If the idea is to name the Chaos players "Traitors" as a class ingame, I think its wrong IF u dont make this game based on the Space Marines subjectivity.
Leaving aside the original fan vote completely... What I've seen of this process is that Behaviour need to ask GW to approve proposed names from a branding perspective. This is really similar to how a number of branding and IP-managing teams work, including ones I've worked with before. In this situation, GW's decision regarding its brand is final - neither Behaviour or the fans have any influence to argue about a name which has been rejected. Legionnaire/Legionary failed that hurdle. Even if the fans liked it, the job of the person involved at GW is to protect the IP, not try to take into account fan preferences for new or alternative names. They made their decision, and that battle has been lost. There's no value in refighting it. Meanwhile, in the poll, I don't think people realised the risk of uniting our views primarily behind high-fan-popularity high-risk-of-rejection options, and not keeping a closer eye on what was happening with the fan voting for less-popular low-risk-of-rejection options. Which is why Traitor won out over Chaos Space Marine, probably with GW ironically thinking they'd done the right things by picking the most popular approvable name. However, when you consider that it's a brand approval process, we can look at this slightly differently. Behaviour need a reason to request approval for alternative names (fan poll) Behaviour need to be fairly confident this will not take a lot of time/effort (simple proposal) GW need to have an easy decision to approve (alternative is already approved, simple proposal) GW gives approval for the alternative name Behaviour adopts the alternative name Chaos fans can rejoice GW's brand approver won't care what Behaviour's reasons are for requesting a change. So we don't have to persuade GW of fan popularity (they're not interested), only give them an alternative we already know they will say 'yes' to. On the flip side, Behaviour would want a good reason for requesting a change, and it has to be a change which GW has not already rejected and, preferably, that we already know they will say 'yes' to. My concern with multiple options (e.g. Chaos Space Marine vs Chaos Marine vs Chaos Tactical) is that this makes the decision we're asking people to take at Behaviour and GW less straightforward. If we want to explore those options, I think we need to run them against each other ourselves first, and then put the leading one against the current names in a head-to-head poll which we intend to use to persuade Behaviour to reopen the issue. But personally? I think we have the strongest argument for change with Chaos Space Marine anyway, on the basis of its current use in the 40k brand to refer to that unit. If getting rid of Traitor is our unifying goal, Chaos Space Marine stands the best chance and I'd recommend we run with it purely on that basis.
Well the thing is they never told us any of this. We're assuming it's a branding issue but they simply never let us know what names we couldn't have had approved and just gave us Traitor without any feedback. If they'd said "Hey guys we know Legionnaire is the most popular but we can't use it because branding" then I know I personally would have voted for almost anything but Traitor because I think the name is particularly lame. To be honest, I'd have given up my votes just to vote against Traitor if I could. So I don't understand why they couldn't have just told us what names we were allowed to pick from. The other thing is that Legionnaire is a term used in the last Horus Heresy book, the Unburdened, that I read, so it is at least consistent with the latest lore, seeing as Chaos Legions are still Legions(even if some are shattered) while Loyalists are not, so I don't see why that is it. Marauders while used in the Fantasy is still related to the Warhammer Chaos brand, so I don't see why that would be an issue, I mean Warrior is used in WH Chaos and for Dark Eldar so it shouldn't have been a problem since it at least keeps GW's Chaos in mind. That said, if it must/could-have-been Chaos Space Marine (or something) that's still an improvement. However, it's a bit long so I'd have to wonder if they could simplified to "Marines", but once again they've told us nothing on naming conventions and just picked a submission that wasn't even popular and was the only one that had actual opponents. So to make things simple, while I want Legionnaire and don't understand why it wasn't picked, I'd also be happy with almost anything else(almost meaning; anything not an obvious troll suggestion) which is why I'm disappointed that they never let us know what we could have actually chosen from. If we're assuming branding limitations, I'd take Marine (or the long version) in a heartbeat over what we actually ended up with.
Based on this thread I'm expecting a mega thread with everyone shouting waaaaggghhh!!! if they mess up the ork names lol.
That would pale in comparison with the psychic scream the loyalists would unleash if they were renamed to lapdogs of the false emperor! Plus most Orks around here are good fellows they dont deserve such a thing...unlike the loyalists!
I agree that the feedback from GW was...opaque to say the least. In an ideal world, we would have had better feedback and an opportunity to pick from an approved list. Particularly as Traitor turned out to be so divisive...but I suspect that Behaviour and GW didn't see a situation where we would collectively reject the 4th most popular option as it was virtually no-one's second choice and a lot of people's "anything but..." choice. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that Legionnaire, Legionary and Marauder failed some form of cut, as we ended up with Traitor. Rightly maligned though GW HQ may be, I find it hard to believe that Behaviour's contact there took the list and thought "Hey, great. I get to make a personal choice off this list based on what I want, so screw the Chaos players over at Eternal Crusade. I like the sound of Traitor...so Traitor it is. No questions." From a branding point of view, I could understand logic in not accepting Warhammer Fantasy terms for Chaos, given that the two are separate IPs, unless there were no viable alternatives. Self-evidently there was at least one, as we're all traitors now. Yay. :'( Either way, disappointing though it is, I think we need to assume Legionnaire, Legionary and Marauder are all dead to us as options and decide what to do on that basis. In principle, we could still ask Behaviour to go back to GW and ask them to indicate which of the names from the first vote are acceptable, to then run a second vote to adopt the most-preferred (which may, of course, be Traitor). Behaviour haven't seemed too enthusiastic at putting their time into this idea, although anyone with good relations with the devs could always run it past a chaos-sympathiser at Behaviour and see how open they might be to it. However, we'd be reliant on someone at Behaviour agreeing that this was worth spending time on based on the anecdotal fan grumbles at Traitor, as we wouldn't have anything new to put to them to demonstrate the extent of dissatisfaction with the current choice. The alternative would be to generate support for a different name, and persuade Behaviour to reopen the discussion with GW to get it approved based on the extent of that support. I've already laid out my thinking there, but I believe this would be a one-shot option. If they do have to rename the classes, Behaviour might be willing to spend the time to do this once for good reason, but only once. And as this is extra work on top of what I assume is already a hideously busy schedule, they're not going to want to put themselves in a position where they end up faffing around back and forth between GW and the fans trying to referee a mutually acceptable resolution. I think we'd have more traction if we were able to go to Behaviour with "As you know, Traitor has been really unpopular with the Chaos fanbase here. We've run a poll that showed a huge (a%) of (b) people voting would prefer it to be renamed to (x). We think this is a pretty clear cut request, because (x) is already used in the lore to refer to these classes here (list references to established lore). Could you put this to GW and get them to give a Yes or No to whether (x) can be used instead? We know this is extra work, so we promise that if the answer is No we'll shut up about this and not try to change it again." If what's driving our discussions is a collective desire to drop the damn Traitor name, my personal view is we should pick the option which is most likely to succeed in this goal, even if its not our personal preference. Believe me, Chaos Space Marine isn't mine. However, I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to assume I speak for the Chaos faction, so I've not kicked off the poll I think we should do, as I'd want to see whether people agree with my thinking or not. And we'd want the more vocal, influential and visible chaos players drumming up awareness and interest in the poll - so their views count. There are, after all, potential options to make a concrete case for Legionnaire and push to resubmit it, or for deciding on whether Chaos Marine/Chaos Tactical/Marine would be a more popular option to lead with than Chaos Space Marine in a poll versus Traitor designed to provide evidence to Behaviour of why we really want it changed. And as you rightly say, I'm making assumptions about the brand-led decision which may in fact be completely wrong. But for what it's worth, my view is that Legionnaire carries a very high risk of GW throwing it back in our faces a second time, leaving us stuck with Traitor forevermore. Chaos Marine / Chaos Tactical / Marine may well be successful, but if they are rejected by GW for whatever reason, we get stuck with Traitor forevermore. I simply can't see them shooting down Chaos Space Marine, given it's the most lore-accurate description of the class according to tabletop. And, like you, if this boils down to Chaos Space Marine vs Traitor, it's an absolute no brainer to me...
Well we do at least know that dissatisfaction with the choice is more than just a few fans grumbling in the forums, in Djemo's thread he asked the simple question of "Do you like the name Traitor for the CSM?" The responses stand at a 85 Yes and a 199 No, meaning that approximately 70% of respondents don't like the name. This is a rather conclusive result that this name choice was not a good one. I agree that it is highly unlikely the the actual intention was to screw over Chaos fans to fluff up the Space Marine's egos, but when only 30% of those surveyed actually approve of the name it shows a misunderstanding of what their actual fans want and like about the faction. It's also an unfortunate probability that nobody at Behavior is willing to put in the time to take this any further, seeing as we've received no response other than when I aked if they were willing to reopen the dialogue in the Q&A they gave a very simple Another huge obstacle with changing minds that matter for actually changing the decision is that Katie was not actually in charge of this, it was Ivan and he of course unfortunately no longer works at bE so we'd have to approach someone who wasn't involved in the process. I also think that you're correct in your assumption that any such effort would end probably be a one off chance, and would require we ourselves to put in the research into what GW has used as official names for the class, which may very well boil down to CSM and the one with 30% Approval. I'd say we definitely have measurable justification to implore further, but I know I don't have that kind of relationship with the devs personally to forward this with any hope of actually moving things along. But yeah, I could get behind (Chaos Space) Marine, even though I think it's a bit too long and generic for my taste. It's not actually what I want, but if this had won originally I personally would have never have kept pressing on this issue because this really is a matter of "Anything but" as far as I am concerned.
