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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Suck and *get worse*. No possible chance for things to get better.

Wow, Peregrine and Martel are probably the *most* woke 40k fans!
   
Made in us
Blood-Drenched Death Company Marine




And now for some hope!:

Pure Blood Angels go 5-0 at the Boise Cup Major!


https://www.frontlinegaming.org/2019/07/02/pure-blood-angels-go-5-0-at-the-boise-cup-major/
   
Made in us
Locked in the Tower of Amareo




Pretty impressive given mono BA have a 29% win rate. Few dozen more of these, and maybe mono BA can get up to 40%. He even had swords on the SG. Crazy man.

I don't understand how Gman can't enter a building, though.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/07/02 19:03:38


 
   
Made in gb
Tough-as-Nails Ork Boy



UK

Crimson Devil wrote:I guess we can count "Complaining about 40k" as a legitimate hobby now, enough people seem to enjoy doing it.
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe the people complaining meet some or all of the following criteria:

- Has been playing the game for a long time,
- Enjoys the overall lore, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the lore of a specific faction, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the art style and overall artistic merit of the 40K universe,
- Thinks the miniatures produced by GW qualify as works of art in their own right, or at least enjoys the general design style behind the 40K miniature range,
- Has already accumulated over time a wide range of GW miniatures, at significant cost, that they would like to play with,
- At least at some point thoroughly enjoyed playing the hobby with friends/strangers,

All of those would point towards people that would really like to enjoy the 40K game, play it, hobby it etc, but simply feel dissatisfied with the current state of the game. To put this into perspective, many of the original designers behind the game no longer play it or even read the novels etc related to it. Sometimes in their own polite way they sound positively depressed with how things are going, like disowning a child that has gone off the rails and turned into a monster that it hurts them to speak of anymore. There is a difference between random people just arriving and going "hur dur, your hobby sucks" and people who have put many years, sometimes decades into a hobby just wanting it to be better and being frustrated by where their hobby is going.

If you mention second edition 40k I will find you, and I will bore you to tears talking about how "things were better in my day, let me tell ya..." Might even do it if you mention 4th/5th/6th WHFB 
   
Made in us
Battlefortress Driver with Krusha Wheel




Douglasville, GA

To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well. People, especially as they get older, have more and more trouble adapting to change, so they lash out at what is new and rather than see both the good and the bad, they'll focus on the negative to the exclusion of the positive.

My opinion is basically that 8th Edition isn't perfect, but it's not an unplayable dumpster fire either, and the people saying it is are being overly critical because it isn't the 40k they grew up with.
   
Made in us
Blood-Drenched Death Company Marine




bouncingboredom wrote:
Crimson Devil wrote:I guess we can count "Complaining about 40k" as a legitimate hobby now, enough people seem to enjoy doing it.
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe the people complaining meet some or all of the following criteria:

- Has been playing the game for a long time,
- Enjoys the overall lore, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the lore of a specific faction, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the art style and overall artistic merit of the 40K universe,
- Thinks the miniatures produced by GW qualify as works of art in their own right, or at least enjoys the general design style behind the 40K miniature range,
- Has already accumulated over time a wide range of GW miniatures, at significant cost, that they would like to play with,
- At least at some point thoroughly enjoyed playing the hobby with friends/strangers,

All of those would point towards people that would really like to enjoy the 40K game, play it, hobby it etc, but simply feel dissatisfied with the current state of the game. To put this into perspective, many of the original designers behind the game no longer play it or even read the novels etc related to it. Sometimes in their own polite way they sound positively depressed with how things are going, like disowning a child that has gone off the rails and turned into a monster that it hurts them to speak of anymore. There is a difference between random people just arriving and going "hur dur, your hobby sucks" and people who have put many years, sometimes decades into a hobby just wanting it to be better and being frustrated by where their hobby is going.




There is a difference between complaining about a relationship that is fixable, and stalking your ex.

Dakka is stalker territory.
   
Made in de
Boom! Leman Russ Commander






To get back to the topic:

That does not really count under "most broken" but it would be something I would like to see: I personally would like it, if weapons that are in the fluff really dedicated to a specific task, would have some function that really has an effect, that is not easily copied or even surpassed by another unit.

To illustrate my point (I'm most familiar with guard, but its the same for other factions):
- The dedicated tank hunters (Vanquisher Cannons, Tank Hunters) have the same mechanic as a long range Melter weapon and are not really efficient at what they should be best at. I personally would find it more interesting if they, like the Bane Wolf would wound Vehicles on 2+ and everything else at 6+, which might make them more competetive, especially against high-Thoughness. Or some other "special tank hunter" effect like ignoring one of the defensive rolls (Armor Save, Invul, FnP).

- The same goes for dedicated anti air which I personally would also find more interesting if they had more than "+1 to hit". Somewhere I read about the idea of some kind of overwatch against all flying units within range. I cannot say if that would be broken, but it would definitely give them some effect that can not easily be replicated by a non-AA-unit (like all Leman russ Tank commanders having the same to hit against flyers as Hydra-AA Tanks)

- On a similar note: If a unit includes a great variety of weapons choices (looking at you, Leman Russ tank), I would find it interesting if one would have a special effect not so easily replicated. The Eradicator is a good idea, yet at the moment "ignores cover" does not really feel special, since in the end it is mostly just another AP-1. Here the Banehammer is an interesting example.

All that is really just a personal opinion and I fully understand that more special rules might bloat everything even more, but I wanted to at least mention it.

~6550 build and painted
819 build and painted
830 
   
Made in gb
Tough-as-Nails Ork Boy



UK

flandarz wrote:To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well. People, especially as they get older, have more and more trouble adapting to change, so they lash out at what is new and rather than see both the good and the bad, they'll focus on the negative to the exclusion of the positive.

My opinion is basically that 8th Edition isn't perfect, but it's not an unplayable dumpster fire either, and the people saying it is are being overly critical because it isn't the 40k they grew up with.
See I think there you're guilty of infantilising and dismissing what many people would consider legitimate arguments. It's not so much that 40K isn't just "the 40K they grew up with", rather many people are angry because the entire nature of the game has changed. If we look at vehicle rules as a snapshot, the system has gone from one where you needed specialised weapons to even penetrate certain vehicles to a system where every weapon has a chance to wound any vehicle. We've gone from there being a degree of tactical skill and positioning required to get flank/rear shots, to it not mattering, and from vehicles being limited in their firing arcs for different weapons, requiring forethought in positiong, to what is frankly a ludicrous situation where as long as the tip of part of your vehicle can see an enemy then you can fire all your weapons at it. That's not just "oh, this isn't quite how I remember 40K", that's "wow, the rules, concepts and game design objectives of this game have changed A LOT".

Take that 5-0 Blood Angels thread. I've been reading a lot of old white Dwarf bat reps lately and the contrast between those (involving strategy largely grounded in similar to RL concerns) vs hearing someone talking almost exclusively about two opponents trying to milk and game every last loophole and flaw in the ruleset is quite saddening really. It shows a descent in the very nature of the game, from one of being at least related to a realistic concept of warfare to one that has almost no bearing to genuine conflict. To dismiss these sorts of concerns as just rose tinted glasses (every version of 40K has had its flaws) or people moaning for the sake of moaning is poor form I think.


Crimson Devil wrote:There is a difference between complaining about a relationship that is fixable, and stalking your ex. Dakka is stalker territory.
If 9th edition went back more towards some older version (which version would depend on the player) would that not constitute a relationship that is fixable? I think your problem is caused by the fact that you think people are complaining for the sake of complaining and that they will never like anything to do with 40K ever again, whereas I see a lot of people who would likely warm to 40K to one degree or another if it just fixed some of the basic problems they have with the game.

If you mention second edition 40k I will find you, and I will bore you to tears talking about how "things were better in my day, let me tell ya..." Might even do it if you mention 4th/5th/6th WHFB 
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






My issues have nothing to do with the game i grew up with. I started in 7th. 8th is WAY better than 7th. That doesnt make it good. And ignoring its problems while shrugging off its criticims simply because its a 2 out of 10 instead of a 1 is just sitting in willful ignorance. Very legitamate criticsms can be levied at the game. And should. Call the game what it is. An improvement? Sure. Good? Not on its best day.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/07/02 23:05:20



These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





 Lance845 wrote:
My issues have nothing to do with the game i grew up with. I started in 7th. 8th is WAY better than 7th. That doesnt make it good. And ignoring its problems while shrugging off its problems simply because its a 2 out of 10 instead of a 1 is just sitting in willful ignorance.


Now whilest exagerated that is a good point. And there are mechanics that got too simplified f.e.


https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in us
Battlefortress Driver with Krusha Wheel




Douglasville, GA

Legitimate complaints and concerns are fine. I'm not trying to say you have to like everything about 8e. Or even any of it. But "this is actual garbage and everything about it is terrible" is an overreaction. If you think me calling people out for that is "infantilising" them or dismissing them, then I'm afraid I don't have a much nicer way to put it.

I will say that most people here have been real good about saying "I don't like a lot of 8e, but they did some stuff right" or "it was better in the beginning, but rules bloat", which I appreciate. There's only a few that I've seen who have been like: "Everything about 8th is irredeemably awful" and they are the people my message is directed towards.
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






Were you playing at 8ths launch? Pure indexes? How close to good it was and yet still had broken bad confusing rules?


These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in us
Battlefortress Driver with Krusha Wheel




Douglasville, GA

If you're expecting me to say that it's "perfect", you'll be disappointed. I enjoy playing 8th, but I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't need improvement in many areas. I've voiced my issues in other places around the board, so I won't really get into it here. I'll just say that as the "supporters" have all admitted that the system isn't perfect, the "detractors" should also admit that not every part of the system is bad. There's no room for true dialogue when one side takes an inflexible stance.
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






 flandarz wrote:
If you're expecting me to say that it's "perfect", you'll be disappointed. I enjoy playing 8th, but I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't need improvement in many areas. I've voiced my issues in other places around the board, so I won't really get into it here. I'll just say that as the "supporters" have all admitted that the system isn't perfect, the "detractors" should also admit that not every part of the system is bad. There's no room for true dialogue when one side takes an inflexible stance.


1) i am not expecting anything. I asked a question to gauge your actual experience with the edition.

2) this thread isnt titled "what do you like/dislike?" Its what is broken. Coming here expecting praise is nonsensical.


These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in us
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The problem is that the things wrong with 8h are so glaringly and obviously horrible that it’s insane. Cover saves. Shooting at one guy in a unit and the nine guys totally out of line of sight still get killed. Wtf?
   
Made in us
Battlefortress Driver with Krusha Wheel




Douglasville, GA

No one is expecting praise. And, honestly, saying "everything is broken" is equally nonsensical. It's an exaggeration which doesn't help the conversation at all. Again, most folks have been good with actually laying out what issues they have. That's what I expect. A run-down on what actual problems people have with 8th.
   
Made in us
Norn Queen






 flandarz wrote:
No one is expecting praise. And, honestly, saying "everything is broken" is equally nonsensical. It's an exaggeration which doesn't help the conversation at all. Again, most folks have been good with actually laying out what issues they have. That's what I expect. A run-down on what actual problems people have with 8th.


I have an arts background. Which means that I spent several years basically being trained on how to give and receive constructive criticism. And you know what you learn from that in a practical application kind of way? 99.9% of the world isn't trained and won't give you good constructive criticism. They will give you bad non constructive criticism. It's up to you to figure out what they actually mean if you want to get useful information out of it.

Let's mine the statement everything is broken for useful bits.

What they probably mean to start with is that the rules are universally written poorly, as evidenced by the constant FAQ errata and still broken gak. No document has ever been safe from it. In fact, just regular ol' community articles have had to have faq errata. They are not wrong in that respect. SO we are starting on a foundation of the basic building blocks of the entire game suck/don't work/are broken.

Lets move on to list building. The options are so broad and open with so little to no cost that they might as well not have a structure at all. Worse they are exploitable to farm CP and abuse the games mechanics including "soup".

A a shoddy army building framework built onto of poor rules writing foundation.

Then you have the general imbalances in codexes which includes things like Necrons reanimation protocols getting exponentially better the lower the points the game and exponentially worse the higher reaching some semblance of balance around 1250 points (ish).



Yes, you can make statements like "But the psychic phase is better than it was in 7th!" except that there are AT LEAST 3 armies in the game that are flat out incapable of deny the witch which is itself a shoddy mechanic carried over and duct taped onto the new mechanics of the new phase. So while yes, better, still, crap.

When someone says "Everything is broken." they might not be giving you all the details you want in the way that you want them. But they are expressing a valid criticism of the game. There is no facet of 40k 8th that does not have some kind of problem. Not one. There are some good IDEAS in there like Keywords, which are then poorly executed and create issues like Longstrikes buff not working on Forgeworld Hammerheads. So what does it matter if the basic idea was good if the very foundation of the whole thing is built on a pile of gak and permeates the whole thing?

IYou can't expect people to speak to you on your terms. If you want to understand what they are saying you need to read it from theirs. The whole game is broken.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/07/03 00:14:39



These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
 
   
Made in gb
Sagitarius with a Big F'in Gun





North-East UK

To respond to the OP of the thread, I will C+P a long point I made on a different, but similar, thread.

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Wow this thread derailed twice, but anyway I'll try to be on topic to try and put it back on track.

What are my thoughts on 8th?

Well firstly I'll put a disclaimer: As part of my hobby specifically I make a copious amount of time on custom rules, making my own games, etc. I have made groups on social media for specific games for custom rules which have proven to be popular. I have spent many years doing this so I tend to think of things from a games dev's perspective as well as a players. I will also be recounting player experiences of my own and maybe observations of others. Know I hold no grudges nor malicious intent towards any player, person, army or list choice, these are just my thoughts and perspectives, not a critique on personality be it personal or people I don't know.

Ok so with that in mind, my thoughts have to go from my experience in a chronological order of the longevity of the 8th.

I really enjoyed 8th ed. at the start. All the index's were released and everything appeared on point. There were powerful units and a few combo's here and there but nothing that took me too out of the game, I felt as though I had a sense of agency and reaction to other peoples lists and armies when playing my CSM. I didn't feel as though my night lord choices were 'wrong' choices.

When the codex's were initially released I didn't feel they were too bad, there wasn't anything that screamed in my face that was broken so I rolled with it. My average games still felt as though I could react to my opponents moves and tactics.

It was halfway through the codex releases that I felt GW had went back to their old clutches of power creep. Eldar changed from invisible waithknights to just play on the negative modifiers, Tau went from markerlight spam to shield drones: The Codex (Don't get me wrong Markerlights are still a pain but I find shield drones a much more pressing issue). Imperium is Imperium now. Gradually I felt my agency, or my own choices, slowly erode. Not only just from external balance but also from FAQ's and such.

This then puts me in modern day of the game. Do I still have fun? For me it's a yes and no. I still enjoy the game to a degree but once again I have to pick and choose my opponent and I have to know what sort of game I'm going into. I thought this was something 8th ed. was trying to fix?

So what went 'wrong?' Well I can only bullet point my exact thoughts.

1) Player Agency: The most important part of a game is to make sure all players feel as though they add something that contributes to the battle. From this people can value a match more positively than negatively. At the start all you had were three strats, the power of a unit and maybe the odd aura buff. This was expanded, which is not inherently a bad choice but they way it was executed was poor. The expanded strats, subfaction traits, and aura buffs have stopped really trying to make a flavorful army but rather now build momentum of an probability race to turn as much probability factor to 0% as possible. This isn't healthy externally because it takes away your options on how you fight a specific match and creates mismatches that aren't fun. In some cases you just can't fight certain lists because some armies can play to this and some can't. it then creates an atmosphere of 'faux' options which can make players feel 'cheated' out of just buying models they preferred.

Take one experience I had recently. I played my Night Lords (In that game I changed them to Alpha Legion, because my stores tournament rules allows us to use whatever subfaction rules for our forces as long as it's all uniform) along with Red Corsairs against Shadowsuns T'au sept. The board was very open so everything could really see everything. They took the first turn and then proceeded to markerlight everything up and decimate half of my army. In my turn I couldn't really retaliate because anything that could damage major parts of my opponents army could just be shrugged off on shield drones. Turn 2 I was tabled. We then proceeded to play another game on a board with more LoS blocking terrain and I was still tabled but the game lasted until turn 6. What i felt was that I had a major disadvantage because I don't have tools in my CSM force as efficient as Markerlights and shield drones. Back in older editions Markerlights were another economy for Tau. Now it's more like gardening where you just 'Grow your own' and then just get point blank buffs that other armies at most have to spend CP on. While I enjoyed the second game more than my first both games still left a slight bad aftertaste in my mouth per say, and only cemented my view that in early game you need to rename one shooting phase to "destroy ALL the drones, then lick your wounds phase". A game shouldn't create this feeling of absolution.

2) Amount of Hard counters: With this race to make probability to 0% presents a lot of hard counters which can make players feel frustrated during gameplay. In my turn to provide my own case of dickery (because I am no saint) on how I reacted to my area, I now play (with AL trait) three Oblits with a Jump Lord and Jump Sorc. The Sorc had prescience and Death Hex and the Oblits have Mark of Slannesh. The case is simple. I drop them down 12" away from my target(s), I take away their Inv Sv (if they have one) and make my Oblits hit on 2+ with prescience. My Lord re-roll's 1's for the unit. I then point and click a unit out of existence, then shoot again with strat and right-click another unit out of existence. While I certainly have reacted to the competitive shift in my area well, from a design point of view I shouldn't be able to do this. My opponent know what's coming and they know that unless they have something short of a 2+ inv. They can't react against this unit. once again providing a negative player experience, this time for my opponent.

In addition to hard counters there is also the case that with my Night Lords I can never really play them anymore as what they should be because Morale is a bloated phase for most armies. What incentive for me as a Night lords player should I play against Tyranids or Dark Angels? They get their sub-faction trait a special rule to get rid of mine and also all their toys to boot! Soft counters like And they shall know no fear is ok because the morale is still affected but hard counters only serve to provide frustrating play which only makes one to refuse games. A game should not make any player feel or make choices as fundamental as that. The whole 'Tiers' with codex's makes once gain a frustrating experience for many a player because it only serves as some gambling wheel of fortune and you're the one praying for a good codex release. Some of my opponent's just say that to win this edition, depending on what your facing is to just 'win the die roll' (within context of the die roll to deploy) which I can't really say that's wrong anymore.

Similarly another example from My Night Lords is that all my jump units now just sit on a shelf, because functionally they are unplayable. They FAQ had restricted them far too much with measuring in charge distance and so what looked like common sense (like the unit of raptors jumping from rooftops to close in on their prey) is practically undo-able, because from understanding, one player got smug with the game dev at a GT with their smash captain on a 0" charge. These hard counters just provide even more of an frustrating experience which shouldn't happen in a game.

3) 8th wanted to be new but ultimately has succumbed to old editions:

Probably my most controversial view. When 8th was released GW presented it to be revolutionary. this was the all-new edition, with an all-new simpler and more 'fun' experience. But as the edition has aged, I can see the old editions problems seep in. The new stat line isn't really all that new. From a designers perspective, they could have had much more fun with this. I refuse to believe an Guardsman moves as fast as a Marine and an Eldar. Why does a standard Marine have as many wounds as a Guardsman? Imo Guardsmen and equivalents should have had 4" of movement. Marines should have had 5" and Primaris and Eldar should have had 6". How much would this edition change with that in mind? Imagine Marines having 2-3 wounds and Primaris just an extra +1 to whatever a marines had. Terminators having 5-6 wounds a piece? This might sound ludicrous and to a degree I would agree but it would have certainly solved the elite Vs. Horde issue the game has and make marines feel like marines imo in GW's more streamlined approach. Why does armies special rules for arrival from reserves need to be standardised? why can't a unit of Warp Talons arrive by 6" a drop pod by 7"?

This to me would have meant that they could have had wider variables to play with which meant less hard counters by strats and such. They wanted a new edition but clutched to elder stat lines from editions before, but I don't blame entirely the dev's for going this route as I feel the playtesters have an equal part to play. From what I understand is that the playtesters (forming a microcosm of the wider playerbase) wanted more incentives than restrictions. This I can understand as the older editions were restricting, bit now the pendulum has swung the other way and it's either incentive the players or don't bother. We need more restrictions so we can have player agency return to the game. Nothing really, well, changed in regards to the power creep. They experiment with early codex's then get carried away in an edition halfway through. This is just bad practice that they only get away with because their the largest company out there.

To conclude, do I hate this edition? No, there are some things they added that I wanted two editions ago, like a Damage characteristic and a streamlined WS/BS chart. But the power creep that early editions had still persist in this edition. They wanted to make something new but still clutched on to the old which to me has bled through in this edition, so could I say I enjoy this edition? I can't really say that I do anymore, just that I take what I can get. I don't view any edition with rose-tinted glasses and I've been playing since 2007. The edition I feel is neither better or worse, but exactly the same as elder editions.


So to further the discussion what do I think is most broken in 40k currently?

1) Far, far too many extremes. Currently, whilst there are different pathways to achieve the end result per codex/soup, in a competitive sense there are only really two sorts of lists. Either A) Table early game with buffs or B ) Play on negative modifiers to increase survivability.

2) YGIGO System is too clunky for a game that has grown in scale. Because of how the system interacts with the armies it once again removes a ton of player agency that frustrates many players.

3) Power creep, like every other edition, this keeps on happening. The Dev's like previous editions have gotten carried away with the power of armies. Look at the new Chaos Knights rules released yesterday and compare, to say, the earlier codex's.

4) System has outgrown the D6. Because of the amount of absolutes and hard counters in the game, it leaves little for actual risk/reward scenarios that usually make a game really enjoyable. They game should evolve to D10 at this point.

5) Player agency is relatively non existent at this point. Take a look at competitive lists and my earlier examples too. It's not fun to play with/against units that have been buffed so much that it requires so little thought. The game needs more radical 'swingy' results so that people may feel on par with each other.

6) Bloat to the point that core mechanics are essentially 'phased out' like morale. Each stat you give needs to be effective so that factions/subfactions can have a difference in playstyles. People don't like sunk cost fallacy.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/07/03 00:17:55


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Ever wanted a better 5th ed. 40k? Take a look at 5th ed. Reforged! https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/794253.page 
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka





Ottawa Ontario Canada

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Primary problems with 40k are fundamental design philosophy questions more so than any numbers or specific mechanics or anything else. To wit:

1) Turning point theory. Every game has to be a massive turning point on a galactic scale, which means every psychic power has to be this grandiose massive epic super-thing on which the game pivots, every army has to be loaded down with the most epic extreme super-badasses in the galaxy, every game has to have a Primarch in it, etc. Most of the scale creep/balance issues with the game result from this philosophy and need to be addressed by taking a chainsaw to it; if smaller and more subtle things existed the game would be less silly. Consider by comparison Warmachine (on scale): people in Warmachine don't have potentially spammable spells that say "move this unit again", they have potentially spammable spells that say "this unit moves 2" further". Because they're working with smaller and more subtle effects than GW's grandiose sledgehammer of superpowers they can be more fine-tuned and more balanced.

2) Scale asymmetry. Consider for the moment a Guard army; they're spending 4pts/model on their basic line units, their heavy-hitting armoured tanks might be 200pts if kitted out heavily. Consider for comparison a Knights army; their cheapest units are ~180pts/model and their heavy hitters are around 700pts. The issue of expecting two armies with such wild disparities in model count to go head to head requires GW to make all weapons in the game too generalist (see: shooting Knights with pulse rifle gunlines), so as to avoid cases like fighting Knights in 7e where anything short of S6 just didn't do anything. As a result everything is sitting on the same linear scale of durability/damage output, which means any mistake gets to ripple out and affect just about everything (ex. the need for anti-Knight weapons makes normal-size vehicles without an Invulnerable save pointless unless they're incredibly inexpensive).

3) Sacred-cow design. 40k has discrete turns rather than alternating activations, five phases of play, and requires 3-4 rolls to kill anything because that's how it's always worked, not because it works any better. Consider as a counterexample Bolt Action/Gates of Antares (Rick Priestly (GW founding designer)'s work with his new company); it has randomized alternating activations, turns are a single phase, attacks are two dice (to-hit/to-wound), armies are heavily constrained (one tank per lieutenant/two infantry in Bolt Action) to avoid spam, and the damage mechanics require guns to specialize and encourage you to use a variety of units rather than finding the most efficient choice and spamming it.
-3A) Refusal to backpedal. Introducing Knights as a standalone Codex, the bizarre reroll-before-modifiers bug, act-again effects, and penalty stacking in this edition, superheavies the last two editions, Destroyer weapons and Invisibility in 7th, Jink and Heldrakes in 6th, the glance table and psybolt ammo in 5th, GW has a long history of making terrible design decisions and then standing by them and trying to patch around them when it'd be much, much easier and produce a much simpler, cleaner, and better game to admit that they f***ed up and backpedal.

4) Inadequate testing and refusal to backpedal. GW doesn't playtest anything enough, and in previous editions instead of iterating on their designs to fix bugs they've finished all the army books and released a new edition to completely upend the apple cart. The fact that the game is so unstable and that the models you bought that were good might be unplayable in six months is a serious problem for anyone who wants to play the game; dropping $500 on an army only to find GW has nerfed it into dust and you need to buy a new one before you've even finished painting it isn't good for anyone (you get frustrated and go away talking gak about GW, GW loses a customer).

Very little about the core rules to 40k right now is inherently wrong, and you could honestly fix a lot of this within the existing framework of 8e, but what you have to recognize is that GW's design issues stem from attitude problems far more than they do specific design decisions. It isn't any individual decision they make that hurts the game, if it were it'd be easy for them to fix because we'd all be complaining about the same thing and it'd get through to them eventually. It's the attitude problems that lead to a feedback loop of small mistakes feeding off each other and producing a kludgy mess.


Agreed on just about everything. The game used to function pretty well as a combined arms turn based skirmish game. 7th screwed up terrain and eventually lost the plot with formations but provided both sides just used and foc and didn't reach for the apoc crap it was a pretty decent game. All they had to do was tweak mc's a little bit and avoid factions like knights, instead like you said they introduce everything hurting everything and basically turn almost every unit into an mc. Flamethrowers as choice AA weapons, 8th is just bad. As peregrine says it's a card game, a thousand dollar card game.

What's most broken is the silly everything hurting everything nonsense. No amount of anger is going to make a human fist hurt a tank.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/07/03 00:52:37


Do you play 30k? It'd be a lot cooler if you did.  
   
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I once punched a hole in a tank when I was angry my lascannon rolled a one
   
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Inquisitorial Keeper of the Xenobanks






your mind

bouncingboredom wrote:
Crimson Devil wrote:I guess we can count "Complaining about 40k" as a legitimate hobby now, enough people seem to enjoy doing it.
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe the people complaining meet some or all of the following criteria:

- Has been playing the game for a long time,
- Enjoys the overall lore, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the lore of a specific faction, or at least the concepts that underpin it,
- Enjoys the art style and overall artistic merit of the 40K universe,
- Thinks the miniatures produced by GW qualify as works of art in their own right, or at least enjoys the general design style behind the 40K miniature range,
- Has already accumulated over time a wide range of GW miniatures, at significant cost, that they would like to play with,
- At least at some point thoroughly enjoyed playing the hobby with friends/strangers,

All of those would point towards people that would really like to enjoy the 40K game, play it, hobby it etc, but simply feel dissatisfied with the current state of the game. To put this into perspective, many of the original designers behind the game no longer play it or even read the novels etc related to it. Sometimes in their own polite way they sound positively depressed with how things are going, like disowning a child that has gone off the rails and turned into a monster that it hurts them to speak of anymore. There is a difference between random people just arriving and going "hur dur, your hobby sucks" and people who have put many years, sometimes decades into a hobby just wanting it to be better and being frustrated by where their hobby is going.


This would be me.
Thank you for that.
Spoiler:

The current game does seem to suit a transformed "community".
When I started, card games and gotcha combos were for kids.
For young kids, UNO;
for old kids, UNO at parties.

Working at a game/comics shop in college,
I saw the CCG set grow along with the Play Station.
Most of the tables in the back belonged to 40k and Fantasy,
some epic, ManOWar, then Necromunda and BFG ruled,
but throughout, the CCG set grew and the Play Station developed.
More tables were filled by card gamers.
A friend sold all of his first run Magic cards for mint.
These cards were legit and powerful, so people wanted to pay more.

When I started, people made fun of the guy with the 30 Dark Reapers.
The vortex grenade was hella fun, but could be taken out.
Spoiler:

The game appealed to practically minded people
and all seemed to have one thing in common,
whether simulating space battles or high fantasy on the high seas,
and that was a sense of realism.
We all presumed that the models and the terrain
meant something very much like it does in the real world.

We can complain about range and model scale and whatever,
but we could sit down behind the model,
consider the situation,
even set it up and consider it within the space of the rules.
This was very much an RPG, moderated by a rules manual
and filtered by common sense.

I learned to play with lawyers, actual lawyers and students of law.
There is common sense in common law.
Real situations mediated by rules, and intention is often inferred.
A case must be made...

This dynamic is mostly absent in a CCG
and impossible in a video game due the media.
The framework for action is given, we just slip through it
nearly effortlessly.

In this way, the state of the game very much reflects
the state of the world that this generation has come to inherit.
Most everything is a given, or may seem so.

When I started, very much was undetermined.
We made it, and wanted to, felt that we could.
So maybe we enjoyed games that reflected this anticipation.


There is a lot to be learned at a game table.
The practice of objective discussion when one's own interests are invested in the outcome, for instance,
is a valuable meta-cognitive skill.

These skills cannot be (easily) tested with CCGs and video games.
And, they seem mostly absent from the current iteration of the game, as well,
beyond tweaking hard coded mechanics like CPs, basically tweaking a difficulty setting in a video game.

Most importantly, for me,
the flavor, the smell of the battleground, the suspense,
the feeling of the grit and grime that an RPG mindset delivers going into the game,
this seems gone altogether, replaced with dry card gamery with expensive plastic counters.

Turning orks to dust was perhaps the first hint for me that GW had lost this connection,
because this was the best way to understand why anyone would be upset about it.
Who wants to be a mold spore? Very few...

Who wants to live in a video card game?
Spoiler:

And, don't even get started with the narrative fracturing acts of the Omnissiah
and all this primaris hover craft nonsense.
"Everybody's favorite space marines" indeed.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
warpedpig wrote:
I once punched a hole in a tank when I was angry my lascannon rolled a one

Man, when I got home that night and saw that fist sized hole, I was like 'I need me a new tank!'

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/07/03 07:53:17


   
Made in nl
Inquisitorial Keeper of the Xenobanks






your mind

 Crablezworth wrote:
 AnomanderRake wrote:
Primary problems with 40k are fundamental design philosophy questions more so than any numbers or specific mechanics or anything else. To wit:

1) Turning point theory.
Spoiler:
Every game has to be a massive turning point on a galactic scale, which means every psychic power has to be this grandiose massive epic super-thing on which the game pivots, every army has to be loaded down with the most epic extreme super-badasses in the galaxy, every game has to have a Primarch in it, etc. Most of the scale creep/balance issues with the game result from this philosophy and need to be addressed by taking a chainsaw to it; if smaller and more subtle things existed the game would be less silly. Consider by comparison Warmachine (on scale): people in Warmachine don't have potentially spammable spells that say "move this unit again", they have potentially spammable spells that say "this unit moves 2" further". Because they're working with smaller and more subtle effects than GW's grandiose sledgehammer of superpowers they can be more fine-tuned and more balanced.

2) Scale asymmetry.
Spoiler:
Consider for the moment a Guard army; they're spending 4pts/model on their basic line units, their heavy-hitting armoured tanks might be 200pts if kitted out heavily. Consider for comparison a Knights army; their cheapest units are ~180pts/model and their heavy hitters are around 700pts. The issue of expecting two armies with such wild disparities in model count to go head to head requires GW to make all weapons in the game too generalist (see: shooting Knights with pulse rifle gunlines), so as to avoid cases like fighting Knights in 7e where anything short of S6 just didn't do anything. As a result everything is sitting on the same linear scale of durability/damage output, which means any mistake gets to ripple out and affect just about everything (ex. the need for anti-Knight weapons makes normal-size vehicles without an Invulnerable save pointless unless they're incredibly inexpensive).

3) Sacred-cow design.
Spoiler:
40k has discrete turns rather than alternating activations, five phases of play, and requires 3-4 rolls to kill anything because that's how it's always worked, not because it works any better. Consider as a counterexample Bolt Action/Gates of Antares (Rick Priestly (GW founding designer)'s work with his new company); it has randomized alternating activations, turns are a single phase, attacks are two dice (to-hit/to-wound), armies are heavily constrained (one tank per lieutenant/two infantry in Bolt Action) to avoid spam, and the damage mechanics require guns to specialize and encourage you to use a variety of units rather than finding the most efficient choice and spamming it.
-3A) Refusal to backpedal. Introducing Knights as a standalone Codex, the bizarre reroll-before-modifiers bug, act-again effects, and penalty stacking in this edition, superheavies the last two editions, Destroyer weapons and Invisibility in 7th, Jink and Heldrakes in 6th, the glance table and psybolt ammo in 5th, GW has a long history of making terrible design decisions and then standing by them and trying to patch around them when it'd be much, much easier and produce a much simpler, cleaner, and better game to admit that they f***ed up and backpedal.

4) Inadequate testing and refusal to backpedal.
Spoiler:
GW doesn't playtest anything enough, and in previous editions instead of iterating on their designs to fix bugs they've finished all the army books and released a new edition to completely upend the apple cart. The fact that the game is so unstable and that the models you bought that were good might be unplayable in six months is a serious problem for anyone who wants to play the game; dropping $500 on an army only to find GW has nerfed it into dust and you need to buy a new one before you've even finished painting it isn't good for anyone (you get frustrated and go away talking gak about GW, GW loses a customer).

Very little about the core rules to 40k right now is inherently wrong, and you could honestly fix a lot of this within the existing framework of 8e, but what you have to recognize is that GW's design issues stem from attitude problems far more than they do specific design decisions. It isn't any individual decision they make that hurts the game, if it were it'd be easy for them to fix because we'd all be complaining about the same thing and it'd get through to them eventually. It's the attitude problems that lead to a feedback loop of small mistakes feeding off each other and producing a kludgy mess.


Agreed on just about everything. The game used to function pretty well as a combined arms turn based skirmish game. 7th screwed up terrain and eventually lost the plot with formations but provided both sides just used and foc and didn't reach for the apoc crap it was a pretty decent game. All they had to do was tweak mc's a little bit and avoid factions like knights, instead like you said they introduce everything hurting everything and basically turn almost every unit into an mc. Flamethrowers as choice AA weapons, 8th is just bad. As peregrine says it's a card game, a thousand dollar card game.

What's most broken is the silly everything hurting everything nonsense. No amount of anger is going to make a human fist hurt a tank.


Truth in bold.
Respect.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/07/03 07:56:13


   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




Reading this thread has made me think about things i have read in the passed.

One thing that comes to mind in another game, is highly synergistic units and models.
How they had find a issue with how they play, with how they where very powerfull.
And that not taking them was a detriment.

Making them simply cost more points did not really work, They just point them up until they where not worth taking at all.
And Nerf also had the same effect.
You have to put thought into the players seeing useful units and incorporating them into there army. As all units working together create interesting strategy even in far more basic games than these.

One of the Issues, is GW wants these units. But seem to talk against this design all the time.
"you can take anything, even if its stupid, dont worry about it" Could be there sales pitch !
And i think it hurts the game, and there players a bit.
We see in the lore things work, when they are unlikely and we even see pure lunacy work out far to often.

Leading to a desire of list design they do not design for.
The Imperial knights a prime example, Fluffy. Well units like them should have support, They should have been designed for the game as a whole. And i think even now they still effect the flawed design we keep seeing :(

They want the players to feel they can play anything in the standard game, But design it against this idea consistently.

Leading to what feels like a company with no idea what they have, and no real idea how to go forward.
   
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There's nothing broken about 8th Edition in my opinion. It works much better than prior versions and balance between armies has reached a nice point unlike 6th and 7th Edition where you had to negotiate lists before the game. The game has become much more tactical while prior editions where more like watching fireworks and wondering why tanks were squishier than a Space Marine.
Could it need refinement? Probably. Tanks could need something, but not the crap from prior editions that only made them worse than anything else in the game and made superheavies the only good tanks because they ignored 90% of the tank rules...
At the start of the Edition I said cover but for me that's fixed with cities of Death.
Blast weapons mostly need a fix as well. Similar to tank rules in 6th and 7th what makes them "special" actually just makes them bad. No weapon needs two to hit roles, just get rid of random number of shots, the usual to-hit-role already provides enough randomness.

I'd like a 15€ book with every narrative mission from the BRB, Vigilus 1+2, CA2017/2018 and Urban Conquest in it and the needed special rules for them. No giant fluff, no photos, no artworks, just give me a simple mission catalogue to build a campaign.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/07/03 11:02:58


 
   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

Really the biggest issues with 8th are that GW has gone back to codex creep/adding cool flavorful rules without thinking (something they explicitly stated they did in 7th; it was officially said they thought of rules that fit the background, and then figured out how it would be for the game).

The second major problem is the desire to turn the game into a CCG with miniatures. Warmahordes did this first but did it in such a way that it was still largely balanced and had meaningful tactics and choices. 8th has basically combo stacking, and that's it. My friends I do a podcast with were talking the other day about Guilliman as an example, and how him existing and doing what he does means that Marines cannot ever be properly balanced. Giving them something really good will break if you add Guilliman because he's such a game changer. Not only the fact it punishes you for not wanting to play Ultramarines and encourages you to mix armies since his benefits affect all Imperium.

That's the larger issue. As said above, the game turned from having interesting tactics that you could often apply some real-world tactics, to essentially who can game the system the best and stack the most combos. That's not interesting or engaging gameplay at all.

GW pitched 8th as being a new, modern 40k. And instead we got the same old gak with a new coat of paint, but that coat of paint was done so cheaply that very quickly it started to flake away and reveal the old stuff underneath. The game is already bloated, possibly way more than 7th, and shows no sign of stopping. Sure, there may not be 2++ rerollable invisible Wraithnights or Taudar, but there are enough terrible things that it makes those not look so bad, since all those needed were some restrictions like what they've done now, rather than necessarily being gutted.

Is it a total dumpster fire? No, but it's nowhere near good. It might have been somewhat good during the Index days (and there were still huge glaring problems that GW somehow missed, remember the dark Eldar bird spam?) but it's way off the rails now, possibly because GW refused to actually gut the system like they should have for fear of it turning out like AOS launch did.

- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





@ Mr. White: Orks growing from spores and therefore being almost impossible to completely eliminate was one of my favorite parts of their fluff when I played them. In this universe even the mold is trying to kill you, and not in the passive "I'll destroy your lungs if you inhale me" kind of way.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
There's nothing broken about 8th Edition in my opinion. It works much better than prior versions and balance between armies has reached a nice point unlike 6th and 7th Edition where you had to negotiate lists before the game. The game has become much more tactical while prior editions where more like watching fireworks and wondering why tanks were squishier than a Space Marine.
Could it need refinement? Probably. Tanks could need something, but not the crap from prior editions that only made them worse than anything else in the game and made superheavies the only good tanks because they ignored 90% of the tank rules...
At the start of the Edition I said cover but for me that's fixed with cities of Death.
Blast weapons mostly need a fix as well. Similar to tank rules in 6th and 7th what makes them "special" actually just makes them bad. No weapon needs two to hit roles, just get rid of random number of shots, the usual to-hit-role already provides enough randomness.

I'd like a 15€ book with every narrative mission from the BRB, Vigilus 1+2, CA2017/2018 and Urban Conquest in it and the needed special rules for them. No giant fluff, no photos, no artworks, just give me a simple mission catalogue to build a campaign.


On the bold part: We must not be playing the same game, some armies still need a significant handicap against others.

Kind of agree on the rest though. Especially I would love to get a compendium of all the rules, errata, and missions arranged and indexed by someone who knows what they're doing, without most of the fluff and artwork. (Although in all fairness if GW knew what they were doing that .pdf would already exist for download on their website.)

   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

Oh, another big issue is that GW continues to expect/write rules on the expectation you're being social with your opponent beyond "Hey, want to play a 2k point game?". So the 40k design team, which incidentally still seems to be the same guys from the bad "Forge the narrative" days, aren't really caring about writing balanced rules still since they probably only play with their mates and do crazy weird "Sure, that sounds fun" sort of rule deviations.

It's rather telling that AOS now, despite having some issues, has overall better balance since most of the AOS design team are big UK tournament players, so are probably more used to playing against random guys at the club/events.

- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in us
Locked in the Tower of Amareo




I do sometimes fantasize about giving the GW "forge the narrative" guy the Stone Cold Stunner.
   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

Martel732 wrote:
I do sometimes fantasize about giving the GW "forge the narrative" guy the Stone Cold Stunner.
Okay that's the funniest thing I've read today. But yeah, the 40k team definitely feels like the outdated group now compared to AOS. Seems like they really don't "get" it still, while the AOS team has learned. In fact, I think it was originally the same group, and it's only been relatively recently that AOS has gotten its own team. Which might explain why early AOS was so bad too, it was the same guys as the 40k team doing it.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/07/03 13:41:17


- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in us
Wicked Warp Spider





 flandarz wrote:
To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well.

4th edition was a whole new game, with many elements and basic design concepts (dissociated mechanics) that clashed with what people wanted from D&D back then. It did not fix anything of what people wanted to be fixed from 3.5.
It was clumsily advertised on top of that.
5ed D&D, albeit newer, received a way better feedback.

If you wanted to use D&D as an example, you played yourself.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/07/03 17:31:05


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