Warmachine's Popularity

>I think the Warmachine side suffers from having three factions that are just humans-with-warjacks.
>meanwhile most of 40k armies, are Imperium

>I mean it makes sense in universe but the universe should have been altered around gameplay.
Universe or setting never was a point of Warmahordes, PP always stated that gameplay > setting for them

>What the fuck happened?
I don't know of any recent things, but it's pretty well known they generally treat contracted workers and people who weren't there from the start like shit.

It's even gotten to the point the people who leave PP find getting work harder mentioning they used to work at PP.

>they generally treat contracted workers and people who weren't there from the start like shit.
That's actually a really common sentiment basically everywhere at this point

honestly they just don't have a hook... like there's nothing about the universe that really draws me in. it all came off as incredibly generic and boring, like the people who made the game just could't come up with an interesting universe to save their lives...

plus like you mentioned, there really isn't any difference between the factions. just good guys with robots and bad guys with robots

>What the fuck happened?

There has been some surprisingly large clusterfucks in the fanbase about various decisions. Like spending one edition going 'Buy themes that let you break the cap on various unit types' and the next edition scrapping those themes and thus leaving people with models that they literally can't use them all.

Or the shitshow with the Guncarriage where they took it and kept fucking with how it works, ending up with a mediocre melee unit despite the name.

Or the most recent 'Hey, let's introduce X but also a trencher. X but also a trencher will be a better unit in basically every comparable unit than X'

>What the fuck happened?
Basically it's all extremely awful PR

Unlike mkii, mkiii was released with no community testing and the answer given was that this was a heavily internally tested project that was in development for years.

Teasers start coming out by the game's lead developer , Jason Soles, are very concerning because all his posts are talking about nerfs, buffs that no one cares, or comparisons between units not mentioned to render the reveals more confusing and concerning.

The game releases and glaring faction balance issues are brought up. Skorne players are up in arms due to this. Soles replies that Skorne players "just don't like options" pinning the Skorne's problems at the playerbase. This is not received well at all. The subsequent World Team Tournament and the next convention event all puts Skorne at the lowest win rate, confirming to the community that Skorne was poorly designed and that Soles and PP have acted arrogantly rather than admit fault.
Soles later admit in Reddit AMA that they in-fact, didn't know what they were doing with Skorne which caused further outrage.

Amidst this, a problem in the rules text is found which basically makes charges against knocked down or frozen targets impossible to land. This is answered to be "working as intended" and again there's an outrage at the idiocy. Again the outrage is vindicated by later errata documents fixing the rules to work as the community collectively agreed as it should.

Further rules changes occur including the inability to target your own friendlies for certain attacks for effects after their initial rule change between editions caused an issue.

In the middle of this, PP announce a new faction, Grymkin, who's visuals receive mixed response.

The new tournament rules are released, the scenario rules are so bad that one of the scenarios is unofficially banned by most tourney organizers.

The game is recovering/stagnant, but the above incidents basically broke the game's back.

I like the elves but that's 99% because 'Jesus fuck people, make some elf models with guns!'. Warhammer has 3 different elf factions and not a single firearm among them.

>plus like you mentioned, there really isn't any difference between the factions. just good guys with robots and bad guys with robots
I just mention part of Warmachine. Even that has some outliers. There's the elves who have their sleek magical mechs and the crazy transhumanist cultists who have their clockwork army.

Hordes is also lot more diverse. I was just pointing out there was an issue with having three factions use basically the same chassis for all their warjacks.

40k in particular is very much established in nerd culture and the like. It's no Star Wars but Emprah, Blood God etc are popular memes or phrases.
Once you're well established and your universe is in a sense iconic it is hard to be displaced

Jesus christ

PP sounds like it's run by monkeys

>In the middle of this, PP announce a new faction, Grymkin, who's visuals receive mixed response.

My issue with Grumkin is the same I have with Convergence. I don't like minifactions that won't get support worth a damn. I'd have much prefered if they folded Grymkin in as a Minions subfaction or put them in with the Circle Ourboros for full on 'Scary shit in the woods'.

I can't speak for everyone, but for me, the dude-bro, "hardcore" fake attitude and their limp-dick "Press Gangers" made me quit the game early on. When I was barred from playing in tournaments because my army wasn't painted "the right color," that was the end of that for me. I can't imagine things have changed.

>one of the scenarios is unofficially banned by most tourney organizers.

What makes it ban-worthy? I've long since stopped keeping up with competitive WMH.

>What is it about Warhammer, particularly 40k, that lends it so much exposure, popularity, and longevity?

True or not, 40k sells itself pretty heavily on 'You can play with your friends/can get into it just for the modeling'. Warmachine has been pretty blatant about being a tournament game first and foremost. The former is often more what someone new to the hobby/without a heap of time for getting good would prefer.

>I'd have much prefered if they folded Grymkin in as a Minions subfaction or put them in with the Circle Ourboros for full on 'Scary shit in the woods'.
Fucking this. If they're desperate for a new faction fucking put in the goddamn Infernals. I mean they're RIGHT THERE. USE THEM

>Convergence. I don't like minifactions that won't get support worth a damn.
That's what put me off starting with them. I like their focus-relay and warcaster-dependent stat system, though.

>When I was barred from playing in tournaments because my army wasn't painted "the right color,"
FUCK

What army and what color? Green Cygnar? Blue Khador?

whatever they could have done couldn't possibly be as bad as deleting an entire, popular game though, right?

The scenario worked by holding the flags on the opponent's side of the board and there were no killboxes forcing the opponents to meet in the middle. So gunline armies just hung back near their flags and killed any melee armies trying to touch their flag.

Also flags are infinitely easier to contest than actually control, so the scenario was basically non-existent and gunlines like Cygnar and Legion danced circles.

They had success due to hardcore fanboys who absolutely loved their game! Because believe me, it was a great and fun game to engage in, but some of these guys where on the verge of going full autism on you if you disagreed on something regarding the brand.

When mk3 released, it had its ups and downs as far as rules goes. But the main problem was how the company, time and time again literally buttfucked its fanbase. To the point of them removing negative revives on the forum grounds, and eventually closing down the independent team forums. This was due to people actually just speaking their mind on the current release. This might seem like a bad move, a bump in the road so to speak, had it not been for the fact that they had bragged about this edition months before its early sneekpeaks! It was supposedly the most balanced edition yet, so play tested and so on point it would rip a new one on any game that was placed along side it in comparison. And when it came, it was a watered down "beginners friendly" spew that had been play tested in a basement between 4 of the designers. Needless to say, it took the community about 20 minutes to utterly destroy any resemblance of balance in the game, due to thinking outside the box. And instead of accepting this, they went on a defensive witch hunt to silence anyone who criticized their game.

I used to love PP and their game. But since 3ed I think I have played just a handful of games. Not only due to community breaking up and its hard to find players, I simply lost the taste for it. Really sad if you ask me.

"Popular"

>I don't like minifactions that won't get support worth a damn.

Christ Almighty, this sort of shit. Stop piling on bullshit factions when you're already piling new characters, 'jacks and bullshit units into existing factions. It's a wargame, not a fucking Christmas Tree.

>"Popular"
Yep, even durring 8th edition
icv2.com/articles/games/view/26216/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-lines-spring-2013

One word:
Monpoc

This is what kills warmachine for me. There's no "your dudes" factor. No customization of lore. It just feels like an expensive board game at that point and may as well be a tactical video game. I mean, you're not even "allowed" to pick your colour, and there's no unnamed characters. I don't want to use the company's OC donut steel characters in their OC colours, I want to use MY OC donut steel characters. Even if there was 0 customization rules wise, this would be a game changer for me.

But it's not so it isn't. For me and my gaming circle, the concept of collaborative storytelling through gameplay and campaigns is huge. We've got our own little slice of the lore in something like 40k where we've got our own little sector where our stories revolve and grow. In warmachine, I don't care about the trials and tribulations or the stories around their official characters. It's like playing an RPG but you have to pick a character to play as from a list instead of making your own. It's not the same, it feels like there's a bit of a disconnect that can't really be reconciled even if you try to trick yourself into thinking it's "your dudes" you know it's not. It's hard to explain and maybe I'm an autismo for thinking this way, but warmahordes might as well be a vidya for all the (lack) of meaningful narrative contribution the players bring to the table.

Game Workshop is uncomparably bigger and the bet was risky, but not insane. WFB was failing to make profit, years of design fuckups had soured the player base, competitors were appearing. Axing the game was a PR hit but GW's image in public opinion couldn't actually fall much lower than it was after a decade of Kirby's bullshit. The possibility that it might just be a commercial success was here. It worked.

Most importantly though, GW didn't stop supporting WFB and went away. They replaced the ruleset and lore but kept the existing miniatures (though on another base). The people who would leave over paper were the old guard, who wasn't buying that much anyway and could be replaced with new blood if the plan worked.

If you want a true fuck-up, look at Uncharted Sea (and Spartan Games in general). When they axed UC, they simply stopped supporting it. No rules, no miniatures, no nothing. Now THAT was a massive fuck-up, Spartan got branded as a company that would happily take your money and leave you with no game to play with it. It later turned out that this opinion was in fact the complete truth, but axing UC is a big reason why Spartan struggled to make money. Even the fans of their more popular games got wary that they could be next and reduced their expenses.

You nailed it- Green Cygnarans. I gave them a green and brown "forest colors" pallette because I thought it made sense. But because they weren't blue, they weren't clearly Cygnar, and HQ wanted future players to see minis in their "proper" livery.

Fuck that noise. They're my minis, I spent my own money, I'll paint them how I want. Take your "Page 5 Attitude" and jerk yourself off with it.

>The possibility that it might just be a commercial success was here. It worked.
You mean better sales than last years of 8th edition?

Precisely. My group managed to get a little slice of the IK carved out for ourselves in the original IK RPG, and we still tell stories about that game.
The new RPG? Fucking cancer. "It's more like the minis game!" You mean exactly what I didn't want? Go drown yourself in a bar toilet.

They've said that it's going to have more minifactions, which makes me very worried.

I don't really mind the new RPG (Imo it's decent but VERY flawed. I'll play it if others want but I wouldn't go to it for my first choice). Honestly, what I'd have loved to have seen is the IKRPG make the jump from 3e to 4e (Back when it was a 3e D&D setting).

You'd have a more functional RPG for the mechanics while actually having a tactical aspect that the wargame crowd would appreciate.

No, it actually sells.
Its a sour bite to swallow for all those grognard neckbeards out there who´s still in rage for what GW did to their favorite game.

The idea is this, and this is basic marketing 101. A new customer usually spends more money the first year than a veteran of 20 years do his next 8-10 years. See, he already has everything he needs. He knows all the tricks in the books, there´s no reason for him to buy all that extra sit the company pours out! He doesn't get official tools, he goes to his home depot or wallmart to get his crafting gear. He sculpts, crafts with plastic cards to make his models stand out. He converts with bits from third party producers with no shame. This guy is not making the company profit nearly as much as they would want.... But that new kid, that's a entire different story all together!

When you think about this, its no wonder GW squatted WHFB for AoS. Hell, they probably make more out of computer games based on the world of WHFB now than WHFB ever did as a wargame.

You chose to forget the whole grass level marketing so essential in mini wargaming, I see. There are alway new and early adobters, but without established community you don't get that many players, which means lower sales. The Grogrnard might spend relatively little on new stuff, but he might encourage the new kid stay and spend more and not leave after the first impulse buy,

>inb4 le toxic Fantasy community -meme so popular with AoShitposters

>No, it actually sells.
People keep repeating this, but we have absolutely zero proof. The only statements we have about AoS is that "It performs according to expectations", which is a wet fart, and that it performed better than WHFB's worst during its initial release, which you'd better hope it did. Although we don't even know by which margin.
We have absolutely zero hints at how AoS is doing, GW is silent about it and it doesn't show up in the ICv2 report (which doesn't cover direct sales, but its the only other source we have)

>This is what kills warmachine for me. There's no "your dudes" factor. No customization of lore.
I haven't played Warmachine in years, but what's stopping you from picking a specific Cygnarian city and themeing your army after that? Or a regiment? Or making up a Menoth Subsect and going with thet. Hell, my Trollbloods were a completely made up clan.
As for the Warcaster/Warlock, I don't see why you shouldn't just come up with your own character, convert him and play him as whatever character fits your ideas. I've been doing that in every game I've played ever and nobody, 40k, Warmachine, Malifaux or whatever, has ever given me a pause about it.

They might smile on the outside, but they judge you silently.

>No, it actually sells.
[citation needed]

As long as I get a game, it's all the same to me.

>A new customer usually spends more money the first year than a veteran of 20 years do his next 8-10 years
As a Magic player I can tell you this is bullshit. Your first year or two is you getting used to the hobby and how much everything costs. Beyond that is when you take the plunge, if you're still around.

This is why PP fails. GW sells models and settings. These two are far more important to autistic neckbeards who spend thousands of hours painting and involving themselves in the franchise in ways that don't involve actually playing. Meanwhile, the majority of PP players are in it purely for the game, and online discussion is mostly meta and game related, with not nearly as much emphasis on painting or lore compared to GW. Not saying it's nonexistent, just that the competitive focus is far greater.

X-Wing outpaced PP because they offer the Star Wars setting and the pre painted models allow them to get right into the game with better looking pieces, whereas PP stuff can often be a chore to assemble and look worse unpainted, thus detracting from the experience. If the models, appearance, and experience weren't important, these would have been video or board games instead, rather than involve miniatures and battlefields.

It's also why the huge backlash over AoS destroying WHFB's setting.

>Hello darkness my old friend ...

Its probably been worsened by timing as well, while all that was going on GW was gaining positive opinion with greater community communication and 8es release.

It's kinda the same in Infinity though, and that game is much more successful

I've never heard of Infinity guys sperging at you if you do your USARF in urban camo or your CA in electric blue.

That's true, yeah

Warhammer is just the superior game.

>ostensibly a mech game, mechs are actually one of the worst units
>Only really appeals to WAAC players as that's what the rules encourage. >Fluff/modeling aspects of the game are non-existent
>Tiny scale
>Entire aim of the game is to blob your units in the middle and see who triggers their combo first.
>Models are still just as expensive as GW ones and less interesting
>Bland fluff
>Warmachine players can only explain what's good about their game by saying warhammer is bad, they can't actually say anything good about Warmachine itself.

It's the lore man. 15 year old's want to be Space Marines and everything 40k is Space Marine branded, it's basically just a money printing machine.

>Warhammer is just the superior game
>talks about the setting and models
Top kek

>it's basically just a money printing machine.
>laughing_stormtroopers.jpg

Its generally popular in most gaming locals (though not everywhere of course). The biggest change is its player base is mostly new wargamers,so they don't have much interaction with the gorgnards. But they're there and most gaming stores are shifting AoS kits steadily enough.

Wargaming is a little different from CCGs then, cos that's usually how things go with minatures.

>Its generally popular in most gaming locals
[citation needed]

Stop trying to rewrite history, WHFB was still popular and still sold well, it just wasn't shitting fountains of gold and it was too easy to use alternative ranges so the latest official regiment made of 5 models for £50 wasn't selling well.

Just go out of your basement dude and visit some gaming clubs/stores.
More often than not when having these discussions people talk about AOs being popular rather than non existant in their area.

I know locally AoS got most of the disgruntled warmahordes players.

...

> 40k is the superior game
> universally acknowledged to be one of the most poorly designed, bloated rulesets in existence, exemplifying the concepts of power creep and shiny of the week
Ok, user, ok.

>Just go out of your basement dude and visit some gaming clubs/stores
And my local fantasy crowd just moved to other games (40k, infinity, malifaux and x-wing), people tired of 8th edition and wasn't interested in AoS.
But again, voth of our examples, are anecdotal evediences

>EternalCrusadeOnline.jpg

>generally popular in most gaming locals
Kek
It was never really popular here in Europe, and 8th edition was the nail in the coffin

so the development of mythos I think is what most everyone is talking about. though the poor handling of mkiii is definitely something to blame.

warhammer/warhammer 40k: developed by brits and europeans who have been at the center of western civilization that 40k uses all those tropes. even the tau is a westernized version of anime. Then they added the european view of ameircans in the way of football. this game was also originally developed as a labor of love, becuase brits and europeans love, FUCKING LOVE board games, and beer and pretzels shit.

warmachine: mythos I think specifically developed to just stay in competition with 40k.
the setting isn't unique becuase its just a bunch of tropes added on so it can have mass appeal. The story line seems to be about the carving out the european empires. they probably should've taken inspiration from the great american story about immigration, integration and revolution.

again: while theres proabably some people who worked on these games lately that considered it a labor of love, but most likely they still had to answer to their managers/shareholders who ultimatly care about the product selling, instead of a product that they can be proud of. this criticism however can be levied against GW and PP respectively.

There are two GW stores, one independant with ample gaming space and one general wargaming club.
Nobody plays AoS at the club. Fantasy wise, it's all about Oldhammer, 6th Ed, KoW or ASoBaH.
Zero people play AoS at the indie. It's all Malifaux, Guildball, Infinity, 9th Age and some 40k.
Nobody but the redshirts plays AoS at the GWs. It's only 40k all day every day

>But Warmahordes...
Yeah, that one's dead.

>this game was also originally developed as a labor of love
That's why GW always acted as EA/Activision of TT industry?
Admit it user, all what big companies loves is money

>but most likely they still had to answer to their managers/shareholders who ultimatly care about the product selling,
>says GW defender

GW wasn't always a big company.
GW blew up pretty much once DoW came out.
before then it was more of a "fun" company.
now its just all grim dark.

big companies do love money.
but they appreciate certainty much more.
and once a company has been around for awhile they start to get an idea on what sells and what doesn't.
so they slowly, but surely start to become beholden to a certain formula.

this can also be bad for startups and other competing companies, becuase they just take an example from the big companies and just rebrand pretty much the same game that made the big company lots of bank.

this is death in all the creative fields.

im trying to apprach this subject as objectively as possible .
Im only presenting you with my observations being in the hobby for 20 years.

and im not defending anyone except for my nostaliga.
im saying that companies that rely on creative fields for their products will inevitably loose their creativity and novelty and pretty much anything that makes a customer appreciate said company. becuase it seems to be less of an exploration of ideas and more about refining the idea you started out with that made you your first milllion

>still sold well
>made less in sales than paint

>source:my ass

About 40 years of history.

More likely history+very small market

Thats sorta the thing, AoS has mostly been drawing in new gamers. People who never touched WFB and so didn't care about all that stuff with killing the setting.

dude im not the guy you are citing but have you been living under a rock? the GW stock report articles on bols for 2 years has stated that aos is outselling 40k in many markets.

So still no source?
We have a lot of new people for the last 2 years and they've just picked what people played.

Can't just make it history because Infinity's even younger than Warmachine, yet I can't remember the last time a thread died from inactivity. It keeps pumpin' along even during content droughts.

>the GW stock report articles on bols for 2 years
Yeah and for 2 years GW released shitton of Space Marines (Calth, Prospero, Custodes, Deathwatch, Thousand Sons, Wulfens, Plastic MkIII, motherfucking Guilliman, Primaris marines and Death Guard) and really reworked the 40k rules with 8th edition.
>bols
Then please, post a prooflink with references to official GW publication.

>whatever they could have done couldn't possibly be as bad as deleting an entire, popular game though, right?
Good job no-one did that then.

No one gave a shit about WHFB except a bunch of grognards who bought all of their models ten years earlier.

even an official gw stock report isnt going to have it broken down like that. you can continue to live in delusion if you want but youre just wrong.

natfka.blogspot.ca/2016/08/how-is-age-of-sigmar-doing.html

Whatever happened to their LotR game, anyway?

>exemplifying the concepts of power creep and shiny of the week
And now you're just full of shit.

There is no deliberate power creep, new models do not get more powerful rules.

The power level of each release (codex or models) has always been essentially random because they don't understand the game well enough to have power creep or shiny of the week.

If you'd actually played 40K for any length of time you'd have seen this over and over - every new release has just as much chance of being complete shit as it does being totally OP.

>However, a source close to some very real information here
BWAHAHAHA!
Meanwhile, GW stocks went well only after rhey refocused their releases on 40k, while AoS got 1-2 releases per season.

Once movie hype ended the game start loosing playerbase, so GW just released War of th Ring, what turned game from nice skirmish into 40k-like

Because CB didn't fucked up their audience and their niche.

>>inb4 le toxic Fantasy community -meme so popular with AoShitposters

The fact that you call it a meme doesn't make it less true. Maybe not everywhere, but around here like in a lot of places the established community only played higly competitive games with the latest combo.

I have seen more than one 40k player that was thinking about starting fantasy getting turned off by a test game against an invulnerable block of White Lions.

And how exactly it's community fault, not Ward, who made all elves armybooks?

Like clockwork.

>No GW stores in the area
>All flgs have barely any AOS presence
>All those who play AOS are newbies who change to 9th age, mordeheim or any other official ed of whfb and 9th age
I'm not saying you're wrong user, but you're a faggot for assuming everywhere else is a carbon copy of your city.

>but you're a faggot for assuming everywhere else is a carbon copy of your city.
>it's okay when other side doing it

As a magic Player your opinions aren't worth shit though

Even in the middle of 40k 7th edition, with the worst bullshit I have ever seen being possible, you still had an active community of people that played only fluff games. It involved heavy houseruling and limiting of bullshit choices, but the asshole that played a scatbikes list against a new player with a tactical squad and a captain was the exception, not the rule.

In the WHFB the entire community was made by assholes like that.

>My entire side is made of turboautist and assholes
>Goddammit, people will rightly point that out when I claim we were actually the good guys
>I'll just call it a meme, that will shut them up!

You are a fool if you think the only ones that call the WHFB community toxic are AoS players. Why don't you ask in a 40k thread how many of them thought about starting WHFB but never did because of the community and now will never do because of AoS?

>you still had an active community of people that played only fluff games.
Define "fluff" games please, and how exactly good lists isn't fluff
>In the WHFB the entire community was made by assholes like that.
Few minutes before:
>Maybe not everywhere,
Also
>unironically using "toxic"
You have to back to tumblr, you sissy-boy.

>initially
Reading comprehension shouldn't be such a rare skill

I'm not assuming AOS is dying everywhere else, I'm just pointing out you're wrong by assuming AOS is succeeding everywhere else because it's doing great in your area

wow, you sure got butthurt a lot for some observations about the community of a place you don't even know. You know that when someone call out the assholes and you feel the overwhelming need to defend yourself you don't actually make a good case?