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Pandabeer wrote:
Reducing army size. 2000 points felt like Apocalypse at the end of 8th. Hopefully GW will find some other way of buffing underperforming units besides just endlessly reducing points costs.

and even then losing a unit or two and maybe a hq and/or a support choice isnt really meaningfully smaller, if that was the intention dropping a standard game to 1500 and leaving points as is seems a way easier than whats happened

Smaller tables means need less stuff

This cannot be a reason.
GW is more interested to sell more, more models and units, all made playable in a single list.

So you can be more specific about point value, for instance a scale of 1-10 isn’t as accurate in a scale of 1-100, especially since GW don’t do 1.5 pt; it’s easier to scale up the pt value. This way they can separate items that were the same pt value in previous edition.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Smaller tables means need less stuff

This cannot be a reason.
GW is more interested to sell more, more models and units, all made playable in a single list.

KT mats probably didn't sell good enough.

 Eipi10 wrote:

Breton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
There's a fair few people saying that of they wanted to promote smaller games use lower points or the community should have made that move already.

Simply put nobody would play smaller points because there's a large crowd of players who are fixated on "bigger is better" and like to see a big round number. There were threads here saying people would just play 2300 etc after the points changes because they like having more stuff. Same for the 2000+1 crowd.

Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.

Nobody is going to buy that fallacy. People want the big game because they have enough stuff for a big game. They want to "play" with all their "toys". For most people it's not that hard to collect 50ish Space Marines - or 100ish orks, or 75ish eldar, or 20-100 Nids that all worked out to about 2000 to 2500 points. I've been in the game for nearly 30 years, and my first army was the Ultramarines in 2nd Ed. There were four of us and we each picked one of the main four liveries of Space Marines. I went last and got UM. At this point I think I have about a third of the chapter, maybe more. About half the First Company, The second, enough for the third, maybe even the fourth, half the 10th company. Part of me wants to play with it all. Most of me just wants to play with one or two of every/most things Which last time I tried to write a list (that way) came out to about 3500 points, which I hated trimming to 2000-2500. If they're going to play a game, people want to play with all the pieces to get their money's worth. We can assign motives to GW all we want about how GW wants what we want them to want for the game to be played the way we think it should be, but the fact is, human nature determines how the game is played. and people want to empty the toy box when they play with toys. We've seen 20+ years of this behavior. You can pick whatever points total on whatever arbitrary scale you want, the simple truth is people generally collect an army of a certain size that has in the past floated in the 2K-3K range +/- a few side board units You can call that 500 points or you can call it 10,000 points, it doesn't matter the point is people want to play with all 50 space marines, all 80 orks, etc.

I think his point is that people are so used to seeing 2000 pt lists that if GW wanted to call 1500 pts the standard or something it wouldn't fly. The only way they can do that is by repointing everything to be X% more expensive. Your ideas aren't incompatible, collections tend towards to 50 SM / 100 ork size and people like the idea of a 2K point army, the two fit together. Admittedly it was pretty clear how far things fell in points costs in 8th, so GW is probably hedging their bets for the early part of 9th. Although I'm not so sure about the toy box analogy, if it were true then apocalypse would be more popular.

This is it basically, the toybox thing comes from 2 places, either people who have a large collection of cool stuff or those who attend events and don't like hard choices when list building.

Why might playtesters "feel a need to try and justify the results somehow"? Especially when there shouldn't be anything to justify? Even more worryingly, why weren't they "actually involved in the points adjustments, had no prior knowledge of what they would be, no knowledge of why it was done outside of the stated reason"? Isn't that the point of playtesters, to be assistants to the main rules writers and so be more in the know than your average community article reader?

It seems to me and many others that GW put these playtesters up as scapegoats, gave them quarter-tested rules, ignored their feedback, and now expect them to defend these terrible rules. Those who don't defend them will not be invited back, but those who do will get even more official support from GW.

Can't speak for them obviously, but I think a lot of play testers felt the need to say something because such a big deal was made of the play testing. And now, a lot of these folks (who are very well known within the community) are feeling the pressure of a lot of eyes on them. Honestly, I'm sort of with you on this - When they said 9th was the most play tested version ever, I kind of laughed at it. 8th was, at the time, also the most play tested version ever and it didn't stop GW from making classic GW mistakes ...

GW has been trying to take more control over the competitive market recently, and the next step in doing that is to kill it, so to speak. 9th edition will have significantly worse balance than 8th to filter out and drive away community leaders who are not totally loyal to GW and will never threaten their market share. I'm not saying 9th will be unplayable, but I am saying better balance will not be a goal of 9th in the least and it will suffer for that. TO's who stand by GW, keeping their missions and not using house rules, will be rewarded as FLG has and more. Those who don't and attempt to fix 9th's obvious flaws will be ignored and fail to grow the way officially supported tournaments grow.

Meanwhile, they can use this opportunity to make 40k more "accessible", like by making all the points a multiple of 5. I don't know which motive came first, I imagine you think it is the latter, but it doesn't matter, they are doing both.

So, this is considerably less evil and conspiratorial than you were being earlier. The last sentence isn't even evil at all. lol It's GOOD to make the game more accessible. That's always the issue when an edition ends. The end of 7th and 8th both had the same issue - how on earth do you get a new player started? Now, whether or not that's what they were doing with the points remains to be seen. I don't think that was on their mind. I think they had a certain goal in mind and went about it incorrectly.

In terms of the tournament scene - It's arguably the tournament scene that SAVED 40k during 7th. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but were it not for the ITC, I don't know that there would have been ANY tournaments happening in the U.S. by the time 7th ended. That edition almost single handedly murdered the game in many areas. That team (whether one likes them or not, and whether one agrees with what they did or not) did a lot of work to make 7th playable. In addition, it was once again the competitive community that helped save AoS when they released it without points (what the hell Jervis!?). So, given that GW has not thrown its own major tournaments in a very long time (outside if the occasional events at Warhammer World), and give that this particular section of the community has actively done so much to fix some of GW's problems, it only makes sense that GW would reach out.

This goes double for GW under Rountree who has the point of view of someone who actually played the games GW makes. So again, GW has been more active in all sections of the community. All of them. It's not an evil conspiracy, and they aren't "trying to take over the tournament scene". They don't want that - they currently barely have the man-power for their own stores and those are direct money makers. Tournaments are NOT. They are often "break even" at BEST. Why would they want to take that over? There's no conspiracy here. They are just trying (poorly in some cases) to be more engaged with the community.

So far, other than your theory of trying to make the game more4 accessible by going in multiples of 5 (which, I have a feeling will go away at the very next CA update, and which isn't really the "malevolent conspiracy" you were hinting at), I still haven't seen you explain what "evil" GW is up to with this increase. Can we put the conspiracy theory to bed now?

Basically revamp points across the board requires reassessment of your army and makes new optimal choices.

New auto includes = more sales.

Basically revamp points across the board requires reassessment of your army and makes new optimal choices.

New auto includes = more sales.

There were a million other and better ways to do that with the points. I don't even think that's it. They just screwed up on their initial goal because the premise was flawed to begin with (we were NEVER going to see an appreciably faster game but reducing armies by only one or two units), and then there's the classic GW approach of "just release it and we'll look at fixing it later."

Pandabeer wrote:
Reducing army size. 2000 points felt like Apocalypse at the end of 8th. Hopefully GW will find some other way of buffing underperforming units besides just endlessly reducing points costs.

It's a hard thing to ask when they can't easily change datasheets. Even if it were all online, a new point's list will be far more accessible than giving some weapon AP-3 on wound rolls of 6 or some weird rule.

Tycho wrote:

Spoiler:

Why might playtesters "feel a need to try and justify the results somehow"? Especially when there shouldn't be anything to justify? Even more worryingly, why weren't they "actually involved in the points adjustments, had no prior knowledge of what they would be, no knowledge of why it was done outside of the stated reason"? Isn't that the point of playtesters, to be assistants to the main rules writers and so be more in the know than your average community article reader?

It seems to me and many others that GW put these playtesters up as scapegoats, gave them quarter-tested rules, ignored their feedback, and now expect them to defend these terrible rules. Those who don't defend them will not be invited back, but those who do will get even more official support from GW.

Can't speak for them obviously, but I think a lot of play testers felt the need to say something because such a big deal was made of the play testing. And now, a lot of these folks (who are very well known within the community) are feeling the pressure of a lot of eyes on them. Honestly, I'm sort of with you on this - When they said 9th was the most play tested version ever, I kind of laughed at it. 8th was, at the time, also the most play tested version ever and it didn't stop GW from making classic GW mistakes ...

GW has been trying to take more control over the competitive market recently, and the next step in doing that is to kill it, so to speak. 9th edition will have significantly worse balance than 8th to filter out and drive away community leaders who are not totally loyal to GW and will never threaten their market share. I'm not saying 9th will be unplayable, but I am saying better balance will not be a goal of 9th in the least and it will suffer for that. TO's who stand by GW, keeping their missions and not using house rules, will be rewarded as FLG has and more. Those who don't and attempt to fix 9th's obvious flaws will be ignored and fail to grow the way officially supported tournaments grow.

Meanwhile, they can use this opportunity to make 40k more "accessible", like by making all the points a multiple of 5. I don't know which motive came first, I imagine you think it is the latter, but it doesn't matter, they are doing both.

So, this is considerably less evil and conspiratorial than you were being earlier. The last sentence isn't even evil at all. lol It's GOOD to make the game more accessible. That's always the issue when an edition ends. The end of 7th and 8th both had the same issue - how on earth do you get a new player started? Now, whether or not that's what they were doing with the points remains to be seen. I don't think that was on their mind. I think they had a certain goal in mind and went about it incorrectly.

In terms of the tournament scene - It's arguably the tournament scene that SAVED 40k during 7th. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but were it not for the ITC, I don't know that there would have been ANY tournaments happening in the U.S. by the time 7th ended. That edition almost single handedly murdered the game in many areas. That team (whether one likes them or not, and whether one agrees with what they did or not) did a lot of work to make 7th playable. In addition, it was once again the competitive community that helped save AoS when they released it without points (what the hell Jervis!?). So, given that GW has not thrown its own major tournaments in a very long time (outside if the occasional events at Warhammer World), and give that this particular section of the community has actively done so much to fix some of GW's problems, it only makes sense that GW would reach out.

This goes double for GW under Rountree who has the point of view of someone who actually played the games GW makes. So again, GW has been more active in all sections of the community. All of them. It's not an evil conspiracy, and they aren't "trying to take over the tournament scene". They don't want that - they currently barely have the man-power for their own stores and those are direct money makers. Tournaments are NOT. They are often "break even" at BEST. Why would they want to take that over? There's no conspiracy here. They are just trying (poorly in some cases) to be more engaged with the community.

So far, other than your theory of trying to make the game more4 accessible by going in multiples of 5 (which, I have a feeling will go away at the very next CA update, and which isn't really the "malevolent conspiracy" you were hinting at), I still haven't seen you explain what "evil" GW is up to with this increase. Can we put the conspiracy theory to bed now?

Glad we agree on something, and I only used the word "malicious" to quote Hanlon's Law. Back on topic, making everything a multiple of 5 will do nothing for accessibility, it's just a number, but I can see how some lizard brain might think it matters. The fact the some are hurt the change while no one is helped is where conspiracy talk and evilness might come into play, but even if it was an honest mistake (I don't care either way), trying to make a trade-off like that is pretty low. I would call a mistake of that magnitude evil regardless of intentions. [N.B. if they actually wanted to make 40k more accessible, they would have to undo most of psychic awakening].

As for the tournament scene, Your thoughts on ITC during 7th are exactly correct and I have never heard anyone else say otherwise. And that's the thing, people weren't playing Warhammer 40k, they were playing ITC 40k. It was not part of GW's IP and a potential competitor in the making; a small one, but one who could do their own game better than they could. What better way to fix these two problems (having a bad game and a competitor who can do it better) than to simply buy out the competition, hire them as playtesters and whatnot. Again, I don't care which motivation they had, improving the game or eliminating competition, the end result is the same. There are fewer versions of 40k being actively played making the game all the more of a monopoly, with all the stagnation and inefficiency that entails. ITC is just being roped into matched pay (the other way around, really) and narrative and open play are still taking the leftovers of matched (Crusade might change that, but I am not confident in the current version; I haven't actually played it though), even FW-made rules are gone. It's a big consolidation and one I don't support, 40k was hardly overly decentralized before. I don't believe a multi-billion dollar company would do anything just to make friends, but even if community engagement was their primary goal, it sure is awfully convenient that this is the main side effect. And that side effect will have more long-lasting consequences than GW doing more announcements at LVO or whatever.