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 Crimson Devil wrote:
We also don't know how many problems GW caught before the books were published.

The Dakka bubble posits that after the rules designers wrote the rules on the back of a napkin, they finish their day counting huge stacks of money swindled from those poor exploited gamers.

Seriously, this place becomes more like Infowars every day.

The ad mech chemicals in the water are turning the rippers gay?

A rules designer not being 100% sure of every rule of the top of their head seems pretty normal to me tbh, even if it is a core rule and even if it was FAQ'd a few months prior. 40k has lots of rules and interactions.

Leading the team that writes the rules doesn't mean you can remember each and every rule word for word.

Plus of course what everyone has already said about the writers being so insync with each other that they have difficultly fathoming how a rule could be interpretted differently.

Racerguy180 wrote:

Kdash wrote:

The problem however, is that we see the “casual play” bubble expand as the “competitive play” bubble expands, as there is often a link between the two (especially if you play in a very competitive meta/group), but, GWs bubble doesn’t seem to expand at the same rate, if it expands at all a lot of the time. This results in them being left behind, and is, in part, what drives a fair amount of the frustration at their supposed inability to keep a grasp on their game.

I think you have the bubbles switched, out of the 100ish local players only 5 are what I would consider competitive and out of those only 1 really is. Gw does need to be a little more clear and concise with their rules. They really should have a 100% competition rules set and then have matched, narrative, & open. Matched doesnt always mean tournament level of "creative" and screw over the other guy lists.

Back on topic, GW is making great strides but still tripping over minutiae. All of the weird interactions, ridiculous combos, etc...are the unintended result of GW writing the rules like they play them(e.g. megacasual) and certain kinds of players exploiting loopholes.

BCB is just being themselves, outrage levied at anything to do with GW.

The bubble concept isn't about the amount of players, it's more about how the game is played.

For example, GW play a lot internally, they all understand the intent of the rules and play with (probably) the highest level of sportsmanship out of the 3 groups.
Casual players take the core rules, a chunk of the RAI, put more emphasis on RAW, but then also start introducing their own RAI interpretations and additional house rules. (so, in a way they are taking the GW "bubble" and expanding it with their own additions)
Competitive players (at events) take the common RAI interpretations set out by the casual bubble, mainly due to TOs making things simple and the more common an interpretation is, the more likely it is to be followed (not always correct though). Then, on top of that, they put even more emphasis on RAW, and further more, often use their own mission packs and rules (i.e. ETC restriction on FW and their own mission setups. ITC have a totally different mission set etc etc).

The reason why we have, sometimes, a massive discrepancy between GW and the competitive players is because of this expansion and general understanding. GW has a very fixed idea on how the game should be played and how interactions work - you can see this when they put so many points for their events into the "sportsmanship" bracket - with this determining the overall winner, as opposed to... well.. the overall winner game wise.

The issue is how to fix this.
A lot of it does sit with GW and their rules writing abilities. Noone is arguing that they don't make some really good rules and some absolutely shocking ones, but, until they close the loop on RAW and RAI and start to publish rules where all the RAI is clearly the exact same as RAW then the "bubbles" will always be there, and thus the disconnection. (besides, i don't know if everyone will agree with me... But... I've always thought that if you write something as a rule, then, you intend for the rule to be played that way? - in a perfect and logical world anyway. - otherwise, what is the point of writing the rule in the first place? If you write something and mean something else, why don't you just write what you mean to begin with?!?!!?!?)

you also have a big problem when its a small team writing and especially testing rules, they start to test what they wanted them to mean and perhaps not whats actually written.

bit like how its hard to get technicians to follow written instructions because after a while they go from memory, which is fine, except they forget bits and then the procedures change without them noticing

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
We also don't know how many problems GW caught before the books were published.

The Dakka bubble posits that after the rules designers wrote the rules on the back of a napkin, they finish their day counting huge stacks of money swindled from those poor exploited gamers.

Seriously, this place becomes more like Infowars every day.

The ad mech chemicals in the water are turning the rippers gay?

Legendary

They just need to hire people who understand proper templating i.e. WotC R&D / Development.

zerosignal wrote:
They just need to hire people who understand proper templating i.e. WotC R&D / Development.

To be fair, even WotC can't catch everything everytime and mistakes still occur. Not to mention occasionally something gets released that interacts with a card from nearly 20 years ago and breaks the game leading to them needing to ban parts of the combo to fix it.

GW doesn't ban things, but the same kind of thing happens here too: unintented things are unintended (and are being written/curated by a much smaller team on a smaller budget than what Hasbro gives WotC) and GW has to fix them, or clarify them to be better understood.

If anything GW needs to adopt WotC's judge system and create certified TOs who can get a stronger handle on what GW actually wants the game to be played as, and can directly feedback on things that are working in a way that breaks the game.

WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

Giving away whatever your business produces for free is, in fact, always the "consumer friendly thing".

Not much of a business left after you give your work away free, though. Good luck getting them to do this. ;-) Heck, even if they did you’d moan about the file format!

 BaconCatBug wrote:
WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

That's probably because WotC don't rely on selling rules as a business model. They sell cards and don't change the rules unless they add something new. Banned cards aren't really a ruleset as much as a standard play format.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Oh look. BCB’s rant returns. Video games do this too. In fact, most companies have to, to varying degrees. Get over it.

Video games can roll out a patch that updates everything in a matter of seconds or minutes. I'm not aware of a similar system for a physical book. Considering these things cost $3 to print and sell for $50+, I would expect some degree of proof reading and balance testing beforehand. I shouldn't have to print errata for books that haven't even hit the shelf yet at my FLGS.


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 ClockworkZion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 ServiceGames wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
THIS JUST IN: Water is wet, snow is cold and humans make mistakes.

I've had to drop FAR more on textbooks that had errors (and this isn't to count the US Army regulations I've seen with errors despite having a bigger budget to spend on stuff than GW does) than I do GW's books. Mistakes happen and sometimes you can miss errors even if you re-read something dozens of times.

But errors in 100% of their materials? Of course, humans make mistakes. But, it shows how poorly GW is doing with their rulebooks when 100% of the product line has errors.

SG

There are different errors in every book. It's not like they're constantly repeating the same exact error in every book.

Except the first few codexes where they forgot to limit the Relic stratagem to once per battle? Same error, different codexes. By your own logic, you agree with us.

I don't agree because that limit was only introduced to deal with players who were abusing RAW to circumvent RAI. Which is what most erratta are created for: to bring the game we play more in line with the game they intend for us to play.

If RAW and RAI are different things, the original RAW should have been written differently.

I can understand to some degree the RAW vs RAI difference. While I've never designed game rules, I have both academic and practical experience in legislative drafting and it can be harder than one assumes to write even a simple statute to cover something. You have to take into account almost every single word, how those words influence the others and then account that people are bias and are going to interpret it the way they would prefer to.

GW is sloppy a lot of the time, but a good bunch of RAW vs RAI are people being obtuse and actively trying to bent or break the rules.

The Bible has the same problem of RAW vs RAI.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
The Bible has the same problem of RAW vs RAI.

RAW is RAI. It it was intended to be otherwise, there would be errata.

Maybe he's just slower than GW and still working on it.

 Stux wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
The Bible has the same problem of RAW vs RAI.

RAW is RAI. It it was intended to be otherwise, there would be errata.

Unless this is a sarcastic swipe at the OP, and I’ve missed the joke, I gotta point out that this blanket statement is incorrect.

RAW is very obviously intended to be RAI, but sometimes unintended rules interactions occur (eg stacking invulnerable saves) or someone could read and interpret a rule differently to its intent, possibly via omissions, loose wording or poor grammar choices in the original rule. Some of these mismatches to the writers’ intent have been patched by FAQs and Errata, some haven’t. This might be because they aren’t considered necessary, because they’ve been missed, because the interaction hasn’t made its way to the writers yet, because they missed a deadline, who knows... humans are human. Despite best efforts, RAW is not always RAI and FAQ and Errata are the proof of this. That not everything is patched as fast as some people like does not change that. Sorry to wellll ackshually you, but better to hash this out here than have this “RAW always = RAI” fallacy crop up in YMDC regularly. Not that it will stop one chap from getting more threads locked, but each to their own.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

That's probably because WotC don't rely on selling rules as a business model. They sell cards and don't change the rules unless they add something new. Banned cards aren't really a ruleset as much as a standard play format.

And it's worth noting that the games where WOTC DOES sell the rules as part of the busniess model they very much DO ask for 100 bucks before you can start playing. to play a game of D&D you need 3 books, the Players Handbook, Dungeon Master's guide, and Monster Manual (yes if you NEVER DM you can get away with JUST the PHB, but you can also get away with the free basic rules and the unit cards in your unit box when playing 40K, so let's not argue the "el cheapo" route) that comes out to 150 bucks.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

That's probably because WotC don't rely on selling rules as a business model. They sell cards and don't change the rules unless they add something new. Banned cards aren't really a ruleset as much as a standard play format.

And GW sells models as their business model. GW is model company rather than book company.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
The Bible has the same problem of RAW vs RAI.

In that book, I bet RAI there was no psychic phase.

tneva82 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

That's probably because WotC don't rely on selling rules as a business model. They sell cards and don't change the rules unless they add something new. Banned cards aren't really a ruleset as much as a standard play format.

And GW sells models as their business model. GW is model company rather than book company.

Or rather, GW sells models and books as their business model.

tneva82 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

That's probably because WotC don't rely on selling rules as a business model. They sell cards and don't change the rules unless they add something new. Banned cards aren't really a ruleset as much as a standard play format.

And GW sells models as their business model. GW is model company rather than book company.

i could've sworn with CA rules with pts changes and Codices aswell as indices and ofcourse the rulebook they very much are a book selling company. It is also about their only reccuring Revenue they get, since f.e. A CSM player that allready has 50+ CSM is very unlikely to buy another bunch (except if the new ones look way better or finally get a proper upgrade sprue to also make Havocs out of them with all options in maximum quantity) . Same for Ork players really, why buy even more boyz when you allready have probably easily over 200 at home, (even i have 50 + boyz and i did run a Mek Warband) Basically they see they can milk and they will milk, except this time they pulled an EA and made a mandatory pts changing FAQ called CA and expected people to buy it.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

 Stux wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
The Bible has the same problem of RAW vs RAI.

RAW is RAI. It it was intended to be otherwise, there would be errata.

Unless this is a sarcastic swipe at the OP, and I’ve missed the joke, I gotta point out that this blanket statement is incorrect.

RAW is very obviously intended to be RAI, but sometimes unintended rules interactions occur (eg stacking invulnerable saves) or someone could read and interpret a rule differently to its intent, possibly via omissions, loose wording or poor grammar choices in the original rule. Some of these mismatches to the writers’ intent have been patched by FAQs and Errata, some haven’t. This might be because they aren’t considered necessary, because they’ve been missed, because the interaction hasn’t made its way to the writers yet, because they missed a deadline, who knows... humans are human. Despite best efforts, RAW is not always RAI and FAQ and Errata are the proof of this. That not everything is patched as fast as some people like does not change that. Sorry to wellll ackshually you, but better to hash this out here than have this “RAW always = RAI” fallacy crop up in YMDC regularly. Not that it will stop one chap from getting more threads locked, but each to their own.

It was meant to be a joke yes, sorry!

Making fun of the idea of the Bible and a rulebook for a miniatures game being held to the same standard :p

Ah phew! I was worried for a moment!

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
WotC don't charge $100+ for just the rulebooks though, GW do. If GW wanted to do the consumer friendly thing, they would online release their rules 6 months before going to print, wring out any RaW errors and broken stuff, then print a physical copy for those who want it.

That's probably because WotC don't rely on selling rules as a business model. They sell cards and don't change the rules unless they add something new. Banned cards aren't really a ruleset as much as a standard play format.

And GW sells models as their business model. GW is model company rather than book company.

Or rather, GW sells models and books as their business model.

and as I said when you look at other companies that produce rule books to their standard, GW's actually not that bad,

Volo's guide to Monster's is D&D sourcebook, full colour, same grade of paper as codex space, Marines and with a roughly similer page count. Volo's guide to Monsters, costs about 65 dollars Canadian, Codex Space Marines about 60 bucks Canadian.

All told? that's pretty good considering I'd be willing to bet money that WOTC's runs of D&D books are considerably bigger then GW's codex runs.

If you want to see how much fun it would be reading an exact RAW rule book that was flaw less read a lengthy legal document. Among the reasons they read so badly is that they need Loop hole free. And any one who ever has read such a document will know it’s not easy to read or make sense of. Not only that the people who are writing them get a lot more than the GW staff per hour.

 Stux wrote:


Making fun of the idea of the Bible and a rulebook for a miniatures game being held to the same standard :p

I think the 8ed is in a better place. The Bible really does need an FAQ.

Andykp wrote:
If you want to see how much fun it would be reading an exact RAW rule book that was flaw less read a lengthy legal document. Among the reasons they read so badly is that they need Loop hole free. And any one who ever has read such a document will know it’s not easy to read or make sense of. Not only that the people who are writing them get a lot more than the GW staff per hour.

As an attorney, this so much. If the rule set was written like a contract was written, the game wouldn't work and the rule book would be even thicker than it was in 7th.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Andykp wrote:
If you want to see how much fun it would be reading an exact RAW rule book that was flaw less read a lengthy legal document. Among the reasons they read so badly is that they need Loop hole free. And any one who ever has read such a document will know it’s not easy to read or make sense of. Not only that the people who are writing them get a lot more than the GW staff per hour.

As an attorney, this so much. If the rule set was written like a contract was written, the game wouldn't work and the rule book would be even thicker than it was in 7th.

Case in point: Magic: the Gathering.

Its comprehensive rulebook (Link) is written in a legalistic manner, intended to cover as much as possible. Even ignoring the glossary and the rules for different game types, multiplayer, specific keyword abilities and actions, and other oddities that should probably belong in faction-specific documents, the .docx file is 97 pages for the core rules. Before taking into account the official text of all the cards in the game and the various errata files and FAQs.

Now, MtG is a more technically complicated game than 40K, but I would be amazed if it was even possible to re-write the 8th edition ruleset in less than 40 pages in this style, before touching on game modes or faction-specific rules.

I pay for the books because they look nice, I enjoy reading them and having them... I like the lore, history, art work and the rules. I find them to be very good value...