Anyone less excited for 10th than they were?

[appiah4]

5 minutes ago, Doghouse said:

6 minutes ago, Doghouse said:

 

Chin up, at least they haven't shattered the universe into separate realms overwriting all the existing lore...yet.

 

Bet they bring the Emperor back. 

But they already did shatter it into two.

 

[Interrogator Stobz]

32 minutes ago, appiah4 said:

 

They have shattered our local gaming community in two. 

 

The die hard '40k or bust' tournament players and the One Page Rules 'Casual games please' players.

 

I'm just stoked the later is getting so much support now.

That's a sign that 40k has truly gone too far, they used to give loose support, now none.

[jaxom]

10 minutes ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

and the One Page Rules 'Casual games please'

And yet it has some nice granularity to list building. I think there's a paradox of design where the more narrative elements influence rules, the more options it provides to cheese them, so the healthiest place for granular, very fluffy rules is in a game targeted at casual players who enjoy a competitive game while telling a story through game play. Late third edition was like that (at least for me) and OPR reminds me a lot of 3rd edition.

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

3 hours ago, Arkhanist said:

 

You assume they have a quality control department for the rules, as opposed to an intern and a pot of coffee. Right now, I'm thinking they made the coffee too strong.

 

I'm thinking what they put in the brownies that they served WITH the coffee was too strong.

 

"Yeah man, all weapons should be free because war is just a word and how can you fight a word?"

[Scribe]

Thing is, I really want to be playing 40K again. Frustrating.. 

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, spessmarine said:

And all units will be costed accordingly, costed as if you did take as many hammers as possible or whatever weapon edges out the rest. 

 

Absolutely.

[Arkhanist]

48 minutes ago, Lord Nord said:

 

I'm thinking what they put in the brownies that they served WITH the coffee was too strong.

 

"Yeah man, all weapons should be free because war is just a word and how can you fight a word?"

 

Ah, those cookies went to the rules writing department. The overcaffeinated intern just had to try and check if their output made sense, gave up trying, then they ran out of time and the CEO hit the "publish" button anyway.

[Kastor Krieg]

4 hours ago, Cleon said:

Half a lifetime ago I used to be a Test Analyst. One of the things you do is sample check for quality. Assuming you have someone who cares and knows anything about the game in the quality control team, one of the first simple checks would be 'grab all the Rhino cards, are they consistent' if the answer is 'hell no, someone has half arsed updates and copy pasted half rules all over the place.' then you raise a defect and do more tests. 

They don't have a process. They simply don't. They run beer & pretzels games with insiders. Also they send rules packets overseas to US tournament players and then disregard their feedback. That's it.

In a 4.5 billion dollar company, on the company's main product.

[Scribe]

8 minutes ago, Kastor Krieg said:

In a 4.5 billion dollar company, on the company's main product.

 

The flaw here, is thinking that the game(s) are their main product.

 

That would be the models.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Broken games sell more models apparently. FOMO and creep are great incentives for many.

[KenaiPhoneix]

Well, a new system (or rework of one) will surely bring problems to the balance of factions, and there is no such thing as "perfect" balance.

 

The good thing is that, thanks to fact that they can update the character stats every time they want, and that anyone can access to them freely, will bring more flexibility to the "meta" and to the overall balance of the game. So Im optimistic that GW will use these tools to fix any potential problem with any faction.

[Emperor Ming]

Bah, free wargear is just going to open a whole new can of balance issues

[Arkhanist]

Until the publish codexes, and we're right back to the waiting for the however long online balance update to the dead tree static version, and people having to manually apply (and de-apply when they get reversed ala AoC) multiple changes to their paper copies.

 

Unless they also pay for warhammer+ and use the official app AND import the single-use code from their paper codex. Then you get online updates. Everyone else can go pound sand.

 

I guess that might be one advantage to being a faction that spends most of the next 3 years waiting for their codex after all; but given codex power-creep has been a problem since forever, it seems unlikely GW will resist the temptation this time.

[Captain Idaho]

If things really do flop outside a stellar Leviathan box grab, forcing the company to U-turn...

 

What does that look like?

 

My best guess is an expansion framed as "tournament points and unit size variation - just as always planned guys."

 

Outside chance they'll update the rules and call it a living rulebook, but that's unlikely since they'd have to rework the released Codex books so far. Then again, folk will just rebuy them so maybe GW will...

[Arkhanist]

I was honestly looking forward to 10th and refactoring and painting up new stuff for my BA and plague marines and starting tyranids cos they are dope models.

 

The rules mostly seem pretty clean and tight, and OK, the indexes are  janky and bug filled, but they're only temporary, I don't need VV, my plage marines can be donors for HH, I can do this unit, and that unit still...

 

My whoosh of disappointment when I saw the points switcheroo could probably heard in the next county. It's not just so many things have effectively got the VV treatment via power level (you will pay as if you're taking all this profile stuff, so you're penalising yourself taking weaker options) but the fixed unit sizes removes so much flexibility for picking which units you take  - I can squeeze this guy if drop two guys from that unit and now they can go in that transport... Nope, says GW. You cannot count to 5, so we will do it for you.

 

And the fact that they've switched to power levels almost certainly means they plan to do the VV treatment to everything over time; you take the options that's in the box, no more or less, and we're going to mush all the profiles together anyway so most of them are interchangable. Everything becomes an aspect unit or AoS or most primaris etc.

 

I'm gonna paint the stuff in leviathan, because well, I've bought it now, and they will still be a fun painting project. And at most I might play combat patrol since that's a completely fixed loadout for all, that they might even be able to handle the balance on, and it should be quick rounds. And I'll be revisiting one page rules. I sure as hell ain't gonna be buying new stuff to expand 40k.

 

What a total disappointing mess.

[Kastor Krieg]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

The flaw here, is thinking that the game(s) are their main product. That would be the models.

The flaw in your thinking is believing the crud "we're a miniatures company first" propaganda they're pushing down customers' throats. That's not what they're telling the only people they have the duty in telling the truth - their shareholders.

The codex-selling, novel-churning, hobby-painting side of the business is large enough that despite the logistics issues these create (especially codices), GW still have not gone full-digital - even though this would immediately sell them a ton more models. 

It's a compounding, complex and overlapping business model (pun notwithstanding) - if 40k popularity tanks nobody will suddenly buy 50 more Space Marines to put on their shelves or into the Pile of Shame. As soon as they're "unplayable", the models are being discarded left and right. It's enough to observe the prices of second-hand Leviathan Dreadnoughts  tanking after the recent Legends announcement.

[Doghouse]

Have they said whether or not when the Space Marine codex drops the free data cards will be updated or not yet?

[Bryan Blaire]

1 hour ago, Arkhanist said:

I'm gonna paint the stuff in leviathan, because well, I've bought it now, and they will still be a fun painting project.

At this point, I’m considering returning Leviathan… I can spend a lot less money on a couple of cool painting projects.  Might not, because I’ve already bought it, but geez, GW has really lost just about everything that I loved about this game in 2nd - 5th I think.

 

1 hour ago, Arkhanist said:

What a total disappointing mess.

Totally agreed.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Bryan Blaire

[Arkhanist]

Bright side - anyone who wants the models in Leviathan but didn't pre-order is suddenly going to find it a lot easier to pick up on launch day! And 10ed rule books will be going super cheap on ebay.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Just Never buy their rulebooks again. Not even 2nd hand.

They don't deserve it and haven't for years but this one wins hands down.

 

Minis, sure. They're as cool as.

[Arkangilos]

26 minutes ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

Just Never buy their rulebooks again. Not even 2nd hand.

They don't deserve it and haven't for years but this one wins hands down.

 

Minis, sure. They're as cool as.

This. 

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, Kastor Krieg said:

The flaw in your thinking is believing the crud "we're a miniatures company first" propaganda they're pushing down customers' throats. That's not what they're telling the only people they have the duty in telling the truth - their shareholders.

 

I'm just saying that based on the observation of behavior over time.

 

Why are marines pushed? Because the models sold like crack.

Why are characters pushed? Because the models have insane rates of profit.

 

Do they have other revenue steams? Absolutely. Do I wish the game was good again? Absolutely.

 

I could not with a straight face say that 40K, the game, has EVER been the actual priority of their business.

 

This isnt giving GAMES Workshop a pass here. I went from a "Dont tell my wife how much I spend." gamer, to a "What edition is current?" gamer over the last 2 editions, and I wish it wasnt the case, but I would struggle to make the argument that GW cares about the rules/game as the priority.

[Kastor Krieg]

25 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

I'm just saying that based on the observation of behavior over time.

 

Why are marines pushed? Because the models sold like crack.

Why are characters pushed? Because the models have insane rates of profit.

 

Do they have other revenue steams? Absolutely. Do I wish the game was good again? Absolutely.

 

I could not with a straight face say that 40K, the game, has EVER been the actual priority of their business.

 

This isnt giving GAMES Workshop a pass here. I went from a "Dont tell my wife how much I spend." gamer, to a "What edition is current?" gamer over the last 2 editions, and I wish it wasnt the case, but I would struggle to make the argument that GW cares about the rules/game as the priority.

Marines are pushed because of "product identity". And that's why they sell like crack - because like it or not, 40k is Marines. And when pushed, the iconic faction will always outsell the others.

 

Again, characters are not pushed because models have an insane margin of profit. Character models have an insane margin of profit because the rules are written to require characters to be competetive (and in 10th more than ever!). This, connected with the marketing push, means that they will sell like hot cakes and create insane margins of profitability, despite constant price hiktes. Not the other way around. As soon as the reason to buy all the new HQ vanishes, people will not pay a unit's price for a single mini, not to mention centerpiece stuff like Primarchs and others.

I'm not saying the game is the priority of the business - the game is the core of the business. It is the axis upon which the wheel revolves. It is th reason for the existence of the IP and the business. Without the game the IP dies and the model, as well as auxiliary (books, paint, WH+, etc,) sales along with it.

[Scribe]

16 minutes ago, Kastor Krieg said:

Marines are pushed because of "product identity". And that's why they sell like crack - because like it or not, 40k is Marines. And when pushed, the iconic faction will always outsell the others.

 

Again, characters are not pushed because models have an insane margin of profit. Character models have an insane margin of profit because the rules are written to require characters to be competetive (and in 10th more than ever!). This, connected with the marketing push, means that they will sell like hot cakes and create insane margins of profitability, despite constant price hiktes. Not the other way around. As soon as the reason to buy all the new HQ vanishes, people will not pay a unit's price for a single mini, not to mention centerpiece stuff like Primarchs and others.

I'm not saying the game is the priority of the business - the game is the core of the business. It is the axis upon which the wheel revolves. It is th reason for the existence of the IP and the business. Without the game the IP dies and the model, as well as auxiliary (books, paint, WH+, etc,) sales along with it.

 

10th is not going to kill the game any more than 9th did though. I still think 10th is an improvement over whatever 9th was trying to pass itself off as so its position as the core of the business, being the vehicle by which the profit is made, will still be there.

[Blurf]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

 

10th is not going to kill the game any more than 9th did though. I still think 10th is an improvement over whatever 9th was trying to pass itself off as so its position as the core of the business, being the vehicle by which the profit is made, will still be there.

To wit, there is one thing people absolutely should keep in mind:

 

7th edition 40k and Launch AoS, absolutely DID come very close to tanking the company. They were in BAD shape before the General's Handbook launched and were still on the rocks until the launch of 8th.

 

A bad enough string of time can tank sales, we've seen it happen. The question is, are DG, SoB, and Admech players not making any new purchases enough to counter all the Marine players going out and buying Desolation Squads and all the new Wraithknights and Knight Preceptors getting picked up?