Horus Heresy New Edition, or Just Horus Hearsay?

[BitsHammer]

1 minute ago, Sky Potato said:

I’m quite clearly not ascribing malice. I’ve never thought anything was being done out of spite, for me or for anyone else.
 

I’m asking why it’s taking so long to proof read a document and release it. I’m asking why a logical deadline wasn’t met.

 

I’m worried about the internal workings of a company I’ve invested in - both as a customer and a stockholder - who are showing signs of either indifference or incompetence by:

- Not having a strategy mapped out for their big annual summer release. 
or

- Rushing a known bad product out the door to meet their own deadlines.

This is a FTSE100 company now, and this is their sixth or seventh consecutive summer release. They should be better at this.

 

No chips on shoulders here, just genuine concern.

The issue is clearly the three year cycle. Devs are being pushed to release unfinished products and patch them on day one as a result. 

 

If we assume the community backlash lead to the pdf document being adjusted it likely needed more passes before release to prevent it from making things worse.

 

If we assume it was done and ready to go, then this was an intentional choice to space things out instead of dumping out pdfs on the same day the pre-orders for Space Wolves and Grey Knights kicked off as to not distract from that hype cycle.

 

There are probably more reasons we could think up, but the thing is we're guessing. And while I personally spend a lot of time trying to work out why GW does stuff, I have no more of a clue than anyone else who is outside of the company.

 

We only know what they tell us, and that is that they are intentionally holding this pdf for a couple more days. 

[Antarius]

While I agree that we don't really know anything, I think it's fair to say that this bears a lot of the hallmarks of a product being rushed out to meet a deadline (so yeah, this is going to be filed under the tired old "3-year cycle bad" complaint at the end of the day).

I can't say for sure whether the designers honestly thinks this is a better version of the game (they might even be right, if only the writing was less convoluted and less filled with errors), but I think it's fair to say that the writing is very obviously lacking proofreading, editing and a bunch of rewriting and that this is the cause of most of the complaints and dissatisafaction.
Something which, taken together with everything else we know of the process, tells me that they haven't been given enough time to do their job properly, because these people clearly aren't idiots or bad writers.

 

Riffing off of this, I sort of wonder how many problems would be solved by moving to a 5-year cycle and whether this would actually materially impact their revenue? I mean, they must be doing it this way because they think it makes them more money, but does it really? Or is shortening the cycle to 3 years actually going to lose them customers at a rate that offsets the initial benefits?

I mean, obviously 40k is their main breadwinner, but both AoS, Old World and Heresy seem(ed?) to be doing fine and one would think they have enough other games that they could keep things going on a 5-year cycle without having slump years, but I (obviously) don't know. I just know that I can see the advantage of having a fixed cycle for editions and that I think 5 years seems much more reasonable both from the customer and the designer's point of view.

[MoriyaSchism]

6 hours ago, caladancid said:

I’m going to add this photo here as an illustration to the earlier comments on ‘contempt’ for customers. Call it whatever you’d like, this is not acceptable for a 70 USD book. 

Damn, Super Soaker bolter man obscuring the better design. He should get out of the way and stop hogging that base. 

[Cleon]

2 hours ago, Antarius said:

Riffing off of this, I sort of wonder how many problems would be solved by moving to a 5-year cycle and whether this would actually materially impact their revenue? I mean, they must be doing it this way because they think it makes them more money, but does it really? Or is shortening the cycle to 3 years actually going to lose them customers at a rate that offsets the initial benefits?

 

For me the three year cycle never made any sense - unless you go for a 6 year cycle with a mid edition refresh where you change up the edition box, wrap up the FAQs into a 'rulebook 2' and make any larger fixes official - that way you can give players of all armies a decen ttime with their codex and in the second half only do 2nd codexes for the ones left behind or didn't work out as intended and focus on campaign/other books. 

[Doghouse]

I think they should stick to a six year cycle and have a new mid edition themed starter set released at the three year mark.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

15 hours ago, Redcomet said:

The negativity on this forum.

 

Holy moly.

Nobody is stopping you from buying the Saturnine box. You are even allowed to buy all the journals and campaign books which will be released in the next three years. Open your wallet and spend as much as you like. No one is stopping you. Although DON´T come then in 2028 to a forum in order to bitch and moan that James Workshop has turned all your book purchases into toilet paper and your army into glass cabinet divas.

 

It´s always funny that valid criticism is regarded as negative but shameless shilling for a soulless corporation is the highest form of virtue. 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

20 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

Not to mention we do have proof of people acting in ways that could indicate contempt for customers.

 

For example, whoever made the decision to delete entire ranges of units/loadouts that were common until now could certainly be said to have contempt for the time people put into building their massive HH armies.

 

Whoever is pushing for a harder split between ranges to make it more difficult for people to use their HH models in official 40k events after hard selling cross compatibility (i.e. Leviathan dreads) seems to not be all that concerned about how customers might feel.

 

Whoever chose to release a premium cost rulebook that needs a large Day One DLC to fix it probably cares less about getting a quality product into people's hands than he does about getting people's money into GW's bank accounts.

 

And so on. That kind of person is who people are referring to when they speak about "contempt," not the Peachies and Louises and the real nerdy fanboys grinding things out under The Man.

A lot of former GW employees have reported that GW suits hold customers or even employees in very low regards, if they "play with toy soldiers" past the age of 18. So employees who love the hobby are prone to suffer passive-aggressive remarks on most occasions. These people also tend to not last long in the company.

Edited 2 hours ago by Deus_Ex_Machina

[Redcomet]

36 minutes ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Nobody is stopping you from buying the Saturnine box. You are even allowed to buy all the journals and campaign books which will be released in the next three years. Open your wallet and spend as much as you like. No one is stopping you. Although DON´T come then in 2028 to a forum in order to bitch and moan that James Workshop has turned all your book purchases into toilet paper and your army into glass cabinet divas.

 

It´s always funny that valid criticism is regarded as negative but shameless shilling for a soulless corporation is the highest form of virtue. 

Yes because shilling is what I do 24/7

 

It is funny how bitching and moaning about GW has become their primary hobby instead of just leaving the hobby, the forum and going outside to touch grass

[SalamandersBro]

Does anyone else remember. When GW was building up HH for the 2.0 release they said HH wasn't necessarily going to gollow the 3 year cycle? Or am I remembering incorrectly? 

[Matcap86]

1 hour ago, Redcomet said:

Yes because shilling is what I do 24/7

 

It is funny how bitching and moaning about GW has become their primary hobby instead of just leaving the hobby, the forum and going outside to touch grass

 

This. Valid criticism is fine. There's plenty of stuff to be annoyed about. But reiterating the same point that's been made a 100 times before and looking for every misplaced comma in 100s of pages of rules to loudly declare "being slapped in the face by the CORPORATION again" is just wallowing in the negativity. 

[Captain Idaho]

Let's keep it on topic folks. Complaining about people complaining about people complaining about people complaining is off topic.

 

And I typed that rather than copy and pasted it.

[Joe]

Made a quick spreadsheet looking at the current games and their approximate edition cycles. For Heresy to be on the "three year cycle" that people are talking about we'd need to see another edition in 2028 for flat confirmation that's a thing. Basically, a trend has to be isolated - and right now there's more systems that don't sit on the three year cycle than do.

 

(This may change if we see for say, Warcry 3E this year - at which stage that game would be on said cycle.)

 

[Astartes Consul]

Will probably pick up the Liber today from my FLGS so I can list build properly. I do really like the army building mechanics tbh, so I’m looking forward to seeing how I can play about with it.

 

Assuming we’ll get the Legacies on Monday/Tuesday. I’m quite apprehensive. The fact that the document looks set to be so huge is a potential double edged sword. We are getting far more than I think most people assumed, but the additional quality control seems likely to be a problem. Seeing the (relatively) small Talons PDF have to be updated only hours after it’s release doesn’t fill me with hope…