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Am I the only one who sees a number of parallels between GW recently and the rule set change from 3.5 to 4.0 D&D by WoTC?

In no way am I naive enough to think that the players dictate the changes in the game; lets be honest... its all about the shareholders. But, the parallels between how the two companies have handled new rule sets and expansions that seem to be cash grabs at best are impossible to ignore. D&D 4.0 was an utter flop for the most part; and from everything I've read and from the multiple discussions I've had with players at local gaming stores, WoTC just didn't listen to their fanbase when developing the new rule set.

My fear, and I'm sure some will disagree... GW seems to be following this same exact path. When will companies learn "if its not broke, don't fix it" Why they have this incessant need to swing the pendulum of over compensation to the opposite side of the spectrum everytime they have a rule switch is beyond me... Why the need for complete overhaul, why not fine tune what we have?... Just my two cents.

Can you elaborate on your hypothesis? I would like to discuss this, but I'm not sure what, exactly, you find similar between the two.

Most of the people I know who play D&D think 4th is better than 3.5th. The latter had a lot of unbalanced stuff in it.

squidhills wrote:
Can you elaborate on your hypothesis? I would like to discuss this, but I'm not sure what, exactly, you find similar between the two.

Both companies seem to make decisions that fly in the face of what their fanbase ask for on a consistent basis... 4.0 is a perfect example due to how underwhelmingly accepted it was; most D&D players I know went back to 3.5 or moved on to Pathfinder and I think a lot of that has to do with the corporate decision to "make the game easier to get into" and ended up alienating the core player base.

If GW isn't careful, the same could happen here. It's not an "oh GW is going to die" predicition, just an observation on the comparison.

D&D 4th was a failure. It chased away so many players, including me. I stuck with 3.5 but most people I know went on to other games or Pathfinder.

A more accurate analogy would be GW and TSR. They were the top of the mountain, they were friggin' D&D, yet they fell and fell hard in a short amount of time. Go look it up. Agree or not, its quite interesting.

 MWHistorian wrote:
D&D 4th was a failure. It chased away so many players, including me. I stuck with 3.5 but most people I know went on to other games or Pathfinder.

A more accurate analogy would be GW and TSR. They were the top of the mountain, they were friggin' D&D, yet they fell and fell hard in a short amount of time. Go look it up. Agree or not, its quite interesting.

And that's kinda my point... GW is at the top, alone on the summit. But, that is the issue here; rather than sweeping changes to a new rule set (allies, escalation, etc) why not fine tune the rule set we have? Sure introduce fun aspects like the Apoc book which is a separate play style to a certain extent. It just seems to me that they are running at 100 miles per hour; rushing all of their "cool" ideas right off the drawing board into production rather than first, fully vetting the idea from the mind set "how will this truly impact our game?"

I think your wrong; while I believe they are being very ham fisted in their approach gw is actually doing something good. Their trying to kill competitive play. Or at least cut a distinction between tournament play and casuals/Joe average's. By altering magic and making LOW table legal they have wrecked the games ability to be written on paper as fair or balanced. And they have in turn placed fair play and gentlemanly play in the hands of us the players. With the changes in 7th I can see a lot less scumbag players fielding land raiders and tervigons in 500 pts casual play simply because now they will feel bad for doing it.

Tournament 40k players like to twist, bend, and abuse rules. By making everything and anything fair game try as they might, they won't be doing that and it will feel wrong to go around seal clubbing. And the community will then crack down and limit play which is great! We handle it better than they could by balancing it according to our local meta. Rememeber the codex books are written based on their player testbed meta not your meta or the meta at mine and that will be awesome.

Few people have superheavies and nobody flyer spams. And lords of war are few and far between. So we tend to limit them to special occasion matches and in matches tailor made to them being fielded.

I am happy for this despite gw's brute force approach. I will be buying it the first payday in June I have.

 MWHistorian wrote:
D&D 4th was a failure. It chased away so many players, including me. I stuck with 3.5 but most people I know went on to other games or Pathfinder.

A more accurate analogy would be GW and TSR. They were the top of the mountain, they were friggin' D&D, yet they fell and fell hard in a short amount of time. Go look it up. Agree or not, its quite interesting.

4e was a financial success, but it was only fairly so; compared to D&D's effective stranglehold on the market in the heydey of 3.X (where many companies found it more profitable to just release third party add ons under the OGL than make their own system) where the main competition (GURPS and White Wolf Stuff) were mostly unknowns and the rise of the indie game developer was still years away.

4e made money, but the edition wars combined with the massive proliferation of competitors meant that D&D went from effectively being the Windows OS of the RPG market to being the Exxon Mobil (the biggest game in town, but not even the majority).

GW is probably going to undergo the same fate as the indie revolution keeps on undergoing it's explosive growth now that the main barrier to miniature gaming indie companies had (the cost of making detailed miniatures in bulk) is quickly eroding. It will probably still be the big dog, but not the majority.

 ionusx wrote:
I think your wrong; while I believe they are being very ham fisted in their approach gw is actually doing something good. By altering magic and making LOW table legal they have wrecked the games ability to be written on paper as fair or balanced. And they have in turn placed fair play and gentlemanly play in the hands of us the players. With the changes in 7th I can see a lot less scumbag players fielding land raiders and tervigons in 500 pts casual play simply because now they will feel bad for doing it.

Tournament 40k players like to twist, bend, and abuse rules. By making everything and anything fair game try as they might, they won't be doing that and it will feel wrong to go around seal clubbing. .

So you are saying that bad people will stop being bad because now the rules explicitly allow them to be bad?

I think the key difference is 3.0/3.5 D&D to 4th was a HUGE rewrite. They changed the entire way characters feel and play with the power structure, as well as how defenses work, etc.

GW on the other hand has been tweaking the same core ruleset since 2nd edition. From what I've seen I don't think 6th to 7th is nearly as big of a step, it's more like 6.5.

For example D&D changing Reflex from a save to a non-AC defense would be like GW changing an Armor Save to a flat to-hit roll. (If that makes sense )

Anyway the previously mentioned comparison of GW to TSR is much more apt. All the recent 40k expansions mirror the desperate rush of TSR splatbooks exactly.

 Kain wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
D&D 4th was a failure. It chased away so many players, including me. I stuck with 3.5 but most people I know went on to other games or Pathfinder.

A more accurate analogy would be GW and TSR. They were the top of the mountain, they were friggin' D&D, yet they fell and fell hard in a short amount of time. Go look it up. Agree or not, its quite interesting.

4e was a financial success, but it was only fairly so; compared to D&D's effective stranglehold on the market in the heydey of 3.X (where many companies found it more profitable to just release third party add ons under the OGL than make their own system) where the main competition (GURPS and White Wolf Stuff) were mostly unknowns and the rise of the indie game developer was still years away.

4e made money, but the edition wars combined with the massive proliferation of competitors meant that D&D went from effectively being the Windows OS of the RPG market to being the Exxon Mobil (the biggest game in town, but not even the majority).

GW is probably going to undergo the same fate as the indie revolution keeps on undergoing it's explosive growth now that the main barrier to miniature gaming indie companies had (the cost of making detailed miniatures in bulk) is quickly eroding. It will probably still be the big dog, but not the majority.

I disagree. I think the indie market for wargames is doomed to failure. The fact is that this isn't the videogame industry. Where everyone is happy to throw a couple of bucks to play a game. These are expensive hobbies that will only get more and more expensive to play as they evolve as games. And on top of that everyone and their dog thinks they can make one which is foolish. Your going to see a lot of these smaller games and emerging games fall apart or get squelched on the store shelves before they ever get off the ground. Gw will forever be the top dog and your going to be hard pressed to make them suffer the pains of a thousand papercuts.

I think a more likely scenario is that alto of these games will grow up and die from their humble beginnings. Gw will acquire and up and comer in its infancy and use it to replace Lord of the rings when it's run it's course. And then gw will probably get more players of their games simply because those people who bought into those new games that died don't like infinity, warmachine, whathaveyou and want something else to fill the void left by trollwars or whatever stupid crackpot tabletop game they invested into made by Tony the guy in his parents basement in the bronx.

The only thing that will kill gw is gw, It's got WoW syndrome.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

squidhills wrote:

 ionusx wrote:
I think your wrong; while I believe they are being very ham fisted in their approach gw is actually doing something good. By altering magic and making LOW table legal they have wrecked the games ability to be written on paper as fair or balanced. And they have in turn placed fair play and gentlemanly play in the hands of us the players. With the changes in 7th I can see a lot less scumbag players fielding land raiders and tervigons in 500 pts casual play simply because now they will feel bad for doing it.

Tournament 40k players like to twist, bend, and abuse rules. By making everything and anything fair game try as they might, they won't be doing that and it will feel wrong to go around seal clubbing. .

So you are saying that bad people will stop being bad because now the rules explicitly allow them to be bad?

and that now we can adjust the rulebook ourselves to ensure they won't be playing with us anymore if they continue to be bad.

Yeah, the problem WoC and GW are having is that they're NOT listening to their fan bases...

I would have no issue with this, considering 4e is by far my favorite edition of D&D and one of my favorite RPGs of all time. If 40k 7th edition turns out anything like that I'll be content.

Also I'm 100% certain the "GW/WotC" comparison was proposed a while back in the Dakka discussions forum.

 ionusx wrote:
and that now we can adjust the rulebook ourselves to ensure they won't be playing with us anymore if they continue to be bad.

You could always do that. You could always say "I don't want to play Apocalypse" or "I don't want to use Forge World units" or "Friends don't let friends play Taudar". I'm not saying Unbound will fundamentally upend game balance (what game balance?) but it won't suddenly empower you to stop playing with people who are jerks. You've always had that power, you just had to believe in yourself.

Also, from a mechanical standpoint, the change from 2nd to 3rd edition 40K is closer to the change from 3.5 to 4.0 D&D. Those were each massive, radical rules changes. What we've seen since 3rd has just been a continual tweaking of the rules to sell specific models (infantry one edition, tanks/transports another, then flyers, now superheavies, and so on) not a complete re-working of 40K fundamentals.

4.0 was an effort to make D&D more like MMORPGs, rather than conventional dice n paper games (the mechanics, the terminology used in the rule books, the removal of anything not directly related to combat). I don't think it was an attempt to make D&D "easier" for people to get into rules-wise; it was an attempt to appeal to the generation that was playing WoW and to try to cash in on some of that sweet sweet MMORPG lewt. I've heard a friend sum up D&D editions thusly; 2.0 plays like a fantasy novel, 3.X plays like a fantasy movie, and 4.0 plays like a fantasy video game. I haven't seen much of the rules for 7th Ed 40K, but I doubt that they are substantivly less complicted than 6th ed's rules. In fact, 40K has gradually been getting more compliceted since 3rd edition.

 sing your life wrote:
Most of the people I know who play D&D think 4th is better than 3.5th. The latter had a lot of unbalanced stuff in it.

Me and my players said screw you to WotC and stuck to 3.5rd edition. 3.5rd edition was pretty damn solid, even if things were too streamlined to make them balanced with regards to previous editions. 4th edition was awful and nobody I know bought it - unless someone vomited on the books and were forced to buy them.

With regards to GW, I usually see loads of people in my local GW whenever I'm there, but I've heard GW's been downsizing for the last few years. Regardless, they have the stores - nobody else has designated stores with good staff (this obviously varies from store to store) on hand. There are LFGS, but they don't have a player base consisting of exclusively WH and WH40K players - they usually have fantasy and sci-fit literature, comics, M;tG, D&D, V;tR, weird anime CCGs, Warmahordes, Malifaux, Axis & Allies etc. GWs stores don't need to run positive accounts; they get people into playing WH and WH40K, who then buy stuff off either the GW site or go to other LFGS and buy it there. That is the massive advantage they have over D&D.

I think 7th/6.5th edition isn't too bad of an idea; at a glance, the changes don't seem pants-on-head slowed, and while I'd prefer a more balanced gameplay, that was a problem when I played 15 years ago too.

I think there are some parallels, but overall I'd say GW's main problem is that they've committed to an unsustainable business model. Their focus has always been on the little plastic soldiermens, and that worked when they were the best and nearly the only serious game in town, but it's not really working anymore. Yet everything they do is devoted to pushing more minis, instead of leveraging the IP or the game itself.

The Faustian bargain that was codex creep in 5E didn't help. Not nearly everybody jumped from new codex to newer codex in that edition, but it seems like enough did for them to commit to the pay-to-win model in 6E. Now that they've committed, there's really no going back. The next codex has to be more powerful than the last, because their audience isn't growing, so that's how they get the established audience to shell out more cash for toy soldiers. Allies exist to squeeze money out of the people unwilling to do a full army jump.

That's unsustainable. They'll survive through 7E, but there's only so many times you can play a variation on the, "Hey, everyone can now summon daemons, so everyone go buy daemons!" stuff before people get wise to it and just drop out.

 dementedwombat wrote:
I would have no issue with this, considering 4e is by far my favorite edition of D&D and one of my favorite RPGs of all time. If 40k 7th edition turns out anything like that I'll be content.

Also I'm 100% certain the "GW/WotC" comparison was proposed a while back in the Dakka discussions forum.

 bosky wrote:
I think the key difference is 3.0/3.5 D&D to 4th was a HUGE rewrite. They changed the entire way characters feel and play with the power structure, as well as how defenses work, etc.

GW on the other hand has been tweaking the same core ruleset since 2nd edition. From what I've seen I don't think 6th to 7th is nearly as big of a step, it's more like 6.5.

For example D&D changing Reflex from a save to a non-AC defense would be like GW changing an Armor Save to a flat to-hit roll. (If that makes sense )

Anyway the previously mentioned comparison of GW to TSR is much more apt. All the recent 40k expansions mirror the desperate rush of TSR splatbooks exactly.

Same here. For me 4e was/is a blast (still play it). It gave the hobby a fresh new air after 8 years of 3rd/3.5. But I agree the change was too extreme and scared a significant number of players.

6th to 7th is going under a much more smooth process.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Also I'm 100% certain the "GW/WotC" comparison was proposed a while back in the Dakka discussions forum.

About once every month or so.

Actually when I think about it GW parallels a lot of big companies that don't have much competition, regardless of industry. As a consumer having competition for companies is a great thing, because you end up with better products at better prices.

GW initially made some fun games, great quality minis, etc. Then when they got on top, they sort of slowed down and became stagnant.
What I think is needed to light a fire under them in a strong single company competitor. Right now the competition is scattered between many different games and systems.
Then it'd be interesting to see if GW responds and rises to the challenge and shows everyone why they got to the top in the first place, or if they crumble under.

So having said that, I think they actually parallel Intel pretty well. Intel originally made great processors, got on top, then slacked off and produced worse and worse processors (in the 90s), because there was no competition and therefore no reason to innovate or produce a better product. Then AMD came along, and nearly crushed Intel. That made Intel wake up and start working hard again, resulting in some terrific new processors like the i5 and i7. Eventually AMD bowed out of the desktop processor market.

Wow, this thread looks eerily familiar.

I appreciate many of the driving design goals that lead them to how they crafted 4th edition. It's the first edition were they achieved some semblance of balance between character classes, and balance between players having "fun" at the table. Many of the motivations for these changes were, I think, made with good intentions. But, "the road to hell" and all that...

 sing your life wrote:
Most of the people I know who play D&D think 4th is better than 3.5th. The latter had a lot of unbalanced stuff in it.

4e is a perfect example of a "too balanced" game wherein your choices mean nothing because every single thing you can do does the exact same thing.

I think Bosky's observation is a good one; they have no pressure to excel, so they just go off and do whatever and people still buy their stuff because no matter how bad GW gets there isn't really anyone who's got a competitive alternative (before someone slams me for not including WARMACHINE GW's got a better and easier to use range of miniatures and much more interesting lore, it's not a Warhammer-killer even if it does have a loyal following who prefer the rules).

D&D 4th ed was a fine game... if you wanted to play an MMO on the tabletop.

The problem was, it just wasn't D&D. It didn't have the same feel, vibe, or flavor of the game people had known from the previous 30 years. Lots of people *bought* 4th Ed... very few people (relative to the total D&D playerbase) actually *play* 4th ed.

 Psienesis wrote:
D&D 4th ed was a fine game... if you wanted to play an MMO on the tabletop.

The problem was, it just wasn't D&D. It didn't have the same feel, vibe, or flavor of the game people had known from the previous 30 years. Lots of people *bought* 4th Ed... very few people (relative to the total D&D playerbase) actually *play* 4th ed.

When I was in college I remember people making the same comments about the differences between AD&D and 2nd edition D&D. 4th was very different,but it just wasn't the D&D I grew up with. It was however a superior game with its combat mechanics. Spellcasters were no longer broken,but performed a vital function. Fighters had a point past 5th or 6th level besides Fantasy window dressing. It had its faults, but I think many gaming groups never gave it a chance including my own.

I think the general conclusion from the last thread was that TSR was killed by an unexpected forced re-purchase of their books by their publisher that they didn't have the cash to cover.

GW, while their sales are waning, shouldn't be quite at that point, but who knows. The TSR thing kind of came out of the blue, so maybe that could happen to GW.

What seems more likely is they continue a steady decline as their sales numbers go down and the cost of entry goes up, and no new players come to the game while existing players leave. I do think 7th edition could be a definitive step towards that, but we shall see.

 Psienesis wrote:
D&D 4th ed was a fine game... if you wanted to play an MMO on the tabletop.

The problem was, it just wasn't D&D. It didn't have the same feel, vibe, or flavor of the game people had known from the previous 30 years. Lots of people *bought* 4th Ed... very few people (relative to the total D&D playerbase) actually *play* 4th ed.

You put into words really well what I was trying to say about 4.0. And this is my exact fear, GW seems to be swinging the pendulum so far one direction it may end up alienating a large part of the playerbase.

The precedent has been set before when a change to a game has led to a mass exodus away from it... The MMO world with SWG and the combat upgrade, table top with 3.5 D&D to 4.0... all I am saying is; it can happen with 40K as well if GW isn't mindful of the potential pitfalls.

 slowthar wrote:
I think the general conclusion from the last thread was that TSR was killed by an unexpected forced re-purchase of their books by their publisher that they didn't have the cash to cover.

GW, while their sales are waning, shouldn't be quite at that point, but who knows. The TSR thing kind of came out of the blue, so maybe that could happen to GW.

What seems more likely is they continue a steady decline as their sales numbers go down and the cost of entry goes up, and no new players come to the game while existing players leave. I do think 7th edition could be a definitive step towards that, but we shall see.

Well, GW won't have the problem of having to buy back the books. As we've seen with some of their releases this past year or so, they're actually not printing enough books.

As far as the D&D 4.0 transition losing players, well, to me, 4.0 felt too much like a boardgame with all of its mechanics. And, at that point, I might as well just play a better written boardgame instead.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
As far as the D&D 4.0 transition losing players, well, to me, 4.0 felt too much like a boardgame with all of its mechanics. And, at that point, I might as well just play a better written boardgame instead.

Ok, I'm going down this rabbit hole. I can certainly understand that frame of mind, but that is a big part of what makes me like 4e so much.

I got into tabletop games opposite of what I imagine a lot of other people seemed to. I found tabletop wargames first. I was the grade school kid in the hobby store watching people play 40k. Then I branched out into RPGs and a few board/card games. I am foremost a tactical war-game player. I love crunch and interesting rulesets and balanced combat action and (dare I say this word in relation to tabletop games?) realism.

4e gives me a great crunchy squad level tactical wargame to hang stories around. I don't really want rules for non-combat stuff, at least in a fantasy RPG, since that's 90% of what I'll be using rules for anyway. Just let me build the world I want my players to explore and give me an awesome battle system to make them fear for their character's lives a few times an adventure. As a player I prefer 4e too both because it lets me play the kind of characters I want to play, but also because it makes sure I won't simply be the baggage sitting around while the optimized people actually do all the work. Whenever anybody mentions that anything in 3.5/Pathfinder is "unbalanced" my stock reply is "the wizard class exists. Your argument is invalid."

There is no experience I have enjoyed less in RPGing (well, other than playing CoC, but that's a whole different story) than playing Pathfinder and sitting around while the crazy optimized control wizard took turns 3 times longer than anybody else to make sure every drop of fun was removed from the encounter by ensuring the monsters were never able to do anything. It even made the encoutners take longer since all the zone effects actually stopped most of the party from being able to do anything to the monsters either.

 MWHistorian wrote:
D&D 4th was a failure. It chased away so many players, including me. I stuck with 3.5 but most people I know went on to other games or Pathfinder.

A more accurate analogy would be GW and TSR. They were the top of the mountain, they were friggin' D&D, yet they fell and fell hard in a short amount of time. Go look it up. Agree or not, its quite interesting.

6th pretty much killed the interest for 40k in many places.

 ChazSexington wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
Most of the people I know who play D&D think 4th is better than 3.5th. The latter had a lot of unbalanced stuff in it.

Me and my players said screw you to WotC and stuck to 3.5rd edition. 3.5rd edition was pretty damn solid, even if things were too streamlined to make them balanced with regards to previous editions. 4th edition was awful and nobody I know bought it - unless someone vomited on the books and were forced to buy them.

With regards to GW, I usually see loads of people in my local GW whenever I'm there, but I've heard GW's been downsizing for the last few years. Regardless, they have the stores - nobody else has designated stores with good staff (this obviously varies from store to store) on hand. There are LFGS, but they don't have a player base consisting of exclusively WH and WH40K players - they usually have fantasy and sci-fit literature, comics, M;tG, D&D, V;tR, weird anime CCGs, Warmahordes, Malifaux, Axis & Allies etc. GWs stores don't need to run positive accounts; they get people into playing WH and WH40K, who then buy stuff off either the GW site or go to other LFGS and buy it there. That is the massive advantage they have over D&D.

I think 7th/6.5th edition isn't too bad of an idea; at a glance, the changes don't seem pants-on-head slowed, and while I'd prefer a more balanced gameplay, that was a problem when I played 15 years ago too.

Solid? The 3.5 edition of CoDzilla and Magichammer, where multiclassing was done for one drops in front loaded prestige classes? 3.5 was the WORST balanced of the editions and to say it's not is utter laughable.

4th edition was glorious in that regards of allowing for martial and non-magical classes to shine, it didn't cause the issues of multi-stat meltdown.

D&D 4th ed was a fine game... if you wanted to play an MMO on the tabletop.

The problem was, it just wasn't D&D. It didn't have the same feel, vibe, or flavor of the game people had known from the previous 30 years. Lots of people *bought* 4th Ed... very few people (relative to the total D&D playerbase) actually *play* 4th ed.

Heh, to many 3E wasn't D&D either, 2E wasn't D&D either.

It's just 3.5 was the one most people started with, and so it had the most grognards to it's name.