10th Edition: GW's Target Demographic

[Special Officer Doofy]

Soooo what does customer attention spans and acquisition age have to do with lopsided 10th edition tournament results? Because my neighbor's kid grew up with a smart phone and has a short attention span Eldar get a rigged faction bonus and cheap point costs? Because a mom bought their kid a toy instead of a grown man buying it for himself Death Guard lost their signature ability and are the worst faction in the game?

 

This thread has turned silly over the last few pages. Regardless of what many (myself included) consider to be a bad core mechanics like using power level disguised as points because it's "easier", they could still have balanced the individual faction's better. Doesn't matter if the core rules are designed for a new generation or not. This thread is slowly becoming a catch all for people's grievances with the edition/hobby versus poor balance between faction's leading to lopsided tournament results. And don't get me wrong, there is alot of things to complain about but I thought this thread was just about the disparity between faction strengths based on the results. Things like forcing powerlevel and fixed unit sizes, free wargear, leaders joining units, a whole slew of new weapon keywords, and forcing at least one ability on each data sheet affects every faction. It might make the game worse (or better), but it's not the main issue with the disparity between faction's.

 

The game got worse because we actually had better balance at the end of 9th even with the bonker codexes and balance slates versus the indexes at the start of 10th. GW just did a bad job. Core rules aside, the individual indexes are bad (but I also think the core rules got worse, but that's a seperate issue). Scary thing is doing all the indexes at once had a faction at just about 75% win rate and one at just about 25% win rate. If they can't do it right with a reset how are they going to get it right with 9 codexes over 12 months?

[Xenith]

=][= I've split this from the 10th ed tourney topic, interesting stuff! =][=

[Domhnall]

Personal opinion, having only read the first page of this topic: 
 

GW's target demographic is more toward the casual gamer, rather than the hardcore tournament gamer.

If you want to appeal to the broadest group, you make it easy to get into and play without getting bogged down in rules. I'd probably also say a bigger portion than you'd think have never set foot inside a local gamer group, and only ever play with their friends in their own homes. These people don't give a rats bottom that X faction playing Y formation is the current meta, or that Z rule contradicts R rule and can be exploited against F faction. They only care that their Orks may beat their pals Marines this week and have a laugh. 

 

D&D took off in popularity during 4th & 5th edition possibly because it was more streamlined and easy to get into than 3.5 (and subsequently pathfinder). I preferred pathfinder, but the group I had wanted to play 5th edition because it was far easier to play for a couple of hours every few weeks. 

 

GW's biggest problem, is because it has hamstrung itself by insisting on keeping the 1D6 system for most rolls, which limits their flexibilty for balance. 

[alfred_the_great]

One of the thing that bemuses me about “balance” and whatnot, is that any game like 40k will inherently be in-balanced, and mathematically incorrect if it also tries to exist in a make-believe world. 

 

There are plenty of balanced games out there, but they don’t have the richness and breadth that 40k/30k has.  If you want a balanced, simple and quick game to play, why not go for chess?  If you want a game that talks about the grim darkness of the far future, then you might have to accept that “balancing” the lore, points and people’s desire for their toys to be “good enough” just ain’t going to happen.

[TrawlingCleaner]

Younger demographics (Teenagers) are quick easy money, they buy a starter set or combat patrol and try buying kits regularly. It's not a consistent money stream and sporadic, probably centred around Christmas/their birthday largely. To be frank, there's not a chance this the Core demographic of the game

 

Core Demographics are definitely people in their 30s+. They have extra money, time and are hit hardest with nostalgia grabs (look at most SM character kits being released based on Mark Gibbons art).

Combat Patrol is definitely targetted towards newer players and is a good way to get people into the hobby. The core game being simpler is interesting, I think whilst on the whole rules have been shifted from one place to another, the proliferation of "Phase Skip" rolls is likely to reduce mental load in game. I believe there was an interview with an Ex-GW game designer when talking about a game he was developing and the role Dice play into mental load. The short of it was that reading numbers on dice adds to a game's mental load and supposedly symbols are better for that.

 

I think the fixed Points on units is likely to be more benficial to veteran players with larger armies. Someone new to the hobby with a small unit pool may be able to build a 1k list on the dot one day, then poitns change or they get a new unit and they can't make their list work anymore. Where you'd be able to change wargear around, you now can't so you have to go into a game at a defeict.

Whereas Veteran players with largely pools of units just dust off that weird unit that hasn't seen play but they love to get out. They're more likely to make Houserules to change things as they've got deeper ties/sunk cost vs a New player with a small army

 

That's my broadstrokes, two cents anyways

[Marshal Rohr]

4 hours ago, Antarius said:

The “it’s for kids now!” used derogatively has always been both misguided and silly. Most people get into these games as kids/teens and kids are anything but dumb; I mean, I wish I had the sheer brainpower for games that I had when I was in my teens. That being said, parents’ purchasing for kids is definitely a demographic/market that many, many companies (hell, entire industries) target, so I don’t think the idea that GW does so too is very far fetched.

Whether they focus on one demographic to the exclusion of others is another matter and I don’t really see any actual evidence that they do. There are certainly lots of releases that seem to be targeted at the nostalgia of people who got into the games in ye olden times, people who read black library books, people with more money than sense (one might argue this is their key demographic and that we’re all in it, I guess  ) and so on.

 

In any case, I haven’t actually tried 10th yet and I doubt I will; my ability to play depends on the “grown up schedules” of myself and my friends, so there’s no reason wasting the couple of gaming weekends we manage to get in every year with what seems to be a complete shambles of a game. I am super casual, which is precisely why I want balance, or at least a reasonable approximation of balance. It’s a shame, because a lot of the changes, I actually like. I just don’t want to bother with completely mismatched armies or spending several hours of research and tweaking to get some semblance of an enjoyable game.

No one said dumb, a lot of people assumed dumb, but no one actually said dumb. Zoomers and whatever is after Zoomers gree up entirely with hobbies that provided rapid dopamine hits (CoD grinds, Mobile Games, Social Media notifications) so this new design paradigm of avoiding passive down time in a turn, a separate combat patrol system with zero choices, making wargear aesthetic upgrades with no impact on points. All of that is attempting to cater to younger generations who were raised surrounded by digital media and very little understanding of how digital media works or is used. 

[Xenith]

9 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

No one said dumb, a lot of people assumed dumb, but no one actually said dumb.

 

Maybe not literally, but the implication was there in your choice of words and the tone in which they were conveyed. 

 

I guess we have to split this into:

1) GW's target demographic

and

2) the people that play and spend the most.

 

I think GW is, smartly, going after the younger generation rather than those already addicted, however the rapid growth of many professional painting studios in the last 3-5 years strongly suggests that a big chunk of the hobby is populated by cash rich and time poor people, so professionals in the 25 - 45 category with maybe young familes. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Xenith

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, Domhnall said:

D&D took off in popularity during 4th

 

This is not correct. 4E crushed D&D's popularity, because the people who wanted to play MMOs were already playing MMOs and a lot of the people who wanted TTRPGs went somewhere else. That "somewhere else" being Pathfinder, mostly.

 

4E did not "take off" as the streamlined alternative to games like Pathfinder. This is quite literally the opposite of reality. Pathfinder exploded in popularity because it was the version of D&D people actually wanted after 4E turned the game into a wannabe MMO.

 

Paizo used to create supplements for D&D, and not long before 4th rolled around, they were told by D&D execs that their services would no longer be needed. Hasbro wanted people funneled into D&D Insider, not buying adventure supplements from a 3rd party. This got the Paizo team started on the path that would end up with Pathfinder, a game based on the 3.5E license.

 

D&D 4E is a masterclass on misunderstanding a game's market. If GW is in fact following in those same footsteps, I have to wonder what system will step in to pick up their inevitable lost market share.

[TrawlingCleaner]

=][= Let's leave the ADHD talk there folks and stick to the discussion at hand =][=

[Halandaar]

I don't know, for a company supposedly all about appealing to a new generation GW sure are wheeling out a lot of products designed explicitly to appeal to the nostalgia of those of us who started in the 80s and early 90s. Modern models for Arbites, Beastmen and Corsairs? Minis that are 1:1 references to classic 90s artwork like Helbrecht, Mephiston, Azrakh, or to classic sculpts like the Noise Marine or very recently the Screamer-Killer? Bringing back long-dead factions like Genestealer Cults and Squats? Resurrecting Fantasy Battles and Epic? Imo there are even elements of the 9th>10th Edition rules changes that seem to harken back to the 2nd>3rd Edition changes, which makes perfect sense given the age of the people writing the game now and what that suggests about which edition they have the strongest nostalgia for.

[Domhnall]

59 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

This is not correct. 4E crushed D&D's popularity, because the people who wanted to play MMOs were already playing MMOs and a lot of the people who wanted TTRPGs went somewhere else. That "somewhere else" being Pathfinder, mostly.

 

4E did not "take off" as the streamlined alternative to games like Pathfinder. This is quite literally the opposite of reality. Pathfinder exploded in popularity because it was the version of D&D people actually wanted after 4E turned the game into a wannabe MMO.

 

Paizo used to create supplements for D&D, and not long before 4th rolled around, they were told by D&D execs that their services would no longer be needed. Hasbro wanted people funneled into D&D Insider, not buying adventure supplements from a 3rd party. This got the Paizo team started on the path that would end up with Pathfinder, a game based on the 3.5E license.

 

D&D 4E is a masterclass on misunderstanding a game's market. If GW is in fact following in those same footsteps, I have to wonder what system will step in to pick up their inevitable lost market share.

 

I stand corrected  

 

4th edition was one I passed over and had got into pathfinder during that time, but when came back in 5th it D&D was more popular than it had been previously. 

[Special Officer Doofy]

2 hours ago, alfred_the_great said:

One of the thing that bemuses me about “balance” and whatnot, is that any game like 40k will inherently be in-balanced, and mathematically incorrect if it also tries to exist in a make-believe world. 

 

There are plenty of balanced games out there, but they don’t have the richness and breadth that 40k/30k has.  If you want a balanced, simple and quick game to play, why not go for chess?  If you want a game that talks about the grim darkness of the far future, then you might have to accept that “balancing” the lore, points and people’s desire for their toys to be “good enough” just ain’t going to happen.

 

One thing that bemuses me is people who think the game can't be balanced and in the ballpark of 45-55% win rate for factions and always suggest chess. It will never be perfect but there's glaring outliers all the time. Why at the start of 8th edition were lightning claws 6/10 points for loyalist but 8/12 points for Chaos marines? There's little gems all over the place that anyone with knowledge of the game can look at and immediately go how did that even make it to print.

 

So where do you draw the line on the lore translating to the game? Loyalist marines tend to work together more and the character abilities benefit the unit they join but the Chaos marine equivalent just buff the character and are worse overall in the game. Why aren't the Chaos lords stronger than the space marine Captains in the game? Chaos lords on average are much older and have more combat experience and kills under their belt than the much younger loyalist counterpart in the lore, why isn't that reflected in their stats in the game? How often do loyalist marines go to the warp to fight chaos versus chaos coming out and ambushing loyalist? Why don't chaos automatically go first against loyalist?

 

Not everything in the lore is going to translate. 10 tactical marines are worth about 25 Guardsmen in the game, but we both know in the lore 10 marines would rip 25 Guardsmen in half. Would you prefer 5 marines cost 1,000 Guardsmen? Why spend upwards of $1,000's in plastic models that you assemble and paint by hand and have to pay for rules to the game seperately for and just accept that it can't be balanced when we had even more balance in the end of 9th with all of the crazy codexes, mono bonuses, strats and subfactions? Talk about low standards. There's even less for them to balance now and they did much worse. The setting is made up but the math is real and at middle school level at best.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Special Officer Doofy

[Scribe]

3 hours ago, Domhnall said:

D&D took off in popularity during 4th & 5th edition possibly because it was more streamlined and easy to get into than 3.5 (and subsequently pathfinder). I preferred pathfinder, but the group I had wanted to play 5th edition because it was far easier to play for a couple of hours every few weeks. 

 

This part is a bit off, but outside the scope of the forum.

[Helycon]

17 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

Yep, my boy (15) is a super computer when it comes to rules, shame he doesn't do that at school. 

He and his group do Not want simple. They love obsession. 

Whilst he has access to my money, I still want and buy 3x as much as him.

My mum always said the same about me and being worse at remembering Warhammer rules and remembering my French schoolwork 

 

It really is just interest at that point. I couldn't give a hoot about French then, everything I did or read was either English or native. Now, when visiting France every so often, it would have been handy, but teacher telling me there was regularity in irregular verbs didn't gel with my logic 

[MegaVolt87]

There is nothing inherently wrong with pursuing a younger generation for products, but table top wargames are an odd duck. They benifit from older hobbyists to be the pillars of a games group. GW knows they can only rock the boat so much.

 

40k firstborn players are in shambles currently and rightly so. Some will quit or drift to 30k, others will switch to- Eldar, Custodes, Tau to mercilessly crush primaris.  Life goes on.

[alfred_the_great]

1 hour ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

One thing that bemuses me is people who think the game can't be balanced and in the ballpark of 45-55% win rate for factions and always suggest chess. It will never be perfect but there's glaring outliers all the time. Why at the start of 8th edition were lightning claws 6/10 points for loyalist but 8/12 points for Chaos marines? There's little gems all over the place that anyone with knowledge of the game can look at and immediately go how did that even make it to print.

 

So where do you draw the line on the lore translating to the game? Loyalist marines tend to work together more and the character abilities benefit the unit they join but the Chaos marine equivalent just buff the character and are worse overall in the game. Why aren't the Chaos lords stronger than the space marine Captains in the game? Chaos lords on average are much older and have more combat experience and kills under their belt than the much younger loyalist counterpart in the lore, why isn't that reflected in their stats in the game? How often do loyalist marines go to the warp to fight chaos versus chaos coming out and ambushing loyalist? Why don't chaos automatically go first against loyalist?

 

Not everything in the lore is going to translate. 10 tactical marines are worth about 25 Guardsmen in the game, but we both know in the lore 10 marines would rip 25 Guardsmen in half. Would you prefer 5 marines cost 1,000 Guardsmen? Why spend upwards of $1,000's in plastic models that you assemble and paint by hand and have to pay for rules to the game seperately for and just accept that it can't be balanced when we had even more balance in the end of 9th with all of the crazy codexes, mono bonuses, strats and subfactions? Talk about low standards. There's even less for them to balance now and they did much worse. The setting is made up but the math is real and at middle school level at best.

I have literally no interest in balance as my interaction with 40k is via rpg and the lord - where 10 tactical marines should (and do) rip a 1000 guardsmen in half. But for the reasons you suggest, that’s not very interesting.  
 

as for your other points, they’re reasonably made, but I imagine SM players would object. 
 

lore; balance; ease of use - pick any 2 (to misquote an engineering aphorism)

[Special Officer Doofy]

13 minutes ago, alfred_the_great said:

I have literally no interest in balance as my interaction with 40k is via rpg and the lord

 

[Aarik]

I think GW's "target" demographic is probably 30+ year olds with more disposable income.  I recall reading that this demo is the largest for videogames, as well, and I'd hazard the presumption that it extends to a lot of other nerdy hobbies/collectibles (legos, funko pops, what have you).  I know my hobby spending has increased and become more regular as I've gotten older.

 

I think that GW is trying to reduce the barrier to entry, but not necessarily targeted at kids, and that its more controversial design choices are a result of that aim.  Personally, I had much more mental brain space to learn and remember a complicated rules system when I was younger than I do now.  The burdens and responsibilities of life weigh more heavily as we get older haha.  Learning and remembering the flow chart that you needed for 9th edition Ad Mech would have been a lot easier 15-20 years ago than it would be now.

 

In the Painting Phase interview with the product designer, he talks about how contrast paint was designed to be able to get players the dopamine hit of seeing a painted model as easily as possible.  And on an similar note, fixed unit sizes, free wargear, no force org slots, rules moved to datacards, and most importantly combat patrol were all in service of making it as easy as possible to get players playing their first games.  But I think GW missed the mark on a decent chunk of these changes.  They provide a marginal benefit at the earliest stages, but cause bigger problems slightly further down the line.  The analogy I'd use is that GW is trying to get people in the door into the "house" of the hobby.  And they thought, "okay, what are the barriers to entry?  Well, to get into the house, you need to remember to bring your key with you, use the key to unlock the door, and then open the door and walk in."  And to eliminate the need for those steps, GW decided to just knock out the front wall so anyone can just come up and walk right in.  This is great for getting people inside the house the first time.  But it makes it much harder to live in the house once you're there.  Not only does your house not have a door that locks, it doesn't have a door or even a front wall at all!  This is the equivalent of people quickly finding that fixed unit sizes, power level, and free wargear make it much harder to tailor your list around the margins, forcing you to swap out whole units because your list is a few points over.  And that a lot of these changes make the game more unbalanced and harder to fix because most of the balance levers are gone. This is a problem because once people get past their first few games and get a little deeper, they realize that a lot of the rules are wonky.  And the people who are already in the house are mad that they no longer have a front wall.

 

I think the better choice would have been a more pared back version of what GW did.  They ripped out the winding hedge maze that you previously needed to navigate to even get to the house (bloated/overcomplicated faction/subfaction rules -- AdMech being a quintessential example), but a number of the replacement faction/detachment rules just don't work well now.  I.e., they ripped out the hedge maze, but did a poor job paving over what was left.  And rather than ripping out the whole front wall of the house, I think it would have been better if GW built a big porch that newcomers could walk right up to and hang out on, and once they're having fun, they're invited through the door to larger games.  Combat patrol is that porch, and I think it's a great one.  Fixed everything, easy to just build and play.  And once people are happy on the porch, they can pretty easily be shown how to unlock and open the door.  The problem really wasn't the door at all, it's not that hard to open.  Most people, it seems, weren't really held back by having to choose wargear or unit sizes, or fit their army into force org slots.  Having to remember your keys and open the door wasn't the pain point for most.  And to the extent they were, they have the porch/combat patrol to dip their toes into.  But doing it this way keeps the door and front wall for both newcomers to the house and those who have lived in it for years.

 

This analogy itself has gotten a bit bloated too, but hopefully it gets my point across.  And just to overload everyone with analogies, 10th edition now also sort of reminds me of Quidditch in the Harry Potter universe.  It sounds really cool, but when you think a little bit about it, the whole game breaks down (rules as written, the Seeker catching the snitch is really the only part of the game that matters because it results in so many points compared to other aspects of the game). 

[Helias_Tancred]

I'm 51. Gen X demographic. I realized a while back that other than buying or not buying, I have no influence over what GW does/releases/etc. I no longer stress or worry about it. Sure I have opinions, I have a few big pet peeves, but I realize thats all they are lol, and I don't let them rule my enjoyment of the hobby.  That said I mainly play with a small group of friends. In my basement. Rarely if ever out at a shop. That fact allows me to be how I am towards the hobby. Rarely do I encounter the rules/faction power problems  that pop up regularly during an edition. If I was playing in stores regularly, I'm not sure if I could take all the nonsense/gamer "gotta crush you" ego on a continuous level? It's a disease here in the U.S.  But there's also some good people that play in stores too. I focus on the parts of the hobby that I enjoy the most, and playing with friends not in a gamer fishbowl, allows the game play to be more fun and easy going. It helps to have beers, colas, and snacks at arms reach too lol. Overall I like 10th, it allows me to continue on in the hobby and for that I'm grateful. 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Eilio Tiberius

[sarabando]

GWs target demographic from 9.01am on the first day they opened were and always will be mummy and daddies credit card

[Halandaar]

40 minutes ago, sarabando said:

GWs target demographic from 9.01am on the first day they opened were and always will be mummy and daddies credit card

 

I would take offense to that because back in the day I used to buy my minis with my hard earned paper round money (and not-so-hard earned birthday cash), but given I am now a dad myself and use my own credit card to buy I suppose you are technically correct 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Halandaar

[Captain Idaho]

I think GW's target demographic being young people, often kids with parents' money, is correct. But that's their target, not their real bedrock of the hobby that brings in their money. The rest of us, the real GW money makers, the whales or whatever happy term the Internet may call refer to a bunch of us, are taken for granted.

 

If we ever needed evidence of just how out of touch GW is, their handling of the Forge World Legends debacle, points to power level and now Firstborn retirement, is all the proof we need. Sure there are those who like all those changes (oddly enough many seem to like all 3 of them, even though they're unrelated to each other...) but a substantial number of customers aren't happy with one, two or all three of those changes. GW seems to think alienating a significant portion of their customer base is a viable strategy.

[Noserenda]

They dont target teenagers to get parents credit cards, i mean, thats inherently dumb, parents have way less money than single/childless people on the whole :P 

No, the reason they target teenagers is because the ones they hook statistically come back time and time again over their lives and drop cash, they recognised lapsed players as an investment years ago and the more teens you expose, the more likely you are to get them on board.

Plus, lets be honest, 40k is like, peak Teenage interest fodder by its very nature :D 

[Halandaar]

1 minute ago, Noserenda said:

They dont target teenagers to get parents credit cards, i mean, thats inherently dumb, parents have way less money than single/childless people on the whole :P 

No, the reason they target teenagers is because the ones they hook statistically come back time and time again over their lives and drop cash, they recognised lapsed players as an investment years ago and the more teens you expose, the more likely you are to get them on board.

Plus, lets be honest, 40k is like, peak Teenage interest fodder by its very nature :D 

 

Wholeheartedly agree with this. They aren't recruiting teenagers as active customers, they're recruiting them as sleeper agents to be activated in 10 years time when they have their own money.

[Helycon]

3 minutes ago, Halandaar said:

 

Wholeheartedly agree with this. They aren't recruiting teenagers as active customers, they're recruiting them as sleeper agents to be activated in 10 years time when they have their own money.

Which does require them to keep the current player base happy. A business plan of making losses for 10 years with the promise of making a profit in 10 isn't something a bank or investors will generally jump on