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I think that's probably true. The only way I can see a full rewrite working, is if it's done parallel to the current game. The only way I can see that happening is if it's a different sort of game, one that doesn't dilute their brands. It certainly would be possible to release a "40K Advanced" ruleset to play alongside "40K Basic," but I don't think that's something GW would try to play with.

The problem, though, is that there appears to be no major rethink going on with the Codices to support an iterative revision process. Looking at the Eldar Codex (the most recent release), the changes are primarily layout and stylistic. It's no closer to supporting a full rewrite than the 3rd Edition Codices were, and thus we're no closer to a full rewrite than we were during 3rd Ed.

All that said, I'm not sure there's really even that much wrong with the core concepts of 40K. Move, shoot, assault. Sorta clunky, but fine, really. The major problems are in ambiguous rules, poor wording, fluff blending with rules, etc. etc. It would take a full rewrite, a review of every single word in the rules, but I think they could produce a much better product without invalidating the Codices. Of course, at that point they'd need to revise all the Codices as well, because there's just as much ambiguity and poor wording there (if not more).

Of course, all of this could be addressed by a timely and responsive FAQ process.

Posted By Toreador on 01/19/2007 9:05 AM
4. Is not ever truly a requirement...   ...They just cut down on a few options they saw as needless or that didn't fit neatly into the book. Why MUST those units be included? Heck, I want my core dragon rider units that elves used to have in WHFB!

This should be a requirement because of a few reasons.

1.  Consistency is kind of important in any game.  Players expect a Sherman tank to be worse than a Tiger in a one on one tank battle.  Just because the Shermans are loosing in this kind of engagement doesn't mean that the designers will "rebalance" the statistics to give the Alies a better chance.  Just because the setting is fictional doesn't make this kind of consistency irrelevant.

A 40k example would be Salamander's Space Marines:  Most special rules lost with no equivalent in the new Marine dex.  I guess they're just Green Ultramarines now.

2.  Respecting their customer's investment.  Seer's councils aside, here's a few examples of where enterprising gamers were completely screwed by GW's rules re-writes.

- 2nd edition - Squats - Eaten by Tyranids.  Count as IG or Orks.  WTF.
- 2nd edition - Eldar.  All lasgun / laspistol wielding models made obsolete.  (This was all the plastic Guardians, and about 1/3 of the metal ones)
- 2nd edition - Genestealer Cult - Discontinued.
- 3rd edition mutable genus.  Think about how many players with lovingly converted (and very expensive) flying gaunt hordes.  Old One Eye and the Red Terror are gone.  4th edition completely cut off support for these options.
- Legion of the Damned.  I could be wrong, but I don't think these dudes have rules support anymore.  Too bad if you have an army of these metal marines.
- Schaefer's Last Chancers.  These can't be used anymore as there is no corresponding rules for a suicide squad in the Guard codex, and their modeled options are kind of iffy.  (Pitty, as they are great models).
- 3rd edition White Dwarf - Chapter Approved - Both cultists and Sisters of Battle Zealots required a lot of investment in time and money to use.  Both are now largely eliminated.

- While I'm not familiar with Fantasy, a lot of the changes seem to occur in the Beastiary, which doesn't help as they're expensive.  The Steam Tank has been streamlined again so the old variants are no-longer usable.  And remember way back when you could put Bloodletters on Juggernauts?  Another very expensive converted model made obsolete.  Your dragon rider example is perfect.  How much would said unit cost to build money wise, time wise for converting and painting...

At any rate, I should be beat soundly with the idiot stick just for posting this reply... so I'll shut up now.

You GW hating poopy pants! No fair!

issue 292....zealots made a return. Didnt have to change a thing model wise.

Otherwise your correct.

Well, you did leave out the Zoats (both fantasy and 40k) that I have large amounts of, along with the orginal Slann and the small Fimir force. Genestealer Hybrids are yet another, along with eldar ghost warriors.

Historicals are a bit different as you have a set boundry. I have been through different incarnations of historical games where they tweak the stats of tanks to make them more historical, or give the matchups the historical "effect" with differing results. Some historical rulesets have even invalidated whole armies lists until the lists were updated. It happens everywhere.

Then you have the mounds of Warzone and Vor stuff I have,.. of companies long since gone. Things change. It's just a fact of life. Doesn't mean it always makes me happy. Not many games or companies have made it as long as GW has.

Torreador> You sir, have a tolerance worthy of Buddah. The rest of us are, sadly, only human.

Posted By Toreador on 01/19/2007 9:05 AM
4. Is not ever truly a requirement. I haven't played many games systems where this was ever a standard. Things change. Not that I have bought into it, but I see that working on a few unique units that aren't necessarily used by every eldar craftworld isn't a priority. They wanted to make a generic Eldar book that would cover as much of the Eldar race as possible. Why connect things to Eldrad? He's dead. And it isn't like they made any miniatures obsolete. They just cut down on a few options they saw as needless or that didn't fit neatly into the book. Why MUST those units be included? Heck, I want my core dragon rider units that elves used to have in WHFB!

1 and 3 should be standard. With GW products it is lucky when it happens.

2 is why games are ever changing. Every game.

I will have to respectfully disagree. I believe 4 is important. Now, I'm not saying that they have to be there in the same format (which is why I gave my illustration, more on that later) or that they have to have the exact same rules; I just think it's important for players to know that their army won't be rendered irrelevant seemingly on a whim. Look at everyone who made daemon armies for WHFB for the campaign last summer, only to be told that said armies won't be recognized as tourney-legal, within a year of that campaign.

Squats and Zoats are interesting examples, as are Jokero and Slann: these were armies that, as the design team moved forward, couldn't figure out a good way to do them. Fine. That doesn't mean they should just kill them off. Reintroduce them in some way, even if only in the form of an article in WD on how to use 'mercenaries' or something. (just so you don't get confused, the preceding was an illustration, and not a long-held fervent belief on my part of how to play the game, or some kind of gospel). There is precedent for this, in the form of the Citadel Journal Harlequins list, as well as the Arbites option in C:WH.

Regarding my illustrations: that's all they were. Just some examples of how everyone could think differently about the whole notion of updating the rules/lists. Tying things to Eldrad was just an example of how they could have preserved the feel of Ulthwe, using the precedent of both the Farsight special rules (more battlesuits, no ethereal, FCW get USR, etc.) and Lysander special rules (oh, and he's dead too).

Deadness/fluff is irrelevant: are you going to look at the person across from you with the Eldrad-based army, in ANY gaming setting (friendly, tournament, league) and tell him/her he can't field that army because the character (who's rules are provided in the codex, who is NOT A SPECIAL CHARACTER and does not require opponent's permission to field) is dead?

However, your point helps prove my point: if they want to move the fluff along, then have the units fit the fluff. If that means that a certain character is dead, then don't provide rules for him (exceptions could be for special one-off scenarios for those who want to play 'historical' games, etc.).

Finally, with regards to #2, obviously balancing a list/game takes fine tuning: Warmachine, which has very few useless units, and has little in the way of 'codex creep', just went through this with Prime: Remix, fixing some issues from the early days. Having said that, there is a difference between fine-tuning and bait-and-switch. Fine-tuning is not what's happening with 40k. Instead, we have a game of 'tit-for-tat'. Oh, transports are powerful in 3rd? Let's nerf 'em. That's not fixing the balance problem; that's rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.

At the end of the day, all I'm trying to argue is that GW has within its power the ability to fix all of these problems, and there are plenty of precedents in its history and rules showing them how. The fact that they don't, the fact that their 'fixes' are inexcusably inconsistent, and the fact that, rather than starting over to look at the game holistically they prefer their old tricks of codex creep and tit-for-tat nerf/power-up, shows me no way forward, and we only enable the designers when we allow them to dictate the discourse for us.   

Old One Eye and the Red Terror 

Presumably Keezus would like every option from every codex from every edition in the current version of the game. Hurrah for Harlequin robots and land raiders! Jet cycles and beastmen with jump packs for the Guard! Graviton guns on my Marines!

The thing is that 40k started out as a very different animal from the one it is now. Initially it was a roleplaying skirmish game and the wacky lists and model choices refelected that. The focus is better now and specific weapon types have been developed for each race. Why go back and give them the original choices (boltguns on tyranids)?

Also, lets not forget that GW makes mistakes all the time and some army and model concepts are just lame. Better to kill them off rather than keep including them, allow people to keep buying them, just compounding things, and make it even worse later on down the line.

Personally, reliance on printed media will always make life hard. Being unable to undo or change anything puts l lot of pressure on a company to get it right first time. That said, in GW's case, they don't seem to want to playtest the products properly to offset the problems of static print.

My personal dream scenario:

GW partners with a medium-sized electronics company to release a cut down, but fairly cheap (possible subsidised) electronic ink-based reader for around £75, including a free copy of the main rules. Codexes and Army books can be bought for £6ish and are loaded onto the reader. Incremental updates allow for balancing and rules clarity changes to be delivered via automatic update whenever the user connects their reader to a computer. Security on this is water-tight, else copies will become extremely easy to make. A record of changes is made availible, and very clear. White Dwarf remains print-based.

Now, be removing static rules, small changes can be made regularly. Also, Chapter Approved updates are made easier to spread around, and also can be updated based on user feedback. Because it is now so much easier to spread rules out, they could increase the breadth of rules released, with rules clearly marked as experimental or tournament-ready. Perhaps experimental rules may eventually be upgraded to tourney readyness by using the playing and paying public as their testers. Updates are free, large updates such as total re-writes are not, but perhaps reduced in price if you possessed the previous version of the codex. Sub-lists could be charged for say £2 each.

Now, sublists. If say, someone in GW made a sub-list for Genestealer Cults, and releases it via the reader. A fair few players respond promisingly, the list is made more balanced, and GW releases metal conversion bits for the Cadian Imperial guard sprue to make brood brother. These sell either well, or not very. If they don't sell to well, nothing happens. If they do, GW roles out a few more products, and spend more attention to the rules, upgrading them to full tournament standard. By being able to gauge response to releases, and by releasing products in one range fairly slowly, but multiple ranges at once (as opposed to the one range big blob release schedule at the moment) they can scale back or increase focus on lines.

Now, this may require a change in the way they design and release models. The current system is quite slow, from design to sculpting to release. Ideally for this system to work, they will have to increase the speed at which models are created, perhaps utilising their snazzy computer and laser based system they spent so much money on. Overall, there may be a slight decrease in the quality of art direction, but if it means an increase in the breadth of models (as opposed to recycled marine models every other release) then that keeps me happy.


Anyway, enough fantisising. The odds of GW ever changing from their current inflexible model to anything like this is practically nil. I personally see GW similar to Microsoft. Gargantuan, Slow to react, and thinks it rules the world and everyone has to work the way it wants them to work. And my approach might be similar to Google. Small, flexible and fast to react. Well, recent history will tell you how well that went for Google.

I don't want to even get into an arguement about Warmachine, because warmachine by it's very nature IS codex creep. And I have some Menoth jacks I will sell you if you can use them, because they ARE worthless

I am in agreement in part with you syr8766. I agree with all your points on the forces that were entirely gotten rid of, or suddenly you can't use those minis you bought.

I am in disagreement about what the Eldar codex did. It redressed and balanced things in my opinion without truly making anything unusable. They aren't just usable in a list as they were.

It would be nice if they just put out "optional" lists in the White Dwarf.

But then we all know what happens then. People still complain. Is this "official"? Is it not? Can I use it in tourney play?

Every time they have done "fun" rules in the past they were bitten by it. We are just a big disgruntled mass on the interweb.

I think it's important to notice that there are two issues being conflated as one "fixing" issue.

One is balance, the other is ambiguity and contradictory rules.

I think the former is much more subjective, is a moving target, and is not something GW should be overly concerned with. Somebody is always going to insist that the Eldar are nerfed, even as some other guy insists they're totally cheesy broken. You can't please everyone. Plus, even if you do make things nicely balanced, the community can unbalance them. If everyone in a given area is playing Marines, Starcannons are undercosted. If everyone in another area is playing horde armies, Starcannons are overcosted. As far as balance goes, I think the lists are, overall, pretty good. Probably as good as can be expected. There are a lot of armies that can win big tournaments. Yes, Orks need some help. Yes, Blood Angels are a bit broken. It's nothing too severe, and isn't a core problem. Balance should be a goal, broken units and combinations should be weeded out, but you're always going to hear *female dog*ing about this, and I think it's by far the strongest area of the 40K rules currently.

What IS a core problem is ambiguous and contradictory rules. There's no subjectivity here. If two reasonable people can't agree on what a rule says, it's objectively a badly written rule. This is where I'd like to see GW focus their attention. Clean up the rules, make them consistent, understandable and unambiguous.

Posted By lone pilgrim on 01/19/2007 11:15 AM

Presumably Keezus would like every option from every codex from every edition in the current version of the game. Hurrah for Harlequin robots and land raiders! Jet cycles and beastmen with jump packs for the Guard! Graviton guns on my Marines!

Dude.  I won't rest until I can field my:  Ork Slaan Daemon Prince Farseer Ancestor Lord wearing Terminator Exo-Armor, a Conversion Field a Rosarius, a Banshee Mask, trademark item, melta bombs, wielding a matched pair of ivory handled twin-linked thunderhawks and a wearing master-crafted Carnifex across his back.

One thing that hasn't been brought up in the discussion yet is the fact that GW promised that your armies would still be able to be used in 4th edition.

Posted By Abadabadoobaddon on 01/19/2007 11:55 AM
Deleted by the =][=

I thought about sigging you.

I thought about it longer than I should have.

But in the end (no pun intended), I decided I just wouldn't feel comfortable (no pun intended).

It's funny as hell, but I just couldn't look myself in the mirror after I did it (no pun intended).

It's been a full two minutes since I read your post and I'm still laughing.  Damn you!

 

-Jmz

Posted By keezus on 01/19/2007 12:10 PM

Posted By lone pilgrim on 01/19/2007 11:15 AM

Presumably Keezus would like every option from every codex from every edition in the current version of the game. Hurrah for Harlequin robots and land raiders! Jet cycles and beastmen with jump packs for the Guard! Graviton guns on my Marines!

Dude.  I won't rest until I can field my:  Ork Slaan Daemon Prince Farseer Ancestor Lord wearing Terminator Exo-Armor, a Conversion Field a Rosarius, a Banshee Mask, trademark item, melta bombs, wielding a matched pair of ivory handled twin-linked thunderhawks and a wearing master-crafted Carnifex across his back.

Heh heh. Touche!

Posted By Jmznudd on 01/19/2007 1:21 PM

Posted By Abadabadoobaddon on 01/19/2007 11:55 AM
Deleted by the =][=

I thought about sigging you.

I thought about it longer than I should have.

But in the end (no pun intended), I decided I just wouldn't feel comfortable (no pun intended).

It's funny as hell, but I just couldn't look myself in the mirror after I did it (no pun intended).

It's been a full two minutes since I read your post and I'm still laughing.  Damn you!

 

-Jmz

Drat....it got deleted. I missed it.

Hmmm lots of posts being deleted nowadays. I think I would prefer a warning or some such.

Posted By Toreador on 01/19/2007 9:05 AM
Heck, I want my core dragon rider units that elves used to have in WHFB!
   

Oh Lordy, how could I ever have forgotten that army list option! The stuff that dreams were made of!

I say: expecting every unit ever created to be kept and somehow rehabilitated is flawed. I've worked in a corporation where people woudn't drop a bad idea for fear of upsetting the bigwigs. Recognise a failure and move on.

You & I might both want the horseradish-powered personal teleporter to work, but we both know we can't waste any more of our lives working on it, as it's not really going to happen.

Sorry, terrible analogy. It's 2am here.

Not everything dropepd was a failure....

Posted By carmachu on 01/20/2007 6:40 AM

I say: expecting every unit ever created to be kept and somehow rehabilitated is flawed. I've worked in a corporation where people woudn't drop a bad idea for fear of upsetting the bigwigs. Recognise a failure and move on.

Not everything dropepd was a failure....

Agreed. By those standards, Las/plas razorbacks must've really sucked, while Vibro-cannons were clearly the best idea evar (TM).   

Posted By Hellfury on 01/19/2007 3:23 PM

Posted By Jmznudd on 01/19/2007 1:21 PM

Posted By Abadabadoobaddon on 01/19/2007 11:55 AM
Deleted by the =][=

Drat....it got deleted. I missed it.

Hmmm lots of posts being deleted nowadays. I think I would prefer a warning or some such.

A lot of posts are just clearly over the lines nowadays.

When it's a new poster, an edit or deletion plus a warning or explanation is standard.  When it's someone who should know better, a simple deletion or edit predominates; we'll usually throw in the warning if we're considering more serious action, like banning.

I'm not considering banning Abby right now (though I didn't see the post either, and if it was bad enough, the mod involved may have PM'd him about it).

He didn't use profanity or anything, although the content was more NC17 than PG13.

It was funny though.

-Jmz

Posted By syr8766 on 01/20/2007 9:49 AM

Posted By carmachu on 01/20/2007 6:40 AM

I say: expecting every unit ever created to be kept and somehow rehabilitated is flawed. I've worked in a corporation where people woudn't drop a bad idea for fear of upsetting the bigwigs. Recognise a failure and move on.

Not everything dropepd was a failure....

Agreed. By those standards, Las/plas razorbacks must've really sucked, while Vibro-cannons were clearly the best idea evar (TM).   

I think those are clearly model-driven decisions.  They weren't making that turret option as part of the plastic razor kit, and they did have these sweet, fairly new Vibrocannon models no one was using.

Posted By Mannahnin on 01/20/2007 10:00 AM

Posted By syr8766 on 01/20/2007 9:49 AM

Posted By carmachu on 01/20/2007 6:40 AM

I say: expecting every unit ever created to be kept and somehow rehabilitated is flawed. I've worked in a corporation where people woudn't drop a bad idea for fear of upsetting the bigwigs. Recognise a failure and move on.

Not everything dropepd was a failure....

Agreed. By those standards, Las/plas razorbacks must've really sucked, while Vibro-cannons were clearly the best idea evar (TM).   

I think those are clearly model-driven decisions.  They weren't making that turret option as part of the plastic razor kit, and they did have these sweet, fairly new Vibrocannon models no one was using.

Like not having (current) models/options for something ever stopped GW from writing rules for it. Dreadnought weapon options, for example.

Posted By Mannahnin on 01/20/2007 10:00 AM

Posted By syr8766 on 01/20/2007 9:49 AM

Posted By carmachu on 01/20/2007 6:40 AM
Quoted Stuff

Not everything dropepd was a failure....

Agreed. By those standards, Las/plas razorbacks must've really sucked, while Vibro-cannons were clearly the best idea evar (TM).   

I think those are clearly model-driven decisions.  They weren't making that turret option as part of the plastic razor kit, and they did have these sweet, fairly new Vibrocannon models no one was using.

Yes, but what I'm saying is that it didn't have to be that way. They could have included it in the sprue, or just kept the rules for it, or even threw in rules in WD (heck, that's what they did for the Empire Steam Tank).