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Made in at
Longtime Dakkanaut




Let me preface this by saying that I am not trying to hate on 9th Ed here. What I've been asking myself is this:

How long can GW draw out 9th Ed until it requires a reset due to codex creep and stat creep?

With warhammer working on a D6 system and a unit statline ranging from 1-10, I am wondering for how long units and weapons can get stronger and stronger.

Now I honestly think that GW has done a stellar job with the death guard and drukhari codex and if the quality of codex releases continues in this manner, I am very hyped for the rest of 9th edition, especially because I think GWs new armies of renown approach is great (I want to see a necron destroyer cult army of renown and I want it yesterday, please and thank you).

Basically I would like 9th to continue as long a possible with lots of armies of renown possibilities for each faction. I am just fearful, that one year or so after the last 9th Ed codex update hits, we'll get a hard reset and 10th will come along.
Do you think my fears are unfounded the way 9th is being set up?
   
Made in gb
Furious Fire Dragon




UK

GW seem to pretty much be doing their editions in 3 year cycles now.

Whether Covid has forced them long-term to push this back is yet to be seen however.

Nazi punks feth off 
   
Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

Tiberias wrote:

How long can GW draw out 9th Ed until it requires a reset due to codex creep and stat creep?

GW doesn't need to draw it out. Just don't buy 10th edition, and keep playing 9th if you're happy with it.

 
   
Made in us
Confessor Of Sins





Tacoma, WA, USA

GW can draw out an edition for as long as they want. There is no requirement to make a new edition at anytime. If they wanted to, they could just roll a few years of errata into a new printing of the rules and make no other changes at all.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




Central California

 alextroy wrote:
GW can draw out an edition for as long as they want. There is no requirement to make a new edition at anytime. If they wanted to, they could just roll a few years of errata into a new printing of the rules and make no other changes at all.


This is absolutely true. They however, will not do this. They will roll 10th out as soon as the Sister's of Battle Codex comes out. (Sarcasm, see the history of 40k to get it.)
Or, more realistically, they will roll a new one out when they decide they can get more money by doing so. This usually occurs when they believe the majority of players have received the codex (codices) they use. This does seem to be a rough 3 year pattern. Creep has been a part of the last four editions at least, it is part of GW's system, not a flaw. Creep sells the latest releases. GW is in it to make money.

Keeping the hobby side alive!

I never forget the Dakka unit scale is binary: Units are either OP or Garbage. 
   
Made in ca
Angered Reaver Arena Champion





The three year cycle is kind of established. The question that remains is whether we'll be seeing big edition changes or just tweaks.
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





My dream is that 9th becomes the persistent, living edition that 8th was supposed to be. I really want the game to have a persistent edition, because I think it is actually the only way to achieve complete ranges for non-marine factions. The Space Marine range, once Heavy Intercessors and Gravis Captains are available as stand-alones in May is so robust that GW has given themselves room to make things that aren't Space Marines.

If 9th dies, they have to rerelease a dex for Marines, which will mean another 6-8 months of nothing but Marines and whichever NPC army they choose to occupy the other half of the starter box. If not, they can build a campaign book to support releases from any four factions each quarter and then 16 factions get something new every year forever.

Once enough new units exist for a given faction, you can reprint the dex if you want to, but since people who liked the models and bought them will already have the rules from the box and/ or the campaign book, this would be more cosmetic than anything else. No need for a BRB.People think this will never happen, and to be fair, GW doesn't have the kind of track record that would make a persistent edition plausible.

Only time will tell.

Once all the dexes are out, they'll try another round of campaign resources to support model releases. If that doesn't drop their sales figures, they'll stick to it. As soon as the numbers dip below a given threshold, they'll default to known behaviour and hit the reset button.

I'll buy into 9th as much as I did 8th, which is a deeper buy in than I've done for any other edition of the game. I was preparing to make 8th MY last edition, whether it was GW's edition or not. In order to do that, I'd need a dex and models for every army that I might conceivably want to play for the next 30 years or so... That's probably the longest I can reasonably expect to live.

The only reason that I didn't stick to my guns is that Crusade was good enough that the bespoke content in each dex was worth the money for me- Crusade made the game feel like the game I always wanted. And that's also one of the things that will lock me into 9th for life- if they do a 10th, there's no guarantee they'll continue Crusade, and even if they do, it's so good as is that I think it's just as likely they'd screw it up than make it better.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/12 23:59:16


 
   
Made in gb
Shas'la with Pulse Carbine




Eastern Fringe

I really don't like the way in which the editions are being done. It doesn't feel like a genuine attempt to improve the game, it feels like rules churn in order to bleed as much money as possible. I think it is about time that GW made their rules digital and just had an annual update, and used real publishing for lore, campaigns, etc. A 3-year release cycle seems crazy to me when you have 20+ factions and you are burning through the books.

The first rule of unarmed combat is: don’t be unarmed. 
   
Made in fi
Locked in the Tower of Amareo





Tiberias wrote:
Let me preface this by saying that I am not trying to hate on 9th Ed here. What I've been asking myself is this:

How long can GW draw out 9th Ed until it requires a reset due to codex creep and stat creep?



Irrelevant. Gw will release new ed when they want to sell one. Odds are they already know date for 10th. And odds are good one it's 2023.

For gw it's all about marketing. How long before sales of models could do with another big change to change purchape habits. How fast we can change rules and codexes without releases competing each other.

What rules need etc are irrelevant. Editions come when it gives maximum profit to gw(in their estimation). Not when players would want.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/13 03:21:35


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




The need to reset all the stats is precisely what will be their excuse for 10th edition. And people will lap it as always, and talk about how great it will be to tone down the stat inflation, just like at the start of 9th they were talking about how great said stat inflation was.

GW is well aware of how to manage a circular development cycle.
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





I won't.

I honestly don't think there's anything they could do to drag me out of this edition and into another.

Even if 10th had a Crusade system, and even if it was better than the current one, the current one is enough to keep me going far as long as I need.

By contrast, if GW makes the wise decision to avoid hitting the reset button, I'll be a paying customer for another couple decades.
   
Made in jp
Crushing Black Templar Crusader Pilot






I think people saying that GW wants rulesets to run for exactly 3 years before a do-over give GWs rules team far more credit to coordinate and plan their work than we've seen, but 9th really does seem to have a lot of issues baked in from the outset. The biggest giveaway that this edition's days are numbered is the amount of bloat already.
   
Made in it
Longtime Dakkanaut





10th could happen at any time, but the 3 years cycle is a good indication.

Now, since 9th edition so far is faring very very well, it is likely that 10th edition will be a very light brush stroke over 9th.
   
Made in at
Longtime Dakkanaut




Spoletta wrote:
10th could happen at any time, but the 3 years cycle is a good indication.

Now, since 9th edition so far is faring very very well, it is likely that 10th edition will be a very light brush stroke over 9th.


I agree that 9th is doing very well so far, but after every faction got their 9th update, with stronger weapons, more AP, more wounds....how do you apply a light brushstroke to that for 10th?
You can't infinitely inflate stats, especially on a D6 system with a statblock from 1-10. So unless they keep 9th, a reset is inevitable at some point.
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka




NE Ohio, USA

 posermcbogus wrote:
I think people saying that GW wants rulesets to run for exactly 3 years before a do-over give GWs rules team far more credit to coordinate and plan their work than we've seen, but 9th really does seem to have a lot of issues baked in from the outset. The biggest giveaway that this edition's days are numbered is the amount of bloat already.


Bzzz. WRONG.

The biggest give away is that you're playing the NINTH edition of the game.
The clock started ticking towards 10th before 9th even hit the shelves....
   
Made in gb
Trigger-Happy Baal Predator Pilot




Scotland

I don't think it'll make a 3rd year. 9th is done after it's 2nd.

Some of us have been around long enough to see it happen before and it'll happen again.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




I guess you can say since 7th lasted 3 years and 8th lasted 3 years that this edition will last 3 years - but I'm not totally sure it works that way.

In the olden days GW wanted a big headline box - containing rules, some Space Marines and... miscellaneous. This was clearly a big selling item, that stores attempted to push on anyone who wandered in. It needed to be replaced every so often - and "its a totally new edition even if it isn't really" was a good excuse.

But for some reason GW decided with Indomitus that this should cost a fraction of whatever even a normal discount box would expect to cost - selling out in about 20 seconds, and then... not be available. Something they have just repeated with Cursed City. (This seems kind of stupid to me - but from a financial perspective if 100% sales=megabucks, you are not going to complain.)

So I don't know if rule resets are as essential. I mean lets say its summer 2023. There's now Assault Inceptors and Veteran Boltguard and a new Gravis-Librarian and idk, a whole new plastic CWE range. And GW stick what is potentially ÂŁ500 RRP in a box worth just ÂŁ125. Do they need to wrap it up in 10th edition, or is it just going to sell out in microseconds? I guess it doesn't hurt.

You can say they need a new edition to cause a new codex creep cycle - but SM 2.0 (and the often forgotten CSM joke) are standing right there. Nothing really stops them issuing multiple army books to a faction over the course of a 4-5 year edition if they were so inclined. They can spend 18 months making everyone's anti-tank ludicrously powerful - and then another 18 months giving all vehicles and monsters 50% more wounds.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/13 10:25:27


 
   
Made in at
Longtime Dakkanaut




Just hypothetically, GW doesn't have to recycle the codex creep for a 10th edition, if armies of renown get a good feedback from the community and their rules sell well. You can update factions this way as well in a (imo) more fun way than just creeping everyone's stats up endlessly (which as I said before, you can only do up to a certain point).

Maybe I'm completely wrong on this one, but I think that if 10th does come around in 3years and they don't do a hard reset on some unit stats, the health of the game would suffer greatly from yet another round of codex creep.
   
Made in de
Longtime Dakkanaut




3 years is probably realistic.

I wouldn't expect the "everyone has their Codex"-phase to last very long.

8th was in a perfect spot after GSC and Chaos Knights were out. Everyone had their book. Granted, some armies like Grey Knights might've needed a little help, but it was the best the game has ever been and could've stayed there for decades.

Instead, GW burned it down with Marines 2.0 and PA within 2-3 months of the "last" Codex being released.
   
Made in us
Enigmatic Chaos Sorcerer




Tampa, FL

2-3 years at most. They have figured they can do an adjustment to the rules, just enough to change it so you have to rebuy everything and change around what's good, and milk it for a few years then rinse and repeat. It means the game never really gets to a mature point because as soon as everyone gets their books, they will either redo books e.g. SM v2 or add more garbage on top and then surprise new edition right after e.g. Gathering Storm and PA.

- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
Made in it
Longtime Dakkanaut





Tiberias wrote:
Spoletta wrote:
10th could happen at any time, but the 3 years cycle is a good indication.

Now, since 9th edition so far is faring very very well, it is likely that 10th edition will be a very light brush stroke over 9th.


I agree that 9th is doing very well so far, but after every faction got their 9th update, with stronger weapons, more AP, more wounds....how do you apply a light brushstroke to that for 10th?
You can't infinitely inflate stats, especially on a D6 system with a statblock from 1-10. So unless they keep 9th, a reset is inevitable at some point.


Why inflate them?
What 9th is doing is toning down the worst excesses of 8th and focusing a lot on internal balance by buffing never seen units. There is very little actual power creep, in fact the meta sees a lot of 8th edition books (Sisters, demons, halrequins, custodes, admech).
There will be no need for a reset in 10th.
   
Made in pl
Longtime Dakkanaut




 alextroy wrote:
GW can draw out an edition for as long as they want. There is no requirement to make a new edition at anytime. If they wanted to, they could just roll a few years of errata into a new printing of the rules and make no other changes at all.
Yes, but then they're missing out on all those rulebook sales. Gotta keep the customers chasing the meta.
   
Made in it
Perfect Shot Dark Angels Predator Pilot





Sesto San Giovanni, Italy

I think it's a two-fold issue, an GW cornered themselves with the "no model no rules" policy on one side, and with the "no free rules" on the other.

Basically, they NEED to release new models, and they NEED the books to provide them to players. Their books are (generally speaking) either codexes or of abysmal value, as such I don't see a living edition with periodical "campaign" update as feasible.

Yes, they can (in theory) manage multiple codexes for the same faction within the edition... But I don't think they want that. Aside from the fact that I agree that the current level or rule bloat is barely manageable.
I haven't purchased my new DA codex yet for example, because the expense is not justified until Covid situation improves... and that's the first competitive codex for DA from a decade.

As usual, they'll maximize profit rather than maximize the user engagement... It's their decision and (eventually) their loss.

I can't condone a place where abusers and abused are threated the same: it's destined to doom, so there is no reason to participate in it. 
   
Made in us
Hellacious Havoc





They will want to keep their pipeline going. For 8E they released all the codices and then did the campaign books, but now they are releasing them side by side. So that may shorten the cycle this time around, although the pandemic has slowed them down as well.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Springfield, VA

Bloat ruined 7th, then damaged 8th (though it ended before Bloat could really take off, after only 2 sets of campaign books), and will continue into the future.

Wake up sheeple, the bogeyman of 7th hasn't died, because it was never the edition's fault in the first place.

   
Made in at
Longtime Dakkanaut




Spoletta wrote:
Tiberias wrote:
Spoletta wrote:
10th could happen at any time, but the 3 years cycle is a good indication.

Now, since 9th edition so far is faring very very well, it is likely that 10th edition will be a very light brush stroke over 9th.


I agree that 9th is doing very well so far, but after every faction got their 9th update, with stronger weapons, more AP, more wounds....how do you apply a light brushstroke to that for 10th?
You can't infinitely inflate stats, especially on a D6 system with a statblock from 1-10. So unless they keep 9th, a reset is inevitable at some point.


Why inflate them?
What 9th is doing is toning down the worst excesses of 8th and focusing a lot on internal balance by buffing never seen units. There is very little actual power creep, in fact the meta sees a lot of 8th edition books (Sisters, demons, halrequins, custodes, admech).
There will be no need for a reset in 10th.


I'm not saying that they should inflate the stats further, I'm saying they can't be doing it forever every time a new edition comes along unless they make a hard reset at some point.
You can't just keep slapping more attacks and wounds on a profile and more dmg on weapons when you are limited by a D6 system with a stat block from 1-10.

My hope is that they get every faction up to par like they did with drukhari and then expand from there with non essential campaign books like charadon. If we get another complete codex cycle for 10th, and the power creep increases at the same rate as it does now, something has to change considering unit stats and weapon profiles.
   
Made in us
Slaanesh Chosen Marine Riding a Fiend




Australia

I hope they stick with it, but expect 9th to be replaced within 3-4 years of release.

The Circle of Iniquity
The Fourth Seal
 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





 alextroy wrote:
GW can draw out an edition for as long as they want. There is no requirement to make a new edition at anytime. If they wanted to, they could just roll a few years of errata into a new printing of the rules and make no other changes at all.


If GW's history is any indication they'll roll out a new printing of the rules with none of the [censored] errata included at all. And then they'll release an entirely new edition.

Edit:

Ok, if I'm going to be critical of GW in general and 40k in particular (and I am) and I'm going to try to not be a smart-[censored] adding something besides heat to the discussion (which I should) I'm obliged to take a step back and look at the real problem.

I played WMH for most of 5th-7th ed, and I loved that game, but if I'm being honest it had a lot of the same issues that draw complaints about 40k. Same IGOUGO turn structure, same rules bloat, same lethality, and despite fan-boys like me gushing about tighter and more technical rules writing by the Mk1 -> Mk2 conversion they had an FAQ document big enough to beat goats to death with. There were three things they got really right though:

1) They eliminated Codex Creep. They kept it down to basically five real Warmachine factions and four real Hordes factions; whenever they released a book everyone on that side of the system got roughly the same number of new toys and they alternated between the two. They did a pretty good job of making new units more nuanced rather than straight up stronger, and as a side bonus nobody was ever looking at the new toys and complaining that their models were old enough to get served in a bar.

Now obviously that turned out to be unsustainable in the long run, but GW could still take a page from that book. The average codex is still 75% fluff text, cut that down to something a little less stupid and they could probably manage to pack what you need to actually play into four books; Marines, Other Imperium, Chaos, and Xenos, and turn a better profit. They sell 20 codexes and 10 suppliments, I'm buying 1/10th of the product line. They sell 4 collections and I'm buying 3/4 instead. It's the same number of purchases on my part, but a much lower investment on theirs.

2) Multiple victory conditions. One problem that 40k has always had is that it's very difficult to turn a losing position around and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. WMH was built from the ground up around the idea that if you can kill the opposing commander you win. Scenarios were mostly about adding alternative win conditions, but if you were losing on attrition and losing on scenario you weren't out of the game so long as you had the tools left to attempt an assassination run.

Again, 40k can't really do that the way WMH did it because WMH was designed around it and a Warcaster/Warlock was generally the most durable thing in your army, but I do think it's possible to design scenarios where the two players each have a primary objective that instantly wins the game and then secondary objectives that score points to decide the winner if the game goes the full five turns.

3) Threat ranges were much, much shorter. Average gun range of 12", charging was part of normal movement and not a phase of it's own. It made moving into position vastly more important.

40k needs a complete overhaul to pull that off. Not impossible, but still a big shift in unit profiles.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/13 19:34:32


   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





yukishiro1 wrote:
The need to reset all the stats is precisely what will be their excuse for 10th edition. And people will lap it as always, and talk about how great it will be to tone down the stat inflation, just like at the start of 9th they were talking about how great said stat inflation was.

GW is well aware of how to manage a circular development cycle.


I'll bet you that won't happen.

Anyway, the forum has a lot of diverse opinions. I don't really recall talk about stat inflation at the start of 8th beyond marines, because it was an entirely new system and even before 8th people talked about tanks with wounds.

I rather think we'll see increased complexity for vehicles in the next edition, but not so much as to go back to the old system, endless psychic spells / expanded psychic abilities, and a utility surrounding the spell and stratagem types they have begun to include.
   
Made in us
Omnipotent Necron Overlord






The truth of the matter is - editions are really determined not by their edition number - but by how many space marine codex's have been released. You really think it will be another 2ish years before we get our next space marine codex?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/04/13 18:56:05


If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
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