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 Brutallica wrote:
Yes it annoys you. Comeon, you dont even know what taking a break means

No. It doesn't. I appreciate that English isn't your first lanuage and I commend you for speaking it waaaaaaay better than I can speak Danish. However, it was a rhetorical question, not a statment. I do understand what taking a break means, I was suggesting you don't (hence the question mark) but never mind. Complain away!

 Hollow wrote:
Isn't that kinda the point though? It ISN'T an 8th edition balance thread. It a completely different topic (a good one I might add) which is being swamped by his negativity. It seems to me he would be doing himself a favour if he stopped with GW and 40k considering he hates it so much. (would be nice for the forum as well, to be rid of the constant moaning)

IOW, you want the conversation in a "what would you change about GW" thread to refrain from criticizing GW, and be limited to praising what GW is already doing and saying that you wouldn't change anything. Nope.

Year 1: A new algorithm is implemented that automatically buffs poorly selling models and nerfs models that has been sold out in a while. GWs legal team is expanded and I marry a young trophy wife.

Year 2: A new kind of space marine called the Superior Marine is introduced. It is slightly bigger better and cooler than the Primaris Marines.

Year 3: Pokémon is made into a playable faction. Pikachu spam dominates the meta for almost a year, until the models are nerfed into kingdom come. For the first time in GWs history lawsuits generate more revenue than miniature sales.

Year 4: Warp boxes are introduced. They contain a random miniature from a known faction. Most of them are quite ordinary, but rare and super rare models are also present, and quickly begins to dominate the meta.

Year 5: I marry an even younger trophy wife with even bigger tits. A small country is evacuated to make room for my new palace. GW lawyers now number more than 10000 and is organized into battalions.

Year 10: GW takes over the government in the UK, and the new Ordo Legalitius runs the treasury. GW royalties amounts to more than 10% of the GDP and is for the first time referred to as tithes.

Year 100: I am enshrined in a Golden Throne in GWs headquarters in Buckingham Palace. I am artificially kept alive by a steady stream of botox-infused trophy-wives. The cycle is complete.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
Isn't that kinda the point though? It ISN'T an 8th edition balance thread. It a completely different topic (a good one I might add) which is being swamped by his negativity. It seems to me he would be doing himself a favour if he stopped with GW and 40k considering he hates it so much. (would be nice for the forum as well, to be rid of the constant moaning)

IOW, you want the conversation in a "what would you change about GW" thread to refrain from criticizing GW, and be limited to praising what GW is already doing and saying that you wouldn't change anything. Nope.

No. I just think that "I'd fire everyone and start from scratch because everythings rubbish and they're all clueless morons! WaaaaWaaaa!" isn't constructive or interesting. It's dull.

Well to get back on track here. I would gather the Rules writers together and have numerous meetings on where the direction of the game needs to go and on how we should go about making the game more balanced. Anyone who thinks 8th is balanced is lying to themselves.

I would also hire anywhere from 100-1,000 game testers for the low low price of NOTHING.

Anyone here would be willing to spend a day playing 40k if GW offered them the early rules or maybe a new model or two. GW has so many untapped resources in its gaming community that it is astounding.

Next I would work to merchandise the crap out of 40K. The fact that they don't is beyond me.

Finally, I would hire a game designer for each faction that plays that faction and LOVES that faction and use them as the stick to measure new rules on. No army should have to spend an entire edition (in orkz case 3-4) on the shelf because the design team either doesn't understand the army or just doesn't care.

pismakron wrote:

Year 4: Warp boxes are introduced. They contain a random miniature from a known faction. Most of them are quite ordinary, but rare and super rare models are also present, and quickly begins to dominate the meta.

I get that you're being facetious. I actually think this one is a pretty good idea. $10 for a mystery model. You know the faction ahead of time. Bonus points if it's tied to a game of 1-3 models to get new people interested (I vaguely recall there was a game at that scale around the turn of the century?).

 Hollow wrote:

 Brutallica wrote:
Yes it annoys you. Comeon, you dont even know what taking a break means

No. It doesn't. I appreciate that English isn't your first lanuage and a commend you for speaking it waaaaaaay better than I can speak Danish. However, it was a rhetorical question, not a statment. I do understand what taking a break means, I was suggesting you don't (hence the question mark) but never mind. Complain away!

Oh i will complain away indeed, just to annoy you

SemperMortis wrote:

Finally, I would hire a game designer for each faction that plays that faction and LOVES that faction and use them as the stick to measure new rules on. No army should have to spend an entire edition (in orkz case 3-4) on the shelf because the design team either doesn't understand the army or just doesn't care.

Good ideas, this one in particular has always made me wonder. I'm hoping the recent cups, badges and journal books are a step in this direction.

 Hollow wrote:
No. I just think that "I'd fire everyone and start from scratch because everythings rubbish and they're all clueless morons! WaaaaWaaaa!" isn't constructive or interesting. It's dull.

It is, however, accurate. GW's rules are terrible, to the point that a complete redesign from scratch is necessary, and their authors show no signs whatsoever of being capable of doing better. Worse, they have demonstrated a "casual at all costs" attitude towards the rules, where yelling "beer and pretzels, forge a narrative" is an excuse for printing bad rules (which are also bad for casual players, btw) and blaming competitive players for having fun the wrong way. This is a company-wide problem, and anything short of firing everyone is just delaying the inevitable. It would be far better to fire everyone up front and admit that you're starting over than to keep pushing out broken rules until you finally acknowledge that the process isn't working and fire everyone.

Sorcererbob wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
I'd fire the current devs and hire people with a clue.

How? Presume that the current writers probably appear to have a clue in an interview.

The rules team isn't paid enough to attract or keep quality people.

They need to accept the value of the rules quality to the business, increase the budget for the rules team (by an amount that really isn't massive compared to their profit) and recruit some people with a proven track record. At minimum the rules team needs an excellent manager with industry-specific experience but a clean sweep (including Jervis) would be better.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
I'd fire the current devs and hire people with a clue.

How? Presume that the current writers probably appear to have a clue in an interview.

The current rules team isn't paid enough to attract or keep quality people.

no offense but how much do they need to be paid? This forum itself is a free tool GW could utilize to develop rules for each faction.

Even in this hypothetical situation, you wouldn't legally be able to just walk in a fire everyone anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:
This forum itself is a free tool GW could utilize to develop rules for each faction.

That would be terrifying. The vast majority of suggestions made on here are utter dross, my own included!

SemperMortis wrote:

no offense but how much do they need to be paid? This forum itself is a free tool GW could utilize to develop rules for each faction.

So your plan is to employ people with zero experience writing rules, pay them about the same as a bus driver and then have them ransack forums for other people's ideas to combine into rules? How is this different to what's already happening?

SemperMortis wrote:
Finally, I would hire a game designer for each faction that plays that faction and LOVES that faction and use them as the stick to measure new rules on. No army should have to spend an entire edition (in orkz case 3-4) on the shelf because the design team either doesn't understand the army or just doesn't care.

I agree with all of the things you said. I want to drill down on this one though, if you don't mind. I think it has value, but I want to understand the execution.

I wonder how large the design team is. I can't imagine there are more than a half-dozen game designers currently. How many factions are there? 15? And we're going to fill the gap. Let's say we need to hire 6 people. I don't actually know how much a game designer costs. Let's assume you get them at cutthroat rates because you'll find people who love the game. So you get them for 60k AUD (that's graduate wages in most fields here). You're saying we should spend $360k AUD per year. Plus plus plus -- they'll want raises and bonuses and training and other things. Call it 400k AUD -- I think that's a low estimate.

(Playing the part of a director)
What do I get for my investment?

Sorcererbob wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Finally, I would hire a game designer for each faction that plays that faction and LOVES that faction and use them as the stick to measure new rules on. No army should have to spend an entire edition (in orkz case 3-4) on the shelf because the design team either doesn't understand the army or just doesn't care.

I agree with all of the things you said. I want to drill down on this one though, if you don't mind. I think it has value, but I want to understand the execution.

I wonder how large the design team is. I can't imagine there are more than a half-dozen game designers currently. How many factions are there? 15? And we're going to fill the gap. Let's say we need to hire 6 people. I don't actually know how much a game designer costs. Let's assume you get them at cutthroat rates because you'll find people who love the game. So you get them for 60k AUD (that's graduate wages in most fields here). You're saying we should spend $360k AUD per year. Plus plus plus -- they'll want raises and bonuses and training and other things. Call it 400k AUD -- I think that's a low estimate.

(Playing the part of a director)
What do I get for my investment?

People who will stick with their army and warhammer in general for a longer time, less veteran players leaving because of OP or UP things and new players arriving because of the good things that they have (hopefully) heard.

 Hollow wrote:
Even in this hypothetical situation, you wouldn't legally be able to just walk in a fire everyone anyway.

That's not a problem.

Say you've got six writers.

You hire six new, good writers.

You then decide that you only need six and six are getting made redundant. You create criteria to score each of the twelve employees (making sure that the criteria will score the six you want to keep the highest).

You make redundant the six lowest scoring writers which just happens to be the six you wanted to get rid of.

 Hollow wrote:
Even in this hypothetical situation, you wouldn't legally be able to just walk in a fire everyone anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SemperMortis wrote:
This forum itself is a free tool GW could utilize to develop rules for each faction.

That would be terrifying. The vast majority of suggestions made on here are utter dross, my own included!

haha, I spent years as an analyst, its fairly easy to data mine and pull the gems from the trash. Also, I have seen a number of really good ideas in here that went over board due to fanboyism. Taking those and tweaking and adjusting would be a lot easier then doing it yourself, or hiring a development team to do it all.

Let me put it this way, when HQMC was fielding ideas for new gear they would send out teams to AD units in the states and even deployed who would give them design ideas, requirements and needs. The teams would come back, analyze the data and then either build or buy the required gear. GW could do the very same thing for low cost compared to developing a new rule/unit and having it fail spectacularly. (Looking at you Stompa/Nauts).

SemperMortis wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

What do I get for my investment?

People who will stick with their army and warhammer in general for a longer time, less veteran players leaving because of OP or UP things and new players arriving because of the good things that they have (hopefully) heard.

(I'm still being a director)
You're promising balance. How will you balance things by just having more people doing the designing? If anything, would we not be creating a "too many chefs in the kitchen" situation?
I like the idea of people sticking with us for longer, but your argument is premised on balance. You've not demonstrated how hiring more people achieves that.

Sorcererbob wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Finally, I would hire a game designer for each faction that plays that faction and LOVES that faction and use them as the stick to measure new rules on. No army should have to spend an entire edition (in orkz case 3-4) on the shelf because the design team either doesn't understand the army or just doesn't care.

I agree with all of the things you said. I want to drill down on this one though, if you don't mind. I think it has value, but I want to understand the execution.

I wonder how large the design team is. I can't imagine there are more than a half-dozen game designers currently. How many factions are there? 15? And we're going to fill the gap. Let's say we need to hire 6 people. I don't actually know how much a game designer costs. Let's assume you get them at cutthroat rates because you'll find people who love the game. So you get them for 60k AUD (that's graduate wages in most fields here). You're saying we should spend $360k AUD per year. Plus plus plus -- they'll want raises and bonuses and training and other things. Call it 400k AUD -- I think that's a low estimate.

(Playing the part of a director)
What do I get for my investment?

Well for starters you get a happier fanbase, and a happy fanbase is more willingly to part with their disposable income then an unhappy fanbase. I know several players in my local area, myself included, who haven't bought a single GW model in over a year. We purchase from 3rd party or people quitting. We support our local store by buying other items and such. SO if you managed to make people happy you would likely increase your profits.

From a business perspective I'm not sure there's much I would change as they're making money pretty damn effectively right now.

Sure the game is nothing special, but that's borderline irrelevant to them if sales are good. Their focus is not on a balanced game, etc. It's about pushing plastic - something they do pretty well.

Sorcererbob wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

What do I get for my investment?

People who will stick with their army and warhammer in general for a longer time, less veteran players leaving because of OP or UP things and new players arriving because of the good things that they have (hopefully) heard.

(I'm still being a director)
You're promising balance. How will you balance things by just having more people doing the designing? If anything, would we not be creating a "too many chefs in the kitchen" situation?
I like the idea of people sticking with us for longer, but your argument is premised on balance. You've not demonstrated how hiring more people achieves that.

Mathhammer and looking at what the competitive community says are 'acceptable' for point cost per model and point cost per piece of wargear. If more people are in the office who each like a certain army, assuming that there is a 'neutral party' in the rules team, then rules will be given to the 'neutral party' faster which will hopefully be more balanced. It's a risk but it could pay out well.

SemperMortis wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

What do I get for my investment?

Well for starters you get a happier fanbase, and a happy fanbase is more willingly to part with their disposable income then an unhappy fanbase. I know several players in my local area, myself included, who haven't bought a single GW model in over a year. We purchase from 3rd party or people quitting. We support our local store by buying other items and such. SO if you managed to make people happy you would likely increase your profits.

You've made some good points, and I personally agree that a happy fanbase will spend money. I'm less convinced that people buy from other parties because they're unhappy with GW. To be honest I think the more likely motivators are cost (some 3rd parties are strictly cheaper than the GW web store) and loyalty. I think the key question is therefore: how do we get them buying from us INSTEAD of 3rd party brick-and-mortar? Sadly, I think the answer to that question is the reason they have a bunch of special rules for 3rd parties.

I'm guessing that 3rd party online is a lost cause; people will either buy from GW because it's the manufacturer, or they'll buy the cheapest. And GW won't compete on price for their own goods.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kastelen wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

What do I get for my investment?

People who will stick with their army and warhammer in general for a longer time, less veteran players leaving because of OP or UP things and new players arriving because of the good things that they have (hopefully) heard.

(I'm still being a director)
You're promising balance. How will you balance things by just having more people doing the designing? If anything, would we not be creating a "too many chefs in the kitchen" situation?
I like the idea of people sticking with us for longer, but your argument is premised on balance. You've not demonstrated how hiring more people achieves that.

Mathhammer and looking at what the competitive community says are 'acceptable' for point cost per model and point cost per piece of wargear. If more people are in the office who each like a certain army, assuming that there is a 'neutral party' in the rules team, then rules will be given to the 'neutral party' faster which will hopefully be more balanced. It's a risk but it could pay out well.

(i'm still being the Devil's advocate director)
If I've understood what you've said, you want to use a combination of maths and consensus to determine balance. Those suggestions appear to be counter-intuitive when put together, but I'm going to assume that you can find a way to make them mesh well. The part I'm missing is why you need someone who loves the faction to do this -- why do we need to spend the money?
(/director)

I've really enjoyed this thread. Thanks all for your contribution. I'm going to sleep now -- I'm sure I'll have some great ideas to read when I wake up!

Sorcererbob wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

What do I get for my investment?

Well for starters you get a happier fanbase, and a happy fanbase is more willingly to part with their disposable income then an unhappy fanbase. I know several players in my local area, myself included, who haven't bought a single GW model in over a year. We purchase from 3rd party or people quitting. We support our local store by buying other items and such. SO if you managed to make people happy you would likely increase your profits.

You've made some good points, and I personally agree that a happy fanbase will spend money. I'm less convinced that people buy from other parties because they're unhappy with GW. To be honest I think the more likely motivators are cost (some 3rd parties are strictly cheaper than the GW web store) and loyalty. I think the key question is therefore: how do we get them buying from us INSTEAD of 3rd party brick-and-mortar? Sadly, I think the answer to that question is the reason they have a bunch of special rules for 3rd parties.

I'm guessing that 3rd party online is a lost cause; people will either buy from GW because it's the manufacturer, or they'll buy the cheapest. And GW won't compete on price for their own goods.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kastelen wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:

Sorcererbob wrote:

What do I get for my investment?

People who will stick with their army and warhammer in general for a longer time, less veteran players leaving because of OP or UP things and new players arriving because of the good things that they have (hopefully) heard.

(I'm still being a director)
You're promising balance. How will you balance things by just having more people doing the designing? If anything, would we not be creating a "too many chefs in the kitchen" situation?
I like the idea of people sticking with us for longer, but your argument is premised on balance. You've not demonstrated how hiring more people achieves that.

Mathhammer and looking at what the competitive community says are 'acceptable' for point cost per model and point cost per piece of wargear. If more people are in the office who each like a certain army, assuming that there is a 'neutral party' in the rules team, then rules will be given to the 'neutral party' faster which will hopefully be more balanced. It's a risk but it could pay out well.

(i'm still being the Devil's advocate director)
If I've understood what you've said, you want to use a combination of maths and consensus to determine balance. Those suggestions appear to be counter-intuitive when put together, but I'm going to assume that you can find a way to make them mesh well. The part I'm missing is why you need someone who loves the faction to do this -- why do we need to spend the money?

Because why would someone who either isn't invested in their job or loves a completely different army try their best to make the army they're working on fun to play with and against?

 Hollow wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Hollow wrote:
Isn't that kinda the point though? It ISN'T an 8th edition balance thread. It a completely different topic (a good one I might add) which is being swamped by his negativity. It seems to me he would be doing himself a favour if he stopped with GW and 40k considering he hates it so much. (would be nice for the forum as well, to be rid of the constant moaning)

IOW, you want the conversation in a "what would you change about GW" thread to refrain from criticizing GW, and be limited to praising what GW is already doing and saying that you wouldn't change anything. Nope.

No. I just think that "I'd fire everyone and start from scratch because everythings rubbish and they're all clueless morons! WaaaaWaaaa!" isn't constructive or interesting. It's dull.

No its business plain and simple if you have staff constantly making mistakes that upset customers and cost the company money you don't leave them alone you give them a chance to improve and if that does not work you fire them.

8th was the chance to improve and they've messed it up again so they'd get their notice and we'd then go on aggressively recruiting the best most experienced rules writers we could, then we'd ask the community to bear with us as we work to deliver a game worth playing giving full transparency.

No one has a right to a job if you can't do it you should lose it.

It's been said before and I'll say it again. I think a price reduction could really help. I know the model has been gone over before and the price point is optimized BUT I just can't justify $47 for a box of plastic soldiers. I love the hobby and usually limit myself to about 1 purchase a year. That being said if that price was cut in half I would but waaaay more. I would probably even have more then one army.

Sorcererbob wrote:

(I'm still being a director)
You're promising balance. How will you balance things by just having more people doing the designing? If anything, would we not be creating a "too many chefs in the kitchen" situation?
I like the idea of people sticking with us for longer, but your argument is premised on balance. You've not demonstrated how hiring more people achieves that.

I think the main thing to look to here would be Magic. Magic sets are designed in two stages. They have a team of people whose job is to come up with fun cards and then a team of people whose job is to put mana costs on those cards and tweak them so that those cards produce a solid competitive game (Hearthstone does something similar). These are very different skills. Speaking way too broadly, you want creative types determining how it feels to play your game and you want analytical types deciding exactly what numbers to attach to everything to make the game fair. A common problem game designers have is that they don't appreciate the value of the analytic side of things -- people tend to become game designers through the creative side of the business -- and think that they're doing a reasonable job in this area when actually much better results are possible. To be fair, you see the reverse tendency a lot too (very analytically-minded people who have awful creative instincts) but they tend to be shitposters on forums rather than game designers.

This is often a hard problem for game companies to even realize they have, because often they just don't have any competent people in a position to be listened to. Executives are not by-and-large the smartest people, and many of them won't have a very deep understanding of the business they're running, so they won't even grasp that there's an issue here. Game designers are, as I said, mostly on the creative side of things, and lack the mathematical talent and intuition to understand or address balance problems. To be clear, I'm not saying that they're just morons. Most people, in general, would be at least as bad at this. Relatively few people are suited to the job. The big problem is that decision-makers don't even understand that it's possible to be a lot better at the job -- this is basically Dunning-Kruger. In fairness, I don't know what GW pays game designers. I know that Magic gets away with underpaying for talent because it's a popular game among computer programmers, mathematicians, etc. So maybe GW is fully aware that they could hire mathematically competent people to do a much better job balancing the game but just doesn't think it makes sense to offer what would be necessary to tempt these people away from what they're doing now.

Like, it's pretty striking just how obvious imbalances in 8th have been so far. Within days of the indices leaking, people had pegged Guilliman, Razorbacks, Stormravens, Celestine, Manticores, and Scions as really good. It was immediately clear that hordes had gotten a big buff, and people suspected that Guard were going to be very strong. It's really clear that a relatively large number of people had a very, very high hit rate with respect to picking out problem units without even doing any playtesting at all. The community's big Day 1 misses include very few actual errors and more simple overlooking of obscure units -- nobody was really combing through the FW R&H list and analyzing Malefic Lords, and nobody suspected that Razorwing Flocks might actually be a useful unit. The story of 8th so far has been a story about how incredibly useful mathhammer is for figuring out what's good. And so it's very hard not to think that GW lacks people with any talent for this, or else I guess one of the conspiracy theories is right and they're doing it on purpose for whatever reason.

So I actually have experience with management. Here's my free advice to GW:

1. You do need to clean house at the rules team and get some more talent. You don't want to just fire everyone, but you need to see if there are any patterns of unpopular rules coming out of the same person or people. When you get new talent, don't grab new kids out of college. Poach people from Wizards, FFG, e.t.c. Yes, this means you have to pay them more but there's a reason for that.

2. Culture shift. For a long time the attitude was "we make toys and rules are ancillary". This artificially limits your market share because people only want to buy so many toys. You have much greater potential if you instead "make a game" and people want to buy expansions/add-ons. Game first, models second.

3. GW already is promoting more of an 'esports' vibe and attitude towards tournaments but they should step it up. Do what Phreak from Riot did and just have 2-4 people in the company pull shift as casters and open up a streaming channel on YouTube and Warhammer Community. Get an egghead to pull a Day9 with Newbie Tuesday videos and Wednesday Rules Questions via live stream. This would cost very little and greatly promotes player activity (and thus spending).

4. Get more ancillary merch going. Imperial jackets, Chaos hoodies, e.t.c. Even Bioware is doing this with some success and they're about as tone deaf as current GW. You can license production here to a 3rd party.

5. Don't do Codexes/CA for revenue if you're gonna make this many. Make a subscription model instead. Do about half price of a standard MMO subscription (sales team should be able to get an exact number after some research). Do books only as 'made to order' so you don't have excess inventory. That or release fewer books per year.

6. Relic really blew your good will in video games with the disaster of DoW3. You've still got some with Mortal Empires on Total War at least, but you're going to need something big to come back on this. RTS's are always a small market and you've lost the good will for a RPG (plus open world sandboxes are more popular right now). Bethesda is happily taking licenses right now, it might be time to look into a 40k sandbox RPG with them. You WILL have to loosen the reigns on your IP a bit to get something with quality though.

7. Novels are doing good. Maybe don't hire writer's internally so much but you're mostly O.K. here. Maybe do a quick cash grab anthology of short stories by asking famous sci-fi writers to each contribute one (and pay them their normal rates for it, obviously).

8. Do 'mystery models' where players can gift each other units. Charge your base rate for a normal 5 unit troop squad. That's what most people will get so you're fine. Just make sure like .1% gets a Primarch or Knight and people will be all over it. Remember, what is going out isn't random or a mystery to you.

9. Stay away from movies and TV for now. Hasn't worked well and you need a break to let good will and demand come.

10. FLGS's are closing and people need places to play. Building your own is way too expensive. Tournaments are the cheap and easy answer. Keep aggressively sponsoring them and consider holding a yearly 'worldcup' of your own at GW stores.

Implement stricter play testing. 8th is in many ways better then 7th, but also a lot worse.

Realistically speaking?

-Contemplate the cost-benefit tradeoffs of keeping one-man brick-and-mortar stores versus subsidizing third-party local game stores/clubs/conventions. GW stores are *small*, and have the reputation of being a glorified daycare.
-Contemplate the cost-benefit analysis of making the rules free online. While GW loses a potential profit vector, rules tend to be pirated with remarkable ease anyway, and you don't have to worry about supplier goofs, last-minute edits/day 1 FAQs, etc.
-Revisit legal policies. At the least, be more forthright about certain decisions. If you admit "Imperial Guard was not trademarkable and our business is at risk of being completely undercut, and we understand if people keep calling them Guard," I would *hope* players are more understanding or at least appreciative. Saying "it's their High Gothic Name. No really," makes GW look shifty and disrespectful of their fanbase. Remember the "your dudes" factor. People will buy and trade for bitz to convert stuff; move away from stuff like "A Primaris Captain can only take a Power Sword, a Deathwatch Captain cannot take a Bike," etc.
-Likewise, focus on cleaning up and consolodating the old minis range rather than going for continuual new releases. Plastic Obliterator/Mutilator dual-kits, updated Warbuggies, etc. There's a lot of ancient stuff that easily dissuades an army from being popular.
-Feel free to have a "hall of fame" or a "hall of shame", where certain "oops" moments are given time to shine. Heck, you could jokingly award Golden Snotling for the funniest unintended rules interaction to players that discover the bug *and* provide the best fix.

I would AoS 40K and reboot the community.