Letter I haven't sent to Games Workshop (yet, anyway)
Guys, I'm worried about you. Hardly anybody plays 40k by choice anymore. Those who play it at all do so not because they want to, but because they (and by "they" I mean "we") have too much invested in the hobby to give it up. But that's not going to sustain your company forever. I thought you had come to terms with this fact when Privateer Press showed up and started taking your lunch money a few years ago, but you can't get away with treating your established customer base like an unlimited resource to be exploited. Take us for granted like this, and we will look elsewhere! Instead of attracting new players with our borderline-fanaticism over the game, we will be warning prospective players away. This is not out of vindictiveness (at least, not primarily), but about concern for our fellow hobbyists and honesty regarding how much fun the hobby is at this point.
The biggest problem for me is price and game balance issues. While I realize that balancing the various factions, models, and playstyles in a game system as complicated as 40k is not a simple task, anecdotal reports suggest that you aren't really even trying to do so! In my opinion a new, previously inconceivable, low was reached with the White Dwarf update to Chaos Daemons. Flamers and Screamers of Tzeentch were given significant upgrades. The Screamer updates made some sense since so few melee attacks in 6th edition rules can penetrate a 2+ armor save, but the Flamer update does not. They weren't one of the more popular choices in 5th edition because they competed for the Elite slot with Bloodcrushers, but with the improvements to shooting in 6th they were already the best choice. Not content with that, you made them tougher overall (doubling their wounds is far more significant than reducing their save), and dropped their points cost by a third. There is only one possible reason for this, and it's no coincidence that you had recently released a plastic kit for the Flamers. While marketing, in many cases, should lead product development, marketing can not be allowed to change game balance issues! This will only lead to what has been suggested on multiple occasions, if never proved: blatant codex creep.
In the short term, sure, this will lead to increased revenue as somesuckers players buy a box of each new army as it comes out, changing their force to be the most recent, most competitive version, but that is a tiny minority of the player base. Most of us can't afford to do that, and most of the few who can have the sense not to! Do you really expect to build a business model on the theory of selling to a tiny fraction of the potential market while rapidly alienating the rest? Now I concede that I have no idea how much it costs you, in either marginal or fixed costs, to manufacture and distribute models like the Helldrake, but I have an extremely hard time believing that you can charge $70 for some of them without a truly absurd mark-up. $70 for a polystyrene model is insane, and I could come up with plenty of other intelligence-insulting pricings, but it's pointless to do so since I'm sure any reader of this could also do the same.
I concede that your models are better quality than your competitors', but not by so much that we, your players, have nowhere else to turn. Try hard enough to drive us away, and you will succeed. At the risk of stretching an analogy beyond its elastic limit, you act like the highschool jock who thinks himself so desirable that he can treat everyone else like dirt and get away with it. Or the cheerleader if you prefer an equal opportunity reference. I, and many other players, are clearly deciding that no matter how good the models look, it's just not worth it. Learn to treat your customers with respect, and many of them will be loyal sources of income. Treat them like you have been, and they will go elsewhere.
Finally, and with intentional homage to Stephen Colbert, I have to mix in a small amount of "tip of the hat" to all this very deserved "wag of the finger." Evidence suggests that FAQ documents are being reviewed quarterly, or something similar. Significantly more often than previously. This is a good thing, and I hope it continues. There are still areas of confusion, and there likely always will be, but regular reviewing of the FAQs shows that you are trying to make the game playable. Similarly, while there are some rule interpretations I consider poor (as well as the Tau seeker missiles versus flyers ruling, which qualifies as abysmal), I respect the attempt, at least. So keep working on that end of things.
The biggest problem for me is price and game balance issues. While I realize that balancing the various factions, models, and playstyles in a game system as complicated as 40k is not a simple task, anecdotal reports suggest that you aren't really even trying to do so! In my opinion a new, previously inconceivable, low was reached with the White Dwarf update to Chaos Daemons. Flamers and Screamers of Tzeentch were given significant upgrades. The Screamer updates made some sense since so few melee attacks in 6th edition rules can penetrate a 2+ armor save, but the Flamer update does not. They weren't one of the more popular choices in 5th edition because they competed for the Elite slot with Bloodcrushers, but with the improvements to shooting in 6th they were already the best choice. Not content with that, you made them tougher overall (doubling their wounds is far more significant than reducing their save), and dropped their points cost by a third. There is only one possible reason for this, and it's no coincidence that you had recently released a plastic kit for the Flamers. While marketing, in many cases, should lead product development, marketing can not be allowed to change game balance issues! This will only lead to what has been suggested on multiple occasions, if never proved: blatant codex creep.
In the short term, sure, this will lead to increased revenue as some
I concede that your models are better quality than your competitors', but not by so much that we, your players, have nowhere else to turn. Try hard enough to drive us away, and you will succeed. At the risk of stretching an analogy beyond its elastic limit, you act like the highschool jock who thinks himself so desirable that he can treat everyone else like dirt and get away with it. Or the cheerleader if you prefer an equal opportunity reference. I, and many other players, are clearly deciding that no matter how good the models look, it's just not worth it. Learn to treat your customers with respect, and many of them will be loyal sources of income. Treat them like you have been, and they will go elsewhere.
Finally, and with intentional homage to Stephen Colbert, I have to mix in a small amount of "tip of the hat" to all this very deserved "wag of the finger." Evidence suggests that FAQ documents are being reviewed quarterly, or something similar. Significantly more often than previously. This is a good thing, and I hope it continues. There are still areas of confusion, and there likely always will be, but regular reviewing of the FAQs shows that you are trying to make the game playable. Similarly, while there are some rule interpretations I consider poor (as well as the Tau seeker missiles versus flyers ruling, which qualifies as abysmal), I respect the attempt, at least. So keep working on that end of things.
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