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Interesting comments on a natfka post. Real or not, who knows...

http://natfka.blogspot.ca/2014/01/an-interesting-conversation-with-gw-rep.html

I'm still wondering why there hasn't been any momentum for a community driven Open40k project.

gravitywell wrote:
I'm still wondering why there hasn't been any momentum for a community driven Open40k project.

Probably because, as happened with the INAT FAQ, regardless of the intentions of such a thing, it would quickly come to be regarded as some 'elitist' group of gamers trying to tell everyone else how to play the game.

article wrote:-GW is not concerning themselves with game balance or competitive play in any respect.

Translation: we publish garbage, and we don't care.

article wrote:-The people that write the rules often don't remember what they write.

This does not surprise me at all. It's just sad that the industry leader is willing to act as a charity to provide employment for game designers who are too incompetent to get a real job.

 insaniak wrote:

Probably because, as happened with the INAT FAQ, regardless of the intentions of such a thing, it would quickly come to be regarded as some 'elitist' group of gamers trying to tell everyone else how to play the game.

You're probably right. I guess I figured a well run, easy to use, open project could attract followers. I guess there will always be a draw to use the official rules too.


A lot of people have suggested that GW doesn't worry about balance because it helps them sell product. Could they sell just as well with a better balanced set of rules?

It comes down to an effort vs return equation. If you can sell 'x' amount by doing 'y' amount of work, and sell just as well doing less work... then it makes better business sense to do the latter.


IMO, better written rules would sell better... but clearly GW don't agree that it's worth the effort.

gravitywell wrote:

A lot of people have suggested that GW doesn't worry about balance because it helps them sell product. Could they sell just as well with a better balanced set of rules?

Developing balance takes real effort. Thus, here we are.

You quoted one really controversial statement, but left out some of the more reasonable stuff.

Personally I like hearing GW say that Taudar is a "mistake". Even if they aren't gonna fix it, its still better than nothing. And "sure, let the TOs make the game more competitive, they do a better job of it than we do" is pretty nifty as well.

 Dakkamite wrote:
And "sure, let the TOs make the game more competitive, they do a better job of it than we do" is pretty nifty as well.

Yeah... 'A bunch of amateurs running games in their spare time are better at creating a functional game than the guys we employ to do so...' is certainly an interesting angle to take.

 Dakkamite wrote:
You quoted one really controversial statement, but left out some of the more reasonable stuff.

They wouldn't all fit in the subject line

I found that bit about the Tau and Eldar a bit vague... What were the mistakes? The whole book? Just certain units? They forgot to put a (1) by the Riptide?

I feel like GW doesnt want the majorities money and would prefer to make less money since they seem to be constantly trying to cull out the non "grey-beards" and turn their already niche market into an even more niche market. Personally I dont think that is good business plan since it further limits your market and potential for profit. Also, if you advertise your game more than models and advertise more towards kids, then I dont think that your niche market full of "grey-beards" will be too interested in your product and neither will the kids since the game isnt too good compared to its competitiors but that is whats advertised, the start up cost is also very high compared to its competitors but offers little in return in terms of gameplay. If they were to advertise their models much more and then say "oh btw we also have this game if you would be interested" then their niche market would work better, but if they keep trying to advertise their game and to kids instead of their models to grey-beards like they say they want to sell to, then profits will continue to decrease. (The advertising I am talking about is the usual over enthusiastic redshirt demoing the game to people like they are children or are in fact, children)

Until GW realizes that their game sells the models and not vice versa they will most likely continue to lose money since intentionally shrinking your community from a wide variety of consumers to a more focused and smaller group of consumers is usually not good for business. Also whats the point of hiring rules writers if you dont actually care about making a game with balanced units when you have BL writers who can actually write fluff and not just hit the copy and paste button a bunch of times. Sure the game devs most likely know how to write rules better than the BL people do but they dont even know their game system and I'm sure that if any competent game dev wrote it they would proofread and make sure that their new book worked the way they intended. Also the BL writers would probably be able to write rules just as good as the devs currently do except they would most likely better match the fluff and still have just as many badly worded things and imbalances as the current writers except the "coolness factor", that GW seems to want to sell by, would be more enhanced because every unit would better match the fluff and the narrative forging would be all over the place.

Been pretty obvious for 2 years now. They hate people who play the game competitively and in the first issue of the "new" WD Jervis poo-pooed the concept that the 40k hobby wasn't about collecting/buying things first and foremost, with painting and gameplay both taking a backseat to collecting as much as you can.

-Mentioned how the Tau and Eldar books were mistakes in that they elevated expectations for the remaining 6th ed books. Said not to expect all (any) books to be quite on that level going forward. Mentioned how it's probably nice for "us" that the books were so strong. [brought up after i mentioned the tyranid book, escalation, dataslates.]

Not a bad mistake. They were just better written than everything else and made you think the rest of the books might be good.

I will agree that the eldar codex is actually pretty good in a casual play for funsies environment with a huge number of builds that can work. However the second you get a person who wants to field 4+ waveserpents the balance starts slipping, though even then the eldar codex can compete with itself reasonably well.

 Dakkamite wrote:
You quoted one really controversial statement, but left out some of the more reasonable stuff.

Personally I like hearing GW say that Taudar is a "mistake". Even if they aren't gonna fix it, its still better than nothing. And "sure, let the TOs make the game more competitive, they do a better job of it than we do" is pretty nifty as well.

Actually it makes it worse. It means they know of it, but don't care to fix a major issue.

Which instead of making them seem oblivious, makes them see intentionally lazy, which is far worse to appear as.

 insaniak wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
And "sure, let the TOs make the game more competitive, they do a better job of it than we do" is pretty nifty as well.

Yeah... 'A bunch of amateurs running games in their spare time are better at creating a functional game than the guys we employ to do so...' is certainly an interesting angle to take.

Not counting the fluff section I could easily write a codex or army book and achive the same interenal and extrernal balance as GW books have in 30-40 min .

"GW is not concerning themselves with game balance or competitive play in any respect."

"Mentioned how the Tau and Eldar books were mistakes in that they elevated expectations for the remaining 6th ed books. Said not to expect all (any) books to be quite on that level going forward."

I think that statements contradict each other.

gravitywell wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
You quoted one really controversial statement, but left out some of the more reasonable stuff.

They wouldn't all fit in the subject line

I found that bit about the Tau and Eldar a bit vague... What were the mistakes? The whole book? Just certain units? They forgot to put a (1) by the Riptide?

As the Riptide kit sells for £50, it is not in GW's interest to put Riptide (1).

I do think players should take things into their own hands and limit some of the excess by for example playing smaller games, agreeing not to use allies, and so on.

Not an anti-Tau statement, I used the Riptide as the example because I wanted to follow on from gravitywell's point.

 insaniak wrote:

gravitywell wrote:
I'm still wondering why there hasn't been any momentum for a community driven Open40k project.

Probably because, as happened with the INAT FAQ, regardless of the intentions of such a thing, it would quickly come to be regarded as some 'elitist' group of gamers trying to tell everyone else how to play the game.

Yea, this kind of thing can only work on a local level, with the consensus of an entire play group, and even then it can become a political game with the rules only benefitting the factions with the most supporters (see any comp rules ever)

see any 40k rules ever

FTFY

Matt Ward liked the Grey Knights, and they dominated in response. He hated Orcs and Goblins, so they got a gakky book. He thought daemons should be OP, so they were OP. Etc etc.

Every ruleset is biased in some way, as is every fix for those rulesets. We cannot escape subjectivity, and any rules modifications will benefit some players over others - but if we leave it as it is, the only people who benefit are the ones who make more money the more riptides they sell

This was a hard post to read for me.

I mean, sure we, as the community could have inferred all these things from the attitude GW takes & the decisions they make, but to see it written down is pretty disheartening.

There would not be a single party who would lose out from balanced rules... GW would sell more models, both the tournament scene and the casual scene would be happier, it would be easier for people to get into the game...


As for the whole 'Tau/Eldar are a mistake thing'. Great... so now those two books, who were released right at the start will dominate the meta for the entire edition. What a shame.

Cost vs reward. The only way to remain balanced is to throw out the cyclical codex release schedule and move to all one hit - works fine for smaller games, harder to maintain a constant revenue strream though.

article wrote:-The people that write the rules often don't remember what they write.

As someone who writes house rules all the time, I know full well why this happens.

If you write your rules and test them, and try them, and take care about your work, you end up memorizing every single one of them. You may get confused when there are many different versions being tested, but you still know the rules by heart.

BUT if you just copy-paste the work of others... that´s something completely different. Then you don´t remember a thing. You didn´t even read it.

That is what is going on here.

Well they are paid to pay attention to what was written before.

GW has no PR department. There will be no official announcement about any of this stuff or any article in WD. They'd like people like me to communicate this sort of thing and "steer" the community in whatever direction we'd like based on it.

The rep dislikes the fact that people that are not qualified to write articles on GWs financial situation, policies, or direction often write articles on the internet that people take as gospel.

Seems like if they had a PR department they could remedy this.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Cost vs reward. The only way to remain balanced is to throw out the cyclical codex release schedule and move to all one hit - works fine for smaller games, harder to maintain a constant revenue strream though.

People really have some weird ideas about how balance works.
There would need to be a total reset, new BRB and new codices for everyone within a very, very small window of releases but after that they could keep the codex release cycle and simply do a better job balancing things as they come out.
I can't think of any other company doing anything as full on as GWs release cycle (entier army updates at once with all the new models you can expect for the next 4 years or so) but there are plenty of others doing much better balance and releasing a unit here for army X, a unit there for army Y (though that cycle doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rules side of things, purely putting out stuff when it's ready instead of waiting for a full 'wave').

I figured this out in the first 24 hours I started playing 40k, so no big surprise.

What surprises me is their lack of concern regarding how poor rules (in terms of balance) for new kits affect sales, I can't imagine the new Tyranid Warrior or Hive/Tyrant Guard kits will sell very well.

Best way to balance the game the way it works now would be a few pages in white dwarf and on the site listing all units and point costs. That way they could change point costs each month according to community feedback.

As for the interview, a lot of it is just opinion. The anecdote about writer not remembering a rule, it might as well have been a joke or said to get rid of the guy asking. It's useless for drawing conclusions. If GW "was not concerning themselves with game balance in any respect", the game would be unplayable so it's kind of hyperbole statement. Sure the balance is crap vs what it could have been but for what is seemingly attaching point costs to units at random when drunk, the game still produces suprisingly a lot of close games. There is an interview with Robin Cruddace http://natfka.blogspot.com/2012/11/french-games-day-interview-with-robin.html where he stated as follows:

I asked him how they playtested new rules. Robin explained they have an inhouse team dedicated to that and they call upon renowned tournament players to assist. When I asked him about an open beta for a new edition (like PP did for Warmachine Mk2), he did not seem to keen.

also

Robin explained that if you look at the lifespan of an edition (he said roughly five years), if you remove the months dedicated to the new rulebook, the new starter box for each of their flagship games, the months where GW release supplements (like Blood in the Badlands or Planetstrike), surprise releases (like Space Hulk or Dreadfleet), it leaves basically 36 months out of 60 months (5 years remember) for new releases, and firstly codices and army books

I think the problem lies in the fact that they refuse to change point costs after the book is published so disconnect themselves from a huge free playtesters base that is their community also that they do not show the tables they playtest on. Terrain is a huge balancing factor, if you give only vague instruction for it (like this edition) there will be problems obviously - example in 5th edition whenever we went by BRB rules for terrain (25% of the board, 1-2 big LoS blocking pieces), Tyranids were not a weak codex anymore.

 Harriticus wrote:
Been pretty obvious for 2 years now. They hate people who play the game competitively and in the first issue of the "new" WD Jervis poo-pooed the concept that the 40k hobby wasn't about collecting/buying things first and foremost, with painting and gameplay both taking a backseat to collecting as much as you can.

In the article from the issue with first Hobbit game, he stated that playing with as powerful as possible list was a perfectly valid way to play the game. Have to check the exact wording but that was more or less the sense of it.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
I figured this out in the first 24 hours I started playing 40k, so no big surprise.

What surprises me is their lack of concern regarding how poor rules (in terms of balance) for new kits affect sales, I can't imagine the new Tyranid Warrior or Hive/Tyrant Guard kits will sell very well.

But they dont care about the competitive scene so good rules dont matter according to GW. They think their models sell the game (or at least keep trying to think that) even though the game sells the models.

I don't buy the article at all. For it to be true the people writing the game not only have to be apathetic, but they have to have actual contempt for their game, and I don't think they have that.

 Dakkamite wrote:
You quoted one really controversial statement, but left out some of the more reasonable stuff.

Mate, you don't even need to go on the goddamned internet to see that happening every day. Nobody bats an eye for "Guy makes some logical and relevant arguments pertinent to a current world issue.", but you turn heads with "Guy makes outrageous argument based on certain lines being omitted or just blatantly changed". You see this on television every day. In newspapers every day. from your family and friends, every day. I'm really surprised you needed to say that.

That said, you're quite right. I think the idea behind the quote is that GW just wants to make games that reflect their belief in an imaginative and enjoyable storytelling experience. Now the fact that every story ends with "and all the guardsmen died in each other's arms because they could not compete with the massed firepower of 2 ripties, 3 wraithknights and a whole buttload of wave serpents", doesn't occur to them. The only thing that occurs to them is the beautiful, sad allegory of human life being fickle and that sometimes, the difference between life and death is the 15 wounds you took from one armoured personnel carrier.

This is news? This is like announcing KFC isn't concerned with providing dry-aged beef and gourmet french soups.