Neil Arthur Hotep
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Posts posted by Neil Arthur Hotep
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6 minutes ago, Marcvs said:
But I would still push back strongly against the argument: it doesn't happen 'cause its too expensive
Yes, I don't believe that's a good argument either. But it becomes more understandable if you look at their apparent philosophy of only adjusting things once they become problematic, not before. Arguably, spam list for certain units on TTS have not yet become problematic. Again, kind of flimsy reasoning, but somewhat understandable.
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Just now, Marcvs said:
I don't really understand this argument. 1) TTS lists are legal lists, 2) Most people use TTS to test or train with lists they have or plan to build IRL, 3) Skewed lists very much exist in real life (last big-ish tournament in between lockdowns here in France was won by a list with 70 sentinels)
I think you understand what I am getting at, but are not convinced it's a good argument. Which is fair.
I think we can both acknowledge that there are different pressures shaping IRL and TTS lists. People not putting certain lists on the table due to non-rules related factors is still meta shaping. Like, maybe Gyrocopter spam is super good, but people are just not putting a list of 30 of them on the table on a whim IRL at a price point of 1200€, where they very well might on TTS. There is also the hobby time commitment, although that's less of a barrier since you can paint an army pretty quickly to a three colour tabletop standard if you don't care about quality, regardless of what the list looks like. Never the less, I am sure "I don't want to paint 120 skeletons" has been prevented at least some players of fielding that list in the past.
Again, it's fair if you think that this is not a good enough reason not to do points updates given the data the rules team has. But at least it is a reason potentially worth acknowledging, and I could see the rules team coming down on the side of the data not being good enough to base large point changes on at least partially due to it. I think this consideration would help make their decision more understandable, regardless of whether we agree with it.
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6 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:
I'm curious about what the actual difference in game data is. Sure there are events, but do we even know what GW pulls its data from? Like if GW pulls data exclusively from events of 100 players or more it's irrelevant that there are several 50 player events globally.
I sympathize with the rules team a lot on this. I think the argument that the Tabletop Simulator meta is too different from the in-person meta to draw good conclusion on which to base their points adjustments would be solid if they made it. You don't really have to worry about lists with 15 Cockatrices in them for real life games. I even understand how they can't actually acknowledge the existence of TTS on Warhammer Community, so they are not in a position to directly say this. And I could accept that there is too little in-person data to make big points adjustments.
But that only goes so far, because large effect sizes become reliably detectable even with small data pools. I don't think anyone really believes that Kroak or Spell-in-a-Bottle would be meaningfully more balanced for in-person tournaments (or even in-person casual games). That's why I think their decision not to adjust these particular things is pretty incomprehensible.
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10 hours ago, Chikout said:
I am disappointed by the lack of points changes. They could have compromised and agreed to change the 4 or 5 things we ALL agree are wrong like Kroak. There is one thing that could be considered a bit of a positive though. Gw has turned a blind eye towards TTS . A more litigious company like nintendo or Disney would probably have gone after them and forced them to remove gw content. That probably means that gw has to pretend that data doesn’t exist. From an official gw perpesctive there hasn’t been a UK or US AOS tournament since last February.
That's basically my stance on it, too. I think the reception would have been much more positive if they had come out and said: "We don't have the kind of data this time around that would make us comfortable with making huge, sweeping points changes. That is why we are only touching the stuff that's most obviously out of line." And that's Kroak, Spell-in-a-Bottle and Tzeentch.
The most popularly suggested "fix" for Spell-in-a-Bottle is not even a points thing: It's to errate it to only be able to take non-faction specific endless spells.
1 hour ago, sandlemad said:It’s probably worth noting that you can be uninterested in matched play AoS as a Thing and feel like the dominance or weight of tournament play fundamentally isn’t good for the game or hobby and still feel like this is a half-assed rush job by a company that knows people will grumble, suck it up, and keep buying any old whatever.
It would be really good if GW more strongly distinguished matched play from tournament play. I think the vast majority of players does not go to tournaments, but still uses matched play rules. And stuff like Kroak being super underpointed is not a tournament problem. Just taking Kroak and all his synergies from the Battletome is not some kind of in-depth tournament strategy. It's the most obvious strong build once you have decided to include Kroak. Even very casual players will hit on that strategy if they decide to include Kroak just because they like his fluff.
Personally I find this situation frustrating because it's just another in a series of recent communication problems from GW. It seems to me that they constantly keep undermining their own hype. We can see that from the preview show: Lumineth getting a big update should make people excited. Objectively, it's good news for Lumineth players. But those players are still frustrated because they feel like GW is abusing their trust when it comes to battletomes. Even though it's not stated outright, it's reasonable to expect that if GW makes you pay for both rules and models that at least the rules will be stable for a while. Sure, GW never outright makes that promise, but it's completely reasonable to be frustrated by a company that signals "Our relationship to our customers is completely one sided, we don't take your satisfaction into account, profit is always the highest priority." with their publishing decisions.
Same for BR: Morathi. Some people are saying you should not expect a narrative book's rules to be current forever. But at the same time, the books are very obviously also rules patches. It's completely reasonable to expect them to be current at least for a while, like until the next edition that we are all expecting. Of course you can say "You idiot, you should be expecting GW to try to
heckyou over! They never promissed that BR books would be rules patches that would last!". But at the same time, they very strongly implied it with their marketing, constantly talking about all the cool new rules in that book.Not providing rules updates/rebalancing is a similar problem. A lot of players these days are not from the 80s/90s/2000s, where not getting rules updates was the norm. These days, most people are familiar with games like Magic, which gets constant attention, or video games, which are patched all the time. The expectation is not to just git gud and deal with out-of-balance, negative play experience rules for a few years. The expectation is that a modern game will receive a reasonable amount of attention even after "launch".
To me, the signal GW is sending is "Don't buy our stuff unless you are OK with it being obsoleted out of nowhere in a few months." So that's what I will probably be recommending to people for the time being: Only buy into GW stuff if the price is worth it for you right now, not with the expectation of getting value out of it for several years.
On more word on the rules team, because I have seen that pop up in this thread a lot: I don't want to lay any blame for this FAQ at the feet of the rules team, or accuse them of being dishonest. They are probably among the people at GW most passionate about just making AoS a good game (regardless of financial success). Maybe (and here I go shilling again) they are hard at work on AoS 3 right now and that takes up all their attention. But if that is the case, just a little bit of a heads up that the FAQ would not be big and some adjustment of the worst, most obvious imbalances would have been all it takes to make people happy. I am laying the blame for that at the feet of whoever is in charge of PR at Games Workshop.
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9 hours ago, Clan's Cynic said:
I'm shifting into the camp of thinking we might not see Soulblight until 3.0 as well. If we assume they aim for the usual July release we've still got..
It seems like we are actually roughly in agreement on the timeframe. I personally just believe that AoS 3 will not come out/is not planned to come out in July.
Following the pattern that Broken Realms: Morathi has set, it takes two months for an announced BR book to come out. Then, it takes another two months for a new book to be announced. That would mean:
BR: Teclis release - March
BR: Alarielle (or whatever) announcement - May
BR: Alarielle release - July
And then we would be seeing a potential AoS 3 announcement after that (and that is working from the theory that there will only be three BR books).
We know for Hedonites, they were aiming for a January release (from the coin they wanted to give away in GW stores). So that's two months after the November release of BR: Morathi.
Applying that to a potential Soulblight release: After BR: Teclis comes out in late March, we might expect Soulblight in late May, early June. Possibly a month or two later to make room for Ulfenkarn in between. That would put us in the vincinity of a July-August release. That would also be about three months after the Underworlds warband, which would again be the same timeframe as Hedonites.
Of course, this is working under the assumption that GW will stick to the pace they have set with BR: Morathi. If an AoS 3 launch is planned for July, they might well decide to pick up the pace for Broken Realms. Psychic Awakening used to release on a schedule of one book every two months. That would make a July release of AoS 3 possible if there are only going to be three books.
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10 minutes ago, Nighthaunt Noob said:
I think my point is the evidence suggests that customers don't seem to care that much about "customer satisfaction", at least as it pertains to rules/gameplay. They mostly just care about good models which is why they're happy to buy even when we're all locked down.
I don't know, it seems to me that AoS has been booming since they started treating it as a proper game and caring for customer satisfaction. It just seems really boneheaded to risk going back to the Kirby era with stuff like this.
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20 minutes ago, Nighthaunt Noob said:
People can't play in person and GW's sales are higher than ever. They really don't have that much business incentive to invest a lot of time in rules and points tweaks, especially if 3.0 is going to hit later this year and shake some things up.
AoS 3 is at the end of this year at the earliest. And "They just care more about money than customer satisfaction" is also not really an excuse.
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1 hour ago, Sception said:
BUT if that were the case, I don't think GW would have been as coy about admitting 'Soulblight Gravelords' were a thing to begin with.
Disagree here: It makes sense from a marketing perspective to hype up one army at a time. This is currently Lumineth. GW has an interest in keeping customers in the dark as to the release of upcoming factions, because they believe they can get people to spend more that way. Plus, the existence of a future Vampire faction in itself would be a minor spoiler for BR: Teclis if we knew it's coming out after that book.
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I am glad that just when I start feeling like a GW shill, they come out and do something totally incomprehensible.
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3 hours ago, Sception said:
saw this pic online (posted by count michael on the carpe noctem forum, not sure if they made it or got it from somewhere else) showing how many (most? maybe even all if you don't count the basket hilt previews from the underworlds warband) of the undeadish seeming rumor engine pictures seem tied to the Warhammer Quest: Cursed City set, based on art from the trailer video & website:
I think these all seem pretty rock solid. I wonder who that round shield will end up belonging to and if they will be important. They are the placeholder image on the Overlords of Ulfenkarn section, but we know they are not one of the four important guys.
Images missing form this are:
Spoiler
Less certain, but still potentially Death:
Spoiler
2 hours ago, Sception said:If it's the case that all of the rumor engine pics can now be ascribed to either Underworlds or Warhammer Quest, then it lends credence to my thought that the Vampire Lord leak /was/ an actual leak, that games workshop was not and is not ready to announce Soulblight Gravelords, and that we still have a pretty significant wait in front of us before we'll start to see or hear anything further when it comes to a new Battle Tome / AoS proper release wave.
I agree with this. I think the Vampire Lord being vindicated by GW, but no mention of the Gravelords faction both in the articel and reveal show indicates that we got to see this before they were ready. I would think the smart money should be on a release after BR: Teclis. The narrative opportunities to set up the Gravelords faction as a result of whatever will happen in that book just seem too good.
100% a real, actual leak in my book. Revealing the Gravelords faction name and then refusing to mention it again would make no sense as intentional marketing.
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2 minutes ago, Yokai said:
Huh, a Cursed City preview with the witch hunter fellow went up briefly on WarCom, then disappeared again. Anyone managed to catch it? Something about silver bullets and stakes burning the undead "alive", as far as I saw.
It's back up for me.
"Once he hunted witches, aethergheists, and cultists of the Dark Gods, but after he was expelled from the Order of Azyr, he decided on a massive career change and started hunting vampires instead."
I feel vindicated for all those times I have been telling people that called him a witch hunter that stakes means vampires.
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2 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:
There's no reason they couldn't have included the rules and photographs in the Battletome and then release it later. They're doing this with Space Marines and Necrons who six months on are only just getting the Primaris Landspeeder and such, the Heavy Intercessors are coming out as part of a box set, etc. The Death Guard didn't get the Blight-hauler released for a good few months and the Lord of the Rings line used to have loads of stuff that took ages to actually see a physical release. Hell, the Vampire Lord was leaked as a clampack ready for distribution and they're probably not landing for at least another six months so these things presumably spend a long time in storage.
I don't disagree. Although releasing rules without models is unfortunate in it's own way.
However, this is also where I wish I knew more about the logistics involved. If someone told me that that Vampire Lord might be all done and packaged, but to get everything else in Soulblight Gravelords done and shipped will take another six months, I would not be surprised.
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5 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:
[Laughs in Fyreslayers]
Hearthguard Berzerkers are still a better deal than Alarith Stoneguard as far as price-per-point. Plus, it's probably more fair to call them semi-elite rather than horde.
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11 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:
GW absolutely weighed up whether to cut out half of the range and sell it down the line as part of another book. Presumably a second Lumineth book won't be far out afterwards and the defenders will say, "but that new Battletome had to happen so the new units could be compiled in one book!" Even the most popular armies usually wait years between release waves, the only real exception being Space Marines by virtue of being Space Marines and Stormcast up until 2.0's launch (which was obviously done because GW had hoped to make them as popular as their 40k cousins).
I agree with you that the release timing for Lumineth wave 2 must be deliberate. I think that should be fairly uncontroversial given the time we know it takes to get models designed and produced, as well as books printed. It's not possible that they released Lumineth, then looked at their sales numbers or whatever and decided to give them a second wave of models. There is just not enough time of this to happen, especially given COVID delays.
However, I disagree that the choice GW had was between releasing all of LRL at once, or splitting the line and releasing half of it about a year later. Given what I have just said above about the lead up these things take, I would guess their choice was between releasing LRL in the split fashion we are seeing, or all at once but later. I don't have any insight into GW production time and logistics, but I would be surprised if they can produce, store and ship a release of 10 kits exactly as fast as one of 20.
If this is right, I would personally prefer a small release and quick update after a year over a big release that comes substantially later. But then again, I did not buy into Lumineth yet, and this is partially because I did not yet see a list from just the first wave units that I would be excited enough to build.
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3 minutes ago, Siegfried VII said:
I think the worst offenders are the Alarith Stoneguard in the case of lumineth (and seeing the Swordmasters in the preview video be 5 models makes me think the Swordmasters will get the same treatment) were for the same price you get 10 Wardens or 10 Sentinels you only get 5 Stoneguard.. Mind you we are talikng about the same size of models.. So with the same money you get half the models.. This in my opinion is one of the most agressive price raises in the last years from GW and makes me think that will be the new trend..
I mean, on some level we all know that the price of a kit is not mostly decided by the amount of plastic in it. I am not going to say that those prices are justified, but GW does at least partially tie the price of kits to their point cost. In theory, this is so that horde play styles remain possible at all. I think this makes sense. People already naturally want to play elite armies over hordes (less time spent building and painting, often cooler models, easier to transport...), so horde armies would probably not be able to compete if their models were not cheaper. Still, I am sure the extra profit on more elite units and heroes is a welcome byproduct of this.
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44 minutes ago, Lucentia said:
I do wonder how much they've had to reshuffle the release schedule around lockdowns and stuff, and how much that affected these specific examples. Assuming that big tentpole releases like Indomitus are more locked into the calendar in advance so things have to move around them, etc. If we were supposed to get BR Morathi much earlier in the year and the DoK battletome further months after I dont think it would feel so weird.
I have been thinking about this as well. I think BR: Morathi was likely delayed to begin with, and then additionally Broken Realms seems to be forced to release at a slower pace than originally intended.
It's hard to guess when Broken Realms was originally supposed to come out, but we can take some guesses from related rumour engines. Usually, there seems to be a gap from as short as one month to as long as around six between a rumour engine being teased and the model coming out. The gap for the Lord of Pain from the Shadow and Pain box was 13 months. 11 months for the Ironscale. It's not anything definitive, but I'd say these extraordinarily long gaps indicate a delay.
As for the release schedule of Broken Realms: It seems to release at about half the speed of Psychic Awakening. BR has a seen a periode of about two months between the announcement of a book and it's release. Then another two months until the announcment of the next book. Psychic Awakening, by contrast, was about one month from announcement to release, then another until the next announcement.
I can't really tell you whether that makes GWs release schedule more or less egregious, but at least it's something to consider.
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13 hours ago, BrocknerTheBear said:
I'd agree that the artwork is the four key generals to the wolf before they went batty (see what I did there?).
Excuse me, I think you mean before they got re-vamped.
13 hours ago, BrocknerTheBear said:The shield patterns they have under them coincide with some of the greyed out areas of the city.
This is actually a super good catch! I have seen people speculate that the greyed-out shields are for future expansions, but I think this puts that to rest.
So could that imply a kind of campaign structure where you first tackle some boss-less levels and then go face the named characters later? There seem to be four locations without an associated overlord.
13 hours ago, BrocknerTheBear said:The "undead ork" from the previous reveal video is actually, I think, the necromancer esc guy (the beards match exactly and so do the big cuffs on his hands) and it's just very close up photos to make it look bigger then it is.
I agree with the others ones, but I don't think we have seen the priest guy. Looking at the new years video again and cranking the brightness way up, the armour of the "undead ork" is just too different (fur collar, bone shoulderpads, different style and colour coat...). Plus, a switch from a wolf staff to a huge axe for that priest also seems unlikely. So I don't think we have seen him yet.
The thing I find the most mysterious at the moment is the lady (?) on the right of this picture:
We see the grave keeper and the wolf in this shot, so that implies that the lady is similarly important to the two. But the website seems to suggest that there is no room for another Overlord of Ulfenkarn.
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In the two factions that I am the most familiar with, Cities of Sigmar and Legions of Nagash, the subfactions are basically mandatory. I like how it's handled in those books, though, with each subfacitons coming with their own artefact and command trait tables. Plus, for both factions there are neutral choices (Grand Host of Nagash and Hammerhal/Tempest's Eye) that don't particularly push you in any direction, so that's nice.
In other factions like OBR, where there is the choice to go without a subfaction, at the moment I think the balance between having more options and getting extra stuff for specializing is not exactly right. I think we see a similar situation with the decision of taking a battalion or not doing so. In theory, not taking a subfaction/battalion should give you access to more versatile tools, at the cost of being overall lower power in some way (extra abilites, drops...). But the extra freedom of choice is mostly not worth it at the moment.
Personally, I don't mind. Subfaction descriptions are fluff anyway. You can just reflavour them as you like if you are care a lot about your army's narrative. And it's enough form me that the option of not taking a subfaction exists for those who want it. It does not necessarily have to be as good as taking one. Besides, subfactions and battalions fulfill an important role in signposting intended playstyles for a faction. Arguably, it is better if players feel incentivized to take one over not doing so to make ir more likely they have a good play experience (i.e. the list they build actually works).
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4 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:
I dislike the design 90 degree quiver with a line of arrows... seems inefficient. =}
It's probably a reference to this.
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1 hour ago, cyrus said:
Yes !
There are 24 factions : 5 factions for each book it means 5 BR books totally. Br Alarielle is very likely but I believe there will be more than aelves.
Although we can probably check off Slaanesh now, and LoN if Gravelords come out after BR: Teclis, so four books is possible if there are in-between book updates.
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19 minutes ago, NotAWzrd said:
It could definitely be that way around too! I just figured the big guy fits the already revealed Vampire Lord aesthetic more than the one with two swords.
There could certainly be room for all three. Glass cannon, tanky and fast infantry are all pretty destinct niches. The big guy could also come mounted on some kind of creature in AoS proper.
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25 minutes ago, NotAWzrd said:
It looks like we’re get a flying, lesser vampire unit and a big elite mace wielding unit for Soulblight going off the WHU warband.
Interesting, I had put down the big mace guy as a likely one-off. I was thinking lightly armoured duellists and winged vampires.
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1 minute ago, HorticulusTGA said:
Well yeah, but I understand that as "touched in the fluff". And honestly, rulewise, I didn't expected to get that much "side" stuff like Idolators or Misthavn in Morathi alone.
And Tyrion/Malerion, when we just got Teclis/Morathi, plus LRL and DOK Battletomes releases in recent months ? Can't see that happening at all.
But I agree, three books is short. Then if it's to lead to 3rd Edition ...
I was thinking the most likely would be Malerion and his guys as a new faction. You are right that another Lumineth or DoK expansion seems unlikely. But a completely new faction in 9 to 12 months seems like a possibility.
At the moment I am wondering how Destruction will come into play in only three books worth of time. Especially since we still need to resolve the Slaanesh plotline. I guess their payoff from BR would be that they are the big antagonists of AoS 3.
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2 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:
Friends, don't forget the initial announcement of Broken Realms only mentioned the Aelven pantheon, in that order : Morahti, Teclis, Alarielle.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/08/22/warhammer-preview-online-shadow-iron-broken-realms/
Morathi and Teclis have been confirmed since, so as Battletomes keep getting released in between, I think we'll "only" get three Broken Realms books, leading to 3rd Edition and the Siege of Excelsis (so huge Destruction focus there, vs SCE, CoS or Devoted
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Then we can get more stuff like Soulblight Gravelords, Chaos Duardin / Duardin soup, Grotbag Scuttlers, Tyrion/Malerion, etc. !
Didn't they also say that every faction would be touched on over the course of Broken Realms? Seems hard to do in only three books. I don't think this is very likely, but maybe Tyrion/Malerion for a fourth book?
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Do you feel cheated?
in Age of Sigmar Discussions
Posted
I think that'a very valid complaint, given that their initial marketing push to appeal to old high elf players. The whole "pointy elves" campaign is pretty ironic in hindsight, with their message of "Look at all those weirdo tree and fish elves. That's cool, but some people just want something more traditional".
Although I guess where the new releases leave you with respect to your feelings about the faction as a whole depends on you. I did not get into the initial wave for Lumineth because they did not really work as a high elf callback or a completely new faction for me. I might get into LRL wave two, though, since with the new weird stuff that is coming, they are starting to get me interested in their own right, separate from the high elf connection. If I view the army not as a high elf thing, but as an interesting pseudo-asiatic army with a bunch of interesting animal spirits, it hits a certain spot for me.
I think the most valid grievance is that people expected their LRL book to be good for a while (like the usually assumed three or so years). I definitely don't think that it's reasonable to assert that all Lumineth players would have bought BR: Teclis anyway. I did not get BR: Morathi because I didn't think the Cities rules in there were worth it for me, even though I play Cities. If BR: Teclis only had a few battalions or a new subfaction in it, I am sure many Lumineth players would have skipped it. Some might not have bought into Lumineth wave one at all if they had known a year ago that the army would get a second wave and book in the near future.
I think we could view the issue as GW using their information advantage (they knew LRL 2 would be coming, players did not) to get players to buy something they would otherwise not have if they had the same information as GW. And it's reasonable to suspect that GW knew this would be the case (that people would not buy into Lumineth at release to the same degree if they knew more was coming a year later) and chose not to provide the pertinent information to players precisely because they thought doing so would reduce initial sales. This is whole situation is definitely not ethically neutral. Feeling cheated (for lack of a better word) is justified.
GW don't make false promises, that is true. But they certainly don't provide customers with all the information they might want to make informed purchasing decisions either. They definitely keep their plans for future expansions secret. And those plans might well impact the perceived value of a GW product for customers if they knew about them (as we indeed see with BR: Morathi and the battletome).
Never the less, I agree with you on the point that when you buy a GW product, you should not expect anything beyond that product. However, from my point of view, that means that in the future I will buy GW products only if I am happy with the value I get out of them right now, not with the expectation that they will be valid for a certain length of time. That probably means I will buy less GW stuff overall. I don't think that's in the interest of GW. I would like to be able to give them a certain degree of trust when it comes to their games, rule books and kits as far as their long term support.