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@ OP It wasnt.

It was/is caused by GW marine rule boosting to boost sales strategy and either incompetence or plain disredgard for its wider community and even makers.

I know RAI versus RAW is a weird ideological conflict that has gone on for two decades and isn't going to stop - but how is this a good example?

Rites of Tempering change to only applying for infantry... was a change. Not a RAI/RAW issue.
The Ironstone change is the same.
Stratagems going up in CP is the same.
Psychic repair skill was nerfed.

Etc?

I'm going to do a generic response since that is much easier than addressing each person individually. RAI is a good stop gap for when the rules are unclear or non-functional. No arguments there. The problem is that it has turned into the defacto norm and as such GW isn't being held to a reasonable standard. Is there really any excuse when GW flat out admits some things are not functional and they lean heavily on RAI to circumvent having to address the rules. The breaking point is where you start getting rules debates on "well I think this is the intention" vs "No I think this is the intention" and it turns into a popularity contest on what the actual intention is going to be. Savior protocols is the poster child for this debate as it has changed dramatically every single time there is an FAQ. Sometimes it reflects the community consensus, sometimes it doesn't.

Again, RAI isn't inherently bad just like mutation isn't inherently bad. It turns into a cancer once it starts disrupting things from working normally just like RAI is giving GW a cop out from fixing things like assault weapons. Forcing the tournament scene to strictly adhere to RAW is probably too extreme, in retrospect I'll cede that point. Ideally, I would want the major tournament organizers to do something more atune to "Obviously GW does not intend for you to have infinite hits on exploding 6s so we are going to house rule in that these hits do not cause additional hits themselves until GW fixes it." There's a subtle difference between "Uh yeah I know it says that but uh we don't think they intended that so we won't play it that way" vs "Uh yeah I know it says that and we don't think they intended that so for this tournament/league/whatever change the text to ________ until they fix it." Hopefully, this is where GW copy+pastes the fix into the FAQ assuming it does what they want it to. RAI people, we both want the same thing and we both agree that the game cannot be played strictly RAW, I am advocating that people stop pretending that words mean things they don't and change the text themselves. Just changing the method, not the end result.

Ultimately though it's irrelevant because I was unaware GW has been caught red handed and outed for intentionally buffing units for sales purposes. Testing for intent might explain how problems like Tigersharks not being able to fire their macro weapon or Longstrike buffing keywords that don't exist happens, but if there's more than just tinfoil conspiracy theories about sacrificing balance for sales yeah that's probably it and RAW vs RAI isn't relevant to the discussion anymore. I was assuming it was creating blissful ignorance for how powerful they were when played RAW.

Lemondish wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Yeah... but no. OP’s hypothesis is nonsense, the analogy is not actually an analogy, and it’s just pure soapboxing. Comparing things to cancer is Reddit-esque edgery. RAI is a tool to make rules work, not something that people are told to use over the words.when playtesting.

This is just a personal agenda, sorry. Not one shred of it will match reality.

agreed. It makes zero sense. especially as the bit he's highlighting is a standard introduction GW's used for a few rules tweeks they've done in the past

Right? We also know from crusaders like BaconCatBug (ironically, as he was soapboxing another point) that the game would be poorer if played purely by RAW, as in it just doesn’t function in lots of cases... but common sense sorts it right out. Honestly, this weird agenda people have about slavishly following rules to the detriment of reason, logic and fun is... well, alien to me.

These people do not play this game. They talk about it. They may even excessively write lists they'll never play and argue the efficiency of units they'll never use. They'll weigh in on the meta, which is arguably their only worthwhile contribution, but the RAW crowd need that little bastion of following the rules to the detriment of the experience. They need that safe haven because the lack of firsthand experience is huge. It's pretend for Internet outrage points.

And they're the reason we don't get nice things.

Wow I've never seen this articulated so well. Very well said

Tyel wrote:
I know RAI versus RAW is a weird ideological conflict that has gone on for two decades and isn't going to stop - but how is this a good example?

Rites of Tempering change to only applying for infantry... was a change. Not a RAI/RAW issue.
The Ironstone change is the same.
Stratagems going up in CP is the same.
Psychic repair skill was nerfed.

Etc?

Yep. The whole premise of the thread is faulty.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Yeah... but no. OP’s hypothesis is nonsense, the analogy is not actually an analogy, and it’s just pure soapboxing. Comparing things to cancer is Reddit-esque edgery. RAI is a tool to make rules work, not something that people are told to use over the words.when playtesting.

This is just a personal agenda, sorry. Not one shred of it will match reality.

agreed. It makes zero sense. especially as the bit he's highlighting is a standard introduction GW's used for a few rules tweeks they've done in the past

Right? We also know from crusaders like BaconCatBug (ironically, as he was soapboxing another point) that the game would be poorer if played purely by RAW, as in it just doesn’t function in lots of cases... but common sense sorts it right out. Honestly, this weird agenda people have about slavishly following rules to the detriment of reason, logic and fun is... well, alien to me.

These people do not play this game. They talk about it. They may even excessively write lists they'll never play and argue the efficiency of units they'll never use. They'll weigh in on the meta, which is arguably their only worthwhile contribution, but the RAW crowd need that little bastion of following the rules to the detriment of the experience. They need that safe haven because the lack of firsthand experience is huge. It's pretend for Internet outrage points.

And they're the reason we don't get nice things.

Wow I've never seen this articulated so well. Very well said

I did know a guy years ago who would try to pull all sorts of RAW BS. He would try to claim things like: A glancing hit with his meltagun on a roll of 2 was a still a 2, because you know you subtract first to a minimum of 1 and then add 1. So you know 2-2+1=2. Or he wouldn't tell you what was in each transport because the rules in 5th ed didn't say you had to. Or wobbly model rule in older editions did say your opponent had to agree. So once after I exploded one of his vehicles he put down a custom built crater that had a small hole in the center and very steep slopes that made it impossible to place your models without them falling over. He would then claim you couldn't charge his models because you couldn't place your models and he wouldn't let you use the wobbly model rule.

He also outright cheated too. Everybody hated that guy.

Edit: Lemondish is probably right for 99% of these rules lawyers. I have meet a few "that guys" while playing 40k over years.

 JohnnyHell wrote:


And who’s to say that is the case here? No one has any proof anyone was ignored, heeded, or anywhere in between. GW done fethed up. At least they haven’t made us wait a whole edition for a fix. Patch is better than no patch, however you look at it. And no product has ever shipped with zero errors (cue BCB parachuting in with his “100% error record!” mantra). For the record this isn’t white knighting, it’s being pragmatic.

but they do it only for some armies. With IH they changed the rules fast, but other armies waited 6 months for an FAQ, and got nothing. Some armies like necron, are still waiting for quality of life errata.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

I did know a guy years ago who would try to pull all sorts of RAW BS. He would try to claim things like: A glancing hit with his meltagun on a roll of 2 was a still a 2, because you know you subtract first to a minimum of 1 and then add 1. So you know 2-2+1=2. Or he wouldn't tell you what was in each transport because the rules in 5th ed didn't say you had to. Or wobbly model rule in older editions did say your opponent had to agree. So once after I exploded one of his vehicles he put down a custom built crater that had a small hole in the center and very steep slopes that made it impossible to place your models without them falling over. He would then claim you couldn't charge his models because you couldn't place your models and he wouldn't let you use the wobbly model rule.

He also outright cheated too. Everybody hated that guy.

Edit: Lemondish is probably right for 99% of these rules lawyers. I have meet a few "that guys" while playing 40k over years.

I love the mental gymnastics that TFG goes through to justify their behavior

Ironhands imbalance was caused by someone being an ironhands fan at GW central. You'd have to be flat out blind to not know it when writing the rules. While they were at it an imperial fist fan meanwhile was like...lets nerf guilliman and then give crimson fists and equal buff for the cost of free.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Ironhands imbalance was caused by someone being an ironhands fan at GW central. You'd have to be flat out blind to not know it when writing the rules. While they were at it an imperial fist fan meanwhile was like...lets nerf guilliman and then give crimson fists and equal buff for the cost of free.

This has been a common conspiracy theory since the dawn of time.

X is broken? Must have been a fan of X working on it.
Y made it through play-testing? Play-tester who's main army is Y probably protected it.

When arguments run together you pretty much know they're made up.

The likely reason(s)? Incompetence, miscommunication, and/or culture clash between departments. Given the first is unlikely to be bad enough to cause the issue it leaves miscommunication and culture clash. Did marketing force the rules writer's hands? Its possible. What matters now is they recognized what biting the hand that feeds them feels like. If it was miscommunication then GW needs to change its process.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Ironhands imbalance was caused by someone being an ironhands fan at GW central. You'd have to be flat out blind to not know it when writing the rules. While they were at it an imperial fist fan meanwhile was like...lets nerf guilliman and then give crimson fists and equal buff for the cost of free.

This has been a common conspiracy theory since the dawn of time.

X is broken? Must have been a fan of X working on it.
Y made it through play-testing? Play-tester who's main army is Y probably protected it.

When arguments run together you pretty much know they're made up.

The likely reason(s)? Incompetence, miscommunication, and/or culture clash between departments. Given the first is unlikely to be bad enough to cause the issue it leaves miscommunication and culture clash. Did marketing force the rules writer's hands? Its possible. What matters now is they recognized what biting the hand that feeds them feels like. If it was miscommunication then GW needs to change its process.

Xeno is partly right here. All broken Eldar stuff was because Phil Kelley loves the space elves and has written their stuff. Heck, their worst edition, 5th, they were at worst mid tier. That says a lot about the favoritism argument.

 DominayTrix wrote:
So as a community should 40k stop giving GW the benefit of the doubt and start applying strict RAW to tournaments until things get fixed? Personally I think its going to suck in the short term, but it is time to rip off that bandaid especially now that we have FAQs as a tool for fixing things.

You realize right that means "dont' play any 40k whatsoever" since it's literally impossible to play 40k raw? Games halt with rules that aren't even covered so you can't play the game to conclusion.

Have fun.

IH imbalance was caused btw not by RAI but GW being lousy designers...well actually scratch that. They wanted to sell their fliers and executioners super fast. Intentional so the supplement worked as intended.

How were IH intended to be played in a way they werent broken? All their rules are quite clear in what way they work and how they buff everything.

Only way they would have been balanced with RAI would be if GW intended that you would only use old marine units like tactical marines, rhinos, assault maries, terminators, drop pods, melee dreads and predators etc. Non of the new stuff at all and only the weakest units and preferably those that barely benefit from all their new rules. But I cant see how that is the case as IH lore makes them vehicle heavy and GW have pushed primaris to high heavens the last few years.

To say they made a supplement intended to NOT use those units just make GW look even more incompetent. Cant even believe this is made as a defense of the IH mess. Now you are gonna say that IF super doctrine is balanced because its obviously only intended to work ok lascannons and multi meltas in devastators/tactical squads despite its obvious synergy with heavy bolter weapons due to their own CHAPTER TACTIC. "Wow! How could anyone ever think their doctrine + tactic would ever be used together. Obviously not RAI"

I don't know, maybe GW expects people to have armies build around a highlander system. So no double units. no FW. most of the stuff becomes to swingy to judge, when all you have is one repulsor, one dread, and flyer etc.

If it is true that they play test stuff with painted studio armies, then it could be like that. They rarely have anything double then troops. Or it is is stuff like two units of agressors, but they aren't 6 men, and one is flamer and the other is dakka.

Maybe they think people play the game that way. Someone living in UK could ask,them to be honest.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

The likely reason(s)? Incompetence, miscommunication, and/or culture clash between departments. Given the first is unlikely to be bad enough to cause the issue it leaves miscommunication and culture clash. Did marketing force the rules writer's hands? Its possible. What matters now is they recognized what biting the hand that feeds them feels like. If it was miscommunication then GW needs to change its process.

I am not very good with math, but I can draw analogy from sports. There is no chance to get a team or a sportsman dominate for 30 years, unless they are helped in some way or start from an unequal footing to begin with. Now I know w40k isn't considered to be a sport by people here. But I think the chance of eldar being great every edition on and on, is a bit strange to say the least.

The same goes for reverse situations, when armies are bad. And even more strange is the fact, that it is the same people writing and testing the books. If it was something like, eldar and marines are done by the Nothingam HQ, and ending up awesome, but NPC or background faction being done by some small sub studio in Canada, being hit or miss, and another one being done In San Paulo and always ending up really under powered, I could understand it. But codex like necron or GK, were writen and tested, by the same people that just did marines, or eldar or Inari, or the knight books. And it is not even the time difference. Take the DG book and place it next to GK. They came out at the same time. GK feel as if they weren't even writen for 8th ed.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Xeno is partly right here. All broken Eldar stuff was because Phil Kelley loves the space elves and has written their stuff. Heck, their worst edition, 5th, they were at worst mid tier. That says a lot about the favoritism argument.

The only edition since 2nd they didn't get a book.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Ironhands imbalance was caused by someone being an ironhands fan at GW central. You'd have to be flat out blind to not know it when writing the rules. While they were at it an imperial fist fan meanwhile was like...lets nerf guilliman and then give crimson fists and equal buff for the cost of free.

This has been a common conspiracy theory since the dawn of time.

Except it was an outright fact with the 3.5 CSM codex ref. Pete Haines and Iron Warriors. The guy said so himself.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Ironhands imbalance was caused by someone being an ironhands fan at GW central. You'd have to be flat out blind to not know it when writing the rules. While they were at it an imperial fist fan meanwhile was like...lets nerf guilliman and then give crimson fists and equal buff for the cost of free.

This has been a common conspiracy theory since the dawn of time.

X is broken? Must have been a fan of X working on it.
Y made it through play-testing? Play-tester who's main army is Y probably protected it.

When arguments run together you pretty much know they're made up.

The likely reason(s)? Incompetence, miscommunication, and/or culture clash between departments. Given the first is unlikely to be bad enough to cause the issue it leaves miscommunication and culture clash. Did marketing force the rules writer's hands? Its possible. What matters now is they recognized what biting the hand that feeds them feels like. If it was miscommunication then GW needs to change its process.

How can incompetence not cause the IH issues?
For all we know the designers still play the game with armies of rhino's and las/plas tacticals so they never considered someone might take 2 Repulsors and some flyers, which to me falls under incompetence.

The only way RAW to be enough is the game to be played for years with minimum changes. There are to many interactions to test after every new release to be cached during the testing.
The real problem is there are so many FAQ and erratas. If you are new player, you can`t get the rulebook, read it and start to play the game. You have to read alot of extra rules that are not updated in the rulebook and that is what annoy me.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Ironhands imbalance was caused by someone being an ironhands fan at GW central. You'd have to be flat out blind to not know it when writing the rules. While they were at it an imperial fist fan meanwhile was like...lets nerf guilliman and then give crimson fists and equal buff for the cost of free.

This has been a common conspiracy theory since the dawn of time.

Except it was an outright fact with the 3.5 CSM codex ref. Pete Haines and Iron Warriors. The guy said so himself.

It's also hard to justify iron hands getting three traits unless the designer was such an iron hands fan he couldn't let one of them go.

Lemondish wrote:

 DominayTrix wrote:

So as a community should 40k stop giving GW the benefit of the doubt and start applying strict RAW to tournaments until things get fixed?

No, because that would require people at tournaments to abandon their ITC house rules. Also, it's a pretty tone deaf thing to suggest.

Intentionally killing the tournament scene to "teach GW a lesson" is as asinine as the continued beating of the drum for RAW when people don't even follow the very basic and fundamental concept of RAW winning conditions in a given game.

RAI is how this game is played, like it or not. Want to play full RAW 40k? You won't be doing it at any tournament without a much more seismic shift away from ITC.

Also the whole 'as annoying as it is baconcatbug has a point and the game literally doesn't function RAW because GW are bad at language' thing.

And I'm sorry, missions are house rules now? That's some bull.

I write procedures and instructions as part of my living, makes me no expert but sure causes me pain when writing is badly done.

A note of "intent" is helpful to put at the beginning of a document to identify what you are trying to achieve with the document and to give guidance if by some horrible mistake <giggle> a rule can be interpreted multiple ways.
A "scope" does not hurt to also define what you feel these rules should affect to ensure you are clear and no "scope creep" happens where you go a little too far.

Most quality systems have now pretty much banned the word "should" and use the word "shall" to make it clear things written do not falsely appear optional: unclear language is a choice and needs to be mercilessly edited out.
GW unfortunately likes to write so everything appears to be from a friend and the soft language causes no small amount of pain.

RAI is bad, full stop.
We cannot lay claim to read the mind of the author and unless they clearly write down their "intent" from the beginning it all becomes a matter of opinion.
The "Iron Hands Imbalance" was caused by bad writing and a decided lack of editing (with an eye to gaming not just language).
Take the most rabid competitive player in the GW shop and get them to itemize how they would leverage the most out of the rules and then have them make an army and beat the author's army of choice into the ground with it.
"But that was not in the SPIRIT of the game!" you could cry, well, rules and anything handed down by authority completely determines the tone of how a system plays-out and will be used to the letter and extreme of the law.

It has been hammered by many in Dakka that GW makes "horrible" rules, I feel their ideas are excellent but their complete dedication to friendly language shoots them in the foot again and again.
I feel they can have the best of both worlds and write all the text they want to explain but put the clear core rule in some box imbedded in that section of the book that they clearly state that ONLY the text in those designated boxes are the actual rules.
It would make it into a handy abridged rule book later on as well.

ERJAK wrote:

And I'm sorry, missions are house rules now? That's some bull.

ITC has more than just missions btw. And yes, custom missions that aren't in the basic rulebook is the very definition of house rules...

Marin wrote:
The only way RAW to be enough is the game to be played for years with minimum changes. There are to many interactions to test after every new release to be cached during the testing.
The real problem is there are so many FAQ and erratas. If you are new player, you can`t get the rulebook, read it and start to play the game. You have to read alot of extra rules that are not updated in the rulebook and that is what annoy me.

I would even say that if you get the hands on the actual rule book, you may get the wrong idea about the game, and start buying the wrong units or even buy in to a faction you think works in a specific way, but it doesn't, because rules do not allow it.

I feel they can have the best of both worlds and write all the text they want to explain but put the clear core rule in some box imbedded in that section of the book that they clearly state that ONLY the text in those designated boxes are the actual rules.

This is very much true. A tight and clear rule set would be good for everyone, doesn't matter if someone plays tournaments or not. The whole RAI thing more often then not sounds like people trying to either defend GW, or defend their army choice.

 Eldarain wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Xeno is partly right here. All broken Eldar stuff was because Phil Kelley loves the space elves and has written their stuff. Heck, their worst edition, 5th, they were at worst mid tier. That says a lot about the favoritism argument.

The only edition since 2nd they didn't get a book.

2nd was...a bit funky. I try not to consider it when it comes to balance discussions because it was honestly all over the place. I maybe did 10ish games and I can't see why anyone would have liked it.

I love how all the bad things in the game are because GW is bad at making a game, and couldn't balance things if their life depended on it (and how anyone saying otherwise is apparently a battered wife).

But apparently they're so good that any army that's good is because it's GW's favorite army.

Isn't it much more likely the truth is somewhere in between? Sometimes they fanboi, and sometimes they're not great at ruleswriting.

Well it could also be that they are bad at rulewriting and fanbooiing.

Historically there have clearly been differences in codex power. "Balancing" is rudimentary at best - codexes written by "I love this faction, lets give them this rule, and that rule, and this random special wargear, and and and" run into "oh? Is it faction X's turn? Eh, who cares. What do they have on the model? I guess these guys have guns. Yeah, thats it."

Or the classic "its the start of the edition, we are pruning rules, trying to cut the power back" - "its the end of the edition, have all the rules for no points!"

At least these days GW changes the points to try and rectify their mistakes.

Since Eldar have a huge roster and elements of every unit type they have generally been competitive because some units have worked out to be very efficient, so you just spam them.

I always feel "but we wos bad in 5th" to be special pleading, although its mainly because I hated that edition. Its boring to say - but yes, I hate Grey Knights from that edition and I likely always will. Necrons have grown on me a little, but were in a similar boat. Its not like this was the whole edition, but... eh. Worst time in 40k going on and off back to 1998.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Patch is better then no patch yes.
But the reliance of first day patches is nothing good. Neither in the video game industry nor in the TG one.

It shows serious lack in planning capabilities and abuses workers for last minute crunch time.

James Hewitt talked a bit about that in a response to a question about the FAQs:

Right, so, I've been expecting a question like this, and I've been mulling over the best way to answer it for a couple of days. Here's the best answer I can think of - apologies in advance if it rambles!

In a company the size of GW (which, I'll make clear, is not a big company by any means, but in terms of this industry it's monolithic) there are a lot of considerations. Everything that's done needs to be worthwhile, and needs to make a profit. When producing a game for GW, the sad truth is that quality of rules has very little impact on sales. Obviously you don't want the rules to be bad, but there's a real diminishing returns thing going on; the difference between a set of rules that's 60% perfect and one that's 70% perfect is going to be fairly significant, but the difference between 70% and 80% less so. And 80% to 90% even less.

So, as a designer, you're always pushing for more time. Any game design project has several stages - you do your R&D, your preparation, your grunt work (actually writing the thing), and your polish / testing / proofing. Management are always going to squeeze your deadlines, because they know that your instinct is to push for a good game, but they know that from a business point of view it only needs to be good enough to sell. Unfortunately, the grunt work is the bit that needs to happen, so the bits that get trimmed are R&D (which make things interesting and well-thought-out) and polish (which makes sure there are no mistakes).

That said, it's getting better. When I first started, playtesting was a bit of a dirty word; there was a real disdain for "balance" among the higher echelons of management. Silver Tower, for example, was playtested almost entirely in my own time, unpaid, using unpaid volunteers. But now, the are increasing numbers of external playtesters, and it's getting better. Thing is, no matter how rigorously the internal testing is, you're never going to find all the issues; it might seem shocking that a book comes out and the internet finds a dozen errata on day one, but remember that more people are seeing it in that one day than saw it throughout the entire production cycle. The only way to deal with it would be to have open playtesting, getting thousands of people to read the rules before they go to print, and sure enough that's what Forge World sometimes do - but it's not practical for main-range GW, because of their confidentiality rules and that kind of thing.

Hope that answers your question - sorry if it's a bit rambly!

The tl;dr: it's a problem caused by a combination of deadlines that need to be met and a limited number of eyes on any given rule set.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Patch is better then no patch yes.
But the reliance of first day patches is nothing good. Neither in the video game industry nor in the TG one.

It shows serious lack in planning capabilities and abuses workers for last minute crunch time.

James Hewitt talked a bit about that in a response to a question about the FAQs:

Right, so, I've been expecting a question like this, and I've been mulling over the best way to answer it for a couple of days. Here's the best answer I can think of - apologies in advance if it rambles!

In a company the size of GW (which, I'll make clear, is not a big company by any means, but in terms of this industry it's monolithic) there are a lot of considerations. Everything that's done needs to be worthwhile, and needs to make a profit. When producing a game for GW, the sad truth is that quality of rules has very little impact on sales. Obviously you don't want the rules to be bad, but there's a real diminishing returns thing going on; the difference between a set of rules that's 60% perfect and one that's 70% perfect is going to be fairly significant, but the difference between 70% and 80% less so. And 80% to 90% even less.

So, as a designer, you're always pushing for more time. Any game design project has several stages - you do your R&D, your preparation, your grunt work (actually writing the thing), and your polish / testing / proofing. Management are always going to squeeze your deadlines, because they know that your instinct is to push for a good game, but they know that from a business point of view it only needs to be good enough to sell. Unfortunately, the grunt work is the bit that needs to happen, so the bits that get trimmed are R&D (which make things interesting and well-thought-out) and polish (which makes sure there are no mistakes).

That said, it's getting better. When I first started, playtesting was a bit of a dirty word; there was a real disdain for "balance" among the higher echelons of management. Silver Tower, for example, was playtested almost entirely in my own time, unpaid, using unpaid volunteers. But now, the are increasing numbers of external playtesters, and it's getting better. Thing is, no matter how rigorously the internal testing is, you're never going to find all the issues; it might seem shocking that a book comes out and the internet finds a dozen errata on day one, but remember that more people are seeing it in that one day than saw it throughout the entire production cycle. The only way to deal with it would be to have open playtesting, getting thousands of people to read the rules before they go to print, and sure enough that's what Forge World sometimes do - but it's not practical for main-range GW, because of their confidentiality rules and that kind of thing.

Hope that answers your question - sorry if it's a bit rambly!

The tl;dr: it's a problem caused by a combination of deadlines that need to be met and a limited number of eyes on any given rule set.

I have long suspected that GW's weekly release schedule is hitting into the available time for quality control and play testing. Back when releases were monthly it didn't feel as bad, but I guess then the gaps between releasing Codex/army books was months.

The above sort of confirms my suspicions. As long as GW keep to this frantic release schedule, we'll continue to see glaring errors in writing, and in balance.

Bharring wrote:
I love how all the bad things in the game are because GW is bad at making a game, and couldn't balance things if their life depended on it (and how anyone saying otherwise is apparently a battered wife).

But apparently they're so good that any army that's good is because it's GW's favorite army.

Isn't it much more likely the truth is somewhere in between? Sometimes they fanboi, and sometimes they're not great at ruleswriting.

You can tell when they are inspired by certain armies. Some armies they aren't inspired by at all. They are like a bad parent picking favorites. When the children cry because they are unhappy - there response is "at least you got a roof over your head".