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Please don’t feed the troll.

If you want to argue for get-you-by rules pdfs with a new edition, I won't argue against that.
But I'll definitely argue against the 'disposable updates for cash' multiple times in an edition that was ridiculously short, even by modern GW standards. I'd rather have a 5 year or even 10 year turn around on codexes again. I wouldn't be happy with 10, but I'd prefer it to a pile of self-immolating crap that I didn't even bother to buy or use.

I really wouldn't mind one bit if this edition stuck around for 5 or 6 years. Slow down a bit on the codex releases. Give folks a chance to really play their armies before the next frantic buying cycle starts up all over again. I have books I bought for 8th ed. that I've barely gotten to use and which will more than likely be outdated by the time the Orks codex rolls around. And I'm frustrated that I spent the money on them, because if I'd known that 9e was coming a short 3-6 months later, I'd have just not made the purchases.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Please don’t feed the troll.

Who said I was a troll, I just spoke truth. A Codex that will be out of date day 1.

 BlackoCatto wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Please don’t feed the troll.

Who said I was a troll, I just spoke truth. A Codex that will be out of date day 1.

The point is its fine to be disgruntled or to have moved on and no longer be interested in something. But when that becomes your dominant post content and when you're always appearing in threads telling people how you're not interested any more and being hostile about it. Then you come off as being a troll.

In general the healthy thing to do is to accept, move on and focus on posting and engaging with things you enjoy. Focusing on things you don't enjoy isn't healthy for you and its not healthy for the community either. Instead of focusing on how you don't like the game and don't want to take part instead focus on other areas.

Start up threads talking about classic editions you do like; about models you've built and painted; above other games you've tried etc.... You say you're into AoS so focus on your engagement and joy of that in the present rather than lamenting and being negative on the bits you don't like.

In general the healthy thing to do is to accept, move on and focus on posting and engaging with things you enjoy. Focusing on things you don't enjoy isn't healthy for you and its not healthy for the community either. Instead of focusing on how you don't like the game and don't want to take part instead focus on other areas.

From little expiriance I have, I know that this is not how humans work. There are children tales about how people hated or disliked something so much, that even when they were helped and saved, they still did everything to destroy the thing or get vengance for it, or at least make it as bad for everyone else as it was for them.

Karol wrote:

In general the healthy thing to do is to accept, move on and focus on posting and engaging with things you enjoy. Focusing on things you don't enjoy isn't healthy for you and its not healthy for the community either. Instead of focusing on how you don't like the game and don't want to take part instead focus on other areas.

From little expiriance I have, I know that this is not how humans work. There are children tales about how people hated or disliked something so much, that even when they were helped and saved, they still did everything to destroy the thing or get vengance for it, or at least make it as bad for everyone else as it was for them.

And in those children's stories, the moral is nearly always "don't do what they did, be a better person by moving on."

And no, giving into impulsive urges isn't an excuse to troll or to be needlessly unpleasant, because we're better than that.

Voss wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In terms of Codex Disparity and its affect on games?

I remember the Dark Eldar codex. The original one. That wasn’t updated for years.

Some folk like a challenge, but using that was like tactically removing your limbs before entering Ninja Warrior.

Thats... not actually true. I think it depended on the matchup, but I trotted mine out during 5th edition and absolutely tabled several armies.
It was horrible against some things, but it _really_ wore its 'glass CANNON' badge, especially against tyranids of the time. I remember one game against nids that was over by turn three, as there simply wasn't a bug left. I felt rather bad about it, but it wasn't an army people were used to seeing at the time, and it felt more like clubbing baby seals than going in with a handicap.

This was my experience too around the same time. DE could be pretty nasty played right and had quite a few good matchups, but there were other things it didn’t have the tools to deal with.

The main issue was the limited number of units, and the even smaller number of units which were actually good (Archons, wyches, incubi, ravagers, warriors)

Karol wrote:
...

I... What?



Well, I think I get why you play 40K. In the Grim Darkness of Last Saturday at 3:00PM...

What the hell does this have to do with gradual release teasers? Which, on topic, I found very draining on my initial enthusiasm; Perhaps it caused a lot of speculation and wasted thought-energy on individual changes in a vacuum as they came piece by piece; It also might have been because it was 6 months of barely interrupted Marine hype.

ok guys, the rules were chewed out and spit up into a different form going into 8-9th edition, so yes we have a higher demand for codex's right now, I know covid is a thing but that doesnt mean you can't work out some codex's, the demand for them is just so high for many armies right now, not to mention they couldn't even give the second wound to chaos space marines?

 jaredb wrote:
I remember back when GW Never teased anything, and then all of a sudden there would be a new codex and a bunch of model kits for release no-one saw coming. Folks complained that they wished GW would give teasers for what's coming in the future, so they could have an idea.

Now GW does release teasers, and folks complain there are too many teases.

Does anyone really beg for snippets of rules and glimpses of models, with no idea what the sum rules changes are or when the models are coming or what they represent?

I'd guess when people complain that they don't know what's coming, what they're looking for is a release schedule, a roadmap, designer interviews, summaries of rules changes, stuff like that. Transparency.

What GW does isn't transparency, it's just marketing. Teasers. Who asks for teasers?

 catbarf wrote:

 jaredb wrote:
I remember back when GW Never teased anything, and then all of a sudden there would be a new codex and a bunch of model kits for release no-one saw coming. Folks complained that they wished GW would give teasers for what's coming in the future, so they could have an idea.

Now GW does release teasers, and folks complain there are too many teases.

Does anyone really beg for snippets of rules and glimpses of models, with no idea what the sum rules changes are or when the models are coming or what they represent?

Begging for either? Not me.
{shrugs} I don't really care much about rules snippits. I do enjoy seeing new models that're upcoming though.

 Overread wrote:
The big issue is that when you go and add a lot of units in one go for a marketing boost to an army; that can be a big fundamental change to how the army has to work. So either you put those units in the codex to start with and then 3rd parties flood the market before GW can bring the models to the market themselves; or you leave them out and the codex feels half-baked for years; or you make the expansion book basically a new codex in all but name.

The new boxes come with datasheets and until the new codex is printed GW can put the datasheets up on their webpage like FW does with their beta rules. Rules having to coincide exactly with new fluff and model updates is killing the balance of the game. Once a codex is published it's published and that makes it relatively difficult to change rules and stats since that will also make a codex feel half-baked if every other page has errata, having a beta period of 6-24 months will make it easier to change things once or twice before publishing and get the writing down correctly before ink gets squirted all over the page.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As said, someone is going to be last out the gate. That’s unavoidable of course. But I do agree weaker Codexes should be updated over those which are muddling along quite happily.

In 9th it's less that codexes are weak and more than the Munitorum Field Manual is out of wack, unless you give Brimstone Horrors and Gretchin undercosted Stratagems or some very strong abilities they won't be worth 5 pts. All pts were updated at the start of the edition, there is no real need for everyone to get new codexes. Trying to adjust rules based on points is a hopeless project, rules should be based on fluff and points should be based on rules and tournament results.

I really think the answer to this one is just COVID.

Audustum wrote:
I really think the answer to this one is just COVID.

You there, yes you! Stop making sense right now.

bat702 wrote:
I feel like in 9th edition they are really teasing us with releases, especially codex's releases, there are alot of armies that need a new codex, like guard, craftworlds, chaos space marines. I feel games-workshop is trying to sell us on buying additional armies by teasing us with releases, withholding the release of new codex's, I feel we wont get a new guard codex until 2022 or something sad..

Guard doesn't just need a new codex, they need a model revamp, BADLY. I got my two new Catachan characters painted by a friend, had them out looking at them the other day and compared them to the old Catachan sculpts. Hideous those old models are compared to these newer ones.

 catbarf wrote:

 jaredb wrote:
I remember back when GW Never teased anything, and then all of a sudden there would be a new codex and a bunch of model kits for release no-one saw coming. Folks complained that they wished GW would give teasers for what's coming in the future, so they could have an idea.

Now GW does release teasers, and folks complain there are too many teases.

Does anyone really beg for snippets of rules and glimpses of models, with no idea what the sum rules changes are or when the models are coming or what they represent?

I'd guess when people complain that they don't know what's coming, what they're looking for is a release schedule, a roadmap, designer interviews, summaries of rules changes, stuff like that. Transparency.

What GW does isn't transparency, it's just marketing. Teasers. Who asks for teasers?

Based on the News and Rumours section of this site I would say that people are very interested in snippets of info. The Drukhari 9th Edition Tactics thread has amassed 24 pages since July (so about seven months). One Drukhari 9th Ed Warrior datasheet has generated a thread with 9 pages in just four days. Humans love rumours and glimpses of what is coming.

The Slaanesh fans on the TGA forums went from "I'm not hyped any more" to "I'm supremely hyped let me buy it now" over just the leaks from the battletome appearing and few things like Depravity being revealed as to how they now work.

People like information and like to make informed choices. They like to be able to plan their future buying with information.




Heck right now Warcradle is releasing the new dystopian Wars and one big thing I (and many others want) is more photos and designs for different factions so that we can choose which to follow. I don't know right now if I want to buy heavily into Russians or Arctic forces now or wait and see what the others turn out like

To be fair there are probably pros and cons to both approaches from the companies perspective so they pick a lane.

I think there's two angles on it that are important.

Reliability and support.


Reliability is marketing what is locked in and coming. It's about being clear and saying "this is years off - this is months off". It's also about not getting carried away and showing ideas that are pipe dreams with no certain future; or pet project ideas that get started and are never finished; or showing previews of things so far in advance that by the time they come you've changed everything about them.

It's unsettling when you can't trust the company marketing. Spartan Games fell for that mistake many times in getting really fired up and showing off lots of stuff -then missing their own deadlines and going silent. It bred a lot of frustration in the community because they kept seeing official cool things and never getting them which led to even accurate marketing falling on deafer ears.
Your customers have to trust your company marketing.



The next is support and by this I mean that each, for a wargame, game itself and each faction within the game is a separate block of customers. It doesn't really matter how many support multiple games or armies; the key is that each fragment is a separate thing to support.
GW has fallen for this (as did Spartan games and others) where they focus on some products but not othres. Armies left for years and years without even rule updates saps enthusiasm for that army. However even worse all those fans are not just going to cross over and collect another army; Why should they collect something else from the same company if what they already invested in isn't being openly marketed/talked about/supported/updated.

In the end they are more likely to support multiple factions if they see each faction getting attention - each game getting attention. Because they have confidence in the new army/game being supported just like their current one.


Ergo how you support their first is how they envision being supported for the rest of their collection.



It's a lesson that can be hard to put into practice because you can't release models for every army and every game all the time once you're as big as GW. Indeed sometimes armies reach a point where the only updates are reworked sculpts. At that point I think GW and many firms floundered not really knowing what to do. The thing is things like FAQ and pont updates; things like community articles; story campaigns; white dwarf; magazines; stories; lore etc.... There are so many side things (some of which really don't take many resources) that you can put out there to keep an army that you're not releasing models for, updated and in the light. To keep those fans feeling like the parent company is paying attention to them.

And again if their core force is getting attention they are more likely to go "Oh well there's not been any models for a while, I'll collect a second army of XYZ that I've always wanted in the mean time.".

I think you are probably right morally and certainly right from the point of view of the consumer but the facts might be that Facebook short term hype boosts sales better than alternative methods.

 catbarf wrote:
Does anyone really beg for snippets of rules and glimpses of models, with no idea what the sum rules changes are or when the models are coming or what they represent?

I'd guess when people complain that they don't know what's coming, what they're looking for is a release schedule, a roadmap, designer interviews, summaries of rules changes, stuff like that. Transparency.

What GW does isn't transparency, it's just marketing. Teasers. Who asks for teasers?

They do give us a road map - its just a quarterly look. In the past there have been clues that they shift their schedule around pretty regularly - moreso with COVID. Any long term roadmap wouldn't be reliable.

People might look for "your codex this year", but that might not end up being true and then people just get pissed - look what happened when the Big FAQ missed its deadline.

Dai wrote:
I think you are probably right morally and certainly right from the point of view of the consumer but the facts might be that Facebook short term hype boosts sales better than alternative methods.

Oh true short term hype works best; you can't hype for too long without any substance. That's why GW normally works with a 3 month window. It's why in an ideal world you don't hype for too long. Indeed in my point about reliability I noted that previews of things years and years off need clear marking as such otherwise you're building hype far too early.


Video games sometimes do this, but I typically notice they only tend to do it for two reasons
1) To deflect leaks from their own development dominating the marketing
2) Because they are taking preorders. Even if those orders don't process and pay out, its still actual consumer interest and it can be critical for ensuring investment sources remain on board with the project and might accept delays; requests for more or the company seeking further investment.



My point was more talking about reliability and long term views of support for a product line spread out over time. It's more taking a step back and viewing the bigger picture and not just relying on hype for a big product release every 5 years.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


They do give us a road map - its just a quarterly look. In the past there have been clues that they shift their schedule around pretty regularly - moreso with COVID. Any long term roadmap wouldn't be reliable.

People might look for "your codex this year", but that might not end up being true and then people just get pissed - look what happened when the Big FAQ missed its deadline.

What if they didn't say next year or this year, and just said next. And then presented stuff in batchs. Something like next we plan on working on this three armies, in no specific order. Short term stuff could be the way it was, mid term stuff would first be secret, then slowly become one of those 3 armies, and at the same time people who have not fun rule sets wouldn't have to go crazy thinking next book has to be theirs, and then getting angry when it isn't.

They do that.
Literally exactly that.
After space marines/necrons, the announcement was DG, DA and a xenos book. Xenos was then clarified to DE. Then delays happened.

But the planned roadmap was announced. So was the Underworlds roadmap (with a bonus 'we expect to be back to normal here' marker)