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20-50% price increase for forge world, even in the US despite now having a local store. FW deleting all criticism on Facebook.


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14 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Has nothing to do with overpowered.  There's plenty of undercosted overpowered stuff in the core game.  Its that its another layer of rules and warscrolls to have to memorize.

Come on man, It's easy! Simply drop the Malign Sorcery add on rules! Same thing, you can both optionally use them, both approved by GW, both only interesting for the people who like it and both just more rules for the people who don't. 

And no! It has nothing to do that I play several duardin factions! Just like for you it has nothing to do with Forgeworld apparently offering nothing interesting to you. (which is fair by the way, but why deny part of the options to others :S )

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On 8/23/2018 at 2:47 AM, tokek said:

 

They have set the exchange rate at the 10 year average, see this post for example doing the analysis. Note that the 29 year average only differs by 3 cents - so the reality is that the pound usually does have that exchange rate and unless GW want to change their prices frequently in response to fluctuations (which in this case are driven by short-term political uncertainty) what exchange rate would you suggest they use other than the medium term average?

 

brexit isn't a short term political change. It is a fundamental shakeup of the British economy. The pound will never be the same. It's strength was contigent of a financial market heavily integrated into a european community. Without that integration, the financial sector cannot function the same. Which means the UK doesn't even want a strong currency any longer to be realistic. What made a strong currency attractive to an integrated financial sector and what will benefit a post brexit economic restructure are inherently different. And GW is in ripe position to exploit this as they are in one of the industries a weaker currency actually benefits.

 

But they want to price like brexit never happened because they have some strange neurosis about charging a cent less for models than what they've ever charged before.

 

For what interest I have in forge world, which I admit has never been particularly high, I am going to rely on resellers who will buy in the UK and ship with a milder markup than GW. At least until GW legal team tries to crush them. Again.

23 hours ago, AGPO said:

@tokek pretty much nailed this with their last couple of posts, but I'll add my five cents.

I currently live in France but get paid in £GBP and my income has been hit pretty hard by the current exchange rate. Everything I buy here has stayed the same price as it was before the exchange rate changed, so I still need to buy the same number of euros to live, but at a much higher price. It's caused about a 34% increase in my cost of living. The same issue affects all of GW's retail businesses overseas. They still need to buy euros, $USD etc to pay staff, rent and the like. as well as factor in the increasing additional costs of operating overseas such as hiring local HR and legal experts, shipping stock internationally, translating all their products etc.  Those costs have just gone up considerably, and are likely to go up a heck of a lot more after Brexit happens, especially in the event of no deal being struck with the EU.

There have been serious consequences to this. My FLGS stopped stocking most of its GW stuff recently, because customers were buying from Dark Sphere/Wayland and the like because the relative savings were too good. GW's business model depends heavily on these brick and mortar clubs to attract and retain customers. If I buy a Start Collecting box from my local GW, it costs me 65€. That was a pretty fair price considering normal exchange rates and their added costs of making the game and hobby centres available in French, but with Dark Sphere discount and a weak pound that set now costs me 41.78€  if I wait until I pass through London/Dark Sphere.

The same issue applied to FW. If you decide to buy a FW Chaos Dwarf army rather than say Karadron in order to benefit from the weak £GBP, and you play in the local GW, then the company is losing out, because profits from Karadron bought in €, $USD or whatever still cover the same proportion of the costs of running that store,  whilst the FW stuff bought in £GBP now covers less. 

Where GW has been really foolish is in their communication on this. Much like Finecast they should just have been up front about the business reality that created the need for this move. I think most of the customer base would have understood this, outside of the usual suspects, especially if GW gave them time to get a last big order in at the low prices. Instead both times they tried to spin it as something that would be great for the customer base, created unrealistic expectations then followed them with an unpleasant shock, costing them a lot of good will.

 

Except as GW's business strategy is a manufacturer, they are also paying their employees relatively less in the UK, which is where most of their staff resides, and their goods are more attractive, as was the case before. Heck, forge world barely even operates out of the UK, so pretty much none of your issues even apply to that part of the company.

 

Weaker currencies benefit manufacturers, and GW's service overseas is a fraction of their combined service, manufacturing, and executive functions in the UK, all of which got cheaper for them.

 

See, yes GW product is getting undercut by resellers. And the responce to that should not be "RAISE PRICES EVEN HIGHER!". That's ass backwards. If people can legit make a profit buying your stuff and reselling it, you done messed up somewhere along the way. The proper response it to actually lower costs. And GW certainly can afford it. Remember they posted record sales? Your perception of a distressed GW isn't real. While GW's current success isn't solely due to brexit, brexit does help the margins.

 

22 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

As a frequent purchaser of Forge World products*1 and somebody who frequently attends various GW events, I feel I need to point a few bits out.

Forge World is akin to Citadel Miniatures - it's a part of Games Workshop that designs miniatures and rules.  The decision to move over to their standard method of calculating international currencies won't have been decided by Forge World - there will be a separate team of people who decided this.  And before anybody contradicts this, I've spoken to various Forge World (and main studio) staff when dozens of items were being move to last chance to buy and was told that once it leaves the design studio everything else is decided by other parts of the company - including release dates & prices.  Forge World is full of miniature designers, rules writers and painters, so to direct any annoyance at Forge World is directing it at the wrong people.

 

At some point somebody has taken on the cries from the community *2 to sort the postage rates out.  I would imagine that the easiest way of achieving this was to get rid of the old way of dispatching Forge World products and merge it into the one system.  That has also meant that it adopted the GW currency conversion system which has increased prices by quite a margin.  As with some decisions it's likely that the people making the decision didn't foresee at the actual impact*3 - I'm pretty positive that based on the backlash, this is being discussed right at the top of the company.  It's also likely that whatever department made the decision didn't fully explain to the Community Team (aka PR & Marketing) how this would affect somebody living in Canada for example.

One thing that Games Workshop has been very good at though is honouring their fixed prices too - the pound getting stronger doesn't mean that they immediately increase non-UK prices.  Even economists don't know what is going to happen over the next 5 ~ 10 years, which is the sort of time we're looking at for many of the current political changes to take before we know what's "normal".  But TGA isn't a political forum - it's a haven for people to escape from the real world so let's not dwell on this too long.

What isn't acceptable is the vitriol that's been posted on the Facebook page - I would imagine that the people who manage the social media pages got pretty fed up of seeing hundreds of needlessly negative comments and simply took the decision to remove anything related to prices - in truth there's nothing they can do about them*4 and responding to a genuine question would likely see all of the naysayers jump onto that and start spouting unpleasantness.   What irks me too is that ten years ago the pound was significantly stronger and non-UK people were happy to pay more than the prices we've just seen things jump to plus the international delivery fees.  Also, the announcement on the 6th did say that they'd implement local currencies - we all know that GW use a fixed currency rate on their other products so why would they use a different one for Forge World?

In summary if you're not happy about something, it's fine to express it in a rational manner, but engage brain before going off with a mindless rant.  Not buying products will ultimately flag this up to Games Workshop, as will expressing it in a polite manner.  It's no use shouting to the postman that a parcel is broken if the company sending it just threw it into a box, the postie isn't going to feel very enthused to explain the complaints and claims process*5

 

*1 from spare arms up to the biggest Knight they sell
*2 that includes AoS, 40k, 30k etc
*3 I have been told that a number of the decision maker departments don't contain people who play the hobby
*4 see comment about directing annoyance at the wrong people
*5 not the best analogy - but does highlight being polite will get you a better response

because GW has always priced thier models under the expectation of a strong pound. No they haven't raised prices... well no that's not true, they rais prices all the time. New kits are all noticeably more expensive than old kits. They do in fact raise prices. Indeed they do so deliberately to make their bundled options more attractive deals. I mean, there's no real excuse for 60 dollar fyreslayers. But 60 dollar fyreslayers make the fyreslayer start collecting look real real good. It's pretty simple marketing tricks. But even putting that aside, the price point they set is very high and always has been. It has always been priced at a theoretical strong pound. That isn't coming back unless brexit is undone.

 

People are upset that the fixed currency they decided on is based on a reality ten years out of date, not only ignoring the brexit, but it feels like they're ignoring the 08 crash too.

 

15 hours ago, jackmcmahon said:

Doesn't making up your own exchange rate (price of a commodity) just create the opportunity for arbitrage?  He says exchange rate is x. Rest of the world says y.  Someone in the rest of the world can just buy the product without exchange and sell to ppl globally at real exchange rate? Sales stay the same for fw, but they continue to just come from HQ and the money they spent on global brick and mortar is wasted? Clearly don't know what I'm talking about, but I love economics and would love to hear why this is/isn't right.

yes, and people will do this for as long as they can dodge the GW legal team wack-a-moling them.

 

15 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

On a small scale this kind of thing happens. The problem is that GW bans independent stockists/FLGS from selling product outside their geographical region (as defined by GW). If this weren't the case, then I'd probably buy most of my new product directly from the UK because it'd be cheaper even with international shipping costs. For example, I could purchase a Great Unclean One from Wayland Games for 68 pound or from Dicehead for $119. At current conversion rates, purchasing from Wayland would cost me about $87. Suffice to say the cost of international shipping is way less than $32. 

However, Wayland won't sell me a GUO at all because GW doesn't allow it. If Wayland violated these rules, GW would simply stop supplying them with product.

So if you are a small operation you could probably make a small amount of money buying up stock in the UK and selling it globally on eBay or whatever, but you couldn't actually scale it up to the point where you'd make significant money. 

 

I was just thinking about selling off part of my Legion of Azgorh hoard because it's way on the back burner for me project wise, but now I think I will be holding off on that. 

if the price disparity is big enough, there's really nothing stopping someone from ordering 100 kits and then selling them except, again, the legal department.

 

 

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18 minutes ago, stratigo said:

brexit isn't a short term political change. It is a fundamental shakeup of the British economy. The pound will never be the same. It's strength was contigent of a financial market heavily integrated into a european community. Without that integration, the financial sector cannot function the same. Which means the UK doesn't even want a strong currency any longer to be realistic. What made a strong currency attractive to an integrated financial sector and what will benefit a post brexit economic restructure are inherently different. And GW is in ripe position to exploit this as they are in one of the industries a weaker currency actually benefits.

 

 

The long term impact of Brexit is bitterly disputed, lets not bring that dispute into TGA community.

The medium term average exchange rates between the pound and the dollar have not really changed in 30 years. That means that GW is too young a company to have had to deal with significant and durable exchange rate movements in its major markets before; they have never needed to seriously change their policy before. Their finance people are probably scratching their heads about how they approach this but it would seem that they - along with most of British commerce and industry - are waiting to see what really happens next year before they decide what change to make.

  

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8 hours ago, Kyriakin said:

Stop trying to encourage the universal banning people's armies, just because you don't seem to realise that you can simply choose to not play against Forgeworld.

I play events, so I have to play against whatever the event allows.  I can't simply choose to not play against it.  But now I don't have to worry, at least in our area's main tournament store, as its not allowed anyway  now.

but why deny part of the options to others 

 

I don't have the power to deny anything  as I don't run the store.  Its just a decision I am very glad for that went in a direction I approve of.

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Well I'm sure it sucks for others in your area that haven't got this chip on shoulder issue with forgeworld, and have spent time and effort painting their models for their hard worked armies. 

I never get this vindictive attitude in a hoddy that should be all inclusive, especially with a larger that normal percentage of people that might have felt marginalised in society. 

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@Dead Scribe It still doesn't make any sense. FW armies are not more OP than GW plastic ones (Tzeentch during AoS1 for example). Your FLGS made a decision that discriminates people with FW armies (LoA, Tamurkhan Horde). If they used that "it's another layer of rules to memorize" argument, then they should ban any new army because of additional new rules. 

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8 minutes ago, michu said:

@Dead Scribe It still doesn't make any sense. FW armies are not more OP than GW plastic ones (Tzeentch during AoS1 for example). Your FLGS made a decision that discriminates people with FW armies (LoA, Tamurkhan Horde). If they used that "it's another layer of rules to memorize" argument, then they should ban any new army because of additional new rules. 

Yeah it's not clear what the "direction" @Dead Scribe wants to go? If additional rules is unwanted, do you not play with matched play rules, with realm rules, with malign sorcery or firestorm campaigns? FW is only "more rules" in the sense that any model is more rules. It's just another warscroll.

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16 minutes ago, Thebiggesthat said:

Well I'm sure it sucks for others in your area that haven't got this chip on shoulder issue with forgeworld, and have spent time and effort painting their models for their hard worked armies. 

I never get this vindictive attitude in a hoddy that should be all inclusive, especially with a larger that normal percentage of people that might have felt marginalised in society. 

They can still use their models.  Just not in any of our tournament events.  

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If @Dead Scribes store banned Forge World to encourage people to buy primarily through the store I could understand that. After all, if that store can't sell forge world products then any dollar your regulars spend on forge world is a dollar they aren't spending in shop. But forge world is so niche that I doubt the pull is that much to justify such a policy. 

Knowing the distribution of 40k to AoS in the store would help here, as this policy could have been more aimed at 40k and AoS got caught in the crossfire. Because forge world AoS products are in no way OP and don't add complexity in any way to the system. All the rules are free, just like every other armies. Hell, Legion and Tamurkhan allegiance abilities are even easier to access than some GW armies that you need to buy the GHB to access.  I don't think the same can be said for 40k.

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I'm not really trying to convince you.  Winning an internet debate on why it should be done won't change anything.  As it happens, in my area it is banned.  Really when you boil it down, thats all that really matters to me, the rules in my area that I have to abide by.  The rules in my area that I have to abide by only impact the players in my area, and really even moreso only the tournament players in my area.  Anyone else in my area not playing in tournaments has nothing to worry about.

Forgeworld rubs a lot of tournament players the wrong way simply because its another layer of warscrolls we have to memorize.  So excluding them means less to memorize, which is a positive for me.

Additionally the store makes no money off of forgeworld so having it in store does nothing positive for the business.

Last, there is the whole raising prices up 25%.  Forgeworld is going to feel the burn of lost sales from this.

So its a mixed bag of reasons.

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46 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

Additionally the store makes no money off of forgeworld so having it in store does nothing positive for the business.

That's the only reason that makes sense. YOu might as well ban  nighthaunt and SCE's new battletomes- more warscrolls to learn!

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13 hours ago, Malakithe said:

The community rebelled and won.

Its pitchfork and angry mob time now bois 

I can google at least a dozen times people tried to petition warhammer/games workshop. The Vote With Your Wallet movement has always been a part of warhammer for the past decade or so.

(also EAs Battlefront 2 is still not exactly a perfect game, some may even say its not a good game)

For crying out loud, isn't that the entire point of 9th Age, to take warhammer fantasy battles into the hobbyist hands? Isn't being affordable warhammer one of the main marketing plans of Mantic Games? Doesn't Warmachine/Hordes (and maybe other games like Infinity) pride itself in having many ex-warhammer players?

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4 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Forgeworld rubs a lot of tournament players the wrong way simply because its another layer of warscrolls we have to memorize.  So excluding them means less to memorize, which is a positive for me.

Any army you meet for the first time - be it from Games Workshop or Forgeworld - are "another layer of warscrolls we have to memorize", so, using that logic, you ought to be banning the upcoming Moonclan, Slaanesh and Brayherd releases as well.

All the Legion of Azgorh warscrolls on on the app, while the Forgeworld website has a free-to-downlaod PDF with the small number of (weak) Allegiance Abilities, Command Traits and Artefacts.

Given the fact that the General's Handbook and various Battletomes (i.e. to view the Battalions) cost money, Legion of Azgorh rules are actually easier to gain access to than your average Games Workshop army. It just sounds like you can't be bothered.

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It just seems like such a weird line to draw.  Any number of Battletomes are fair game, but one half-way faction and a couple dozen warscrolls is somehow unbearable.

The "if you can't buy or order it from this store it's not allowed" argument to ban FW is one I disagree with but can understand.  "The warscrolls are too inconsistent in power, and the points are way off" is another argument that I disagree with, but can understand.  The "memorize" argument just doesn't make any sense at all, and out of all the times in my life, in all the iterations of Warhammer back through the years, where folks have made arguments or policies to ban FW, "these particular rules are too numerous to cope with" is an argument I have literally never heard anywhere before.

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AoS forgeworld stuff is nearly universally worse that GW prime stuff(mourngul being the obvious exception). No big loss.  EDIT* not talking about banning, talking about not purchasing. Their models were overpriced for what that are BEFORE the increase.

 

The reason tournament players don't like forgeworld has nothing to do with memorizing warscrolls. It's because forgeworld is even worse at rules writing than GW is. Their units are either entirely worthless or brutally OP 90% of the time and they can go multiple YEARS without getting changed.

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To be fair FW has mostly ignored fantasy and then sigmar for a while now - the issue won't be felt by fantasy players for at least a year or so - by which time I expect FW to be putting out more fantasy content (or at least to have started). A lot of the fantasy kits are old now and even the rules update FW did a little while back wasn't complete (eg the merwyrm wasn't added to Idoneth even though its perfectly suited and I recall reading that it was FW's intent to make it accessible to that faction at some point). 

As for banning and use in games; my view on FW has always been that its like an expansion pack to a computer game. It's not about balance or remembering stuff its about expectation. When you hold a fight with someone you generally expect to know what army they bring (most times) and thus you can expect what is within that armies Battletome/Codex - in addition to any formal dataslate releases by GW*

Thus just like for Age of Sigmar, where you'd confirm if you are playing with Realm Rules, Endless Spells et c... you'd also confirm if you're bringing FW models as well. 

 

By this token you both agree to bring or not to bring them. The game then carries on with both sides knowing what they can expect and what is allowed and isn't allowed. It doesn't blanket ban nor blanket accept FW use and its a good stance for matches with people you don't know or don't play often. Once you've been gaming at a club for a while you'll know if its generally FW allowed or denied and some clubs are basically "always allowed" so people don't ask. 

I've met a few who take offence to this stance, but mostly because they think that the only people trying to ask or treating FW as an "Extra" are using it to deny players to bring their FW models. Some also say that some armies are totally FW armies and thus if you'd deny them then you're denying the match. My view is that if your opponent is bringing a FW army then, by default and without asking, you know FW is accepted (nay has to be to make the game viable).

 

 

It's one of those real world 5 second parts of a conversation that takes only a moment to ask and ends any disappointment on either side. 

 

 

*this last bit is newer and mostly due to GW no longer putting units into the battletomes/codex for future release. Thus having to release them with rules at a later date. 

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14 hours ago, tokek said:

Their finance people are probably scratching their heads about how they approach this but it would seem that they - along with most of British commerce and industry - are waiting to see what really happens next year before they decide what change to make.

  

Unfortunately they did not wait as you say though and implemented the local currency change immediately, ****** over the international community to a high degree.  

Assuming that it's even based on the long term average- taking an outdated average after we've already changed to a vastly/ distinctly different situation economically is arbitrarily opportunistic.  This is not what we've been paying for models. I came into the hobby last year and it was obvious even with those prices that forge world's were unnecessarily high (for people in the UK as well), now I can no longer even financially justify a purchase.

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this sort of stuff happens everywhere. 

for instance, you get tv's cheaper, probably plenty of other stuff cheaper also. 

even if you knock vat off thats still a £70 or so increase for no reason. 

quite often see stuff like $50 console games cost £50.

the same TV in AUS $ is a 2000$ mark up. 

there's gotta be reasons EVERYTHING is marked up so much more than the basic  £ to $ conversion 
 

40066366_10156395039925336_1001362730185129984_o.jpg

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14 hours ago, Arkiham said:

this sort of stuff happens everywhere. 

for instance, you get tv's cheaper, probably plenty of other stuff cheaper also. 

even if you knock vat off thats still a £70 or so increase for no reason. 

quite often see stuff like $50 console games cost £50.

the same TV in AUS $ is a 2000$ mark up. 

there's gotta be reasons EVERYTHING is marked up so much more than the basic  £ to $ conversion 
 

40066366_10156395039925336_1001362730185129984_o.jpg

You're missing the point. The point was there wasn't a markup like two weeks ago and now suddenly there is. It's not that sometimes stuff gets marked up, it's WHEN.

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2 hours ago, Bellfree said:

You're missing the point. The point was there wasn't a markup like two weeks ago and now suddenly there is. It's not that sometimes stuff gets marked up, it's WHEN.

done from convenience sake ? instead of having to alter the website again and again and again  and pay someone to do it each time ? 

" hey while were changing the delivery costs an such boss shall we just go ahead an do those price changes we have been meaning to do for a while now ?? - yeah sure why not, save some time and effort " 



 

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On 8/24/2018 at 7:29 AM, Dead Scribe said:

Forgeworld rubs a lot of tournament players the wrong way simply because its another layer of warscrolls we have to memorize.  So excluding them means less to memorize, which is a positive for me.

This is an entirely false narrative you've created for yourself. By the sound of it players in your area sounds like a clique you've created to justify this stance.

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On 8/24/2018 at 3:29 PM, Dead Scribe said:

Forgeworld rubs a lot of tournament players the wrong way simply because its another layer of warscrolls we have to memorize.  So excluding them means less to memorize, which is a positive for me.

It's literally no different from any other warscrolls. In fact, it's better as their isn't a battletome to buy and learn your opponent. It's some free warscrolls.

 

Right now you are either trolling or being a ******. 

 

Edit.  Not even close to being a rude word ?

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All y’all hurting my feelings in here man, like “good ban forgeworld” and, “don’t buy Forgeworld.” 

You know what I buy from Forgeworld? World Eater conversion kits for space Marines and Rhinos so I can fly my favorite legion’s colors legitimately instead of just using stickers. It’s etched into their armor now and they have cool Khorne Berzerkers helmets. 

I also buy Chain Axes because there aren’t enough in the box for everyone to get one and a chainswords at the same time. 

I also buy Lascannons because I don’t want to buy 2 boxes for 4 Lascannons when I can pay half the price of 1 box for 5 and kit out an entire devastators/Havocs Squad. 

So I made 10 awesome World Eaters Khorne Berzerkers, an official World Eaters Rhino with their legion symbols and everything, everyone has a chain axe and sword and I made some plastic chaos Space Marines into Havocs with the Lascannons because I don’t like the havoc models and it was a really easy conversion.

ForgeWorld upgrade kits are cool and use the basic rules. Don’t ban Forgeworld :( only 50% of my models are Forgeworld the other 50% came out of the GW Citadel Start Collecting box :(

if they have Helbrute World Eaters conversion kits I’ll get those too. 

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