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 kodos wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The app's rating in the stores is pretty damning, and GW surely can't look past that, no matter how much white knighting is happening elsewhere.
When my companies app dropped to 2.3 stars, the people responsible had to personally go explain that to the board.

Manger to the board: salty people who stopped buying out products years ago, nothing to worry as we make more money from it than expected, this is just an internet thing

You are massively underestimating the money an app costs. What the few subscribers are paying is probably eaten up by infrastructure and service costs.

Unlike books, bad apps actively destroy money every month.

 Jidmah wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The app's rating in the stores is pretty damning, and GW surely can't look past that, no matter how much white knighting is happening elsewhere.
When my companies app dropped to 2.3 stars, the people responsible had to personally go explain that to the board.

Manger to the board: salty people who stopped buying out products years ago, nothing to worry as we make more money from it than expected, this is just an internet thing

You are massively underestimating the money an app costs. What the few subscribers are paying is probably eaten up by infrastructure and service costs.
Unlike books, bad apps actively destroy money every month.

in case of GW they paid for the App once, this money was likely earned back in the first weekend
now it is maintained by someone working for them anyway as a side-job to the regular stuff he is doing

bad reputation does not matter as people won't stop playing 40k or buying 40k models just because The App has a bad rating

The app is based on Microsoft Azure, which creates quite impressive monthly costs.

so you know that there are enough subscriptions running to maintain those costs and make profit

The app is based on Microsoft Azure, which creates quite impressive monthly costs.

I have no idea what the actual install base for the app is, but Jidmah is right - Azure (especially anything poorly done in Azure), can be like a sucking chest wound when it comes to upkeep/cash on hand.

And that is why I havent bothered.. Anyone holding out "for one more month" is just enabling them to take advantage of their fans.

But that is the case with everything they sell.. They can do what they want because they have monopoly on warhammer and all things GW/Warhammer.

 kodos wrote:
so you know that there are enough subscriptions running to maintain those costs and make profit

I'm a certified professional for cloud architecture, and I know for sure that it doesn't cover the costs.
With 75% percent of the ratings being one star, the best they can hope for is that no one actually uses their app to keep traffic and cpu costs low, but there still is a massive overhead costs if they actually expected 200k+ users to be using it regularly.

And that is all assuming their infrastructure is not as shoddy as their front-end.

It works for what I need it to. Which is act as an alternative to carrying around 7+ books to play. Its pretty easy to use to look up rules to be honest. I am happy with it. The army builder that is coming is icing on the cake.

As always, I recommend everyone fed up with the app to buy their 40K codexes second hand, and ripping them into personal digital copies themselves. Much, much better UX than the pisspoor App.

Making a digital copy of a book you have bought for personal use is legal. You will not be breaking the law by doing so AFAIK.

I will keep on doing this as long as GW refuses to offer official digital versions of current 40K books. Every other game system of theirs is sold on Warhammer Digital, they are just trying to force everyone into using the App. Vote with your wallets and make them realize they've broken things trying to offer a solution to a problem that didn't exist.

 generalchaos34 wrote:
Since my month already went by recently I'm going to give them until xmas before I cancel and ask for a refund. If they were ever going to release this godforsaken army builder it would be for xmas.

Well... no. Xmas coming means people are having office parties, going away in a couple weeks and probably not coming back until the second week of January.
This is literally the worst time of year for seeing actual work done, even if it isn't universally true and this year has other issues, you'll still have people sloping off on leave, key people not updating, and general non-productive chaos.

 Mezmorki wrote:
The sad part is that other people have made their own online libraries/databases for rules and codexes (I won't link to them here) that are 1000 times better and more functional than what GW puts out - and people aren't even charged for using it.

It is almost as if we would be better off without GW involved at all...

Not Online!!! wrote:
Sadly most of the community doesn't hold gw to task and when you dare bring that up in general you get shouted down often, but considering the mainline rules themsevles are allready bad quality beyond even going in to the debate of a balance.

The worst part is GW will eventually get around to 'fix' the app up to the standard it should've launched at, and the same people will laud them as community driven and "listening to our concerns".

 Arbitrator wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Sadly most of the community doesn't hold gw to task and when you dare bring that up in general you get shouted down often, but considering the mainline rules themsevles are allready bad quality beyond even going in to the debate of a balance.

The worst part is GW will eventually get around to 'fix' the app up to the standard it should've launched at, and the same people will laud them as community driven and "listening to our concerns".

Well if GW fixes it I wouldn't call that a bad thing. I mean that's about the best result you can hope for.

The second is that GW drops the whole concept.

The third is that GW doesn't fix it or fixes it in ways the community doesn't think/know its broken and thus the community still has the same issues and perhaps new ones. That's perhaps the worst result.



So yeah company fixes faulty product the way consumers want - win win everyone wins. It's not as if GW gets any benefit releasing it with a bad launch. That will only stall sales, result in more refunds (which loses GW money) and reduce potential sales of the improved version later.

 Overread wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Sadly most of the community doesn't hold gw to task and when you dare bring that up in general you get shouted down often, but considering the mainline rules themsevles are allready bad quality beyond even going in to the debate of a balance.

The worst part is GW will eventually get around to 'fix' the app up to the standard it should've launched at, and the same people will laud them as community driven and "listening to our concerns".

Well if GW fixes it I wouldn't call that a bad thing. I mean that's about the best result you can hope for.

The second is that GW drops the whole concept.

The third is that GW doesn't fix it or fixes it in ways the community doesn't think/know its broken and thus the community still has the same issues and perhaps new ones. That's perhaps the worst result.

So yeah company fixes faulty product the way consumers want - win win everyone wins. It's not as if GW gets any benefit releasing it with a bad launch. That will only stall sales, result in more refunds (which loses GW money) and reduce potential sales of the improved version later.

Does it though? This fandom largely has horrendous impulse control. There were threads in dozens of places warning people off it on the initial launch days, but plenty of posts replying with 'trying it for themselves' and some even saying they were doing it to 'support GW during this difficult time'. They likely know anything and everything will be readily lapped up. Whether they released the app half-baked (which they did) or released it with full features six months from now, odds are close to the same number of people would be putting down money for it - this fandom is anything if not extremely forgiving of GW's issues.

The benefit for their half-baked launch is getting months more money out of people than they would've otherwise. GW aren't stupid, if they thought releasing it in the state it was would've negatively impacted on longterm sales they'd have held it off for a while.

The negative in the long-term is GW continue to put out half-baked products, be they virtual or otherwise, giving a shrug to the quality because, hey, they're just going to buy it anyway.

My favourite is "I'll give them my money now, to encourage them to make the product better".
That has literally the opposite effect, if you're already paying they don't need to change anything do they?

You're absolutely right that GW knows it can do more or less whatever it likes and people will buy it anyway. Just look at the prices they're charging for things like dice sets.
You can literally get a customised set of dice just for yourself for the same sort of price they're charging.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
My favourite is "I'll give them my money now, to encourage them to make the product better".
That has literally the opposite effect, if you're already paying they don't need to change anything do they?

Hence why I tell everyone not to even buy even codices until they're a product actually worth the premium they're asking for, but the people here really don't understand this very basic concept.

It still boggles my mind that anyone has paid for this piece of junk at all. It's hilariously, meme-worthy bad. Even by GW's normal standards, it is pretty shocking they are still charging people a monthly fee for it, given how embarrassingly unready it still is...five months after the date we were supposed to have an army builder.

yukishiro1 wrote:
It still boggles my mind that anyone has paid for this piece of junk at all. It's hilariously, meme-worthy bad. Even by GW's normal standards, it is pretty shocking they are still charging people a monthly fee for it, given how embarrassingly unready it still is...five months after the date we were supposed to have an army builder.

GW could sell used toilet paper and would will sell out if they stamped an Aquila. I can't think of a single fandom or consumer base who is as forgiving/willing to accept glaring problems as GW's - it's really no wonder they do so well financially.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

You're absolutely right that GW knows it can do more or less whatever it likes and people will buy it anyway. Just look at the prices they're charging for things like dice sets.
You can literally get a customised set of dice just for yourself for the same sort of price they're charging.

So with the dice, if it's the same price to GW or to someone else, then it just comes down to "Do I like the GW version?"
If YES - I order the GW dice.
If NO - I have them customized by someone else....

Their APP? The $ I'd spend on this thing is literally better used on my morning trip through Starbucks.

Agree, an app failing at its primary function is very similar to finecast models destroyed by bubbles.
It's not a matter of taste, the product simply is defective.

 Arbitrator wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It still boggles my mind that anyone has paid for this piece of junk at all. It's hilariously, meme-worthy bad. Even by GW's normal standards, it is pretty shocking they are still charging people a monthly fee for it, given how embarrassingly unready it still is...five months after the date we were supposed to have an army builder.

GW could sell used toilet paper and would will sell out if they stamped an Aquila. I can't think of a single fandom or consumer base who is as forgiving/willing to accept glaring problems as GW's - it's really no wonder they do so well financially.

i mean part of it is the sad fact that in many parts GW is one of the few games TG wise that is played constantly making it's monolithic position carry itself.

Which is why i embraced the breakdown in our local community during 6-7th, it led to a massive influx of other, better games and has diversified the community locally alot.

Not Online!!! wrote:

i mean part of it is the sad fact that in many parts GW is one of the few games TG wise that is played constantly making it's monolithic position carry itself.

I think this is exactly the problem.
If someone is looking to get into tabletop gaming, it's 40k. Everybody else plays 40k.
Precious few people play anything that isn't 40k, but no one plays anything else for fear of having someone to play with.
I have spoken to several people which confess they don't really enjoy 40k as much as they once did, for various reasons. I tell them about other games which resolve all of those issues and the response is an unwillingless to make the jump due to the large amount they've already invested in 40k, and the relative sizes of playerbases.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

i mean part of it is the sad fact that in many parts GW is one of the few games TG wise that is played constantly making it's monolithic position carry itself.

I think this is exactly the problem.
If someone is looking to get into tabletop gaming, it's 40k. Everybody else plays 40k.
Precious few people play anything that isn't 40k, but no one plays anything else for fear of having someone to play with.
I have spoken to several people which confess they don't really enjoy 40k as much as they once did, for various reasons. I tell them about other games which resolve all of those issues and the response is an unwillingless to make the jump due to the large amount they've already invested in 40k, and the relative sizes of playerbases.

playerbase is a bigger issue imo.
I never saw a game of BA f.e. before 6th in our local store, with the breakdown of 40k due to it's ruleset and the removal of fantasy the shop changed, a lot. For the better imo.
Now there's a whole slew of historicals other systems, played at the same time. more players and in general more spread and ideas thrown arround.

GW itself is a bubble , and it does everything to maintain it's players in the bubble, it's not above even forcing that down the FLGS's throat. Hence the outright hostility when changes in design get brought up as improvements by it's community.
F.e. the abbandonment of IGOUGO which most newer or simply better rulesets have done.

I've tried getting WM/H off the ground multiple times, because I think the game is really interesting, but always failed. Most of the time people are unwilling invest in a second expensive hobby(time and/or money), they don't find the background interesting enough or they are already playing a fantasy game (AoS/LotR) and don't want more of the same.
Another big issue these days is that most of us have families now, and we already cut back on our hobbies, so people would rather pick up some of the hobbies they cut than start yet another tabletop game.

which is partially the reason for why GW can maintain it's somewhat monolithic position with ease.

Voss wrote:

 generalchaos34 wrote:
Since my month already went by recently I'm going to give them until xmas before I cancel and ask for a refund. If they were ever going to release this godforsaken army builder it would be for xmas.

Well... no. Xmas coming means people are having office parties, going away in a couple weeks and probably not coming back until the second week of January.
This is literally the worst time of year for seeing actual work done, even if it isn't universally true and this year has other issues, you'll still have people sloping off on leave, key people not updating, and general non-productive chaos.

haha! due to pure stubbornness and dumb luck I am now victorious!

 Arbitrator wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It still boggles my mind that anyone has paid for this piece of junk at all. It's hilariously, meme-worthy bad. Even by GW's normal standards, it is pretty shocking they are still charging people a monthly fee for it, given how embarrassingly unready it still is...five months after the date we were supposed to have an army builder.

GW could sell used toilet paper and would will sell out if they stamped an Aquila. I can't think of a single fandom or consumer base who is as forgiving/willing to accept glaring problems as GW's - it's really no wonder they do so well financially.

WWE is another one.

Hecaton wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It still boggles my mind that anyone has paid for this piece of junk at all. It's hilariously, meme-worthy bad. Even by GW's normal standards, it is pretty shocking they are still charging people a monthly fee for it, given how embarrassingly unready it still is...five months after the date we were supposed to have an army builder.

GW could sell used toilet paper and would will sell out if they stamped an Aquila. I can't think of a single fandom or consumer base who is as forgiving/willing to accept glaring problems as GW's - it's really no wonder they do so well financially.

WWE is another one.

WWE doesn't also expect you to buy crummy books for $50 though.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It still boggles my mind that anyone has paid for this piece of junk at all. It's hilariously, meme-worthy bad. Even by GW's normal standards, it is pretty shocking they are still charging people a monthly fee for it, given how embarrassingly unready it still is...five months after the date we were supposed to have an army builder.

GW could sell used toilet paper and would will sell out if they stamped an Aquila. I can't think of a single fandom or consumer base who is as forgiving/willing to accept glaring problems as GW's - it's really no wonder they do so well financially.

WWE is another one.

WWE doesn't also expect you to buy crummy books for $50 though.

PPV Events?

Charging money for that piece of trash app is borderline insulting. The army builder they just teased looks like trash and probably won't work properly for the next couple of months. Even the rules section of the app absolutely sucks, they weren't even able to sort the different strategems from the psychic awakening books by faction...it's a hot mess.

I am almost 100% convinced that the software developers GW hired to make the app got 1-2weeks notice before the apps release...cause even by GWs standards, this is such a hilariously bad product it almost beggars belief.