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 -Loki- wrote:

RoperPG wrote:
With a heavy side of entitlement.

No one, or very few people at least on this board, is saying GW owes them. They're quite plainly criticising business decisions that have turned them off the product.

Personally, I now play several other games. GW is the only one I've played because I have lost at the army selection stage, because the army I chose became the companies red headed step child. I don't feel they owe me a balanced ruleset for the army because I spent money on it, I simply leave my criticism and go play other games.

Dunno I kinda feel they owe the community an apology for several things over the past decade.

Like fine cast, squating armies, killing off fantasy, killing specialist games, turning on the veterans, closing down their forums etc.

They are trying, I'll give them that. Did anyone imagine you'd see GW with a Facebook page or a Youtube channel that shows painting techniques? It's a far cry still from the GW of old, but it's better than the GW of the last couple years. I don't see much of the "haha our customers are so stupid they'll buy anything" mentality.

To be fair, they have almost caught up with most of their rivals in that regard.

As someone who has "rage quit" 40k after 3rd edition "decapitation" of rules, I can clearly understand why that many people can outright hate GW.

But after returning to the hobby a year ago, I can also see, why a lot of this GW hate is just misdirected rage. Not that there are no faults on GW part, of course there are… But not all of them:

- GW gets blamed for the fact that people do not play as often as they would want to. There is a poll here on dakka, where more than half of voters play only a couple times a year or do not play at all. How can you name yourself a "playerbase" if you play once a year? I do not call myself a skier if I last went skiing couple of years ago, only because there are skis in my closet… And people get offended by GW claims, that they are hobby company, not games company, yet almost all mentions of "my group" or "at my flgs" here on dakka, mentions a list of only a few players, less than 10 usually… WH40K is a hobby with the posibility of playing a game, not a game with posibility of becoming a hobby...

- GW gets blamed for virtually zero social skills amongst playerbase. Hence the need for totaly bulletproof rules, because people do not want, or are unable to, make real friends within comunity and lack the ability to comunicate their needs (of course there are exceptions to this, but judging from constant whining here on dakka, these seems to be rare…). In the last month alone, there are at least two entire threads dedicated to shaming "Timmis" and "Daves" for being TFGs… And all I can say to summarise those threads - if you change all mentions of wh40k related stuff to violence or sexual abuse, these threads become diaries of toxic relationships. And if you are in a toxic relationship you either break up or get counseling and not blame any company for your lack of self esteem. And if you happen to have a close minded friend, spouse, brother, father, child etc.. to play with, this game has NO UNSOLVABLE problems whatsoever. And is a great "basic engine" and model range which you can modify to suit your needs.

- GW gets blamed for not making a game not 100% inline with particular interests of any given individual. We have a 22 pages long thread about femarines for crying out loud. In a clearily fascist, racist, mysoginistic, violent, grimdark, non-representative hobby game! Playerbase of this game is so diverse in terms of age, investment level, frequency of playing, attitude, political views, country of origin, cultural background etc that this is really childish to think, that there is "one ruleset to rule them all". There are hardcore tournament folks; there are beer and pretzels folks; teenagers without money, teenagers with parents money, mid aged people with a ton of money or on a tight budget; there are people playing with carefully painted collections and there are proxy netlisters and so on… There are Eternal War players and Maelstrom enthusiasts… ALL SORTS of players with sometimes drastically different expectations from GW products. It is impossible to please all of them at once, and sooner or later anyone and everyone will end up on the wrong side of changes GW makes.

- regarding ruleset alone: there are people who praise 5th ed rules and those who will not play anything post-2nd ed, because those are two ENTIRELY different games. If you think that 7th ed is a "bloated mess of rules and you cannot be bothered with even a single additional dice roll" try to read 2nd ed or Necromunda rulebook, and if you think that current games are slow, try to play modern sized games with 2nd edition rules - you will get stuck in a single game for a week, as games in Kill team size could take a couple of hours… And in "proposed rules" threads I can see recurring "improvements" involving rend instead of AP and to-hit modifiers instead cover saves, both of which massively increase resolution time on any terrain heavy table, when each member of a squad can be in different cover type, have a different armour, cover save etc (fun fact: those two rules are straight from 2nd ed and were scrapped in 3rd, but most of "rules proposers" do not know that)… And in those threads alone we can often see endless loop of arguments against and pro those changes, because playerbase is not homogeneous.

WH40K is a game with 30 year old history and some folks are playing it for similiar period. It is OBVIOUS that ups and downs are inevitable - this is a period of a traditional marriage. No one expects that a relationship will be endless honeymoon, or that every thing you do in your life will give you same thrill during entire life, or that you will not get bored or exhausted by ANY profession. WH40K is so huge (as a hobby), that you could easily write a major in psychology or sociology based on dakka forum alone. And yet there are people, who think that a bare minimum, clear rules will benefit all, or that focusing on a single faction or scrapping another will make everyone (or only a "significant minority") happy…

WH40K is so huge, that everything and anything GW does will have positive and negative influnence on different parts of the community. And all the whining in the world will not change that simple fact. Most recent example: Ynnead ritual, which was a huge expectation and dissapointment for some Eldar players; huge enjoyment for some Marine players after suposed failure, some rage quit threats from both Eldar and Slaneesh fanboys and some tears of racist joy in Eldar hating eyes. How could GW write this to satisfy ENTIRE community is beyond me...

Now to be fair I think GW is very much like Microsoft in some regards: Windows is "good enough" but has a lot of flaws, but Microsoft can't just strip it out and redo it from the ground up because of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth as legacy things break (see: Windows 10 coming after Windows 8 because so many legacy code used "9x" as a code for Windows 95 and 98 that it would break if there was a Windows 9).

GW is the same way. They SHOULD completely redo 40k from the ground up to be a scalable game, but if they ever did that the rage would be extreme even though ultimately it would be necessary.

I still have hope that GW does see that they need to stop relying on a core set of rules that are 18 years old and on top of that were whipped together in a hurry from a homebrew WW2 set of rules, and actually create a set of rules that can scale down to skirmish levels with a handful of models, or scale up to large battles. I don't think it would be that difficult. Some people may not like how abstracted their forces become at the higher scales, but that's how large-scale games work and they are better for it.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Now to be fair I think GW is very much like Microsoft in some regards: Windows is "good enough" but has a lot of flaws, but Microsoft can't just strip it out and redo it from the ground up because of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth as legacy things break (see: Windows 10 coming after Windows 8 because so many legacy code used "9x" as a code for Windows 95 and 98 that it would break if there was a Windows 9).

GW have really only gotten themselves in to that position in the past couple of editions. They should strip back the game to have a slightly different set of rules for smaller games and larger games for the sake of the core game, but that's not going to make people who like big stompy things in small games happy.

BUT.... there's really nothing stopping GW just from fixing some of the glaringly bad issues with 40k that result in a lot of hate from the community. While I think they do need to do a complete rewrite, they'd go a long way if they just fix the existing rules. All the stuff that's poorly written or just blatantly unbalanced could be fixed without a complete rewrite.

Something like Orks and Tyranids sucking and Eldar being awesome, or some of the ambiguous rules, the blame lies squarely with GW.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Now to be fair I think GW is very much like Microsoft in some regards: Windows is "good enough" but has a lot of flaws, but Microsoft can't just strip it out and redo it from the ground up because of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth as legacy things break (see: Windows 10 coming after Windows 8 because so many legacy code used "9x" as a code for Windows 95 and 98 that it would break if there was a Windows 9).

GW have really only gotten themselves in to that position in the past couple of editions. They should strip back the game to have a slightly different set of rules for smaller games and larger games for the sake of the core game, but that's not going to make people who like big stompy things in small games happy.

BUT.... there's really nothing stopping GW just from fixing some of the glaringly bad issues with 40k that result in a lot of hate from the community. While I think they do need to do a complete rewrite, they'd go a long way if they just fix the existing rules. All the stuff that's poorly written or just blatantly unbalanced could be fixed without a complete rewrite.

Something like Orks and Tyranids sucking and Eldar being awesome, or some of the ambiguous rules, the blame lies squarely with GW.

Absolutely correct. They could do a lot to fix the game. What they should do is like they used to have, "Chapter Approved" in White Dwarf. They could have some "beta" versions of like a revamped Assault phase (like they did once before) or revamped army list, with a big note that hey this is a work in progress, try it out and give us feedback on our Facebook page. Then basically work on updating model ranges, instead of putting out new stuff. That's the problem. Space Marines get a dozen plus supplements, other factions get nothing, when they have mainstay troops that need to be in plastic and not Finecrap, but no can't do that because we need yet another Marine codex and reboxed Marine models with an extra sprue that nobody asked for instead.

That's the part that bothers me. They are showing improvements, but IMHO It's not where it counts. The game is a mess, and there's such a huge imbalance in codex power for no reason that it needs to be addressed, full stop before it gets even more out of control than it already is. Unless they make 40k like the Heresy where Marine vs. Marine is a common thing, it's silly to give the lion's share of books to an army that in its own fluff can't fight itself except in rare situations (the way games go you'd think there was another heresy going on with all the Imperium vs. Imperium conflicts).

They don't need to stop selling (let's face it, that's stupid), but they need to prioritize models. Chaos needs an update, for example, much more than there needs to be yet another Marine book or repackaged set. Orks need some updates, which should have happened long before putting out Deathwatch. Tyranids, who in the fluff are like second only to Chaos as the big boogeyman, need some major upgrades that should have happened before the Angels of Death book or the Flyer supplement that nobody remembers. They are focusing on the wrong things. Marines sell, this is undeniable, but the game doesn't promote Marine vs. Marine, and the sheer power gap turns the game typically (Eldar notwithstanding) into an 80s style saturday morning cartoon of the heroic and invincible Space Marines vs. their bumbling and incompetent foes who always get summarily defeated after bragging about this week's latest ridiculous scheme.

What I think they could do/plan to do in order to fix things:

1) Announce via White Dwarf they are working on a new edition of 40k that will streamline and revamp the rules, similar to Age of Sigmar but not destroying the world. Beta versions of these rules will be put into future White Dwarfs with the return of "Chapter Approved" for you to try out in your own games.

2) Prioritize getting rid of Finecast, redoing aging ranges (looking at you CSM) and then making upgrade kits for major groups within factions (e.g. an upgrade pack with Iron Warrior shoulderpads and helmets, or different style Eldar helmet for Ulthwe, or different style Ork bodies for Bad Moon, etc.) in plastic, sold similar to the existing upgrade packs at a relatively cheap price (idea being you buy a box of core troops and then pick up the upgrade pack,and you aren't spending a big amount).

3) Revamp the paint range again and move to a decent size (likely not dropper bottles, but like how Forgeworld has them now), okay raise the price a little bit (the larger shade paints are what, $7 now? That's expensive but not insane), so you don't feel like you're being ripped off by spending $5 on a 12ml bottle of paint. Texture paints for bases should be sold in BIG jars, period. Drybrush or technical paints can stay 12ml, idea being you aren't going to use a lot of paint so they last longer, I'd almost say different sizes for different ranges e.g. base paints are larger, because you use a lot to basecoat.

4) Create a 40k app for the new rules like AoS app, where all the rules/datasheets are freely available for download. Codexes become more like AoS battletomes; good additions but not required for the game. Focus on codexes, codex supplements, several for each faction (e.g. for Chaos Legions, Ork Clans, Craftworlds and the like), prices should be like General's Handbook for these (i.e. reasonable). Also focus on campaign books that add new detachments or wargear options and the like, with missions that can be customized. Put out a generic campaign system (not Planetary Empires) that encourages people to use it as the base, at the same time do a worldwide campaign like Seasons of War.

A GW doing those things would be great.

hobojebus wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

RoperPG wrote:
With a heavy side of entitlement.

No one, or very few people at least on this board, is saying GW owes them. They're quite plainly criticising business decisions that have turned them off the product.

Personally, I now play several other games. GW is the only one I've played because I have lost at the army selection stage, because the army I chose became the companies red headed step child. I don't feel they owe me a balanced ruleset for the army because I spent money on it, I simply leave my criticism and go play other games.

Dunno I kinda feel they owe the community an apology for several things over the past decade.

Like fine cast, squatting armies, killing off fantasy, killing specialist games, turning on the veterans, closing down their forums etc.

Nor is it wrong to want the company to produce rules that justify the cost. The customer is entitled to get his or her money's worth - Forbes has gone on about that more than once.

People are entitled to complain when a clam pack containing a single plastic miniature retails for $25.

I have seen more copies of 8th edition Warhammer bought for use with the Kings of War rules than I have seen bought for their own rules. (A shocking statement - the Isle of Blood box was worth it, just for the miniatures. The elves, in particular, are very good value for the quality of the models. The skaven... less so, but we have a ratkin player that disagrees with me. )

And many, if not most, of the complainers do say when they see GW doing something right. I know that I do.

And that is happening more often, these past few months, than had been the case in years.

On the other hand, it feels like the OP found a big ol' can labeled WORMS and went 'Hey! Let's open it!'

The Auld Grump

WayneTheGame wrote:
3) Revamp the paint range again and move to a decent size (likely not dropper bottles, but like how Forgeworld has them now), okay raise the price a little bit (the larger shade paints are what, $7 now? That's expensive but not insane), so you don't feel like you're being ripped off by spending $5 on a 12ml bottle of paint. Texture paints for bases should be sold in BIG jars, period. Drybrush or technical paints can stay 12ml, idea being you aren't going to use a lot of paint so they last longer, I'd almost say different sizes for different ranges e.g. base paints are larger, because you use a lot to basecoat.

I don't really think that's necessary, other than maybe textures being in larger pots. People don't go through full pots of paint unless it's the main colour of their army, a wash or the pot dries out, so low price-per-pot is more important than price-per-ml for 95% of the paints people buy. I don't think GW can afford to raise their price-per-pot any further, they are already the most expensive option. I really like the way Tamiya paints are cheaper per pot than anything else, even if they are only labelled as 10ml (though I'm sure they're more then that).

Even on washes, the only washes I go through regularly are dark brown and to a lesser extent black. Green, purple, blue, sepia, those washes have lasted me years.

Unfortunately for GW they are worse than the competition both on price per pot and price per ml.

To me, the idea of having small pots is to be competitive on the price-per-pot front so if doesn't matter that some of the money people save on buying 20 different colours for small details goes in to buying 2 or 3 pots of the base colour of one's army.

Agreed, the only paints I think I ever ranout of maybe 3 pots of colour in the 20+ years I've been painting but I've lost countless paints to drying though. So bigger pots would be more of a waste, as well as being harder to store.

I think it has alot to do with disgruntled Ex-players not leaving, as has been pointed out previously.

As has also been previously pointed out GW get the blame for alot of diverse things and the disgruntled Ex-players are there to pick up the newly disgruntled and welcome them into the soup. The soup is quite pro-active too, and will often praise other game systems and companies quite blindly.

I saw this most clearly with the switch from Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition to AoS.

So far I think the worst thing GW have done was the switch to finecast, as they promoted it as a cheaper material then increased prices, if it was priced lower I would have been fine with it.

The other baddie thing I think GW did was place an Embargo on the southern hemisphere.

It would be nice if GW could simplify and streamline 40K, but I imagine the internet reaction would be like the reaction AoS dialled up to 11 regardless of the merits of the actual changes.

You've picked up on a couple of things there StygianBeach, but there is more than that to it.

This was from a previous post on a similar subject, but think it applies equally well here

What I think is hard for gamers new to the hobby to understand is exactly how much ‘good stock’ GW used to hold with hobbyists. It has taken some serious effort (said sarcastically) to erode this to the point we are at now, although I do think things are much better now than they were 2011-12 (which had been dubbed the ‘summer of terror’ on some forums) in that at least GW doesn’t seem to be actively trying to upset the fanbase as much as possible. You're getting a lot more positive news now, more olive branches from GW.

Some examples of prior events, for the un-initiated:
- Finecast. Not so much that it was riddled with difficulties when it launched, but that it was sold as the ‘next big thing’. Look up stories of people getting 8-9 replacements of a miniature to find one of acceptable quality.
- ‘Rest of world sales ban’ – This does have arguments either side, although I think it was most likely brought in to protect the absurd prices in Aus/NZ. Essentially it stopped people from outside of Europe buying from the big UK sellers (Wayland, Maelstrom at the time etc.) Personally, this killed my GW hobby at the time as I lived in a country with no GW stores and had been relying completely on imports.
- The perennial price rises. These are better disguised and distributed now. Usually each spring would see a price rise (or jump, from your perspective) which would come along with a mass of groaning threads on forums.
- The voracious legal team. No one is or was disputing that GW’s IP is at the heart of its success. But the continuous targetting of small garage sellers, websites and authors (‘Spots the Space Marine’) won it few fans. What was perhaps worse was that a lot of the time the targets themselves were the biggest fans – websites/blogs (being issued with C&D orders because they had ‘warhammer’ in the URL for instance) is one example. There was also a fair amount of battening down of hatches in some forum communities, as they desperately tried to avoid falling under the crosshairs. It was all very ugly and unpleasant, and affected me personally as a moderator on a forum. Thankfully seems to have been checked for the time being. This, for me, is the biggest black mark against the company. You should never, ever, ever, forget the people that put you there.
- The sale of kits at the expense of the game. It’s all about the sale of the big next thing now, with rules that you can’t possibly ignore. Expensive to keep up, and the churn of new rules/army books is constant. Yes they are a business and have to make money but it’s a sliding scale, and I’m sure most would prefer it to be a bit more fan friendly, with more thought given to the creation of a quality game.
- The change from the GW store as a hobby club and centre to one-man intro-game sales point. Again, can understand why this has been done, but another big ‘X’ for the people that used to enjoy using the GW in this way (and perhaps had no other alternative, especially in the UK where we have a dearth of hobby stores.
- The complete lack of official social media. This is improving now, but for a good few years there was nothing. Think this was a good reason why the forums and blogsphere tended to vent at times, there was no-where else for it to go, and didn’t give an impression that GW cared much for its fans other than for the content of their wallets.

Personally, I think it’s wonderful that GW is living up to its name once more as a ‘games workshop’ – with new board games coming out etc. I would definitely say it is going some way to repairing the poor community relations and damage caused over the past 4-5 years. This is, in part, because things like the voracious legal team seems to have been quietened or at least let loose on worthy targets (illegal recasters and the like). The one, for me, dastardly act of the past years was killing off WHFB to release AoS. Yes, create a new game, but to kill a game off completely (and there was a big tournament and event following for that game) was nasty. And that would have applied even had AoS been the best game ever made, which it most pointedly is not.

Now, hopefully players will just be able to have fun and concentrate on the games and miniatures themselves, rather than having their attention drawn to nasty big-business behaviour. But, the rep the company has (improving now from an all time low) is definitely not without cause.

I do find it hilarious when people try to use the defense of, "it's just business" to justify GW's practices. This seems fair on the surface as an argument, but the reality is that if any other business operated like GW did, it would be bankrupt. GW exists mainly off nostalgia, captive market, and lack of competition. They have a good product in general, but that's just basic quality control.

Unfortunately, the only thing is has left nostalgia in spades, and then their captive market has been fleeing to the plethora of unanticipated competition, like X-Wing.

Likewise, it may be the job of a business to make money, but it's not the consumer's job to sit there and blindly accept be treated horribly by a business and still give them money. But, as mentioned already, people still do.

There's a balance to be had and GW has not been well balanced for a long time.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Household names (or as near as) always come in got flak whenever they do anything, and GW is no exception.

Especially when they deserve it.

Aside from the other things already mentioned here GW just can't make good games anymore. Their models tend to be decent (although the competition has improved to the extent that they can no longer be considered the best on the market) but their rules, and the philosophy behind those rules, are just appalling and that is something that GW's management is entirely responsible for.

At this stage if you want a genuinely good wargame then you need to look elsewhere.

While 40k is a hot mess at present, AoS is actually a decent little ruleset - especially with the General's Handbook added in and some commonsense tweaks (i.e.: measure from base, not model). People mostly hate it (understandably) because of the manner that it was introduced. The newer boxed games are mostly decent games in and of themselves, with Overwatch, Calth, Execution Force, Silver Tower all getting positive responses to the games, while others like Stormcloud Attack and Renegade are decent, but in the "free in White Dwarf" level of quality and polish. Lost Patrol's rewrite seems distinctly sub-par on the other hand, so they really run the gamut of rules quality. Frankly, I gave up on WHFB years ago because of 5th (Herohammer) and on 40k during 6th. I still buy, build and paint the models, but the fantasy stuff gets used in a bunch of non-GW games, and will be for AoS as well at some stage, and 40k gaming is on hold until I work out which ruleset to migrate my stuff to. The boxed games are the best thing they have going in many ways right now, though.

The best thing about the past few years has been GW"s unfriendly business practices opening up a world of other, alternate games and models to flourish across many genres.



BTW, great post, Pacific. I don't agree entirely with every point, but overall a great post.

nou wrote:
GW gets blamed for virtually zero social skills amongst playerbase. Hence the need for totaly bulletproof rules, because people do not want, or are unable to, make real friends within comunity and lack the ability to comunicate their needs (of course there are exceptions to this, but judging from constant whining here on dakka, these seems to be rare…). In the last month alone, there are at least two entire threads dedicated to shaming "Timmis" and "Daves" for being TFGs… And all I can say to summarise those threads - if you change all mentions of wh40k related stuff to violence or sexual abuse, these threads become diaries of toxic relationships. And if you are in a toxic relationship you either break up or get counseling and not blame any company for your lack of self esteem. And if you happen to have a close minded friend, spouse, brother, father, child etc.. to play with, this game has NO UNSOLVABLE problems whatsoever. And is a great "basic engine" and model range which you can modify to suit your needs.

The reason that GW gets a lot of flak for this is because they are literally the only major company that needs this. Other companies are capable of writing rules that require no haggling other than "...X-points okay with you?" to get started. A lot of people therefore expect that the biggest player in the market should be able to do at least as much. With 40k/AOS, the horse-trading phase is so important you can end up playing a completely different game depending on your opponent (A Guard Player will have very different issues with the rules than an Tyranid player for example). Meanwhile it is a turn-off to new players or new players to your area, who turn up to a club only to find that there is a huge list of agreed-upon house rules that, again, completely alter play.

Contrast this with Warmahordes, where the only variation is what scenario is rolled, or X-wing, where it is always a head-to-head match unless stated otherwise. With these games, I could walk into a store in Quebec, only needing to know "bonjour", "merci", and whatever numbers are common point values for my game, and I could get a game. Of course, that's a ridiculous example, as most young people in Quebec speak pretty good English. Point is, GW is so far below the curve for simple clarity of rules, it would be easier to play some other games without a shared language than to play a GW game.

Many of us who left GW during the Kirby reign have come back under Rountree. There have been a lot of issues that have upset people to the point of leaving, that have been fixed. Not everything is fixed yet, and it can't be fixed overnight. But these past 6 months have marked a 180 turnaround that shows a remarkably different attitude that deserves to be supported. GW is back on the road to being the top company out there. If they stay on this path, I am confident they will earn back most of the people they've lost.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

nou wrote:
GW gets blamed for virtually zero social skills amongst playerbase. Hence the need for totaly bulletproof rules, because people do not want, or are unable to, make real friends within comunity and lack the ability to comunicate their needs (of course there are exceptions to this, but judging from constant whining here on dakka, these seems to be rare…). In the last month alone, there are at least two entire threads dedicated to shaming "Timmis" and "Daves" for being TFGs… And all I can say to summarise those threads - if you change all mentions of wh40k related stuff to violence or sexual abuse, these threads become diaries of toxic relationships. And if you are in a toxic relationship you either break up or get counseling and not blame any company for your lack of self esteem. And if you happen to have a close minded friend, spouse, brother, father, child etc.. to play with, this game has NO UNSOLVABLE problems whatsoever. And is a great "basic engine" and model range which you can modify to suit your needs.

The reason that GW gets a lot of flak for this is because they are literally the only major company that needs this. Other companies are capable of writing rules that require no haggling other than "...X-points okay with you?" to get started. A lot of people therefore expect that the biggest player in the market should be able to do at least as much. With 40k/AOS, the horse-trading phase is so important you can end up playing a completely different game depending on your opponent (A Guard Player will have very different issues with the rules than an Tyranid player for example). Meanwhile it is a turn-off to new players or new players to your area, who turn up to a club only to find that there is a huge list of agreed-upon house rules that, again, completely alter play.

Contrast this with Warmahordes, where the only variation is what scenario is rolled, or X-wing, where it is always a head-to-head match unless stated otherwise. With these games, I could walk into a store in Quebec, only needing to know "bonjour", "merci", and whatever numbers are common point values for my game, and I could get a game. Of course, that's a ridiculous example, as most young people in Quebec speak pretty good English. Point is, GW is so far below the curve for simple clarity of rules, it would be easier to play some other games without a shared language than to play a GW game.

I have not played in any non-GW wargame long enough to really feel such difference, and I had many rulewise arguments in all but the simplest boardgames. And had them in almost any RPG-like complexity level games I have played which all had some sort of "the most important rule" of social contract or flipping a coin over inevitable disputes. But I do get your point that GW may be the worst ofender here (but as you see from my post, I do not think that this is just a matter of the ruleset alone), and probably just had enough luck to mostly play with sensible players as I do not enjoy or seek pickup games of any kind.

Another factor is white knights coming up with irrelevant or nonsensical reasons why GW does not suck, with 'Well, I can afford it!' being an example.

There are arguments that work, but trying to claim that GW prices are reasonable, or that GW rules don't have problems actually end up serving the opposite to the intended purpose.

I never hate GW more than when some idjit comes up with a strawman argument or other nonsense to defend them.

*EDIT* Right now I am in the annoying position of wanting to show GW that I like the changes in direction, while finding nothing that I want among the current GW miniatures. (I loathe the style for AoS - and they got rid of the next army that I was planning to use for KoW - Tomb Kings.... *Sigh* ) I wish that Rountree had taken over about two years ago....

The Auld Grump

*EDIT 2* In case anyone thinks that i am targeting a poster in this current thread - no. The thing running through my head has to do with unemployed teenage Cypriots.... Somehow that long ago poster managed to make me hate GW more than any critic could have.

nou wrote:
- GW gets blamed for the fact that people do not play as often as they would want to. There is a poll here on dakka, where more than half of voters play only a couple times a year or do not play at all. How can you name yourself a "playerbase" if you play once a year? I do not call myself a skier if I last went skiing couple of years ago, only because there are skis in my closet… And people get offended by GW claims, that they are hobby company, not games company, yet almost all mentions of "my group" or "at my flgs" here on dakka, mentions a list of only a few players, less than 10 usually… WH40K is a hobby with the posibility of playing a game, not a game with posibility of becoming a hobby...

Two issues here:

1) You're ignoring the reason why many of those people play so rarely: the fact that the rules suck. This is not a win for GW.

2) The idea of "it's a hobby, not a game" is complete nonsense. GW isn't doing stuff that makes a great hobby at the unfortunate cost of making a weaker game, they're making a terrible game because they're lazy and incompetent and dismissing valid criticism with "it's a hobby". None of the things that make GW's products bad games make them better as painting hobbies.

- GW gets blamed for virtually zero social skills amongst playerbase. Hence the need for totaly bulletproof rules, because people do not want, or are unable to, make real friends within comunity and lack the ability to comunicate their needs (of course there are exceptions to this, but judging from constant whining here on dakka, these seems to be rare…). In the last month alone, there are at least two entire threads dedicated to shaming "Timmis" and "Daves" for being TFGs… And all I can say to summarise those threads - if you change all mentions of wh40k related stuff to violence or sexual abuse, these threads become diaries of toxic relationships. And if you are in a toxic relationship you either break up or get counseling and not blame any company for your lack of self esteem. And if you happen to have a close minded friend, spouse, brother, father, child etc.. to play with, this game has NO UNSOLVABLE problems whatsoever. And is a great "basic engine" and model range which you can modify to suit your needs.

Sorry, but this is just ridiculous. Other companies manage to make games that don't depend on "making friends" to function. If I want to play a game of X-Wing I can walk into a game store on X-Wing night, ask "standard 100 point game ok?" and start playing the game. There probably won't be any rule questions, and if they are they can almost certainly be solved with a quick look at the rulebook and/or FAQ. And this is great even if I'm friends with the person I'm playing with. We can spend all of our time playing the game or chatting about football or whatever instead of having to negotiate basic parts of how the game functions.

And no, the fact that I can make my own game based on 40k that solves 40k's problems does not in any way negate the fact that 40k is a broken game. If GW is going to demand obscene prices for their rulebooks then I am entirely justified in expecting that the game functions "out of the box" without having to find the right special snowflakes who share my exact gaming desires and spending a bunch of time and effort playing amateur game designer to fix all of the problems.

- GW gets blamed for not making a game not 100% inline with particular interests of any given individual. We have a 22 pages long thread about femarines for crying out loud. In a clearily fascist, racist, mysoginistic, violent, grimdark, non-representative hobby game! Playerbase of this game is so diverse in terms of age, investment level, frequency of playing, attitude, political views, country of origin, cultural background etc that this is really childish to think, that there is "one ruleset to rule them all". There are hardcore tournament folks; there are beer and pretzels folks; teenagers without money, teenagers with parents money, mid aged people with a ton of money or on a tight budget; there are people playing with carefully painted collections and there are proxy netlisters and so on… There are Eternal War players and Maelstrom enthusiasts… ALL SORTS of players with sometimes drastically different expectations from GW products. It is impossible to please all of them at once, and sooner or later anyone and everyone will end up on the wrong side of changes GW makes.

Contrast this with WOTC's position on MTG: "there are lots of different kinds of players who want different things, let's make sure we market to as many of them as we can". This is one of the reasons that MTG is a license to print money while GW is struggling to make a profit at all.

nou wrote:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

nou wrote:
GW gets blamed for virtually zero social skills amongst playerbase. Hence the need for totaly bulletproof rules, because people do not want, or are unable to, make real friends within comunity and lack the ability to comunicate their needs (of course there are exceptions to this, but judging from constant whining here on dakka, these seems to be rare…). In the last month alone, there are at least two entire threads dedicated to shaming "Timmis" and "Daves" for being TFGs… And all I can say to summarise those threads - if you change all mentions of wh40k related stuff to violence or sexual abuse, these threads become diaries of toxic relationships. And if you are in a toxic relationship you either break up or get counseling and not blame any company for your lack of self esteem. And if you happen to have a close minded friend, spouse, brother, father, child etc.. to play with, this game has NO UNSOLVABLE problems whatsoever. And is a great "basic engine" and model range which you can modify to suit your needs.

The reason that GW gets a lot of flak for this is because they are literally the only major company that needs this. Other companies are capable of writing rules that require no haggling other than "...X-points okay with you?" to get started. A lot of people therefore expect that the biggest player in the market should be able to do at least as much. With 40k/AOS, the horse-trading phase is so important you can end up playing a completely different game depending on your opponent (A Guard Player will have very different issues with the rules than an Tyranid player for example). Meanwhile it is a turn-off to new players or new players to your area, who turn up to a club only to find that there is a huge list of agreed-upon house rules that, again, completely alter play.

Contrast this with Warmahordes, where the only variation is what scenario is rolled, or X-wing, where it is always a head-to-head match unless stated otherwise. With these games, I could walk into a store in Quebec, only needing to know "bonjour", "merci", and whatever numbers are common point values for my game, and I could get a game. Of course, that's a ridiculous example, as most young people in Quebec speak pretty good English. Point is, GW is so far below the curve for simple clarity of rules, it would be easier to play some other games without a shared language than to play a GW game.

I have not played in any non-GW wargame long enough to really feel such difference, and I had many rulewise arguments in all but the simplest boardgames. And had them in almost any RPG-like complexity level games I have played which all had some sort of "the most important rule" of social contract or flipping a coin over inevitable disputes. But I do get your point that GW may be the worst ofender here (but as you see from my post, I do not think that this is just a matter of the ruleset alone), and probably just had enough luck to mostly play with sensible players as I do not enjoy or seek pickup games of any kind.

So you are saying that you have no real experience with what people are complaining about and choose to blame the players rather than admit that GW messed up?

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
- GW gets blamed for the fact that people do not play as often as they would want to. There is a poll here on dakka, where more than half of voters play only a couple times a year or do not play at all. How can you name yourself a "playerbase" if you play once a year? I do not call myself a skier if I last went skiing couple of years ago, only because there are skis in my closet… And people get offended by GW claims, that they are hobby company, not games company, yet almost all mentions of "my group" or "at my flgs" here on dakka, mentions a list of only a few players, less than 10 usually… WH40K is a hobby with the posibility of playing a game, not a game with posibility of becoming a hobby...

Two issues here:

1) You're ignoring the reason why many of those people play so rarely: the fact that the rules suck. This is not a win for GW.

2) The idea of "it's a hobby, not a game" is complete nonsense. GW isn't doing stuff that makes a great hobby at the unfortunate cost of making a weaker game, they're making a terrible game because they're lazy and incompetent and dismissing valid criticism with "it's a hobby". None of the things that make GW's products bad games make them better as painting hobbies.

- GW gets blamed for virtually zero social skills amongst playerbase. Hence the need for totaly bulletproof rules, because people do not want, or are unable to, make real friends within comunity and lack the ability to comunicate their needs (of course there are exceptions to this, but judging from constant whining here on dakka, these seems to be rare…). In the last month alone, there are at least two entire threads dedicated to shaming "Timmis" and "Daves" for being TFGs… And all I can say to summarise those threads - if you change all mentions of wh40k related stuff to violence or sexual abuse, these threads become diaries of toxic relationships. And if you are in a toxic relationship you either break up or get counseling and not blame any company for your lack of self esteem. And if you happen to have a close minded friend, spouse, brother, father, child etc.. to play with, this game has NO UNSOLVABLE problems whatsoever. And is a great "basic engine" and model range which you can modify to suit your needs.

Sorry, but this is just ridiculous. Other companies manage to make games that don't depend on "making friends" to function. If I want to play a game of X-Wing I can walk into a game store on X-Wing night, ask "standard 100 point game ok?" and start playing the game. There probably won't be any rule questions, and if they are they can almost certainly be solved with a quick look at the rulebook and/or FAQ. And this is great even if I'm friends with the person I'm playing with. We can spend all of our time playing the game or chatting about football or whatever instead of having to negotiate basic parts of how the game functions.

And no, the fact that I can make my own game based on 40k that solves 40k's problems does not in any way negate the fact that 40k is a broken game. If GW is going to demand obscene prices for their rulebooks then I am entirely justified in expecting that the game functions "out of the box" without having to find the right special snowflakes who share my exact gaming desires and spending a bunch of time and effort playing amateur game designer to fix all of the problems.

- GW gets blamed for not making a game not 100% inline with particular interests of any given individual. We have a 22 pages long thread about femarines for crying out loud. In a clearily fascist, racist, mysoginistic, violent, grimdark, non-representative hobby game! Playerbase of this game is so diverse in terms of age, investment level, frequency of playing, attitude, political views, country of origin, cultural background etc that this is really childish to think, that there is "one ruleset to rule them all". There are hardcore tournament folks; there are beer and pretzels folks; teenagers without money, teenagers with parents money, mid aged people with a ton of money or on a tight budget; there are people playing with carefully painted collections and there are proxy netlisters and so on… There are Eternal War players and Maelstrom enthusiasts… ALL SORTS of players with sometimes drastically different expectations from GW products. It is impossible to please all of them at once, and sooner or later anyone and everyone will end up on the wrong side of changes GW makes.

Contrast this with WOTC's position on MTG: "there are lots of different kinds of players who want different things, let's make sure we market to as many of them as we can". This is one of the reasons that MTG is a license to print money while GW is struggling to make a profit at all.

@not playing often enough: I'm not ignoring anything. Simply pointing out to recurrent complaints here on dakka, that people do not play as often as they want, because various non-ruleset related reasons (like FLGS being an hour away from where they live or being nonexistent in their area; or not having playpartners; or other rules independent reasons) and then blaming GW for making a game, that balance itself more over series of games and not within a single game each time. Another thing is, that if you like to play with fully painted non-proxy armies, then you have to invest a lot of time in preparation for your first game and once you are stuck with particular force you cannot make simple experiments with units (and loadouts if you play wysiwyg). Escalation leagues are organised over a periods of months and give you just a couple of games within that period. Your play-to-hobby ratio is very, very poor and this has nothing to do with ruleset. I usually see wh40k compared to X-Wing, Infinity or Malifaux in terms of rules clarity, but those are all skirmish level/squad level games in which you don't have to invest so heavily to just play a game. So your play-to-hobby ratio is much, much higher. WH40K (and WHFB even more so) have very, very poor play-to-hobby ratios compared to other games. And for comparison - MTG has huge - you do not spend literally hundreds of hours more painting and collecting cards than actually playing with them. In WH40K you often do. So dissapointement rate over bad game is much, much higher than with other board or card games. And one can of course complain, that this is GW fault for not delivering a game in which all your games are equally enjoyable, but judging from various discussions here on dakka, this is an unachievable goal with such a diverse community. There will always be something to complain about by at least a fraction of the community. MTG is not a great comparison, because the format of the game is so vastly different.

@social skill: try to play MTG with strangers without investing heavily in powerfull cards all the time and tell me how much fun you have geting a beating each time with your starter set… You have to comunicate power level at least, something that gets a lot of attention here on dakka and people seem to not be able to tame TFGs and powergamers… Same goes for any collectible games of varying power levels. And this is again IMHO related to play-to-hobby ratio of WH40K - you spend so much time carefully modeling and painting your army, that you get attached to it much more than to any MTG deck, and you are not willing to abandon underperforming models so easily as underperforming cards and blame GW for unavoidable power level differences or mismatches. And talking about attachement to your army and lore: WH40K is the only TT/board game I know of, that has true in-game racism and xenofobia amongst players of different factions.

And I really cannot give you any meaningfull answer to the diversity part, as I cannot see any way to further explain to you why Malestrom is not bull gak random mess and I enjy it deeply. We had our discussion about this and we are examples of completely different expectations of what "golden standard game" of WH40K should be. Which is exactly my point. And please, read my post again carefully, especially the first sentence - I'm not claiming, that there is nothing wrong with GW approach to rules writing or release timetable. But after few months spent here on dakka I cannot but wonder why GW gets blamed for every single bit of lore and rules by at least one person here and people have a hard time realising, that for each and every one of them, there is at least one other person, who likes WH40k exactly the opposite way…

And to be clear - please, do hate GW all you want, I'm not defending them or I don't try to prove that they are a flawless company (that would be indeed stupid). I'm just stating that they are not responsible for all what is wrong with WH40K scene.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

nou wrote:

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:

nou wrote:
GW gets blamed for virtually zero social skills amongst playerbase. Hence the need for totaly bulletproof rules, because people do not want, or are unable to, make real friends within comunity and lack the ability to comunicate their needs (of course there are exceptions to this, but judging from constant whining here on dakka, these seems to be rare…). In the last month alone, there are at least two entire threads dedicated to shaming "Timmis" and "Daves" for being TFGs… And all I can say to summarise those threads - if you change all mentions of wh40k related stuff to violence or sexual abuse, these threads become diaries of toxic relationships. And if you are in a toxic relationship you either break up or get counseling and not blame any company for your lack of self esteem. And if you happen to have a close minded friend, spouse, brother, father, child etc.. to play with, this game has NO UNSOLVABLE problems whatsoever. And is a great "basic engine" and model range which you can modify to suit your needs.

The reason that GW gets a lot of flak for this is because they are literally the only major company that needs this. Other companies are capable of writing rules that require no haggling other than "...X-points okay with you?" to get started. A lot of people therefore expect that the biggest player in the market should be able to do at least as much. With 40k/AOS, the horse-trading phase is so important you can end up playing a completely different game depending on your opponent (A Guard Player will have very different issues with the rules than an Tyranid player for example). Meanwhile it is a turn-off to new players or new players to your area, who turn up to a club only to find that there is a huge list of agreed-upon house rules that, again, completely alter play.

Contrast this with Warmahordes, where the only variation is what scenario is rolled, or X-wing, where it is always a head-to-head match unless stated otherwise. With these games, I could walk into a store in Quebec, only needing to know "bonjour", "merci", and whatever numbers are common point values for my game, and I could get a game. Of course, that's a ridiculous example, as most young people in Quebec speak pretty good English. Point is, GW is so far below the curve for simple clarity of rules, it would be easier to play some other games without a shared language than to play a GW game.

I have not played in any non-GW wargame long enough to really feel such difference, and I had many rulewise arguments in all but the simplest boardgames. And had them in almost any RPG-like complexity level games I have played which all had some sort of "the most important rule" of social contract or flipping a coin over inevitable disputes. But I do get your point that GW may be the worst ofender here (but as you see from my post, I do not think that this is just a matter of the ruleset alone), and probably just had enough luck to mostly play with sensible players as I do not enjoy or seek pickup games of any kind.

So you are saying that you have no real experience with what people are complaining about and choose to blame the players rather than admit that GW messed up?

I have enough (5 years) experience with pickup games of 2nd and 3rd ed 40K to know exactly what people complain about and to not want to return to such playstyle. And as I said I rage-quit myself back then. I have also experience with various different board/card games of varying complexity and competitiveness (including MtG) to know how much of the feel to different tournament games lies within a comunity and not a ruleset. And I have came back to 40K in 7th ed, but being independent from playerbase I can now deeply enjoy the game, as I don't have to deal with hostile attitude of players and suddenly there is no problem with rule lawyering or TFG attitude and in-game racism… And as I wrote in my initial post and in reply to Peregrine - I do not try to defend GW, I just try to point out that they may not be solely responsible for everything that is wrong with current state of 40K scene.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Might I suggest, as you yourself admit to being poorly informed on the subject, that you go away and familiarize yourself with the issues people have with (or have had, a change in CEO has mitigated some of these at least a little)

- Cost of either starting or keeping up with changes
- Poor balance
- Using game edition advancement to try and manipulate more sales rather than fix what's broken.
- Heavy handed and often inappropriate legal action.
- Total disengagement from the community
- Downsizing of stores, often taking away people's space to play.
- What they did to Fantasy
- Using transitions in packaging or material to disguise huge price increases
- Refusal to show releases more than a week away
- What they've done to White Dwarf
- (my personal bugbear above nearly all else) removing player agency from games and replacing it with random.

There's probably others I've overlooked, and more personal ones for individuals, but that should get you started..

Pretty much sums it up for me. I sort of expected things to hit a status quo, and they would work on promoting the game rather than rererererevamping it to sell you the same book plus errata for more money. So for me, the game stopped being what I got into in the first place. More than anything is that, but the list above is nail on the head accurate.

nou wrote:
I do not try to defend GW, I just try to point out that they may not be solely responsible for everything that is wrong with current state of 40K scene.

This is a completely nonsensical argument. GW writers wrote 40k.... any problems are their fault. In no other field do you blame the customers for not being able to endure the failings of the company that made the product.

Even if GW have some specific plan to piss off certain people who don't want to fix 40k on their own, it's still GW's fault for pissing off those people, not the fault of the people for getting pissed off.

nou wrote:
@not playing often enough: I'm not ignoring anything. Simply pointing out to recurrent complaints here on dakka, that people do not play as often as they want, because various non-ruleset related reasons (like FLGS being an hour away from where they live or being nonexistent in their area; or not having playpartners; or other rules independent reasons) and then blaming GW for making a game, that balance itself more over series of games and not within a single game each time.

That doesn't make any sense. GW doesn't make a game that balances itself over a series of games, an optimized Eldar tournament army is going to crush a "casual" ork army game after game because of major balance issues. And nobody is blaming GW for things like the closest game store being too far away, so I don't know where that is coming from.

Another thing is, that if you like to play with fully painted non-proxy armies, then you have to invest a lot of time in preparation for your first game and once you are stuck with particular force you cannot make simple experiments with units (and loadouts if you play wysiwyg).

I'm not sure what your point here is. The fact that you're often locked in to a particular army list is a reason why GW's poor balance is bad. A well designed game would be balanced enough that a customer who buys their first army can expect to compete on a roughly equal level. GW, on the other hand, doesn't care about this and if you buy the wrong stuff you're just screwed.

I usually see wh40k compared to X-Wing, Infinity or Malifaux in terms of rules clarity, but those are all skirmish level/squad level games in which you don't have to invest so heavily to just play a game.

What does investment have to do with anything? Clear rules are clear rules, it doesn't get harder to write the rules just because it takes longer to paint some models. In fact, the investment level means we should be more critical of GW since you're wasting a lot more money if you invest in a GW game and hate the rule problems, while a cheap skirmish game with bad rules is a much smaller loss.

@social skill: try to play MTG with strangers without investing heavily in powerfull cards all the time and tell me how much fun you have geting a beating each time with your starter set…

And? MTG is not meant to be played with the starter sets. They're called starter sets for a reason. If you play standard tournament games MTG is reasonably well balanced and the rules are completely clear. If you draft the game is very well balanced.

and blame GW for unavoidable power level differences or mismatches.

These power level differences are not unavoidable at all. GW is just too lazy and/or incompetent to playtest sufficiently and catch major balance issues before they happen, and to stubborn about "BEER AND PRETZELS CASUAL AT ALL COSTS" to errata balance problems if they slip through playtesting.

I cannot see any way to further explain to you why Malestrom is not bull gak random mess and I enjy it deeply.

Probably because it is an inexcusable random mess. Maelstrom fails even basic game design concepts like "don't have impossible objectives", the fact that virtually everyone has house rules to modify Maelstrom objectives should be a pretty clear sign that the printed rules are garbage.

In a nutshell they do many things right and had done much more right.
They do many things wrong but it is easy to see potential for easy improvement.
It can be maddening to watch.
40k is "broken" according to me and my friends.
So we build and paint our models and wait.

 Talizvar wrote:
In a nutshell they do many things right and had done much more right.
They do many things wrong but it is easy to see potential for easy improvement.
It can be maddening to watch.
40k is "broken" according to me and my friends.
So we build and paint our models and wait.

Really? <-- and I mean that honestly. I'm actually a bit surprised that you're waiting for a company who provided you with a rules set that you don't enjoy to suddenly provide you with one that you will enjoy. Especially when they've been on the same design path since 1998. Are you expecting an Age of the Emperor game to come out soon?

I would recommend finding other rules sets in the mean time and getting some games in. Fubar and the One Page rules sets would be a place to start, but I like SuperSystem by Four-Color Studios. It's a comic book super heroes miniature game with a very, very complete build system. You can make it work with 40k stuff very easily. It's not free though.

Where I would start:
https://onepagerules.wordpress.com/

nou wrote:
... blame GW for unavoidable power level differences or mismatches...

My apologies. I'm not one to take such a small part of such a massive post and reply to it directly (that and Perry's kinda got us covered on the quote-by-quote replying), but I've got to single out one specific word here:

Unavoidable.

Let me start with a question for you nou: Do you know anything about how rules are written? That's not rhetorical. That's not a jab comparative intelligence levels or anything like that. It's a serious question; do you know anything about writing rules?

I happen to know a little about writing rules. I've dabbled, as it were, and the idea that the power level differences in a war game are somehow 'unavoidable' is laughably stupid. You think the rules take on a life of their own? You think that unforeseen combinations cannot be changed? Rules aren't a runaway train - they're something you develop yourself. They're something you have direct control over. The only reason bad rules get out is due to people either not caring about them, or crappy (or complacent) editing/technical editing.

Unavoidable?

Are you kidding me?

And even if the bad rules are missed in play testing, that doesn't mean they can't be fixed afterwards when brought up.

Gav Thorpe's 4th Ed Codex: Chaos Space Marines

I died a little inside

 MrDwhitey wrote:
And even if the bad rules are missed in play testing, that doesn't mean they can't be fixed afterwards when brought up.

Mistakes are always going to be made. Things will be missed in play-testing. We are all only human after all. I'm not trying to say that because one has control over their rules that everything will be perfect (it is very easy to miss the woods 'cause them blasted trees keep getting in the way)... but unavoidable? What an interesting choice of words (or word, rather).

 PLC wrote:
Gav Thorpe's 4th Ed Codex: Chaos Pace Marines

I died a little inside

I got kinda miffed by it.