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Can( or should) GW change it's ways and release better rulesets? Maybe streamlining the 40K rulesets and Fantasy? It seems that many are really tired of the myriad of books and codexes needed for every army.

Well, I guess this is not the way to go for GW.
Their trend seems to be refining the rules.
PP seems to have a better solution for the rules set
which is cheaper and tighter.
Moreover PP has a rule set for tournaments.

They don't want to. They feel they're a model company, not a game company, and only make the rules so their collectors have something to use the models for. They've stated before they don't care about balance whatsoever, and leave the tweaking of rules that are ridiculous to their customers. The only way it would change is with a drastic leadership change. As long as the current group is in place, so are the crappy updates.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, I guess this is not the way to go for GW.
Their trend seems to be refining the rules.

I think there might be something lost in translation, but that's a funny definition of 'refined'!

Oh yes they will. In time though. Could be next year or 2 or 3 years from now. It seems GW likes going back to the past, so right now we seem to be taking things from 2nd edition to seem to make things more complicated.

They might even go the Nagash route and do that for 40K. I guess it will depend on how popular End Times works.

I am sure GW will go the 3rd edition route which is basically make everything invalid in 7th edition and take out all the bloat out and simplify everything again.

GW will comepletly redo their rulesets and make the game balanced, and more tactical.

This will occur shortly after the company gets taken over, or goes bankrupt and someone else buys the IP.

Keraun0s wrote:
Can( or should) GW change it's ways and release better rulesets? Maybe streamlining the 40K rulesets and Fantasy? It seems that many are really tired of the myriad of books and codexes needed for every army.

Can? Yes.

Will? No.

It will be a cold day in hell when GW writes balanced well written rules

Here is the brutal truth, GW is in the process of a massive transformation.

Within 5 years GW will rename itself Warhammer Models Inc.

GW or from this point Warhammer Models Inc. is getting out of the gaming industry altogether.

Warhammer Models Inc. main function is to sell to Hobbiests to come into the store, purchase what they need, then at home, build, paint and then put up on display the modeler's new unit.

If I am wrong when was the last time GW through its WD magazine focused on tournaments, when was the last time they named Britain's national champion?

They don't focus on the gaming side, it is the hobbiest they are solely focussed on.

Within 5 years Warhammer Models Inc. will be exactly like Airfix, Revell and Tamyia. Get used to it.

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Here is the brutal truth, GW is in the process of a massive transformation.

Within 5 years GW will rename itself Warhammer Models Inc.

GW or from this point Warhammer Models Inc. is getting out of the gaming industry altogether.

Warhammer Models Inc. main function is to sell to Hobbiests to come into the store, purchase what they need, then at home, build, paint and then put up on display the modeler's new unit.

If I am wrong when was the last time GW through its WD magazine focused on tournaments, when was the last time they named Britain's national champion?

They don't focus on the gaming side, it is the hobbiest they are solely focussed on.

Within 5 years Warhammer Models Inc. will be exactly like Airfix, Revell and Tamyia. Get used to it.

That would be fine, we still have PP and other systems spread across many interests for gaming.

Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years.

Their last annual report was not great; while still profitable, those profits have dropped sharply. 'They''re making money' will be true until they start losing money, and it's best not to wait for that to happen before addressing the decline.

As for changing the rules, they'll probably never do it. There are plenty of other issues they can tackle, and rules quality is one they seem to be particularly blind to, which seems fair; things like releases and pricing are more likely to be the crucial issues, since nobody cared about crappy rules until they started caring about other things. One could argue, though, that 40k's reputation has dropped to the point where the quality of the game actually matters.

Even if they did decide to overhaul the rules though, I doubt they could. They chased out all their game designers; do the ascended fanboys staffing the studio actually know how to do that job? They were hired to iterate on 3rd ed 40k, not to write games from scratch. Jervis has some good creations in his history, but he gives the impression of an almost-retired man with no appetite for a large design project, and certainly no need to build up his CV. So would they bring in new talent? Do they know what it looks like? Who at GW knows how to hire a designer?

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years

I am sure there are many companies that could be quoted as having gone out of business because things are "good enough." A lack of change leads to many business failures, and GW shows this vital error in its lack of ability or desire to change. They have been resting on their laurels; they don't even acknowledge competition because they believe their customers belong to them.

I bet Blockbuster execs wonder what could have been, too.

 Moktor wrote:

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years

I am sure there are many companies that could be quoted as having gone out of business because things are "good enough." A lack of change leads to many business failures, and GW shows this vital error in its lack of ability or desire to change. They have been resting on their laurels; they don't even acknowledge competition because they believe their customers belong to them.

I bet Blockbuster execs wonder what could have been, too.

It comes down to the disease in British industry, all management thinking is short term, maximising the current quarters results for the current quarters personal bonus. Very little long term planning exists because if longer term goals affect short term profits it is discarded, especially if it means that targets are not met and bonuses/dividends are at risk.
I have seen much larger industries in the UK die because of this short sightedness.

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years

Their competitors are already hands down beating GW on the rules front. Their competitors are growing while GW is shrinking. GWs main advantage at this point is their market share - once they lose that (and they are doing) then there will be absolutely no reason to go with GW over one of their competitors.

I think change is inevitable but I also subscribe to the notion that GW as it is will die and the IP will be bought before the rules change.

Little things really irritate me at the moment, things like Slow and Purposeful giving Relentless as well. Means I always have to look up that rule. It's clunky. Having said that, I've never played any other tabletop games so I don't know how good it could be.

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years

Because if they made a better product, they could make even more money.

Good question. Rumor is there were those on the inside pushing for a rules-redo, Andy Chambers and Rick Priestley, and look what happened to them. Certainly the current company policy is that they are a model company first; besides, changing the core rules would likely alienate as many current players as appease old/new players. And change to what? There are as many answers to that question as there are disaffected players.

But change could be in the wind. GW will react to ever shrinking profits, and falling shock price. Question is, when, and will it be to late. Is it already too late?

I predict that if the new CEO doesn't throw his/her weight behind a core rules redo after the current run of Codices, the company will die.

The current rules writers don't appear to be up to anything more than refreshing the existing rules - the last person who actually wrote a New Games Workshop Game was Phil Kelly.

The game was Dreadfleet.

Now, I think Dreadfleet is OK, as far it goes, though they way they marketed and sold it was beyond dumb. Many other people loathed it. GW retreated entirely from making new games.

GW's actual games designers have quit and gone to other companies, or in Jervis' case stayed at GW and still written rules for other companies. For whatever reason he appears to be willing to put up with the status quo of his (very good) Epic and Bloodbowl systems being on permanent hiatus.

Who else is going to write a new game from the ground up?

A "redo" will be an impressive thing for them to do but, unlikely.

If the rules are sufficiently different, all codex's would be un-usable and most armies would go on hold until people had rules for their armies.
An immediate massive FAQ would have to be put out for all armies if sales were to continue (painful but doable).

Tweaks to "special rules", some core mechanic re-thinking and an across the board points cost change for all units would have to be done (based on special rules and mechanic changes).

Things have become more modular in the rules so it is easier to change things which seems all the more unlikely substantial changes would be made.

 Daedleh wrote:

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years

Their competitors are already hands down beating GW on the rules front. Their competitors are growing while GW is shrinking. GWs main advantage at this point is their market share - once they lose that (and they are doing) then there will be absolutely no reason to go with GW over one of their competitors.

To be perfectly fair, one could prefer GW's miniatures for a variety of quality/aesthetic reasons. I don't personally like many of them, but it takes all kinds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talizvar wrote:
A "redo" will be an impressive thing for them to do but, unlikely.

If the rules are sufficiently different, all codex's would be un-usable and most armies would go on hold until people had rules for their armies.
An immediate massive FAQ would have to be put out for all armies if sales were to continue (painful but doable).

Tweaks to "special rules", some core mechanic re-thinking and an across the board points cost change for all units would have to be done (based on special rules and mechanic changes).

Things have become more modular in the rules so it is easier to change things which seems all the more unlikely substantial changes would be made.

This is the biggest reason for why the current incarnation of GW will never initiate a systemic rules overhaul. It is a proposition fraught with A) a gack-load of work and B) a gack-load of risk. Right now, GW is adverse to both. GW is looking to maximize the return on a minimum amount of effort. Tom Kirby is, ironically, incredibly risk adverse.

If GW overhauled the rules, it could lose customers. If the rules for all of the factions were not updated at once, the company could alienate customers who can't play the game now. Customers could also dislike the new rules and stop playing the game. Of course, this is ironic because GW says the game rules aren't important, right. If the rules don't matter, if customers only buy models for display, what is the risk in giving the rules a massive overhaul?

The reality is that the game rules are very important with respect to driving sales, so important that GW has blatantly manipulated the rules to drive sales, arguably on a regular basis. Writing good rules takes work, and GW, as an organization, seems to take its customers for granted. From that perspective, investing too heavily into game design is a waste of resources.

The last time they shook up the rules they had the "Black Codex" in the back of the 3rd edition rulebook that had updated rules for everyone to get you by until an update could be done.

There is one major issue with them doing that again: They operate slowly with updates. Instead of doing what PP does where everything had an update for MkII and then each new release for a game gave something to everyone, GW updates everything individually.

That's the first thing they'd need to stop. Stop making new models (updates to old kits are fine) and update everything to 8th edition (or whatever), then do supplements that add things for every army along with the models, instead of a bunch of models for Army X's new codex, then a bunch of models for Army Y, etc.

Such a thing goes against how GW wants to operate though, with models driving everything else, because god forbid that means there might be some time without new models being made! HORROR!

1 rule book, 1 codex per army, i don't see how that is a "miriad of books" (not a complaint at you, but that concept as a whole) and when GW refines the rules down, people will start whining about it being too simple. People love to complain, arguably, GW has been making 40k simpler since 5th, no more area terrain to name one.

 Achaylus72 wrote:
Here is the brutal truth, GW is in the process of a massive transformation.

Within 5 years GW will rename itself Warhammer Models Inc.

GW or from this point Warhammer Models Inc. is getting out of the gaming industry altogether.

Warhammer Models Inc. main function is to sell to Hobbiests to come into the store, purchase what they need, then at home, build, paint and then put up on display the modeler's new unit.

If I am wrong when was the last time GW through its WD magazine focused on tournaments, when was the last time they named Britain's national champion?

They don't focus on the gaming side, it is the hobbiest they are solely focussed on.

Within 5 years Warhammer Models Inc. will be exactly like Airfix, Revell and Tamyia. Get used to it.

An interesting idea, and one that was completely unthinkable even three years ago. I think they're in for a rude awakening if they do, though.

 Brennonjw wrote:
1 rule book, 1 codex per army, i don't see how that is a "miriad of books" (not a complaint at you, but that concept as a whole) and when GW refines the rules down, people will start whining about it being too simple. People love to complain, arguably, GW has been making 40k simpler since 5th, no more area terrain to name one.

The issue is that there are months between codex releases, which hurts balance overall. They should freeze the actual units at a certain part, update everything and provide straight updates for all current units, and then put out supplements that update everything with a couple of new things, instead of a codex a month where somebody has to wait a year for an update because there are a dozen or more factions.

For instance in the months leading up to a revamped edition, there should be no new models released, just redone old sculpts and cosmetic additions (e.g. shoulder pads/iconography). Then the new edition launches with a book that has basic army lists for everything that has been released up until now that make playable, balanced armies. Supplements then add to it, e.g. a book adds the SM Centurions, the Riptide, the Wraithknight, etc. (a unit or two for everybody) with models, but it doesn't invalidate the "black codex" that has the basic rules for everyone. The limited edition codexes then become your fluff/background bibles (there would be a little bit in the black codex for everyone) with lots of cool extras to justify a "collector's" price.

Most other games out there have systems in place to introduce new models without anythink like a codex release. Interestingly enough rumours point to the next release being nids with rules in the box so maybe GW is learning.

This is important thought as it means a core rules update doesn't have to be done with one hand tied behind your back. Having to write rules that older codexs are still compatible with is just pointless.

I really want to see GW take a pag out of Spartan Game's book. When they released their 2.0 versions of their games they pulled in a ton of community playtesters and spent ages making sure everything was balanced. They also told us it was coming ages before the official announcment. When it hit there where army lists put up online for free with every single unit in the game being updated. They took a game almost as poorly balanced and wonky as 40k and completely fixed it.
The result of that was me waiting 2 weeks for my order because even though I preordered a month out I was so far down the waiting list my book didn't arrive until the 3rd shipment my local retailer received. It outsold 40k 7th 7 to 1 when they where released within a week of each other.
That to me says everything.

ntw3001 wrote:

 mitch_rifle wrote:
Why though?

there making money and paying their investors dividends

Why foolishly spend money or put effort into it? people having been buying it for thirty odd years.

Their last annual report was not great; while still profitable, those profits have dropped sharply. 'They''re making money' will be true until they start losing money, and it's best not to wait for that to happen before addressing the decline.

As for changing the rules, they'll probably never do it. There are plenty of other issues they can tackle, and rules quality is one they seem to be particularly blind to, which seems fair; things like releases and pricing are more likely to be the crucial issues, since nobody cared about crappy rules until they started caring about other things. One could argue, though, that 40k's reputation has dropped to the point where the quality of the game actually matters.

Even if they did decide to overhaul the rules though, I doubt they could. They chased out all their game designers; do the ascended fanboys staffing the studio actually know how to do that job? They were hired to iterate on 3rd ed 40k, not to write games from scratch. Jervis has some good creations in his history, but he gives the impression of an almost-retired man with no appetite for a large design project, and certainly no need to build up his CV. So would they bring in new talent? Do they know what it looks like? Who at GW knows how to hire a designer?

Yes they posted a profit, an operational profit, not a sales profit.

Sales retracted globally by 11+ million pounds, meaning to post any profit they had to gut more than 11+ million pounds out of the operational side of it.

On another thread I have indicated that GW is now entrenched in a policy regime of first act to post profits is to cut costs from their operational side rather than trying to sell more product.

Also I have stated that GW in the near future is getting out of the gaming side, it will solely concentrate on the hobby side.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Interestingly enough rumours point to the next release being nids with rules in the box so maybe GW is learning.

Didn't they do that with the eagle-cannon and other emplacements last year?
They could even post them on the website, so people could check the rules before buying. Like they used to do, before the sales-only site overhaul.
They may be learning, but in such a disjointed and nonsensical manner.

 Achaylus72 wrote:

If I am wrong when was the last time GW through its WD magazine focused on tournaments, when was the last time they named Britain's national champion?

They don't focus on the gaming side, it is the hobbiest they are solely focussed on.

Did you ever think that it's because most people don't give a crap about who won the tournaments ?

I've been playing 40K for at least 20 years now. Not once has another player asked me about Britain's National Champion, or who won the Golden Demon, or who I favored to place. It's not a sport.

Most valuable White Dwarfs are the ones with rules, templates for building things, articles about buildinging things. etc...

 adamsouza wrote:

 Achaylus72 wrote:

If I am wrong when was the last time GW through its WD magazine focused on tournaments, when was the last time they named Britain's national champion?

They don't focus on the gaming side, it is the hobbiest they are solely focussed on.

Did you ever think that it's because most people don't give a crap about who won the tournaments ?

I've been playing 40K for at least 20 years now. Not once has another player asked me about Britain's National Champion, or who won the Golden Demon, or who I favored to place. It's not a sport.

Most valuable White Dwarfs are the ones with rules, templates for building things, articles about buildinging things. etc...

Got any numbers to back up those claims of yours that most people aren't interested in the competitive side? Because you and your gaming group don't constitute "most people" by any stretch of the imagination.

And to contradict your anecdote with my own, back when GW had an actual official competitive scene, my gaming group was very interested in who won which tournament and with what, especially because we had groups of players travelling internationally to participate in those tournaments.