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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Playtesters claim they told GW multiple things were broken.

Trust you to call the play-testers liars in order to protect poor defenceless GW.

There must be an odd definition of lie down under, cos what he said was merely a statement of fact. Some people claimed to have said something, for which we have no clear evidence either way; that is not even remotely the same as calling them liars.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

How can you quote yourself bringing in revenue and one line later deny it? Daedalus writing about revenue prior to you is a lie as well.
You can't be taken seriously in discussions like that. Your word is worth nothing.

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

How can you quote yourself bringing in revenue and one line later deny it? Daedalus writing about revenue prior to you is a lie as well.
You can't be taken seriously in discussions like that. Your word is worth nothing.

The value of a publicly traded company is not its revenue, it is the price of a share multiplied by how many shares there are.

GW has a market value of ~$3.9B

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting their revenue to make your case sound better?

No. Nobody mentioned revenue except yourself. Are you constantly and deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote to make your case sound better? Talk about irony.

In fact, they're close to a 4 billion dollar company now. So apparently I was lowballing their value by a factor of almost four.

How can you quote yourself bringing in revenue and one line later deny it? Daedalus writing about revenue prior to you is a lie as well.
You can't be taken seriously in discussions like that. Your word is worth nothing.

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

People, let's not get into the semantics of whether GW is or isn't a billion-dollar company, what their value or revenue is or isn't... it's not really relevant to yukishiro's point. A reminder:

But the bottom line is that it's GW that relies on unpaid, volunteer playtesters, and that says everything about the lack of seriousness with which GW approaches game balance. If they were serious about it, they'd pay people. They're a billion dollar company, they can certainly afford to do it.

Knowing what I know of GW, they certainly can afford playtesters. Moreover, though, I'm reasonably sure as hinted at through community articles and so on, that they do in fact have internal playtesters as well as volunteers. To me, that's the best approach possible - test things yourself, when you think you're in a good spot, do some limited public testing to dip a toe in the water, and make further changes as necessary.

The real question here, is how many internal testers there are, and how competent they are. That's not something I have an answer to, and I doubt anyone else here that doesn't work in Nottingham HQ knows either.

I have also heard through the grapevine that playtesters commonly do identify problems we see, and are not listened to. Just one bit of second hand info though, nothing I would assign importance to on its own.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Nope. If you are complaining about death stars, look no further than 8th edition bubbles.

lmao. The absolute worst, cheesiest and most brokenly powerful lists in all of 8th edition were absolutely tame compared to your generic screamerstar.

Imagine trying to convince yourself and others that a 12'' 17% damage increase bubble is comparable to flying around the map with a re-rollable 2+ invulnerable save, in an edition where mortal wounds did not exist.

I talked with someone who is very involved in both playtesting and organizing some of the larger 40k tournaments. He was really annoyed by GW and had a very long rant about this subject.

Its not only that the playtesters are doing all of this testing without getting compensated but that quite a lot of them go far and beyond what you would expect unpaid testers would do. They dont just give yes or no feedback if a rule/unit works but they also try to give examples of how to rewrite the rules with minimum changes to make them work like the design team likely intended to. They write complete FAQs that would fix armies like IH if GW just would publish it in full. Instead they see GW take one fix they proposed and then change something that really didnt need change and the playtesters/FAQ writers just get frustrated by the lack of effort from GW. There are untold manhours spent to improve the game by people who got asked to do just that that in the end just gets ignored.

The largest culprit though is those who buy the gakky rules according to him. As long as people do that GW dont feel forced to improve and all this fantastic work from the people involved will just get ignored. People pay insane prices for really bad products and enforcers this bad behaviour by GW. As long as they rake in record profits from their gakky rules nothing will change. If people stopped buying codecies and only used BS, shared pdfs, russian sites etc while continuing to buy models and play at events GW could see that the quality of writing mattered. But until then we should be happy if anything improves.

yukishiro1 wrote:

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

You two were clearly both talking about how much money GW has. Or do you want to insist on semantics now when it suits you, compared to the discussion about stat inflation where they did not matter that much?

So someone, who puts in huge hours unpaid 'working' for them, is complaining about people encouraging GW behaviour. Maybe he should look in a mirror first?

Maybe if the playtesters didn't do things unpaid and did not provide 'preview' marketing etc then maybe GW would not act like that?

Or more likely, playtesters, like customers, are invested in their hobby and want to put the time in or spend money on what they enjoy. Clearly not everyone views the rules to the same extreme as this playtester. Blaming the other group for not having his own view on value or perception of the product is sad. As with pretty much all (non essential) hobby activities there will be a huge range of views on value and quality and the reasons people buy, and many will not agree with him.

Putting in effort to recommend something only to see it not acted upon is normal in a company, it happens all the time to me. I even get paid a lot for that, go figure.

No, I would expect most unpaid playtesters to do exactly what he says (put in hours making suggestions), there is nothing unexpected in that at all. The opposite is true. The sort of people who will get into playtesting mini wargames are in that position because they love it; it's a very niche area. If he wasn't doing that I'd be asking why he is doing it at all.

I've done (unpaid) playtesting before for miniature wargaming, and the first thing I learnt was that each playtester has very different views; and each is recommending a range of things which are collectively mutually exclusive. E.g. One person will be arguing for more detail in one area, another for more abstraction, or one person will prefer certain mechanics that another doesn't. There will be debates over designer intent etc (playtesters guessing intent is as funny as customers doing it). One person's 'improvement' is another persons 'made worse'. Having your views rejected is not the same as ignored (though that is a possibility as well).


Is GW expensive, yes. But any other replacement hobby I can think of would be as well. I'm sure my uncle would be flabbergasted at what I spent on toy soldiers, just as my mind boggles at the thousands of pounds he spends on camera lenses. So, no GW isn't insane pricing IMHO; it's 'hobby pricing'. Are the rules really bad, no not really IMHO. There are some minor issues, but they've never been a problem with anyone I play with; I've seen bigger arguments in games like DBA.

I don't really get why each time GW as a hobby is mentioned, people jump to comparing it to collecting cameras, cars or guns. All of those here are done by milioners only, or their children.
GW is a table top and should be compared to other table top games, and comparing to games like infinity or warmachine, it does cost a lot more . It costs more, even if you settle on downloading rules and buying only recasts and second hand models.

And as minor issues go. I am not sure if waiting years for a rules fix should be considered a minor one. If, to use those rich people examples, someone from a yach making company told a yacht owner that they will fix the problem of the yacht sinking as soon as it is in water, after 2 years, they would have their company torched under 48h.

 Super Ready wrote:

The real question here, is how many internal testers there are, and how competent they are. That's not something I have an answer to, and I doubt anyone else here that doesn't work in Nottingham HQ knows either.

14, it's the janitorial staff's job on sundays. Fits with GWs estimate of how many playtests they get in and the quality of balance delivered.

Playtesters jobs is to provide feedback based on parameters given by GW for the test. That's it. Ultimately, GW decides if they are going to incorporate their feedback into a rule or not. Simple. Playtesters from different regions may all have different results and input. I'm not sure if the various GW playtesters have a forum for open discussion regarding their results.

Karol wrote:
I don't really get why each time GW as a hobby is mentioned, people jump to comparing it to collecting cameras, cars or guns. All of those here are done by milioners only, or their children.

Ludicrously false statement. They are hobbies that all sorts do, just like wargaming.

My father spent nearly his time fixing up old classic cars, he was just a working class person who had a hobby he spent his spare money on. I know several people into photography from a wide range of backgrounds. I spend at least as much as most of them on my hobbies. I can spend a couple of hundred a month on smaller stuff whilst they save a few months and spend a thousand on more expensive stuff, but we probably all spend not hugely differently over time. All of us work hard to earn money, none of us are millionaires.

GW is a hobby that is all. Like all leisure activities they tend to be expensive because they are what people 'want' to spend money on vs what they 'have' to spend money on. Most people gain no pleasure from what they have to spend on so they often look to economise, but when it comes to our hobby we are much more invested and prepared to spend our spare money. Some will have less spare money than others, so may spend less or look for 2nd hand stuff, others will be more comfortable and spend more on what they enjoy.

And as minor issues go. I am not sure if waiting years for a rules fix should be considered a minor one. If, to use those rich people examples, someone from a yach making company told a yacht owner that they will fix the problem of the yacht sinking as soon as it is in water, after 2 years, they would have their company torched under 48h.

Is a yacht sinking a minor issue? Is a rule wording a minor issue? You may see it different but if the people I play with have no issue over a rule then it is at best a minor issue hence it doesn't bother me how long to fix. The rule wording issue doesn't in anyway make the game unplayable.

Apparently my group only reads the 10+ wounds requirement as applying to monsters, not vehicles.

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

You two were clearly both talking about how much money GW has. Or do you want to insist on semantics now when it suits you, compared to the discussion about stat inflation where they did not matter that much?

Of course we were talking about how much money GW has. Daedalus then came running in to attack me for allegedly overstating GW's "revenue," because he, like you, didn't understand how the value of a company is measured.

It absolutely doesn't matter to the overall point whether we measure GW's resources by value or revenue - they have tons of both, and plenty of money to employ real playtesters no matter how you assess their resources. But the difference between value and revenue absolutely does matter to Daedalus' bizarre personal attack on me, because that difference is what makes the attack so ridiculous and wrong, in addition to being entirely irrelevant. I wasn't the one misrepresenting things; he was. I wasn't the one "insisting on semantics," he was. You can't accuse someone of misrepresenting something and then turn around and say "oh well it doesn't matter, stop getting semantic!"

Don't personally attack people, but especially don't do it and be totally wrong on the basis for your attack.

I don't know what you expect. GW has been known for providing whatever pseudo-rules you may need to go pew-pew with your friends using fantasy/s-f miniatures. They are not really that far from having shooting resolved with rubber band cannons. That's their style.

Looking for concise, unambiguous, well-written rules, play some other game. Try Warmachine or some modern board games, espiecally euro-style ones.

Btw, was the critique of a more precisely written GW rule on the same forums ? When it was accused of being incomprehensible lawyering jargon ?

yukishiro1 wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

Value isn't revenue. Please educate yourself before rushing to personally attack other people. Let me help: google one of the myriad stories about Apple/Amazon/Microsoft becoming a "trillion dollar company." Hint: that doesn't mean they have a trillion dollars of revenue a year.

You two were clearly both talking about how much money GW has. Or do you want to insist on semantics now when it suits you, compared to the discussion about stat inflation where they did not matter that much?

Of course we were talking about how much money GW has. Daedalus then came running in to attack me for allegedly overstating GW's "revenue," because he, like you, didn't understand how the value of a company is measured.

It absolutely doesn't matter to the overall point whether we measure GW's resources by value or revenue - they have tons of both, and plenty of money to employ real playtesters no matter how you assess their resources. But the difference between value and revenue absolutely does matter to Daedalus' bizarre personal attack on me, because that difference is what makes the attack so ridiculous and wrong, in addition to being entirely irrelevant. I wasn't the one misrepresenting things; he was. I wasn't the one "insisting on semantics," he was. You can't accuse someone of misrepresenting something and then turn around and say "oh well it doesn't matter, stop getting semantic!"

Don't personally attack people, but especially don't do it and be totally wrong on the basis for your attack.

And you dont understand how a market valuation has literally nothing to do with how a business funds operations.

Just because Tesla is worth a ton doesn't mean they're cash positive.

And while GW is, throwing money at a problem often is not the best way to solve it. Or do you think theyd hire more than two people? Wow they could play two games a day with two armies. Was it Crusade? Or Incursion? If a book comes each month they wouldn't even have time to play the updated army more than a couple times versus each other army. And then you'll just accuse them of bias anyway.

It's stupid and a waste of time. Open community testing - then you'll actually make a dent, but with the judgement I see here...I'm not so sure sometimes.

GW is worth a ton, and is also hugely cash positive, as a quick glance at their financials would show. There is no possible way to argue they can't afford to pay playtesters for their labor. There is just no argument that GW needs to rely on unpaid volunteers to balance its game rules, it's a company with massive profit margins, huge revenues and immense value relative to its industry. None of these factors are out of step with any of the others.

For that matter, paying people to test 40k doesn't even involve putting them on the full-time payroll, it just involves compensating them for their time instead of paying them in "perks" like inside access instead. The perk model encourages playtesters not to rock the boat and not to say anything GW doesn't like because GW is doing them a favor by letting them playtest their product. When you start paying people for the service they provide, you send the message that you actually value what they are doing and expect them to provide you value in return. You don't get professional results from unpaid volunteers, and it's unfair to expect it.

But I accept your apology and admission I wasn't misrepresenting anything.

 mokoshkana wrote:
Apparently my group only reads the 10+ wounds requirement as applying to monsters, not vehicles.

If they're reading the WHC post, the important thing is that the 10+ Wound aspect only applies to Character VEHICLE or MONSTER models, as the second bullet covers non-character models.

There's an argument that the summary is possibly clearer here, given it says:

...a friendly unit that contains 1 MONSTER, 1 VEHICLE or 3+ other models (excluding CHARACTER models with 9 or less wounds)...

The Designer's Commentary in the same post makes it really clear what they're trying to prevent, so if your group is trying to argue counter to that, they may need a refresher on at least one of the 3 R's...

What units are they trying to claim are oddly affected by this rule, anyway?

yukishiro1 wrote:


When you start paying people for the service they provide, you send the message that you actually value what they are doing and expect them to provide you value in return. You don't get professional results from unpaid volunteers, and it's unfair to expect it.

Excellent. I look forward to you and others ceasing claims that GW manipulates rules to garner sales. They are paid after all.

You can't reverse a logical proposition. That's a really basic error. All cats are mammals, but that doesn't mean all mammals are cats. It's unfair to expect professional results from unpaid volunteers; that doesn't mean that results from professionals are always uniformly excellent.

Moreover, even if you could reverse logical propositions, the people who think GW deliberately overpower things (if you were keeping track instead of making assumptions, you'd see I'm more in the "they don't know what they're doing" and the "they're evil geniuses" camp) presumably would say that that *is* GW acting in its professional capacity to boost sales, so there'd be nothing contradictory about it anyway.

Straw men are marginally better than personal attacks I guess, but they're still a waste of everyone's time.

Either you believe GW is competent and that playtesters would prevent sales opportunities and afford good balance...

Or you believe they're incompetent and a playtesting group would likewise bring nothing to the table.

Surely the world isnt black and white and the reality is they're just doing their best, but your positions lack any sort of nuance.

You cant have you cake and eat it, too.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Either you believe GW is competent and that playtesters would prevent sales opportunities and afford good balance...

Or you believe they're incompetent and a playtesting group would likewise bring nothing to the table.

No. That's a false dilemma, another really basic logical error. It's perfectly compatible to believe that GW generally has trouble with creating competent rules, and that them investing in a paid playtesting staff could help improve their competence. In fact it would be a really weird worldview under which those two believes were incompatible. You'd have to assume that GW's incompetence is so great that no amount of help could ever improve it. Which I certainly don't believe, as again you'd know if you had bothered to read some of my posts instead of making inaccurate assumptions about what I think in order to make it easier to attack me.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Surely the world isnt black and white and the reality is they're just doing their best, but your positions lack any sort of nuance.

You cant have you cake and eat it, too.

And that's another straw man. You're projecting something on to me in order to shoot it down, and moreover something I've already specifically refuted. Please stop wasting everybody's time by trying to make the discussion about me instead of about the topic.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Either you believe GW is competent and that playtesters would prevent sales opportunities and afford good balance...

Or you believe they're incompetent and a playtesting group would likewise bring nothing to the table.

Surely the world isnt black and white and the reality is they're just doing their best, but your positions lack any sort of nuance.

You cant have you cake and eat it, too.

Those are not the only logical possibilities. It is possible that GW tries to make new things powerful to drive sales but their rules department is incompetent, hence the reality that sometimes things are OP and other times they are not. This incompetent rules team can also ignore feedback from playtesters or listen to that feedback but then fail to implement solutions to the problems raised.

yukishiro1 wrote:

No. That's a false dilemma, another really basic logical error. It's perfectly compatible to believe that GW generally has trouble with creating competent rules, and that them investing in a paid playtesting staff could help improve their competence. In fact it would be a really weird worldview under which those two believes were incompatible. You'd have to assume that GW's incompetence is so great that no amount of help could ever improve it. Which I certainly don't believe, as again you'd know if you had bothered to read some of my posts instead of making inaccurate assumptions about what I think in order to make it easier to attack me.

I think in-house playtesting would never play enough games to ever make a significant difference - and people would still attack them regardless of the outcome. What do you think would happen if they had such a team and several flaws came to light? Based on your reaction to W2 First Born it seems like you're not willing to lend the benefit of doubt. People jumped down their throat for it and before anyone has looked at any official document its "GW is stupid" / "GW is doing the worst possible thing for balance"/ "I'm not playing anymore" / "where's my handout?".

A handful of people who communicate well would do more for the game. And to me, it looks like they gained something to that effect, because they've done a lot better than in the past. That doesn't mean they can't do more, but I'm pretty much over the constant gak posting.

Reading this nonsense has brought me to a basic conclusion.
Too many of you think that GW is in the business of making you happy. When in fact they are in the business of making money.
They care not for tears of sorrow or joy.

 DeffDred wrote:
Reading this nonsense has brought me to a basic conclusion.
Too many of you think that GW is in the business of making you happy. When in fact they are in the business of making money.
They care not for tears of sorrow or joy.

They do want to keep me (and the broad playerbase) happy so I keep buying their stuff. Which they've broadly managed.

I used to think a dedicated team of playtesters would help, but realistically 20 odd people wouldn't get many games done, and they would have varied views on what is and what isn't balanced (never mind more axiomatic questions of "how should the game play").

Much like every forum discussing 40k ever.

If they had 20 full-time playtesters (which you'll note I specifically said was not the only option) on the payroll whose feedback they actually paid attention to that would make a TREMENDOUS difference to the quality of the rules they came up with. Would it cure all balance problems? No, obviously not. But the idea that it wouldn't make any difference itself relies on the assumption that GW is so bad at doing rules that no amount of help would improve their product, and I just don't think that true. GW does make good rules now and then, so they clearly have it in them. The SoB codex is a great example of this. That book is really well done: reasonably balanced, interesting, unique, the rules reflect the fluff, they didn't need a bajillion FAQs to iron out terribly drafted rules, there were no patently broken interactions, etc etc.

The problem is just that they don't make the good rules often enough. A team of paid playtesters who were integrated into the development process could go a long way towards boosting the ratio of SoB codexes to IH supplements. In fact I feel confident saying that GW would never release another IH supplement again with a team of paid playtesters, unless they deliberately and knowingly set out to do so. It would therefore be a good test for the theory people have that GW deliberately releases broken stuff to sell models.

20 playtesters playing a game a day is 300 games a month. That's a very significant sample size to draw conclusions from, especially if you had a professional playtesting approach where all the data from every match is getting fed into a database, instead of just asking random people to play a few games and say what they thought.