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 grouchoben wrote:
Yeah fair enough Hybrid. But GW seem to be going with faction root & branch renovations rather than one or two models. DG, GSC, CSM and now Crons are the factions to have won the non-SM lottery so far. Players of other factions might feel a whole lot better if they knew that early 2021, late 2021, early 2022, etc were the slots for their faction's revamp. It would restore a lot of faith in the company I think from a lot of players who are wavering a little, that's all.

I'm not 100% convinced, I think it's more likely it'd just kill sales of that faction stone dead until the revamp date.

Crispy78 wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
Yeah fair enough Hybrid. But GW seem to be going with faction root & branch renovations rather than one or two models. DG, GSC, CSM and now Crons are the factions to have won the non-SM lottery so far. Players of other factions might feel a whole lot better if they knew that early 2021, late 2021, early 2022, etc were the slots for their faction's revamp. It would restore a lot of faith in the company I think from a lot of players who are wavering a little, that's all.

I'm not 100% convinced, I think it's more likely it'd just kill sales of that faction stone dead until the revamp date.

it would gw force to spread out a bit more to maintain interest, something that isn't inherently bad technically speaking.

Not Online!!! wrote:
That and an editor. Because come on, their new reveal datasheets allready are full with mistakes.

The irony here amuses the hell out of me.

 Dysartes wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That and an editor. Because come on, their new reveal datasheets allready are full with mistakes.

The irony here amuses the hell out of me.

You seem to like making fun of someone that has slight dyslexia and uses a non mother-tongue.
tell me, this is the second time, does it make you feel good or important?

If you think about it, the new GW approach is a significant improvement over the 6th/7th ed Kirby style of only finding out the week before somethign was going to come out (back when they had that awful weekly WD run).

The key to this though, lies in the company culture. Corvus Belli has always been more open and more engaged with the community. They seem to have a better grasp of what their players want, and it seems rare that they would ever, for example "Pull a Jervis" (chastising players for using legal but completely broken rules). They have a better understanding of how all of that works.

GW is a much more closed cutlure, and I've found over the years, that if you have that closed culture mentality, it's probably going to go very wrong if you try to change it up too fast. We know there are massive disconnects between the player base and the rules team, and we also know that a big chunk of the 40k base can be quite toxic. I think it probably works better for GW to keep how they are. It isn't hurting sales at all, and they have a MUCH bigger customer base than someone like Corvus Belli. Maybe in a few more years once they've gotten the hang of interacting with the public, but right now, while they've made great strides, I don't think they're ready and I don't see it going well. Just think about the comments currently when they preview yet another new Primaris thing. I don't see an open conversation going well.

 grouchoben wrote:
Yeah you're right Johnny. I'd prefer them to. Would you? Would we all? What do they benefit from their current stazi-level of information control, is the question, and is it worth the barrels of salt that are currently building up in the community?

Remember when we had no previews, ever and model releases quarterly? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

It's pretty ridiculous to call this stazi-level information control. We get previews frequently and often for stuff pretty far down the pipeline.

You want to stop the salt? Tell people to exercise some self control.

"They're making lots of money, therefore there is literally no avenue or aspect of their business or business practices that can be changed, improved or otherwise upgraded."

You know who else makes lots of money? EA. Activision. Ubisoft. And they're a pack of witches.

You know who else makes lots of money? EA. Activision. Ubisoft. And they're a pack of witches.

In point of fact, they are struggling atm .... EA is actually in trouble with its major shareholders and recently had the Executive bonus clause re-examined and subsequently denied to its executive staff by the board while Ubisoft just completed a stint of studio closures.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"They're making lots of money, therefore there is literally no avenue or aspect of their business or business practices that can be changed, improved or otherwise upgraded."

You know who else makes lots of money? EA. Activision. Ubisoft. And they're a pack of witches.

Is more that people is acknowledging how GW has improved compared with just 5 years ago, and explaining why theres a couple of very good reasons in the eyes of the ones running the gears for not putting out release plans years in advance.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"They're making lots of money, therefore there is literally no avenue or aspect of their business or business practices that can be changed, improved or otherwise upgraded."

You know who else makes lots of money? EA. Activision. Ubisoft. And they're a pack of witches.

"It's easy to confuse what is with what ought to be, especially when what is has worked out in your favour"



Them mountains of SM datasheets that literally outnumber entire factions combined together are not healthy for the game long term. They might make them a lot of cashola short term but it is damaging and frankly demeaning to the long term players who have basically been told they are playing second fiddle for choosing the wrong army.

Tycho wrote:
If you think about it, the new GW approach is a significant improvement over the 6th/7th ed Kirby style of only finding out the week before somethign was going to come out (back when they had that awful weekly WD run).

The key to this though, lies in the company culture. Corvus Belli has always been more open and more engaged with the community. They seem to have a better grasp of what their players want, and it seems rare that they would ever, for example "Pull a Jervis" (chastising players for using legal but completely broken rules). They have a better understanding of how all of that works.

They literally do this every ITT season. They're currently pushing a "15 model cap" specifically because they claim that it isn't the Infinity way to play to have more...despite factions like Ariadna and Haqqislam being built around larger model pools.

And no, they haven't "been more open and more engaged with the community". They flatout lied in the lead-up to Icestorm, claiming that the Corregidor starter set was the "flagship item of a revised range"...and then promptly screwed their scale up within one single box release.
Then there's the whole nonsense about SKU bloat(which is their go-to move for when they just can't be bothered to update something) and their refusal to add extra parts to boxed sets to actually address SKU bloat...or exclusive models.

I could go on, but realistically? Corvus Belli is at the point where GW was in the early 2000s...just without actually being a publicly traded company so we can see their financials or anywhere near the brand recognition or production capabilities.

Think about how non SM players would feel about the game if GW had revealed a road map for the last two years. Yikes.

Okay we get it Kanluwen, you have issues with CB. I don't want to derail the thread by addressing all of your points when they were just a counter-point to GW's business practice.

I'll just say that, for example, a lot of people in the community love the 15 order cap. Let's see how it affects the meta before going all apoplectic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Fluid_Fox wrote:
Think about how non SM players would feel about the game if GW had revealed a road map for the last two years. Yikes.

I think that's partly what I would see as a benefit of more transparency. They'd have to think how they'd present their release schedule a bit more, and that would be very very healthy for that schedule.

Your thread started off with throwing them up as some kind of shining paragon that GW should aspire to. Go ahead and try to refute my points. I've been involved with CB's stuff since 2E and I can tell you that while they might be an 'open' company, they are not player-friendly.

GW doing a roadmap for 40k or AoS isn't going to happen. Not after the nonsense you lot have been spewing after the Necromunda or FAQ roadmaps have been altered. There's too many moving parts when we're talking about things even pre-COVID.

And no, they haven't "been more open and more engaged with the community". They flatout lied in the lead-up to Icestorm, claiming that the Corregidor starter set was the "flagship item of a revised range"...and then promptly screwed their scale up within one single box release.
Then there's the whole nonsense about SKU bloat(which is their go-to move for when they just can't be bothered to update something) and their refusal to add extra parts to boxed sets to actually address SKU bloat...or exclusive models.

I could go on, but realistically? Corvus Belli is at the point where GW was in the early 2000s...just without actually being a publicly traded company so we can see their financials or anywhere near the brand recognition or production capabilities.

That's fair enough I suppose. I haven't followed them very closely for a while, but I remember when they first released Infinity, and some of the early-to-mid years where they really were more engaged. I figured that would have continued. I guess that's not as true of late though?

The other company that comes to mind here is Mongoose Publishing. I was part of their Mobile Infantry demo team and literally bought the first box of the truck when Starship Troopers was delivered. What I loved about MGP ... at first ... was how open they were. Matt Sprange would refularly be on the MGP forums talkign about plans and design philosophy etc. They would also regularly update eveyone on when things were coming etc. They would then do a yearly "State of the Mongoose" report. This was all fine and well when things were mostly good. The problem is, they got in over their heads very quickly. They started whiffing on release dates like you wouldn't believe, and began releasing items (both books and models) that were well below the industry standard at the time. So then the State of the Mongoose report started reading like a list of excuses "well, the dog ate our molds, space aliens abducted the designer, etc etc". Basically a long letter that said "It's not our fault". This went on for a few years before they ended up losing the SST license (as I recall it wasn't that the license was pulled so much as Hienlien's people wanted WAY too much money to renew it due to the rumors of Sony's upcoming SST 3). It looks like they actually stopped doing the year end address in 2018, but even after SST, so many of the letters read like "XYZ went sideways but it's not our fault and we've learned a lesson! In other news, BIG PLANS COMING!" Then, next year, the same thing ...

Too much of this really poisoned me on MGP. I think, had they been less open about the behind the scenes issues, I personally would have been way more open to giving them the benefit of the doubt - they were a small studio trying to do something really big and it got away from them a bit. It happens. But when it constantly became them missing on every promise and then underdelivering while blaming everyone else? Not so much. Had they been more closed and general about future plans, a lot of those issues become much smaller imo.

 grouchoben wrote:
I think that's partly what I would see as a benefit of more transparency. They'd have to think how they'd present their release schedule a bit more, and that would be very very healthy for that schedule.

I'm not so sure. If this forum is any measure of popular sentiment in the community (a rather big assumption), then the Sisters of Battle experiment proves that more transparency is not necessarily a good thing.

GW announces in early 2019 that the are producing a new line of Sisters of Battle for release in 2019 "Emperor Willing". Part of the fanbase is ecstatic, and part starts grumbling that they will never make the deadline.

GW provides regular updates/teasers about the upcoming range. Part of the fanbase enjoys the look inside, and part grumbles about not liking X, Y, and Z.

GW announces the release of a special Battle Box in November 2019. Part of the fanbase says "shut up and take my money" and part starts saying, "you liers, you promised the whole range!".

GW releases the first part of the range in January 2020. Part of the community starts buying, assembling and painting. And part of the community bitches for two months that the complete range isn't releases so they can't build their tournament army yet.

There is no winning for GW. If they are not perfect, so some people they are jerks who hate your hobby. So why invite more pain by providing more information for them to bitch about?

Asking permission from the 'community' on what to release, then having to change and re-allocate resources or costs because some place like Dakka does not approve of what's on the roadmap for the next year?

Yeah that's a bad move.

@ OP - Theres a reason I haven't started a secondary 40k army and instead have been buying odd models from Mierce and looking at infinity.. Obviously this is just me and anectodal but the 40k games around me have dried up for the whole 2 weeks our club re-opened...

Whats even worse is the self aware derpy posts and the rabid fanboys relishing gleefully enjoying the salt... I guess the master + master race relationship keeps the ship afloat...

I've had a squad of failcast Dark Reapers sitting on my paint desk for a week now and I just cant get the motivation to put more paint on such a sup par product.. Been procrastinating...
So yeah a road map is the professional thing to do and for people with that mindset, and would help with motivation & budgeting IMO. If I knew there was more stuff coming in 9 months I might just buy that FW Cobra/ wraithknight and over the next 9 months plus more crap and even start a second army... But I might as well buy some creature caster demon or mierce dragon coz not interested in marines.

Experience tells me they'd either just half ass it to save face, or pretend they didn't hear it. This is a trajectory GW has been on for a long, long time.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Your thread started off with throwing them up as some kind of shining paragon that GW should aspire to. Go ahead and try to refute my points. I've been involved with CB's stuff since 2E and I can tell you that while they might be an 'open' company, they are not player-friendly.

FWIW, I have no real knowledge of how CB engage with the community but I took the OP as more of a general statement about the kind of direction they'd prefer GW to go in, perhaps with an imperfect example, not a forensic comparison of GW with CB. I think you're somewhat missing the forest for the trees here.

"Desperately need to..." seems a little strong.

Space Marines have always been the poster boys, and have always (I believe) had most and most frequent releases, because that's where the money is.

There IS a marketing and information flow. It ain't perfect, and some of it ain't relevant to me, but they are getting their message out there.

Sure I'd like my xenos to have more shiny toys (noooo, my painting backlog...) but I remember waiting 12 years for dark eldar updates, and loving most when they DID arrive. I still fielded my army, though I accept they'd have been hammered in a tournament - but - tournaments are irrelevant to ME (side thought - how many GW buyers? players? tournament players).

Relax. The other buses will be along. Eventually. Probably. Enjoy what you HAVE.

 Fluid_Fox wrote:
Experience tells me they'd either just half ass it to save face, or pretend they didn't hear it. This is a trajectory GW has been on for a long, long time.

Like when the community gave feedback saying new sisters and they released a whole new range of incredible models?

Facts are that GW has been moving away from secrecy. They were long operating on a fornightly) advance notice. Now they are up to an approximately three month announcement-release period. That seems reasonable to me. They've also been very clear that, for example, codexes are coming (not dates for them specifically, sure).

I do get that it is annoying to have that sense of unknown about your army, however I feel like the only way people wouldn't be annoyed is if they just released the items they wanted (and even then...). We've got to remember that we are in a pandemic and we don't want a repeat of the sylvaneth experience, where announced items had to be delayed.

I wish they would get rid of gone back to an index approach for the edition launch, but hey ho.

Umbros wrote:

 Fluid_Fox wrote:
Experience tells me they'd either just half ass it to save face, or pretend they didn't hear it. This is a trajectory GW has been on for a long, long time.

Like when the community gave feedback saying new sisters and they released a whole new range of incredible models?

Which in the first place they ruinded the faction via an desinvestment cycle.
Were then surprised when the Feedback was actually to create sisters.
Were then literally overrun and had underproduced sets because they didn't read the room enough and then failed to follow up for a time with the rest of the release, which was quite annoying at the time for new sister players.


Optimally Step one should've never happened. and Step three maybee migitated by a more conciese release that was less spread out in regards to timeing.

I'm not really saying GW's production cycle should be signed off by the community, whatever that would look like (not good would be my guess). And I'm not holding FFG or Corvus Belli up as paragons, just as examples of other models of handling the information relating to your games, one that is a big improvement on the GW model, to my eye. Why? Because balance isn' hampered by the tortuous production cycle of hardback publishing (I used to work in publishing), and customers aren't kept in the complete dark about what the future holds for their faction. 40k, as we all know, is a huge investment of time, money, energy and care. Given that, it would be a Good Thing© for GW to be more transparent with their customers, to avoid the kind of situation we find ourselves in: a great deal of unrest about a completely occluded and seemingly (note seemingly) never-endingly homogenous release cycle concerning their (expensive, time-absorbing and loved) product. That's all.

GW had been running out of stock for the whole year or more running up to the Sisters release. It was the year-2year period where they saw massive growth. Sisters came right at the end of that massive growth spurt for GW so its no surprise they couldn't keep up with them - they weren't generally keeping up with everything else prior to them either. GW was waiting for their new factory - something we'd have felt the effect of this year were it not for Corona throwing a monkey wrench into the entire world.


I agree that step 1 shouldn't have happened. Then again its hard to make judgement calls on that without background sales data. It's also important to realise that GW sometimes has projects that lag and clearly their older release cycle of big release events was great for big launches, but mean armies could easily get pushed back and pushed back. I'd argue sisters were never off the cards, they just got pushed back and delayed and put off for so long it had the same outward impression as a disinvestment cycle.

 grouchoben wrote:
I'm not really saying GW's production cycle should be signed off by the community, whatever that would look like (not good would be my guess). And I'm not holding FFG or Corvus Belli up as paragons, just as examples of other models of handling the information relating to your games, one that is a big improvement on the GW model, to my eye. Why? Because balance isn' hampered by the tortuous production cycle of hardback publishing (I used to work in publishing), and customers aren't kept in the complete dark about what the future holds for their faction. 40k, as we all know, is a huge investment of time, money, energy and care. Given that, it would be a Good Thing© for GW to be more transparent with their customers, to avoid the kind of situation we find ourselves in: a great deal of unrest about a completely occluded and seemingly (note seemingly) never-endingly homogenous release cycle concerning their (expensive, time-absorbing and loved) product. That's all.

this makes the unsupported assumption that keeping players happy would be better for the GW bottom line than selling something to somebody now.

I worked retail sales for years, and the value of what we called a "be-back," as in, the customer didn't buy that day but said they would "be back" later to buy was almost nil. I know everybody on the internet sees themselves as the exception to every rule, but if you tell somebody that their favoriate army is getting an update in a year, you probably will lose more sales from that person than you will gain if they save up.

Also, as noted, companies get blasted [b]when they miss release dates, especially online when the toxic avengers will throw back anything a company says right back to them.

I think that the OP's argument is bunk for three key reasons. First GW has increased the window a lot, but I think they know they don't need to spend six months building hype for most releases, the hype is already there. Second, GWs approach is objectively successful in terms of sales growth. Third, increased transparancy can and often will backfire, and erode any possible gains.

Lets not forget go back a few years and we often got nothing in pre-view info for months. Now we are in a position where we get around 3 months or so preview window. That's a good sized window. Yes we want more, but going far beyond that moves into areas where projects get uncertain. Where things can wobble and fall off the bridge.



I recall Spartan Games losing a LOT of community good will because they'd continually preview and then miss their own deadlines. It was one of the things that I suspect didn't help them toward their own diminishing sales. It wasn't just that your game didn't get any updates in a while or your army; i twas that you'd had stuff "promised" in marketing reveals which then never came to pass. OR came to pass years later.

 grouchoben wrote:

Infinity is about to launch a new edition, N4, which is an eagerly awaited revision and polishing of a deep, complex and excellent ruleset. As part of this launch they've been releasing videos where they discuss the new edition, but also their release schedule, plans for new models, and long-term goals for faction revamps. While they're not completely open, they provide enough information for fans of a certain faction to have something to look forward to. So eg 'Shasvaasti', an awesome sneaky alien faction, have been getting a SHEDLOAD of new releases, almost unprecedented in Infinity's history, and this release might have a player of another faction, such as 'Corregidor', a bit miffed because their old models really really need an update. But wait! The company has told me that Corregidor will be getting a major overhaul in 2021, and shown a few images and profiles of a taste of their new stuff. I now, as a Corregidor player, can stomach the endless Shasvaasti love, safe in the knowledge that in 12-18 months time it will be my faction's time in the sun.

Thats all well and good, but this assumes that Corvus Belli follows through on half of what they promise. They have a horrible track record. You're just as likely to get Corregidor in 2021 as you are to get it in 2022, 2023, or have Corregidor discontinued entirely. That kind of stuff breeds bad blood, which is how you get entire communities of people to quit a game, as was the case with myself and many others in the local community after we got sick of having our factions discontinued, promised releases delayed for years, etc. DId they ever release the Acheron Falls book or whatever they ended up renaming it to, for example? I think I gave up waiting after 3+ years of "next year".

40K is the largest tabletop minis game on the market by a pretty big margin, Infinity is a game thats been relegated to the bargain bin in a lot of places. Corvus Belli could benefit from learning from GW, I'm not sure that GW would learn all that much from Corvus Belli.

A move away from the "gotcha!" big reveal and towards a more respectful, mature style of marketing would do the community a world of good - Like Infinity's Corvus Belli or X-Wing's FFG as Slipspace pointed out. Involve us in things a bit more - this wouldn't mean specific dates would have to be given, and if things had to shuffle, we could hear that too. I'd love to hear from the designers on what they're working on, see renders and sketches and webcasts discussing how they want to realise the lore or older style of a unit in its new iteration.

FFG's marketing practices for X-Wing, Armada, and Legion have probably done more harm than good. If you want to see a group of people relentlessly whinging about release schedules, long waits, lack of news, etc. etc. look no further than FFGs Star Wars mini games.

This went on for a few years before they ended up losing the SST license (as I recall it wasn't that the license was pulled so much as Hienlien's people wanted WAY too much money to renew it due to the rumors of Sony's upcoming SST 3). It looks like they actually stopped doing the year end address in 2018, but even after SST, so many of the letters read like "XYZ went sideways but it's not our fault and we've learned a lesson! In other news, BIG PLANS COMING!" Then, next year, the same thing ...

Same with the B5 license, but thats how licenses tend to go. You can get a license to a neglected and forgotten property pretty cheap usually, but if you're successful with it the licensor often wants a lot more money from you if you want to renew the license, as you have basically increased the value of the property for them and they figure they can get more by putting it up for competition with other potential licensees.

 grouchoben wrote:
"However what you need to consider is whether complaining and negativity or backlash on the internet actually hurts the overall health of the game and its profits as a whole."

That's a good point Bosskelot, but I can't help think that GW are getting a little worried about community reaction to the SM avalanche. As you said there's been a bit of self awareness in the recent media, and the animation with Cawl just pressing the primaris button to fix everything was a nice nod. Yes they're a big business and controversy can stoke sales to some degree, but public companies are also pretty anxious about wrong steps leading to loss of share price. I just hope there are voices in the company advocating for a change of approach to information in their games and releases...

I guess my thinking is that - while FFG and Corvus Belli aren't perfect by any means - they are examples of a better model of community interaction, and include their fans in their decision making to a much greater degree, and also don't paywall their rules, allowing them to be more reflexive in their balancing.

FFG? They seem to include fans, but never really take the advice into question, not to mention their horrific leadup dates and constant pushbacks have made the various FFG communities wary of them.

Especially given how they've dropped support slowly overtime without telling various communities under them while pushing harder on some others.

FFG's marketing practices for X-Wing, Armada, and Legion have probably done more harm than good. If you want to see a group of people relentlessly whinging about release schedules, long waits, lack of news, etc. etc. look no further than FFGs Star Wars mini games.

Pretty much this.

 Polonius wrote:
I worked retail sales for years, and the value of what we called a "be-back," as in, the customer didn't buy that day but said they would "be back" later to buy was almost nil. I know everybody on the internet sees themselves as the exception to every rule, but if you tell somebody that their favoriate army is getting an update in a year, you probably will lose more sales from that person than you will gain if they save up.

I would argue that investment in an army doesn't really fit the one-and-done sales model that most retail operates under. Part of the value of buying into a 'living' miniatures game is the expectation that your purchase will continue to be supported long after the money is spent.

I'll offer a different parallel: Videogame development, specifically early-access/in-development sales. There's a popular production model now where developers sell a a game early in development, at a lower price than full retail. The gamble is that there's no guarantee the game will ever fulfill its total promises, but many gamers are willing to take a risk on a product that looks fun if the developers appear competent and able to execute their vision. Because the uncertainty of future support and ongoing development are both key elements to this sales model, I think it's a better match for GW/40K.

And all evidence suggests that in this space, transparency and communication are vastly more beneficial than harmful. Gamers are hesitant to buy into an in-development title with no roadmap, no transparency, and no clear sense of where things are going or what's coming down the pipe. If it's a multiplayer title, they need to believe that the game will continue to be supported and other players will be available to play against. If it has issues, they need to know that those issues are recognized by the developer and will be addressed. Devblogs are a staple of the industry.

Can anyone describe GW's plan for 9th edition development? Do we have any idea what the design intent for the game is?

To be clear: It is not necessary to have the entire product development planned out in precise detail and then stick to that schedule religiously. General vision is fine. Broad schedule (eg: expected release date, subject to change) is fine. The important thing is showing that you have a plan, and that the plan is not 'discontinue support for the product right after someone pays $20 for it'. Keep in mind as well that with miniatures, we're talking a lot more than twenty bucks; hundreds of dollars plus dozens to hundreds of hours in assembly and painting is a very significant investment. The perceived risk is higher.

All the examples I can think of where this model led to backlash stem from developers not holding to key promises, going radio silent, grossly failing to live up to their promises, or demonstrating a focus on the wrong issues. Now, if a company suffers from transparency because they continually and repeatedly over-promise and under-deliver, that's a problem in itself, not evidence that hiding it all and keeping prospective customers in the dark is the superior approach.

Anecdotally, I've been seeing players either stop buying models for armies with unclear futures (eg Tyranids), or refrain from buying into armies that could get remade at any moment (eg Eldar), or just get burnt out entirely by the current state of the game and not knowing if it's actually going to change. Just a little bit of insight as to where the game is going, who's getting updated, and what the designers see as the game's biggest current problems would go a long ways towards building that trust.