Honestly 9th edition hardly got played - over half of its lifespan was lockdown madness. Whilst a lot of people got into building stuff, I'd wager it was one of the least played editions in a very long while. In a way I was a little surprised GW kept going with their 3 year cycle because of how little time 9th got on the actual table.
catbarf wrote: Designers should not be looking for suggestions from the peanut gallery and then directly implementing them. They should be collecting feedback to figure out where the perceived problems are, and then designing a holistic solution to address them.
Yes, and what makes this all more bizarre is the fact that for the first time in human history, GW can practically sit at the table with gamers and see their problems in real time. It's not like they have to get letters in the mail, or grainy photographs of board setups that require magnification to figure out.
They can see how the game is actually being played, both in tournaments and online.
Other companies have used this to build out FAQs (which GW has generated for decades) to head these problems off. GW can do it, when it wants to. The rules churn is a deliberate choice and I suspect they think it essential to sustaining sales.
vict0988 wrote: How so? It's not very invigorating to print a new edition that includes errata from the last 3 years, super conservative changes to the three most hated things and nothing else.
Have you noticed that BattleTech has had a meteoric rise in the past 5 or so years, mostly on the back of two huge Kickstarters. The rules are still the same as they were 20 years ago.
GW are a miniatures company. The biggest thing they do is release new miniatures. A new edition that furthers the setting and introduces a swathe of new miniatures would be the kind of thing that generates interest. They don't need to re-write the rules to obtain that.
IMO the answer to the necessity of new rules as a sales mechanism depends on the skill level of the authors.
If they're talented designers they don't need to resort to new edition hype as a marketing gimmick. Selling a strong product that people enjoy playing is enough and new editions can be limited to the minor tweaks required to get a game into its final state, with editions happening less and less frequently as the game gets closer. People will keep buying because the product is great and they want more of it.
If they're a bunch of minimal-talent hacks hired because the company wants to save a bit on salaries then yeah, you do need major changes for a new edition and you need those new editions to happen frequently. If your product sucks and most people are grudgingly putting up with bad rules because they love the lore or their friends all play the game or whatever then engagement will continue to decline and you need major changes to create hype and hope for the future. Minor tweaks don't stop the engagement decline because they're too easily ignored as more of the same thing you're already getting tired of. And yeah, you're going to lose people because they get tired of new editions but you're losing most of them anyway so you might as well try to cash in on new edition sales before they go.
I suspect the answer here is that GW's writers are really bad at their jobs and the management clowns don't know any better and/or don't care. Cleaning out the dead weight and replacing everyone with competent game designers would be better for the company but if GW won't do that they're stuck in the second case, where they need constant reboots to make up for their inability to make a good game. They're almost certainly making less money than they could be if they moved to the first scenario but until GW actually loses money for a while there won't be any pressure on the clowns and they'll continue business as usual.
How so? It's not very invigorating to print a new edition that includes errata from the last 3 years, super conservative changes to the three most hated things and nothing else.
Have you noticed that BattleTech has had a meteoric rise in the past 5 or so years, mostly on the back of two huge Kickstarters. The rules are still the same as they were 20 years ago.
GW are a miniatures company. The biggest thing they do is release new miniatures. A new edition that furthers the setting and introduces a swathe of new miniatures would be the kind of thing that generates interest. They don't need to re-write the rules to obtain that.
This is the most painful thing of all.
They don't NEED to gak on everything on an arbitrary date.
They WANT to gak on everything on an arbitrary date.
Apparently gak=$, or more correctly....
gak=$$$$$$$$$€¥¥¥€€£¥€£¥¥€€£¥£€$$$$$
vict0988 wrote: How so? It's not very invigorating to print a new edition that includes errata from the last 3 years, super conservative changes to the three most hated things and nothing else.
Have you noticed that BattleTech has had a meteoric rise in the past 5 or so years, mostly on the back of two huge Kickstarters. The rules are still the same as they were 20 years ago.
GW are a miniatures company. The biggest thing they do is release new miniatures. A new edition that furthers the setting and introduces a swathe of new miniatures would be the kind of thing that generates interest. They don't need to re-write the rules to obtain that.
Its also conveniently 5 years since battletech released on PC after a huge gap since the last game in that franchise hit the market, so I'd be questioning if that drove the uptick more than anything.
PenitentJake wrote: Working within those limitation is part of the fun for us, because it's an an external force that contributes to the shape the story takes. It's like writing a sonnet with all its imposed stucture in both rhyme and meter, rather than writing everything in free verse. It is part of the art form.
A narrative system for 40k should be capable of telling the full range of stories the game can represent, not only the small subset that the Crusade rules are appropriate for. Crusade is like having a new version of MS Word that can only write sonnets, if you try to write a haiku it crashes and you lose your work. That's not a case of "restrictions breed creativity" it's a tool that is inadequate for the job.
And TBH are you really surprised? This is textbook edition churn. Launch Crusade as a new matched play mission pack, sell new content for it through all of 9th, and then when 10th arrives invalidate everything and start the cycle over. I'm sure at some point GW will dump Crusade entirely and hype up the next narrative system. And just like Crusade ignored all narrative content that preceded it GW will learn nothing from the failures of Crusade, whatever system replaces it will be starting from zero with a whole new set of flaws.
But you ignore all the place where Crusade contributes to lore accuracy- like the structure it provides for shadow wars in Commorragh, or the growth of a Cult, or the rites of Penance and Sainthood. Compared to that enhancement, any lore violations of lore that you might see feel relatively minor to our play group- and those that do exist (limited load outs) are products of the datacard, which is not an exclusively Crusade issue- it's one that exists in all three ways to play. So for us, Crusade is a way to bring the game CLOSER to the lore, not further from it.
This is an excellent example of how Crusade sacrifices narrative elements for the sake of matched play needs! Matched play requires balance so all the various faction-specific Crusade content happens largely outside the game. You total up your points scored and increment your progress meter but very little of it has any effect on the game with your opponent, where it could create balance issues. Matched play requires standard missions so none of the off-table stuff has any direct effect on what you're playing. You may be one victory point short of filling your progress meter and winning a new territory for your DE but you're still going to play one of the stock missions instead of, say, a raid on that territory's current owner to assassinate him. Matched play requires the ability to play pickup games against random opponents so none of the off-table stuff can be interacted with directly by any other player. Your Tau army can happily fill the progress meter on taking over an Imperial planet by fighting orks and there's nothing any Imperial player in the group can do to interfere. Over and over again the story takes second priority at best behind the needs of matched play pickup games.
TBH it's kind of sad that you're so impressed by the pitiful scraps of narrative elements GW gave us with Crusade. You should be holding them to higher standards and demanding more than a matched play mission pack with an upgrade table and a progress meter!
The Chapter Master isn't a green Marine; he's a green CHAPTER MASTER. In the fist battle you fight with him, he has very little experience with the responsibilities that only a Chapter Master has- he's never been the guy who decides which companies fight where for example. He's never been the guy that other Imperial forces talk to when they want the chapter to support their war effort. And if you want to reflect him learning about how to do those things, then yes, you leave room for him to grow.
This is an excellent example of how Crusade fails as a narrative system. A proper 40k narrative system would be able to handle something as basic as an experienced chapter master starting the current story well established in that role. Crusade can't. Even using your rationalization for the rank system it requires you to assume that every character in the story starts as a complete newbie in their role, the whole force has all been newly promoted into a dozen different ranks all at the same time and the whole package has been sent out together. Maybe that's the one story you want to tell over and over again but a system should be capable of more than that.
vict0988 wrote: How so? It's not very invigorating to print a new edition that includes errata from the last 3 years, super conservative changes to the three most hated things and nothing else.
Have you noticed that BattleTech has had a meteoric rise in the past 5 or so years, mostly on the back of two huge Kickstarters. The rules are still the same as they were 20 years ago.
GW are a miniatures company. The biggest thing they do is release new miniatures. A new edition that furthers the setting and introduces a swathe of new miniatures would be the kind of thing that generates interest. They don't need to re-write the rules to obtain that.
Its also conveniently 5 years since battletech released on PC after a huge gap since the last game in that franchise hit the market, so I'd be questioning if that drove the uptick more than anything.
I don't know about overall, but at the local shop it's directly because of a handful of vet players. Just playing the game they love & being seen having a good time over the past 2.5 years.....
That's infectious & draws interest.
After that initial "Ooh, what game is this?" Response from new people?
Our selling points to you are:
●The rules are pretty simple - we can teach you to play in 20 minutes.
●The rules are stable. And clearly written.
●The game is AFFORDABLE.
Here's the book or boxed starter set you need. Here's a selection of all ready assembled very nicely sculpted plastic mechs, 4 - 5 per box, at a very reasonable price tag.
Give us a few minutes & we'll print you a sheet for each of your new mechs. Welcome to the game.
Most of the new players we've attracted? Have no experience with the BTPC games other than knowing they exist. And the next one that has any experience with the BT Kickstarters will be the first.
Dudeface wrote: Its also conveniently 5 years since battletech released on PC after a huge gap since the last game in that franchise hit the market, so I'd be questioning if that drove the uptick more than anything.
Those games don't have the reach you think they do. These aren't AAA games being put out by mega publishers.
Most people would respond with "Oh, is that still going?" if you asked them about MWO. Most people would respond with "There's a Mechwarrior 5?" if you told them about MW5.
But again, that doesn't really put a dent in the point I'm making: You don't need new rules to drum up interest for your game, or even for a new edition.
Hell, just today I was out to lunch for my Birthday, and one of the owners of the restaurant noticed that I was wearing my Jade Falcon T-shirt. It's the third time someone has stopped me in public because of my BTech shirt. Rules haven't changed since I started playing the game.
Dudeface wrote: Its also conveniently 5 years since battletech released on PC after a huge gap since the last game in that franchise hit the market, so I'd be questioning if that drove the uptick more than anything.
Those games don't have the reach you think they do. These aren't AAA games being put out by mega publishers.
Most people would respond with "Oh, is that still going?" if you asked them about MWO.
Most people would respond with "There's a Mechwarrior 5?" if you told them about MW5.
But again, that doesn't really put a dent in the point I'm making: You don't need new rules to drum up interest for your game, or even for a new edition.
Hell, just today I was out to lunch for my Birthday, and one of the owners of the restaurant noticed that I was wearing my Jade Falcon T-shirt. It's the third time someone has stopped me in public because of my BTech shirt. Rules haven't changed since I started playing the game.
Yes there are very much "pockets" of very active players but in other areas it is almost unknown. CGLs plastics have changed that quite a bit for the better but you will find loads of nostalgia because the game has been around so long. At least the buy in for the game with CGL plastics is the lowest of any game out there. $25 will get you a lance of inner sphere mechs which is effectively an entire "army" for the classic game. stopping yourself from buying all the other mechs/vehicle/aerospace/infantry etc... is the hard part.
video game wise the mech warrior series (and mech commander to a lesser degree) are the most well known because they were from larger publishers over 10+ years from 89-2002. MWO started out with all sorts of promise and then turned into a dumpster fire COD mech skin game. while HBS's battle tech and MW5 are improvements over MWO the only current FPS game that accurately captures all of classic battle tech is mech warrior living legends because it was made by fans for fans, but it is on what is now a very old version of the crysis engine as a mod to the original crysis game. still great fun to play, but you are not going to see it advertised anywhere outside the battle tech communities.
ThePaintingOwl wrote: If they're talented designers they don't need to resort to new edition hype as a marketing gimmick. Selling a strong product that people enjoy playing is enough and new editions can be limited to the minor tweaks required to get a game into its final state, with editions happening less and less frequently as the game gets closer. People will keep buying because the product is great and they want more of it.
They had talented designers. They quit on account of the churn and now are able to work on stable designs elsewhere.
It's a deliberate decision, part of Tom Kirby's zombie business model.
ThePaintingOwl wrote: If they're talented designers they don't need to resort to new edition hype as a marketing gimmick. Selling a strong product that people enjoy playing is enough and new editions can be limited to the minor tweaks required to get a game into its final state, with editions happening less and less frequently as the game gets closer. People will keep buying because the product is great and they want more of it.
They had talented designers. They quit on account of the churn and now are able to work on stable designs elsewhere.
It's a deliberate decision, part of Tom Kirby's zombie business model.
Do you know what a zombie business is? They never had talented designers, they have always been a dartboard studio, with badly designed mechanics.
ThePaintingOwl wrote: If they're talented designers they don't need to resort to new edition hype as a marketing gimmick. Selling a strong product that people enjoy playing is enough and new editions can be limited to the minor tweaks required to get a game into its final state, with editions happening less and less frequently as the game gets closer. People will keep buying because the product is great and they want more of it.
They had talented designers. They quit on account of the churn and now are able to work on stable designs elsewhere.
It's a deliberate decision, part of Tom Kirby's zombie business model.
Do you know what a zombie business is? They never had talented designers, they have always been a dartboard studio, with badly designed mechanics.
I'd argue that GW did, at one point, have a solid (not world class, but solid) stable of passionate designers with clear goals. I'd also argue that this is only really visible in 3rd and 4th edition, with maybe a bit of 5th. After that it all went in the bin.
I'd also point out that we have fairly concrete proof of even older iterations of WH being hamstrung at the corporate management level rather than the design level. Andy Chambers (at least IIRC, but I know it was one of the OG names) is quoted as a majority of the design team wanting to switch to an AA game model for 3rd or 4th edition, but the high-level studio management basically stepped in and nixed it because the You Go I Go turn rotation was definitinal of product identity, and they feared it would alienate players.
Ergo there was a time when GW had sufficiently skilled design staff, that actually gave a flying feth, who were focused on the goal of refining such a sprawling mass of a game into a solid and enjoyable ruleset. But suits who saw nothing but dollar signs systematically stopped any attempts and in turn drove those designers away.
I love when GW explains something with "We did X, because we were worried Y would be too strong" or "In our testing Z was fun, even powerful". They nerf some armies for no reasons, like DG in end 9th and 10th, to a point where it becomes a meme sometimes. Some armies always get a slap on the wrist, get supposed fixes and nerfs for months, if not years, and then they get a codex or a supplement and we are back to the same position we were before.
All I would want is for GW to at least pretend they are doing the same kind of work for most, if not all factions. I don't know sometimes I think that index or transition rules for certain factions are the way they are, because of storing space being limited and GW just counts what they want to have and sell aka be good, and then have stuff they just leave bad, with a hope that no one will ask for it or buy it. But I guess telling people that X is not going to be updated or is scheduled for removal would not be good for books/rules/store sales. So GW has absolutly no problem to do something like first give scouts and assault space marines nice rules, then put them in to legends and later on remove them with the codex, after people went out and bought the untis, which GW combines with making the prior edition stuff being bad. Put axes on your units of custodes, because we made them mathematicly superior to everything else? Well now enjoy them being inferior to everything else. Now if you want to play, you have to break your models or buy more stuff.
Another problem is mechanical rules problems that are being fixed with "points drops". Points drops sometimes are needed, but sometimes the points aren't the core problem with a faction being too good or too bad. Yet GW has this strange policy, where they will make people wait, sometimes for years for a change.
And the final problem with the churn of editions and GW rules writing is them writing books for future editions with problems, tactics and mechanics in mind that are either no longer a problem or don't even exist in the next edition. So GW takes the "problem" of intercessors being "too good" in end of 8th, and then nerfs them to a point where in 9th and 10th, they are just not worth running. But the rules set and the meta that made intercessors good no longer exist. But people at the DT still give them bad rules. And vice versa if they decide something should be OP, they will make it OP over and over again, no matter how many and how often it creates problems or breaks the game. It is as if a dude or two just wrote certain armies just for themselfs. Which is a stupid idea that doesn't make sense, but it sure does look like it.
Karol wrote: GW has absolutly no problem to do something like first give scouts and assault space marines nice rules, then put them in to legends and later on remove them with the codex, after people went out and bought the untis, which GW combines with making the prior edition stuff being bad. Put axes on your units of custodes, because we made them mathematicly superior to everything else? Well now enjoy them being inferior to everything else. Now if you want to play, you have to break your models or buy more stuff.
I totally agree with this. Fortunately (as I said previously about retiring my firstborn Ultramarines anyway) I wasn't affected by the former, but the latter has resulted in me proxying a few loadouts for my Chaos Knights (when previously I was fully WYSIWYG).
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Overread wrote: Honestly 9th edition hardly got played - over half of its lifespan was lockdown madness. Whilst a lot of people got into building stuff, I'd wager it was one of the least played editions in a very long while. In a way I was a little surprised GW kept going with their 3 year cycle because of how little time 9th got on the actual table.
I was surprised too, although I did manage to play 34 games, so I do feel like I probably got good use out of the edition.
Commissar von Toussaint wrote: As for the designs, I think that's open for debate. Some of their games are great. It's just that the flagship product isn't all that.
Yep. The LOTR games, Aeronautica Imperialis 1.0, etc, prove that GW has had people who are capable of making better games. And it's important to not apply too much hindsight to our judgement of GW's early work. GW needs to be compared to their peers of the era, not to modern games built on the lessons of that era. For example, it's a lot more understandable that someone would make an IGOUGO game in 1990 because we didn't have nearly as much understanding of why IGOUGO is a bad system or how to make more engaging alternatives. And making an IGOUGO game in 1990 is much less of a black mark on a designer's record than continuing to publish an IGOUGO game in 2023.
Racerguy180 wrote: IGOUGO is not a bad system, I really wish this bs would stop being peddled.
You may not like it, but that is an entirely subjective opinion. Not a statement of fact.
It's a non-interactive system that poorly represents the fluid nature of real combat and creates massive opportunities for balance problems. It's a bad system and no amount of pro-GW apologism will change this fact.
I think its a fine system in its place and likely did work well for GW at one stage. I think that in a game with a large number of models intended to be on the table per side for the majority of factions; and for a game where currently the balance ethos is for very high lethality - then its a very bad system.
Because its weaknesses are amplified. More models per side means more time spent unable to do more than respond to your opponents attacks and actions with defensive armour rolls.
It means a high chance of the player who gets the alpha strike taking a major step forward in gaining the chance of winning over their opponent. In excess of the tactics and gameplay skill to get into the position for that alpha strike.
The system itself can likely work, but when added to GW's overall style of balancing its not. Honestly GW could get even more lethal and have even more dice rolling and big effects in an alternate unit activation game because both players would at least be able to respond in kind during the same turn with their models.
The other option is alternate turns, but where damage is only assigned and models removed after both players have had their turn - though honestly whilst that can work I think it might prove overly complicated to put into practice. I think it works in Apoc because its slightly less serious a format for most people and the vast number of models means its more of a "two gunlines face off" with less tactical moving etc... But suffice it to say it would be one way to bring additional balance to an alternate turn game where it would allow both players a chance to use their models each turn at least.
ThePaintingOwl wrote: It's a non-interactive system that poorly represents the fluid nature of real combat and creates massive opportunities for balance problems. It's a bad system and no amount of pro-GW apologism will change this fact.
In GW's hands all systems can be broken. We get it, you don't like it. It doesn't matter, because GW will never leave it.
you're all arguing from different premises, weighting different aspects of game play and verisimilitude differently.
The 'standard definition' of igougo from what i've seen is, 'my whole army go, your whole army go'.
You can argue semantics over the fact that the phrase 'i go you go' describes every type of game that exists (alternating activation is still i go, then you go), bu that's not what the commonly accepted usage of the phrase igougo is. At least, in my anecdotal experience over the last 25 years in the hobby.
If modeling real combat is weighted highly, then igougo is terrible. All combat is simultaneous and units may kill each other simultaneously.
If weighting accessibility and speed of pick up, it isn't bad.
In my opinion, there are limitations to igougo. The solutions to those tend to work around the inherent limitation of whole army go, so that you end up with a game that's igougo in name only.
If you've added exceptions and work arounds to avoid the limits of igougo but you're still calling it that, you've made the stone soup equivalent of an igougo game.
ThePaintingOwl wrote: If they're talented designers they don't need to resort to new edition hype as a marketing gimmick. Selling a strong product that people enjoy playing is enough and new editions can be limited to the minor tweaks required to get a game into its final state, with editions happening less and less frequently as the game gets closer. People will keep buying because the product is great and they want more of it.
They had talented designers. They quit on account of the churn and now are able to work on stable designs elsewhere.
It's a deliberate decision, part of Tom Kirby's zombie business model.
Do you know what a zombie business is? They never had talented designers, they have always been a dartboard studio, with badly designed mechanics.
I'd argue that GW did, at one point, have a solid (not world class, but solid) stable of passionate designers with clear goals. I'd also argue that this is only really visible in 3rd and 4th edition, with maybe a bit of 5th. After that it all went in the bin.
I'd also point out that we have fairly concrete proof of even older iterations of WH being hamstrung at the corporate management level rather than the design level. Andy Chambers (at least IIRC, but I know it was one of the OG names) is quoted as a majority of the design team wanting to switch to an AA game model for 3rd or 4th edition, but the high-level studio management basically stepped in and nixed it because the You Go I Go turn rotation was definitinal of product identity, and they feared it would alienate players.
Ergo there was a time when GW had sufficiently skilled design staff, that actually gave a flying feth, who were focused on the goal of refining such a sprawling mass of a game into a solid and enjoyable ruleset. But suits who saw nothing but dollar signs systematically stopped any attempts and in turn drove those designers away.
You couldn't give me a slew of badly designed rules for 3rd? I know RT had several at least. 5th had wound juggling, that's bad design and ended up being impactful because the designers and playtesters as far as I know never anticipated it being weaponized in lists because the GW studio is bad at game design and always have been. The MTG team needs to ban things once in a while, but usually because of combos with one of a thousand other cards or trying to release an almost OP card to sell more packs or to help a struggling deck archetype but that card ends up being over the top.
Karol wrote: Another problem is mechanical rules problems that are being fixed with "points drops". Points drops sometimes are needed, but sometimes the points aren't the core problem with a faction being too good or too bad. Yet GW has this strange policy, where they will make people wait, sometimes for years for a change.
Points isn't sometimes the core problem, it's always the only problem when it comes to imbalance. The Eldar automatic bazillion mortals isn't a balance problem, it's a fun mechanics problem or not a problem at all. Space Marines not packing a punch or dying to a stiff breeze isn't a balance problem, it's a fluff problem or not a problem at all. Points fixes all balance problems and when you try to leverage rules to change balance you are hurting either the fun or the fluff of the game because by definition you are no longer allowing fluff and fun to be the only two things you care about when writing the rules which is silly since rules changes have a lesser chance of perfectly balancing things than points do because rules changes are broader, like when giving Space Marines bolter discipline, either Land Raider Crusaders benefit or they don't, there's no middle ground, but there is a middle ground between 180 and 200 pts, 190 pts.
40K doesn't make good use of the IgoUgo system but it doesn't mean it doesn't have its place.
For instance, a lot of fun and satisfaction in Warmachine comes from devising a multi-layered, complex, Rube-Goldberg machine of a plan and executing it. It would be impossible with the twitchy instant-reward reactionism of alternating activations.
The problem with 40k's first turn isn't (only) the turn system, but the ability of units to instantly attack the opponent's units due to very long ranges and limited LOS blocking. That's why the game feels like two huge guys standing still and alternating hitting each other on the head with sledgehammers.
All the games I've played where positioning and maneuver mattered a lot had either very short ranges for weapons (Warmachine) or punishing LOS rules/terrain guidelines (Kill Team) In these games you don't really attack the opponent before they had a chance to move (unless they make a serious deployment mistake) and to attack them at all you need to put in some work. The result is these games much more often feel like a duel of expert fencers.
Racerguy180 wrote: IGOUGO is not a bad system, I really wish this bs would stop being peddled.
You may not like it, but that is an entirely subjective opinion. Not a statement of fact.
It worked, and worked well, when you had 1st edition, and specifically 1st edition sized forces - a character or two, a couple of infantry squads and maybe a vehicle, half a dozen "things" and both sized likely had similar numbers of units
it worked because there was only so much going on, only so much the enemy could do before your turn came around again, alternating activations would have worked too but were not really needed then so for simplicity IGOYGO worked.
it started to fail when the size of armies grew, and grew to the point an army could delete a decent part of the enemy in a single round and do so reasonably reliably by focussing on it - something that was harder to do in the earlier editions with typically smaller forces.
a pure alternating activation system wouldn't work well either, partly because not all units are equal but also because these days the sizes of armies can vary significantly.
something like the Battletech system where the number of activations is decided by the size of the smallest force and the larger force uses multiple units each activation could work, but without a lot of other structural changes you cause problems and end up with a very different game
to the point GW would alienate a lot of players if they did it.
the Apocalypse system GW did worked well, IGOYGO but no one knows how effective an attack is until after both sides have gone works, also the way Middle Earth SBG does it with the phases alternating, "I move, You move, I shoot, You shoot" etc is good and could be brought into 40k a lot more easily
as you note its not that IGOYGO is bad, nor is it that alternating is better, they are different, do different things and work well in different scale of games
Keep in mind there is a lot that could be done to improve 40k, not everyone here will agree on what but there are a lot of concepts, GW seem to want however to keep the basic game very simple and quick to pick up, and to then try, with variable success, to add complexity over the top of that frame work. resulting in a quick to pick up game at the basic level and a bit of a mess later. Other games go for a slightly more balances approach with a more complex core but less changes later.
both can work, depends who your primary audience is, GW were at one point aiming at school kids, hoping that for every starter sold a percentage would by more and the focus being on new players not existing ones. It seems to be shifting gradually to more of a nostalgia market as schoolkids cannot afford the game now
Also from local group, and yes one data point does not equal evidence, but it has been a lot easier to get people playing other games by having vastly smaller armies, a much lower buy in point (even if you can spend way more later) just to get you going, and do so through "oh that looks good" - e.g. I kick started Flame of War (Version 2..) at a local club by having a few units for each side over and above the starter set painted up with a bit of terrain, someone else did ot for Antares (though that fizzled), and various historical games or semi historical - e.g. a current club is seeing a shift of some 40k players over to Bolt Action, partly because with a decent table of terrain and painted models it looks better than the typical "few MDF buildings on a mat" 40k
"realistic" is a bad term for games in general, because nothing is realistic unless you go for a full simulation
and then we start from a simple point that eliminating full units was never the target and hardly achieved but breaking moral and routing the opposition was what happened in combat
and the difference between an overwhelming victory and a minor one was if the opponent could orderly retreat or not
"my army goes and than your army", is realistic for grand tactical/strategic games, much more and alternate unit activations
simply because you move armies/divisions around there was no real interactive combat on that level but a reactive one, if all forces moved, the other armie countered (if there was something left)
the main advantage for a "I do everything, you do everything" is that it is faster and much clearer, as the one thing that slows things down should be decision making and dice rolling.
Both are on the active player so that the opponent cannot slow your turn down by taking his time in planning a reaction or searching for the dice to roll
To slow that design down for people thinking that any other system is faster, it takes some special skill
and why GW games are so slow is simply because GW tries to add as much interactions as possible to make the turn less boring for the passive player which achieves the opposite as the turn takes much longer because of that
at the same time balance is way off as the units are not designed for that type of game but just as "what looks cool".
GW tried to break with IGoUGo and the result was double turn AoS that is as devastating as is the alternating of 40k
yet Bolt Action uses a random activation and now one is winning or losing games just because he gets triple activations, nor are people calling it boring because they have nothing to do during those 3 activations
and if someone wants a realistic and dynamic type of game, they should look into Blücher or LaSalle as those are systems that break with the IGoUGo to be more realistic and still are fast games to play
Cyel wrote: 40K doesn't make good use of the IgoUgo system but it doesn't mean it doesn't have its place.
For instance, a lot of fun and satisfaction in Warmachine comes from devising a multi-layered, complex, Rube-Goldberg machine of a plan and executing it. It would be impossible with the twitchy instant-reward reactionism of alternating activations.
The problem with 40k's first turn isn't (only) the turn system, but the ability of units to instantly attack the opponent's units due to very long ranges and limited LOS blocking. That's why the game feels like two huge guys standing still and alternating hitting each other on the head with sledgehammers.
This is correct. Other games limit the range/LOS of units upon deployment, providing an "advance to contact" experience. If you start in close range in clear LOS (and cover doesn't do much) it's a gunfight in a parking lot.
Changing to activations would not solve or even mitigate this problem, especially in GW's hands. It is very easy to foresee players up-loading a single unit with all available firepower and taking disposable spam units to fill out the roster. Turn one, the Death Star activates, wipes out the other force, wasn't that fun. It will also be another thing for GW to play with, so armies will get bonus activations, re-activations, etc. Give GW more design space, they will find more things to screw up.
IGOUGO is intuitive and easy. Activations are harder to work properly, which some people like, but that is in direct conflict with GW's longstanding policy of making 40k accessible to the kiddos. The churn is permanent, and so is IGOUGO.
Its notting to do with rules annymore its a way to sell you new miniatures. If you have an army you like and play the rules they can sell you no more mini's so they rewrite some rule so models not selling well will be good and models that sold well be toned down a bit for model that sold not enough its a miniature manufacture. Some times i ask my self if the dont make more money selling rules and codexes.
Cyel wrote: 40K doesn't make good use of the IgoUgo system but it doesn't mean it doesn't have its place.
For instance, a lot of fun and satisfaction in Warmachine comes from devising a multi-layered, complex, Rube-Goldberg machine of a plan and executing it. It would be impossible with the twitchy instant-reward reactionism of alternating activations.
The problem with 40k's first turn isn't (only) the turn system, but the ability of units to instantly attack the opponent's units due to very long ranges and limited LOS blocking. That's why the game feels like two huge guys standing still and alternating hitting each other on the head with sledgehammers.
This is correct. Other games limit the range/LOS of units upon deployment, providing an "advance to contact" experience. If you start in close range in clear LOS (and cover doesn't do much) it's a gunfight in a parking lot.
Changing to activations would not solve or even mitigate this problem, especially in GW's hands. It is very easy to foresee players up-loading a single unit with all available firepower and taking disposable spam units to fill out the roster. Turn one, the Death Star activates, wipes out the other force, wasn't that fun. It will also be another thing for GW to play with, so armies will get bonus activations, re-activations, etc. Give GW more design space, they will find more things to screw up.
IGOUGO is intuitive and easy. Activations are harder to work properly, which some people like, but that is in direct conflict with GW's longstanding policy of making 40k accessible to the kiddos. The churn is permanent, and so is IGOUGO.
Quite true. there are only 2 systems i have seen that do alt activations in a good way. one is infinity where it is actually a IGOUGO system that simulates AA through the non active player getting a reaction to anything his models can see activate. but even they have screwed that up with the newest edition (N4) dumbing it down in the same manner that GW has-simplifying rules, shrinking table size, reducing game length etc... with a strong lerch towards satisfying the tournament crowd. the best edition they ever made is still N2 (second edition).
The other is DUST tactics/1947 both of which use 3d terrain rules crafted by none other than Andy Chambers. it doesn't suffer the weird/random activation rules of bolt action or SW legion. the core rules flow smoothly and when a unit activates it gets 2 actions that can be combined any way you like. because it doesn't have the absurd lethality that 40K became known for especially in 9th. there is no unit in the game that can death star most or all of an enemy force in a single activation. and they toss in a reaction mechanic at a certain range to boot. making it a nice mix of something close to crossing index 8th edition 40K and infinity with 4th ed 40K terrain rules.
What makes 40K what it is, partly is due to it being an IGOUGO system. in previous edition there were mitigating factors to prevent much of what is being discussed. tables were larger, you were never allowed to have a deployment zone closer than 24" from your opponent. there was hard cover and limited ranges aside from less volume of fire. aside from a few gimicks like scout/infiltration(that still had a deployment range restriction) or drop pods. there was almost no way to pull of a turn 1 assault. for most armies. This of course helps when both players have a similar goal with the game. using decent amounts of varying types of terrain. playing with the same mind sets etc...
What made 40K work was the fact it was simple (compared to 2nd) and fast game play. it is most certainly not that now. even though 10th has toned it down a few notches i still watch players spending large amounts of time spending command points cycling through stratagems etc.. aside from actually "playing" the game IE the moving, shooting and stabbing part.
I have no doubt the current inheritors that are steering the GW core 40K game right now would screw it up if they were given the go ahead for an AA system. i think the closest they came would be that last iteration of apocalypse where both sides do everything simultaneously and then casualties are removed at the end.
Warmachine also had the limitations on what you can do for each action on each model. Since there werent any phases each time you wanted to use a model you kinda had 2 "actions" for each model/unit. You could do 2 out of move, attack, do model specific action (some could shoot once for each action left or cast a spell) or forgo both actions to do a larger special action like charge (a better move with restrictions that also allowed you to fight) or with jacks/beasts do stuff like trample, hurl or slam models.
Add into that effects that had models give up one action on their next activation. Lots of spells, feats and special attacks that when a unit were hit they got such a debuff on them. Didn't completely take them out of the game for the next turn but heavily reduced their actions. Can't charge if you aren't allowed to both move and attacks and even though you might be able to shoot you aren't getting a good shot off without moving and you cant do both.
You also did an entire model's activation at once and didn't spread it out over 3+ phases like in 40k. Not only can you move, shoot, charge, fight and then move again for a lot of models in 40k you also split it up in multiple parts. It is one of the reasons it can take so much time. You aren't measuring and moving once for a unit but you measure move, pick up model and put it down. Then 10min later you get back to that model and measure its shooting range. Then 10 min later you go back to that model and measure distance, pick it up and down before going to the next and then 5 min later you are fighting and then brining out your tape and start measuring piling in and consolidation moves etc.
Measuring and moving 4 times for a single model is pretty insane when you think about it. Even more when you aren't doing it in a row but have a lot of small wasted time going through your entire army each phase in between each time you are handling that model. You could shave off a lot of time if you did all of a models actions at once before going over to the next model. Might only be 5-10s lost for each unit in each phase when doing them phase by phase rather than all at once but if you have 10 units and there are 4 phases you use the model in but that easily adds up to an additional 5min your opponent is just standing there waiting for their turn.
MESBG does it a lot better in this regard. You alternate the phases so you don't have to wait the entire turn until you get to do something. Models also only get 1 move per turn in most situations and they can in most circumstances only do 1 out of shooting or fighting in each turn. Models that have been charged are locked into combat for that turn as well. This massively reduces the time each turn takes and allows the game to be played for many many turns.
Lethality is also pretty low when compared to 40k. The best archers (Rivendell archers that stand still) in the game vs the easiest to kill models in the game (Goblin town goblins) needs slightly more than 2 turns to kill a goblin on average if open ground with shooting. On average an archer won't be able to kill their points back even after 6 turns of shooting (24" range and most models move 6" so not easy to get more than 4 rounds off). Not even the Balrog for 350pts (6-800pts is standard game size) kills more than 2-4 5pt orcs or goblins a turn. So you can have lots of rapid turns right after each other and even a lucky turn or two is unlikely to decide a game since even if you spike your lethality for a turn it is unlikely to be high enough that it can snowball the game before the luck of the dice goes the other direction.
A big part for me of why MESBG feels a vastly better game is that no matter what you generally get to act before you get murdered, so by the time you come to move your first model you will not have lost a good chunk of your army
I think something alluded to by others also helps here, weapon ranges are low compared to table size - one or other side generally has to move before anything fires (and stuff that moves doesn't shoot as effectively) so no wipe outs on the first turn.
see also Team Yankee & Flame of War 4th, basically the same game system with minor changes but TY is vastly more lethal simply due to much longer weapon ranges that cross the board - and while FoW has such weapons it tends to be artillery and thats about it - tanks can reach over the no mans land but still quite easy to deploy out of range
in 40k you simply do not have that semi-rear area thats reasonably safe until the enemy moves up
when they wrote 8th, and indeed again with 10th 40k they could have done a lot worse than pick up MESBG and give it a new cover as a core system. the way it handles characters especially is vastly better, and it would not have been too hard to bring in squads/units who remain together and are targeted as a single "thing" to avoid slowing down shooting individual models
Sometimes I think that the majority of GWDT all went to soviet era military schools, and that to them w40k is some sort of a historical game, where the tables are often so big that you have pupiles going under tables or use cranes to move above tables, just to move models. And that everyone plays with 20000pts per side with sub generals, generals, refs and maybe even some RPG elements. Artilery in w40k, on w40k tables, should be use the same way artilery is used right now at point blank range, either as so-so anti tank or in city fights to level buildings. And not this LoS shoting. A basilisk or Manticore to shot at something quarter of a football field away, and outside of LoS, would have to shot at almost a 90 degree elevation
MESBG does it a lot better in this regard. You alternate the phases so you don't have to wait the entire turn until you get to do something. Models also only get 1 move per turn in most situations and they can in most circumstances only do 1 out of shooting or fighting in each turn. Models that have been charged are locked into combat for that turn as well. This massively reduces the time each turn takes and allows the game to be played for many many turns.
Iirc aswell, with the original lotr sbg, there was a limit on how many doods could be equipped with ranged weapons - one in three if I remember right? Unless that has changed?
It helped a lot to dent the alpha strike.
Always liked sbg. Simple, elegant intuitive system. I love the dynamic roll-off in the fighting, much prefer it to 40k/wmh's taking turns to hit each other over the head. (On a complete tangent as an intellectual exercise I'd love to see wmh rebuilt using the sbg 'engine' with focus/fury being rebuilt using 'might'.)
Yeah, for most factions it is still only 1/3 can have bows. Some get to have 50% bows and there are a few limited lists that can get 100% bows but they usually have other restrictions as well so they aren't that good anyway.
On average an Isengard Uruk with a S4 crossbow (so can't move and shoot) have a 1/6 chance to kill a standard D6 model (Minas Tirith Warriors with shield, Elves with shield, Uruk Hai with shield etc) and that is considered good shooting into a preferred target. An elf who might hit better but only have S3 with their bows (but can move with hit penalty) only have a 1/9 chance to kill the most common defensive profile in the game. So even if you could take more than 1/3 bows it wouldn't necessarily be broken.
Some scenarios have up to 24" deployment (48"x48" tables). One even forces the 2 forces to be within 6" at start of the game. In 3/18 scenarios you can enter the table at the exact same place and be just 1" away turn 1. One scenario reduces LoS to 12". So even if some lists can have really good shooting it might be dangerous to go all in on them since some scenarios have some huge downsides to them if you just want to shoot.
Klickor wrote: Some scenarios have up to 24" deployment (48"x48" tables). One even forces the 2 forces to be within 6" at start of the game. In 3/18 scenarios you can enter the table at the exact same place and be just 1" away turn 1. One scenario reduces LoS to 12". So even if some lists can have really good shooting it might be dangerous to go all in on them since some scenarios have some huge downsides to them if you just want to shoot.
There were scenarios in 2nd that reduced LOS across the board due to mist, smoke, thick atmosphere, etc., and of course the game was best played with lots of terrain. It's kind of funny in light of the current state of the game, but one of the gripes was that both armies could start hidden in cover, leaving nothing to shoot at.
It's a measure of the environment in which 2nd emerged that historical miniatures games actually required spotting/detection rolls to see an enemy. This gave scouts a purpose - they could spot enemy armor and then call in the heavies.
The initiative stat in 40k reflected this, and was enhanced by scanners, bionic eyes, etc. The overall effect was that while players had a "God's Eye View," the models on the tabletop did not and this forced more maneuver and when combined with an overwatch mechanic, the game had a fair degree of back-and-forth activity.
I think a lot of players (myself included) expected 3rd to clean up some of the Rogue Trader area mechanics, finicky things like scatter for individual jump packs, enduring templates that could grow each turn, rolling for models who didn't die but remained 'on fire' and so on.
There was also the issue that many codexes had been rendered obsolete by subsequent releases. If you're an Eldar player and want to go retro, the rules for your tanks aren't in your codex; either track down a Battle Bible or the appropriate issues of White Dwarf. Some folks like 3rd, but in retrospect the biggest problem with it was that GW management realized they could make sweeping changes to rules, army composition and the feel of the game and sales actually went up.
Whatever attrition they suffered from disaffected players quitting or staying with the old system was more than made up by the increased revenue derived from larger armies composed of more expensive figures.
If you told me in 1998 that 40k would hit tenth edition faster than Fantasy, I would not only have disagreed, I would have wondered why ten editions were even necessary.
lord_blackfang wrote: Personally I'm pretty bored of straight IGOUGO and straight alternating.
Like IGOUGO with reactions
Like alternating with push your luck mechanics for multiple units in a row
Like "initiative based" (X-wing)
I've gotten tired of IGOUGO-vs-AA-for-40K discussions because they always seem to devolve into straight IGOUGO versus straight I-pick-a-unit-you-pick-a-unit AA and debating the flaws of each, as if those bare-bones implementations are the only options.
IGOUGO with reactions is good. IGOUGO with reactions interwoven into phased activation (like Dust Warfare) is good too. IGOUGO by phase like LOTR does a good job of curtailing the alpha strike issue inherent to straight IGOUGO systems.
Straight AA with a mechanism for accounting for disparate force sizes, like Battletech, is good though it does have some 'gameable' elements. AA by formation like Epic or Apocalypse is good and gives a great sense of commanding an army.
Randomized activation order by formation like World At War/Nations At War, or by unit like Armageddon War, makes for some real nailbiter moments and does a fantastic job of implementing 'friction' without resorting to rolling dice to see if you get to act.
Fireball Forward has officers activate groups of units at a time, but you assign their activation order before any of them get to act, so you have to make a plan and then try to execute while your opponent can react and throw a wrench in things.
The activation system of a wargame is pivotal to the tactics and the overall feel of the experience- and particularly for a sci-fi setting like 40K, an opportunity to differentiate factions from one another and better represent how they each handle command and control. There's no one solution that's best for all games in all genres, but so much potential is wasted by treating it like an afterthought, and still using a system that was already being considered outdated decades ago.
catbarf wrote: The activation system of a wargame is pivotal to the tactics and the overall feel of the experience- and particularly for a sci-fi setting like 40K, an opportunity to differentiate factions from one another and better represent how they each handle command and control. There's no one solution that's best for all games in all genres, but so much potential is wasted by treating it like an afterthought, and still using a system that was already being considered outdated decades ago.
There's a disconnect between the simple core mechanics of 40k and the very complex way it is executed, and this is amplified by the 'churn' that causes the same units to behave differently from edition to edition.
That's why I agree that arguments about the turn sequence are a distraction. To use a historical analogy, if the Sherman went from being a reasonably mobile fire platform to a static defense, to a high-speed strike element, people would be scratching their heads.
Within the secondary world of 40k, that's what GW had done. Weapon sponsons were originally as somewhat archaic/future look but they did actually function as indicated - a standard configuration Leman Russ worked like Plan 1919 dream tank.
Then came 3rd, and only one weapon could fire on the move (and not the main gun). If the main gun fired, the vehicle was stationary and all other gunners assumed a position of respectful repose.
So people began building sponsonless vehicles, and Imperial Armor celebrated variants that worked within the game. But then the rules changed again.
At this point, I'm not sure what any of the weapons do. Are melta weapons good for killing tanks? They were. Assault cannon used to shred vehicles, and then became only effective against light infantry. Dreadnoughts appear a lot more complicated, but does it add up to anything?
That's a bigger problem than IGOUGO, because it makes the game feel arbitrary and random.
More on Activations, the way many of the Two Fat Lardies games do it is interesting (Chain of command does it differently)
for example, Sharpe Practice, here you have a concept of "big men" who make a difference, your commanders, NCOs etc. each of whom gets a token in a bag - draw one at a time. not only do you have a randomised activation order but also who activates is randomised.
you can't as with some games always pick what unit will act, that perfect shot you have set up may not work for example.
they then that also combines with a melee system that roles the "overwatch" fire into the combat resolution - e.g. charge an enemy who have ready weapons and it can hurt, a lot, but charge a tired unit, or from the rear and its a lot better.
this also gives more junior characters something to do (work with lone unit detachments etc)
there is then a mechanic to activate some units at the end of the turn (which itself is random, not everyone always gets to act)
I think such a system would work well in 40k as it stands, a junior officer able to do one "thing", slightly more senior two, senior three then seriously capable leaders (rare) four
actual units activate with two actions, move, fire, charge, run etc resolved in different ways. (so you can move then fire, fire then move, double move, fire & reload, for a very few weapons fire then fire again)
the idea is that you, as the force commander, are not fully in control of every last individual in the army and you need to think carefully about command and control.
for example, Sharpe Practice, here you have a concept of "big men" who make a difference, your commanders, NCOs etc. each of whom gets a token in a bag - draw one at a time. not only do you have a randomised activation order but also who activates is randomised.
Honestly, I think the last thing GW games need is to put even more random on top of all the random they already have.
but he made a good point why 40k does not work
because instead of designing a game, it is just a combination of random ideas that other games used on top of each other
kodos wrote: but he made a good point why 40k does not work
because instead of designing a game, it is just a combination of random ideas that other games used on top of each other
Personally a lot of 40ks issues can be traced back to its age, stick it against Battletech, similar vintage
Battletech today is roughly the same set of rules and it works because its roughly the same game - a small number of very detailed units slugging it out
40 today is trying to be the same set of rules, or at least feel like them, same sequence more or less, same turn structures, same buckets of dice, but while that worked when your army was one or two characters, maybe two or three squads and a vehicle, in effect a single platoon, its now trying to be a much much larger scale and the mechanics flat out don't scale up
e.g. shooting across the board was fine when you had a handful or weapons that could do it in your army, that would remove a few models, that worked, where as now you can point & click (well some factions can) units across the board so turn one matters way too much.
my point on the Sharpe Practice activations was mostly about how that system limits the amount of stuff you can do, and limits how predictably you can do it to the point you are not able to win the game just by going first, indeed in that system its entirely possible for nothing to happen in a turn, neither player activates (and then some specific effects trigger), its possible every character will activate, its also possible just one player will activate - but neither player knows it in advance so you have to play the game moment by moment
unlike 40k where you can be 100% sure which combinations of actions you can do, and because of the buckets of dice rolled be reasonably able to predict the outcomes in many cases
for example, Sharpe Practice, here you have a concept of "big men" who make a difference, your commanders, NCOs etc. each of whom gets a token in a bag - draw one at a time. not only do you have a randomised activation order but also who activates is randomised.
Honestly, I think the last thing GW games need is to put even more random on top of all the random they already have.
but what is actually random when you think about it?
charge ranges? well its a 2d6 roll, you have a probability curve but its still two dice, so yes reasonably random
melee results? not really, you have say 30 attacks, thats 30 dice, you know the to hit score, thats actually reasonably predicable in statistical terms, to the point you could really do it with a single dice roll providing a +/- shift on a pre-generated table.
same with weapons fire, yes one las cannon at something is random, but chucking a dozen of them at something is far less so
whats needed is not "mooor random!!!" with more dice, whats needed is more random where it makes players have to think, and where they are ways to work with the outcomes (e.g. position yourself so if you get the chance you benefit, but you are not screwed over if you don't), essentially make the things you as your forces commander shouldn't have control over random, but cut it back on the things that you should be able to rely upon a bit more
What makes 40k highly random is everything is technically pretty low odds overcome with brute force volume. Like, hitting on 3s, wounding on 3s with a 5+ save is pretty good odds for 40k, but the actual probability is quite low. Like even, 2s, 2s, no save fails a bit less than a third of the time. You can definitely work within expected outcomes, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of variance when it comes to the actual outcome.
LunarSol wrote: What makes 40k highly random is everything is technically pretty low odds overcome with brute force volume. Like, hitting on 3s, wounding on 3s with a 5+ save is pretty good odds for 40k, but the actual probability is quite low. Like even, 2s, 2s, no save fails a bit less than a third of the time. You can definitely work within expected outcomes, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of variance when it comes to the actual outcome.
what matters is seldom the odds on an individual action, there it can be swingy, though the usual "hit - wound - save (-mitigate)" sequence is in effect a 3d6, or 4d6 sequence which is reasonably predictable, but then you multiply that by say 10 bodies, firing 20 shots, suddenly you have that 3d6 roll happening 20 times, and thats just one unit firing, its starting to get statistically pretty predictable. heck its not hard to simulate this, take that 20 shots, and repeat it thousands of times and what you see is just how predictable the outcome actually is.
what you actually have a lot of dice rolling for very little actual in game purpose other than the illusion of randomness
example: 10x intercessors are firing at a unit of Ork boyz, using their bolt rifles, a 2 shot weapon. for the sake of the example we are not assuming re-rolls or special abilities, its just two units on the fringe of a fight.
marines hit on a 3+ (66.67%), then wound on a 5+ (33.33%), the orks getting a 6+ save due to the AP-1 (thus a 83.33% chance to fail). so the chance of each shot resulting in a wound is the product of these values: ~18.5%. this is actually pretty low, conceptually thats between one in six and one in five shots killing an ork. thus we should be seeing, on average about 1.85 dead orks. basically two, with a chance of it being one.
thats reasonably easy to understand, but what about the spread of results?
Well I have a bit of software that I chucked this through, which ran this 50,000 times
31.6% of the time the marines didn't actually kill a single ork, this will occur when the marines are under my command
37.7% of the time they will cause a single unsaved wound
21.0% of the time they will cause two unsaved wounds
7.5% of the time they will cause three
1.9% of the time they will cause four
0.3% of the time they will cause five
0.1% of the time they will cause six
they scored 7 once in the 50,000 runs, this will have been when I was commanding the orks naturally.
in probabilistic terms you may as well roll a single D6, on a 1 or a 2 you score nothing, on a 3 or a 4 kill one ork, on a 5 kill two, on a six kill two and roll again, its not too far off and its faster.
but does it feel the same? do you still feel as a player you have the same input into the results? technically you have exactly the same input, its all random so could be abstracted away, but would you want to play it that way?
your "tactics" don't impact the dice results, but your tactics can change the odds, for example this is a "heavy" weapon, so can go to a 2+ to hit by standing still
now your chance of doing nothing drops, a bit, to 24%
35% for one wound
25% for two
11.4% for three
and so on, the variation is still actually quite wide, this shows you can have a much greater influence on the outcome by standing still to increase the chance to hit, and by making that choice you have done a damned sight more to splat some orks than rolling dice does
what the 3d6 sequence does allow for is variation in the results, and notice because of how the probabilities compound it doesn't actually matter too much in what order you roll the dice, you could go hit-save-wound for the same statistical results
comes down to though a simple point, for exactly the same outcome, which is more enjoyable? rolling a bucket of dice, or rolling one and looking up a result?
Edit: maths errors in the above, PEBKAC problem, leaving it up so replies make sense and so people can point and laugh, focus on the point being made, not the maffs
LunarSol wrote: What makes 40k highly random is everything is technically pretty low odds overcome with brute force volume. Like, hitting on 3s, wounding on 3s with a 5+ save is pretty good odds for 40k, but the actual probability is quite low. Like even, 2s, 2s, no save fails a bit less than a third of the time. You can definitely work within expected outcomes, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of variance when it comes to the actual outcome.
what matters is seldom the odds on an individual action, there it can be swingy, though the usual "hit - wound - save (-mitigate)" sequence is in effect a 3d6, or 4d6 sequence which is reasonably predictable, but then you multiply that by say 10 bodies, firing 20 shots, suddenly you have that 3d6 roll happening 20 times, and thats just one unit firing, its starting to get statistically pretty predictable. heck its not hard to simulate this, take that 20 shots, and repeat it thousands of times and what you see is just how predictable the outcome actually is.
what you actually have a lot of dice rolling for very little actual in game purpose other than the illusion of randomness
example: 10x intercessors are firing at a unit of Ork boyz, using their bolt rifles, a 2 shot weapon. for the sake of the example we are not assuming re-rolls or special abilities, its just two units on the fringe of a fight.
marines hit on a 3+ (66.67%), then wound on a 5+ (33.33%), the orks getting a 6+ save due to the AP-1 (thus a 83.33% chance to fail). so the chance of each shot resulting in a wound is the product of these values: ~18.5%. this is actually pretty low, conceptually thats between one in six and one in five shots killing an ork. thus we should be seeing, on average about 1.85 dead orks. basically two, with a chance of it being one.
thats reasonably easy to understand, but what about the spread of results?
Well I have a bit of software that I chucked this through, which ran this 50,000 times
31.6% of the time the marines didn't actually kill a single ork, this will occur when the marines are under my command
37.7% of the time they will cause a single unsaved wound
21.0% of the time they will cause two unsaved wounds
7.5% of the time they will cause three
1.9% of the time they will cause four
0.3% of the time they will cause five
0.1% of the time they will cause six
they scored 7 once in the 50,000 runs, this will have been when I was commanding the orks naturally.
in probabilistic terms you may as well roll a single D6, on a 1 or a 2 you score nothing, on a 3 or a 4 kill one ork, on a 5 kill two, on a six kill two and roll again, its not too far off and its faster.
but does it feel the same? do you still feel as a player you have the same input into the results? technically you have exactly the same input, its all random so could be abstracted away, but would you want to play it that way?
your "tactics" don't impact the dice results, but your tactics can change the odds, for example this is a "heavy" weapon, so can go to a 2+ to hit by standing still
now your chance of doing nothing drops, a bit, to 24%
35% for one wound
25% for two
11.4% for three
and so on, the variation is still actually quite wide, this shows you can have a much greater influence on the outcome by standing still to increase the chance to hit, and by making that choice you have done a damned sight more to splat some orks than rolling dice does
what the 3d6 sequence does allow for is variation in the results, and notice because of how the probabilities compound it doesn't actually matter too much in what order you roll the dice, you could go hit-save-wound for the same statistical results
comes down to though a simple point, for exactly the same outcome, which is more enjoyable? rolling a bucket of dice, or rolling one and looking up a result?
So, any given shot has a .1852 chance of killing an Ork Boy.
That means the odds of not killing any boys is (1-.1852)^20. Or 1.66%.
Your program is either wrong, or you put in the wrong numbers.
its likely an error on my part, however thats not actually the point I was making, the point is the result is reasonably predictable within a range of outcomes - and could be replaced with a lookup table to basically the same effect - the point was is that more or less enjoyable?
having had another look at my code I suspect the "to wound" calculation is off
as noted the actual figures are not the point being made though, its the question of the actual purpose of rolling a bucket of dice for each unit firing when actually the more dice you throw, the less random and more predictable the outcome is.
leopard wrote: its likely an error on my part, however thats not actually the point I was making, the point is the result is reasonably predictable within a range of outcomes - and could be replaced with a lookup table to basically the same effect - the point was is that more or less enjoyable?
having had another look at my code I suspect the "to wound" calculation is off
as noted the actual figures are not the point being made though, its the question of the actual purpose of rolling a bucket of dice for each unit firing when actually the more dice you throw, the less random and more predictable the outcome is.
Probability is a funny thing. For example, I've just flipped a coin and heads came up ten times in a row. What are my odds that the next flip will be heads? 50/50
GW's massive amount of dice rolls don't force the results towards the mean, they randomize the imbalances of the system.
If you have a 1 in a million chance of winning the game on turn 1, it will happen and someone's going to be really pissed when it does.
It's also inelegant. Why roll 30 dice 3 times when one will suffice? GW loves to play dice games - rolls, re-rolls, select re-rolls, ignore 1s, etc. The way the dice are manipulated change the perception of the results, but not the results themselves.
That is very much part of the churn, since by making AP all or nothing, or replacing modifiers with bonus dice, you can shift the curves all over the place and it seems that the only people incapable of figuring this out are the designers.
The core of any game design is how the players' decisions affect the results. GW obscures that with layers of special rules, strategems and dice-rolling to create dramatic tension, but in the end much of it feels like the entire game comes down to a single coin toss.
JNAProductions wrote: How would you implement a look-up table that accounts for hitting, wounding, saves, and FNP?
The point is that you do a gakload of rolling to achieve a result that, for all the different checks you're making, is generally fairly statistically predictable, while still heavily constrained by the limitations of the model.
For comparison:
Battlefleet Gothic uses a gunnery table. Start on the row corresponding to your Firepower, and then go over to the appropriate column for your target type (escort, capital ship, or static defense) and attitude (closing, moving away, or moving abeam). Various effects like range, obscuration, sensors, and the like cause either left or right column shifts. The resulting number is how many dice you roll against the target's armor (no roll to hit), with full re-rolls if you're on Lock-On special orders. The result is a gunnery system with lots of factors that influence how effective your attack is, but it's resolved with just one roll.
Dust Warfare has target classes (eg Soldier 2, Vehicle 5, and so on) and each weapon has a different firepower rating against each class. Find your weapon profile, go over to the correct column for the target class, roll that many dice, any that show 5+ are a hit, sustained fire lets you re-roll fails. The target then takes armor saves and damage is assigned.
Starship Troopers gives each weapon a die + modifier representing its combined accuracy and damage, so maybe a rifle rolls a straight D6 while an anti-tank missile gets D12+2. You roll and if you exceed the target's Hit rating but not their Kill rating, they have to take an armor save. If you exceed their Kill rating, they get no save.
Silent Death gives weapons a die type, and a damage rating of low/moderate/high/all, plus a die type for the pilot. So maybe your laser gun gets 2D6 and the pilot operating it is a D8, and you roll a 4-2-7, and that total of 13 is enough to hit the target. The weapon is a 'moderate' damage, so you take the middle of the three dice you rolled, and inflict 4 damage. Weapon accuracy, pilot accuracy, and damage are all combined into a single roll.
Heavy Gear gives weapons accuracy modifiers at various ranges and a damage multiplier. You roll a number of dice depending on your pilot's skill, take the highest, and apply your accuracy modifiers. The target does the same and applies their defensive modifiers. If you scored higher, you multiply the difference by your damage multiplier and compare to the target's armor value, with the severity of damage based on how many multiples of their armor value your attack achieved. It creates a system where stacking modifiers in your favor can let you punch above your weight or dance around heavy firepower, but always possible to get lucky hits or flub entirely, and any attack is resolved with a single roll from either player.
And then in 40K:
You roll for shots, then roll to hit, then roll to wound, then roll for saves, then roll for damage, then roll for FNPs- and for all this rolling, the system can't even make a stationary Warlord Titan looming over you any easier to hit than a jetbike at Mach 1 two miles away. Nearly everything hits on a 3+ or 4+, so the very best sharpshooters in all the galaxy at 2+ don't even hit twice as often as a basic Guardsman, and the cap on modifiers ensures they can never be particularly meaningful. FNPs statistically amount to extra wounds but with less predictability. Units that rely on speed as defense are modeled the same as units with impenetrable energy shields. Everything gets piles of special rules because the core mechanics don't sufficiently differentiate them.
Some of these rolls are actual stat comparisons, but some are just filters that adjust the overall output by a fixed amount. It's tedious mechanical resolution, and it occurs with basically no decision-making from the players once the dice start rolling.
There are more elegant ways to achieve comparable results with more diverse balance levers and a fraction as much rolling.
Incidentally I did really appreciate the 3-7th Rapid Fire reasoning. It's harder to hit at longer range, so you only roll 1 die instead of 2. The Wound chart and AV system helped as well, "You can't even hurt it, don't bother rolling."
As I look to designing a 40k replacement, knocking out a hefty chunk of rolling is a major goal.
Edit: Truncated ranges helped roll reduction in 3rd too.
Probability is a funny thing. For example, I've just flipped a coin and heads came up ten times in a row. What are my odds that the next flip will be heads? 50/50
best example of 40k randomness is that the by fluff best anti-tank weapons are 1 shot with D6 damage
so of course the supposed anti tank weapons are not taken because they can swing very hard and people rather use something more reliable even if this means using high rate of fire anti-infantry weapons
other games going into similar mechanics have such weapons with an equivalent of 2 shots and D3 damage, which has the same damage potential as 1 shot D6 but is less random
kodos wrote: best example of 40k randomness is that the by fluff best anti-tank weapons are 1 shot with D6 damage
so of course the supposed anti tank weapons are not taken because they can swing very hard and people rather use something more reliable even if this means using high rate of fire anti-infantry weapons
other games going into similar mechanics have such weapons with an equivalent of 2 shots and D3 damage, which has the same damage potential as 1 shot D6 but is less random
I don't think this is a symptom of the randomness in the damage stat, it's more to do with the fact that GW has decided that in order to minimize skew lists they should make anything bigger than a rifle wound tanks on 5+ and actual dedicated AT wound tanks on a 4+. Other games tend to try and make it actually harder to do any damage at all to a tank without dedicated AT weapons.
kodos wrote: best example of 40k randomness is that the by fluff best anti-tank weapons are 1 shot with D6 damage
We've seen the opposite. We spent 2 editions with 3+D3 and 6+D6 and stuff like that. Things were too dangerous. Too reliable. Too lethal.
I don't mind the rolling, to begin with, or the swingy damage weapons. I like the high of rolling well, and the 'Ah! Maybe next time!' of rolling low. Every time I fired my Tyrannofex (a very swingy weapon with 2D6 damage) we both held our breaths over what was going to happen. Once I rolled double 6. Another time a 5 and a 6. The hits were devastating. Another time I rolled a 3, and did nothing. His Lascannons did a similar thing back to me, and having my big bugs hanging on with 1 or 2 wounds made the game more interesting.
It never felt out of place. It honestly felt exciting.
Now I'm all about efficiency and consistency, but I've long since accepted that I can do everything in my power to help increase the chances of an outcome, but I cannot ensure that result because this game uses dice... and I'm ok with that.
I also don't mind rolling To Hit/To Wound/To Save. I don't think every hit should automatically do something, and I think saving throws add in much-need interactivity to the game. I played so many damned games of 2nd Edition where all cover did was decrease the chances of hitting your target; it did nothing to actually protect you. Then they'd roll To Wound, and the abundance of armour save modifiers would mean that you just removed models. Guard vs Eldar was an exercise in frustration, as the only thing you got to do during the Eldar turn was remove your Guard models. 3rd onwards changed that. I could always attempt to save my guys.
I think saving throws are absolutely vital to the style of game 40k is. They can be make or break, they can be miraculous, and they can be soul-crushing. I think saving throws keep the non-player player involved in the game, and I think they add to the story each game tells.
You're all free to disagree with me, but in much the same way I think that Alternate Activation is not the panacea people think it to be, I don't think further abstraction is going to help 40k all that much.
it is not only the damage stat but also the single shot
1 shot, 4+ to hit, 4+ to wound, 1-6 damage is something were you say to reliable take down a target with 6 hit points you take 8 such weapons
so 5+ to wound is still better if you have a fixed 2 damage and much higher rate of fire
and this is nothing new, it was already a problem in 6th for the same reason
40k has a lot of randomness going for it that can be avoided by taking weapons/options that roll more dice, which slows the game down and swings the balance to something that was not expected by the designers (and called unfluffy and WAAC, as by the fluff you should use the supposed weapon and not the one that gets the job done)
other games design their weapons to get the job done, and balance that by getting only that job done and not all others as well by accident (have a laser cannon being 2 shots damage 3, or 1 shot 2D3 damage would solve issues, and people asked for this since vehicles got hit points)
Oh I agree about the high-rate of fire/mid damage thing. But as you said, that's been a problem for a while, exacerbated further in 8th/9th/10th due to the idiotic To Wound rules that do not prevent damage at all, which tends to make bumps in Strength not all that important, but things like +1 To Wound overly important.
Dust Warfare has target classes (eg Soldier 2, Vehicle 5, and so on) and each weapon has a different firepower rating against each class. Find your weapon profile, go over to the correct column for the target class, roll that many dice, any that show 5+ are a hit, sustained fire lets you re-roll fails. The target then takes armor saves and damage is assigned.
Those are not target classes they are armor values.
Armor 1 soldiers have no armor, 2 have flak, 3 are power armor, and 4 are heavy mech suits. to represent how hard they are to damage the number of attack dice you get for the same gun goes down as the armor goes up to the point you sometimes cannot hurt them. it is very evident on vehicles as light or open topped vehicles can be hurt by small arms, once you get to medium tank level (4) you can no longer hurt them with small arms and must use AT weapons. it also helps that aside from the one special super weapon each factions gets all guns in the game have the same stat-IE a machinegun is a machinegun no matter what faction uses it. they added in the fact that even though the armor class is "all around" for vehicles the weapon mounts themselves have facings. lethality is as you said further reduced by the fact aside from characters with the ace gunner skill...everybody shoots like ORKs
On top of that there are a couple other mitigating balance mechanics
-reaction
if an enemy unit activates within LOS and 16" of a unit that has not yet activated the reacting unit can roll 2 dice and on a 5+ can get up to 2 (both dice) activations that interupt the active unit.
-hard counters
several weapons in the game specifically ignore infantry saves (artillery), others cover saves(grenade) and a few ignore all saves (fire, railguns, and close combat attacks)
This leads to games where both players are very actively involved even when it is not their turn. additionally since activated units only get 2 actions per turn it is quite impossible to "deathstar" a unit or alpha strike an enemy army.
I also don't mind rolling To Hit/To Wound/To Save. I don't think every hit should automatically do something, and I think saving throws add in much-need interactivity to the game. I played so many damned games of 2nd Edition where all cover did was decrease the chances of hitting your target; it did nothing to actually protect you. Then they'd roll To Wound, and the abundance of armour save modifiers would mean that you just removed models. Guard vs Eldar was an exercise in frustration, as the only thing you got to do during the Eldar turn was remove your Guard models. 3rd onwards changed that. I could always attempt to save my guys.
I think saving throws are absolutely vital to the style of game 40k is. They can be make or break, they can be miraculous, and they can be soul-crushing. I think saving throws keep the non-player player involved in the game, and I think they add to the story each game tells.
You're all free to disagree with me, but in much the same way I think that Alternate Activation is not the panacea people think it to be, I don't think further abstraction is going to help 40k all that much.
I agree about the saving throw, but I wonder about the Wound roll. Compacting the experience down to just two rolls, one per player, incorperating the S v T into modifiers for To Hit /Save. Not sure how that would hold up with all the possible variety, but it feels possible. Grimdark Future forgoes a To Wound, iirc.
Like I said, I don't think more abstraction would really add anything to 40k.
Yes, you could represent a Guard Lascannon and Marine Lascannon with different "firepower" levels, or whatever term you want to come up with, but I'd prefer it if the "Lascannon" was the same no matter who was using it, but how effectively it was used came down to the skill of the user.
GW core games have always been about rolling lots of dice; its a big thing they've always had and honestly I don't see that going anywhere. I'd also argue that whilst you can make the game more efficient in cutting out dice rolls; having lots of dice rolls isn't inherently a bad thing.
The issue isn't so much how many times you roll a dice; the issue often swings back to how GW often has very finalistic results on dice. Either almost or actually nothing happens or everything happens.
GW leans into very swingy results and high lethality. Which means for all that dice rolling you often come out the other end either doing nothing or obliterating whatever it was you attacked.
Even if you change to gunnery tables or back to the old table system or approach things like One Page Rules does; you still hit the core issue which is what those rolls define in game and how powerful they are.
At its most insane extreme of this we have the AoS double turn mechanic where a single, non modified, non game state influenced, dice roll can give you two turns in a row; or not.
LunarSol wrote: What makes 40k highly random is everything is technically pretty low odds overcome with brute force volume. Like, hitting on 3s, wounding on 3s with a 5+ save is pretty good odds for 40k, but the actual probability is quite low. Like even, 2s, 2s, no save fails a bit less than a third of the time. You can definitely work within expected outcomes, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of variance when it comes to the actual outcome.
That's so true. I discovered this when I played Aeronautica and realised that having perfect positioning and average rolls results in exactly as meh outcome as positioning poorly and getting lucky. The only moment when some really impactful result was achieved was when you got positioning right AND rolled great.
And it translates to other "GW-style probabilities". The ceiling of how well you perform an action is pretty low (point and click super-range shooting for example) but on average doesn't result in anything spectacular. For that you need above average rolls.
This is opposed to, for example, Warmachine, where setting up a perfect solution to a situation with so many tools and options is rather hard (I have a lot of experience in this game and I still think how I could have squeezed a few more % of efficiency out of my moves every time I play) but if you do this you can expect great results even with average or below average rolls. Play well and bad luck can't hurt you and good luck is just unnecessary overkill.
JNAProductions wrote: It also allows the same quick resolution system for anything from a Lascannon to a Lasgun.
How would you implement a look-up table that accounts for hitting, wounding, saves, and FNP?
basically by having the lookup relate to the number of actions not the probability itself directly. throwing in FNP or similar and its now a 4d6 distribution. the probability can be a lookup, you now have a die roll for a column shift on that table.
that said though the point I made is basically does that make for a more enjoyable or less enjoyable game? it could well be a lot faster, and once you start playing with percentages you have a much wider range of results possible over base d6, but you end up with a game that isn't 40k
Insectum7 wrote: I agree about the saving throw, but I wonder about the Wound roll. Compacting the experience down to just two rolls, one per player, incorperating the S v T into modifiers for To Hit /Save. Not sure how that would hold up with all the possible variety, but it feels possible. Grimdark Future forgoes a To Wound, iirc.
This is how Conqueror works. Since it's a fantasy/historical system, melee is the decisive form of combat and so both players can roll hits, announce results and roll saves. It goes pretty quickly.
The key question is: what is the player's job in the framework of the game? What role is he playing? In most games it's battlefield commander, but 40k makes army selection a key element of play, so one could argue that's a logistics function.
The point is that just designating targets and rolling buckets of dice doesn't require a lot of strategic thinking. If you start in range, going first is what you want, but that's random, and then how the buckets of dice fall is random. I would say GW has consistently rated the ability to maximize list/special rules combinations over any battlefield-oriented skill.
This is also a function of churn, because GW needs ever-growing product lines to make money. The old 2nd ed. concept of everyone using essentially the same gear (with some tweaks and variations) and therefore fighting in similar ways (or standing apart, as the Tyranids did), placed the emphasis on tactics because there simply wasn't as much to choose from.
Some weapons were just good in general, and most had more flexibility, yet at the same time there was a sharp division between anti-infantry and anti-tank.
Shorter weapon ranges, more protective cover (and LOS rules) meant armies had to advance to contact, and units with high movement rates could make some radical flanking moves to transform the battlespace. I don't think that's happening now.
H.B.M.C. wrote:I think saving throws are absolutely vital to the style of game 40k is. They can be make or break, they can be miraculous, and they can be soul-crushing. I think saving throws keep the non-player player involved in the game, and I think they add to the story each game tells.
I'd be more sympathetic to this if A. I weren't usually in the position of my armies routinely being denied saves altogether, though admittedly this has gotten better in 10th, and B. Rolling saves actually involved some sort of interactivity with the game, rather than being a mechanic that the other player could just as easily resolve.
I don't mind how Grimdark Future or Dust do it, where the attacker rolls to hit and the defender rolls saves and that's it, each player gets one roll so it's quick and easy and outright ignoring the defender's save is rare. But I'd still rather play a system where the defender has the opportunity to react, immediately act, or otherwise actually do something to interact with the game besides just roll dice for thirty minutes to see how many of their dudes die.
And while I understand your reservations about AA, I think the fact that GW has to find something for the inactive player to do- and settles on a mechanic where they don't actually have any input, and are just contributing to the mechanical resolution of the active player's decisions- speaks volumes about the current level of player interactivity.
Battlefleet Gothic is another pure IGOUGO game and one where the inactive player does very little rolling, but the inactive player having the option to Brace For Impact at any time gives them agency and has them hanging on the result of the attacker's rolls. At any time you can decide to brace and get a 4+ FNP against all damage, but at the cost of reduced capability in your next turn.
Horus Heresy 2.0 is also IGOUGO but with a reaction system. Your primary responsibility as the inactive player isn't rolling, it's looking for the right opportunity to spring a reaction and throw a wrench in the enemy's turn.
AA isn't a panacea and there are other ways maintain player interactivity, but it is a straightforward way to keep player engagement up and increase the number of decision points beyond big pendulum swings where the only thing stopping the inactive player from going to make a sandwich is the game requiring them to be dice monkey.
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Insectum7 wrote: I agree about the saving throw, but I wonder about the Wound roll. Compacting the experience down to just two rolls, one per player, incorperating the S v T into modifiers for To Hit /Save. Not sure how that would hold up with all the possible variety, but it feels possible. Grimdark Future forgoes a To Wound, iirc.
When I started looking at Grimdark Future I thought the condensed hit system (roll to hit -> target takes saves) was going to make units feel bland, but after spending some time with the game I changed my mind. 40K uses Toughness, Save, and Wounds as mechanisms to represent durability, but the separation between some of those is more arbitrary than modeling any meaningful difference between them. If I compare two tanks, what does it mean that one of them has a point higher Toughness? Is that more armor- and if so, why isn't that part of the armor save? Is it more mass- and if so, why isn't that more Wounds? What does it actually mean that a meltagun, the supreme anti-armor weapon with super high armor penetration ability and damage, only wounds a tank on a 5+? It's really good at penetrating armor and does a lot of damage when it connects, but it just... doesn't do anything 2/3 of the time?
Really the most significant effect Toughness has on 40K is acting as a mild filter for differing durability of infantry units, but the difference between wounding on 3+ and 4+ (for most things) is so minor that it can still be captured elsewhere or abstracted out, and nowadays GW has no problem with multi-wound infantry to show significant increases in durability. Once you get past basic W1 dudes, the combination of save to represent armor and wounds to represent overall toughness provides pretty intuitive levers for 'how hard is this thing to hurt' versus 'how much hurt can this thing take'.
And at the risk of beating a dead horse: 40K doesn't do much with the to-hit roll, using it as a largely static filter to uniformly reduce damage. I'd wager that making to-hit into an opposed check against a how-hard-is-it-to-hit stat would add a lot more to the game than consolidating some of the current defensive stats would take away, while still reducing the amount of rolling overall.
Kill Team uses this single opposed roll of Attack vs Defence and it works well enough. Most importantly it doesn't have these high-impact, high-variance singular rolls like charge or D6 damage which make big WH40K feel so silly and unpredictable.
I think looking up tables and stats is a chore. The main gameplay loop being asking your opponent to look up abilities and stats and then using your 3+ gunnery tables sounds like something that should be a video game and not a board game. Rolling 20 dice is not a big deal. Finding a way to make a mob of Ork Boyz only roll 20 dice would be neat, but I don't see value in making everything into a 2d6 roll if you spend tonnes of time looking at a gunnery table instead of having a simple system with reasonable and easy to remember break-points.
Toughness determines how durable something is vs Poison and various common types of weapons and acts as fractions of a wound, so if a unit is more durable than a 1W T3 Guardsman but not quite 2W T3, it can be 1W T4. GW aren't really using it optimally so I'd be okay with removing it. If not removed then simplify what doesn't need to be complex. Make all vehicles the same Toughness unless you find a good reason for them to be different. Don't give units unique abilities to differentiate them from units that are already plenty different in the first place.
vict0988 wrote: I think looking up tables and stats is a chore. The main gameplay loop being asking your opponent to look up abilities and stats and then using your 3+ gunnery tables sounds like something that should be a video game and not a board game. Rolling 20 dice is not a big deal. Finding a way to make a mob of Ork Boyz only roll 20 dice would be neat, but I don't see value in making everything into a 2d6 roll if you spend tonnes of time looking at a gunnery table instead of having a simple system with reasonable and easy to remember break-points.
Toughness determines how durable something is vs Poison and various common types of weapons and acts as fractions of a wound, so if a unit is more durable than a 1W T3 Guardsman but not quite 2W T3, it can be 1W T4. GW aren't really using it optimally so I'd be okay with removing it. If not removed then simplify what doesn't need to be complex. Make all vehicles the same Toughness unless you find a good reason for them to be different. Don't give units unique abilities to differentiate them from units that are already plenty different in the first place.
This I think is the way to do this, take that ork mob and find a way to cap the number of dice rolled
Can think of a few ways, like say each dice counts as two attacks (half the number), if it works it does double the damage. 1-20 attacks, roll however many dice, 21-40 each dice counts as two, 41-60 each counts as three etc.
vict0988 wrote: I think looking up tables and stats is a chore.
A game designer once said that resolving an action in game should take about as much time as it does to perform it in real life.
Complex gunnery tables in BFG are entirely appropriate as the crew actually do ballistic calculations before firing.
For shooting an assault rifle, person to person, in 40k, not so much. Three rolls of dice, with re-rolls on at least one of them usually, is already pushing it.
lord_blackfang wrote: Complex gunnery tables in BFG are entirely appropriate as the crew actually do ballistic calculations before firing.
You're talking like I described tax code.
'My cruiser has 12 firepower, you're a capital ship with 5+ armor and you're closing on me. Okay, going across, that's 4 dice. Oh wait, you're inside of 15cm, so it's 6 dice needing 5+.' And then you roll six dice and the attack is resolved.
I understand disliking tables on principle, but this method is inarguably faster than figuring out all of the same conditional modifiers and resolving them via a sequence of discrete rolls. That's the whole point of using a table- instead of needing 3 rolls that whittle 12 dice to 8 dice to 6 dice and then figure out the final result, you abstract out the first two rolls and just roll for the last. It has implications on the randomness of outcomes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
the gunnery table stuff works exceedingly well in naval games, but more because of how naval gunnery actually works
e.g. "Victory at Sea" (more or less 40k naval) uses the buckets of dice principle, 12 gun battleship? that will be 12 dice.. apply modifiers and roll 'em.
GHQ Micronaughts uses a single D20 for the salvo to see if the firing ship gets the range (again with modifiers) and if it gets the range a second dice to see how many shells hit.
this works because the 12 guns fire a spread to increase the chances of getting a hit, all hitting is essentially impossible.
GW adopt the bucket of dice model and generally stick with it, and until you start rolling more than 20 dice it more or less works for what they are doing. just leads to very predictable actions of large groups and very swingy actions for smaller groups
Maybe a good side of sticking to D6 is that you don't need a lot of different dice and to remember what dice is used for what, that'd mostly apply to people not playing too often?
I hold no grudge against D6, works perfectly in BA that is largely inspired by early 40k, however, I always felt that it restrained the granularity as we already said above.
Granted, more granularity may improve the feel of the game by better suiting the lorew but I doubt it'd change neither bad play testing letting through ridiculous units nor GW being willing to revamp the system often anyway.
catbarf wrote: I understand disliking tables on principle, but this method is inarguably faster than figuring out all of the same conditional modifiers and resolving them via a sequence of discrete rolls. That's the whole point of using a table- instead of needing 3 rolls that whittle 12 dice to 8 dice to 6 dice and then figure out the final result, you abstract out the first two rolls and just roll for the last. It has implications on the randomness of outcomes, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The problem is that 40k bounces back and forth between being based on individual models or units. BFG works because you're aggregating ship salvos, and tables were perfect for that.
The bigger scope 40k games (Epic at one point IIRC), used to essentially do the same thing, with unit fires aggregated in the same way, i.e. "these two tactical squad and that Land Raider are firing at that terminator squad."
But because 40k started out as a game of individual models, GW still keeps vestiges of that around, so we get the whole problem of sniping characters, taking out special/heavy weapons, casualty removal, etc.
That also impacts LOS and cover, because it changes how it works. Is it the aggregate of the squad, or model by model? Do models block other models or not. Can dead monsters/vehicles serve as cover?
Part of the churn is that there are no consistent answers two these problems from edition to edition. The words remain the same, but the meanings change adding to the confusion.
Commissar von Toussaint wrote: The problem is that 40k bounces back and forth between being based on individual models or units. BFG works because you're aggregating ship salvos, and tables were perfect for that.
Agreed, a pure gunnery table isn't suitable for individual trials. BFG doesn't use the gunnery table for one-shot weapons and it wouldn't be an appropriate solution for resolving a single lascannon shot in 40K.
But the underlying principle of 'baked-in' values still has applicability, like how Dust uses varying firepower stats depending on target type to skip the first roll and avoid needing a strength/toughness model, or how SST combines the to-hit with the to-wound to resolve an attack in one roll.
The point is just that the game doesn't need to rigorously simulate each step of the firing process, it needs to appropriately vary units and weapons and deliver appropriate results with a minimum of fuss, and other systems show various shortcuts to avoid the need for endless rolls upon rolls upon rolls to generate a result.
An interesting solution in Hobgoblin is a chart telling you what you need to roll to damage, crossreferencing attacker's unit type vs target's unit type.
Like, cavalry damages infantry on 3+, infantry damages monsters on 5+, etc.
For 40k, maybe this but with weapon vs unit type. Or the reverse, give a unit different saves vs different weapon classes.
catbarf wrote: But the underlying principle of 'baked-in' values still has applicability, like how Dust uses varying firepower stats depending on target type to skip the first roll and avoid needing a strength/toughness model, or how SST combines the to-hit with the to-wound to resolve an attack in one roll.
The point is just that the game doesn't need to rigorously simulate each step of the firing process, it needs to appropriately vary units and weapons and deliver appropriate results with a minimum of fuss, and other systems show various shortcuts to avoid the need for endless rolls upon rolls upon rolls to generate a result.
Yes, that's an example of solid game design. I'm going to have to dig into my Bookshelf of Forgotten Rules Sets because Dust sounds familiar.
If we shift to a historical approach, no one tries to kill a Tiger tank with rifle fire because no one is going to design a system that makes it feasible. One of the "glitches" of Battle Tech was the notion that a 'mech armed to the teeth with machineguns could actually chew through tank armor somehow. "If I just shoot that Panther with the .50 cal I'll get through to the crew eventually" said no one ever.
The GW system worked reasonably well in the 1980s because it was straightforward and intuitive. Also because the main competitor for Fantasy combat was TSR's atrocious Battlesystem. I saved my copy because sometimes I forget how bad it was.
Porting the WHFB system into a future/sci-fi environment worked, in part because the scale was small but also because it was accepted that T8 monsters laughed at the folly of shooting them with S3 weapons. The armor rules relied too much on pilfering D&D dice, but the gist of it was that some AVs were too high to bother shooting at, and one nice feature was that it preserved the sense that armor values vary by angle, and that penetrating hits can be fatal or merely inconvenient.
But that relied on a low model count game, and GW saw that as a problem. So 3rd cut the points, doubled the armies, slashed through the rules, and created this new confusion of whether the game was fought man by man or squad by squad. I don' think that tension has yet been resolved. It's part of the churn.
Something worth pointing out is that while it was IGOUGO, 2nd edition was in a sense a series of individual squad activations. If a squad ran, it doubled its move, but nothing could shoot. If it went into hiding, nothing could shoot.
Movement was by figure, so a squad could maneuver to both protect but also uncover a heavy weapon to take a shot. Or it could go on overwatch.
So while it was IGOUGO, players have to move each squad in sequence, deciding what overarching mode it will be in, and then addressing the individuals. Because there is an overwatch mechanic, the opposing player could also intervene and did so on a squad by squad (or vehicle) basis. Additionally, within each overwatch action, there often several options open to the squad in terms of targeting and weapon used (heavy weapon, grenade or pistol?).
The rules for all these things are constantly in flux thanks to the churn. Are all power weapons the same, or are there differences among them? Is a choppa materially different from a chain axe? How is a chainsword different from either of them? Depends on the edition.
I frankly have no idea how people keep track of the myriad boltgun variants, or how the modeling works, but GW obviously enjoys making all the variations of them, and enjoys the sales even more.
lord_blackfang wrote:An interesting solution in Hobgoblin is a chart telling you what you need to roll to damage, crossreferencing attacker's unit type vs target's unit type.
Like, cavalry damages infantry on 3+, infantry damages monsters on 5+, etc.
For 40k, maybe this but with weapon vs unit type. Or the reverse, give a unit different saves vs different weapon classes.
Yes, that's a great example.
Epic and Apocalypse did it in a very simplistic way with giving weapons anti-infantry or anti-tank values, which accomplishes the task of making weapons differ against different target profiles without needing to explicitly model damage effects. Dust essentially does the same thing, except it expands out 'infantry' and 'tank' and 'aircraft' into different subcategories (so you can have weapons that are good against light vehicles but not heavy ones), and then rates weapons by number of dice rolled rather than what value must be rolled (because one of the central caveats is that everything in Dust succeeds on 5+).
I don't think it's necessary for 40K to abandon the simulationist approach entirely, but it could at least take cues from how other games in the space have made it more elegant in resolution.
Commissar von Toussaint wrote:and created this new confusion of whether the game was fought man by man or squad by squad. I don' think that tension has yet been resolved. It's part of the churn.
Bingo. A lot of 40K's problems stem from it being a mass battle company-level wargame that evolved out of a squad-to-platoon level RPG-influenced one, but without ever really dialing back the granularity. I think 3rd Ed was an admirable attempt and does a pretty coherent job of rescaling- Andy Chambers is the sort of designer who understands when you need to simplify in the interest of playability- but subsequent editions layered back on the chrome.
Lord_Blackfang's game design maxim about resolution time reminded me of another common one, which is that in a good wargame, you wear two 'hats'. Which is to say that playing as the company commander alone and only being able to control your 3-4 platoons isn't especially fun, so you take on the roles of both company commander and the platoon leaders, issuing orders to your entire force (CC) while also issuing orders to individual squads (PL).
But the platoon leader doesn't dictate the positions of individual men- he gives orders to a squad, and the squad leader then assigns individuals to execute. A game where you're commanding a company-sized force but also positioning individual troopers is essentially having you wear the hats of company commander, platoon leader, and sergeant simultaneously.
2nd Ed or Chain of Command have you commanding a reinforced platoon. You're both the platoon leader and the sergeants. Two hats.
Advanced Squad Leader typically has you commanding a reinforced company, but your playing pieces are chits representing entire squads, with the individual men abstracted out. Company commander, platoon leaders. Two hats.
Kill Team, Infinity, and other skirmish games have you manage a single squad. Sergeant. One hat. They tend to play pretty quickly and cleanly as a result.
Modern 40K requires you to micromanage the positions of every trooper lest TLOS make the entire squad an eligible target, but also has you commanding up to two hundred models on the board, up to and including strategic ballistic missiles and skyscraper-sized god machines. Three hats, minimum. Is it any wonder that it struggles to be a playable system?
catbarf wrote: I'd be more sympathetic to this if A. I weren't usually in the position of my armies routinely being denied saves altogether, though admittedly this has gotten better in 10th, and B. Rolling saves actually involved some sort of interactivity with the game, rather than being a mechanic that the other player could just as easily resolve.
But they don't resolve it. You do. You are saving your men. You could have your opponent do everything, but part of the interactivity is the fact that you are the one making the effort to keep your guys alive.
"There's no 'effort' in rolling dice!"
It's not a struggle to roll dice, no, but this is an intangible thing - something you feel whilst playing - not a mechanics or rules-based thing. If you sat there and your opponent did everything including rolling armour saves for the things he's shooting at, the game would be remarkably passive when it was't your turn, and you might as well not be there. But you are there, and rolling saves is how you are involved when it's not your troops taking actions. It's the reason the game uses dice rather than set determined outcomes based upon specific inputs.
catbarf wrote: I don't mind how Grimdark Future or Dust do it, where the attacker rolls to hit and the defender rolls saves and that's it, each player gets one roll so it's quick and easy and outright ignoring the defender's save is rare. But I'd still rather play a system where the defender has the opportunity to react, immediately act, or otherwise actually do something to interact with the game besides just roll dice for thirty minutes to see how many of their dudes die.
That's a matter of taste, and the game does have reaction methods built into it.
catbarf wrote: And while I understand your reservations about AA, I think the fact that GW has to find something for the inactive player to do- and settles on a mechanic where they don't actually have any input, and are just contributing to the mechanical resolution of the active player's decisions- speaks volumes about the current level of player interactivity.
I don't have reservations about AA - I adore BattleTech! - but I have reservations about it in 40k. I just don't think it solves any of 40k's real problems. I don't think that rolling lots of dice ranks up there with 40k's real problems either.
catbarf wrote: Battlefleet Gothic is another pure IGOUGO game and one where the inactive player does very little rolling, but the inactive player having the option to Brace For Impact at any time gives them agency and has them hanging on the result of the attacker's rolls. At any time you can decide to brace and get a 4+ FNP against all damage, but at the cost of reduced capability in your next turn.
Horus Heresy 2.0 is also IGOUGO but with a reaction system. Your primary responsibility as the inactive player isn't rolling, it's looking for the right opportunity to spring a reaction and throw a wrench in the enemy's turn.
And 40k has Strats that are starting to edge into that territory. Yes, they're not as fleshed out as these other systems, but that's because - as I've been saying for months now - GW doesn't iterate, they just replace, so they never learn anything from the previous two editions and keep trying new things rather than developing and evolving the things that worked.
catbarf wrote: And at the risk of beating a dead horse: 40K doesn't do much with the to-hit roll, using it as a largely static filter to uniformly reduce damage. I'd wager that making to-hit into an opposed check against a how-hard-is-it-to-hit stat would add a lot more to the game than consolidating some of the current defensive stats would take away, while still reducing the amount of rolling overall.
I don't disagree with making a To Hit roll an opposed test like a Toughness check.
That way speed/size could be a defence to getting hit, and toughness a defence on whether that hit does anything. 40k currently lacks speed as a form of protection, or, as you keep bringing up, size as a weakness (the difficulties of hitting a Grot vs a Warlord Titan).
If its opposed, you can scale it. Unfortunately 8th-10th's scaling has been neutered with 6's always succeeding. If 6's always succeed then any test has a break point where rolling more dice is just better than using specialist tools. Therein lies the problem: Not that we need to roll lots of dice, but that the basic core mechanics give greater rewards for simply drowning your opponent in small, colourful numbered cubes.
It's not a struggle to roll dice, no, but this is an intangible thing - something you feel whilst playing - not a mechanics or rules-based thing. If you sat there and your opponent did everything including rolling armour saves for the things he's shooting at, the game would be remarkably passive when it was't your turn, and you might as well not be there. But you are there, and rolling saves is how you are involved when it's not your troops taking actions. It's the reason the game uses dice rather than set determined outcomes based upon specific inputs.
I don't feel like that at all. Both players participating in the non-interactive process of generating random numbers necessary for the game to produce a result isn't "engaging both players in the game" IMO. It's "dividing an upkeep/maintenance phase process between players by making it twice as long". It's like telling players in a card game that when one player shuffles a deck the other player must shuffle the same deck too because otherwise he will sit there bored.
If that's what you refer to rolling dice as - generating random numbers necessary for the game to produce a result - then what are you doing even playing40k? Rolling dice to find the outcomes of actions isn't just a core mechanic, its a fundamental foundational element of wargaming in general.
If dice ain't doin' it for you, find another hobby.
Dice are ok, some games need a random element and dice do that fine. But prolonging the process ad absurdum, making the passive upkeep part last several times longer than active gameplay part is 40k's problem IMO. And is exactly the reason why I don't play 40k and find it boring, while I play other games, including miniature wargames that include dice and don't bemoan their presence.
There's a reason video games in general hide the RNG process behind gameplay and make it invisible to the player. Having to perform it manually every single time would just detract from the game.
Things are a lot simpler than they used to be though - vehicles now have the same statlines and rules as infantry, and some of the Rogue Trader-era stats (I, Cl, Wp) have been removed. Rolling lots of dice, to me at least, is less of a problem than stratagems. I still wish they were just unit abilities (or not at all). I think 10th edition army and detachment rules would be fine on their own without stratagems.
Yes, but some of this simplicity was achieved by cutting gameplay and adding random, further distancing players from the result. For example templates, instead of being based on positioning, just add yet another step of dice rolling.
I like templates as well, they give a fun visual to the game for specific weapons.
Can understand why some people need the change, but eh. GW are bad and didn’t adapt the rules that well into the way the system works.
Yes, I think templates were fine. A bit imprecise, I admit, but when I played wh40k it was almost exclusively at home with friends, so it was never much of a problem.
And for this tiny price of a little imprecision, templates provided both players with some interesting decisions and their effectiveness relied a lot on what players did.
Now it's just passively watching a number of hits generating itself with no player input whatsoever. One of the many changes in 8th that just sealed the deal of my leaving the game.
For differing tools, indeed for area denial etc. as seen as HH. Which then of course leads to more mechanical differences on how you engage the game and table and the opponent.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I liked flamer templates. They were straight forward. Blast markers slowed down the game.
The problem with blast templates was part of the whole conflict of whether the game is model-based or squad-based. When it was model-based, positioning troops to mitigate blast attacks was a necessary skill. Players who simply bunched them together got what happens when you do that in real life - the perfect target for a grenade or artillery strike.
Templates in 2nd had very clear rules about how they could be placed, which tied in with the rules about who could be hit as a point target. With 3rd, the model count went up, and so did the abstraction, and that was where template wars/sniping became a problem. The size of the game also meant that players had less time to spend on model position because they had so many troops to physically move. Then there was the constant churn over how LOS works and how to apply cover.
I can see why GW got rid of them: writing clear, coherent and stable rules was simply beyond their capability.
The other issue was as units got greater in model count, players would start to "conga line" them out more and more. Which steadily lost that feeling of a unified force and felt more like strings of models.
The new blast rules where it works based on total models in the unit rather than a template, does help mitigate positioning somewhat. It does take away some of the aspects of crafty movement though, which is a shame; but it does at least try to help deal with conga-line issues.
Overread wrote: The other issue was as units got greater in model count, players would start to "conga line" them out more and more. Which steadily lost that feeling of a unified force and felt more like strings of models.
The new blast rules where it works based on total models in the unit rather than a template, does help mitigate positioning somewhat. It does take away some of the aspects of crafty movement though, which is a shame; but it does at least try to help deal with conga-line issues.
That’s a rather easy fix, you can have command from a leader model, that all other models must be within. This also means players can spread out a bit as they do not have to check coherence for each model in a unit.
And conga lines don’t really work.
People are just far too lenient on GW base rules, constantly we see they are good it’s what’s built on top.
But there base rules suck, so what’s built on top tends to just be a constant state of issues trying to deal with it.
The blast rules now just a fix to an issue they didn’t fix.
catbarf wrote: I'd be more sympathetic to this if A. I weren't usually in the position of my armies routinely being denied saves altogether, though admittedly this has gotten better in 10th, and B. Rolling saves actually involved some sort of interactivity with the game, rather than being a mechanic that the other player could just as easily resolve.
But they don't resolve it. You do. You are saving your men. You could have your opponent do everything, but part of the interactivity is the fact that you are the one making the effort to keep your guys alive.
"There's no 'effort' in rolling dice!"
It's not a struggle to roll dice, no, but this is an intangible thing - something you feel whilst playing - not a mechanics or rules-based thing. If you sat there and your opponent did everything including rolling armour saves for the things he's shooting at, the game would be remarkably passive when it was't your turn, and you might as well not be there. But you are there, and rolling saves is how you are involved when it's not your troops taking actions. It's the reason the game uses dice rather than set determined outcomes based upon specific inputs.
The game uses dice to inject randomness, not to give you agency. When I take saves I'm not choosing to go to ground or otherwise making any other decision that might actually save my men; I'm performing a mechanical function that my opponent, a bystander, or a computer could do as easily and with the same outcome. I want to command armies, to pit my tactical acumen against my opponent's, to make decisions that actually do save my men, and I want the system to quickly and elegantly resolve those interactions so we can get back to the meat of the experience. Rolling dice is part of the traditional wargame identity, but it's still only a means to an end.
In any case, the fact that serving as a random number generator is pretty much all you do in your opponent's turn (aside from the occasional stratagem) is more of an indictment of the game structure than a justification for its inclusion. The game is remarkably passive when it isn't your turn, even if it assigns you busywork to keep you from going off to make a sandwich. It's also pretty arbitrary that armor penetration is the mechanic chosen to do this in the first place- why not make a toughness save? Why not make a dodge save in lieu of roll to hit? Why is armor resolved after S-vs-T to begin with? It's just a legacy carryover from the RPG systems that 40K evolved out of. If it really were vitally important that the passive player get to participate in some part of the combat resolution sequence, they wouldn't pick a mechanic that for the first seven editions of the game was routinely circumvented altogether by AP and didn't apply to vehicles.
In prior editions I never felt like I was bored, or helpless, or not interacting with the game because I had a whole army of Sv5+ and my opponent had a whole army of AP5 (or AP-2) or better. I felt bored, helpless, and non-interactive because I was playing a game structured around thirty-minute periods of having no gameplay input while my opponent removes my models from the table, and being called upon to roll for toughness or whatever wouldn't have changed that.
catbarf wrote: And at the risk of beating a dead horse: 40K doesn't do much with the to-hit roll, using it as a largely static filter to uniformly reduce damage. I'd wager that making to-hit into an opposed check against a how-hard-is-it-to-hit stat would add a lot more to the game than consolidating some of the current defensive stats would take away, while still reducing the amount of rolling overall.
I don't disagree with making a To Hit roll an opposed test like a Toughness check.
That way speed/size could be a defence to getting hit, and toughness a defence on whether that hit does anything. 40k currently lacks speed as a form of protection, or, as you keep bringing up, size as a weakness (the difficulties of hitting a Grot vs a Warlord Titan).
If its opposed, you can scale it. Unfortunately 8th-10th's scaling has been neutered with 6's always succeeding. If 6's always succeed then any test has a break point where rolling more dice is just better than using specialist tools. Therein lies the problem: Not that we need to roll lots of dice, but that the basic core mechanics give greater rewards for simply drowning your opponent in small, colourful numbered cubes.
Can you give me an examples of a case in 10th where just fishing for lots of 6s is better than having the right tools for the right job? The only example I can think of is lasguns hurting tanks, which while still technically possible (and something I dislike from a purely conceptual standpoint) is still nowhere near as effective as dedicated anti-tank weapons. And you could always just add a extra thresholds, where 3x their value is an auto-success and 1/3 their value is an auto-fail.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I liked flamer templates. They were straight forward. Blast markers slowed down the game.
Cyel wrote: Having to perform it manually every single time would just detract from the game.
For you.
For you.
Well, if you made this comment about any other quote from my post you would be absolutely right! In general what we write here is our point of view or opinion.
With this specific sentence, though, you are incorrect.
It refers to video games that use RNG hiding the process in the background and making it invisible to the player, so that the player makes a decision and instantly sees the result without having to perform the calculation and number generation manually. It's true for almost every game, whether a strategy, an RPG or a looter shooter. MTG Arena shuffles your deck for you in a blink of an eye too.
Even Baldur's Gate3, which has a panel where you roll ad20 and can add buffs, uses it only in a limited number of specific occassions to help link the feel of the game to the original tabletop experience. Vast majority of "rolls" (for example all combat or exploration) are automated, instantenous and hidden from the player.
And you know what, it's not me who makes all these games. I wish I was that talented and productive!
So the opinion that it's better to make the process of random number generation necessary for the game to produce a result and progress instantenous and invisible in the background, so that players can concentrate on gameplay and not the menial task of calculating, randomising and consulting is not MY opinion. It seems to be the opinion of the entire video game industry.
And yeah, maybe YOU would like a, let's say, RPG game to stop every time you open a treasure chest, so that you can click on a virtual die to roll it, compare the result with the probability of finding loot and manually click a "found it!" or "nothing there!" button and then manually choose and scroll down an appropriate random loot table to find the number you rolled and click on the specific item. But I strongly believe you are one of maybe a handful video game players on the planet who would prefer RNG in games to work like this. Vast majority just wants to get the item and continue with actual gameplay and that's why games are made like this.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I liked flamer templates. They were straight forward. Blast markers slowed down the game.
Cyel wrote: Having to perform it manually every single time would just detract from the game.
For you.
For you.
Well, if you made this comment about any other quote from my post you would be absolutely right! In general what we write here is our point of view or opinion.
With this specific sentence, though, you are incorrect.
It refers to video games that use RNG hiding the process in the background and making it invisible to the player, so that the player makes a decision and instantly sees the result without having to perform the calculation and number generation manually. It's true for almost every game, whether a strategy, an RPG or a looter shooter. MTG Arena shuffles your deck for you in a blink of an eye too.
Even Baldur's Gate3, which has a panel where you roll ad20 and can add buffs, uses it only in a limited number of specific occassions to help link the feel of the game to the original tabletop experience. Vast majority of "rolls" (for example all combat or exploration) are automated, instantenous and hidden from the player.
And you know what, it's not me who makes all these games. I wish I was that talented and productive!
So the opinion that it's better to make the process of random number generation necessary for the game to produce a result and progress instantenous and invisible in the background, so that players can concentrate on gameplay and not the menial task of calculating, randomising and consulting is not MY opinion. It seems to be the opinion of the entire video game industry.
And yeah, maybe YOU would like a, let's say, RPG game to stop every time you open a treasure chest, so that you can click on a virtual die to roll it, compare the result with the probability of finding loot and manually click a "found it!" or "nothing there!" button and then manually choose and scroll down an appropriate random loot table to find the number you rolled and click on the specific item. But I strongly believe you are one of maybe a handful video game players on the planet who would prefer RNG in games to work like this. Vast majority just wants to get the item and continue with actual gameplay and that's why games are made like this.
Who cares? We're playing & talking about 40k - the miniatures game as played on the table top. Not a PC game. If you want random numbers generated? You've got to pause for a moment & do it manually....
First - don't quote like this, it makes the thread incredibly messy.
Second - yes, it matters. If manual resolution was fun, video games would use it. But they don't. Because they can avoid it, they always do which kind of shows it's a good idea.
And yes, video game can make it invisible, tabletop game can't. So it's the designer's responsibility to make it as quick and unobtrusive as possible. Not, like in40k, make the non-interactive process of upkeep and resolution take 75% of the total time you spend at the table.
Cyel wrote: First - don't quote like this, it makes the thread incredibly messy.
Second - yes, it matters. If manual resolution was fun, video games would use it. But they don't. Because they can avoid it, they always do which kind of shows it's a good idea.
And yes, video game can make it invisible, tabletop game can't. So it's the designer's responsibility to make it as quick and unobtrusive as possible. Not, like in40k, make the non-interactive process of upkeep and resolution take 75% of the total time you spend at the table.
It's not a fair comparison. You're not rolling dice purely to generate numbers, it's a physical tactile activity for both players.
A PC game and in this genre, it's entire selling point in some cases, is that tactile element isn't needed.
Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them. Wargaming is primarily a social tactile activity, stop comparing it to a primarily single player digital product.
Or are you going to approach fifa and suggest they conduct the world Cup using wtfever EA have cranked out this year to reduce VAR errors, reduce unwanted pitch conditions, hundreds of hours of training etc?
Fair point, ifyou see itlike that. Does it really add to the experience, though, that to determine if, say, a 45% chance of success action succeeds, you roll for 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds? Isn't the tactile element satisfied sufficiently by interacting with the models and terrain?
Some people like the feel of shuffling cards. I do. Still card games dont ask us to shuffle them three times for one minute each time, alternating between both players, to add to the experience. Once is enough, thank you. Even if I like the feel, I want to play the game not shuffle the deck for hours on end.
Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them.
For me, personally, it's exactly this. An equivalent of asking a younger brother to roll the dice for me or calling my wife so that she tells me the first number from 1 to 6 that comes to her mind. RNG away and get back to playing ASAP.
And social interaction at the table is for me much more interesting if we discuss decisions and options, not turn our minds off for the menial task that the game asks us to perform.
catbarf wrote: And at the risk of beating a dead horse: 40K doesn't do much with the to-hit roll, using it as a largely static filter to uniformly reduce damage. I'd wager that making to-hit into an opposed check against a how-hard-is-it-to-hit stat would add a lot more to the game than consolidating some of the current defensive stats would take away, while still reducing the amount of rolling overall.
I don't disagree with making a To Hit roll an opposed test like a Toughness check.
That way speed/size could be a defence to getting hit, and toughness a defence on whether that hit does anything. 40k currently lacks speed as a form of protection, or, as you keep bringing up, size as a weakness (the difficulties of hitting a Grot vs a Warlord Titan).
If its opposed, you can scale it. Unfortunately 8th-10th's scaling has been neutered with 6's always succeeding. If 6's always succeed then any test has a break point where rolling more dice is just better than using specialist tools. Therein lies the problem: Not that we need to roll lots of dice, but that the basic core mechanics give greater rewards for simply drowning your opponent in small, colourful numbered cubes.
Can you give me an examples of a case in 10th where just fishing for lots of 6s is better than having the right tools for the right job? The only example I can think of is lasguns hurting tanks, which while still technically possible (and something I dislike from a purely conceptual standpoint) is still nowhere near as effective as dedicated anti-tank weapons. And you could always just add a extra thresholds, where 3x their value is an auto-success and 1/3 their value is an auto-fail.
Not a perfect example, but in a game I played yesterday 2 5-man terminator squads and a 5-man intercessor squad brought my land raider from 14 to 5 wounds over 2 turns with nothing but their small arms and the occasional grenade. And that was with oath of moment only on the second of those turns. You could argue that's an issue with Oath, but I think it shows flaws with the system. Massed Intercessor spam is hard to deal with in general IMO, as the amount of shots they output, combined with the hardiness of the platform is hard to deal with, at least in my experience.
Considering prior to 8th-10 terminators could right up annoy a land raider with powefists even ripping off weapons or immobilizing it with glancing hits at best if they assaulted it, and those intercessors previous incarnation-the tac squad could not do GAK unless they brought along a melta gun or a las cannon those items could hypothetically could kill a land raider in a single shot....but then those are dedicated AT weapons made for such a job.
The current game design is not 40K in the classic sense IE Krieg spiel inspired Napoleonic tactical battle, it is an abstract resource juggling mechanic that uses miniatures as place holders. effectively a CCG with miniatures.
8th-10th volume fishing is a thing because even with a 2+ or a 3+ save enough shots even wounding on 6+ will get through. while "wounding" a heavy tank with infantry small arms is laughable psychologically to the players. it is a mechanic they put in the game as a "balance" mechanic.
from 8th ed onwards it has been an arms race between increased toughness and wounds to counter the massive increase in armor reduction/number of shots and damage weapons get in the game.
Considering prior to 8th-10 terminators could right up annoy a land raider with powefists even ripping off weapons or immobilizing it with glancing hits at best if they assaulted it, and those intercessors previous incarnation-the tac squad could not do GAK unless they brought along a melta gun or a las cannon those items could hypothetically could kill a land raider in a single shot....but then those are dedicated AT weapons made for such a job.
The current game design is not 40K in the classic sense IE Krieg spiel inspired Napoleonic tactical battle, it is an abstract resource juggling mechanic that uses miniatures as place holders. effectively a CCG with miniatures.
Dudeface wrote: Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them. Wargaming is primarily a social tactile activity, stop comparing it to a primarily single player digital product.
It's nostalgia, first and foremost, and for a lot of people a deliberate decision to unplug and have a purely analog experience with another human being.
But it's undeniable that the rise of computer games gutted the wargame market, and complex number-crunching experiences like Star Fleet Battles or Harpoon are now almost universally digital. Board games and wargames have gradually shifted away from that kind of experience and towards systems that play quickly, don't require an associate's degree to learn, and emphasize interacting with the other player(s) rather than tediously resolving the raw mechanics of the game.
I have a lot of fondness for the physical act of rolling dice, but when it takes an average of 62 fething dice across four separate rolls for a squad of Guardsmen to remove a single Marine from the table, my enthusiasm diminishes rapidly. When you make a decision and then roll to see what happens, it's exciting. When you make a decision and then roll and roll and roll and ultimately spend five times longer just resolving the decision than it took to make it, with three-quarters of those rolls just being 'roll to see how many dice you get to roll next', it feels like a chore.
Dudeface wrote: Clicking on the screen to get a number isn't the same as picking up a handful of cubes and rolling them. Wargaming is primarily a social tactile activity, stop comparing it to a primarily single player digital product.
It's nostalgia, first and foremost, and for a lot of people a deliberate decision to unplug and have a purely analog experience with another human being.
But it's undeniable that the rise of computer games gutted the wargame market, and complex number-crunching experiences like Star Fleet Battles or Harpoon are now almost universally digital. Board games and wargames have gradually shifted away from that kind of experience and towards systems that play quickly, don't require an associate's degree to learn, and emphasize interacting with the other player(s) rather than tediously resolving the raw mechanics of the game.
I have a lot of fondness for the physical act of rolling dice, but when it takes an average of 62 fething dice across four separate rolls for a squad of Guardsmen to remove a single Marine from the table, my enthusiasm diminishes rapidly. When you make a decision and then roll to see what happens, it's exciting. When you make a decision and then roll and roll and roll and ultimately spend five times longer just resolving the decision than it took to make it, with three-quarters of those rolls just being 'roll to see how many dice you get to roll next', it feels like a chore.
That's a completely valid stance, I won't deny GW could improve the relative dice to output ratio in a lot of ways, but it is still still part of the joy and the process as you say.
I think it isn't just dice-to-output in terms of the end result, but also each roll having tangible consequence that makes it feel worth the effort.
In 40K, a shot that missed, a shot that failed to wound, and a shot that got saved by armor all have the same significance: none. The steps in the attack resolution process have no effects on their own, they're all 'rolling to see if you get to roll', and it's easy for it all to feel like pointless rolling if it amounts to nothing.
In SST, if you make a hit but the target passes their save, they still have to flinch one model 1". The outcome of every attack is a miss, a flinch, or a kill.
So not only does SST have you do less rolling to reach the outcome, but each success in the sequence means something happens. Each roll matters beyond just being setup for the next roll.
I like rolling when it does stuff. I don't like rolling for the sake of rolling.
catbarf wrote: I think it isn't just dice-to-output in terms of the end result, but also each roll having tangible consequence that makes it feel worth the effort.
In 40K, a shot that missed, a shot that failed to wound, and a shot that got saved by armor all have the same significance: none. The steps in the attack resolution process have no effects on their own, they're all 'rolling to see if you get to roll', and it's easy for it all to feel like pointless rolling if it amounts to nothing.
The dice proliferation is another holdover from 40ksRPG/Platoon-level heritage. Through 2nd ed., even missed shots had consequences, such as guns jamming, overheating and of course templates that missed have to somewhere, etc. Some weapons also came with ammo supply restrictions (Whirlwind, Terminator Typhoons), and some weapons (generally Ork, some Chaos) you misfire in spectacular fashion.
But as the game scales up, a revision to the mechanics of shooting resolution becomes essential. It's kind of funny but an American Civil War boardgame had a complex dice mechanic that was originally done sequentially but one of the players contacted the designers and noted that there was no reason for that. Just use different color sets for the dice, throw them at once and apply the result.
The big difference is that (as noted) in GW's system you roll dice to find out how many dice to roll next.
Still, I'm pretty sure you could do a flow chart based on probability and cut the number of rolls. It would be less random, but I see that as a feature, not a bug.
Still, I'm pretty sure you could do a flow chart based on probability and cut the number of rolls. It would be less random, but I see that as a feature, not a bug.
You could, more or less. The to-hit, to-wound, and save rolls are all basically modifiers that go into a random number generator that determines the number of unsaved wounds that ultimately go through. So theoretically, you could have a table that basically mathhammers the average expected results and then the expected results for one standard of deviation in each direction and turn that into a d6 roll. Something like:
1 = average of one standard of deviation down.
2-5 = simple average.
6 = average one standard of deviation up.
Or something like that. But then, this assumes that you have a table that lists the values you'd need for every possible combination of to-hit values, to-wound values, and save values. Referencing something like that is arguably more tedious than just rolling the dice. Plus you'd lose out on things like special abilities that trigger on certain rolls. Also, there's a point at which you make the game so non-random you might be better off just not rolling dice and making attacks have flat results instead.
If we did the Apocolypse thing where every weapon just has a streamlined anti-big-stuff and anti-little-stuff stat, you could use something like the above d6 roll to quickly generate a number of saves the target has to make. So a squad of tactical marines might roll 1d6 for the whole squad (instead of a bunch of dice for individual attacks). A higher roll wound result in the enemy making more saves than a lower roll, and a lower roll might not cause any saves to be taken at all. Ex:
Bolter (against big stuff): Roll 1d6. 1-4 = 0 saves, 5-6 = 1 save.
Bolter (against small stuff): Roll 1d6. 1-2 = 1 saves, 3-4 = 2 saves, 5-6 = 3 saves.
So the upsides are that you:
* Spend less time resolving attacks (roll fewer dice).
* Can set a minimum number of saves against the squad's preferred target (no feels-bad flub rolls where your 40 bolter shots somehow manage to do 0 wounds to a squad of ork boys.)
* Can set a maximum amount of damage to a non-preferred target (improbably good rolls will never result in 10 lasguns one-shotting a land raider.)
Expanding on that idea, I'd probably give squads "blocks" (better name pending). The first clump of 5 dudes you take in a squad of scourges or devastators? That's a block. You want to add 5 more bodies? That's a second block. Want to give the first block some special weapons? Can do. On the table, each block makes its own attack. So the special weapon guys (who are assumed to all be packing the same gun in this hypothetical) would point their guns at a tank and unload with their heat lance/multimelta attack profile that generates lots of saves for big stuff but not many saves for little stuff. And then the second block (that's forced to use normal splinter carbines/bolters) would point their guns at the non-tank enemy off to the side. That way, you could handle splitfiring even with abstracted squads.
Still gets a little weird when talking about something like a 10-man tactical squad witha meltagun and multi-melta but otherwise packing bolters. I'd probably just give such units an "Anti-Tank Weaponry" upgrade that lets that causes them to inflict +1 saves on attack rolls of 4+. Something along those lines.
EDIT: And to clarify, you wouldn't lose individual models to attacks in this sytem. You'd lose blocks at a time. Individual blocks would have their own hitpoints. So maybe removing a block from a devastator squad would require that they fail 3 saves (lose 3 hitpoints). And once that threshold was reached, you'd pick up either the 5 bolter boys or the 5 special weapon guys+sergeant. The "block" containing those guys is destroyed.
catbarf wrote: I think it isn't just dice-to-output in terms of the end result, but also each roll having tangible consequence that makes it feel worth the effort.
In 40K, a shot that missed, a shot that failed to wound, and a shot that got saved by armor all have the same significance: none. The steps in the attack resolution process have no effects on their own, they're all 'rolling to see if you get to roll', and it's easy for it all to feel like pointless rolling if it amounts to nothing.
I'd argue it's less the fact that failed rolls do nothing and more the fact that so many rolls are completely static.
For example, a model's BS is a straight value. Certain targets may apply a modifier, but that too is fixed.
On the other hand, if there existed a penalty for being outside of half range (or a bonus for being within half range) then you could move closer to your target to try and improve your odds. Same goes for if you suffer a penalty for firing at an obscured target - you can move to a better spot, potentially putting your own unit at greater risk in the process.
Instead, with the sole exception of cover granting a bonus to a model's armour save, the positioning of models has almost no impact on how difficult it is to actually hit them.
Same goes for what you said earlier - there's no way to go to ground or take other defensive measures. So, while it might 'feel' better to roll saves, it would make no difference if your opponent just rolled them for you as there are no decisions to be made.
If all you need to see to target a unit is the tip of a sword, and if all you need to get cover is to hide the tip of a sword, then the position of your troops doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot outside of whether they're in range for shooting/charging.
It's too easy to get LOS, and too easy to get cover. Movement/speed provides no level of protection unless it is artificially built into a unit's rules. Size and range offer no bonuses or penalties (except in very specific circumstances such as that new Marine detachment, or Meltas at half-range).
Wyldhunt wrote: Or something like that. But then, this assumes that you have a table that lists the values you'd need for every possible combination of to-hit values, to-wound values, and save values. Referencing something like that is arguably more tedious than just rolling the dice. Plus you'd lose out on things like special abilities that trigger on certain rolls. Also, there's a point at which you make the game so non-random you might be better off just not rolling dice and making attacks have flat results instead.
What I mean is grinding out the percentages and using them to create fire tables and then rolling a d6. We kind of touched on this earlier with the gunnery system of BFG. Instead of rolling a bucket of dice, count of the factors of each weapon type, and make one roll on the appropriate column.
This would require GW to revert to its older all or nothing system with vehicles, but to me that's a feature, not a bug.
I think you guys are conflating two different styles of resolution.
The Avalon Hill style CRT is where you total up your fire factors, cross reference against a D6 or 2D6 roll, and the table applies some deviation on the basis of that roll to spit out a result. You roll a single die (or maybe two) and that resolves the entire interaction.
Battlefleet Gothic's combat resolution is still a bucket of dice system, it just uses a table to skip the first roll in the sequence. Instead of starting at 12 firepower and determining that you need a 3+ to hit and then rolling, the table tells you to simply roll 8 dice against the target's armor and that's it.
This approach is a lot less constraining than the single-die CRT since it isn't limited to just 6 or 11 outcomes. It also makes it easy to incorporate modifiers that have you shift left or right on the table, which I find is easier to track than tallying up functionally-equivalent pluses and minuses to a die roll.
A 40K equivalent would be a system where you cross-reference 20 shots against having 'normal' ballistic skill, the table tells you that you get 10 dice to-wound, and start your rolling there. But with ballistic skill being such a skin-deep mechanic that it really does just amount to half as many hits as you have shots (plus or minus some randomization), you don't need a chart for that- if you wanted to streamline I think the more elegant approach would be to abstract out to-hit entirely.
Personally I would ditch the to-wound roll instead. It’s main purpose IMO is to reduce the effectiveness of small arms into big models. The addition of the damage stat and multiple wounds can already accomplish most of what the strength and toughness stat do. I would go the route of labeling weapons small arms and anti tank (and maybe something in between) and just disallow small arms to injure tanks or monsters.
Additionally, with the now boosted effectiveness of weapons (since you’re skipping a step), you could reduce the volume of dice needed for weapons to work. A lasgun could forego the rapid fire boost and instead have a close range to hit modifier, for example.
catbarf wrote: I think you guys are conflating two different styles of resolution.
The Avalon Hill style CRT is where you total up your fire factors, cross reference against a D6 or 2D6 roll, and the table applies some deviation on the basis of that roll to spit out a result. You roll a single die (or maybe two) and that resolves the entire interaction.
Battlefleet Gothic's combat resolution is still a bucket of dice system, it just uses a table to skip the first roll in the sequence. Instead of starting at 12 firepower and determining that you need a 3+ to hit and then rolling, the table tells you to simply roll 8 dice against the target's armor and that's it.
I'm not conflating them, I pointing out that there is a broad spectrum to play with.
As to the outcome, that's also effectively limited right now, it's just that there are very long "tails" of probability that can produce some extreme outcomes - and GW seems to think this is worth the extra amount of dice-rolling.
I prefer a "leaner" design, so something like Panzerblitz where you aggregate fire at a unit (and there are types of fire, like anti-personnal or anti-tank) and then compare it to its defensive value and roll a die has a lot of upside.
Another advantage of that approach is that while there are in theory only 6 outcomes (though modifiers could push this to more), right now there's only wounded/not wounded. The aggregate number provides the variation.
But going with a CRT you could have units be disrupted, forced to ground, etc. Huge vistas of possibilities we should just stop talking about because none of it will ever happen.
Back in the real world, GW could do some basic math, crunch the numbers and decided that you can get the same damage by tweaking the combat values and using half as much dice.
It might even happen, if only so that GW can switch it back later after the inevitable complaints. Gotta keep that churn going.
Dandelion wrote:Personally I would ditch the to-wound roll instead. It’s main purpose IMO is to reduce the effectiveness of small arms into big models. The addition of the damage stat and multiple wounds can already accomplish most of what the strength and toughness stat do.
I agree entirely, and Grimdark Future demonstrates how such a system can work quite well and meaningfully distinguish models from one another...
Commissar von Toussaint wrote:Huge vistas of possibilities we should just stop talking about because none of it will ever happen.
...but also I burst out laughing at this because, yeah, you're not wrong. This conversation is really just somewhere between a collective bitchfest and creative writing exercise. If 10th is selling great then there's no incentive to change, except change for change's sake.
catbarf wrote: ...but also I burst out laughing at this because, yeah, you're not wrong. This conversation is really just somewhere between a collective bitchfest and creative writing exercise. If 10th is selling great then there's no incentive to change, except change for change's sake.
So it goes.
To be fair, it did cover a lot of ground in terms of alternative rules, mechanics, GW history and was pretty comprehensive in its approach. It wasn't the run-of-the-mill whinge, but quite pointed and brought together a bunch of different perspectives on the topic.
The thing that fills me with curiosity is why people keep accepting the churn and paying for it? Back when the product cycle was more of a rumor/dark conspiracy theory, I could see people "upgrading" because maybe this timeGW would get it right.
But when you think about how much work has to go into the rules, new unit models, tweaks to factions, there's simply no way the design can be mature in three years, especially when it's non-iterative. It's always a fresh start, so the lessons learned from the last version are lost.
It seems like the ultimate triumph of optimism over experience.
The thing that fills me with curiosity is why people keep accepting the churn and paying for it?
On the churn....
There's nothing I can do about that. It's just how GW operates. And s long as I've been playing their games? (A long time for the record) They've been churning longer.
On paying for it....
●Well, the 10e rules are so thin (& useless) that they can just live on my phone.
●The mission cards? I picked up a pack dirt cheap as everyone was parting out the Leviathan box.
●The unit cards? I did the math. It proved cheaper by a few $s to buy the cards for several of my forces than if I'd printed them & put them in photo sleeves/laminated them. And that was at MSRP. Add in the discount I get at the local shop...
Yes, I could just use my phone for the units - but I hate scrolling back & forth on my phone during play.
But seriously, most of the $ GW gets from me? Is for models. They have this annoying tendency to keep making new models I like. If they'd just stop doing that....
The thing that fills me with curiosity is why people keep accepting the churn and paying for it?
Spoiler:
On the churn....
There's nothing I can do about that. It's just how GW operates. And s long as I've been playing their games? (A long time for the record) They've been churning longer.
On paying for it....
●Well, the 10e rules are so thin (& useless) that they can just live on my phone.
●The mission cards? I picked up a pack dirt cheap as everyone was parting out the Leviathan box.
●The unit cards? I did the math. It proved cheaper by a few $s to buy the cards for several of my forces than if I'd printed them & put them in photo sleeves/laminated them. And that was at MSRP. Add in the discount I get at the local shop...
Yes, I could just use my phone for the units - but I hate scrolling back & forth on my phone during play.
But seriously, most of the $ GW gets from me? Is for models. They have this annoying tendency to keep making new models I like. If they'd just stop doing that....
This sums up my feelings.
I vote with my wallet.
They make models I like & I buy them.
They make rules I like & I buy them(30k & Necromunda)
I don't buy 40k rules....and haven't since i got back in hobby(unless you count buying starter boxes for the minis and keeping the rulebook)
catbarf wrote: ...but also I burst out laughing at this because, yeah, you're not wrong. This conversation is really just somewhere between a collective bitchfest and creative writing exercise. If 10th is selling great then there's no incentive to change, except change for change's sake.
So it goes.
To be fair, it did cover a lot of ground in terms of alternative rules, mechanics, GW history and was pretty comprehensive in its approach. It wasn't the run-of-the-mill whinge, but quite pointed and brought together a bunch of different perspectives on the topic.
The thing that fills me with curiosity is why people keep accepting the churn and paying for it? Back when the product cycle was more of a rumor/dark conspiracy theory, I could see people "upgrading" because maybe this timeGW would get it right.
But when you think about how much work has to go into the rules, new unit models, tweaks to factions, there's simply no way the design can be mature in three years, especially when it's non-iterative. It's always a fresh start, so the lessons learned from the last version are lost.
It seems like the ultimate triumph of optimism over experience.
Its entirely possible that people actually enjoy the game? Just throwing that out there? General Discussion is where people grumble.
I started in 2nd Ed and have mixed feelings on churn. I think it is part of the business model and also an honest attempt at improvement, if not always in equal proportions. Sometimes Edition Churn is exciting, especially if you play a lot. Edition change could be annoying if it involved major book purchases. I am stating the obvious, but edition change could be a disaster if the game experience a net negative compared to the last for the majority of players. I didn't love the shift from 2nd to 3rd, but I still enjoyed the game and more people came into the hobby. So a net positive even if Codex Creep was a thing (the 3.5 codexes). 4th and 5th had ups and downs as they fixed some problems and created new ones, but were generally positive until the end of 5th with Codex Creep once again rearing its head. The shift to 6th was negative from a game-play perspective, but there were some good kits for Dark Angels so I stuck around despite FineCast. 7th was terrible from a rules and balance perspective so I stopped playing for that entire edition. 8th had easy entry from a rules acquisition perspective, and I really liked the stripped-down game-play. So I got back on the train and had a great time. 9th cleaned some things up and unified the "scene", but the missions grew stale (Faction Secondaries are bad and they should feel bad). Codex Creep was also a thing, which can be worse than Edition Churn. 10th has a good mission pack and a decent rules set but balance was off on release. If they apply some rigour to the Codexes that were not at the printers before the release of 10th then the edition will be a good one.
If the edition turns out to be very unstable from a rules and balance perspective then perhaps I walk away again, but at this time I am still enjoying building, painting and playing. So I continue to do so.
have to say for all the griping GW have gotten a few things right in this edition, and a few things wrong.
so far the mission card deck produces some excellent games and really punishes "I sit here with Mr Re-rolls everything ands shoot you" builds (taming the aura spam also helps a lot here). yes you can shoot and kill but in general the secondary objectives are the decider
