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Post by Horsie on Jul 5, 2015 21:01:58 GMT
I meant that their whole deal seems to be elves, orcs, humans .etc, or elves, orcs, humans .etc in space. I really don't know a whole lot about this sort of thing, but that's just the impression that I get from this.
I'll admit that they seemed to have come up with some neat concepts in 40K, from what I've read on here, but it also sounds like they also rendered most of that stuff non-canon anyway.
What I'm saying is that it would interesting to see what could be done with this style of game, but without filling the world with traditional high-fantasy creatures. Clearly if GW did that they couldn't really market it as Warhammer, because it's missing the stuff that is a staple in Warhammer.
I don't really see adding all of these strange rules and rituals to the game that require the players themselves to act like idiots, and creates situations where a player can fuck up in the game if they slip up and do or don't do something themselves.
That sounds more like a drinking game to me. There are dozens of drinking games that work just like that, and they're fun specifically because there's no winning or losing, and everyone is half in the bag anyway.
Okay, that one I could do.
I'd share my drink with him too, until the host screamed at me for pouring stuff on the floor.
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Post by Canuovea on Jul 5, 2015 21:25:49 GMT
Another thing to consider is that the units from the 8th Edition are still available from the look of it. And everyone seems to have those anyway. Frankly, we're lucky that they're even giving us updated rules for using those instead of just starting from scratch, which would be the clever thing to do to force people to buy more.
The thing is, you can still use 8th edition if you have it and want to. They just needed to open it up to a new market.
And maybe that is good, goodness knows, they'd basically saturated the market. So instead of doing more of the same, they want to bring in other people. Sure, it makes it more casual, but at this point, why not? It was collapsing anyway.
Also, ever heard of an RPG called Dread? There are no dice roles, but if you want to do something difficult for your character, you have to pull a block from a Jenga tower. If the tower falls, your character dies/something bad happens. And you're allowed to knock the tower down to do a heroic sacrifice.
This seems more in line with that, but putting that actually "making people physically do something" part on the peripherals.
So maybe you're right that I'm the type of person they're aiming for. The main obstacle for me getting into this game has been price. And now there are free rules and all that, so it is tempting. Another thing was the density of the rules, which is no longer a concern. Still not making the money to go for it, of course, but that is that. I'd certainly consider it if I could.
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Post by RED_NED on Jul 5, 2015 22:32:19 GMT
You can still play the old warhammer, yeah. GW has abandoned a lot of their games before, previously called Specialist Games. You end up with smaller community run rules with people buying models from 3rd party manufacturers. Theres a few popular games companies that make mass battle fantasy games. Kings of War is one run by an ex-GW person with the rules written by the old Warhammer rules writer. They made over $350K from the last kickstarter of their new product, so theres' clearly a market for this style of game.
Dread is cool, the Jenga thing won them an innovation award I think. Also the game was meant to be played as a one-off at conventions if I recall.
The thing is, this isn't a small RPG made by a small company to be played a handful of times, it's the Industry leader in the Wargaming field, a game that is meant to be played many times. This is akin to a new Call of Duty being released, and now all Call of Dutys will be kinect games where you have to dance to do more damage.
Is there a market for it? Maybe, and if there is then GW definitely *should* capitalize on it. But its not in line with every other successful wargame that is currently available (The wargame market is better than it has ever been, many companies are making a lot of profit and are being pooled in with the success that the boardgame market as had recently).
Also the fact that you are praising it, but the price point is too high kind of proves a point. Who is this game going to sell big with? The older fans have been turned away, or people in me and Hark's position of not currently being players but willing to buy models (We are currently all going to buy Blood Bowl miniatures for a new campaign, though GW doesn't make those any more so a 3rd party is going to get that money).
The price is incredibly high and the rules are incredibly weak (We are focusing on the silly rules, but the actual rules are incredibly basic and boring).
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Post by Canuovea on Jul 5, 2015 22:56:53 GMT
I don't think your analogies quite work, really. Call of Duty, for instance, still makes bundles of money no matter what. They have no incentive to be innovative and they won't be.
The price point isn't too high because of the price, necessarily. The Price point is too high because I am making no money and have $15 000 debt.
And having read the rules, they seem simpler and streamlined, yes, but sometimes that is good. In fact, the large complex bullshit annoyed me when I played a couple of Fantasy games back 5 or so years ago. I watched a game of it on Youtube and it seemed to be alright. The biggest problem may be balance and the lack of a points system.
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Post by RED_NED on Jul 5, 2015 23:05:05 GMT
My analogy doesnt work, because GW is the market leader in a thriving industy, and it is losing money. There is no 100% accurate analogy you can make to it's situation.
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Post by Canuovea on Jul 5, 2015 23:21:39 GMT
Which is why analogies tend to be bad for this kind of thing.
My understanding of the situation is that GW would have had to discontinue fantasy entirely if they didn't do something. They could have too, I mean, it literally ended the world already.
They've basically hit the problem that Marx figured Capitalism would run into eventually: The Market has been saturated. Everyone who was going to buy their stuff has already bought their stuff. So they're trying to innovate because they have to. How successful they'll be is questionable. Like with most video game developers, they're actually dealing with a really conservative player base who don't really want innovation. Their loyal customers aren't going to be happy one way or another.
In fact, I think letting them use their old models might be an attempt to hook them in to buy more of the new stuff when it actually starts coming out. I don't think it likely to work.
From my perspective, I'd be willing to give it a try (again, if I had money), but I can't really say if I'd enjoy it enough to keep going. I'd want to see what the new lines are going to look like. Are they intending to change the "Aelfs" up further? Things like that.
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Post by RED_NED on Jul 5, 2015 23:41:47 GMT
The funny thing is, the market isn't saturated. There are hundreds of wargames companies, its a huge hobby. Polls have found that the average wargamer spends £300 a year on products. Games Workshop simply doesn't seem to understand the market or their audience.
And on the videogame comparison, the trouble there is mainly the developer's unwillingness to innovate rather than the playerbase rejecting it.
Look at the successes of Blizzard – Hearthstone was a gamble and payed off big time, no one was asking for an online card game. Valve purchased Dota 2, which no other company would. The game is free, and the last in-game purchase made them over $45 Million. Ark Evolved is currently the top selling PC game and is a survival game about dinosaurs. Splatoon is a new game for Nintendo based on no IP and is insanely popular.
In the boardgame market, Fantasy Flight created the LCG genre, no one was asking for Netrunner to be reprinted. MTG recently released a set where it was only usable for drafting (a smaller demographic than normal) and it was incredibly popular.
The industry leaders in other game fields are innovating and changing, releasing new and exciting products and are being rewarded. You can innovate while retaining your player base, while bringing in new customers
On Aelfs - We don't know about new products or models. A lot of the background is completely changed, so a lot of the models would appear to be incompatible. Not least of which, the models in the Age of Sigmar box set are larger than their older figures, so are going to look odd side-by-side.
Hark is down on the new models, I think they are good, I'm not keen on the designs themselves but they are well sculpted and are pretty cheap for GW.
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Post by Canuovea on Jul 6, 2015 0:08:36 GMT
The Fantasy market was saturated. People weren't buying more fantasy stuff because most people who were going to get into it already had the armies they wanted. War gaming model things as a whole isn't saturated, of course, because 40K is doing pretty well at the moment.
As for the video game thing... people don't really want innovation. They just say they do. If they did really prioritize innovation, then games like Call of Duty wouldn't be making most of the money being made. I mean, think about it, Call of Duty hasn't done anything really new since Modern Warfare.
Blizzard is another example. Sure, they did Hearthstone, but Hearthstone is relatively simple. The main cash cow of that series is World of Warcraft and it looks like it always will be. WoW's last installment seems pretty much the same as the previous ones, with a few gadgets and whathaveyous thrown in.
Isn't Dota 2 basically League of Legends, just slightly more complex? And with a slightly less toxic community?
Ark Evolved I've heard of, but it isn't the first Dinosaur survival game I've heard of either. I'm pretty sure Wordweaver was talking about one on the forum... might have been the same one in Beta though. Still, I can't really comment on it because I haven't played it.
Splatoon sounds neat though. Odd, but neat, that is the point I suppose. But no matter how many people make it insanely popular, it really won't rake in the money. Portal for instance, everyone praised portal. But portal made a drop in the bucket compared to Call of Duty number whatever.
And there was an article I read that compared what made money in the Mario franchise. Was it the stuff that tried something new? Made Mario into something other than a party game (Mario Party 7 now, or something, right?) or other than a sidescrolling jumper? No. Those were the ones that made the most.
A handful of people (relatively speaking), might go in for innovation, but in the end, everyone is more keen to buy the next Halo and Call of Dooty despite the fact they're doing almost nothing new.
Boardgames though, I don't know a lot about. There seems tons of variety for much of them, but I don't know about war gaming specifically. All I know is that Warhammer Fantasy wasn't selling and one of the (theorized) reasons was that it wasn't attracting new players and the old players pretty much had everything.
So GW is trying to innovate while keeping their old player base, letting them still use their old models.
As for size, I think that Chaos and Stormwhatever Eternals are supposed to be larger than your average person by a fairly considerable margin. Now if any new models for the other races are also that size, there will be a problem.
I think that most of the hero models are done for, really, even though they gave rules for them. But considering that the worlds were torn apart, it kind of makes sense that you could find armies from other times still sort of floating about out there. So I think most of the actual units still kinda work.
This all being said, I think GW kind of shot themselves in the foot with the Lord of the Rings models. They created competition for their fantasy world within their own company.
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Post by RED_NED on Jul 6, 2015 0:31:25 GMT
Meh, okay. I don't really want to get into arguing about all this stuff, it feels like you are pulling all of your sales figures out of nowhere. Portal was ridiculously successful, to say it made valve little money compared to CoD is frankly bizarre.
Dota 2 and LoL were the 2 developers of the Warcraft mod 'Dota' parting ways to make their own game, one self created company Riot made League of legends (Which makes at least as much money as CoD does, probably more) and the other was paid to make Dota 2 by Valve.
CoD sells about $1 Billion a year, Hearthstone made $850 Million, there's a lot of money in them there hills. CoD corners the console FPS market but isnt the be-all and end all of games. Hell, Farmville makes about a $billion a year.
Anyhoo i don't really wanna argue about random company profits/innovations and the like. Age of Sigmar might be fun for you, if it looks like the kind of thing you want, I'd get it, its an easy access Wargame. Its just not my thing.
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Post by Canuovea on Jul 6, 2015 0:51:40 GMT
I can't find the article that made the point. But it showed how much the Portals made vs Call of Duty and the rest of them, and it was pretty one sided. That is where I'm getting my numbers from.
I know where LoL and Dota 2 come from. Dota basically created the MOBA genre, but that was something like 6 years ago. The biggest innovation I've seen in that arena to date has probably been CA's attempt to turn it into a Total War game.
I know nothing about Hearthstone. It is more like League of Legends, isn't it?
I don't blame you for not liking Age of Sigmar, and I certainly wouldn't want to play either Stormcast whatsits or Khorne stuff. And the rules have changed pretty significantly it seems. I don't know if you've played much Fantasy, but if you have it is different and more streamlined from the sample I saw on Youtube. If you haven't... it is certainly strange. I just think it seems to make sense to try something different and new given what GW is facing.
I'm going to hold off and see if it ends up being of any interest further down the line. When I make money, then I'll consider what hobbies I'm actually able to afford and then I might get into it.
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Post by Canuovea on Jul 6, 2015 6:23:06 GMT
Anyway, just wait for 3D printers.
Problem solved.
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Post by Harkovast on Jul 6, 2015 22:17:59 GMT
So we played Age of Sigmar today. Wow.
I am genuinely stunned games workshop would sell such a shoddy mess. And considering my famously low opinion of GW that is saying something.
I went in trying to like it! I literally brought bear and pretzels! I gave my general a name (Warboss Smash-slab!) and shouted waarrgh when I was charging! I got as into the spirit as I possibly could. But you can't polish this turd.
The rules are barely finished. They don't answer questions like- Can I move through my own models? Can I fire ranged weapons through other models? Can I move through enemy models?
They allow ranged troops to fire their bows while in close combat, either at the person they are fighting or anyone else in range...and ALSO swing their close combat weapons. I guess they hold their swords in their teeth? Hell some bowmen get a bonus to hit if you don't move so they will be at maximum accuracy while in close combat. You can also fire into close combat with no penalty so you can set up the hillarious situation of two units in close combat, both firing at each others opponents. You might as well set up silly things, there is not even an attempt at game balance. No points values, no guidelines, no limits, just do whatever.
You aren't even restricted in what models you take in terms of armies. Just grab whatever.
The summoning rules are so broken its possible to set up a combo where a shaman summons a copy of himself (with auto success that can't be dispelled) and then the copies do the same thing on the turn they are summoned and soon the entire world is shamans. The guy who came up with that described it as "like the saddest clown car ever."
In the end the game got bogged down into mobs of guys stuck fighting each other and both me and my opponent rolling dice wiht no decision making at all. At that point you could have got a dice rolling machine to finish the game for us.
One combat got so boring it was a chore and got abandoned. The guys rolled masses of dice over and over so it took ages, but the odds of actually doing damage were so low we were bearly making any impact. There is no routing. Instead the ammount of guys who died gives you a chance for a few more guys to desert. Units dont flee on mass, they suffer this weird gradual desertion, like everyone is very uncommitted about the whole thing. Unfortunately this means if the units have decent moral and aren't inflicting very many casualties, then they never desert so end up fighting to the death. Weirdly, if both sides get badly reduced so they are less able to inflict damage, it becomes harder to cause enough to make your opponent flee, so you can end up with hand fulls of weak soldiers stuck in never ending slugging matches where they don't cause any damage by also never quit.
This game is embarassing and GW should be ashamed of themselves for trying to pass off such dross.
And we didnt' even play any goofy rules about beard length.
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Post by zaealix on Jul 6, 2015 22:42:56 GMT
I think I will always be shocked and appalled at incompetence beyond even what a novice game-maker might put out. I mean...I feel like these guys clearly were not testing their own product- no, that's being too generous. That thing could not have been tested out beforehand. Just...How did GW get so sucky!? These games HAD to be good at some point, or it wouldn't be such a big thing, fandom-wise.
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Post by Canuovea on Jul 6, 2015 22:46:40 GMT
Sounds like some of the other criticism I've seen, though some have apparently liked it.
But I'm pretty sure there was a rule about not shooting if an enemy is within 3 inches. I think it is found on the specific warscroll though.
Bases don't matter anymore, you measure from the closest part of the model. That actually does open up some interesting possible placement and model posing strategies, but... it is kind of silly. For instance, if you want to make your unit of spearmen be harder to charge, move your troops with spears down to the back of the unit. If you want to charge, move them to the front.
I will have to consider this a bit more carefully before coming to full judgment. But they also got rid of strength and toughness... I see the innovation they are going for, but I'm not convinced it is going to play out well. But at least they tried something.
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Post by Harkovast on Jul 6, 2015 23:15:48 GMT
Some units might not be able to shoot in close combat, many can. I read a post by someone on a forum who called GW and confirmed this too them. Though the confirmation was on the level of "well it certainly looks that way."
Canuovea I know you are trying to be positive but this trash is not innovation. It is lazy and thrown together. They got rid of strength and toughness...but left in rolling to hit, then to wound, then to save. Since the to hit and to wound rolls are both fixed amounts, the extra dice rolling feels doubly pointless.
Whoever made this game put in a laughably small amount of effort.
Zaelix, go back in time 12 years and GW were innovaters. Battle fleet gothic, blood bowl, necromunda, warmaster, these were great systems! They are a bit dated to play these days but they had tons of original, inspirational ideas. Blood Bowl is so good me and my friends want to get back into playing it again (once the Harkovast game is complete.) Space Hulk! They made space hulk, damn it!
Their core games of 40K and warhammer weren't great but they were workable and you could have fun with them.
They used to be the leaders in wargames that made the competition look like amatuers. They put out slick, innovative, easy to play products. Now they are trying to get away with the least amount of effort, throwing together untested crap without any concern and wondering why no one wants to play and thus stops buying models. Anyone with any talent got chased out of the company years ago and the company is falling apart. They are a public company so thats not speculation, I've seen their profit figures. GW are tanking and it's their own fault.
The company have said out right they don't care about their games in the past. They care about selling models and nothing else. Whether or not you enjoy the games is meaningless to them. Anyone with half a brain would respond "but if I don't enjoy the game, why would I buy the models?" Games workshop don't seem to have figured that out.
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