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I play AOS and never touched WHFB because it was an insane commitment and frankly nobody seemed to play it. This is my tale.
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Jul 1, 2021 08:59
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JBP posted:I play AOS and never touched WHFB because it was an insane commitment and frankly nobody seemed to play it. This is my tale. I learned about warhammer fantasy from the mmo and when I went to the local game store to check out the tabletop game I was told they only played 40k.
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Jul 1, 2021 12:17
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AnEdgelord posted:I learned about warhammer fantasy from the mmo and when I went to the local game store to check out the tabletop game I was told they only played 40k. I did the same but saw they wanted like $40 for some pewter nurglings.
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Jul 1, 2021 12:30
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It comes down to this: GW is a business that answers to shareholders. If WFB was "doing well" then GW wouldn't change it because it's making the shareholders money. However, if WFB is adversely impacting profits in other areas (40K, paints, Black Library, whatever) GW is going to drop or retool WFB into something that (hopefully) makes money for the shareholders. Publicly traded businesses do not exist to produce product lines that lose money, no matter what nerds on 4Chan and Reddit think they're owed. Please note that I enjoy WFB, and am currently building a 6th ed Vampire Counts army. I like WFB, but even I can admit the game was not doing well and, as much as GW screwed up the launch, AoS is doing a lot of things right.
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Jul 1, 2021 13:01
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Businesses also don't just look at whether sales are good now, they want growth. I'd just take it that they knew they were getting whales into WHFB and making money, but that's not the kind of customer you want for growth. I am interested to see what kind of game the old world is. I'm assuming it's going to be a whale hunting expedition unlike anything we've ever seen.
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Jul 1, 2021 13:21
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berzerkmonkey posted:It comes down to this: GW is a business that answers to shareholders. If WFB was "doing well" then GW wouldn't change it because it's making the shareholders money. However, if WFB is adversely impacting profits in other areas (40K, paints, Black Library, whatever) GW is going to drop or retool WFB into something that (hopefully) makes money for the shareholders. Publicly traded businesses do not exist to produce product lines that lose money, no matter what nerds on 4Chan and Reddit think they're owed. you can pretty much point to the complete 180 of AOS as to how WFB could've worked. pretty much everything the WFB community was asking for (more streamlined rules, more affordable armies, more frequent updates & errata) have been implemented over the past couple years in AOS 2.0 saying "it's just business, sorry folks" doesn't work when the replacement to WFB was so awful it tanked the stock price and got most of the executive suite behind the change sacked
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Jul 1, 2021 13:34
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AOS1 was extremely funny and I'm still glad they decided to roll improv into the rules.
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Jul 1, 2021 13:36
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JBP posted:AOS1 was extremely funny and I'm still glad they decided to roll improv into the rules. my AOS story is doing a demo game with my dwarves at a GW store, saying "wow, this seems really clunky and it kind of sucks" and being told if i don't like it, i don't have to play it i didn't pick up the game again until halfway through 2.0 edit: WFB getting blown up might have been a business decision, who knows. we'll never know unless GW releases that kind of info. the important things are: 1) its replacement was pretty clearly big "ideas guy" executive energy 2) the replacement almost tanked the company 3) once the remaining c-suite got desperate for ideas and they actually listened to their game devs & the community, they created a relatively healthy game that, except for a few major flaws, was a massive upgrade to its predecessor 4) if #3 happened with WFB, none of this would've happened and we'd all be playing WFB skirmish or whatever edit edit: i guess after mapping it out, saying "it's just business" kind of works. the only main difference is the c-suite was sacked and the company started listening to their customers. normally, the c-suite gets a golden parachute and the business gets scavenged by the venture capitalists Business Gorillas fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 13:43
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blowing up the setting was bold and unexpected, and i loved it
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Jul 1, 2021 14:07
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Sigmarines rule, sorry brettonia lovers.
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Jul 1, 2021 14:10
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Nebalebadingdong posted:blowing up the setting was bold and unexpected, and i loved it BIG DRYWALL MAN posted:Sigmarines rule, sorry brettonia lovers. It comes down to this: GW is a business that answers to shareholders. If the AOS setting was "doing well" then GW wouldn't change it because it's making the shareholders money. However, if the AOS setting is adversely impacting profits in other areas (40K, paints, Black Library, whatever) GW is going to drop or retool the AOS setting into something that (hopefully) makes money for the shareholders. Publicly traded businesses do not exist to produce product lines that lose money, no matter what nerds on 4Chan and Reddit think they're owed.
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Jul 1, 2021 14:19
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sure, but they aren't rational actors
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Jul 1, 2021 14:25
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Oddly enough the introduction of AoS had the effect of making more people want to play fantasy in my FLGS. I remember hanging out there when the game was announced and suddenly there was a noticeable bigger interest in that even over 40k.
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Jul 1, 2021 14:26
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berzerkmonkey posted:It comes down to this: GW is a business that answers to shareholders. If WFB was "doing well" then GW wouldn't change it because it's making the shareholders money. However, if WFB is adversely impacting profits in other areas (40K, paints, Black Library, whatever) GW is going to drop or retool WFB into something that (hopefully) makes money for the shareholders. Publicly traded businesses do not exist to produce product lines that lose money, no matter what nerds on 4Chan and Reddit think they're owed. By the sounds of things GW was so poorly managed pre-2016 that expecting this kind of rational management style is probably fairly off base.
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Jul 1, 2021 14:31
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I'm a little late to the sales-chat but there's actually a chart of the Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines that reflects sales based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. Warhammer 40k has been #1 for a while: https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/41010/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-spring-2018 https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/45370/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-fall-2019 https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/47882/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-lines-fall-2020 Still, once it reached the list back in 2018, AoS has been a constant presence among the top 5 in sales. Now, look at this one from 2015: https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/32096/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-lines-spring-2015 Or this one from 2014: https://icv2.com/articles/games/view/30000/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-lines-summer-2014 The last time Warhammer Fantasy appeared in the top 5 sales was in the summer 2013 report: https://icv2.com/articles/games/view/27069/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-lines-summer-2013 Now, there's not to say that it wasn't selling, but just take a look at the other games on that list and you'll see why it was worrying to GW. Yes, there was a lot of mismanaging, but I'm still in the opinion that ending Fantasy was the right choice, really badly done, but that's another conversation.
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Jul 1, 2021 14:38
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Vagabong posted:By the sounds of things GW was so poorly managed pre-2016 that expecting this kind of rational management style is probably fairly off base. The Kirby era wasn't great. A lot of bad decisions were made, like limiting their social presence to facebook only when they had a twitter account already. White Dwarf got turned into a weekly magazine and they introduced Warhammer Visions as a glossier companion to that. Then you have 40k 7th that was really just 6th edition with some very minor tweaks. From what I can recall this was also around the time they handled Black Library so poorly that it made Dan Abnett not wanting to write for them (outside of health issues I think too.) Then you have the infamous jewel-like objects quote and the insistence that all art must depict the models as they are or else people might get ideas! I might be misremembering but I think that AoS actually helped bringing the GW stock out of a slump when it was released. Or I might have it confused with the 8th ed 40k release but they were definitely on the rise after that point stock wise. Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Jul 1, 2021 |
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Jul 1, 2021 14:38
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Talas posted:I'm a little late to the sales-chat but there's actually a chart of the Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines that reflects sales based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. Warhammer 40k has been #1 for a while: To be fair, Privateer Press (Warmachine and Hordes) shot themselves in the foot and seems to be actively trying to kill themselves.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:01
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Yeah they don't seem to be capable anything but loving up nowadays.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:26
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Floppychop posted:To be fair, Privateer Press (Warmachine and Hordes) shot themselves in the foot and seems to be actively trying to kill themselves.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:28
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Talas posted:Definitely. I never played their games but knew people that did and it was very sad to see their place in the stores just disappear over time. I enjoyed the game system, mainly because you could do things like a fastball special in a wargame. Or just flat use your opponent's models as weapons against other models. It generally felt easier to play as well. All the rules for models were on the cards. You didn't have to drag around multiple faction books just for faction-wide rules or similar.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:34
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Cooked Auto posted:Oddly enough the introduction of AoS had the effect of making more people want to play fantasy in my FLGS. I remember hanging out there when the game was announced and suddenly there was a noticeable bigger interest in that even over 40k. getting in on the ground floor has an appeal
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Jul 1, 2021 15:35
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:getting in on the ground floor has an appeal True, or just being allowed to play smaller, faster games for that part.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:40
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I’m given to understand the competitive problems began with Warmahordes, when it became impossible to get new players into tournament play. Basically there were a dozen factions and most of them had three or four S-tier war-nouns (leader models) who altered gameplay so much that you’d lose almost all the time until you played against them two or three times and figured out the trick. So to become a competitor player you needed to play 120 plus games with your list to figure out how all your opponents worked or get stomped if you hit an unknown matchup. No units got obsoleted and the number of warnouns just kept increasing every cycle.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:42
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I’m still partly convinced that the first draft of Age of Sigmar used the rules that FFG ended up using for Runewars as part of the FFG/GW partnership at the time, as both c9me out after the breakup. Runewars had no background and AoS had a rules system basically written over a weekend.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:44
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PP’s demise was due to good old fashioned brain drain. One by one the good designers left for greener pastures and the remaining terrible designer, Jason Soles, accrued more and more power over the finished product. Bad money drives out good.
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Jul 1, 2021 15:51
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I remember looking at one of PP's failed ventures a couple of years ago, some sideline of games or something, and just wondering what the gently caress they were doing. And this was before Warmachine Space and all that stuff and just around the time where they started slipping.
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Jul 1, 2021 16:05
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Talas posted:I'm a little late to the sales-chat but there's actually a chart of the Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines that reflects sales based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. Warhammer 40k has been #1 for a while: This is helpful but doesn't really explain why they had to blow up fantasy instead of just do to fantasy what they ended up doing to AoS
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Jul 1, 2021 19:30
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Business Gorillas posted:This is helpful but doesn't really explain why they had to blow up fantasy instead of just do to fantasy what they ended up doing to AoS That’s because it wasn’t a rational decision, it was a decision made by people who thought video games of their setting were competition to the minis game.
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Jul 1, 2021 19:43
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AoS is a better setting for a wargame then the Old World. The setting is more malleable so you can feel more free to create your own dudes without worrying where they fit in the map. It also makes it easier to explain why any two armies are fighting where in the Old World they might be on separate continents. Since it's also not as tied with a historically inspired setting it's also more diverse racially and gender wise where in the Old World nonwhite races were more just of the side of the map and not a playable faction. For all that people make fun of Stormcast as being sigmarines they give a showcase faction that lets you be more of a straightforward good guy rather then fascist child soldiers.
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Jul 1, 2021 20:11
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neaden posted:AoS is a better setting for a wargame then the Old World. The setting is more malleable so you can feel more free to create your own dudes without worrying where they fit in the map. It also makes it easier to explain why any two armies are fighting where in the Old World they might be on separate continents. Since it's also not as tied with a historically inspired setting it's also more diverse racially and gender wise where in the Old World nonwhite races were more just of the side of the map and not a playable faction. For all that people make fun of Stormcast as being sigmarines they give a showcase faction that lets you be more of a straightforward good guy rather then fascist child soldiers. Years later, I played a bunch of Total War: Warhammer, decided to give the tabletop game another chance and I was pleasantly surprised that it was a whole new thing.
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Jul 1, 2021 20:28
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neaden posted:AoS is a better setting for a wargame then the Old World. The setting is more malleable so you can feel more free to create your own dudes without worrying where they fit in the map. It also makes it easier to explain why any two armies are fighting where in the Old World they might be on separate continents. Since it's also not as tied with a historically inspired setting it's also more diverse racially and gender wise where in the Old World nonwhite races were more just of the side of the map and not a playable faction. For all that people make fun of Stormcast as being sigmarines they give a showcase faction that lets you be more of a straightforward good guy rather then fascist child soldiers. I thought they were reworking the setting because the whole interdimensional bubble thing was getting too weird for the lore? Also, "these guys are from the fire dimension and they travelled through the wyrmcore tunneldepths to raid the glitterdelve gemhills of the metal world" seems more complicated than "this army got on a boat"
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Jul 1, 2021 21:28
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https://twitter.com/AgeSomething/status/1410621682906136581 We interrupt this discussion with something amazing.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:33
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Business Gorillas posted:I thought they were reworking the setting because the whole interdimensional bubble thing was getting too weird for the lore? This is news to me. As far as I know the realms aren't going anywhere, though I wish grand alliances would.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:44
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Pretty sure the Realms are going absolutely nowhere. Especially when they took the time of building them up in 2nd edition with a lot of nice details.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:46
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wfb always had that weird problem of the Lizardmen being a really, really cool faction that was very poorly integrated with what the setting actually focused on. Tomb Kings too, to a lesser extent.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:48
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Grand Alliances don’t seem mechanically supported any more, though the concept still exists. And yes, it’s good that there’s actually room for Mesoamerican-styled human beings, with Seraphon now taking on more of a Space Angel/Stargate aesthetic to their stone tech E: the Realms ain’t going away, tho, they’re even reemphasizing origin realm for armies now.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:48
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I want to play AoS and Old World when that comes out. I see the appeal in both settings.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:52
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Not to mention they used those realms a lot in... well, "Broken REALMS". Now with the new General's Handbook only located in Ghur, it looks like they are going to use them for these "seasons" of matched play.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:54
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Cooked Auto posted:https://twitter.com/AgeSomething/status/1410621682906136581 Best post so far in this thread.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:54
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Whats the realm of absolute chads.
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Jul 1, 2021 21:55
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