Rules vs. Good Design Selling Models - How can Consumers influence GW?

[plavski]

20 minutes ago, MitGas said:

I don't think Teclis is the subject here.  It's basically about if something can be classified as ugly per se. I argue that we as humans have some common conceptions about beauty (and ugliness) and others disagree. Which is ludicrous as many researchers already disproved "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Hell, even when you think about something as narrow facial aesthetics in humans there are various common markers. No matter where people come from. Those are universal things.

Well the OP states:

"while probably around 80-90% of the reaction to Teclis is unfavorable."

That's a bad faith number to found an argument on.

[Sleboda]

35 minutes ago, MitGas said:

No. Read a book on that topic. End of discussion

I'm guessing we are just disagreeing on terms. 

Three eyes may be a statistical deviation from the norm of two eyes. That's objective.

Finding three eyes to be repulsive (ugly) is an opinion, no matter if it's a commonly held one or not, making it a judgement, and thus subjective.

Likewise, we can objectively say that salty foods trigger specific flavor receptors on most human tongues. Whether that makes the foods taste good or not is a subjective response to the objective fact.

I do not find Bonereapers to be unpleasant, repulsive, ugly, etc. It is my personal opinion that they are very nice looking. They are subjectively pleasant for me to behold. 

Ugliness is not defined by a majority. It's not a data point, or something we can universally measure. Heck, even from one culture to another we may find the same thing to be attractive or repulsive. These opinions can even change over time. Anything that fluid and non-universal cannot be objective.

In fact, it really only takes one person to evaluate a thing differently from you to render the view subjective. I'm not talking about things like 2+2=5 according to one person. That's obviously incorrect. 2+2=4, objectively, not subjectively.

That's why I think we're just disagreeing on the term being used. 

 

Anyhoo, how 'bout them Mets?

Edited January 27, 2020 by Sleboda

[tripchimeras]

Do rules have an effect on model sales, ABSOLUTELY.   But as those of us who participate in forums, and/or consider ourselves "competitive" players of the game must often be reminded of, we are in the minority.  The percentage of tournament attendance to the wider community is very small.  Now that being said I often know from personal experience, there was a time particularly in my youth where I was absolutely obsessed with hearing about and the thought of one day attending tournaments, but never did so myself.  I approached the hobby from a competitive perspective, yet only played the game with 1 friend, I did participate in the forum community a bit, but still I think as little data we really have on the makeup of the community, if there had been data I would have likely been included in the "casual" data point.  Point is while we have no real idea about people's buying habbits when it comes to this game, we can be pretty sure the competitive side of the game does not cover the great majority of aos purchases.  So while surely the competive crowd is large enough to create a spike in sales for one thing or another, it is by no means large enough to represent the driving force of sales across the board.  Speaking as a competitive player, a models beauty despite terrible rules has driven me to make purchases on more then one occasion; this despite my complete lack of painting talent.  When the plastic dragon ogres got released in 8th edition, I immediately discovered the rules were truly terrible, but it did not stop me from buying 12 of them day 1, and making it my lifes mission to make them work (spoiler I never managed to make them work).  However, it didn't stop me from painting every single one of them with a vigor I had never had with any other model before, and to this day they are the best painted unit I have ever done (not saying much).  My point even in the competitive crowd pretty models can drive sales as much as good rules, so I would bet that while rules certainly can improve the stock of an ugly model, good model design and faction lore is always going to be a huge factor in sales.

The other point I would like to make is that, while OBR certainly had a mixed reception aesthetically online, one thing I noticed VERY quickly was that once painters and hobbyists I follow got their hands on the models opinions seemed to change rapidly.  Turns out they are extremely detailed and hella fun to paint, with a ton of variety and opportunity for creativity.  Turns out, and this is very much something I have found, the promo shots of models often do not do them justice.  Sometimes the paint schemes chosen are boring, or poor choices; sometimes the angle is a poor one, and sometimes the models just look better on the table then they do on camera.  Teclis is a perfect example of this.  While my group was largely indifferent to negative of his model when the promo was revealed, once twitter started showing additional shots and angles of the model, all of our opinions improved.  I am now actually excited for the model after seeing it from additional angles.

Lastly the subjectivity of all of this cannot be understated.  I find it particularly funny that the OP specified the suit of armor as a model everyone loved.  Because, I have seen almost entirely negative commentary on it from my group and those I follow on twitter.  It is entirely dependent on your personal fealings and corner of the internet as to these things.

[Death1942]

6 hours ago, Gecktron said:

Idoneth Deepkin, Fyreslayers, Kharadron Overlords and Nighthaunts would like to disagree, so do Daughters of Khaine and Flesh-Eater courts. 

I worded it poorly, I should have said they release very strong rules for the new models/books and don't really improve much of the older kits/books.  For example I expect Seraphon (without any new kits) to be very middling in strength (like Ogors).

[whiskeytango]

46 minutes ago, Death1942 said:

I worded it poorly, I should have said they release very strong rules for the new models/books and don't really improve much of the older kits/books.  For example I expect Seraphon (without any new kits) to be very middling in strength (like Ogors).

Well, again, thats not necessarily the case. Flesheaters, Skaven, most of the powerful stuff in DoK, Warclans (i don't think Ironjawz can any longer be considered a new release), now Tzeentch. They often make very powerful rules for stuff that has no release tied to it other than a book.

[plavski]

38 minutes ago, whiskeytango said:

Well, again, thats not necessarily the case. Flesheaters, Skaven, most of the powerful stuff in DoK, Warclans (i don't think Ironjawz can any longer be considered a new release), now Tzeentch. They often make very powerful rules for stuff that has no release tied to it other than a book.

In fact, I'd say it was the entire opposite. The amount of strong books for AoS only lines pales in comparison to the amount of strong books for older lines. Cities of Sigmar is almost entirely old sculpts, but it's also super powerful while Gloomspite Gitz was an almost entirely revamped line with a wonderfully fluffy, but decidedly MOR book.

Edited January 27, 2020 by plavski

[MitGas]

7 hours ago, Sleboda said:

I'm guessing we are just disagreeing on terms. 

Three eyes may be a statistical deviation from the norm of two eyes. That's objective.

Finding three eyes to be repulsive (ugly) is an opinion, no matter if it's a commonly held one or not, making it a judgement, and thus subjective.

Likewise, we can objectively say that salty foods trigger specific flavor receptors on most human tongues. Whether that makes the foods taste good or not is a subjective response to the objective fact.

I do not find Bonereapers to be unpleasant, repulsive, ugly, etc. It is my personal opinion that they are very nice looking. They are subjectively pleasant for me to behold. 

Ugliness is not defined by a majority. It's not a data point, or something we can universally measure. Heck, even from one culture to another we may find the same thing to be attractive or repulsive. These opinions can even change over time. Anything that fluid and non-universal cannot be objective.

In fact, it really only takes one person to evaluate a thing differently from you to render the view subjective. I'm not talking about things like 2+2=5 according to one person. That's obviously incorrect. 2+2=4, objectively, not subjectively.

That's why I think we're just disagreeing on the term being used. 

 

Anyhoo, how 'bout them Mets?

I give up (not because any of the arguments against my points are reasonable). First and foremost because the OBR aren't really worth my time to discuss them at length (I don't hate them at all but I don't really care much either) and because I've stopped talking about them a long time ago and I can only gain bonus points on the insanity scale if I keep repeating myself here. 

But okay, continue disagreeing with much sharper minds than our very own on these things if you like to claim that basic taste in the discussed points is subjective, I'll agree to disagree - there are a hell of a lot of things in aesthetics/beauty/design/whathaveyou where there are universal truths - disagreeing here is simply wrong, I'm not arguing anything else. Look up acid victims and then say that beauty is subjective. It's a horrible sight to behold (seriously, those poor people). I'm not talking about Bonereapers there or the best eye or hair color - perhaps you argue for preferences but when something is against the norm it's a difficult point to argue, especially if you look at data.  

What do you think they teach you in university if there were no objective facts about things you could argue are totally subjective (like art)? I'm sure someone out there loves Comic Sans with dubious line-heights and kerning that makes you lose all hope. It's still not a well-made font on an objective point of view (I'm taking an easy example here) even that guy loves it. That makes that guy who's into weirdly set Comic Sans simply tasteless, not a valid artisan. (And no, I don't mean that as a back-handed insult directed at OBR fans). I'm not sure it's anything but senseless to not dismiss such cases.

Anyways, lots of joy to you and all OBR players/Teclis fans and the like - it's cool if you love your dudes/gals. I'll meanwhile sit here in total acceptance of my pink horrors who are ugly in every possible way. Except for Pinky, he's cute as a button and a true hero.

 

[flemingmma]

On 1/25/2020 at 5:41 PM, The_Dudemeister said:

I do not think we can. Every single model GW produces undergoes a costly process of design and production and needs to get approved at several stages of the process. They would not do it for a model they thought was bad and damages the brand reputation (not that Teclis would do that for me, just speaking generally here).

We can safely assume that the people in charge think of every single model that gets approved as "winners", some more some less. My personal biggest gripe with GW models are the faces... the ****** faces. From Constipated Grandpa Teclis to Regurgitated Duke Nukem Reject Space Marines... This is what the designers prefer, so this is what we will get untill a whole new generation of designers emerge.

Recently, I've heard of several 40k players telling me they didn't like the AoS design influence creeping in... one of my favorite changes in recent years. Everyone not in touch with 40k in general, check out Mortarion, he was the first model I know of that was very AoS inspired and fits better between Nagash and Archaon than to any other of the big guys in 40k before him. That's also something that will absolutely not change, because it's so tied to the designers currently working at GW and the people needing to approve all new stuff.

I very much agree with the premise that rules sell models and those that are notably unusable in-game will sell worse than very similar looking units that are good. But the overall design philosophy will stick. More AoSy models for 40k and more punchable faces for me etc.

I think you'll find that space marines are in fact based on leon dijk

[flemingmma]

1 hour ago, flemingmma said:

I think you'll find that space marines are in fact based on leon dijk

Or joop kasteel, any Dutchman really

[MitGas]

2 minutes ago, flemingmma said:

Or joop kasteel, any Dutchman really

the facial structures of your examples are indeed spot-on. 

[Kramer]

Its like looking in a mirror as a Dutchman 😂

20 minutes ago, flemingmma said:

Or joop kasteel, any Dutchman really

 

[Saxon]

I think a lot of opinions are formed by the people you play against in local groups. In trying to assess my own bias i feel like i have a generally negative view of new GW releases on the basis that a couple of people i regularly play against always go for the new shiny armies and the meta-list of those armies where as i prefer to run fun lists resulting in often lop-sided games. This  has shaped my personal opinion of releases always pushing the meta upwards to sell models. Is it a solid strategy to sell models? Absolutely. A lot of people always want the best which is fine but its not for everyone. 

It's just my opinion which may not be accurate but my concern with bringing out these shiny new armies with all these powers has a few major sticking points:

1) New armies seem to be grossly overpowered until they get a FAQ nerf (Slaanesh).

2) Limited play testing from GW is not an excuse for bad rules either under/over powered. We pay a fortune for our plastic crack and have a reasonable right in my opinion to expect that these armies interact together somewhat well. It's never going to be completely balanced but some degree of balance is surely reasonable to expect?

3) The distance between the top tier lists and the older lists grows consistently with each new release which ads to people with older armies feeling stranded/frustrated (look at how bad GLoN armies are now). In this regard, personally when i have felt this way i have shelved or moved on armies instead of continuing to invest in them. This lacks data but i'd imagine the more powerful the new armies get, the less love the older ones get and thus their product lines stagnate. I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing. Selling models is selling models. 

[Sleboda]

6 hours ago, MitGas said:

What do you think they teach you in university if there were no objective facts about things you could argue are totally subjective (like art)?

They teach you that, for example, the existence of beauty is objective. Then they teach that the experience of beauty is subjective.

Pretty simple, really.

Easy example. Can we all agree that at one point or another we've identified another person as "hot" when taking to our friends?

If so, I'm willing to bet that at least once we've pointed out that "hot" person only to have a friend in the guy group say something "nah, he/she isn't hot." We might reply "but that height! That long hair! Wow!" Then the friend says "Meh. If you're into tall people, I guess. Me, I like shorter people with shorter hair."

Not sure how that is a tough thing to agree on. Does "ugly" stuff exist? Objectively, yes it surely does. Do we all have a single definition of what makes a thing qualify as ugly? Nope, because it's subjective what makes a thing ugly, beautiful, hot, sexy, boring, exciting, etc.

We're not talking about existentialism or relativistic philosophy here. 

In order for your assertion to be correct, we would have to accept that every single same person on the planet agrees 100% on a particular definition of ugly, which is clearly not the case. Honest question in an effort to understand your position - Do you think that you (or your friend or a random taxi driver or ...) can declare that a given person is ugly and have no one disagree with you? Because if you can't assign ugly without disagreement, then it's your subjective opinion.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Sleboda

[Beastmaster]

To maybe shorten this discussion, an utilitarian view: Does it matter in practical terms here? Miniatures don’t get sold because they are beauties, but because they are well-designed and well sculpted little monsters. That encompasses objective and subjective qualities. That’s all.

[Kramer]

5 hours ago, Saxon said:

I think a lot of opinions are formed by the people you play against in local groups. In trying to assess my own bias i feel like i have a generally negative view of new GW releases on the basis that a couple of people i regularly play against always go for the new shiny armies and the meta-list of those armies where as i prefer to run fun lists resulting in often lop-sided games. This  has shaped my personal opinion of releases always pushing the meta upwards to sell models. Is it a solid strategy to sell models? Absolutely. A lot of people always want the best which is fine but its not for everyone. 

It's just my opinion which may not be accurate but my concern with bringing out these shiny new armies with all these powers has a few major sticking points:

1) New armies seem to be grossly overpowered until they get a FAQ nerf (Slaanesh).

2) Limited play testing from GW is not an excuse for bad rules either under/over powered. We pay a fortune for our plastic crack and have a reasonable right in my opinion to expect that these armies interact together somewhat well. It's never going to be completely balanced but some degree of balance is surely reasonable to expect?

3) The distance between the top tier lists and the older lists grows consistently with each new release which ads to people with older armies feeling stranded/frustrated (look at how bad GLoN armies are now). In this regard, personally when i have felt this way i have shelved or moved on armies instead of continuing to invest in them. This lacks data but i'd imagine the more powerful the new armies get, the less love the older ones get and thus their product lines stagnate. I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing. Selling models is selling models. 

The first bit. Absolutely. And people need regular reminding of their biases to challenge them. 
1. I would say: some armies are grossly overpowered until a FAQ. Keyword being some. Take the last four releases for example. Two potentially overpowered: bonereapers, tzeentch. Two middle of the pack: ogors, KO

2. I think the expectation is very fair. But I can’t help but judge the product by the mission statement. Which is to create great models first. The rest comes second. So yes. I expect the same but GW focussing resources on models and the bare minimum to rules... kind of make sense. I might not agree with the division of resources the balance as a whole is still miles better than it was. 
 

3. in general I think this isn’t as bad. Their are extremes in both directions. (As in overpowered and underpowered). But in general most armies can compete to a decent point. And with the current update rate it isn’t hard to imagine those armies getting revisited relatively fast. But even then... there always will be a few armies below the middle and some ahead of the curve. Which often will be new armies due to new and unique abilities.  
just my two cents. 

[zilberfrid]

Hyish has only just been fleshed out, and already we have threads that started with the regular complaining of rules devolving into a philosophical discussion on the nature of beauty.

Weird.

[Kramer]

26 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

philosophical discussion on the nature of beauty.

which, to be fair, is probably what the realm enlightenment is all about  

Philosophical discussions for daaaaayys.

[zilberfrid]

3 minutes ago, Kramer said:

which, to be fair, is probably what the realm enlightenment is all about  

Philosophical discussions for daaaaayys.

Yeah, but if this is the effect after only days of the publication of the new elves, orks will be teaching colour theory pertaining to velocity of objects within the month.

"Da red ones go fasta!"

[DerZauberer]

12 hours ago, Death1942 said:

I worded it poorly, I should have said they release very strong rules for the new models/books and don't really improve much of the older kits/books.  For example I expect Seraphon (without any new kits) to be very middling in strength (like Ogors).

Yeah... no.

All those new fancy Grots, Squiggs and Troggoths, all this newer and awesome looking Brutes and Megabosses, but looking at my two tomes in my shelf my best units rules-wise are Grots and Ardboyz.

Those kits have so many mould-lines...

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

As interesting as the philosophical discussion on beauty is, can we keep the discussion to toy soldiers else we're going to lose people's interest 😉

[Beastmaster]

2 hours ago, DerZauberer said:

Yeah... no.

All those new fancy Grots, Squiggs and Troggoths, all this newer and awesome looking Brutes and Megabosses, but looking at my two tomes in my shelf my best units rules-wise are Grots and Ardboyz.

Those kits have so many mould-lines...

There are so many examples for this. Idoneth? The coolest models, sharks and turtles, were barely playable from the beginning. The impressive brand-new Kharadron ships became immediately  known as clown cars. At the same time, the spamming of the really old plague monks and clanrats became a thing. Ogors got a new tyrant and hunter, both hardly make it in any list with the new book. Etc. etc.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Beastmaster

[zilberfrid]

7 minutes ago, Beastmaster said:

The impressive brand-new Kharadron ships became immediately  known as clown cars. 

They were also called clown cars because there is not enough room in the things for the models that can be put in it according to the rules.

If I look at the many, many warscrolls Cities has, it seems that sometimes, the internal balance does work. I thought Drakespawn were still lagging behind, but then we have someone scoring high with it. It is far from perfect (executioners, phoenix guard), but there are reasons to use (almost) any unit over another.

Edited January 28, 2020 by zilberfrid

[Overread]

2 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

They were also called clown cars because there is not enough room in the things for the models that can be put in it according to the rules.

In fairness that's pretty much the same for ALL GW transport models except possibly the FW Manta. It's also true in a lot of other games - very few games operate with perfect 1:1 scale (in fact if memory serves me its such a rare thing that when games do do it its quite a big marketing thing for them - I recall it being something Dropzone commander that was quite widely spoken of). 

It's the same reason most buildings in wargames are tiny. Once you've got a 28-35mm infantryman the size of vehicle and building to be faithful starts to get pretty big. So you either stick to only infantry and the odd small transport; or you sacrifice scale for style. 

[Beastmaster]

In even more fairness, historical ships were horribly crowded by today‘s standards.

For scenery, I always calculate 1 inch=1,5 m (=5 ft).  So a historical galleon of 40m would be 66 cm (26 in) long. A ship this size could easily carry 300 men, plus guns, plus everything else they wanted to transport. Good luck in fitting 300 miniatures in. 😄

Edited January 28, 2020 by Beastmaster

[MitGas]

6 hours ago, Sleboda said:

Nope, because it's subjective what makes a thing ugly, beautiful, hot, sexy, boring, exciting, etc.

In order for your assertion to be correct, we would have to accept that every single same person on the planet agrees 100% on a particular definition of ugly, which is clearly not the case. Honest question in an effort to understand your position - Do you think that you (or your friend or a random taxi driver or ...) can declare that a given person is ugly and have no one disagree with you? Because if you can't assign ugly without disagreement, then it's your subjective opinion.

Yes, look at some people affected by let's say extreme conditions - it's our natural instinct to find them ugly, everyone with a sane mind would agree - obviously I will not consider the opinion of people that are so far off the norm they'd be considered legally insane as that would be absolutely senseless and stupid. I gave you examples in relation to beauty and fonts already. There are objective parameters from golden ratios to what have you. Stop fighting it when you're wrong. I'm not talking about preferences like height, hair color/length or other mundane things. It is misguided to argue that uniform ugliness does not exist much like it is misguided to argue that uniform beauty does not exist. You argue for cases where person A is hotter but I prefer for whatever reason person B. That is fine, not disagreeing there, logically you are right and such things are hard to quantify (I'd go for Jessica Biel, someone else would go for Kate beckinsale in that awful Total Recall remake). But you're just as logically wrong when you wanna take away natural instincts/preferences from humans away because some misguided soul hammered into the minds of people that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder in EVERY case". It's not true in EVERY case. It's like saying "water's wet. ALWAYS". There are situations where it actually is not.