The things that are pushing me rapidly away from playing 40K at the moment are:
1) Too many shots/dice rolls. It's absolutely asinine that an Ork can get 6-7 attacks, or that a unit that shoots a ton is allowed to shoot again in certain armies. The idea of a unit putting out 200-300 etc. attacks is....just asinine. It throws away any other consideration in the game. "Oh this guys tough" - "Doesn't matter I'm about to roll 300 dice." This is possibly the most glaring/obnoxious issue for me.
2) The ease with which auras/stratagems/spells make the above even more obnoxious. "Oh, those 300 dice...I'm re-rolling all of them, and doing double damage on 6's...and then rolling bonus dice if I do that....oh and they're buffed to hitting and wounding on 2+", etc.
The absurd level of lethality and comical level of dice rolling all but removes the idea that it's even a game. This all combines into gotcha-hammer, the worst type of gaming. "I ignore the following six rules and I have the following six buffs...so...you might as well take your models off the table".
This, combined with the archaic IGOUGO format just makes for a silly and miserable experience. You can take units and armies that don't do the above....but then you need to find an opponent who's similarly interested in artificially toning down the game.
Now, the above is fine with a lot of people - but they aren't playing a wargaming, they're competing in "a game". The same people who want to carry out a 168 hit combo in Street Fighter and you never get to hit a button etc. A lot of people enjoy the process of finding how to remove any risk/chance from the game. That's fine if that's the style of hobby you enjoy. However, that all trickles down and ruins the narrative elements of the game. It makes it increasingly hard to develop narrative or fun scenarios when someone can do X+Y+Z and obliterate your army.
I'm all about modifying a game to your enjoyment, but I don't think I care enough to bother any more with 40K. I'm to the point where any opponent (and these are my friends) say "Well I have 120 shots...and then I can shoot again"....I just take the unit off the table to end the game quicker. I can't be bothered. Unfortunate, but true.
Fundimentally I think that 40k should be a game about battelines clashing in combat with a bit of shooting beforehand, when at the moment it is a shooting match with a bit of close combat.
So if I were to fix something it would be to change the game's emphasis.
I agree. When you’re rolling hundreds of dice it’s kin of ridiculous. Just change the unit or weapon stats so you don’t have to roll 200 dice to do your damage
Automatically Appended Next Post: So you want 40k, where it’s in the future and everyone has guns, to place more emphasis on hand to hand combat.
scale creep and bloat are the biggest problems in 8th to me, we are now at 7th 40k levels of bloat and we are not even half way through the edition (i hope), the game also keeps getting bigger and bigger losing focus on the meat and potatoes that make it good, just look at the complete lack of cover rules, boring statlines etc. for evidence of that.
As above but personally i belive it's more the problem of GW going full "bigger is always better".
In a way you now got more units in a 2000 pts army now then ever.
Stratagems are obnoxious at best (havocs needing to ask to use aa missiles, scusme but why?) to outright asinine (double phases hurray, canceling overwatch or stratagems from your enemy even better, etc.)
The fact that you NEED access to a cheap and usefull troop unit or else your cp's fethed and screw you if your particular army needs massed cp's.....
Cover, no seriously cover is slowed atm.
New weapons/ weapon options that are better for a new unit but you only get limited access in order to create artificial scarcity, thank you gw for beeing a prick.
Rules bloat.
Not only have we no more USR, No now we have 12 times the same similiar rule amongst 100 differing units.
Also you want to play csm? According to gw you don't need the new 2.0 dex just the old dex,
And the faq And the shadowspear datasheets
And the shadowspear faq And the Vigilus ablaze book
And the ca.
Especially the ca, because forcing people to pay for what is in essence a balance Patch is good.
I don’t think GW will ever do anything that impairs their ability to sell the maximum amount of models so this rules set I intend on making is just gonna be some house rule thing you and your friends can print off and play with. But GW I think maybe intentionally made it a matter of “I have more of X Y Z unit therefore I win” type of play. They always introduce some new crap like imperial knights that’s overpowered as hell. And the dumb rules down and dumb down tactics so more dumb dumbs can play the game and spend money. I’m very optimistic we can make our own rules that restore the game to what it used to be back in 2nd edition. Much more fun.
Oh, I don't think anyone disagrees that GW has one goal: more model sales. Hence why you won't get a stunning rule set from GW anytime after 1999 or so. Once they realized how to make money (and this not a criticism) the old guard of geeks making products for fun and a bit of profit disappeared.
You need only look at how many units gain arbitrary bonuses for having 20+ or 30+ models. Because why not get way better when you buy waaay more models? No one is doubting that.
The game is simply too complex still. I haven't played in quite some time, but the games are still multiple hours long even at the 1500-2k points range. A game that long should be like 3 vs 3 5k+ or something. The rules need to be streamlined where the average point game is in the 1k-1500pt range and about 1 hour or less in length.
On top of that they put in needlessly complicated things like conquest points, battalions, formations, etc. These things don't add enough to the game to warrant their existence in my opinion. The whole magic phase is a travesty. I'd much rather spells just be wargear again.
Then to add insult to injury they've removed the very concept of balance by creating these soup armies. They did this only to sell models and the game has suffered for it.
So yea, if I were trying to make 9th edition I'd remove conquest points, formations, and all of that. Rebalance the game around 1000-1500 points so players are more willing to try new armies out. And try to refocus the game on the traditional turns we had in editions long past.
The things that are pushing me rapidly away from playing 40K at the moment are:
1) Too many shots/dice rolls. It's absolutely asinine that an Ork can get 6-7 attacks, or that a unit that shoots a ton is allowed to shoot again in certain armies. The idea of a unit putting out 200-300 etc. attacks is....just asinine. It throws away any other consideration in the game. "Oh this guys tough" - "Doesn't matter I'm about to roll 300 dice." This is possibly the most glaring/obnoxious issue for me.
2) The ease with which auras/stratagems/spells make the above even more obnoxious. "Oh, those 300 dice...I'm re-rolling all of them, and doing double damage on 6's...and then rolling bonus dice if I do that....oh and they're buffed to hitting and wounding on 2+", etc.
The absurd level of lethality and comical level of dice rolling all but removes the idea that it's even a game. This all combines into gotcha-hammer, the worst type of gaming. "I ignore the following six rules and I have the following six buffs...so...you might as well take your models off the table".
This, combined with the archaic IGOUGO format just makes for a silly and miserable experience. You can take units and armies that don't do the above....but then you need to find an opponent who's similarly interested in artificially toning down the game.
Now, the above is fine with a lot of people - but they aren't playing a wargaming, they're competing in "a game". The same people who want to carry out a 168 hit combo in Street Fighter and you never get to hit a button etc. A lot of people enjoy the process of finding how to remove any risk/chance from the game. That's fine if that's the style of hobby you enjoy. However, that all trickles down and ruins the narrative elements of the game. It makes it increasingly hard to develop narrative or fun scenarios when someone can do X+Y+Z and obliterate your army.
I'm all about modifying a game to your enjoyment, but I don't think I care enough to bother any more with 40K. I'm to the point where any opponent (and these are my friends) say "Well I have 120 shots...and then I can shoot again"....I just take the unit off the table to end the game quicker. I can't be bothered. Unfortunate, but true.
The turn structure. The biggest most fundamental baseline issue with the whole game is the turn structure. Everything else is problems built on that foundation.
The biggest issue is clearly command points fueling stratagems not being equal access to all armies.
That and some stratagems are just too strong. Shooting twice/fighting twice and moving twice should not exist.
For me those are the biggest issues. I feel like the Igougo nonsense is also a big problem. Will mostly be resolved when just about everyone transitions over to APOC.
The core of the issue is that 40k is a CCG with $1000 in "cards" on the table. Movement is barely relevant, terrain is minimized, and the emphasis is on optimizing your math and combos for list construction and then playing your stratagem cards effectively.
One thing that makes me wanna vomit is the auras given by people like guilleman. Reroll everything you can imagine. And he is hard to kill. So much cheese Strategems and CP could vanish. They should just have army bonus. If you have all fluff list and no soup BS you get your faction bonus. Or just some special rule for certain units. CP farming and strategems are just more cheese.
the idea behind stratigiums is cool, situational activated abilities with a cost etc. the problem is some strats are a little too situational and others are just "yeah this completely boosts your unit for no real reason" and then you have abilities that are "well we should have just given you this an an innate ability but randomly tied to to stratigiums because.... I dunno we wanna sell more guardsmen"
Compare stratagems to the 30k equivalent, where instead of CCG buff cards they're actually difficult choices to make. For example, you might get drop pods for every unit (you normally can't take them) but at the cost of not being able to take tanks or anything else that can't be deployed by deep strike. 40k could have had something like that, but instead the only question you have to ask is how many CP farm detachments you want to bring to power your CCG mechanic.
I think the point was made earlier that all these strategems and Auruas and other crap make it so the game becomes about executing super awesome combos and wiping your enemy out in one turn with your +1 attack with five reroll assault guy that teleports in turn one
The game is simply too complex still. I haven't played in quite some time, but the games are still multiple hours long even at the 1500-2k points range. A game that long should be like 3 vs 3 5k+ or something. The rules need to be streamlined where the average point game is in the 1k-1500pt range and about 1 hour or less in length.
On top of that they put in needlessly complicated things like conquest points, battalions, formations, etc. These things don't add enough to the game to warrant their existence in my opinion. The whole magic phase is a travesty. I'd much rather spells just be wargear again.
Then to add insult to injury they've removed the very concept of balance by creating these soup armies. They did this only to sell models and the game has suffered for it.
So yea, if I were trying to make 9th edition I'd remove conquest points, formations, and all of that. Rebalance the game around 1000-1500 points so players are more willing to try new armies out. And try to refocus the game on the traditional turns we had in editions long past.
Ishagu wrote: Broken means the rules cease to function and the game cannot be played, or a combination of units is so potent that nothing else can interact with it.
If you're trying to say not fully balanced, that's a different matter entirely.
I'm above hyperbole and absolutes.
No, you're being unreasonably literal. A game is broken if it is functioning poorly even if it is not literally impossible to play the game. And 40k is broken. Balance is very poor, and there are fundamental design issues (IGOUGO, poor terrain rules, excessive CCG-like mechanics, etc) that make an exceptionally bad game.
Not fully balanced is a pretty generous term to describe the current (and to be fair past few editions) state of the game. GW is a bit more proactive about fixing some things this editions but the haves and have nots of units and options is still pretty stark this edition and 40k still requires liked minded opponents or one or more players will not get much out of a given game.
I feel that 40ks biggest issue is GW is trying to have a game that can cater both to a small skirmish game and Epic lite and ended up with a rule set that doesn't really do either well. It doesn't have quite enough granularity for a proper skirmish game and yet has way to many trap/meaningless choices to do a large scale battle right either.
We end up with a weird hybrid that needs a ton of house rules/ local customs to fix.
Knights. Because then you have to take into account that knights and grots exists on the same table top...
Breaks the immersion of 40k for me as its used to be about infantry supported by vehicles and champions duking it out in a trench! Titanic things were the stuff of apocalyptic battles.
But that genie is well out of the bottle so no real hope in a fix.
Kroem wrote: Fundimentally I think that 40k should be a game about battelines clashing in combat with a bit of shooting beforehand, when at the moment it is a shooting match with a bit of close combat.
So if I were to fix something it would be to change the game's emphasis.
Kroem wrote: Fundimentally I think that 40k should be a game about battelines clashing in combat with a bit of shooting beforehand, when at the moment it is a shooting match with a bit of close combat.
So if I were to fix something it would be to change the game's emphasis.
Agreed here.
Then play WHFB/AOS. 40k is a game full of guns and should be primarily about shooting with occasional melee to finish off the survivors. A game full of tanks/aircraft/artillery/etc should not revolve around your entire army running up and punching people.
warpedpig wrote: Lmao well said. Although themed close combat armies can exist. They still have guns
Nurgle Daemons.
Are you saying I’m wrong to play the army I enjoy?
Your army is bad for the game and should be consolidated back into the CSM codex. Demons should be summoned allies for a CSM and/or chaos cultist army, not an opportunity to use your WHFB army on round bases.
Because pure demons are literally a WFHB army on round bases. It's questionable fluff-wise to have them exist independently from conventional chaos forces, it breaks the theme of 40k to have a bunch of WHFB monsters running up to punch things in a game where everyone else is using conventional modern-style armies, and it creates significant difficulties from a rules support point of view when you have a WHFB army that can't participate in the major offensive phase needing to be balanced with armies more in line with the shooting-focused game mechanics.
warpedpig wrote: Lmao well said. Although themed close combat armies can exist. They still have guns
Nurgle Daemons.
Are you saying I’m wrong to play the army I enjoy?
Your army is bad for the game and should be consolidated back into the CSM codex. Demons should be summoned allies for a CSM and/or chaos cultist army, not an opportunity to use your WHFB army on round bases.
So I'm curious, is there anything you actually like about 40k Peregrine?
BrianDavion wrote: So I'm curious, is there anything you actually like about 40k Peregrine?
Lots of things. In fact, I even like demons just fine when they're part of a chaos army with marines/cultists/traitor IG/etc. But demons as an independent army are not acceptable.
I dont agree with peregrine that chaos deamons are necessarily a problem. But i do agree that it doesnt matter what fluff you have, some armies are problems for their design philosophy and the available design space for making armies unique.
40k has a lot of overlap. Or useless design directions. Nightlords being morale abusers in a game were morale is basically useless is a good example.
Some armies should be collapsed into others or just removed. They dont serve a purpose being their own thing.
JNAProductions wrote: Why not? Why are magical space Daemons any less acceptable than magical space elves, or space soccer hooligan mushrooms?
Because "soccer hooligans" and "elves" are just minor elements on top of conventional forces. The "space elves" are using tanks and guns and calling in air strikes, not running around on unicorns with swords. The "soccer hooligan mushrooms" are going to chop you up with swords, but they're also going to shoot you with normal guns. Put them in WHFB and they'd be completely out of theme. But pure demons, on the other hand, are literally a WHFB army on round bases.
To be fair, the game is not in a real bad place at the moment, with a few exceptions. I do agree with Elbows that the sheer number of rolling is getting ridiculously out of hand, having to use a bucket for dice is basically the same as having a meal in a bucket. If you are using a bucket, it has probably gone too far.
At 2000pts we're basically playing Apocalypse anyway with what is on the table. Of course, this sells models for GW and they don't want to see that decline. Hordes need to be reigned in a little bit, It gets to be a nightmare to manage that on a 6x4 table, which means points should be adjusted. I know then we'll hear that knight players can't play their knights, but how about just start playing with one knight. Leave the handful of knights to larger games.
Overall, the game is fine when 2 people can have a conversation about the type of game you want to play.
JNAProductions wrote: Why not? Why are magical space Daemons any less acceptable than magical space elves, or space soccer hooligan mushrooms?
Because "soccer hooligans" and "elves" are just minor elements on top of conventional forces. The "space elves" are using tanks and guns and calling in air strikes, not running around on unicorns with swords. The "soccer hooligan mushrooms" are going to chop you up with swords, but they're also going to shoot you with normal guns. Put them in WHFB and they'd be completely out of theme. But pure demons, on the other hand, are literally a WHFB army on round bases.
So which is better:
1) Removing an army that a lot of people have invested a good deal of time, effort, and money into.
2) Adding more units, such as (for Nurgle) massive bile-spurting monsters that act similarly to tanks, Plaguebearers that carry hives of toxic insects they can use as a ranged attacks, living artillery towers of noxious projectiles, and other such units.
1) Removing an army that a lot of people have invested a good deal of time, effort, and money into.
2) Adding more units, such as (for Nurgle) massive bile-spurting monsters that act similarly to tanks, Plaguebearers that carry hives of toxic insects they can use as a ranged attacks, living artillery towers of noxious projectiles, and other such units.
The one that is more likely to happen, and that is consolidating demons back into the CSM codex where they belong instead of having to create four new armies worth of models to continue supporting them as they are now.
1) Removing an army that a lot of people have invested a good deal of time, effort, and money into.
2) Adding more units, such as (for Nurgle) massive bile-spurting monsters that act similarly to tanks, Plaguebearers that carry hives of toxic insects they can use as a ranged attacks, living artillery towers of noxious projectiles, and other such units.
The one that is more likely to happen, and that is consolidating demons back into the CSM codex where they belong instead of having to create four new armies worth of models to continue supporting them as they are now.
Oh no, more models! THE HORROR!
Do you want all armies to be as bland as Necrons, with virtually no customization? Or do you want armies to be more like Space Marines, with plenty of options to make your army unique?
Because, despite being a big advocate for balance, 40k would be NOTHING if you couldn't make your army your army.
1) Removing an army that a lot of people have invested a good deal of time, effort, and money into.
2) Adding more units, such as (for Nurgle) massive bile-spurting monsters that act similarly to tanks, Plaguebearers that carry hives of toxic insects they can use as a ranged attacks, living artillery towers of noxious projectiles, and other such units.
The one that is more likely to happen, and that is consolidating demons back into the CSM codex where they belong instead of having to create four new armies worth of models to continue supporting them as they are now.
you think GW Squatting an army is more likely then GW giving a popular army a new series of models? ......... yeah right.
I still say get rid of some power armor armies. There's too many, so get rid of the caricature armies like BA and SW. And it would be nice if chaos ran out of marines at some point. Losses happen.
Martel732 wrote: I still say get rid of some power armor armies. There's too many, so get rid of the caricature armies like BA and SW. And it would be nice if chaos ran out of marines at some point. Losses happen.
I'd much rather see GSC, Knights and harlequins go (and I'm a harlequin player) than lose BA, SW, and DA. However, I don't see how losing variety really helps the game, it's the mechanics that are the problem, not the selection of armies.
They aren't true variety, though. Mechanically, SW are on life support via index trickery and BA are already dead. It would be more intellectually honest to get rid of BA then let them live on as a joke. I don't know why DA are doing so poorly. I guess lack of Gman, since that's the only build that consistently does anything for marines.
Martel732 wrote: They aren't true variety, though. Mechanically, SW are on life support via index trickery and BA are already dead. It would be more intellectually honest to get rid of BA then let them live on as a joke. I don't know why DA are doing so poorly. I guess lack of Gman, since that's the only build that consistently does anything for marines.
Yup.
There is a concept in game design called the illusion of choice. In Vanilla World of Warcraft every class had like 3-4 dozen talents to choose from. But only certain ones were actually viable for builds in the game that had any chance of being effective. So did all those other options actually provide you with a variety of options or were they simply the illusion of choice?
Every time GW gives these armies these options that have no chance of getting anything done it's a wasted option. BA, DA, and SW have a couple unique units that could just be flavor when they get folded into regular space marines and given a chapter tactics rule. You don't have more armies because they come in more books. You just have more books. The Nightlords are a wasted CSM option. Blacktemplar are a joke SM option. So on and so forth. The game has everything to gain by trimming the fat and getting rid of every illusion of choice option for the sake of tightening up the options into all being legitimate real choices. That goes not just for armies but units and wargear too.
I don't even like Peregrine, but I will agree. Close-combat dedicated armies have little to no room to exist in 40K, unless your particular narrative or game type (perhaps Zone Mortalis style) suits them.
Daemons only exist in 40K so GW can sell more of that fantasy line of models, full stop. Just because you chose to buy into them does not mean the game "should" be based around close combat. As mentioned there is literally an entirely other game intended for that exact purpose...and you can even use the same models.
Daemons should not be their own army, and should have been combined with CSM (and Renegades while we're at it). The only reason they're a separate army is so that they can bait AoS players into 40K and occasionally sell an additional codex or deck of stratagem cards. If you're electing by choice to run an army with no shooting...in a universe filled with guns - that's entirely on you.
Thing is, WoW eventually learned and got rid of talents (supposedly... I haven't played in YEARS so I am going off of what I have heard for this part). Now when you level up you are given a couple distinct choices that all have real impact. You choose the one and move on to the next choice. You are not accumulating and spending points just to gain access to another tier of "choices" so you can get the thing you really want. You have this 1 choice no matter what and each option has it's distinct pros and cons.
The Illusion of Choice that is so prevalent in games is sloppy bad game design. Be it guns that have no distinct purpose or are clearly inferior to all the other options in it's class. Classes that can't carry their weight or compete. Armies that are not distinct enough to be their own army. Or units that get over shadowed by other options within the army. Having more options that are not real options does hurt the game.
warpedpig wrote: What’s the worst stuff that needs fixing. Cover. Armor saves. Charging. Units. Etc. I’m gonna make an improved rule set and post it later
Martel732 wrote: They aren't true variety, though. Mechanically, SW are on life support via index trickery and BA are already dead. It would be more intellectually honest to get rid of BA then let them live on as a joke. I don't know why DA are doing so poorly. I guess lack of Gman, since that's the only build that consistently does anything for marines.
Martel "the codex doesn'tautowin games" maens jack gak. seriously, do you even play warhammer 40k? because I styrongly suspect you do not, and instead you just run around spewing whatever nonsense you see on 1d4chan etc. There are a lot of ways to play warhammer 40k.
My favorite thing about the 40k setting is that there's daemons in it. Pure daemons.
It's Event Horizon man, it's tight.
I don't think there's anything broken about the game. It's fun to play, both at casual and competitive levels. It's only unfun when you're not on the same page as your opponent regarding the degree of mathhammer vs shelfhammer you're bringing to the table.
I'll just say that I agree that a lot of the Codexes out there could and should have just been combined into a single book. Like imagine if, instead of Codex: Orkz, we had Codex: Goffs, Codex: Freebooters, Codex: Snakebites, etc. No real reason to have so many SM Codexes when 90% of their contents are similar to each other.
Lol a lot of you guys got angry really quickly. Various codex books not having balance doesn't mean the game is broken. It means various codex books don't have balance.
Most armies have a win rate between 40-60%
It's certainly not great and needs improvement, we can all agree on that.
But importantly that's not a broken disparity. If one faction won 90% of games and another only 10, that might be considered a broken disparity. Calm down. The game isn't broken, it's updated regularly. It's a lot better than it was in the 8 years prior to 8th edition.
It might not play how some of you personally want it to, but again that isn't an indication of it being broken. That's an indication of the game not playing how some of you personally want it to. You can always have a hobby hiatus and come back in the future.
Again, you are being ridiculously over-literal with the term "broken". There's a long list of complaints, including complaints entirely unrelated to balance or win rates, from a bunch of different people here and all you have in defense of your argument is nitpicking if it's "broken" or just "not great and needs improvement".
Peregrine wrote: Again, you are being ridiculously over-literal with the term "broken". There's a long list of complaints, including complaints entirely unrelated to balance or win rates, from a bunch of different people here and all you have in defense of your argument is nitpicking if it's "broken" or just "not great and needs improvement".
Yeah, there's lots of entitled, unreasonable complainers who can't even use the correct words to describe something. I guess you're right about that.
I would also support, that a reduction of necessary dice rolls would be great. I have no real idea how to achieve this, but if there was a more or less fair optional mechanic to handle 100+ attacks of some units followed by wound rolls and saves in lets say 10 dice rolls, that would be great.
In another system er experimented a bit with using the statistical average and only modify it by a limited number of dice. So like 100 WS4+ attacks equals 50 +/- d12 successes. One die was for +/- the other for the effect size. The result was at least much faster
warpedpig wrote: Lmao well said. Although themed close combat armies can exist. They still have guns
Nurgle Daemons.
Are you saying I’m wrong to play the army I enjoy?
Your army is bad for the game and should be consolidated back into the CSM codex. Demons should be summoned allies for a CSM and/or chaos cultist army, not an opportunity to use your WHFB army on round bases.
OMG I would be so happy to see a cultist demon army that worked and was fun to play.
I think 40k does close combat rather badly, and mostly just leads the game bogging down at this point in the rules, and i even play demons.
To many games ended up, running in a line at the enemy and hoping over the years.
Seems the biggist thing broken about 40k is GW. A lot of there issues could be fixed with better design, Even if they just take a bit of inspiration from other games.
Its cool, seems to be all GW has for a lot of there stupidity.
warpedpig wrote: You would think for such a large gaming company they could have the personnel resources to actually come up with awesome simple rules
They do. They have many different rule sets and games, from tight competitive rulesets like Shadespire over more board-game-inspired stuff like Betrayal at Calth to sprawling, more relaxed "show-off-all-your-toys" things like 40K.
The problem is people don't pick the game to suit their preferences (whether within the GW catalog or even beyond it). They instead insist to 40K should fundamentally change to be a different kind of game entirely, despite plenty of games scratching those other itches being out there, which is kinda dumb.
It's Base 6 instead of Base 10. We use a 6 sided dice to randomize results. I don't even know how many factions there are anymore. There's 80 codex on the website, I think 4 per faction, between hardcopy soft cover, epub, Apple book, and Apple Book Enhanced or some such. That's still something like 20 factions. Sure some of the factions have some strong and justified overlap, Craftworld, Drukhari, Ynnari - they're all elves with roughly similar armors, strength toughness etc.
But the MEQ and MEQ+ stuff- The Necrons were a great idea. But there wasn't room for them on a D6, so they got 3+ and reanimation protocols- which has been boom or bust -either too good or not good enough.
Terminators on a 2D6 3+ with Save modifiers was actually pretty nice - Probably too good, but still about where it should have been. 2+ with no invuln was awful. 2+ with a 5++ isn't good enough, 2+ with 4++ is too good- especially in comparison to captains+ And don't buy into the D12 exclusively hype. Putting Terminators on a 3+ on a D12 (two fails out of 12) isn't the solution either. It's the same as a 2+ on 1D6. A 3+ on 2D6 (1 fail out of 11) meant to fail a roll vs AP -0 , first you had to roll a 1 on the first dice. 16% of the time. Then you have to roll a 1 on the second dice. 16% of 16% of the time. That should be something like a 97.5% success rate. Probably too good for a balanced game where most Imperial Guardsmen should be using lasguns.
If you make it a 3+ on 1D6 with reroll... you'll succeed on 67% of your original 33% failures. giving you an overall success raite of about 89%. Slightly better than a 2+ no-rerolls at 83/84% - vs Plasma you'll pass 16% of your armor saves + 16% of 83% of your armor saves. Or about 29%.
As a 1 is "always a failure", that means there are 5 potential good results on a D6, and Plasma removes 3 of them- which means 60% - on a D12, Plasma would have a (11 potential good results * 60%) -6.6 save mod. 3+ -6 = 33% success rate. 3+ -7 = 25% save rate
As you can see rerolls- despite the complaints - are a good way to change the results window by a different increment.
If I were doing this, I'd probably mix D6's and D10's even though D12's would be better in many respects, having more result options, and being more "normal" looking to observers. But may of the increments of D6 and D12 will overlap.
warpedpig wrote: You would think for such a large gaming company they could have the personnel resources to actually come up with awesome simple rules
They do. They have many different rule sets and games, from tight competitive rulesets like Shadespire over more board-game-inspired stuff like Betrayal at Calth to sprawling, more relaxed "show-off-all-your-toys" things like 40K.
The problem is people don't pick the game to suit their preferences (whether within the GW catalog or even beyond it). They instead insist to 40K should fundamentally change to be a different kind of game entirely, despite plenty of games scratching those other itches being out there, which is kinda dumb.
For a lot of us, it was GW changing 40k to fit other peoples preferences and we just got left behind wondering what happened. Even looking at apoc, our primary reason of interest here for my group is if we can get it to play 40k better at lower points. None of my friends have even put a thought to it as a use for massive games. House rules of necessity.
For me it's definitely the combo-oriented nature of the game that breaks it the most. The idea you can guarantee a certain combo of units and stratagems and re-rolls all working together, often with a psychic power or two (that you can't reliably Deny with most armies) makes games play out far too similarly. It's very much like a CCG, but with the crucial difference you don't have to draw any cards to activate your combo because you always have access to them. There's nothing more disheartening than seeing your opponent get a bad roll, only for them to just pick up all their failures and re-roll into 90% successes because they have the amazing tactical acumen required to stand within 6" of a specific model.
The number of dice is also becoming comical. GW even boasted about the number of dice the new Havocs could put out with the Mark of Slaanesh and the new chainguns. I think this, combined with the prevalence of auras, highlights GW's laziness when it comes to the game. Orks, for example, could have had increasing strength, or improved hit rolls for shooting as their numbers increased rather than getting more attacks. Custodes - an army of complete individuals who are noted in the background as lacking the squad-level training and command structure that makes Marines powerful - still get re-roll auras from their characters instead of some other buff. Or - shock! horror! - no character buffs at all. Why? Because GW is fundamentally lazy when it comes to game design and just recycles the same mechanics regardless of whether they're characterful or useful.
One thing I think game designers should think about is how the various elements of their game are countered. If too many aspects of your mechanics have no viable counter you end up with an unsatisfying game which is all about a damage race rather than any actual tactics. Most of the degenerate things in 40k fall into this category. Arbitrarily improved weapons like Cawl's Wrath, combos of stratagems and buffs that vastly magnify the power of a unit, soup allowing CP farms with little drawback all remove a lot of player agency and furthermore tend to even remove the point of rolling dice since units that reroll all hits and wounds, sometimes with +1 to one those rolls too, often become an exercise in rolling dozens of dice only to arrive at the inevitable result of 90%+ efficiency.
I do agree with the above comment that there are too many armies. In the past all these armies were effectively in one book and the HQ choice would give you some basic options to make some of the unique options stand out. The most basic example of this was Dark Angels where their HQ allowed Terminators or Bikers as troops and they had plasma options in their troop squads. Expanding that type of play style would have been quite easy to expand to the others at the time but we've long since moved so far beyond those basic elements I don't know if we'll ever go back.
But you're right, armies like BA and SW are underperforming and it makes more sense to consolidate them than expand them further and keep going down the path we're headed down.
Chaos were effectively the same. Demons just had generic profiles and you could use lesser demons and greater demons in armies and you could pick the ones you like most to look at for theme purposes. Those days are also long past.
There are arguments on both sides as to if those were the golden years or if things were improved since then but I do agree that we have too many niche armies these days and that needlessly bloats the games complexity.
Nvs wrote: I do agree with the above comment that there are too many armies. In the past all these armies were effectively in one book and the HQ choice would give you some basic options to make some of the unique options stand out. The most basic example of this was Dark Angels where their HQ allowed Terminators or Bikers as troops and they had plasma options in their troop squads. Expanding that type of play style would have been quite easy to expand to the others at the time but we've long since moved so far beyond those basic elements I don't know if we'll ever go back.
But you're right, armies like BA and SW are underperforming and it makes more sense to consolidate them than expand them further and keep going down the path we're headed down.
Chaos were effectively the same. Demons just had generic profiles and you could use lesser demons and greater demons in armies and you could pick the ones you like most to look at for theme purposes. Those days are also long past.
There are arguments on both sides as to if those were the golden years or if things were improved since then but I do agree that we have too many niche armies these days and that needlessly bloats the games complexity.
I honestly do not understand how more different army options makes the game bloated and too complex. 8th ed is as far from complexity as the game can possibly get. Now if you were to say that the volume of different armies can be very confusing for new players, I would absolutely agree with you, but the number of armies has nothing to do with the underlying complexity of the game system itself as far as I understand it.
Now don't get me wrong, I agree with you that some armies should be put back together in one codex. Grey Knights, Inquisition and Assassins for example like in 3rd ed, Sisters of Silence and Custodes also belong into one book. GW will never consolidate Blood Angles and Space Wolves into one book, they sell way more books and models this way, and that is the only thing that counts, always.
I think it's kind of ridiculous when you have some lists pumping out 100+ dice of shooting/attacks and your opponent cant even produce that many dice in the first place.
Nvs wrote: I do agree with the above comment that there are too many armies. In the past all these armies were effectively in one book and the HQ choice would give you some basic options to make some of the unique options stand out. The most basic example of this was Dark Angels where their HQ allowed Terminators or Bikers as troops and they had plasma options in their troop squads. Expanding that type of play style would have been quite easy to expand to the others at the time but we've long since moved so far beyond those basic elements I don't know if we'll ever go back.
But you're right, armies like BA and SW are underperforming and it makes more sense to consolidate them than expand them further and keep going down the path we're headed down.
Chaos were effectively the same. Demons just had generic profiles and you could use lesser demons and greater demons in armies and you could pick the ones you like most to look at for theme purposes. Those days are also long past.
There are arguments on both sides as to if those were the golden years or if things were improved since then but I do agree that we have too many niche armies these days and that needlessly bloats the games complexity.
I honestly do not understand how more different army options makes the game bloated and too complex. 8th ed is as far from complexity as the game can possibly get. Now if you were to say that the volume of different armies can be very confusing for new players, I would absolutely agree with you, but the number of armies has nothing to do with the underlying complexity of the game system itself as far as I understand it.
Now don't get me wrong, I agree with you that some armies should be put back together in one codex. Grey Knights, Inquisition and Assassins for example like in 3rd ed, Sisters of Silence and Custodes also belong into one book. GW will never consolidate Blood Angles and Space Wolves into one book, they sell way more books and models this way, and that is the only thing that counts, always.
It's not an issue for the person playing the army, it's really an issue for who you're playing against. Take space marines for example. All a player needs to do is paint an army in their favorite color and choose a book with the strongest rules at the time and they're good to go. But their opponent on the other hand needs to learn what, 7 different space marine books at the moment so they are prepared to fight against your 'counts as' Space Marine army. This wouldn't be so bad if they all used the same book but only needed to remember some force org swaps based off the HQ they had chosen. But now they have to remember different formations, detachments, CPs, spells, etc. It's a bit absurd at times. Their opponent isn't going to buy every book under the sun just to stay up to date on the rules. Thus the issue where people spend the first 30mins setting up models and reading each other's books at the beginning of every match and spend 10mins of every turn phase verifying someone isn't cheating. Not to mention GW has gotten rid of alot of the flavor text available in the different books at this point. We don't even get much in the way of unique stories and such anymore in these books. It's almost like we should be hosting all the rules online for free and players could buy a codex for nothing more than the fluff at this point.
The argument that they sell more books doesn't hold up. What's the difference is a player needs to buy a Space Marine codex or a Space Wolves codex? They still only need to buy one codex. GW could arguably make more money by going back to upgrade sprues to be honest. Instead of everyone buying a Blood Angels Marine box or a SM box at the same price. They'd buy a SM box and a BA upgrade sprue.
I realize this isn't a popular opinion and I'm sure there are plenty of valid reasons for these armies to coexist like they do currently. I just feel that while the hobby is better off, the game itself is suffering.
I honestly do not understand how more different army options makes the game bloated and too complex. 8th ed is as far from complexity as the game can possibly get. Now if you were to say that the volume of different armies can be very confusing for new players, I would absolutely agree with you, but the number of armies has nothing to do with the underlying complexity of the game system itself as far as I understand it.
Now don't get me wrong, I agree with you that some armies should be put back together in one codex. Grey Knights, Inquisition and Assassins for example like in 3rd ed, Sisters of Silence and Custodes also belong into one book. GW will never consolidate Blood Angles and Space Wolves into one book, they sell way more books and models this way, and that is the only thing that counts, always.
Its not too complex, but its hard to make them unique on a D6. Power Armor is supposed to be rare and better protection most battlefields see. How many 3+ armies are there? How many 4+? 5+? 3+ is getting pretty crowded. Dark Angels and Blood Angels were at one time in one codex. It was Codex: Angels of Death. They will not likely share a codex with anyone, even each other, again.
Well, in terms of the things that turn me off the game:
- Lack of support for certain armies. If GW weren't making any new models, I could put this down to production issues. However, they're actually making tons of new models . . . just none for the army they spent the last 2 editions gutting.
- On top of the above, they've also resolved that said army needs to have the most boring and worthless HQs possible. Because no one likes having fun or interesting characters leading their armies, right?
- I hate the removal of options and wargear (whether it's removed entirely, changed into a stratagem or confined to the Index).
- In terms of gameplay, I despise the pointless randomness. Why do weapons need a random number of shots? It's not tactical or interesting, it's just an exercise in time-wasting.
- Speaking of which, could Overwatch please die already? It's been nothing but a pointless waste of time ever since it was first introduced.
- Really not a fan of Stratagems. It's rare that I'll give any praise to Age of Sigmar, but I think its system is vastly superior. Having the 'stratagems' as Command Abilities on heroes means there's only ever a handful for players to keep track of, whilst also allowing for hero buffs (or debuffs) that aren't just auras. Also, the 1CP-per-turn keeps things in check and prevents Alpha Strikes and such.
- I dislike the scale-creep. I don't like seeing models getting bigger and bigger for no reason and I especially don't like the push towards the use of bigger and bigger models (in terms of aircraft, super-heavies, Lords of War etc.). Especially in the latter case, it's not just the units themselves but also the way the game has to be reshaped to accommodate them.
JNAProductions wrote: Why not? Why are magical space Daemons any less acceptable than magical space elves, or space soccer hooligan mushrooms?
Because "soccer hooligans" and "elves" are just minor elements on top of conventional forces. The "space elves" are using tanks and guns and calling in air strikes, not running around on unicorns with swords. The "soccer hooligan mushrooms" are going to chop you up with swords, but they're also going to shoot you with normal guns. Put them in WHFB and they'd be completely out of theme. But pure demons, on the other hand, are literally a WHFB army on round bases.
This raises an interesting point. Do you think Chaos Daemons would be more suitable for 40k if they were like the demons from Doom, with weapons built into them?
Peregrine wrote: Again, you are being ridiculously over-literal with the term "broken". There's a long list of complaints, including complaints entirely unrelated to balance or win rates, from a bunch of different people here and all you have in defense of your argument is nitpicking if it's "broken" or just "not great and needs improvement".
Yeah, there's lots of entitled, unreasonable complainers who can't even use the correct words to describe something. I guess you're right about that.
Broken, my immersion in the game is broken, therefore the game is broken to me.
having spend easily upwards of £30,000 on GW stuff since I started.... yep I am entitled for wanting a superior product.... reaaaaal entitled, or, and this is the real problem, we are just expressing our frustrations for a setting we all enjoy and purging once and a while is healthy.
Was the likely content of the thread not completely obvious from the title? Seems to me there's been a mix of feedback here, from overblown to pretty considered. Or are we just supposed to accept anything GW pushes out as being brilliant and not comment at all. Also, as Formosa rightly points out, many people have put a lot of money and a lot of time into this game and don't like seeing those dual investments eroded in value.
I'd argue most of the comments so far in this thread have been more helpful and enlightening than yours.
having spend easily upwards of £30,000 on GW stuff since I started.... yep I am entitled for wanting a superior product.... reaaaaal entitled, or, and this is the real problem, we are just expressing our frustrations for a setting we all enjoy and purging once and a while is healthy.
1) Too many armies, leading to massive bloat. Not much more to say about this other than the more armies you add, the more permutations you need to consider in your rules to make sure things are balanced. I'd also throw in too many options in this category, but that's been an issue with 40k for years.
2) Stratagems went from being pitched in the previews as minor neat things you can do, do being army-defining with many rules that were previously passive baseline rules being moved to stratagems.
3) Continuing from above, the pushing of stratagems as army-defining features leads to CP abuse. Instead of Command Points being a nice extra that you have to do some neat things, it becomes the focal point of list building due to stratagems being so influential. This, in turn, leads to soup dominating and CP farms/batteries being such a common sight.
4) True Line of Sight. It's already been mentioned but it is absolutely stupid that if your model can see a tiny portion of an enemy model through a gap in a building/under the tread of a tank, etc. you can shoot at them with no penalty as though they were standing out in the open. It's an extremely lazy way to handle line of sight.
5) Keeping every unit with its own set of rules on paper seems good, but has the side effect of contributing to the bloat. Do you really need five different variations of Re-roll 1s to hit while within 6" of this model? Especially when there seems to be a random chance if each ability will be worded slightly differently. I get the hate for USRs from 7th, but the issue with USRs was that there were too many of them. A lot of rules need to just be there as global rules that can apply to models, especially since GW seems to be ignoring the main benefit of having individual rules for each model: That being you can change one model without impacting the others, which you could not do with USRs.
6) The high visibility of tournaments means that you have rules being changed for all matched play when they should just affect tournaments. The "rule of three" for example is only a suggestion for events, yet everyone treats it like a matched play rule. While it can be argued that the rules which balance tournaments are also good for matched play, and this is technically true, the fact remains that we have seen units get affected by issues that only come up in tournaments or due to issues often seen in competitive games. Blood Angels, for example, suffered unduly because you saw "Smash Captains" with the Loyal 32 in tournaments.
I would say that #2 and #3 (Stratagems/CP) is probably the most egregious and the biggest fundamental issues in the game today. Nearly all the issues can be traced to the proliferation of stratagems as the major army traits (playing into the "CCG Combo" mentality) and as a result CP stacking being such a problem.
I'd argue most of the comments so far in this thread have been more helpful and enlightening than yours.
Coolbeans. It wasn't meant to be either helpful, or enlightening. It was meant to express dis-satisfaction with the same tired old voices making the same tired old argument and injecting their own, tired subjective criteria into a debate as if anyone gives a flying [Expletive Deleted] at a rolling doughnut about their ridiculously entitled opinions. But, for sure, you can defeat an accusation of entitlement by doubling down on it and pointing out that in fact, yes, you spent some money so you are owed. That is not the textbook definition of entitlement, or anything.
Spending £30k on something you consider a sub-par product does in fact speak volumes, but not about GW.
I'd argue most of the comments so far in this thread have been more helpful and enlightening than yours.
Coolbeans. It wasn't meant to be either helpful, or enlightening. It was meant to express dis-satisfaction with the same tired old voices making the same tired old argument and injecting their own, tired subjective criteria into a debate as if anyone gives a flying [Expletive Deleted] at a rolling doughnut about their ridiculously entitled opinions. But, for sure, you can defeat an accusation of entitlement by doubling down on it and pointing out that in fact, yes, you spent some money so you are owed. That is not the textbook definition of entitlement, or anything.
Spending £30k on something you consider a sub-par product does in fact speak volumes, but not about GW.
The money arguments are dumb. The quality arguments are not. The game is broken. It does have massive problems. And the rules writing and design of 40k has been "lack luster" at best for editions. 8th might be miles better than 7th but that is a exceedingly low bar. Better than complete garbage is still not good.
... ...The game is broken. It does have massive problems. And the rules writing and design of 40k has been "lack luster" at best for editions. 8th might be miles better than 7th but that is a exceedingly low bar. Better than complete garbage is still not good.
having spend easily upwards of £30,000 on GW stuff since I started.... yep I am entitled for wanting a superior product.... reaaaaal entitled, or, and this is the real problem, we are just expressing our frustrations for a setting we all enjoy and purging once and a while is healthy.
I'd argue most of the comments so far in this thread have been more helpful and enlightening than yours.
Coolbeans. It wasn't meant to be either helpful, or enlightening. It was meant to express dis-satisfaction with the same tired old voices making the same tired old argument and injecting their own, tired subjective criteria into a debate as if anyone gives a flying [Expletive Deleted] at a rolling doughnut about their ridiculously entitled opinions. But, for sure, you can defeat an accusation of entitlement by doubling down on it and pointing out that in fact, yes, you spent some money so you are owed. That is not the textbook definition of entitlement, or anything.
People aren't necessarily saying they're owed anything. Expressing dissatisfaction is not the same as demanding compensation from GW. If you define entitlement as paying customers complaining about stuff then you've departed so far from the real definition of the word there's not much point debating it.
Spending £30k on something you consider a sub-par product does in fact speak volumes, but not about GW.
Unless that money was spent at a time when you didn't consider the game to be sub-par. I have no sympathy with someone piling loads of money into the game now, then complaining about it. I do have sympathy with people who have invested time and money into a game that they feel could be better, and once was. I think a lot of the frustrations people have with the game right now stem from the belief that the game isn't that far from being very good, but several mis-steps from GW have taken it a long way from that.
I don't mind the idea in principle, but it really shouldn't be based on Wounds as that's probably the most arbitrary and unrepresentative quality of any given model.
IMO it should be based on type:
- INFANTRY characters can be hidden by models of any size.
- BIKER characters can be hidden by any models except INFANTRY
- VEHICLE characters can only be hidden by VEHICLE models
- MONSTER characters can only be hidden by MONSTER models.
- TITANIC characters (if any exist) can never be hidden
(If a model has more than one of the above, use the one lowest on this list.)
Personally, I don't think MONSTER or VEHICLE characters should be able to hide at all but if they really have to be hide-able, I'd use the above.
4) True Line of Sight. It's already been mentioned but it is absolutely stupid that if your model can see a tiny portion of an enemy model through a gap in a building/under the tread of a tank, etc. you can shoot at them with no penalty as though they were standing out in the open. It's an extremely lazy way to handle line of sight.
This is more of an aside, but there's something really weird about the way 40k and AoS handle LoS and character targeting.
AoS deals almost entirely with primitive weapons (bows, crossbows etc.), and yet they can target any character with only a minute hit penalty. What's more, in spite of the fact that they can be freely targeted, characters in AoS tend to have pitiful saves and no Invulnerable saves or any (meaningful) FNP saves.
Meanwhile, 40k, which deals with all manner of advanced weapons and targeting systems makes it almost impossible to shoot characters. However, in spite of this almost total protection from shooting, 40k characters are still armoured to the teeth with all manner of armour, invulnerable, and FNP saves, along with many other defences.
Really, I'm just talking about the kind of person who doesn't play a Faction, but who wants that Faction to be entirely reworked solely 'cause they don't like it. Or a person who wants another entire Faction deleted, solely 'cause they don't like that Faction.
You know, the self-appointed guardians of the hobby, who are in fact just massively entitled, self-important Normans.
Primary problems with 40k are fundamental design philosophy questions more so than any numbers or specific mechanics or anything else. To wit:
1) Turning point theory. Every game has to be a massive turning point on a galactic scale, which means every psychic power has to be this grandiose massive epic super-thing on which the game pivots, every army has to be loaded down with the most epic extreme super-badasses in the galaxy, every game has to have a Primarch in it, etc. Most of the scale creep/balance issues with the game result from this philosophy and need to be addressed by taking a chainsaw to it; if smaller and more subtle things existed the game would be less silly. Consider by comparison Warmachine (on scale): people in Warmachine don't have potentially spammable spells that say "move this unit again", they have potentially spammable spells that say "this unit moves 2" further". Because they're working with smaller and more subtle effects than GW's grandiose sledgehammer of superpowers they can be more fine-tuned and more balanced.
2) Scale asymmetry. Consider for the moment a Guard army; they're spending 4pts/model on their basic line units, their heavy-hitting armoured tanks might be 200pts if kitted out heavily. Consider for comparison a Knights army; their cheapest units are ~180pts/model and their heavy hitters are around 700pts. The issue of expecting two armies with such wild disparities in model count to go head to head requires GW to make all weapons in the game too generalist (see: shooting Knights with pulse rifle gunlines), so as to avoid cases like fighting Knights in 7e where anything short of S6 just didn't do anything. As a result everything is sitting on the same linear scale of durability/damage output, which means any mistake gets to ripple out and affect just about everything (ex. the need for anti-Knight weapons makes normal-size vehicles without an Invulnerable save pointless unless they're incredibly inexpensive).
3) Sacred-cow design. 40k has discrete turns rather than alternating activations, five phases of play, and requires 3-4 rolls to kill anything because that's how it's always worked, not because it works any better. Consider as a counterexample Bolt Action/Gates of Antares (Rick Priestly (GW founding designer)'s work with his new company); it has randomized alternating activations, turns are a single phase, attacks are two dice (to-hit/to-wound), armies are heavily constrained (one tank per lieutenant/two infantry in Bolt Action) to avoid spam, and the damage mechanics require guns to specialize and encourage you to use a variety of units rather than finding the most efficient choice and spamming it.
-3A) Refusal to backpedal. Introducing Knights as a standalone Codex, the bizarre reroll-before-modifiers bug, act-again effects, and penalty stacking in this edition, superheavies the last two editions, Destroyer weapons and Invisibility in 7th, Jink and Heldrakes in 6th, the glance table and psybolt ammo in 5th, GW has a long history of making terrible design decisions and then standing by them and trying to patch around them when it'd be much, much easier and produce a much simpler, cleaner, and better game to admit that they f***ed up and backpedal.
4) Inadequate testing and refusal to backpedal. GW doesn't playtest anything enough, and in previous editions instead of iterating on their designs to fix bugs they've finished all the army books and released a new edition to completely upend the apple cart. The fact that the game is so unstable and that the models you bought that were good might be unplayable in six months is a serious problem for anyone who wants to play the game; dropping $500 on an army only to find GW has nerfed it into dust and you need to buy a new one before you've even finished painting it isn't good for anyone (you get frustrated and go away talking gak about GW, GW loses a customer).
Very little about the core rules to 40k right now is inherently wrong, and you could honestly fix a lot of this within the existing framework of 8e, but what you have to recognize is that GW's design issues stem from attitude problems far more than they do specific design decisions. It isn't any individual decision they make that hurts the game, if it were it'd be easy for them to fix because we'd all be complaining about the same thing and it'd get through to them eventually. It's the attitude problems that lead to a feedback loop of small mistakes feeding off each other and producing a kludgy mess.
I don't mind the idea in principle, but it really shouldn't be based on Wounds as that's probably the most arbitrary and unrepresentative quality of any given model.
IMO it should be based on type:
- INFANTRY characters can be hidden by models of any size.
- BIKER characters can be hidden by any models except INFANTRY
- VEHICLE characters can only be hidden by VEHICLE models
- MONSTER characters can only be hidden by MONSTER models.
- TITANIC characters (if any exist) can never be hidden
(If a model has more than one of the above, use the one lowest on this list.)
Personally, I don't think MONSTER or VEHICLE characters should be able to hide at all but if they really have to be hide-able, I'd use the above.
This is more of an aside, but there's something really weird about the way 40k and AoS handle LoS and character targeting.
AoS deals almost entirely with primitive weapons (bows, crossbows etc.), and yet they can target any character with only a minute hit penalty. What's more, in spite of the fact that they can be freely targeted, characters in AoS tend to have pitiful saves and no Invulnerable saves or any (meaningful) FNP saves.
Meanwhile, 40k, which deals with all manner of advanced weapons and targeting systems makes it almost impossible to shoot characters. However, in spite of this almost total protection from shooting, 40k characters are still armoured to the teeth with all manner of armour, invulnerable, and FNP saves, along with many other defences.
The character rules are certainly very clunky. There's a bit too much weirdness, where things like a Librarian Dreadnought can hide an inch behind a functionally identical regular Dread and be completely untargetable. Something based on unit type would be preferable. I've sometimes toyed with the idea of trying a game where characters are freely targetable (maybe with a -1 to hit or something) if you have LoS to them and seeing how that plays out. It would obviously make characters much, much more likely to die, but is that such a bad thing? Seems like that might force some different decisions in army building. At the moment characters enable extra Detachments and often act as huge force multipliers. If you couldn't rely on their continued presence that might make for a more interesting game.
Excommunicatus wrote: Really, I'm just talking about the kind of person who doesn't play a Faction, but who wants that Faction to be entirely reworked solely 'cause they don't like it. Or a person who wants another entire Faction deleted, solely 'cause they don't like that Faction.
You know, the self-appointed guardians of the hobby, who are in fact just massively entitled, self-important Normans.
Broken clocks. They may be annoying but they're not usually entirely wrong; you don't have to play a faction to understand that there are issues with how GW"s written them. Consider the Tau. Aesthetic or tonal considerations aside by defining the faction as "the best at shooting" GW has produced a faction that only really bothers to participate in one phase of play, which ends up meaning in the vast majority of games they either steamroll or get steamrolled, there isn't really a middle ground between the Tau player being the punching bag that doesn't really get to do anything and their opponent being the punching bag that doesn't really get to do anything, though the ratios vary depending on matchup and edition. And if you break up and analyze most "Tau OP please nerf" arguments on the Internet that's what they're complaining about. (Unless they're complaining about aesthetic or tone, those bits can safely be ignored.)
(In the interests of full disclosure I have attempted a Tau army in the past (both in 7th and in 8th), didn't enjoy it, and ended up selling them off.)
Indeed - It's telling that we've mostly moved past talking about broken units and now people just talk about structural items that can be tweaked. And yet we're still met with over the top statements about how it's an "exceptionally bad game" and sometimes people who don't even play it.
I don't mind the idea in principle, but it really shouldn't be based on Wounds as that's probably the most arbitrary and unrepresentative quality of any given model.
IMO it should be based on type:
- INFANTRY characters can be hidden by models of any size.
- BIKER characters can be hidden by any models except INFANTRY
- VEHICLE characters can only be hidden by VEHICLE models
- MONSTER characters can only be hidden by MONSTER models.
- TITANIC characters (if any exist) can never be hidden
(If a model has more than one of the above, use the one lowest on this list.)
Well that’s kind of arbitrary. You’re saying Gulliman can be seen from behind a Repulsor Dread?
You’re saying a librarian on a bike cant be lost behind a squad of 10 Intercessors? 10 Aggressors? You realize most men on a bike are shorter than when they’re standing?
I don't mind the idea in principle, but it really shouldn't be based on Wounds as that's probably the most arbitrary and unrepresentative quality of any given model.
IMO it should be based on type:
- INFANTRY characters can be hidden by models of any size.
- BIKER characters can be hidden by any models except INFANTRY
- VEHICLE characters can only be hidden by VEHICLE models
- MONSTER characters can only be hidden by MONSTER models.
- TITANIC characters (if any exist) can never be hidden
(If a model has more than one of the above, use the one lowest on this list.)
Well that’s kind of arbitrary. You’re saying Gulliman can be seen from behind a Repulsor Dread?
You’re saying a librarian on a bike cant be lost behind a squad of 10 Intercessors? 10 Aggressors? You realize most men on a bike are shorter than when they’re standing?
I've advocated for a Size stat, where you can only hide behind someone up to one Size point larger than you.
Obviously there's a breakpoint where you can't hide anymore (no hiding Character Knights, even behind other Knights) but I feel like it'd be a good solution.
I'd like to see a change from IGOUGO to Alternating Activation. Anyone who has played Titanicus will recognised how much it changes the gameplay and makes you think more tactically.
To be more specific however, I think certain combinations just need to be removed. Certain units/rules seem ok by themselves, but combining them just makes it monstrous. 4x Chaincannon Havocs with VotLW and Endless Cacophany are suddenly spitting out 64 Heavy Bolter shots that are wounding Knights on 4+. By themselves, these rules/units aren't too broken, but combined they're just terrible. Similar example would be Destroyers re-rolling all hits and wounds.
Going back to Havocs, they seem to be a good example of Codex Creep. I didn't think it was too much of an issue at first but it's when GW just start adding random additions for no apparent reason is what I don't get. Havocs get the Chaincannons, which are good and kinda make up for the lack of Assault Cannons, but suddenly they're T5 (why?) and can ignore moving penalties, again for no reason.
Mortal Wound spam should go. It's an interesting mechanic but I get the impression that GW just use MW when they're too lazy to actually think of rules. Look at the C'tan powers for example; back in 7th they were all unique and had some pretty interesting effects; now they're all a variation of "pick a unit and roll (x) dice, for each roll of (y) inflict a Mortal Wound", it's boring and tedious. I'm not saying get rid of the mechanic alltogether, but tone it down a hell of a lot.
True Line of Sight needs to come back; what was wrong with the 7th Edition version? They even reintroduced it in Cities of Death in the latest CA. Why couldn't they have made it a rule from the start? "My unit can see one of your bayonets", so therefore not only can he die, but the whole unit can be wiped!"
Character Targeting: I get the theme of this was that it's hard to pick out one guy amongst squads of units, but when you can't shoot Guilliman 12" away because there's a Land Raider 11" behind you, it's just ridiculous.
warpedpig wrote:What’s the worst stuff that needs fixing. Cover. Armor saves. Charging. Units. Etc. I’m gonna make an improved rule set and post it later
Good luck with that bud. Keep in mind that GW isn't focused on optimal game design anymore, only sustained sales growth, so the underlying mechanics you're working with are largely sub-optimal, made worse by the fact that different people want different things out of their table top war games. 40K started as a sort of skirmish based RPG, that then involved into a skirmish game with overly bloated rules (H2H was a nightmare in 2nd ed). In 3rd they opted to throw the baby out with the bath water and since then they've really struggled to figure out just what kind of game 40K is supposed to be, which is why you know have Imperial Knights, Gargants and atmospheric flghter aircraft occupying the same battlefield as everything from Primarchs and Custodes to Gretchin/grots and Eldar Guardians. The whole thing is a giant mess that they're stuck with, because they can't just flip a switch and invalidated all the large, expensive items that their whales have brought over the years, not unless they can offer them some sort of alternative game mode.
Tack onto this the problem with trying to please a large player base in general. Take the bashing of IGOUGO for example, that has become the norm these days, despite the fact that it has worked in all manner of previous systems - both GW and otherwise - for a long time. Indeed it is a staple of many game types, not just table top games. One of the reasons IGOUGO draws so much hate now is because of how deadly the first round of a typical 40K game has become now. Going first is a massive advantage. In days of yore, when people used to lay out their terrain in a much more sensible and interesting manner than seems typical of the current ITC-esque format, and back when cover and long range conferred penalties on the shooter, winning the first turn was less important. The game was centred more around the gradual advance to contact, requiring skillful positioning and forward planning to create advantageous angles and no-go zones for the enemy. The handful of what we would now call strategems were mainly broken even back then and frequently discarded by people that wanted to have a serious yet fun tactical war game with a friend.
While the D6 is often raised as a point of contention, that often misunderstands its use. It's not supposed to be this brilliantly versatile game device, it's simply intended to add a degree of randomness that a real battle would possess, such that you avoid the situation where moving a squad of assault marines into a small mob of boyz doesn't automatically result in one side or the other winning. Adding in additonal layers of operation (hit/wound/save) allows the expanding of the difference between different units. Oddly (given that people often complaing about units being too much the same) a lot of the problems with 40K and other table tops has historically come from the oppostie end; having too many special snowflakes with their super special equipment and magic items. Couple this with the occassional horrendous game design choice, such as wizards in old WHFB that could effectively move and then shoot at multiple targets (in the form of multiple spells), combined with frequently atrocious army balance (internal and external) and you have quite the mess to unpick.
If you want to create a decent rule set your best bet is to probably start from scratch. It's a project of significant complexity which will require many, many hours of work to get right. If you just try and half arse it and make a few tweaks you wont really change much. Fair play to you if you're still thinking of going for it but I think you're onto a hiding to nothing bud. The most likely outcome is that you'll pour your heart and soul into it, get bored/frustrated, rush the last bits, and for all your work you'll probably please all of about three people.
Ishagu wrote:I spent more than that on a car. I guess I'm entitled to ask for it to be faster, more economical and more spacious?
Not your car, but the next iteration of your car maybe. The automotive world is highly competitve and car manufacturers spend enormous sums on trying to figure out what it is their customers want and where the future trends of their industry are headed, so as to produce products that match as closely as possible what it is that people want from their cars. The history of car manufacturing is littered with the corporate corpses (some returned as Zombies) of companies that failed to listen to what their current and potential customers wanted.
Valkyrie wrote: True Line of Sight needs to come back; what was wrong with the 7th Edition version? They even reintroduced it in Cities of Death in the latest CA. Why couldn't they have made it a rule from the start? "My unit can see one of your bayonets", so therefore not only can he die, but the whole unit can be wiped!"
Oh no, my two Rhinos have accidentally made it so the only models I can see are your Special and Heavy Weapon guys. Such a shame!
Valkyrie wrote: True Line of Sight needs to come back; what was wrong with the 7th Edition version? They even reintroduced it in Cities of Death in the latest CA. Why couldn't they have made it a rule from the start? "My unit can see one of your bayonets", so therefore not only can he die, but the whole unit can be wiped!"
Oh no, my two Rhinos have accidentally made it so the only models I can see are your Special and Heavy Weapon guys. Such a shame!
Conversely,
"Oh no, two Warp Spider guys are hiding behind that building 12" away. I guess I can't see the *five HQs* on the objective in the open 20" away. I guess my Lascannon-spam gunline can't see anyone!"
Valkyrie wrote: True Line of Sight needs to come back; what was wrong with the 7th Edition version? They even reintroduced it in Cities of Death in the latest CA. Why couldn't they have made it a rule from the start? "My unit can see one of your bayonets", so therefore not only can he die, but the whole unit can be wiped!"
Oh no, my two Rhinos have accidentally made it so the only models I can see are your Special and Heavy Weapon guys. Such a shame!
Conversely,
"Oh no, two Warp Spider guys are hiding behind that building 12" away. I guess I can't see the *five HQs* on the objective in the open 20" away. I guess my Lascannon-spam gunline can't see anyone!"
Yes, both are stupid. What's your point? I never said the current rules were flawless.
That none of the options on the table are perfect. Rhino Sniping can certainly be silly, but the Anti-Rhino Sniping rules provide similarly silly scenarios.
Ishagu wrote: Rules are fine and games can be played without pre-arranged conditions beyond what mission types/matched or narrative format.
Not broken. Not balanced as well as it could be.
This isn't true and hasn't been for true at any point I've played 40k. While I usually rag on people for being to negative about the game, you almost come off as a GWFB poster. Even well designed codexes half at least a third if not more units being borderline useless and so many unit options have no place unless your opponent is willing to also tone down their list.
I think the worst(i.e."broken") part of 40k has to be the people ACTIVELY trying to break the game in their favor.
The player interaction with those specific individuals is a horrid experience and should be avoided once known of.
If that's how you want to play then maybe you should practice(cuz that's all you use other non-comp players for) against those worthy of you masterful skills and not be wasted on relaxed, laid back types.
This is not directed at any one in particular, but nearly every local group has/had players who treat others like dirt and only care about their enjoyment and total douche`ness.
Indeed - It's telling that we've mostly moved past talking about broken units and now people just talk about structural items that can be tweaked. And yet we're still met with over the top statements about how it's an "exceptionally bad game" and sometimes people who don't even play it.
Well people don't want to lose their Dakka street cred. Even a mildly positive statement about 40k can get you denounced as a white knight fanboi. Then all that hard work behind their keyboards goes down the drain.
You’re saying a librarian on a bike cant be lost behind a squad of 10 Intercessors? 10 Aggressors? You realize most men on a bike are shorter than when they’re standing?
If the targeting rules worked like they did in Warmachine - where you have to be fully obscured behind another model's base - I'd agree with you.
However, what you're asking for here is for us to accept that there's no visual difference between a Librarian on a bike and a squad of Intercessors (so long as the Librarian is 1mm further back). Same goes for Guilliman and the Repulsor Dread. Apparently if you stand them side by side Guilliman just disappears into the background.
Something that would help a lot with the alpha strike turn one problem would be the caste/class system. Overloading your army with heavy weapons gives you big alpha strike but if heavy weapons had a blanket -2 to hit against light infantry it would force a more balanced approach. Removing overpowered strategems and auras and refills as well. HQ should just be skilled warriors with some special fighting ability but not auras that generate Death Stars. With multiple rerolls and bull
Indeed - It's telling that we've mostly moved past talking about broken units and now people just talk about structural items that can be tweaked. And yet we're still met with over the top statements about how it's an "exceptionally bad game" and sometimes people who don't even play it.
Well people don't want to lose their Dakka street cred. Even a mildly positive statement about 40k can get you denounced as a white knight fanboi. Then all that hard work behind their keyboards goes down the drain.
This is so so true it hurts. There hasn't been a single release in the last 3 years that hasn't been denounced as usless/broken/having terrible rules. Yet everywhere I look there are more people playing 40k with more diverse list than I had seen in the years beforehand.
A cursory look on dakka and you would presume that nobody is enjoying the game anywhere.
small_gods wrote: This is so so true it hurts. There hasn't been a single release in the last 3 years that hasn't been denounced as usless/broken/having terrible rules. Yet everywhere I look there are more people playing 40k with more diverse list than I had seen in the years beforehand.
A cursory look on dakka and you would presume that nobody is enjoying the game anywhere.
Enjoyment is not the same as quality. Anyone who's watched The Room can attest to that.
Indeed - It's telling that we've mostly moved past talking about broken units and now people just talk about structural items that can be tweaked. And yet we're still met with over the top statements about how it's an "exceptionally bad game" and sometimes people who don't even play it.
Well people don't want to lose their Dakka street cred. Even a mildly positive statement about 40k can get you denounced as a white knight fanboi. Then all that hard work behind their keyboards goes down the drain.
This is so so true it hurts. There hasn't been a single release in the last 3 years that hasn't been denounced as usless/broken/having terrible rules. Yet everywhere I look there are more people playing 40k with more diverse list than I had seen in the years beforehand.
A cursory look on dakka and you would presume that nobody is enjoying the game anywhere.
Lots of people like bad things. Its not like michael bay transformers movies dont make billions of dollars. Just because people enjoy bad things doesnt mean they are not bad.
Amateur vs amateur isn’t gonna reveal the serious problems. They dumbed the rules down in some ways yet also made insane wtfrapebbqyourass combos and army lists possible. Ynarri strength from death insanity was a good example of how things get way out of hand. How many times do you hear people say how they used to have a great army but it was nerfed so bad it’s now unplayable against the new cheeseball lists. There is something wrong with 40k.
Something that needs to be fixed that drives me insane is that you hit a target with your lance strength 12 or whatever fire prism. Then proceed to roll a 1 for damage. Heavy weapons like lascannons need to be 3+D3. Or something. It ruins the damn game when you’re just rolling garbage for your critical heavy weapons.
warpedpig wrote: HQ should just be skilled warriors with some special fighting ability but not auras that generate Death Stars. With multiple rerolls and bull
I think auras definitely need looking at.
Maybe something like MWBD would be better - where the HQ can only buff a single unit, rather than everything nearby.
warpedpig wrote: Something that needs to be fixed that drives me insane is that you hit a target with your lance strength 12 or whatever fire prism. Then proceed to roll a 1 for damage. Heavy weapons like lascannons need to be 3+D3. Or something. It ruins the damn game when you’re just rolling garbage for your critical heavy weapons.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of using d6 for damage (or for shots, for that matter). Maybe 2d3 or d3+2?
Something that Apoc does some work to fix. The scale, a game doesn’t really work well when you have titans and individually stats for guardsmen. Everything should work based on units not models.
1. Faction specific abilities.
-Death to the false emperor is such a broken mechanic when facing lord discos, morty or any other melee chaos unit as imperium. Chaos players don't like vengeance for cadia. Bringing back units of demons when killed by grey knights. All of them are terrible and unbalanced rules.
2. CP/Strats/psychic powers
Some are just too good (double shoot, double move) a lot of them are really bad (SM/GK). Vect should be a universal strat at least. Throw them all out and start over as small fluffy bonuses (pass morale, re-roll charge distance...). Too many ways to stack/abuse the buffs that GW isn't taking the time to balance. CP farming (loyal 32/rusty 17) is terrible game design.
3. Invlun saves, toughness, strength
Vehicles and t6 or better should have good saves and lots of wounds, t5 and below should have invluns and not a huge amount of wounds.
High ap, high str weapons should be the weapon of choice against those targets not str 5-6 ap -2 2d with re-roll wounds.
Give more 1+ armor saves to land raiders/knights/tau suits with a couple more wounds and change eldar to 4+/5++ with a couple less.
GW should have gone all out with the str/toughness and not top themselves out at t 8/9. Let knights work at t12 with str 24 weapons to leave some design space for armor, elite infantry and other classes to get into that wounded on 2 range. S6 is much less appealing if you wound infantry on 2 but knights on 6s, you may actually have to bring anti-vehicle weapons to deal with vehicles. A dark lance actually would be viable instead of just needing more disintegration cannons.
4. Melee
It's bad for most units. Unless you a packing a ton of special rules to get you there (re-rollable 9" charges are not viable) and a ton of special rules once you get there (like boys and their 100+ attacks) it is very bad. It leads to a lot of really bad units in a lot of codexes. The fall back mechanic exacerbates this problem.
5. Drones/losing at list building.
Shield drones are such a terrible mechanic. Tau would need a complete re-write without them but it's such a binary situation where you can kill 40 drones turn 1-2 or you lose that it just isn't good game design. There are several lists like this (knights, pox-walker smite spam, tau drones, eldar flyers, vs chaos as marines) where unless you have the specialized tools to deal with that particular set of problems you will not have a way to win the game. It's okay to have bad match-ups but auto-loses seem like bad game design.
6. Balance
Disco lords, plague bearers, butcher cannons, disi cannons, eldar flyers, wave serpents, guilliman (he feths up the entire marine line), rock saws, gsc characters, relic shock attack guns, callidus grav tanks, tank commanders, (just from what I can remember last tourney I played). It's not a huge list but there are a lot of really unbalanced things in the game right now. GW actually seems to be trying to address them which is why it's last on my list but they are failing especially hard with the CP strats and psychic powers.
warpedpig wrote: Something that needs to be fixed that drives me insane is that you hit a target with your lance strength 12 or whatever fire prism. Then proceed to roll a 1 for damage. Heavy weapons like lascannons need to be 3+D3. Or something. It ruins the damn game when you’re just rolling garbage for your critical heavy weapons.
All damage should be fixed, random damage isn’t fun and it makes balance difficult.
Indeed - It's telling that we've mostly moved past talking about broken units and now people just talk about structural items that can be tweaked. And yet we're still met with over the top statements about how it's an "exceptionally bad game" and sometimes people who don't even play it.
Well people don't want to lose their Dakka street cred. Even a mildly positive statement about 40k can get you denounced as a white knight fanboi. Then all that hard work behind their keyboards goes down the drain.
This is so so true it hurts. There hasn't been a single release in the last 3 years that hasn't been denounced as usless/broken/having terrible rules. Yet everywhere I look there are more people playing 40k with more diverse list than I had seen in the years beforehand.
A cursory look on dakka and you would presume that nobody is enjoying the game anywhere.
Lots of people like bad things. Its not like michael bay transformers movies dont make billions of dollars. Just because people enjoy bad things doesnt mean they are not bad.
I think you're confusing a kids film with explosions, cgi robots and a multi million pound marketing campaign that costs £10 to see, with a hobby that takes many many hours investment and £100s to play.
More people are playing and enjoying 40k. It's rules are more accessible, the models are better and you can generally play a 2k game in 2 hours. That's why it's more popular.
Ishagu wrote: Nothing about 40k is broken right now.
Not everything is balanced, but nothing is breaking the game.
Except the amount of time it takes. I agree that everything else is within tolerable levels....except time. Most of us just can't sit down for 8 hours for 1 game. (we always play 2v2 etc)
I wouldn’t mind a 2v2 taking many hours as long as there was strategy and no overpowered crap. Like one guy from a unit is barely exposed. So the enemy unleashed a ton of firepower and somehow kills him and 6 others who were behind a bunker.
Lots of people like bad things. Its not like michael bay transformers movies dont make billions of dollars. Just because people enjoy bad things doesnt mean they are not bad.
I think you're confusing a kids film with explosions, cgi robots and a multi million pound marketing campaign that costs £10 to see, with a hobby that takes many many hours investment and £100s to play.
More people are playing and enjoying 40k. It's rules are more accessible, the models are better and you can generally play a 2k game in 2 hours. That's why it's more popular.
1) yeah you think those movies are kids films? You mean the sheer volume of violence, the sex jokes, and this...
or this
...is a kids movie like say... Toy Story or Tangled or Spiderman into the Spiderverse? I bet it was a real kids movie moment when Optimus Prime told the Fallen he was going to cut off his face and then did it.
2) Less people are playing 40k then went to go see those movies.
3) Arguably the amount of effort and money you put into 40k is deluding you and others. You don't want your investment to be in a ultimately crap product. But it is. So you scrape out what fun you can have so your time and money hasn't gone to waste and then you gloss over all the bad.
Lots of people like bad things. Its not like michael bay transformers movies dont make billions of dollars. Just because people enjoy bad things doesnt mean they are not bad.
I think you're confusing a kids film with explosions, cgi robots and a multi million pound marketing campaign that costs £10 to see, with a hobby that takes many many hours investment and £100s to play.
More people are playing and enjoying 40k. It's rules are more accessible, the models are better and you can generally play a 2k game in 2 hours. That's why it's more popular.
1) yeah you think those movies are kids films? You mean the sheer volume of violence, the sex jokes, and this...
or this
...is a kids movie like say... Toy Story or Tangled or Spiderman into the Spiderverse? I bet it was a real kids movie moment when Optimus Prime told the Fallen he was going to cut off his face and then did it.
2) Less people are playing 40k then went to go see those movies.
3) Arguably the amount of effort and money you put into 40k is deluding you and others. You don't want your investment to be in a ultimately crap product. But it is. So you scrape out what fun you can have so your time and money hasn't gone to waste and then you gloss over all the bad.
I mean for someone who hates transformers films you certainly know a lot about them. I think I have seen two of them but knew they weren't aimed at a man in his mid 30s so wasn't pissed when it didn't leave me with the same feeling as seeing the matrix for the first time.
I'm not scraping any joy out of 40k, I genuinely enjoy it. I play weekly, I go to at least one tournament a month and I chat to my friends about modelling/painting/army lists most days. If you hate it so much why are you posting 6,000 times on dakka?
Or is it more that you think it was cool when you first liked it and hate that it's become so popular?
I mean for someone who hates transformers films you certainly know a lot about them.
This is a (kinda) subtle ad hominem. He could know the movie because followed the series as a kid, to then witness Optimus being transformed into a GIMME YO FACE psychopath.
Lots of people like bad things. Its not like michael bay transformers movies dont make billions of dollars. Just because people enjoy bad things doesnt mean they are not bad.
I think you're confusing a kids film with explosions, cgi robots and a multi million pound marketing campaign that costs £10 to see, with a hobby that takes many many hours investment and £100s to play.
More people are playing and enjoying 40k. It's rules are more accessible, the models are better and you can generally play a 2k game in 2 hours. That's why it's more popular.
1) yeah you think those movies are kids films? You mean the sheer volume of violence, the sex jokes, and this...
or this
...is a kids movie like say... Toy Story or Tangled or Spiderman into the Spiderverse? I bet it was a real kids movie moment when Optimus Prime told the Fallen he was going to cut off his face and then did it.
2) Less people are playing 40k then went to go see those movies.
3) Arguably the amount of effort and money you put into 40k is deluding you and others. You don't want your investment to be in a ultimately crap product. But it is. So you scrape out what fun you can have so your time and money hasn't gone to waste and then you gloss over all the bad.
I mean for someone who hates transformers films you certainly know a lot about them. I think I have seen two of them but knew they weren't aimed at a man in his mid 30s so wasn't pissed when it didn't leave me with the same feeling as seeing the matrix for the first time.
I'm not scraping any joy out of 40k, I genuinely enjoy it. I play weekly, I go to at least one tournament a month and I chat to my friends about modelling/painting/army lists most days. If you hate it so much why are you posting 6,000 times on dakka?
Or is it more that you think it was cool when you first liked it and hate that it's become so popular?
Generally speaking if you are going to say something is bad you should know enough about it to be able to back it up. I don't tend to dislike things indiscriminately. I find out about a thing, I find reasons to like/dislike it and then I form my opinions. Someone who hates transformers films should know enough about them to get there. Someone who hates them out of ignorance is just an idiot flapping their jaw.
Maybe instead of just looking at my post number you should click my profile and see where those posts are being made. Top 4 posting areas and number of posts.
20% General Discussion: 1316 posts (1317 with this post) 19% Geek Media: 1239 17% Proposed Rules: 1142 16% You Make Da Call 1053
Thats 4750 of my posts. 72%.
How about instead of making some assumptions about my motivations based on absolutely nothing you do the barest shred of digging to build a clearer picture.
Again, you can absolutely enjoy 40k. Lots of people enjoy bad things. Thats fine. Like what you like.
warpedpig wrote: Lots of people listen to rap. And rap is absolute trash. Just like many people think 8th edition is awesome. But it’s crap
Bad analogy.
Rap is an entire genre of music. I am not saying all miniature wargames are crap. I am saying 40k is. At worst I am saying GW is bad at making them. Pick a rapper and/or a label and you have a better analogy.
JohnnyHell wrote: No one cares for someone who’s decided on others behalf what’s good or bad. That’s a silly stance. Do better.
You like/dislike enjoy/don't enjoy is entirely subjective. I am not deciding those things for anyone.
Bad design is bad design. Wanna know how I know, factually, that it's bad design? 2 years old and over 95 DOCUMENTS to play an actual game with the current rules. No source of 40k rules in 8th has ever been released that did not need a rules clarification/edit/faq after it's release to fix problems with the initial documents. None. Not once.
The core rules of the game fit on 8 pages and those rules do not work as written.
This isn't opinion. Fact, 8th 40k is a bad game with a lot of a problems.
JohnnyHell wrote: No one cares for someone who’s decided on others behalf what’s good or bad. That’s a silly stance. Do better.
You like/dislike enjoy/don't enjoy is entirely subjective. I am not deciding those things for anyone.
Bad design is bad design. Wanna know how I know, factually, that it's bad design? 2 years old and over 95 DOCUMENTS to play an actual game with the current rules. No source of 40k rules in 8th has ever been released that did not need a rules clarification/edit/faq after it's release to fix problems with the initial documents. None. Not once.
The core rules of the game fit on 8 pages and those rules do not work as written.
This isn't opinion. Fact, 8th 40k is a bad game with a lot of a problems.
Hear, hear! However due to GW removing some of the FAQs (specifically the Stepping into a New Edition and the CA17FAQ no longer having any relevant info in it post CA18) we're actually down to 94 documents.
40k at this point needs ANOTHER reboot from the ground up but with competent, technical writers at the helm.
JohnnyHell wrote: No one cares for someone who’s decided on others behalf what’s good or bad. That’s a silly stance. Do better.
You like/dislike enjoy/don't enjoy is entirely subjective. I am not deciding those things for anyone.
Bad design is bad design. Wanna know how I know, factually, that it's bad design? 2 years old and over 95 DOCUMENTS to play an actual game with the current rules. No source of 40k rules in 8th has ever been released that did not need a rules clarification/edit/faq after it's release to fix problems with the initial documents. None. Not once.
The core rules of the game fit on 8 pages and those rules do not work as written.
This isn't opinion. Fact, 8th 40k is a bad game with a lot of a problems.
Hear, hear! However due to GW removing some of the FAQs (specifically the Stepping into a New Edition and the CA17FAQ no longer having any relevant info in it post CA18) we're actually down to 94 documents.
40k at this point needs ANOTHER reboot from the ground up but with competent, technical writers at the helm.
Yeah but it will be +6 by the end of the year. We will soon have chaos knights and their inevitable FAQ/errata, sisters of battle and THEIR faq/errata, and then CA 2019 and IT'S FAQ/errata. So 100 documents by years end.
Again, you can absolutely enjoy 40k. Lots of people enjoy bad things. Thats fine. Like what you like.
Gee thanks I feel validated now.
But in all seriousness why are you wasting so much time and energy telling people that '40k is bad'? It feels like it would be more enjoyable and mentally healthy to talk about things you like. For instance I'm not spending my time on harry potter forums bitching about how much I dislike them and anyone who enjoys them is 'an idiot, flapping their jaw'.
Initiative based activation. Pulling units out of a bag to determine when they act. or something like in apoc where damage is inflicted at the end of the turn.
JohnnyHell wrote: No one cares for someone who’s decided on others behalf what’s good or bad. That’s a silly stance. Do better.
You like/dislike enjoy/don't enjoy is entirely subjective. I am not deciding those things for anyone.
Bad design is bad design. Wanna know how I know, factually, that it's bad design? 2 years old and over 95 DOCUMENTS to play an actual game with the current rules. No source of 40k rules in 8th has ever been released that did not need a rules clarification/edit/faq after it's release to fix problems with the initial documents. None. Not once.
The core rules of the game fit on 8 pages and those rules do not work as written.
This isn't opinion. Fact, 8th 40k is a bad game with a lot of a problems.
Hear, hear! However due to GW removing some of the FAQs (specifically the Stepping into a New Edition and the CA17FAQ no longer having any relevant info in it post CA18) we're actually down to 94 documents.
40k at this point needs ANOTHER reboot from the ground up but with competent, technical writers at the helm.
Better writing would be nice I agree. Isn't the 95 documents of FAQ pretty similar to the 233 page comprehensive rules document that MtG has though? Is it really that big a deal?
Especially considering the alternative is broken rules staying broken.
slave.entity wrote: Isn't the 95 documents of FAQ pretty similar to the 233 page comprehensive rules document that MtG has though?
No, because MTG puts it all in once place. You have one document to keep track of and that's it. 40k has 95 separate documents, any one of which could be updated or become obsolete at any time. There's an immense difference between having exactly one source to check and having to remember if it was CA17 or CA18 or the 40k rulebook FAQ or your codex FAQ that changed the thing your opponent thinks was changed.
Would it be more acceptable to you if it was all in one giant document that GW just kept up to date?
That seems like something GW would totally do if enough people asked for it. That's just formatting.
Personally I haven't had much of a problem with the process of googling 'X faction FAQ' and clicking the first result. Or even just navigating to the FAQ page and finding the one I'm looking for. Yes, it could be more convenient, but it seems pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
The 233 page MtG document that is available for free is more like the 281 page BrB you have to pay for. Except that the free document is all you need to play MtG rules wise and the BrB isn't enough without a codex.
If the MtG 233 doc was full of logic errors, general imbalances, unclear language, and a bunch of other bs and then required a FAQ/Errata to fix it along with 3 times a year updates that then all got their own FAQ erratas along with each color of mana having their own books along with artifacts and colorless and then each of those were full of logic errors, general imbalances, unclear language and a bunch of other bs and then required a FAQ/Errata to fix those, THEN we would be heading in a direction where the 2 were even remotely comparable.
They are not.
And no, I would not prefer things to stay broken. I prefer that they get their gak together and made it right the first time.
slave.entity wrote: Would it be more acceptable to you if it was all in one giant document that GW just kept up to date?
That seems like something GW would totally do if enough people asked for it. That's just formatting.
Personally I haven't had much of a problem with the process of googling 'X faction FAQ' and clicking the first result. Or even just navigating to the FAQ page and finding the one I'm looking for. Yes, it could be more convenient, but it seems pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
Yes I totally agree, it would be a massive improvement.
I've been an advocate of this when the last survey came out trying to get the idea out there. Not sure how many people bothered to mention it though. All it takes is for the battle primer to be updated & re-uploaded whenever they get enough emails & questions about it. Its very easy to do for the core rules because they are free.
It becomes a bit trickier for codexes because they cost money.... But I would argue if you buy the PDF version you should be able to have the most up to date errata'd version whenever an update is made I wouldn't even mind getting a book version and a PDF version YMMV.
40K as a game is far from perfect and could use lots of improvements. Some people will just hate on 40K because '40k sucks!'. That's their opinion and they need everyone to know it... I don't understand what it brings them because they could just ignore 40k - not play, collect, and not waste any time thinking about how much they hate it.
I just ignore it and enjoy painting and playing with my models.
slave.entity wrote: Would it be more acceptable to you if it was all in one giant document that GW just kept up to date?
That seems like something GW would totally do if enough people asked for it. That's just formatting.
Personally I haven't had much of a problem with the process of googling 'X faction FAQ' and clicking the first result. Or even just navigating to the FAQ page and finding the one I'm looking for. Yes, it could be more convenient, but it seems pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
If it was in one document they would just change to complaining about how many pages it was. With this group there is no improving the situation. Just screaming into the void.
This thread isn’t just about complaining. It is about identifying the broken things in the game so we can create fixes. I’m working on simple changes that would fix the game. But I would need help. I’d need volunteers to take the new basic structure and then adapt a coded to it and revise it along the new lines I’ve set up. It’s too much for one man to do. But it would be doable. And it would make 40k a much better game without so much cheese and things that piss you off
Unless you're part of the GW40k team you aren't going to come up with a fix. Not to denigrate your efforts, but even then you're like the programmer that sees 8 different standards and writes a new languages with the features of all 8 and creates a 9th.
But hey, while I'm here, I wish there was more interactivity, like going to ground and pinning. I miss those things.
Bharring wrote: That none of the options on the table are perfect. Rhino Sniping can certainly be silly, but the Anti-Rhino Sniping rules provide similarly silly scenarios.
So you're both making the same point, but you're making it to dispute his version of making the same point - which was literally the answer to the question asked?
Q: Whats wrong with True LOS?
A: Rhino Sniping forcing specific casualty removal
Whataboutism: Untargetable Characters - which is a flaw with the shooting at characters rule (change), not the True LOS rules. IIRC the original rules didn't include invalid/hidden/etc targets - so if a character was the closest one you could see- it was fair game.
Bharring wrote: That none of the options on the table are perfect. Rhino Sniping can certainly be silly, but the Anti-Rhino Sniping rules provide similarly silly scenarios.
So you're both making the same point, but you're making it to dispute his version of making the same point - which was literally the answer to the question asked?
Q: Whats wrong with True LOS?
A: Rhino Sniping forcing specific casualty removal
Whataboutism: Untargetable Characters - which is a flaw with the shooting at characters rule (change), not the True LOS rules. IIRC the original rules didn't include invalid/hidden/etc targets - so if a character was the closest one you could see- it was fair game.
I mean, GW had a perfectly acceptable rule for protecting characters in 3rd though 7th, so why not just use that again?
An enemy CHARACTER with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if it is both visible to the firing model and it is not within 2" of another enemy unit.
And I personally would want to improve the CHARACTER rule such that they can only be screened by equal or "larger" units (and yes, I am aware this hits Rowboat Girlyman but he shouldn't have the MONSTER keyword to begin with). This would make Old One Eye usable for a start.
BaconCatBug wrote: I mean, GW had a perfectly acceptable rule for protecting characters in 3rd though 7th, so why not just use that again?
I solved that problem by simply going back to 3rd Ed. which only leaves me a few issues to contend with. They don't break the game, but you do have to plan for it.
BaconCatBug wrote: I mean, GW had a perfectly acceptable rule for protecting characters in 3rd though 7th, so why not just use that again?
Were you not around for those editions? Did you somehow miss how many rules and FAQs were related to just handling independent characters? Just download the 5th edition BRB somewhere an check the chapter(!) about characters. Plus the issue with any character missing that ability just being target practice. Oh, and challenges. The current character rules are the by far the best ones we had so far, characters finally do what they are supposed to do.
An enemy CHARACTER with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if it is both visible to the firing model and it is not within 2" of another enemy unit.
And I personally would want to improve the CHARACTER rule such that they can only be screened by equal or "larger" units (and yes, I am aware this hits Rowboat Girlyman but he shouldn't have the MONSTER keyword to begin with). This would make Old One Eye usable for a start.
slave.entity wrote: Would it be more acceptable to you if it was all in one giant document that GW just kept up to date?
That seems like something GW would totally do if enough people asked for it. That's just formatting.
Personally I haven't had much of a problem with the process of googling 'X faction FAQ' and clicking the first result. Or even just navigating to the FAQ page and finding the one I'm looking for. Yes, it could be more convenient, but it seems pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
If it was in one document they would just change to complaining about how many pages it was. With this group there is no improving the situation. Just screaming into the void.
This is 2019. The only time GW should be generating a PDF for their FAQs should be when someone hits the "print this" button on their searchable database. There are third party webpages of questionable legality that already have organized all the rules (BRB, CA, Vigilus, FAQs, Index, FW, all codices and every single promotional model) in a way that you can find any rule in the game with no more than 5 clicks. The only reason not to do this is incompetence or greed - and ockham's razor points us to incompetence.
Sorry, for some reason I had a brainfart and thought OOE had 10 wounds.
I am not suggesting reintroducing Independent Characters joining squads, just that a Character next to a bodyguard/screening unit can't be shot but one in the open can.
slave.entity wrote: Isn't the 95 documents of FAQ pretty similar to the 233 page comprehensive rules document that MtG has though?
No, because MTG puts it all in once place. You have one document to keep track of and that's it. 40k has 95 separate documents, any one of which could be updated or become obsolete at any time. There's an immense difference between having exactly one source to check and having to remember if it was CA17 or CA18 or the 40k rulebook FAQ or your codex FAQ that changed the thing your opponent thinks was changed.
Also worth pointing out the MtG 233-page document is more like the full, official rules of something like golf, including all its variants like foursomes and fourballs. You don't generally need to use the full rules when playing a game and the document is written to be as watertight as possible. There's about 3 pages just on colours, for example, which are a really simple concept to grasp but need a lot of explaining to provide completely watertight language.
The problem with 40k's current pile of documents is they include everything from answers to truly idiotic questions to genuinely useful answers, to full-on errata, all scattered about the place. The number of 90+ is hyperbolic in that you'll never need that for an individual game, but I do think GW could improve things by consolidating all the non-Codex FAQ/errata info into a single document so you only need your Codex FAQ and one master FAQ for all other sources.
Again, you can absolutely enjoy 40k. Lots of people enjoy bad things. Thats fine. Like what you like.
Gee thanks I feel validated now.
But in all seriousness why are you wasting so much time and energy telling people that '40k is bad'? It feels like it would be more enjoyable and mentally healthy to talk about things you like. For instance I'm not spending my time on harry potter forums bitching about how much I dislike them and anyone who enjoys them is 'an idiot, flapping their jaw'.
They spend all that energy, because that is what they derive pleasure from. There's no other explanation for how some people can keep chanting the exact same complaints for years and years at a time. Asking why someone invests so much time in something they don't like is the obvious question, but it's missing the point--endlessly mewling and kvetching about something they hate (and sneering at those who do enjoy it) is their joy.
Don't know about anyone else, but I spend time and money on the version of the game I actually enjoy. I keep coming here to keep my finger on the pulse of modern 40K in case the newest edition somehow jibes with how I want to play, or to maybe drum up any interest in retrogaming.
Bharring wrote: That none of the options on the table are perfect. Rhino Sniping can certainly be silly, but the Anti-Rhino Sniping rules provide similarly silly scenarios.
So you're both making the same point, but you're making it to dispute his version of making the same point - which was literally the answer to the question asked?
Q: Whats wrong with True LOS?
A: Rhino Sniping forcing specific casualty removal
Whataboutism: Untargetable Characters - which is a flaw with the shooting at characters rule (change), not the True LOS rules. IIRC the original rules didn't include invalid/hidden/etc targets - so if a character was the closest one you could see- it was fair game.
I mean, GW had a perfectly acceptable rule for protecting characters in 3rd though 7th, so why not just use that again?
An enemy CHARACTER with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if it is both visible to the firing model and it is not within 2" of another enemy unit.
And I personally would want to improve the CHARACTER rule such that they can only be screened by equal or "larger" units (and yes, I am aware this hits Rowboat Girlyman but he shouldn't have the MONSTER keyword to begin with). This would make Old One Eye usable for a start.
Breton makes a good point. My post was more about agreement and expansion of BCB's point. I didn't write it well.
Just Tony wrote: Don't know about anyone else, but I spend time and money on the version of the game I actually enjoy. I keep coming here to keep my finger on the pulse of modern 40K in case the newest edition somehow jibes with how I want to play, or to maybe drum up any interest in retrogaming.
I also spend my time and money on the version of the game I actually enjoy The only wrong way to do a hobby is not having fun.
Well, I stopped playing “normal” games of 40k becuase somehow the game just crawls along at a very boring pace. The top two reasons I noticed were absolutely ridiculous amounts of dice rolling, and tracking all the special rules, stratagems, cps, etc... during a game. Definitely the dice rolling though is the number one issue.
I still play at home with small Point sizes and the more simple units, but the typical game is just frankly boring the way it plays out. I don’t know if I’d say it’s broken, just a real slog even if (and usually this is not the case), everyone knows every rule by heart.
I dunno, somehow they managed to take the stripped down version that is 8th and bloat it up real fast.
I guess I fall into the camp of "it's far from perfect, but not really that broken". But as it's fun to complain, my biggest gripe is paper books.
I just don't get the addiction to printed rules, they get errata'd, FAQ'd or CA'd pretty intensively and are basically obsolete within a set timeframe (whether that's a few days before the rules are arbitrarily changed or at best when a new edition lands). As an accountant it makes me wince thinking about how many unsold worthless out of date books must be scrapped by GW, and as a hobbyist I cant help but feel like free electronic rules distribution would strip away any barriers to me starting up smaller alternative armies (i.e. sell me more models - the mark up on plastic is better than paper and models only go out of date if no one buys them).
Again, you can absolutely enjoy 40k. Lots of people enjoy bad things. Thats fine. Like what you like.
Gee thanks I feel validated now.
But in all seriousness why are you wasting so much time and energy telling people that '40k is bad'? It feels like it would be more enjoyable and mentally healthy to talk about things you like. For instance I'm not spending my time on harry potter forums bitching about how much I dislike them and anyone who enjoys them is 'an idiot, flapping their jaw'.
They spend all that energy, because that is what they derive pleasure from. There's no other explanation for how some people can keep chanting the exact same complaints for years and years at a time. Asking why someone invests so much time in something they don't like is the obvious question, but it's missing the point--endlessly mewling and kvetching about something they hate (and sneering at those who do enjoy it) is their joy.
I didn't sneer at anyone. Stop projecting. I legit want you to enjoy the things you enjoy. Who cares if its crap if you have fun with it? I read comics. Any idea how fething dumb those are?
Crimson Devil wrote: I guess we can count "Complaining about 40k" as a legitimate hobby now, enough people seem to enjoy doing it.
Just as long as we also count "whining about negativity" as a hobby.
It's a package deal. I can't talk about 40k on Dakka without you lot pissing all over the topic, and you can't complain without us calling you out. We are doomed to repeat this endless cycle of bullgak as we fall forever. Our fingers wrapped around eachother's throats for eternity.
Pretty impressive given mono BA have a 29% win rate. Few dozen more of these, and maybe mono BA can get up to 40%. He even had swords on the SG. Crazy man.
I don't understand how Gman can't enter a building, though.
Crimson Devil wrote:I guess we can count "Complaining about 40k" as a legitimate hobby now, enough people seem to enjoy doing it.
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe the people complaining meet some or all of the following criteria:
- Has been playing the game for a long time,
- Enjoys the overall lore, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the lore of a specific faction, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the art style and overall artistic merit of the 40K universe,
- Thinks the miniatures produced by GW qualify as works of art in their own right, or at least enjoys the general design style behind the 40K miniature range,
- Has already accumulated over time a wide range of GW miniatures, at significant cost, that they would like to play with,
- At least at some point thoroughly enjoyed playing the hobby with friends/strangers,
All of those would point towards people that would really like to enjoy the 40K game, play it, hobby it etc, but simply feel dissatisfied with the current state of the game. To put this into perspective, many of the original designers behind the game no longer play it or even read the novels etc related to it. Sometimes in their own polite way they sound positively depressed with how things are going, like disowning a child that has gone off the rails and turned into a monster that it hurts them to speak of anymore. There is a difference between random people just arriving and going "hur dur, your hobby sucks" and people who have put many years, sometimes decades into a hobby just wanting it to be better and being frustrated by where their hobby is going.
To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well. People, especially as they get older, have more and more trouble adapting to change, so they lash out at what is new and rather than see both the good and the bad, they'll focus on the negative to the exclusion of the positive.
My opinion is basically that 8th Edition isn't perfect, but it's not an unplayable dumpster fire either, and the people saying it is are being overly critical because it isn't the 40k they grew up with.
Crimson Devil wrote:I guess we can count "Complaining about 40k" as a legitimate hobby now, enough people seem to enjoy doing it.
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe the people complaining meet some or all of the following criteria:
- Has been playing the game for a long time,
- Enjoys the overall lore, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the lore of a specific faction, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the art style and overall artistic merit of the 40K universe,
- Thinks the miniatures produced by GW qualify as works of art in their own right, or at least enjoys the general design style behind the 40K miniature range,
- Has already accumulated over time a wide range of GW miniatures, at significant cost, that they would like to play with,
- At least at some point thoroughly enjoyed playing the hobby with friends/strangers,
All of those would point towards people that would really like to enjoy the 40K game, play it, hobby it etc, but simply feel dissatisfied with the current state of the game. To put this into perspective, many of the original designers behind the game no longer play it or even read the novels etc related to it. Sometimes in their own polite way they sound positively depressed with how things are going, like disowning a child that has gone off the rails and turned into a monster that it hurts them to speak of anymore. There is a difference between random people just arriving and going "hur dur, your hobby sucks" and people who have put many years, sometimes decades into a hobby just wanting it to be better and being frustrated by where their hobby is going.
There is a difference between complaining about a relationship that is fixable, and stalking your ex.
That does not really count under "most broken" but it would be something I would like to see: I personally would like it, if weapons that are in the fluff really dedicated to a specific task, would have some function that really has an effect, that is not easily copied or even surpassed by another unit.
To illustrate my point (I'm most familiar with guard, but its the same for other factions):
- The dedicated tank hunters (Vanquisher Cannons, Tank Hunters) have the same mechanic as a long range Melter weapon and are not really efficient at what they should be best at. I personally would find it more interesting if they, like the Bane Wolf would wound Vehicles on 2+ and everything else at 6+, which might make them more competetive, especially against high-Thoughness. Or some other "special tank hunter" effect like ignoring one of the defensive rolls (Armor Save, Invul, FnP).
- The same goes for dedicated anti air which I personally would also find more interesting if they had more than "+1 to hit". Somewhere I read about the idea of some kind of overwatch against all flying units within range. I cannot say if that would be broken, but it would definitely give them some effect that can not easily be replicated by a non-AA-unit (like all Leman russ Tank commanders having the same to hit against flyers as Hydra-AA Tanks)
- On a similar note: If a unit includes a great variety of weapons choices (looking at you, Leman Russ tank), I would find it interesting if one would have a special effect not so easily replicated. The Eradicator is a good idea, yet at the moment "ignores cover" does not really feel special, since in the end it is mostly just another AP-1. Here the Banehammer is an interesting example.
All that is really just a personal opinion and I fully understand that more special rules might bloat everything even more, but I wanted to at least mention it.
flandarz wrote:To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well. People, especially as they get older, have more and more trouble adapting to change, so they lash out at what is new and rather than see both the good and the bad, they'll focus on the negative to the exclusion of the positive.
My opinion is basically that 8th Edition isn't perfect, but it's not an unplayable dumpster fire either, and the people saying it is are being overly critical because it isn't the 40k they grew up with.
See I think there you're guilty of infantilising and dismissing what many people would consider legitimate arguments. It's not so much that 40K isn't just "the 40K they grew up with", rather many people are angry because the entire nature of the game has changed. If we look at vehicle rules as a snapshot, the system has gone from one where you needed specialised weapons to even penetrate certain vehicles to a system where every weapon has a chance to wound any vehicle. We've gone from there being a degree of tactical skill and positioning required to get flank/rear shots, to it not mattering, and from vehicles being limited in their firing arcs for different weapons, requiring forethought in positiong, to what is frankly a ludicrous situation where as long as the tip of part of your vehicle can see an enemy then you can fire all your weapons at it. That's not just "oh, this isn't quite how I remember 40K", that's "wow, the rules, concepts and game design objectives of this game have changed A LOT".
Take that 5-0 Blood Angels thread. I've been reading a lot of old white Dwarf bat reps lately and the contrast between those (involving strategy largely grounded in similar to RL concerns) vs hearing someone talking almost exclusively about two opponents trying to milk and game every last loophole and flaw in the ruleset is quite saddening really. It shows a descent in the very nature of the game, from one of being at least related to a realistic concept of warfare to one that has almost no bearing to genuine conflict. To dismiss these sorts of concerns as just rose tinted glasses (every version of 40K has had its flaws) or people moaning for the sake of moaning is poor form I think.
Crimson Devil wrote:There is a difference between complaining about a relationship that is fixable, and stalking your ex. Dakka is stalker territory.
If 9th edition went back more towards some older version (which version would depend on the player) would that not constitute a relationship that is fixable? I think your problem is caused by the fact that you think people are complaining for the sake of complaining and that they will never like anything to do with 40K ever again, whereas I see a lot of people who would likely warm to 40K to one degree or another if it just fixed some of the basic problems they have with the game.
My issues have nothing to do with the game i grew up with. I started in 7th. 8th is WAY better than 7th. That doesnt make it good. And ignoring its problems while shrugging off its criticims simply because its a 2 out of 10 instead of a 1 is just sitting in willful ignorance. Very legitamate criticsms can be levied at the game. And should. Call the game what it is. An improvement? Sure. Good? Not on its best day.
Lance845 wrote: My issues have nothing to do with the game i grew up with. I started in 7th. 8th is WAY better than 7th. That doesnt make it good. And ignoring its problems while shrugging off its problems simply because its a 2 out of 10 instead of a 1 is just sitting in willful ignorance.
Now whilest exagerated that is a good point. And there are mechanics that got too simplified f.e.
Legitimate complaints and concerns are fine. I'm not trying to say you have to like everything about 8e. Or even any of it. But "this is actual garbage and everything about it is terrible" is an overreaction. If you think me calling people out for that is "infantilising" them or dismissing them, then I'm afraid I don't have a much nicer way to put it.
I will say that most people here have been real good about saying "I don't like a lot of 8e, but they did some stuff right" or "it was better in the beginning, but rules bloat", which I appreciate. There's only a few that I've seen who have been like: "Everything about 8th is irredeemably awful" and they are the people my message is directed towards.
If you're expecting me to say that it's "perfect", you'll be disappointed. I enjoy playing 8th, but I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't need improvement in many areas. I've voiced my issues in other places around the board, so I won't really get into it here. I'll just say that as the "supporters" have all admitted that the system isn't perfect, the "detractors" should also admit that not every part of the system is bad. There's no room for true dialogue when one side takes an inflexible stance.
flandarz wrote: If you're expecting me to say that it's "perfect", you'll be disappointed. I enjoy playing 8th, but I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't need improvement in many areas. I've voiced my issues in other places around the board, so I won't really get into it here. I'll just say that as the "supporters" have all admitted that the system isn't perfect, the "detractors" should also admit that not every part of the system is bad. There's no room for true dialogue when one side takes an inflexible stance.
1) i am not expecting anything. I asked a question to gauge your actual experience with the edition.
2) this thread isnt titled "what do you like/dislike?" Its what is broken. Coming here expecting praise is nonsensical.
The problem is that the things wrong with 8h are so glaringly and obviously horrible that it’s insane. Cover saves. Shooting at one guy in a unit and the nine guys totally out of line of sight still get killed. Wtf?
No one is expecting praise. And, honestly, saying "everything is broken" is equally nonsensical. It's an exaggeration which doesn't help the conversation at all. Again, most folks have been good with actually laying out what issues they have. That's what I expect. A run-down on what actual problems people have with 8th.
flandarz wrote: No one is expecting praise. And, honestly, saying "everything is broken" is equally nonsensical. It's an exaggeration which doesn't help the conversation at all. Again, most folks have been good with actually laying out what issues they have. That's what I expect. A run-down on what actual problems people have with 8th.
I have an arts background. Which means that I spent several years basically being trained on how to give and receive constructive criticism. And you know what you learn from that in a practical application kind of way? 99.9% of the world isn't trained and won't give you good constructive criticism. They will give you bad non constructive criticism. It's up to you to figure out what they actually mean if you want to get useful information out of it.
Let's mine the statement everything is broken for useful bits.
What they probably mean to start with is that the rules are universally written poorly, as evidenced by the constant FAQ errata and still broken gak. No document has ever been safe from it. In fact, just regular ol' community articles have had to have faq errata. They are not wrong in that respect. SO we are starting on a foundation of the basic building blocks of the entire game suck/don't work/are broken.
Lets move on to list building. The options are so broad and open with so little to no cost that they might as well not have a structure at all. Worse they are exploitable to farm CP and abuse the games mechanics including "soup".
A a shoddy army building framework built onto of poor rules writing foundation.
Then you have the general imbalances in codexes which includes things like Necrons reanimation protocols getting exponentially better the lower the points the game and exponentially worse the higher reaching some semblance of balance around 1250 points (ish).
Yes, you can make statements like "But the psychic phase is better than it was in 7th!" except that there are AT LEAST 3 armies in the game that are flat out incapable of deny the witch which is itself a shoddy mechanic carried over and duct taped onto the new mechanics of the new phase. So while yes, better, still, crap.
When someone says "Everything is broken." they might not be giving you all the details you want in the way that you want them. But they are expressing a valid criticism of the game. There is no facet of 40k 8th that does not have some kind of problem. Not one. There are some good IDEAS in there like Keywords, which are then poorly executed and create issues like Longstrikes buff not working on Forgeworld Hammerheads. So what does it matter if the basic idea was good if the very foundation of the whole thing is built on a pile of gak and permeates the whole thing?
IYou can't expect people to speak to you on your terms. If you want to understand what they are saying you need to read it from theirs. The whole game is broken.
To respond to the OP of the thread, I will C+P a long point I made on a different, but similar, thread.
The Warp Forge wrote: Wow this thread derailed twice, but anyway I'll try to be on topic to try and put it back on track.
What are my thoughts on 8th?
Well firstly I'll put a disclaimer: As part of my hobby specifically I make a copious amount of time on custom rules, making my own games, etc. I have made groups on social media for specific games for custom rules which have proven to be popular. I have spent many years doing this so I tend to think of things from a games dev's perspective as well as a players. I will also be recounting player experiences of my own and maybe observations of others. Know I hold no grudges nor malicious intent towards any player, person, army or list choice, these are just my thoughts and perspectives, not a critique on personality be it personal or people I don't know.
Ok so with that in mind, my thoughts have to go from my experience in a chronological order of the longevity of the 8th.
I really enjoyed 8th ed. at the start. All the index's were released and everything appeared on point. There were powerful units and a few combo's here and there but nothing that took me too out of the game, I felt as though I had a sense of agency and reaction to other peoples lists and armies when playing my CSM. I didn't feel as though my night lord choices were 'wrong' choices.
When the codex's were initially released I didn't feel they were too bad, there wasn't anything that screamed in my face that was broken so I rolled with it. My average games still felt as though I could react to my opponents moves and tactics.
It was halfway through the codex releases that I felt GW had went back to their old clutches of power creep. Eldar changed from invisible waithknights to just play on the negative modifiers, Tau went from markerlight spam to shield drones: The Codex (Don't get me wrong Markerlights are still a pain but I find shield drones a much more pressing issue). Imperium is Imperium now. Gradually I felt my agency, or my own choices, slowly erode. Not only just from external balance but also from FAQ's and such.
This then puts me in modern day of the game. Do I still have fun? For me it's a yes and no. I still enjoy the game to a degree but once again I have to pick and choose my opponent and I have to know what sort of game I'm going into. I thought this was something 8th ed. was trying to fix?
So what went 'wrong?' Well I can only bullet point my exact thoughts.
1) Player Agency: The most important part of a game is to make sure all players feel as though they add something that contributes to the battle. From this people can value a match more positively than negatively. At the start all you had were three strats, the power of a unit and maybe the odd aura buff. This was expanded, which is not inherently a bad choice but they way it was executed was poor. The expanded strats, subfaction traits, and aura buffs have stopped really trying to make a flavorful army but rather now build momentum of an probability race to turn as much probability factor to 0% as possible. This isn't healthy externally because it takes away your options on how you fight a specific match and creates mismatches that aren't fun. In some cases you just can't fight certain lists because some armies can play to this and some can't. it then creates an atmosphere of 'faux' options which can make players feel 'cheated' out of just buying models they preferred.
Take one experience I had recently. I played my Night Lords (In that game I changed them to Alpha Legion, because my stores tournament rules allows us to use whatever subfaction rules for our forces as long as it's all uniform) along with Red Corsairs against Shadowsuns T'au sept. The board was very open so everything could really see everything. They took the first turn and then proceeded to markerlight everything up and decimate half of my army. In my turn I couldn't really retaliate because anything that could damage major parts of my opponents army could just be shrugged off on shield drones. Turn 2 I was tabled. We then proceeded to play another game on a board with more LoS blocking terrain and I was still tabled but the game lasted until turn 6. What i felt was that I had a major disadvantage because I don't have tools in my CSM force as efficient as Markerlights and shield drones. Back in older editions Markerlights were another economy for Tau. Now it's more like gardening where you just 'Grow your own' and then just get point blank buffs that other armies at most have to spend CP on. While I enjoyed the second game more than my first both games still left a slight bad aftertaste in my mouth per say, and only cemented my view that in early game you need to rename one shooting phase to "destroy ALL the drones, then lick your wounds phase". A game shouldn't create this feeling of absolution.
2) Amount of Hard counters: With this race to make probability to 0% presents a lot of hard counters which can make players feel frustrated during gameplay. In my turn to provide my own case of dickery (because I am no saint) on how I reacted to my area, I now play (with AL trait) three Oblits with a Jump Lord and Jump Sorc. The Sorc had prescience and Death Hex and the Oblits have Mark of Slannesh. The case is simple. I drop them down 12" away from my target(s), I take away their InvSv (if they have one) and make my Oblits hit on 2+ with prescience. My Lord re-roll's 1's for the unit. I then point and click a unit out of existence, then shoot again with strat and right-click another unit out of existence. While I certainly have reacted to the competitive shift in my area well, from a design point of view I shouldn't be able to do this. My opponent know what's coming and they know that unless they have something short of a 2+ inv. They can't react against this unit. once again providing a negative player experience, this time for my opponent.
In addition to hard counters there is also the case that with my Night Lords I can never really play them anymore as what they should be because Morale is a bloated phase for most armies. What incentive for me as a Night lords player should I play against Tyranids or Dark Angels? They get their sub-faction trait a special rule to get rid of mine and also all their toys to boot! Soft counters like And they shall know no fear is ok because the morale is still affected but hard counters only serve to provide frustrating play which only makes one to refuse games. A game should not make any player feel or make choices as fundamental as that. The whole 'Tiers' with codex's makes once gain a frustrating experience for many a player because it only serves as some gambling wheel of fortune and you're the one praying for a good codex release. Some of my opponent's just say that to win this edition, depending on what your facing is to just 'win the die roll' (within context of the die roll to deploy) which I can't really say that's wrong anymore.
Similarly another example from My Night Lords is that all my jump units now just sit on a shelf, because functionally they are unplayable. They FAQ had restricted them far too much with measuring in charge distance and so what looked like common sense (like the unit of raptors jumping from rooftops to close in on their prey) is practically undo-able, because from understanding, one player got smug with the game dev at a GT with their smash captain on a 0" charge. These hard counters just provide even more of an frustrating experience which shouldn't happen in a game.
3) 8th wanted to be new but ultimately has succumbed to old editions:
Probably my most controversial view. When 8th was released GW presented it to be revolutionary. this was the all-new edition, with an all-new simpler and more 'fun' experience. But as the edition has aged, I can see the old editions problems seep in. The new stat line isn't really all that new. From a designers perspective, they could have had much more fun with this. I refuse to believe an Guardsman moves as fast as a Marine and an Eldar. Why does a standard Marine have as many wounds as a Guardsman? Imo Guardsmen and equivalents should have had 4" of movement. Marines should have had 5" and Primaris and Eldar should have had 6". How much would this edition change with that in mind? Imagine Marines having 2-3 wounds and Primaris just an extra +1 to whatever a marines had. Terminators having 5-6 wounds a piece? This might sound ludicrous and to a degree I would agree but it would have certainly solved the elite Vs. Horde issue the game has and make marines feel like marines imo in GW's more streamlined approach. Why does armies special rules for arrival from reserves need to be standardised? why can't a unit of Warp Talons arrive by 6" a drop pod by 7"?
This to me would have meant that they could have had wider variables to play with which meant less hard counters by strats and such. They wanted a new edition but clutched to elder stat lines from editions before, but I don't blame entirely the dev's for going this route as I feel the playtesters have an equal part to play. From what I understand is that the playtesters (forming a microcosm of the wider playerbase) wanted more incentives than restrictions. This I can understand as the older editions were restricting, bit now the pendulum has swung the other way and it's either incentive the players or don't bother. We need more restrictions so we can have player agency return to the game. Nothing really, well, changed in regards to the power creep. They experiment with early codex's then get carried away in an edition halfway through. This is just bad practice that they only get away with because their the largest company out there.
To conclude, do I hate this edition? No, there are some things they added that I wanted two editions ago, like a Damage characteristic and a streamlined WS/BS chart. But the power creep that early editions had still persist in this edition. They wanted to make something new but still clutched on to the old which to me has bled through in this edition, so could I say I enjoy this edition? I can't really say that I do anymore, just that I take what I can get. I don't view any edition with rose-tinted glasses and I've been playing since 2007. The edition I feel is neither better or worse, but exactly the same as elder editions.
So to further the discussion what do I think is most broken in 40k currently?
1) Far, far too many extremes. Currently, whilst there are different pathways to achieve the end result per codex/soup, in a competitive sense there are only really two sorts of lists. Either A) Table early game with buffs or B ) Play on negative modifiers to increase survivability.
2) YGIGO System is too clunky for a game that has grown in scale. Because of how the system interacts with the armies it once again removes a ton of player agency that frustrates many players.
3) Power creep, like every other edition, this keeps on happening. The Dev's like previous editions have gotten carried away with the power of armies. Look at the new Chaos Knights rules released yesterday and compare, to say, the earlier codex's.
4) System has outgrown the D6. Because of the amount of absolutes and hard counters in the game, it leaves little for actual risk/reward scenarios that usually make a game really enjoyable. They game should evolve to D10 at this point.
5) Player agency is relatively non existent at this point. Take a look at competitive lists and my earlier examples too. It's not fun to play with/against units that have been buffed so much that it requires so little thought. The game needs more radical 'swingy' results so that people may feel on par with each other.
6) Bloat to the point that core mechanics are essentially 'phased out' like morale. Each stat you give needs to be effective so that factions/subfactions can have a difference in playstyles. People don't like sunk cost fallacy.
AnomanderRake wrote: Primary problems with 40k are fundamental design philosophy questions more so than any numbers or specific mechanics or anything else. To wit:
1) Turning point theory. Every game has to be a massive turning point on a galactic scale, which means every psychic power has to be this grandiose massive epic super-thing on which the game pivots, every army has to be loaded down with the most epic extreme super-badasses in the galaxy, every game has to have a Primarch in it, etc. Most of the scale creep/balance issues with the game result from this philosophy and need to be addressed by taking a chainsaw to it; if smaller and more subtle things existed the game would be less silly. Consider by comparison Warmachine (on scale): people in Warmachine don't have potentially spammable spells that say "move this unit again", they have potentially spammable spells that say "this unit moves 2" further". Because they're working with smaller and more subtle effects than GW's grandiose sledgehammer of superpowers they can be more fine-tuned and more balanced.
2) Scale asymmetry. Consider for the moment a Guard army; they're spending 4pts/model on their basic line units, their heavy-hitting armoured tanks might be 200pts if kitted out heavily. Consider for comparison a Knights army; their cheapest units are ~180pts/model and their heavy hitters are around 700pts. The issue of expecting two armies with such wild disparities in model count to go head to head requires GW to make all weapons in the game too generalist (see: shooting Knights with pulse rifle gunlines), so as to avoid cases like fighting Knights in 7e where anything short of S6 just didn't do anything. As a result everything is sitting on the same linear scale of durability/damage output, which means any mistake gets to ripple out and affect just about everything (ex. the need for anti-Knight weapons makes normal-size vehicles without an Invulnerable save pointless unless they're incredibly inexpensive).
3) Sacred-cow design. 40k has discrete turns rather than alternating activations, five phases of play, and requires 3-4 rolls to kill anything because that's how it's always worked, not because it works any better. Consider as a counterexample Bolt Action/Gates of Antares (Rick Priestly (GW founding designer)'s work with his new company); it has randomized alternating activations, turns are a single phase, attacks are two dice (to-hit/to-wound), armies are heavily constrained (one tank per lieutenant/two infantry in Bolt Action) to avoid spam, and the damage mechanics require guns to specialize and encourage you to use a variety of units rather than finding the most efficient choice and spamming it.
-3A) Refusal to backpedal. Introducing Knights as a standalone Codex, the bizarre reroll-before-modifiers bug, act-again effects, and penalty stacking in this edition, superheavies the last two editions, Destroyer weapons and Invisibility in 7th, Jink and Heldrakes in 6th, the glance table and psybolt ammo in 5th, GW has a long history of making terrible design decisions and then standing by them and trying to patch around them when it'd be much, much easier and produce a much simpler, cleaner, and better game to admit that they f***ed up and backpedal.
4) Inadequate testing and refusal to backpedal. GW doesn't playtest anything enough, and in previous editions instead of iterating on their designs to fix bugs they've finished all the army books and released a new edition to completely upend the apple cart. The fact that the game is so unstable and that the models you bought that were good might be unplayable in six months is a serious problem for anyone who wants to play the game; dropping $500 on an army only to find GW has nerfed it into dust and you need to buy a new one before you've even finished painting it isn't good for anyone (you get frustrated and go away talking gak about GW, GW loses a customer).
Very little about the core rules to 40k right now is inherently wrong, and you could honestly fix a lot of this within the existing framework of 8e, but what you have to recognize is that GW's design issues stem from attitude problems far more than they do specific design decisions. It isn't any individual decision they make that hurts the game, if it were it'd be easy for them to fix because we'd all be complaining about the same thing and it'd get through to them eventually. It's the attitude problems that lead to a feedback loop of small mistakes feeding off each other and producing a kludgy mess.
Agreed on just about everything. The game used to function pretty well as a combined arms turn based skirmish game. 7th screwed up terrain and eventually lost the plot with formations but provided both sides just used and foc and didn't reach for the apoc crap it was a pretty decent game. All they had to do was tweak mc's a little bit and avoid factions like knights, instead like you said they introduce everything hurting everything and basically turn almost every unit into an mc. Flamethrowers as choice AA weapons, 8th is just bad. As peregrine says it's a card game, a thousand dollar card game.
What's most broken is the silly everything hurting everything nonsense. No amount of anger is going to make a human fist hurt a tank.
Crimson Devil wrote:I guess we can count "Complaining about 40k" as a legitimate hobby now, enough people seem to enjoy doing it.
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe the people complaining meet some or all of the following criteria:
- Has been playing the game for a long time,
- Enjoys the overall lore, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the lore of a specific faction, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the art style and overall artistic merit of the 40K universe,
- Thinks the miniatures produced by GW qualify as works of art in their own right, or at least enjoys the general design style behind the 40K miniature range,
- Has already accumulated over time a wide range of GW miniatures, at significant cost, that they would like to play with,
- At least at some point thoroughly enjoyed playing the hobby with friends/strangers,
All of those would point towards people that would really like to enjoy the 40K game, play it, hobby it etc, but simply feel dissatisfied with the current state of the game. To put this into perspective, many of the original designers behind the game no longer play it or even read the novels etc related to it. Sometimes in their own polite way they sound positively depressed with how things are going, like disowning a child that has gone off the rails and turned into a monster that it hurts them to speak of anymore. There is a difference between random people just arriving and going "hur dur, your hobby sucks" and people who have put many years, sometimes decades into a hobby just wanting it to be better and being frustrated by where their hobby is going.
This would be me.
Thank you for that.
Spoiler:
The current game does seem to suit a transformed "community".
When I started, card games and gotcha combos were for kids.
For young kids, UNO;
for old kids, UNO at parties.
Working at a game/comics shop in college,
I saw the CCG set grow along with the Play Station.
Most of the tables in the back belonged to 40k and Fantasy,
some epic, ManOWar, then Necromunda and BFG ruled,
but throughout, the CCG set grew and the Play Station developed.
More tables were filled by card gamers.
A friend sold all of his first run Magic cards for mint.
These cards were legit and powerful, so people wanted to pay more.
When I started, people made fun of the guy with the 30 Dark Reapers.
The vortex grenade was hella fun, but could be taken out.
Spoiler:
The game appealed to practically minded people
and all seemed to have one thing in common,
whether simulating space battles or high fantasy on the high seas,
and that was a sense of realism.
We all presumed that the models and the terrain
meant something very much like it does in the real world.
We can complain about range and model scale and whatever,
but we could sit down behind the model,
consider the situation,
even set it up and consider it within the space of the rules.
This was very much an RPG, moderated by a rules manual
and filtered by common sense.
I learned to play with lawyers, actual lawyers and students of law.
There is common sense in common law.
Real situations mediated by rules, and intention is often inferred.
A case must be made...
This dynamic is mostly absent in a CCG and impossible in a video game due the media.
The framework for action is given, we just slip through it
nearly effortlessly.
In this way, the state of the game very much reflects
the state of the world that this generation has come to inherit.
Most everything is a given, or may seem so.
When I started, very much was undetermined.
We made it, and wanted to, felt that we could.
So maybe we enjoyed games that reflected this anticipation.
There is a lot to be learned at a game table.
The practice of objective discussion when one's own interests are invested in the outcome, for instance,
is a valuable meta-cognitive skill.
These skills cannot be (easily) tested with CCGs and video games.
And, they seem mostly absent from the current iteration of the game, as well,
beyond tweaking hard coded mechanics like CPs, basically tweaking a difficulty setting in a video game.
Most importantly, for me,
the flavor, the smell of the battleground, the suspense,
the feeling of the grit and grime that an RPG mindset delivers going into the game,
this seems gone altogether, replaced with dry card gamery with expensive plastic counters. Turning orks to dust was perhaps the first hint for me that GW had lost this connection,
because this was the best way to understand why anyone would be upset about it.
Who wants to be a mold spore? Very few...
Who wants to live in a video card game?
Spoiler:
And, don't even get started with the narrative fracturing acts of the Omnissiah
and all this primaris hover craft nonsense.
"Everybody's favorite space marines" indeed.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
warpedpig wrote: I once punched a hole in a tank when I was angry my lascannon rolled a one
Man, when I got home that night and saw that fist sized hole, I was like 'I need me a new tank!'
AnomanderRake wrote: Primary problems with 40k are fundamental design philosophy questions more so than any numbers or specific mechanics or anything else. To wit:
1) Turning point theory.
Spoiler:
Every game has to be a massive turning point on a galactic scale, which means every psychic power has to be this grandiose massive epic super-thing on which the game pivots, every army has to be loaded down with the most epic extreme super-badasses in the galaxy, every game has to have a Primarch in it, etc. Most of the scale creep/balance issues with the game result from this philosophy and need to be addressed by taking a chainsaw to it; if smaller and more subtle things existed the game would be less silly. Consider by comparison Warmachine (on scale): people in Warmachine don't have potentially spammable spells that say "move this unit again", they have potentially spammable spells that say "this unit moves 2" further". Because they're working with smaller and more subtle effects than GW's grandiose sledgehammer of superpowers they can be more fine-tuned and more balanced.
2) Scale asymmetry.
Spoiler:
Consider for the moment a Guard army; they're spending 4pts/model on their basic line units, their heavy-hitting armoured tanks might be 200pts if kitted out heavily. Consider for comparison a Knights army; their cheapest units are ~180pts/model and their heavy hitters are around 700pts. The issue of expecting two armies with such wild disparities in model count to go head to head requires GW to make all weapons in the game too generalist (see: shooting Knights with pulse rifle gunlines), so as to avoid cases like fighting Knights in 7e where anything short of S6 just didn't do anything. As a result everything is sitting on the same linear scale of durability/damage output, which means any mistake gets to ripple out and affect just about everything (ex. the need for anti-Knight weapons makes normal-size vehicles without an Invulnerable save pointless unless they're incredibly inexpensive).
3) Sacred-cow design.
Spoiler:
40k has discrete turns rather than alternating activations, five phases of play, and requires 3-4 rolls to kill anything because that's how it's always worked, not because it works any better. Consider as a counterexample Bolt Action/Gates of Antares (Rick Priestly (GW founding designer)'s work with his new company); it has randomized alternating activations, turns are a single phase, attacks are two dice (to-hit/to-wound), armies are heavily constrained (one tank per lieutenant/two infantry in Bolt Action) to avoid spam, and the damage mechanics require guns to specialize and encourage you to use a variety of units rather than finding the most efficient choice and spamming it.
-3A) Refusal to backpedal. Introducing Knights as a standalone Codex, the bizarre reroll-before-modifiers bug, act-again effects, and penalty stacking in this edition, superheavies the last two editions, Destroyer weapons and Invisibility in 7th, Jink and Heldrakes in 6th, the glance table and psybolt ammo in 5th, GW has a long history of making terrible design decisions and then standing by them and trying to patch around them when it'd be much, much easier and produce a much simpler, cleaner, and better game to admit that they f***ed up and backpedal.
4) Inadequate testing and refusal to backpedal.
Spoiler:
GW doesn't playtest anything enough, and in previous editions instead of iterating on their designs to fix bugs they've finished all the army books and released a new edition to completely upend the apple cart. The fact that the game is so unstable and that the models you bought that were good might be unplayable in six months is a serious problem for anyone who wants to play the game; dropping $500 on an army only to find GW has nerfed it into dust and you need to buy a new one before you've even finished painting it isn't good for anyone (you get frustrated and go away talking gak about GW, GW loses a customer).
Very little about the core rules to 40k right now is inherently wrong, and you could honestly fix a lot of this within the existing framework of 8e, but what you have to recognize is that GW's design issues stem from attitude problems far more than they do specific design decisions. It isn't any individual decision they make that hurts the game, if it were it'd be easy for them to fix because we'd all be complaining about the same thing and it'd get through to them eventually. It's the attitude problems that lead to a feedback loop of small mistakes feeding off each other and producing a kludgy mess.
Agreed on just about everything. The game used to function pretty well as a combined arms turn based skirmish game. 7th screwed up terrain and eventually lost the plot with formations but provided both sides just used and foc and didn't reach for the apoc crap it was a pretty decent game. All they had to do was tweak mc's a little bit and avoid factions like knights, instead like you said they introduce everything hurting everything and basically turn almost every unit into an mc. Flamethrowers as choice AA weapons, 8th is just bad. As peregrine says it's a card game, a thousand dollar card game.
What's most broken is the silly everything hurting everything nonsense. No amount of anger is going to make a human fist hurt a tank.
Reading this thread has made me think about things i have read in the passed.
One thing that comes to mind in another game, is highly synergistic units and models.
How they had find a issue with how they play, with how they where very powerfull.
And that not taking them was a detriment.
Making them simply cost more points did not really work, They just point them up until they where not worth taking at all.
And Nerf also had the same effect.
You have to put thought into the players seeing useful units and incorporating them into there army. As all units working together create interesting strategy even in far more basic games than these.
One of the Issues, is GW wants these units. But seem to talk against this design all the time.
"you can take anything, even if its stupid, dont worry about it" Could be there sales pitch !
And i think it hurts the game, and there players a bit.
We see in the lore things work, when they are unlikely and we even see pure lunacy work out far to often.
Leading to a desire of list design they do not design for.
The Imperial knights a prime example, Fluffy. Well units like them should have support, They should have been designed for the game as a whole. And i think even now they still effect the flawed design we keep seeing :(
They want the players to feel they can play anything in the standard game, But design it against this idea consistently.
Leading to what feels like a company with no idea what they have, and no real idea how to go forward.
There's nothing broken about 8th Edition in my opinion. It works much better than prior versions and balance between armies has reached a nice point unlike 6th and 7th Edition where you had to negotiate lists before the game. The game has become much more tactical while prior editions where more like watching fireworks and wondering why tanks were squishier than a Space Marine.
Could it need refinement? Probably. Tanks could need something, but not the crap from prior editions that only made them worse than anything else in the game and made superheavies the only good tanks because they ignored 90% of the tank rules...
At the start of the Edition I said cover but for me that's fixed with cities of Death.
Blast weapons mostly need a fix as well. Similar to tank rules in 6th and 7th what makes them "special" actually just makes them bad. No weapon needs two to hit roles, just get rid of random number of shots, the usual to-hit-role already provides enough randomness.
I'd like a 15€ book with every narrative mission from the BRB, Vigilus 1+2, CA2017/2018 and Urban Conquest in it and the needed special rules for them. No giant fluff, no photos, no artworks, just give me a simple mission catalogue to build a campaign.
Really the biggest issues with 8th are that GW has gone back to codex creep/adding cool flavorful rules without thinking (something they explicitly stated they did in 7th; it was officially said they thought of rules that fit the background, and then figured out how it would be for the game).
The second major problem is the desire to turn the game into a CCG with miniatures. Warmahordes did this first but did it in such a way that it was still largely balanced and had meaningful tactics and choices. 8th has basically combo stacking, and that's it. My friends I do a podcast with were talking the other day about Guilliman as an example, and how him existing and doing what he does means that Marines cannot ever be properly balanced. Giving them something really good will break if you add Guilliman because he's such a game changer. Not only the fact it punishes you for not wanting to play Ultramarines and encourages you to mix armies since his benefits affect all Imperium.
That's the larger issue. As said above, the game turned from having interesting tactics that you could often apply some real-world tactics, to essentially who can game the system the best and stack the most combos. That's not interesting or engaging gameplay at all.
GW pitched 8th as being a new, modern 40k. And instead we got the same old gak with a new coat of paint, but that coat of paint was done so cheaply that very quickly it started to flake away and reveal the old stuff underneath. The game is already bloated, possibly way more than 7th, and shows no sign of stopping. Sure, there may not be 2++ rerollable invisible Wraithnights or Taudar, but there are enough terrible things that it makes those not look so bad, since all those needed were some restrictions like what they've done now, rather than necessarily being gutted.
Is it a total dumpster fire? No, but it's nowhere near good. It might have been somewhat good during the Index days (and there were still huge glaring problems that GW somehow missed, remember the dark Eldar bird spam?) but it's way off the rails now, possibly because GW refused to actually gut the system like they should have for fear of it turning out like AOS launch did.
@ Mr. White: Orks growing from spores and therefore being almost impossible to completely eliminate was one of my favorite parts of their fluff when I played them. In this universe even the mold is trying to kill you, and not in the passive "I'll destroy your lungs if you inhale me" kind of way.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: There's nothing broken about 8th Edition in my opinion. It works much better than prior versions and balance between armies has reached a nice point unlike 6th and 7th Edition where you had to negotiate lists before the game. The game has become much more tactical while prior editions where more like watching fireworks and wondering why tanks were squishier than a Space Marine.
Could it need refinement? Probably. Tanks could need something, but not the crap from prior editions that only made them worse than anything else in the game and made superheavies the only good tanks because they ignored 90% of the tank rules...
At the start of the Edition I said cover but for me that's fixed with cities of Death.
Blast weapons mostly need a fix as well. Similar to tank rules in 6th and 7th what makes them "special" actually just makes them bad. No weapon needs two to hit roles, just get rid of random number of shots, the usual to-hit-role already provides enough randomness.
I'd like a 15€ book with every narrative mission from the BRB, Vigilus 1+2, CA2017/2018 and Urban Conquest in it and the needed special rules for them. No giant fluff, no photos, no artworks, just give me a simple mission catalogue to build a campaign.
On the bold part: We must not be playing the same game, some armies still need a significant handicap against others.
Kind of agree on the rest though. Especially I would love to get a compendium of all the rules, errata, and missions arranged and indexed by someone who knows what they're doing, without most of the fluff and artwork. (Although in all fairness if GW knew what they were doing that .pdf would already exist for download on their website.)
Oh, another big issue is that GW continues to expect/write rules on the expectation you're being social with your opponent beyond "Hey, want to play a 2k point game?". So the 40k design team, which incidentally still seems to be the same guys from the bad "Forge the narrative" days, aren't really caring about writing balanced rules still since they probably only play with their mates and do crazy weird "Sure, that sounds fun" sort of rule deviations.
It's rather telling that AOS now, despite having some issues, has overall better balance since most of the AOS design team are big UK tournament players, so are probably more used to playing against random guys at the club/events.
Martel732 wrote: I do sometimes fantasize about giving the GW "forge the narrative" guy the Stone Cold Stunner.
Okay that's the funniest thing I've read today. But yeah, the 40k team definitely feels like the outdated group now compared to AOS. Seems like they really don't "get" it still, while the AOS team has learned. In fact, I think it was originally the same group, and it's only been relatively recently that AOS has gotten its own team. Which might explain why early AOS was so bad too, it was the same guys as the 40k team doing it.
flandarz wrote: To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well.
4th edition was a whole new game, with many elements and basic design concepts (dissociated mechanics) that clashed with what people wanted from D&D back then. It did not fix anything of what people wanted to be fixed from 3.5. It was clumsily advertised on top of that. 5ed D&D, albeit newer, received a way better feedback.
If you wanted to use D&D as an example, you played yourself.
flandarz wrote: To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well.
4th edition was a whole new game, with many elements and basic design concepts (dissociated mechanics) that clashed with what people wanted from D&D back then. It did not fix anything of what people wanted to be fixed from 3.5.
It was clumsily advertised on top of that.
5ed D&D, albeit newer, received a way better feedback.
If you wanted to use D&D as an example, you played yourself.
I think the main difference is that D&D tried (and failed) to change up their game with 4th edition, but went too far. They actually learned what went wrong though and did 5th edition, which from what I've read is pretty solid overall.
GW claimed they learned, but really didn't change anything or, if they did, they quickly fell back into their old ways. Honestly, I think part of the issue is BECAUSE of games like Warmahordes. Warmahordes exploded in popularity when GW was on the decline, and a big reason for that was the tight, concise rules and competitive bent, as well as the very synergistic approach to army building. It was very different to what was the norm at the time, and was very appealing.
Sadly, GW despite being way larger doesn't have the quality to match that, so made an attempt to have more combo/synergy driven games as opposed to the older style based on historical games, only there's a slew of problems because they don't seem to actually know how to design a game like that. For one thing, the reason Warmahordes tends to have less overall units and options is to avoid exactly what has plagued and continues to plague 40k: Too much bloat that hinders balance. There are how many armies in 40k? Over a dozen, if not closer to 20? How many units in each of those factions? How many options per unit? It's just bloat on top of bloat on top of bloat, and the more they add the harder it becomes to balance because part of balancing a game is actually testing all the permutations of an ability rather than play a game or two and call it done. GW goes for quantity over quality with the rules, and that's a big factor why the game breaks down.
It still seems like GW largely tests in the old style; rather than actually test how abilities interact with all the things (something which is key, otherwise you end up with the situation where you are locked into design for a faction because they would be too strong if you fixed them, due to poor synergies with units), they play a few games in a laid back way, take notes on what felt good, and tweak minorly. From what I've read, even the external testers are limited; GW doesn't let them build lists to show what breaks the game or could have issues, they essentially say test these rules with this army and tell us how it feels.
That isn't how you test any sort of game, let alone one that's supposed to now be based around synergies and combos. The reason Warmahordes was able to do this successfully was because they actually tested and compared abilities across the game, not at best within one faction while completely ignoring the fact that the rules usually let you ignore any sort of faction-specific weakness (assuming you play Imperium or Chaos, and maybe Eldar)
Strg Alt wrote: 8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:
GW's rules have always been terrible though. You would think "dumbing down" the rules would make them easier to understand, cleaner and with fewer loopholes/debate on what's meant. Instead, it seems like the opposite. Literally, every single book has glaring errors, if not actual incorrect rules that need to be addressed.
Strg Alt wrote: 8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:
I don't think that's quite the issue, I think the bigger issue is that they want everything in the 40k universe to be playable under one ruleset, regardless of size, setting, scale, or suitability. They want one primary product line at the 28mm scale that anyone can buy anything in and slap down anywhere and play with. They're trying to do in one rules system what would normally be done in 3 or 4 different games.
And so, we get a game where you can bring just about anything that exists in the setting, but in order to accommodate that they have to make the rules extremely generalized with lots of simplified abstractions.
Strg Alt wrote: 8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:
I really hate this elitistic, nerdier-than-thou attitude. If rule complexity is a barrier for entry, it's only normal for GW to simplify the rules. They're a for-profit company after all. They need an influx of new blood, or their customer base will only ever shrink and they'll go bankrupt.
Streamlining the rules is not the same as "dumbing down" the rules.
flandarz wrote: To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well.
4th edition was a whole new game, with many elements and basic design concepts (dissociated mechanics) that clashed with what people wanted from D&D back then. It did not fix anything of what people wanted to be fixed from 3.5.
It was clumsily advertised on top of that.
5ed D&D, albeit newer, received a way better feedback.
If you wanted to use D&D as an example, you played yourself.
Did I? Even just with the quoted portion, and ignoring the rest of my post, I think my example stands. 4th dropped, and rather than take the system on it's own merits, it was compared to the previous edition and because it wasn't the same, dismissed as inferior or "garbage". I'm relatively certain that had that same ruleset dropped under any other name but D&D, no one would have had a single word of complaint.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a fan of 4th edition either. And I think 5e is the best iteration to date. But, as a ruleset, 4th wasn't bad. As was stated above, it was just too different for the old guard to get behind.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a fan of 4th edition either. And I think 5e is the best iteration to date. But, as a ruleset, 4th wasn't bad. As was stated above, it was just too different for the old guard to get behind.
4th was a nice tabletop, but a bad RPG because the mechanics interfered with the immersion needed for a RPG. So yeah, I'd argue the system was actually pretty bad. But we are going off-topic. My point is that in my opinion the nerd-o-verse reacts badly to a new iteration of a given system when such iteration doesn't address the perceived or real issues of the older version.
And this is why, on the other hand, people were open to 8th at the beginning.
Martel732 wrote: The problems with 7th was miscosted units. The problem with 8th is miscosted units. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Depends what you want from a game.
As an example, albeit I like 8th well enough, I think that it's maddening that I cannot tell apart infiltrators from deepstrikers.
The bigger issue is their desire to focus everything into auras/stratagems. How many faction rules that used to be available all the time got rolled up into limited stratagems? How many interesting abilities devolved into some weaksauce aura which buffs the broken stuff and doesn't do enough for the bad stuff. How many armies have multiple units that do the same role, but one is so much better than the other that it's essentially a replacement, without explicitly obsoleting the previous unit?
The bottom line is that the 40k team still doesn't really know how to balance rules. They add stuff to stratagems, which were neat when they were very specific and limited. But you can just take CP farms from another army (in most cases) and ignore the limited uses, which breaks them. A perfect example is our old friend the Castellan. It was clear the Knight Codex was built around the idea it had very strong stratagems, which were limited due to low CP, which his fine design. Except, their shoddy ally system let you just take cheap guard battalions to get a lot of CP, thereby eliminating what should have been the balancing factor of taking knights.
That's the key issue. They don't think enough about how the rules interact, and maybe that's proof there are too many units/options/abilities in the game, but even then within hours (if not sooner) of a codex dropping (sometimes even before it officially comes out due to leaks) people are finding glaring issues with the rules or glaring holes in the rules that are grossly ambiguous and require debate over what they mean, which show that either they aren't considering all the possibilities for a rule and just throwing it out there because it "sounds cool", or they just aren't even sure of how the rules in their own game work because they are so used to house ruling or going along with what they feel yet not clarifying that, or maybe both.
If that doesn't show the game is bloated, I don't know what will.
The Newman wrote: @ Mr. White: Orks growing from spores and therefore being almost impossible to completely eliminate was one of my favorite parts of their fluff when I played them. In this universe even the mold is trying to kill you, and not in the passive "I'll destroy your lungs if you inhale me" kind of way.
But, this is not how the story begins, with a young orkling out for glory...
it is Imperial propaganda, trying to convince the rest of us that orks are so low as mold!
Lies, I say.
Lies... all.
Strg Alt wrote: 8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:
I really hate this elitistic, nerdier-than-thou attitude. If rule complexity is a barrier for entry, it's only normal for GW to simplify the rules. They're a for-profit company after all. They need an influx of new blood, or their customer base will only ever shrink and they'll go bankrupt.
Streamlining the rules is not the same as "dumbing down" the rules.
Right on!
Because nothing here is streamlined.
But, it is awfully dumbed down!
Martel732 wrote: The problems with 7th was miscosted units. The problem with 8th is miscosted units. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
I disagree. Miscosted units was definitely *a* problem in 7th, but it was far from the *only* problem. You also had:
- Hugely bloated and convoluted rules (not helped by the worst layout I've ever seen in any rulebook to date).
- In addition to the core rules, there were a stupid number of additional rules (and, in some cases, units that ignored whole swathes of the rulebook).
- Absurd differences in scale and army composition. A player could easily find themselves facing an IK army that was immune to about half their army's firepower (since anything less than S6 was worthless, and even S6 could barely scratch them).
- A great deal of weapons were made useless by scenarios like the above. Small arms fire in particular became almost completely useless because there were so few units in the game that it was even remotely effective against.
- Many of the later Formations were hilariously unbalanced and granted bonuses far beyond what could be considered reasonable.
- Similarly, many psychic powers were completely ridiculous (Invisibility being the main culprit).
- 'Balance by randomness'. "Who cares if these spells or warlord traits are on entirely different levels in terms of power? They're random so it balances out."
etc.
8th addressed some of these, but frequently either went too far or else replaced them with new ones.
Martel732 wrote: The problems with 7th was miscosted units. The problem with 8th is miscosted units. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
I disagree. Miscosted units was definitely *a* problem in 7th, but it was far from the *only* problem. You also had:
- Hugely bloated and convoluted rules (not helped by the worst layout I've ever seen in any rulebook to date).
- In addition to the core rules, there were a stupid number of additional rules (and, in some cases, units that ignored whole swathes of the rulebook).
- Absurd differences in scale and army composition. A player could easily find themselves facing an IK army that was immune to about half their army's firepower (since anything less than S6 was worthless, and even S6 could barely scratch them).
- A great deal of weapons were made useless by scenarios like the above. Small arms fire in particular became almost completely useless because there were so few units in the game that it was even remotely effective against.
- Many of the later Formations were hilariously unbalanced and granted bonuses far beyond what could be considered reasonable.
- Similarly, many psychic powers were completely ridiculous (Invisibility being the main culprit).
- 'Balance by randomness'. "Who cares if these spells or warlord traits are on entirely different levels in terms of power? They're random so it balances out."
etc.
8th addressed some of these, but frequently either went too far or else replaced them with new ones.
Many of the later Formations were hilariously unbalanced and granted bonuses far beyond what could be considered reasonable.
Balance & reason was never the aim of GW. Their agenda was, is and always will be a sales driven ruleset. I still remember the introduction of the defiler which surpassed the dreadnought in every category. It was such a good unit that not to include it was an act of stupidity on the part of a chaos player.
Nowadays defilers are old junk and the new hot stuff are the upcoming chaos knights. Though I haven´t seen double AGC artwork on any chaos knight yet which could imply by GW´s terms of business conduct that such a choice of weapons is now illegal. And this is another HUGE issue which GW does all the time: Outlawing certain weapon loadouts and screwing players over. Geez, I am lucky that I chose to remain loyal with my four IK.
Please remember the rules when posting, especially rule 1. Making broad, sweeping, insulting generalizations is not polite. Do not do it.
Thanks,
ingtaer.
I'd say you could find as many examples of balanced or bad new units as you could find overpowered ones. GW is hit or miss concerning balancing new units.
Primaris, Orkbuggies, the new CSM aside from the Lord Discordant and chaincannon all were on the weaker side of things.
Adding to the thread what I'd consider "broken": everything should cost points, Warlord traits, psychic powers, faction rules, artefacts. You won't be able to balance these if they cost nothing. Even as a casual fluff Player why would I ever take Plague Wind or stream of corruption when they're clearly worse than blades of putrefaction or miasma and even need a higher roll to pull of despite being a worse smite? Yes, probably in a fluffy list surrounding stacking mortal wounds, but it's still a self - imposed Handicap.
Martel732 wrote: Nothing says streamlined like "reroll all misses" not applying to rolls of "3" for marines if there is a to hit penalty.
Okay, yeah, I agree the way penalties interact with re-rolls is totally ridiculous and counter-intuitive.
Also, plasma guns should overheat on an unmodified 1.
.
yeah it really is stupid that something is harder hit so your gun blows up rather than your gun blows up because you overcharged it and the containment field failed.
The things that are pushing me rapidly away from playing 40K at the moment are:
1) Too many shots/dice rolls. It's absolutely asinine that an Ork can get 6-7 attacks, or that a unit that shoots a ton is allowed to shoot again in certain armies. The idea of a unit putting out 200-300 etc. attacks is....just asinine. It throws away any other consideration in the game. "Oh this guys tough" - "Doesn't matter I'm about to roll 300 dice." This is possibly the most glaring/obnoxious issue for me.
2) The ease with which auras/stratagems/spells make the above even more obnoxious. "Oh, those 300 dice...I'm re-rolling all of them, and doing double damage on 6's...and then rolling bonus dice if I do that....oh and they're buffed to hitting and wounding on 2+", etc.
The absurd level of lethality and comical level of dice rolling all but removes the idea that it's even a game. This all combines into gotcha-hammer, the worst type of gaming. "I ignore the following six rules and I have the following six buffs...so...you might as well take your models off the table".
This, combined with the archaic IGOUGO format just makes for a silly and miserable experience. You can take units and armies that don't do the above....but then you need to find an opponent who's similarly interested in artificially toning down the game.
Now, the above is fine with a lot of people - but they aren't playing a wargaming, they're competing in "a game". The same people who want to carry out a 168 hit combo in Street Fighter and you never get to hit a button etc. A lot of people enjoy the process of finding how to remove any risk/chance from the game. That's fine if that's the style of hobby you enjoy. However, that all trickles down and ruins the narrative elements of the game. It makes it increasingly hard to develop narrative or fun scenarios when someone can do X+Y+Z and obliterate your army.
I'm all about modifying a game to your enjoyment, but I don't think I care enough to bother any more with 40K. I'm to the point where any opponent (and these are my friends) say "Well I have 120 shots...and then I can shoot again"....I just take the unit off the table to end the game quicker. I can't be bothered. Unfortunate, but true.
Ok kind of off topic, but there hasn't been a Street Fighter game in a while where one person can dominate another with a single combo. There is always a chance for the defending player to do SOMETHING to stop that.
Really it is the same thing in 40k 8th edition. I have found that most armies I play against have been pretty balanced and the only egregious issues I've found comes from a few rules that were just poorly worded (Necron transports was the worst). The FAQs have fixxed a lot of the problems I personally had with the game, but even with a "low tier" army like necrons I still have fun and give folks a run for their money.
8ths biggest issue is as it stands the game could be replaced by a dice rolling simulation, key it to roll say 5000 d6’s rerolling 1’s and whoever rolls the most 6’s wins.
It would be quicker the “rules” are clearer and it’s balanced, on the whole it would probably be more fun and have the same tactical and strategic depth.
Seriously 8th’s main issue is that it is dull, tedious and just not that much fun. The thing is KillTeam is actually quite good and kinda based on the same rules. Which leads me to think 8th just does not scale up very well, but it also outside KT doesn’t scale down very well either if you have tried low point games.
This is backed up by Armageddon being its own thing for the 1st time, so GW have a dedicated skirmish game and a dedicated mass battle game. So what is the actual point of 8th what scale should it be used for or should it just be quietly dropped like 6th as a failed experiment?
Sid Meier is quoted as saying that a game is a series of interesting decisions. My core problem with 8e is that it includes fewer of those decisions, and they matter less.
In some cases this is due to specific internal balance issues, but more pressing are the instances where it's baked into the structure of the game. Important binary differences and decisions have been smoothed out into penalties or bonuses or removed altogether. The result feels more like a frictionless "white room" scenario than older editions ever did, and while it's quicker and more straightforward it's also shallow and often uninteresting, leading to a lot of the feelings described in this thread, such as "Combo-hammer", or "Bucket of Dice", where it doesn't really matter what you do so long as you stack your buffs properly onto a good death-blob and roll lots of dice for them.
The yearning for a d12 system is a symptom of this: people recognize that there's less and less to differentiate between units, and hope to revive a sense of mechanical identity by breaking down the various stats into more specific values.
Look at guns in 8e as a perfect example. In 3-5e, you couldn't split targets, so loading up a specific unit for a specific purpose really mattered. Rapid Fire weapons couldn't fire if your unit moved while outside short range, and Heavy Weapons couldn't fire if you moved full stop. Assault weapons were the only guns that could freely move-and-shoot, while template weapons varied in power massively depending on placement and target, and Pistols offered a powerful combat boost.
In these editions the Strength and AP of a weapon were of huge importance. Firstly because AP was binary: against anything short of AP3, a Marine was saving on 3+. This gave weapons a very clear set of targets and priorities. A weapon that would leave a Guardsman without a save would ping off power armour. AP3 is now AP-2, and applies a flat penalty to everything; AP5 is now AP-0, and doesn't touch anything. AP4, once "better than nothing, I guess" in a Marine-dominated meta, is now AP-1, the gold standard for a useful weapon that will double your Terminator kills compared to AP-0.
Secondly, because vehicles were closer to binary. A vehicle could be shaken or lose guns, yes, but for the most part it was dead or it wasn't, as determined by the attacker's Strength (and AP). A dozen autocannons couldn't scratch a Land Raider in a million years, while a meltagun up the jacksie was an instant death sentence for almost anything. In 8e, vehicles are monsters, and you kill them with the same stuff you'd use to kill anything with lots of Toughness and Wounds. Instant Death is a rule that also falls into this category. Not all of these things were perfect (or even good for the game), but they did draw clear sharp lines between how you used different guns.
The list goes on. Overwatch, for example, is a no-brainer defensive boost to shooting units that would have previously needed to decide between eating the charge and hoping to tie up the enemy for a countercharge, or falling back and risking destruction in the hopes of escaping to regroup. In its original incarnation, back in 2e, it was a decision to gamble on your shooting; you'd suffer a penalty, but if your opponent moved into range or out of cover (with penalties of up to -2) you could shoot on their turn and avoid those penalties. It was an interesting decision.
The reason people like Kill Team more than 40k is in large part because it includes more of these decisions, and they matter more. Do I move into cover for a powerful defensive bonus, or into the open so I'll be in short range and shoot better, or just Ready so I can shoot first? Do I fire Overwatch or try to Retreat? Do I take this gun or that gun? Do I take a Combat Specialist or a Veteran? Do I activate this model first, or that model? I'm in combat and I don't want to be; do I Fall Back, or keep him tied up and hope my pistol will do the job? I'm in combat and I want to be; do I Fall Back so my opponent doesn't leave me stranded when they Fall Back, or do I try to charge him to keep him here?
Interesting decisions, and decisions that matter. That's what 8e has lost a lot of.
RevlidRas wrote: In these editions the Strength and AP of a weapon were of huge importance. Firstly because AP was binary: against anything short of AP3, a Marine was saving on 3+. This gave weapons a very clear set of targets and priorities. A weapon that would leave a Guardsman without a save would ping off power armour. AP3 is now AP-2, and applies a flat penalty to everything; AP5 is now AP-0, and doesn't touch anything. AP4, once "better than nothing, I guess" in a Marine-dominated meta, is now AP-1, the gold standard for a useful weapon that will double your Terminator kills compared to AP-0.
Eh, there is quite a lot of rose-tinted glasses involved here.
AP4 wasn't "better than nothing" AP 4 was "nothing" against pretty much all armies and "no armor" vs all others who payed points for their 4+ armor. Terminators also had just one wound, so and AP 6-4 weapon with many shots was the best way to kill terminators, not the worst.
Secondly, because vehicles were closer to binary. A vehicle could be shaken or lose guns, yes, but for the most part it was dead or it wasn't, as determined by the attacker's Strength (and AP). A dozen autocannons couldn't scratch a Land Raider in a million years, while a meltagun up the jacksie was an instant death sentence for almost anything.
That is ist a big fat misrepresentation of how the game really worked. Autocannons were the most efficient way of destroying all vehicles except those few AV14 models through many editions, while missiles, lascannons and other similar weapons were outright useless.
In 8e, vehicles are monsters, and you kill them with the same stuff you'd use to kill anything with lots of Toughness and Wounds. Instant Death is a rule that also falls into this category. Not all of these things were perfect (or even good for the game), but they did draw clear sharp lines between how you used different guns.
Binary is a BAD thing in game design. Vehicles dying slowly and degrading is much better than half of your army exploding/being invincible turn 1 due to bad/good luck is not something to be desired.
The thing that needs to be fixed is that all vehicles should be getting degrading tables that actually hurt them equally, so you get your "weapon destroyed/stunned"-effect back. Vehicles like the hemlock which just ignore degrading should not exist.
As for instant death, there is no way to properly price an instant death weapon when it can one-shot 500 point models. A 6 damage weapon like the knight's sword is a much better solution, as it's very much instant death to any infantry model, but not to a landraider.
The list goes on. Overwatch, for example, is a no-brainer defensive boost to shooting units that would have previously needed to decide between eating the charge and hoping to tie up the enemy for a countercharge, or falling back and risking destruction in the hopes of escaping to regroup. In its original incarnation, back in 2e, it was a decision to gamble on your shooting; you'd suffer a penalty, but if your opponent moved into range or out of cover (with penalties of up to -2) you could shoot on their turn and avoid those penalties. It was an interesting decision.
I actually agree on this one, but point to my previous post. Avoiding assaults should not be too easy, as they are very hard to pull off compared to shooting. I guess you could make it a decision between overwatch, counter-charge and falling back if you make leaving combat much more punishing.
The reason people like Kill Team more than 40k is in large part because it includes more of these decisions, and they matter more. Do I move into cover for a powerful defensive bonus, or into the open so I'll be in short range and shoot better, or just Ready so I can shoot first? Do I fire Overwatch or try to Retreat? Do I take this gun or that gun? Do I take a Combat Specialist or a Veteran? Do I activate this model first, or that model? I'm in combat and I don't want to be; do I Fall Back, or keep him tied up and hope my pistol will do the job? I'm in combat and I want to be; do I Fall Back so my opponent doesn't leave me stranded when they Fall Back, or do I try to charge him to keep him here?
I really love the way KT handles shooting and wish it were implemented like that for WH40k. However, most of the other decisions exist in both games - the big issue with KT is that shooting is much less deadly, so stuff gets more "personal" forcing more actions from player than point&clicking artillery units.
Interesting decisions, and decisions that matter. That's what 8e has lost a lot of.
What army do you play? Which armies are you facing regularly? How high is your meta's competitive level?
I think these answers might have a huge impact on the amount of decision making your games require.
Jidmah wrote: Eh, there is quite a lot of rose-tinted glasses involved here.
To be clear, I'm not praising these older mechanics (at least, not universally) – I'm just pointing out the ways in which different stats and options had more weight and distinction to them than in the "sliding scale" approach of 8e.
To use an example you raised, I'm not really concerned with whether insta-exploding vehicles that are immune to most weapons is a good thing for the game. I'm more concerned with examining how much weight that system puts on weapon choice and placement, as opposed to blasting away at vehicles to whittle them down the same way you would anything else. As I noted in my own post, the Marine-heavy meta (which hasn't and will never change) and tendency toward army-wide standard Save values meant that AP4 was worthless against MEQ armies while stripping clean through Tau or Eldar – but it can't be denied that the difference between an AP4 weapon and an AP3 weapon was more stark than an AP-1 weapon vs an AP-2 weapon now.
RevlidRas wrote: Sid Meier is quoted as saying that a game is a series of interesting decisions. My core problem with 8e is that it includes fewer of those decisions, and they matter less.
Just a little correction. He said GAMEPLAY is a series of interesting decisions. There is a big difference between defining a game and defining gameplay.
RevlidRas wrote: Sid Meier is quoted as saying that a game is a series of interesting decisions. My core problem with 8e is that it includes fewer of those decisions, and they matter less.
Just a little correction. He said GAMEPLAY is a series of interesting decisions. There is a big difference between defining a game and defining gameplay.
True, but a game shapes gameplay. There are certainly games in which players create their own interesting decisions largely from the sandbox ether, discover new opportunities emergent from the existing systems, or even against the developer's intent – Minecraft is an example of the former – but a wargame like Warhammer 40,000 probably shouldn't be one of them.
(I don't actually know the full quote, and I've often heard that it's a misquote – so I just said he was quoted as saying it, which is a nice weaselly way of dodging responsibility for getting it right)
Jidmah wrote: Eh, there is quite a lot of rose-tinted glasses involved here.
To be clear, I'm not praising these older mechanics (at least, not universally) – I'm just pointing out the ways in which different stats and options had more weight and distinction to them than in the "sliding scale" approach of 8e.
I can agree on that, but I don't think that the old mechanics did it better, quite the opposite. Right now the weapons I use to kill a predator (SAG, KMK) vary vastly from those I need to kill a assault terminator squad (mortal wounds) to those I need to kill a unit of intercessors (lootas, flash gits) to those I need to kill a unit of scouts (shootas). Of course, lootas might kill a terminator or two and a SAG will definitely kill some scouts, but neither is effective at it.
Some weapons are too all-round efficient and need to be fixed, but I don't think that the system is the problem. Then again, I really love apoc's idea of providing different "strengths" for shooting at armored targets.
To use an example you raised, I'm not really concerned with whether insta-exploding vehicles that are immune to most weapons is a good thing for the game. I'm more concerned with examining how much weight that system puts on weapon choice and placement, as opposed to blasting away at vehicles to whittle them down the same way you would anything else. As I noted in my own post, the Marine-heavy meta (which hasn't and will never change) and tendency toward army-wide standard Save values meant that AP4 was worthless against MEQ armies while stripping clean through Tau or Eldar – but it can't be denied that the difference between an AP4 weapon and an AP3 weapon was more stark than an AP-1 weapon vs an AP-2 weapon now.
But isn't that the only difference in the whole system?
AP 4+ were the same. AP 1-3 were the same. You basically had AP "yes" and AP "no" with the definition varying depending on the army you were facing. If you look at it closely the "initiative system" in 8th has more variation with "fight in order", "fight first" and "fight before first".
The problem is more that AP-1 is priced to aggressively on high strength, high RoF weapons, making them all-rounders. In general, the difference between AP-1 and AP-2 is quite big when shooting targets with good saves, with the higher values getting slightly weaker due to invulnerable saves. A squad of loots is unlikely to kill a squad of terminators in cover, no matter what.
RevlidRas wrote: Sid Meier is quoted as saying that a game is a series of interesting decisions. My core problem with 8e is that it includes fewer of those decisions, and they matter less.
Just a little correction. He said GAMEPLAY is a series of interesting decisions. There is a big difference between defining a game and defining gameplay.
True, but a game shapes gameplay. There are certainly games in which players create their own interesting decisions largely from the sandbox ether, discover new opportunities emergent from the existing systems, or even against the developer's intent – Minecraft is an example of the former – but a wargame like Warhammer 40,000 probably shouldn't be one of them.
(I don't actually know the full quote, and I've often heard that it's a misquote – so I just said he was quoted as saying it, which is a nice weaselly way of dodging responsibility for getting it right)
Incorrect. A Game is generally something that has a win condition and rules governing it's structure and game play no matter how vague those things might be. Tag is a game where you chase a person to make the other one "It" Not being it is a win condition. Everything else is left vague. The emergent gameplay of hiding and running and dodging or whatever is just some game play.
Minecraft is only really a game in survival mode where your decisions have potential consequences. Otherwise it is a fun sandbox (things that are not games can also be fun) to play in but that does not make it a game (Some kids LOVE shoots and ladders but shoots and ladders has no choices to make so it has no game play and is thus not really a game). 40k has all of it's most interesting decisions in the list building. Which leaves it's actual game play shallow and empty. Screening is a form of emergent game play because it's a thing that is never explicitly stated as a thing to do but it's so useful that it inherently happens. Developers intent is mostly meaningless (the author is dead). Once the rules have been released the players who follow them will do what they want within the structure of the game. A bad design will see the players run rampant in unintended ways that are a detriment to the game play experience. A good design will either leave much open intentionally to the benefit of the gameplay experience or it won't allow the players to make those decisions at all.
Again, back to the topic, 40k has next to no meaningful choices. 90% of the time the decision of who to shoot that gun at is crystal clear and to do otherwise just hurts yourself. Which doesn't make it an interesting choice it makes it a dull dumb one. VERY rarely will you reach a point in the middle of the game where your decisions are not clear and you have to make an actual decision with good and bad in both directions and actual gameplay emerges. Too bad the other 9/10ths of the time your just going through the motions.
First I would say that the game is in s pretty decent state when the majority of people don't mention specific factions and/or units as the most broken parts of 40k!
What I think is the most broken part would be CP created by one codex being used on other codexes stratagems. So CP farms.
The other thing the IGOUGO system. I would like to see casualties being removed after both players had had their turn.
The last thing is all "Vs specific army" rules, stratagems etc. being included in matched play.
Formal definitions around this sort of thing tends to be too vague to be valuable.
Having fun is why you play. It's not a win condition for the rules. The golden rule isn't an actual rule. Formal definitions are very valuable if you actually care about the study of games and game design. What isn't valuable is pedantic nonsense that has no point or purpose.
Wibe wrote:First I would say that the game is in s pretty decent state when the majority of people don't mention specific factions and/or units as the most broken parts of 40k!
What I think is the most broken part would be CP created by one codex being used on other codexes stratagems. So CP farms.
The other thing the IGOUGO system. I would like to see casualties being removed after both players had had their turn.
The last thing is all "Vs specific army" rules, stratagems etc. being included in matched play.
I like that the cards we saw for apoc so far that have effects against specific armies have a secondary use that is universal. Good call apoc design team.
To me, what's broken about 40k are some really questionable design choices in terms of unit and army balance.
Consider psychic powers - there is literally no reason to not take psykers because they effectively give you access to another phase to do stuff.
Which means that if you don't have psykers you are pretty much screwed, as that means your opponent basically gets a free phase where all you can do is sit and get smote.
What's even worse is that the psyker-less armies also have terrible psyker defense, because GW can't into army design.
And then there's soup - some armies can take allies or form <faction> combinations that are quite effective. Others, such as necrons, can't do that as well.
There's also offensive output - some armies can take units that have a huge RoF or damage output for relatively cheap. Other armies (again, such as necrons) have to pay out the nose for a weaker equivalent that can't churn out nearly that many dice.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: To me, what's broken about 40k are some really questionable design choices in terms of unit and army balance.
Consider psychic powers - there is literally no reason to not take psykers because they effectively give you access to another phase to do stuff.
Which means that if you don't have psykers you are pretty much screwed, as that means your opponent basically gets a free phase where all you can do is sit and get smoted.
What's even worse is that the psyker-less armies also have terrible psyker defense, because GW can't into army design.
And then there's soup - some armies can take allies or form <faction> combinations that are quite effective. Others, such as necrons, can't do that as well.
Psyker defense yes and no.
Necrons should absolutely be very capable of annoying psykers.
Tau not so much.
But considering allies threw the design concept of inbuilt weaknesses out the window i would agree that GW can't into army design. Well actually GW can't into attempt of balance, since the designs, allright i guess.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: To me, what's broken about 40k are some really questionable design choices in terms of unit and army balance.
Consider psychic powers - there is literally no reason to not take psykers because they effectively give you access to another phase to do stuff.
Which means that if you don't have psykers you are pretty much screwed, as that means your opponent basically gets a free phase where all you can do is sit and get smoted.
What's even worse is that the psyker-less armies also have terrible psyker defense, because GW can't into army design.
And then there's soup - some armies can take allies or form <faction> combinations that are quite effective. Others, such as necrons, can't do that as well.
Psyker defense yes and no.
Necrons should absolutely be very capable of annoying psykers.
Tau not so much.
But considering allies threw the design concept of inbuilt weaknesses out the window i would agree that GW can't into army design. Well actually GW can't into attempt of balance, since the designs, allright i guess.
Tau should at least have a psyker auxiliary unit though. There's bound to be a psyker Gue'Vesa somewhere in their empire. And there's always the Nicassar, though apparently they aren't suitable for ground combat.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: To me, what's broken about 40k are some really questionable design choices in terms of unit and army balance.
Consider psychic powers - there is literally no reason to not take psykers because they effectively give you access to another phase to do stuff.
Which means that if you don't have psykers you are pretty much screwed, as that means your opponent basically gets a free phase where all you can do is sit and get smoted.
What's even worse is that the psyker-less armies also have terrible psyker defense, because GW can't into army design.
And then there's soup - some armies can take allies or form <faction> combinations that are quite effective. Others, such as necrons, can't do that as well.
Psyker defense yes and no.
Necrons should absolutely be very capable of annoying psykers.
Tau not so much.
But considering allies threw the design concept of inbuilt weaknesses out the window i would agree that GW can't into army design. Well actually GW can't into attempt of balance, since the designs, allright i guess.
Tau should at least have a psyker auxiliary unit though. There's bound to be a psyker Gue'Vesa somewhere in their empire. And there's always the Nicassar, though apparently they aren't suitable for ground combat.
So long GW tries to maintain a hold on the inbuilt weakness design so long that will not happen.
And frankly i don't mind Tau beeing not capable at psy or defense of it. What bothers me more is that Psy has A such a vast array of Good to outright Terrible spells and B rather non dangerous even if you fail.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: To me, what's broken about 40k are some really questionable design choices in terms of unit and army balance.
Consider psychic powers - there is literally no reason to not take psykers because they effectively give you access to another phase to do stuff.
Which means that if you don't have psykers you are pretty much screwed, as that means your opponent basically gets a free phase where all you can do is sit and get smoted.
What's even worse is that the psyker-less armies also have terrible psyker defense, because GW can't into army design.
And then there's soup - some armies can take allies or form <faction> combinations that are quite effective. Others, such as necrons, can't do that as well.
Psyker defense yes and no.
Necrons should absolutely be very capable of annoying psykers.
Tau not so much.
But considering allies threw the design concept of inbuilt weaknesses out the window i would agree that GW can't into army design. Well actually GW can't into attempt of balance, since the designs, allright i guess.
Tau should at least have a psyker auxiliary unit though. There's bound to be a psyker Gue'Vesa somewhere in their empire. And there's always the Nicassar, though apparently they aren't suitable for ground combat.
Kroot Shaman! But then GW would actually have to give models to one of the main pillars of Tau lore! Nah, we need more big suits instead, that fits the Tau mobile and flexible combat doctrine. Big artillery suits...
CthuluIsSpy wrote: To me, what's broken about 40k are some really questionable design choices in terms of unit and army balance.
Consider psychic powers - there is literally no reason to not take psykers because they effectively give you access to another phase to do stuff.
Which means that if you don't have psykers you are pretty much screwed, as that means your opponent basically gets a free phase where all you can do is sit and get smoted.
What's even worse is that the psyker-less armies also have terrible psyker defense, because GW can't into army design.
And then there's soup - some armies can take allies or form <faction> combinations that are quite effective. Others, such as necrons, can't do that as well.
Psyker defense yes and no. Necrons should absolutely be very capable of annoying psykers. Tau not so much.
But considering allies threw the design concept of inbuilt weaknesses out the window i would agree that GW can't into army design. Well actually GW can't into attempt of balance, since the designs, allright i guess.
Tau should at least have a psyker auxiliary unit though. There's bound to be a psyker Gue'Vesa somewhere in their empire. And there's always the Nicassar, though apparently they aren't suitable for ground combat.
I honestly don't see why the Nicassar cannot be brought in (other than GW wanting to go all Battlesuits all the time with Tau...). With some of the stuff they've been pumping out for basic terrain they have no excuse not to do one in some kind of floating chamber. Hell, if they wanted to stick with the whole Battlesuit thing they still could as the Nicassar don't even have eyes. A Battlesuit looking like something like the Corollary warjack from PP would fit right in with Tau as a psyker unit IMO.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: To me, what's broken about 40k are some really questionable design choices in terms of unit and army balance.
Consider psychic powers - there is literally no reason to not take psykers because they effectively give you access to another phase to do stuff.
Which means that if you don't have psykers you are pretty much screwed, as that means your opponent basically gets a free phase where all you can do is sit and get smoted.
What's even worse is that the psyker-less armies also have terrible psyker defense, because GW can't into army design.
And then there's soup - some armies can take allies or form <faction> combinations that are quite effective. Others, such as necrons, can't do that as well.
Psyker defense yes and no.
Necrons should absolutely be very capable of annoying psykers.
Tau not so much.
But considering allies threw the design concept of inbuilt weaknesses out the window i would agree that GW can't into army design. Well actually GW can't into attempt of balance, since the designs, allright i guess.
Tau should at least have a psyker auxiliary unit though. There's bound to be a psyker Gue'Vesa somewhere in their empire. And there's always the Nicassar, though apparently they aren't suitable for ground combat.
Kroot Shaman! But then GW would actually have to give models to one of the main pillars of Tau lore! Nah, we need more big suits instead, that fits the Tau mobile and flexible combat doctrine. Big artillery suits...
Cause why would Tau have Aux? That'd be silly.
Na fam, that would mean that Tau actually should be able to use their auxilia as a whole and not just sit around diddle fiddle blow apart anything without makeing use of the other phases.......
Sir Heckington wrote: It shouldn't even be a strong psyker unit. Pskyers can still be the Tau weakness without them being completely unable to participate in the phase.
any psyker in 40 k knows smite.
Smite spam still works.
Sir Heckington wrote: It shouldn't even be a strong psyker unit. Pskyers can still be the Tau weakness without them being completely unable to participate in the phase.
any psyker in 40 k knows smite.
Smite spam still works.
See the issue?
...So? Then smite needs nerfed. The Tau would absolutely utilize Gue'vesa Pyskers, Kroot Shaman and the Nisscar.
Sir Heckington wrote: It shouldn't even be a strong psyker unit. Pskyers can still be the Tau weakness without them being completely unable to participate in the phase.
any psyker in 40 k knows smite.
Smite spam still works.
Sir Heckington wrote: It shouldn't even be a strong psyker unit. Pskyers can still be the Tau weakness without them being completely unable to participate in the phase.
any psyker in 40 k knows smite.
Smite spam still works.
See the issue?
Any Psyker given rules so far.
They don't have Smite. Problem solved.
Then they become support psykers only.
Somehow that would make the situation worse imo. Or you could take a gander over at the CSM Spells mostly support stuff.
I for one don't want another army with such capabilities. Especially if the baseline of it works better.
Sir Heckington wrote: It shouldn't even be a strong psyker unit. Pskyers can still be the Tau weakness without them being completely unable to participate in the phase.
any psyker in 40 k knows smite.
Smite spam still works.
See the issue?
Any Psyker given rules so far.
They don't have Smite. Problem solved.
Then they become support psykers only.
Somehow that would make the situation worse imo. Or you could take a gander over at the CSM Spells mostly support stuff.
I for one don't want another army with such capabilities. Especially if the baseline of it works better.
Or, at the very least, give Tau some way to deny. 0 Ways to participate in a phase just isn't good game design.
Sir Heckington wrote: It shouldn't even be a strong psyker unit. Pskyers can still be the Tau weakness without them being completely unable to participate in the phase.
any psyker in 40 k knows smite.
Smite spam still works.
See the issue?
Any Psyker given rules so far.
They don't have Smite. Problem solved.
Then they become support psykers only.
Somehow that would make the situation worse imo. Or you could take a gander over at the CSM Spells mostly support stuff.
I for one don't want another army with such capabilities. Especially if the baseline of it works better.
Or, at the very least, give Tau some way to deny. 0 Ways to participate in a phase just isn't good game design.
Look GW fails to make both Tau Doctrines work in Army design of the Tau.
And often the army allready does ignore half the combat.
To say that GW fundamentally has no idea how to make the skew points of army design work is an understatement.
Sir Heckington wrote: It shouldn't even be a strong psyker unit. Pskyers can still be the Tau weakness without them being completely unable to participate in the phase.
any psyker in 40 k knows smite.
Smite spam still works.
See the issue?
Any Psyker given rules so far.
They don't have Smite. Problem solved.
Then they become support psykers only.
Somehow that would make the situation worse imo. Or you could take a gander over at the CSM Spells mostly support stuff.
I for one don't want another army with such capabilities. Especially if the baseline of it works better.
So?
If that is their role then so be it. GW did just fine in WHFB with Dwarfs and TK having no or unorthodox wizards and still being able to participate in the magic phase.
This is like the USR discussions all over again, just because GW implements it poorly (or theoretically will given past evidence) does not make it a bad idea.
I think one of the biggest issues is that 40k is basically a game of numbers, with very little actual strategy involved (as already stated the vast majority of "strategy" comes from list building and deciding which combos to apply; it's essentially a CCG with expensive models and not a wargame anymore; it's a wargame in name only by virtue of you using models to simulate combat and has about as much in common with a wargame now as a go-kart has with a car). As someone said earlier, you have units that are meant to be very tough, and then others that roll 100+ dice so the fact your 5-man squad is super tough doesn't matter. Quantity largely applies over quality, which is part of why your "elite" armies are usually in a very bad place.
The gameplay in 40k isn't engaging or tactically rewarding, it basically just a matter of adding buffs to what you want to do, and roll a fethton of dice to overwhelm your opponent. While the older editions had more tactical decisions, 40k's decisions now are largely just where to apply firepower and what to enhance it with. I really think it's showing the major limitations of the d6 system in the style 40k wants to do it (buckets of dice). Warmahordes got away with it because you had a 2d6 system and it was per-model, not per unit, so you were only ever rolling 2d6 and comparing it rather than "These ten guys shoot, each weapon gets 2 shots so that's 20 dice, re-rolling 1s because of X" sort of rolling. Now granted 40k couldn't do a 2d6/model system since it's way too large, but I really do think that if Apoc shows that d12 works, a future version might change it. It's about time to move away from the d6 system if 40k wants to keep the modifiers and re-rolls stuff, they completely skew the math at a d6 level.
flandarz wrote: Are Tau not strong enough already without giving them another mechanic? Cuz, last I checked, they ain't exactly in a bad place this edition.
Good, and fun to play, are two different things. Tau are good, but they are not fun nor interactive to play.
My problems with Tau aren't from a 'being good' view point. I view the army as unfulfilling to play as, and against. Our main playstyle involves castling around units that create unrealistic armies and unfun gameplay. This is part of a core issue with 8th, but we're set to sit in one place and out shoot the enemy, and do nothing else. This is not fun game play the way I see it.
Not only do we have to play a castling playstyle, caused by Shield Drones, Master of War and For the Greater Good, we miss out on two of the main phases of the game. This is bad game design, other armies can just have a field day with us and we have to have special rules to stop this. In a hyper competitive environment yes you can deal with this, but that's not how balance works and we should have options to deal with these things in more conventional and interesting ways than shoot it till it dies. (Drones that can deny psykers, skirmisher units like Kroot, ect. ect.)
We also play much like guard, hyper gunlines and hording up FWs. We play with a strict non mobile playstyle (Competitively) that feels like it would fit a guard regiment more than anything.
Which leads me into my final and largest compliant about Tau, the lack of Auxillery and their representation. They are one of the largest defining features of the T'au Empire, and they get almost 0 representation. What we do have are either resin/metal or have terrible rules, and we also are missing much of the fleshing out that the Aux deserve.
I won't deny that Tau have some of the most flexibility and best rules in the game, competitive wise. However to me that does not mean our rules are fun or interesting. Yes we have it better than other armies, but that does not mean we shouldn't be fixed, that's not how game design works. Certain armies don't need more treatment because they are worse in ways, every army needs to be taken into account for its own needs.
Here's a short thing I wrote a while about on my current opinions about Tau.
If I can't do anything to shut down markerlights why should Tau be able to shut down my psykers?
Having no psychic powers is not that bad for Tau, I remember last Edition when Tau could literally pull of the effects of psychic powers just without rolling for them. It's not as bad now, but it's also not a problem for Tau as they're one of the most durable armies in the game already. You have drones to catch smite (and who uses smite anyway? With my Daemons, DG and CSM there's hardly a situation where I'd use smite...)
Sgt. Cortez wrote: If I can't do anything to shut down markerlights why should Tau be able to shut down my psykers?
Having no psychic powers is not that bad for Tau, I remember last Edition when Tau could literally pull of the effects of psychic powers just without rolling for them. It's not as bad now, but it's also not a problem for Tau as they're one of the most durable armies in the game already. You have drones to catch smite (and who uses smite anyway? With my Daemons, DG and CSM there's hardly a situation where I'd use smite...)
Bad analogy. Markerlights is closer to and they shall know no fear or am order or whatever other army wide rules they get. Marker lights are not equivalent to psykic powers.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: If I can't do anything to shut down markerlights why should Tau be able to shut down my psykers?
Having no psychic powers is not that bad for Tau, I remember last Edition when Tau could literally pull of the effects of psychic powers just without rolling for them. It's not as bad now, but it's also not a problem for Tau as they're one of the most durable armies in the game already. You have drones to catch smite (and who uses smite anyway? With my Daemons, DG and CSM there's hardly a situation where I'd use smite...)
Bad analogy. Markerlights is closer to and they shall know no fear or am order or whatever other army wide rules they get. Marker lights are not equivalent to psykic powers.
Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
Markerlights really don't seem comparable to psychic powers.
If you want an example of 'Psychic powers that aren't actually Psychic powers', I'd cite C'tan Powers.
That would be closer.
However, there are some noticeable differences -
- They are not done in the psychic phase
- They tend to be harder to pull off than proper psychic powers, as C'tan get no casting bonuses unless its a Vault.
- No buffs or debuffs, which limits C'tan power utility by a considerable margin.
- C'tan still can't deny. Which is weird, because you'd think they'd be able to use their reality warping trick to counter the warp's reality warping trick. Like, a C'tan sees a psyker trying to break the laws of physics and he's like "Stop psyker scum, you have violated the law!" and presses the Undo button. Now, you could make the argument that you can't deny C'tan powers, which is fair, but the problem is though that you are paying a lot more for a C'tan than a psyker for powers that aren't even that amazing in turns of effectiveness who can't even counter powers like its cheaper warp based counter-part could.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
- They tend to be harder to pull off than proper psychic powers, as C'tan get no casting bonuses unless its a Vault.
- No buffs or debuffs, which limits C'tan power utility by a considerable margin.
- C'tan still can't deny. Which is weird, because you'd think they'd be able to use their reality warping trick to counter the warp's reality warping trick. Like, a C'tan sees a psyker trying to break the laws of physics and he's like "Stop psyker scum, you have violated the law!" and presses the Undo button. Now, you could make the argument that you can't deny C'tan powers, which is fair, but the problem is though that you are paying a lot more for a C'tan than a psyker for powers that aren't even that amazing in turns of effectiveness who can't even counter powers like its cheaper warp based counter-part could.
Oh, I'm not trying to say that C'tan powers are especially good or powerful, just that they seem much closer to psychic powers in general design than Markerlights.
And yeah, they're pretty one-note. Basically just 6 different ways to cause Mortal Wounds.
I would actually replace seismic assault with a utility power, and merge Cosmic Fire with Sky of Falling Stars (because they are pretty much the same ability) to have another utility power. Not sure what to give them, but maybe move Entropic Strike over to act as a unit buff and introduce something that gives an invul save.
And before anyone goes "but free unit wide Entropic Strikes would be OP", Null Zone and that Tzeentch equivalent says hello. And those are better than Entropic Strike because you don't have to be in CC to benefit from it, so it balances out.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
So the don't give additional BS? Oh wait they do which is literally one of the better powers....
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
So the don't give additional BS? Oh wait they do which is literally one of the better powers....
Ah right. Tyranid primes give a +1 to hit for warriors. I guess the unit tyranid prime is a psychic power.
We all know whats important about psychic powers is if they mimic the effect of any other ability in the game.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
So the don't give additional BS? Oh wait they do which is literally one of the better powers....
Ah right. Tyranid primes give a +1 to hit for warriors. I guess the unit tyranid prime is a psychic power.
We all know whats important about psychic powers is if they mimic the effect of any other ability in the game.
Also 5 markerlights is very rarely worth it, so most of the time it might not even exist.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
So the don't give additional BS? Oh wait they do which is literally one of the better powers....
Ah right. Tyranid primes give a +1 to hit for warriors. I guess the unit tyranid prime is a psychic power.
We all know whats important about psychic powers is if they mimic the effect of any other ability in the game.
Oh noes, a strawman.
Congratz.
It isn't like one is an aura, the other an targeted effect gated behind a check....
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also 5 markerlights is very rarely worth it, so most of the time it might not even exist.
Except for about 80% of other armies that would very well be worth an effect pursuing, wouldn't it be?
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
So the don't give additional BS? Oh wait they do which is literally one of the better powers....
Ah right. Tyranid primes give a +1 to hit for warriors. I guess the unit tyranid prime is a psychic power.
We all know whats important about psychic powers is if they mimic the effect of any other ability in the game.
Oh noes, a strawman.
Congratz.
It isn't like one is an aura, the other an targeted effect gated behind a check....
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also 5 markerlights is very rarely worth it, so most of the time it might not even exist.
Except for about 80% of other armies that would very well be worth an effect pursuing, wouldn't it be?
Not with the checks required to get it. The cost is too high.
Not Online!!! wrote: Nope again, the oppurtunity cost is too high.
Not the cost itself.
No? It's just not worth the cost to get 5 markerlights on a single target, when you can get 1 markerlight on multiple targets.
Either way, this is pointless. Markerlights are and never will be like psychic powers, Tau need something in the psychic phase. Not having anything in a phase is bad game design, and currently the Tau lack anything in practically 2 phases of what amounts to a 4 phase game. (Move, Psychic, Shoot and Assault). And movement and shooting are the most uninteresting things in 8ed ever.
Not Online!!! wrote: Nope again, the oppurtunity cost is too high.
Not the cost itself.
No? It's just not worth the cost to get 5 markerlights on a single target, when you can get 1 markerlight on multiple targets.
Either way, this is pointless. Markerlights are and never will be like psychic powers, Tau need something in the psychic phase. Not having anything in a phase is bad game design, and currently the Tau lack anything in practically 2 phases of what amounts to a 4 phase game. (Move, Psychic, Shoot and Assault). And movement and shooting are the most uninteresting things in 8ed ever.
That i agree on.
Vice versa though Chaos Daemons suffer from the no shooting issue ironically.
And due to shooting beeing the damage phase most often it kinda shows how absurd gw balances with gameconcepts and skew armies on that range and their "supposed" faction identity, which determines where they are on that range.
Edit: supposed due to the fact that more then half the factions just can ally to overcome their inherent weaknesses.
Which makes as allready pointed out the existence of these mute.
Not Online!!! wrote: Nope again, the oppurtunity cost is too high.
Not the cost itself.
No? It's just not worth the cost to get 5 markerlights on a single target, when you can get 1 markerlight on multiple targets.
Either way, this is pointless. Markerlights are and never will be like psychic powers, Tau need something in the psychic phase. Not having anything in a phase is bad game design, and currently the Tau lack anything in practically 2 phases of what amounts to a 4 phase game. (Move, Psychic, Shoot and Assault). And movement and shooting are the most uninteresting things in 8ed ever.
That i agree on.
Vice versa though Chaos Daemons suffer from the no shooting issue ironically.
And due to shooting beeing the damage phase most often it kinda shows how absurd gw balances with gameconcepts and skew armies on that range and their "supposed" faction identity, which determines where they are on that range.
Edit: supposed due to the fact that more then half the factions just can ally to overcome their inherent weaknesses.
Which makes as allready pointed out the existence of these mute.
Unless you're one of the factions that has no allies.
I personally Find it hilarious. In a bad way. Mostly because it throws all the inherent weakness /strength balancing out the window.
Because why even bother to do it then in the first place.
It also leads to the chronic allies abuse for specific tasks.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
By that logic doom and shriveling pox aren't psychic powers either.
The vast majority of psychic powers don't teleport anything, don't cause AOEs or add auras. The most common effects are mortal wounds to a target, buffs to friendly units and debuffs to enemy units. Markerlights are buffs or debuffs, depending on how you look at them, very similar to doom or shriveling pox. Their army-wide rule is "For the Greater Good", not markerlights.
Tau also get to invoke the elements, master of war, manta strike or infiltrate across a large percentage of their army plus all the utility their various drones bring.
If anything, you could argue that Tau need more ways to deal MW (do they? I have no clue), but they are almost definitely not lacking the utility of psychic powers since they have lots of abilities that do the same things as psychic powers, including markerlights.
Not Online!!! wrote: Nope again, the oppurtunity cost is too high.
Not the cost itself.
No? It's just not worth the cost to get 5 markerlights on a single target, when you can get 1 markerlight on multiple targets.
Either way, this is pointless. Markerlights are and never will be like psychic powers, Tau need something in the psychic phase. Not having anything in a phase is bad game design, and currently the Tau lack anything in practically 2 phases of what amounts to a 4 phase game. (Move, Psychic, Shoot and Assault). And movement and shooting are the most uninteresting things in 8ed ever.
So if you invoke the elements and declare master of war in the psychic phase, that would make it good game design?
flandarz wrote: Are Tau not strong enough already without giving them another mechanic? Cuz, last I checked, they ain't exactly in a bad place this edition.
Good, and fun to play, are two different things. Tau are good, but they are not fun nor interactive to play.
As a Tau player, I would gladly accept a powering down of the stronger units if it meant that we got access to the fight and psychic phase. Honestly, every army should have access to every phase. I was drawn into 40k by the idea of all the armies having strict gameplay identities, The shooting guys, the fighting guys, and so forth. However, after two years of playing now, I think 40k could probably do with some homogenization from a gameplay perspective. The fluff and art style makes the armies unique. The rules can still reflect uniqueness without needing to go as extreme as they are now.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I made that last post without realizing there was an entire extra page. So to add, if Markerlights are supposed to be the Tau version of psyker powers like you guys suggest. That's fine, but put it in the psyker phase and don't make it cost that entire unit's shooting action to do it.
Another way to balance that would be to remove the markerlight stacking, and return to the targeted buff version of markerlights. Make them legit psyker powers, choose an effect, choose a unit, roll to see if it works.
They just need something to do during the opponent's psychic phase. Having to wait through your opponent's turn without being allowed to do anything isn't good design.
Its the same problem with the movement phase, really, especially when hordes are involved. A sort of Overwatch / suppression fire mechanic that activates when an enemy unit moves within a certain distance and at a certain angle of a unit in overwatch "stance" might remove a bit of that tedium.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: They just need something to do during the opponent's psychic phase. Having to wait through your opponent's turn without being allowed to do anything isn't good design.
Its the same problem with the movement phase, really, especially when hordes are involved. A sort of Overwatch / suppression fire mechanic that activates when an enemy unit moves within a certain distance and at a certain angle of a unit in overwatch "stance" might remove a bit of that tedium.
Lance845 wrote: Is it not? Psykers are not unique to any faction that gets them. Astra militarum orders are unique to am just like markerlights are unique to tau. Mob rules and waaghs for orks. Synapse and shadow in the warp for nids reanimation protocols for necrons and subterrainian assault for gsc.
You can't point at markerlights and say "see! The tau have psykers!"
They have quite a few rules that do the same job as psykers, and markerlights are one of them. Literally the only thing they are missing out on is a deny - which is not worth that much anyways.
There's two really great denial units to my knowledge, one is the rogue psyker coven that can throw 3 dice to deny and the other is the MoP that can deny 2 times and force mortals on pashs
I would say they do things far closer to am orders. Especially because they dont cause multitudes of mortal wounds. Again, markerlights are not psychic powers. They dont teleport blobs of dudes. They dont cause mw. They dont allow you to do aoes or add auras or cause leadership penalties. Markerlights are not psychic powers. Assuming ml are like psychic powers is either a sign of a lack of understanding of most armies actual power lists or a lack of understanding of markerlights.
By that logic doom and shriveling pox aren't psychic powers either.
The vast majority of psychic powers don't teleport anything, don't cause AOEs or add auras. The most common effects are mortal wounds to a target, buffs to friendly units and debuffs to enemy units. Markerlights are buffs or debuffs, depending on how you look at them, very similar to doom or shriveling pox. Their army-wide rule is "For the Greater Good", not markerlights.
Tau also get to invoke the elements, master of war, manta strike or infiltrate across a large percentage of their army plus all the utility their various drones bring.
If anything, you could argue that Tau need more ways to deal MW (do they? I have no clue), but they are almost definitely not lacking the utility of psychic powers since they have lots of abilities that do the same things as psychic powers, including markerlights.
No. By that logic it does not work that way.
What I was saying is that the effect of the ability does not make it a psychic power. Being a psychic power makes it a psychic power. Tau do not have psychic powers. Some tau units have their own unique special abilities. Marker lights is their army wide special ability. If you go to the first page of the index/rules for the codex when they explain the SEPT/HIVE FLEET/etc... keyword. On that page they explain army wide rules. For Nids it's synapse and sitw. For tau its markerlights. For AM it's orders.
The only argument I am making is that it is a bad analogy for someone to say "I cannot stop tau markerlights why should they be able to stop my psychic powers?" Answer, because ML are not psychic powers.
My Daemons don't have anything to do in the shooting phase aside from sneezing once. The shooting Phase is widely considered the most important phase on dakka. So should I advocate for shooty Nurgle and Slaanesh Daemons now? Nope. Not every army has to do everything. As noted Tau have different ways to do what psychic powers do for other people while CSM now even have Psychic powers AND psychic powers, but different (apostle). Daemons overcome their lack of shooting with deep strike, speed or Toughness, Tau have their own ways to overcome their lack of psychic powers. Maybe Tau players need to get used to just watch for a phase, just like all their opponents for the 30Mins that a usual Tau shooting Phase lasts as long as the Game overall doesn't have more alternations or reactions we'll have to live with that I guess.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: My Daemons don't have anything to do in the shooting phase aside from sneezing once. The shooting Phase is widely considered the most important phase on dakka. So should I advocate for shooty Nurgle and Slaanesh Daemons now? Nope. Not every army has to do everything. As noted Tau have different ways to do what psychic powers do for other people while CSM now even have Psychic powers AND psychic powers, but different (apostle). Daemons overcome their lack of shooting with deep strike, speed or Toughness, Tau have their own ways to overcome their lack of psychic powers. Maybe Tau players need to get used to just watch for a phase, just like all their opponents for the 30Mins that a usual Tau shooting Phase lasts as long as the Game overall doesn't have more alternations or reactions we'll have to live with that I guess.
You still get saves during your opponent's shooting phase, don't you? That's doing something. I'm not talking about useless phases during your turn. That's not a problem, you can just skip it. It still kind of sucks, but its nothing too irritating in practice.
I'm talking about having to watch your opponent play through his phases with no interactivity. That's just boring design.
Ever played against an Ork or Tyranid player with something like 150 models that he has to move, and you have to just wait for something like 10 minutes before you get to do something? I'm talking about stuff like that. And it sucks.
Now imagine the same playing doing his movement phase, and then going onto his psychic phase when you have nothing to deny his powers. That's even more time passing before you can play the game. Bad design is bad.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: They just need something to do during the opponent's psychic phase. Having to wait through your opponent's turn without being allowed to do anything isn't good design.
Its the same problem with the movement phase, really, especially when hordes are involved. A sort of Overwatch / suppression fire mechanic that activates when an enemy unit moves within a certain distance and at a certain angle of a unit in overwatch "stance" might remove a bit of that tedium.
True Overwatch back in 40K? Highly unlikely.
Probably, but at least you get to do something instead of waiting for interactivity. Normally I would be against alternative activations as that's not the "40k way", but if GW is going to insist on designing the game in such a way where you have to wait a while before being allowed to play the game, then that's probably the way to go.
Even looking at 
However due to 
And this is another HUGE issue which 
