many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense, is because they have novelists writing the rules instead of technical writers.

Look at who writes rules, they're all black library novelists. They're story tellers, and honestly pretty damn good at fiction. So they sit down, write something that sounds good and don't bother even checking to see if the rule is nonsensical or doesn't actually work in the context of the game.

Technical writing and fiction writing are two totally different skills. it's like someone saying "i drive a car, so i can drive a cruise ship"

GW needs to hire the type of people who write manuals, boardgame rules, ect. People who know how to check to see if things actually work.

I agree game design and story writing are different arts, but how are you this certain that modern GW hires writers and gives them game designer jobs ?

I can get behind the idea, but find it incredibly arguable that their writers are good at fiction. I find them "okay" at best, most of the time.

Jacksmiles wrote:
I can get behind the idea, but find it incredibly arguable that their writers are good at fiction. I find them "okay" at best, most of the time.

They write great vignettes, it's when the stories get past 2-4 pages that they start to fall apart. I love the fluff in the codices and rulebooks. But the novels are mostly just pulpy war fiction.

 oldzoggy wrote:
I agree game design and story writing are different arts, but how are you this certain that modern GW hires writers and gives them game designer jobs ?

Because you can just look up the hiring requirements for that position is just an english degree

But they have Jervis.

GW has been doing this for decades. Whether the current team is still made up of such, I don't know, they stopped attributing authorship several years ago.

That said, alone it does not explain GW's poor game design, and they've brought in dedicated game people as well and many of their former employess have gone on to other positions in game design elsewhere. The rules aren't really there to be functional, they're there to push kit sales and serve as an add-on sale. Games Workshop is not, and does not advertise itself to its shareholders to be, a games studio, but basically a "premium" toy company.

You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

But instead they come up with every wrong idea possible.
"lets split armies into multiple books to sell more books"
"lets dumb the rules down, maybe it's too hard"
"lets get rid of the community support and push our online store"
"lets break things, then release a formation that fixes what's broken but requires a dozen of one kit that doesn't sell well."

It's like if they took about 5 minutes to read any forum or listen to any gamer they'd get this incredibly simplistic idea that the biggest issue with their games is their lack of well written rules. It's right there in front of them and it goes totally over their heads.


I actually don't know for certain that they still use novelists for rules writing, but that's what they did for 26 years...so it's probably a good bet they still are by the quality of the rules. And the books where we do hear rumors of who wrote it, it always turns out to be black library novelist. So i think it's a pretty solid guess.


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 TheSilo wrote:

Jacksmiles wrote:
I can get behind the idea, but find it incredibly arguable that their writers are good at fiction. I find them "okay" at best, most of the time.

They write great vignettes, it's when the stories get past 2-4 pages that they start to fall apart. I love the fluff in the codices and rulebooks. But the novels are mostly just pulpy war fiction.

a large chunk of them are just bolter pron, you know "some space marine cleaved 600000 orks in half with a chainsword for 100 pages"
But i do still think in general their stories are entertaining, and among them are some actual gems, like anything written by his holiness Dan Abnett, or Graham Mcneal, ect

I personally love warhammer fluff, i think a lot of us do and it's probably one of the reasons we put up with such a crap company. But they badly need to realize how a well written game will sell more miniatures.

Danny slag wrote:
You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

I am sure someone did. They got thrown out the window.

For the original poster, what is a technical writer?

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

On the whole the rules are unbalanced towards shooting and MC/GMC. Are you saying that monstrous creatures are supposed to be much more powerful than the majority of similarly costed vehicles? Grav weapons are good against basically everything. Are you saying that Grav is supposed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperium's armory? Due to how the barrage rule works it's easier to hit a specific target in a unit with a barrage weapon than it is to with a sniper. Is artillery (with the barrage rule) supposed to be better for the purposes of sniping than actual snipers are?

As for who writes the rules, back when we knew who the codex authors were the people who did most of them were dabblers, who did some fluff writing and had some experience writing rules. The advantage of this was that you'd have someone who would actively try to write rules that matched the lore. The problems were that there wasn't a concerted effort to balance things in between books, or sometimes within the same book, that the authors would write the rules based on their ideas about the fluff and often got much leeway, sometimes leading to massive canon changes between codexes, and writers picking favorites which led to a lot of throwing ideas about what's "fair" out the window, like the original GK Plasma Syphon.

As for a lot of the newer stuff it feels like GW is thinking less about balance and more about pushing out the latest supplement and making rules that are fun to play with.

Davor wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

I am sure someone did. They got thrown out the window.

For the original poster, what is a technical writer?

For example a technical writer could write contracts while a creative writes stories.

Considering CSM just won a Grand Tournament and everyone is berating Magnus for being overcosted, and how terrible CSM are, just shows that this meta simply isn't well defined.

We talk about balance, but imbalance should be present in these games. Because the meta typically evolves; as one thing becomes more powerful, it's logical counter should gain popularity. For instance, if everyone at the tournament was playing Dark Angels and just jinking the night away, maybe template flamers/barrage/template that ignores cover start to show up in lists.

The problem is that this meta is relatively inelastic, in that not a lot of games get played, and also, it's not easy to just "have a new list with certain strengths" since constructing a unit & painting it are very time consuming. It fosters the perception of imbalance, when the game may actually have a good level of competitive imbalance.

I mean there's a thread talking about how bad Magnus is and he's overcosted. Magnus was instrumental in winning a GT. Are these people going to admit they didn't know how to use Magnus, or claim the guy who won got lucky, or what? The community took a pretty solid stance on this specific model and all of that just got blown out of the water, if we use tournaments as an indication of what's good and what isn't.

I guess my point is, it's easy to call the game imbalanced, and that's true, but that doesn't mean that the imbalance makes the game ineffective. That's an entirely different argument.

Edit- for screwup

Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

Nope.

I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

Davor wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

I am sure someone did. They got thrown out the window.

For the original poster, what is a technical writer?

A technical writer is someone who's trained in, well i guess the official term is technical writing. It's actually a pretty big field that no one really knows exists. I took a few classes in it myself as part of my degree which is the only reason I know it's a thing. Basically the people who write every manual, textbook, or instruction book you've ever read. Writing those is a completely different skill set. In my classes we even used rule books for board and tabletop games as examples of good and bad technical writing.

Essentially with technical writing the goal is clarity, saying everything in as few words as possible, but in ways that can lead to no misunderstanding, and making sure everything makes sense and doesn't conflict with other sources. So everything GW needs.

 Vaktathi wrote:
GW has been doing this for decades. Whether the current team is still made up of such, I don't know, they stopped attributing authorship several years ago.

That said, alone it does not explain GW's poor game design, and they've brought in dedicated game people as well and many of their former employess have gone on to other positions in game design elsewhere. The rules aren't really there to be functional, they're there to push kit sales and serve as an add-on sale. Games Workshop is not, and does not advertise itself to its shareholders to be, a games studio, but basically a "premium" toy company.

It, traditionally, was the other way around.

Gav Thorpe and Graham McNeill started as rules-writers first, then got to do BL stuff.

Most of the BL writers now don't have anything to do with rules, and haven't ever.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

Have him write the fluff, but get Rick Priestley, Matt Leacock and Reiner Knizia together to write the rules collectively.

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

I think almost everyone here would disagree. But i'll let them do so instead of speaking for them.

I wasn't even really referring to balance. That's a whole different can of worms, so please don't straw man me into saying "i wish my army was more OP." because that's not what i'm saying at all.

What i'm talking about is the rules are broken and badly written, not imbalance, not what unit is at what power, but repeatedly rules are released which blatantly don't work
just a couple quick examples,
A techpriest-enginseer can't even use it's ability on the army it exists in.
deathwatch talks about combat squads, but can't combat squad.
Rubric marines can take a weapon that doesn't work with them since they're slow and purposeful.
imperial agents lets you take a transport...that can't transport anyone.

Think about every codex release. Every single one within minutes of it being out players have found rules that simply don't work, and ones that are written in a way where you wonder if the writer has even read the big rulebook or played a game.



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 master of ordinance wrote:
Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

I would probably buy that just because it's written by him, even though i don't think rules should be written by novelists, but he's Dan Abnett, so who am i to question god.

Most interesting part of this thread to me is the different opinions on the novelists.
Myself I think some of the novelists are great and others are...well, I wish they weren't. I also miss the blurb fiction codexes used to have.
I've never thought the core balance was particularly bad, skewed towards shooting maybe but not bad - I've always thought the biggest problem was in the codex stage some writers really get into their codexes, some seem to whack a new round of 'eavy metal in there and call it a day. The guy who writes Necrons is probably the only one that cares about balance though.

Technical Writers are all over, they just take positions in corporate settings working in Knowledge Management, User Accessibility, or other words that basically amount to "person who writes documentation for products."

And technical writers wouldn't create the rules, they would just write them. And the more complex the product, the more mistakes, or issues, can be in the writing. And you would definitely have multiple teams of writers, so it's very very very likely that each book can have a different set of writers.

I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

 Marmatag wrote:


I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

If you have to adopt a particular mindset to understand the rule, its not clearly or well written.

A well written rule is understood by all without need to read with any sort of interpretation.

So in that case, no, GW does not do a good job writing their rules.

 Marmatag wrote:
I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

It really isn't. In fact, "you can't use RAW" has been one of GW's major problems. For example, remember the "models with helmets can't shoot or charge" thing from 6th edition and earlier? The rules said you draw LOS from the model's eyes, and a model with a helmet (or crisis suits, wraithlords, etc) do not have eyes to draw LOS from. To make the game function at all you had to completely ignore "what does it say" and replace it with "what do I want it to say".

 Peregrine wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

It really isn't. In fact, "you can't use RAW" has been one of GW's major problems. For example, remember the "models with helmets can't shoot or charge" thing from 6th edition and earlier? The rules said you draw LOS from the model's eyes, and a model with a helmet (or crisis suits, wraithlords, etc) do not have eyes to draw LOS from. To make the game function at all you had to completely ignore "what does it say" and replace it with "what do I want it to say".

.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

 Blacksails wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

If you have to adopt a particular mindset to understand the rule, its not clearly or well written.

A well written rule is understood by all without need to read with any sort of interpretation.

So in that case, no, GW does not do a good job writing their rules.

The mark of a well written rule is not that a good-faith reader can determine its meaning; it's that a bad-faith reader can come to no other meaning than the intended one.

 Asmodai wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

If you have to adopt a particular mindset to understand the rule, its not clearly or well written.

A well written rule is understood by all without need to read with any sort of interpretation.

So in that case, no, GW does not do a good job writing their rules.

The mark of a well written rule is not that a good-faith reader can determine its meaning; it's that a bad-faith reader can come to no other meaning than the intended one.

QFT. And we aren't even talking about trying to prevent WAAC rules abuses half of the time, just honest misinterpretation.

Lord Kragan wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

It really isn't. In fact, "you can't use RAW" has been one of GW's major problems. For example, remember the "models with helmets can't shoot or charge" thing from 6th edition and earlier? The rules said you draw LOS from the model's eyes, and a model with a helmet (or crisis suits, wraithlords, etc) do not have eyes to draw LOS from. To make the game function at all you had to completely ignore "what does it say" and replace it with "what do I want it to say".

.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

See Wraithguard/Wraithknight

Lord Kragan wrote:
.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

Visor =/= eye. Now, it's certainly obvious what the rule was intended to be and easy to fix the problem in real games, but RAW was obviously broken and you had to be reasonable about house-ruling it to something that made more sense if you wanted to have an enjoyable game. And it certainly disproves the idea that RAW is fine and all of the issues are from players not paying enough attention to RAW.

Danny slag wrote:

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

I think almost everyone here would disagree. But i'll let them do so instead of speaking for them.

I wasn't even really referring to balance. That's a whole different can of worms, so please don't straw man me into saying "i wish my army was more OP." because that's not what i'm saying at all.

What i'm talking about is the rules are broken and badly written, not imbalance, not what unit is at what power, but repeatedly rules are released which blatantly don't work
just a couple quick examples,
A techpriest-enginseer can't even use it's ability on the army it exists in.
deathwatch talks about combat squads, but can't combat squad.
Rubric marines can take a weapon that doesn't work with them since they're slow and purposeful.
imperial agents lets you take a transport...that can't transport anyone.

Think about every codex release. Every single one within minutes of it being out players have found rules that simply don't work, and ones that are written in a way where you wonder if the writer has even read the big rulebook or played a game.



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 master of ordinance wrote:
Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

I would probably buy that just because it's written by him, even though i don't think rules should be written by novelists, but he's Dan Abnett, so who am i to question god.

And some of those complaints are just complaining to complain. Deathwatch already operate at 5 dudes and don't really combat squad in the first place and not being able to Overwatch is a core issue with Rubric Marines; the Flamers still work.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
On the whole the rules are unbalanced towards shooting and MC/GMC

Your Codex might be, but the core rules aren't. My Codex does fine against both of those things.

Are you saying that monstrous creatures are supposed to be much more powerful than the majority of similarly costed vehicles?

Are they? A Bloodthirster can kill a lot more models than a Land Raider can, but on the other hand I can kill a Bloodthirster with almost any weapon in my army, and the Bloodthirster has to expose itself to those weapons in order to hurt me. Five Flyrant armies might be more powerful than five-LR armies, but that's a case of the army being greater than the sum of its parts. An individual Flyrant isn't much more powerful than an individual Land Raider pound for pound.

Grav weapons are good against basically everything. Are you saying that Grav is supposed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperium's armory?

Well, yes - because it was designed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperial arsenal. Works as intended. Explain why such a weapon is bad, please.

Due to how the barrage rule works it's easier to hit a specific target in a unit with a barrage weapon than it is to with a sniper. Is artillery (with the barrage rule) supposed to be better for the purposes of sniping than actual snipers are?

I doubt that, which means this is a rule not working as intended. This deficiency has little overall effect on the game's functioning, but I suppose it's a deficiency nonetheless.

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

The game is perfectly functional, barring a few oversights. What the old designers intended for the game, and your personal feelings about the sturcture and flow of the game, are not relevant.

Danny slag wrote:
I think almost everyone here would disagree

Almost everyone agreed the earth was flat at one time. Popularity does not entail validity.

I wasn't even really referring to balance. That's a whole different can of worms, so please don't straw man me into saying "i wish my army was more OP." because that's not what i'm saying at all.

I never said you were talking about balance. You think rules oversights in new releases are indicative of poor development. I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ, and have no issue with such problems as long as they're patched out promptly (by the developers - it's not acceptable to expect players to patch your rules for you).

There are many reasons the 40K development team need a kick up the arse, but minor mechnical oversights in new releases isn't one of them.

 BBAP wrote:
Well, yes - because it was designed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperial arsenal. Works as intended. Explain why such a weapon is bad, please.

Because missile launchers were already supposed to fill that role: adequate against a wide variety of targets, but not the best weapon against any of them. Grav weapons break that rule and are great against most targets, with the only real weakness (low-save hordes) being compensated for by having lots of bolters on the best grav units.

The game is perfectly functional, barring a few oversights

Lol.

I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ

And you're 100% wrong. A good process with skilled writers doesn't have rule problems because they playtest sufficiently to catch everything before the rules are printed. And they design the rules from the beginning with a goal of clarity and function. This is why games like MTG can function with no rule disputes at all, because every possible interaction has been covered.

Aren't grav weapons supposed to be very rare? Like, rarer than plasma? Sure seems to be a lot of rare weapons around.
The problem with grav is that its too good for a weapon that's meant to be versatile. Its a basic rule of game balance; the more something can do the less effective it must be at those roles compared to specialized variants. The term "jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind. At the moment grav is pretty much "jack of all trades, master of them all". It out performs anti-vehicle weapons and outperforms plasma at theirs role, and its only weakness is a moot point as bolters, the standard weapon of a space marine army, already takes care of that.
Its just not a well balanced weapon. It should really have been a support weapon, that screws with enemy movement or their initiative or something.

As for functionality - A car without brakes is certainly functional, in that it can be driven. That doesn't mean you should drive it.

I'm pretty sure i could drive a cruise ship

 BBAP wrote:

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

The game is perfectly functional, barring a few oversights. What the old designers intended for the game, and your personal feelings about the sturcture and flow of the game, are not relevant.

LOL. You should do standup.

 Ubl1k wrote:
I'm pretty sure i could drive a cruise ship

Since when was a cruise ship a car
You probably could, but whether you should is another matter entirely

 Peregrine wrote:
Because missile launchers were already supposed to fill that role: adequate against a wide variety of targets, but not the best weapon against any of them. Grav weapons break that rule and are great against most targets, with the only real weakness (low-save hordes) being compensated for by having lots of bolters on the best grav units.

"All weapons and units must be mediocre" is not a rule. Missile Launchers cost too much and suck too hard to justify that cost. That's not a problem with Grav weapons. Similarly, in an army rocking a maximum of 50-60 infantry models at 1850pts, having those models be effective at shooting down more or less anything that comes at them is perfectly fine.

I don't see the validity of this complaint, and even if it were a valid issue it doesn't affect the functionality or flow of the game at all and hence is not relevant here.

I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ

And you're 100% wrong. A good process with skilled writers doesn't have rule problems because they playtest sufficiently to catch everything before the rules are printed.

... which means I'm 100% right. Writers will make mistakes. The playtesters catch these mistakes, and then send the rules back to the writers to fix them. Test, re-write, test- rewrite, until you have a polished finished product. That's one way to do it. The other is to put the product out to gamers and patch any issues that arise. That's the direction GW seem to be taking with their game system.

If there's going to be an obvious best choice, why both including the other choices at all?

It makes more sense to have advantages and drawbacks to each of the choices, e.g. Grav is good if you expect to face Terminators. Plasma Cannons are good if you're expecting Marines. Heavy Flamers and Heavy Bolters are good if you're expecting a horde. Lascannons are good if you're expecting a lot of armor. Missile Launchers are good if you're expecting fliers or skimmers.

Seems to allow for more interesting decisions in army design than "Always take Grav."

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

Clearly you never played second edition.

 Melissia wrote:

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

Clearly you never played second edition.

Actually I have. Some of the things in 2nd ed, even at its end pale in comparison to the insanity we have in front of us now.

Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

 BBAP wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Because missile launchers were already supposed to fill that role: adequate against a wide variety of targets, but not the best weapon against any of them. Grav weapons break that rule and are great against most targets, with the only real weakness (low-save hordes) being compensated for by having lots of bolters on the best grav units.

"All weapons and units must be mediocre" is not a rule. Missile Launchers cost too much and suck too hard to justify that cost. That's not a problem with Grav weapons. Similarly, in an army rocking a maximum of 50-60 infantry models at 1850pts, having those models be effective at shooting down more or less anything that comes at them is perfectly fine.

I don't see the validity of this complaint, and even if it were a valid issue it doesn't affect the functionality or flow of the game at all and hence is not relevant here.

I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ

And you're 100% wrong. A good process with skilled writers doesn't have rule problems because they playtest sufficiently to catch everything before the rules are printed.

... which means I'm 100% right. Writers will make mistakes. The playtesters catch these mistakes, and then send the rules back to the writers to fix them. Test, re-write, test- rewrite, until you have a polished finished product. That's one way to do it. The other is to put the product out to gamers and patch any issues that arise. That's the direction GW seem to be taking with their game system.

any game that needs as much FAQ as 40k has probably does not have terribly well written rules. I cant think of another game that has as many issues, particularly after so many editions that are just minor iterative changes, and every event has to run its own FAQ and changes just to make it playable.

 Asmodai wrote:
If there's going to be an obvious best choice, why both including the other choices at all?

My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

 Vaktathi wrote:
any game that needs as much FAQ as 40k has probably does not have terribly well written rules. I cant think of another game that has as many issues, particularly after so many editions that are just minor iterative changes, and every event has to run its own FAQ and changes just to make it playable.

I can't think of any tabletop games, but plenty of videogame developers are pursuing this model and a few of them are doing spectacularly well out of it. Bethesda games are generally unfinished, bug-filled beta test builds at release, yet they still manage to shift units because people want what they're selling. It remains to be seen whether GW's products are popular enough to reward that kind of business model. I'm guessing they're not, judging by their financials, but I don't run the company so I don't get to decide how they run their gak.

Martel732 wrote:Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

So is 7th.

 BBAP wrote:
My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Davor wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

So is 7th.

I saw more one turn tablings in 2nd than all other editions combined. There is no dumpster fire as big as the supernova dumpster fire of 2nd. The Tyranids could kill half your list before the game started and a piece of wargear could kill an entire IG list. Marines saved shuriken cannons on 6+ and shuriken catapults and sonic blasters on 5+. After people figured out how to exploit the game, I never saw an IoM list win. Oh, and Pulsa Rokkits. You don't get to play.

 Peregrine wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Why not? I am just curious.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Why not? I am just curious.

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

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

This just doesn't make any sense.

Even less so seeing as you recently argued in another topic that not every game is hyper competitive. Which directly translates to some games being something else, something else including concepts like "casual" - inwhich suboptimal options clearly have a place and uses, since people also make choices based on what they think is fun/cool/you name it.

In this, you are not correct.

Unless you underline that it is simply your opinion, and nothing more. Even then you won't be correct though, because opinions. Something you should consider doing more often, seeing as what you say isn't automatically a fact/all encompassing truth, and thinking it is doesn't make it so. Except maybe on a subjective level at best.

 Runic wrote:
Even less so seeing as you recently argued in another topic that not every game is hyper competitive. Which directly translates to some games being something else, something else including concepts like "casual" - inwhich suboptimal options clearly have a place and uses, since people also make choices based on what they think is fun/cool/you name it.

Having suboptimal choices doesn't improve casual gaming at all. Imagine missile launchers never existed at all, and grav always had the "good at everything" role. Now 8th edition arrives, and here casual players, have this weapon that is just a worse version of a grav cannon. How many casual players are going to be excited about this new "option"? Not very many of them. And why should they be? The new option adds nothing to the game, it's just extra rules text to fluff out the word count of the codex. So why should our evaluation of the worth of the missile launcher change just because it's already in the rules? Get rid of it and simplify the rules for everyone, casual or competitive.

Also, remember that removing an option from the rules doesn't mean removing fluff or models. For example, those missile launcher models could be representing grav missiles and use the rules for grav cannons. So it's not like removing obsolete options is going to invalidate anyone's army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And from a broader game design point of view, outside of removing clearly obsolete clutter from the rules, suboptimal options still add nothing to the game. Causal players aren't going to suffer if the rules are improved so that all options are relevant and there's no such thing as suboptimal choices. Casual players can still make choices based on what is fun/cool/whatever, except now their armies aren't terrible anymore. So having suboptimal choices in the rules is a failure of game design, not a reasonable choice to market to a particular audience. The only choice that remains is what to do about suboptimal choices: remove them from the game entirely, or buff them until they're no longer suboptimal.

 Peregrine wrote:
If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Wrong again. The Missile Launcher functions perfectly well - its rules are fine. If it cost 20pts less than a Grav Cannon it'd be a reasonable alternative - you get less firepower per model, but more models, and thus more weapons. It doesn't, though. It costs the same, so it's obsolete. GW has always had issues with consistency of points values. I think I said as much a couple of replies back. You can call this a "rules" issue if you want - and technically it is - but lumping everything from mechanical faults to twisty-ass point costings under the header of "rules issue" creates an argument so broad as to be useless.

There are games that recieve balance changes every week that have balance problems. Warhammer can never hope to have that kind of attention to rules you can simply stop wasting your effort. Popular RTS/1st person shooters/Dota-LoL type games with large followings are always nerfing buffing remaking and can never get it right. Even when they get it close something silly crawls into the ech chamber of complaints

One thing I have come to enjoy about 40k is that my buddies space marines rarely change much. And I don't feel like I am playing with a different set of Ork rules each week. WoW and LoL every 1st person shooter I have played could feel like a different game every week.

 BBAP wrote:
Wrong again. The Missile Launcher functions perfectly well - its rules are fine. If it cost 20pts less than a Grav Cannon it'd be a reasonable alternative - you get less firepower per model, but more models, and thus more weapons. It doesn't, though. It costs the same, so it's obsolete. GW has always had issues with consistency of points values. I think I said as much a couple of replies back. You can call this a "rules" issue if you want - and technically it is - but lumping everything from mechanical faults to twisty-ass point costings under the header of "rules issue" creates an argument so broad as to be useless.

Broken point costs are still broken rules, and still a failure of game design. They still come from the same failure to care about writing good rules and playtesting sufficiently to catch problems before they are published. So why do you keep using "GW's rule authors don't suck, they just suck instead" as a response?


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 Rismonite wrote:
Warhammer can never hope to have that kind of attention to rules you can simply stop wasting your effort.

The existence of MTG and its much better balance and rule clarity would be a pretty thorough counter to this idea. 40k rules are bad because GW's rule authors are lazy and/or incompetent, not because the task is impossible.

Good point about MTG. I like to think they don't have nearly the variables this game has. I would still point out that they playtest that game much more easily than 40k, you can play a game in minutes it makes gathering data much easier. As for balance, last I was looking anyways, you had about two decks at tournaments. That would be the meta deck, and it's hard counter. And a couple hints of flavor in a sideboard, provided you had room since at least 12 of the cards needed to be for the 3rd or 4th best deck in the meta in case some hipster was mucking about. It has been at least three years since I was watching MTG however.

Still MTG has nice things, like a flowchart for the phases of the game, definitions for what each card is, and exactly what each card does.

I still think balance will never really be achievable even with a polished ruleset. How many units in how many armies and what is really supposed to counter what in the first place?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Runic wrote:
Even less so seeing as you recently argued in another topic that not every game is hyper competitive. Which directly translates to some games being something else, something else including concepts like "casual" - inwhich suboptimal options clearly have a place and uses, since people also make choices based on what they think is fun/cool/you name it.

Having suboptimal choices doesn't improve casual gaming at all. Imagine missile launchers never existed at all, and grav always had the "good at everything" role. Now 8th edition arrives, and here casual players, have this weapon that is just a worse version of a grav cannon. How many casual players are going to be excited about this new "option"? Not very many of them. And why should they be? The new option adds nothing to the game, it's just extra rules text to fluff out the word count of the codex. So why should our evaluation of the worth of the missile launcher change just because it's already in the rules? Get rid of it and simplify the rules for everyone, casual or competitive.

Also, remember that removing an option from the rules doesn't mean removing fluff or models. For example, those missile launcher models could be representing grav missiles and use the rules for grav cannons. So it's not like removing obsolete options is going to invalidate anyone's army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And from a broader game design point of view, outside of removing clearly obsolete clutter from the rules, suboptimal options still add nothing to the game. Causal players aren't going to suffer if the rules are improved so that all options are relevant and there's no such thing as suboptimal choices. Casual players can still make choices based on what is fun/cool/whatever, except now their armies aren't terrible anymore. So having suboptimal choices in the rules is a failure of game design, not a reasonable choice to market to a particular audience. The only choice that remains is what to do about suboptimal choices: remove them from the game entirely, or buff them until they're no longer suboptimal.

Despite all this there are still players who use squads with Missile Launchers, Lascannons or Autocannons out there, and anything similiar. And they like using them. There is no reason to remove suboptimal choices from the game, aside from someones opinion.

 Runic wrote:
Despite all this there are still players who use squads with Missile Launchers, Lascannons or Autocannons out there, and anything similiar. And they like using them. There is no reason to remove suboptimal choices from the game, aside from someones opinion.

And they could continue using those options with the grav cannon rules. If 8th edition replaces the lascannon stat line with the grav cannon stat line do you honestly think all of the "casual" players are going to have their game ruined forever? That STR 9 AP 2 is such an inherent part of their game experience that they can't possibly enjoy a balanced version?

(Of course there's also the option of buffing all the other weapons until they're equally viable, I'm not the one who said that the missile launcher is an obsolete option that should be replaced by grav.)


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 Rismonite wrote:
I like to think they don't have nearly the variables this game has.

This is wrong. MTG has far more possible interactions because of the tens of thousands of unique cards that exist. The reason MTG is successful in having functioning rules despite the vastly higher complexity is that, where GW ignores the entire concept of writing good rules, WOTC builds a solid foundation in the core rules and then carefully tests every new addition to make sure it works fine.

I would still point out that they playtest that game much more easily than 40k, you can play a game in minutes it makes gathering data much easier.

As for balance, last I was looking anyways, you had about two decks at tournaments. That would be the meta deck, and it's hard counter. And a couple hints of flavor in a sideboard, provided you had room since at least 12 of the cards needed to be for the 3rd or 4th best deck in the meta in case some hipster was mucking about. It has been at least three years since I was watching MTG however.

This is semi-accurate. It's usually more than just 1-2 decks, but remember that this is happening in hardcore competitive tournaments with tens of thousands of dollars in cash prizes at stake. Even a 1% advantage is significant in that environment. But in a more casual environment, where most MTG games are played, there are a lot more options. And it's still way better than in 40k, where balance is virtually nonexistent. Getting 40k to the level of MTG's balance would be a massive step forward.

I still think balance will never really be achievable even with a polished ruleset. How many units in how many armies and what is really supposed to counter what in the first place?

Again, other companies achieve much higher levels of balance with games that are at least as complicated. GW's failure to balance 40k is the result of incompetent and/or lazy rule authors, not an impossible task.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Why not? I am just curious.

Isn't it obvious? If noone uses an option, or if the option is flat out inferior compared to another, then it either has to be improved or removed.
Otherwise you're just keeping junk around. Say you have a piece of old equipment lying around that doesn't work anymore, and got replaced by something better a long time ago. Would you still keep it?
At the moment there are a lot of options in the game that aren't used.

To use necrons as an example-
Tesla Carbines are worthless compared to gauss blasters. There's no point in upgrading, even when they are free
Why take a hyperphase sword or a gauntlet of fire when I can have a warscythe for relatively cheap, that's just so much better?
Likewise, the staff of light is pretty crap. Before it was a power weapon and a ranged weapon, so it did have a bit of utility. Now its just a short ranged assault weapon that's not good in assault anymore, and I might as well charge with a warscythe at the range I could use it.

Just a thought on the subject of Missile Launchers, since they came up specifically - Why didn't they just make Flakk Missiles free? Most people agree that Missile Launchers are overcosted at 15pts, and they still were back at the start of 6th. This would have both weakened fliers, who were vastly OP at the start of the edition, and given Missile Launchers a reasonable buff that makes them more flexibile, and therefore stronger, without making them any more spammable then they currently are.

Waaaghpower wrote:
Just a thought on the subject of Missile Launchers, since they came up specifically - Why didn't they just make Flakk Missiles free? Most people agree that Missile Launchers are overcosted at 15pts, and they still were back at the start of 6th. This would have both weakened fliers, who were vastly OP at the start of the edition, and given Missile Launchers a reasonable buff that makes them more flexibile, and therefore stronger, without making them any more spammable then they currently are.

Because GW can't write rules. Flakk should have been a free option to begin with.
I guess they thought it would hurt flyer sales.

Variety in wargear and having some things being more of a niche choice instead of a more well rounded general purpose is fine and adds the choices or feeling of choice you have. Now the issue is when the general purpose weapon is so good at its job that it makes all the other options feel like garbage is when you have a big problem and that is something that Grav currently does. Its better than plasma in like 95% of situations, it makes heavy bolters look like junk (as do so many other things in this game), and it is able to harm any vehicle in the game with the added benefit of always immobilizing it when it does harm it (which is huge plus the whole immobilizing an already immobilized vehicle removing another hull point). With its high RoF and with the cannons having the reroll to wound/pen it is extremely effective against most targets and can spam volume of fire to brute force down things its not optimal at killing.

The old IoM arsenal is a good mix of weapons that have their own strengths and weaknesses. Lascannon is a stable vehicle killer with long range, multi melta / melta gun can wreck vehicles hard but had to be very close to do so which made using it more restrictive, Plasma Guns had volume of fire for high armor infantry/MCs that need number of shots to chew threw unlike the 1 shot lascannons and melta weapons. Heavy Bolter has relatively high rate of fire and decent strength to reliably wound medium infantry and cut through a lot of the xenos and non MEQ armor. Flamer weapons roast hordes and ignore cover naturally. Missile Launchers are the middle of the road weapon with not quite the kick of a lascannon but can fire frag missiles to cut down light infantry (personally I think frag missiles are just garbage but I get the design idea behind it). All of this being balanced with points so that heavy bolter is far cheaper than a lascannon. Throw Grav into the mix and you end up with plasmas and heavy bolter being nearly completely obsolete, lascannons/missile launchers look really cost ineffective in comparison, and only the melta/flamer weapons really have a distinct niche but the volume of fire from the Grav weapons make it so they can throw large numbers of dice at the sub optimal target to force it down through weight of fire. Grav is too good at everything and without enough weaknesses to offset it.

Long winded and slightly off topic tangent out of the way, the problem is that rules are written for the game without much thought put into making it balanced. GW just slaps together ideas without much consideration for their impact on the game or what purpose it should have and you end up with gak like Grav which makes so much stuff obsolete or units like the Gorkanaut which is just a piece of junk and basically does the same thing as the Deffdread for 2.5x the points cost (and it even fails at pulling off the Orky aesthetic). GW has no skill at writing rules and there is no clear leadership when it comes to maintain any sort of consistency between the codices or maintaining any sort of quality control. Not sure if what the original OP wrote is accurate but I will say GW's writers are either incredibly incompetent or hamstrung by some terrible leadership that results in rushed or compromised rules writing.

No the problem with GW is that they can't write rules and think "Hey this would be cool" without actually understanding what role it plays. They provide options for modeling purposes that are useless in game, perhaps under the delusion that people will assemble what they want and not care how it performs (which is usually untrue for most people), which again reinforces the fact they consider the game superfluous at best and useless at worst; simply a mechanism to sell models without caring about the fact I'd wager the majority of "hobbyists" only buy GW models because they play GW games, not to sit in a breakfront somewhere looking pretty (there are, of course, exceptions but I think the majority of people expect to actually use the models in games of Warhammer)

A lot of the writers now were designers before, as others have mentioned. It's mainly that they want to provide a ton of options to present the illusion of tons of various choices (a common laurel 40k is given is "variety of options" when most of the options are worthless and might as well not exist), while in reality they kind of just throw things together without even seeing how they interact with other things.

It's a combination of things really but the crux of the issue is that GW doesn't seem to simply be able to look at the stats of a weapon and judge if it's too good (i.e. there's never a reason to not take it over other choices in most cases, for example Grav) or too situational/useless (i.e. you almost never want to take this option because chances are it won't be as good as the other choices except in rare cases). If they could fix that simple fact and actually be able to look at something like Grav and go "You know, this weapon can deal with virtually everything in the game, it's probably a little too good since it will be the default choice to pick", there wouldn't be half these problems. Instead it's "Hey we need to give Space Marines a new gun since the model team put one on the sprue. Let's see... I know, we'll call it a Grav Gun. What should it do? Oh! It would be cool if it wounded you based on your armor save, so it's like a Plasma Gun! And how about if it immobilized a vehicle on a 6! Yeah, that would be neat!" and not actually look at how it impacts everything else, there would be less of these problems.

Wayniac wrote:
No the problem with GW is that they can't write rules and think "Hey this would be cool" without actually understanding what role it plays. They provide options for modeling purposes that are useless in game, perhaps under the delusion that people will assemble what they want and not care how it performs (which is usually untrue for most people).

A lot of the writers now were designers before, as others have mentioned. It's mainly that they want to provide a ton of options to present the illusion of tons of various choices (a common laurel 40k is given is "variety of options" when most of the options are worthless and might as well not exist), while in reality they kind of just throw things together without even seeing how they interact with other things.

It's a combination of things really but the crux of the issue is that GW doesn't seem to simply be able to look at the stats of a weapon and judge if it's too good (i.e. there's never a reason to not take it over other choices in most cases, for example Grav) or too situational/useless (i.e. you almost never want to take this option because chances are it won't be as good as the other choices except in rare cases). If they could fix that simple fact and actually be able to look at something like Grav and go "You know, this weapon can deal with virtually everything in the game, it's probably a little too good since it will be the default choice to pick", there wouldn't be half these problems. Instead it's "Hey we need to give Space Marines a new gun since the model team put one on the sprue. Let's see... I know, we'll call it a Grav Gun. What should it do? Oh! It would be cool if it wounded you based on your armor save, so it's like a Plasma Gun! And how about if it immobilized a vehicle on a 6! Yeah, that would be neat!" and not actually look at how it impacts everything else, there would be less of these problems.

I've said time and time again, the reason we have these new things becoming "the default choice" is simply because they've spread existing material around too much.

Change Plasma Guns for one book, it changes every single book.

 BBAP wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Because missile launchers were already supposed to fill that role: adequate against a wide variety of targets, but not the best weapon against any of them. Grav weapons break that rule and are great against most targets, with the only real weakness (low-save hordes) being compensated for by having lots of bolters on the best grav units.

"All weapons and units must be mediocre" is not a rule. Missile Launchers cost too much and suck too hard to justify that cost. That's not a problem with Grav weapons. Similarly, in an army rocking a maximum of 50-60 infantry models at 1850pts, having those models be effective at shooting down more or less anything that comes at them is perfectly fine.

I don't see the validity of this complaint, and even if it were a valid issue it doesn't affect the functionality or flow of the game at all and hence is not relevant here.

I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ

And you're 100% wrong. A good process with skilled writers doesn't have rule problems because they playtest sufficiently to catch everything before the rules are printed.

... which means I'm 100% right. Writers will make mistakes. The playtesters catch these mistakes, and then send the rules back to the writers to fix them. Test, re-write, test- rewrite, until you have a polished finished product. That's one way to do it. The other is to put the product out to gamers and patch any issues that arise. That's the direction GW seem to be taking with their game system.

If it didn't usually take forever for them to FAQ something, and even then only FAQ a tiny percent of the problems, and then a lot of times the FAQ just says "play it how you want" or introduce new issues in the FAQ, You might have a point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rismonite wrote:
There are games that recieve balance changes every week that have balance problems. Warhammer can never hope to have that kind of attention to rules you can simply stop wasting your effort. Popular RTS/1st person shooters/Dota-LoL type games with large followings are always nerfing buffing remaking and can never get it right. Even when they get it close something silly crawls into the ech chamber of complaints

One thing I have come to enjoy about 40k is that my buddies space marines rarely change much. And I don't feel like I am playing with a different set of Ork rules each week. WoW and LoL every 1st person shooter I have played could feel like a different game every week.

Again I'm not talking balance, I'm talking poorly written and broken rules. In your analogy what I'm talking about is if the game crashed to desktop.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
No the problem with GW is that they can't write rules and think "Hey this would be cool" without actually understanding what role it plays. They provide options for modeling purposes that are useless in game, perhaps under the delusion that people will assemble what they want and not care how it performs (which is usually untrue for most people).

A lot of the writers now were designers before, as others have mentioned. It's mainly that they want to provide a ton of options to present the illusion of tons of various choices (a common laurel 40k is given is "variety of options" when most of the options are worthless and might as well not exist), while in reality they kind of just throw things together without even seeing how they interact with other things.

It's a combination of things really but the crux of the issue is that GW doesn't seem to simply be able to look at the stats of a weapon and judge if it's too good (i.e. there's never a reason to not take it over other choices in most cases, for example Grav) or too situational/useless (i.e. you almost never want to take this option because chances are it won't be as good as the other choices except in rare cases). If they could fix that simple fact and actually be able to look at something like Grav and go "You know, this weapon can deal with virtually everything in the game, it's probably a little too good since it will be the default choice to pick", there wouldn't be half these problems. Instead it's "Hey we need to give Space Marines a new gun since the model team put one on the sprue. Let's see... I know, we'll call it a Grav Gun. What should it do? Oh! It would be cool if it wounded you based on your armor save, so it's like a Plasma Gun! And how about if it immobilized a vehicle on a 6! Yeah, that would be neat!" and not actually look at how it impacts everything else, there would be less of these problems.

I've said time and time again, the reason we have these new things becoming "the default choice" is simply because they've spread existing material around too much.

Change Plasma Guns for one book, it changes every single book.

True Grit says "Hi"...

 Peregrine wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
Wrong again. The Missile Launcher functions perfectly well - its rules are fine. If it cost 20pts less than a Grav Cannon it'd be a reasonable alternative - you get less firepower per model, but more models, and thus more weapons. It doesn't, though. It costs the same, so it's obsolete. GW has always had issues with consistency of points values. I think I said as much a couple of replies back. You can call this a "rules" issue if you want - and technically it is - but lumping everything from mechanical faults to twisty-ass point costings under the header of "rules issue" creates an argument so broad as to be useless.

Broken point costs are still broken rules

That's exactly what I said - but interpreting broken points costs as an inability to write rules is facile and unhelpful, particularly not when other aspects of the rules function perfectly well.

and still a failure of game design

I don't disagree - but we weren't discussing points costings. We were talking about the mechanical fitness of the rules, which is a distinct issue.

They still come from the same failure to care about writing good rules and playtesting sufficiently to catch problems before they are published.

And again, that's not the only way to fix a game system. You can also release the product, bugs and all, then patch it post release. That's what GW are doing at the moment - if you dislike that approach then find another game to play, but either way, recognise that you're whining about a non-issue.

Danny slag wrote:
If it didn't usually take forever for them to FAQ something, and even then only FAQ a tiny percent of the problems, and then a lot of times the FAQ just says "play it how you want" or introduce new issues in the FAQ, You might have a point

I agree that GW's implementation of the system is poor at present, but the system does work, and it's easier and cheaper to implement than an in-house QC step. That suggests it's the direction GW will be taking, so bleating about a lack of playtesting and stomping your little booties because some Codexes have ruels issues on release is just going to frustrate you.

Missile launchers have been bad since 3rd ed. It can't engage 2+ armor. Fail. It can't engage hordes because the small blast sucks. Fail. Even with the introduction of hull points, it only gets one shot. Fail.

Martel732 wrote:
Missile launchers have been bad since 3rd ed. It can't engage 2+ armor. Fail. It can't engage hordes because the small blast sucks. Fail. Even with the introduction of hull points, it only gets one shot. Fail.

So why was everyone taking buckets of Long Fangs with them in 5th?

Ruin wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Missile launchers have been bad since 3rd ed. It can't engage 2+ armor. Fail. It can't engage hordes because the small blast sucks. Fail. Even with the introduction of hull points, it only gets one shot. Fail.

So why was everyone taking buckets of Long Fangs with them in 5th?

Because they were absurdly cheap and SW's didn't have access to Autocannons.

That said I don't think ML's were as bad as they were made out to be by some, and were a weapon of choice for many 4E armies, but they've been poor choices for a while for most units.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Because they were absurdly cheap and SW's didn't have access to Autocannons.

... plus by "bucketful" we mean "3x3 Long Fangs with 2 MLs apiece". Which is a pretty small bucket. I don't think lack of autocannons was a factor though. Missile Launchers were always the fence-sitter's heavy weapon of choice - cheap, versatile, and mediocre, useful for annoying vehicles and infantry alike. Not bad, not good, just... meh.

Well, usually it was 3x6 longfangs with 15 missile launchers for 420pts with a split-fire capability, which was pretty ridiculous.

ML's were pretty solid in 4th due to the vehicle damage table (though non-skimmer vehicles were largely garbage as a result), but they started trailing off in 5E where they either got more expensive for some armies, or alternatives became cheaper, or the role just wasn't as necessary. For example, ML's for IG were a good choice in 4E, but then the vehicle rules changed and made ML's less capable and Autocannons became cheaper, so the ML disappeared from IG armies as a result.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, usually it was 3x6 longfangs with 15 missile launchers for 420pts with a split-fire capability, which was pretty ridiculous.

Not in the tournament lists. The MLs were, at best, an annoyance - most of the firepower of 5th Ed Wolves lists lay in the Grey Hunters, Razorbacks, Dreadnoughts and Rune Priests, all of which hit a lot harder than the Fangs and were more mobile. The Fangs were just turrets and Razorback vectors. The Split Fire thing was a red herring too - the Fangs had no ablative Bolter dudes like Devs get, so the Pack Leader was always the first man down and with him went Split Fire. Don't think I ever split my fire once in all the 5th Ed games I played.

just about every 5E SW tournament list I can recall ran the 3x6 dudes with 5 ML's for a 15 missile alpha strike, most SW lists I faced back then ran them that way, the razorbacks were definitely there, but the Long Fangs were a major headache and there's a reason they got hit with the nerfbat later.

Martel732 wrote:

Davor wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

So is 7th.

I saw more one turn tablings in 2nd than all other editions combined. There is no dumpster fire as big as the supernova dumpster fire of 2nd. The Tyranids could kill half your list before the game started and a piece of wargear could kill an entire IG list. Marines saved shuriken cannons on 6+ and shuriken catapults and sonic blasters on 5+. After people figured out how to exploit the game, I never saw an IoM list win. Oh, and Pulsa Rokkits. You don't get to play.

Does it really matter what edition is a worse dumpster fire? They are both dumpster fires. Just because one is worse gives a pass for the other? That is like saying the bully punches you in the gut and steels your lunch money and the bully punches you in the gut but doesn't steal your lunch money. They are still both horrible people. You don't get a pass because you do less bad or evil.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, usually it was 3x6 longfangs with 15 missile launchers for 420pts with a split-fire capability, which was pretty ridiculous.

ML's were pretty solid in 4th due to the vehicle damage table (though non-skimmer vehicles were largely garbage as a result), but they started trailing off in 5E where they either got more expensive for some armies, or alternatives became cheaper, or the role just wasn't as necessary. For example, ML's for IG were a good choice in 4E, but then the vehicle rules changed and made ML's less capable and Autocannons became cheaper, so the ML disappeared from IG armies as a result.

"Jack of all trades" troops and weapons I think have always suffered in comparison to their more specialized counterparts. The only other parameter for competition would be points but if ML's end up paying for their fire modes, then they become uncompetitive and disappear. The small blast has been of dubious benefit compared to the autocannon's higher number of shots.

Of course if a jack of all trades was good at all things and reasonably cheap then it becomes the default choice for everything. Such was the case for the Eldar Starcannon of 3rd edition.

Davor wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Davor wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

So is 7th.

I saw more one turn tablings in 2nd than all other editions combined. There is no dumpster fire as big as the supernova dumpster fire of 2nd. The Tyranids could kill half your list before the game started and a piece of wargear could kill an entire IG list. Marines saved shuriken cannons on 6+ and shuriken catapults and sonic blasters on 5+. After people figured out how to exploit the game, I never saw an IoM list win. Oh, and Pulsa Rokkits. You don't get to play.

Does it really matter what edition is a worse dumpster fire? They are both dumpster fires. Just because one is worse gives a pass for the other? That is like saying the bully punches you in the gut and steels your lunch money and the bully punches you in the gut but doesn't steal your lunch money. They are still both horrible people. You don't get a pass because you do less bad or evil.

I know it's depressing but you should watch the news sometime.
This world revolves around that kind of distinction, not to mention the double standards.

 BBAP wrote:
That's exactly what I said - but interpreting broken points costs as an inability to write rules is facile and unhelpful, particularly not when other aspects of the rules function perfectly well.

But the point is that both of them come from the same core problem: GW hires incompetent and/or lazy rule authors, and has a "we don't give a about making good rules" attitude. This isn't a 5% power level difference in need of some fine-tuning or an obscure interaction that a reasonable person could overlook, grav weapons are a complete failure at a conceptual level. The rules for grav weapons technically function in that you can complete a game with them, but they're clearly broken in a way that even low-talent game designers can immediately recognize as a problem.

And again, that's not the only way to fix a game system. You can also release the product, bugs and all, then patch it post release. That's what GW are doing at the moment - if you dislike that approach then find another game to play, but either way, recognise that you're whining about a non-issue.

Releasing a broken product and eventually patching it is bad game design. The fact that other companies do similarly bad things is not an excuse.

If the novelists are writing the rules, then the game designers must be the ones writing the fluff, because that's also been an absolute mess for some time as well. Bolter porn where every named character is an unstoppable "badass" gets quite tiresome after a short while.

 Peregrine wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

Visor =/= eye. Now, it's certainly obvious what the rule was intended to be and easy to fix the problem in real games, but RAW was obviously broken and you had to be reasonable about house-ruling it to something that made more sense if you wanted to have an enjoyable game. And it certainly disproves the idea that RAW is fine and all of the issues are from players not paying enough attention to RAW.

with all due respect anyone who actually tried using that arguement on me I'd walk away from the table having dimissed them as too stupid to play 40k anyway. there are a lot of flaws in 40ks rules no doubts there but let's not demand the writers assume we're total morons.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

Visor =/= eye. Now, it's certainly obvious what the rule was intended to be and easy to fix the problem in real games, but RAW was obviously broken and you had to be reasonable about house-ruling it to something that made more sense if you wanted to have an enjoyable game. And it certainly disproves the idea that RAW is fine and all of the issues are from players not paying enough attention to RAW.

with all due respect anyone who actually tried using that arguement on me I'd walk away from the table having dimissed them as too stupid to play 40k anyway. there are a lot of flaws in 40ks rules no doubts there but let's not demand the writers assume we're total morons.

When writing game rules you're supposed to assume your players are morons because morons will eventually play your game

 Peregrine wrote:
But the point is that both of them come from the same core problem: GW hires incompetent and/or lazy rule authors

That's your interpretation of the situation. Mine is that GW doesn't playtest, hence oversights that inevitably arise as part of the development process are going to end up in releases, If these oversights are patched, that's fine by me - and while the quality and timeliness of their FAQs needs to improve, GW does patch these issues.

and has a "we don't give a about making good rules" attitude.

Indeed they do. They've said repeatedly that they're not interested in competitive; they're interested in fun. Their failure here is not managing the expectations of people like you, who want MTG-style competition when GW are quite clearly building a D&D-style game system. In that respect I don't know what to tell you. Find another game system to play. Maybe make your own.

This isn't a 5% power level difference in need of some fine-tuning or an obscure interaction that a reasonable person could overlook, grav weapons are a complete failure at a conceptual level. The rules for grav weapons technically function in that you can complete a game with them, but they're clearly broken in a way that even low-talent game designers can immediately recognize as a problem.

It's not a problem, though. Grav Cannons are not "OP" or whatever - they're just a better HW option than Missile Launchers. I don't see why this has so many people so annoyed.

Releasing a broken product and eventually patching it is bad game design

... in your opinion. You need to recognise how subjective and personal these arguments are. You don't like how things are going down. That's your perogative. Fact still is, this is the way things are going down. If you don't like it then it's maybe time to go and play MTG or something.

In my opinion I end up with a finished product either way, so I'd rather the company do whatever's cheapest and easiest for them. I'm unhappy with how GW has implemented their design philosophy, but that's not to say it can't work if they do it properly.

 BBAP wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
But the point is that both of them come from the same core problem: GW hires incompetent and/or lazy rule authors

That's your interpretation of the situation. Mine is that GW doesn't playtest, hence oversights that inevitably arise as part of the development process are going to end up in releases, If these oversights are patched, that's fine by me - and while the quality and timeliness of their FAQs needs to improve, GW does patch these issues.

and has a "we don't give a about making good rules" attitude.

Indeed they do. They've said repeatedly that they're not interested in competitive; they're interested in fun. Their failure here is not managing the expectations of people like you, who want MTG-style competition when GW are quite clearly building a D&D-style game system. In that respect I don't know what to tell you. Find another game system to play. Maybe make your own.

This isn't a 5% power level difference in need of some fine-tuning or an obscure interaction that a reasonable person could overlook, grav weapons are a complete failure at a conceptual level. The rules for grav weapons technically function in that you can complete a game with them, but they're clearly broken in a way that even low-talent game designers can immediately recognize as a problem.

It's not a problem, though. Grav Cannons are not "OP" or whatever - they're just a better HW option than Missile Launchers. I don't see why this has so many people so annoyed.

Releasing a broken product and eventually patching it is bad game design

... in your opinion. You need to recognise how subjective and personal these arguments are. You don't like how things are going down. That's your perogative. Fact still is, this is the way things are going down. If you don't like it then it's maybe time to go and play MTG or something.

In my opinion I end up with a finished product either way, so I'd rather the company do whatever's cheapest and easiest for them. I'm unhappy with how GW has implemented their design philosophy, but that's not to say it can't work if they do it properly.

With respect though, I think the crux of the matter is GW has shown time and time again that they can't do it properly. Either because they just don't want to, or because they mentally are unable to do what is necessary. They show that they point things seemingly at random, without any sort of formula, so you end up with things that are way underpriced or overpriced. They midway through a game edition decide to change how they do armies (this more applies to AOS right now) and then plod forward widening the gap between armies that came before the design change and armies that came after, because they never stop and go back to update the ones that didn't get part of this change. Nearly every new book has a 50% chance of being way more powerful of whatever came before, or balanced, or underpowered, it all depends, again precisely because their game design seems to be "This sounds good" without any actual guidelines to say if it's appropriately balanced or not. That might be fine if it was an online game or something where you can easily hotfix things rapidly if necessary, but not when an army is lucky to get one codex update every couple of years (unless you're Marines of course) so if they feth up on balance, you're stuck waiting and using poor balanced things because they'll never go back and fix it, they just keep moving forward because they already sold the kits for your army, now time to make the next big thing to sell those kits too.

This is especially true with a game with as "passionate" fans as GW has. I have never ever seen any other tabletop game where people were so eager to eat up every single release the company put out, waiting with anticipation for it to go live and with the same "Omg new shiny buy buy buy" sort of thing I see from Warhammer/GW fans. That's not to disparage them, but it seems to be a unique phenomenon to the GW ecosystem where they know their fans will eat up anything they release, so they can get away with doing the minimal effort necessary because all they have to do is say "New releases!" and they will sell out almost instantly. It makes for a weird situation where GW can get away with a lot of things because they know it wont matter. Very similar to Apple (which GW has stated they feel themselves close to), where the same thing happens. All they have to do is release a new iPhone, even if it's basically the same as the old, and legions of fans will line up in droves waiting to buy it because it's "new".

That's the biggest problem with GW: Everything that they do revolves around pushing product, and not making sure the game that said product is sold for works well. It's in their best interest to NOT put any effort at all in rules or the game, just do enough to get the new kits flying off shelves and then move on, and who cares if the faction you just released isn't as good as the one coming up, because the one you just released already was sold, now you have to make sure the one coming up gets sold too. It's an absolutely crazy way to run a business.

Jacksmiles wrote:
I can get behind the idea, but find it incredibly arguable that their writers are good at fiction. I find them "okay" at best, most of the time.

I bought the Rynn's World novel because of my love of all things Crimson Fists. While the writing was plodding most of the time, the moment I gave up on the novel was when the writer couldn't get a character death right when referenced a few chapters later. Kantor identifies the Ork Warboss as the one that killed Captain Alvez, but it was Captain Drakken who died at the Warboss's hands. I can get botching a reference to another novel, but the same novel?!?!?!?! And did nobody edit it before it got released? There were tons of grammatical errors as well, but it pretty much soured me on ever buying a novel from them again. And if that is the kind of writer that is making the rules now? Well, I guess that explains a LOT.

I used to be in 2 minds about the rules -they seemed fun but somewhat illogical. The more I've analysed other rulesets and then revised 40k, the more absurd and illogical the game seems. Novelists writing the rules or not, they've stuck themselves in a rut by clinging to a core set of rules that lack detail for elements that matter, and on the other hand swamped with needless complication from rules and mechanics that don't contribute to making it a better game. Furthermore the amount of publications is so expansive that doing a serious re-write would be a mammoth task. Yet that's the only way forward for the game.

 BBAP wrote:
That's your interpretation of the situation. Mine is that GW doesn't playtest, hence oversights that inevitably arise as part of the development process are going to end up in releases, If these oversights are patched, that's fine by me - and while the quality and timeliness of their FAQs needs to improve, GW does patch these issues.

Not playtesting is incompetence. I don't know why you think "GW isn't incompetent, they're just incompetent" is a compelling argument.

Indeed they do. They've said repeatedly that they're not interested in competitive; they're interested in fun. Their failure here is not managing the expectations of people like you, who want MTG-style competition when GW are quite clearly building a D&D-style game system. In that respect I don't know what to tell you. Find another game system to play. Maybe make your own.

The things that make 40k a bad competitive game also make it bad for casual/narrative/etc players. GW doesn't give a about making good rules for anyone.

It's not a problem, though. Grav Cannons are not "OP" or whatever - they're just a better HW option than Missile Launchers. I don't see why this has so many people so annoyed.

IOW: "grav cannons aren't OP, they're just OP".

... in your opinion. You need to recognise how subjective and personal these arguments are. You don't like how things are going down. That's your perogative. Fact still is, this is the way things are going down. If you don't like it then it's maybe time to go and play MTG or something.

Nope. Game design is not always subjective, and this is an issue with a pretty clear answer. Releasing a half-finished product and patching it later is lazy and incompetent game design. It sucks when GW does it, it sucks when video game companies do it. It generates bad publicity for the company and drives away customers who don't want to pay lots of money for a defective product. And it benefits absolutely none of the customers. The only people gaining anything are the shareholders, who might get a little more profit out of cutting development costs to the bare minimum.

 BBAP wrote:
If these oversights are patched, that's fine by me - and while the quality and timeliness of their FAQs needs to improve, GW does patch these issues.

And you don't see that as a problem? Even when GW is arsed to put out a FAQ, it often doesn't answer the questions people want answered, answers questions no one was even asking, or answers questions in such a manner that it raises even more problems than the original question did.

They've said repeatedly that they're not interested in competitive; they're interested in fun. Their failure here is not managing the expectations of people like you, who want MTG-style competition when GW are quite clearly building a D&D-style game system.

Ok, fine, GW wants the game to be more D&D-style, then give us a fething DM/GM so that they can deal with issues as the game plays out. No one is asking for GW to make any game as competitive as MTG is, what we are asking for is for GW to write rules as well as MTG's are written. That's the fething great thing about a well written rule set. It can be played at the highest levels of competition or the lowest levels of kitchen table play and still function just fine. GW rules do not function on ANY level, competitive or not! Just about every FLGS I've been to, there have been "local" house rules for 40k just to work. That has never been the case for MTG.

Grav Cannons are not "OP" or whatever - they're just a better HW option than Missile Launchers. I don't see why this has so many people so annoyed.

The problem is that Grav Cannons, and Grav weapons as a whole aren't just better than Missile Launchers, they are better than every other weapon period. Maybe if points costs were adjusted to reflect the fact that Grav weapons are objectively better than every other weapon available to Space Marines, then maybe they wouldn't always be taken or at least it wouldn't be an automatic "choice". But alas, that is not the case.

 Evil Lamp 6 wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
If these oversights are patched, that's fine by me - and while the quality and timeliness of their FAQs needs to improve, GW does patch these issues.

And you don't see that as a problem? Even when GW is arsed to put out a FAQ, it often doesn't answer the questions people want answered, answers questions no one was even asking, or answers questions in such a manner that it raises even more problems than the original question did.

They've said repeatedly that they're not interested in competitive; they're interested in fun. Their failure here is not managing the expectations of people like you, who want MTG-style competition when GW are quite clearly building a D&D-style game system.

Ok, fine, GW wants the game to be more D&D-style, then give us a fething DM/GM so that they can deal with issues as the game plays out. No one is asking for GW to make any game as competitive as MTG is, what we are asking for is for GW to write rules as well as MTG's are written. That's the fething great thing about a well written rule set. It can be played at the highest levels of competition or the lowest levels of kitchen table play and still function just fine. GW rules do not function on ANY level, competitive or not! Just about every FLGS I've been to, there have been "local" house rules for 40k just to work. That has never been the case for MTG.

Grav Cannons are not "OP" or whatever - they're just a better HW option than Missile Launchers. I don't see why this has so many people so annoyed.

The problem is that Grav Cannons, and Grav weapons as a whole aren't just better than Missile Launchers, they are better than every other weapon period. Maybe if points costs were adjusted to reflect the fact that Grav weapons are objectively better than every other weapon available to Space Marines, then maybe they wouldn't always be taken or at least it wouldn't be an automatic "choice". But alas, that is not the case.

This, exactly. GW's FAQs are, often, a joke. They very rarely answer anything worthwhile, they answer nonsensical questions (like what fething moron actually asked if they could take an entire army of just fortifications, and why did GW even justify that level of idiocy with an answer?) and a lot of times the FAQ ruling either directly contradicts what the actual book says, or is answered in such a vague manner that it doesn't answer the question, because even in their FAQs they refuse to actually write like they are writing a rulebook.

People seem to always ignore the fact that a well-written, clear and concise set of rules benefits everybody, while a set of rules that are vague and don't explicitly state what you can/cannot do benefit nobody except the rules-lawyers and WAAC types who can easily interpret things in weird ways to try and game the system. GW may not want the game to be competitive, but that doesn't excuse writing awful rules that often are written in such a way as to require interpretation to what it's actually saying. GW is like the only "wargame" that does that sort of gak when it comes to writing rules; they are often unclear, can be interpreted several ways, and to top it off you get things like the Alpha Legion formation/Cultist formation interactions where it was left up to interpretation and how much of a jerk you wanted to be how you played it, whereas a solid set of rules would have had it be the same rule from two sources so it was clear it didn't stack. Or take the issue with I think the Skitarii start collecting, where some sheets said one unit and some said the other unit; GW's answer? "use whichever". That's not an answer. Even at such a small level of play it shows a lack of actually caring, because they constantly show they are incapable or unwilling to write rules that specifically state what is and isn't allowed, and instead write in this weird conversationalist tone, and often contradict themselves later on depending on who answers the FAQ.

It would be one thing if they had a system like the Infernals for Privateer Press, where you can ask a question, and someone can get in touch with the designers to actually clarify it, at which point it becomes official (although might be errated later; the Infernal only states what the interaction is, not if it's good/bad). But they don't. And that's a problem when they write rules the way they do.

As for D&D vs. MTG in game styles, GW isn't making a D&D style game. Nothing about the game encourages narrative play or character development or any of the things that make roleplaying games fun. In fact, GW has been moving away from those elements over the past few years. All of the sections about how to design your own missions have been removed from the core rulebook, the narrative-focused expansions (Planetstrike, etc) have been stripped down to nothing more than a different maelstrom objective table to roll on, and random tables have been used instead of player choices about their characters for things like warlord traits and psychic powers. The only way that 40k diverges from competitive-focused games like MTG is that the rules are garbage.

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

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

 Melissia wrote:

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

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

No no no, the logical extreme would obviously be to do away with all rules, as the simplest rules are a total absence thereof.

We should be playing with green army men in a sandbox instead.

Obviously.

 Peregrine wrote:
Not playtesting is incompetence. I don't know why you think "GW isn't incompetent, they're just incompetent" is a compelling argument.

Because there's more than one way to skin a cat. You either playtest the faults out, or you patch the faults out. Either way the faults are removed. You dislike the latter approach, but what you like or dislike is irrelevant.

The things that make 40k a bad competitive game also make it bad for casual/narrative/etc players. GW doesn't give a about making good rules for anyone.

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

IOW: "grav cannons aren't OP, they're just OP".

This is just histrionic straw-clutching. "Better than Missile Launcher" is an exceptionally low bar to set for "OP".

Nope. Game design is not always subjective, and this is an issue with a pretty clear answer. Releasing a half-finished product and patching it later is lazy and incompetent game design

No it isn't. I realise you dislike this model, but nobody cares what you like or dislike. If it leads to a finished product then it's a competent approach.

It sucks when GW does it, it sucks when video game companies do it. It generates bad publicity for the company and drives away customers who don't want to pay lots of money for a defective product.

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

And it benefits absolutely none of the customers. The only people gaining anything are the shareholders, who might get a little more profit out of cutting development costs to the bare minimum.

GW, like all other private enterprises, doesn't exist to provide "benefit" to you; it exists to generate a profit for the people running it and a dividend for the shareholders. If they want to cut development costs - which they do, because they need to squeeze every penny out of their flat-lining sales - then they're not going to playtest in-house. If they believe they can expand their consumer base with a less "competitive", more "casual" game system, then that's what they'll make.

 Peregrine wrote:
As for D&D vs. MTG in game styles, GW isn't making a D&D style game.

They're making a game that you sit down with a group of friends to have a laugh over, rather than one you get salty about because someone "beat" you. The game's the thing. Competition is secondary. That's what D&D is. It's what 40k is trying to be.

 BBAP wrote:
Because there's more than one way to skin a cat. You either playtest the faults out, or you patch the faults out. Either way the faults are removed. You dislike the latter approach, but what you like or dislike is irrelevant.

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

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

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

This is just histrionic straw-clutching. "Better than Missile Launcher" is an exceptionally low bar to set for "OP".

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

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

That's a blatant straw man. I never said it would destroy the company, I said that it generates bad PR and drives away customers. And it does. "Skyrim is a buggy mess" was a story on release, as was "Fallout 4 is a buggy mess". And there are people (such as myself) who are reluctant at best to buy a Bethesda open-world game soon after release because of these things. That is not a thing that you want to see as a company.

GW, like all other private enterprises, doesn't exist to provide "benefit" to you; it exists to generate a profit for the people running it and a dividend for the shareholders. If they want to cut development costs - which they do, because they need to squeeze every penny out of their flat-lining sales - then they're not going to playtest in-house. If they believe they can expand their consumer base with a less "competitive", more "casual" game system, then that's what they'll make.

None of this changes the fact that GW's game designers are incompetent. It may be better for the shareholders to hire incompetent morons to write the rules and save money over hiring people with more talent, just like a fast food restaurant serves barely-edible garbage because it's cheaper than paying for quality ingredients to make a $1 hamburger. But we still recognize that they are putting out a low-quality product, even if selling garbage to people with low standards is profitable sometimes.

They're making a game that you sit down with a group of friends to have a laugh over, rather than one you get salty about because someone "beat" you. The game's the thing. Competition is secondary. That's what D&D is. It's what 40k is trying to be.

And the things that make 40k bad for competitive play also make it bad for that kind of gaming. Making a bad competitive game doesn't make it great for casual play by default, nor does "casual" mean "have low standard for the things you buy". You have to earn that praise and GW has not.

And I notice you omitted the explanation of why 40k doesn't include D&D-style narrative design, presumably because you have no response to that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a "design failure", somehow.

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

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

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

 Melissia wrote:

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

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

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


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BBAP wrote:


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

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

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

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

This is a "design failure", somehow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This invalidates your point, you know it, right?

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

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

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
This is disingenuous, sorry.

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

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

 Melissia wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
This is disingenuous, sorry.

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

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

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

 Melissia wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
This is disingenuous, sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Melissia wrote:

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

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

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

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

There was some other discussion in there too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 BBAP wrote:

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

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

[

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

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

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

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

This is a "design failure", somehow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Verviedi wrote:

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

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

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

Automatically Appended Next Post:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 agnosto wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

 agnosto wrote:

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

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

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

I quote:

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

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


Automatically Appended Next Post:

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

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

 Melissia wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

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

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

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

I quote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[delete: off topic.]

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

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

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

Because of fluff, orks will never be competitive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tarrox wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You just need people to write rules and playtesting.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
That would just be a waste of money. Understanding how a gamer works?

You just need people to write rules and playtesting.

I think you're very wrong about that.

How do I convince you that there are irreplaceable benefits to having a psychologist on a game design team?

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

Depends on how the organization is done. If "English major" includes technical writing then an English major with a focus in technical writing would be acceptable. If "English major" refers only to literature then no, they'd be terrible for the job. Programmers would be the other good source for rule writers, since they have experience in both writing code that is 100% literal RAW in execution and in commenting their code/working as a team on it/etc. Engineers and scientists in general would have at least some experience with technical writing, and would be better than a fiction writer.

Playtesting is the thing GW hasn't done in all cases over the years.
But other companies don't do it either to a large extent. Have a look into mk3 of WMH and the recent errata.

 Peregrine wrote:

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

Depends on how the organization is done. If "English major" includes technical writing then an English major with a focus in technical writing would be acceptable. If "English major" refers only to literature then no, they'd be terrible for the job. Programmers would be the other good source for rule writers, since they have experience in both writing code that is 100% literal RAW in execution and in commenting their code/working as a team on it/etc. Engineers and scientists in general would have at least some experience with technical writing, and would be better than a fiction writer.

I imagine that GW would not hire the first English major to apply, and would ask more questions than just "Are you an English major?" when determining their qualifications.

Computer programmers would not be useful in this regard, because computer science skills don't translate well to writing rules for human minds to interpret. Generalizing computer programming to an extreme degree only results in equivocation.

Engineering has no useful applications to game design in terms of designing the rules.

Science is not even relevant.

And if you want a technical writer, you should just hire one, but again, they wouldn't be THAT useful since you're not writing documentation or manuals here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Playtesting is the thing GW hasn't done in all cases over the years.
But other companies don't do it either to a large extent. Have a look into mk3 of WMH and the recent errata.

Actually, GW has done extensive playtesting for all of their rules.

However, they have limited the pool of playtesters to the staff designing the rules and a handful of other players.

The solution for playtesting would be to release test rules to the Internet for free and then encourage players across the world to try them in their own games and send in their feedback, and make adjustments accordingly.

Unfortunately, that won't work because GW also wants to sell rulebooks, and releasing early versions of those rulebooks would cut into their profits should players decide to simply skip paying the fees for rulebooks and use the most recent playtesting rules instead.

The obvious solution to that is one that most companies gave chosen in recent years: Don't charge for rules, release them for free on the Internet and in every starter box, and provide a cheap paperback copy for anyone who wants a convenient booklet with the rules.

 Pouncey wrote:
I imagine that GW would not hire the first English major to apply, and would ask more questions than just "Are you an English major?" when determining their qualifications.

"Attitude is more important than skills."
-GW hiring policy

Computer programmers would not be useful in this regard, because computer science skills don't translate well to writing rules for human minds to interpret. Generalizing computer programming to an extreme degree only results in equivocation.

Uh, no, this is completely wrong. Programming translates very well to writing rules because you understand the concept that RAW has to work without interpretation. The language may change (just like it does when you're programming for different uses) but you have the mindset of "this is going to be used 100% literally, I must write exactly what I want it to do". A programmer also has experience with higher-level algorithm design, where you design the structure of a program and make sure that all of the logic works, something that is very similar to designing game rules. And they have to communicate all of these things clearly, which means being able to express things like "thing X does A, then B, then C goes into thing Y" with zero ambiguity so some other programmer doesn't create a bug when two sections have to interact with each other. If you can do those things you can write game rules that function properly.

Engineering has no useful applications to game design in terms of designing the rules.

Science is not even relevant.

Speaking as someone who is an engineer, you're completely wrong about this. Part of being a successful engineer is understanding how to communicate technical concepts clearly and effectively. It's like the programmer's "RAW is god" mindset, if you can write out product specifications such that someone on the other side of the world can look at your work, build the thing you described, and then plug it into a complex system and have everything work flawlessly you can write game rules. And because of this engineers have to take at least a class or two in technical writing, on top of any hands-on experience. So they might not be as experienced as someone who did a full major in technical writing, but they're in a much better position than someone who writes novels for a career.

And if you want a technical writer, you should just hire one, but again, they wouldn't be THAT useful since you're not writing documentation or manuals here.

100% wrong again. You ARE writing documentation/manuals, that's exactly what a game rulebook is.

Actually, GW has done extensive playtesting for all of their rules.

For definitions of "extensive" that do not include "doing enough of it". Playing a game or two on someone's lunch break (because playing the game is fun, not work, and you shouldn't get paid for it according to GW) is not "extensive" playtesting.

I wonder if anyone declaring how GW goes about/doesn't go about their playtesting in this thread has any concretical evidence or experience on the matter.

Seems like subjective guessing to me, at best.

 Runic wrote:
I wonder if anyone declaring how GW goes about/doesn't go about their playtesting in this thread has any concretical evidence or experience on the matter.

Seems like subjective guessing to me, at best.

Playtesting can be measured when you compare the published rule set with the posed FAQ's and errata later on.

 Runic wrote:
I wonder if anyone declaring how GW goes about/doesn't go about their playtesting in this thread has any concretical evidence or experience on the matter.

Seems like subjective guessing to me, at best.

GW, at least in the past, has commented (in WD articles, for example) on their playtesting.

 Peregrine wrote:
GW, at least in the past, has commented (in WD articles, for example) on their playtesting.

Do you happen to recall when the last one was written (ballpark) and what was written in it? Would be interesting to read if I can find the correct issue.

 Runic wrote:
Do you happen to recall when the last one was written (ballpark) and what was written in it? Would be interesting to read if I can find the correct issue.

Sorry, I don't.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
I imagine that GW would not hire the first English major to apply, and would ask more questions than just "Are you an English major?" when determining their qualifications.

"Attitude is more important than skills."
-GW hiring policy

Huh.

I wonder what would happen if someone with the right attitude who was completely incompetent applied for a job with them.

Computer programmers would not be useful in this regard, because computer science skills don't translate well to writing rules for human minds to interpret. Generalizing computer programming to an extreme degree only results in equivocation.

Uh, no, this is completely wrong. Programming translates very well to writing rules because you understand the concept that RAW has to work without interpretation. The language may change (just like it does when you're programming for different uses) but you have the mindset of "this is going to be used 100% literally, I must write exactly what I want it to do". A programmer also has experience with higher-level algorithm design, where you design the structure of a program and make sure that all of the logic works, something that is very similar to designing game rules. And they have to communicate all of these things clearly, which means being able to express things like "thing X does A, then B, then C goes into thing Y" with zero ambiguity so some other programmer doesn't create a bug when two sections have to interact with each other. If you can do those things you can write game rules that function properly.

That's the kind of thing where you learn how to use the correct instructions that have already been proven to work.

Not the kind of thing where you create the instructions out of nothingness because they don't exist yet.

Engineering has no useful applications to game design in terms of designing the rules.

Science is not even relevant.

Speaking as someone who is an engineer, you're completely wrong about this. Part of being a successful engineer is understanding how to communicate technical concepts clearly and effectively. It's like the programmer's "RAW is god" mindset, if you can write out product specifications such that someone on the other side of the world can look at your work, build the thing you described, and then plug it into a complex system and have everything work flawlessly you can write game rules. And because of this engineers have to take at least a class or two in technical writing, on top of any hands-on experience. So they might not be as experienced as someone who did a full major in technical writing, but they're in a much better position than someone who writes novels for a career.

Oh.

So then go apply to GW, get hired, and make better rules yourself then.

And if you want a technical writer, you should just hire one, but again, they wouldn't be THAT useful since you're not writing documentation or manuals here.

100% wrong again. You ARE writing documentation/manuals, that's exactly what a game rulebook is.

The people writing the rules aren't just documenting the rules, they are creating them.

Actually, GW has done extensive playtesting for all of their rules.

For definitions of "extensive" that do not include "doing enough of it". Playing a game or two on someone's lunch break (because playing the game is fun, not work, and you shouldn't get paid for it according to GW) is not "extensive" playtesting.

If you read the rest of that post, you'll notice that yes, that definition of "extensive" DOES include "not doing enough of it."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Runic wrote:
I wonder if anyone declaring how GW goes about/doesn't go about their playtesting in this thread has any concretical evidence or experience on the matter.

Seems like subjective guessing to me, at best.

I don't recall them releasing any test versions to the Internet.

Did I miss that happening?

 Pouncey wrote:
That's the kind of thing where you learn how to use the correct instructions that have already been proven to work.

Not the kind of thing where you create the instructions out of nothingness because they don't exist yet.

Clearly you have no idea how programming works then. There is a lot of creating instructions out of fundamental building blocks (much like game authors tend to use English words and not invent a whole new language) involved in anything but the most basic of programming. And you're also missing the point that it's about a mindset which encourages clarity and complete lack of ambiguity in communication, not the specific programming task.

Oh.

So then go apply to GW, get hired, and make better rules yourself then.

This assumes that GW cares about those things. They don't fail because they're unable to hire anyone qualified to write good rules, they fail because they don't give a about the rules being good. it doesn't matter if I could do a much better job of writing the rules to 40k (I almost certainly could), GW doesn't want the service I'm offering.

The people writing the rules aren't just documenting the rules, they are creating them.

And that's part of the problem. Game design and technical writing are two very different skills. It's possible to have a game designer with good technical writing skills, but GW should have at least one person with significant technical writing experience whose job is to turn the initial designs into a finished rulebook. And that person should have the final say on any published rules, regardless of who writes them. If they aren't up to the required standards they go back for revision until they are.

(This, btw, is how WOTC does it with MTC. This is why MTG doesn't have rule arguments.)

If you read the rest of that post, you'll notice that yes, that definition of "extensive" DOES include "not doing enough of it."

And my point is that it isn't "extensive" if they aren't doing enough. It's kind of what the word "extensive" means.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
That's the kind of thing where you learn how to use the correct instructions that have already been proven to work.

Not the kind of thing where you create the instructions out of nothingness because they don't exist yet.

Clearly you have no idea how programming works then. There is a lot of creating instructions out of fundamental building blocks (much like game authors tend to use English words and not invent a whole new language) involved in anything but the most basic of programming. And you're also missing the point that it's about a mindset which encourages clarity and complete lack of ambiguity in communication, not the specific programming task.

If the mindset is the important part, then the education they have is irrelevant.

Oh.

So then go apply to GW, get hired, and make better rules yourself then.

This assumes that GW cares about those things. They don't fail because they're unable to hire anyone qualified to write good rules, they fail because they don't give a about the rules being good. it doesn't matter if I could do a much better job of writing the rules to 40k (I almost certainly could), GW doesn't want the service I'm offering.

That's a separate issue then. Because now we're not talking about "who would make good rules" we're instead talking about "is having good rules important?"

The people writing the rules aren't just documenting the rules, they are creating them.

And that's part of the problem. Game design and technical writing are two very different skills. It's possible to have a game designer with good technical writing skills, but GW should have at least one person with significant technical writing experience whose job is to turn the initial designs into a finished rulebook. And that person should have the final say on any published rules, regardless of who writes them. If they aren't up to the required standards they go back for revision until they are.

(This, btw, is how WOTC does it with MTC. This is why MTG doesn't have rule arguments.)

We're talking about game design.

Unless you intend to have that technical writer creating the actual rules themselves instead of simply writing them up and insisting that what they are given be useful...

If you read the rest of that post, you'll notice that yes, that definition of "extensive" DOES include "not doing enough of it."

And my point is that it isn't "extensive" if they aren't doing enough. It's kind of what the word "extensive" means.

It's a paradox.

Their version of extensive would have been the very definition of extensive prior to the widespread popularity of the Internet, when widespread playtesting was impossible. This is also when their playtesting system was developed.

 Pouncey wrote:
If the mindset is the important part, then the education they have is irrelevant.

Uh, no. Education is where you get the mindset. Engineering/programming/technical writing/etc are learned skills, not something you're naturally born with.

That's a separate issue then. Because now we're not talking about "who would make good rules" we're instead talking about "is having good rules important?"

Now you're just saying random things. You posted "go work for GW", I explained why that is a silly thing to say. If you think that is off topic for this thread then why did you post it in the first place?

We're talking about game design.

Unless you intend to have that technical writer creating the actual rules themselves instead of simply writing them up and insisting that what they are given be useful...

Ok, clearly you don't understand how this works. To give a simple example: the game designer says "I want these models to move 6" and these models to move 12" per turn", based on their understanding of what makes a good game experience. The technical writer takes that concept and writes it in formal rules, then checks all possible interactions with other rules to make sure that there are no conflicts or ambiguous cases. If there are any the technical writer changes the wording of the rule(s) until there are no more problems. The end result is that the game designer's wishes about 6"/12" movement distance are clearly expressed so that the given models will always have that movement distance no matter how much of a RAW rules lawyer a given player tries to be.

Or, to give an analogy in a different field: a game designer is a novelist, a technical writer is their editor. The novelist creates an appealing work of fiction, the editor makes sure everything is polished and ready for sale.

Their version of extensive would have been the very definition of extensive prior to the widespread popularity of the Internet, when widespread playtesting was impossible. This is also when their playtesting system was developed.

Uh, what? What does the internet have to do with anything? WOTC does extensive playtesting on MTG, entirely with internal employees (some of whom are hired for the sole purpose of playtesting, IIRC). The issue is not that GW doesn't use the internet, it's that they play too few games and don't play them as part of any kind of systematic testing environment.

 Peregrine wrote:
Or, to give an analogy in a different field: a game designer is a novelist, a technical writer is their editor. The novelist creates an appealing work of fiction, the editor makes sure everything is polished and ready for sale.

This may be why GW hired novelists to design their rules and not editors.

Edit:

Oh, I see my error. I've been focusing on the "design" part of this when what's actually been being talked about is the "writing" part. I feel dumb now. Sorry.

I think I got confused at some point because GW has the same people do both.

Yes, a technical writer would be better for actually writing the rules themselves.

 Pouncey wrote:


I don't recall them releasing any test versions to the Internet.

Did I miss that happening?

This much can be said ofcourse, they haven't done such a thing and it requires no insight to see. The rest is guessing.

 Runic wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:


I don't recall them releasing any test versions to the Internet.

Did I miss that happening?

This much can be said ofcourse, they haven't done such a thing and it requires no insight to see. The rest is guessing.

Well, that's the important part. That's how you have to do playtesting for a game as complex as WH40k if you want to catch errors. With all respect to the MtG team, I'm certain they do a fine job, but the rules for MtG are rather short and (IIRC) they actually have a formula for determining how powerful to make their new cards, allowing for acceptable variances in power. WH40k, on the other hand, is WAY more complex, with so many variables that interact with each other that such a formula would be a wall of text on its own. A small team of dedicated playtesters is simply insufficient for playtesting a game as complex as 40k, you need a crapload of playtesters doing things in a huge variety of ways.

RE: Attitude over skills, I can see that. The manager of my GW store didn't even know about/play the game until he started running the store; he had managed other businesses but knew like nothing about GW games. When he told me that I was shocked, because that makes zero sense to hire a store manager that doesn't know anything about the product you're selling. He's picked up a bit of it now, but still. It also doesn't help that people like to ask him about rule questions because, I guess, they assume he knows about it since he manages a GW store. He's a great guy, don't get me wrong, but he's not a GW "hobbyist" at all.

RE: The style of the rules, I think that's a big issue. Compare how the 40k rulebook reads to like the Warmachine rulebook (which is also available as a free PDF). The GW one reads very conversational, and less of an instruction manual. The warmachine book reads like an instruction manual with language that indicates what is or isn't allowed in clear, concise terms. That, IMHO, is the style GW needs to use for their own rules. Keep the conversational tone out of the rules themselves, and keep it in the hobby type sections only.

RE: Playtesting, I do think GW playtests, but I think because of their very limited way of playing the game (preferring narrative scenarios, not powergaming at all, etc.) it does more harm than good because they never are able to see the broken combos. It's great they approach that style of play, but not everyone does and will try to eke out every bit they can in order to "win" so having vague rules or missing key interactions harms the game in the long run because it leaves these combos open to abuse. Couple that with the fact the designers often are handed design for a miniature and told to "make it work", and given a deadline for when it's coming out, and you likely would not have enough time to fully playtest it anyways and find all the combos, only the most basic use cases.

A lot of things are the designers fault, but not everything. A good chunk is related to sales deadlines (e.g. this model is coming out on X date, rules need to be ready by then) and sales being the focus of the company, not having good rules. It is possible to do both (Privateer Press manages this, and probably has a bigger design team than GW, although they aren't always perfect; see Skorne until recently), but GW doesn't or can't do it and as a result the game suffers.

 Pouncey wrote:
the rules for MtG are rather short and (IIRC)

You recall incorrectly. Here's the 200+ page rules for MTG: http://media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/MagicCompRules_20170119.pdf

Now, there is a 30-page basic rulebook for new players to learn the core mechanics, but that doesn't cover everything. It might be good enough for "casual" games where all players are fine with house-ruling any rule disputes, but if you want to play the game in tournaments or settle rule disputes consistently you're going to be reading that full rulebook.

they actually have a formula for determining how powerful to make their new cards, allowing for acceptable variances in power.

They have no such thing. In fact, given that each set introduces new mechanics, such a formula-based design approach can't exist. At most a formula could provide stats for the basic "filler" cards that every set needs for draft purposes: generic creatures, basic removal spells, etc. They way they actually balance the game is through iterative playtesting.

WH40k, on the other hand, is WAY more complex, with so many variables that interact with each other that such a formula would be a wall of text on its own.

Nope. 40k is not way more complex than MTG. In fact, it's arguable that it's even more complex at all. It's certainly much shallower in strategy, so the only real question is whether the sheer rules bloat of 40k is enough to match the vast number of potential interactions between MTG's tens of thousands of unique cards. If MTG is less complicated and easier to playtest it's only because of the systematic approach to game design, where WOTC makes sure the core rules are a solid foundation and can cover all possible interactions no matter what the individual cards do. GW could do the same, if they cared enough.

 Runic wrote:
I wonder if anyone declaring how GW goes about/doesn't go about their playtesting in this thread has any concretical evidence or experience on the matter.

Seems like subjective guessing to me, at best.

A few good friends of mine back home were one of the external playtest groups gw used up until they canned the system when someone else leaked the fifth edition ruleset. Even then, though they playtested, they didn't always want to take on the feedback. At least Two of my friends have also had their names mentioned in the 'special thanks' sections of either the main rulebook, or codices as well.

So yeah, I've heard some interesting first hand accounts, often in confidence.

 Peregrine wrote:
...You recall incorrectly. Here's the 200+ page rules for MTG: http://media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/MagicCompRules_20170119.pdf...

The thing about the two hundred page document is that the font size is big and the spacing is large (if the AoS rules were formatted that way they'd be twenty pages long) ([/hyperbole]), most of it is irrelevant to most games (22 pages on weird multiplayer variants?), and the length of the rules is a very different statement from the ease of use of the rules.

That two-hundred-page document is well sorted, well edited, clear, consistent, and it's very, very easy to find the answer to any question you want to ask. The rules for Warhammer are the exact opposite, they're chunky, redundant, don't actually answer a whole bunch of very basic questions (find me the point where the rules tell us that a vehicle weapon's line of sight is restricted to its fire arc), have an irrational fondness for using the same phrase to mean different things, and are loaded with loopholes that require arguing.

Give me the two-hundred-page document written by math people over the unedited two-hundred-page mess that doesn't give clear answers to any questions any day.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

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

Depends on how the organization is done. If "English major" includes technical writing then an English major with a focus in technical writing would be acceptable. If "English major" refers only to literature then no, they'd be terrible for the job. Programmers would be the other good source for rule writers, since they have experience in both writing code that is 100% literal RAW in execution and in commenting their code/working as a team on it/etc. Engineers and scientists in general would have at least some experience with technical writing, and would be better than a fiction writer.

I imagine that GW would not hire the first English major to apply, and would ask more questions than just "Are you an English major?" when determining their qualifications.

Computer programmers would not be useful in this regard, because computer science skills don't translate well to writing rules for human minds to interpret. Generalizing computer programming to an extreme degree only results in equivocation.

Engineering has no useful applications to game design in terms of designing the rules.

Science is not even relevant.

And if you want a technical writer, you should just hire one, but again, they wouldn't be THAT useful since you're not writing documentation or manuals here.


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 wuestenfux wrote:
Playtesting is the thing GW hasn't done in all cases over the years.
But other companies don't do it either to a large extent. Have a look into mk3 of WMH and the recent errata.

Actually, GW has done extensive playtesting for all of their rules.

However, they have limited the pool of playtesters to the staff designing the rules and a handful of other players.

The solution for playtesting would be to release test rules to the Internet for free and then encourage players across the world to try them in their own games and send in their feedback, and make adjustments accordingly.

Unfortunately, that won't work because GW also wants to sell rulebooks, and releasing early versions of those rulebooks would cut into their profits should players decide to simply skip paying the fees for rulebooks and use the most recent playtesting rules instead.

The obvious solution to that is one that most companies gave chosen in recent years: Don't charge for rules, release them for free on the Internet and in every starter box, and provide a cheap paperback copy for anyone who wants a convenient booklet with the rules.

How are a games rules not "documentation and manuals."
Technical writers study game rules as teaching material, most technical writing classes require you to design and write a game rulebook.
Technical writing competitions, yes there is such a thing, very often have game rules as the topic.
It's exactly the skill that is useful.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Give me the two-hundred-page document written by math people over the unedited two-hundred-page mess that doesn't give clear answers to any questions any day.

Well yes, my position is that the MTG approach is clearly better than what GW is doing. The point wasn't "OMG 200+ PAGES SO BAD", it was a response to the idea that MTG is easy to design and balance because the rules are so simple. The rules aren't simple at all, they're just very well designed and maintained.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
...You recall incorrectly. Here's the 200+ page rules for MTG: http://media.wizards.com/2017/downloads/MagicCompRules_20170119.pdf...

The thing about the two hundred page document is that the font size is big and the spacing is large (if the AoS rules were formatted that way they'd be twenty pages long) ([/hyperbole]), most of it is irrelevant to most games (22 pages on weird multiplayer variants?), and the length of the rules is a very different statement from the ease of use of the rules.

That two-hundred-page document is well sorted, well edited, clear, consistent, and it's very, very easy to find the answer to any question you want to ask. The rules for Warhammer are the exact opposite, they're chunky, redundant, don't actually answer a whole bunch of very basic questions (find me the point where the rules tell us that a vehicle weapon's line of sight is restricted to its fire arc), have an irrational fondness for using the same phrase to mean different things, and are loaded with loopholes that require arguing.

Give me the two-hundred-page document written by math people over the unedited two-hundred-page mess that doesn't give clear answers to any questions any day.

The mtg rules are a great example on how to design and word rules for clear consistent rules, I agree. thats the kind of care GW needs to give their rules.

 Peregrine wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Give me the two-hundred-page document written by math people over the unedited two-hundred-page mess that doesn't give clear answers to any questions any day.

Well yes, my position is that the MTG approach is clearly better than what GW is doing. The point wasn't "OMG 200+ PAGES SO BAD", it was a response to the idea that MTG is easy to design and balance because the rules are so simple. The rules aren't simple at all, they're just very well designed and maintained.

I'd argue that there's a difference between 'simple' and 'short'; MTG gave a lot of thought to first principles (what any game entity is, resolution steps, etc.) in such a way that despite being two hundred pages long I would call their rules 'simple'.

On a stream a couple weeks back, Simon Grant (A GW rules writer) mentioned offhand that they had decided Magnus should be 400 points when they started playtesting him, and in their 1st playtest against Space Wolves he killed more than 400 points in his 1st 2 turns.

So they did "playtest" to some degree, though clearly not much.

In any case, I'm pretty sure the issues stem from the upper ladder of the corporate command chain.

I don't believe it's the designers fault, in a sense. It's quite a common occurrance, on many fields, that management/middle management wants results, and the publication cycle is fast (as we can see now, it is -really- fast with new releases.)

This leads to there not being enough time to test things thoroughly. And even if a designer wanted to do extensive playtesting, they might not receive a green light to do so, but are instead pushed into writing new stuff when the current stuff is basically just about finished with minimal checks.

This, most of the time, is the reality with different publications on many fields. The designers/writers are not necessarily to blame, or to be blamed completely.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I'd argue that there's a difference between 'simple' and 'short'; MTG gave a lot of thought to first principles (what any game entity is, resolution steps, etc.) in such a way that despite being two hundred pages long I would call their rules 'simple'.

You've hit something significant there; GW products have a serious problem with consistency of the game entities which they seem to constantly try to correct with half measures (with the exception of 5th edition's rulebook). The problem with the Haemotrope reactor and promethium relay pipes alone highlight the lack of a consistent toolkit rather glaringly. I'd suggest the reason the complaints haven't prompted action is that the Imperial faction uses basically the same components so often, that cross faction standardisation would be (perceived) as style cramping.


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 Runic wrote:
In any case, I'm pretty sure the issues stem from the upper ladder of the corporate command chain.

I don't believe it's the designers fault, in a sense. It's quite a common occurrance, on many fields, that management/middle management wants results, and the publication cycle is fast (as we can see now, it is -really- fast with new releases.)

This leads to there not being enough time to test things thoroughly. And even if a designer wanted to do extensive playtesting, they might not receive a green light to do so, but are instead pushed into writing new stuff when the current stuff is basically just about finished with minimal checks.

This, most of the time, is the reality with different publications on many fields. The designers/writers are not necessarily to blame, or to be blamed completely.

Conversely (and by their own admission it was the case) the management branch wasn't responsive to customer feedback so as to reign in the poorer decisions by, lets say, Matt Ward. Being in charge means everything is your fault after all.

Building on your point, however talented an article producer may be involved in the production line, if they're working towards the wrong objectives, with the wrong apparatus of quality perception and potentially with the wrong tools - and by that i'm thinking basic layout systems - the product can only be 'good' by a convergence of uncontrolled factors in its favor.

 Capt. Camping wrote:
Because of fluff, orks will never be competitive

Orks control most of the galaxy in the fluff and are the predominant civilizaiton of the 40k Milky Way. And outside of rare and powerful events like the Great Crusade, Macharius' crusade, or the ones led by Alicia Dominica and her handmaidens, they're never depicted as really permanently losing territory.

 Melissia wrote:

 Capt. Camping wrote:
Because of fluff, orks will never be competitive

Orks control most of the galaxy in the fluff and are the predominant civilizaiton of the 40k Milky Way. And outside of rare and powerful events like the Great Crusade, Macharius' crusade, or the ones led by Alicia Dominica and her handmaidens, they're never depicted as really permanently losing territory.

That's not really a compliment though. Orks are basically the cannon fodder of the setting, so what if they never permanently lose and come back later? Orks almost every time they show up get the gak kicked out of them, and the argument was about the game, not the fluff. In the fluff Orks are actually terrifying, on the tabletop they are basically easy to beat to keep up that "noble Imperium defeating the enemies of Mankind" stuff.

Being the most successful military force in the galaxy, dominating most of the galaxy by default, isn't 'a compliment?

 Melissia wrote:
Being the most successful military force in the galaxy, dominating most of the galaxy by default, isn't 'a compliment?

Not when the person you quoted was saying they won't be competitive. Nobody cares what the fluff is, if the rules are trash.

And yet people still play armies that aren't Space Marines or Eldar.

Which doesn't actually address anything being said.

Just because you aren't actually paying attention to the conversation being had doesn't mean there is no conversation going on.

The conversation which you replied to was someone saying "orks will never be competitive" with some fluff about how Orks dominate the galaxy. That didn't even remotely relate to the question of orks being competitive or not. Also stop with your condescending and rude tone.

Wayniac: Try actually reading the post in question.

 Capt. Camping wrote:
Because of fluff, orks will never be competitive

The base of the post is "Orks are not competitive", and the reason given for their non-competitiveness is "their fluff", IE the lore.

I was disagreeing with this by providing a counter-argument that, actually, Orks ARE very good in the lore, because they dominate the galaxy in spite of every other species' attempt to stop them, including the powers of Chaos and the intergalactic threat of Tyranids. Clearly, Orks in the lore are not notorious push-overs that can't fight worth crap which is how many people believe them to be in the tabletop. And therefor, the reason for their non-competitiveness is NOT lore, because the lore indicates far more strength than the tabletop metagame would otherwise show. I would posit the reason is simply because GW doesn't put all that much thought in to the game to begin with, actually, but that's neither here nor there.

My post was thus relevant to the discussion at hand. If you have something stuck that far up your craw about what I've posted, feel free to PM the mods about it, because I'm not budging nor responding any further to your objections.

Wayniac wrote:
That's not really a compliment though. Orks are basically the cannon fodder of the setting, so what if they never permanently lose and come back later? Orks almost every time they show up get the gak kicked out of them, and the argument was about the game, not the fluff. In the fluff Orks are actually terrifying, on the tabletop they are basically easy to beat to keep up that "noble Imperium defeating the enemies of Mankind" stuff.

Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

 Peregrine wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
That's not really a compliment though. Orks are basically the cannon fodder of the setting, so what if they never permanently lose and come back later? Orks almost every time they show up get the gak kicked out of them, and the argument was about the game, not the fluff. In the fluff Orks are actually terrifying, on the tabletop they are basically easy to beat to keep up that "noble Imperium defeating the enemies of Mankind" stuff.

Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

Pretty much this.

Yeah, the rules are mindnumbingly unclear and inconcise. I play lots of MTG in addition to 40k. WOTC has taken so much care to make a complex system straightforward and easy to understand. MTG is easy to pick up but difficult to master, which should be a goal for any and all interactive entertainment. GW, however, has a verbose encyclopedia for a rule book.

GW also doesn't seem to have anyone in overall charge of each system, nor do they seem to have any sort of design bible for their systems. You can see evidence of this in the way they keep releasing stuff that breaks the game in various ways.

Two good examples of this:

1. Grav Cannons. They completely invalidate a lot of the SM heavy weapons and are too good against too many things, making them a go-to choice in pretty much all cases. They shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a table in their current form because of this and that's the sort of decision for a design lead to take and a design bible to prohibit.

2. Formations and Decurion-style detachments. I don't actually have a problem with the concept of formations but the execution once again showed GW lack leadership at the design level. GW shouldn't have released the Decurion halfway through an edition without also having some sort of plan in place to bring the earlier armies back into line with this entirely new way of building armies. But no, the GW approach is to say "screw it" and release anyway and let the earlier armies catch up eventually. These sorts of mid-edition changes in direction just shouldn't happen in a well run game.

I know there are reasons other than pure design ones for some decisions. Marketing is probably too heavily involved in the design process, which is another issue.

Getting back to the original point about having novelists writing rules, I'm reminded of an interview with Jervis (or maybe Rick Priestley) a long time ago when he actually said they don't write rules in a dry, legalistic fashion because they wanted the rules to be approachable and readable. That's ludicrous to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, clarity is the most important thing when writing rules. Secondly, I don't care how florid your prose is, reading a rulebook the size of 40k's is not an enjoyable experience. Just give me the rules as concisely and accurately as possible so I have to spend as little time as possible with my head buried in your book .

Slipspace wrote:
GW also doesn't seem to have anyone in overall charge of each system, nor do they seem to have any sort of design bible for their systems. You can see evidence of this in the way they keep releasing stuff that breaks the game in various ways.

Two good examples of this:

1. Grav Cannons. They completely invalidate a lot of the SM heavy weapons and are too good against too many things, making them a go-to choice in pretty much all cases. They shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a table in their current form because of this and that's the sort of decision for a design lead to take and a design bible to prohibit.

2. Formations and Decurion-style detachments. I don't actually have a problem with the concept of formations but the execution once again showed GW lack leadership at the design level. GW shouldn't have released the Decurion halfway through an edition without also having some sort of plan in place to bring the earlier armies back into line with this entirely new way of building armies. But no, the GW approach is to say "screw it" and release anyway and let the earlier armies catch up eventually. These sorts of mid-edition changes in direction just shouldn't happen in a well run game.

I know there are reasons other than pure design ones for some decisions. Marketing is probably too heavily involved in the design process, which is another issue.

Getting back to the original point about having novelists writing rules, I'm reminded of an interview with Jervis (or maybe Rick Priestley) a long time ago when he actually said they don't write rules in a dry, legalistic fashion because they wanted the rules to be approachable and readable. That's ludicrous to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, clarity is the most important thing when writing rules. Secondly, I don't care how florid your prose is, reading a rulebook the size of 40k's is not an enjoyable experience. Just give me the rules as concisely and accurately as possible so I have to spend as little time as possible with my head buried in your book .

Eloquently phrased. As another MTG player, it's painful to try to resolve something confusing with the 40k rulebooks.

Slipspace wrote:
GW also doesn't seem to have anyone in overall charge of each system, nor do they seem to have any sort of design bible for their systems. You can see evidence of this in the way they keep releasing stuff that breaks the game in various ways.

Two good examples of this:

1. Grav Cannons. They completely invalidate a lot of the SM heavy weapons and are too good against too many things, making them a go-to choice in pretty much all cases. They shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a table in their current form because of this and that's the sort of decision for a design lead to take and a design bible to prohibit.

2. Formations and Decurion-style detachments. I don't actually have a problem with the concept of formations but the execution once again showed GW lack leadership at the design level. GW shouldn't have released the Decurion halfway through an edition without also having some sort of plan in place to bring the earlier armies back into line with this entirely new way of building armies. But no, the GW approach is to say "screw it" and release anyway and let the earlier armies catch up eventually. These sorts of mid-edition changes in direction just shouldn't happen in a well run game.

I know there are reasons other than pure design ones for some decisions. Marketing is probably too heavily involved in the design process, which is another issue.

Getting back to the original point about having novelists writing rules, I'm reminded of an interview with Jervis (or maybe Rick Priestley) a long time ago when he actually said they don't write rules in a dry, legalistic fashion because they wanted the rules to be approachable and readable. That's ludicrous to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, clarity is the most important thing when writing rules. Secondly, I don't care how florid your prose is, reading a rulebook the size of 40k's is not an enjoyable experience. Just give me the rules as concisely and accurately as possible so I have to spend as little time as possible with my head buried in your book .

This is all baseless conjecture and proves nothing. Imbalances are supposed to exist in games, GW is clever enough to make sure they are obvious.

Of course there is someone in charge of each system. It's Duncan. The rules are written in a manner that thins them down.

 Peregrine wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
That's not really a compliment though. Orks are basically the cannon fodder of the setting, so what if they never permanently lose and come back later? Orks almost every time they show up get the gak kicked out of them, and the argument was about the game, not the fluff. In the fluff Orks are actually terrifying, on the tabletop they are basically easy to beat to keep up that "noble Imperium defeating the enemies of Mankind" stuff.

Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

Dull surprise.

 techsoldaten wrote:
This is all baseless conjecture and proves nothing. Imbalances are supposed to exist in games, GW is clever enough to make sure they are obvious.

Of course there is someone in charge of each system. It's Duncan. The rules are written in a manner that thins them down.

The issues isn't "Imbalances are supposed to exist in games", but how that imbalance works. You could say rock, paper, scissors isn't balanced either, but it's still fair. We don't have rock, paper, scissors with SM heavy weapons, we have Rock, paper, scissors, Tactical nuclear warhead.

"Imbalances are supposed to exist in games,"

That's blatantly false. Differences are supposed to exist, not imbalancing differences.

Peregrine wrote:
Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

And they are giving a seminar about rules design.

Martel732 wrote:
"Imbalances are supposed to exist in games,"

That's blatantly false. Differences are supposed to exist, not imbalancing differences.

"Rock is imbalanced when compared with scissors."

Expand your scope. There is no perfectly balanced scenario.

If differences exist, imbalances exist, this is a fact. But the presence of imbalances doesn't mean an imbalanced game.

Differences aren't imbalances. Rock has a job. That is to defeat scissors. That doesn't mean it's imbalanced vs scissors. You can't compare a unit to what it's meant to hard counter. You have to look at how many units a given units counters and it countered by. That's where imbalance comes into play.

"If differences exist, imbalances exist, this is a fact"

I disagree. It's not a fact at all.

Balance is a unit being fairly costed for how it fares vs the FIELD, not one of its counters, nor something it itself counters.

There's also differences in situational balance but not overall balance.

I think a pretty obvious example of this is in 30k, where the Legio Cybernetica army can field an entire phalanx of monstrous creatures with little effort, and is generally capable of fielding and defeating most Legion lists due to resilience alone...

... except that none of the robots are scoring. This means that in an overall game-state sense, Cybernetica are fairly weak in 30k. In any individual game, however, they will feel very strong, because until victory points are counted, they are very durable and killy for the price of their machines.

 Melissia wrote:
Being the most successful military force in the galaxy, dominating most of the galaxy by default, isn't 'a compliment?

Orks don't need compliments about their dominance of the galaxy. They just do it for fun, and they don't wipe out the other races because it's good to have some variety in your wars.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:

Peregrine wrote:
Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

And they are giving a seminar about rules design.

Who actually paid to attend that?