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I was browsing through some of my old threads when I came across this little gem. Who'd have known, that in a little over five months, Games-Workshop would churn out a brand new addition addressing all of those exact points! If I hadn't written the post myself, I'd be accusing the poster of being a GW plant right now!

 Ginjitzu wrote:

Spoiler:

I've been lurking around this forum for a while now & I've noticed what appear to be several contradictory consensuses (actually a real word; I looked it up!).

The 40k ruleset is a bloated mess & should be cut down/simplified/streamlined.

The limitation on progressing the story beyond 999.M41 has made the 40k universe background stagnant & boring and the story should progress beyond this.

What they did to Warhammer Fantasy was a travesty and should never be repeated.

My question, thus, is this: assuming that the first two points cannot be addressed without repeating the third, what exactly does this community want? Is there some other consideration that resolves these contradictions that I'm not seeing?

Since the premise of the original question was about what you wanted, my question now is, did you get it?

Bittersweet, ultimately. Conceptually the new edition and the forwarding of the fluff were good ideas. But in execution both projects left something to be desired. 8th edition still has balance issues, and what should have been the defining moment for the Imperial Guard and Chaos ended up just being used as another opportunity to fellate Space Marines with Guilliman's return and the advent of Primaris.

From my own perspective:

The 40k ruleset is a bloated mess & should be cut down/simplified/streamlined.

They achieved exactly this, and though the new rules aren't perfect, they're on an order of magnitude better than what existed before.

The limitation on progressing the story beyond 999.M41 has made the 40k universe background stagnant & boring and the story should progress beyond this.

They did exactly this, too!

What they did to Warhammer Fantasy was a travesty and should never be repeated.

Hmm. I expect people to debate this one more than the others, but in spite of your views on lost Cadias, broken craftworlds, new Eldar gods, Great Rifts and returning Primarchs, I think it would be a stretch to say they did anything near as dramatic as they did when they took an Exterminatus to The World that Was.

My question, thus, is this: assuming that the first two points cannot be addressed without repeating the third, what exactly does this community want? Is there some other consideration that resolves these contradictions that I'm not seeing?

As many pointed out at the time, the contradiction I was imagining was entirely unfounded, and I think time has only proven you correct.

In general terms 8th edition was on the right track, barring a couple of serious mis-steps like not using USRs. The rules were streamlined but, theoretically, still good enough to represent the game and the decision to do a major overhaul of the way the AP and damage systems worked, along with removing the restriction on stats only going up to 10 could have led to a much, much better game than what we have.

Unfortunately what we've seen in reality is the old GW problems, magnified by a lack of a strong foundation in the core rules. Namely, Codex balance is all over the place and the new concepts they've introduced like army-wide special rules and stratagems/CPs have been poorly thought out and horribly balanced. The willingness to produce FAQs and balance updates is encouraging but the unwillingness to do anything about the obvious problems around allies shows the bean counters are probably still too much in control.

Much like previous versions of 40k, IMO it's a complete waste of time at the competitive level but still more or less functional as a semi-competitive game between like-minded players.

Well, as a just returning player (and veteran wargamer), I'm going to go with mostly no.

ccs wrote:
Well, as a just returning player (and veteran wargamer), I'm going to go with mostly no.

What have you been playing in the interim, and what were you hoping to find on your return?

 Ginjitzu wrote:
I was browsing through some of my old threads when I came across this little gem. Who'd have known, that in a little over five months, Games-Workshop would churn out a brand new addition addressing all of those exact points! If I hadn't written the post myself, I'd be accusing the poster of being a GW plant right now!

 Ginjitzu wrote:

Spoiler:

I've been lurking around this forum for a while now & I've noticed what appear to be several contradictory consensuses (actually a real word; I looked it up!).

The 40k ruleset is a bloated mess & should be cut down/simplified/streamlined.

The limitation on progressing the story beyond 999.M41 has made the 40k universe background stagnant & boring and the story should progress beyond this.

What they did to Warhammer Fantasy was a travesty and should never be repeated.

My question, thus, is this: assuming that the first two points cannot be addressed without repeating the third, what exactly does this community want? Is there some other consideration that resolves these contradictions that I'm not seeing?

Since the premise of the original question was about what you wanted, my question now is, did you get it?

Sooo...We got bloated mess ruleset and 40k's main idea of setting was thrown into garbage to get dime in a dozen story...Yup good thing we got.

Generally happy.

It was never going to please everyone whatever happened. Half the people wanted radical change, half wanted a preservation of the status quo just retooled. Half of people would be pissed off either way, and the current poll results attest to this.

They were damned either way, and in that context they did a pretty good job.

tneva82 wrote:
Sooo...We got bloated mess ruleset...

Do you mean bloated when one considers army specific rules, or just the core rules themselves? What do you think should be removed?

 Ginjitzu wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Sooo...We got bloated mess ruleset...

Do you mean bloated when one considers army specific rules, or just the core rules themselves? What do you think should be removed?

People don't know what they want for the most part. When 8th launched and we were playing a truly streamlined ruleset there were people complaining about lack of depth.

 Ginjitzu wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Sooo...We got bloated mess ruleset...

Do you mean bloated when one considers army specific rules, or just the core rules themselves? What do you think should be removed?

I think this is a common mis-conception from players. A ruleset can be expansive without ever feeling bloated, and many games accomplish this including 40k in the past. Typically, that bloat comes from the million-and-one exceptions that have to be remembered for each rule, and individual interactions that stack up to make the game feel more bloated. This is probably the biggest issue with 40k's current development cycle.

 Stux wrote:
People don't know what they want for the most part. When 8th launched and we were playing a truly streamlined ruleset there were people complaining about lack of depth.

That is a serious misunderstanding of depth and complexity. Depth is about how interesting the gameplay decisions are, complexity vs. streamlining is about word count in the rules. For example, "heavy weapons are -1 to hit if the model moves" and "heavy weapons can not fire if the model moves" are equivalent in complexity but very different in depth. Having heavy weapons be move-or-shoot forces strategic decisions about how to deploy them, whether it's worth moving at the expense of shooting that expensive lascannon, etc. In fact, because effective use of a heavy weapon is situational it is often a poor idea to buy one at all. Having them fire at a -1 penalty minimizes the importance of those decisions because the possible outcomes are closer together. And since heavy weapons are still effective with that -1 penalty (the superior stat line over a basic gun more than offsets the to-hit penalty) there's rarely any choice about taking one.

8th edition at release was somewhat streamlined (though still burdened with nonsense like caring about exactly what melee weapon a sergeant has before a titan removes the entire squad in one shot or a million different versions of "re-roll 1s") compared to the utter disaster of 7th, but only because it was an incomplete game with temporary army lists. It was also a very shallow game with excessive homogenization, minimized importance of LOS/maneuvering/etc, and way too much rolling dice to see how many dice you roll to see who wins the game. Now, after the full game has been released, it's still a very shallow game where the primary deciding factor in who wins is CCG-style list optimization (and how willing each player is to sacrifice everything besides math optimization in making their army) but the word count of the rules is significantly longer.

I’ll preface my answer by saying that 8th for me is subjectely more enjoyable than the last few editions. That being said...

The core rule book is a mess because they just took the rules bloat of 7th and distributed it around individual unit cards instead of having universal special rules which make it more disorganized.

8th is not more streamlined, the rules are all still a mess, you just have to dig harder to find them.

I never once wanted them to advance the storyline, and I think by adding primaris and the primarchs to the game, they have basically ruined the a lot of what made 40k cool and interesting.

For every good thing they did in 8th, they’ve done something wrong, so we’re still stuck with a fairly bad rules set. That being said I commend GW for making an effort this time..

 Peregrine wrote:

 Stux wrote:
People don't know what they want for the most part. When 8th launched and we were playing a truly streamlined ruleset there were people complaining about lack of depth.

That is a serious misunderstanding of depth and complexity. Depth is about how interesting the gameplay decisions are, complexity vs. streamlining is about word count in the rules. For example, "heavy weapons are -1 to hit if the model moves" and "heavy weapons can not fire if the model moves" are equivalent in complexity but very different in depth. Having heavy weapons be move-or-shoot forces strategic decisions about how to deploy them, whether it's worth moving at the expense of shooting that expensive lascannon, etc. In fact, because effective use of a heavy weapon is situational it is often a poor idea to buy one at all. Having them fire at a -1 penalty minimizes the importance of those decisions because the possible outcomes are closer together. And since heavy weapons are still effective with that -1 penalty (the superior stat line over a basic gun more than offsets the to-hit penalty) there's rarely any choice about taking one.

8th edition at release was somewhat streamlined (though still burdened with nonsense like caring about exactly what melee weapon a sergeant has before a titan removes the entire squad in one shot or a million different versions of "re-roll 1s") compared to the utter disaster of 7th, but only because it was an incomplete game with temporary army lists. It was also a very shallow game with excessive homogenization, minimized importance of LOS/maneuvering/etc, and way too much rolling dice to see how many dice you roll to see who wins the game. Now, after the full game has been released, it's still a very shallow game where the primary deciding factor in who wins is CCG-style list optimization (and how willing each player is to sacrifice everything besides math optimization in making their army) but the word count of the rules is significantly longer.

That's fair to be honest. It's the same reason I don't think Inception is that good (aside from cinematography, which is excellent). It's world is complex for complexity's sake. It's not deep.

I was mostly being facetious in the wording of my comment and you make some great points.

I would add though that I don't think 8e is even still THAT complicated. Not as a game. The complexity that detracts from enjoyment of the game isn't the same as 7e, where you have exception layered on exception. Instead the problem with the 8e ruleset that makes it feel bloated is how the rules are presented, and the number of documents you have to cross reference.

If there was a general rerelease of the core book, taking into account all errata, it would be so much easier to play. Though of course there's the cost issue of getting new books!

It's not an easily solvable problem though, GW are not in an easy position here.

No. Why is Space Marines still crap after all these years? Back in 7th edition, all Space Marine armies were weak, except when it comes to Tournaments where playing the objective is important. Until I see Space Marines actually winning Tournaments consistently (because they are the MOST played faction), I can't consider them balanced in any way.

bibotot wrote:
No. Why is Space Marines still crap after all these years? Back in 7th edition, all Space Marine armies were weak, except when it comes to Tournaments where playing the objective is important. Until I see Space Marines actually winning Tournaments consistently (because they are the MOST played faction), I can't consider them balanced in any way.

But is it fair to measure balance in this way? Tournaments will always consist of people actively trying to exploit weaknesses in the rules to gain advantage, and even if Games-Workshop actively try to close those loopholes, they will always be dramatically outnumbered. I'm reminded of a prison guard who said, "we only work eight hours per day to try to think of ways to keep these guys in, but they have literally nothing else to think about all day." OK, so tabletop gamers aren't exactly as limited in their range of life activities as prisoners, but then again...

 Ginjitzu wrote:

bibotot wrote:
No. Why is Space Marines still crap after all these years? Back in 7th edition, all Space Marine armies were weak, except when it comes to Tournaments where playing the objective is important. Until I see Space Marines actually winning Tournaments consistently (because they are the MOST played faction), I can't consider them balanced in any way.

But is it fair to measure balance in this way? Tournaments will always consist of people actively trying to exploit weaknesses in the rules to gain advantage, and even if Games-Workshop actively try to close those loopholes, they will always be dramatically outnumbered. I'm reminded of a prison guard who said, "we only work eight hours per day to try to think of ways to keep these guys in, but they have literally nothing else to think about all day." OK, so tabletop gamers aren't exactly as limited in their range of life activities as prisoners, but then again...

The ratio of players to designers is orders of magnitude greater though!

I got a better system so that was fulfilled. Got a good Drukhari codex that developed the faction even further.

bibotot wrote:
No. Why is Space Marines still crap after all these years? Back in 7th edition, all Space Marine armies were weak, except when it comes to Tournaments where playing the objective is important. Until I see Space Marines actually winning Tournaments consistently (because they are the MOST played faction), I can't consider them balanced in any way.

I seem to recall some very borken SM formations - in an eiditon that some armies did not even get a formation.

8th for me is far far better than 7th and most of the new rules I am happy with, making the terrain rules non optional and some other tweeks would be helpful.

8th is great. The game is fun to play, gained a lot of tactics and depth, while getting rid of unnecessary complexity.
Some elaborated terrain rules are the only thing I'd add, but I think that will come.

The new fluff is also okay. I like that they progressed the timeline, Primaris marines right now are a bit bland, we need renegade Primaris (not necessarily as models, but in the background) or some kind of schisma in the imperium against Guilliman. But Abaddon finally was successful and blew up half the imperium, what's not to like about that?

8E scaled back some of the worst excesses of 7E. The 6E/7E period was by far the lowest point of 40k's existence, both in terms of quality of the rules/balance, and market position/sales.

Now, i'd say we're more or less back to 5E levels of balance and rules quality, which is to say, mediocre at best, but dramatically better than the 2012-2017 days.

As for the story progression, eh...not really a fan of how they chose to do that, I think GW's general fluff quality has been on a downward trend for the last decade or so, and I think there's far too much focus on characters these days, but you can still just ignore most of it.

8th has been my favorite edition since 5th. It's not perfect mind you, but it's being improved with every new update to the rules.

So yeah, I got what I wanted. Then again I didn't want much, other than a game to have fun with.

I think the 8th edition change was on paper a very good one. We REALLY needed a reset, rule-wise. I don't mind the over simplification in MOST cases. I appreciate the multi-damage.
Vaktathi is right when he says that 6th and 7th were the lowest point of 40k.
Nonetheless, the execution of many rules is far from being perfect. The way vehicles get stuck... the transition from templates was catastrophic. See all the hot-fixes introduced (Leman Russ). Something like that is a sign of a huge basic problem in the basic framework of the game.
Furthermore, the overall "power level" of the game remained the same. You still need to stress specific units and strategies because the power creep and volume of fire were not toned down. I am still baffled by the fact that some army concept viable in 3rd edition is not viable anymore in 8th (and it wasn't viable in 6th and 7th as well, you can bet). See the current discussions and hopes for Trukk Boyz with the upcoming Ork codex.
The fluff is... eh. I liked the setting, if I want a progressing story I read a book or watch a movie. Setting must be expanded horizontally, not time-wise. Or at least, not on a great scale. See what Brutus said about Primarchs.
Unless you know VERY WELL what you are doing and it's not what is happening now, sorry. The quality of the writers is not that good.
Primaris are REALLY awkward. But I kinda justify GW moves with them because the marine fanbase is difficult.

Is not all doom and gloom, mind it. Overall I keep my optimism also GW seems to listen. They are just more or less the same, very good models and concepts, very clumsy but good meaning (for most part) designers and writers.
Also editing is heresy, I guess.

Also one note on tournaments - there is bug and bug. I think we cbe more than forigiving if the designers miss specific rules interactions, especially with the soups. These are bugs only players will find out. I don't mind that. I am more worried by over-nerfs or by balance set on the soups instead of a focus of the design on independent and self-sufficient sub-factions. I find more annoying the fact that factions and units are neglected for whole editions because clearly none is interested in the studio.

On the production level, I find baffling to see Primaris Lieutenant #23 (of the 64 planned), and then Warp Spiders from 2nd edition. Come on.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Stux wrote:
People don't know what they want for the most part. When 8th launched and we were playing a truly streamlined ruleset there were people complaining about lack of depth.

That is a serious misunderstanding of depth and complexity. Depth is about how interesting the gameplay decisions are, complexity vs. streamlining is about word count in the rules. For example, "heavy weapons are -1 to hit if the model moves" and "heavy weapons can not fire if the model moves" are equivalent in complexity but very different in depth. Having heavy weapons be move-or-shoot forces strategic decisions about how to deploy them, whether it's worth moving at the expense of shooting that expensive lascannon, etc. In fact, because effective use of a heavy weapon is situational it is often a poor idea to buy one at all. Having them fire at a -1 penalty minimizes the importance of those decisions because the possible outcomes are closer together. And since heavy weapons are still effective with that -1 penalty (the superior stat line over a basic gun more than offsets the to-hit penalty) there's rarely any choice about taking one.

8th edition at release was somewhat streamlined (though still burdened with nonsense like caring about exactly what melee weapon a sergeant has before a titan removes the entire squad in one shot or a million different versions of "re-roll 1s") compared to the utter disaster of 7th, but only because it was an incomplete game with temporary army lists. It was also a very shallow game with excessive homogenization, minimized importance of LOS/maneuvering/etc, and way too much rolling dice to see how many dice you roll to see who wins the game. Now, after the full game has been released, it's still a very shallow game where the primary deciding factor in who wins is CCG-style list optimization (and how willing each player is to sacrifice everything besides math optimization in making their army) but the word count of the rules is significantly longer.

I agree with you about the meanings of depth and complexity, but disagree with pretty much everything else. HAveing heavy weapons be move-or-shoot reduces the depth of the game as, instead of trading mobility for a reduction in damage when it is advantageous you simply never move a unit with a heavy weapon unless forced to do so. Having the outcomes be so drastically far apart trivialises the decision by making the right answer obvious in almost every case, stripping depth from the game. Additionally in 8th vehicles are also affected by the heavy weapon penalty which makes them much more interesting.

The primary deciding factor in 40k is hard to determine. If you bring a terrible list, then, yes, you will lose. If we consider an environment where people are bringing a similarly competitive list (of which there is a reasonable variety in 8th), the primary deciding factor becomes player skill. This is evident from competition results, but you can also test it yourself by playing mirror matches and/or doing army swaps. I frequently do this with my opponents, as it leads to improvement in play by the less skilled player a lot of the time.

Drager wrote:

The primary deciding factor in 40k is hard to determine. If you bring a terrible list, then, yes, you will lose. If we consider an environment where people are bringing a similarly competitive list (of which there is a reasonable variety in 8th), the primary deciding factor becomes player skill. This is evident from competition results, but you can also test it yourself by playing mirror matches and/or doing army swaps. I frequently do this with my opponents, as it leads to improvement in play by the less skilled player a lot of the time.

I have to ask - how big the difference between a bad and a good list should be? Mind it that I don't think that the answer should be necessarily "little". But I wonder if there is agreement on that.

It's easier to learn and more people are playing. Yay!

Still hard to master, there are some tricky things about the assault phase in particular which can transform the outcome of a battle. Yay!

Quoting myself from that old thread
"All I want is simply some semblance of game balance. I'm not asking for StarCraft Brood War levels of balance but it would be nice if they hit the "not quite as bad as DoW Dark Crusade" standard. As it currently stands the rules writing for 40k is almost as bad (if at times worse) than just rolling 2D6 and using a Buff/Nerf table to make changes. Bloated rules aren't really an issue for me but its the carelessness of the rules that is concerning."

Carelessness of rules is a major concern of mine and i feel like 8th attempted to avoid careless rules by just gutting everything. My issues with 7th where with the codexes (and some of the core rule interactions) causing huge balance issues but I generally enjoyed the core of 7th. 8th has a terrible core rule set and the codexes can't really add enough to such a bare bones system to make it fun to play.

I wanted some sort of balance and in a monkey's paw sort of way got it but at the cost of the whole game being unfun to play. Also the whole "rolling a d6" joke is a bit of irony as 8th had a lot of complex mechanics reduced down to d6 rolls such as blast weapons.

The core of 7E had a lot of issues in and of itself. I cannot recall a single game of 7E that did not resort to house rules of some form, even if it was just terrain setup. Vehicle rules were an atrocious mess (lets just make all vehicles W2/W3 models with no save on top of the damage table kill mechanic), the Jink mechanic was absurdly poweful and overused, wound allocation was overdetailed and had poor effects on game balance, even the most basic mission design was awful (oh look, they kept Big Guns and Scouring the same as 6E...except HS and FA choices now have no unique scoring ability to offset their added kill value), psychic powers were comically poorly balanced (e.g. Invisibility), the core game rules were really a poor amalgamation of a number of badly implemented patchs that were never well thought out.

8E is far from perfect, but I think the core ruleset has fewer basic issues.

 Stux wrote:

 Ginjitzu wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Sooo...We got bloated mess ruleset...

Do you mean bloated when one considers army specific rules, or just the core rules themselves? What do you think should be removed?

People don't know what they want for the most part. When 8th launched and we were playing a truly streamlined ruleset there were people complaining about lack of depth.

I would say those people confuse pointless micromanagement and rolling dice to see what table you roll on for another random result with actual depth. 7th had very little depth but a whole lot of chucking dice on random tables and making sure your tank was angled at exactly 37.5 degrees to the right so you could actually use both guns on your desired target.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ginjitzu wrote:

bibotot wrote:
No. Why is Space Marines still crap after all these years? Back in 7th edition, all Space Marine armies were weak, except when it comes to Tournaments where playing the objective is important. Until I see Space Marines actually winning Tournaments consistently (because they are the MOST played faction), I can't consider them balanced in any way.

But is it fair to measure balance in this way? Tournaments will always consist of people actively trying to exploit weaknesses in the rules to gain advantage, and even if Games-Workshop actively try to close those loopholes, they will always be dramatically outnumbered. I'm reminded of a prison guard who said, "we only work eight hours per day to try to think of ways to keep these guys in, but they have literally nothing else to think about all day." OK, so tabletop gamers aren't exactly as limited in their range of life activities as prisoners, but then again...

That would be a good excuse, but GW admits they don't even try very hard to make balanced rules. They make rules for fluff, fun, and selling models, with balance coming in last as a concern. They also don't playtest the rules very well. Video game devs figured out a long time ago that there's more players than devs, and they're better at breaking the game. That's why they have early access, betas, PTR servers, etc. If GW put out a beta codex 3-6 months ahead of release of the regular codex, the players would have a chance to break it, figure out what is undercosted/overcosted, point out spelling errors or contradictions in the rules, and then the final version could be far more balanced. They are finally doing that with SoB codex, but it's taken them damn near 30 years to figure that out. Every codex written for 8th has already needed FAQs and erratas. If devs can balance a game like Dota with 117 heroes, 468 abilities and 100 items that all interact with each other and scale throughout the game, GW can balance 20 odd factions. It would just require balance to be a primary concern instead of the last cursory glance before the book goes to print.

I havent played w40k before this edition, so I don't know how they were once. What I did get in 8th was hard to describe in english. It feels like being sold something we call the german flood car. It has all the legal papers, it maybe even looks nice, it costs less then a brand new car. But it does not drive, because it has sand in its engine.

GK in 8th feel like that. An index, a codex, not a non faction like SoS or inquisition, but the army was copy pasted and not writen, and no one that actually plays the army saw the rules before sending them off to print.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

They make rules for fluff, fun, and selling models, with balance coming in last as a concern.

What part of the GK rules is fun, fluffy or ment to help sell GK models?