Johannes_Tippmeister said:

macd21 is arguing that communications are costly. For Apple it's worth the cost and it has the money to spare; for FFG that's not the case. An annual road-map would not be a bad idea though - let's face it, the lack of information from GenCon specifically for WFRP seems to have kicked this argument into gear (even though it was grinding along before).

I should say that while I think there should be more information forthcoming from FFG, it's worth noting that regular communication does not equate to quality or reliability. Mongoose is fairly active on its forums, but it produces mediocre material and abandons lines at the drop of a hat.

Cheers

Sparrow

James Sparrow said:

There was information provided at GenCon, although probably not the information people were hoping for. A GenCon info summary, just to be clear:

"Here's a few more details about the forthcoming TEW3e. We have other WFRP projects in the pipeline, but our new policy prevents us from discussing future projects too far in advance [flashes PoD slide]."

Maybe when TEW launches they'll announce the next product, or maybe not. They know people desperately want a product announcement, so we can probably take their silence to mean there's nothing "imminent" after TEW.

RPG product line slows to a trickle after first few years - not a new phenomenon. Any non-core freelancers waiting for a call from FFG can probably start looking elsewhere.

Herr Arnulfe said:

My mistake: when I said "lack of information" I should have said "limited information".

Cheers

Sparrow

macd21 said: "I'm sorry, but that's rubbish. That is not at all what you are asking for. That would not at all satisfy those that are calling for more interaction on the forums. If that's all they got then they would demand more."

Hey Mac!! Would you like to explain the dice ?? Am I to assume it is your stance that informing CUSTOMERS of when a product might be available again is "too expensive"? You are wrong! It IS all "we" are asking for!

"Sorry guys,… we got caught off-guard. Dice have been ordered and should be here no later than ________. We will keep ya posted when we get a date from the manufacturer."

That would just take soooo much labor, and time, and energy, and of course,.. money. I mean, FFG would have to pay a guy to stand next to a phone and he would have to be holding a penc*……… wait a sec,…. Don't they already have a bunch of people near a phone over at corporate? I bet they have pencils too,….

Assuming you have to make lets say 2-3 replies to hot question on each forum, lets say once a month. For FFG that equates to about 200 forums. Multiply that by the 2-3 replies per month that comes to about 400-500 posts that would have to be made each month by FFG to satisfy a basic requirement like that. Add to that the information that needs to be gathered by that person from the literly hundreds of product lines which you can presume no living person is familiar with all of them. Yeah we are talking 2-3 full time employees if you really wanted to do it right and give accurate information. I would say that would be a pretty considerable expense.

WFRPG 3.0 is not the only forum, its only one of about 200. Each of these forums is requesting similiar "communication" and 2-3 replies is really a pretty low ball estimate as their are at least a dozen unanswered questions on these forums alone.

So while answering a simple question like "When can we expect more dice to be released?" would not require a whole lot of work and effort, answering 500 questions like that every month would.

If support for WHFRP 3e is going to end with the release of TEW (and I' not saying it will), I'll be interested to see if they develop a 4e, and if that game will hew to the mechanics of the 40k line, or WHFRP 2e. Or if they'll let it linger with no new edition.

BigKahuna said:

BigKahuna said:

That's a really inefficient and expensive way of setting up a communication system in this context. You don't hire 2-3 communication staff to make 400-500 posts each month and chase information from other people. You have one person already involved with each game line make 2-3 replies a month or provide a single monthly update. Every two months would probably do, and fans would probably be happy for it to be quarterly if it had a reliably fixed date.

Cheers

Sparrow

henrysamwise said:

Actually I would like that FFG goes for a 4th edition of wfrpg after SW is released. A fourth edition much more like Sw is, with the dice mechanics but without action cards soketing talents or **** like this. If they keep supporting the 3rd edition we are going to end up with more cards than Magic the Gathering!

Quick question: did anyone actually contacted FFG to ask them nicely when will dices be available?

Just curious. I didn't since I don't play at a table and don't need dices, but it would be a reasonable question of those of you that need dices.

Thanks

Ceodryn

The bottom line is that there is no excuse for FFG to be devoid of a community manager or open communication in official forums. They need not answer every thread, but a "state of the union" - particularly as stewards of a beloved franchise - would reinvest customers who have many unanswered questions regarding the future of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

GrimAndPerilous.com said:

If its any consolation, I don't disagree with you that a community manager handling WFRPG would be great, but I don't think "thats the bottom line" in terms of what should be accepted or rejected by the community. The reality is that FFG has over 150 active franchises and game communities for their products, WFRPG is no more beloved than Twilight Imperium, REX or any of the other 150 products they produce. That said as well, the WFRPG community is EXTREMLY tiny. There is all of 20-30 posting on these forums and on the first page of the forum the latest post is often 8-12 hours old. This is not an active community and its not made up of as nearly as many people as you make it sound. If they hired a community manager for WFRPG he would make up about 3-5% of the WHOLE community for WFRPG on these forums. Thats how small it is. '

I think a bit of perspective is in order, WFRPG is not that popular.

BigKahuna said:

A community manager manages the official forums as a whole, not a single franchise. They are the conduit from the company to the end user for all products and lines.

BigKahuna said:

Indeed. I've pointed out the lack of activity here several times. The Black Industry forums, which saw BI staff actively involved, was much, much busier. Sadly though, I doubt we can directly relate forum activity to company involvement - that probably has more to do with the relative popularity of WFRP2 and WFRP3.

Cheers

Sparrow

Maybe these forums aren't so active because FFG can't even tell ya when a major element of their product will be available again. Did ya even think of that?? I wonder how many potential players who thought " let me look into WFRP3" also thought "I'll check out PF as well". At first glance what do the uninitiated actually see when they are doing their "research"? They see you tube videos and reviews and posted comments that have ALL KINDS of misconceptions attached to them, some of them are just flat out made up. They see a fan community that has a hard time simply describing what to purchase first, and can't come together on an official "entry point". They see a total lack of representation at their local game store. ("I see a few books or I see a single boxed campaign so they go and ask the store clerk or owner, who hasn't a clue about the game or just regurgitates the misconceptions.) Their is a wealth of information out there and really fantastic websites and content and supplements and online play, BUT you have to REALLY hunt and search and spend a lot of time to find it and figure it all out. Etc., etc., and so on and so fourth.

All of the above can be laid DIRECTLY at the feet of FFG. It is what I have been on about in several other posts. When they released this edition they failed miserably in the "roll out" division. NOT the "game play" division, THAT was genius!, I have never seen a company soooo under utilize ready, willing, and able resources. This is an assumption on my part, but I really wonder if they even had communication with the retailers,.. Don't you guys have account reps up there in Minn.?? USE THEM! I wonder was there ever even a discussion at FFG where they looked at what they had created and said "We have something VERY different here, something VERY good. We have to REALLY be careful and make certain that everyone UNDERSTANDS what and how this game is."

I will be the first to say that I am ignorant as to how FFG is structured from a marketing, sales and promotion stand point. Do they even have sales reps? Does anybody from FFG actually walk into stores to promote and Describe their product to the people that could have potentially the biggest impact of the understanding of a product?

NOW,.. what does this player see if he were to look at PF? ( and others I am sure, I am just not aware of them ) Well, just look at their site, look at the representation at the retailer, look at the PF society at the table at the store. Consolodation of information, concise entry point etc.

Partial solution: A beginner boxed set. ( that is a period after set btw )

A community manager manages the official forums as a whole, not a single franchise. They are the conduit from the company to the end user for all products and lines.

True but thats the thing about FFG vs. say Paizo. Paizo has to manage a single community doing one thing, Pafthfinder. A community manager has to understand the product, what it does, what its for, how its used, in a sense he has to be a fan and I would say using the product is a must in order to relate to the community. A product like WFRPG is complex requiring a thorough understanding of the rules of the game to be able to respond to the community in a way that will reflect well on FFG. Another words, he has to know what the hell he's talking about. Considering that many of the FFG products are wildly complex of which there are many I don't see how one community manager could manage such diverse and detailed oriented communities like Twilight Imperium, WFRPG and other products like that and appear and actually be knowledgable about them all.

I mean again, I don't disagree that the community does need a manager, but this isn't as simple as hiring a random slept to come to the forums and start posting because if he isn't knolwedgable these rather fickle communities will tear him a new one over night and it won't be pretty. The expectations on a community manager by communities are going to be very high, in a sense, he will be expected to be an expert in the community.

When they released this edition they failed miserably in the "roll out" division. NOT the "game play" division, THAT was genius!,

I think thats a pretty fair assesment WFRPG 3.0 is not easy to get involved in and even today (after having played it for nearly a year) I still find trying to explain "what should a new player buy" very hard to do. Between the core set, the various suppliments and the various duplications of material I can honestly say that this was completetly botched and made far too complicated.

I understand that they where making compromises on "cost vs. material" and to some degree its understandable, but it would have been far better to simply create 4 basic box sets. A start kit, A GM kit, a Player Kit and a Monster Kit. Even if the whole thing cost a couple hundred dollars (which it effectively does anyway, its just sub divided into smaller sections) it would at least be a lot easier to understand what stuff is for. Clearly this was a failure on their part and even they couldn't properly explain exactly what players should be buying which from a marketing stand point you have to wonder how anyone could let that happen.

So in the end its saving grace is that its an awsome game and when a game is awsome, players will figuire it out, but when your competing against organized companies like Paizo, this kind thing makes you appear very … amaturish. (made up word that I think is awsome)

flyndad said:

Would they bother anyways? They don't care. Forums don't fit on graphs..and neither do fans. Remember when they were promising the Tomb of Thieves product and telling everyone that they were still supporting 2e and suddenly…poof! What they had told people didn't match what their actions were. Its no wonder 3e didn't magically catch on with 2e players. Not only did they knowingly avoid telling an accurate story, they also didn't get the biggest supporters and writers for 2e on board for 3e and then failed to continue to gather support other than just putting shiny Monopoly boxes on shelves with a 200% mark up over other games. What did they expect to happen? What do they expect to continue to happen?

There's nothing cheaper than posting, "We're here for you guys. Thanks for supporting us."

Gotten much thanks lately for buying their products?

Maybe they'll put out a press release

jh

If my memory serves me correctly Tomb of Thieves was intended to be released in the Summer of 2009 which we can only estimate but is a safe assumption was before WFRPG 3.0 was a full fledged "redesign" project. I think at the time they where still considering making a kind of 2.5 edition and or at least continuation of the 2nd edition system rather than what they ultimatly did which is re-invent it. We can only speculate on that, unless someone has some information that I'm not aware of. It is a fact however that they did promise to release it in official press.

I can understand 2nd edition fans being upset about that, I really don't like it when companies make release promises that they don't meet. But if this qualifies them as "a bad company" than their are no "good" companies out there and none of them care about their consumer because you can't name a company that hasn't at some point canceled a planned release, even the good folks at Paizo have had their failures. Its just a part of business, they obviously made a call to discontinue 2nd edition and start 3rd edition. It was inevitable that people would be pissed about it and disect the event down to nitty gritty details and find some wrong doing on FFG's part as online communities always do whenever change is proposed. I have never in 25 years seen a game that got a new edition that didn't trigger ample edition hate and what your talking about here is really an extension of that sentiment.

Its simple. 2nd edition players loved their system and when it was canceled they got pissed, the natural people to blame was FFG and their new edition. This is probobly one of the most common occurances in the gaming industry. Some people love the new, some people can't get over the cancelation of the old.

FFG does care about their fans. They might not be great business men at times and I agree they need work on their communication, but to suggest that being bad at something by default is intentional is just plain silly. Unfortunatly online communities always make this type of connection and it never ceases to amaze me howe quickly the mantra is adapted.

BigKahuna said:

Agreed. What's happening here (apart from some understandable overreaction) seems to be rooted in the exasperation that we don't ask that much (like a note regarding availability of the custom dice), that it wouldn't hurt FFG (rather the opposite, they might benefit), and that it would be so easy. It's not arcane. It's simple - some might consider it obvious, though I'd say obviousness is a really tricky beast.

This feeling (at least on my part) translates into this disillusioned sentiment of "they are not caring". Sure, I'm being unfair. I'd like to be pampered, wooed, get inside information or at least lots of attention… At the same time, I'm rational enough to downsize my expectations to a minimum of communication from their side that seems reasonable from their business perspective - like with the dice, maybe a video of the GenCon Warhammer seminar, nothing more. And, naturally, I'm frustrated that even this seems to be asking too much. It sure isn't a very big problem, not a catastrophic misbehavior on their part - but looking at the fan psychology at work here, the reaction is understandable.

BigKahuna said:

Jay Little mentioned 1-2 years ago (on his blog perhaps) that he was hired by FFG with the intention to develop WFRP v3. I don't know whether the vision for v3 changed between 2008 and 2009, or if there had originally been plans to support both editions simultaneously. But v3 was already on the table in 2008, before CC, SoE or the two cancelled books.

BigKahuna said:

And some of us only stuck with the 2e system because it's the lesser of three evils.

The game requires special dice to play. Those special dice are no longer being produced, and have been out of stock most places for many months now. All theorizing aside, I think that simple fact speaks for itself.

I just bought into this system after trying it out and dropped $400ish on product. I can't buy dice. This is ******* disgraceful and just plain wrong.

hairballs said:

I appreciate - and to a degree understand - the genuine enthusiasm people have for WFRP3's dice, but this highlights a real problem with the system.

There's something to be said for a six-sided die labelled one to six.

Cheers

Sparrow

James Sparrow said:

There's always the app, and the possibility to create the dice needed using Dicenomicon (which is another app and a better dice roller overall than the WFRP-toolkit). Also numerous rollers are avaliable onlline. It doesn't solve the problem, I think it sucks that the dice are out of stock, but at least there are some alternatives.

In the meantime, we need stickers, like they have for the Star Wars beta. Anybody want to step up and create them?

Oh, and here are dice rollers:

brokentome.com/tools/DiceRoller.aspx

laakmann.free.fr/wfrp/

gallery.rptools.net/v/contrib/emirikol7/wfrp3+dice+probability+caclulator/

It is really sad that they don't even give enough of a crap about this game to keep the dice in stock. Anybody know why this is?

jh

Hmmm…There are still two packs at my alaskan FLGS! Any bidders? Nope, I'm sweepin 'em up. But, having been out to sea and away from this thread it does make me feel a bit nervous (CL checks failing…or too many chaos stars) to see this sort of support drying up. Dice are THE GATEWAY drug for noobs. I.E. my wife, her sister, our recently introduced to WFRP (any version) friends. They bought dice. Not a book (50 bucks!!) Skyrim costs 50 bucks. They bought dice for 12 dollars, they roll them, look at them, whisper strange incantations while rolling them, put them into commemorative dice bags (Crown Royal…) By the way I find it interesting that while WFRP v3 no longer has dice for sale Arkham Nights is offering T-shirts, dice bags, ALL kinds of stuff. We are a really tiny community aren't we .

RPG's are a tough sale in this day and age (I won't even attempt to flog that dead ungulate). I just bought the PF Beginner Box for my life long gaming buddy's ten year old. That thing is AMAZING! for 35.00 dollars! Come on FFG! You got Star Wars in Beginner mode (for that I say Yah Hoo! You're all clear kid!). I know packaged right, a BASIC WFRP set would really be much better for the franchise overall. We sure ain't gettin any younger. If you haven't done it yet (and I haven't, yet…) if you have even the scrap of a wfrp scenario send it in to Emirikol for the contest which ends in two weeks. THIS is what will keep this game rolling even if the company doesn't want it. Just look at Strike to Stun been around for ten years generating great fan based material. Lieber Fanatica is just great. The last Warpstone is set to roll out…someday. It would be interesting to create a WFRP v3 likes on the Book of Face(the real and true force of Chaos in the world). Because it does sound like FFG likes to keep their sales numbers close to their chest.

So, in conclusion I have four sets of dice and as my dog eats them, they roll into the Crack of Doom (in our couch), or they just fail their instability checks. I will be planning on creating "stickers" for my readily available polyhedrals. Stickers which cost…ten cents ? twenty cents ? Ya hearin me FFG ? By the way, 'you are my density FFG'.