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I've played 40K since 2nd edition, an I think the game has been constantly getting better over the years, although this doesn't mean it is perfect. Nevertheless, overall the game works and is enjoyable enough to play.

However, as a fan of representative and unified mechanics, there is one (rather big) thing in 40K that bugs me massively: the complete disconnect of vehicle and non-vehicle rules, which has recently been made worse by classifying obvious vehicles as MCs. Not only does this cause various balance problems, it is just jarring. If there's one thing I'd like to be changed it is this. Vehicles should have toughness and saves; they could still have facings (with armour saves) and even damage table, but the overall damaging mechanic should be unified.

There's room to improve to be sure, but it's a fine game and it's how I met my wife back in my pre-teen years.

No game is perfect, especially any game you let people actually play. But I like 40k. I enjoy the fluff, the setting, even the grandiose, over-the-top setting. It's actually one of it's big selling points in my book.

Is it perfect? Not a chance. But I've long since stopped caring about how perfect it is and focused on having fun with it instead and things became a lot more enjoyable for me.

xruslanx wrote:
Speaking for myself here, what I like about the rules is the easy interaction between the fluff and the ruleset. If the designers want to impliment something because they think it's cool, they don't have to use the existing mechanisms in the ruleset, they can just stick it in. I will give some examples of this since that won't much much sense on its own.

So why exactly do you play 40k, the game where you have lots of stupid and un-fluffy things happening because the rules are poorly designed? For example, barrage sniping makes a Basilisk the ultimate sniper weapon, while a unit of sternguard (the elite of the elite for shooting) can't figure out how to stop shooting the tank character (the closest model) and shoot the melta gunner next to him.

Or GK's Warp Storm. Against the old demon codex it practically broke them, yet still fluffy and cool.

Wait, did you just use the special rule that ended the game without playing it as an example of how 40k's rules are good? I think you just lost all credibility here.

A "tighter" ruleset just sounds boring to me. It would essentially mean that anything actually *new* would be impossible, everything would have to be created from pre-existing methods.

First of all, a tighter rule set doesn't mean that nothing new can be created, it just means that everything has to work. Terms have to be clearly defined, rule interactions have to be carefully tested and any conflicts have to be resolved, etc. The goal is to have rules where you never have to wonder what how the rule is supposed to work, not to fit the whole rulebook on an index card.

Second, restrictions enforce creativity. It would be bad if GW was limited to the core rulebook USRs, but they could use a few lessons in using what you already have instead of just throwing on extra rule after extra rule (with no testing, of course).


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xruslanx wrote:
There is already a poll in an anti-GW sub-forum. i know the results will be biased but it might at least put an end to the rediculous "only children can play 40k" and "40k is unplayable" nonsense.

So, how exactly does making a biased poll prove anything other than your ability to make a biased poll?

This is exactly why I have not voted

 Paradigm wrote:
I like the rules. I don't love them, admit they are far from flawless, but they enable me to use the figures I have bought and spent time painting, and to create a story around them. That said, I have 0 interest in competitive play, so am not really bothered by internal/external balance of the various codexes and the rules themselves.

In the same way as you can enjoy a video game that suffers from glitches, poor graphics and/or sub-par mechanics, I enjoy 40k, purely for fun.

I agree with this, and this is why I'm not voting, as a game with a story driven scenario, its great but in competitive play its just a book with the quality you would see in poundland, buy it, read it, play a game, throw in the bin. you can not really compare them because the two styles play so much differently.

The problem with 40k for me is that with the amount of USR it has it wants to be a skirmish game but, but because its a Tabletop wargame, it shouldn't and when mixed it makes for a bad combination, like an omelette with rotten eggs for example.

Current edition is fine, would be great if MC followed the vehicle obscurement rule for gaining cover instead of like infantry.

Makumba wrote:
To be honest I don't understand what polls like this are suppose to prove . If some realy doesn't like w40k , then he probably stoped playing it when 6th started. Melee armies or chaos players won't be voting on this . On the other hand people like me who play IG or those who play armies which do ok in 6th , will say that the rule set is totaly ok or even great. Tau/eldar players will probably call 6th the best edition ever made.

Chaos player here, voting in. I like the rules for 40k, but that's probably because I play with a group of like-minded friends. Hell, I played a 1500 point game yesterday and we got through the whole thing without any problems!

Good for you . out of the 73 people that played at the last big tournament here 0 played csm . In the last new player league out of 16people 0 were csm. I can't remember the last time , I saw csm as something else as helldrake ally . And considering this is a few months after two new codex , it seems to be a bad time for csm players. I mean we have more faresight and Iyaden players then csm players counting the veterans that have csm armeis .

Makumba wrote:
Good for you . out of the 73 people that played at the last big tournament here 0 played csm . In the last new player league out of 16people 0 were csm. I can't remember the last time , I saw csm as something else as helldrake ally . And considering this is a few months after two new codex , it seems to be a bad time for csm players. I mean we have more faresight and Iyaden players then csm players counting the veterans that have csm armeis .

However, sampling data from a tournament scene is not exactly conclusive. At an educated guess and based on experience I'd say the majority of 40k players are casual gamers. This thread has made it clear that 40k has some serious balance issues, and likely was not designed for tournaments, so the competitive players are of course going to play with the top codexes, or migrate to better-balanced games. That still leaves the casual crowd, to whom Chaos is probably just as playable as any other army or style of army. Just because it can't beat netlists build on statistics and broken combinations, it doesn't mean you can't use it in a casual meta and still play successfully.

As I said earlier, it's decent enough.

I think the game is "fine", but it has it's horribly cumbersome and complicated aspects, especially in 6th edition. I do know I will never buy any more of the rulesets, as I already have 2nd ed through 4th edition, and can play friendly games with friends perfectly fine with those. I will not pay another 75 dollars to stay current, when I don't like the slightly smarmy and WAAC community "feel" of the current game.

For the best experience for small games, I would rather play 2nd edition with friends, which allows me to ignore the generally opinion-ed "bad" parts that all the smarmy players used to love, but didn't bring anything to the game but grief. For larger games that need a slightly more streamlined ruleset, 4th/5th edition would be my go-to with the same caveats.

good game designers change things to make the game better and fix problems. terrible ones break things on purpose for no reason other than to drive sales.

I was initially a huge fan of 6th edition. Sure, it nerfed vehicles, which was a but of a bummer, but there are so many awesome ideas in there.

But now I'm in the same place I wound up during 4th edition. The game should be fun, but the appalling lack of professionalism in the rules writing leaves too many grey areas or things that just don't work for me to be enthusiastic about it any more.

Add in the lack of proper FAQ support, with rules issues that have existed for multiple editions now still not being fixed, and the move to an ever increasing array of supplements designed to encourage people to build armies that will be rendered obsolete as soon as the core codex the supplement relies on is updated, while some armies still have codexes that are now two editions out of date...

GW's entire method of rules distribution needs an overhaul. Until that happens, I'll mostly be playing Warmachine.

insaniak what "gray areas" are you referring to? I can't think of rules problems that come up every single game.

The rules are "ok", they could be really good if they would only make a core rule book and all army books at once - but GWS always makes new books choices stronger than before just for the sake of selling more stuff thus bringing inbalance _on purpose_, which is really the biggest downside of 40k.

daisho wrote:
The rules are "ok", they could be really good if they would only make a core rule book and all army books at once - but GWS always makes new books choices stronger than before just for the sake of selling more stuff thus bringing inbalance _on purpose_, which is really the biggest downside of 40k.

Extra Credits sums up intentional imbalance as a game design technique well: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

For thise who didn't spend the 5 minutes watching it, basically the idea is to keep things just a bit off balance to keep the game from ever going stale.

ClockworkZion wrote:

daisho wrote:
The rules are "ok", they could be really good if they would only make a core rule book and all army books at once - but GWS always makes new books choices stronger than before just for the sake of selling more stuff thus bringing inbalance _on purpose_, which is really the biggest downside of 40k.

Extra Credits sums up intentional imbalance as a game design technique well: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

For thise who didn't spend the 5 minutes watching it, basically the idea is to keep things just a bit off balance to keep the game from ever going stale.

Which is perfectly fine in a video game where one day you can play one thing and the next day you can play another without any trouble, but is a pretty big problem when changing faction in a miniature wargame means that you have to spend several hundred euros...


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xruslanx wrote:
insaniak what "gray areas" are you referring to? I can't think of rules problems that come up every single game.

Here, help yourself: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/15.page

PhantomViper wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:

daisho wrote:
The rules are "ok", they could be really good if they would only make a core rule book and all army books at once - but GWS always makes new books choices stronger than before just for the sake of selling more stuff thus bringing inbalance _on purpose_, which is really the biggest downside of 40k.

Extra Credits sums up intentional imbalance as a game design technique well: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

For thise who didn't spend the 5 minutes watching it, basically the idea is to keep things just a bit off balance to keep the game from ever going stale.

Which is perfectly fine in a video game where one day you can play one thing and the next day you can play another without any trouble, but is a pretty big problem when changing faction in a miniature wargame means that you have to spend several hundred euros...

GW isn't the only developer out there who does things like this though. Wizards does it too, constantly shuffling things around, adjusting costs, ect to keep the game from staying too much of the same. If player abuse gets to bad on paticular cards or combos then erratas or bans occur.

PhantomViper wrote:

Here, help yourself: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/15.page

If I can prove that none of those problems crop up in every single game, will you admit that you're wrong?

xruslanx wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Here, help yourself: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/15.page

If I can prove that none of those problems crop up in every single game, will you admit that you're wrong?

That's not the point he's trying to make.

The point is that in many games (not necessarily all, everyone's experience varies) have at least one, or multiple problems.

There are in fact many problems with even how the codex is written for wargear selection. This is technically an issue in any game where you use anything with access to a part of the armoury with the poor wording.

Many people simply ignore these problems and play their own RAI version, but this can only work among friends on a regular basis. Against random pickups or at tournaments, everyone will have a different view.

The actualy realistic, non hyperbolic point is that many, and I would go for a majority, of games have at least one rules dispute/issue/unclear wording occur due to the rules or codices. And YMDC is an example of how many problems there are and how many of them persist.

I just want to play my nids, as long as the rules allow me to do that with out auto loosing every game i'll keep playing. Its the army that makes my day, not the rules.

Melee, shooting ranges, wound allocation, LoS and cover cause many problems, in my experience.

Mind you I haven't played 6th edition so perhaps it is all fixed now.

Basically the same question but 12 pages of answers here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/550170.page

Seems like most were leaning towards "Eh, not the best on purely rules".

Personally I dislike the boredom brought on by my opponent playing their whole turn for 40 minutes straight while I daydream about an interactive game, only being roused to roll a save or two. I really hate having to roll a zillion dice a zillion times just to figure out if a shooting attack was successful. I dislike how the core statline is still so heavily melee/WHFB influenced. I dislike the random, out of a hat point values. I dislike having even the simplest interactions be tedious and generally come grinding to a halt when Rule X from Codex Y overwrites Rule A from Codex Z. And so on and so forth.

 Blacksails wrote:

xruslanx wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Here, help yourself: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/15.page

If I can prove that none of those problems crop up in every single game, will you admit that you're wrong?

That's not the point he's trying to make.

The point is that in many games (not necessarily all, everyone's experience varies) have at least one, or multiple problems.

There are in fact many problems with even how the codex is written for wargear selection. This is technically an issue in any game where you use anything with access to a part of the armoury with the poor wording.

Many people simply ignore these problems and play their own RAI version, but this can only work among friends on a regular basis. Against random pickups or at tournaments, everyone will have a different view.

The actualy realistic, non hyperbolic point is that many, and I would go for a majority, of games have at least one rules dispute/issue/unclear wording occur due to the rules or codices. And YMDC is an example of how many problems there are and how many of them persist.

Thing is, it seems strange to me that the people who regard 40k as having so many problems that it's basically unplayable, just happen to be people who also slag off GW over anything and everything they do, and complain about declining quality of GW models,

Whereas people who don't spend all day whinging about GW tend to find 40k very easy to play with genuinely game-breaking glitches few and far between. That's an interesting coincidence, isn't it?

I like the granularity of the answer options in the poll, especially between "a lot" and "not really".

I haven't had many games I'm still learning myself. But I quite like them. Overwatch is cool, though I never seem to kill anyone with it.

xruslanx wrote:
Thing is, it seems strange to me that the people who regard 40k as having so many problems that it's basically unplayable, just happen to be people who also slag off GW over anything and everything they do, and complain about declining quality of GW models,

Whereas people who don't spend all day whinging about GW tend to find 40k very easy to play with genuinely game-breaking glitches few and far between. That's an interesting coincidence, isn't it?

Well, it makes sense people who don't complain about GW tend to be the ones who like it. I would expect that to be the norm, for well, just about anything that exists. Don't know what point you're trying to make with that line.

The people who have problems with the rules have repeatedly stated what issues there are and what systems exist that are better rules for their game. One of the underlying issues with 40k is the drive to sell more models, which has constantly tried to push the size of games steadily upwards. Now, 28mm is supposed to be a skirmish level game by its very nature. We're talking at most two dozen units with a vehicle or two. Assuming a standard 4x6 or even 4x8 board, this allows for a lot of movement and freedom, while also being able to implement realistic and reasonable ranges and movement.

40k has shoehorned itself into trying to be a 15mm game played with 28mm figures. If all the models were shrunk down to 15mm, and everything remained identical, the rules would work better and the game would have at least some semblance of true tactical depth.

Now, I want to go back to your first statement. Just like your last line that I commented on, this line actually says nothing. Its a contentless sentence that proves nothing besides the obvious. Of course the people who complain about 40k will have other problems with GW. GW makes a few other games of varying quality, but company policy as a whole tends to show through in all their work. All the criticism levied against them is valid to varying degrees. Disagreeing with it doesn't make you any more right, or the other side any less wrong.

The difference in a discussion is how you present your side.

So now I ask you, instead of throwing around meaningless statements with no content or thought or depth or even a smidgen of real attempt at a proper discussion, why not engage in a proper discussion. Raise counterpoints, acknowledge the other side and refute some of the points. Maybe even consider what the other side is saying instead of plugging your ears. Make a convincing argument and make me believe what you believe.

Because, if 40k was actually a good rule set, and the game was even a little more balanced, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?

The 40k ruleset is kind of a mess right now. It really doesn't know what it wants to be, and has lots of units that don't quite know exactly what they want to be. We've got a mix of scales to include things from orbital bombardment, air superiority fighters, personal duels, individual comparisons of who gets to hit who in a melee combat, heavy artillery, and more. The game doesn't know if it wants to be a skirmish scale RPG-ish type game, or a company or even battallion level wargame. We've got gigantic war machines that don't use the rules for vehicles and vehicle rules that basically just make them weak MC's.

The game rules themselves largely function, but the overarching concept they try to grasp at is just a mess.

xruslanx wrote:
Thing is, it seems strange to me that the people who regard 40k as having so many problems that it's basically unplayable, just happen to be people who also slag off GW over anything and everything they do, and complain about declining quality of GW models,

I have never said that 40K is 'basically unplayable'. Just that the current standard of the rules is making it increasingly less fun to play.

Whether or not particular rules issues pop up in every game is irrelevant. Nor does a rules issue have to be 'game breaking' to be an issue. The fact that the rules don't actually cover, for example, how to actually put an Aegis Defense Line that includes a quad gun onto the table isn't game breaking... but it's something that is going to have to be resolved every time I come across a new opponent who has one. And that's annoying, and shouldn't be necessary. Even more annoying is the lack of clarity on core rules, like determining LOS behind infantry models. A thoroughly stupid oversight in the current rules, that should have been addressed in the very first round of FAQs. Instead, we're left to sort it out for ourselves.

I'm not enjoying 40K less because I complain about the current state of it. I complain about the current state of 40K because I'm enjoying it less the worse the rules get.

I enjoy 6th edition much more than 5th. Ironically, I no longer have the free time to play that I used to.