I'd guess that once end times was mostly released they started work on it, maybe even before.
I know that some folks are going to say things like "they scribbled it on a napkin during lunch" just to be spiteful cause they feel wronged by GW, but I'd venture to guess they took their time and worked on this as they brought down the curtain on the old world if not before.
It was planned well in advance, and I think it paid off for them even if only by double tapping their customer base.
I think a single scroll doesn't take that much time. How many models come in a box? Fill it in minimum model per unit. Fill the weapons. Does the model look like it is strong or is the weapon brutal enough? Give it a better to wound. Is it heavily armored - better save. Does it look like it is slow? 4" of movement. Can it dig? Make it look like it can burrow by placing it in reserves. Do all the previous stats make it too weak compared to other models? Make it summonable or slap some re-rolls somewhere. It is just a guess but I also think that there wasn't that much time put in the model rules just because they represent the model and not so much its place in the rule framework as an abstract working piece. IMO, the game doesn't suffer from it, though. It somewhat falls in line with the "toolbox" definition given by some players.
"Here's a big pile of models with rules, some are more alike, some are very different. Have fun with them."
To be honest I think it took them longer than you would think. Those PDFs are far, far more balanced than any armybook they splurted out past 7th edition and their rules are more immersive and give better feel of the units than the old ones did.
Not sure about the core rules, but I assume that reducing all those unnecessary stats from previous editions into this streamlined, better form took some forethought. The core rules are solid in general, only need some more precise wording (like shooting in combat) and a little expansion (magic, cover saves from obstacles on the way). Although I am fairly sure they will release some magic expansion kit like the old magic cards, just available to various Alliances.
I'm a little baffled by your post, though, because on one hand you say that you expect serious answers and on the other you say that it took them about 4-5 days. If you're not trolling you might be uninformed, which is perfectly fine - you don't work at a game development studio, so let me catch the bait and tell you - playtesting takes months. Even GW, which is often accused of not doing playtests must have done at least weeks upon weeks of testing to get the stats, special rules and balance right (and I assure you, the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed). Developing rules also is a bit more than just "let's give them that" - it, again, takes a lot of testing in various scenarios and it also goes through intense filtration by other people who decide if it's okay or not.
Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?
Developing the rend mechanic or what avarge stats they want on troops could take them some time. But after they got that out doing the armies probabaly went very fast. The stupid addon rules either took them no time, which would tell a lot about the design team, or took them ages or was added at the very end by someone crazy like Jervis.
I think the most time they spent on warmachine and monsters of the old armies, and trying to fit them in with the new AoS stuff. Depending on the staff size probably a few months.
I wouldn't be surprised if these rules have been worked on, in one capacity or another, for years. The lead time on the models and books alone are probably over a year (new art, fiction, and visual design takes time), which suggests they've at least had these rules for that long - I doubt they just made the rules and sat on them for a year, doing absolutely no playtesting or revisions during this time.
If you are asking how long the initial draft took? Probably a few weeks, at the least, but I guarantee you, it looked nothing like it does now. I'm sure it was much longer and much more complicated initially. I wouldn't be surprised if they went through five or six different rulesets before deciding on refining AoS.
I'm guessing about a year. The warscrolls are fairly balanced for what each unit is. Writing a whole game rules and testing it takes longer than most think too.
AoS has been what games workshop wanted to have done for the last 4 to 5 years. There was never going to be a 9th. They only did 8th to fix the mess of 7th which held back AoS.
As for rules and how long it took. Long enough. The butthurt really is getting boring now
the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed
No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.
Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?
That's an oversimplification, and you know it. The content of your post makes it seem like you are just here to bash people who have low opinions of AoS. That may not be your intent, but that's what it comes across as.
In regards to the OP, its hard to tell. I could see them spending months discussing different ideas and stats and such, and I can also see the AoS design just being the first one they came up with. Once the 4-page rules were set the armies could easily be hammered out in a week, but again they may have spent time discussing and modifying. In short: we don't know how many documents preceded the ones we have. So I'd say between 2 weeks and 6 months.
Ashtastic wrote: I'm not at all surprised at the snark from some faces that can't seem to escape the AoS bards despite seemingly loathing it.
I find this hypocritical; it looks like you are using snark to jab at those who seem snarky to you. I'm counting three people in this thread alone taking shots (directly or implied) at people who dislike AoS or certain features of AoS (which does not automatically mean they loathe every aspect of it). Let's drop that line of discussion before it spirals into yet another pro-AoS vs anti-AoS debate that we have already seen too many of.
the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed
No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.
I'm basing my opinion off the leaked store tournament comp and Azyr comp. Yes, you are right, the base rules of AoS have no force composition so it's hard to tell the balance apart, but if those simple comps suddenly make the game more balanced than 8th ed ever was then I feel free to state that. Even the 2 pages long store tournament "errata" comp with army composition rules based on wounds suddenly made all the armies -very- similar in power level when you field the most optimized forces available in them.
Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?
That's an oversimplification, and you know it. The content of your post makes it seem like you are just here to bash people who have low opinions of AoS. That may not be your intent, but that's what it comes across as.
No, I was only bashing mindless haters who say stuff I quoted. I've seen a lot of those comments on this forum and, frankly, if someone believes he can do better, why hasn't he? AoS is selling, so what's barring him from making a better game? I have nothing against people who dislike the game - I don't like Bolt Action and it's okay, but I don't like when people just bash it for the sake of bashing and act like their subjective opinion is an objective truth when they rave on how terrible this game is, especially in threads where such comments aren't even called for or even were more inclined towards positive attitudes and yet those people had to crash it because, apparently, if they don't enjoy it, then noone should.
That being said, I think it's been going on for a long time now, although there could've been several totally different game drafts going on in last two years and AoS' rule set turned out to be the best one (to GW). It must've taken at least a couple months of fine-tuning, fiddling with the rules, finding the perfect spot for some rules and overall making (virtually) all the units viable. And the fluff must've been worked on for a long time as things like that don't just pop up overnight - not the artworks, the designs, the storyline, the campaigns. It was all deliberately planned by GW after all.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Let's drop that line of discussion before it spirals into yet another pro-AoS vs anti-AoS debate that we have already seen too many of.
This thread is simply flame-bait and it would be naive to think otherwise.
There will be posters who will realize that this has probably been in the pipeline for a while and wouldn't have just been tossed together over a weekend and on the other side ... well, what we have seen already.
the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed
No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.
I'm basing my opinion off the leaked store tournament comp and Azyr comp. Yes, you are right, the base rules of AoS have no force composition so it's hard to tell the balance apart, but if those simple comps suddenly make the game more balanced than 8th ed ever was then I feel free to state that. Even the 2 pages long store tournament "errata" comp with army composition rules based on wounds suddenly made all the armies -very- similar in power level when you field the most optimized forces available in them.
I do agree that certain comps do make AoS more balanced than 8th ever was (by a large margin), but the large number of comps that try and fail to produce a balanced games make it, in my view, unjustified to say that AoS is balanced without a great deal of effort. For example, at my FLGS Azyr comp has been abandoned because of how unbalanced it is. I would go further to say that any comp which has a "most optimized force" or even a handful isn't all that balanced--that's what we had in 8th. Wounds count suffers from this as well; stormvermin at 1 wound per model are better than skavenslaves at 1 wound per model. so why would a skaven player take the latter? I don't think GW designed or intended AoS to have balance or to facilitate people making their own comp systems since there simply isn't an easy way to do it.
Believe me, making a game, even as simple as AoS is much harder than you'd think and everyone who says "I could come up with better game" probably... should. Go, be the brilliant geniuses, come up with the game, write it down, put it on kickstarter and overthrow GW! I mean, you can do better than them, right?
That's an oversimplification, and you know it. The content of your post makes it seem like you are just here to bash people who have low opinions of AoS. That may not be your intent, but that's what it comes across as.
No, I was only bashing mindless haters who say stuff I quoted. I've seen a lot of those comments on this forum and, frankly, if someone believes he can do better, why hasn't he? AoS is selling, so what's barring him from making a better game? I have nothing against people who dislike the game - I don't like Bolt Action and it's okay, but I don't like when people just bash it for the sake of bashing and act like their subjective opinion is an objective truth when they rave on how terrible this game is, especially in threads where such comments aren't even called for or even were more inclined towards positive attitudes and yet those people had to crash it because, apparently, if they don't enjoy it, then noone should.
Fair enough, but from my perspective I see no one in this thread mindlessly hating AoS, and no one claiming that they could make a better ruleset. I don't feel like people saying development time was in the days are trolling or bashing; given some of the grey areas of rules and a low level of internal consistency (how many different rules for shields do we have?) it's not a stretch to suggest that they didn't do any playtesting, or simply not very much. A design team could conceivably have constructed AoS in 4-5 days, I don't personally think they did but that opinion doesn't really qualify as mindless hate. There ARE threads and posts like that (too many...) but I don't see them here.
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Ashtastic wrote: This thread is simply flame-bait and it would be naive to think otherwise.
If you do believe that, then given the response you made it seems like you feel the best response to flame-bait is flaming? I get that you radically disagree with the OP, but there's no need to take a negative tone because of that.
the balance is quite nice actually - definetely better than in 8th ed
No and no. That's not even a matter of opinion. There isn't balance in AoS because there is no baseline to balance against, unless you mean to suggest that every warscroll is relatively equal in power.
I think that's a very fair point.
What strikes me as actually taking quite a bit of time though is how all the units compare against one another in their design. I'm not talking about balance, but rather making units feel "right" with their stats and abilities. Not to mention they added rules for almost every existing model with all of its options including (as for Warriors of Chaos) their upgrade packs. So units like Warriors of Chaos, Blood Warriors, Putrid Blightkings, and Stormcast Liberators are all almost identical in model stats but then are differentiated through very thematic rules. I haven't had a chance to try every old unit (and a lot of them will likely be replaced/updated as AoS continues to update factions) but from all the ones I've tried and looked at everything just feels "right" to me.
And I personally doubt that took a short amount of time.
Only options I've found missing are goblins/night goblins with hand weapon and shield, warriors with great weapons, and mournfangs with great weapons.
4 out of five bazillions is pretty good.
I think putting together the basic feel for each army took some time. Like goblins being more brave at a distance, and orcs wanting to get up close, beastmen rapidly hoofing it across the table and so on.
After that, you'd need units within the list to be somewhat balanced to each other and the fluff, and then units between lists somewhat balanced as well.
All in all, I think the scrolls took a fair bit of work, more so than people gives them credit for.
So units like Warriors of Chaos, Blood Warriors, Putrid Blightkings, and Stormcast Liberators are all almost identical in model stats but then are differentiated through very thematic rules.
That is an intersting insight, wouldn't that make AoS a lot like W40k, where most armies played are some sort of marines with identical stats too and only difference being thematic rules?
Consider that the rules are a stripped down version of 40K with some WHFB elements mixed in.
Far more work had to be done in deciding what things to reject, rathe than inventing new ways of doing things. There was a minor change to stat lines that necessitated the writing of the war scrolls. This conversion could be done automatically using spreadsheet macros, if GW keep their unit data in a database rather than in paper form.
The special rules and fluff descriptions would take a lot more work, of course.
TheWaspinator wrote: Not long enough to notice that an army of a single Carrion breaks the sudden death rules.
That arguably doesn't work either RAW or RAI, since endure only applies to units which start on the battlefield and carrion must start above the battlefield which based on its swoop rule is clearly intended as a seperate gamestate.
techsoldaten wrote: My understanding is that it took a few years to get the rules / mechanics down to what they were.
This started as an exercise in reducing complexity for the overall ruleset, and took on a new life when the End Times came around.
But the AoS rules came first. There were a lot of other iterations of the ruleset before we ended up with what we have now.
That's how I could see it having taken a long time; multiple attempts that were discarded before the final iteration. The trick is where do we draw the theoretical line and say stuff on one side is a modification of existing rules, and stuff on the other side is AoS development. Ultimately if they knew what they wanted straight off then AoS would not have taken long, but as development goes that isn't always so clear (for anyone, not bashing GW here).
I think that when a rule or mechanic is spamed through different factions, like let say rend or how monster or machines are suppose to work, we got what the design team wanted at least most of the time, I doubt they checked how hard it is for a dward model to actualy hit something on a flying stand without a spear. Everything else was , imo, added later and never realy tested. So when SD mechanics work like GW wanted it to, and I will ignore how good or bad they are actualy, I doubt they designed them while thinking that one faction has one unit that can be on the table but totaly untargetable.
One thing I noticed was when the first AoS White Dwarf was released with that free model, the model has a copyright date of 2014. So they had the models for at least 6 months and if you combine that with fluff and artwork that happen before model are sculpted and cast it would need to be AT LEAST a year before we saw it.
When did End Times start? AoS would have been planned before that, and think how long that would have taken to write and develop... its definitely not the 4-5 days people have mentioned.
We get that some people don't like AoS but if you SERIOUSLY think it took 4-5 days to develop the game you are either trolling or have no idea what you are talking about.
Nerm86 wrote: One thing I noticed was when the first AoS White Dwarf was released with that free model, the model has a copyright date of 2014. So they had the models for at least 6 months and if you combine that with fluff and artwork that happen before model are sculpted and cast it would need to be AT LEAST a year before we saw it.
When did End Times start? AoS would have been planned before that, and think how long that would have taken to write and develop... its definitely not the 4-5 days people have mentioned.
We get that some people don't like AoS but if you SERIOUSLY think it took 4-5 days to develop the game you are either trolling or have no idea what you are talking about.
Just because the had the models & compyright doesn't mean they were developing the rules that entire time, or even most of that time. Its entirely possible they spent 4-5 days to make the rules in 2014 then spent a large amount of time designing the models (which are far more complex and well-done than the rules imo). Assume for a moment that they DID make the rules for AoS in 5 days. What sort of problems would you expect to see with that ruleset? Now look at the problems with the AoS ruleset. YMMV, but when I do that there's a large match between problems I would expect to see and problems I actually do see.
Nerm86 wrote: One thing I noticed was when the first AoS White Dwarf was released with that free model, the model has a copyright date of 2014. So they had the models for at least 6 months and if you combine that with fluff and artwork that happen before model are sculpted and cast it would need to be AT LEAST a year before we saw it.
When did End Times start? AoS would have been planned before that, and think how long that would have taken to write and develop... its definitely not the 4-5 days people have mentioned.
We get that some people don't like AoS but if you SERIOUSLY think it took 4-5 days to develop the game you are either trolling or have no idea what you are talking about.
Just because the had the models & compyright doesn't mean they were developing the rules that entire time, or even most of that time. Its entirely possible they spent 4-5 days to make the rules in 2014 then spent a large amount of time designing the models (which are far more complex and well-done than the rules imo). Assume for a moment that they DID make the rules for AoS in 5 days. What sort of problems would you expect to see with that ruleset? Now look at the problems with the AoS ruleset. YMMV, but when I do that there's a large match between problems I would expect to see and problems I actually do see.
I feel like you need to provide examples to really get your point across because at the moment I don't see the relation. The majority of issues I've seen people have with the rules are either about vagueness in wording, lack of points, or a dislike of the direction compared to other wargames.
A lot of the issues with how vaguely things are worded (such as piling bases, being about to shoot a model if you can see the top of its spear, carrions, etc) seem like they are mostly results of GW trying to fit a whole core ruleset onto 4 pages and then use as few words as possible on the warscrolls. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it actually took a lot of time to boil down the rules this small when you consider just how many directions various rules could have been designed. It's possible that they started from scratch and just happened to think of everything that ended up in the game on a first try, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn they considered a lot of different sudden death types, rule variations, and triggering conditions to settle on the current system.
The lack of points and the radically different direction with the game was clearly a choice and not a result of them rushing. I'd argue its actually not all that surprising considering GW have been printing the "golden rule" in the core rulebooks for ages now. The amount of words they spend talking about how AoS should be about having a dialogue with your opponent, the free, simpler rules, and heavy focus on pushing campaign and formation books suggests they want to move into a more casual hobby market. Its actually pretty reminiscent of the changes in business model happening for AAA video games where casual free to play is an increasingly valued content delivery method due to its ability to pull in wide demographics of new players.
Again, I'm curious to hear specifically what examples of problems you had in mind when you made your statement since I'm seeing something else entirely.
I feel like you need to provide examples to really get your point across because at the moment I don't see the relation. The majority of issues I've seen people have with the rules are either about vagueness in wording, lack of points, or a dislike of the direction compared to other wargames.
...
Again, I'm curious to hear specifically what examples of problems you had in mind when you made your statement since I'm seeing something else entirely.
There is a difference between the time intervening between the decision to write AoS and the date it was published, and the amount of man hours needed to design the product. Obviously a large company like GW develops plans a couple of years in advance, because they have to take into account a complex supply train to manufacture and distribute new products. (Luckily they don't have to worry about marketing, which saves a lot of effort.)
However if you are looking at the actual work involved in writing the rules, what's in AoS is nearly all taken out of 40K or WHFB, with some relatively small modifications.
Let's look at the construction of the rules:
Battlefield Setup
Old rules: Table size.
New rules: Table to select terrain, Selection of deployment zones by half tables.
Force Selection and Deployment
Old: Nothing.
New: No balance factors (Points, etc.) Deploy units alternately within your deployment zone. Each unit is a unit with identical equipment and cannot be merged with any other unit. Sudden Death rule for outnumbered armies.
Turn Sequence
Old: The outline of the Turn Sequence
New: Dice for Initiative each turn. New phases in the sequence.
New: Hero Phase
Command Rule
Magic Rule
Old: Movement Phase
It's the same as 40K.
Movement stat is the same as WHFB.
Old: Shooting Phase
It's the same as 40K.
New: No cover saves. BS is replaced by To Hit stat. The S stat is replaced by To Wound stat. Save is replaced by To Save with Rending modifiers. Mortal wounds. No invulnerable saves.
Old: Charge Phase
Same as 40K.
Old: Combat Phase
Same as 40K.
New: The I stat is replaced by alternation of attacking unit. The WS stat is replaced by the To Hit stat. IDK if weapon ranges were in WHFB. The same changes to Wound and Save mechanism as in the SHooting phase..
New: Battleshock Phase
Bravery stat and Battleshock mechanism replaces Ld stat and mechanism.
Terrain Rules
New: Standard terrain types have special rules to give modifiers for various actions.
War Scrolls
New: Stat line is a modification of the old stat line. Each unit has at least one special rule.
The surprising thing really is how similar AoS is to the core rules of 40K and WHFB.
Can we really be expected to believe that dozens of designers spent months thinking up revolutionary new movement rules, and how to replace the To Hit, To Wound, To Save mechanism, then decided what they had was already good enough? The game has to include walking and flying units that move around the table top, the movement has to be measured, and so on. Much easier to believe they just kept the same rules because they work, and let's face it, people like them.
Once you remove movement and combat from the workload, there isn't very much else in the core ruleset. The bulk of the work overall is the new special rules in the war scrolls.
I don't deny that people may have been thinking about AoS two years ago, it's just impossible to believe that several designers have been working on it continuously for that long.There just isn't enough work to be done.
Nerm86 wrote: One thing I noticed was when the first AoS White Dwarf was released with that free model, the model has a copyright date of 2014. So they had the models for at least 6 months and if you combine that with fluff and artwork that happen before model are sculpted and cast it would need to be AT LEAST a year before we saw it.
When did End Times start? AoS would have been planned before that, and think how long that would have taken to write and develop... its definitely not the 4-5 days people have mentioned.
We get that some people don't like AoS but if you SERIOUSLY think it took 4-5 days to develop the game you are either trolling or have no idea what you are talking about.
Just because the had the models & compyright doesn't mean they were developing the rules that entire time, or even most of that time. Its entirely possible they spent 4-5 days to make the rules in 2014 then spent a large amount of time designing the models (which are far more complex and well-done than the rules imo). Assume for a moment that they DID make the rules for AoS in 5 days. What sort of problems would you expect to see with that ruleset? Now look at the problems with the AoS ruleset. YMMV, but when I do that there's a large match between problems I would expect to see and problems I actually do see.
I feel like you need to provide examples to really get your point across because at the moment I don't see the relation. The majority of issues I've seen people have with the rules are either about vagueness in wording, lack of points, or a dislike of the direction compared to other wargames.
A lot of the issues with how vaguely things are worded (such as piling bases, being about to shoot a model if you can see the top of its spear, carrions, etc) seem like they are mostly results of GW trying to fit a whole core ruleset onto 4 pages and then use as few words as possible on the warscrolls. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it actually took a lot of time to boil down the rules this small when you consider just how many directions various rules could have been designed. It's possible that they started from scratch and just happened to think of everything that ended up in the game on a first try, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn they considered a lot of different sudden death types, rule variations, and triggering conditions to settle on the current system.
The lack of points and the radically different direction with the game was clearly a choice and not a result of them rushing. I'd argue its actually not all that surprising considering GW have been printing the "golden rule" in the core rulebooks for ages now. The amount of words they spend talking about how AoS should be about having a dialogue with your opponent, the free, simpler rules, and heavy focus on pushing campaign and formation books suggests they want to move into a more casual hobby market. Its actually pretty reminiscent of the changes in business model happening for AAA video games where casual free to play is an increasingly valued content delivery method due to its ability to pull in wide demographics of new players.
Again, I'm curious to hear specifically what examples of problems you had in mind when you made your statement since I'm seeing something else entirely.
Fair enough. Though I will say again that I don't think they wrote the rules in under a week, I'm just saying that it's not an irrational opinion to have. Anyways, examples in no particular order:
-Model to model measurement: can bases stack on top of each other? Can models stack on top of each other? If yes, how much? If no, what constitutes stacking? On a related note, where does base end and model begin? If my wood elf is modeled standing on a 2" tree and the tree is part of his base then he can never be hit by 1" melee weapons unless the swinging model is sufficiently large, or has a particularly flamboyant hat. Even if that problem is resolved we come to flying units...
-Does piling in "towards the closest enemy model" mean I have to end closer than I started, that the entire move must be continuously bringing me closer, or that I can only go directly towards it in a straight line?
-Sudden death. Does this only trigger at the start of the battle? If it can be triggered during a battle, then what happens if the model count evens out, or even reverses?
-Skaven Doombell and Kyros Fateweaver combo. You may say its against the rules but I say it isn't. Let's roll a dice: on a 4+ I win automatically my first turn. You like sudden death rules? Meet my single tomb scarab. Yes, these and other stupid combos are just that, but in a properly designed game they wouldn't even exist.
-Dual-wielding models: am I using the profile for the weapon once or am I doubling it? For some models it seems obvious, for others not so much.
-Bonus stacking combined with no auto-fail on a 1 means multiple mystic shields make a model invulnerable to conventional wounds.
-Special characters are now hardly so; you can take as many of the same one as you like. Granted they seem to be fixing this with new releases, but that further suggests it was something intended that slipped through the cracks of a rushed ruleset.
-Rolling for initiative at the start of each turn can decide games independent of tactics, planning, or any actual skill. This makes it seem like a rule that was never tested or even thought through properly. The triumph table certainly speaks to the latter as well.
-Lost unit coherancy. If a unit loses coherency then "it must reform the next time it moves" what if the models do not have sufficient movement to do so? Can they not move at all? What if they are in melee? Can they not make pile-in moves?
-On a similar note, units must be set up and end moves in coherency, but what about adding models to an existing unit? Presumably they must be added in coherency (though RAW they don't have to), but are they added one at a time or all at once?
-War machines. Are warmachine and crew 1 warscroll? If so, why are they separated like that and how are they treated as a unit? Crew get cover from a war machine, so do I assign wounds before rolling saves? Either way, do crew 'belong' to a certain war machine? Can they count for multiple war machines if they are within range of more than one? If they are separate scrolls, then how do war machines work if I have no crew on the table? Do the rules from the crew's warscrolls function even if they aren't on the board? Presumably so, but either way this precedent is linked to...
-Summoning. Specifically, do the warscroll abilities to be summoned apply even if the model is not on the table? The logical answer is no, but then that conflicts with the logical answer to war machine crew.
-I see problems in a number of individual warscrolls. The giant has a rule for falling over that involves literally putting the model on its side (which is silly to begin with...) then dealing wounds to models it "lands on" but has no indication as to what that actually means. Does the giant model need to contact the enemy model, or just be directly over it? How does a scenic base on the giant play into this? The High Elf Bolt Thrower has the same problems as other warmachines plus conflict between the attack profile and the chart, and further Ithilmar bolts are never statistically better than Repeating bolts so why does this option even exist?
Many of these questions can be figured out with a decent application of RAI, house rules, and common sense, but the point is that such issues aren't present (or at least not nearly as frequent) in well-designed and playtested rulesets. They aren't utterly crippling flaws but more than just obscure quibbles; exactly the sort of thing (IMO) that would slip through a rushed design process.
I don't think GW rushed the design process, they just don't care about writing precise rules. Not just that, they don't care about writing unambiguous rules in clear, plain English. The problem is that people start to interpret and invent new things to explain stuff.
Kilkrazy wrote: I don't think GW rushed the design process, they just don't care about writing precise rules. Not just that, they don't care about writing unambiguous rules in clear, plain English. The problem is that people start to interpret and invent new things to explain stuff.
That's a consequence of the English language being ambiguous. Even a sentence like "the turtle raced against the hare. It was victorious." can be parsed two different ways. The only way to be unambiguous with English is to describe the same thing multiple ways (pictures don't hurt), which runs counter to the 4 page design philosophy (they could've dumped the triumph tables and added a 5th page).
That being said, most people's opinion on what is ambiguous in AoS is them using rules and standards from different games (and wishing AoS was one of them). Like the two weapons argument. What's written makes it obvious that you don't double the weapon line, but people read what they want to read, and they want twice the attacks. There's a reason why reading comprehension is on the SATs - not everybody is particularly good at it. Also, some of the ambiguity, such as balancing forces, is intentional.
There is a basic problem with GW writing ambiguously, as well as a lack of definitions, glossary of terms and so on. Whilst adding these would make the rules longer, there is no excuse for failure to write clear English explanation of their intentions.
Take this sentence from the AoS rules:
Missile weapons can be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can be used in the combat phase.
Now look at this version:
Missile weapons can only be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can only be used in the combat phase.
My version is unambiguous because I have written it better. It didn't take me a degree in English Language.
I've never found a rulebook which wasn't needless ambiguous in extremely weird ways. About a decade ago, I used to play board games with a friend who would argue every single rule he could in his favor (even when he just argued the exact opposite in the previous game) and parsing the English language in new and unusual ways was his specialty. There wasn't a game around that he couldn't argue into tedium. (we stopped playing board games because of this and focused on video games, which had no ambiguity). I just don't think it's a GW exclusive problem.
I see it as the difference between TADS and Inform - both interactive fiction authoring tools. TADS is an object orientated scripting language, familiar to any programmer, and with a very explicit structure. Inform is natural language and rules based, so you would write "Apple is an object with the description 'xyz'. It is in the Lounge." Rather than defining an apple, you define the things that make it an apple (if that makes sense).
Complex rule orientated games, like 40k or Warmachine, are similar to TADS. It is very explicit and structural, familiar and comfortable to nerds everywhere (myself included). AoS is more rule based. Rather than explicitly defining its structure, it defines what the game can do, and the structure is sort of invisibly built in the background. If it says that Missile weapons can be used in the shooting phase, that's all it means. What the shooting phase is and represents is then inferred. The rules define what a zone of control does, not is.
If you aren't familiar with TADS or Inform, this example won't make much sense, but my point is that AoS describes the rules using a fundamentally different approach than something like 40k does. And it can feel a bit weird and maybe even a bit overly permissive.
Language ambiguity is a problem that needs to be addressed with every written set of rules, not addressing it (intentionally or no) cuts down dramatically on the time it take to develop a ruleset. Relying on reasonable interpretation of the rules can work for certain situations, like for a casual game that goes alongside models which customers buy primarily for collection purposes (which is why GW -thinks- their models sell), but not for a game that has a broad playerbase and is competing against the rest of the wargames market (what AoS actually is). The reality is that one person's reasonable is another person's powergaming, and just because ambiguity will be a inevitably be a problem doesn't mean the frequency/severity isn't a factor.
Probably the afternoon break between the back breaking labor of moving mr kirbs considerable amount of money down into the vaults, and washing him down during his sponge bath.
Do we have a list of all the ambiguous points of contention in the AoS ruleset?
Off the top of my head, I can only think of one place where language is the real problem (summoned units count as casualties, or summoned causalities counted as casualties?), and one where games using terms differently leads to assumptions (slain models removed play - from the table or from the entire game?)
Kilkrazy wrote: There is a basic problem with GW writing ambiguously, as well as a lack of definitions, glossary of terms and so on. Whilst adding these would make the rules longer, there is no excuse for failure to write clear English explanation of their intentions.
Take this sentence from the AoS rules:
Missile weapons can be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can be used in the combat phase.
Now look at this version:
Missile weapons can only be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can only be used in the combat phase.
My version is unambiguous because I have written it better. It didn't take me a degree in English Language.
Your version is not the same thing though. You're adding in restrictions that don't exist in GW's version and would preclude special rules that allow out of sequence attacks. For example, I'm pretty sure one of the High Elf ranged units can fire 40k style Overwatch. Your version wouldn't allow use of the missile weapons as it wouldn't be during a shooting phase.
I've edited technical documents in the past. It's VERY important not to change meaning when you try to clarify a sentence.
Nerm86 wrote: One thing I noticed was when the first AoS White Dwarf was released with that free model, the model has a copyright date of 2014. So they had the models for at least 6 months and if you combine that with fluff and artwork that happen before model are sculpted and cast it would need to be AT LEAST a year before we saw it.
When did End Times start? AoS would have been planned before that, and think how long that would have taken to write and develop... its definitely not the 4-5 days people have mentioned.
We get that some people don't like AoS but if you SERIOUSLY think it took 4-5 days to develop the game you are either trolling or have no idea what you are talking about.
Just because the had the models & compyright doesn't mean they were developing the rules that entire time, or even most of that time. Its entirely possible they spent 4-5 days to make the rules in 2014 then spent a large amount of time designing the models (which are far more complex and well-done than the rules imo). Assume for a moment that they DID make the rules for AoS in 5 days. What sort of problems would you expect to see with that ruleset? Now look at the problems with the AoS ruleset. YMMV, but when I do that there's a large match between problems I would expect to see and problems I actually do see.
I feel like you need to provide examples to really get your point across because at the moment I don't see the relation. The majority of issues I've seen people have with the rules are either about vagueness in wording, lack of points, or a dislike of the direction compared to other wargames.
A lot of the issues with how vaguely things are worded (such as piling bases, being about to shoot a model if you can see the top of its spear, carrions, etc) seem like they are mostly results of GW trying to fit a whole core ruleset onto 4 pages and then use as few words as possible on the warscrolls. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it actually took a lot of time to boil down the rules this small when you consider just how many directions various rules could have been designed. It's possible that they started from scratch and just happened to think of everything that ended up in the game on a first try, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn they considered a lot of different sudden death types, rule variations, and triggering conditions to settle on the current system.
The lack of points and the radically different direction with the game was clearly a choice and not a result of them rushing. I'd argue its actually not all that surprising considering GW have been printing the "golden rule" in the core rulebooks for ages now. The amount of words they spend talking about how AoS should be about having a dialogue with your opponent, the free, simpler rules, and heavy focus on pushing campaign and formation books suggests they want to move into a more casual hobby market. Its actually pretty reminiscent of the changes in business model happening for AAA video games where casual free to play is an increasingly valued content delivery method due to its ability to pull in wide demographics of new players.
Again, I'm curious to hear specifically what examples of problems you had in mind when you made your statement since I'm seeing something else entirely.
Fair enough. Though I will say again that I don't think they wrote the rules in under a week, I'm just saying that it's not an irrational opinion to have. Anyways, examples in no particular order:
-Model to model measurement: can bases stack on top of each other? Can models stack on top of each other? If yes, how much? If no, what constitutes stacking? On a related note, where does base end and model begin? If my wood elf is modeled standing on a 2" tree and the tree is part of his base then he can never be hit by 1" melee weapons unless the swinging model is sufficiently large, or has a particularly flamboyant hat. Even if that problem is resolved we come to flying units...
-Does piling in "towards the closest enemy model" mean I have to end closer than I started, that the entire move must be continuously bringing me closer, or that I can only go directly towards it in a straight line?
-Sudden death. Does this only trigger at the start of the battle? If it can be triggered during a battle, then what happens if the model count evens out, or even reverses?
-Skaven Doombell and Kyros Fateweaver combo. You may say its against the rules but I say it isn't. Let's roll a dice: on a 4+ I win automatically my first turn. You like sudden death rules? Meet my single tomb scarab. Yes, these and other stupid combos are just that, but in a properly designed game they wouldn't even exist.
-Dual-wielding models: am I using the profile for the weapon once or am I doubling it? For some models it seems obvious, for others not so much.
-Bonus stacking combined with no auto-fail on a 1 means multiple mystic shields make a model invulnerable to conventional wounds.
-Special characters are now hardly so; you can take as many of the same one as you like. Granted they seem to be fixing this with new releases, but that further suggests it was something intended that slipped through the cracks of a rushed ruleset.
-Rolling for initiative at the start of each turn can decide games independent of tactics, planning, or any actual skill. This makes it seem like a rule that was never tested or even thought through properly. The triumph table certainly speaks to the latter as well.
-Lost unit coherancy. If a unit loses coherency then "it must reform the next time it moves" what if the models do not have sufficient movement to do so? Can they not move at all? What if they are in melee? Can they not make pile-in moves?
-On a similar note, units must be set up and end moves in coherency, but what about adding models to an existing unit? Presumably they must be added in coherency (though RAW they don't have to), but are they added one at a time or all at once?
-War machines. Are warmachine and crew 1 warscroll? If so, why are they separated like that and how are they treated as a unit? Crew get cover from a war machine, so do I assign wounds before rolling saves? Either way, do crew 'belong' to a certain war machine? Can they count for multiple war machines if they are within range of more than one? If they are separate scrolls, then how do war machines work if I have no crew on the table? Do the rules from the crew's warscrolls function even if they aren't on the board? Presumably so, but either way this precedent is linked to...
-Summoning. Specifically, do the warscroll abilities to be summoned apply even if the model is not on the table? The logical answer is no, but then that conflicts with the logical answer to war machine crew.
-I see problems in a number of individual warscrolls. The giant has a rule for falling over that involves literally putting the model on its side (which is silly to begin with...) then dealing wounds to models it "lands on" but has no indication as to what that actually means. Does the giant model need to contact the enemy model, or just be directly over it? How does a scenic base on the giant play into this? The High Elf Bolt Thrower has the same problems as other warmachines plus conflict between the attack profile and the chart, and further Ithilmar bolts are never statistically better than Repeating bolts so why does this option even exist?
Many of these questions can be figured out with a decent application of RAI, house rules, and common sense, but the point is that such issues aren't present (or at least not nearly as frequent) in well-designed and playtested rulesets. They aren't utterly crippling flaws but more than just obscure quibbles; exactly the sort of thing (IMO) that would slip through a rushed design process.
Not all of these are under contention at a community level. You might want to take your concerns to You Make Da Call and you'll likely find that a community consensus exists. You're also adding value judgments to your comments above. "The logical answer is no". Why? Logically, in the absence of a rule telling me to ignore rules, I would follow all rules on all War Scrolls I brought to the battle. Just because some units were kept in Reserves doesn't logically mean I should ignore their rules.
Kriswall wrote: Not all of these are under contention at a community level. You might want to take your concerns to You Make Da Call and you'll likely find that a community consensus exists. You're also adding value judgments to your comments above. "The logical answer is no". Why? Logically, in the absence of a rule telling me to ignore rules, I would follow all rules on all War Scrolls I brought to the battle. Just because some units were kept in Reserves doesn't logically mean I should ignore their rules.
I was answering a question as to problems I saw that I thought could arise from a rushed design job, relating to the original topic of the thread. Not to derail too much, but I say that because the RAI seem to be that units which aren't in play don't have their rules apply to the game. For example, Epidemius' tally never states he has to be on the board, but I doubt every nurgle models should be getting the benefits if he isn't present. However, it doesn't matter if the answer is yes or no because it creates rules issues either way (and if the answer is "sometimes" then that reeks of poor design even more). At any rate, your difference in opinion highlights the fact that what one person considers the reasonable/logical answer may not seem so to another player; both our opinions have legitimate evidence so who's to say which one of us is right, if either? The rules don't (beyond 1-3 your way 4-6 my way), and its things like that which make people think GW did not put much time/effort into the design. Certainly me and those I play with have reached conclusions on the issues I raised (or haven't had to deal with them in game) but that is outside the game's design, especially because many of the resolutions come from outright house ruling.
Your version is not the same thing though. You're adding in restrictions that don't exist in GW's version and would preclude special rules that allow out of sequence attacks. For example, I'm pretty sure one of the High Elf ranged units can fire 40k style Overwatch. Your version wouldn't allow use of the missile weapons as it wouldn't be during a shooting phase.
Unless you mean to suggest that missile weapons can be used as melee weapons in combat, and melee weapons can be used in the shooting phase, then his version is the same thing (but clearer). Plenty of the warscrolls 'break' the conventional rules but that isn't to say that the conventional rules can be broken otherwise. A baseline assumption in GW games is that individual unit rules trump the main rulebook, if you don't make that assumption then the games fall apart.
Ultimately I am confused at what you are trying to say here, so perhaps I am misunderstanding your angle.
Kriswall wrote: Not all of these are under contention at a community level. You might want to take your concerns to You Make Da Call and you'll likely find that a community consensus exists. You're also adding value judgments to your comments above. "The logical answer is no". Why? Logically, in the absence of a rule telling me to ignore rules, I would follow all rules on all War Scrolls I brought to the battle. Just because some units were kept in Reserves doesn't logically mean I should ignore their rules.
I was answering a question as to problems I saw that I thought could arise from a rushed design job, relating to the original topic of the thread. Not to derail too much, but I say that because the RAI seem to be that units which aren't in play don't have their rules apply to the game. For example, Epidemius' tally never states he has to be on the board, but I doubt every nurgle models should be getting the benefits if he isn't present. However, it doesn't matter if the answer is yes or no because it creates rules issues either way (and if the answer is "sometimes" then that reeks of poor design even more). At any rate, your difference in opinion highlights the fact that what one person considers the reasonable/logical answer may not seem so to another player; both our opinions have legitimate evidence so who's to say which one of us is right, if either? The rules don't (beyond 1-3 your way 4-6 my way), and its things like that which make people think GW did not put much time/effort into the design. Certainly me and those I play with have reached conclusions on the issues I raised (or haven't had to deal with them in game) but that is outside the game's design, especially because many of the resolutions come from outright house ruling.
Your version is not the same thing though. You're adding in restrictions that don't exist in GW's version and would preclude special rules that allow out of sequence attacks. For example, I'm pretty sure one of the High Elf ranged units can fire 40k style Overwatch. Your version wouldn't allow use of the missile weapons as it wouldn't be during a shooting phase.
Unless you mean to suggest that missile weapons can be used as melee weapons in combat, and melee weapons can be used in the shooting phase, then his version is the same thing (but clearer). Plenty of the warscrolls 'break' the conventional rules but that isn't to say that the conventional rules can be broken otherwise. A baseline assumption in GW games is that individual unit rules trump the main rulebook, if you don't make that assumption then the games fall apart.
Ultimately I am confused at what you are trying to say here, so perhaps I am misunderstanding your angle.
Point 1 - I would generally agree that abilities can only be used when a model is on the table. Epidemius's Tally thing is an ability. The various summon spells aren't abilities as they aren't listed in the abilities section. My stance remains that abilities require that a model be on the table while non-abilities such as the Magic section don't. And to stave off a potential rebuttal, the core rules require a model to be on the table to cast a spell or unbind a spell. There is no general requirement that a model be on the table to confer a spell to another unit/type of unit.
Point 2 - If I'm told that missile weapons can only be used in the shooting phase, then I'm also being told that missile weapons CAN'T be used during other phases. There are some units that allow you to make a shooting attack whenever an enemy units moves to within 1/2". Sisters of Avelorn is a good example. Placing an additional restriction saying they can only use their bows during the shooting phase creates a conflct with the war scroll. The standard wording creates no such conflict. Why would you want to add additional wording to create additional restrictions that serve only to create conflicts that weren't there before?
Kriswall wrote: Not all of these are under contention at a community level. You might want to take your concerns to You Make Da Call and you'll likely find that a community consensus exists. You're also adding value judgments to your comments above. "The logical answer is no". Why? Logically, in the absence of a rule telling me to ignore rules, I would follow all rules on all War Scrolls I brought to the battle. Just because some units were kept in Reserves doesn't logically mean I should ignore their rules.
I was answering a question as to problems I saw that I thought could arise from a rushed design job, relating to the original topic of the thread. Not to derail too much, but I say that because the RAI seem to be that units which aren't in play don't have their rules apply to the game. For example, Epidemius' tally never states he has to be on the board, but I doubt every nurgle models should be getting the benefits if he isn't present. However, it doesn't matter if the answer is yes or no because it creates rules issues either way (and if the answer is "sometimes" then that reeks of poor design even more). At any rate, your difference in opinion highlights the fact that what one person considers the reasonable/logical answer may not seem so to another player; both our opinions have legitimate evidence so who's to say which one of us is right, if either? The rules don't (beyond 1-3 your way 4-6 my way), and its things like that which make people think GW did not put much time/effort into the design. Certainly me and those I play with have reached conclusions on the issues I raised (or haven't had to deal with them in game) but that is outside the game's design, especially because many of the resolutions come from outright house ruling.
Your version is not the same thing though. You're adding in restrictions that don't exist in GW's version and would preclude special rules that allow out of sequence attacks. For example, I'm pretty sure one of the High Elf ranged units can fire 40k style Overwatch. Your version wouldn't allow use of the missile weapons as it wouldn't be during a shooting phase.
Unless you mean to suggest that missile weapons can be used as melee weapons in combat, and melee weapons can be used in the shooting phase, then his version is the same thing (but clearer). Plenty of the warscrolls 'break' the conventional rules but that isn't to say that the conventional rules can be broken otherwise. A baseline assumption in GW games is that individual unit rules trump the main rulebook, if you don't make that assumption then the games fall apart.
Ultimately I am confused at what you are trying to say here, so perhaps I am misunderstanding your angle.
Point 1 - I would generally agree that abilities can only be used when a model is on the table. Epidemius's Tally thing is an ability. The various summon spells aren't abilities as they aren't listed in the abilities section. My stance remains that abilities require that a model be on the table while non-abilities such as the Magic section don't. And to stave off a potential rebuttal, the core rules require a model to be on the table to cast a spell or unbind a spell. There is no general requirement that a model be on the table to confer a spell to another unit/type of unit.
Point 2 - If I'm told that missile weapons can only be used in the shooting phase, then I'm also being told that missile weapons CAN'T be used during other phases. There are some units that allow you to make a shooting attack whenever an enemy units moves to within 1/2". Sisters of Avelorn is a good example. Placing an additional restriction saying they can only use their bows during the shooting phase creates a conflct with the war scroll. The standard wording creates no such conflict. Why would you want to add additional wording to create additional restrictions that serve only to create conflicts that weren't there before?
Well on point one I personally disagree, but I also respect the reasoning you used to arrive at that conclusion. On point two, I see that with the wording we have now, no one uses missile weapons outside the shooting phase anyway unless they have a specific rule permitting to do so. I read that as the original rule effectively meaning that shooting weapons can only be used in the relevant phase, just being vague about it. I read GW's rules with the idea that there is an unspoken assumption that specific model rules trump the main rules, so either way a model with a rule allowing it to fire outside the shooting phase can do so. The difference is that the vague version could potentially be spun to allow a unit firing its missile weapons in the combat phase, while the specific version disallows that. Ultimately its trivial (because seriously, who is going to do that?) and I (think I) understand your point, but I believe Killkrazy meant to use it as an example of simple fixes to vague wording rather than an actual rule change that should be present. At this point we are getting a bit off topic so I'll let you finish off this line of the discussion.
Even after 8 editions of development, WFB still needed multiple FAQ's during it's lifecycle.
I think NinthMusketeer's (quite comprehensive!) list of things he finds odd/ambiguous in the main rules is remarkably small given this is a "1st edition" ruleset.
Kilkrazy wrote: There is a basic problem with GW writing ambiguously, as well as a lack of definitions, glossary of terms and so on. Whilst adding these would make the rules longer, there is no excuse for failure to write clear English explanation of their intentions.
Take this sentence from the AoS rules:
Missile weapons can be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can be used in the combat phase.
Now look at this version:
Missile weapons can only be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can only be used in the combat phase.
My version is unambiguous because I have written it better. It didn't take me a degree in English Language.
Your version is not the same thing though. You're adding in restrictions that don't exist in GW's version and would preclude special rules that allow out of sequence attacks. For example, I'm pretty sure one of the High Elf ranged units can fire 40k style Overwatch. Your version wouldn't allow use of the missile weapons as it wouldn't be during a shooting phase.
I've edited technical documents in the past. It's VERY important not to change meaning when you try to clarify a sentence.
If you are not sure it would be a good idea to check on the precise wording of the High Elf rule, so that we can discuss the situation from a position of knowledge.
I wrote my ideas for a tabletop game a few years ago. Pretty sure what I came up with in one day was more rules than they have in AoS. I worked on it for a total of 1 week of actual writing (only a couple of hours a day) and 2-3 weeks of just thinking. I finallyI realized no one will ever play it, I have no money to launch a game etc. before I dropped it.
I came up with 30 pages in that time.
So yea, pretty sure they popped those rules out in less than a week. Play testing I am sure took longer, another couple of week for the war scrolls.
Kilkrazy wrote: There is a basic problem with GW writing ambiguously, as well as a lack of definitions, glossary of terms and so on. Whilst adding these would make the rules longer, there is no excuse for failure to write clear English explanation of their intentions.
Take this sentence from the AoS rules:
Missile weapons can be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can be used in the combat phase.
Now look at this version:
Missile weapons can only be used in the shooting phase, and melee weapons can only be used in the combat phase.
My version is unambiguous because I have written it better. It didn't take me a degree in English Language.
Your version is not the same thing though. You're adding in restrictions that don't exist in GW's version and would preclude special rules that allow out of sequence attacks. For example, I'm pretty sure one of the High Elf ranged units can fire 40k style Overwatch. Your version wouldn't allow use of the missile weapons as it wouldn't be during a shooting phase.
I've edited technical documents in the past. It's VERY important not to change meaning when you try to clarify a sentence.
If you are not sure it would be a good idea to check on the precise wording of the High Elf rule, so that we can discuss the situation from a position of knowledge.
Sigh. I'm 100% sure. I checked. I was at work. There are measurably units in the game that can use missile weapons in phases other than the shooting phase. Happy? I see no reason to change the wording to introduce a rules conflict that did not exist previously.
We wrote: I wrote my ideas for a tabletop game a few years ago. Pretty sure what I came up with in one day was more rules than they have in AoS. I worked on it for a total of 1 week of actual writing (only a couple of hours a day) and 2-3 weeks of just thinking. I finallyI realized no one will ever play it, I have no money to launch a game etc. before I dropped it.
I came up with 30 pages in that time.
So yea, pretty sure they popped those rules out in less than a week. Play testing I am sure took longer, another couple of week for the war scrolls.
That's not how things work though... you can do a million of anything, but quality is what matters.
Again, I'm curious to hear specifically what examples of problems you had in mind when you made your statement since I'm seeing something else entirely.
I'll give my example. When we started to test AoS I noticed that my dwarfs struggle fighting beefed up special characters, powerful magic users and cavalery. When we tried to play scenarios the lack of speed was a huge problem. The anwser to all those problems was runing 4-5 cannons and mass crossbowman,and when I say mass I mean enough to shot, but not so many I would give ID buff to my opponent, at least most of the time.
The cannons delt with heros and monsters the crossbow dudes cleaned chaff, There was no way for me deal with magic, but I guess every army needs a weaker side.
But after a few games, accodring to the 4page rules, every non dwarf players decided that artilery, which their army didn't have, is either too OP, not interective or not fun to play against. We already played a modified comp system as without it the system is unplayable at all, so I didn't realy have the option to say no. So the slot for machines were cut and suddenly I could run max 2 machines in a "normal" sized game. This drasticly lowered my chance against most of the other armies played. Now if there were points in the game I could take X points of cannons, or 25% or what ever GW decided was balanced for all armies. I wouldn't need to ask other people to let me have a chance to win and have fun, because the chance of 10 people saying ok to 1 person, when it doesn't help them at all is close to 0.
That is my "other" problem with AoS. That the supposed rules set, flawed as it may be, leaves you at the totaly mercy of your opponent AFTER you already bought an army. Heck I can't even use half my models in the avarge AoS game and a secondary market for dwarf models doesn't realy exist.
I've been poking away at a Dogs of War list, and I can tell you that building a comprehensive AoS army list is a non-trivial undertaking. I would not be surprised if GW spent quite a while on EACH army. - there are a LOT of units, and there is a whole core of rules templating for the game and for each army that happened behind the scenes. Someone curated the various mechanics and selected special rules as appropriate to each army and unit, and that takes time, especially when you're starting with a clean sheet, so to speak.
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We wrote: I wrote my ideas for a tabletop game a few years ago. Pretty sure what I came up with in one day was more rules than they have in AoS. I worked on it for a total of 1 week of actual writing (only a couple of hours a day) and 2-3 weeks of just thinking. I finallyI realized no one will ever play it, I have no money to launch a game etc. before I dropped it.
I came up with 30 pages in that time.
So yea, pretty sure they popped those rules out in less than a week. Play testing I am sure took longer, another couple of week for the war scrolls.
It is much harder to write 4 pages of rules than 30 - ask any editor.
Honestly I think, even just looking at the rule set, AoS must have taken a lot of time to come up with. I am not a fan of AoS (I feel it has many good ideas that were woefully bungled on implementation). It is fun/easy to make jokes that they made the whole thing on napkins in a bar but realistically that is disingenuous -- obviously they put a huge amount of thought and work into their major relaunch of an entire product line!
AoS is such a drastic departure from warhammer. I guarantee it took a long time to write rules so obviously flawed. If they had done them quickly, the flaws would have been more apparent to the design team. AoS screams that it is the result of a long iterative process in which lots of ideas were tried, discarded, tweaked, revamped, etc. Over time the design staff probably felt AoS had become a lean, simple, and fun game, that addressed many of the flaws with WHFB 8th edition in new and creative ways. And really none of that is untrue, but they clearly lost the ability to see AoS as their customers would when first presented with it.
This is likely why GW was so shocked when the reception to AoS was controversial/mixed. They'd spent probably upwards of a year slowly talking themselves into how brilliant and awesome the new rules were without considering that they also managed to dump most of what many people also loved about fantasy while creating a whole slew of new issues (which we've all rehashed a thousand times so I will not bother mentioning!).
Finally, just a response on balance in AoS (ie on statement that AoS is fairly "balanced" vs previous editions) Others have already pointed out that there really can't be "balance" from a rules perspective, I won't belabor that. However, I totally agree the various armies feel "balanced" vs each other in terms of what is available, how the rules work vs each other, how the warscrolls are built overall, etc. This is likely a factor of getting to create all of the warscrolls at once, by the same team of people following the same design ethics. When compared with warhammer, or 40k, or whatever, where each codex is written sequentially with large gaps in between, rarely by the same person, over the course of many years. All I am getting at is it really isn't too surprising if the warscrolls feel a little more cohesive at a high level, and that is certainly a good thing. But that definitely is not the same thing as the "balance" that many criticize AoS for lacking.
I think the reason why there is such an outcry against AoS is because it actually is very similar to the core of 40K. The movement and fighting rules are slightly modified, and there is a new army list and deployment mechanism.
GW may have felt that with 40K being a very popular game, people would enjoy the similarity of mechanisms. However most people already were playing 40K not Fantasy. The people who played Fantasy did so because of the differences to 40K, such as formations.
GW dropped formations, points and the Old Worlde from AoS, all three things which a significant number of players liked, and it's no surprise there is an outcry.
At the same time, a lot of people who like 40K and wanted to dip their toes into Fantasy, have been given a simple entry point, so it's swings and roundabouts.
Again, I'm curious to hear specifically what examples of problems you had in mind when you made your statement since I'm seeing something else entirely.
I'll give my example. When we started to test AoS I noticed that my dwarfs struggle fighting beefed up special characters, powerful magic users and cavalery. When we tried to play scenarios the lack of speed was a huge problem. The anwser to all those problems was runing 4-5 cannons and mass crossbowman,and when I say mass I mean enough to shot, but not so many I would give ID buff to my opponent, at least most of the time.
The cannons delt with heros and monsters the crossbow dudes cleaned chaff, There was no way for me deal with magic, but I guess every army needs a weaker side.
But after a few games, accodring to the 4page rules, every non dwarf players decided that artilery, which their army didn't have, is either too OP, not interective or not fun to play against. We already played a modified comp system as without it the system is unplayable at all, so I didn't realy have the option to say no. So the slot for machines were cut and suddenly I could run max 2 machines in a "normal" sized game. This drasticly lowered my chance against most of the other armies played. Now if there were points in the game I could take X points of cannons, or 25% or what ever GW decided was balanced for all armies. I wouldn't need to ask other people to let me have a chance to win and have fun, because the chance of 10 people saying ok to 1 person, when it doesn't help them at all is close to 0.
That is my "other" problem with AoS. That the supposed rules set, flawed as it may be, leaves you at the totaly mercy of your opponent AFTER you already bought an army. Heck I can't even use half my models in the avarge AoS game and a secondary market for dwarf models doesn't realy exist.
Just to check here;
You were struggling against (by implication) commonly used units in your local group.
So you changed the kind of units you were using (which is pretty much stock advice for dealing with those types of units, by the way).
Then, instead of your opponents doing the same, they all amended the 'comp' system that your group use, thus hamstringing you specifically.
If you keep losing, I presume they will amend the comp system to disallow special characters or something?
This is the issue with a lot of comp systems I've seen. The good ones are objective and actively request feedback, but the bad ones are entirely subjective and get skewed by local considerations like "Bob keeps winning and he uses lots of multiwound infantry, so it's obviously that"
The rules are quite clear. Your group have decided that's not for them, and created a comp system that apparently can be amended at will. That's not the game's fault, that's the houserule's fault.
There are plenty of ways of dealing with artillery and ranged units. One of my regular opponents plays Dwarfs and frankly massed warmachines make you want to cry - until you figure out how you can deal with them.
I think the reason why there is such an outcry against AoS is because it actually is very similar to the core of 40K. The movement and fighting rules are slightly modified, and there is a new army list and deployment mechanism.
GW may have felt that with 40K being a very popular game, people would enjoy the similarity of mechanisms. However most people already were playing 40K not Fantasy. The people who played Fantasy did so because of the differences to 40K, such as formations.
GW dropped formations, points and the Old Worlde from AoS, all three things which a significant number of players liked, and it's no surprise there is an outcry.
At the same time, a lot of people who like 40K and wanted to dip their toes into Fantasy, have been given a simple entry point, so it's swings and roundabouts.
The key thing to remember is that the people who were playing Fantasy, as a whole, weren't supporting it financially. Fantasy represented a fraction of GW's sales compared to 40k. I'm not even a little surprised that they made the Fantasy rule set more appealing to people who enjoy 40k. I think this was a conscious decision, and part of a larger overall business strategy. I'd be extremely surprised is Age of Sigmar wasn't in various states of execution and planning for years.
Also...
You can still use block formations if you so choose. Nothing in the Age of Sigmar rules preclude the use of movement trays and block formations. You simply no longer have flank, etc rules to go along with them. Pile in move are optional, so if both players use movement trays, the only thing that will happen is that sometimes you'll have to choose to have fewer models in combat to preserve your formation.
AND
The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.
Kriswall wrote: The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.
Out of curiosity, what background?
Dark Elves were my first fantasy army and right now as far as I am aware no new information has come out about them since AoS landed, when they were renames Aelfs and folded into the forces of order
To my knowledge we don't really have a lot of fluff for anyone other than the Sigmarines and chaos.
Kriswall wrote: The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.
Out of curiosity, what background?
Dark Elves were my first fantasy army and right now as far as I am aware no new information has come out about them since AoS landed, when they were renames Aelfs and folded into the forces of order
To my knowledge we don't really have a lot of fluff for anyone other than the Sigmarines and chaos.
Did you read the End Times material? The End Times were a bridging 'story' connecting the Old World to the 'New' World. The Dark Elves feature in that story.
Also, I get that there is general and vague background information for some of the factions right now. Expect to see more as more books are released. Keep in mind that we're still VERY early in the release cycle. So far, most of the attention has been on the Sylvaneth (tree people), Nurgle Rotkin, Khorne Bloodbound, Skaven Pestilins and Stormcast Eternals. We're only two books in so far. The next book should cover more factions, and so on. Aelfs will get there time.
The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.
It isn't a continuation, not really. There's some characters with the same names, but that's about it. There's no shared themes or tone - Chaos in the Old World was about subtle, inescapable corruption as much as screaming barbarian hordes. The 'good' gods were distant and possibly nonexistent, instead of bouncing around smashing evil in the face. The average background blurb focused on muck-covered ratcatchers with small but vicious dogs or travelers muttering about the things lurking in the woods that might make a charcoal-burner vanish every now and then as much - or even more than - warrior priests smashing evil in the face. It's all war war war, all the time, and from my perspective, there's no real soul to it. It doesn't have the sense of tragic grandeur that 40k does, so it can't really get away with the same level of over the top carnage.
What they did was take a gritty, relatively low-fantasy setting (in that magic and fantastical creatures are something to marvel at or fear, rather than how John the Alchemist gets to work every day), crank the Magic Dial up to about five hundred, blow it up, create a new setting with a couple of shared characters, blow THAT up without really saying enough about it for anyone to get invested, and then ask us to care about it while sort of brushing off anyone who cared about the old one. If you like the game or background for whatever reason, that's totally fine, glad you're having fun with it. But please don't tell me that GW gave us a continuation of the Old World if you stare long enough at it in a bad light and tilt my head a bit. They really didn't.
On topic! I'd say about a week sounds right? The majority of the work was definitely in the warscrolls, although it feels like they did their usual GW 'playtest' thing among a group of like-minded gamers who know what the rules mean, of course they work that way, what do you mean 'ambiguous wording'? This time, the ruleset explicitly caters to that sort of group, though, so that's something!
Kriswall wrote: Did you read the End Times material? The End Times were a bridging 'story' connecting the Old World to the 'New' World. The Dark Elves feature in that story.
Also, I get that there is general and vague background information for some of the factions right now. Expect to see more as more books are released. Keep in mind that we're still VERY early in the release cycle. So far, most of the attention has been on the Sylvaneth (tree people), Nurgle Rotkin, Khorne Bloodbound, Skaven Pestilins and Stormcast Eternals. We're only two books in so far. The next book should cover more factions, and so on. Aelfs will get there time.
The fact that we're in this position right now would suggest they did not spend long on AoS then, wouldn't it?
You'd think if they put more than a couple of weeks of worth into the brand new setting they are launching (which is what AoS is despite it being a continuation of Fantasy) they would have, on release day, a comprehensive fluff guide. Or hell, at the very least fleshing out each faction just a little but so that it feels like it is actually a faction.
Kriswall wrote: Did you read the End Times material? The End Times were a bridging 'story' connecting the Old World to the 'New' World. The Dark Elves feature in that story.
Also, I get that there is general and vague background information for some of the factions right now. Expect to see more as more books are released. Keep in mind that we're still VERY early in the release cycle. So far, most of the attention has been on the Sylvaneth (tree people), Nurgle Rotkin, Khorne Bloodbound, Skaven Pestilins and Stormcast Eternals. We're only two books in so far. The next book should cover more factions, and so on. Aelfs will get there time.
The fact that we're in this position right now would suggest they did not spend long on AoS then, wouldn't it?
You'd think if they put more than a couple of weeks of worth into the brand new setting they are launching (which is what AoS is despite it being a continuation of Fantasy) they would have, on release day, a comprehensive fluff guide. Or hell, at the very least fleshing out each faction just a little but so that it feels like it is actually a faction.
I don't think they wanted to release a 'comprehensive fluff guide'. I'm 100% certain they have one internally. I'm also 100% certain that we'll never see it. My gut tells me we'll get campaign book after campaign book and a Battle Tome (Army Book) for each faction as time goes on. We know a Stormcast Eternals Battle Tome is coming out. It's reasonable to assume a Khorne Bloodbound Battle Tome will follow at some point and then over time we'll get all the others. ALL of these books will be optional as the core rules and war scrolls will always be free. If you want Battle Plans and Battalions... then you'll have to pay extra.
One week is laughable. How long do you think it physically takes to contract out the artwork, or to physically lay out all the publications we've seen so far. Do you think the various books Black Library has released were conceived, written and printed over the course of 5 business days? Seriously? Designing a new setting with a new rules system is a complex undertaking with lots of moving parts of lots of people involved.
The fact that there are books alone should tell you that this was more than a couple weeks worth of effort. You obviously have no idea how publishing works.
I'm 100% certain that the initial Age of Sigmar release is the culmination of lots of people working hard over a long period of time. I'm also 100% certain that we've only seen the smallest portion of the work they've already done.
BL books and supplements that have been released are not the question. The question was core rules and Warscrolls that were made available upon release.
Isn't the question "how long the rules took"? Not the fancy artwork or the nounverb names or the books or anything else, but the actual rules.
EDIT:...so fast...
Also, just a thought, but if I wanted to introduce a setting for a game focused on people who like to model and game based on the background, I'd lead off with any fluff I had written. A comprehensive fluff guide would have been exactly the right thing to release alongside the starter set.
jonolikespie wrote: BL books and supplements that have been released are not the question. The question was core rules and Warscrolls that were made available upon release.
I'm not sure you can separate the core rules and war scrolls from everything else involved. I'm sure they talked about fluff during the war scroll meetings. I'm sure they talked about artwork during the war scroll meetings.
In any case, there is no way 2-3 people spent a week writing up the core rules and war scrolls. If you think otherwise, I'd challenge you to grab 2 of your friends and create a brand new game, based loosely on the old system that has playable core rules and hundreds of unit entries. You have 40 hours (that's one week for you non business types). Get cracking.
my guess is several years - to actually make the decision to make the break with the previous rule set - which were overgrown and overblown and way past it's sell-by-date
and about a year to write the rules and the scrolls
We wrote: I wrote my ideas for a tabletop game a few years ago. Pretty sure what I came up with in one day was more rules than they have in AoS. I worked on it for a total of 1 week of actual writing (only a couple of hours a day) and 2-3 weeks of just thinking. I finallyI realized no one will ever play it, I have no money to launch a game etc. before I dropped it.
I came up with 30 pages in that time.
So yea, pretty sure they popped those rules out in less than a week. Play testing I am sure took longer, another couple of week for the war scrolls.
That's not how things work though... you can do a million of anything, but quality is what matters.
MWHistorian wrote: For a "narative" game they sure went light on any actual story.
There are two campaign books at roughly 500 pages, two battle tomes at around 130 pages, and 8 or so black library ebooks (page count unknown) which beg to disagree. You may not like the story, but there's no shortage of it.
MWHistorian wrote: For a "narative" game they sure went light on any actual story.
There are two campaign books at roughly 500 pages, two battle tomes at around 130 pages, and 8 or so black library ebooks (page count unknown) which beg to disagree. You may not like the story, but there's no shortage of it.
I can see both sides. As you stated, there IS a decent chunk of story written for AoS, but much of it is outside the game, and much of the battle tomes (read: vast majority) is pictures and warscrolls with little actual fluff. Compare this to the 8th edition core rulebook, which has a solid third of it devoted to fluff, and I see how people say AoS is less narrative at the onset. Its a somewhat vague setting with vague history and the specifics have come in after the release; this can point towards a short amount of time spent writing it with the intent to fill in later.
We wrote: I wrote my ideas for a tabletop game a few years ago. Pretty sure what I came up with in one day was more rules than they have in AoS. I worked on it for a total of 1 week of actual writing (only a couple of hours a day) and 2-3 weeks of just thinking. I finallyI realized no one will ever play it, I have no money to launch a game etc. before I dropped it.
I came up with 30 pages in that time.
So yea, pretty sure they popped those rules out in less than a week. Play testing I am sure took longer, another couple of week for the war scrolls.
That's not how things work though... you can do a million of anything, but quality is what matters.
Oh the irony.
You're like a writer who thinks all that matters is more words.
Presumably it took a fair while for everyone involved to agree on what the scope of the game should be (i.e. round bases moving individually instead of ranked blocks), and it wouldn't surprise me if they tried out several entirely different rule sets before deciding on the rough structure on what the game should be like.
Writing the rules themselves wouldn't take too long once you've decided on what they should be, but when there are lots of management types involved in the decision process, it's going to take time.
So I'm not sure there is a good answer. Given the scope of the project, it probably took more than a year from they decided to make the game until the whole thing was finished. But if you just took one guy and told him to come up with a simplified rule set and rules for all units in the game, he'd be able to crank out SOMETHING in a few weeks.
It's like how you can make up a new name in three seconds, but the process of coming up with a new for a company or product can take months or even years.
I wish we could see some of the other rulesets that were considered and rejected. My main complaint against AoS is how much of the DNA of WH/40K is preserved.
Based on how the rules are written I suspect that the design team played through loads of possibilities, tweaking how the game worked and finally wrote it down at the end.
This would explain some of the more ambiguous rules, they knew how it should be played, but didn't properly consider how a person new to the rules could read them.
The game flow actually works pretty well, the mechanics are interestinG, hero phase works well as do the various buffs etc.
They just needed to write a clearer explanation of the rules, blind playtesting with a different gaming group would have helped iron out the issues with things like summoning. I also think that they would really benefitted from releasing a couple of video battle reports explaining the mechanics of the game on release day.
GW really needs to join the modern age of communication, especially with younger players, they have zero official social media presence, everyone in the business world is scrambling to make social media work for them few companies do it well as you have to have customers willing to engage. GW customers are more than keen to engage with them bit they just seem to be stuck in the wrong era.
Gharak wrote: Based on how the rules are written I suspect that the design team played through loads of possibilities, tweaking how the game worked and finally wrote it down at the end.
This would explain some of the more ambiguous rules, they knew how it should be played, but didn't properly consider how a person new to the rules could read them.
G
I remember, from what I think was one of the last, public, sneak peaces into how GW designers make decisions to change rules and why, one designer stating that they've intentionally left some parts vague to give players room for interpretation. This was from an interview for an older iteration of 40k's rules.
Gharak wrote: GW customers are more than keen to engage with them bit they just seem to be stuck in the wrong era.
Have a quick read through the Dakka forums for GW systems to get an idea on the sort of person that might approach GW via social media.
Being GW's social media team wouldn't be a job, it'd be a sentence...
GW used to have their own forums which had volunteer moderators. They closed them in late 2006.
The basic problem was that the purpose of a company forum is to allow the company and customers to communicate each other, however GW simply isn't interested in communication.
Thus, complaints, requests for information, rules queries and suggestions were banned, ignored or sometimes answered haphazardly when someone at GW felt like dipping in.
Gharak wrote: GW customers are more than keen to engage with them bit they just seem to be stuck in the wrong era.
Have a quick read through the Dakka forums for GW systems to get an idea on the sort of person that might approach GW via social media.
Being GW's social media team wouldn't be a job, it'd be a sentence...
Fun fact, companies that use child labor, have spilled oil all over the ocean and done things a LOT worse than GW have social media teams.
As bad as one might think 'nerd rage' is, anyone actually competent with customer interactions and is being paid to do just that should have no problem with any of it.
Swaying public opinion is literally the entire point, if GW never closed themselves off there would be a lot less unhappy people now and opening up now might seem daunting but five years down the line will certainly have payed off.
I do not think very long at all, they just cut out a lot of stuff.
I think the artist who designed the models and pictures took a longer time then the rules team
Couldn't have been longer than the production time of the new Total WARhammer video game. Otherwise they would have used the new AoS and not gone about selling the old world after they get rid and are now trying to make AoS work. I know GW cares little abotu video game titles but it does give an indicator that AoS is no more than two years old in terms of development start to finish.
Swaying public opinion is literally the entire point, if GW never closed themselves off there would be a lot less unhappy people now and opening up now might seem daunting but five years down the line will certainly have payed off.
I used to run a forum of some size (around 40k-50k registered users) and it was not a job I would wish on my worst enemy. In today's climate of perpetual offense, I can't imagine what a nightmare it must be to manage a community now. It is time consuming and personally costly, and often times, your moderators can be even worse than the users. In a commercial setting, you end up having moderators who just can't give answers and the community ends up turning against them. You've got cases where beloved community managers end up saying something stupid (or getting fired like at Reddit) and it creating a consumer revolt. You ban a poster and you've lost a customer, even if they deserved the ban.
In my opinion, and only my opinion, I would not fault anybody or organization that wanted to stay the hell out of the community management business. They don't need, and probably shouldn't want, any place where customers can post their opinions in public. They can gather opinions easily enough without giving disgruntled players and idiot trolls a platform to reach their customers too.
You know how the saying goes, "it's better to keep your mouth closed and look like an idiot, than open it and remove all doubt".
Concept to release was 3yrs. That isn't a glib statement, that is how long it actually took. Whatever your opinion of the game is, a huge amount of work has gone into streamlining it.
Gharak wrote: GW customers are more than keen to engage with them bit they just seem to be stuck in the wrong era.
Have a quick read through the Dakka forums for GW systems to get an idea on the sort of person that might approach GW via social media.
Being GW's social media team wouldn't be a job, it'd be a sentence...
GW created this issue via their treatment of their fans. Look at other similar wargames companies and you don't see this behavior amongst other fan groups. Its on GW's back to fix this problem as well, and the way to do that would be through honest and open communication to rebuild the sense of trust that does not exist amongst its customers. It would take time and effort, but its certainly doable. GW has shown zero interest in such communication however.
Kilkrazy wrote: If that's true that GW's design studio have completely lost the plot. 125 people working on AoS for three years and this is the best they could do?
It is definitely true, although the whole studio wouldn't have been involved, or working on it simultaneously. Models are 18 months from concept to box. The concepts for the new background would have had to have been planned and begun before the miniature designers had anything to work with, so probably the same again allowing for trial and error. As for the game, the changes are massive, and so there was a lot of passing back between rules team and the play testers, especially on trying to balance the warscrolls to be able to remove the points system.
Fair enough, I know a lot of people seem to think it was a Friday afternoon effort.
Tbh, I don't really see a huge change, you buy an army, you roll dice to hit and wound. It's essentially the same game, with simplified mechanics made complicated trying to remember the warscroll rules. The biggest chance that is meaningful that I can see is the freedom to buy whatever models you want without proxying and agreeing with opponents beforehand. Doesn't affect me as I only play socially, but might be useful in tournis. It's a change that I can't see changing much beyond the annual statement (hopefully).
It took them three years to come up with this? I...wow.
Thanks for giving us a former insider's viewpoint! Is there anything else you can share about the development? I'm mostly curious about the decision to switch the background. Why on earth would they do that? Even if they were dead-set on having Chaos overrun everything and not hit the reset button again at the end of End Times, they could have at least kept the links by setting their new skirmish game in the ruins of the Old World. What sort of thought went into picking the new themes and style of the setting?
Just to throw in my $0.02 from an MTG point of view, I heard from the Head Designer for MTG (Mark Rosewater) on one of his podcasts that something like only 1 out of 100 ideas for a given card actually make it into production and off to stores. So, it could have actually taken a lot more time to write the AoS rules and Warscrolls than it appears on the surface.
@spinner no idea, we kept hearing that the world was being battered down until it was just the old world, so no lustria, ulthuan, Cathay etc, and 9th ed would be set in the remains. As we read the end times it seemed to be confirming what we'd heard, so the last book came as a massive shock. I thought it was so they could sell the ip to make the total war game, but apparently it hasn't been the case.
Hm. Don't think I would have cared much for that either, to be honest - seems like cutting out variety just to cut it out - but it would have been better than what we got. Interesting that they kept it quiet from the people working for them. I wonder if that was to keep rumors under control? If so, it didn't work that well - the old 'bubblehammer' rumor is a little too close to be coincidence, in my mind.
3 years seems completely believable considering how much goes into the creation of a game (from concept to artwork to design to sculpting to rules to layout... etc etc etc) and the amount of playtesting and iteration they must have done, just imagine how many versions they probably threw away before arriving at what we have now. I said at least 6 months before but obviously I was way off.
The actual rules and warscrolls? It's probably a few weeks work for a small dedicated team that knows what they're doing plus playtesting and whatnot.
Obviously AoS as a whole would have taken longer as there would have been a lot of time spent on concept development first, artwork, miniatures, decisions on progressing the the story line. All that crap would have taken a lot longer than the rules and warscrolls themselves.
But if you just told a team of developers to design a game with the general parameters of AoS I don't see why it would take them more than a few weeks to come up with a final draft for approval and given how the rules are written it doesn't feel like there was much editing from the final draft to the published copy.
If you think that the AoS ruleset took more than a few weeks to develop, ask yourself honestly how one could spend more than a month developing those four pages. There's not a lot there. I cannot fathom or imagine grown adults spending a great deal of time creating that ruleset. What took so long? I'm genuinely curious how it would have been a such a drawn out process.
Sqorgar wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if these rules have been worked on, in one capacity or another, for years. The lead time on the models and books alone are probably over a year (new art, fiction, and visual design takes time), which suggests they've at least had these rules for that long - I doubt they just made the rules and sat on them for a year, doing absolutely no playtesting or revisions during this time.
If you are asking how long the initial draft took? Probably a few weeks, at the least, but I guarantee you, it looked nothing like it does now. I'm sure it was much longer and much more complicated initially. I wouldn't be surprised if they went through five or six different rulesets before deciding on refining AoS.
AoS was developed throughout, at the minimum, 2014, as evidence by all the copyright dates on the first releases being 2014.
Well End Times was obviously being developed in some form while writing Eighth Edition because 8th retconned various events to lead into ET. So probably started like 5 years ago or earlier.
Age of Sigmar most likely began a few years ago. The three year figure seems right.
Clearly this was more work than usual edition changes even if you don't like it.
The rules and warscrolls are a small part of what they've done.
Thokt wrote: If you think that the AoS ruleset took more than a few weeks to develop, ask yourself honestly how one could spend more than a month developing those four pages. There's not a lot there. I cannot fathom or imagine grown adults spending a great deal of time creating that ruleset. What took so long? I'm genuinely curious how it would have been a such a drawn out process.
The rules probably took them a trivially short period of time compared to all the other stuff. Firstly all the meetings and whatnot deciding to kill WHFB and then deciding what would replace it, then preparing all the supplementary materials, miniatures and all that junk would have taken quite a long time.
The 4 page set of rules? I really don't think that took them all that long to do. Neither do I think the rules in the warscrolls took them a hell of a long time to do.
The rules simply are too simple and too similar to the previous 30 years of GW to have taken long to write. The decisions about canning WHFB and so on would have taken a lot longer.
It doesn't take long to write 4 pages of rules - of course. But I imagine those 4 pages are the result of draft and re-draft and re-draft and re-draft.
Condensing an entire rulebook into four pages is not an easy task. I challenge someone to do it with the 40k rulebook in one draft.
Bottle wrote: It doesn't take long to write 4 pages of rules - of course. But I imagine those 4 pages are the result of draft and re-draft and re-draft and re-draft.
Yeah, like 2 days for one draft... then 2 days for the redraft... then probably 1 day for the redraft... then half a day for the last redraft
Maybe a bit longer than that and I'm sure they did some amount of playtesting but I really can't see how it would have taken a hell of a lot of time to write those rules.
What would have taken a longer time is deciding that they want to make the rules 4 pages long in the first place, that decision making process would have taken a lot longer than writing the rules themselves.
Bottle wrote: Condensing an entire rulebook into four pages is not an easy task. I challenge someone to do it with the 40k rulebook in one draft.
If a professional, being paid and working full time, can't do that in a week I'd suggest that they should never have been hired for a game developer role.
Bottle wrote: It doesn't take long to write 4 pages of rules - of course. But I imagine those 4 pages are the result of draft and re-draft and re-draft and re-draft.
Condensing an entire rulebook into four pages is not an easy task. I challenge someone to do it with the 40k rulebook in one draft.
I don't imagine they are the result of draft and re-draft.
It's impossible to imagine that these rules are the finely honed result of many iterations of test and refinement. They simply are too simple and too derivative of well established systems already familiar to GW.
AoS isn't a condensed version of 40K/WHFB. It's just a version with huge amounts of stuff left out and a few bits of simple rules like the terrain deployment table that are new or modified.
It is inconceivable that the fairly trivial changes in AoS took any significant amount of work to produce. Rival studios have produced much greater bodies of work much quicker with much smaller resources than GW commands.
These "trivial" changes (I don't see what's so trivial about them tbh) have a HUGE effect on how the game plays and I can absolutely see them being iterated on for quite a while (how long depends on how many resources were put into it). That's just my guess of course, for all I know you could be right and it took them 3 months and a couple of coffee breaks
Mymearan wrote: These "trivial" changes (I don't see what's so trivial about them tbh) have a HUGE effect on how the game plays and I can absolutely see them being iterated on for quite a while (how long depends on how many resources were put into it). That's just my guess of course, for all I know you could be right and it took them 3 months and a couple of coffee breaks
For example the movement and combat system are essentially the same as 40K.
It's not clear to me why having had 25 years of experience of 40K combat it would be necessary or helpful to do much testing, redesigning and retesting of a new combat system, only to result in the one that already existed. Especially given GW's previous history of copy-pasta,
Movement and Combat rules make up 75% of the rulebook. The rest of the rules are nearly one liners. It's hard to think the that the terrain roll-up table took months, for instance, or the idea of rolling for initiative every turn instead of at the beginning og the game.
If the new game actually had a lot of new, cleverly streamlined, exciting rules, it would be much easier to believe in a long development process.
you guys are being too dismissive in my opinion. Take the new magic phase for example. In 8th edition there must have been 40+ spells in the rulebook and then 6 or more in each army book.
Now there are 2 core spells and each caster has a unique spell plus any summoning spells.
That reduction in magic probably took a lot of refining. I doubt they decided to go with 2 core spells of the bat, and even if they did I'm sure they made lots of alternatives to test the waters before settling on just those 2.
Same with bravery. I imagine different ideas were put forward, drafted, refined, altered, removed etc etc before the final mechanic was introduced.
Bottle wrote: you guys are being too dismissive in my opinion. Take the new magic phase for example. In 8th edition there must have been 40+ spells in the rulebook and then 6 or more in each army book.
Now there are 2 core spells and each caster has a unique spell plus any summoning spells.
That reduction in magic probably took a lot of refining. I doubt they decided to go with 2 core spells of the bat, and even if they did I'm sure they made lots of alternatives to test the waters before settling on just those 2.
It took a 'select all' and 'cut' to be fair. Being cynical, The conversation preceding it probsbly took longer, but even then, 'cut all the excess, and boil it down to a basic set of things' isn't a lot of refining.
Bottle wrote: you
Same with bravery. I imagine different ideas were put forward, drafted, refined, altered, removed etc etc before the final mechanic was introduced.
That's called a 'conversation' with jervis. Put forward some ideas, the boss says 'yes, go with this one'. I can imagine it being done over the course of a few meetings. Knowing the corporate world though, that was probably a meeting a week over a month or two.
My impression is they didn't spend much time at all, the rules are not a big departure from mechanics they have already been using. Granted it is a very watered down version there is really nothing new or innovative about it. maybe 2 months tops.
