Do you think firstborn marines will be discontinued?

[Kallas]

16 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Would we expect an Ork player to move on and accept an entire edition of Primaris releases over his beloved faction? Or would said Ork player be allowed to air his grievances?

Nah, we should totally just be happy that people want our stuff phased out, even when those people seem upset when someone suggests the same thing happen to their stuff and somehow don't make the connection to it being a not very cool thing to suggest 

[Tacitus]

16 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

Would we expect an Ork player to move on and accept an entire edition of Primaris releases over his beloved faction? Or would said Ork player be allowed to air his grievances?

To some extent?  Yeah.  I've mentioned I think Primaris was a stick GW could use to poke us into buying new SM models even more so than a hit/miss chance of a new sculpt on a pre-existing Unit.   We didn't ask for it.  We were happy not buying anything because we already had everything.

 

Another secondary reason is the design paradigm shift from 4 Devastators and 5 Ablative Bodies to 10 Hellblasters all with a "smaller" special/heavy gun and thus smoother casualty/performance curves. 

 

If you're saying Primaris Marines instead of new Ork Releases - complaining to SM players about releases GW put out they didn't want or ask for doesn't do any good.

If you're saying Primaris Orks as a new update to their line:  Doubly so, as we had to listen to them complain we kept getting "new stuff" we again didn't ask for and didn't want. 

 

Now, that said I generally like the Primaris design better - I like Hellblasters and Aggressors better than Devastator types. 

I'm also annoyed at how long it's taking to finish the process.  We're still missing the Rhino (which isn't really a rush-necessary because Transporting Sucks)

We're missing the flying Jump-Fighters (Which is a rush-necessary because its generically and Subfaction specific Iconic.)

[Malakithe]

Not sure what the back and forth here is all about. Old stuff will be discontinued. Its going to happen. Just a matter of time. Whether or not Primaris should have been made doesnt matter either. GW will make whatever they want. They wanted to refresh the line in order to make money and bring in new younger customers. You choose to buy into it or not. At the end of the day the only Firstborn kits being made are now for HH now....and GK...but thats a whole other mess. 

 

I personally think they just need to rip the band-aid off and get this cluster done so everyone can move on.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Brother Tyler

[Tacitus]

44 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Not sure what the back and forth here is all about. Old stuff will be discontinued. Its going to happen. Just a matter of time. Whether or not Primaris should have been made doesnt matter either. GW will make whatever they want. They wanted to refresh the line in order to make money and bring in new younger customers. You choose to buy into it or not. At the end of the day the only Firstborn kits being made are now for HH now....and GK...but thats a whole other mess. 

 

I personally think they just need to rip the band-aid off and get this cluster done so everyone can move on.

I think they were.  I think the success of 30K and the pushback from people figuring it out may have changed their plans.  It doesn't cost them anything to keep 30K Tactical squads on the shelf with an extra page of rules for 40K. 

[Captain Idaho]

Indeed, it's leaving money on the table essentially. Especially with the 10K of history between 30-40K that can be mined.

[Tacitus]

That's the thing they have to figure out.  Mk VII or Mk VIII Power armor is probably not a Heresy thing.

[phandaal]

2 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Not sure what the back and forth here is all about. Old stuff will be discontinued. Its going to happen. Just a matter of time. Whether or not Primaris should have been made doesnt matter either. GW will make whatever they want. They wanted to refresh the line in order to make money and bring in new younger customers. You choose to buy into it or not. At the end of the day the only Firstborn kits being made are now for HH now....and GK...but thats a whole other mess. 

 

I personally think they just need to rip the band-aid off and get this cluster done so everyone can move on.

 

Old models will be discontinued, as always. Old units though? I doubt everything is going away. At the end of the day, customers are going to purchase the things they want to purchase. GW has to work within that reality and squeeze out every sale they can get in order to maintain their investors' new margin expectations.

 

The "suck it up buttercup," "accept my authori-tay" approach invariably leaves companies holding the bag and wondering why their customers' wallets stopped opening. In this case, ripping the bandaid off would just mean losing existing customers with no guarantee that they would replace them with new ones.

[Malakithe]

23 minutes ago, phandaal said:

wondering why their customers' wallets stopped opening.

I think this is less about what they are selling and more about how much they are selling it for lol they are pricing themselves out of the next generation of players but thats off topic

[Kallas]

9 hours ago, Malakithe said:

I personally think they just need to rip the band-aid off and get this cluster done so everyone can move on.

 

*Sigh*

 

And again, I ask: why the hell should I move on? I still enjoy my Firstborn and there is no reason for them to go away, so why the hell should I just happily accept them getting removed?

As I've tried to point out many times, Primaris enjoyers are never happy with the suggestion that Primaris get removed; why do people expect Firstborn enjoyers to be happy with the idea of their stuff getting removed?

[Tacitus]

7 hours ago, Kallas said:

 

*Sigh*

 

And again, I ask: why the hell should I move on? I still enjoy my Firstborn and there is no reason for them to go away, so why the hell should I just happily accept them getting removed?

 

What makes you think they're a Primaris Enjoyer?  I like both, but I have a mental block when it comes to mixing and matching even though I don't take Transports (On the hypothetical that I MIGHT take Transports and not that I would have to totally rework the army to get those points anyway)  The "rip the bandaid" analogy heavily implies the "If they're going to do it anyway..." scenario. 

[Malakithe]

7 hours ago, Kallas said:

 

*Sigh*

 

And again, I ask: why the hell should I move on? I still enjoy my Firstborn and there is no reason for them to go away, so why the hell should I just happily accept them getting removed?

As I've tried to point out many times, Primaris enjoyers are never happy with the suggestion that Primaris get removed; why do people expect Firstborn enjoyers to be happy with the idea of their stuff getting removed?

Well you dont need to 'move on' but whether you want to or not is irrelevant. Its like when a video game gets updates/dlc/expansions. You can be totally fine with sticking to older content but the devs dont care and will move on regardless. 

 

And your right there is no real reason to get rid of anything except physical space and meeting deadlines. As GW adds more and more kits they would need more and more actual production space to keep making every single Firstborn kit along side every single Primaris kit in addition to every other faction. Thats why when a line gets refreshed the old stuff gets discontinued. Thats how they are doing it with AoS at least. 

[Tacitus]

They can't be that hurting for physical space while they're bringing back Squats and Sisters as well as adding 30K - where a lot of the first born kits can sit between 30K and 40K shelves. 

[Kallas]

5 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Well you dont need to 'move on' but whether you want to or not is irrelevant. Its like when a video game gets updates/dlc/expansions. You can be totally fine with sticking to older content but the devs dont care and will move on regardless. 

You're not wrong - and I have accepted that Primaris are the future, because GW is fully pushing them at the expense of Firstborn. As I've said before, they are not even showing Firstborn models any more in any kind of promotional material, and while they still have rules it is clear that GW intends to push through with Primaris.

 

But here's the thing: there's no reason to get rid of Firstborn. So I will continue to push back against that idea as much as I can, which is not much in the grand scheme of things, but there is no reason why I should accept my stuff being removed entirely. People will point to Legends being "useable" (which is honestly kind of laughable), but what I think people who feel similarly to me want is just the ability to keep using what we have (ie, updated rules in line with changing editions and such), even if Primaris are being promoted.

 

5 hours ago, Malakithe said:

And your right there is no real reason to get rid of anything except physical space and meeting deadlines. As GW adds more and more kits they would need more and more actual production space to keep making every single Firstborn kit along side every single Primaris kit in addition to every other faction.

Physical space is a nothing burger. They had room for the original Firstborn models and kits, except they removed a bunch of character models to make room for Primaris - it's a problem made from whole cloth; it didn't need to be a problem, but they made it anyway.

 

As they expand Primaris options (which are inexplicably not multi-part kits, eg, Hellblasters/Desolation) they need more room, so they're gonna remove the other units that aren't new and don't have the same overheads (ie, new moulds) that they need to get value back from. Sure, that's the reality of it: the further reality is that they didn't need to make such a mess for themselves in the first place.

 

Firstborn kits were still the best selling line GW made before Primaris. New sculpts with better proportions and repackaged using newer designs (ie, better built sprues to fit more stuff in) along with some new ideas (eg, Inceptors, jump pack troops with heavy firepower) would have attained a lot of the same results without a portion of their consumer base becoming disgruntled.

 

5 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Thats why when a line gets refreshed the old stuff gets discontinued. Thats how they are doing it with AoS at least. 

Thing is, Primaris aren't a refresh, they're a replacement.

 

Also, do you recall the backlash that happened with AoS? How people did not like having their armies of decades being removed from the game so that GW could repackage everything and sell it all again? AoS was a bad template of how to do things - they've definitely learned from that, otherwise we would have seen the exact same thing in 40k, but the driving principle is the same: they are intending to remove Firstborn to make room for Primaris, when Primaris did not need to be created as Firstborn were still meeting the demand (ie, being the most popular army line of the entire company).

 

AoS now is a decent ruleset (albeit at least as bloated as the worst of 40k), but the removal of armies people had built over many years remains a problem, so suggesting that the same kind of thing happen here is just a terrible notion.

 

5 hours ago, Tacitus said:

What makes you think they're a Primaris Enjoyer?

I mean, what they said is what every militant Primaris enjoyer says ("just get it done", "rip off the band aid").

 

6 hours ago, Tacitus said:

The "rip the bandaid" analogy heavily implies the "If they're going to do it anyway..." scenario. 

My personal belief is that GW fully intended to do this, much like how AoS just "ripped the band aid" off of WHFB, but the backlash to that caused them to reconsider their strategy. I do believe that Firstborn will be replaced by Primaris, but they are going to do it much more gradually (they haven't removed any mainline units yet) and it remains to be seen if they will hold true to the statement they made in 8th about Primaris not being replacements (which is funny that Primaris enjoyers seem to ignore that when they want Firstborn removed).

[Malakithe]

18 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Also, do you recall the backlash that happened with AoS?

Oh I remember as thats when I started the hobby right during the End Times and into the launch of AoS. There was a ton of backlash...but GW didint care. They pushed forward with their plan and here we are several years later.

 

22 minutes ago, Kallas said:

Thing is, Primaris aren't a refresh, they're a replacement.

Eh refresh, replace...its basically the same. In order to refresh with new stuff you need to replace the old stuff.

 

But I agree with you that they dont need to remove anything but they will in order to sell the latest shiniest stuff

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Age of SIGMAR is hugely popular. It’s rules were the foundation for eighth edition.

[Kallas]

22 minutes ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

Age of SIGMAR is hugely popular.

Now it is, but on first release it was a mess, both rules and lore.

 

It's almost like you go out of your way to misinterpret and present the worst take possible.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Kallas

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

The point is nobody cares now about it and have moved on.

[Kallas]

16 minutes ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

The point is nobody cares now about it and have moved on.

You don't care, doesn't mean people don't.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I play AoS, nobody talks about it.

[Kallas]

28 minutes ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

I play AoS, nobody talks about it.

Cool story.

[phandaal]

2 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Oh I remember as thats when I started the hobby right during the End Times and into the launch of AoS. There was a ton of backlash...but GW didint care. They pushed forward with their plan and here we are several years later.

 

Yeah, GW pushed forward, and the AoS launch was an utter disaster.

 

Goes back to my earlier comment. GW went with the "deal with it, nerds" approach, and people did in fact deal with it - by walking away. GW has spent nearly a decade recovering AoS to where it is today. And still, WFB is the setting for their most popular fantasy video games and is in such demand that GW is - begrudgingly it seems - bringing it back in the near future.

 

There is no doubt that Games Workshop is well aware of how these events played out. That is why we are not going to see any Band-Aids getting ripped off in regards to Primaris. In fact, we are seeing the opposite.

[caladancid]

4 hours ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

Age of SIGMAR is hugely popular. Its rules were the foundation for eighth edition.

Yeah it’s SO popular that GW overwhelmingly releases a book and one model at a time. They could make more money, they just don’t want to. 

 

Hopefully GW learns from their mistakes with AoS, I think they have and firstborn are safe. 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

That’s fine you think that but we still have to wait and see. If they get shelved I think there’d be less conversations like these.

[BrainFireBob]

10 hours ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

That’s fine you think that but we still have to wait and see. If they get shelved I think there’d be less conversations like these.

Not likely, considering the 4th Ed chaos dex

 If they squatted Firstborn tomorrow, conversation might stop by 2030, but I doubt it, with the rash of "counts as" threads that will happen.

 

Edit: Really don't look forward to that

Edited March 5, 2023 by BrainFireBob

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Honestly I can’t recall the last time I saw any conversation regarding the 3.5 CSM codex . Obviously that doesn’t mean it’s not discussed but this seems like comparing apples to oranges .

Edited March 5, 2023 by BLACK BLΠFLY