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 Peregrine wrote:
One of them involves selling a finished product and not upsetting your customers. The other involves selling a defective product, getting bad PR and potentially losing customers who won't make the mistake of buying your products again, and hoping to salvage the situation at some future point. I think it should be obvious which is the correct choice.

If GW's financials are down in April you can talk about "correct" - until then you need to accept that your little snowflake preferences are contravened by empirical evidence.

The things that make 40k a bad competitive game are a lack of cohesive, centralised yardsticks by which to measure unit/ wargear power and thus assign point costings. GW manifestly *can* make rules that function, because the ruleset they've put out functions in thousands of games every week.

And those things are bad for casual/narrative/whatever games as well. This is not a case of GW choosing to make a better casual/narrative game at the expense of competitive play, it's GW failing at game design.

... with respect to point costings, which is something GW have needed to get a grip on for several editions now. The problem, in my view, is that there's never been any desire in the design philosophy to develop a central framework against which the "power" of units and wargear can be measured.

The fact remains that 40k is a stable game system 99% of the time, so whatever incompetence is betrayed by their inaction on points balance is not pervasive enough to prevent the game from functioning.

It's still a design failure. If A is simply better than B then you have a failure of design, because auto-take and never-take options are bad. Whatever the magnitude of the failure's impact on the game as a whole it's still incompetent design. Good game designers would not have produced grav weapons.

A is a new wargear item, an effective weapon useful against most targets. B is a legacy wargear item that sucks balls in the majority of situations but was spammed regardless because it allowed high-S shots at 48" range. A was not created to supplant B, but it turns out that's what's happened (except B is nowhere near as useful against GEQ infantry at range and is only marginally more effective against vehicles in practice).

This is a "design failure", somehow.

"Never-take" options aren't a big deal if you're only including them for legacy reasons. 2+/5++ Terminators have been useless since at least 5th Edition, if not earlier, yet they still keep getting into the Codex.

Manifestly untrue. Skyrim was abominable at launch, and for the first year after release. There are still bugs in the game now after nearly 6 years. If what you're saying is true then Fallout 4's release should've bankrupted Bethesda. Is that what happened?

That's a blatant straw man. I never said it would destroy the company, I said that it generates bad PR and drives away customers. And it does

 Melissia wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Because if an option is just plain bad and obsolete then it should be removed from the game to simplify the rules.

Taking this to its logical extreme: Therefor, we should play chess instead of 40k.

This is disingenuous, sorry. Of course is impossible all the options will be equal, but a good game require them to fall into a reasonable interval.
I fail to understand how this can contribute to a discussion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BBAP wrote:


... with respect to point costings, which is something GW have needed to get a grip on for several editions now. The problem, in my view, is that there's never been any desire in the design philosophy to develop a central framework against which the "power" of units and wargear can be measured.

The fact remains that 40k is a stable game system 99% of the time, so whatever incompetence is betrayed by their inaction on points balance is not pervasive enough to prevent the game from functioning.

Of all the things you posted in this thread, this is the most jarring to me. Point costs is part of the rule and its bad execution one of the reasons the rules suck.
You are running in circles doing everything to avoid this point but is still there.

A is a new wargear item, an effective weapon useful against most targets. B is a legacy wargear item that sucks balls in the majority of situations but was spammed regardless because it allowed high-S shots at 48" range. A was not created to supplant B, but it turns out that's what's happened (except B is nowhere near as useful against GEQ infantry at range and is only marginally more effective against vehicles in practice).

This is a "design failure", somehow.

Yes. A design success would have been give flakk automatically to such weapon and/or reduce its point cost. Is not rocket science.
Again, this is so simple and straightforward that should not normally give space to discussion.
Also, Grav is wrong on many levels, included conceptually.

Here I was specifically referring to your naive whingeing about the lack of benefit to consumers. GW doesn't exist to benefit you. No private company does. They exist to derive profit from operations. The "incompetence" is dealt with elsewhere.

You mean is dealt with dying games that lose steam in a couple of editions because the customers are tired of exploitation? Then such game is deleted and replaced with something different (and dumbed down) that breaks the player base, along with the squatting of models and whole armies?
Dealt in this way? This is what you want for 40k?

No, but the fact a game has little competitive merit likewise doesn't mean it has no merit at all. The fact remains that no matter how hard you sperg about incompetence or your lack of faith in GW, 40k is a stable game system, barring a few oversights. it runs perfectly well 99% of the time, and what issues there are can be worked around until they're FAQed.

I would be curios to know what makes 40k "stable". What does "stable" means in this context? And is more important than "balanced", "straightforward" or whatever else?
Also, what, as an example , made Thousand Sons pre-last 2 chaos box worthy of be deployed (or not)? Would a FAQ or errata have changed that? How?

My comment about D&D was specifically regarding the attitude with which the game is approached - that is, as a way to nerd out of a weekend around a table with a handful of friends. Competition is secondary to the game itself, the point of which is to have a laugh and try not to get your toon killed too much. 40k doesn't include the RPG stuff because it's not an RPG. It's a miniature wargame. The narrative is a backdrop to the game, not a part of it.

This invalidates your point, you know it, right?

"Miniature wargames" are not intended to be something you "nerd out a weekend around a table with a handful of friends". GW/Warhammer has been the only "miniature wargame" that I am aware of, barring the primitive original historical games that pioneered the genre in the 70s, that was not intended to be an actual wargame but some sort of pseudo-roleplaying game with miniature armies.

That's not exactly a laurel. Most other wargames can strike a balance between competitive and casual play by having solid rules with an actual framework that can be applied to either. Warhammer has been the exception, the one that chooses to do only one thing (poorly) and as a result do everything worse.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
This is disingenuous, sorry.

No, it is not. "Bad options should be removed" has been an argument used in the past by Peregrine to argue to removing entire armies at a time. Orks and Tyranids and Chaos Daemons, in his opinion stated previously? They're bad, so remove them entirely instead of trying to fix them.

The "It's bad therefor remove it" argument nothing but an exceedingly precise form of intellectual laziness, when you also instead have the option to, you know, FIX the bad thing instead of removing it entirely. Removal should be an option of last resort, not the first choice of the game designer.

 Melissia wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
This is disingenuous, sorry.

No, it is not. "Bad options should be removed" has been an argument used in the past by Peregrine to argue to removing entire armies at a time. Orks and Tyranids and Chaos Daemons, in his opinion stated previously? They're bad, so remove them entirely instead of trying to fix them.

The "It's bad therefor remove it" argument nothing but an exceedingly precise form of intellectual laziness, when you also instead have the option to, you know, FIX the bad thing instead of removing it entirely. Removal should be an option of last resort, not the first choice of the game designer.

I took it as an Reductio ad absurdum to show that things should be fixed to make them not pointless - but if it is like you said, I can see your point.
My apologies.

 Melissia wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
This is disingenuous, sorry.

No, it is not. "Bad options should be removed" has been an argument used in the past by Peregrine to argue to removing entire armies at a time. Orks and Tyranids and Chaos Daemons, in his opinion stated previously? They're bad, so remove them entirely instead of trying to fix them.

The "It's bad therefor remove it" argument nothing but an exceedingly precise form of intellectual laziness, when you also instead have the option to, you know, FIX the bad thing instead of removing it entirely. Removal should be an option of last resort, not the first choice of the game designer.

I think that you took the quoted statement to an extent that was not intended by the author. My take on the statement in question was that Peregrine was stating that there should be no "bad" options, implying that all options should be equally utile, situationally speaking.

An example would be to take the "bad" missile launcher and give it free flak missiles. This makes a currently "bad' weapon option and creates more utility for the cost of the item, thus making it a more attractive option to the universal grav cannon.

Obviously point-balancing would go a long way towards making things work better as well.

My opinion is that GW progresses the game through a tac-on approach, not through any intelligent game design philosophy. Each new unit/wargear option is just created in a silo and thrown into the game without any real thought on how the rules for these new game constructs will interact with currently existing items. That is bad game development and just plain bad business in general. I posit that it is possible to create new content without breaking the old content, if the will exists to do so; other companies seem capable doing this.

I agree with the conceit that GW needs better writers or at least needs to employ one or more trained technical writers of sufficient skill to take the poorly written product that the game designers come up with and create something that looks better than what monkeys fling at walls.

 agnosto wrote:
think that you took the quoted statement to an extent that was not intended by the author.
[snip].

How the hell did you get any of that from "it should be removed from the game to simplify the rules"?

 Melissia wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
think that you took the quoted statement to an extent that was not intended by the author.
[snip].

How the hell did you get any of that from "it should be removed from the game to simplify the rules"?

I read the whole thread and was therefore able to draw a reasonable conclusion based upon the entirety of the conversation rather than the single statement, taken in a vacuum and examined by itself.

To paraphrase the discussion between Peregrine and BBAP:
1. The rules suck
2. No, just some options are better than others, some weapons are obsolete
3. If something's obsolete, it needs to go so the game would be simpler
...

There was some other discussion in there too.

I read the thread, too, and again, I disagree with your conclusions. Especially since the poster in question has argued in the past that entire factions should be removed-- Tyranids and Chaos Daemons, specifically-- because they aren't very good at shooting.

Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it should be removed. It should be altered to make it not obsolete. If missile launchers suck, then they can be changed to not suck. Removing them instead of changing them-- and that's exactly what he has been suggesting-- removes an aspect of the game that adds more depth and flavor to it. If it's obsolete because another item has been added that's overpowered, lke Grav weapons, then another option is to nerf grav weapons, with the simplest way to do so being by making them more expensive. If a unit is bad because, for example, it is an overly fragile assault unit, then it needs to be made less fragile, made faster, be able to assault out of stealth or deep strike, or be given a transport able to deliver it to close combat-- something to make it useful... as opposed to the lazy option of just removing it entirely.

 Melissia wrote:
I read the thread, too, and again, I disagree with your conclusions. Especially since the poster in question has argued in the past that entire factions should be removed-- Tyranids and Chaos Daemons, specifically-- because they aren't very good at shooting.

Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it should be removed. It should be altered to make it not obsolete. If missile launchers suck, then they can be changed to not suck. Removing them instead of changing them-- and that's exactly what he has been suggesting-- removes an aspect of the game that adds more depth and flavor to it. If it's obsolete because another item has been added that's overpowered, lke Grav weapons, then another option is to nerf grav weapons, with the simplest way to do so being by making them more expensive. If a unit is bad because, for example, it is an overly fragile assault unit, then it needs to be made less fragile, made faster, be able to assault out of stealth or deep strike, or be given a transport able to deliver it to close combat-- something to make it useful... as opposed to the lazy option of just removing it entirely.

Thus the point to my additions, in my first post which mirrors your own opinions. I agreed with Peregrine's comment in part and just added, "or make it not obsolete." I would argue that if the game designers make something obsolete, by design or omission, it doesn't add depth or flavor because no one will ever use it, it then just becomes some artifice that takes up space. The reality is that GW's game designers did nothing to make the humble missile launcher an attractive weapons choice and it effectively became obsolete. In a perfect world they would make it suck less or make grav suck a little but they didn't do either so there's really no point to it existing at all in the game now.

I would also argue that the laziest option it to do nothing as opposed to removing it or updating it, which is exactly what was done.

And yet that "or fix it" was never actually stated in the post I was responding to, making your objection to my post completely pointless.

 Melissia wrote:
I read the thread, too, and again, I disagree with your conclusions. Especially since the poster in question has argued in the past that entire factions should be removed-- Tyranids and Chaos Daemons, specifically-- because they aren't very good at shooting.

False. He specifically argued that Tyranids should be removed for being a poor concept, and Daemons should exist solely as support for other Chaos forces.

Just because something is obsolete doesn't mean it should be removed. It should be altered to make it not obsolete. If missile launchers suck, then they can be changed to not suck. Removing them instead of changing them-- and that's exactly what he has been suggesting-- removes an aspect of the game that adds more depth and flavor to it. If it's obsolete because another item has been added that's overpowered, lke Grav weapons, then another option is to nerf grav weapons, with the simplest way to do so being by making them more expensive. If a unit is bad because, for example, it is an overly fragile assault unit, then it needs to be made less fragile, made faster, be able to assault out of stealth or deep strike, or be given a transport able to deliver it to close combat-- something to make it useful... as opposed to the lazy option of just removing it entirely.

I have no arguments here. And I don't believe anybody is seriously advocating removing missile launchers. This thread took a turn into "worst logical extreme" territory a while ago.

 BBAP wrote:

If GW's financials are down in April you can talk about "correct" - until then you need to accept that your little snowflake preferences are contravened by empirical evidence.

Just because GW is making $3 million with poor rules doesn't mean they couldn't be making $5 million with good rules. (These numbers are made up, btw)

[

... with respect to point costings, which is something GW have needed to get a grip on for several editions now. The problem, in my view, is that there's never been any desire in the design philosophy to develop a central framework against which the "power" of units and wargear can be measured.

The fact remains that 40k is a stable game system 99% of the time, so whatever incompetence is betrayed by their inaction on points balance is not pervasive enough to prevent the game from functioning.

Then why do the same 3 or so armies keep winning all of the tournaments? Why did 40k require such a huge FAQ? Why are systems like ITC so popular? Why is the YMDC so popular?

It'is a new wargear item, an effective weapon useful against most targets. B is a legacy wargear item that sucks balls in the majority of situations but was spammed regardless because it allowed high-S shots at 48" range. A was not created to supplant B, but it turns out that's what's happened (except B is nowhere near as useful against GEQ infantry at range and is only marginally more effective against vehicles in practice).

This is a "design failure", somehow.

"Never-take" options aren't a big deal if you're only including them for legacy reasons. 2+/5++ Terminators have been useless since at least 5th Edition, if not earlier, yet they still keep getting into the Codex.\

What kind of wargame has the litany of useless wargear and unit options that 40k has? Most well written wargames have a place for most units even if not all of them are optimal for high end play. Further, how is it -not- a failure of game design that the newer weapons make the older ones useless? Why even include the old weapons if they are not intended to be used?

Here I was specifically referring to your naive whingeing about the lack of benefit to consumers. GW doesn't exist to benefit you. No private company does. They exist to derive profit from operations. The "incompetence" is dealt with elsewhere.

And incompetent game design is inhibitive towards this goal. "GW making money" and "GW writing good rulesets" aren't two mutually exclusive ideas. In fact, the latter would benefit the former.

The fast food analogy is entirely fallacious, unless you think burgers and steaks are an equivalent product in which case I don't know what to tell you. Skyrim is Skyrim, whether Bethesda choose to playtest the bugs away before releasing it or they choose to dump the beta build and patch as necessary. The end product is still the same regardless of how you get there.

As for your sad little jibe - either you're buying GW products in spite of their business practises, in which case your standards are exactly as "low" as mine, or you're not, in which case GW has no reason to listen to your whining.

Making poor quality products only to promise to fix them later is poor business practice. It killed Evolve and it is likely costing Bethesda sales. Also, why does it matter that Games Workshop won't read what is written on some internet forum? If that somehow invalidates his argument then wouldn't that also equally invalidate yours? I see Games Workshop defenders roll out this counter argument everytime they have nothing of value to say in response so they just resort to the same tired tactic. It's the same as people replying with "Vote with your wallet" and "Caveat emptor" when people criticize other bad business practices. Just because a corporate entity won't recognize a criticism does not mean the criticism has no value.

No, but the fact a game has little competitive merit likewise doesn't mean it has no merit at all. The fact remains that no matter how hard you sperg about incompetence or your lack of faith in GW, 40k is a stable game system, barring a few oversights. it runs perfectly well 99% of the time, and what issues there are can be worked around until they're FAQed.

Ah, yes, personal attacks. The last defense of someone with no argument. You keep repeating this same counterargument but that doesn't make it any more true.

My comment about D&D was specifically regarding the attitude with which the game is approached - that is, as a way to nerd out of a weekend around a table with a handful of friends. Competition is secondary to the game itself, the point of which is to have a laugh and try not to get your toon killed too much. 40k doesn't include the RPG stuff because it's not an RPG. It's a miniature wargame. The narrative is a backdrop to the game, not a part of it.

How is a poorly written ruleset more conducive to this kind of gaming than a well written one?

Was gonna respond but actually, screw it, this is really off topic and distracting from the thread in general.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
While this might be another bit of off-topic, I suppose...

 BBAP wrote:
My comment about D&D was specifically regarding the attitude with which the game is approached - that is, as a way to nerd out of a weekend around a table with a handful of friends. Competition is secondary to the game itself, the point of which is to have a laugh and try not to get your toon killed too much

... if that's how you play DnD, I'm glad I don't play in your games because they sound really damn lame. A great many people take roleplaying in general and DnD in specific rather seriously, as opposed to than just playing it to "have a laugh" as if it's all one big joke. Including WotC.

 Melissia wrote:
Was gonna respond but actually, screw it, this is really off topic and distracting from the thread in general.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
While this might be another bit of off-topic, I suppose...

 BBAP wrote:
My comment about D&D was specifically regarding the attitude with which the game is approached - that is, as a way to nerd out of a weekend around a table with a handful of friends. Competition is secondary to the game itself, the point of which is to have a laugh and try not to get your toon killed too much

... if that's how you play DnD, I'm glad I don't play in your games because they sound really damn lame. A great many people take roleplaying in general and DnD in specific rather seriously, as opposed to than just playing it to "have a laugh" as if it's all one big joke. Including WotC.

I think he meant you can take it seriously without being competitve. In fact, at least in my experience, munchkining is bad.

 Melissia wrote:
And yet that "or fix it" was never actually stated in the post I was responding to, making your objection to my post completely pointless.

So people have to have a "point" in your world in order to have a conversation? OK. I wasn't trying to be argumentative, I made a personal observation, you didn't agree with it, there was no name calling or "I'm right, you're wrong" exchange intended. I didn't know you're an argumentative person, apologies for interacting with you at all, have a pleasant day.

Maybe you shouldn't be objecting to my post if you aren't interested in the argument at hand.

 BBAP wrote:
Not everyone is as high-strung and entitled as you are.

And this says it all: I'm "high-strung and entitled" for expecting a product that I just paid quite a bit of money for to work properly. There's no point in addressing any of your other blatant GW apologism because you might as well be a paid member of their PR department.

 Verviedi wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I read the thread, too, and again, I disagree with your conclusions. Especially since the poster in question has argued in the past that entire factions should be removed-- Tyranids and Chaos Daemons, specifically-- because they aren't very good at shooting.

False. He specifically argued that Tyranids should be removed for being a poor concept, and Daemons should exist solely as support for other Chaos forces.

Exactly. My dislike for those factions has nothing to do with their shooting power, it's about fluff concepts. I have no problem with orks existing, despite their melee focus and mediocre shooting ability.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
IJust because something is obsolete doesn't mean it should be removed. It should be altered to make it not obsolete. If missile launchers suck, then they can be changed to not suck.

Well yes, that's what should be done. I was saying "just remove them" based on the premise stated by the person I was responding to: that missile launchers are obsolete and have been replaced by grav, and will not be getting a buff because of that "obsolete" status. If something is obsolete and you no longer want to make it a supported part of the game then yes, it should be removed. Rules that add complexity without adding any strategic depth (since nobody will take an obsolete option unless they're a clueless newbie) are bad game design.

(And of course, speaking of removing stuff, grav is conceptually broken and should be the weapon to be removed, not missile launchers. Remove grav, use the models as alternate plasma guns/plasma cannons, problem solved.)

Why do people think "casual" is an excuse for badly written rules. They seem to frequently misconstrue the two.
I'm a casual player through and through, i play fluffy lists, I am totally adverse to the hyper competitive play. (not saying hyper competitive is bad, that mentality is just as valid as a casual one.)
But I still want well written rules.

no one says "well i just play for fun, so the rules can be full of contradictions and situations where the rules simply don't work from one book to another."

casual doesn't mean ok with badly written rules. Well written and structured rules make the game more enjoyable for casual players too.


*Edit* I also find it funny that the one person who thinks the rules are so well written and just fine is the one calling everyone else who disagrees a special snowflake. No friend, you're the odd-man out here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 agnosto wrote:

My opinion is that GW progresses the game through a tac-on approach, not through any intelligent game design philosophy. Each new unit/wargear option is just created in a silo and thrown into the game without any real thought on how the rules for these new game constructs will interact with currently existing items. That is bad game development and just plain bad business in general. I posit that it is possible to create new content without breaking the old content, if the will exists to do so; other companies seem capable doing this.

I agree with this too.
They seem to have the writers write totally detached from all other rules in the game, as if they don't read the main rulebook or any other codex when they write. Just "oh this is neat, add it" without looking at it in context or having any overall design goal.

This is why most design teams have a QC group. A person or people who review all the writing and go "hey bob, your rule here doesn't work with jim's rule over in this book." or "this conflicts with page 12 of the main rulebook."

 Melissia wrote:
Maybe you shouldn't be objecting to my post if you aren't interested in the argument at hand.

Off topic but not everything is an objection and not everything is an argument. Adults can, and often do, have rational discussions without resorting to theatrics, present federal leadership aside.

 agnosto wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Maybe you shouldn't be objecting to my post if you aren't interested in the argument at hand.

Off topic but not everything is an objection and not everything is an argument. Adults can, and often do, have rational discussions without resorting to theatrics, present federal leadership aside.

If you aren't making an argument about the topic at hand, then you're really not contributing at all and are just spamming.

I quote:

ar·gu·ment
ˈärɡyəmənt/
noun
a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.

Your statement is a totally irrelevant non-response to my post.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
I was saying "just remove them" based on the premise stated by the person I was responding to: that missile launchers are obsolete and have been replaced by grav, and will not be getting a buff because of that "obsolete" status. If something is obsolete and you no longer want to make it a supported part of the game then yes, it should be removed. Rules that add complexity without adding any strategic depth (since nobody will take an obsolete option unless they're a clueless newbie) are bad game design.

Pretty sure we just have such wildly divergent writing styles that I just don't get your intended meaning out of your posts half the time even when I read them several times over. Either way, I'll take your word for it.

 Melissia wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Maybe you shouldn't be objecting to my post if you aren't interested in the argument at hand.

Off topic but not everything is an objection and not everything is an argument. Adults can, and often do, have rational discussions without resorting to theatrics, present federal leadership aside.

If you aren't making an argument about the topic at hand, then you're really not contributing at all and are just spamming.

I quote:

ar·gu·ment
ˈärɡyəmənt/
noun
a reason or set of reasons given with the aim of persuading others that an action or idea is right or wrong.

Your statement is a totally irrelevant non-response to my post.

Last post so if you feel the need to have the final word, as seems to be your wont, be my guest.

dis·cus·sion
dəˈskəSH(ə)n/
noun
the action or process of talking about something, typically in order to reach a decision or to exchange ideas.

As in, this is a discussion board, not an argument board. If your sole purpose in communicating with other humans is to create an environment of right and wrong or pursue an adversarial dialog rather than facilitate an exchange of ideas, opinions, thoughts, all I can say is, that must make having a casual conversations with you very difficult.

My statement was relevant as I was expressing a personal opinion to which you, or others, may agree or disagree freely.

I'll leave this alone now as I feel that I've explained my thoughts sufficiently; whether you choose to accept my comments as the conversational statements they were intended to be is of course up to you.

[delete: off topic.]

True. It seems that several employees with a degree in English Language and Literature have written the rules over years.
But what degree and education should a gaming rule writer have?

You want the English Major. These are rules to a toy soldier game, not the flight operations manual of a 747. The rules should be engaging and accessible written.

But you also should have a team. A statistician to make everything work mathematically and a psychologist who understands player behaviours and motivations would be my first two additions.

Because of fluff, orks will never be competitive

 Asmodai wrote:
You want the English Major. These are rules to a toy soldier game, not the flight operations manual of a 747. The rules should be engaging and accessible written.

No you dont want engaging rules, you want engaging games. Rules and Novel are two different entities (And if you want fluff just add it under the rule in cursive text). Writing the rules in a novel way (which GW does) creates only problems because sometimes there is only one good way to easily describe a rule. But one rule of novel writing is not to repeat yourself. So instead of heaving clear written rules, you have convoluted ones, which mean the same but may be harder to grasp.

One example is if you have rules of the style "If model has status A, it gives it rule B", a rules writer would write them all down this way, but a novel writer would go with additional ones like "Under the circumstance that your model has status A, the model also gains the benefit of the rule B" or "The model gets the rule B only if it is currently under the influence of status A". All three mean the same thing but the first one is the one which is the most simple to grasp. In addition to that switching the writing of the same rule style, makes you think "wait a minute, there has to be a reason why it is written differently, lets reread it" (Which means you spend more time thinking about the rules). It also opens the gate for problems like writing errors if all rules are written similar you grasp an error easier then writing it all differently (It is one of the reason why as a programmer you should use coding guidelines, basically write the same stuff the same way because it helps to spot errors more easily).

In addition wasn't there a big Rules question last year with I think Khorn-Guys, which wouldn't have been a problem if they didn't write it in a novel style (I think they also missed a comma which changed the raw to something absurd).

But you also should have a team. A statistician to make everything work mathematically and a psychologist who understands player behaviors and motivations would be my first two additions.

The statistician is definitely a good start, the psychologist normally not so much, but in this days of 40k and AoS I think that it would also help (at least have someone think about it from this perspective).

Frankly I don't know how well it can all go considering the amount of material being dealt with and the constant release schedule and deadlines.

Even were they to be more competently lead and have enough staff to test stuff to some degree, it wouldn't be that much better unless they change the way and pace that the rules are delivered in the first place.

tarrox wrote:

 Asmodai wrote:
You want the English Major. These are rules to a toy soldier game, not the flight operations manual of a 747. The rules should be engaging and accessible written.

No you dont want engaging rules, you want engaging games. Rules and Novel are two different entities (And if you want fluff just add it under the rule in cursive text). Writing the rules in a novel way (which GW does) creates only problems because sometimes there is only one good way to easily describe a rule. But one rule of novel writing is not to repeat yourself. So instead of heaving clear written rules, you have convoluted ones, which mean the same but may be harder to grasp.

One example is if you have rules of the style "If model has status A, it gives it rule B", a rules writer would write them all down this way, but a novel writer would go with additional ones like "Under the circumstance that your model has status A, the model also gains the benefit of the rule B" or "The model gets the rule B only if it is currently under the influence of status A". All three mean the same thing but the first one is the one which is the most simple to grasp. In addition to that switching the writing of the same rule style, makes you think "wait a minute, there has to be a reason why it is written differently, lets reread it" (Which means you spend more time thinking about the rules). It also opens the gate for problems like writing errors if all rules are written similar you grasp an error easier then writing it all differently (It is one of the reason why as a programmer you should use coding guidelines, basically write the same stuff the same way because it helps to spot errors more easily).

In addition wasn't there a big Rules question last year with I think Khorn-Guys, which wouldn't have been a problem if they didn't write it in a novel style (I think they also missed a comma which changed the raw to something absurd).

If not an English major, then what field of study would produce a better-skilled person for writing clear and engaging rules?

But you also should have a team. A statistician to make everything work mathematically and a psychologist who understands player behaviors and motivations would be my first two additions.

The statistician is definitely a good start, the psychologist normally not so much, but in this days of 40k and AoS I think that it would also help (at least have someone think about it from this perspective).

To be clear, the psychologist would not be a therapist, they would be providing advice on how gamers think while playing the game.

Understanding how your gamers think is always beneficial when it comes to creating rules, since rules only exist in the minds of humans, writing them down is simply a reminder of what they are.

That would just be a waste of money. Understanding how a gamer works?

You just need people to write rules and playtesting.