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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Jan 15, 2014 10:01:49 GMT
Has anyone bought one of these yet? I was just curious about how much you get in them, as for £7 to £10 I'm not sure they are worth it if it's just a single model/unit stat line.
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Post by Geifer on Jan 15, 2014 12:25:26 GMT
I haven't bought any of them and won't until Black Library rethinks its woefully inadequate list of payment methods, but I've been following news and rumors and to me, as to many others, it seems GW has discovered micro-transactions with all the joy and wonder that brings. Which is to say, zero effort low content for big money. Nothing fundamentally new for GW, just new heights of it.
It's a dilemma, really. Because the idea behind all that is sound. Release stuff on its own in digital form that wouldn't get a real book release, or that doesn't tie in with anything else. Makes gamers happy that have been dying for updated Cyper or Inquisition rules, let's GW make money on it and older models formerly not supported by rules, everyone wins, really. But then you look at the price tag and suddenly everyone does not win anymore.
Hardback codices are already quite expensive. Codices Adepta Sororitas and Inquisition are a fraction of that content, but are not discounted nearly as much. For instance, you get Codex Tyranids for 10€ less than the actual book. Inquisition costs another 8€ (which is still over half the price for a hardback codex), but if you converted the digital formating to book format, you'd be luck to get a quarter of the content of a standard codex.
As I said, I haven't seen the dataslates (as opposed to the digital offerings mentioned above), but I have no reason to believe that have a similar content to price ratio as the codeices we all know and love. Instead, I'm going to go under the assumption that what can plainly be seen with Codex Inquisition continues the lower the price of a digital item gets.
Of course ultimately the question is, do you have a little money left over and will the thing you consider buying make you happy? If you love Cypher, wonderful, now you can buy his official, 6th ed rules and happily play him whenever you want. This is genuinely great. Big fan of Belakor (insert apostrophes as needed)? There's DLC for that. And it is all not that pricy, individually. How much fun will those 10€ provide over the next few years of playing your favorite special character? So, it is very much a question of what you, personally, need, and get out of it.
The trap, as always, is getting hooked and coming back for more. Individually these things aren't expensive and you need to buy a few before you hit the price of a codex, but if buying them becomes a habit, you will pay several times the price of a codex to get to the same amount of content.
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Jan 15, 2014 12:49:42 GMT
That's essentially what I was thinking. In this age of digital love I still like physical objects. Books, CDs, DVDs etc. le sigh...
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Post by Farseer Kyladras on Jan 15, 2014 14:25:27 GMT
Isn't that what white dwarf and the GW website should be used for though? I don't use the digital downloads so can't claim to knowing the full facts but seriously? They charge £7+ for a page of rules to use 1 single model?  That is utterly ludicrous even by GW's standards... FK |
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Jan 15, 2014 15:28:30 GMT
That's what is has been used for in the past, but not for a very long time. Doesn't sound like that will change back either.
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Post by Geifer on Jan 15, 2014 15:28:57 GMT
That's capitalism for you. Someone gets greedy and pioneers something, they get away with it, everyone else hops on the train because they smell their profits increasing. And once it becomes accepted (often enough because of new generations that never knew anything else making up an ever growing part of the customer base), there's no going back. Which is to say the GW we fondly remember for putting stuff in WD (not technically free stuff since we pay for the magazine, but certainly additional content that is well received) on free on their website is gone. The GW we now have expects money for every tiny thing. Actually, scratch that. They expect money for nothing but realize that customers are easier to attract if they get something in return. They just to try to keep that something as cheap as possible.
Not a whole lot one can do about that.
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Jan 15, 2014 15:34:02 GMT
It makes me sad, because other companies seem to do it in a nicer way. Hawk have just released new models and thrown up free downloads for the rules, Privateer Press have cards that come with the new models and have them in No Quarter magazine, Wyrd had a massive beta session for their 2nd Edition rules for Malifaux.
All those examples will eventually put those rules into a book (some already have) and at that point I'd buy the book as well, even though I didn't need it!
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Post by badfang on Jan 15, 2014 16:07:50 GMT
Isn't that what white dwarf and the GW website should be used for though? Isn't that what the new weekly comic should be used for? Silly me  |
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That is utterly ludicrous even by GW's standards...
