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Indeed. Some people will like a new edition. Others will hate it.

When the current edition leaves and a new edition is unveiled, some people will like it. Others will hate it. Some of those that hate it will love the current and hate the new.

The cycle of gaming life.

 thekingofkings wrote:

Lemondish wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
Realistically, addressing this would basically require a new edition.

This is the correct answer. The only solution is a new edition that makes 40k a wargame, instead of a CCG with "cards" you have to paint yourself. And I'm glad people are finally starting to agree with what I was saying from day one, that 8th edition is a dumpster fire of bad design.

8th was why many came back. Making it less streamlined will just make them drop it like a hot rock again. I think they prefer having new gamers join since all the old guard will never, ever change their tune. It'll always be a dumpster fire to them, so I'm glad GW is abandoning them.

Its also why many left, same thing every edition change. Will be the same when they dump 8th and go to 9th.

Generally true, but all indications are that 8th had a far better new player acquisition rate than previous editions for some time. Especially looking at GW financials.

Stux wrote:
Generally true, but all indications are that 8th had a far better new player acquisition rate than previous editions for some time. Especially looking at GW financials.

This is not surprising, but it probably doesn't say as much as you think it does. 6th and 7th were incremental "upgrades" to 5th, which (IIRC) was an incremental upgrade over 4th. They just didn't have much new-edition hype to bring in anyone who wasn't already invested and obligated to buy the new rules to keep playing, so all GW got was those current players buying new rulebooks and the same steady flow of new customers that they were already getting. 8th edition, for all its flaws, was at least marketed as a major change to the game, and that's going to generate more attention even if the changes turn out to be bad. And on top of this 8th is happening in parallel with GW making starter sets and side games that are a better deal for new players, something that would be happening regardless of the rules edition.

Oh for sure, I'm aware of that. I'm just saying 8th is more than just a normal edition cycle, it's very much an anomaly in the company's favour.

I wouldn't call 6e and 7th an incremental update of 5th. The direction changed significantly from 5th to 6e, which (anecdotal evidence) drove a lot of people out of the hobby.

 Ordana wrote:
I wouldn't call 6e and 7th an incremental update of 5th. The direction changed significantly from 5th to 6e, which (anecdotal evidence) drove a lot of people out of the hobby.

Yeah, I really enjoyed 5th, 6th left me slightly sour, and I escaped to the Horus Heresy with Mechanicum and Solar Auxilia before formations really became a thing in 7th. 8th brought me back to the 41st millenium, though Edition 5 Version 2.0 would have worked as well... which 6th and 7th were decidedly not.

 Ordana wrote:
I wouldn't call 6e and 7th an incremental update of 5th. The direction changed significantly from 5th to 6e, which (anecdotal evidence) drove a lot of people out of the hobby.

They did, but from a marketing point of view the changes were fairly minor. "Hey, new wound allocation system" doesn't get anyone's attention like 8th did, and most of the utter dumpster fire that 7th became didn't happen until after the core rules were out.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
I wouldn't call 6e and 7th an incremental update of 5th. The direction changed significantly from 5th to 6e, which (anecdotal evidence) drove a lot of people out of the hobby.

They did, but from a marketing point of view the changes were fairly minor. "Hey, new wound allocation system" doesn't get anyone's attention like 8th did, and most of the utter dumpster fire that 7th became didn't happen until after the core rules were out.

The things that drove me nuts about 6th revolved around army construction (multiple FOCs!) and close combat. 5th Edition handled CC with independent characters just fine. So now they took the just fine system and utterly overhauled it, putting in gamey non-depth like "challenges" where one of my IG sergeants heroically took all 8 attacks from a charging bloodthirster while the 9 Guardsmen around him stood and booed. Oh, but then they fixed that in 7th, by adding formations to army construction which were essentially 8th's detachment system but with free rules tacked on and arbitrary, incomprehensible restrictions added. Oh, and now you can attack into and out of challenges, given certain conditions that constantly started issues on the table.

If you think a player coming from mid-5th edition could hop into mid-7th Edition and be perfectly comfortable, you're deluding yourself. The game was crippled at this point, and I went to play 30k - which interestingly enough has different detachments and whatnot similarly to 8th.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If you think a player coming from mid-5th edition could hop into mid-7th Edition and be perfectly comfortable, you're deluding yourself.

That is not what I said. I said that from a marketing point of view the changes were minor. The things you mention are bad, and had significant effects on the game experience, but they don't matter from a marketing point of view. Nobody is looking at a new edition and saying "wow, this is 5th edition but now there are challenges" and deciding to invest thousands of dollars in getting into the game. But "now easier to learn, and we updated all of the rules at once" is something that gets attention.

Also, remember that formations didn't become a disaster until after 7th was released. When you're comparing the early-era new player recruitment of 8th vs. previous editions you're talking about a point where formations were a minor thing that didn't really exist outside of that one WD article or Tau box set or whatever it was.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
If you think a player coming from mid-5th edition could hop into mid-7th Edition and be perfectly comfortable, you're deluding yourself.

That is not what I said. I said that from a marketing point of view the changes were minor. The things you mention are bad, and had significant effects on the game experience, but they don't matter from a marketing point of view. Nobody is looking at a new edition and saying "wow, this is 5th edition but now there are challenges" and deciding to invest thousands of dollars in getting into the game. But "now easier to learn, and we updated all of the rules at once" is something that gets attention.

Also, remember that formations didn't become a disaster until after 7th was released. When you're comparing the early-era new player recruitment of 8th vs. previous editions you're talking about a point where formations were a minor thing that didn't really exist outside of that one WD article or Tau box set or whatever it was.

Yes, that's true. If 8th gets to the point that 7th was with whacky shenanigans that are obviously unbalanced, needlessly restrictive, or outright silly, then I'll jump ship back to 30k again, which has stayed fairly flat in the same time period.

And honestly, that's a worry of mine. "Needlessly restrictive" fits 90+% of the proposed 8th-edition fixes on here, with outright silly or obviously imbalanced taking up 4-6% of the remainder. I hope GW doesn't go that route and undo all the awesome progress that's been done on the front of allowing fluffy armies, but if they do, there's always 30k, where fluffy armies are actively encouraged by the rules.

I mean if we are gonna Monday night quarterback here. In reality there were only 2 major problems with 7th that if addressed would have made it one of the best editions, on par with 5th Ed for me.

That would have been addressing the fact formation we're free. Where as in previous edition formations were only a thing in apoc and cost a lot of points. Iirc 3 pred formation for killshot rule was 300 points on top of the cost of the unit. Getting free stuff was what broke the game. The other being the massive cluster that was the payker phase. If it was just a pass a leadership test it would have been much more simple.

On top or those changes the other minor issue in 7th was the weakness of vehicles. If they added in the degrading profile from 8th and got rid of hullpoints 7th I think would have been the edition. But that's just my opinions.

As for 8th, I look at it the same way I look at fallout4 which was a great game, but a really bad fallout game. 8th Ed is a really good miniture game, but a really bad 40k games because it stripps everything from it. Cover, facing, in many cases moral, the creativity of psykers, the stratagy or positioning. Its all been watered down, still run to toss dice around for sure but it's so meh stratagy wise. I'm suspecting it will make great foundation for 9th

 Backspacehacker wrote:

As for 8th, I look at it the same way I look at fallout4 which was a great game, but a really bad fallout game. 8th Ed is a really good miniture game, but a really bad 40k games because it stripps everything from it. Cover, facing, in many cases moral, the creativity of psykers, the stratagy or positioning. Its all been watered down, still run to toss dice around for sure but it's so meh stratagy wise. I'm suspecting it will make great foundation for 9th

I'm 100% with you on the Fallout 4 assessment, but all those things that make 8th a bad 40k game, also make it a bad miniature wargame. A good wargame makes positioning, cover, facings, and other player decisions matter.

Like the two editions that came before, 8th is propped up on all the other elements of 40k/GW to make it bearable. Beautiful models, expansive fluff, huge player population, and lots of 3rd party support for anything you can ever imagine.

7th had a third big issue.

The labyrinthine "universal" special rules made the new player experience horrible. Your most basic models could ahve rules spread out over 5 pages and a word referring to a page to another page to another page.

Also as a CSM player I noticed someting in 7th. the basic rules told you what you could do and what restrictions and disadvantages it imposed. A lot of "Universal" special rules were about ignoring these restrictions.
The ultimate example of this were the superheavies. Almost all their special rules revolved around ignoring rules.

At least that's mostly gone in 8th. And really a lot of the supposed lack of depth 8th has vs 7th dissapears when you rememer how the game was actually practically played. Land raiders sucked because while they had AV 14. Practically every good army had means of ignoring it partially or wholly (grav, doomed melta ,etc.). Cover was nice but ignored by some options and well of course those were the options we took. Warp charges was an interesting decision in theory but it turned most of psykers into batteries for the few good ones/ those with the good powers.

Those 2 things combined to create a horrible learning curve. You went through a bunch of complicated scattered yes/no/yes/no logic-loops for ultimately a game that if properly played had no real depth.

 Earth127 wrote:
7th had a third big issue.

The labyrinthine "universal" special rules made the new player experience horrible. Your most basic models could ahve rules spread out over 5 pages and a word referring to a page to another page to another page.

Also as a CSM player I noticed someting in 7th. the basic rules told you what you could do and what restrictions and disadvantages it imposed. A lot of "Universal" special rules were about ignoring these restrictions.
The ultimate example of this were the superheavies. Almost all their special rules revolved around ignoring rules.

At least that's mostly gone in 8th. And really a lot of the supposed lack of depth 8th has vs 7th dissapears when you rememer how the game was actually practically played. Land raiders sucked because while they had AV 14. Practically every good army had means of ignoring it partially or wholly (grav, doomed melta ,etc.). Cover was nice but ignored by some options and well of course those were the options we took. Warp charges was an interesting decision in theory but it turned most of psykers into batteries for the few good ones/ those with the good powers.

Those 2 things combined to create a horrible learning curve. You went through a bunch of complicated scattered yes/no/yes/no logic-loops for ultimately a game that if properly played had no real depth.

I don't get the USR hate.

The situation we have now where rules work exactly the same but have multitude of different names is far worse.

Same boat I never understood why people hated USR. It was not that hard to remember.

Case in point, I was dark angels, as dark angels ym terminators and bikes are fearless and get bonus attacks against fallen.

I hated USR. Learning the game was such a pain when there were dozens of pages of rules and you didn't know where to find that one rule. The new system is far superior simply because it tells you the rule on its datasheet. The fact that they have different names for the same effect is irrelevant and is largely nitpicking. I don't need to know the name, just the effect.

As a note on USRs, I played an army that had Crusader and Zealot as fairly common rules throughout, and I still can’t remember what any of those things actually did. There were too many USRs that did the exact same thing as other USRs, but with one minor change or another.

 Verviedi wrote:
As a note on USRs, I played an army that had Crusader and Zealot as fairly common rules throughout, and I still can’t remember what any of those things actually did. There were too many USRs that did the exact same thing as other USRs, but with one minor change or another.

This is a great example of USRs going overboard. They're great in principle and that 8th needs more of them, but too many is a turn-off.

What we need is a toned down list of about 10 of them to handle very common, inter-army rules:

-Deep strike
-Melta
-Fights first/as if charged
-Feel No Pain
-The Airborne/Supersonic/Hard to Hit combo
-Random stuff I've forgotten because I'm only halfway through my coffee

I think there are a few others (-1 to hit generally, psyker, etc.) that you could argue either way on, too.

8th's approach was to put all of the "USR" type stuff on each dataslate so that reference to book to reference to book to reference to rule wasn't bogging down games.

USR's are still all around, in spirit, it is just now they are written individually on the unit/army that uses it.

I really like this approach far more in 8th as opposed to 6th/7th.

The onlu real issue I have with the above is they failed to be consistent though where different units have supposedly the same ability or special rule, or people jeep calling it X ability but they are in fact different. Atleast USR were consistent army to army.

Ice_can wrote:
The onlu real issue I have with the above is they failed to be consistent though where different units have supposedly the same ability or special rule, or people jeep calling it X ability but they are in fact different. Atleast USR were consistent army to army.

Though... not really.

I am reminded of the "these dudes are scary when they charge" problem from 7th edition. The concept of "these dudes are scary when they charge" could be abstracted in a single way (e.g. Furious Charge) but instead became:
1) Furious Charge
2) Hammer of Wrath (I guess these dudes were somehow less scary/different when they charged)
3) The "attack twice" thing that Wulfen had on the charge (I guess these dudes were scarIER on the charge!)

There's no reason to have 3 different ways to abstract that problem. That was a lot of my problem with 7th: things like the Vehicle Damage Table abstracted ... you guessed it ... vehicle damage. Oh, but also, we have hull points, to abstract vehicle damage differently, also. Because why not? Tactics = depth = complexity, apparently.

Ice_can wrote:
The onlu real issue I have with the above is they failed to be consistent though where different units have supposedly the same ability or special rule, or people jeep calling it X ability but they are in fact different. Atleast USR were consistent army to army.

Can you cite one that is like this? I haven't seen any in my travels.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
The onlu real issue I have with the above is they failed to be consistent though where different units have supposedly the same ability or special rule, or people jeep calling it X ability but they are in fact different. Atleast USR were consistent army to army.

Can you cite one that is like this? I haven't seen any in my travels.

Relentless and slow and purposeful did the same thing except slow and purposeful made it so you cant run

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
The onlu real issue I have with the above is they failed to be consistent though where different units have supposedly the same ability or special rule, or people jeep calling it X ability but they are in fact different. Atleast USR were consistent army to army.

Can you cite one that is like this? I haven't seen any in my travels.

SM Scouts and Nurglings 'Infiltrate' during the deployment phase. Other equivalent units do so 'before the first turn'.
Its the only roughly same rule working differently in 8th that I can think of off hand.

As I said I'm not sure if its just players calling thing the wrong name, or if GW has actually made thing that work differently the same name. I suspect its probably players calling things the wrong name. But deathshroud terminators bodyguard rule works differently to everyone elses. Infiltrate appears to be used to describe a lot of different rules though I suspect this is players misnaming the rule.

Rattling naturally stealth and spacemarine scouts cammo cloaks same rule different name.

 Ordana wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
The onlu real issue I have with the above is they failed to be consistent though where different units have supposedly the same ability or special rule, or people jeep calling it X ability but they are in fact different. Atleast USR were consistent army to army.

Can you cite one that is like this? I haven't seen any in my travels.

SM Scouts and Nurglings 'Infiltrate' during the deployment phase. Other equivalent units do so 'before the first turn'.
Its the only roughly same rule working differently in 8th that I can think of off hand.

Well, those aren't the same like Supersonic being universal across factions. Scouts is "Concealed Positions" and Nurglings are "Mischief Makers" for flavor, but both named differently from other units for purpose.. A Scout Sentinel has "Scout Vehicle". In this it's like they're trying to creating infiltrate and vanguard depending on the unit.

He good part about having th same (or similar) rules with different names is that it gives GW more leeway to fix things if problems are found. Let’s say that both nurglings and scouts got the infiltrate USR. If it was found that nurglings infiltrating caused a problem for the game, they cannot change infiltrate unless they want it to effect every unit in the game, so they are really only left with changing unit cost as a solution. If both rules are “different” one can be changed while leaving the other alone. The reason it gets confusing is the legacy language people use to describe the way the rules work. My scouts infiltrate, because that was what the rule used to be called and people have an idea how it works. But people also use that word for say Ravenguard using strike from the shadows, even though that is a completely different rule.