shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Dec 3, 2018 17:21:04 GMT
Get Schick and Pagani back, cut Wilson and Soles Where are you seeing that Shick is leaving / has left? I let that out a bit quicker than intended. Schick announced today on Twitter. Jr Goodwin, Lowry and Pagani are all leaving/left.
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shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Dec 3, 2018 17:32:13 GMT
They do when they have already allocated capital to the project and can expect a short-term RoI Infernals were announced in november, wont hit CID til march, wont get finalized rules till june and wont be finished rolling out til september. Nearly a year out isn't really a short term RoI Look at 8th ed GW for how it works when a company is dumping a line, or AEG's L5R for how it looks when they're selling off a property. You do realize those sculpts, costs, Material, and labor are very likely to have been cost-determined and Capitol allocated for them long before now. And yes, a year, within two or three years is commonly considered short term RoI for project planning. Not 100% sure in the miniature market, but in consumer electronics that's true, so I have no reason to thin the turn around would be any shorter of a time frame in an industry that moves lightning fast compared to the glacial pace of a miniatures game. I worked in project management for several years. RoI and long term vs short term implementation dont have the same connotations in the business world as they do outside of it. Also, the models, how big the units are, the types, base sizes, concepts, all of that stuff, for the most part, the development is done. Hell, chances are most of the sculpts are likely done at this point. So yes. Short term. Capitol is likely already spent or allocated and even if they release infernals on monday and intend and do close shop on Tuesday, they will still release them regardless of consequence because of the short term payoff. (Not saying they would do that, just illustrating it).
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Dec 3, 2018 17:47:09 GMT
Careful considerations would have to be taken to see what gets cut. You would have to weigh the actual development costs of updating the rules, maintaining the old molds, availability of prime materials, printing new boxes, etc. Versus the opportunity costs of just investing all those development resources into producing brand new stuff. Yes, people would throw fits, that's very clear to me. But it is very unreasonable to maintain the level of balance Warmachine players expect with an evergreen catalogue. Not to mention that PP is notorious for their supply chain troubles. Cut the amount of merchandise they have to move, both in the States and abroad, and you'll mitigate a lot of the current frustrations. The overall health of the game and company is what's needed, and I for one am willing to sacrifice my AKs on that alter (for example). The moment SKUs start getting cut, and models start getting rotated out of the game, I'm like...90% sure my meta just dies. And my meta contains a considerable number of the top players in the country, and is also (to my knowledge) one of the largest metas in the country. If that's at all generalizable, it's not any kind of route to go. On the flip side, high profile players in US and Canada have said they would support a fully Limited format "Magic The Gathering" style. I don't think you can generalize the reaction, but the fact remains, an evergreen roster won't be sustainable in the long run.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Dec 3, 2018 17:50:31 GMT
Careful considerations would have to be taken to see what gets cut. You would have to weigh the actual development costs of updating the rules, maintaining the old molds, availability of prime materials, printing new boxes, etc. Versus the opportunity costs of just investing all those development resources into producing brand new stuff. Yes, people would throw fits, that's very clear to me. But it is very unreasonable to maintain the level of balance Warmachine players expect with an evergreen catalogue. Not to mention that PP is notorious for their supply chain troubles. Cut the amount of merchandise they have to move, both in the States and abroad, and you'll mitigate a lot of the current frustrations. The overall health of the game and company is what's needed, and I for one am willing to sacrifice my AKs on that alter (for example). Eh, if there was actually a sign that balance was worsening this would be a strong argument against an evergreen catalogue, but thats not the case really, signs point to balance actually doing much better than it was last edition. The fact that people aren't happy with it, despite this increased level of balance of tournament placings is another data point in the "competitive balance seems to be the enemy of mass enjoyment" that i've noticed in many competitive games. I agree with you, the current balance is the best I've seen it in the past 8 years, and the fact that balance is currently manageable is due to Theme forces. I don't think adding 40 to 50 news SKUS a year to the roster will be sustainable for much longer though. 5 new models per CID, around 4 to 6 "Full" CIDs a year, plus a new Faction each year, plus smaller CIDs like the Locus and Journeymen, it's going to get nuts. On the flip side... with so many people leaving the company, I don't think we have much to worry about in the case of longevity lol Anyway, I'm putting my money down on a buyout and reboot, wouldn't be the first game that has gone through one, and it won't be the last: Dungeons and Dragons, Battletech, Netrunner, L5R. I mean the game is a strong property, at least according to ICv2 only the FFG's minis lines are a true competitor, even the indie darlings like Guildball don't register in their charts. This is all speculation by the way.
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Post by Havock on Dec 3, 2018 18:36:51 GMT
The problem is that you don't know who will buy it, and who really cares enough and has the monetary "interest" to buy such a thing nowadays?
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shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Dec 3, 2018 18:53:57 GMT
I agree with you, the current balance is the best I've seen it in the past 8 years, and the fact that balance is currently manageable is due to Theme forces. This may be true, and it likely is, I'll take your word for it, but I would hazard a guess that the way most people interact with the game isnt actually playing the game. Most people interact with the game during non game time, like painting (well, maybe not painting for WMH), assembling models, and building lists. Theme forces, while good for balance (though honestly, I'm not entirely sure that's true honestly, I think all it has managed to do is widen the gulf) have decimated one of the easiest ways for players to interract with their hobby, by making lists and talking about them. Now, it's a lot less about what your putting in your list and a lot more about what "build" your playing. If players cant get excited about list creation, how are they supposed to get excited about playing it. Sure, the top 10%, the WTC peeps, I'm sure they're excited, it's a grind for them. Glad they love it, but for the casual player, the people who normally make up the vast majority of any game audiance, it strips them of one of the fundamental ways to interact with the game, and I think that's the horrid cost of themes everywhere.
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cain
Junior Strategist
Posts: 243
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Post by cain on Dec 3, 2018 19:02:04 GMT
Will Shick also stated on Twitter that he are leaving without a new job. (Like pagani)
My bet would be that they are scaling down cost and specially related to warmahordes. The future is focus on new games and the new yearly faction.
Shick also stated that we shouldnt worry about the PP company because Monpoc is doing great....!
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Post by scarecrow on Dec 3, 2018 19:05:29 GMT
Will Shick also stated on Twitter that he are leaving without a new job. (Like pagani) My bet would be that they are scaling down cost and specially related to warmahordes. The future is focus on new games and the new yearly faction. Shick is the director of business development for PP. Trying to read the cards over his departure seems like a wild hare chase. He didn't just work on Warmachine and Hordes, so what you're proposing seems off base at best.
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crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Post by crimsyn on Dec 3, 2018 19:10:17 GMT
And unfortunately, this is not PP's area to fix, but ours. PP has offered numerous ways to play with our models, but it is the tournament-focused ones who tended to drive the meta at times. GW had a similar standard for customization as PP had, but they still managed to get a lot of customization in there. Both have relaxed a bit, but PP could relax a little more, and more importantly, the organizers can relax that even more. Off hand, I tend to see more painted models in GW games, oddly enough than I do in WMH games. That could mean that there are more hobbyists in GW games, or that GW is easier to get in to for a hobbyist. GW has a lot more plastic lines than PP has, and plastic is easier to work than the white metal is, and the price per model USED to be cheaper, though the price per bit still is. On the first point, I totally agree. However, just in keeping my ear to the ground on the internet, listening to chatter about CID, etc., it feels like there is kind of an "inmates running the asylum" situation. I worry that if WMH goes all-out in trying to cater to the 5-10% of their audience who are top-level hardcore competitive players, that 5-10% won't be enough to support the game by themselves. However, they are also sometimes the most vocal, on CID and elsewhere, and I fear that if both the company and local communities focus on them, the game will become insular and crash and burn as the couple hundred aspiring WTC players aren't enough to support the overhead, tooling, etc., in making a miniatures game. Regarding conversion rules, I wrote an article recently where one of the points I made was a wishlist for a couple small changes that would open up a lot of creative freedom for conversions. Mainly, relaxing the 50% rule for cavalry models to allow for mount swaps that don't immediately run afoul of that rule as the mount is generally at least 50% of the model by itself, and consider allowing players to go nuts with a small portion of their force. I suggested something similar when the SR/Masters/Champions packet was in CID, but they said that that part of the packet was not up for discussion. Which is fair, I suppose, so while I think it is a good idea to relax those rules a little, I don't think it is going to happen. And, if PP proposes any easing of the conversion requirements, there will be a vocal minority who doesn't like conversions because they feel they may get confused by a model in an opponent's army. As for the number of painted models in PP and GW games, is it really odd or really such a surprise? I feel like both companies do a decent job at the company level of promoting painted models by having really good studio painters, doing videos with Duncan or Dallas, and running painting competitions at their events. However, it feels like with PP, that doesn't actually trickle down, at least not in my experience. They've dropped painting requirements from all their official tournament formats, and it there are very few events that have a painting requirement or really do much of anything to reward painting. Most competitive players would rather hastily throw together 9 Slayers because it's the new hotness than play with what they have and what they have painted. As a result, you have community leaders rocking unpainted armies, and tournaments are often a sea of grey plastic and silver metal. And I'm not sure there is much PP can do to change that culture at this point. The culture that has been inculcated in WMH is one where painting does not and should not matter, and this probably goes back to the early days of "play like you've got a pair." It seems like going back to the beginning, WMH was positioned as the anti-GW in a lot of ways, including being a serious hardcore game for hardcore players with real metal minis, not some fluffy artsy crap where we care how nicely painted your plastic is. As such, any serious attempt to promote, reward, or incentivize painting (or at least, anything more than just an afterthought and a mention that "painting is nice, I suppose, but you don't have to" in the Steamroller packet) is going to be met with opposition from a vocal portion of the player base (honestly not sure if it is a vocal minority or if it is actually the majority). I've seen people argue on this forum and on facebook, for example, that there shouldn't even be painting awards because it's not fair that any portion of the prize pool at events goes to hobbyists instead of the people who place in the tournament or that a best painted award is just a "participation ribbon." Or that I should "f--- off to GW" for suggesting a way to reward painting. I'm not sure if this is something that can be changed; like I said, both PP and GW do a decent job of promoting the hobby aspect, but for a variety of reasons, it's more likely to trickle down to tournaments and to the local level for players of GW games. So, while I don't think it's all doom and gloom over at PP, I feel like the community and the game is at the risk of becoming insular and focused solely on competitive play at the highest levels. And the thing is, when you become insular, you're often the last person to notice because by definition you're on the inside of the in-group and not on the outside looking in (or on the outside and on the receiving end of a cold shoulder).
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Post by anderfreak on Dec 3, 2018 19:25:16 GMT
The problem is that you don't know who will buy it, and who really cares enough and has the monetary "interest" to buy such a thing nowadays? This is all speculation but my assumption has been that they are trying to court Fantasy Flight with Matt Wilson trying to have FFG retain a small core group of the PP creative team to ease transition and give some semblance of continuity to the players. I could also just be talking out my ass. It doesn't have to be a sale either, it could just as easily be a large scale restructuring of the business, probably downsizing. That too often comes with a lot of staffers jumping ship at the prospect of working through a transitional period where the company culture they knew and grew used to ceases to be. Although without Will Schick I'm curious how that would proceed. Either way, I have to remain optimistic because I've put a lot of time and money into the game and all I hope is that I can still play it and have it be supported in some official capacity, because I'd like to continue putting time and money into it.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Dec 3, 2018 19:32:25 GMT
The problem is that you don't know who will buy it, and who really cares enough and has the monetary "interest" to buy such a thing nowadays? You buy the IP and spin it off to other genres. FFG bought L5R from AEG 3 years ago, they now produce the LCG, an RPG, a board game, and novellas. Just the Minis and RPG alone can give someone like FFG a nice bump in their portfolio. Reboot something like High Command but you know, make it actually good (they already have experience with the LCG model), and also deliver a boxed board game experience and get the IP in the eyes of people that aren't familiar with the Iron Kingdoms (they also have pleeeenty of experience with boxed products).
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isotope
Junior Strategist
Posts: 634
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Post by isotope on Dec 3, 2018 19:39:44 GMT
With two Wills leaving without new jobs lined up im starting to thing some highlander type shit went down and hungerford won.
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Post by dragonpup on Dec 3, 2018 19:53:25 GMT
With two Wills leaving without new jobs lined up im starting to thing some highlander type shit went down and hungerford won. Why does everyone forget that Oz is a Will, too?
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Post by The Snark Knight on Dec 3, 2018 19:58:27 GMT
With two Wills leaving without new jobs lined up im starting to thing some highlander type shit went down and hungerford won. Perhaps a... "Battle of Wills?"
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isotope
Junior Strategist
Posts: 634
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Post by isotope on Dec 3, 2018 19:59:44 GMT
With two Wills leaving without new jobs lined up im starting to thing some highlander type shit went down and hungerford won. Why does everyone forget that Oz is a Will, too? Inb4 his twitter post that hes leaving.
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