semajnollissor wrote:
Nitpick wrote:
Pardon me for asking, but WHO are these ”people” you reder to? Expensive designs and manufacture seems a minute portion of the conversation here?
I'm 85% confident that my response below won't be viewed as constructive, but it's late, so what the hell...
My post was mainly in response to ...
Thinking Stone wrote:
...I think the design cost and game niche are much greater factors (and the small uptake it’d have as a niche game)...
And
Glynn wrote:
...As in the box consists of two armies of identical marines, just like AT Grandmasters has two identical armies that just get painted differently to differentiate them as loyalists or heretics. It would be a much more manageable range of models to produce then...
And
Blip wrote:
As Glynn says, the outside chance is 30k Epic. Identical armies help investment costs and projected sales...
And
Blip wrote:
...But i doubt they will do standard 40k stuff in small scale as it would eat sales of 28mm...
And please understand I'm not meaning to nitpick those three "people" - similar sentiments have been expressed in the main Adeptus Titanicus thread. I just think that all of those statements are directly contradicted by the large amount of models, boxed games, themed dice, card packs, etc. that GW has brought out in the last few years.
Sure, this thread is ostensibly about AI, but those other topics did get mentioned on page 3 of this thread, just like they were discussed in the AT thread. For me, when statements get brought up again and again in spite of them being (in my opinion) demonstrably false, I feel the need to try to offer examples of how those statements aren't necessarily supported by the available facts.
I fully recognize that everything I've stated is just my own opinion; I am merely trying to explain how I arrived at it.
My point there was exactly that design and manufacture costs are only one factor of several! : D Though I agree it perhaps wasn’t stated so clearly along those lines. I guess it’s also pertinent to keep in mind that ‘design costs’ are always in the context of what demand will result in the most sales.
I think it’s the targeting of particular demands that’s the key factor: ‘game niche’ or ‘playstyle niche’ seems much more important for GW, and all the games so far have a distinctive feel to set them apart. We were discussing how Epic is unlikely to meet that pattern (factors being the existence of Apocalypse and the focus of Titanicus), and I think that’s probably regardless of costs.
The ‘continuity between games’ point is not a convincing one for me. We do have several examples of discontinuity in GW IPs (Total War: Warhammer/AoS/Bloodbowl, Necromunda doesn’t have everything in 40K, AT doesn’t have everything Knight+). I don’t think the specialist games design has any problem with leaving things out if they don’t fit the ‘niche’ of the game (at any rate, AT seems to be doing finely with adding things slowly, and the designers seem to approach it proactively rather than as a burden).
So, in summary: I agree that design and manufacture costs are not the only factor in producing game material. At the moment, I think the ‘playstyle niche’ of a game is the main factor; I don’t think continuity between games is a major factor. All my humble opinions, of course!
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Good observation about the use of ‘archaic’ flyer designs in AI so far, too! I hadn’t thought of that before! It will be interesting to see where they go from here.
