What has been the cause of GW's massive improvement over the last 2 years?

His comments on skirmish games should bring joy to even the crustiest xenos-player

I'd tell you to go back to Warnahordes but no actually plays that anymore. Go back to like 1d4chan and complain about Matt Ward I guess.

This is pretty much it.

They are doing what should be the bare min right now. Vast improvement, but that isn't saying much. Lot of the problems still exist.

Not him but what happened to warmahordes? I never played it because of shit models but until some time ago it seemed on the road to replace 40k as THE wargame.

>massive improvement

>54786622
no. fuck off would you kindly.

>massive imp[rovement
>some rando DUPLICATES THE FUCKING PRIMARCH PROGRAM

No, not even THE FUCKING EMPEROR could duplicate it. Its worse. WAY WORSE. MINI PRIMARCHS!

>Going from 2ed to 3ed.
>Designers are claiming it to be the best, most play tested ed yet, in a game where competitive play is a thing!
>On release its full of so many "even a child could have figure this one out" loopholes and even grammar/spelling-errors that raises the question about said play testing and data collecting, not to mention the overall quality of the game
>Mods go on full which hunt and starts blaming their fanbase for not "playing the game right"
>Starting by banning negative reviews on the forum as it is rated as "bad publicity" to newcomers.
>Later on decides to remove the full forum for teams and "re-boot"

All in all it was a shitfest without end. A clumsy release, whose faults where blamed on a extremely dedicated fanbase. Not even when the evidence where right in front of their noses could they accept that they didn't know balance if you slaps it in their face. This made the veterans doubt the crew in charge, and in that time GW swings around and produce something like 8th ed. It was nothing short of a execution. All that's left now are a few rock hard fanboys that will play the game till they die of old age.

To bad as the game (2ed) was, to me and my friends at least, a breath of fresh air from the usual beer and pretzel 7th 40k. It was clear it was a game, with added miniatures to it, and no one blamed you for playing the good stuff and actually used the rules as RAW, unlike your average 40k game back then.

is this a bait thread? i cant even tell anymore

>Had to close literally all their stores and fire 90% of the good stuff for a small profit.
>CAD designs everywhere with lazy sculpting.
I wouldn't call that improvement.

so basically they made the mistakes of 6e-7e era GW. at the time when GW itself was beginning to recover?

I think a lot of nuGW's relative success is because they have pinned down what their most avid consumers want. Which unfortunately to the rest of us looks a lot like Space Marines in Fantasy and nuSpace Marines, rather than something particularly aiming to compete with the rest of the (growing) wargaming market.

They've re-aimed squarely at the people who don't mind that the £20 index they bought last month will be getting replaced with a £30 codex next month, it's got all those cool new units in it from the £90 "board game" which is actually an army box with some counters thrown in. Sweet!

>people doubt the improvements GW has made

You fags are like Hillary voters after the election.

>Numbers and Stock are proof that a company is doing something right. Because it's not like the Stock Market is simultaneously reactive and speculatory, and as such, subject to rapid change. Or that making improvements and learning how to milk dumbasses with too much pocket money aren't one and the same. Nope, this graph has a line that goes up so that means it must be right.

Redshirts everyone

>stock price has steadily increased to triple the value in 2 years
>guys it's not an improvement

Post your stock portfolio

>massive improvement

Nigga any company that has tripled its value in two years is either playing with funny-money or massively improving, and I sincerely doubt GW is laundering money and cooking their books.

>replaced
There's that word again...

This guy gets it

>improvement
>leeching money out of their cucked clientele like never before
>the fluff is dogshit for everything barring their licenced properties
>the only good thing they have done in recent months is re-release a tweaked version of what they had out in the 90s
>which they immediately overshadowed with Primarines and a new edition that eliminates part of the components the other, actually good game needs
If this is your idea of improvement I'd hate to see what you think utterly tanking looks like

>utterly tanking

It was literally what we just had.

>the only good thing they have done

>actually discounted box sets isn't a good thing
>a return to softcover, affordable books isn't a good thing
>pushing regular new releases isn't a good thing
>actually listening and replying to fans isn't a good thing

>actually listening to fans
Shame they didn't do that with Age of Shitmar, eh?

Why do you hate AoS?

Because it took a big steaming shit on a much-loved setting with its own unique feel and look, before throwing it out in favour of bland but easily copyrighted crap cynically pumped out to appeal to what the board of directors thinks kids like this month.

I disagree with your sentiment, Fantasy had been written into a corner and something needed to happen to change shit up, but that's a reason to hate it I can at least understand.

It didn't need to be completely obliterated. Fuck whoever thought that was a good idea.

If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device.

Better than ever, don't like it don't play it you fucking autistic niggers. Stupid niggers.

Let's be honest, Warmahordes' main appeal was not being 40k. It was going to suffer the moment GW stopped shitting the bed. They just sped up the process.

Sorry I had a bad day but fuck man this company is a lot better than it's ever been, financially and socially. Nobody is calling them perfect, but to say they are worse is just wrong.

The fact that it would have been more work to get worse than to get better than that low bar.

Semi at best.

Violence football.

Don't forget that they had to re-write an entire faction's rules after Mk3 dropped.

And then, instead of buckling down and fixing rules they decide to release "Tim Burton's rejected ideas: the faction," which no one is excited for or even wanted.

Man, PP pisses me off. I really wanted to like them, you know?

Are you some kind of faggot who doesn't play the game and whines about fictional characters online?

Who gives a flying fuck about what some dipshit writes, this is Veeky Forums and what matters is making a semi-playable game and not some asinine fantasy drek that has never been worth reading, ever.

Glad I'm not the only one that really doesn't like Grymkin.
The Heretic is a nice model though but he's also not an evil European fairy.

But the game aspect is also an unbalanced pile of drek that isn't worth playing, ever.

No, the game is pretty fucking good now and the addition of command points has both completely changed the old 40k dynamic and made it more tactical. You can actually swing a whole game around now depending on how you use that pile of non-replenishing hail mary's.

In addition to not liking them, I just can't understand why they'd even make them. On top of the fact that they've already got nine full factions, two mercenary factions, and two small factions, there are far more interesting things going on in the warmahordes world than "skin and moans."

First off, new CEO after their stocks plummeted from bad business decisions.

Secondly they have improved significantly from 2 years ago. There's finally a lot of fanbase outreach, new interesting novel series ideas (i.e. beast arises), an attempt to keep all the armies relevant (see the index release that came with 8th edition), rule improvements with 8th, a return to campaign events (that won't be stupidly retconned cause they're so small in scale), and even the models look less shitty now. Armies that people wanted codex's/models for for ages (Mechanicus, custodes, even Sisters of Silence) finally got them. A lot of people wanted them to finally advance the timeline as well.

However they still have huge issues, now it's mostly the prices. They're not very good at designing new fluff either (I hate the idea of Chadmarines and they ruined WHFB).

But if GW's shit level was 588% 2 years ago, it's 520% now.

I mean, I think the IDEA for the Grymkin is really, really cool.

It just doesn't feel to fit into the rest of the world. Like they were just tossed in there. Coincidentally I've been meaning to sell off my Warmachine collection.

I've been considering making a return to 40K but the prices make me choke a little every time I see them. $60 for basic troop choices is fucking wild. I was initially happy about GWs move to plastic singles for stuff like HQs because I much prefer painting it to metal. I don't like that that seems to have made the prices of said models double.

Don't ever, ever pay full price. You can find mail order places that will give you a 25% discount.

In Canada you can use GC Minis from Victoria.

>I just can't understand why they'd even make them.
Hordes was hitting its 10th anniversary and it had not had a new faction yet. So "do an army that's design process is "make a pun"

>However they still have huge issues, now it's mostly the prices

You're not kidding. I'm over here in Japan and GW expects us to pay 8100yen ($73USD) for a box 10 Reivers .

Serviceman or actual Nip-poster?

Neither. Dancing Monkey / former WHFB/40k player.

How much are those special "only available in Japan" kits, or are they not out yet?

Yeah their prices are nuts. I wanted to buy some AOS blood warriors for conversion parts on my CSM, they fucking $70 for a box of ten. I'd love to support them proper but there's no reason to ever pay that much for a fucking troops choice when I can get them for $30 on ebay.

The blind box marines? They're not out for general sale until September, I think.

They had an early sale at Wonfest at the end of July though.

Not sure of how much they expect to sell them at. I think I had read somewhere 500yen?

See, that's this line of throught that ends up with AoS boxes collecting dust in a warehouse. While the WHFB community was able to keep the game afloat despite years without meaningful releases due to the appeal of its IP, AoS can't even stay amongst the most sold wargames despite having the KO release.

Let me remind you that at this point AoS sells less than Armada or even than a range of D&D minis.

I don't agree with AoS, I feel they should have done something different than annihilate the whole setting sure, but the setting needed change.

Also those D&D minis have been selling like fucking hotcakes over here, and Armada is pretty popular too so I wouldn't give those as examples.

They were absolute dogshit in pretty much every aspect, except for the casting quality of their palstic models. Now they have some basic customer service, actually react to some wishes from the community and at least pretend to try to get their rules somehow balanced. They are still at a basic level, which is perceived as the second coming because they were so fucking atrocious for so many years.

How popular is 40k in Japan, out of curiosity?

>but the setting needed change.
Yeah, retconning the End Times.

I can only speak for Tokyo, but of miniatures wargames, it's definitely the most popular for those in the know.

It's a fairly niche thing, but there's been some push recently to get GW stuff into bigger hobby shops and electronic stores(which double as hobby shops - gotta get 'dem Gunpla and Tamiya kits somewhere, right?). The new SM heroes boxes are likely another push to get the Japanese modeling community interested.

It's been about a year since I've visited a GW shop, but from what I remember, there were some complaints of the Japanese community being too "narrow" - i.e. it's a really small, almost inbred, community that lacks new blood. Mostly cool guys though.

How's that crippling loneliness working out for you? Are you having fun being the guy that everyone hates being around?

I guess it's probably clearer if I say, I've never met a Japanese person who knew what it was who wasn't already interested in wargaming/miniatures/scale modeling.

Right there with you m8, the fluff and fiction has done the game more harm than good.

Dropping AoS softly

Improvement sure, massive no

The fanbase for WHFB was miniscule by that point. I get the impression AoS was an experiment, because if it failed (which I think it has) who was gonna complain? They'd just learn from their mistakes for when they shake up 40k. Which they have done quite well.

I think you´re only partionally right here, user.

Playing a wargame that´s based on a fictional universe, benefits from a strong fictional background to enhance the experience and make the armies and characters more relateable.

If you would just like to pay the game, then use little cards as proxies. You can write the stats of the model it shall be on it and put a small pic on them too, to make them more recognizable of course. Also, ban every kind of expression from your game that is based on something written in the fluff. (some might even enjoy it)

Now behold, how attractive the whole thing gets for new players and the experienced players too. Because now, you have just the game itself and nothing else.

See, if there would be no more books and background written or sold, it wouldn`t attract nearly as much people to buy the models. So "the game itself" is highly depending on it. While the fluff could easily survive and sell itself without even a single model ever produced or sold.

I think the reason why a lot of fluff is bad in the first place, is because of the model release decisions and marketing campaigns, that suddenly require novels and ridiculous background stories that nobody that would only focus on the lore would ever choose to implement.

Meanwhile, the overall quality of the novels seems to have risen while I agree, that there are still some unreadable books coming out. But it´s nowhere near the inflationary selling of shitty books that were published out of greed two or three years ago. The quality control seems to be tighter now.

In the end, this is just my humble opinion. I grant you yours.

>tl;dr: To say, it is all unworthy of reading is utterly stupid.

Culling WHFB and paying attention to their audience has been a good move for GW (contrary to the persistent screeching of the 9 people who actually still played WHFB at the time).
Lately GW has been doing a great job interacting with players on social media. We also saw GW taking influence from homebrew tournament-systems and points values that online communities made for AoS in the first year of its release, to write the GHB.

Found the WHFB player

what are some of the newer (see: came out in the last 5 years) BL books you'd recommend? I loved the Guardsmen stuff like Gaunt's series and Inquisitor Eisenhorn one.

As we see from 2017 numbers, the AoS fanbase is pretty dead. It can't sustain itself without a steady stream of releases. GW made an experiment and it tanked hard.

At least they will be able to sell GHBs

>GW's massive improvement

>GW
>improvement

>improvement

Why, the return of our Spiritual Liedge of course

Ad hominem, the last argument of the intellectually devoid. Oh, the injury.

There haven't been any. ADB barely writes any more, Abnett seems to have moved on to other things + health issues and all the others left writing are garbage tier.

Is that really the best you can do?

25% off is getting increasingly rare and even when you get it, it just takes the prices from 'utter insanity' down to 'are you taking the piss?'

Come on dude the bait couldn't be more obvious if there was a giant neon sign.

(you). There, you got what you wanted.

>this time re-imagined as characters from GI Joe and with fluff written by 12 year old with ADHD and learning difficulties.
>this time re-imagined as characters from GI Joe
>this time

But why did WHFB have to die for it? Why couldn't it have just been a spinoff game with some unique models?

To see how far they could push things, and see how strong the reaction would be.

>let's kill off our game that doesn't need to die and currently costs us literal pennies in upkeep as we already have all of the moulds so we can just see what people would think

Brilliant financial strategy, I can see why they pay you the big bucks.

I was talking to the guy who owns my local GW and he told me, and I have no way to prove this but I don't think he was lying to me, that before AoS he was selling more paint and primer than the entirety of his WHFB stock. Now even though AoS doesn't meet 40k numbers it's doing really well, I think he quoted me something like 30% of his total business.

It's just one individual store, but I'd say that the success/failure rate of AoS is actually kind of a location thing, I've seen more AoS games in that shop in the last year or so than I saw WHFB games in the previous three. Though that is just what I personally saw.

I get people on Veeky Forums are salty, but it seems like people do like it.

>lets never try anything new ever again and keep everything static
k

>we have to kill off old games to make new ones

k

They're headed in the right direction, but the IP side of things has been really bad.

Honestly, the fact that GW can only really try to improve one thing at a time, at the cost of other features is a good sign they're not fit to purpose anymore.

Sure, why not? If people weren't playing, and it doesn't seem like a ton were, try something new.

Stay mad.

>let's stop making what money we are from this game so we can try something new that will end up making exactly the same amount of money, a little bit

I didn't even play WHFB, the move to completely kill it off for literally no reason than they wanted to try to force people into a completely different game is just so retarded I can't understand it. And the only answers I ever get are "new things" which don't necessitate killing off a product that still makes you some money with very little investment and "lol mad fag?" which isn't even an argument.

Yeah, but you can still play whatever the last edition of WHFB was. People still play Epic and Necromunda, they don't need constant new releases. If the WHFB community didn't come around to AoS AT ALL, I'm sure I'd see a lot more talk about fan rules to continue support for the old line. But despite a rocky start, I hear people talking about AoS at all, which is a lot more attention then I've seen people give WHFB in a long time.

But that's simply anecdotal. I still see tons of people talking about and playing WHFB. And there's been stuff like 9th age which is even named after what would be the next edition for WHFB and I see a WHF general thread every so often here.

Yes, the goal of a business is to make more money, I'm proud of you for figuring this out.

the move to completely kill it off for literally no reason than they wanted to try to force people into a completely different game
I wasn't in the rooms when these decisions were made, but sure I'll take a whack.

GW knows full well people still play older editions, so keeping up production for people who are set and for a line that really doesn't sell.

They don't want old product and new product to share shelf space, or even have old product that sells worse take up shelf space

They only wanted one narrative, they're already juggling 40k and HH and they don't want to put up with that with WHFB

that's three plausible reasons.

>just so retarded I can't understand it.
Something is retarded here, but it wasn't GW.

>And the only answers I ever get are "new things" which don't necessitate killing off a product that still makes you some money with very little investment
There are plenty of reasons. Clearing out shelf space for your new IP that, by all indications is at least selling better. People buy new shit, AoS looks new, using Veeky Forums as an indication of how rando's feel is dumb.

>"lol mad fag?" which isn't even an argument.
I wasn't trying to make one. I am calling you a faggot though.