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I think as changes goes the 3 year system, with a 6 year reset system is too fast for most players that want to play an army , never mind a specific build. GW functions in their changes/fixes, as if those evil tournament players had an army at the ready at the snap of their fingers and the good casuals didn't care, if their army is fun to play, because they are probably too buys painting and writing poems about their armies.

This depending on luck hurts all the people that do want to play, but who don't want to whale out 700$ every quarter of the year to have a working army. Now growth, opening to new markets etc can stiffle the bleeding on players over all. But that is for the world wide company, like with all things, hobbies have a cap too and if a store dies, because the local community can't keep up with the changes or they really hate the changes , then this can be it for the local table top gaming. Because as much as other games could be fun, GW games are, in most of the world, the only source of hobby play time you can get.

And I think that with some games from GW we are often skiming or lightly going over what is accepted/expected by the community. Now the effects to GW aren't instant. They did sell (to the stores) pallets of Dominion boxes, the Horus Heresy, the Leviathans. And the FOMO is strong, because it is under produced(from buyers perspective) and GW UK/Online only. Now the question is, how many Dominions and similar releases have to happen for large stores to say, we would like 2 pallets instead of 20 or 30? I think we are getting closers and closer to it happening. Which is odd because the focus and world wide recognition of GW products is going up and up.
Sometimes I think that it isn't (to the new people) even a rules thing. But a simple quality of life thing. What do you mean my rulebook/codex is invalid 2 weeks after it is out ? 65$ for a single plastic model. An army costs as much as a 3d printer and Resin to make 2 armies? The jump in stuff is often created, as if someone was trying to spite the new player. Here is your Kill Team entry team. The window to Kill Team and potential w40k, HH etc. Cool. Now why does the new player get a squad that won't allow him to play a regular game of kill team, and he has to buy extra boxes, if he wants to do it?

But then again this isn't new, when GW WFB was blowing up a PC version, GW had WFB killed for "selling bad" when sells were bad because of how GW structured the game. Same game, practicaly the same models now sell good enough for GW think of WFB to be their 4th big game. And considering the HH 3ed start, maybe it is even their 3ed biggest game now.

I'll agree 10th has had the best competitive diversity of any edition so far. It's definitely had rough patches for sure, but once they worked out the pre-codex beta period I can't think of a time when so many armies were viable. Unfortunately the last patch has not been the edition's best and they've been a bit slower on updates to it, but even then the meta has had the tools to adapt surprisingly well.

 Jidmah wrote:
I'm not going to waste my time to repeat all the proof for the arguments proving you wrong, feel free to dig through my post history if you care.
TL;DR: You're objectively wrong. As usual, if you don't want to change your opinion, don't bother reading.

So you're saying old editions don't have followings?

I actively started playing with 5th,

Good to know.

A following would imply that there is a body of people enjoying a single edition which make up a relevant part of the people playing 40k.

Going by that definition, no, there is no following for any single old edition. There are no active communities, no events, no support for any of them. Just some isolated groups of people "frozen in time" as someone described it. Even on dakka, which hasn't been a relevant part of the 40k community in years, you'll struggle to find more than half a dozen supporters for any given edition, despite it's heavy focus on the good old times.

 Jidmah wrote:
A following would imply that there is a body of people enjoying a single edition which make up a relevant part of the people playing 40k.

Going by that definition, no, there is no following for any single old edition. There are no active communities, no events, no support for any of them. Just some isolated groups of people "frozen in time" as someone described it. Even on dakka, which hasn't been a relevant part of the 40k community in years, you'll struggle to find more than half a dozen supporters for any given edition, despite it's heavy focus on the good old times.

So your not being aware of the communities mean they don't exist? Interesting.

A useful proxy for the popularity of a hobby is the value of its materials. If what you said was true, all old edition books would be pretty much rock-bottom giveaway prices, but there are stark differences between the editions, and the people buying them can't be "frozen in time" because they'd already own the books. So there is a collector market and in certain editions, it is very strong.

You might say that collectors don't equal players, but that's still a community.