when they were grumbling about indexes as new codexes were rolled out much quicker than many expected.

But, were I to buy CA, which is looking pretty shakey right now, we're talking

New Rules £35
New Index £15
New FW Index £15
New Codex £25
CA £20.

So that's potentially £110 on rules in less than 6 months for one army. Daemons are due shortly and if I want to be able to play them, then that's another £25.

"Just get it from Reddit" isn't really a valid counter, as "just take it" can be applied to pretty much anything, and I always buy at discount, but that only saves so much.

I agree. Imagine an army that still doesn't have a codex yet like Orks or, even a better example, SW. A player must buy the index and CA which will be completely invalidated with the future release of the codex. But CA gave them some buffs, even significant ones to the wolves, so those players are tempted to buy the book. Of course you may find the leaked pages on the internet but it's illegal to post them on a site and even if everyone does that I'm not ok in suggesting: find those pages on internet and don't buy the book. It's essentially like saying: don't buy the movie's dvd, download the torrent from a site.

Piracy doesn't decrease sales actually, there is a research

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/22/eu-suppressed-study-piracy-no-sales-impact/


People that have money and want to support developers buy anyway, those that can't - don't, regardless of the option to torrent

We are all aware that piracy is illegal and not condoned by GW in any way, right? "You can just pirate it" does not help at all.
I'm getting quite put off by this "buy another book, buy another book"; I'm being asked to spend money to use a product I've already paid for.

Overread wrote:So after years of saying we'd pay for better rules and balance support from GW we'll turn around and say that, actually, we'd rather not?
GW isn't a new start-up company which can factor in free rules releases into their pricing structure and which likely has the rules writer also being the company manager or any one of a half dozen other roles in the company. GW is a larger company with larger overheads who are making a larger investment in staff time to refine rules after the community has requested/screamed for them.

As a "not a start-up" I expect better rules than smaller companies, but the big company has dedicated staff doing a worse job apparently.

Melissia wrote:

 Overread wrote:
So after years of saying we'd pay for better rules and balance support from GW we'll turn around and say that, actually, we'd rather not?

Where are the better rules for Sisters, exactly? Two of our better units got nerfed rather nastily, and it's not like we're top tier right now-- you don't see us winning tournaments. And Orks barely even got touched, though what did get buffed badly needed it-- you're not gonna see a huge wave of Ork wins. Codex Marines got an enormous, unprecedented buff, but a lot of other armies barely even got touched, or worse got nerfed-- and several armies didn't get touched at all.

Overread wrote:Well stands to reason that armies without full new codex are not going to be fully up to speed as yet; that's a waiting game sadly as its always been - the only difference is that this time around you likely only have to wait a year before its finished rather than waiting for IF your army got a new codex.

This kind of thinking is awful and entirely justified with GW. Armies are worse than those that have gotten their thing in the next round of rules, so one has to keep buying whatever GW throws out.
"Here's a book while we get your next book sorted (hope you didn't expect to use it much) and now here's a book for those in the back of the line!" Don't stop paying us to wait if you want to have your army up to par!

Azreal13 wrote:

 Infantryman wrote:
$150 still isn't very much, especially stretched out over 6 months.

Oh pull the other one.
This isn't about absolute cost, it's about relative cost. Show me another game which would require this much spend for just the rules with no components or game aids?

Some of us don't have that privilege or exchange rate. $150 is enough to buy all I need for Malifaux or Infinity. Nice rulebooks too, but you can download it if you don't want the hard copy

Annual supplement?
Malifaux cards get an errata (free to download) and Infinity Army (the official army builder website that links to the Corus Belli's website, forum and International Tournament System; so you can just upload your list to events) gets updated when things get revised. Also both of those companies bring out a new (also free to download) tournament pack for each year, with rules tweaks and a set of scenarios.
While GW can't even balance their fething games to respectable degree.

 Dovis wrote:

People that have money and want to support developers buy anyway, those that can't - don't, regardless of the option to torrent

A research isn't the absolute truth though and it can't be applied to all fields.

The majority of people that buy something don't do that to support developers but because they enjoy what they're buying. I cannot speak for the entire world but here in Italy movies DVD/Blurays don't sell anymore (in fact stores like Blockbuster closed pretty much in the entire country) but cinemas have never been so crowded, even if the standard quality of movies is certainly worse than the previous decades. That's because you can replace a dvd/bluray with a dowloaded file but you can't replace the cinema atmosphere for free. For the same reason you can download GW rules/book but you can't have the miniatures for free.

Since CA does only have a few pages of rules/points changes and many players bought it only because of them, IMHO it should have a different cost, like 50% cheaper. Or maybe it shouldn't have any rules and points changes, those ones should be released for free like regular FAQs.

Basically, there's nothing wrong with charging for the actual content. The problem is charging for the point updates, which that section (and ONLY that section) should be made available for free. The rest of the book can require you to buy the book; that's fine. But unlike GH2017, which had points for everything including adjusted points, this is ONLY adjusted points, you need this book AND your codex to get all the points. It's literally an errata/FAQ behind a paywall because GW can get away with doing it.

Wayniac wrote:
Basically, there's nothing wrong with charging for the actual content. The problem is charging for the point updates, which that section (and ONLY that section) should be made available for free. The rest of the book can require you to buy the book; that's fine. But unlike GH2017, which had points for everything including adjusted points, this is ONLY adjusted points, you need this book AND your codex to get all the points. It's literally an errata/FAQ behind a paywall because GW can get away with doing it.

This is very well said. I agree.

 Overread wrote:
So after years of saying we'd pay for better rules and balance support from GW we'll turn around and say that, actually, we'd rather not?


GW isn't a new start-up company which can factor in free rules releases into their pricing structure and which likely has the rules writer also being the company manager or any one of a half dozen other roles in the company. GW is a larger company with larger overheads who are making a larger investment in staff time to refine rules after the community has requested/screamed for them.

Also we already know that after this big hump that is the initial release of 8th edition they'll shift toward a 6 month review pattern.

Heck at this stage we don't even know if GW is even going to release a 9th edition. They could easily just make 8th edition THE edition and shift into a continual rolling update of balance adjustments; collating it all together every few years with updated codex releases (which also come with fluff and such too).

We do pay for working rules and rule patches, every time we buy a $600 army. No other game company charges for rule fixes.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Wait, where's this "enormous, unprecedented buff" for codex marines? Guilliman, Razorbacks, and Stormravens all got nerfed.

I'm aware of this, yes. But are you aware that nearly every other unit in the book got buffed? That's on top of buffs they ALREADY received going from index to codex. So unless you're one of those scrubs who think that those three units are the only good units in the book, my statement stands.

 Melissia wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Wait, where's this "enormous, unprecedented buff" for codex marines? Guilliman, Razorbacks, and Stormravens all got nerfed.

I'm aware of this, yes. But are you aware that nearly every other unit in the book got buffed? That's on top of buffs they ALREADY received going from index to codex. So unless you're one of those scrubs who think that those three units are the only good units in the book, my statement stands.

What other amazeballs units do SM have? Girlyman, stormravens and asscanbacks were about it. Primaris? Garbage. Tacticals? Still useless. ASM? Still bad. Devs? Better than they have been, but not award winning, and still a bunch of T4/3+ models which aren't exactly hard to kill, even in cover.

While SM aren't bottom tier like Necrons/tau, they're not top tier without those three units you mentioned.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
You know this thing only costs 20 quid?

You know, that was my response to people when they were grumbling about indexes as new codexes were rolled out much quicker than many expected.

But, were I to buy CA, which is looking pretty shakey right now, we're talking

New Rules £35
New Index £15
New FW Index £15
New Codex £25
CA £20.

So that's potentially £110 on rules in less than 6 months for one army. Daemons are due shortly and if I want to be able to play them, then that's another £25.

"Just get it from Reddit" isn't really a valid counter, as "just take it" can be applied to pretty much anything, and I always buy at discount, but that only saves so much.

Do you really need all of that? From what I remember 8th was being hyped up as way cheaper ruleswise.

pm713 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
You know this thing only costs 20 quid?

You know, that was my response to people when they were grumbling about indexes as new codexes were rolled out much quicker than many expected.

But, were I to buy CA, which is looking pretty shakey right now, we're talking

New Rules £35
New Index £15
New FW Index £15
New Codex £25
CA £20.

So that's potentially £110 on rules in less than 6 months for one army. Daemons are due shortly and if I want to be able to play them, then that's another £25.

"Just get it from Reddit" isn't really a valid counter, as "just take it" can be applied to pretty much anything, and I always buy at discount, but that only saves so much.

Do you really need all of that? From what I remember 8th was being hyped up as way cheaper ruleswise.

Yes, you do. You definitely need the BRB, if you wanted to play immediately and/or have any old units, you need the Index, if you have any Forgeworld models, you need the Forgeworld Index, if your Codex came out before CA, you need both the Dex and CA.

Lol I'm a space marine player and as soon as they said indexes were temporary I said screw that and never bothered.
Even as cheap as they were it wasn't worth buying, cause after all space marines are the favourite. All GW did was not tell people that the space marine codex was coming out a month later so they could make money twice for the same rules.

And that's a thing I really hate about non space marine players "blah blah you guys get allll the new models!"
Do you think I wanted primaris? Do you think I like new units coming out at a steady pace that makes you have to look at everything again?
Things not even always that good, but still gets more attention than the stuff that needs to be changed