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 BlackoCatto wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'm guessing that Daedalus thinks that, since it isn't pretty, the UI isn't good. Battlescribe ain't pretty but it's pretty damn easy to work.

Well, I design and program apps for a living ( among other things ), so....more of a professional opinion.

To let ya know, being pretty is a bonus. I'd much rather something work well enough than look nice. Gold plated turd is still pretty much a turd.

I'll hold my hand up as not having looked at the GW app or the Infinity app - but a good UI isn't just "making something look pretty," it's an important part of the functional design of a piece of software.

Sure, the back-end needs to work as well, but a UI that confuses your user or hides away important tools (as well as other design sins) can turn your functional app into a nugget of turd-plated gold, while a good UI on a shoddy back-end can give that gold-plated turd feel.

As I said, I've not used either app, so I'm not going to comment on the specifics of their form or function, but claiming that UI design is a bonus is delusional, frankly.

Most people defending the app I've encountered argue something along the lines of "GW has no experience in apps, you can't expect it to be flawless at launch, it's entirely reasonable".
Even when told about the AoS version, they choose to deny or ignore the point rather than change their mind.

Maybe it's just typical internet arguments where it's physically impossible for you to be wrong, but I think it's very indicative of blind-following.

ccs wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

ccs wrote:
Most of our games have been Crusade & our Crusades have all used PL.

And you are flipping back and forth through you codex instead of using the PL values all printed in one page in the update PDF?

No. I've simply printed the page and tucked it into the back of the book. So, just as with pts, I look to a page in the back of my book. Pts or PL, same amount of page flipping.... And when it gets changed again? I'll print a new page, retiring the old one to a folder.
Were I a bit less lazy/slightly more motivated I'd go through my book with those easy to remove colored circle stickers & "update" the PL in the corner of each stat block. But there's always something better to do....

What I'm NOT doing is wasting a few dollars/month on an app.

 Jidmah wrote:
Not to mention that you'll probably be building lists straight from your rooster anyways once the crusade has started and messed with the PL costs.

Not seeing your point. Or needing to spend $ on their app since once Crusade underway my PLs change from what's printed.

My pencil - still cheaper & more useful than GWs app.

I think you just missed my point, I agree with you on all points.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Most people defending the app I've encountered argue something along the lines of "GW has no experience in apps, you can't expect it to be flawless at launch, it's entirely reasonable".

From my job experience of actually being part of such projects, GW just did the same feth-ups every bigger company makes that suddenly decides that they want have an app for something. It's all there, pretty UI, tons of bugs, missing functionality and doesn't work for anything but system demos to BS the guys with the budget into thinking that they are getting the bestest app ever for their undersized budget.

It's just regular levels of management incompetence you always see in these projects
And you didn't actually expect that the guys developing the two apps communicate any more than two teams writing books, did you?
This app is just Conway's law in action.

I'm not defending this app, but I would have been very surprised if it had been any better than it is. The only difference to most of my work projects is that companies usually don't dare to charge for their little dumpster fires until they are actually sufficiently complete and stable.

 Jidmah wrote:
The only difference to most of my work projects is that companies usually don't dare to charge for their little dumpster fires until they are actually sufficiently complete and stable.

this is GW's main marketing model, charge enough for a bad product to kick "some form of sunk cost shame" off and people will buy and defend it no matter how bad really is

if another company would have made this app for free, they would have received a shitstorm and people stop playing their game and support them over night for even thinking about put something like this on the app store

for GW, charge a ridiculous price and people have sympathy for GW because they cannot do better and need the money to improve

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'm guessing that Daedalus thinks that, since it isn't pretty, the UI isn't good. Battlescribe ain't pretty but it's pretty damn easy to work.

Well, I design and program apps for a living ( among other things ), so....more of a professional opinion.

Good for you. Now lemme tell you a little secret.

It doesn't matter how pretty your app is if it is barely functional, especially if you have to pay for it. The app sucks and the fact that the free one for the other game can function just fine says not only a lot about the people paid money to design the GW one, but the lengths people will go to defend GW. The fact you design apps honestly has zero worth to me because it isn't a defense for the app.

That's why I said I wasn't defending GW there.

Being at the highest price point GW should have the best UI and be entirely functional and it is not.

 kodos wrote:

ccs wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
When you think about it, GW has pretty much built its dominance on nice UI (models) with barely passable innards (rules) for an extremely premium price, so maybe it's no surprise that they're taking the same approach to app design.

Lol. But it actually matters for an App.

it actually matters for the game as well, but GW marketing has told people over years that they should not care because it is not possible to do better

with the App it will be similar, GW will tell people that it is not perfect and might have some mistake, but it is the best people can make without taking too much time and they need to rise the prise again because a company need to live

and those people will believe them and defend it as the truth (because otherwise they would have spend too much money on an inferior product, and it is easier to pretend that the product is good than to admit a mistake)

Yes, but my premium priced models don't require GW rules to still have value/be useful. The books also contain entertainment value in the form of the fiction & all the imagination that inspires. Decent rules would certainly be nice though (and some editions are better than other for this).
But an app that doesn't work.... Not valuable at all from the consumer end of things.

Most people buy the books and the models first and foremost for the rules.

ccs 796009 11053872 wrote:
Yes, but my premium priced models don't require GW rules to still have value/be useful. The books also contain entertainment value in the form of the fiction & all the imagination that inspires. Decent rules would certainly be nice though (and some editions are better than other for this).
But an app that doesn't work.... Not valuable at all from the consumer end of things.

I don't think many people would buying codex if they didn't have rules in them. Same with model buyings, I understand that there is a group of people that buys them just to have them, but in general people tend to buy the stuff they want to play with. And for new players this seems to not just a possibility, but a general rule of buying stuff.

The rules have to be there to provide an excuse. They don't have to be good. The average GW customer doesn't even play the game more than a couple times a year, and GW is well aware of that fact, and it informs how little effort, energy and care they put into their rules as compared to their models.

How good did AoS do without rules? GW had to scramble to turn it in to a game real fast, because a game system without point costs wasn't doing that well.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Well, I design and program apps for a living ( among other things ), so....more of a professional opinion.

And nuthin' quite says "professional" like GW's new app.

I mean, they made an app and people paid for it, so yeah.

I give GW credit, it's a lot prettier than BS.

 fraser1191 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Well, I design and program apps for a living ( among other things ), so....more of a professional opinion.

And nuthin' quite says "professional" like GW's new app.

I mean, they made an app and people paid for it, so yeah.

I give GW credit, it's a lot prettier than BS.

Without any of the functionality. And it isn't like Battlescribe is UGLY in any sense, it just isn't pretty.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Well, I design and program apps for a living ( among other things ), so....more of a professional opinion.

And nuthin' quite says "professional" like GW's new app.

I mean, they made an app and people paid for it, so yeah.

I give GW credit, it's a lot prettier than BS.

Without any of the functionality. And it isn't like Battlescribe is UGLY in any sense, it just isn't pretty.

I don't have it so I don't know how unfunctional it is.

I just wish that BS would let me make my own data and send it to my friends then I wouldn't even consider GW's app

 fraser1191 wrote:

I just wish that BS would let me make my own data and send it to my friends then I wouldn't even consider GW's app

BS comes with a Data Editor. I've never been able to get it to work, admittedly, but I've also not tried particularly hard nor looked for guides on their site/forums/etc.

 fraser1191 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 fraser1191 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Well, I design and program apps for a living ( among other things ), so....more of a professional opinion.

And nuthin' quite says "professional" like GW's new app.

I mean, they made an app and people paid for it, so yeah.

I give GW credit, it's a lot prettier than BS.

Without any of the functionality. And it isn't like Battlescribe is UGLY in any sense, it just isn't pretty.

I don't have it so I don't know how unfunctional it is.

I just wish that BS would let me make my own data and send it to my friends then I wouldn't even consider GW's app

I'd give it a go. It took me a bit to figure out how to download the files, but from there it's pretty smooth sailing. Like I said, it ain't the prettiest, but the options are usually all accurate and up to date within a week or two within the newest release.

Only thing I don't like about BattleScribe right now is that the Marine files appear to have lost the "Show Primaris Only" option.

But that's a very minor issue.

What is good software is a non-trivial topic
Give this a read if you want to get an rough idea, and don't worry if you don't understand more than half of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality

BattleScribe has a rather bad UX, barely above that of a designer fresh out of college. There is no glossing over this, there simply is no need to have a UI complexity akin to a software development tool for pushing a pile of models together, and solving a complex problem like with with tree controls is an approach about two decades old. Other tools have done this much better, but are obviously lacking in other departments.

In addition, its data model is veeery inefficient, which causes many performance issues, especially when it is confronted with the space marine bloat. That's the reason why they had to curb the primaris only function by the way.

Neither problem is bad enough that it makes it unusable though.

Outside of those two things BS is pretty much a slam-dunk though. It is quite reliable, doesn't crash, supports multiple platforms, automatically updates both data and software, has multiple export formats, including for print and can store and import an entire library of lists.

That's all nice and dandy, but the core requirement every single one of us has towards our army builder is that the data is correct enough to rarely bother us and have it easily accessible during list building and have the data available during gaming.

So while the 40k app is probably an overall better piece of software, it simply fails to fulfill the core requirements.
Kind of like a car that has all the comfort features, but no motor.

I am not seeing this better software really, and on the IPad it’s really bad missing even basic features that battle scribe can handle without issues.

I don’t even think it looks particularly better, at least not for a payed app of its price when compared to other company apps.

Usability as well on the iPad is a mess, as they haven’t even done the basics it seems to work with the compatibility for phone apps on the iPad.
So it basicly loses a lot of its positives it has in its design by simply being run on a iPad it seems right now.
All why asking for money, and considering how many tablets I see for gaming I wonder if that’s a big issue.
It’s probably every game someone has a tablet here for rules and books. It’s just so clearly unfinished that even if the experiance is better than battlescribe half the players here would possibly not even know it.

I also have the Age of sigmar app, and these issues are not here. It’s fully compatible with the iPad so I have to wonder exactly was going on, as it’s not there first app experiance as a company.

The "better software" comment was considering the whole thing, not just what consumers see on their side.

It's also a rather common thing for developers to build a "better software" that consumers hate

 Jidmah wrote:
The "better software" comment was considering the whole thing, not just what consumers see on their side.

It's also a rather common thing for developers to build a "better software" that consumers hate

So modern

So with the free trial and lower monthly fee I thought I'd give the app another go, this time with a suscription so I could try Battle Forge...

In general, it's nicer than BattleScribe (which I also have a subscription for) - much more professional, much quicker to put together a list, and much easier and cleaner to export.

However, there are a few issues:

1) The export only shows you wargear that affected the points cost of each unit - fine for seeing the points breakdown, but not so good for showing your opponent what weapons each of your unit has. Some trait choices aren't shown either (Chaos Knights dread household bonds for example).

2) There are still bugs - for my Ultramarines army I get validation errors on the TAC squads (appaently changing one bolter for a missile launcher is too many heavy weapons), and the 5 point teleport homer causes the points value to change by 10 points.

3) The price is still too high - given that everyone using it will have already bought hardcopy rules and miniatures from GW, asking £24/year is too much (BattleScribe is £3/year for comparison).

Honestly, at that price I cant see myself keeping it beyond the end of the free trial, even if they address the bugs and improve the export.

 Jidmah wrote:
What is good software is a non-trivial topic
Give this a read if you want to get an rough idea, and don't worry if you don't understand more than half of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality

BattleScribe has a rather bad UX, barely above that of a designer fresh out of college. There is no glossing over this, there simply is no need to have a UI complexity akin to a software development tool for pushing a pile of models together, and solving a complex problem like with with tree controls is an approach about two decades old. Other tools have done this much better, but are obviously lacking in other departments.

In addition, its data model is veeery inefficient, which causes many performance issues, especially when it is confronted with the space marine bloat. That's the reason why they had to curb the primaris only function by the way.

Neither problem is bad enough that it makes it unusable though.

Outside of those two things BS is pretty much a slam-dunk though. It is quite reliable, doesn't crash, supports multiple platforms, automatically updates both data and software, has multiple export formats, including for print and can store and import an entire library of lists.

That's all nice and dandy, but the core requirement every single one of us has towards our army builder is that the data is correct enough to rarely bother us and have it easily accessible during list building and have the data available during gaming.

So while the 40k app is probably an overall better piece of software, it simply fails to fulfill the core requirements.
Kind of like a car that has all the comfort features, but no motor.

Agreed - a point on the data model. BS attempts to be a one-size fits all sort of thing, which is where it gets rough. I've mentioned many times that an army builder for GW would be silly complex due to the exceptions and other army building rules that exist. And what's worse is new codexes may not even be consistent with that.

If the programmers don't have a ton of experience making the model extensible then they'd probably be losing their minds right about now.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
What is good software is a non-trivial topic
Give this a read if you want to get an rough idea, and don't worry if you don't understand more than half of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality

BattleScribe has a rather bad UX, barely above that of a designer fresh out of college. There is no glossing over this, there simply is no need to have a UI complexity akin to a software development tool for pushing a pile of models together, and solving a complex problem like with with tree controls is an approach about two decades old. Other tools have done this much better, but are obviously lacking in other departments.

In addition, its data model is veeery inefficient, which causes many performance issues, especially when it is confronted with the space marine bloat. That's the reason why they had to curb the primaris only function by the way.

Neither problem is bad enough that it makes it unusable though.

Outside of those two things BS is pretty much a slam-dunk though. It is quite reliable, doesn't crash, supports multiple platforms, automatically updates both data and software, has multiple export formats, including for print and can store and import an entire library of lists.

That's all nice and dandy, but the core requirement every single one of us has towards our army builder is that the data is correct enough to rarely bother us and have it easily accessible during list building and have the data available during gaming.

So while the 40k app is probably an overall better piece of software, it simply fails to fulfill the core requirements.
Kind of like a car that has all the comfort features, but no motor.

Agreed - a point on the data model. BS attempts to be a one-size fits all sort of thing, which is where it gets rough. I've mentioned many times that an army builder for GW would be silly complex due to the exceptions and other army building rules that exist. And what's worse is new codexes may not even be consistent with that.

If the programmers don't have a ton of experience making the model extensible then they'd probably be losing their minds right about now.

Yeah, you're spot on with this IMO. I would HATE to be the PM on this right now ...

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Agreed - a point on the data model. BS attempts to be a one-size fits all sort of thing, which is where it gets rough. I've mentioned many times that an army builder for GW would be silly complex due to the exceptions and other army building rules that exist. And what's worse is new codexes may not even be consistent with that.

If the programmers don't have a ton of experience making the model extensible then they'd probably be losing their minds right about now.

I haven't looked into it in detail, but to me it always seemed like their data is not abstract enough and too close to actually trying to code 40k rules - but it's always easier to tell people what they have done wrong than getting it right yourself when you are in their position

Tycho wrote:
Yeah, you're spot on with this IMO. I would HATE to be the PM on this right now ...

If the development team is an external company they have hit a gold mine with this
Honestly, with my current company and team I'd probably love to take over that project. I've had worse.
However, whether you are able to salvage it heavily depends on company culture. If it's just a bunch of half-knowing suits driving their own agendas (and it probably is), there is little chance of getting this out of the failure bin. Good software takes time, and since they are charging money for this, taking your time is not an option.

 Jidmah wrote:
but it's always easier to tell people what they have done wrong than getting it right yourself when you are in their position

That's when it's the most fun - it isn't your problem!

I am not sure, if this isn't people other problem. What if GW decides one day that core books are sold with codex, but all supplements are digital only? then being forced in to a subscription of a bad app, very fast becomes a your problem too.

Oh no, all my ork and death guard supplements!

Karol wrote:

ccs wrote:

Pointer5 wrote:
First they need to fix it. Second they need to make it free. After that go digital with the rules and make them free also. Especially with how they keep jacking up the minis prices.

Free - HA! Believe me, with GW you'll pay for that. Well, someone will - when they buy their next box of minis.

GW app becomes free. Wake up in 10th ed with basic box of infantry costing 85$.

That'll probly happen no matter what the app costs really

Brother Castor wrote:
2) There are still bugs - ... the 5 point teleport homer causes the points value to change by 10 points.

I see this same bug when adding or removing a Watcher in the Dark. In both cases it only occurs when viewing the detachment. When you come out of that to the page above the points are correct.

is it gwapps@gwplc.com to give feedback on apps like Battleforged?