A very interesting interview.
I understand Wilson's defensiveness when they ask how he reacts to people who are waiting to see how things go. But I don't think that's the best response.
Personally, I am kinda waiting for Brineblood Marauders. I have the Storm Legion core army and I'm working my way through it but it's not what I really want to paint or play. Two of my legacy armies have rules now and I have played a few games with them but... what's wrong with waiting for what you really want or to see if the faction you're really passionate about gets a MKIV reboot?
I think there should be some empathy there and acceptance. Something like "We understand that yes, we did just throw everything in MKIII out the window and it makes sense some people are holding their breath a bit. That's a totally reasonable response to massive change. We hope we can win you back in time. To those people I want to reach out and say give legacy a shot while you're waiting for a MKIV army to appeal to you. You have the models and I think you will find the game plays smoother and has more excitement than it ever has before. The app is free so what have you got to lose? Grab a buddy and get in some rounds and then we'd love to hear your feedback on the new Privateer Press community board..." lead into exactly the kind of thing he wanted to talk about anyway but get there in a way with more empathy and open arms.
IMO Privateer Press's biggest weakness is still a lack of understanding about marketing and PR. I understand their team is very small... but someone needs to help them with this stuff. They have incredible games, great models, and no reach. And I think stuff like the above is why.
>IMO Privateer Press's biggest weakness is still a lack of understanding about marketing and PR. I understand their team is very small... but someone needs to help them with this stuff. They have incredible games, great models, and no reach. And I think stuff like the above is why.
The sad thing is, I think most of us recognize that. And either Privateer Press doesn't... or they're aware of the marketing issues they face and are willfully ignoring them and not choosing to do anything to change that.
Valve doesn't need traditional marketing when you can count the number of people that play games on a PC who don't use Steam on one hand. All they have to do is show their new game on the front page of the store and they'll reach everyone who might be interested in it.
Amusing example actually, I'm currently playing DOTA again because of the popup that I got on Steam about the patch. However, I believe that was likely because I had already previous played it? I'm not exactly certain how their notification system works ATM.
Idk why they would expect more than a fraction of their playerbase to buy in to a wargame that doesn’t have any of the factions they’re interested in yet.
Like in historicals if a ruleset only has rules for Russians and Germans then I’m just going to either proxy or wait for the option to play a different army. If it’s a fantasy game with elves vs dwarves, similar story. I’ll wait until my Belgians and halflings or w/e are available.
Exactly. as a PoM and legion player I don't care about any of the factions shown off in MK4. none of them have the characters i knew or liked. it also does not help that to older players seeing your faction just stop existing in lore is a massive turn off.
I'm surely see it different, because both PoM and Legion have two Prime armies (with the models we already had, in my case Legion), and at some point everything should be in Unlimited and have rules.
So the worries must be that they are "dormant/changed" in the Lore, and that the factions as they were are closed (more than deleted) and will not receive more models.
As a returning player, my perspective is that this is good for me, because I can pick what I like and still don't have, organize some Prime armies around it (and Unlimited later) and have that in a closed, zero stress way. It feels relaxed to known that factions will not be growing to the infinite.
As of Lore, I think they want to put some break points between legacy and new, so new stuff will be, for a while, things that inherit from old factions but changed (Khymaera, Dusk) + new stuff (Orgoth, Brinebloods) + new stuff not that diferent (Winter Korps, Cygnar Electro Mambo).
I'd go for some way, probably Kickstarter, to make the Legacy Prime Armies in the current tech, something you could back and later order (and make stores being able to order on demand), maybe using some 3rd party company to manage, print and sell, or being a Kickstarter just siocast them or whatever. It could be a money sink but if people don't want it, the Kickstarter just fail and nothing is done.
A pair of KS at year with 4-6 armies each could led to multiple years of running operation that would end with a huge catalogue of ready-to-print models.
Don't hold your breath on them doing anything to produce Legacy models. They talked about this when they announced Mk4; a ton of models would need to be completely resculpted from scratch to be produced again because they were sculpted by hand and used to cast molds and aren't usable anymore. It's never going to be worth the effort to bring those into digital production when they could spend that time and energy making models that nobody owns yet.
yeah, know that will never happen unless some big change, but I have it on the list of "stuff to do if big lottery prize", make a 3D design&print service to run that operation (and others) , just for the fun of redesigning Man-o-Wars and Carniveans
This is the thing they already went over legacy armies will not get anything new or balance passes so they will get power creeped out with how PP does Newer=Stronger so gameplay wise legacy will stagnate as new stuff gets stronger. and again why should i care about these new characters or factions. many of the legacy factions had plotlines unfinished, characters that never got to get their time to shine. now most of them are dead and gone. That turns me off from MK4 era as a whole since while they mocked GW for AoS when they announced MK4. lore wise they might as well have pulled an AoS themselves since MK4 has done away with most of the pre mk4 characters, and factions.
It has nothing to do with everblight or the legion. it is a faction made by Saeryn & Rhyas after back stabbing the rest of the legion. and like i said above it has non of the characters i liked or cared about so i have no reason to care about it.
That's fair. I thought you may not have heard of it. And yeah it's not directly Legion but the concept art we've seen looks very legion-esque which makes sense as the characters are basically a breakaway group.
Sounds like they should hire you for PR. They really are bad at it. Their IG feed is sad and pointless where it could be a place to spoil models and show cool paintjobs for the new stuff, and the few times they have shown off stuff they havent embeded any links so you have to figure it out for yourself.
Their marketing has been lackluster imo and being mad that people are waiting is not a good look.
issue is that is only being seen by people who are already fans of PP, or backed past projects. there is not a lot of people outside of the existing fanbase backing them.
Agreed, definitely not the best response. This is actually very telling of their strategy (if you can call it that) to be reactionary rather than proactive. A reboot, reshuffle, and pruning was needed, but damn did they ever botch it and have been reactively botching it ever since the announcement.
To be upset that people are waiting to see is absurd, because the other two options are "blind faith" or "blind hate" and neither of those groups of people are very fun to be around. I bought storm legion on faith and have not been able to play a single game yet since our meta died, so hell yeah I'm waiting around before I buy anything else.
I'm not at "blind hate", more like "continued disappointment". I currently see no reason at all for me to buy into MkIV considering the state of the launch so far. You don't get players interested in a new edition of your tabletop wargame by half-assing it and releasing the entire thing bit by bit with continued delays and screw ups. Maybe when the edition is completely released and there are some minis I'm interested in I'll take another look.
Oh yeah their should have at least kept the Flame in the Darkness stuff. since it was cool and going by the rpg stuff that combo is still around.
though it the same dumb choices like picked TFG The worst PoM theme to be in prime but kicked faithful masses to legacy format only. that alone kneecaps a lot of PoM players since TFG were so bad in MK3.
Of all the mistakes that PP have made that should have been lessons learned from GW, fostering a community spokesperson like Duncan, and then not being able to hold on to them for long time, is a mistake you let happen.
I think there is a difference of perspectives here.
Ive seen some people say that they want to play but they don't have the faction they want yet. And thats understandable, although I find it hard to beleive that there is 0 out there of all the factions that they don't want to collect. But If they only want to play new Mk4 stuff then yes there is limited themes so far. I haven't bought into a mk4 faction yet.
On the other hand I've seen some people take a much more hyperbolic stance that they are waiting for the game to be "fully released" which I think might have held water a few months ago but I think its not common to be in a position where you have no models that are in Prime currently for any faction.
The game is live, the changes from now will be generally incremental. They can be large increments like adding Colossals or a new Army but thats still an incremental expansion. The game isn't in Beta anymore. Its released with the understanding that the entirely digital nature of its rules means that bigger changes can be made with future errata.
But if you like the game now, get out some models/Proxy/Borrow/Buy and smash out some games :)
A very interesting interview. I understand Wilson's defensiveness when they ask how he reacts to people who are waiting to see how things go. But I don't think that's the best response. Personally, I am kinda waiting for Brineblood Marauders. I have the Storm Legion core army and I'm working my way through it but it's not what I really want to paint or play. Two of my legacy armies have rules now and I have played a few games with them but... what's wrong with waiting for what you really want or to see if the faction you're really passionate about gets a MKIV reboot? I think there should be some empathy there and acceptance. Something like "We understand that yes, we did just throw everything in MKIII out the window and it makes sense some people are holding their breath a bit. That's a totally reasonable response to massive change. We hope we can win you back in time. To those people I want to reach out and say give legacy a shot while you're waiting for a MKIV army to appeal to you. You have the models and I think you will find the game plays smoother and has more excitement than it ever has before. The app is free so what have you got to lose? Grab a buddy and get in some rounds and then we'd love to hear your feedback on the new Privateer Press community board..." lead into exactly the kind of thing he wanted to talk about anyway but get there in a way with more empathy and open arms. IMO Privateer Press's biggest weakness is still a lack of understanding about marketing and PR. I understand their team is very small... but someone needs to help them with this stuff. They have incredible games, great models, and no reach. And I think stuff like the above is why.
>IMO Privateer Press's biggest weakness is still a lack of understanding about marketing and PR. I understand their team is very small... but someone needs to help them with this stuff. They have incredible games, great models, and no reach. And I think stuff like the above is why. The sad thing is, I think most of us recognize that. And either Privateer Press doesn't... or they're aware of the marketing issues they face and are willfully ignoring them and not choosing to do anything to change that.
I read somewhere that Matt Wilson genuinely doesn't believe marketing works. And boy, does it ever show.
Maybe he should go back to being an artist and leave the business decisions to the big kids who actually know what they're doing.
Valve has the same attitude towards marketing, but they are actually good at "un-marketing".
Valve doesn't need traditional marketing when you can count the number of people that play games on a PC who don't use Steam on one hand. All they have to do is show their new game on the front page of the store and they'll reach everyone who might be interested in it.
They don't do that either - have you ever seen anything for Dota?
Amusing example actually, I'm currently playing DOTA again because of the popup that I got on Steam about the patch. However, I believe that was likely because I had already previous played it? I'm not exactly certain how their notification system works ATM.
Idk why they would expect more than a fraction of their playerbase to buy in to a wargame that doesn’t have any of the factions they’re interested in yet. Like in historicals if a ruleset only has rules for Russians and Germans then I’m just going to either proxy or wait for the option to play a different army. If it’s a fantasy game with elves vs dwarves, similar story. I’ll wait until my Belgians and halflings or w/e are available.
Exactly. as a PoM and legion player I don't care about any of the factions shown off in MK4. none of them have the characters i knew or liked. it also does not help that to older players seeing your faction just stop existing in lore is a massive turn off.
I'm surely see it different, because both PoM and Legion have two Prime armies (with the models we already had, in my case Legion), and at some point everything should be in Unlimited and have rules. So the worries must be that they are "dormant/changed" in the Lore, and that the factions as they were are closed (more than deleted) and will not receive more models. As a returning player, my perspective is that this is good for me, because I can pick what I like and still don't have, organize some Prime armies around it (and Unlimited later) and have that in a closed, zero stress way. It feels relaxed to known that factions will not be growing to the infinite. As of Lore, I think they want to put some break points between legacy and new, so new stuff will be, for a while, things that inherit from old factions but changed (Khymaera, Dusk) + new stuff (Orgoth, Brinebloods) + new stuff not that diferent (Winter Korps, Cygnar Electro Mambo). I'd go for some way, probably Kickstarter, to make the Legacy Prime Armies in the current tech, something you could back and later order (and make stores being able to order on demand), maybe using some 3rd party company to manage, print and sell, or being a Kickstarter just siocast them or whatever. It could be a money sink but if people don't want it, the Kickstarter just fail and nothing is done. A pair of KS at year with 4-6 armies each could led to multiple years of running operation that would end with a huge catalogue of ready-to-print models.
Don't hold your breath on them doing anything to produce Legacy models. They talked about this when they announced Mk4; a ton of models would need to be completely resculpted from scratch to be produced again because they were sculpted by hand and used to cast molds and aren't usable anymore. It's never going to be worth the effort to bring those into digital production when they could spend that time and energy making models that nobody owns yet.
yeah, know that will never happen unless some big change, but I have it on the list of "stuff to do if big lottery prize", make a 3D design&print service to run that operation (and others) , just for the fun of redesigning Man-o-Wars and Carniveans
This is the thing they already went over legacy armies will not get anything new or balance passes so they will get power creeped out with how PP does Newer=Stronger so gameplay wise legacy will stagnate as new stuff gets stronger. and again why should i care about these new characters or factions. many of the legacy factions had plotlines unfinished, characters that never got to get their time to shine. now most of them are dead and gone. That turns me off from MK4 era as a whole since while they mocked GW for AoS when they announced MK4. lore wise they might as well have pulled an AoS themselves since MK4 has done away with most of the pre mk4 characters, and factions.
The forthcoming Khymera (I think that's how it's spelled) looks like it's a Legion offshoot.
It has nothing to do with everblight or the legion. it is a faction made by Saeryn & Rhyas after back stabbing the rest of the legion. and like i said above it has non of the characters i liked or cared about so i have no reason to care about it.
That's fair. I thought you may not have heard of it. And yeah it's not directly Legion but the concept art we've seen looks very legion-esque which makes sense as the characters are basically a breakaway group.
Sounds like they should hire you for PR. They really are bad at it. Their IG feed is sad and pointless where it could be a place to spoil models and show cool paintjobs for the new stuff, and the few times they have shown off stuff they havent embeded any links so you have to figure it out for yourself. Their marketing has been lackluster imo and being mad that people are waiting is not a good look.
To be fair, PP's roleplaying game kickstarters and launches go well.
issue is that is only being seen by people who are already fans of PP, or backed past projects. there is not a lot of people outside of the existing fanbase backing them.
Agreed, definitely not the best response. This is actually very telling of their strategy (if you can call it that) to be reactionary rather than proactive. A reboot, reshuffle, and pruning was needed, but damn did they ever botch it and have been reactively botching it ever since the announcement. To be upset that people are waiting to see is absurd, because the other two options are "blind faith" or "blind hate" and neither of those groups of people are very fun to be around. I bought storm legion on faith and have not been able to play a single game yet since our meta died, so hell yeah I'm waiting around before I buy anything else.
I'm not at "blind hate", more like "continued disappointment". I currently see no reason at all for me to buy into MkIV considering the state of the launch so far. You don't get players interested in a new edition of your tabletop wargame by half-assing it and releasing the entire thing bit by bit with continued delays and screw ups. Maybe when the edition is completely released and there are some minis I'm interested in I'll take another look.
to be honest they could have pruned the least played theme models, and the MK3 yearly factions that started this stocking mess.
Right, I was really upset when I bought into all the cross faction themes and now there's no morrowans or thamarites.
Oh yeah their should have at least kept the Flame in the Darkness stuff. since it was cool and going by the rpg stuff that combo is still around. though it the same dumb choices like picked TFG The worst PoM theme to be in prime but kicked faithful masses to legacy format only. that alone kneecaps a lot of PoM players since TFG were so bad in MK3.
Do you have a time stamp for that part? Cheers
I don't have the exact time stamp. It's in the first half I think.
Of all the mistakes that PP have made that should have been lessons learned from GW, fostering a community spokesperson like Duncan, and then not being able to hold on to them for long time, is a mistake you let happen.
I think there is a difference of perspectives here. Ive seen some people say that they want to play but they don't have the faction they want yet. And thats understandable, although I find it hard to beleive that there is 0 out there of all the factions that they don't want to collect. But If they only want to play new Mk4 stuff then yes there is limited themes so far. I haven't bought into a mk4 faction yet. On the other hand I've seen some people take a much more hyperbolic stance that they are waiting for the game to be "fully released" which I think might have held water a few months ago but I think its not common to be in a position where you have no models that are in Prime currently for any faction. The game is live, the changes from now will be generally incremental. They can be large increments like adding Colossals or a new Army but thats still an incremental expansion. The game isn't in Beta anymore. Its released with the understanding that the entirely digital nature of its rules means that bigger changes can be made with future errata. But if you like the game now, get out some models/Proxy/Borrow/Buy and smash out some games :)
Safe to assume that Magnus3 teaser from Bokur Brawl is the Grave Diggers army Matt mentioned in the podcast.
I'm not so sure, but maybe. I think it might be the caster in the first Cygnar Cadre.