I saw this a few days ago, but felt it was worth opeining a can of worms on what GW's "intent" for the rules are.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
Thats been their stance for 30 odd years. I don't think most people who play competitively really care what the gw design studio intent is. The reality is the rules ARE used to crush each other into paste.
auticus wrote: Thats been their stance for 30 odd years. I don't think most people who play competitively really care what the gw design studio intent is. The reality is the rules ARE used to crush each other into paste.
While true, it's still nice to hear it spoken aloud with examples of how you can use the rules to do just that.
Their intent is dumb because evidence shows that what people actually do the majority of the time is try to follow a stricter guideline around a more balanced match up.
Yes, narrative exists and whatever. But people still incorporate rule of 3 into many matches along with psychic focus and other matched play rules. Their intentions dont align with customer wants. People dont want do it yourself rules. They want a good baseline that work. Anyone who wants to break away from that baseline doesnt need gws permission or support to do that.
This video aligns with what I've been experiencing lately. After getting tired of competitive play, I switched mentalities and started thinking of the ruleset as a base with which to play out fun lore-centric scenarios on the tabletop. It wasn't hard to convince my friends to start playing this way. Suddenly, all of those models collecting dust that we've longed to run for months or years now have a purpose! All of those "useless" datasheets suddenly have a ton of value! And since we've all been focusing so hard on competitive strength for the past few years, it's been relatively easy to put our heads together and set up fairly "balanced" lists and matchups before our narrative game session starts.
I'm looking forward to playing more games in this style. It's opened up a whole new dimension of play among my group.
Lance845 wrote: Their intent is dumb because evidence shows that what people actually do the majority of the time is try to follow a stricter guideline around a more balanced match up.
Yes, narrative exists and whatever. But people still incorporate rule of 3 into many matches along with psychic focus and other matched play rules. Their intentions dont align with customer wants. People dont want do it yourself rules. They want a good baseline that work. Anyone who wants to break away from that baseline doesnt need gws permission or support to do that.
Theie intent is no more dumb their our assumptions of what that intent is or should be.
More over matched play looks like it's not supposed to bleed over into those casual games as much.
GW charges anywhere from about $40 to several hundred dollars for rules per person. While it's fine to modify the games you play to your hearts' contents, with a good group, I expect that for the money I pay to get a tight, competitive game. I shouldn't NEED a strong social contract to play a fun game of 40k. Obviously I'd like my opponents to be cool people, but the baseline should be pretty damn strong for the money I pay.
Lance845 wrote: Their intent is dumb because evidence shows that what people actually do the majority of the time is try to follow a stricter guideline around a more balanced match up.
Yes, narrative exists and whatever. But people still incorporate rule of 3 into many matches along with psychic focus and other matched play rules. Their intentions dont align with customer wants. People dont want do it yourself rules. They want a good baseline that work. Anyone who wants to break away from that baseline doesnt need gws permission or support to do that.
This is more or less incorrect. The majority of players are actually not playing tournaments or matched play. Also, yes, customers want plenty of do-it-yourself rules.
JNAProductions wrote: GW charges anywhere from about $40 to several hundred dollars for rules per person. While it's fine to modify the games you play to your hearts' contents, with a good group, I expect that for the money I pay to get a tight, competitive game. I shouldn't NEED a strong social contract to play a fun game of 40k. Obviously I'd like my opponents to be cool people, but the baseline should be pretty damn strong for the money I pay.
And while those expectations are fine, they make it pretty clear that isn't the intent they have for the game. Just listen to his comment about "balance".
JNAProductions wrote: GW charges anywhere from about $40 to several hundred dollars for rules per person. While it's fine to modify the games you play to your hearts' contents, with a good group, I expect that for the money I pay to get a tight, competitive game. I shouldn't NEED a strong social contract to play a fun game of 40k. Obviously I'd like my opponents to be cool people, but the baseline should be pretty damn strong for the money I pay.
And while those expectations are fine, they make it pretty clear that isn't the intent they have for the game. Just listen to his comment about "balance".
I'm not listening to a whole hour just to hear a justification for bad balance, so just go ahead and paraphrase.
ClockworkZion wrote: I saw this a few days ago, but felt it was worth opeining a can of worms on what GW's "intent" for the rules are.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
I don't understand how it eliminates claims. Everyone already new all of that and no one ever claimed otherwise.
People criticize GW for being incompetent at writing rules, not being competitively minded (because literally everyone knows that they are not competitively minded.)
Lance845 wrote: Their intent is dumb because evidence shows that what people actually do the majority of the time is try to follow a stricter guideline around a more balanced match up.
Yes, narrative exists and whatever. But people still incorporate rule of 3 into many matches along with psychic focus and other matched play rules. Their intentions dont align with customer wants. People dont want do it yourself rules. They want a good baseline that work. Anyone who wants to break away from that baseline doesnt need gws permission or support to do that.
This is more or less incorrect. The majority of players are actually not playing tournaments or matched play. Also, yes, customers want plenty of do-it-yourself rules.
Tournaments, yes. Matched play, no. The majority of people play matched. Even most narrative players use matched play rules as a baseline for setting up their own scenarios.
JNAProductions wrote: GW charges anywhere from about $40 to several hundred dollars for rules per person. While it's fine to modify the games you play to your hearts' contents, with a good group, I expect that for the money I pay to get a tight, competitive game. I shouldn't NEED a strong social contract to play a fun game of 40k. Obviously I'd like my opponents to be cool people, but the baseline should be pretty damn strong for the money I pay.
And while those expectations are fine, they make it pretty clear that isn't the intent they have for the game. Just listen to his comment about "balance".
I'm not listening to a whole hour just to hear a justification for bad balance, so just go ahead and paraphrase.
Basically we get too obsessed with chasing this mythical idea of balance over trying to have fun. And based on how there is -always- calls to nerf and buff units constantly I think he's right. There is a strong tendency to get wrapped up in this idea of balancing the game, even when dealing with armies that are sitting in that fat middle of win/loss rates and operating like they should.
I don't understand how it eliminates claims. Everyone already new all of that and no one ever claimed otherwise.
People criticize GW for being incompetent at writing rules, not being competitively minded (because literally everyone knows that they are not competitively minded.)
It eliminates claims about their intent for kitbashing and customizing the game. It also spells out how you can jse narrative rules with points costs and talks about making your own custom characters (I rather want to stick a Chaplain in Gravis Armout now).
Tournaments, yes. Matched play, no. The majority of people play matched. Even most narrative players use matched play rules as a baseline for setting up their own scenarios.
This is one of the reasons I like this Voxcast: it talks about how to use those narrative only things with points and do cool things with the game.
Basically I feel like the tone of the whole thing is "it's not all about being competetive and here are some things you can do with the game".
No one is asking for perfect balance. At least, no one reasonable is.
But what we do want is the various fluffy things that we hear about actually being good on the tabletop. Why does a Marine Battle Company suck? Why do Speed Freakz suck? Why do Grey Knights suck?
And yes, there are ways to fix that. Give bonuses to a Battle Company, make Bikerz cheaper, give the GK player a handicap. And that SHOULDN'T BE NEEDED. The baseline game should WORK BETTER.
ScarletRose wrote: So... write bad rules and then when people complain tell them they're "too obsessed with trying to have perfect balance".
Geez, I wish I could turn in a load of gak at work and then tell my boss to not get "obsessed" about it being perfect.
I'm heavilly summarizing, but he did call out the fixation on chasing balance specifically. There is a difference than wanting to even the bumps in the game out for more people and trying to every model into the exact points value for the smaller percentage who play at a high level.
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JNAProductions wrote: No one is asking for perfect balance. At least, no one reasonable is.
But what we do want is the various fluffy things that we hear about actually being good on the tabletop. Why does a Marine Battle Company suck? Why do Speed Freakz suck? Why do Grey Knights suck?
And yes, there are ways to fix that. Give bonuses to a Battle Company, make Bikerz cheaper, give the GK player a handicap. And that SHOULDN'T BE NEEDED. The baseline game should WORK BETTER.
I can agree the base game needs improvement (even as a toolkit it lacks in things like terrain rules), but if they can match the 8.5 Marines going forward that'll go a long way to fix the base game.
EDIT: I think people are confusing "intent" and "execution" with some of their criticisms. The intent is the game should be a tool box for telling cool stories. The execution may be falling short of that in places, but it is the goal the studio writes the rules for.
Outside Gladius and metas where everyone buys one-of-everything and doesn't bother to optimize by even a percent, they suck.
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JNAProductions wrote: If the intent is just a vehicle for cool stories, why does it cost so damn much money?
Which is the crux of the issue. I don't need to spend 40$ to tell stories. I already know Marine fluff, and I can get summaries of new fluff for inspiration.
Lance845 wrote: Their intent is dumb because evidence shows that what people actually do the majority of the time is try to follow a stricter guideline around a more balanced match up.
Yes, narrative exists and whatever. But people still incorporate rule of 3 into many matches along with psychic focus and other matched play rules. Their intentions dont align with customer wants. People dont want do it yourself rules. They want a good baseline that work. Anyone who wants to break away from that baseline doesnt need gws permission or support to do that.
I've found a lot of narrative folks don't post much on the forums. They absolutely exist, there's a reason they keep putting out stuff for narrative players, and not just in the studio. You just don't see them much here.
I still believe a mostly balanced game benefits the narrative players too, but there's nothing wrong with a chill game focused on telling a story. I really wish people would play more "historical" games, they're a lot of fun and a good change of pace from all ITC all the time. Let's you recharge your batteries a bit and let you chill out.
Lance845 wrote: Their intent is dumb because evidence shows that what people actually do the majority of the time is try to follow a stricter guideline around a more balanced match up.
Yes, narrative exists and whatever. But people still incorporate rule of 3 into many matches along with psychic focus and other matched play rules. Their intentions dont align with customer wants. People dont want do it yourself rules. They want a good baseline that work. Anyone who wants to break away from that baseline doesnt need gws permission or support to do that.
I've found a lot of narrative folks don't post much on the forums. They absolutely exist, there's a reason they keep putting out stuff for narrative players, and not just in the studio. You just don't see them much here.
thats no suprise, dakkadakka isn't, as a community, very welcoming to those types.
Outside Gladius and metas where everyone buys one-of-everything and doesn't bother to optimize by even a percent, they suck.
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JNAProductions wrote: If the intent is just a vehicle for cool stories, why does it cost so damn much money?
Which is the crux of the issue. I don't need to spend 40$ to tell stories. I already know Marine fluff, and I can get summaries of new fluff for inspiration.
The game should try harder for balance, period.
in fairness with Primaris it's suprisingly easy to find yourself with a marine battle company almost by accident.
as for the GW philophesy, I think at the core GW sees 40k as more akin to
I think what struck me on this whole thread was how closely it followed on the heels of a prev. topic where someone asked why the rules aren't free/cheap.
And the response was "well you're paying for the designers work". Now apparently the designers are saying the game doesn't need to be balanced.
GW already HAS games that emulate D&D in their universe. Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader come to mind. And while I can appreciate that they want a more narrative driven game, the rules they wrote are designed to create competition.
In D&D, it doesn't matter if the Wizard is more powerful than the Fighter, because they work together to solve problems. It's a cooperative game. Same for Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader. 40k isn't like that at all. It's you against your opponent. That's just the game they made.
And, if they really want people to just have fun and play the armies and games they WANT to play, then balance is incredibly important for that goal. As much as I'd LOVE to field a Stompa, or some Burna Boyz, I understand that doing so is not only going to decrease MY enjoyment of the game, but also my opponent's.
So, because balance isn't important for GW, we really CAN'T play the narrative style they want us to. 40k just isn't built for it like D&D is.
And beyond the issue of cooperative vs. competitive 40k doesn't have the narrative elements that define a game like D&D. In terms of how the printed rules function, not GW's inane author commentary about "DRINK BEER* AND FORGE A NARRATIVE", 40k is just a straightforward tabletop miniatures game with poor balance and dysfunctional rules. All of the "narrative" elements in 40k exist in purely competitive wargames, but GW seems to depend on creating a wall around their private retail chain and selling to customers who don't know about any other games.
*It should really say something that GW's strongest demonstration of a "narrative" gaming approach is a concession that they're a bunch of marginally-functional alcoholics.
flandarz wrote: As much as I'd LOVE to field a Stompa, or some Burna Boyz, I understand that doing so is not only going to decrease MY enjoyment of the game, but also my opponent's.
This may not be work for everyone, but when I want to field underpowered units, I'll just tell my opponent what I'm running, and they are usually happy to adjust their lists accordingly. This may be because I don't play with people who only care about stomping their opponents into the dust 100% of the time (though we do also play plenty of competitive-style games). Most of my opponents are really just looking for a fair fight so winning a game in the listbuilding phase before turn 1 even starts is pretty boring for all parties involved, and usually people won't mind putting in a little effort to avoid it. Luckily this is an easy problem to solve. All you have to do is share your lists in advance.
flandarz wrote: As much as I'd LOVE to field a Stompa, or some Burna Boyz, I understand that doing so is not only going to decrease MY enjoyment of the game, but also my opponent's.
This may not be work for everyone, but when I want to field underpowered units, I'll just tell my opponent what I'm running, and they are usually happy to adjust their lists accordingly. This may be because I don't play with people who only care about stomping their opponents into the dust 100% of the time (though we do also play plenty of competitive-style games). Most of my opponents are really just looking for a fair fight so winning a game in the listbuilding phase before turn 1 even starts is pretty boring for all parties involved, and usually people won't mind putting in a little effort to avoid it. Luckily this is an easy problem to solve. All you have to do is share your lists in advance.
We shouldn't have to play amateur game designer and negotiate which units each player is allowed to bring just to be able to use the rules and models we pay quite a bit of money for.
The problem I tend to run into is that my opponent also has a structure they'd like to run in a game. So, if I ask them "hey. You mind playing down to me, because I wanna try this very weak unit out", then they won't be able to field the units (and tell the narrative) they want to.
And even when they acquiesce, neither one of us tends to have as good a time as we could have. Because we're both "playing in the shallow end" you could say. Whether we're both just playing weaker units, or if we're "taking it easy" on each other, we both know that we COULD be playing better.
Lastly, as Peregrine inferred, it's still pretty much a cop-out. Instead of balancing units so they can all be competitive with each other, GW would prefer we, basically, write the rules for them.
That's a fair expectation. I'm just saying that it's not impossible to have fun with underpowered datasheets if you have the right group. Better than watching those beautiful FW vehicles (sersiouly nice stuff btw) you posted in the FW thread sit around and collect dust, right? But yes, YMMV.
Yeah. Why would anyone want 40k to have strategy, balance, or competition? People and their unreasonable expectations for a tabletop wargame!
Seriously though, if 40k was just about telling stories, then GW doesn't even need rulebooks. Just sell minis and let people make up their own rules. Or sell pens and paper and let people write some fiction. They obviously assume there's at least SOME competitive aspect to their game, otherwise there wouldn't BE rules. They're just kinda half-assing it.
Also, I just wanna compliment you on that roundabout insult there. If your intent was to upset some people, you sure nailed it. Here's hoping you don't get caught up on a Rule #1 violation.
I've found a lot of narrative folks don't post much on the forums. They absolutely exist, there's a reason they keep putting out stuff for narrative players, and not just in the studio. You just don't see them much here.
That's a very convenient thing to claim. That these people must exist somewhere, despite there being near-zero evidence of that fact. I maintain that the "narrative players" are all but extinct today. Perhaps they existed in editions before now, but the culture surrounding the game has chewed them up and spat them out ages ago.
Personally, I drew my own conclusions about how I was treated by the community at large, as well as the game designers, and how the game didn't accommodate the kind of armies I wanted to play, and stopped playing it. This has made me significantly happier and more positive as a person. Sure, it's sad that there isn't a game out there for me, but on the other hand, beating my fists at the unyielding fortress of arrogance and idiocy that is the GW rules department never got me anywhere.
40k is a terrible game for narrative gaming, and anyone attempting to use it for such should re-examine the meaningfulness of their actions, and Let. It. Go. You're never going to get what you want out of the half-formed chimera that GW has nurtured in its bosom for all these years, and regularly lining up to pay the latest releases is never going to change that.
I've found a lot of narrative folks don't post much on the forums. They absolutely exist, there's a reason they keep putting out stuff for narrative players, and not just in the studio. You just don't see them much here.
That's a very convenient thing to claim. That these people must exist somewhere, despite there being near-zero evidence of that fact. I maintain that the "narrative players" are all but extinct today. Perhaps they existed in editions before now, but the culture surrounding the game has chewed them up and spat them out ages ago.
Personally, I drew my own conclusions about how I was treated by the community at large, and how the game didn't accommodate the kind of armies I wanted to play, and stopped playing it. This has made me significantly happier and more positive as a person.
From my perspective, And a very narrative minded player. I find GW rules suck at it, Out of the box as a standed they need a lot more work than other games. Even games normally seen as more competitive like warnmachine provide a better starting point for narrative games.
SImply though a narrative consistency from the rules they go a long way, but also in how power and unit effectiveness on the table.
As well as rules already set and easy to adapt to a lot of situations where everyone at the table can easily understand.
IF GW was catering to a narrative competently i feel they would have been cleaning up far more of the Vehicle rules for a start and 8th would not be in the state it is in at all.
Super heavys would have facings and far more involved movement and how they are involved in the game and how they function.
From a narrative point, good rules and the ability mimic the universe in a interesting and believable way is very important.
From there intent, If they where focusing for narrative play as important Knights would not have release at that time in that way, and person in design should have seen that could be a problem. They just thought it was COOL, and used the rule of COOL to justify they half done work. And make some easy money.
I am not saying there cannot be a narrative based set of content. Missions, exceptions to the rules etc...
I am saying it needs to be built off the backbone of a core centralized, structured rule set. 8th went the opposite way around. The rules are written loose and flimsy with many suggested ways to playing including sections of optional rules that build a more "balanced" matched play game style. And as a result everyone plays matched as the base line and then adjusts to fit where they need/want.
They need to recognize that and build on that. Strong core central rules. Options to get less strict and get narrative focused.
And no, I am not talking tourneys. I am talking about being able to run into any other player and know quickly and effectively that we are going to play the same game.
A key ingredient to GW's beer-and-pretzels delusion is that they expect most people play against their friends, not random people they meet at a store or other venue.
Perhaps it's because that's how traditional historical wargames used to function. Nobody played a Thursday pick-up game of those kind of games, scenarios and forces were arranged well in advance, since often both sides had to prepare for the specific circumstances well in advance, to match their available figures to an agreed upon force that accurately depicted the real armies involved to an agreed upon level of abstraction.
Miniature wargames as mass market products changed all of that, however, and in their blind and confused way, Games Workshop somehow failed to get the message.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
That sounds very much like an excuse to tell people that if something does not work, they should force others to accept fixs they like. As if they played their game only in UK, maybe even only in the HQ, and had no idea how it is playe else where. I would like them to give some examples how someone who play one army per store is suppose to strong arm 20+ people to let him play the game the way he wants, so he can have fun. That would be something actualy interesting to hear. It is as if in their world everything gets fixed with magic, this scenario or rule is not fun, let us change it on the stop. And if we can't fix it, let me go to my truck full of boxs with 5000pts armies, to build two armies that are going to be fun for both of us.
But with such a mind set it does explain everything. Any errata or FAQ changes are mostly made, to cover new unit updates or if someone droped the soap on how they wrote a specific rule. Game mechanics on the other hand, if they are visibily bad or too good, can be fixed on the spot by playerthemselfs. Awesome for places where that can work, horrible for any other place, that requiers legal source for rules to play.
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Agamemnon2 wrote: A key ingredient to GW's beer-and-pretzels delusion is that they expect most people play against their friends, not random people they meet at a store or other venue.
I wonder what beer and pretzels have to be made out of in the UK. A beer here costs around 1 euro, a pretzel is half a euro. An army costs around 800 euro. I guess in UK, you buy beer in bottles of solid gold and pretzels are sprinkled with gold dust.
Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever. Your typical player is likely only to really be into the game for a year or two, playing maybe once or twice a month or two, most will play a couple dozen games ever if not fewer, even many relatively active players may only get in ~50 or so games playing once a month over the course of an edition. The people that play hundreds of games over the course of an edition and stick through it for many years are relatively few by comparison. This does have an impact on how GW views and presents their product.
It is fine for their intent to be to make more narratively focused games. But that is not an excuse to not bother to design a robust core system to hang your narrative games around.
8th certainly looks on the surface to be better than the previous two editions in that regard, but there is stil a lot of silliness and bad design ideas in the game that are obvious from even a fairly superficial read.
As others have said, if GW expect me to do the work of fixing all that stuff and designing my own stuff, that is cool, but then I will not be spending money on their over priced and poorly written published materials. There are plenty of simpler, easier to adapt systems out there with a more robust core, and if I am gonna be negotiating everything anyway with my opponent, I figure I will start the negotiation with "Hey lets use these cool models to play this other, better game!".
I think what that designer is saying is really more of a justification or excuse though. One of my favourite modern games is 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, which certainly lends itself towards a tailored experience and is certainly helpful in creating a narrative (though I would dispute that it is purely a narrative game). And to appeal to people who like a narrative, one of the main things they release are pre written adventure narratives to inspire people, give them stuff to take apart, locations and stories to work with or play through. GW does sometimes release stuff like this, but it is not the majority of their releases in the same way it is for Wizards of the Coast. They were releasing a bunch of narrative campaigns for Age of Sigmar, so perhaps that was their intent, but I think the books were too expensive and the system they were based on was too half formed and controversial, so they seem to have stopped with that model now. Maybe they will try again? I liked the narrative stuff for the Third War for Armageddon, it was great.
Wargames are resource heavy and expensive hobbies, a robust core set of rules is really important to make sure that the experience is satisfying on a base level.
Vaktathi wrote: Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever.
I wish GW told that at the stores, or at least the sells people told that to new people. It does seem to make a lot fo sense. If rules are bad fix them yourself, most buyers aren't playing in the first place, so we don't care about rules that much. The droping after a year or two seems to be true too. When I started with people at school there were 15 people that were new, 6 including me from my class. Now the ones left are me, one guy who got in to tournaments, and two other guys that play at small events in the store for prize money. Everyone else either stoped playing, or plays something else, but most no longer play, they sold their armies to new people.
8th certainly looks on the surface to be better than the previous two editions in that regard, but there is stil a lot of silliness and bad design ideas in the game that are obvious from even a fairly superficial read.
Considering I never played anything other then 8th edition, I wonder how bad prior editions had to be for 8th to be considered good. They had to be really horrible, to a point I can't even imagine it.
They release things like that to say " Lol, the game isn't supposed to be balanced it's all about forging the narrative ! " Which is a phrase I'll never ever forget from 6th 7th days as the mantra of the most broken crap I'd ever seen.
Yet, they release rule sets to make under performing units, armies strong, do yearly points balances and FAQs for balance they say, when they don't intend to balance it ? Seems odd and they support and attend all these tournaments which seem to be using their rules in ways they don't intend, to pound each other to paste.
So why even bother with rules and just say that nothing is tournament legal or cut out for it.
They just love to talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Forging the narrative didn't work in 6th, 7th and almost killed AoS on its launch. They either need to be very over the top clear in that their rules are a joke involving balance of any kind, or actually hire real rules writers to balance it for them.
I add further, if this narrative approach was their goal they would support their old products more, as pushing that narrative is seemingly all well and good when selling new stuff, but I guess all that narrative goes out the window when it comes to kitbashing models, or using out of print models, why even bother calling out legends not for tournaments if the rules are just for narrative anyways.
Wait, forge the narrative was a thing, that GW actually said?
Because people here use it like an insult or making fun of someone. If they table them in one turn, then someone may come and ask, if they weren't "forging the narrative" enough in english.
Karol wrote: Wait, forge the narrative was a thing, that GW actually said?
Because people here use it like an insult or making fun of someone. If they table them in one turn, then someone may come and ask, if they weren't "forging the narrative" enough in english.
Forge the narrative was their battle cry. Far back in the dark times. When I lamented how utterly broken the rule set was I was told to " Forget the narrative " it was literally what GW said as to why nothing needed to be balanced and was thick in their propaganda at the time period. Why do you think people use it as an insult now ? It was supposed to be what formations were created to do, help forge the narrative in their words.
Aye, their "rules" for terrain being based entirely around plastic kits they produce and sell for a lot of money point toward a certain cynicism when it comes to "forging a narrative", as does the gradual culling of models that do not have explicit kits (Looted wagons, certain characters, stuff like Guard Doctirines and Chapter Tactics).
Oh and Karol, absolutely that was something that they said and pushed quite hard.
Narrative gaming is not particularly supported by GW over any other style. Perhaps they want to, but it is just more incompetence on their part.
The greater incompetence is not having the discipline to keep the release schedule at least somewhat sensible, and not leaving entire model lines languishing sometimes three ediitons behind at times.
Again, 8th made good inroads with this with the Index rules, and I do think they are making an effort to correct some of this stuff, but they have to hold themselves to a higher standard and not make excuses.
flandarz wrote: As much as I'd LOVE to field a Stompa, or some Burna Boyz, I understand that doing so is not only going to decrease MY enjoyment of the game, but also my opponent's.
This may not be work for everyone, but when I want to field underpowered units, I'll just tell my opponent what I'm running, and they are usually happy to adjust their lists accordingly. This may be because I don't play with people who only care about stomping their opponents into the dust 100% of the time (though we do also play plenty of competitive-style games). Most of my opponents are really just looking for a fair fight so winning a game in the listbuilding phase before turn 1 even starts is pretty boring for all parties involved, and usually people won't mind putting in a little effort to avoid it. Luckily this is an easy problem to solve. All you have to do is share your lists in advance.
Ayy and generally this is a good thing and sign for the local community you have.
However when you each time have to point out you would like to field ( GK, r&h, Burna boys, speedfreaks, etc) it does get to the point where we should start to see that Gw has issues in balance.
Ishagu wrote: Their intent is for people to have fun?
Hold the phone
I don't think people fun is their goal. It is sell stuff, and people that are having fun do not buy more stuff. Look at mobile gaming, a whole industry created to make people feel miserable, and chasing the new meta rabbit. GW is similar, they make changes to rules, enough for people to start buying in to stuff, and be locked in to an army. They don't fix stuff, they just break it. Inari for example, a clear problem for most of 8th ed, GW fix to them was to kill the army as a playable faction. The whole primaris shift, is the same. People already had marines, or could buy recasts that were cheaper then GW stuff, or could go 3ed party or second market for their stuff. GW creeps in primaris, focusing all new rules, updates and fixs on them. And if they miss something for normal marines, that ends up good, they nerf it ultra fast, like DW bolter rule synergy and their ammo, all the BA army rules, heck the SW codex was changed before its own premier.
So I don't think GWs goal is to make people happy, or to keep people happy. It is more like they want them miserable enough to not leave, but still keep buying stuff on a regular basis in hope that this time, the change is going to be fun. And in fact you can achive fun state for some time. If something has good rules you go all in, and buy the army in one go, and if it is post big FAQ or CA, you can easily have between 6 to 12 months of fun games.
Karol wrote: Wait, forge the narrative was a thing, that GW actually said?
Because people here use it like an insult or making fun of someone. If they table them in one turn, then someone may come and ask, if they weren't "forging the narrative" enough in english.
GW would often use the term "forge the narrative" and it was clear to most people what GW was saying. namely that they viewed 40k as a tool box to tell your stories etc. of course it quickly became a meme about GW's being out of touch with what people really did with 40k. parituclarly among the more compeitive set whose intreast in narrative based play was somewhere around "absolute zero"
Incidentally, I find it hilarious that GW are using the narrative defence, after having removed a ton of wargear and other character options (including entire characters), as well as just about everything that required even a minor conversion to construct.
FORGE THE NARRATIVE, kids! But remember that your narrative must be constructed using only monopose kits WHICH MAY NOT BE COMBINED! Also, ze narrative must be constucted WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA!
Yeah. Forge the Narrative, with our premade kits and complete lack of rules for anything we do not directly sell to you.
It might be true that the designers WANT to do it, but are restrained from that by corporate, but then don't feed us a line to justify poor rules writing.
James spent a good chunk of the Podcast talking about Narrative and Open but makes various allusions to Matched Play and the three ways to play. Just because they focussed the interview on a couple of the areas doesn’t mean they’re unaware of the tighter needs of Matched Play. Whether they meet those needs is down to you, dear listener.
okey, but focusing on open and narrative is like focusing on the smallest way of the game being played. There are probably more ITC tournament players, then people who play open or narrative.
Karol wrote: okey, but focusing on open and narrative is like focusing on the smallest way of the game being played. There are probably more ITC tournament players, then people who play open or narrative.
no, not really, its just that the tournaments get more attention due to releasing who has won etc. Whilest narrative campaigns rarely or seldom get the attention they deserve.
I wonder what beer and pretzels have to be made out of in the UK. A beer here costs around 1 euro, a pretzel is half a euro. An army costs around 800 euro. I guess in UK, you buy beer in bottles of solid gold and pretzels are sprinkled with gold dust.
Vaktathi wrote: Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever. Your typical player is likely only to really be into the game for a year or two, playing maybe once or twice a month or two, most will play a couple dozen games ever if not fewer, even many relatively active players may only get in ~50 or so games playing once a month over the course of an edition. The people that play hundreds of games over the course of an edition and stick through it for many years are relatively few by comparison. This does have an impact on how GW views and presents their product.
Gw can keep hanging on to that delusional idea but the financial results from the headline days of 6th and 7th say they aren't being realistic. The poor sales of expensive/overly complex model kids rather tanked when the game rules that aren't a sales drive were poor.
Yet when they promise to actually try to produce some functional rules and address mistakes etc the company makes more sales and more profitable than it has been in a long time.
But sure that's totally unrelated and the designers can tell us we're all playing 40k wrong and we should be forging the narative with power points and open play all they want.
I'm just glad someone above them has the common sense to see what the data is telling them.
Karol wrote: okey, but focusing on open and narrative is like focusing on the smallest way of the game being played. There are probably more ITC tournament players, then people who play open or narrative.
no, not really, its just that the tournaments get more attention due to releasing who has won etc. Whilest narrative campaigns rarely or seldom get the attention they deserve.
I just used it as an example. I have played in zero tournaments, yet all the games I played were matched play rules. In fact, I have never seen or met anyone who played or seen someone play narrative or open. I dont know how much of the player base is narrative or open playing, but sure ain't a majority. From what I was told the age of sigmar thing started as a narrative system with no point costs, and it almost killed the game. So as much as selfish this my sound, puting focus on narrative or open play, and then saying people are suppose to balance it themselfs, while at the same time being vogue about the design of matched play rules seems strange.
For example in stuff like card games, the designers can show what they think a deck for a specific game and period in the game make look like. Now this doesn't mean some 4D chess tier player, can't invent something themselfs, but at least everyone knows what and where is suppose to go. This is a tournament deck, those cards are for draft or some other format, everything is clear. With GW the rules writing is never explained, and no I don't think someone saying they wanted to make something cool is an explanation. Cool is a buzzword that means nothing, unless your nude in -40 degree . They somehow expect that one person who plays pre nerf inari, and the other one playing necron are suppose to both invest a lot of money and time, in to their armies, and then magicaly agree on a rule set that is going to be right for both armies, when the armies are on so different tiers of playability, that they may as well be playing different games.
I would like GW to be straight about stuff. Like this is a pool of main factions we update, and want to see in matched, open, tournament etc play, this is something we sell for models, this we sell because we sold it in the past and we are slowly phasing it out etc. A new player works in to a mine field, when he starts the game. And worse thing is that they get conflicting informations, one group tells them to play what they want, and the rest gives them a list of 4-5 armies that are good and everything is crap. Even if someone decides the truth is in the middle, somewhere, they are still in risk of picking the wrong army.
My local pub is about £5.50 a pint, so 6.15€...
yeah, the differences are kind of crazy. My step sister works in UK, and when she comes visit her dad, she always talks about prices in London. I could live a school week out of how much her breakfast cost. Prague and Cracow get a ton of tourists from UK every week. fly in get drunk, fly back , unless of course they get in trouble here. You also don't have to drink as fast, most pubs are open till 2-3 in the morning. And where I live, the gigantic discos we have close at like 5 in the morning, technicaly at least.
ClockworkZion wrote: I saw this a few days ago, but felt it was worth opeining a can of worms on what GW's "intent" for the rules are.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
So basically "we are bad at making balanced game so we don't try" even though it's precisely casual narrative games that would benefit most from good balanced ruleset. Competive players are like "who cares". They actually get more of kicks out of imbalance.
And for all the talk about how awful 40k rules are, and every thread on this topic is the same with the same ton of comments about how awful 40k rules are, the community is the largest on the globe for tabletop miniatures games and the tournament scene right now is the largest its probably ever been.
And some of our guys are going down to Atlanta for a tournament with a $200 buy-in and a $10,000 first prize that is GT in size and scope, as they push even further to make Professional 40k a thing.
auticus wrote: And for all the talk about how awful 40k rules are, and every thread on this topic is the same with the same ton of comments about how awful 40k rules are, the community is the largest on the globe for tabletop miniatures games and the tournament scene right now is the largest its probably ever been.
And some of our guys are going down to Atlanta for a tournament with a $200 buy-in and a $10,000 first prize that is GT in size and scope, as they push even further to make Professional 40k a thing.
Sure. But even their (stated) intend isn't to make it the most tightly balanced of competitions, but to make it a more stream/broadcasteable, entertaining (and monetizeable) one.
The emphasis shifts from "telling a story" in the in-universe background towards "telling a story" in the marketable entertainment sense. It's about moving 40K from "D&D" to American Football with lots of ad breaks, player drama and a giant half-time show. It's not about moving 40K from "D&D" towards chess.
Ever rotating "top tier armies" and a "changing meta" is as vital to them as it is to GW sales. Perfect balance would be the death of both in the long run.
auticus wrote: And for all the talk about how awful 40k rules are, and every thread on this topic is the same with the same ton of comments about how awful 40k rules are, the community is the largest on the globe for tabletop miniatures games and the tournament scene right now is the largest its probably ever been.
And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies. Newbies either drop out of the game over the first year or two, or they become tournament players themselves. Anyone else barely amounts to a rounding error in the calculations, which is the point I made earlier: the mythical casual fast-and-loose gamer GW thinks plays their game scarcely exists anymore, and hasn't been a majority since at least the 3rd edition days (Rogue Trader and 2E tournaments, if they existed, would have been entertainment for a very hardcore self-flagellating wargamer set).
GW has always gone with the philosophy that their rules are flexible to allow for a variety of options, and it just so happens that a certain type of player uses those lax rules to exploit (in the min/max sense not necessarily cheating) in order to build the most uber list possible.
Back in the day, like in 1997 or so they even had (this was for WHFB but still applicable) an article called the "Spirit of the Game" where they said this same thing.
In the end though people will play the game the way they want, and most competitive players don't care what the design team thinks because they feel the design team are stupid anyways and are totally wrong.
And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies.
Citation needed.
Yeah... that's obviously false. I'd wager MOST people in the 40k community are casual or laid back players. It's just that those people don't post in forums or ask for list advice; it's the competitive/tournament players who are the most vocal because they are the most visible online, partially in thanks to the major conventions and such which focus on their tournaments while they have a lot more. A casual player isn't going to care if X is so much better than Y if they like X. The competitive player is going to pretty much *only* care what is the most effective unit.
And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies.
Citation needed.
Yeah... that's obviously false. I'd wager MOST people in the 40k community are casual or laid back players. It's just that those people don't post in forums or ask for list advice; it's the competitive/tournament players who are the most vocal because they are the most visible online, partially in thanks to the major conventions and such which focus on their tournaments while they have a lot more. A casual player isn't going to care if X is so much better than Y if they like X. The competitive player is going to pretty much *only* care what is the most effective unit.
I don't see how I'm supposed to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim as "Oh, there's tons of casual players out there, you just never see them anywhere online!" That's edging into Russell's Teapot territory, so I'd say the onus is on you to prove that these multitudes of longterm casual players who never interact with the rest of the community even exist. I'm willing to grant that a few do, but certainly not in the numbers imagined by the collective fantasists of this forum, or the imaginations of whatever hacks GW is employing to steer the ship of their intellectual property.
I'd say I'm a pretty casual gamer, but I'd still like to challenge my opponent and/or win sometimes. And that's hard to do when some units are MUCH worse at their primary task than others. For example, I could take a Stompa. Or I could take 3 Gorkanauts, for a cheaper pricetag, who will do everything it can only better in every way.
I can only speak to what I see with my own eyes. With my own eyes in my city, the tournament players make up about 40% of the overall player population of 40k. The other 60% are pick up gamers down at the store that aren't interested in tournaments or events, they just want to show up a couple times a month to play and then go home.
However I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.
I know for a fact that there are about a dozen guys in my gaming circle that watch dakka and facebook groups who are not tournament players, but they never post anything (but they will talk about dakka discussions on saturday afternoons down at the store).
That cannot be used conclusively globally but in my city thats about how the numbers land.
Now as far as army lists go, even the casual players tend to mostly avoid non optimal builds, so you see I'd say 4 out of 5 games with optimal builds even though not everyone present is a tournament player, and those players will stick for on average 2.8 years (I'm an event organizer, I have 20 years of rosters to pull for my stats) before the churn and burn gets to them and they sell off and get out of the game solely because its very expensive and time consuming to have to buy and paint new armies every year to have good games.
I don't see how I'm supposed to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim as "Oh, there's tons of casual players out there, you just never see them anywhere online!" That's edging into Russell's Teapot territory, so I'd say the onus is on you to prove that these multitudes of longterm casual players who never interact with the rest of the community even exist. I'm willing to grant that a few do, but certainly not in the numbers imagined by the collective fantasists of this forum, or the imaginations of whatever hacks GW is employing to steer the ship of their intellectual property.
You mean like how anyone is supposed to be able to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim of "there's only competitive tournament players in 40k, and anybody who isn't one doesnt matter"?
auticus wrote: I can only speak to what I see with my own eyes. With my own eyes in my city, the tournament players make up about 40% of the overall player population of 40k. The other 60% are pick up gamers down at the store that aren't interested in tournaments or events, they just want to show up a couple times a month to play and then go home.
However I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.
I know for a fact that there are about a dozen guys in my gaming circle that watch dakka and facebook groups who are not tournament players, but they never post anything (but they will talk about dakka discussions on saturday afternoons down at the store).
That cannot be used conclusively globally but in my city thats about how the numbers land.
This strongly matches my experience. There's a core cadre of heavy duty tournament folks in my area, but they're vastly outnumbered by the number of folks who want to hang out, throw some dice, and have a good time, regardless of the high end viability (or lack thereof) of their armies.
auticus wrote: IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.
Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.
Sterling191 wrote: You mean like how anyone is supposed to be able to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim of "there's only competitive tournament players in 40k, and anybody who isn't one doesn't matter"?
Touche. Although the burden of proof I placed on you was far lighter than that which you bestowed upon my humbled and crippled shoulders.
At any rate, if ninety-five games out of every hundred are being played using competitive tournament rules, even among these putative casual players, then the point still stands: Only the competitive tournament rules matter, because they are the de facto standard across the community, or at least all of the community who stand up to be counted. That there could exist cadres, cabals and sodalities of cloistered narrative players playing fast-and-loose, catch-as-catch-can 40k far away from the world's eyes is a hypothesis I am willing to entertain for the time being, but if said brethren are content in their obscurity, whether they're reckoned as a part of the whole somewhat becomes a matter of academic interest, nothing more.
auticus wrote: IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.
Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.
Or is it the other way, and their customers are missing the point of the game and trying to force it to be something it's not, and because it can sort of be molded into that fashion are keeping it in that realm when it wasn't intended to be?
I've recently started to look at getting into historical wargaming. For the most part (there are some exceptions with the 40k-esque games like Flames of War and Bolt Action) it's a completely different mindset. People get into those knowing that you really don't try to skew and min/max, because that's not the point of playing them. Other than the ones that push a competitive aspect (FoW is a big one here), you'll almost never see people waxing about if Unit X is better than Unit Y or how to build the "best" army. That idea exists in the games that are marketed as being for competitive, which is mainly Warhammer and games that were inspired by/designed to compete with Warhammer.
auticus wrote: IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.
Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.
Matched play isnt remotely "competitive tournament rules".
auticus wrote: IHowever I will say that matched play games make up 95 out of 100 games in my city, using tournament rules typically.
Even if I'm wrong, this fact alone, that the overwhelming majority of games, no matter how casual, are played using competitive tournament rules, still proves the general point, which is and has always been that Games Workshop is out of touch as to what their ruleset is actually used for by their customers, and that their statement of intent that it should all be fun and games, forge-the-narrative, etc, is misguided and meaningless.
Matched play isnt remotely "competitive tournament rules".
But it is the set of rules designed for those sort of games, where you want "equal" forces rather than a social agreement. And the fact a lot of people use tournament rules in matched play regardless (see: Rule of Three), if not using ITC rules for regular games for "balance" (I've seen this. People will use ITC's rules and missions because they are the "most balanced", even if not in an ITC event or tournament), and I'd say that's a fair assessment. You find a lot of people who use rules that are used in a tournament for all matched play games because of the assumption that if it's good enough for tournaments it must be balanced, and if it must be balanced then it should be used in any sort of game where you want balance.
Matched play is not tournament rules, but typically i see tournament rules being what is being played at the store among the casuals and tournament players alike (ITC rules) and matched play is the foundation for either.
I do agree that even though the majority of players do not attend tournaments, that by and large the default setting is competitive play and not narrative or open play.
The only open play I have ever seen in five years since AOS came out are the events that I run, and those always have a lot of kick back from a couple people Every.Single.Time.
The store hosting our narrative campaign for AOS posted dates for our campaign meetups and there were players posting excitement saying "you guys are hosting AOS campaigns? I'm interested" - and then they find out its my campaign and that its open play and not following matched play standards, and the facebook sad/tears emoji is the response. (we have 12 players right now in the campaign who are open to open play / houseruling AOS because we don't like how AOS matched play RAW plays, so I'm not hurting for players, but if it were matched play-standard I could probably pull 25 - 30 players - however I have zero interest in that game)
AOS release in 2015 was the perfect litmus test for just how acceptable narrative games are to the community.
That being, hardly at all.
No points? No community. Release a bunch of campaign books loaded down with campaign rules and narrative scenarios? They sat on the shelf and had to be returned because only a very small handful of people bought any of them.
Release books with matched play rules? Grudgingly those books were bought by everyone, though the renewed cry of "please just release the points and profiles by themselves so I don't have to have books that I won't read" came back.
Even the narrative event organizer group that sprung from AOS that touts narrative events base almost entirely all of their activities on the back of matched play and tournament level lists, they just don't use standard ITC scenarios and include background stories.
And the fact a lot of people use tournament rules in matched play regardless (see: Rule of Three), if not using ITC rules for regular games for "balance" (I've seen this. People will use ITC's rules and missions because they are the "most balanced", even if not in an ITC event or tournament), and I'd say that's a fair assessment. You find a lot of people who use rules that are used in a tournament for all matched play games because of the assumption that if it's good enough for tournaments it must be balanced, and if it must be balanced then it should be used in any sort of game where you want balance.
You're hilariously reaching here, first in the assumption that an ITC, ETC or whomever's homebrewed ruleset is balanced, or what the implications are of a non-tournament playerbase using said homebrew ruleset.
At any rate, if ninety-five games out of every hundred are being played using competitive tournament rules, even among these putative casual players, then the point still stands: Only the competitive tournament rules matter, because they are the de facto standard across the community, or at least all of the community who stand up to be counted. That there could exist cadres, cabals and sodalities of cloistered narrative players playing fast-and-loose, catch-as-catch-can 40k far away from the world's eyes is a hypothesis I am willing to entertain for the time being, but if said brethren are content in their obscurity, whether they're reckoned as a part of the whole somewhat becomes a matter of academic interest, nothing more.
Citation. Needed.
You keep warbling on about how "95 out of 100" players do XYZ without providing any kind of data to back it up, while simultaneously gaking on anyone who might dare to play the game a different way from you. Back it up, or accept the fact that there are multiple viable ways to play 40k, no matter how much you hate the players who do it differently.
Also I'd love to see the look on the faces of the 50-100 players who rotate through the local scene here when you show up and tell them they're a cloistered cabal of players who are doing it wrong and dont matter.
That's my point as well. "All" tournament games are matched play, but not all matched play are tournament games. However, most matched play games will adopt things that are used at tournaments because the perception is the tournament has to be balanced, therefore the rules they use have to be the most balanced, therefore it should be used for matched play.
Again I bring up things like the rule of three as the biggest offender which is explicitly a suggested rule for events and yet the vast majority of people have adopted it as a matched play rule where if you ask for list advice, even if you say it's not for an event, the expectation is that rule of three will be in effect. Whether or not the rule is good (and I think it is) the fact remains that it's a rule for tournaments which has "become" a rule for everyone. I've seen the same thing in regards to the ITC first floor LOS rule. This is often considered a baseline rule too, and again it might be a good rule (it is) but it's not a matched play rule and yet somehow finds its place in matched play all the time.
I also agree that launch AOS showed that the gamers of today, by and large, want codified balance and rules for building armies (specifically "balanced" armies) and don't want to have discussions or agreements over what they feel would be fun. The last bastion of that mindset is with a lot of the historical games where they still have very rudimentary points but the majority of games don't use points.
I have to disagree that AoS showed that. The only issues I had with it in my gaming group were the people who went into the game determined to show that "you need balance".
I don’t understand why people continue to get bent out of shape about this. What you’d like 40k to be isn’t the same thing the designers intend it to be. The “then what am I paying for?” thing is bizarre. Just because it’s not what you’d ideally like it to be doesn’t mean there were no resources put into making it. If that renders it worthless to you, then just don’t buy it. It’s like buying a two-seater car because you think it looks cool and then complaining there’s nowhere for your kids to sit.
Wayniac wrote: That's my point as well. "All" tournament games are matched play, but not all matched play are tournament games. However, most matched play games will adopt things that are used at tournaments because the perception is the tournament has to be balanced, therefore the rules they use have to be the most balanced, therefore it should be used for matched play.
Again I bring up things like the rule of three as the biggest offender which is explicitly a suggested rule for events and yet the vast majority of people have adopted it as a matched play rule where if you ask for list advice, even if you say it's not for an event, the expectation is that rule of three will be in effect. Whether or not the rule is good (and I think it is) the fact remains that it's a rule for tournaments which has "become" a rule for everyone. I've seen the same thing in regards to the ITC first floor LOS rule. This is often considered a baseline rule too, and again it might be a good rule (it is) but it's not a matched play rule and yet somehow finds its place in matched play all the time.
I also agree that launch AOS showed that the gamers of today, by and large, want codified balance and rules for building armies (specifically "balanced" armies) and don't want to have discussions or agreements over what they feel would be fun. The last bastion of that mindset is with a lot of the historical games where they still have very rudimentary points but the majority of games don't use points.
I would even wonder if GW themselves as the big dog in the park, have pushed this culture. In a lot of cases units and models have been bad due to how the rules have turn out, fixes never really coming in a reasonable time.
In turn lead to players over the years finding a more competitive way of looking at the game, when some units and even some army can be so low on usability that turning up to play is more frustration than it is worth.
Even narrative play can be hard, if a unit does not even really function in the game due to rules as it probably should or no support to make it work.
You keep warbling on about how "95 out of 100" players do XYZ without providing any kind of data to back it up, while simultaneously gaking on anyone who might dare to play the game a different way from you.
Ask Auticus where he sourced his number, I simply used it in an attempt to find common ground with the enemy.
At any rate, you have utterly misunderstood my motivation. I would rather clamp my jaws shut with a nail gun than play competitive 40k, I find that entire practice pointless. After all, I haven't won a single game in the last three editions, because it turns out I'm dogshit at wargames, why the hell would I want to subject myself to that? But all anyone I ever played wanted to do was tournament this and ITC that. The last properly casual game I had predates the Tau as a faction.
I'd love it if the game was actually what GW claims it is, but I see precious little evidence of that fact. So frankly, I've given up trying to play it entirely.
Agamemnon2 wrote: "Decent people should not live here. They'd be happier somewhere else."
Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!
Kanluwen wrote: I have to disagree that AoS showed that. The only issues I had with it in my gaming group were the people who went into the game determined to show that "you need balance".
The AOS community was mostly shriveled and dead until ghb came out with official points. By all accounts in most every nook out there that had whfb players, there was hardly any AOS scene until the ghb 2016.
From personal experience, all four GW shops in my city and the three closest had nearly no players and had virtually no sales of those first few realmgate war books. As my GW manager stated that I'll reshare, the GHB (2016) had more sales by itself than all of the AOS material combined up to that point.
Ask Auticus where he sourced his number, I simply used it in an attempt to find common ground with the enemy.
As I noted in my statement, that is my own personal observation of my own community. I can't state that that number applies to all communities globally. I can draw inferences from what I read online that my area is fairly common but you'll never be able to conclusively prove such a thing without a global study.
And of that massive community, almost all are tournament players or newbies.
Citation needed.
Yeah... that's obviously false. I'd wager MOST people in the 40k community are casual or laid back players. It's just that those people don't post in forums or ask for list advice; it's the competitive/tournament players who are the most vocal because they are the most visible online, partially in thanks to the major conventions and such which focus on their tournaments while they have a lot more. A casual player isn't going to care if X is so much better than Y if they like X. The competitive player is going to pretty much *only* care what is the most effective unit.
I don't see how I'm supposed to prove wrong such a patently unfalsifiable claim as "Oh, there's tons of casual players out there, you just never see them anywhere online!" That's edging into Russell's Teapot territory, so I'd say the onus is on you to prove that these multitudes of longterm casual players who never interact with the rest of the community even exist. I'm willing to grant that a few do, but certainly not in the numbers imagined by the collective fantasists of this forum, or the imaginations of whatever hacks GW is employing to steer the ship of their intellectual property.
I don’t know how you intend to proove it false, but it is quite easy to prove it right with just public revenue data and ITC data.
GW’s revenue for 2018 was £219mil and full ITC ranking is only about 8000 entries long. I get that not every competitive player is ITC ranked and there is also ETC, so lets generously multiply this figure by 10. For competitive focused crowd to fully fund GW you’ll need for every player to spend a whooping £27000 a year for churn and burn directly from GW. A 2000pts army purchased directly from GW is what, around £400? Ok, so 67 full armies a year is a bit of a stretch, so let’s see what we can do about it. IP license fees, no, only £11 mil... Ok, so we crank up those numbers and let’s assume that ITC rankings only list not a 1/10th but 1/100th of competitive players - it still leaves us with 6.7 full armies a year per every FLGS player... But realities of most FLGSs are that if there are 20 active players it is a popular FLGS and you rarely have shops with numbers of regulars reaching a 100... And no one churns and burns more than six full armies a year at official prices. It simply doesn’t add up that competitive crowd is a main bulk of GWs playerbase. Every poll, dakka, independent or GW’s leaks from interviews place competitive crowd at about 10% of total players, with major bulk of customers being mainly collectors playing single digit games a year if any at all.
Essentially, they realized that the rule bloat is again a thing, they have no time, skill or intent to tackle it, and therefore they go back to the same old excuse. After all, the customer base bought a good chunk of models this year. So who cares, amrite? Oh well.
Vaktathi wrote: Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever. Your typical player is likely only to really be into the game for a year or two, playing maybe once or twice a month or two, most will play a couple dozen games ever if not fewer, even many relatively active players may only get in ~50 or so games playing once a month over the course of an edition. The people that play hundreds of games over the course of an edition and stick through it for many years are relatively few by comparison. This does have an impact on how GW views and presents their product.
OTOH, I think that a decent ruleset would keep some of those people. Many, I personally think from my experience. In my former group in the old country people would look at a new model line, think to return to "our" 40k we all played together in high school and university, buy few models, realize the ruleset was frustrating garbage and would hamper their simple and fun list-making, and give up. I "lost" (only form the 40k standpoint obviously) most of my former group in this way. People just did not bother. Why should they?
One of the early D&D guys cut his teeth on Wargamming. To hear him tell it, D&D was kinda a progression of what they were doing with Wargamming. They'd have some games that even had, basically, a DM/GM.
Apparently, in one such game, he and his teammate just hated eachother. So they decided their characters should duel. There were no rules for it. But there was a guy "running" the game - basically a DM. He came up with the rolls off the top of his head. And it worked out.
My point is, tabletop wargamming has had more fluid/less clear rules than some find acceptable for *longer than D&D has existed*. And 40k is one of the least technical wargames out there - one of the most "It's about the experience".
Now, I don't want a DM for my 40k games. It's head to head, and I like that. But when rules aren't clear, having a non-player make a quick judgement lets you keep going and get back into it. For a casual game based on immersion, flipping through rulebooks really breaks you out of it.
At an FLGS, it's usually whoever's at the next table. We all kinda know who knows how much about the game, but even a green player's gut call is often better than spending 30 minutes digging through books.
At a tourny, there are TOs. And their role and scope is managed by the tourny itself. So, if there's an edge case, the resolution of that edge case is adjucated in a previously-agreed-upon manner. So that works well.
I'd love cleaner, more concise rules. But it's foolish to think they'll ever be perfect. And its' not that big a deal.
Nazrak wrote: I don’t understand why people continue to get bent out of shape about this. What you’d like 40k to be isn’t the same thing the designers intend it to be. The “then what am I paying for?” thing is bizarre. Just because it’s not what you’d ideally like it to be doesn’t mean there were no resources put into making it. If that renders it worthless to you, then just don’t buy it. It’s like buying a two-seater car because you think it looks cool and then complaining there’s nowhere for your kids to sit.
I am a pretty casual player myself and I only played tournaments for 5th-7th edition WHFB, never for 40k that I always considered inferior from that standpoint, but more interesting in certain aspect of the gameplay and in the lore and models concepts. I think that a tight ruleset helps everyone. A tight ruleset is never going to repel people NOT interested in tight rules, only keeps in the group people that consider them a priority. And frankly, several iterations of the 40k ruleset were written in such a frustratingly bad manner that kept away even people that would happily play a game with their friends and weren't interested in tournaments. The impossibility to make some models and sometimes whole armies simply work, matches so uneven to make any game pointless because the outcome is known. And so on. I almost fear a perfect balance because it can kill flavor, player creativity, character and so on. I myself preferred that marvelous mess of D&D 3.5 to 4th edition by far, or Vanilla wow to retail (that I did not play that much and I find repulsive for many reasons, story first). Not even Chess is perfectly balanced because white always begins the match.
Nonetheless, I am afraid that the usual GW justification is an excuse. Some intelligent Dakkanaut few days ago pointed out that GW has good designers (the rules are creative and interesting) but horrible developers. They just don't BELIEVE in developing. I think that is the crux of the issue. There must be a middle ground. There must be a way for the design team to think things in advance, to crunch numbers, and to do not add layers of rules over layers or rules in order to fix stuff that is non-functional, and then cry back to the old excuse in order to clean their conscience and reputation. And sorry, I do not accept any "it's just for narrative guys" excuse from the same people that sold the Skyhammer. They clearly planned formations to sell models in a bunch back them, and created rules to make them "interesting". This is hypocrisy.
I think that 8th edition had the heart in the right place for many reasons, I think is a system we should believe in at its core but it has glaring issues that are, luckily, fixable. One is the same old escalation from 5th onward. More dakka, more saves/FnP, point reduction and rule layers in a negative feedback to keep units functional until the system collapses. All due to the scale of the game, from grot to titan. Then you have math failures like tank cannons and such that fire twice (it began with the Russes) because they did not think the math through. Flamer weapons. All these things CAN be fixed. 8th is not inherently flawed I think. Deepstrike and Infiltration CAN be differentiated again. And so on.
You keep warbling on about how "95 out of 100" players do XYZ without providing any kind of data to back it up, while simultaneously gaking on anyone who might dare to play the game a different way from you.
Ask Auticus where he sourced his number, I simply used it in an attempt to find common ground with the enemy.
At any rate, you have utterly misunderstood my motivation. I would rather clamp my jaws shut with a nail gun than play competitive 40k, I find that entire practice pointless. After all, I haven't won a single game in the last three editions, because it turns out I'm dogshit at wargames, why the hell would I want to subject myself to that? But all anyone I ever played wanted to do was tournament this and ITC that. The last properly casual game I had predates the Tau as a faction.
I'd love it if the game was actually what GW claims it is, but I see precious little evidence of that fact. So frankly, I've given up trying to play it entirely.
I see you stating that and can just say that for me it's the other way around. Tournament players/ competitive 40K for me is something mythical, something that is only existing on the internet and never visible in real life. In my group narrative play with points is the default, if we are short on time it's sometimes a simple maelstrom or eternal war, but even then we take our time and add some additional rules or use the open war cards or Cities of Death rules to spice it up. Claims of "unit x is unplayable" are usually discarded as "well, then you either don't use it in the right scenario or you need to play better". That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...
So in essence I'm probably exactly what GWs rules writers have in mind. And I can say 8th edition as a toolbox works perfectly for me, it's just that rules are usually too expensive (Vigilus, Urban warfare) and/or are too far spread out. I'd prefer a pdf that puts all (narrative) missions together. And then one with all the warzones or battlezones. Then one with campaign trees. Would be cool if CA did that.
Another take on this whole „nearly all players are competitive”, Facebook pages/groups member count:
Warhammer 40k official - 150k
Spikey Bits - 177k
Competitive 40k - 10k
Competitive 40k/ITC discussion - 1.9k
...
And some „oddities” to compare:
Warhammer 40k Terrain and more - 5.9k
Necromunda official - 18k
The Ash Wastes - 1.5k
Necromunda Terrain Makers - 7.7k
Warhammer Quest Blackstone Fortress - 3.5k
And according to some dakka members no one plays those crap boxed/specialist games and GW should focus solely on refining balance as measured by ITC statistics...
“Ivory Tower design” and the Citidel logo have gone hand-in-hand since the 90’s. There’s a reason a lot of people buy their “games” and throw away the cardboard, just to keep the minis. Their rules have always and always will be rubbish for anything more than a “a lark with friends”.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...
This is generally a big issue with Warhammer, even compared to other competitive games. Most other games DOhave people offering advice on how to make X work, even if it's prefaced by "X isn't great, but.." Warhammer is the exception, in part due to how awful the rule sare, where there often is no good way to make X work so the only advice that's worth giving is to throw out half your list and take a bunch of ther things.
That's one of the biggest issues with 40k, there's no middle ground. Something is either good, or it's trash and little or nothing can make it better while in other games you'll get meaningful advice that isn't throw out 90% of your army and take whatever spammy bullgak du jour is making its rounds. I recall very fondly a good example in MkII Warmahordes when Man-o-War Shocktroopers (a really cool looking unit that often got people's eye) wasn't that great but you would frequently see people offer suggestions on how to make them work with other options. You rarely, if ever, saw "They suck don't take them" as a response. Compare that to 40k and something like Terminators (those still suck right?) where you'll likely be told to replace your cool Terminator list with something else rather than be offered useful advice on how you can run a Terminator list.
You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Yeah. Discussion of tactics in 40K is severely limited by the lack of genuine tactical choices in the game, which is due to the rules.
Exactly. So instead of a discussion on how to make the most of unit X because the OP really wants to use Unit X, it's constant "Drop that and take Unit Y". I've seen list advice discussions, here and like on Facebook, where the advice is basically throw away 90% of your list and take all this other stuff; rarely if ever is it actual advice how to use what the person suggested.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...
This is generally a big issue with Warhammer, even compared to other competitive games. Most other games DOhave people offering advice on how to make X work, even if it's prefaced by "X isn't great, but.." Warhammer is the exception, in part due to how awful the rule sare, where there often is no good way to make X work so the only advice that's worth giving is to throw out half your list and take a bunch of ther things.
That's one of the biggest issues with 40k, there's no middle ground. Something is either good, or it's trash and little or nothing can make it better while in other games you'll get meaningful advice that isn't throw out 90% of your army and take whatever spammy bullgak du jour is making its rounds. I recall very fondly a good example in MkII Warmahordes when Man-o-War Shocktroopers (a really cool looking unit that often got people's eye) wasn't that great but you would frequently see people offer suggestions on how to make them work with other options. You rarely, if ever, saw "They suck don't take them" as a response. Compare that to 40k and something like Terminators (those still suck right?) where you'll likely be told to replace your cool Terminator list with something else rather than be offered useful advice on how you can run a Terminator list.
That’s not quite true. Most of the units are playable in relaxed/casual games (where GW lives), but they are rubbish when viewed competitively. If tournaments were earthquakes, GWs flimsy rules would start to badly wobble at .5, and utterly crash at 3 on the Richter scale. Yet most tournaments I’ve witness try to play at 8.5 or higher end of the scale and you end up with replacing the entire structure with something far more sturdy.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Yeah. Discussion of tactics in 40K is severely limited by the lack of genuine tactical choices in the game, which is due to the rules.
Exactly. So instead of a discussion on how to make the most of unit X because the OP really wants to use Unit X, it's constant "Drop that and take Unit Y". I've seen list advice discussions, here and like on Facebook, where the advice is basically throw away 90% of your list and take all this other stuff; rarely if ever is it actual advice how to use what the person suggested.
It's ridiculous.
Mhmmm. I mean look at the removal of vehicle facings. There is now zero reason to flank a vehicle as it doesn't make a difference. The player gains no advantage for doing so.
This then affects what weapons are most efficient for taking out vehicles. Weapons which need to be mobile and get into range, such as meltaguns, are now much less desirable as mobility is much less important. Why take a meltagun which requires you to forego shooting for a turn or two whilst you close the gap to your target and remove the chaff around it when you could take a lascannon which can shoot from turn 1 without needing to worry about getting into range or the chaff?
Why move your infantry squads to flank or encircle your opponent when doing so takes them out of the aura range of your commander and that encirclement doesn't actually make the enemy any easier to kill?
ClockworkZion wrote: Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
It's a long standing theme when GW are asked about sloppy balancing.
Of course if someone were to write and distribute more balanced 40k codex/rulesets they would get slapped down faster than you could say 'forge the narrative'
Sgt. Cortez wrote: That's why most of the "tactic" discussions on this forum are usually pointless for me, as they're rarely about "how to make X work" but more: "What do you think about my list?" "Well, throw out these 5 of your 6 units, add these 4 units instead, and now you can play it."...
This is generally a big issue with Warhammer, even compared to other competitive games. Most other games DOhave people offering advice on how to make X work, even if it's prefaced by "X isn't great, but.." Warhammer is the exception, in part due to how awful the rule sare, where there often is no good way to make X work so the only advice that's worth giving is to throw out half your list and take a bunch of ther things.
That's one of the biggest issues with 40k, there's no middle ground. Something is either good, or it's trash and little or nothing can make it better.
See, I totally disagree with that. Only squads are literally unplayable.
(and maybe corsairs? But I'm not familiar with their rules, just repeating what I read from some dakka-posters). For everything else there is a use, even it's sometimes a situational one. Or a scenario-specific one. You aren't content with your terminators deep striking on planet bowling ball? Well then, make up a Space Hulk mission for them. The game is there for players to have fun with their painted plastic toys. The advice: "Well, simply use other plastic toys" doesn't make sense in my view.
So far I didn't meet "trash units". My Plague hulk comes closest probably, but he at least works as distraction carnifex or objective blocker because the model is huge and it won't die. One time I killed a riptide with it but that's anecdotical. I killed ghost arcs with mutilators in 7th edition when the internet told me "this unit will never do anything".
It simply depends on the opponent's army, scenario rules, supporting elements in your list and last but not least what you're actually doing with your unit on the battlefield.
A typical dakka phrase is: "Don't use x, it will never reach the enemy/ it will get shot off the board turn 1" When reading stuff like that I'm always wondering: Do people never meet any Daemon players? Or CSM? Or Orks? Or Space Wolves? etc. Do people only play against Tau, Imperial Guard and Knights? Do people not use terrain?
There are tactics in 40K, and it's always hilarious when some people on dakka are surprised about tournament winning lists using units that "should not be playable" in their view.
You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.
You are actually right, I did make a one zero too much mistake here. Nevertheless it only lowers the amount by which casuals/collectors outnumber competitives. You still have to have 800k competitive players burning an army a year with no second hand market to generate GW’s revenue.
This is still a game. And games are meant to be balanced. For 30 years, GW has failed to provide that. Let players provide the limitations they want for themselves, but don't just make crap rules and try and explain it away.
They don't need to make rules that necessarily make every list work. Iyanden players specifically set limitations on themselves to play to the background. Deathwing players are capable of putting limitations on themselves to play to the background. Aside from FO swaps, GW didn't need to worry about trying to make these lists competitive. Just make units themselves competetive and let the players worry about the rest.
GW is a model company first and often don't remember/care that those models are meant to be a part of a game. That's the problem and has been for as long as I've been playing.
nou wrote: It simply doesn’t add up that competitive crowd is a main bulk of GWs playerbase. Every poll, dakka, independent or GW’s leaks from interviews place competitive crowd at about 10% of total players, with major bulk of customers being mainly collectors playing single digit games a year if any at all.
That is an interesting way of looking at it, thank you. Perhaps there's some hope after all.
From my experience, most folks posting lists and asking for advice say: "is this good/competitive?". In which case, it's perfectly reasonable to tell them "yes" or "no" and offer suggestions on replacements. Very rarely do I see anyone ask for advice on how to USE a unit or army, and when I do, most folks will give em that advice (though I'll admit they'll preface with "that's not a very good unit/list").
There are only so many ways you can abstractly discuss target prioritization and screening, the two primary tactical strategies you employ in 40k other than min/max the odds via list building.
Nvs wrote: This is still a game. And games are meant to be balanced. For 30 years, GW has failed to provide that. Let players provide the limitations they want for themselves, but don't just make crap rules and try and explain it away.
No Game; not even Checkers, Chess, and Backgammon, has ever been perfectly balanced. The game became impossible to balance once they passed about 20 different datasheets and now that there are hundreds of different datasheets and thier permutations it pretty much is impossible. The best any game at that scale can hope for is a spread in which most models are at least playable and about a dozen models are overpowered(and targeted for the next round of nerfs) with another dozen being underpowered (and targeted for the next round of buffs). The fact that so many players keep trying to force WH and WH40k into this tight competitive pigeonhole instead of playing an actually tournament focused game just makes it worse.
It's true that the balance is a lot better than it used to be, but that's been at the expense of rules stability - like those in the Video Games realm, designers have largely stopped paring the rules down for easier balance (which players seem to hate) and instead focus on constantly tuning and re-tuning the rules (which generates tons of buzz and is generally liked by players).
Infinity and Warmachine have also gone down this same path, despite being far more tournament focused that WH(40k). Its inevitable.
Because of the effects of terrain, ad the fact that terrain should matter, it means that some units will inherently be better than other units on some boards, but not others, and vice versa.
It's good that tanks be more valuable on open ground than infantry, and it's good that infantry be better than tanks in built up areas.
pardon the crossover to another market here in this comparison... but i call complete and utter bs.
It is like in the electric bike world. Often you have the ebike that comes with a switch , a button, or a set of modes on a digital control panel and/or app to a connected phone. You have the "on road use" mode often limiting top speed to a pretty low amount like 15-19 MPH . They often also have an "economy" setting for maximum battery life but have a much lower top speed, thin 9-12 MPH. FInally you have "off road use and/or performance" which is exactly what almost everybody out there sets things to.
In the Ebike case the performance mode is what really should post for all stats, range, top speed etc should be measured as this is what the users are actually doing.
In the case of GW they know exactly how thier audience plays. They know they can try and be the "narrative guys" and thus explain poor rules balance. "guys its that we plan you to not play hyper competative/competative" despite knowing for a fact most people will only ever consider using the matched play rules.
put another way "we know you bought that old models and we are the good guys letting you use that old model in narrative... its too bad for all practical purposes you now will never be able to use your now discontinued model as they are not recommended for matched play, it really is unfortunate for you, but the blame for your problem as our customer resides in our other customers."
You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.
You are actually right, I did make a one zero too much mistake here. Nevertheless it only lowers the amount by which casuals/collectors outnumber competitives. You still have to have 800k competitive players burning an army a year with no second hand market to generate GW’s revenue.
But that's an absurd comparison. You're ignoring all of GW's non-40k revenue, along with things like milking the cash cow of whiny kids demanding a box of space marines to ignore 15 minutes later.
TheFleshIsWeak wrote: Incidentally, I find it hilarious that GW are using the narrative defence, after having removed a ton of wargear and other character options (including entire characters), as well as just about everything that required even a minor conversion to construct.
FORGE THE NARRATIVE, kids! But remember that your narrative must be constructed using only monopose kits WHICH MAY NOT BE COMBINED! Also, ze narrative must be constucted WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA!
If you watched the video they talk about conversions in the video and the studio being for them. It looks like they just don't give the keys to that toy box to the tournament crowd though (either because it makes it easier to balance, or because they don't want another Chapter House incident or both).
TheFleshIsWeak wrote: Incidentally, I find it hilarious that GW are using the narrative defence, after having removed a ton of wargear and other character options (including entire characters), as well as just about everything that required even a minor conversion to construct.
FORGE THE NARRATIVE, kids! But remember that your narrative must be constructed using only monopose kits WHICH MAY NOT BE COMBINED! Also, ze narrative must be constucted WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA!
If you watched the video they talk about conversions in the video and the studio being for them. It looks like they just don't give the keys to that toy box to the tournament crowd though (either because it makes it easier to balance, or because they don't want another Chapter House incident or both).
The tournament crowd does not interest gw compared to their IP and therefore bottom line.
It certainly seems like any discussion on the "fairness" of points values is more a symptom where the rules decide what abilities of a unit are ideal or have value.
I find the main focus seems to appeal to our Magic the Gathering generation: we pay/play various stratagems to buff units in various situations (which needs to be fueled by Detachment CP's gained).
So this becomes a strong consideration in the army list sub-game in getting the most point effective units that are the least affected by chance.
Everything else below are the "details" of actual play mechanics:(spoiler for text we have probably read before)
Spoiler:
Actual positioning relative to a unit is right now is rather pointless: there is no advantageous "facing" to attack with or be attacked on (as pointed out earlier by others).
Screening is only used to keep critical shooting units from being bogged down in melee.
That is quickly being addressed with various heavy units with the "Fly" keyword.
My friend keeps wanting to house-rule units acting as a shooting screen providing cover like in the past which would add a little bit for bracketed fire around the screen.
The movement stat only becomes important for units that will want to charge into melee, most units have a means to get what they need done without (shooting unit with enough reach, deep-strike).
There was a bit of hope with the hits vs damage stats to have the right weapon for the right job (low hits, high damage, high AP = tank killer, high hits, low damage, low AP = troop killer).
Some of the more desirable weapons just spam a bunch of hits and work pretty good on anything.
Strength is rather odd in this edition, it has this bump by one up or down depending on if you are higher or lower than the toughness and then no other bump till double the toughness.
I find heavy bolters are a "safe" go-to.
It seemed to give a new lease on life for strength 5 weapons for standard troop killing utility but strength 7 is VERY situational, hence why we want to overcharge plasma all the time (Then the need for the Captain with the +1 to hit...)
The deepstrike "alphastrike" so you can attack immediately: you place your models more than 9" away and either have an auto-hit or high # of hits weapons with a >9" reach OR have some buffs to ensure you can make the 9" charge.
No real tactics to this or that much planning.
Blah...
The only rather complex "plan" is to leverage units for what they are good at (shooting/melee) and knowing your strategems well so you can spend them to maximum effect.
I'd honestly be surprised if a fair portion of GW's revenue wasn't generated by the competitive crowd "chasing the meta". Buying the best units (only to do it again when something gets nerfed or buffed). Getting paints and glue. Buying all the latest rulebooks. And, really, an unbalanced ruleset favors a business model that sells to those types.
You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.
You are actually right, I did make a one zero too much mistake here. Nevertheless it only lowers the amount by which casuals/collectors outnumber competitives. You still have to have 800k competitive players burning an army a year with no second hand market to generate GW’s revenue.
But that's an absurd comparison. You're ignoring all of GW's non-40k revenue, along with things like milking the cash cow of whiny kids demanding a box of space marines to ignore 15 minutes later.
I am curious how much of their revenue is just paint. I am in a lot of 3d printing facbook groups and communities and am surprised how often tutorials and paint guides use Citadel paints. also when people post models they painted after printing they often include paints used and basically everything uses gw washes and paints in thier list. and these are often DND players and other RPG players (though i imagine there is a lot of wargamign crossover tehre)
Well, if nothing else, opening this can of worms has made it pretty clear who doesn't bother to actually check to see what GW is saying and jumps in solely with their loaded nonsense to start bashing GW right out of the gate. Stay classy Dakka.
So let's break this down since people can't be trusted to do any research instead of stuffing their feet into their mouths:
James did not say the studio doesn't care about balance. He was saying that players over rely on a mythical idea of balance (which no one really agrees on based on what I've seen from the proposed rules section over the years, much less more casual commentary about rules or points costs) to have fun. If you got all wound up about how GW doesn't care about balance at all congrats, you can collect your No Prize™ at the door for your nonsense.
Furthermore, more than half the video was talking about conversions and how you can use them with points costs. An example given by name was taking the Laser Destroyer from the Chaos Knight Kit and giving it to a Loyalist Knight and pay the points for it. Want your Salamanders Primaris Captain to have a Thunderhammer? 40pts and jobs a goodun.
There was talk about homebrewing your own characters as well, but for most of us opening up the wargear options like this is what we wanted permission to do (I was the idiot trying to talk people to take five minutes to send the 40kfaq email a message about wanting conversion options for Primaris characters from the upgrade kits after all). This was that permission.
He also talked about how they decided to leave Marks off Chaos Knights because there wasn't a way to mark them in the kit to really set them apart as true representatives of their gods. The option for that to be added in later with an upgrade sprue made more sense to them as they want those god aligned knights to feel more like they represent their gods than just a paint job.
I am not someone who uniformly bashes GW. But I do not really care what some bloke on a podcast says about how the rules work. I am not gonna be bringing that podcast to games or letting people listen to it.
The way to promote conversions is to allow stuff in the rules for which there is no specific kit. Explicitly. In the printed rules.
Not handwaved in some podcast somewhere to provide cover for the fact that GW does not really support conversions or creativity to the same extent that they used to.
If I want to use stuff outside the written rules, I am gonna do that regardless of what some bloke who works for GW says. I do not need permission. But that requires negotiation and discussion and some people are difficult about that. So I like it when they provide that stuff in the core, written rules.
Da Boss wrote: I am not someone who uniformly bashes GW. But I do not really care what some bloke on a podcast says about how the rules work. I am not gonna be bringing that podcast to games or letting people listen to it.
The way to promote conversions is to allow stuff in the rules for which there is no specific kit. Explicitly. In the printed rules.
Not handwaved in some podcast somewhere to provide cover for the fact that GW does not really support conversions or creativity to the same extent that they used to.
If I want to use stuff outside the written rules, I am gonna do that regardless of what some bloke who works for GW says. I do not need permission. But that requires negotiation and discussion and some people are difficult about that. So I like it when they provide that stuff in the core, written rules.
While I agree, actual rules would be nice, I can also understand why they don't do it in the rules when they don't have dedicated kits for a given option. Looking at the mess that was the Chapter House lawsuit, the rise of 3rd party companies who make bits and replacement models the company isn't going to print rules unless they can support them in some way. As frustrating as it is, the company can't intentionally leave gaps in it's line like that if it expects to protect the IP. Knowing that is why I was asking them to let us use the upgrade sprue options on Primaris characters instead of asking for a bunch of options that don't exist anymore.
And just for the record, that "some bloke" is one of the 40k team's rules writers whose written a large chunk of the codexes we've got right now.
Da Boss wrote: I suppose that is the reason for it, though I wonder why other industries can allow for after market parts but not Games Workshop in particular.
IP law is a PITA. If you're not defending it, then you're allowing for your brand control to be weakened which can result in it becoming public domain, which can shoot the company in the foot.
You're off by an order of magnitude. Assuming the ITC rankings are 10% of competitive players is £2,700 per year, assuming it's 1% is £270 per year. And £400 seems pretty low for an entire 2000 point army at full MSRP unless you're playing an extreme elite faction.
You are actually right, I did make a one zero too much mistake here. Nevertheless it only lowers the amount by which casuals/collectors outnumber competitives. You still have to have 800k competitive players burning an army a year with no second hand market to generate GW’s revenue.
But that's an absurd comparison. You're ignoring all of GW's non-40k revenue, along with things like milking the cash cow of whiny kids demanding a box of space marines to ignore 15 minutes later.
The claim was that all players are competitive. I assume that similar claim is made for AOS which by all dakka discussions is a much smaller game than 40k. So on the one hand you have 800k of competitive players of both systems supporting GW or you have 6milion whiny kids with Intercessor box. You can mix those freely but remember, that this is yearly amount of purchases and many, many players at even LVO level do not churn and burn and play with old collections (half of ITC ranking is made up of single event attendees with less than 1/10th points of a top player). And GW had to release special product line to target toy shops and those little Timmys. So let apply rule of halfs: half revenue are little Timmys of whatever game, half of the rest goes to non-40k products, that leave us with 200k of competitive players churning and burning an army a year and selling their previous army on ebay to god knows who, since there are only little Timmys and non-40k players out there. See a glaring hole in that landscape, perfectly fillable by collectors and beer and pretzels casuals and narrative players?
What I find funny is that during 5th to 7th you yourself, by your own statements in prior discussions, were a member of this suposedly non existing group of players, rarely playing an occasional narrative game and making an occasional purchase if ever.
By your own words, you did not exist/were irrelevant...
ThatMG wrote:The counter point to the video as that if the rules were actually good they wouldn't need to make a video "declaring intent."
A Town Called Malus wrote:
ThatMG wrote: The counter point to the video as that if the rules were actually good they wouldn't need to make a video "declaring intent."
This.
Sloppy rules help absolutely nobody.
Not Online!!! wrote:Seconded.
Good job not watching the video to see what is actually discussed and jumping into a conversation only armed with your assumptions. Please collect your No Prize™ at the door. Seriously, the amount of reaching involved in this nonsense is insane. The "point" of the video is for Wade Pryce to talk to a member of the studio about their job and James is a 40k rules writer so he talked about the rules and ways you can use those rules to tell cool stories and spelled out their intent as trying to let people create cool moments in the game. All these claims about them not caring about balance or the rules themselves are nonsense.
JNAProductions wrote: GW charges anywhere from about $40 to several hundred dollars for rules per person. While it's fine to modify the games you play to your hearts' contents, with a good group, I expect that for the money I pay to get a tight, competitive game. I shouldn't NEED a strong social contract to play a fun game of 40k. Obviously I'd like my opponents to be cool people, but the baseline should be pretty damn strong for the money I pay.
And while those expectations are fine, they make it pretty clear that isn't the intent they have for the game. Just listen to his comment about "balance".
I'm not listening to a whole hour just to hear a justification for bad balance, so just go ahead and paraphrase.
ThatMG wrote: The counter point to the video as that if the rules were actually good they wouldn't need to make a video "declaring intent."
This.
Sloppy rules help absolutely nobody.
Yep but really - it's almost like they are telling us to make our own rules at this point. Lets do it. Lets take ITC/ETC to the next level and write an actual competitive rule set and give it away for free.
GW's rule-books are already an outdated, error-riddled rip-off at £20+ for the matched players. How insane would you have to be to buy GW rulebooks if you were gonna change significant parts of it anyway?
Why would you write rules for people who aren't using your rules as written?
Affirming Rule 0 and "muh narrative" is fine, but relying on it is fatal for rules design. Players who are happy to use Rule 0 don't need to be the primary audience because they'll fix anything in the rules that doesn't suit their needs. The primary target for the writing of a rule-set has to be the people who will (or more commonly, have to) use the rule-set as written.
If we take this design... "ethos" at it's face, and accept that the purpose of the rules is to provide narrative players a good baseline for their homebrew, then narrative players deserve better than the haphazard dart-flinging GW indulges in.
JNAProductions wrote: GW charges anywhere from about $40 to several hundred dollars for rules per person. While it's fine to modify the games you play to your hearts' contents, with a good group, I expect that for the money I pay to get a tight, competitive game. I shouldn't NEED a strong social contract to play a fun game of 40k. Obviously I'd like my opponents to be cool people, but the baseline should be pretty damn strong for the money I pay.
And while those expectations are fine, they make it pretty clear that isn't the intent they have for the game. Just listen to his comment about "balance".
I'm not listening to a whole hour just to hear a justification for bad balance, so just go ahead and paraphrase.
Agreed.
And it wasn't even an excuse for bad balance, it was a statement of intent of what they intend to the rules to be for and a comment about how some players focus too much on chasing an idea of balance in order to have fun.
ThatMG wrote: The counter point to the video as that if the rules were actually good they wouldn't need to make a video "declaring intent."
This.
Sloppy rules help absolutely nobody.
Yep but really - it's almost like they are telling us to make our own rules at this point. Lets do it. Lets take ITC/ETC to the next level and write an actual competitive rule set and give it away for free.
The entire discussion presented wasn't focused on tournament play, which accounts for maybe 10% of the people who spend money on this hobby, and more on the more casual play with your friends, so maybe that's why Dakka is so darn confused (other than a failure to do actual research and listen to the podcast being discussed instead of making assumptions of what is said in the podcast based on a contextless summary of the topic).
ClockworkZion wrote: The "point" of the video is for Wade Pryce to talk to a member of the studio about their job and James is a 40k rules writer so he talked about the rules and ways you can use those rules to tell cool stories and spelled out their intent as trying to let people create cool moments in the game. All these claims about them not caring about balance or the rules themselves are nonsense.
And the rules frequently fail to do that.
If they wanted cool moments then they wouldn't have randomised charge ranges which means that your epic cool commander fails a 3" charge by the player rolling double 1s and is promptly shot to pieces on the next turn. That is not cool for either player, it's just bad luck and rolling getting in the way of cool moments.
If GWs designers wanted cool moments in the game, then getting rid of some of the randomness would be a good start as it would actually make it possible to plan to do a cool moment.
First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
ClockworkZion wrote: The "point" of the video is for Wade Pryce to talk to a member of the studio about their job and James is a 40k rules writer so he talked about the rules and ways you can use those rules to tell cool stories and spelled out their intent as trying to let people create cool moments in the game. All these claims about them not caring about balance or the rules themselves are nonsense.
And the rules frequently fail to do that.
If they wanted cool moments then they wouldn't have randomised charge ranges which means that your epic cool commander fails a 3" charge by the player rolling double 1s and is promptly shot to pieces on the next turn. That is not cool for either player, it's just bad luck and rolling getting in the way of cool moments.
If GWs designers wanted cool moments in the game, then getting rid of some of the randomness would be a good start as it would actually make it possible to plan to do a cool moment.
Randomization is there to create risk. Risk is what makes those stories we tell each other later more interesting. No one cares about all the times their units pass the statistically average number of saves, but I sure do remember the time that my Exorcist tank passed more than 20 6+ Invul saves in 5th edition.
I also remember the time I shot a Necron flyer out of the air and it crashed, exploded and took a large chunk out of my army (basically crashing -on- my army). Those moments stand out because they aren't what we expect to happen, but the random chance the dice gives made it happen.
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Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Tournament =/= matched play. Using points costs doesn't make you a tournament player.
Second, just because something is used with Matched Play, like the Rule of 3, doesn't mean its intended for all game types. Rule of 3 is intended only for tournament play for example.
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
Why don't you go to tournaments? Not even Local ones? Why do you prefer matched play over narrative rules?
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
but here's the 1000000$ question.
DO you use Ro3?
Yes
Then techincally you are playing what GW calls organized play.
Which is in essence tournament v 0.5
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
Why don't you go to tournaments? Not even Local ones? Why do you prefer matched play over narrative rules?
Not this person, but with my current job I work the days they tend to do local tournaments. My only days to play are in the middle of the week.
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
Why don't you go to tournaments? Not even Local ones? Why do you prefer matched play over narrative rules?
Matched play provides structure and some semblance of fairness - or at least a jumping off point.
As for not going to tournaments, I’ve had several horrid encounters with the local herd - 40K and otherwise (I used to do a lot of Mechwarriorark Age tournaments) and I can no longer stand the mentalities it breeds. I like to use my variety of models and not be prejudged for not optimizing my list to the max, for one.
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
but here's the 1000000$ question.
DO you use Ro3?
Yes
Then techincally you are playing what GW calls organized play.
Which is in essence tournament v 0.5
Even if that's true, there is nothing restricting them from doing more with the game than trying to play tournament style games.
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
but here's the 1000000$ question.
DO you use Ro3?
Yes
Then techincally you are playing what GW calls organized play.
Which is in essence tournament v 0.5
Even if that's true, there is nothing restricting them from doing more with the game than trying to play tournament style games.
For which a more balanced and less sloppy ruleset will be much more valuable than any number of videos telling us about what the design team are trying to do, rather than what they actually manage to do.
A Town Called Malus wrote: For which a more balanced and less sloppy ruleset will be much more valuable than any number of videos telling us about what the design team are trying to do, rather than what they actually manage to do.
And not a single statement made in that entire Voxcast said they weren't trying to make a balanced ruleset. It called out people for putting balance on a pedestal, but it never said the game wasn't written with the intent of giving fair games for all involved.
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
Why don't you go to tournaments? Not even Local ones? Why do you prefer matched play over narrative rules?
Matched play provides structure and some semblance of fairness - or at least a jumping off point.
As for not going to tournaments, I’ve had several horrid encounters with the local herd - 40K and otherwise (I used to do a lot of Mechwarriorark Age tournaments) and I can no longer stand the mentalities it breeds. I like to use my variety of models and not be prejudged for not optimizing my list to the max, for one.
Well IMO there is nothing wrong with that. Plus you aren't the only one that likes to play with all their units. There is a social construct required for this kind of gaming though. If you are playing toned down lists - your opponents need to as well or you aren't actually playing at a good "jumping off point" the balance between good and bad units is that bad. A fair number of games I play are between mono armies in which we try to bring similarly balanced armies. We use tournament style rules though for the same reason you do - it's a good jumping off point.
Xenomancers wrote: Well IMO there is nothing wrong with that. Plus you aren't the only one that likes to play with all their units. There is a social construct required for this kind of gaming though. If you are playing toned down lists - your opponents need to as well or you aren't actually playing at a good "jumping off point" the balance between good and bad units is that bad.
All games are built on social constructs. Even if that construct is agreeing to only use the rules, or following an understanding that you'll be playing a tournament mission pack, it's still a social construct. This idea that only certain kinds of games require a social construct is misunderstanding what a social construct is and how it works.
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
but here's the 1000000$ question.
DO you use Ro3?
Yes
Then techincally you are playing what GW calls organized play.
Which is in essence tournament v 0.5
Even if that's true, there is nothing restricting them from doing more with the game than trying to play tournament style games.
For which a more balanced and less sloppy ruleset will be much more valuable than any number of videos telling us about what the design team are trying to do, rather than what they actually manage to do.
flandarz wrote: I'd honestly be surprised if a fair portion of GW's revenue wasn't generated by the competitive crowd "chasing the meta". Buying the best units (only to do it again when something gets nerfed or buffed). Getting paints and glue. Buying all the latest rulebooks. And, really, an unbalanced ruleset favors a business model that sells to those types.
The data suggests they are a surprisingly minor. While such players are 'whales' that buy a large amount of stuff, they also dip heavily into the second market and are massively outnumbered by narrative players (who buy a similar amount of material) and casual/modeling only players (who buy little but massively outnumber the other margins.
The truth is that for every competitive player is one guy playing casually at a store, three guys buying the latest models for their home play meta that consists of maybe 4 other people, and 4 other people that actually haven't played a game in 6 months.
^ disclaimer: given as an example, but the ratios are actually far worse. The number of people who play once-twice a year (or less) are almost 8 to 1 who plays more than once a month.
Stormonu wrote: Matched play provides structure and some semblance of fairness - or at least a jumping off point.
As for not going to tournaments, I’ve had several horrid encounters with the local herd - 40K and otherwise (I used to do a lot of Mechwarriorark Age tournaments) and I can no longer stand the mentalities it breeds. I like to use my variety of models and not be prejudged for not optimizing my list to the max, for one.
This.
The general rule of the forum (particularly YMDC) tends to discourage us from discussing "The Most Important Rule (TMIR) " - however, I find this to be the actual most important rule in the entire game. It essentially tells you that coming up with a house rule is recommended, if not a required, aspect of the game itself. The internet community and hardcore RAW-elitist would tell us that houseruling in itself is cheating ("not playing the actual game"), but it is precisely the copious and generous application of TMIR that makes the game work and help define the 'local meta' of the game.
In fact, in a sense, tournament organizers are doing exactly the same thing by tacking on their own sets of rules & rewards that encourage min-maxing lists. Tournament in themselves are not necessarily a test of skills and tactics, but rather a game of how much money you have to spend on the hobby and how far you can break the system. It's the game mode where TMIR is not applied (which in itself is "breaking" the rule since the rules specifically tell you to come up with a rule that works for both parties).
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
but here's the 1000000$ question.
DO you use Ro3?
Yes
Then techincally you are playing what GW calls organized play.
Which is in essence tournament v 0.5
Even if that's true, there is nothing restricting them from doing more with the game than trying to play tournament style games.
For which a more balanced and less sloppy ruleset will be much more valuable than any number of videos telling us about what the design team are trying to do, rather than what they actually manage to do.
I pretty much agree with this. There is literally no downside to having a well balanced ruleset. IMO it helps causal and narrative the most because those players put the least effort into optimising their list to make sure it rules and can accomplish things.
THe problem is that some "gamers" like to pretend their social hour that they tell their parents/wives/gf's is game time isn't. THey sit around and laugh and 1/2 heartedly play a turn or 2 while having a beer.
For those guys intent is great.
Gamers, intent on playing a game, and getting better at it and who use it as self improvement know the idea of Intent is crap.
Real play with a tight ruleset that doesn't have grey area's makes for a better play experience.
Is there some social construct I missed that demands GW games designers to answer questions like "What's it like, working on games rules" with new FAQ rules to clean up the game?
How far does that rule go? Do you require them to fix one rule every time they order breakfast? How does the waitress know what to bring them if they're jabbering about MEQ vs Green Tide instead of sausage or bacon?
I get that you don't care for a video where they're talking about the hows and whys, but what's so wrong with them producing such a video for those who want it?
Besides, either the process is working and things are as they should, or the process is broken and needs to be fixed. In the first case, why not share their process? But in the second case, wouldn't focusing on their process be the only way to fix it?
Either way, it's hard to see how this video warrents so much hate.
Reemule wrote: THe problem is that some "gamers" like to pretend their social hour that they tell their parents/wives/gf's is game time isn't. THey sit around and laugh and 1/2 heartedly play a turn or 2 while having a beer.
For those guys intent is great.
Gamers, intent on playing a game, and getting better at it and who use it as self improvement know the idea of Intent is crap.
Real play with a tight ruleset that doesn't have grey area's makes for a better play experience.
You do understand the intent doesn't contradict the idea that the game can have a tight ruleset right? The reason I shared this discussion of intent is because it shows the intent of the studio so when we're discussing RAW versus RAI we know more of what the studio is going for rather than what we assume they're going for.
Basically if your reading of a rule creates moments that feel bad to play against, your reading of the rule is wrong.
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Bharring wrote: Is there some social construct I missed that demands GW games designers to answer questions like "What's it like, working on games rules" with new FAQ rules to clean up the game?
How far does that rule go? Do you require them to fix one rule every time they order breakfast? How does the waitress know what to bring them if they're jabbering about MEQ vs Green Tide instead of sausage or bacon?
I get that you don't care for a video where they're talking about the hows and whys, but what's so wrong with them producing such a video for those who want it?
Besides, either the process is working and things are as they should, or the process is broken and needs to be fixed. In the first case, why not share their process? But in the second case, wouldn't focusing on their process be the only way to fix it?
Either way, it's hard to see how this video warrents so much hate.
Most of the hate is from people who don't even watch it, assume what it actually covers and then running with their biases on full display.
Reemule wrote: Gamers, intent on playing a game, and getting better at it and who use it as self improvement know the idea of Intent is crap.
Real play with a tight ruleset that doesn't have grey area's makes for a better play experience.
I'd argue the true "intent on playing" a tournament 40k isn't about getting better at it but how badly they can break the game to their advantage which for them "makes for a better play experience."
Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
The stock market would probably explode
As RAI goes, I understand how it could work with strange interaction , although they sometimes get supported by later supplements. I even get how RAI could work with too good rule combinations. But I have zero idea how RAI would work with bad rules. So if GW writes a set of rules and they end up real bad, and then the fixs make them worse, but I think we agree people want fun armies to play with, how do those two go hand in hand. Can't have bad armies that are unfun to play with, that are fun to play, and you can't even fix them through house rules, assuming you play in a place where those are accepted, because GWs own doing clearly shows the rules are suppose to be bad, because if GW wanted to fix them, they would either say they want to fix the rules or they would just fix them.
Reemule wrote: Gamers, intent on playing a game, and getting better at it and who use it as self improvement know the idea of Intent is crap.
Real play with a tight ruleset that doesn't have grey area's makes for a better play experience.
I'd argue the true "intent on playing" a tournament 40k isn't about getting better at it but how badly they can break the game to their advantage.
I'd say it's both. Competitive play is hinged on finding the strongest exploitation of the rules while ensuring it works on the widest number of opponents all while claiming the game needs to be more balanced despite the fact that the competitive scene, especially at high level play, hinges on this sort of exploration.
Most of the hate is from people who don't even watch it, assume what it actually covers and then running with their biases on full display.
Why you conflate criticism and hate? This is not the first time this happens.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Could you please point out specific instances? Like, Poster X stated Y, but at minute zz:zz of the video this is countered.
Because this sounds a lot like some band-aid defense.
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
The stock market would probably explode
It's more that BMW sells you a car for daily driving but you try and use it as a formula one car by adding extra parts to it, and then complain it's not a sports car.
That's competitive play in a nutshell, it's trying to make a formula one car out of a rule set intended more for a daily driver that might be able to drive the autobahn comfortably, but isn't meant for the sort of redlining it keeps getting shoved into.
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
I take this from GW "spend money on our models, not on our rules - these are worthless".
Ok GW, message received.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Could you please point out specific instances? Like, Poster X stated Y, but at minute zz:zz of the video this is countered.
Because this sounds a lot like some band-aid defense.
I'm not the one claiming that GW doesn't care about game balance and is just trying to bandaid the game with an excuse video. The burden of proof isn't on me, it's on the usual suspects who jumped into this thread to take shots at GW without doing the research.
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
I take this from GW "spend money on our models, not on our rules - these are worthless".
Ok GW, message received.
The rules explicitly state you can make your own rules.
The base rules give you a framework in which you can alter to suit your local meta.
Tourny meta is one which eschews the TMIR, take the rules at its face value (even if it would mean some hilarious outcomes) and pits players & their min-maxed army together.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Could you please point out specific instances? Like, Poster X stated Y, but at minute zz:zz of the video this is countered.
Because this sounds a lot like some band-aid defense.
I'm not the one claiming that GW doesn't care about game balance and is just trying to bandaid the game with an excuse video. The burden of proof isn't on me, it's on the usual suspects who jumped into this thread to take shots at GW without doing the research.
This is hilarious. "Forge the narrative" became a meme for a reason.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Isn't more important, then what GW says in videos, the stuff they actually do with their rules.
GW can tell all they want that their goal is for people to have fun, but then I get to look at my codex, the FAQs and the CAs, and I don't get how this can be true. Because clearly they do not want GK players to have fun with their army.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Could you please point out specific instances? Like, Poster X stated Y, but at minute zz:zz of the video this is countered.
Because this sounds a lot like some band-aid defense.
I'm not the one claiming that GW doesn't care about game balance and is just trying to bandaid the game with an excuse video. The burden of proof isn't on me, it's on the usual suspects who jumped into this thread to take shots at GW without doing the research.
This is hilarious. "Forge the narrative" became a meme for a reason.
Yeah, because the loudest voices on the internet can't imagine using a game as a game to have fun and need to treat it like a bloodsport.
Well that, and Kirby was running the company into the ground with bad practices that ran counter to anything the studio actually intended to do with the game.
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
I take this from GW "spend money on our models, not on our rules - these are worthless". Ok GW, message received.
The rules explicitly state you can make your own rules.
The base rules give you a framework in which you can alter to suit your local meta.
Tourny meta is one which eschews the TMIR and pits players & their min-maxed army together.
Make my own rules should be an addition to a tight ruleset. Once my friends and I master the ruleset, and we have a good common ground and solid baseline CREATED BY THE AUTHORS, then we can make up rules. This is not what can happen with GW games. 40k rule writing is erratic, inconsistent, unbalanced, schizophrenic, and partial to a given faction on a given moment. Is not, it cannot be, a solid framework to work on. What are you asking it to do the designer's job.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Isn't more important, then what GW says in videos, the stuff they actually do with their rules.
GW can tell all they want that their goal is for people to have fun, but then I get to look at my codex, the FAQs and the CAs, and I don't get how this can be true. Because clearly they do not want GK players to have fun with their army.
You live in a meta where people think smashing face is the only way to play. There are people out there who can roll up to their local store say "I brought Grey Knights" and play people who will tone their army down for a fun game rather than trying to stomp face.
Yes, GK need a rework from the ground up, but the inability to have fun with the army has as much to do with the enviroment you play in as much as the army you play with.
Yeah, because the loudest voices on the internet can't imagine using a game as a game to have fun and need to treat it like a bloodsport.
Well that, and Kirby was running the company into the ground with bad practices that ran counter to anything the studio actually intended to do with the game.
If my friends, as happened, get frustrated because the mad max ork army they envisioned is not functional since 3rd edition I am not going to have fun because they quit and I am not going to play with them. And I know Kirby is a serviceable boogeyman but here the problem is the same old with the design team.
I take this from GW "spend money on our models, not on our rules - these are worthless".
Ok GW, message received.
The rules explicitly state you can make your own rules.
The base rules give you a framework in which you can alter to suit your local meta.
Tourny meta is one which eschews the TMIR, take the rules at its face value (even if it would mean some hilarious outcomes) and pits players & their min-maxed army together.
Well, and what if people don't want to play like that? people say that 8th ed is good edition. Now I can't imagine how bad, other editions had to be for that to be true. But considering we are on 8th ed, maybe 9th considering how different the new books are, if the make your own rules was the dominant way that people want to play, then wouldn't everyone be already be playing like that. There would be whole 3ed party companies making different rule sets for w40k etc. Nothing like that exists. People play matched play, with "test" rules being played as if they were in full effect. Only difference is what ever people play ITC/ETC/or base rule book missions.
Why do you pretend that people who are making commentary about what they think GW said without actually checking to see what GW said is valid criticism? I could have posted that the video had said just about anything and most of the posters in this thread would have jumped on that without bothering to check it.
Could you please point out specific instances? Like, Poster X stated Y, but at minute zz:zz of the video this is countered.
Because this sounds a lot like some band-aid defense.
I'm not the one claiming that GW doesn't care about game balance and is just trying to bandaid the game with an excuse video. The burden of proof isn't on me, it's on the usual suspects who jumped into this thread to take shots at GW without doing the research.
You're blaming others for what has become of this thread when the blame should lay right at your feet for summarising the video incorrectly. You KNEW people were not going to watch it for one reason or another. This is all on you for not doing a proper TL;DR.
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
I take this from GW "spend money on our models, not on our rules - these are worthless".
Ok GW, message received.
The rules explicitly state you can make your own rules.
The base rules give you a framework in which you can alter to suit your local meta.
Tourny meta is one which eschews the TMIR and pits players & their min-maxed army together.
Make my own rules should be an addition to a tight ruleset. Once my friends and I master the ruleset, and we have a good common ground and solid baseline CREATED BY THE AUTHORS, then we can make up rules.
This is not what can happen with GW games. 40k rule writing is erratic, inconsistent, unbalanced, schizophrenic, and partial to a given faction on a given moment. Is not, it cannot be, a solid framework to work on.
What are you asking it to do the designer's job.
No ruleset for any game is watertight. Albeit 40k has more holes than I'd like, it's functional enough to get a game going.
Reemule wrote: The object of the game is to win.
The point of the game is to have fun.
Arguments are not fun. Unclear rules and stuff like Intent encourages arguments.
Tournament games hardly ever have arguments. If something is unclear a Judge is called, the play is clarified and the game goes on.
Casual play is where you get arguments. You get TFG. You get Intent discussions. Not fun.
You get TFG and intent discussions in competitive play too. Let's not pretend that those things don't exist just because you can get a third party over to discuss things with and solve a dispute.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Grimtuff wrote: You're blaming others for what has become of this thread when the blame should lay right at your feet for summarising the video incorrectly. You KNEW people were not going to watch it for one reason or another. This is all on you for not doing a proper TL;DR.
Nice blame shift. I summarized, not provided a line by line transcript. Summaries eliminate context and boil things down to points, and people where ignoring those points from the get go and railed on about how GW doesn't care about balance.
I'm not taking the blame for people looking for their latest excuse to make up new BS to complain about.
Albeit 40k has more holes than I'd like, it's functional enough to get a game going.
Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
Nice blame shift. I summarized, not provided a line by line transcript. Summaries eliminate context and boil things down to points, and people where ignoring those points from the get go and railed on about how GW doesn't care about balance.
I'm not taking the blame for people looking for their latest excuse to make up new BS to complain about.
Post and minute of the video please.
And no, your "burden of proof" is nonsense I am afraid. People are discussing the ruleset, YOU are calling their statement and interpretation of the video fallacious, it's therefore on YOU to debunk the posts.
I am waiting.
You live in a meta where people think smashing face is the only way to play. There are people out there who can roll up to their local store say "I brought Grey Knights" and play people who will tone their army down for a fun game rather than trying to stomp face.
Yes, GK need a rework from the ground up, but the inability to have fun with the army has as much to do with the enviroment you play in as much as the army you play with.
I don't see endless threads about other ways of playing here, or on other forums or facebook groups. Where is the world wide community that produces rule sets for narrative or open play? where are the community accepted, codex rewrites? If my place is so one of the kind, in playing with just the match play rules. Then I am sure the open or narrative stuff, should be bursting everywhere.
And I am talking separate from my personal position. The fact that people here have 1 army, and out of 30 or something people, only 4-5 have more then one, means that even if you tell someone your bringing GK, not like everyone doesn't know what other people have and play with, there is no place for adjustment. How does someone with 2000pts with flyer eldar or a orc da jump list, is going to modify it to accomodate a GK army. Which kind of a brings the argument someone else brought before. GW doesn't want you to buy a 2000pts working army, they want you to buy 2-3 armies, or 5-6k pts of one army, and mix and match from that"so everyone can have fun". But lets not make all of this about me, and my supposed evil and unique place to play.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
That would be a discussion of "fairness" and/or "balance", not that of rules intent.
You can't generalize the game as a whole as seen on tournament scene because they play by a specific house rule sets that skews the advantages to a certain build.
Post and minute of the video please.
And no, your "burden of proof" is nonsense I am afraid. People are discussing the ruleset, YOU are calling their statement and interpretation of the video fallacious, it's therefore on YOU to debunk the posts.
I am waiting.
Post the timestamp for what exactly? The part of the video where GW talks about how things they don't talk about? I can't provide evidence that something that didn't happen didn't happen, that's why it's not my burden to prove.
1) Narrative players will be given a decent frame work to build of on for "forging the narrative." "Muh Story." (it would be easier and effortless to do so)
2) Players who want to achieve a "Win State" will have various options and/or playstyles suited to their needs.
3) Prevents rules inconsistencies to the point that the game itself has a clear simple mechanical flow that is because of its intuitive design.
Various games may meet these partial or somewhat however that doesn't invalidate their importance. That argument is "it's hard to write good rules." Really shouldn't be in the debate.
People getting triggered of the intent of the vid that explains intent. It wouldn't exist if the RULEZ met the above criteria. Holding games design to a high standard isn't the problem, the problem is if you accept mediocrity you will only get a downward spiral of mediocrity.
Remember kidz "GW is a model(s) company not a RULEZ company "
Post and minute of the video please. And no, your "burden of proof" is nonsense I am afraid. People are discussing the ruleset, YOU are calling their statement and interpretation of the video fallacious, it's therefore on YOU to debunk the posts. I am waiting.
Post the timestamp for what exactly? The part of the video where GW talks about how things they don't talk about? I can't provide evidence that something that didn't happen didn't happen, that's why it's not my burden to prove.
They who? Me? Peregrine? Santa Claus? And when, in which post we posted something wrong? How is debunked by the video? Because it's quite easy to write generic statements that essentially mean "you got it wrong, goodnight".
You live in a meta where people think smashing face is the only way to play. There are people out there who can roll up to their local store say "I brought Grey Knights" and play people who will tone their army down for a fun game rather than trying to stomp face.
Yes, GK need a rework from the ground up, but the inability to have fun with the army has as much to do with the enviroment you play in as much as the army you play with.
I don't see endless threads about other ways of playing here, or on other forums or facebook groups. Where is the world wide community that produces rule sets for narrative or open play? where are the community accepted, codex rewrites? If my place is so one of the kind, in playing with just the match play rules. Then I am sure the open or narrative stuff, should be bursting everywhere.
And I am talking separate from my personal position. The fact that people here have 1 army, and out of 30 or something people, only 4-5 have more then one, means that even if you tell someone your bringing GK, not like everyone doesn't know what other people have and play with, there is no place for adjustment. How does someone with 2000pts with flyer eldar or a orc da jump list, is going to modify it to accomodate a GK army. Which kind of a brings the argument someone else brought before. GW doesn't want you to buy a 2000pts working army, they want you to buy 2-3 armies, or 5-6k pts of one army, and mix and match from that"so everyone can have fun". But lets not make all of this about me, and my supposed evil and unique place to play.
You do most people have more than exactly 2k of a given army right? I mean most of us have been collecting armies for a while and have picked up new stuff as the game has ebbed and flowed and can bring less broken stuff to the table.
And you can tone down the Da Jump list by not taking Da Jump.
It shouldn't have a rule set like the GK one play against something like IG or Eldar. Because right now it is like having someone from 14 or down, being set up in an event for under 17y olds, with no weight limit.
To balance GK vs any army in the game, you would have to either play top game, specific ETC mission rule set AND play a tournament list, and get lucky with match ups, and rolls, in every game you play till you stop playing. Or rewrite the codex, and good luck on people not playing your book accepting you rewriting your to make it better, even if it is gak right now.
1) Narrative players will be given a decent frame work to build of on for "forging the narrative." "Muh Story"
2) Players who want to achieve a "Win State" will have various options and/or playstyles suited to their needs.
3) Prevents rules inconsistencies to the point that the game itself has a clear simple mechanical flow that is because of its intuitive design.
I note that "cutesy" little stab at narrative players. I can't say I'm surprised.
I'm thinking this thread might have run its course, with the amount of vitriol on both sides. I'm just gonna bid you all adieu at this point and watch from the sidelines.
Reemule wrote: The object of the game is to win.
The point of the game is to have fun.
Arguments are not fun. Unclear rules and stuff like Intent encourages arguments.
Tournament games hardly ever have arguments. If something is unclear a Judge is called, the play is clarified and the game goes on.
Casual play is where you get arguments. You get TFG. You get Intent discussions. Not fun.
You get TFG and intent discussions in competitive play too. Let's not pretend that those things don't exist just because you can get a third party over to discuss things with and solve a dispute.
Actually, you don't. TFG's don't operate when you know the rules and you understand the way the rules work, and various power levels of forces. And in general as they don't "win" they don't stay and play in the competitive game arena.
flandarz wrote: I'm thinking this thread might have run its course, with the amount of vitriol on both sides. I'm just gonna bid you all adieu at this point and watch from the sidelines.
I find it reassuring that the one fixed point in a changing age is that this forum always finds ways to make me hate certain members of this community.
Post and minute of the video please.
And no, your "burden of proof" is nonsense I am afraid. People are discussing the ruleset, YOU are calling their statement and interpretation of the video fallacious, it's therefore on YOU to debunk the posts.
I am waiting.
Post the timestamp for what exactly? The part of the video where GW talks about how things they don't talk about? I can't provide evidence that something that didn't happen didn't happen, that's why it's not my burden to prove.
They who? Me? Peregrine? Santa Claus? And when, in which post we posted something wrong? How is debunked by the video?
Because it's quite easy to write generic statements that essentially mean "you got it wrong, goodnight".
I didn't switch subjects in that sentence. The "they" mentioned was GW. As in "The part of the video where GW talks about things GW doesn't talk about" as in you're asking me to provide a timestamp of something that isn't being said. GW not once mentions they are against balance, and I can't give you a timestamp of that because there isn't a timestamp for something that never happened.
You do most people have more than exactly 2k of a given army right? I mean most of us have been collecting armies for a while and have picked up new stuff as the game has ebbed and flowed and can bring less broken stuff to the table.
And you can tone down the Da Jump list by not taking Da Jump.
not here, not when an army costs 800$ or more. also absolutly no where in the rules or the rule book, does it say that to play a 2000pts game you require more then 2000pts or even multiple armies. This isn't MtG side decks are not a thing.
And no if you build an army to use jump, you can't just play without it. If my opponent has an eldar flyer list, he cant play a non flyer list, because without flyers, he has ~1000pts.
Reemule wrote: The object of the game is to win.
The point of the game is to have fun.
Arguments are not fun. Unclear rules and stuff like Intent encourages arguments.
Tournament games hardly ever have arguments. If something is unclear a Judge is called, the play is clarified and the game goes on.
Casual play is where you get arguments. You get TFG. You get Intent discussions. Not fun.
You get TFG and intent discussions in competitive play too. Let's not pretend that those things don't exist just because you can get a third party over to discuss things with and solve a dispute.
Actually, you don't. TFG's don't operate when you know the rules and you understand the way the rules work, and various power levels of forces. And in general as they don't "win" they don't stay and play in the competitive game arena.
You do know that TFG describes cheaters and poor sports as well right? Or are you pretending they don't exist for the sake of your arguement?
You do most people have more than exactly 2k of a given army right? I mean most of us have been collecting armies for a while and have picked up new stuff as the game has ebbed and flowed and can bring less broken stuff to the table.
And you can tone down the Da Jump list by not taking Da Jump.
not here, not when an army costs 800$ or more. also absolutly no where in the rules or the rule book, does it say that to play a 2000pts game you require more then 2000pts or even multiple armies. This isn't MtG side decks are not a thing.
And no if you build an army to use jump, you can't just play without it. If my opponent has an eldar flyer list, he cant play a non flyer list, because without flyers, he has ~1000pts.
Then play a 1k game? Or play Kill Team.
I see you keep finding reason to justify why your environment has to be so special that it can't scale the game back from skullcrusher levels to have a fun game.
You do most people have more than exactly 2k of a given army right? I mean most of us have been collecting armies for a while and have picked up new stuff as the game has ebbed and flowed and can bring less broken stuff to the table.
And you can tone down the Da Jump list by not taking Da Jump.
not here, not when an army costs 800$ or more. also absolutly no where in the rules or the rule book, does it say that to play a 2000pts game you require more then 2000pts or even multiple armies. This isn't MtG side decks are not a thing.
And no if you build an army to use jump, you can't just play without it. If my opponent has an eldar flyer list, he cant play a non flyer list, because without flyers, he has ~1000pts.
That would be a case of putting all eggs in one basket without regard for potential rules change down the road. Same with GK - just because it was S-tier army in 5th, doesn't mean that it should remain so down the line. GK in 5th ed was outrageously broken.
The fact of the matter is, the meta shifts due to point revisions and rules change. It certainly is true that GWseems to be favoring certain army/units over others, but you have to take into consideration that not everyone in the 40k community plays ultra-competitive min-max armies all the time, every time.
Part of being a ultra-competitive min-max army player means that you have to be willing to dish out $$ everytime an OP unit gets released.
Part of being casual but competitve, while remaining sensible to your lifestyle where you're not dropping $1,000's every month or so just to keep up with the internet meta means that it's usually smarter to have a balanced army that can deal with the tides of change better.
Reemule wrote: When your play is on camera.. Cheaters tend to get outed quickly. And poor sports? Define a poor sport.
Not every table is on a stream, not ever cheater reaches the top tables, and poor sports exist at every level of play.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So here are some timestamps worth hearing.
A discussion about the rules designer's most important job, a talk about indexes versus codex, and things like the Tau Commanders:
Skipping forward a bit I'm going to quote James: "It's important to let people feel like they can do what they want to do with their models" which segued into a talk about the Laser Destructor on loyalist knights which leads into the comment about balance:
I'm not going to keep plumbing the video for points, but those are a couple good spots to listen in at. If you start on the first one that skips his work experiance and jumps into his rules developer talk.
Reemule wrote:THe problem is that some "gamers" like to pretend their social hour that they tell their parents/wives/gf's is game time isn't. THey sit around and laugh and 1/2 heartedly play a turn or 2 while having a beer.
Why the quote marks on "gamers"? Are you implying that they're not "true gamers"?
Furthermore, how is how they play a "problem"? Are they not l33t enough for you? Not on the cutting edge of the meta and strictly following chess clocks?
I don't see endless threads about other ways of playing here, or on other forums or facebook groups. Where is the world wide community that produces rule sets for narrative or open play? where are the community accepted, codex rewrites? If my place is so one of the kind, in playing with just the match play rules. Then I am sure the open or narrative stuff, should be bursting everywhere.
And I am talking separate from my personal position. The fact that people here have 1 army, and out of 30 or something people, only 4-5 have more then one, means that even if you tell someone your bringing GK, not like everyone doesn't know what other people have and play with, there is no place for adjustment. How does someone with 2000pts with flyer eldar or a orc da jump list, is going to modify it to accomodate a GK army. Which kind of a brings the argument someone else brought before. GW doesn't want you to buy a 2000pts working army, they want you to buy 2-3 armies, or 5-6k pts of one army, and mix and match from that"so everyone can have fun". But lets not make all of this about me, and my supposed evil and unique place to play.
I alone own about 10.000 pts worth of models, plus significant amount of GW's terrain (costing around the same as 2000pts army) and a bucket of paint, and I'm 1/4th of my narrative group. Together we own around 25k pts bought mostly in the last three years. That makes us "worth" the same in the eyes of GW as what? A third of your meta, a fourth?. And we are not seen in any FLGS, I'm the only one taking time to post online but we all take part in community surveys so we are visible to GW.
As to why you don't see open/narrative rulesets - the trick is that beside official GW rules each group has their own set of house rules or fandexes which do not have to be published anywhere to be used as intended by their creators. Even then, there were a lot of custom reworks/fandexes published even here on dakka during 7th, but then all of those got jumped by "constructive critcism" (come posters here showed up only to call all fan work trash). A lot of narrative content is "published" as commentary to scratchbuild terrain on FB terrain building groups - especially in Necromunda crowd there are a lot of folks who build special terrain pieces to represent focus points of their next games. Yes, that is right, people spend time and recources to make a special one-off terrain for their hour long weekly game.
Reemule wrote:THe problem is that some "gamers" like to pretend their social hour that they tell their parents/wives/gf's is game time isn't. THey sit around and laugh and 1/2 heartedly play a turn or 2 while having a beer.
Why the quote marks on "gamers"? Are you implying that they're not "true gamers"?
Furthermore, how is how they play a "problem"? Are they not l33t enough for you? Not on the cutting edge of the meta and strictly following chess clocks?
They're gamers as much as anyone else.
If you don't actually finish a game.. are you a gamer? If you just go and spar at the gym, are you a boxer? How far do you want to go Sarge?
Reemule wrote:THe problem is that some "gamers" like to pretend their social hour that they tell their parents/wives/gf's is game time isn't. THey sit around and laugh and 1/2 heartedly play a turn or 2 while having a beer.
Why the quote marks on "gamers"? Are you implying that they're not "true gamers"? Furthermore, how is how they play a "problem"? Are they not l33t enough for you? Not on the cutting edge of the meta and strictly following chess clocks?
They're gamers as much as anyone else.
If you don't actually finish a game.. are you a gamer? If you just go and spar at the gym, are you a boxer? How far do you want to go Sarge?
Yes to both of the above. You don't need to finish a game to be a gamer. You only need to play it. You don't need to win boxing matches to be a boxer, as long as you're putting in effort. Sparring is effort. Your point?
ClockworkZion wrote: I saw this a few days ago, but felt it was worth opeining a can of worms on what GW's "intent" for the rules are.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
I do wish the greater community would take this as their own philosophy. It would be nice is casuals like myself had an easier time of finding games that didn't feel like a waste of an afternoon when the game ends 10 to 1 on turn 2.
Outside Gladius and metas where everyone buys one-of-everything and doesn't bother to optimize by even a percent, they suck.
If you can't get clouds of power armor to work after the new books, there's just no hope for you.
Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance.
Of course there's the question of what's considered "TAC", which is slightly more holistic and prompts more discussion, but we can think of the basic definition for now as you bringing something to handle every reasonable threat.
Also you've always been saying that about Marines and don't have the statistics to back it up. YEAH they got better after the new Codex, but just wait for everyone else to get a rework.
I don't see endless threads about other ways of playing here, or on other forums or facebook groups. Where is the world wide community that produces rule sets for narrative or open play? where are the community accepted, codex rewrites? If my place is so one of the kind, in playing with just the match play rules. Then I am sure the open or narrative stuff, should be bursting everywhere.
Not everyone goes online Karol. Of my group I am the only one who reads, let alone posts. The others, and they're all narrative gamers are simply not interested.
What you see on the internet isn't necessarily Equal amounts of people advocating all the various ways of playing. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there, and let's be fair - there are those of us who play, like myself, like nou, wayniac, like notonline etc who play with groups than enjoy this kind of things, who also post here and the general reaction can be quite hostile or, at best, polite indifference or lack of interest, which is fair. What you tend to get with the online community is a congregation of the more hardcore elements of the community, why typically favour a particular way of playing which usually trends towards the more hardcore elements. It self selects for 'competitive' players more than I think does for narrative. This is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.
You won't have a 'world wide community'. You have lots of people all over the world, doing their own thing. You won't have 'community accepted codex rewrites' - that's not how this works - plenty groups just do their own thing, and make the game work for themselves, irregardless of how everyone else plays. The garage scene is hugely varied. As to why folks like me don't post what we do online - what's the point? Christ, this community on its own can't agree on what it wants. And we all see and know the vitriol and bile sent towards gw for their rules, do you really think folks like myself want to ruin our days with competive-at-all-costs jerks (note: hypothetical imaginary character) tearing to shreds stuff that we've done, stuff that we love, just because they get a kick out of complaining and lashing out?! I really can't be bothered with the negativity. And again hypothetical jerk interactions aside, what is the value of people like us posting up what we do? What you get here is a self-selection of competitive types, whose main interest is generally the 'official' game. It doesn't matter how perfect our game is, or our missions, unless it's an officially approved mission or toruanament pack, it's irrelevant. Why would they read, or respond? And if they're not interested in 'our' game because it's not the 'real' game, (and by the way, that's totally fair perspective - competitive/tournament types, though I disagree I will respect it. And I'm not having a go!) why would I put all that effort into it? The work/reward ratio is too skewed to the level of 'its pointless' I'll just go and play the games I love with my group and talk aboht it with them, and not waste my time or anyone else's time here. Hell, I'm more likely to pm nou than I am to post up a home brew infinity scenario.
And I am talking separate from my personal position. The fact that people here have 1 army, and out of 30 or something people, only 4-5 have more then one, means that even if you tell someone your bringing GK, not like everyone doesn't know what other people have and play with, there is no place for adjustment. How does someone with 2000pts with flyer eldar or a orc da jump list, is going to modify it to accomodate a GK army. Which kind of a brings the argument someone else brought before. GW doesn't want you to buy a 2000pts working army, they want you to buy 2-3 armies, or 5-6k pts of one army, and mix and match from that"so everyone can have fun". But lets not make all of this about me, and my supposed evil and unique place to play.
Shrug. Not everyone plays to the game of 'only having 2000 points'. Plenty of folks have been playing for years and have thousands of points, across multiple armies. Of course gw want you to buy more - they're a business. There's nothing particularly 'wrong' with this approach. I like having things to buy and things to collect, I have no interest whatsoever in limiting my purchases to a tiny fraction of the game to fit some arbitrary number.
ClockworkZion wrote: 2 caught cheaters doesn't mean there haven't been more. Loaded dice where a common issue in the past for example.
And a boxer who doesn't compete is still a boxer. They're just not professional boxers.
In the scrutinized environment of tourney play, TG are so rare your scraping for examples. My point stands, You have a much better play experience in a tourney setting than a Casual setting.
ClockworkZion wrote: 2 caught cheaters doesn't mean there haven't been more. Loaded dice where a common issue in the past for example.
And a boxer who doesn't compete is still a boxer. They're just not professional boxers.
In the scrutinized environment of tourney play, TG are so rare your scraping for examples. My point stands, You have a much better play experience in a tourney setting than a Casual setting.
It depends who you play against in both tourney setting and casual setting.
In casual setting, if you have a tight group of players who play together often you won't see much TFG.
In random pick up/tournament setting you're statistically more likely run into TFG.
Outside Gladius and metas where everyone buys one-of-everything and doesn't bother to optimize by even a percent, they suck.
If you can't get clouds of power armor to work after the new books, there's just no hope for you.
Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance.
By that definition, Chess is imbalanced - White is OP. But it's still a well-liked non-trivial game. A full 50% of armies are OP and a full 50% of armies are bad.
Of course there's the question of what's considered "TAC", which is slightly more holistic and prompts more discussion, but we can think of the basic definition for now as you bringing something to handle every reasonable threat.
"Handle" as in, "have a 50% shot at beating it"? Because, if your list has a 50% shot at beating every reasonable threat, then no list has a >50% chance of beating yours. Therefore, anyone not playing your list cannot do better than you. And cannot do better than 50/50 against you. So the meta boils down to everyone playing that list (or lists with 100% identical winrates).
I sure hope you didn't mean "more than 50% shot at beating it". Because that's simply OP.
So do you mean "more than 45%"? Or 40%? Or where? That surely gets complex.
My point isn't to clearly define TAC, really. It's just to show you didn't provide a non-trivial definition of "Balance"; you just shifted the complexity to another term and defined it that way.
Also you've always been saying that about Marines and don't have the statistics to back it up. YEAH they got better after the new Codex, but just wait for everyone else to get a rework.
I'm sorry that you've never been able to do much with the, historically, second-often-top-dog army in the game. These last two years have been rough, sure. But almost every faction in the game has been trash more often than Marines.
While Codex Creep makes it likely that any new Dexes will at least compete with them, but
(1) What makes you think other factions are getting a new book soon?
(2) Even if a few more books came out, if Marines remained better than half the armies, is it really such a bad thing?
I hope Marines stay at least reasonable for a while.
Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance.
Of course there's the question of what's considered "TAC", which is slightly more holistic and prompts more discussion, but we can think of the basic definition for now as you bringing something to handle every reasonable threat.
A reasonable start, but how do you account for terrain or missions?
Also you've always been saying that about Marines and don't have the statistics to back it up. YEAH they got better after the new Codex, but just wait for everyone else to get a rework.
Hate to break it to you, but you don't have the statistics on it either.
It's a good video that gives valuable insights into 40K design/development. I thought he was quite open. His discussion of the writing of the Indexes and the first tranche of 8th edition books certainly explains a lot.
I got the impression that he is in tune with both the tournament crowd and those who favour "narrative" play. I Had no sense that he was in an ivory tower. He also covered how he himself thinks that you can have narrative elements in any style of play - no black and white. He certainly seemed to understand the desire for balance, although he also hinted that perhaps some take that too seriously. It was good to hear that Codex writers do not want so see their book suddenly dominating tournament play. On some elements he indicated that you shouldn't just rock up to an open game night with your home-brew stuff. He also said sometimes to not ask for permission. Perhaps context is everything. Among friends go for it, among strangers not so much.
ClockworkZion wrote: 2 caught cheaters doesn't mean there haven't been more. Loaded dice where a common issue in the past for example.
And a boxer who doesn't compete is still a boxer. They're just not professional boxers.
In the scrutinized environment of tourney play, TG are so rare your scraping for examples. My point stands, You have a much better play experience in a tourney setting than a Casual setting.
Disagree.
I played tournaments for years. I've seen plenty tfg types in competitive/tournament circles And t ranged from 'petty' stuff or 'serious'. Internet is full of anecdotes. Few years back, I saw a single tfg type almost ruin the warmachine community in our city. And that was a tight, well written game that can still be ruined by jerks.
And being honest, I've had more fun in a casual environment with like minded folks over the last few years than I have in any of the recent tournaments I've played. I'm sure our group would be hell for some people. Ymmv.
The truth is You'll probably have a good time playing tournaments if you're into that kind of thing, and you can play with likeminded folks. Which is totally fair. It's also fair to say you'll probably have a good time playing casual games if that's your thing, and you can play with like minded folks. For me, the people playing is a far more vital component of the equation than either the 'specific game' or 'how said game is played'. Jerks are gonna jerk. And 'rules quality' won't always (or often, imo) be enough to counter the jerkiness and tfg-ness of jerks that is more than capable of ruining a game.
ClockworkZion wrote: 2 caught cheaters doesn't mean there haven't been more. Loaded dice where a common issue in the past for example.
And a boxer who doesn't compete is still a boxer. They're just not professional boxers.
In the scrutinized environment of tourney play, TG are so rare your scraping for examples. My point stands, You have a much better play experience in a tourney setting than a Casual setting.
It depends who you play against in both tourney setting and casual setting.
In casual setting, if you have a tight group of players who play together often you won't see much TFG.
In random pick up/tournament setting you're statistically more likely run into TFG.
TFG isn't just "cheater". He's also "jerk", "the smelly guy", "the unfun guy", "the guy nobody likes", "the guy who eats all your food/drinks your beer and never brings any", "the guy who never lets go of an argument".
He's also "the guy who rules lawyers everything" and/or "the guy who doesn't know the rules". Depending on the speaker.
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
I think a more apt anology would be if a car manufacturer created a line of mini smart cars for driving 30-40 mph to and from work (priced as a luxury car, of course), but everyone was buying it and trying to use them to win the Indy 500 (and the manufacturer just shrugged and went “okay”). That’s the sort of mentality I seem to pick up from tournament players.
GW’s game works -but only if you squint very hard and don’t purposely try and game it - and in the latter case, that’s not a guarantee against breaking something anyways.
Would we benefit if GW purposely built their ruleset for competitive play? Sure we would, but that’s Too much effort for GW for overall little gain. They make their money on the minis, the rules are just a side gig to promote buying more than one copy of a model. They only put in enough effort to sell the next kit they put out - and that’s all the effort they see the need to do. They only fix something if it’s dragging down model sales.
ClockworkZion wrote: 2 caught cheaters doesn't mean there haven't been more. Loaded dice where a common issue in the past for example.
And a boxer who doesn't compete is still a boxer. They're just not professional boxers.
In the scrutinized environment of tourney play, TG are so rare your scraping for examples. My point stands, You have a much better play experience in a tourney setting than a Casual setting.
It depends who you play against in both tourney setting and casual setting.
In casual setting, if you have a tight group of players who play together often you won't see much TFG.
In random pick up/tournament setting you're statistically more likely run into TFG.
TFG isn't just "cheater". He's also "jerk", "the smelly guy", "the unfun guy", "the guy nobody likes", "the guy who eats all your food/drinks your beer and never brings any", "the guy who never lets go of an argument".
He's also "the guy who rules lawyers everything" and/or "the guy who doesn't know the rules". Depending on the speaker.
Don't forget "the guy who always shows up with grey army that ruins the pictures" and "the guy who likes to touch other people's models with pizza grease/doritos powder all over their hand"
Karol wrote: Imagine you bought a car, and VW told everyone that they know it sometimes the engine work and sometimes it doesn't, same with breaks, heating etc. But they full encourage the buyer of their cars to fix the cars they bought themselfs, they are even willing to sell the parts needed for specific repairs.
I think a more apt anology would be if a car manufacturer created a line of mini smart cars for driving 30-40 mph to and from work (priced as a luxury car, of course), but everyone was buying it and trying to use them to win the Indy 500 (and the manufacturer just shrugged and went “okay”). That’s the sort of mentality I seem to pick up from tournament players.
GW’s game works -but only if you squint very hard and don’t purposely try and game it - and in the latter case, that’s not a guarantee against breaking something anyways.
Would we benefit if GW purposely built their ruleset for competitive play? Sure we would, but that’s Too much effort for GW for overall little gain. They make their money on the minis, the rules are just a side gig to promote buying more than one copy of a model. They only put in enough effort to sell the next kit they put out - and that’s all the effort they see the need to do. They only fix something if it’s dragging down model sales.
Perhaps a more apt analogy:
The guys who sell a video game.
Should they wait until 100% of bugs have been fixed and the game is balanced?
It's a trick question, because you never know that 100% of bugs have been fixed. Even if they were, you wouldn't know it. It's just your ROI on bughunting keeps falling (to 0 if you have no bugs and don't know it).
Kaiyanwang wrote: Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
That would be a discussion of "fairness" and/or "balance", not that of rules intent.
You can't generalize the game as a whole as seen on tournament scene because they play by a specific house rule sets that skews the advantages to a certain build.
Another reason why GW needs to make a dedicated tourney ruleset and separate it from the rest of the game.
You do most people have more than exactly 2k of a given army right? I mean most of us have been collecting armies for a while and have picked up new stuff as the game has ebbed and flowed and can bring less broken stuff to the table.
And you can tone down the Da Jump list by not taking Da Jump.
not here, not when an army costs 800$ or more. also absolutly no where in the rules or the rule book, does it say that to play a 2000pts game you require more then 2000pts or even multiple armies. This isn't MtG side decks are not a thing.
And no if you build an army to use jump, you can't just play without it. If my opponent has an eldar flyer list, he cant play a non flyer list, because without flyers, he has ~1000pts.
Nothing will stop you from using (wait for it) not equal points.....oh my gawd, the horror, the shame.
WAR AINT FAIR!
Togusa wrote:
Spoiler:
ClockworkZion wrote: I saw this a few days ago, but felt it was worth opeining a can of worms on what GW's "intent" for the rules are.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
I do wish the greater community would take this as their own philosophy. It would be nice is casuals like myself had an easier time of finding games that didn't feel like a waste of an afternoon when the game ends 10 to 1 on turn 2.
This is the worst part about about the current bleed over between "fuhk you" lists/players and pretty much everyone else.
We play narrative @ my flgs all the time. it's not uncommon to have 1750vs2250 games, or 100pl vs 150pl, or let's try this out.
I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules. even tho it does say in the rules that if your opponent is cool with it, go right ahead.
We (local flgs) found the voxcast to be great, it was nice hearing the way that they approach 40k and hope the new stuff continues to please(well maybe not everyone).
If you want to play competition 40k, no problem, if you want to complain how uncompetitive the ruleset is...why on earth are you playing/supporting it then? I'm sure there are plenty of games that have the rules/balance/whatever you are searching so desperately for.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
That would be a discussion of "fairness" and/or "balance", not that of rules intent.
You can't generalize the game as a whole as seen on tournament scene because they play by a specific house rule sets that skews the advantages to a certain build.
Another reason why GW needs to make a dedicated tourney ruleset and separate it from the rest of the game.
Agreed. They need to release "advanced" ruleset for competitive gaming.
Racerguy180 wrote: I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules.
Because we don't want to have to play amateur game designer to figure out if the change is a good one and how to implement it. Sucks for people with weaker armies, but the easiest thing to do is just play by RAW and those people can buy stronger lists.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
That would be a discussion of "fairness" and/or "balance", not that of rules intent.
You can't generalize the game as a whole as seen on tournament scene because they play by a specific house rule sets that skews the advantages to a certain build.
Another reason why GW needs to make a dedicated tourney ruleset and separate it from the rest of the game.
Agreed. They need to release "advanced" ruleset for competitive gaming.
Ehhh, didn't they do that in their main rulebook anyways? They have Matched Play and Open. do I have to buy another book on top of the expensive one I already bought to get tourney rules? No thanks.
Stormonu wrote: I think a more apt anology would be if a car manufacturer created a line of mini smart cars for driving 30-40 mph to and from work (priced as a luxury car, of course), but everyone was buying it and trying to use them to win the Indy 500 (and the manufacturer just shrugged and went “okay”). That’s the sort of mentality I seem to pick up from tournament players.
That's not an apt analogy at all. The mini smart car is reasonably designed to do its job of in-town commuting and its low speed is the result of design choices to optimize it for that role. It's a bad race car, but if you're looking for an efficient in-town commuter car then it might be a good choice. In the case of 40k the flaws aren't because the game is optimized for casual/narrative play, the various issues that hurt competitive play are also bad for everyone else. GW's BEER AND MORE BEER FORGE A NARRATIVE ABOUT HOW DRUNK YOU ARE attitude is nothing but excuses for failure. In the car analogy it would be like if the smart car's wheels randomly fell off every few miles because the engineer failed to design them correctly. Yes, it's a bad race car because its wheels won't last long enough to finish a race, but it's also a terrible car for driving to and from work.
Would we benefit if GW purposely built their ruleset for competitive play? Sure we would, but that’s Too much effort for GW for overall little gain. They make their money on the minis, the rules are just a side gig to promote buying more than one copy of a model. They only put in enough effort to sell the next kit they put out - and that’s all the effort they see the need to do. They only fix something if it’s dragging down model sales.
This sure sounds like a list of reasons why every rule author at GW should be fired and replaced with more competent people.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
That would be a discussion of "fairness" and/or "balance", not that of rules intent.
You can't generalize the game as a whole as seen on tournament scene because they play by a specific house rule sets that skews the advantages to a certain build.
Another reason why GW needs to make a dedicated tourney ruleset and separate it from the rest of the game.
Agreed. They need to release "advanced" ruleset for competitive gaming.
Ehhh, didn't they do that in their main rulebook anyways? They have Matched Play and Open. do I have to buy another book on top of the expensive one I already bought to get tourney rules? No thanks.
It could come out as a free PDF updates maybe with select approved units for balanced competitive play.
DOTA2's inclusion in Captains Mode come to mind - where only finely balanced units can be included.
I don't understand why there's so much anger between the "casuals" and "competitive players". You both want the same thing: to play with the minis you worked hard on and like. And, from my perspective, balancing is pretty important for this. I ain't saying every model should be exactly the same, but they should, at least, all be viable. WITHOUT your opponent having to change their list or cater to you. You should be able to play a Kan Wall or whatever is the "worst" list for your army, and have a reasonable chance of victory (1 in 3 or so seems relatively reasonable), even if your opponent is playing the current hot list out there. I feel like that's pretty fair, and not unreasonable.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
That would be a discussion of "fairness" and/or "balance", not that of rules intent.
You can't generalize the game as a whole as seen on tournament scene because they play by a specific house rule sets that skews the advantages to a certain build.
Another reason why GW needs to make a dedicated tourney ruleset and separate it from the rest of the game.
Agreed. They need to release "advanced" ruleset for competitive gaming.
The thing is, that’s what matched play is supposed to be. That’s what The rulebook says it is. That’s what all those tournament guidelines are for, and why they say they FAQ the game all the time. It’s disingenuous to do all that, to talk about balancing the game and consulting tournament players and then say “oh we don’t actually mean for you to play tournaments”. It’s having their cake and eating it too, and the same lazy excuse they’ve always made when their lack of investment in a real rules team comes up short.
The analogy is a company selling AR-15s and saying “oh it’s just a hunting rifle” while also selling you suppressors, reflex sights and extended mags.
By that definition, Chess is imbalanced - White is OP. But it's still a well-liked non-trivial game. A full 50% of armies are OP and a full 50% of armies are bad.
But that's not "Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance" you were quoting. In chess, White acts first. That's about it. Is not that Black's pawn cannot do anything to White bishops, or that Black Knights out-maneuver hopelessly White Knights. Sorry but your comparison does not hold water. It's the same old "if perfect balance cannot exist, balance should not be pursued" fallacy.
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flandarz wrote: I don't understand why there's so much anger between the "casuals" and "competitive players". You both want the same thing: to play with the minis you worked hard on and like. And, from my perspective, balancing is pretty important for this. I ain't saying every model should be exactly the same, but they should, at least, all be viable. WITHOUT your opponent having to change their list or cater to you. You should be able to play a Kan Wall or whatever is the "worst" list for your army, and have a reasonable chance of victory (1 in 3 or so seems relatively reasonable), even if your opponent is playing the current hot list out there. I feel like that's pretty fair, and not unreasonable.
Viability should be enough. Most people don't care about super-tight rulesets. Then progressive refinements perhaps. Problem being, not only models but entire factions, subfactions, concepts, are neglected even for years before this happens, if happens. Heck, enough to keep people interested in the game. Not leave frustrated.
By that definition, Chess is imbalanced - White is OP. But it's still a well-liked non-trivial game. A full 50% of armies are OP and a full 50% of armies are bad.
But that's not "Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance" you were quoting.
In chess, White acts first. That's about it. Is not that Black's pawn cannot do anything to White bishops, or that Black Knights out-maneuver hopelessly White Knights.
Sorry but your comparison does not hold water. It's the same old "if perfect balance cannot exist, balance should not be pursued" fallacy.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
flandarz wrote: I don't understand why there's so much anger between the "casuals" and "competitive players". You both want the same thing: to play with the minis you worked hard on and like. And, from my perspective, balancing is pretty important for this. I ain't saying every model should be exactly the same, but they should, at least, all be viable. WITHOUT your opponent having to change their list or cater to you. You should be able to play a Kan Wall or whatever is the "worst" list for your army, and have a reasonable chance of victory (1 in 3 or so seems relatively reasonable), even if your opponent is playing the current hot list out there. I feel like that's pretty fair, and not unreasonable.
Viability should be enough. Most people don't care about super-tight rulesets. Then progressive refinements perhaps. Pproblem being, entire factions, subfactions, concepts, and not only models are neglected even years before this happens, if happens.
Heck, enough to keep people interested in the game. Not leave frustrated.
Ayy, also chess normaly changes colour to let the former black player have now advantage in the second round.
nou wrote: I assume that similar claim is made for AOS which by all dakka discussions is a much smaller game than 40k.
I make no such assumption. In fact, I have no idea how AoS is as I can't imagine why anyone finds the game appealing.
See a glaring hole in that landscape, perfectly fillable by collectors and beer and pretzels casuals and narrative players?
Not really. Let's make some reasonable assumptions, going with your 50/50 approximation:
* 50% of GW's revenue is from non-40k sources (AoS, license deals, etc), with "40k sales" including models, paint, and rules.
* 50% of 40k sales are to one-time customers who (for whatever reason) make an initial purchase or two but drop it soon after, which is probably a wildly optimistic estimate of GW's retention rate.
* 75% of 40k sales are to competitive players, a pretty good approximation of "competitive players dominate the hobby".
That's £40.5 million per year in 40k sales to competitive players. If the ITC list covers 100% of competitive players that's an average annual expense of ~£5,000. If the ITC list covers 10% of competitive players that's down to £500 per year, about equivalent to buying a new army every year or two. So no, there isn't really this massive hole you insist must exist. You can account for the majority of 40k revenue with competitive players alone, leaving very little need to assign sales to non-competitive players.
What I find funny is that during 5th to 7th you yourself, by your own statements in prior discussions, were a member of this suposedly non existing group of players, rarely playing an occasional narrative game and making an occasional purchase if ever.
By your own words, you did not exist/were irrelevant...
And that's 100% correct! People who stay engaged with a game at that point are rare, and someone who isn't involved with the local community and only buys OOP stuff from third-party sellers might as well not exist from the point of view of GW. It is absolutely correct to say that I didn't exist except as a potential customer that could be drawn back into relevance if GW improved the game.
some of the best 'narrative' games I've ever played used the Star Fleet Battles system, a system that only an engineer in love with spreadsheets could love, a very tight, balanced and heavily cross referenced rule system
and yet it allowed for detailed commando raids on outpost pirate bases to rescue key individuals, it allowed narrative campaigns etc.
a tight set of rules doesn't prohibit beer & pretzels games, doesn't prohibit narrative games.
but a slack set of rules does tend to prohibit competitive games
SFB basic set when I bought it cost me about the same as 40k 1st edition
I've still got it and occasionally still play it, write something well and it tends to work better
By that definition, Chess is imbalanced - White is OP. But it's still a well-liked non-trivial game. A full 50% of armies are OP and a full 50% of armies are bad.
But that's not "Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance" you were quoting.
In chess, White acts first. That's about it. Is not that Black's pawn cannot do anything to White bishops, or that Black Knights out-maneuver hopelessly White Knights.
Sorry but your comparison does not hold water. It's the same old "if perfect balance cannot exist, balance should not be pursued" fallacy.
A black *pawn* might be no weaker than a while *pawn*, but the black *army* is weaker than the white *army*. White is clearly superior to black in Chess. Not by a lot, but it is. Purely because it goes first.
The "If perfect balance cannot exist, balance should not be pursued" is a fallacy. Balance should be pursued. Complaints that 40k is not balanced *enough* is a legitimate concern. But the post I'm replying to is falling for a closely related fallacy - "Balance less than perfect is not balance".
ClockworkZion wrote: 2 caught cheaters doesn't mean there haven't been more. Loaded dice where a common issue in the past for example.
And a boxer who doesn't compete is still a boxer. They're just not professional boxers.
In the scrutinized environment of tourney play, TG are so rare your scraping for examples. My point stands, You have a much better play experience in a tourney setting than a Casual setting.
It depends who you play against in both tourney setting and casual setting.
In casual setting, if you have a tight group of players who play together often you won't see much TFG.
In random pick up/tournament setting you're statistically more likely run into TFG.
TFG isn't just "cheater". He's also "jerk", "the smelly guy", "the unfun guy", "the guy nobody likes", "the guy who eats all your food/drinks your beer and never brings any", "the guy who never lets go of an argument".
He's also "the guy who rules lawyers everything" and/or "the guy who doesn't know the rules". Depending on the speaker.
Basically he's any and every player that is unenjoyable to play against for any number of reasons.
By that definition, Chess is imbalanced - White is OP. But it's still a well-liked non-trivial game. A full 50% of armies are OP and a full 50% of armies are bad.
But that's not "Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance" you were quoting.
In chess, White acts first. That's about it. Is not that Black's pawn cannot do anything to White bishops, or that Black Knights out-maneuver hopelessly White Knights.
Sorry but your comparison does not hold water. It's the same old "if perfect balance cannot exist, balance should not be pursued" fallacy.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
flandarz wrote: I don't understand why there's so much anger between the "casuals" and "competitive players". You both want the same thing: to play with the minis you worked hard on and like. And, from my perspective, balancing is pretty important for this. I ain't saying every model should be exactly the same, but they should, at least, all be viable. WITHOUT your opponent having to change their list or cater to you. You should be able to play a Kan Wall or whatever is the "worst" list for your army, and have a reasonable chance of victory (1 in 3 or so seems relatively reasonable), even if your opponent is playing the current hot list out there. I feel like that's pretty fair, and not unreasonable.
Viability should be enough. Most people don't care about super-tight rulesets. Then progressive refinements perhaps. Pproblem being, entire factions, subfactions, concepts, and not only models are neglected even years before this happens, if happens.
Heck, enough to keep people interested in the game. Not leave frustrated.
Ayy, also chess normaly changes colour to let the former black player have now advantage in the second round.
Some people have expressed interest in doing that in 40k. I'd rather an unbalanced game than have to trade armies though. Win lose or draw, I'm playing *my* guys. I'd rather go play something else than field your army.
I think that's a good point about there being ways to balance the game that *aren't* worth the cost (at least to some players).
Racerguy180 wrote: I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules.
Because we don't want to have to play amateur game designer to figure out if the change is a good one and how to implement it. Sucks for people with weaker armies, but the easiest thing to do is just play by RAW and those people can buy stronger lists.
Based on the stuff I've seen the internet (and even Dakka) claim would fix the game I have to say the studio is doing a better job than 99% of the armchair games designers online.
Racerguy180 wrote: I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules.
Because we don't want to have to play amateur game designer to figure out if the change is a good one and how to implement it. Sucks for people with weaker armies, but the easiest thing to do is just play by RAW and those people can buy stronger lists.
Based on the stuff I've seen the internet (and even Dakka) claim would fix the game I have to say the studio is doing a better job than 99% of the armchair games designers online.
There is a catch - the armchair game designers online do it for free, the GW studio is supposedly made up of professionals.
By that definition, Chess is imbalanced - White is OP. But it's still a well-liked non-trivial game. A full 50% of armies are OP and a full 50% of armies are bad.
But that's not "Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance" you were quoting.
In chess, White acts first. That's about it. Is not that Black's pawn cannot do anything to White bishops, or that Black Knights out-maneuver hopelessly White Knights.
Sorry but your comparison does not hold water. It's the same old "if perfect balance cannot exist, balance should not be pursued" fallacy.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
flandarz wrote: I don't understand why there's so much anger between the "casuals" and "competitive players". You both want the same thing: to play with the minis you worked hard on and like. And, from my perspective, balancing is pretty important for this. I ain't saying every model should be exactly the same, but they should, at least, all be viable. WITHOUT your opponent having to change their list or cater to you. You should be able to play a Kan Wall or whatever is the "worst" list for your army, and have a reasonable chance of victory (1 in 3 or so seems relatively reasonable), even if your opponent is playing the current hot list out there. I feel like that's pretty fair, and not unreasonable.
Viability should be enough. Most people don't care about super-tight rulesets. Then progressive refinements perhaps. Pproblem being, entire factions, subfactions, concepts, and not only models are neglected even years before this happens, if happens.
Heck, enough to keep people interested in the game. Not leave frustrated.
Ayy, also chess normaly changes colour to let the former black player have now advantage in the second round.
Some people have expressed interest in doing that in 40k. I'd rather an unbalanced game than have to trade armies though. Win lose or draw, I'm playing *my* guys. I'd rather go play something else than field your army.
I think that's a good point about there being ways to balance the game that *aren't* worth the cost (at least to some players).
And thus the point got missed by 1000000 miles.
The point was that multiple matches are played with switching start (first turn) advantage.
Not to switch armies.
Because if GW could actually decently balance points 2000pts of any army would perform equally if handled by equally competent players.
Racerguy180 wrote: I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules.
Because we don't want to have to play amateur game designer to figure out if the change is a good one and how to implement it. Sucks for people with weaker armies, but the easiest thing to do is just play by RAW and those people can buy stronger lists.
Based on the stuff I've seen the internet (and even Dakka) claim would fix the game I have to say the studio is doing a better job than 99% of the armchair games designers online.
There is a catch - the armchair game designers online do it for free, the GW studio is supposedly made up of professionals.
Free gak is still gak. . . you couldn't pay me to take it
Kaiyanwang wrote: There is a catch - the armchair game designers online do it for free, the GW studio is supposedly made up of professionals.
Exactly. GW's authors are supposedly professionals and supposedly have editors and assorted other management to ensure the quality of their final published work. You'd expect them to have immensely higher average quality than an open forum where anyone can spam their random impulses as fast as they can come up with them. The fact that we're even considering comparing the two is an implicit concession that GW is doing a horrible job of publishing a quality product.
Racerguy180 wrote: I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules.
Because we don't want to have to play amateur game designer to figure out if the change is a good one and how to implement it. Sucks for people with weaker armies, but the easiest thing to do is just play by RAW and those people can buy stronger lists.
Based on the stuff I've seen the internet (and even Dakka) claim would fix the game I have to say the studio is doing a better job than 99% of the armchair games designers online.
There is a catch - the armchair game designers online do it for free, the GW studio is supposedly made up of professionals.
Free gak is still gak. . . you couldn't pay me to take it
Because if GW could actually decently balance points 2000pts of any army would perform equally if handled by equally competent players.
I'd argue this is not only not achievable, but also not an ideal target.
Read the whole Post or let it be.
The point was to propperly competitively eliminate first turn Bias you would need to play multiple rounds with start switching.
With the baseline assumption that the balance isn't to far off.
Which should still be a aim.
Maybee not endgoal but aim in design and rules development.
Kaiyanwang wrote: There is a catch - the armchair game designers online do it for free, the GW studio is supposedly made up of professionals.
Exactly. GW's authors are supposedly professionals and supposedly have editors and assorted other management to ensure the quality of their final published work. You'd expect them to have immensely higher average quality than an open forum where anyone can spam their random impulses as fast as they can come up with them. The fact that we're even considering comparing the two is an implicit concession that GW is doing a horrible job of publishing a quality product.
Editors are not confirmed.
They Are mystical and work on a system of a jumanji board to determine which books get Controlled
By that definition, Chess is imbalanced - White is OP. But it's still a well-liked non-trivial game. A full 50% of armies are OP and a full 50% of armies are bad.
But that's not "Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance" you were quoting.
In chess, White acts first. That's about it. Is not that Black's pawn cannot do anything to White bishops, or that Black Knights out-maneuver hopelessly White Knights.
Sorry but your comparison does not hold water. It's the same old "if perfect balance cannot exist, balance should not be pursued" fallacy.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
flandarz wrote: I don't understand why there's so much anger between the "casuals" and "competitive players". You both want the same thing: to play with the minis you worked hard on and like. And, from my perspective, balancing is pretty important for this. I ain't saying every model should be exactly the same, but they should, at least, all be viable. WITHOUT your opponent having to change their list or cater to you. You should be able to play a Kan Wall or whatever is the "worst" list for your army, and have a reasonable chance of victory (1 in 3 or so seems relatively reasonable), even if your opponent is playing the current hot list out there. I feel like that's pretty fair, and not unreasonable.
Viability should be enough. Most people don't care about super-tight rulesets. Then progressive refinements perhaps. Pproblem being, entire factions, subfactions, concepts, and not only models are neglected even years before this happens, if happens.
Heck, enough to keep people interested in the game. Not leave frustrated.
Ayy, also chess normaly changes colour to let the former black player have now advantage in the second round.
Some people have expressed interest in doing that in 40k. I'd rather an unbalanced game than have to trade armies though. Win lose or draw, I'm playing *my* guys. I'd rather go play something else than field your army.
I think that's a good point about there being ways to balance the game that *aren't* worth the cost (at least to some players).
And thus the point got missed by 1000000 miles.
The point was that multiple matches are played with switching start (first turn) advantage.
Not to switch armies.
Because if GW could actually decently balance points 2000pts of any army would perform equally if handled by equally competent players.
Which would make switching obsolet.
In Chess, they switch armies. The only difference between armies is White goes first.
In 40k, if you're playing the same person with the same list several times in immediate succession, then yeah, swapping who goes first makes sense *for that specific variance*. Now, there are other difference between the two armies as well.
I think you missed my point:
Chess is considered a balanced game. Even with a 5-round event having one player be white 2 times and the other player be white 3 times, the second player has a (tiny) advantage. It's an example that no game is actually balanced.
Carrying that further, you could switch off advantage every game by swapping armies. It's something you theoretically could do which would actually make the game a lot more balanced. It's an example of a theoretical change that would improve balance, but wouldn't be worth the change.
Free gak is still gak. . . you couldn't pay me to take it
I think Peregrine got more what I meant. You cannot compare the writing of randoms online to professional designers. If you do, we already have a problem. And we have a problem because the rule writing of these supposed professional designer is far from being tight, clear, consistent, balanced, and fair in dedication for all the factions.
Free gak is still gak. . . you couldn't pay me to take it
I think Peregrine got more what I meant. You cannot compare the writing of randoms online to professional designers. If you do, we already have a problem.
And we have a problem because the rule writing of these supposed professional designer is far from being tight, clear, consistent, balanced, and fair in dedication for all the factions.
no we just get codex with 6 supplements now.
Whilest others got an update that is more a joke and others again got no joke or update at all.
Insectum7 wrote: Free gak is still gak. . . you couldn't pay me to take it
I think Peregrine got more what I meant. You cannot compare the writing of randoms online to professional designers. If you do, we already have a problem.
And we have a problem because the rule writing of these supposed professional designer is far from being tight, clear, consistent, balanced, and fair in dedication for all the factions.
Sure, but the problem seems to me is that "tight", "balanced", and "fair in dedications to all the factions" are either vague terms or possibly not in line with what the company is trying to accomplish.
For example, "fair to all the factions" from the company's point of view may be, "fair to all the models currently on store shelves". "Balance" to them may not mean, "Balanced for tournament play at 2000 points on a table with 4.5 sq. ft of LOS blocking terrain, etc."
From my perspective, "clear and consistent" is the part which is the most concerning to me. Everything else works reasonably close to what I think they are aiming for.
Because if GW could actually decently balance points 2000pts of any army would perform equally if handled by equally competent players.
I'd argue this is not only not achievable, but also not an ideal target.
Read the whole Post or let it be.
The point was to propperly competitively eliminate first turn Bias you would need to play multiple rounds with start switching.
With the baseline assumption that the balance isn't to far off.
Which should still be a aim.
Maybee not endgoal but aim in design and rules development.
Ehh, still seems relevant if we're going to talk at all about balance.
Racerguy180 wrote: I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules.
Because we don't want to have to play amateur game designer to figure out if the change is a good one and how to implement it. Sucks for people with weaker armies, but the easiest thing to do is just play by RAW and those people can buy stronger lists.
Based on the stuff I've seen the internet (and even Dakka) claim would fix the game I have to say the studio is doing a better job than 99% of the armchair games designers online.
There is a catch - the armchair game designers online do it for free, the GW studio is supposedly made up of professionals.
Even professionals make mistakes. College textbooks cost several hundred dollars and have errors all the time.
100% perfect out of the gate is impossible. Even with guys like Reece trying to break the game for testing stuff slips through. Thousands of eyes > dozens or even hundreds of eyes.
ClockworkZion wrote: Even professionals make mistakes. College textbooks cost several hundred dollars and have errors all the time.
100% perfect out of the gate is impossible. Even with guys like Reece trying to break the game for testing stuff slips through. Thousands of eyes > dozens or even hundreds of eyes.
Nobody is complaining about occasional typos that get fixed by FAQ once they are discovered. We're talking about major mistakes and poor design choices caused by systematic failures in GW's process.
100% perfect out of the gate is impossible. Even with guys like Reece trying to break the game for testing stuff slips through. Thousands of eyes > dozens or even hundreds of eyes.
None is talking about typos and you know it. Please don't.
ClockworkZion wrote: Even professionals make mistakes. College textbooks cost several hundred dollars and have errors all the time.
100% perfect out of the gate is impossible. Even with guys like Reece trying to break the game for testing stuff slips through. Thousands of eyes > dozens or even hundreds of eyes.
Nobody is complaining about occasional typos that get fixed by FAQ once they are discovered. We're talking about major mistakes and poor design choices caused by systematic failures in GW's process.
The guys who write and playtest the ITC are on board for play testing and are on record that not every problem is feasible to catch before a book comes out.
There is a severe lack of perspective combined with hyper inflated demands placed on this game that drown out the things that do need real addressing.
Racerguy180 wrote: I dont understand why people have a mental block about doing something that isn't EXPLICITLY stated in the rules.
Because we don't want to have to play amateur game designer to figure out if the change is a good one and how to implement it. Sucks for people with weaker armies, but the easiest thing to do is just play by RAW and those people can buy stronger lists.
Based on the stuff I've seen the internet (and even Dakka) claim would fix the game I have to say the studio is doing a better job than 99% of the armchair games designers online.
There is a catch - the armchair game designers online do it for free, the GW studio is supposedly made up of professionals.
Even professionals make mistakes. College textbooks cost several hundred dollars and have errors all the time.
100% perfect out of the gate is impossible. Even with guys like Reece trying to break the game for testing stuff slips through. Thousands of eyes > dozens or even hundreds of eyes.
None is talking about typos and you know it.
Who said I was talking typos? Factual errors end up in college texts too.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Actually speaking of factual errors: the US Army APFT manual used to require people to wear knee high tube socks to prevent shin splints.
That is not how shin splints or tube socks work.
And they have a budget that far beyond anything GW has.
nou wrote: I assume that similar claim is made for AOS which by all dakka discussions is a much smaller game than 40k.
I make no such assumption. In fact, I have no idea how AoS is as I can't imagine why anyone finds the game appealing.
See a glaring hole in that landscape, perfectly fillable by collectors and beer and pretzels casuals and narrative players?
Not really. Let's make some reasonable assumptions, going with your 50/50 approximation:
* 50% of GW's revenue is from non-40k sources (AoS, license deals, etc), with "40k sales" including models, paint, and rules.
* 50% of 40k sales are to one-time customers who (for whatever reason) make an initial purchase or two but drop it soon after, which is probably a wildly optimistic estimate of GW's retention rate.
* 75% of 40k sales are to competitive players, a pretty good approximation of "competitive players dominate the hobby".
That's £40.5 million per year in 40k sales to competitive players. If the ITC list covers 100% of competitive players that's an average annual expense of ~£5,000. If the ITC list covers 10% of competitive players that's down to £500 per year, about equivalent to buying a new army every year or two. So no, there isn't really this massive hole you insist must exist. You can account for the majority of 40k revenue with competitive players alone, leaving very little need to assign sales to non-competitive players.
What I find funny is that during 5th to 7th you yourself, by your own statements in prior discussions, were a member of this suposedly non existing group of players, rarely playing an occasional narrative game and making an occasional purchase if ever.
By your own words, you did not exist/were irrelevant...
And that's 100% correct! People who stay engaged with a game at that point are rare, and someone who isn't involved with the local community and only buys OOP stuff from third-party sellers might as well not exist from the point of view of GW. It is absolutely correct to say that I didn't exist except as a potential customer that could be drawn back into relevance if GW improved the game.
You have basically repeated my 50/50 divisions just starting on a different one and then drew conclusions that suit you, because you have ommited the "look at ITC ranking closer" part of my post - it is absolutely unreasonable to assume, that entirety of those ITCx10 crowd churn and burn an army per year if half of the ITC ranking doesn't really compete in any serious way. Half of those RANKED players have a score of less than 100pts with only top 400 having scores of more than half of maximum (1200pts) and 5/5 attendance (5/5 attendance start at around top 1000). You also get a lot of examples in tournament vs casual threads that there is a whole lot of people even at LVO level who go only to get guaranteed, strictly casual games with people at their level (sorted out after first games due to pairig mechanism). I suspect that only those in higher percentiles can be reasonably "accused" of spending +£500 per year to stay competetive, so "reasonable assumptions" require you to multiply yearly spendings per competitive player tenfold again. You also forget, that churn and burn means that a whole lot of models get recycled on second hand market, deducing that part from GWs revenue from other players - GW only sells any mini once. So no, this don't add up and there is a glaring hole to fill by narrative/pretzel casuals/collectors and this "filling" is visible all over internet, including large chunk of dakka's own P&M blogs.
And I forgot to mention, that I don't really believe in 50% of GWs revenue being accidental one time purchases, I was just being generous here - I never saw any data supporting it. But even with all those "reasonable calculations" provided by both of us "serious competitive players" are only a fifth of GWs revenue but act as 95% of it. GW could easily stop bother about them altogether, focus solely on pushing minis and broken rules and still be the largest and most prosperous tabletop games company. Which they kind a do, which is the point of this entire thread. But now I'm tired with this going in circles with you, so don't expect another reply from me.
And you did not understand the last part - you did not exist not in the eyes of GW, but in the eyes of Peregrine's previous discussions during those last three years.
ClockworkZion wrote: The guys who write and playtest the ITC are on board for play testing and are on record that not every problem is feasible to catch before a book comes out.
There is a severe lack of perspective combined with hyper inflated demands placed on this game that drown out the things that do need real addressing
Again, nobody is expecting 100% perfection. If all we saw was minor mistakes that managed to slip through a thorough playtesting effort despite reasonable efforts to catch them then hardly anyone would be complaining. But what we get is stuff that the community spots within minutes of the books being available. That kind of thing should not happen with any kind of competent design and development process.
Factual errors end up in college texts too.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Kaiyanwang wrote: Not really. Again, try to build a decent Aspect Warriors or Trukk Boyz list. 8th has still the potential to be great IMHO but the volume and scope of the game killed any subtlety again. 40k is go big, or go home.
That would be a discussion of "fairness" and/or "balance", not that of rules intent.
You can't generalize the game as a whole as seen on tournament scene because they play by a specific house rule sets that skews the advantages to a certain build.
Another reason why GW needs to make a dedicated tourney ruleset and separate it from the rest of the game.
Agreed. They need to release "advanced" ruleset for competitive gaming.
Ehhh, didn't they do that in their main rulebook anyways? They have Matched Play and Open. do I have to buy another book on top of the expensive one I already bought to get tourney rules? No thanks.
What I'm talking about is a stand-alone ruleset (no 40k rules crossover)that doesnt cater to any singular faction(read: balance). If the rules dont have to worry about non-optimal builds and you limited the number of strats(everyone gets same, no faction special) & unit values/quantity, a strictly defined ruleset is feasible at least. add in a map/deployment set and specific rules for how to implement them in play. Kinda like a video game in that the maps are specifically balanced between each other and then specific missions to go along w them.
I'm not opposed to competition/tourney play, it just doesn't interest me at all. I play 40k to relax & hangout, always have, always will. If some find tournaments fun and relaxing, more power to them.
I don't see how it's even possible to discuss honestly the issue, at this point. Deliberate disregard for the math that leads to several rule add-ons in order to fix weapons that formerly used templates is not a typo or a factual error. Is deliberate sloppy design whose cost is discharged on the customer to make them but the next rulebook. Same with rule bloat, scale of the game etc. These are not typos or factual error, they are CONCEPTUAL errors. Deep roots.
Kaiyanwang wrote: I don't see how it's even possible to discuss honestly the issue, at this point.
Deliberate disregard for the math that leads to several rule add-ons in order to fix weapons that formerly used templates is not a typo or a factual error.
Is deliberate sloppy design whose cost is discharged on the customer to make them but the next rulebook.
Same with rule bloat, scale of the game etc.
These are not typos or factual error, they are CONCEPTUAL errors. Deep roots.
Templates were a problem in their own right. Nothing like arguements if a template is clipping an extra model or people skewing the scatter.
ClockworkZion wrote: The guys who write and playtest the ITC are on board for play testing and are on record that not every problem is feasible to catch before a book comes out.
There is a severe lack of perspective combined with hyper inflated demands placed on this game that drown out the things that do need real addressing
Again, nobody is expecting 100% perfection. If all we saw was minor mistakes that managed to slip through a thorough playtesting effort despite reasonable efforts to catch them then hardly anyone would be complaining. But what we get is stuff that the community spots within minutes of the books being available. That kind of thing should not happen with any kind of competent design and development process.
Factual errors end up in college texts too.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
You're overblowing the faults in the rules or playing the wrong game if you sincerely think your comparison isn't hyperbole.
Mist of GW's rules problems come down to unexpected rules interactions followed by a lack of more in-depth terrain and movement mechanics.
Kaiyanwang wrote: I don't see how it's even possible to discuss honestly the issue, at this point. Deliberate disregard for the math that leads to several rule add-ons in order to fix weapons that formerly used templates is not a typo or a factual error. Is deliberate sloppy design whose cost is discharged on the customer to make them but the next rulebook. Same with rule bloat, scale of the game etc. These are not typos or factual error, they are CONCEPTUAL errors. Deep roots.
Templates were a problem in their own right. Nothing like arguements if a template is clipping an extra model or people skewing the scatter.
This is another deflection, sorry. The fact that templates were a problem for some does not make the new rules mathematically sound. Nor the design team look good if their fix for their poor planning and forethought is "let's add another layer of rules". See the new marines codex, BTW. The issue here is that the team re-adapted templates without crunching the numbers in a game with dice. It's really that simple.
Mist of GW's rules problems come down to unexpected rules interactions followed by a lack of more in-depth terrain and movement mechanics.
And this is surreal because we are in this very moment discussing an example of an horrible, poorly planned, and statistically illiterate implementation of a basic rule. The design team is bad at math.
nou wrote: You have basically repeated my 50/50 divisions just starting on a different one and then drew conclusions that suit you, because you have ommited the "look at ITC ranking closer" part of my post - it is absolutely unreasonable to assume, that entirety of those ITCx10 crowd churn and burn an army per year if half of the ITC ranking doesn't really compete in any serious way. Half of those RANKED players have a score of less than 100pts with only top 400 having scores of more than half of maximum (1200pts) and 5/5 attendance (5/5 attendance start at around top 1000).
I have no idea what your point is with any of this. ITC is only one ranking system and "they aren't represented in ITC" does not prove anything other than a lack of participation and success in ITC tournaments. There is no way you can get from a lack of ITC points to conclusions about a person's spending habits. Poor skill and attending non-ITC events are two obvious explanations for a lack of ITC points that you've completely ignored in favor of your personal favorite theory.
You also get a lot of examples in tournament vs casual threads that there is a whole lot of people even at LVO level who go only to get guaranteed, strictly casual games with people at their level (sorted out after first games due to pairig mechanism). I suspect that only those in higher percentiles can be reasonably "accused" of spending +£500 per year to stay competetive, so "reasonable assumptions" require you to multiply yearly spendings per competitive player tenfold again.
Sorry, but what? I don't think you understand just how little £500 per year is. The travel and hotel costs alone for attending the LVO are easily going to exceed that, and it's laughable to suggest that someone making that kind of investment attending a competitive tournament for a game counts as a "casual" player. They're significantly invested in the hobby with a budget that makes £500 a very conservative estimate of their likely spending. Hell, even non-competitive players can easily drop £500 per year on models by building a new army every few years.
And I forgot to mention, that I don't really believe in 50% of GWs revenue being accidental one time purchases, I was just being generous here - I never saw any data supporting it.
You're right. I don't think it's 50%. I think 90% is a much more likely number for the proportion of customers that make an initial purchase and then drop out before getting anywhere in the hobby. Anecdotally GW's retention rates are known to be awful because of the immense up-front investment required before playing, as is the fact that GW openly targets younger "three purchase" customers and sets sales quotas for their employees based on the assumption that most of their customers will follow this buying pattern. By assuming only a 50% rate for this I was granting you an incredibly generous assumption.
GW could easily stop bother about them altogether, focus solely on pushing minis and broken rules and still be the largest and most prosperous tabletop games company.
Alternatively, they could stop ignoring competitive players, make the changes that benefit competitive play (and also benefit non-competitive play at the same time) and expand their customer base beyond the dedicated fans who are willing to put up with the game's flaws. It's certainly a theory with as much evidence to support it as yours.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Kaiyanwang wrote: I don't see how it's even possible to discuss honestly the issue, at this point.
Deliberate disregard for the math that leads to several rule add-ons in order to fix weapons that formerly used templates is not a typo or a factual error.
Is deliberate sloppy design whose cost is discharged on the customer to make them but the next rulebook.
Same with rule bloat, scale of the game etc.
These are not typos or factual error, they are CONCEPTUAL errors. Deep roots.
Templates were a problem in their own right. Nothing like arguements if a template is clipping an extra model or people skewing the scatter.
This is another deflection, sorry.
The fact that templates were a problem for some does not make the new rules mathematically sound.
Nor the design team look good if their fix for their poor planning and forethought is "let's add another layer of rules". See the new marines codex, BTW.
The issue here is that the team re-adapted templates without crunching the numbers in a game with dice. It's really that simple.
Mist of GW's rules problems come down to unexpected rules interactions followed by a lack of more in-depth terrain and movement mechanics.
And this is surreal because we are in this very moment discussing an example of an horrible, poorly planned, and statistically illiterate implementation of a basic rule.
The design team is bad at math.
No, you're looking at a rules mechanic that replaced another rules mechanic and deciding it's bad because you don't like the way it works. The execution works fine, you just don't like that execution.
ClockworkZion wrote: Templates were a problem in their own right. Nothing like arguements if a template is clipping an extra model or people skewing the scatter.
You're missing the point there. It's not that templates were a good mechanic (they weren't), it's that the random shot mechanic GW replaced them with has been an utter failure because GW doesn't seem to understand math. It's how you get stuff like frag missiles and the missile launchers that use them being worthless 95% of the time, LRBTs that were so hilariously terrible that GW had to literally double their firepower to get them to a reasonable level, etc.
Mist of GW's rules problems come down to unexpected rules interactions followed by a lack of more in-depth terrain and movement mechanics.
IOW, "most of GW's rules problems come down to rules bloat causing too many interactions for comprehensive playtesting and a failure to create reasonable mechanics for the key feature that defines a miniatures game". I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a compelling defense of GW, and that's not even considering the continued existence of IGOUGO, the absence of any kind of pinning/morale/etc system, etc. None of these things are accidental typos that slipped through because GW's employees are only human, they're fundamental design problems caused by systematic flaws in GW's approach to the game.
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Racerguy180 wrote: What I'm talking about is a stand-alone ruleset (no 40k rules crossover)that doesnt cater to any singular faction(read: balance). If the rules dont have to worry about non-optimal builds and you limited the number of strats(everyone gets same, no faction special) & unit values/quantity, a strictly defined ruleset is feasible at least. add in a map/deployment set and specific rules for how to implement them in play. Kinda like a video game in that the maps are specifically balanced between each other and then specific missions to go along w them.
But why does this need to be a separate expansion instead of the normal game? Because it sure seems like you're arguing that GW should fix the game and make it enjoyable for everyone, and then tell all of the non-tournament players to keep suffering through the broken mess of "normal" 40k.
No, you're looking at a rules mechanic that replaced another rules mechanic and deciding it's bad because you don't like the way it works. The execution works fine, you just don't like that execution.
Let me understand if I got it right - you are telling me that the transition from template to dice has been done elegantly? If so, why all the "patch" rules for (formerly) single shot vehicles?
Also I am in fact explaining you WHY "I don't like" the rules. Because the rule team understanding of probability is garbage.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Erm. . . design choice =/= factual error.
No, IGOUGO is genuinely that broken. It's about as much of a "design choice" as adding a special rule that space marines always win because space marines are better than whatever trash army the other player has.
Alternatively, they could stop ignoring competitive players, make the changes that benefit competitive play (and also benefit non-competitive play at the same time) and expand their customer base beyond the dedicated fans who are willing to put up with the game's flaws. It's certainly a theory with as much evidence to support it as yours.
So havong tournament players involved in playtesting matched play is ignoring competetivs players?
ClockworkZion wrote: No, you're looking at a rules mechanic that replaced another rules mechanic and deciding it's bad because you don't like the way it works. The execution works fine, you just don't like that execution.
It objectively doesn't work fine, as demonstrated by GW's attempts to fix those weapons (with varying levels of success).
1) Narrative players will be given a decent frame work to build of on for "forging the narrative." "Muh Story"
2) Players who want to achieve a "Win State" will have various options and/or playstyles suited to their needs.
3) Prevents rules inconsistencies to the point that the game itself has a clear simple mechanical flow that is because of its intuitive design.
I note that "cutesy" little stab at narrative players. I can't say I'm surprised.
Do you realise I have modified CA2018 Rules extensively for my own home games and my own narrative campaign format.
These Rules Include
No Vehicle Keyword datasheets (don't like, see later)
Non-named Characters can gain perks a modification of CA2018.
Cities Of Death Modification for games.
Custom Faction Rules for my custom armies.
Buffs to some units (cough rough riders)
I am waiting for various releases before starting that is going to (maybe go into Psychic Awakening stuff if it is good from narrative point.)
There was no stab it was the same as "win state" for MP.
You and others tend to try and place me in a box. I am neither a Narrative or Match Player, as if those are exclusive. I change according to the situation at hand.
I enjoy games design and making my own rules/armies. etc I can play "by the rules" or "house rules." Use to play Yu-gi-oh competitively so I have a unique perspective on 40k.
I have been aware of 40k since 3rd edition.
ClockworkZion wrote: So havong tournament players involved in playtesting matched play is ignoring competetivs players?
What color is ths sky on your planet?
Having a token level of playtesting involvement in setting point costs is a pretty good approximation of ignoring them when GW continues to keep the fundamental design flaws in the game.
No, you're looking at a rules mechanic that replaced another rules mechanic and deciding it's bad because you don't like the way it works. The execution works fine, you just don't like that execution.
Let me understand if I got it right - you are telling me that the transition from template to dice has been done elegantly? If so, why all the "patch" rules for (formerly) single shot vehicles?
Elegantly? Perhaps not. Functional with no actual breaks on the mechanics of how it works? Very much so. A rule that lacks elegance is not broken if it still works as the devsloper intented.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Erm. . . design choice =/= factual error.
No, IGOUGO is genuinely that broken. It's about as much of a "design choice" as adding a special rule that space marines always win because space marines are better than whatever trash army the other player has.
You're conflsting your opinion for objective fact again.
ClockworkZion wrote: Elegantly? Perhaps not. Functional with no actual breaks on the mechanics of how it works? Very much so. A rule that lacks elegance is not broken if it still works as the devsloper intented.
Intent is not an excuse if the author deliberately writes a broken mechanic. And, again, if it isn't broken then why did GW need to literally double the firepower of certain units to get them anywhere near a playable state?
ClockworkZion wrote: So havong tournament players involved in playtesting matched play is ignoring competetivs players?
What color is ths sky on your planet?
Having a token level of playtesting involvement in setting point costs is a pretty good approximation of ignoring them when GW continues to keep the fundamental design flaws in the game.
They run one of the biggest tournament circuits on the planet and you call it "token"? Either you're trolling or you need to stop oriming your models inside the house.
I am doing no such thing. IGOUGO being a bad mechanic is as close to objective fact as anything in the entire game design profession. If you want to object to it as "just your opinion" then you are required to argue that game design has no facts or correct answers and any random person's drunk-posted proposed rules thread is as good as the best games done by professionals.
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ClockworkZion wrote: They run one of the biggest tournament circuits on the planet and you call it "token"? Either you're trolling or you need to stop oriming your models inside the house.
Sigh. Their input is treated as token by GW, the tournament group itself is clearly not token. GW listens to them a bit but only as long as they get the answers they want to hear.
ClockworkZion wrote: Elegantly? Perhaps not. Functional with no actual breaks on the mechanics of how it works? Very much so. A rule that lacks elegance is not broken if it still works as the devsloper intented.
Intent is not an excuse if the author deliberately writes a broken mechanic. And, again, if it isn't broken then why did GW need to literally double the firepower of certain units to get them anywhere near a playable state?
If the mechanic works it isn't broken. You're using your opinion on how the mechanic should work as a measuring stick on if it works which is not the basis on how we measure if a mechanic functions correctly or not.
ClockworkZion, the template debacle is a clear sign of the lack of forethought and math skills of the design team. Even if the solutions worked well enough for the Leman Russ, the base problem remains. The approach is to add new rules, many of these rules just create bloat or noise or power creep until the system collapses. It also subtracts design space. Trukk Boyz and Aspect Warriors risk to become my Carthago Delenda Est so my apologies to keep talking about it but they are a huge symptom as well. Basic, iconic concepts that are not going to work because the system is too big and with too big players like primarchs or knights and we need to spam scatterbikes (7th) or to jump 30 buffed boyz.
And remember: less design space is less concept space. So it could be one potential buyer that evaluates the possibility of a trukk boyz or Aspect armies and decides that no, better not.
I am doing no such thing. IGOUGO being a bad mechanic is as close to objective fact as anything in the entire game design profession. If you want to object to it as "just your opinion" then you are required to argue that game design has no facts or correct answers and any random person's drunk-posted proposed rules thread is as good as the best games done by professionals.
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ClockworkZion wrote: They run one of the biggest tournament circuits on the planet and you call it "token"? Either you're trolling or you need to stop oriming your models inside the house.
Sigh. Their input is treated as token by GW, the tournament group itself is clearly not token. GW listens to them a bit but only as long as they get the answers they want to hear.
Citation needed because unless you can source actual evidence you're talking out of your backside again.
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Kaiyanwang wrote: ClockworkZion, the template debacle is a clear sign of the lack of forethought and math skills of the design team.
Even if the solutions worked well enough for the Leman Russ, the base problem remains. The approach is to add new rules, many of these rules just create bloat or noise or power creep until the system collapses.
It also subtracts design space. Trukk Boyz and Aspect Warriors risk to become my Delenda Carthago so my apologies to keep talking about it but they are a huge symptom as well. Basic, iconic concepts that are not going to work because the system is too big and with too big players like primarchs or knights and we need to spam scatterbikes (7th) or to jump 30 buffed boyz.
And remember: less design space is less concept space. So it could be one potential buyer that evaluates the possibility of a trukk boyz or Aspect armies and decides that not, better not.
Or they've added different rules to said weapons to try and add more flavor to the way they work much like gow we had weapons that reduced scatter or upped the blast marker size when hitting bigger units.
James clearly says they try to capture the feel of the models and the lore which means increasing the ways a mechanic is employed on the table.
ClockworkZion wrote: So havong tournament players involved in playtesting matched play is ignoring competetivs players?
What color is ths sky on your planet?
Having a token level of playtesting involvement in setting point costs is a pretty good approximation of ignoring them when GW continues to keep the fundamental design flaws in the game.
They run one of the biggest tournament circuits on the planet and you call it "token"? Either you're trolling or you need to stop oriming your models inside the house.
The fact that such drastic changes, such as the aforementioned doubling of LRBT shots, happen after that playtesting and the codex release happens does seem to suggest that either the playtesting is incredibly limited and does not adequately test the units in a codex, or that GW ignores the feedback. Take your pick.
ClockworkZion wrote: If the mechanic works it isn't broken. You're using your opinion on how the mechanic should work as a measuring stick on if it works which is not the basis on how we measure if a mechanic functions correctly or not.
Again, the mechanic didn't work. GW themselves admitted exactly this by making significant changes to units that used the mechanic, correcting their previous failures to understand dice math. If the mechanic worked then extreme changes like that would not have been necessary.
ClockworkZion wrote: Citation needed because unless you can source actual evidence you're talking out of your backside again.
Evidence of what? That IGOUGO is bad? That GW doesn't pay attention to their playtesters enough? The latter is pretty well demonstrated by the continued existence of threads like this arguing over how 40k is still a poor competitive game despite years worth of opportunity to improve it, and, well, if you don't understand something as obvious as why IGOUGO is bad then I'm not sure where to begin.
ClockworkZion... what the designers try to do could be very different from what they ultimately accomplish, and at what cost. And yes, 30 boyz is very orky, I have 90 and I built with care every single one of them to make them unique. Going for 150 asap. But this has nothing to do with the fact that you are deflecting again. Ork boyz in groups of 30 is orky, but are not Trukk Boyz so the fact that is "Orky" has nothing to do with my point. Absolutely nothing. It's an answer GW's FB team would write. We can do better, can't we?
You're right. I don't think it's 50%. I think 90% is a much more likely number for the proportion of customers that make an initial purchase and then drop out before getting anywhere in the hobby.
Despite my previous post I simply have to - 90% of one time purchases leave you with those ITCx10 crowd spending £270 a year responsible for the entirety of the rest of GWs 216 mil revenue, with no room for repeated purchases for AOS, Necromunda, Middle Earth or BSF whatsoever. Also, it is about 3 milion people a year buying nothing else but Start Collecting box and some paints or equivalent. And because those are one time only customers, in ten years that is one in thirty citizens of NA+Europe having owned at least one box of GWs product, in 30 years of GWs existence it is one in ten. Yes, you are that bad at this estimates game...
I really don't get people "IGOUGO" is a broken mechanic has been for a long time regardless what game it is in.
Yu-gi-oh as a TCG had changed 1st turn from both players draw 5 cards, turn start draw 1 card to
1st turn player doesn't get a draw.
Even chess 1st turn is "better."
This is an issue with game systems in general.
40k is unique because it add layers of bloat that are "good dakka vs bad dakka" to "everyone has no defence, unless you reach a point your are unkillable, cough Warlord titan."
That and the terrain system is something that is "non-existent" to the point where many people "rely on unofficial rules and/or covering the entire board." As an "patch" to the fact that if you play kinda loose with terrain game is "shoot the target." What I personally have nothing against this just creates an artificial meta of what "your group" likes.
Kaiyanwang wrote: ClockworkZion... what the designers try to do could be very different from what they ultimately accomplish, and at what cost.
And yes, 30 boyz is very orky, I have 90 and I built with care every single one of them to make them unique. Going for 150 asap.
But this has nothing to do with the fact that you are deflecting again. Ork boyz in groups of 30 is orky, but are not Trukk Boyz so the fact that is "Orky" has nothing to do with my point. Absolutely nothing.
It's an answer GW's FB team would write. We can do better, can't we?
Forgive my lack of nuance as I type with one hand and fill coin towers with the other. I am quite literally phonepostinf from work this evening.
At the end of the day I see a lot of accusations on how GW operates (which flies in the fa e of how they and their pmaytesters say it operates) while people insist every error ever made is obvious as they flaunt their 20/20 hindsight like they're some how on a moral highground when we have statements from playtesters saying that plenty of stuff the community finds on day 1 are things they didn't even see or notice.
GW is not a monolithic entity, it's a company made of people who run dozens of eyes over everything before the playtesters see it and run countless more eyes over the rules. If stuff gets through it has gone through at least two layers of screenjng and rewriting before we ever see it. The stuff complained about now is the stuff that fell through the cracks and is not as monumental as claimed.
nou wrote: Despite my previous post I simply have to - 90% of one time purchases leave you with those ITCx10 crowd spending £270 a year responsible for the entirety of the rest of GWs 216 mil revenue, with no room for repeated purchases for AOS, Necromunda, Middle Earth or BSF whatsoever.
Well that's certainly some circular reasoning, come to the £270 number by insisting that the competitive players provide all of GW's revenue and then complain that the £270 number doesn't leave room for other spending. Do you honestly not see how this is an argument in my favor? If you want to make room for spending money on those non-40k games you can very easily find it by reducing the spending of the competitive players to an even lower level.
Also, it is about 3 milion people a year buying nothing else but Start Collecting box and some paints or equivalent. And because those are one time only customers, in ten years that is one in thirty citizens of NA+Europe having owned at least one box of GWs product, in 30 years of GWs existence it is one in ten. Yes, you are that bad at this estimates game...
You do know that GW's products are well known for a reason, right? One in ten having at least some involvement over 30 years is not an unreasonable assumption, especially when you're talking about the UK where GW is the local toy store that everyone walks past while doing their other shopping.
Not that your numbers make much sense, in any case. You seem to be assuming a ~£65 purchase for each of those 3 million people, pretty wildly optimistic given the price of the hobby. The starter set alone is ~£100, and that doesn't include the army rules or any building or painting supplies. Realistically you're talking about spending at least £150-200 on a starter purchase for 40k. That cuts your supposed customer base to about a third of what you claim, down to ~3% of people having made a 40k purchase at some point over the past 30 years. That's 1 in 30, and the average class size in school is about 20-30 kids. Think back to when you were a kid, is it really that hard to imagine that one of your peers got a 40k starter bundle for a holiday gift?
Kaiyanwang wrote: ClockworkZion... what the designers try to do could be very different from what they ultimately accomplish, and at what cost. And yes, 30 boyz is very orky, I have 90 and I built with care every single one of them to make them unique. Going for 150 asap. But this has nothing to do with the fact that you are deflecting again. Ork boyz in groups of 30 is orky, but are not Trukk Boyz so the fact that is "Orky" has nothing to do with my point. Absolutely nothing. It's an answer GW's FB team would write. We can do better, can't we?
Forgive my lack of nuance as I type with one hand and fill coin towers with the other. I am quite literally phonepostinf from work this evening.
At the end of the day I see a lot of accusations on how GW operates (which flies in the fa e of how they and their pmaytesters say it operates) while people insist every error ever made is obvious as they flaunt their 20/20 hindsight like they're some how on a moral highground when we have statements from playtesters saying that plenty of stuff the community finds on day 1 are things they didn't even see or notice.
GW is not a monolithic entity, it's a company made of people who run dozens of eyes over everything before the playtesters see it and run countless more eyes over the rules. If stuff gets through it has gone through at least two layers of screenjng and rewriting before we ever see it. The stuff complained about now is the stuff that fell through the cracks and is not as monumental as claimed.
I am talking about specific trends (especially in rule "hotfixing"), math etc not really about what slipped through the cracks. In this specific regard, if the company has many employee, maybe a lead designer with a vision or an editor could go a long way. Said this, since I care about your well being, if you are phoneposting from work, better to continue tomorrow or when is convenient! I want you to keep your job! See you around
Kaiyanwang wrote: ClockworkZion... what the designers try to do could be very different from what they ultimately accomplish, and at what cost.
And yes, 30 boyz is very orky, I have 90 and I built with care every single one of them to make them unique. Going for 150 asap.
But this has nothing to do with the fact that you are deflecting again. Ork boyz in groups of 30 is orky, but are not Trukk Boyz so the fact that is "Orky" has nothing to do with my point. Absolutely nothing.
It's an answer GW's FB team would write. We can do better, can't we?
Forgive my lack of nuance as I type with one hand and fill coin towers with the other. I am quite literally phonepostinf from work this evening.
At the end of the day I see a lot of accusations on how GW operates (which flies in the fa e of how they and their pmaytesters say it operates) while people insist every error ever made is obvious as they flaunt their 20/20 hindsight like they're some how on a moral highground when we have statements from playtesters saying that plenty of stuff the community finds on day 1 are things they didn't even see or notice.
GW is not a monolithic entity, it's a company made of people who run dozens of eyes over everything before the playtesters see it and run countless more eyes over the rules. If stuff gets through it has gone through at least two layers of screenjng and rewriting before we ever see it. The stuff complained about now is the stuff that fell through the cracks and is not as monumental as claimed.
I am talking about specific trends (especially in rule "hotfixing"), math etc not really about what slipped through the cracks. In this specific regard, if the company has many employee, maybe a lead designer with a vision or an editor could go a long way.
Said this, since I care about your well being, if you are phoneposting from work, better to continue tomorrow or when is convenient! I want you to keep your job! See you around
In the past every dev was potentially taskedneith a project in Aid, 40k, a specialist game or who knows what else. Now they have distinct teams and we've seen an uptick in quality since they did that.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Erm. . . design choice =/= factual error.
No, IGOUGO is genuinely that broken. It's about as much of a "design choice" as adding a special rule that space marines always win because space marines are better than whatever trash army the other player has.
Uhhhh. Nope. Just nope.
Like, you can have a strong opinion about it, but IGOUGO clearly works and thousands of players don't have any problem with it. If it "didn't work", the game wouldn't be enjoyed by as many people that enjoy it.
Balance isn't hard to define. One TAC army should be able to go toe-to-toe with another TAC army. The moment one army is completely better at that aspect, there's imbalance.
Of course there's the question of what's considered "TAC", which is slightly more holistic and prompts more discussion, but we can think of the basic definition for now as you bringing something to handle every reasonable threat.
A reasonable start, but how do you account for terrain or missions?
Also you've always been saying that about Marines and don't have the statistics to back it up. YEAH they got better after the new Codex, but just wait for everyone else to get a rework.
Hate to break it to you, but you don't have the statistics on it either.
You'd have a point if the terrain rules commonly used actually mattered. It only matters for the dudes automatically getting it (ala army bonus) and when you pop the strat T1. The City Fight terrain rules go a longer way to make terrain matter more, BUT nobody plays "narrative" and, because it not being part of the official rule set, nobody cares. When it comes to stopping LoS it sometimes helps, but it doesn't actually make Assault Marines better at their job. It just means they love longer before I laugh at the pitiful attempt they make at their job.
Missions are kinda fine but definitely favor certain armies rather than certain compositions for those various armies, and I wouldn't say ITC or ETC completely fix this either. That's both an internal and external issue for the codices.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Erm. . . design choice =/= factual error.
No, IGOUGO is genuinely that broken. It's about as much of a "design choice" as adding a special rule that space marines always win because space marines are better than whatever trash army the other player has.
Uhhhh. Nope. Just nope.
Like, you can have a strong opinion about it, but IGOUGO clearly works and thousands of players don't have any problem with it. If it "didn't work", the game wouldn't be enjoyed by as many people that enjoy it.
Imagine playing a game of chess where the player playing white could move all of their pieces before black got to move. That is what IGOUGO does, it exponentially increases the first turn advantage, even in games where both sides have identical forces.
Now imagine that the white player also has 3 queens, 3 rooks, 3 bishops and 3 knights instead of some pawns whilst the black player has no queen, one rook, one bishop and no knights but these missing pieces aren't even replaced by pawns. Think how ridiculous it is that the white player gets to move every one of their pieces before the black player, who was already at a massive disadvantage due to their lack of pieces, can move a single one. That is how imbalanced some match ups can be in 40k and demonstrates how first turn advantage, coupled with ability to use your entire army on the first turn before your opponent can react and the potentially ludicrous imbalance between armies all build off of each other.
Now imagine that the white player also has 3 queens, 3 rooks, 3 bishops and 3 knights instead of some pawns whilst the black player has no queen, one rook, one bishop and no knights but these missing pieces aren't even replaced by pawns. Think how ridiculous it is that the white player gets to move every one of their pieces before the black player, who was already at a massive disadvantage due to their lack of pieces, can move a single one. That is how imbalanced some match ups can be in 40k and demonstrates how first turn advantage, coupled with ability to use your entire army on the first turn before your opponent can react and the potentially ludicrous imbalance between armies all build off of each other.
All of this was less striking when there wad no need for the firepower good to kill a knight. The game scaled BADLY during the years.
Not factual errors on the level of GW's problems. You don't have a legitimate biology textbook accidentally devoting a whole chapter to how young-earth creationism is the only valid theory, or a legitimate math textbook carefully and elaborately explaining that 1+1=3. And yet somehow GW continues to publish games that use the IGOUGO mechanic.
Erm. . . design choice =/= factual error.
No, IGOUGO is genuinely that broken. It's about as much of a "design choice" as adding a special rule that space marines always win because space marines are better than whatever trash army the other player has.
Uhhhh. Nope. Just nope.
Like, you can have a strong opinion about it, but IGOUGO clearly works and thousands of players don't have any problem with it. If it "didn't work", the game wouldn't be enjoyed by as many people that enjoy it.
Imagine playing a game of chess where the player playing white could move all of their pieces before black got to move. That is what IGOUGO does, it exponentially increases the first turn advantage, even in games where both sides have identical forces.
Now imagine that the white player also has 3 queens, 3 rooks, 3 bishops and 3 knights instead of some pawns whilst the black player has no queen, one rook, one bishop and no knights but these missing pieces aren't even replaced by pawns. Think how ridiculous it is that the white player gets to move every one of their pieces before the black player, who was already at a massive disadvantage due to their lack of pieces, can move a single one. That is how imbalanced some match ups can be in 40k and demonstrates how first turn advantage, coupled with ability to use your entire army on the first turn before your opponent can react and the potentially ludicrous imbalance between armies all build off of each other.
Okay, but now imagine parts of the board only allowed certain models to have access, Queens cost 200 points each.... Ect ECT.
The chess metaphor falls apart because we're working with more variables than chess does.
I agree I would like something more like how Apoc works in 40k (I actually feel Apoc captures the game better but that's just me) I don't think turn order is the part of the game that breaks the game.
Xenomancers wrote: First of all way more than 10% of people play "matched play" rules. Literally 100% of the people I know play match play rules in most of their games. Narrative is a side gig for some players I know.
Second. If you have a rules set that is intended for match play - but then it's not intended for matched play...Is it or isn't it?
Matched Play =/= Tournament Play.
I use matched play rules generally, but I do not do tournaments
but here's the 1000000$ question.
DO you use Ro3?
Nope. Because I'm not in a tournament/"Organized Play" environment.
My friend Dave & I saying "2pm sat? Yeah. My place or the shop? Shop, that way Mike can play if he wants. Ok. Hey, don't forget to text John." =/= the Organized Play GWs talking about.
Nor will we even need a discussion about Legends. You got it? It has rules in this edition? Great, then use whatever the most current rule for it is & game on.
ClockworkZion wrote: Templates were a problem in their own right. Nothing like arguements if a template is clipping an extra model or people skewing the scatter.
You're missing the point there. It's not that templates were a good mechanic (they weren't), it's that the random shot mechanic GW replaced them with has been an utter failure because GW doesn't seem to understand math. It's how you get stuff like frag missiles and the missile launchers that use them being worthless 95% of the time, LRBTs that were so hilariously terrible that GW had to literally double their firepower to get them to a reasonable level, etc.
Mist of GW's rules problems come down to unexpected rules interactions followed by a lack of more in-depth terrain and movement mechanics.
IOW, "most of GW's rules problems come down to rules bloat causing too many interactions for comprehensive playtesting and a failure to create reasonable mechanics for the key feature that defines a miniatures game". I'm not sure how this is supposed to be a compelling defense of GW, and that's not even considering the continued existence of IGOUGO, the absence of any kind of pinning/morale/etc system, etc. None of these things are accidental typos that slipped through because GW's employees are only human, they're fundamental design problems caused by systematic flaws in GW's approach to the game.
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Racerguy180 wrote: What I'm talking about is a stand-alone ruleset (no 40k rules crossover)that doesnt cater to any singular faction(read: balance). If the rules dont have to worry about non-optimal builds and you limited the number of strats(everyone gets same, no faction special) & unit values/quantity, a strictly defined ruleset is feasible at least. add in a map/deployment set and specific rules for how to implement them in play. Kinda like a video game in that the maps are specifically balanced between each other and then specific missions to go along w them.
But why does this need to be a separate expansion instead of the normal game? Because it sure seems like you're arguing that GW should fix the game and make it enjoyable for everyone, and then tell all of the non-tournament players to keep suffering through the broken mess of "normal" 40k.
I have no idea how what I've proposed would negatively effect Narrative play, since it (narrative)works in it's current form?
Also, I did not mention an expansion since that would entail being based (ruleswise) on the horribly written unbalanced shitshow that is 8th.
Why would you want to be tainted by a clearly inferior ruleset?
ClockworkZion wrote: Elegantly? Perhaps not. Functional with no actual breaks on the mechanics of how it works? Very much so. A rule that lacks elegance is not broken if it still works as the devsloper intented.
Intent is not an excuse if the author deliberatelywrites a broken mechanic. And, again, if it isn't broken then why did GW need to literally double the firepower of certain units to get them anywhere near a playable state?
If the mechanic works it isn't broken. You're using your opinion on how the mechanic should work as a measuring stick on if it works which is not the basis on how we measure if a mechanic functions correctly or not.
That's how Pere functions(at least by their RAW), it's like their subjective/objective recognition program has the wrong user definitions. As has been the pattern, maybe they're deliberately doing it.
Racerguy180 wrote: Why would you want to be tainted by a clearly inferior ruleset?
My point exactly! The whole idea of a separate tournament ruleset is nonsense because once you fix the things that make 40k a poor tournament game you have a much stronger core ruleset that you can use for everything else. And once you have a strong foundation for the game in general you can make a tournament "expansion" in half a page or less. You certainly don't need anything even remotely close to the level of word count that justifies creating a separate product.
That's how Pere functions(at least by their RAW), it's like their subjective/objective recognition program has the wrong user definitions. As has been the pattern, maybe they're deliberately doing it.
Once again, it's not my opinion. It's GW's opinion. GW, by making massive changes to how those units worked, admitted that their original rule was broken. I honestly don't understand why this is in any way controversial, when you add a rule to an underperforming unit that literally says "double your firepower" you are making a very direct statement that the unit in its previous state was broken and needed to be fixed. Units that aren't broken don't receive buffs like that because they'd become blatantly overpowered and break the game in the opposite direction.
Lots of games seems to make IGOUGO work. Chess, Panzer General, Civilization, to name but a few. 40k's problem is that GW isn't attempting to define scenarios, shape forces, or provide any more context to battles than "line up in a pitched battle about 2 feet apart on a space visually representing about a football field's worth of terrain, and go bonkers with whatever you want to bring that exists in this entire game universe and we'll make it fit and have rules for it, from personal sidearms to strategic bombers", and the propensity for using power bloat to express faction traits.
Got to disagree here, at least in the context of a game like 40k. IGOUGO is a fundamentally broken mechanic and any game that has it would almost certainly be improved by using something else instead. At best those games are able to be ok because IGOUGO is the only flaw and the rest of the game makes up for it. But it's still a significant liability that should be avoided at all costs.
Also, chess is not an IGOUGO game at all. It's an alternating activation system with no limit on activating the same "unit" again and again each time it's your turn. Chess with IGOUGO would have one player make a move with all of their pieces, followed by their opponent doing the same. And I think it's pretty obvious why nobody actually plays chess like that.
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ClockworkZion wrote: Prove GW has actually presented it as their opinion in video or a quote or in writing or feck off with this nonsense Peregrine.
JFC why are you so stubborn about this? It doesn't matter if GW hasn't explicitly said that 1+1=2 and that water is in fact wet, their actions confirm that they hold that opinion whether or not they hand you a written statement of it. You do not give LRBTs double the firepower unless they are a completely broken unit because that is a massive buff that will break the game when applied to anything but a broken unit. It is very obvious to everyone but you that GW looked at the state of LRBTs and how poorly they were performing with D6 shots, acknowledged their mistake in translating the LRBT weapons to D6 shots, and gave them 2D6 shots to correct the mistake. Do you actually have a plausible chain of events that does not involve GW holding this opinion, or is all you have repetition after repetition of "you can't prove it"?
If you make a claim that GW has taken a stance but can't back it up then they haven't actually taken said stance. Instead we see evidence of you climbing up on your cross to claim GW is persecuting you because you want the game to work a way they don't dorectly design for.
ClockworkZion wrote: If you make a claim that GW has taken a stance but can't back it up then they haven't actually taken said stance. Instead we see evidence of you climbing up on your cross to claim GW is persecuting you because you want the game to work a way they don't dorectly design for.
Get over yourself Pere.
I have backed it up over and over again with evidence that is overwhelming proof to everyone except you. It does not matter if GW has not personally handed you a signed and notarized statement explaining their reasons for making the change, their actions make it perfectly clear what their position was.
Racerguy180 wrote: Why would you want to be tainted by a clearly inferior ruleset?
My point exactly! The whole idea of a separate tournament ruleset is nonsense because once you fix the things that make 40k a poor tournament game you have a much stronger core ruleset that you can use for everything else. And once you have a strong foundation for the game in general you can make a tournament "expansion" in half a page or less. You certainly don't need anything even remotely close to the level of word count that justifies creating a separate product.
I think you missed my point.
If the game functions with its ruleset as intended& it's a terrible tournament game, then by logic, it isnt one and shouldnt be treated like one.
So that would then mean....an entirely different ruleset is required. Kinda like I've stated before.
Why on earth would you not be in favor of this? It would seem to hit all of your points, balance, rules that are clear(by your own "definition") & no over/under costing.
If your tzeentchs' gift to rules design maybe you should go work for GW? No, better yet, create your own game system and manage it the "best" you can. Cuz you'll go far kiddo.
I am in favor of it. I just reject this idea of it being in the form of a separate tournament ruleset instead of putting all of those changes into 9th edition and using the new rules for all games. This conversation started with the idea of making separate rules because they wouldn't be appropriate for non-tournament games, when in reality what is needed is a comprehensive overhaul of the entire game where at the end of it there is no further need for separate tournament/narrative/etc rules.
If your tzeentchs' gift to rules design maybe you should go work for GW? No, better yet, create your own game system and manage it the "best" you can. Cuz you'll go far kiddo.
No thanks, I'm pretty happy with where I am and I'd rather not take a pay cut to change careers.
ClockworkZion wrote: If you make a claim that GW has taken a stance but can't back it up then they haven't actually taken said stance. Instead we see evidence of you climbing up on your cross to claim GW is persecuting you because you want the game to work a way they don't dorectly design for.
Get over yourself Pere.
I have backed it up over and over again with evidence that is overwhelming proof to everyone except you. It does not matter if GW has not personally handed you a signed and notarized statement explaining their reasons for making the change, their actions make it perfectly clear what their position was.
You make a lot of claims about the studio not listening to playtesters, to relegating tournament play to the woodshed put back and other gak. The only thing you might have proof of is the LRBT thing, and even then they still corrected what the realised wasn't operating as intended instead of leaving it alone and telling people to just deal with it.
Basically the more GW comes ouy of their shell and tries to take steps to engage the community, demystify the design process and even open up playtesting the more I see you and a few others climbing up on these crosses to martyr yourself over how bad you claim the company is despite them making a heel turn on the behavior you accuse them of when Kirby got the boot.
It's like people can't accept things are progressively improving or something.
ClockworkZion wrote: It's like people can't accept things are progressively improving or something.
Because the steps are laughably tiny and well short of what is needed. IGOUGO still exists, the rules are still a bloated mess and getting worse with every new release, LOS is still unplayable without house rules, morale/pinning/etc are still irrelevant, movement is still barely relevant, the game is full of pointless RNG and CCG mechanics that take away from the core concept of a wargame, and it's still a game with the strategic depth of a puddle where the winner is almost entirely decided by who optimized their dice math better. 40k in its current state is like a restaurant served you a plate of rotting food and then "improved" it by scraping off a bit of the mold from one corner. It's technically a step in the right direction, but so pathetic that zero credit is deserved. And at GW's current rate of improvement none of us will live to see a good 40k ruleset.
ClockworkZion wrote: It's like people can't accept things are progressively improving or something.
Because the steps are laughably tiny and well short of what is needed. IGOUGO still exists, the rules are still a bloated mess and getting worse with every new release, LOS is still unplayable without house rules, morale/pinning/etc are still irrelevant, movement is still barely relevant, the game is full of pointless RNG and CCG mechanics that take away from the core concept of a wargame, and it's still a game with the strategic depth of a puddle where the winner is almost entirely decided by who optimized their dice math better. 40k in its current state is like a restaurant served you a plate of rotting food and then "improved" it by scraping off a bit of the mold from one corner. It's technically a step in the right direction, but so pathetic that zero credit is deserved. And at GW's current rate of improvement none of us will live to see a good 40k ruleset.
The rules for 40k could be handed down from the heavens from actual gods and you'd complain about something. Don't mistake your personal bias for the feelings most of us have towards how far 8th edition has improved over 7th.
Basically, stop acting like GW stole your lunch money and find something that makes you happy instead of wizzing in everyone's breakfast cereal because they're not catering to your personal definition of what makes a game good or not.
ClockworkZion wrote: The rules for 40k could be handed down from the heavens from actual gods and you'd complain about something. Don't mistake your personal bias for the feelings most of us have towards how far 8th edition has improved over 7th.
That's an awfully nice straw man you've built there. Perhaps you shouldn't mistake your personal biases for facts or confuse "it's a bit better than the raging dumpster fire of 7th" with "it's a good game"?
Basically, stop acting like GW stole your lunch money and find something that makes you happy instead of wizzing in everyone's breakfast cereal because they're not catering to your personal definition of what makes a game good or not.
WEEEEOOOOOOO WEEEEEEEOOOOOO THE POSITIVITY POLICE ARE HERE, PUT YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD AND STEP AWAY FROM THE CRITICISM.
If you don't like seeing criticism of 40k you're free to leave dakka. But I have zero obligation to care about your enjoyment and refrain from expressing my honest opinion of the game and how it should be fixed. Nor do I have any obligation to pretend that GW's failures to understand good game design are anything but failures just because some people here don't understand enough about what makes a good game.
ClockworkZion wrote: The rules for 40k could be handed down from the heavens from actual gods and you'd complain about something. Don't mistake your personal bias for the feelings most of us have towards how far 8th edition has improved over 7th.
That's an awfully nice straw man you've built there. Perhaps you shouldn't mistake your personal biases for facts or confuse "it's a bit better than the raging dumpster fire of 7th" with "it's a good game"?
Basically, stop acting like GW stole your lunch money and find something that makes you happy instead of wizzing in everyone's breakfast cereal because they're not catering to your personal definition of what makes a game good or not.
WEEEEOOOOOOO WEEEEEEEOOOOOO THE POSITIVITY POLICE ARE HERE, PUT YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEAD AND STEP AWAY FROM THE CRITICISM.
If you don't like seeing criticism of 40k you're free to leave dakka. But I have zero obligation to care about your enjoyment and refrain from expressing my honest opinion of the game and how it should be fixed. Nor do I have any obligation to pretend that GW's failures to understand good game design are anything but failures just because some people here don't understand enough about what makes a good game.
I love how you hide from my points about you making gak up only to pretend you have a moral highground when I get tired of your games.
I have posted criticisms on Dakka, I just find you to be completely incapable of accepting that you're in a (vocal) minority group in this hobby on where you want the game to go and how "broken" it actuslly is.
Basically you're a toxic member of the communuty incapable of accepting different opinions or even admitting you've been caught making things up about what the company is and is actually doing. I'm not against the idea that the game has areas that need improvement (I posted earlier that I feel Apoc is a better core rulset for 40k due to the change in turn krder and casualties), I don't feel the game is so fundamentally broken that people can"t, or shouldn't, have fun with it.
But sure, paint me as the bad guy because I'm telling you to quit trying to wear your butt as a hat.
Can I possibly suggest a compromise? Namely, a pox on both your houses. Past a certain point, it doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong, and this topic certainly qualifies.
Both of you calm down and be polite. You're both probably in violation of rule 1 and I'll be going through the posts to see. But until then you can both shape up
I am pretty surprised the OP placed a video that basically says " Forget the narrative " then gets surprised people jump all over it.
Speaking on why GW won't support kit bashing and customizing, well if they just stopped making primaris Lts maybe they would be able to make some of these kits.
That still doesn't explain why they can't fully support old models they made, and models that are made from their own kits. Like why did they ever decide to remove looted wagons ? Every kit is looted wagons for Orks. Why remove options for bikes, packs, etc, etc from characters ? They have those kits, everywhere. I made those models and I'm not an amazingly good modeler and I can do it anyone can do it.
The only reason they have to be as they are, is funneling you to new kits they want to sell. Then, say how they make the rules to torge the narrative to hand wave away poor balance, then make old kits Legendary because they make it too hard balance, because they care so much about balance that they themselves claim doesn't really matter and we shouldn't care about.
What a load poop, big ol poop. Makes the design team sound a bit daft and makes me wonder if they even know what they are saying anymore.
All this talk of defending their IP, they'll never do so. As long as other companies make models they just refuse to give enough of or another person can make nicer versions of, third parties will live on. They shoot themselves in the foot thinking every customer will buy enough kits to equip all the chain cannons they want, or Frag cannons, etc, etc
I do remember back when you could bitz order from GW, and it felt pretty good. Until they decided they'd rather me get them from other sources of course and stopped the practice.
This went into a bit of a rant, sorry about that but my mind is a little warped from trying to digest all the narrative they forged on me.
As long as people will swallow their tripe, they'll keep spoon feeding it. They know competitive rules sell their books, hence the power creep we are living in now. They can talk all about forging the narrative all they want, when they want to sell stuff they go right to breaking the game apart, just wait till the free models start to show up from the new formations. That narrative will feel so strong that day.
That still doesn't explain why they can't fully support old models they made, and models that are made from their own kits. Like why did they ever decide to remove looted wagons ? Every kit is looted wagons for Orks. Why remove options for bikes, packs, etc, etc from characters ? They have those kits, everywhere. I made those models and I'm not an amazingly good modeler and I can do it anyone can do it.
Very true. One of the first conversions I ever made was of a metal Chaplain model that I decided I'd ruined, so I sawed his head off with a blunt hobby saw and plopped it on a biker torso. I had no pin vice to attach him properly, or green stuff to cover up the damage. Instead of a Crozius, he's wielding a morningstar taken from the old skeleton warriors box. Given how crappy everything was, it's amazing that he turned out as well as he did, and I would never want to repaint him, or consign him to oblivion as a pile of disarticulated body parts in my bitz box. Wherever my hobby fortunes go, Timeon the Biker Chaplain will remain as he is, to commemorate where I was 22 years ago.
I think really, intent only really matter a bit. if they are not doing a good job at that, i think intent or not. They should be working towards improving rather than talking about it.
And i do not think it is even the rules writers, I think 40k is failing at a design point. Before it comes to rules being written.
I would hope the rules team are in the whole design but i wonder if they are at this stage, or if they just get bad design dumped down on there table.
Weapons, units, and even what is planned for the future should all be layed out in design with the rules team.
Flyers and knights come off as bad design, Half done and with little care for the rules or the game. And they should have catch both way before any rules where written for them.
There narrative rules have been mostly very weak, and there terrain rules feel like afterthoughts.
When both should be strong if the company is looking towards its own intent it seems. These are things that have been done better in the passed, and i can think are only a rules failure though a general design failure.
Since some of the terrain they sell is effectively useless, and only finds its place on a table though rules being worth the time and purchase to put it there.
If the base game was good, both of these aspects would be far more easy to expand. And would ad more to the game when they are expanded on.
Instead we get rules that seem like quick hackjobs into the rules rather than well thought out extensions.
And honestly i just do not understand how the company can produce such low quality for such a high price.
AngryAngel80 wrote: I do remember back when you could bitz order from GW, and it felt pretty good. Until they decided they'd rather me get them from other sources of course and stopped the practice.
Devils advocate here - but that was a legacy of metal models. You can always run out a batch and melt down what doesn't get sold, whereas someone ordering a hundred crusader helms off the plastic templar sprue would have been a bit of a problem.
