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What is the deal with GW and their inconsistancy on their FAQ's?

Is it really so hard to get the same guy who wrote the rules to just write the FAQ's as well?

Anyone remember the "Ravening Hordes" supplement that was released when 5th? ed fantasy was released?
That pamphlet had every army in it and it was BALANCED because the same guy re-wrote the lists to fit the new system.

Thats what needs to happen to 40k.

I get extremely frustrated when the new FAQ comes out and whoa what do you know!~! the chicken hawk sales were weak so now you cant take a cover save against Vector Strike?

Anyone feel the same?

The answer is that GW hasn't figured out a way to make FAQs profitable yet, so they get the lowest priority for publishing resources. What this often means is that the janitor (who has never played 40k) has to write them between emptying the trash and mopping the floors, so it's understandable that there would be occasional odd decisions.

What I don't understand is the need for some fundamental FAQs the same day that the codices hit the shelves. I am not talking rules imbalance, I'm talking simple editing - like leaving special rules on units that don't have them, leaving unit choices out altogether, etc.

It was never this bad before (granted, I have not read through the Tau codex, so it may be crisp and clean). The speed of the release schedule (for whatever reason they're doing it) seems to be affecting the quality of the material they're putting out. Unless they fired their editors to cushion their profits.

I don't think the FAQs are as bad as it seems that you do.

Personally, I see the occasional decision in them that I consider odd. (My flamers can hit units they can see, but can't wound them...) That being said, there are decisions in the main rules that I don't understand, either. (I can't use Machine Curse on a zooming flyer, for example.) Overall, I think we have a pretty solid rules set, including the FAQs.

 puma713 wrote:

It was never this bad before

Wasn't it?
Without their release of FAQs how would you know those things you argued over as a kid were not just wrong or unclear?

The FAQs have gotten progressively better and better over the fourteen years I've been playing. More comprehensive, more clearly written, more regularly updated, etc. They've added page references, they've even added dates and version numbers. Stuff we'd been clamoring for for YEARS.

The only ruling I've really blinked at recently was that "d6 it" ruling in the IG FAQ, but the more I thought about it, the more okay I was with it. It makes it a 50/50 shot; which is a bit unreliable for hardcore competitive players to rely on, but lets casual players still have a chance to do it and be excited when it happens. Speaking as a pretty hardcore competitive player, I think this way actually works pretty well.

Now, 6th has seen some terrible basic editorial mistakes in the rulebook (like leaving out the basic rule about not moving through your own units) and codices (look at all the errors in the DA unit entries), which must have been really embarrassing to the editors/proofreading folks at GW. But I can find extremely little to complain about regarding their FAQs, and a great deal to praise.

What I think would be interesting is a 1-month 'beta' of new rules. Open this to a small number of players, who pay the full price of a codex to receive a beta version. just the rules, no artwork or models. These people get to provide feedback and rules questions, which are then corrected/clarified before being put in to the real codex.
This could have the bonuses of:
1) Allowing the more hardcore players the ability to scrutinize the rules for exploits, which benefits everyone because the game becomes more fun.
2) Allow the concerned players the ability to find questionable rules, which benefits everyone as GW can make rules which are easier to play and don't need 3 pages of FAQ on release day.
3) Allow the powergamers to find 'broken' combos and overpowered/underpowered/auto-include units, which benefits everyone as GW can tweak this to affect their sales in the way they want.

The main thing is that these people can read the codex without the authors hanging around giving guidance/suggestions/input. They know how they think the codex is supposed to work: the users should be able to try to make it work however they want.

... I mean, they could just do this all effectively in-house: they have about 2000 staff who I assume would be happy to do it. I really don't think anyone at GW outside of the team who wrote the Tau codex looked at the missile drones entry before the book was published, because the thing that immediately went through every Tau player's head was 'omg crisis teams with 12 missile pods each'. That kind of thing should be picked up with a beta test.

Trasvi wrote:
I really don't think anyone at GW outside of the team who wrote the Tau codex looked at the missile drones entry before the book was published, because the thing that immediately went through every Tau player's head was 'omg crisis teams with 12 missile pods each'. That kind of thing should be picked up with a beta test.

They did. The ipad version of the codex had it right from the beginning, it was just a typo that slipped into the paper version (which is why the FAQ was published so quickly). It says bad things about GW's proofreading abilities, but it wasn't the kind of "stupid rule" problem that more playtesting would fix.

 puma713 wrote:
What I don't understand is the need for some fundamental FAQs the same day that the codices hit the shelves. I am not talking rules imbalance, I'm talking simple editing - like leaving special rules on units that don't have them, leaving unit choices out altogether, etc.

It was never this bad before (granted, I have not read through the Tau codex, so it may be crisp and clean). The speed of the release schedule (for whatever reason they're doing it) seems to be affecting the quality of the material they're putting out. Unless they fired their editors to cushion their profits.

apparently they were ghost writers for the BRB as well

Measure twice, cut once. They should take more time going over the products they sell. I guess they are fine looking like fools doing their editing via FAQ's.

 Mannahnin wrote:
Now, 6th has seen some terrible basic editorial mistakes which must have been really embarrassing to the editors/proofreading folks at GW.

Do you think they actually have any of those? My old mate who is constantly tinkering with his own RPG rules (version 8 out by now) gets better results because he actually has the rest of us go through his dyslexic run-on sentences once in a while. We've seen enough rules wrangling that we can spot an invitation to abuse in a particularly unclear statement, and we use so much English for work and pleasure that we can catch all but the most obscure errors.

With GW it looks more like they have a copy/paste department which pastes in the text from the previous book, then the "writer" adds or removes a few words if a tweak is needed. Then they just assume he did it right and nothing clashes with the original text he left there.