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Yeah. Why would anyone want 40k to have strategy, balance, or competition? People and their unreasonable expectations for a tabletop wargame!
Seriously though, if 40k was just about telling stories, then GW doesn't even need rulebooks. Just sell minis and let people make up their own rules. Or sell pens and paper and let people write some fiction. They obviously assume there's at least SOME competitive aspect to their game, otherwise there wouldn't BE rules. They're just kinda half-assing it.
Also, I just wanna compliment you on that roundabout insult there. If your intent was to upset some people, you sure nailed it. Here's hoping you don't get caught up on a Rule #1 violation.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 05:33:45
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
I've found a lot of narrative folks don't post much on the forums. They absolutely exist, there's a reason they keep putting out stuff for narrative players, and not just in the studio. You just don't see them much here.
That's a very convenient thing to claim. That these people must exist somewhere, despite there being near-zero evidence of that fact. I maintain that the "narrative players" are all but extinct today. Perhaps they existed in editions before now, but the culture surrounding the game has chewed them up and spat them out ages ago.
Personally, I drew my own conclusions about how I was treated by the community at large, as well as the game designers, and how the game didn't accommodate the kind of armies I wanted to play, and stopped playing it. This has made me significantly happier and more positive as a person. Sure, it's sad that there isn't a game out there for me, but on the other hand, beating my fists at the unyielding fortress of arrogance and idiocy that is the GW rules department never got me anywhere.
40k is a terrible game for narrative gaming, and anyone attempting to use it for such should re-examine the meaningfulness of their actions, and Let. It. Go. You're never going to get what you want out of the half-formed chimera that GW has nurtured in its bosom for all these years, and regularly lining up to pay the latest releases is never going to change that.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 06:23:18
I've found a lot of narrative folks don't post much on the forums. They absolutely exist, there's a reason they keep putting out stuff for narrative players, and not just in the studio. You just don't see them much here.
That's a very convenient thing to claim. That these people must exist somewhere, despite there being near-zero evidence of that fact. I maintain that the "narrative players" are all but extinct today. Perhaps they existed in editions before now, but the culture surrounding the game has chewed them up and spat them out ages ago.
Personally, I drew my own conclusions about how I was treated by the community at large, and how the game didn't accommodate the kind of armies I wanted to play, and stopped playing it. This has made me significantly happier and more positive as a person.
From my perspective, And a very narrative minded player. I find GW rules suck at it, Out of the box as a standed they need a lot more work than other games. Even games normally seen as more competitive like warnmachine provide a better starting point for narrative games.
SImply though a narrative consistency from the rules they go a long way, but also in how power and unit effectiveness on the table.
As well as rules already set and easy to adapt to a lot of situations where everyone at the table can easily understand.
IF GW was catering to a narrative competently i feel they would have been cleaning up far more of the Vehicle rules for a start and 8th would not be in the state it is in at all.
Super heavys would have facings and far more involved movement and how they are involved in the game and how they function.
From a narrative point, good rules and the ability mimic the universe in a interesting and believable way is very important.
From there intent, If they where focusing for narrative play as important Knights would not have release at that time in that way, and person in design should have seen that could be a problem. They just thought it was COOL, and used the rule of COOL to justify they half done work. And make some easy money.
I am not saying there cannot be a narrative based set of content. Missions, exceptions to the rules etc...
I am saying it needs to be built off the backbone of a core centralized, structured rule set. 8th went the opposite way around. The rules are written loose and flimsy with many suggested ways to playing including sections of optional rules that build a more "balanced" matched play game style. And as a result everyone plays matched as the base line and then adjusts to fit where they need/want.
They need to recognize that and build on that. Strong core central rules. Options to get less strict and get narrative focused.
And no, I am not talking tourneys. I am talking about being able to run into any other player and know quickly and effectively that we are going to play the same game.
These are my opinions. This is how I feel. Others may feel differently. This needs to be stated for some reason.
A key ingredient to GW's beer-and-pretzels delusion is that they expect most people play against their friends, not random people they meet at a store or other venue.
Perhaps it's because that's how traditional historical wargames used to function. Nobody played a Thursday pick-up game of those kind of games, scenarios and forces were arranged well in advance, since often both sides had to prepare for the specific circumstances well in advance, to match their available figures to an agreed upon force that accurately depicted the real armies involved to an agreed upon level of abstraction.
Miniature wargames as mass market products changed all of that, however, and in their blind and confused way, Games Workshop somehow failed to get the message.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
That sounds very much like an excuse to tell people that if something does not work, they should force others to accept fixs they like. As if they played their game only in UK, maybe even only in the HQ, and had no idea how it is playe else where. I would like them to give some examples how someone who play one army per store is suppose to strong arm 20+ people to let him play the game the way he wants, so he can have fun. That would be something actualy interesting to hear. It is as if in their world everything gets fixed with magic, this scenario or rule is not fun, let us change it on the stop. And if we can't fix it, let me go to my truck full of boxs with 5000pts armies, to build two armies that are going to be fun for both of us.
But with such a mind set it does explain everything. Any errata or FAQ changes are mostly made, to cover new unit updates or if someone droped the soap on how they wrote a specific rule. Game mechanics on the other hand, if they are visibily bad or too good, can be fixed on the spot by playerthemselfs. Awesome for places where that can work, horrible for any other place, that requiers legal source for rules to play.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Agamemnon2 wrote: A key ingredient to GW's beer-and-pretzels delusion is that they expect most people play against their friends, not random people they meet at a store or other venue.
I wonder what beer and pretzels have to be made out of in the UK. A beer here costs around 1 euro, a pretzel is half a euro. An army costs around 800 euro. I guess in UK, you buy beer in bottles of solid gold and pretzels are sprinkled with gold dust.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 07:06:09
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever. Your typical player is likely only to really be into the game for a year or two, playing maybe once or twice a month or two, most will play a couple dozen games ever if not fewer, even many relatively active players may only get in ~50 or so games playing once a month over the course of an edition. The people that play hundreds of games over the course of an edition and stick through it for many years are relatively few by comparison. This does have an impact on how GW views and presents their product.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
It is fine for their intent to be to make more narratively focused games. But that is not an excuse to not bother to design a robust core system to hang your narrative games around.
8th certainly looks on the surface to be better than the previous two editions in that regard, but there is stil a lot of silliness and bad design ideas in the game that are obvious from even a fairly superficial read.
As others have said, if GW expect me to do the work of fixing all that stuff and designing my own stuff, that is cool, but then I will not be spending money on their over priced and poorly written published materials. There are plenty of simpler, easier to adapt systems out there with a more robust core, and if I am gonna be negotiating everything anyway with my opponent, I figure I will start the negotiation with "Hey lets use these cool models to play this other, better game!".
I think what that designer is saying is really more of a justification or excuse though. One of my favourite modern games is 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, which certainly lends itself towards a tailored experience and is certainly helpful in creating a narrative (though I would dispute that it is purely a narrative game). And to appeal to people who like a narrative, one of the main things they release are pre written adventure narratives to inspire people, give them stuff to take apart, locations and stories to work with or play through. GW does sometimes release stuff like this, but it is not the majority of their releases in the same way it is for Wizards of the Coast. They were releasing a bunch of narrative campaigns for Age of Sigmar, so perhaps that was their intent, but I think the books were too expensive and the system they were based on was too half formed and controversial, so they seem to have stopped with that model now. Maybe they will try again? I liked the narrative stuff for the Third War for Armageddon, it was great.
Wargames are resource heavy and expensive hobbies, a robust core set of rules is really important to make sure that the experience is satisfying on a base level.
Vaktathi wrote: Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever.
I wish GW told that at the stores, or at least the sells people told that to new people. It does seem to make a lot fo sense. If rules are bad fix them yourself, most buyers aren't playing in the first place, so we don't care about rules that much. The droping after a year or two seems to be true too. When I started with people at school there were 15 people that were new, 6 including me from my class. Now the ones left are me, one guy who got in to tournaments, and two other guys that play at small events in the store for prize money. Everyone else either stoped playing, or plays something else, but most no longer play, they sold their armies to new people.
8th certainly looks on the surface to be better than the previous two editions in that regard, but there is stil a lot of silliness and bad design ideas in the game that are obvious from even a fairly superficial read.
Considering I never played anything other then 8th edition, I wonder how bad prior editions had to be for 8th to be considered good. They had to be really horrible, to a point I can't even imagine it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 07:47:55
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
They release things like that to say " Lol, the game isn't supposed to be balanced it's all about forging the narrative ! " Which is a phrase I'll never ever forget from 6th 7th days as the mantra of the most broken crap I'd ever seen.
Yet, they release rule sets to make under performing units, armies strong, do yearly points balances and FAQs for balance they say, when they don't intend to balance it ? Seems odd and they support and attend all these tournaments which seem to be using their rules in ways they don't intend, to pound each other to paste.
So why even bother with rules and just say that nothing is tournament legal or cut out for it.
They just love to talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Forging the narrative didn't work in 6th, 7th and almost killed AoS on its launch. They either need to be very over the top clear in that their rules are a joke involving balance of any kind, or actually hire real rules writers to balance it for them.
I add further, if this narrative approach was their goal they would support their old products more, as pushing that narrative is seemingly all well and good when selling new stuff, but I guess all that narrative goes out the window when it comes to kitbashing models, or using out of print models, why even bother calling out legends not for tournaments if the rules are just for narrative anyways.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/09/09 08:06:10
Wait, forge the narrative was a thing, that GW actually said?
Because people here use it like an insult or making fun of someone. If they table them in one turn, then someone may come and ask, if they weren't "forging the narrative" enough in english.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/09 07:58:32
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Karol wrote: Wait, forge the narrative was a thing, that GW actually said?
Because people here use it like an insult or making fun of someone. If they table them in one turn, then someone may come and ask, if they weren't "forging the narrative" enough in english.
Forge the narrative was their battle cry. Far back in the dark times. When I lamented how utterly broken the rule set was I was told to " Forget the narrative " it was literally what GW said as to why nothing needed to be balanced and was thick in their propaganda at the time period. Why do you think people use it as an insult now ? It was supposed to be what formations were created to do, help forge the narrative in their words.
Aye, their "rules" for terrain being based entirely around plastic kits they produce and sell for a lot of money point toward a certain cynicism when it comes to "forging a narrative", as does the gradual culling of models that do not have explicit kits (Looted wagons, certain characters, stuff like Guard Doctirines and Chapter Tactics).
Oh and Karol, absolutely that was something that they said and pushed quite hard.
Narrative gaming is not particularly supported by GW over any other style. Perhaps they want to, but it is just more incompetence on their part.
The greater incompetence is not having the discipline to keep the release schedule at least somewhat sensible, and not leaving entire model lines languishing sometimes three ediitons behind at times.
Again, 8th made good inroads with this with the Index rules, and I do think they are making an effort to correct some of this stuff, but they have to hold themselves to a higher standard and not make excuses.
flandarz wrote: As much as I'd LOVE to field a Stompa, or some Burna Boyz, I understand that doing so is not only going to decrease MY enjoyment of the game, but also my opponent's.
This may not be work for everyone, but when I want to field underpowered units, I'll just tell my opponent what I'm running, and they are usually happy to adjust their lists accordingly. This may be because I don't play with people who only care about stomping their opponents into the dust 100% of the time (though we do also play plenty of competitive-style games). Most of my opponents are really just looking for a fair fight so winning a game in the listbuilding phase before turn 1 even starts is pretty boring for all parties involved, and usually people won't mind putting in a little effort to avoid it. Luckily this is an easy problem to solve. All you have to do is share your lists in advance.
Ayy and generally this is a good thing and sign for the local community you have.
However when you each time have to point out you would like to field ( GK, r&h, Burna boys, speedfreaks, etc) it does get to the point where we should start to see that Gw has issues in balance.
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.
Ishagu wrote: Their intent is for people to have fun?
Hold the phone
I don't think people fun is their goal. It is sell stuff, and people that are having fun do not buy more stuff. Look at mobile gaming, a whole industry created to make people feel miserable, and chasing the new meta rabbit. GW is similar, they make changes to rules, enough for people to start buying in to stuff, and be locked in to an army. They don't fix stuff, they just break it. Inari for example, a clear problem for most of 8th ed, GW fix to them was to kill the army as a playable faction. The whole primaris shift, is the same. People already had marines, or could buy recasts that were cheaper then GW stuff, or could go 3ed party or second market for their stuff. GW creeps in primaris, focusing all new rules, updates and fixs on them. And if they miss something for normal marines, that ends up good, they nerf it ultra fast, like DW bolter rule synergy and their ammo, all the BA army rules, heck the SW codex was changed before its own premier.
So I don't think GWs goal is to make people happy, or to keep people happy. It is more like they want them miserable enough to not leave, but still keep buying stuff on a regular basis in hope that this time, the change is going to be fun. And in fact you can achive fun state for some time. If something has good rules you go all in, and buy the army in one go, and if it is post big FAQ or CA, you can easily have between 6 to 12 months of fun games.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Karol wrote: Wait, forge the narrative was a thing, that GW actually said?
Because people here use it like an insult or making fun of someone. If they table them in one turn, then someone may come and ask, if they weren't "forging the narrative" enough in english.
GW would often use the term "forge the narrative" and it was clear to most people what GW was saying. namely that they viewed 40k as a tool box to tell your stories etc. of course it quickly became a meme about GW's being out of touch with what people really did with 40k. parituclarly among the more compeitive set whose intreast in narrative based play was somewhere around "absolute zero"
Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
Incidentally, I find it hilarious that GW are using the narrative defence, after having removed a ton of wargear and other character options (including entire characters), as well as just about everything that required even a minor conversion to construct.
FORGE THE NARRATIVE, kids! But remember that your narrative must be constructed using only monopose kits WHICH MAY NOT BE COMBINED! Also, ze narrative must be constucted WITHIN ZE DESIGNATED AREA!
Yeah. Forge the Narrative, with our premade kits and complete lack of rules for anything we do not directly sell to you.
It might be true that the designers WANT to do it, but are restrained from that by corporate, but then don't feed us a line to justify poor rules writing.
James spent a good chunk of the Podcast talking about Narrative and Open but makes various allusions to Matched Play and the three ways to play. Just because they focussed the interview on a couple of the areas doesn’t mean they’re unaware of the tighter needs of Matched Play. Whether they meet those needs is down to you, dear listener.
Stormonu wrote: For me, the joy is in putting some good-looking models on the board and playing out a fantasy battle - not arguing over the poorly-made rules of some 3rd party who neither has any power over my play nor will be visiting me (and my opponent) to ensure we are "playing by the rules"
okey, but focusing on open and narrative is like focusing on the smallest way of the game being played. There are probably more ITC tournament players, then people who play open or narrative.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Karol wrote: okey, but focusing on open and narrative is like focusing on the smallest way of the game being played. There are probably more ITC tournament players, then people who play open or narrative.
no, not really, its just that the tournaments get more attention due to releasing who has won etc. Whilest narrative campaigns rarely or seldom get the attention they deserve.
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.
I wonder what beer and pretzels have to be made out of in the UK. A beer here costs around 1 euro, a pretzel is half a euro. An army costs around 800 euro. I guess in UK, you buy beer in bottles of solid gold and pretzels are sprinkled with gold dust.
Vaktathi wrote: Something to keep in mind from GW's perspective, there's a *lot* of people who buy a lot of stuff and never play a single game, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people don't actually play much, or play forever. Your typical player is likely only to really be into the game for a year or two, playing maybe once or twice a month or two, most will play a couple dozen games ever if not fewer, even many relatively active players may only get in ~50 or so games playing once a month over the course of an edition. The people that play hundreds of games over the course of an edition and stick through it for many years are relatively few by comparison. This does have an impact on how GW views and presents their product.
Gw can keep hanging on to that delusional idea but the financial results from the headline days of 6th and 7th say they aren't being realistic. The poor sales of expensive/overly complex model kids rather tanked when the game rules that aren't a sales drive were poor.
Yet when they promise to actually try to produce some functional rules and address mistakes etc the company makes more sales and more profitable than it has been in a long time.
But sure that's totally unrelated and the designers can tell us we're all playing 40k wrong and we should be forging the narative with power points and open play all they want.
I'm just glad someone above them has the common sense to see what the data is telling them.
Karol wrote: okey, but focusing on open and narrative is like focusing on the smallest way of the game being played. There are probably more ITC tournament players, then people who play open or narrative.
no, not really, its just that the tournaments get more attention due to releasing who has won etc. Whilest narrative campaigns rarely or seldom get the attention they deserve.
I just used it as an example. I have played in zero tournaments, yet all the games I played were matched play rules. In fact, I have never seen or met anyone who played or seen someone play narrative or open. I dont know how much of the player base is narrative or open playing, but sure ain't a majority. From what I was told the age of sigmar thing started as a narrative system with no point costs, and it almost killed the game. So as much as selfish this my sound, puting focus on narrative or open play, and then saying people are suppose to balance it themselfs, while at the same time being vogue about the design of matched play rules seems strange.
For example in stuff like card games, the designers can show what they think a deck for a specific game and period in the game make look like. Now this doesn't mean some 4D chess tier player, can't invent something themselfs, but at least everyone knows what and where is suppose to go. This is a tournament deck, those cards are for draft or some other format, everything is clear. With GW the rules writing is never explained, and no I don't think someone saying they wanted to make something cool is an explanation. Cool is a buzzword that means nothing, unless your nude in -40 degree . They somehow expect that one person who plays pre nerf inari, and the other one playing necron are suppose to both invest a lot of money and time, in to their armies, and then magicaly agree on a rule set that is going to be right for both armies, when the armies are on so different tiers of playability, that they may as well be playing different games.
I would like GW to be straight about stuff. Like this is a pool of main factions we update, and want to see in matched, open, tournament etc play, this is something we sell for models, this we sell because we sold it in the past and we are slowly phasing it out etc. A new player works in to a mine field, when he starts the game. And worse thing is that they get conflicting informations, one group tells them to play what they want, and the rest gives them a list of 4-5 armies that are good and everything is crap. Even if someone decides the truth is in the middle, somewhere, they are still in risk of picking the wrong army.
My local pub is about £5.50 a pint, so 6.15€...
yeah, the differences are kind of crazy. My step sister works in UK, and when she comes visit her dad, she always talks about prices in London. I could live a school week out of how much her breakfast cost. Prague and Cracow get a ton of tourists from UK every week. fly in get drunk, fly back , unless of course they get in trouble here. You also don't have to drink as fast, most pubs are open till 2-3 in the morning. And where I live, the gigantic discos we have close at like 5 in the morning, technicaly at least.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
ClockworkZion wrote: I saw this a few days ago, but felt it was worth opeining a can of worms on what GW's "intent" for the rules are.
So for those who don't bother watching: basically the intent is to let you be creative and use the points and rules provided as to tell stories with your minatures. They mentioned the vehicle creation rules and mentioned if you want to use the points values instead, just add up the points like you normally would.
That said there is a large social contract undercurrent with asking others to look at the rules you put together on a model to ensure they're fair to play against.
Basically the intent of the rules team is for people to tell cool stories with their minis instead of focusing on just crushing each other into paste.
Though I'm curious on what the reaction to this will be since it eliminates a lot of claims regarding the studio.
So basically "we are bad at making balanced game so we don't try" even though it's precisely casual narrative games that would benefit most from good balanced ruleset. Competive players are like "who cares". They actually get more of kicks out of imbalance.
