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Author Topic: WH40K discussion thread: [loading grimdark, please wait]  (Read 1048851 times)

Arx

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #225 on: March 15, 2015, 12:21:55 pm »

Well, yeah. The issue is that Warhammer is the only tabletop wargame that anyone I know plays. You can buy a lead Field of Glory or De Bellis Multitudinus army second for about the price of a single 40K squad, but my brother's the only person I know who would also be interested in playing that, which is not great scope for variation.
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Urist McScoopbeard

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #226 on: March 15, 2015, 12:35:01 pm »

Well, yeah. The issue is that Warhammer is the only tabletop wargame that anyone I know plays. You can buy a lead Field of Glory or De Bellis Multitudinus army second for about the price of a single 40K squad, but my brother's the only person I know who would also be interested in playing that, which is not great scope for variation.

ya, prohibitively expensive is GWS go-to tagline.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #227 on: March 15, 2015, 01:58:20 pm »

I once heard the hobby shop guys explain that GWS is like a lot of other modeling hobbies. Model trains, for example? You can drop stupid amounts of money into good model trains, the big Mr. Roger's setup costing you thousands of dollars. GWS games are essentially the same thing; the difference is it's a game, which just puts even more pressure on the hobbyist to buy. And just one purchase can't suffice. GWS wouldn't be a business if people could buy one or two books and 20 figs and call it good. The business of hobbies kind of requires people keep spending money. Hobbyists and hobby gamers are kind of a captive audience in that regard too. There's a market for it, but there's not a ton of competition, and people's interest is as much thematic as it is about having a game play. I remember when Warmachine came out, people fled GWS games in droves, including the-then 55+ year old neckbeards, because it was a game and a genre they could get into that WASN'T actively making grim dark conflict on their wallets.

As an older person now with a steady job instead of a perpetually broke teenager trying to play catch up at the game shop people, I buy a couple figs or a vehicle a year, so I can continue to grow the army (that I've had for like 20 years now) a little bit at a time. But as someone trying to break into the hobby, I get that's now how you can roll.

I dunno, is it still the case where you need to buy the big fuck-off $70-$100 boxed set for the core edition to really get started? Sometimes that's a "good thing" because you get a lot of figs for at least two different armies and core resources....other times it's a drag because it's just another huge purchase that gives you very little you need.

Consider too that, not all games are going to be 2000 point games, or whatever GWS average battle size is. You can have a lot of fun with way smaller point values. My friend runs Eldar and for the games we play, he and I rarely have more than 10 to 15 figs on the table each. And he goes nuts with his and heavily modifies them. So rather than approaching an army from "God I need 20 guys with las guns, at least 10 heavy weapon teams, leader characters and vehicles", think smaller. Although, to be fair, IG is one of those armies that relies on strength of numbers, and so your wallet has to be equally stronk to keep up.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2015, 04:51:45 pm by nenjin »
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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #228 on: March 15, 2015, 02:02:19 pm »

Warmachine V Hordes has gotten kinda big lately (ish)

There's also a new 'big tabletop game' which has come out recently, backed by a miniatures painting company - but I can't for the life of me remember it, so that goes down the drain.

Those two IMO|AFAIK are the 1 and the 10 of miniature quality.
Warmachine is fun, but the minis can have trouble gluing together simply because of how Shod their plastics are.
The new one whose name I've forgotten is apparently all $$$ to engines to make the cleanest, busiest models money can buy (Again, it's a custom painting company who made it).


I dunno, is it still the case where you need to buy the big fuck-off $70-$100 boxed set for the core edition to really get started?
Push that number up a bit, but they are still quite good value.

NinjaEdit again:
You can have a lot of fun with way smaller point values.
I've had some decent fun with this Third-Party Ruleset
« Last Edit: March 15, 2015, 02:11:15 pm by Tack »
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #229 on: March 15, 2015, 02:18:04 pm »

Push that number up a bit, but they are still quite good value.

It's enough you have to actively be working a job to support the habit as a kid or teenager, have a parent that plays or be filthy rich. Birthdays and Christmas are also a nice time to ask for that stuff, assuming your parents approve and don't swallow their tongues at the price either.
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Radio Controlled

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #230 on: March 15, 2015, 03:38:05 pm »

I do wonder how GW stays so competitive despite cheaper alternatives. I guess the 40K IP is a really strong one, with a whole lot of fan loyalty.
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #231 on: March 15, 2015, 03:48:41 pm »

It doesn't, really. GW has been tanking for years. There's the occasional rich kid who doesn't care about price, but everyone I know has been priced out it.
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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #232 on: March 15, 2015, 03:51:15 pm »

It doesn't, really. GW has been tanking for years. There's the occasional rich kid who doesn't care about price, but everyone I know has been priced out it.

Likewise. Most people I know only use figures they had already, or that they got secondhand. The rest use janky solutions like NATO reporting symbols on paper, or soda can + pencil = artillery piece.

I wanted to get in with the Guard, but then I saw the price tag. I still haven't stopped running.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2015, 03:54:42 pm by Baffler »
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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #233 on: March 15, 2015, 04:01:04 pm »

It doesn't, really. GW has been tanking for years. There's the occasional rich kid who doesn't care about price, but everyone I know has been priced out it.

Well, it's not dead, and it still has a large chain of stores and such. Still, I wonder what'll finally force them to go down in price, or if they'll continue being stubborn until they break.
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Urist McScoopbeard

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #234 on: March 15, 2015, 04:27:08 pm »

It doesn't, really. GW has been tanking for years. There's the occasional rich kid who doesn't care about price, but everyone I know has been priced out it.

Well, it's not dead, and it still has a large chain of stores and such. Still, I wonder what'll finally force them to go down in price, or if they'll continue being stubborn until they break.

I don't understand WHY they're so stubborn? Surely the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of the notion that their popularity is steadily decreasing. I mean, between the pricing and the lack of the massive, plot line advancing tournaments, the fun just isn't there anymore.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #235 on: March 15, 2015, 04:38:35 pm »

I think GWS problem is they've never totally made the transition from 80s-90s Hobby Store front behemoth to the the digital age until it was too late.

In the day, their biggest strength was in retail, in drawing people in with the figs and the huuuggggeeee battles. (I know that's what got me as a kid.) They opened stores dedicated to their own products, some of which were really lavish. They got invested in a lot of infrastructure. I've been told by some hobby store managers that GWS also really aggressive pursued retail they didn't own, putting in a lot of clauses and requirements for selling their stuff, hosting tournaments, etc...

In this day and age though, games have by and large moved out of the stores and online. Hobby stores I think don't do as brisk a business on hobby gaming as they used to. They're back to just straight hobby stuff like RC cars and safe stuff to stock like Magic. With all the scaling back, instead of pivoting to deal with how people buy and play these games, GWS doubled down, raised prices and closed stores. I guess they figured in the hobby market, they'd just try to be exceptional at what they did and let the price reflect that (they've said as much at one point) along with a good dose of trying to increase profits along the way. Sure, they had a pretty robust web store (and actually did offer a lot of discontinued content in digital format, for which I was eternally grateful for at the time), but the prices were at the absolute top dollar, they didn't pass any savings on to the customer.

And then they started getting really greedy, in my mind. Instead of validating people's grossly expensive purchases by keeping editions going, they started making new editions regularly and insanely expected their fan base to continue rebuying the game over and over again. They shut down all their side projects like Mordheim, Necromunda, Blood Bowl, basically anything that wasn't 40K or Fantasy. These were games people played to stay in the GWS world, and spend some money, without buying into $400 worth of shit. This also was in the period when people were begging for the 40k license for video games, so fans could essentially do the same thing, and GWS were kinda "Meeeehhhhh" about it, only realizing it was good business when Dawn of War hit the scene. This is around the point at which the web store also got shittier too. They stopped offering discontinued rules and supplements, period, and started making bundles instead of offering a lot of stuff as singles. (Which they used to, for a while you could find a lot of the figs you wanted sold individually. Instead of buying a fig as part of a command squad to get some what of a deal on more figs, they just only sold the command squad for one giant lump sum. Thanks GWS. I think this had something to do with not essentially fucking the Hobby Stores as well by letting online shoppers undercut the boxed units GWS sold them.)

They woke up to the possibility of licensing the franchise for video games a while ago and are now, kind of predictably, going apeshit with it, green lighting probably 10? games in the last 5 years. But they didn't shift their business soon enough to really protect the table top business from bad practices. Years of abusing fans with new editions and pricing and shelving games that weren't the core business have basically killed people's good will and willingness to see what's new. I know it has for me, as far as table top goes.

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I don't understand WHY they're so stubborn? Surely the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of the notion that their popularity is steadily decreasing. I mean, between the pricing and the lack of the massive, plot line advancing tournaments, the fun just isn't there anymore.

GWS is just notoriously stubborn and aggressive about business. Consider their milieu. Attacking perceived violations of their IP, defending themselves from accusations of infringing other people's IPs (Michael Moorcock, Starship Troopers, the list goes on), defending the franchise against moral outrage, neckbeards (the most vocal and easiest to displease of all fans), at one time being the undisputed king of table top wargaming....they've been in business for coming up on almost 40 or 50 years. They're part of the old guard, and they've always been kind of cutthroat when it comes to the actual business of the franchise.

And that has a lot to do with how intractable they are too. I think the distance between the people that created GWS and the people that now run it is growing too. GWS has always sort of felt coldly corporate and I think it's just gotten worse as more old timers get out of the scene. They sought equally aggressive business people to hand the company off to, who don't have the attachment to their creation or the fan base that sustains it. So perhaps the people who control the fate of the company are just planning to squeeze it until they're only doing two things: mail-ordering figs to deplete their stock and licensing the IP out for video games and books. (I think the Black Library will probably continue to have legs long after the TT business falls apart completely.) At which point stockholders will bail and someone will buy the rights to it, and 40k will just be another Battletech/Mechwarrior/Shadowrun/White Wolf/All the games and IPs from the 80s and 90s I loved, which will occasionally resurface from time to time when someone is willing to throw enough money at whoever holds the IP so the it can be "reborn" for a shitty game or two.

There's your grim dark analysis.
« Last Edit: March 15, 2015, 04:54:36 pm by nenjin »
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #236 on: March 15, 2015, 04:41:38 pm »

It doesn't, really. GW has been tanking for years. There's the occasional rich kid who doesn't care about price, but everyone I know has been priced out it.

Well, it's not dead, and it still has a large chain of stores and such. Still, I wonder what'll finally force them to go down in price, or if they'll continue being stubborn until they break.

Many of the stores and even regional HQs are shutting - and staff in stores are being reduced severely. Basically, it's on it's way out, and it'll just become a domain contracted for books and the like.

I still remember when they tried to sue [company] for making a few of the tyrannid models to use in 40k. They lost the courtcase and so just cut theose tyrannids out of the game. Cutting your nose off to spite your face.
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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #237 on: March 15, 2015, 05:07:57 pm »

Hmm. So, GWS is on its way out, though the 40K franshise might survive (I kinda hope it does, I enjoy it too much to see if burn in the name of corporate greed).

Tell me, if GWS announced tomorrow they're selling off their 40K license, who would you like to get it? Can be separate companies for different aspects (eg company X to do the tabletop, group Y to make video games).

I'd say THQ for the video games, cause I still play DOW to this day, but... yeeeah.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #238 on: March 15, 2015, 05:26:07 pm »

I'd say Relic since they have the most experience and success with the franchise by far, but that would put 40k in the hands of SEGA, whose track record for sound use of IPs is less than stellar (see: Aliens.) TBH, I wouldn't want to see it go to corporate big wigs, despite the resources they could throw behind the IP. I'd rather see it go to someone who is focused on the IP directly, makes it their business rather than just another file in its of "What do we do to make money in a quarter 2 years from now" folder. To the same token, I'm not sure I'd want to see 40k turned into CoD either....unless that 40k CoD was something amazing to behold, from story to shooting.
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: Warhammer 40K discussion: checking dates is for squares edition.
« Reply #239 on: March 15, 2015, 05:31:42 pm »

I remember Fire Warrior. That was a 40k FPS. It wasn't bad, it was just... eh.
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