Going into more detail about the specific example here the target priority rule is a terrible idea in a vacuum, yes. Games I've played or written that used it or any variation of it have always included simple exceptions; Mordheim let you shoot the closest Large Target instead of just the closest target to avoid goblins screening for trolls, and let models in an elevated position pick their targets. At an even simpler level you can play around being forced to shoot at the closest thing by moving/positioning such that the thing you want to shoot is the closest thing to you. Yes, the rule "takes away player agency," but it isn't a universal non-interactable always-on thing, you can play around it. It has the practical effect of adding to player decision-making by giving you a restriction you have to deal with during play.
Dropping restrictions from play to "increase player agency" can speed up and streamline the game, yes. It can also reduce gameplay to the point where there is no game. One very common restriction on what models can do in wargames is movement speed; I can only go a certain distance in one turn, and some models can move faster than others. "This is unfair!", you could write, "I want to be able to place my model wherever I want it!", and write a thirty-page essay explaining exactly why it's fluff-justified, and then you remove all movement speeds from the game and say "the movement phase is picking up all your models and placing them somewhere else on the board." You've streamlined the game! You've reduced the movement phase in the rulebook to one sentence! You've made it easier for new players to make their perfect-play moves! But would you play that version of
40k? I wouldn't.
Let's go to a further extreme using the example people keep throwing out here. Tic-
tac-toe is a very deterministic game. Playing correctly is trivial, it's a draw every time unless you let your opponent win, and it's 100% based on player decisions. It has very few rules. Let's take one of those rules out; instead of "you can make one move a turn" let's go for "you can make as many moves as you like every turn." We're reducing restrictions on player actions! We're making it possible for a player to make a decision to win instead of just making a decision to not lose! Player agency is increasing! Except no, it isn't, all we've done is make the first player win.
I think the question Jidmah thinks he's asking is about rules that give the player agency versus rules that don't. Let's imagine in
40k you had a rule that required your units to make a Leadership test to shoot at all. No exceptions, no edge cases, no nothing, just a
Ld test to shoot. This is a rule that adds randomness without adding choice; this is snakes and ladders in the analogy. It makes the game less predictable, but it doesn't give you new things to do, it adds bloat without adding decision-making. By comparison let's imagine a rule that gives every unit the ability to choose at the beginning of the turn to be in "offensive" mode and get +1 to hit or "defensive" mode and get +1 to saves. This is a very deterministic and player-choice-driven rule, it's not random, it adds a lot of choice, and it could easily add a lot of interesting gameplay.
The problem I have here is that the poll doesn't acknowledge the existence of a third kind of rule, which mixes randomness and player choice. Let's use 3e-7e Deep Strike as an example here; instead of getting your unit to land exactly where you want it you place it where you'd like it to be and then roll the scatter dice to determine where it ends up. If you scatter off the board or onto an enemy unit you roll on a table to see whether your unit is only delayed, or misplaced, or just dies. This is random, yes, and it can lead to your unit dying because of the dice, but it also forces you to consider trade-offs when making gameplay decisions. You can put a unit in Deep Strike and guarantee it's invincible until it gets to shoot, but you risk it not landing exactly where you want it to and not getting its shot. You can place a unit close to the enemy in gaps you couldn't fit a unit in under the 9e Deep Strike rules, but you risk it dying horribly if you do so. By making Deep Strike purely deterministic in 8th/9th
GW reduced the randomness of the game, yes, but they
reduced gameplay decision-making by making leaving units in Reserve such a no-brainer they had to add the 50% rule and the no-models loss so people didn't do Deep Strike null-deploy every game, and they made Deep Strike positioning purely a matter of picking the optimal geometry instead of requiring any risk/reward decision-making. The randomness made players make more decisions, not fewer.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
vict0988 wrote:...How can you ever make a poll without you getting your jimmies rustled then? If you want something perfectly in the middle then just say that, because if snakes and ladders and tic-
tac-toe are equally wrong then you must want something right in the middle. You could also make an example of a change you liked or disliked. Did you like the change to damage allocation, the charge, assault and morale phase that changed it from being the game's AI taking over and forcing you to move your models according to specific rules or do you prefer being able to move as much or as little as you want and removing the models you like from your unit?...
An intelligently-constructed poll isn't just one false dichotomy. Every other poll I've ever seen on Dakka has been better than this.
