Anyone less excited for 10th than they were?

[Aarik]

1 hour ago, Petitioner's City said:

 

"(...) any of it (...)". Well that's a choleric exaggeration.... 

 

Editing and proofreading is tough, trust me, and it's hard work to catch everything. Things like tracking changes through iterations mean that files often get a bit messy, esoeiclat as different teams and individuals will be involved. Projects are hard, they are so hard - nevermind a project with 1000s (actually tens of thousands) of individual bits of text to be checked. 

 

God, "didn't even care". Can we avoid such pointless exaggerations, accept that actually this is hard work, not easy, ever.

 

It is hard.  But lots of jobs are hard.  At the risk of sounding glib, that's what the money is for.  Games Workshop has a roughly $4.3 billion market cap, according to my quick Googling.  I think it's reasonable to expect them to do basic proofreading and catch obvious mistakes like that.  This isn't two guys in a garage, its the multi-billion dollar market leader consistently making simple, unforced copy-paste errors.  If a random player off the street can look at the various indexes once and spot the mistakes at first glance, GW should have caught them before release.  In my professional life, I'd be pretty embarrassed if I kept letting mistakes like this slip past me.  Heck, even if I was one of two guys in a garage making my own game and putting it online, I wouldn't be happy with myself that I screwed that up.  [And that's not to blame the individual GW employees necessarily.  From what I've heard, they are underpaid and overworked.  It seems to be more of a top-down problem.]  Forgetting to add firing deck to most of the Rhinos shouldn't happen.  It's unprofessional.  Or not incorporating prior fixes to known issues like -1 damage not specifying to a minimum of 1.  Even if these mistakes slip through the initial drafts, they should have been caught and fixed by the playtesters before being released to the general public.  The issue is especially problematic due to the lead time necessary for printing the physical cards.  When these mistakes aren't caught in a timely manner, they make their way to the physical product, and GW is faced with the choice of fixing the problem in the digital rules and selling physical product that is out of date before it even hits shelves, or ignoring the problem so as to not invalidate the cards.    

 

And at the risk of repeating myself, I think a large part of the problem is how prevalent these mistakes are.  If they just happened once in a blue moon, people wouldn't be nearly so up in arms.  But GW never seems to get any better.  They don't learn from their mistakes.  We're on the same treadmill.  New edition with sloppy rules and some factions noticeably weaker than others.  We wait years while GW releases codexes and tries to balance the game, in the face of a meandering design philosophy and inconsistent power levels.  Then just when they're finished and the game is in a stable enough place, they blow up the rules with another new edition, and we start back from square one again, rather than iterating and improving upon the most recent version.  

 

We pay a premium price for the hobby (leaving aside that these rules are free; the rules are still part of the package because the hobby would be a lot less popular if there wasn't a game attached), but we're not getting a premium product.  It's like going out for a fancy meal and being served raw chicken.  Yeah, running a fine dining restaurant isn't easy.  And the staff is busy making meals for all the customers every day.  But at the end of the day, someone put the raw chicken on your plate, and someone else carried it out to you, both without noticing.  If, when the waiter sets it down in front of you, you can take one look and say, "excuse me, but that's a raw chicken breast," then there's a problem.  Now, if that happens just once and they apologize and bring you out a cooked one, you can shrug and say mistakes happen.  Which is true.  But if they keep bringing you raw chicken every once in a while, then there's a bigger problem.

 

 

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

2 hours ago, Petitioner's City said:

 

"(...) any of it (...)". Well that's a choleric exaggeration.... 

 

Editing and proofreading is tough, trust me, and it's hard work to catch everything. Things like tracking changes through iterations mean that files often get a bit messy, esoeiclat as different teams and individuals will be involved. Projects are hard, they are so hard - nevermind a project with 1000s (actually tens of thousands) of individual bits of text to be checked. 

 

God, "didn't even care". Can we avoid such pointless exaggerations, accept that actually this is hard work, not easy, ever.

As someone who edits and proofreads bio med documentation I have zero sympathy. But I do realize me being salty :cuss: right now is probably clouding my vision. Will try to hold off for the codex/some gameplay videos 

[Petitioner's City]

14 minutes ago, Mechanicus Tech-Support said:

As someone who edits and proofreads bio med documentation I have zero sympathy. But I do realize me being salty right now is probably clouding my vision. Will try to hold off for the codex/some gameplay videos 

 

As someone who also edits, and project manages, and writes, and works with overworked teams, I can't help but understand why these mistakes happen, and have a lot of sympathy - I can't imagine how complicated this task is (and at points how exceedingly monotonous many of its stages are, especially proofing). Heck, one question I had was what software are they using to package these cards* - or is each created manually by entering the data into a template (and what is cut to fit them). What happens when the source data is updated; are the cards automatically produced via a mail merge style process, or does it occur manually? Either way is open to error (especially around version control).

 

Hence my interjection - I'd love to see someone try to lead a project of this scale, to deadline, because I honestly think it's a lot harder than any of us imagine, even me shouting in the void "it's so complicated". 

 

* This of course also applies to codices, army books, rulebooks, etc - we saw from the heresy leaks that that team was using a word doc version, for example, as a proof. I am really curious about the version adaptation and process that occurs after, and it may be the main studio does use word in the same way. 

 

@Aarik, while a nice metaphor, I don't think it fits - honestly the issue will always be scale. We are consuming more than a single series of meals, we are seeing the largest tabletop game being released in the wild, one involving more moving parts than I dare to imagine. It's like looking instead at the entire main production line of a company (which it is); there will always be errors. It's nothing as drastic as that uncooked chicken - which I feel is catastrophic, especially as in the real world it could be a litigation/health inspection cause, closing the business. The errors we are facing and commenting on are minor; I'd compare it to errors in sowing or cuts of fabric from a big clothes company, which do occur, or the many writing errors our national papers are famous for.

 

It's also essential to differentiate the development stages from one another too - proofreading (catching language mistakes and perhaps tidying language, depending on a proofreader's remit) is different from and done by different people from those who will be editing, but editing usually is different from the main writing stage(s) - nevermind that research, playtesting, model design, box and product design, marketing development, etc. (each their own (series of) projects to complete) impact in varied ways that main "writing > editing > proofing > printing" pathway. 

 

I understand we'll see differently - that's ok :) ultimately tell GW their mistakes, hopefully it will be sorted soon

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

my hype really has been a rollercoster. i was  initially super hyped, then i tempered, then i got hyped, and then i hit a real low in hype, then the marine index hyped me up, then the BA index, now i'm slightly let down by the guard index, but i'm super hyped specifically for the exterminator's rules.

[Sea Creature]

I feel like the game has indeed gotten simpler and am looking forward to playing. Well it’s a big improvement so I won’t fault them. They are trying hard to do better. You might not want to believe it but it’s true.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Sea Creature

[Xenith]

Well, if everyone is miserable and think their faction has been nerfed into oblivion, then maybe we have balance! 

[appiah4]

14 hours ago, Petitioner's City said:

 

"(...) any of it (...)". Well that's a choleric exaggeration.... 

 

Editing and proofreading is tough, trust me, and it's hard work to catch everything. Things like tracking changes through iterations mean that files often get a bit messy, esoeiclat as different teams and individuals will be involved. Projects are hard, they are so hard - nevermind a project with 1000s (actually tens of thousands) of individual bits of text to be checked. 

 

God, "didn't even care". Can we avoid such pointless exaggerations, accept that actually this is hard work, not easy, ever.

Well, you are right I suppose.  It's not like it's their business as a 3.5 billion GBP market cap games company that made 170 million GBP profit before tax in 2022 to actually go through the trouble to write rules, track changes through iterations and end up with a clean and balanced ruleset, particularly if that means arcane arts such as managing teams and individuals are involved.  Like, why would GW have competent Project Managers?  It's not like people actually do this for a job and get paid to do it well.  After all, they can just say it's really hard and morons will still buy their books and toys.

 

I mean, doctors must be really stupid.  Because medicine is like really, really hard but they don't halfass their job.  I don't get it though, how can they possibly be expected to focus on so many patients, have a vast knowledge of their field all the while keeping up with medical journals and technology?  Come on folks, we have already established that people will settle for if it means they can justify their toys: JUST GIVE YOUR PATIENTS FREE TOYS AND LET THEM DIE!

 

/sarcasm

 

Pardon me while I have absolutely NO SYMPATHY for people who do abysmal work and take my money for granted because "You know, it's hard."  I don't earn that money by doing abysmally  in my profession and getting patted on the back for it. 

 

Ultimately, in order for me to justify the outrageously expensive price of $40 for a single plastic character, your game has to be an incredibly well balanced, smooth, and fun experience that I absolutely can't find elsewhere: It has to be second to none in everything if it will be more expensive than everything considering your economies of scale.  This, it is not.  It is not even half way there.  Compared to 9E, this is taking two steps forward, two steps back and celebrating progress.

Edited June 16, 2023 by appiah4

[Captain Idaho]

I have zero sympathy for GW regarding the proofreading or lack thereof. They make millions in profit each year, they can afford and should employ someone to read over things. 

 

And if they do, that person needs a review as to why so much was missed. Took me 5 minutes to read an Index whilst I worked and I found a whole bunch of errors casually.

 

GW says it's the market leader so they should do better.

[Petitioner's City]

But @appiah4, is it "abysmal"? I feel people tend to hone in on specific tiny mistakes to say a whole project is half assessed, the creators don't care, etc., when from my own experience that isn't the case. It's easier to be negative and hone in on small mistakes, with the majority success being ignored. Maybe it's a personality thing, but I've found a lot of the criticism of individual things being mistakes fair, but then it leaps to this meta-argument about the company being awful at its job, nor this a massively successful effort. 

 

And again metaphors being used to try to combat this aren't quite right - this isnt medicine. It's not a life or death situation. It's not even a capital letters situation. It's just a small number of mistakes across so many documents, which is being taken to extremes, by people with no conception how much work, how many people and how many steps are involved in getting to the game's release point. In the end these mistakes will be errated, new mistakes will crop up, the world will carry on. 

 

And again real-world project (and product) management is difficult, and isn't as simple as you are suggesting. You have to accept that all projects (including large-scale commercial projects) have mistakes and errors, that errors are normative and it is the resolution that matters. Let's see what happens :) 

[appiah4]

If you price your product with the highest premium over its peers and market it as the best of their lot to rationalize that pricing then anything less than perfect is abysmal.  It's not about how good your product is in a vacuum.  It's about what you charge for it.  I would be OK with this quality in Grimdark Future army lists, but for a free product even they do a better job than GW.  That's how abysmal it is.

 

Also, please stop assuming other people do not know what project management is.  I'm a certified black belt six sigma project manager, for example.  I've run multi-company projects for a multi-bililon conglomerate with very diverse teams.  It's not easy, but if it's what you get paid for then you do it well. 

 

Also, you don't simply accept that there will be errors in a large project, that defeatist approach will only result in errors being the norm and make you a bad project manager.  Mistakes are never normative, but they can be tolerable.  Your tolerance to errors is a determinant of the quality of your product, and hence its value.  If this is GW's error norm, then this can not be their price point.  It's dead simple.

Edited June 16, 2023 by appiah4

[Petitioner's City]

While I disagree, respectfully, I see what you are saying. I just think we have fundamentally different perspectives on this @appiah4 - and probably quite different personalities (although not truly scientific, you can probably tell I am in the NFP side - that side - of Myers Briggs).

 

Anyway, as i said above, that's ok. But I wouldn't call someone a "moron" for still buying a company's content, as people value different things - and place different valuations upon those things too :)  

[Arkhanist]

34 minutes ago, appiah4 said:

If you price your product with the highest premium over its peers and market it as the best of their lot to rationalize that pricing then anything less than perfect is abysmal.  It's not about how good your product is in a vacuum.  It's about what you charge for it.  I would be OK with this quality in Grimdark Future army lists, but for a free product even they do a better job than GW.  That's how abysmal it is.

 

Also, please stop assuming other people do not know what project management is.  I'm a certified black belt six sigma project manager, for example.  I've run multi-company projects for a multi-bililon conglomerate with very diverse teams.  It's not easy, but if it's what you get paid for then you do it well. 

 

Also, you don't simply accept that there will be errors in a large project, that defeatist approach will only result in errors being the norm and make you a bad project manager.  Mistakes are never normative, but they can be tolerable.  Your tolerance to errors is a determinant of the quality of your product, and hence its value.  If this is GW's error norm, then this can not be their price point.  It's dead simple.

 

While I entirely agree with you wrt to quality and project management expectations, I'd just point out that these rules and indexes are indeed currently free, like grimdark future. I have read a chunk of grimdark future stuff (I've done onepagerules' patreon for the minis), and it's pretty bland.

 

What we're paying the big bucks to GW for is the minis, and those are a different standard entirely. Obviously IMO, but I do think GW minis are the highest quality available in mass manufactured plastic. I do still think they're overpriced, but only somewhat. (some small 3rd party resin stuff is similarly good, but also similar price; and 3d printed designs can be as good or better, but they're not quite in the same marketspace yet). I don't think GW has ever gotten out of the mindset that they sell minis, and their rules just happen to go along with them to have a reason to buy them. I think they'd still be pretty happy if you bought the same amount of minis but played GF with them.

 

Once we get codexes which are charged for (and yes, those are definitely overpriced) and if the quality is the same, then fair enough. I would hope we're going to see significant corrections between now and then. The card copies of the indexes are clearly a bad deal given the amount of FAQs and adjustments that are going to apply to them, but we haven't seen the price on them yet, I think? If they're dirt cheap and you don't have a decent printer, people may be willing to take a pen to them anyway.

[Redcomet]

The level of inconsistencies across the indexes are really something. 
 

I don’t mind the combined weapons. Opens up so many modeling options. But in some units they went way too far.

 

And honestly it seems like some factions got way more development time than others.

 

Also I really like the toughness bump in this edition. But it seems like they forgot that some faction’s really doesn’t have much str 9 and above.

 

They also seem to have forgotten why some units got certain rules in 9th, like the Leman Russ turret weapon rules. 

[appiah4]

44 minutes ago, Petitioner's City said:

While I disagree, respectfully, I see what you are saying. I just think we have fundamentally different perspectives on this @appiah4 - and probably quite different personalities (although not truly scientific, you can probably tell I am in the NFP side - that side - of Myers Briggs).

 

Anyway, as i said above, that's ok. But I wouldn't call someone a "moron" for still buying a company's content, as people value different things - and place different valuations upon those things too :)  

I'm an INTP-T (Turbulant Logician) on that scale and I thinl that defines me rather well.

[Xenith]

1 hour ago, appiah4 said:

If you price your product with the highest premium over its peers

 

Hyperbole is fun and all, but this isn't remotely true. Bolt action tanks cost more and are smaller (£35 for a sherman with metal turret equivalent), on a per model basis, crisis protocol is more expensive and legion is maybe the same or more at £5+ per model. Legion makes GW look cheap! 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Xenith

[appiah4]

Hyperbole?  Bolt action is a 28mm game where a Tiger cost 24 GBP and a Panther cost 32.50 GBP.  Last time I checked 40K was a 32mm game where a Predator cost 42.50 GBP and a Repulsor cost 55 GBP.  That is on average a 75% markup.

 

Both Crisis protocol and Legion are Disney licensed games, and arguably licensed the MOST expensive IPs of the decade for their game.  So in essence an understandable licensing fee is built into the model prices.  Even so, for Crisis Protocol you can get Spiderman & Ghost Spider dual pack for $35 or a huge figure like The Hulk for $35.  Turning to GW US Captain Messinius by himself costs $40 and an oversized model such as Roboute Guilliman costs $60.  Again, 40K is about 80% more expensive.

 

For scale comparison's sake:

 

 

What exactly is 40K's excuse?

 

Hyperbole is fun and all, but there is none in this argument.

Edited June 16, 2023 by appiah4

[Captain Idaho]

@Arkhanist I would say that without the game, the miniatures wouldn't be bought in even a quarter of the number. My entire gaming group just up and wouldn't buy more than a handful instead of armies across different games.

 

If the game is flawed, people are less likely to play. If they're less likely to play, they're less likely to buy.

[Petitioner's City]

54 minutes ago, appiah4 said:

I'm an INTP-T (Turbulant Logician) on that scale and I thinl that defines me rather well.

 

I would have thought you were a STJ or SFJ - nice to learn otherwise, as this does feel appropriate from your own comments above!

 

Quote

Logician managers have high standards, and they expect others to grasp their insights instantly and provide their own in equal measure.

Bosses with this personality type can have a reputation for being exacting. They quickly pick up on discrepancies in their employees’ work, and they may not hold back when it comes to doling out negative feedback. As they gain experience, Logician managers often discover that balancing criticism with praise and encouragement allows their team to enjoy higher morale – and, just as importantly, better results.

 

[Xenith]

1 hour ago, appiah4 said:

Bolt action is a 28mm game where a Tiger cost 24 GBP and a Panther cost 32.50 GBP.  Last time I checked 40K was a 32mm game where a Predator cost 42.50 GBP and a Repulsor cost 55 GBP.  That is on average a 75% markup.

 

Only if you compare apples and oranges. That bolt action panther for £32.50 is much smaller than than a space marine rhino at £24. 

 

Look at the images below. The plastic sherman is £24 and a rhino is £24. What gives you more model for your money? I stand by my assertion that you get more tank for your money with GW! 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Xenith

[appiah4]

Again, that is a Sherman tank that costs only 24 GBP as opposed to a Predator that costs 42.5 GBP.  You may get more plastic per buck but not more tanks per buck, or a more detailed kit.

 

Also the Sherman is one of the smallest tanks in the game.  If we are going that route though, here is a Panther (32.50 GBP) next to a Leman Russ (40 GBP)

 

 

Even if you could argue that GW tanks are not overpriced (they are) you can't really argue against how cheap Bolt Action riflemen etc. are and how much cheaper a Bolt Action army costs despite having so many more vehicles.

Edited June 16, 2023 by appiah4

[Antarius]

I’m not trying to be snarky here, but why not just… not pay them, then?

 

I mean, I think I’ll use OPR if I ever want to play an army game again, but if you really feel that neither the minis or the game justifies the cost in any way, then why keep buying? I mean, there are lots and lots of alternatives.

 

Personally, I might try the new edition, or I might not. But I do like the setting and the minis, which is why I buy them. If I didn’t, I just wouldn’t bother.

[Captain Idaho]

Let's try to steer clear of price comparisons with other companies. The topic of discussion is primarily about whether people are less excited and unhappy with the incoming release of 10th edition 40K, which of course does have some overlap with the concept of cost, it is a loose overlap at best. =][=

[Doghouse]

Well any chance of me being optimistic just sunk like a lead filled titanic being hit by a graviton weapon after looking at how they do points now! 

 

Off to Heresy it is!

[Kallas]

14 minutes ago, Doghouse said:

Well any chance of me being optimistic just sunk like a lead filled titanic being hit by a graviton weapon after looking at how they do points now! 

Yup, absolutely. My enthusiasm fell with every single preview, and every Index came with more and more facepalms; now, these points convinced me to not buy into Eldar and just leave it until they fix things (which I'm so totally sure they will ).

[Brother Christopher]

Seeing the point costs in tandem with the Indexes allowed me to finally pinpoint where my excitement disappeared. I think that most of my disappointment with 10th edition stems from the little expectations that I had: the Indexes at the start of 8th edition were really fun. I was hoping that even when 10th becomes similar to 9th along the way, I'd still have IndexHammer to revert to. Well, I won't...

 

Here's to hoping that this is just a rough start. Doubt it, though.