isotope
Junior Strategist
Posts: 634
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Post by isotope on Dec 1, 2018 14:54:22 GMT
My gripe about CID is how impossible it is to keep up with the game changing. I remember last year i took a break from SRs for the holidays, come back in january and get blindsided by some model that had changed ( i think ghostly on a stick in minions). Currently I'm taking a break because i have a 6 week old son to take care of, im worried by the time i come back in january/feb ill have to learn the game all over again from 5 months of CID changes. I liked having one or two times a year having to sit down and read updates unstead of monthly changes.
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Post by Big Fat Troll on Dec 1, 2018 16:58:33 GMT
holding off on purchases is not the right approach at this time. Support the company I will continue to support the company, but I need to be financially smart. If I spend money into a company such as this I need to know there is a reasonable return on my investment should I need to or decide to give up the game. Right now I can sell my models and get a return of at least 60 to 70 percent of my investment. If the company goes under or is not supported anymore then who in their right mind is going to shell out a couple grand for models they can't use? I absolutely love Privateer Press, I'm just going to take a back seat for now to see how things are going to progress. I hope it will be all good for us in the future. But when everybody does that...
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Post by Havock on Dec 1, 2018 18:02:21 GMT
That's always been the case, even pre-CiD the Warmachine emta has been quite... Evolving.
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shoe
Junior Strategist
Posts: 706
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Post by shoe on Dec 1, 2018 18:19:16 GMT
This is all likely over-reaction. They have at least one maybe two novels in the works. I don't think they are abandoning ship right now.
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Post by frumiousbandersnatch on Dec 1, 2018 18:22:36 GMT
Notice how he didn't thank Wilson. That guy runs all the talent out of the company. It's sad how many amazing ideas that go on at PP never get to see the light of day or come out half-baked and flop. But instead we get a re-release of MonPoc and things like RiotQuest which were quietly taken out back and shot. Company of Iron should have had the campaign rules and progression that were in the works from the start and the launch box should not have been just awful. CID has been a fantastic process and great for the gamestate of WarmaHordes, but honestly without Pagani there is no CID. This is really disappointing. CID is what's killing the game, at least around here, and without Pagani, it can only get worse. They could salvage it if they really wanted to, but they won't. That is, in part, for the reasons you mention, but also because power creep sells new stuff. Still, a team can only fail so much before you have to take a long hard look at its leadership, and yes, Wilson is a big part of the problem. Honestly, at this point, I do hope he sells the company, and that seems likely. Just not to Firetrucking Hasbro. However, another big part of the problem is the players having unreasonable and conflicting expectations. Yes, Riotquest was a dumb idea and should never have made it past the concept stage, but Company of Iron should not have failed. it was a good game and a good answer to things that players have been requesting for years. Yes, they took way too long getting the campaign rules out and there should have been an alternative starter with everything but the minis for people who didn't want them. But there was still plenty for us to grab onto, especially since we could dabble in another faction and so on. Yet not nearly enough players would even look at it because it wasn't STEAMROLLERZ 75 POINTS!!! And CID is causing huge problems, half of which are also our own damn fault. Power creep is supplied in response to a demand, and that demand comes from players who just want their own stuff to be more powerful than what the last guy got, without even three week's worth of foresight to see that the next guy will do the same to them, and it won't stop until everything is obsolete if it hasn't been through CID in the past 9 months. Faction bias gets downright delusional sometimes. Not only will very few people ever express any concern for the health or balance of the game as a whole, but most can't understand what we're even talking about when we do. Half the people on that forum shouldn't be there at all, and we all know it, but the Devs will barely even try to police it. They just remove every limitation or weakness the current thing happens to have every time the munchkins whine. Does your theme have a corpse collection mechanic? Well, sometimes not every model is full up on corpses, and that just will not do! Does terrain sometimes matter? How about theme-wide... no... Pathfinder isn't good enough anymore, let's use Ghostly next time. Sometimes I roll badly, so I guess I should just play Anamag or the viable half of Menoth and have army-wide double-digit MAT. And it never stops. It's exhausting even for us. Models are always changing and it's hard to keep up. I can't look at half of my collection without thinking of how to change it rather than how to use it. And no, I can't just ignore CID, because then I'll get blindsided when suddenly Piggybacks can fly. I can't imagine what it's like for the people for whom developing and playtesting this game is their actual full-time job. I really disagree. CID is NOT perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but when MK3 released the game was in a terrible state. After another two years of development the CID process has managed to rework and fix much of the complete botch job that was done on the game then. They released a terrible edition and have been paying ever since by playing catch-up and I don't think the strides that have been made would have been possible without CID and the developers really breaking their backs and working hard. Again, CID is not without problems, but I don't think that everything that comes out of the process is better than one the before it. Everything that comes out of CID is definitely better than the legacy models that have been left untouched, but roughly speaking I think that factions and themes are coming out of CID and landing in the same ballpark of powerlevel. They are for sure in a power level different than the models that have been unchanged since launch of the edition, but that's part of the monumental task of fixing the huge blunder that was this edition. As for Company of Iron, they ended up releasing a game nobody wanted. Leading up to it I was incredibly excited, as were all the people in my meta holding out hope. We were anticipating Privateer Press' take on Mordheim. That is what we wanted from the game. What we got was obviously not that. CoI is an interesting idea, but you're basically just playing small scale warmachine. It's practically the same game with a few tweaks and a little deck mechanic. They shot themselves in the foot by making a terrible starter box too. The content and price of that box doomed it to terrible sales. PP has also utterly failed in terms of community outreach in the wake of disbanding the PG program. There is no move by the company to guide new players into the game or nurture communities that exist. It's tough to that kind of thing when sales are low and budget is tight, but they really needed to land one hit instead of flop after flop. It is what it is. What can we do? I still am buying minis for my faction because I really love playing Warmachine and Hordes still, but it's almost impossible to get games in anymore without commuting to a big city. It's still my favorite miniature's game out right now and despite the blunders and mismanagement of the company and products I think the game itself remains fantastic and that's why I choose to still buy minis. I don't really understand the criticism of CID, honestly. Yes, I wish they policed their forums better and were a little tighter. Yes, it has shifted the game to a new power level. It has done some harm, to be sure, but I really also think it is the one thing that managed to salvage the disastrous release of this edition.
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bundeez
Junior Strategist
Posts: 325
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Post by bundeez on Dec 1, 2018 18:54:27 GMT
What the?? I wonder why he decided that... Sad day indeed, he brought some sense into PP that they severely lacked at the start of mk3. What now? Love the conspiracies though It does add to the existing thought of PP being sold - can't wait till we find out more!
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Post by cascadiankovnik on Dec 1, 2018 19:36:58 GMT
"They also can't manage to keep Black Anchor models in stock as the Supreme Guardian has been out of stock at least 5 times which might indicate that their busy" Reading between the lines, I think a lot of the purpose of BAHI (aside from capturing the cut distributors and retailers take) was to be able to limit production to just what was needed; no backstock of Siege Animantarixes sitting in a warehouse for all of MkII or having to guess at how much distributors/stores will order. The mystery boxes had lots of hard plastic models. I'm guessing the outsourced production in China has certain order minimums and that bit them when sales didn't materialize. I recall a specific mention at L&L that the Dawnguard Trident had to be reworked because it changed from a hard plastic sprue design to resin. The other thing I want to mention as a Seattle local is that I can almost guarantee they are going to be forced to move in the next 2-5 years. The area of Bellevue that their office/warehouse is located used to be a stretch of light industrial uses, distribution centers etc. But there is a new light rail line under construction that will link Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond (ie the Microsoft campus) that goes right through there. The city has aggressively rezoned and rebranded the area ( www.thespringdistrict.com/ ) with lots of high end mixed use apartment buildings already replacing those industrial/auto shop/warehouse buildings in anticipation of the line's opening. The upshot being at some point I'm guessing news will drop that they're closing their office (and hopefully moving 15 miles south to cheaper space). I'm sure there will be an even larger internet freakout whenever that happens but you won't be able to read much about the health of the company from that one way or the other.
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Grimolf
Junior Strategist
Posts: 246
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Post by Grimolf on Dec 1, 2018 19:45:23 GMT
This is all likely over-reaction. They have at least one maybe two novels in the works. I don't think they are abandoning ship right now. shoe, they do? I thought that all fluff was on hold. Where’d you hear about the novel(s)?
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isotope
Junior Strategist
Posts: 634
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Post by isotope on Dec 1, 2018 19:50:31 GMT
This is all likely over-reaction. They have at least one maybe two novels in the works. I don't think they are abandoning ship right now. shoe, they do? I thought that all fluff was on hold. Where’d you hear about the novel(s)? Ive been waiting for more caine books, i hope it's true.
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Post by Big Fat Troll on Dec 1, 2018 21:03:58 GMT
frumiousbandersnatch Our disagreements are really just about CID and where the power curve should be. Even if you were right that new CID cycles are not escalating power creep, there would still be the problem of leaving half of the models in the game in the dust while larding up new models and leaving most of the players envious, frustrated, and/or exhausted with one too many things. For example, Pyg Lookouts vs Trollkin Scouts was bad enough, but Trencher Long Gunners were so blatant and gratuitous that it was disgusting. The Mk3 launch was a bloody mess, but that does not mean that Mk3 was not needed or that it was devoid of good ideas or that we should revert all changes until the only things that have actually been fixed are the point cost scale, themes, and the scenario system, if that. Mk2 was literally unplayable for at least the last two years of its life. Mk2 Warmachine was quite possibly the most broken competitive game I have ever seen in over 25 years of tabletop gaming, and I stuck with AEG games for years. The points I will concede on these topics are a) that they have proven unable to balance the game with or without our help, though this is (sadly?) still the best it's ever been, and b) overall game balance is more important than exactly where the power curve is.
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Post by Havock on Dec 1, 2018 21:58:28 GMT
Mk2 was pretty great early on, you ha da few offenders but by and large I had a total blast coming in the game at that point.
Later on, yeah...
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Dec 1, 2018 23:02:40 GMT
I'm not sure what game you lot were playing...
The last 18 months of MKII was the best wargaming time of my life. Fantastic game balance, great variety of viable casters / lists, honestly the best state I've ever seen any game in.
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shoe
Junior Strategist
Posts: 706
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Post by shoe on Dec 1, 2018 23:27:59 GMT
This is all likely over-reaction. They have at least one maybe two novels in the works. I don't think they are abandoning ship right now. shoe, they do? I thought that all fluff was on hold. Where’d you hear about the novel(s)? so if u go to aeryn rudels site rejectomancy.com he talkin bout a new project for pp and some months ago deecat said on primecast dat a manuscript was turned in for some book
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shoe
Junior Strategist
Posts: 706
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Post by shoe on Dec 1, 2018 23:28:46 GMT
Mk2 was pretty great early on, you ha da few offenders but by and large I had a total blast coming in the game at that point. Later on, yeah... mk2 was a disasster compared to now
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Post by Charistoph on Dec 2, 2018 2:29:11 GMT
I'm not sure what game you lot were playing... The last 18 months of MKII was the best wargaming time of my life. Fantastic game balance, great variety of viable casters / lists, honestly the best state I've ever seen any game in. I seem to remember complaints of an ever-ramping up power scaling at the time. Sure, it was still more balanced than GW, but that really isn't saying much.
But I guess that depends on which faction you played and which central character you preferred from them or rejected from them.
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