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Makumba wrote:

Again, I'm curious to hear specifically what examples of problems you had in mind when you made your statement since I'm seeing something else entirely.

I'll give my example. When we started to test AoS I noticed that my dwarfs struggle fighting beefed up special characters, powerful magic users and cavalery. When we tried to play scenarios the lack of speed was a huge problem. The anwser to all those problems was runing 4-5 cannons and mass crossbowman,and when I say mass I mean enough to shot, but not so many I would give ID buff to my opponent, at least most of the time.

The cannons delt with heros and monsters the crossbow dudes cleaned chaff, There was no way for me deal with magic, but I guess every army needs a weaker side.
But after a few games, accodring to the 4page rules, every non dwarf players decided that artilery, which their army didn't have, is either too OP, not interective or not fun to play against. We already played a modified comp system as without it the system is unplayable at all, so I didn't realy have the option to say no. So the slot for machines were cut and suddenly I could run max 2 machines in a "normal" sized game. This drasticly lowered my chance against most of the other armies played. Now if there were points in the game I could take X points of cannons, or 25% or what ever GW decided was balanced for all armies. I wouldn't need to ask other people to let me have a chance to win and have fun, because the chance of 10 people saying ok to 1 person, when it doesn't help them at all is close to 0.

That is my "other" problem with AoS. That the supposed rules set, flawed as it may be, leaves you at the totaly mercy of your opponent AFTER you already bought an army. Heck I can't even use half my models in the avarge AoS game and a secondary market for dwarf models doesn't realy exist.

Just to check here;
You were struggling against (by implication) commonly used units in your local group.
So you changed the kind of units you were using (which is pretty much stock advice for dealing with those types of units, by the way).
Then, instead of your opponents doing the same, they all amended the 'comp' system that your group use, thus hamstringing you specifically.
If you keep losing, I presume they will amend the comp system to disallow special characters or something?
This is the issue with a lot of comp systems I've seen. The good ones are objective and actively request feedback, but the bad ones are entirely subjective and get skewed by local considerations like "Bob keeps winning and he uses lots of multiwound infantry, so it's obviously that"

The rules are quite clear. Your group have decided that's not for them, and created a comp system that apparently can be amended at will. That's not the game's fault, that's the houserule's fault.

There are plenty of ways of dealing with artillery and ranged units. One of my regular opponents plays Dwarfs and frankly massed warmachines make you want to cry - until you figure out how you can deal with them.

The discussion about dwarves and informal comp agreements is interesting but I don't see how relevant it is to the topic of the thread.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
You are absolutely right.

I think the reason why there is such an outcry against AoS is because it actually is very similar to the core of 40K. The movement and fighting rules are slightly modified, and there is a new army list and deployment mechanism.

GW may have felt that with 40K being a very popular game, people would enjoy the similarity of mechanisms. However most people already were playing 40K not Fantasy. The people who played Fantasy did so because of the differences to 40K, such as formations.

GW dropped formations, points and the Old Worlde from AoS, all three things which a significant number of players liked, and it's no surprise there is an outcry.

At the same time, a lot of people who like 40K and wanted to dip their toes into Fantasy, have been given a simple entry point, so it's swings and roundabouts.

The key thing to remember is that the people who were playing Fantasy, as a whole, weren't supporting it financially. Fantasy represented a fraction of GW's sales compared to 40k. I'm not even a little surprised that they made the Fantasy rule set more appealing to people who enjoy 40k. I think this was a conscious decision, and part of a larger overall business strategy. I'd be extremely surprised is Age of Sigmar wasn't in various states of execution and planning for years.

Also...

You can still use block formations if you so choose. Nothing in the Age of Sigmar rules preclude the use of movement trays and block formations. You simply no longer have flank, etc rules to go along with them. Pile in move are optional, so if both players use movement trays, the only thing that will happen is that sometimes you'll have to choose to have fewer models in combat to preserve your formation.

AND

The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.

 Kriswall wrote:
The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.

Out of curiosity, what background?

Dark Elves were my first fantasy army and right now as far as I am aware no new information has come out about them since AoS landed, when they were renames Aelfs and folded into the forces of order


To my knowledge we don't really have a lot of fluff for anyone other than the Sigmarines and chaos.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.

Out of curiosity, what background?

Dark Elves were my first fantasy army and right now as far as I am aware no new information has come out about them since AoS landed, when they were renames Aelfs and folded into the forces of order


To my knowledge we don't really have a lot of fluff for anyone other than the Sigmarines and chaos.

Did you read the End Times material? The End Times were a bridging 'story' connecting the Old World to the 'New' World. The Dark Elves feature in that story.

Also, I get that there is general and vague background information for some of the factions right now. Expect to see more as more books are released. Keep in mind that we're still VERY early in the release cycle. So far, most of the attention has been on the Sylvaneth (tree people), Nurgle Rotkin, Khorne Bloodbound, Skaven Pestilins and Stormcast Eternals. We're only two books in so far. The next book should cover more factions, and so on. Aelfs will get there time.

 Kriswall wrote:

The Old World is gone, but the new Age of Sigmar background is a direct continuation with a lot of the factions and named characters surviving in varying ways. The new background is a continuation of the old, not a replacement. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you've read the new background. The Old World has basically moved into the historical realm and is no longer present day.

It isn't a continuation, not really. There's some characters with the same names, but that's about it. There's no shared themes or tone - Chaos in the Old World was about subtle, inescapable corruption as much as screaming barbarian hordes. The 'good' gods were distant and possibly nonexistent, instead of bouncing around smashing evil in the face. The average background blurb focused on muck-covered ratcatchers with small but vicious dogs or travelers muttering about the things lurking in the woods that might make a charcoal-burner vanish every now and then as much - or even more than - warrior priests smashing evil in the face. It's all war war war, all the time, and from my perspective, there's no real soul to it. It doesn't have the sense of tragic grandeur that 40k does, so it can't really get away with the same level of over the top carnage.

What they did was take a gritty, relatively low-fantasy setting (in that magic and fantastical creatures are something to marvel at or fear, rather than how John the Alchemist gets to work every day), crank the Magic Dial up to about five hundred, blow it up, create a new setting with a couple of shared characters, blow THAT up without really saying enough about it for anyone to get invested, and then ask us to care about it while sort of brushing off anyone who cared about the old one. If you like the game or background for whatever reason, that's totally fine, glad you're having fun with it. But please don't tell me that GW gave us a continuation of the Old World if you stare long enough at it in a bad light and tilt my head a bit. They really didn't.

On topic! I'd say about a week sounds right? The majority of the work was definitely in the warscrolls, although it feels like they did their usual GW 'playtest' thing among a group of like-minded gamers who know what the rules mean, of course they work that way, what do you mean 'ambiguous wording'? This time, the ruleset explicitly caters to that sort of group, though, so that's something!

 Kriswall wrote:
Did you read the End Times material? The End Times were a bridging 'story' connecting the Old World to the 'New' World. The Dark Elves feature in that story.

Also, I get that there is general and vague background information for some of the factions right now. Expect to see more as more books are released. Keep in mind that we're still VERY early in the release cycle. So far, most of the attention has been on the Sylvaneth (tree people), Nurgle Rotkin, Khorne Bloodbound, Skaven Pestilins and Stormcast Eternals. We're only two books in so far. The next book should cover more factions, and so on. Aelfs will get there time.

The fact that we're in this position right now would suggest they did not spend long on AoS then, wouldn't it?

You'd think if they put more than a couple of weeks of worth into the brand new setting they are launching (which is what AoS is despite it being a continuation of Fantasy) they would have, on release day, a comprehensive fluff guide. Or hell, at the very least fleshing out each faction just a little but so that it feels like it is actually a faction.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Kriswall wrote:
Did you read the End Times material? The End Times were a bridging 'story' connecting the Old World to the 'New' World. The Dark Elves feature in that story.

Also, I get that there is general and vague background information for some of the factions right now. Expect to see more as more books are released. Keep in mind that we're still VERY early in the release cycle. So far, most of the attention has been on the Sylvaneth (tree people), Nurgle Rotkin, Khorne Bloodbound, Skaven Pestilins and Stormcast Eternals. We're only two books in so far. The next book should cover more factions, and so on. Aelfs will get there time.

The fact that we're in this position right now would suggest they did not spend long on AoS then, wouldn't it?

You'd think if they put more than a couple of weeks of worth into the brand new setting they are launching (which is what AoS is despite it being a continuation of Fantasy) they would have, on release day, a comprehensive fluff guide. Or hell, at the very least fleshing out each faction just a little but so that it feels like it is actually a faction.

I don't think they wanted to release a 'comprehensive fluff guide'. I'm 100% certain they have one internally. I'm also 100% certain that we'll never see it. My gut tells me we'll get campaign book after campaign book and a Battle Tome (Army Book) for each faction as time goes on. We know a Stormcast Eternals Battle Tome is coming out. It's reasonable to assume a Khorne Bloodbound Battle Tome will follow at some point and then over time we'll get all the others. ALL of these books will be optional as the core rules and war scrolls will always be free. If you want Battle Plans and Battalions... then you'll have to pay extra.

One week is laughable. How long do you think it physically takes to contract out the artwork, or to physically lay out all the publications we've seen so far. Do you think the various books Black Library has released were conceived, written and printed over the course of 5 business days? Seriously? Designing a new setting with a new rules system is a complex undertaking with lots of moving parts of lots of people involved.

The fact that there are books alone should tell you that this was more than a couple weeks worth of effort. You obviously have no idea how publishing works.

I'm 100% certain that the initial Age of Sigmar release is the culmination of lots of people working hard over a long period of time. I'm also 100% certain that we've only seen the smallest portion of the work they've already done.

BL books and supplements that have been released are not the question. The question was core rules and Warscrolls that were made available upon release.

Isn't the question "how long the rules took"? Not the fancy artwork or the nounverb names or the books or anything else, but the actual rules.

EDIT:...so fast...

Also, just a thought, but if I wanted to introduce a setting for a game focused on people who like to model and game based on the background, I'd lead off with any fluff I had written. A comprehensive fluff guide would have been exactly the right thing to release alongside the starter set.

 jonolikespie wrote:
BL books and supplements that have been released are not the question. The question was core rules and Warscrolls that were made available upon release.

I'm not sure you can separate the core rules and war scrolls from everything else involved. I'm sure they talked about fluff during the war scroll meetings. I'm sure they talked about artwork during the war scroll meetings.

In any case, there is no way 2-3 people spent a week writing up the core rules and war scrolls. If you think otherwise, I'd challenge you to grab 2 of your friends and create a brand new game, based loosely on the old system that has playable core rules and hundreds of unit entries. You have 40 hours (that's one week for you non business types). Get cracking.

my guess is several years - to actually make the decision to make the break with the previous rule set - which were overgrown and overblown and way past it's sell-by-date

and about a year to write the rules and the scrolls

TrollSlayerThorak'Khun'Na wrote:

We wrote:
I wrote my ideas for a tabletop game a few years ago. Pretty sure what I came up with in one day was more rules than they have in AoS. I worked on it for a total of 1 week of actual writing (only a couple of hours a day) and 2-3 weeks of just thinking. I finallyI realized no one will ever play it, I have no money to launch a game etc. before I dropped it.

I came up with 30 pages in that time.

So yea, pretty sure they popped those rules out in less than a week. Play testing I am sure took longer, another couple of week for the war scrolls.

That's not how things work though... you can do a million of anything, but quality is what matters.

Oh the irony.

For a "narative" game they sure went light on any actual story.

 MWHistorian wrote:
For a "narative" game they sure went light on any actual story.

There are two campaign books at roughly 500 pages, two battle tomes at around 130 pages, and 8 or so black library ebooks (page count unknown) which beg to disagree. You may not like the story, but there's no shortage of it.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
For a "narative" game they sure went light on any actual story.

There are two campaign books at roughly 500 pages, two battle tomes at around 130 pages, and 8 or so black library ebooks (page count unknown) which beg to disagree. You may not like the story, but there's no shortage of it.

I can see both sides. As you stated, there IS a decent chunk of story written for AoS, but much of it is outside the game, and much of the battle tomes (read: vast majority) is pictures and warscrolls with little actual fluff. Compare this to the 8th edition core rulebook, which has a solid third of it devoted to fluff, and I see how people say AoS is less narrative at the onset. Its a somewhat vague setting with vague history and the specifics have come in after the release; this can point towards a short amount of time spent writing it with the intent to fill in later.

We wrote:

TrollSlayerThorak'Khun'Na wrote:

We wrote:
I wrote my ideas for a tabletop game a few years ago. Pretty sure what I came up with in one day was more rules than they have in AoS. I worked on it for a total of 1 week of actual writing (only a couple of hours a day) and 2-3 weeks of just thinking. I finallyI realized no one will ever play it, I have no money to launch a game etc. before I dropped it.

I came up with 30 pages in that time.

So yea, pretty sure they popped those rules out in less than a week. Play testing I am sure took longer, another couple of week for the war scrolls.

That's not how things work though... you can do a million of anything, but quality is what matters.

Oh the irony.

You're like a writer who thinks all that matters is more words.

Presumably it took a fair while for everyone involved to agree on what the scope of the game should be (i.e. round bases moving individually instead of ranked blocks), and it wouldn't surprise me if they tried out several entirely different rule sets before deciding on the rough structure on what the game should be like.

Writing the rules themselves wouldn't take too long once you've decided on what they should be, but when there are lots of management types involved in the decision process, it's going to take time.

So I'm not sure there is a good answer. Given the scope of the project, it probably took more than a year from they decided to make the game until the whole thing was finished. But if you just took one guy and told him to come up with a simplified rule set and rules for all units in the game, he'd be able to crank out SOMETHING in a few weeks.

It's like how you can make up a new name in three seconds, but the process of coming up with a new for a company or product can take months or even years.

I wish we could see some of the other rulesets that were considered and rejected. My main complaint against AoS is how much of the DNA of WH/40K is preserved.

Based on how the rules are written I suspect that the design team played through loads of possibilities, tweaking how the game worked and finally wrote it down at the end.

This would explain some of the more ambiguous rules, they knew how it should be played, but didn't properly consider how a person new to the rules could read them.

The game flow actually works pretty well, the mechanics are interestinG, hero phase works well as do the various buffs etc.

They just needed to write a clearer explanation of the rules, blind playtesting with a different gaming group would have helped iron out the issues with things like summoning. I also think that they would really benefitted from releasing a couple of video battle reports explaining the mechanics of the game on release day.

GW really needs to join the modern age of communication, especially with younger players, they have zero official social media presence, everyone in the business world is scrambling to make social media work for them few companies do it well as you have to have customers willing to engage. GW customers are more than keen to engage with them bit they just seem to be stuck in the wrong era.

G

Gharak wrote:
Based on how the rules are written I suspect that the design team played through loads of possibilities, tweaking how the game worked and finally wrote it down at the end.

This would explain some of the more ambiguous rules, they knew how it should be played, but didn't properly consider how a person new to the rules could read them.
G

I remember, from what I think was one of the last, public, sneak peaces into how GW designers make decisions to change rules and why, one designer stating that they've intentionally left some parts vague to give players room for interpretation. This was from an interview for an older iteration of 40k's rules.

Gharak wrote:
GW customers are more than keen to engage with them bit they just seem to be stuck in the wrong era.

Have a quick read through the Dakka forums for GW systems to get an idea on the sort of person that might approach GW via social media.
Being GW's social media team wouldn't be a job, it'd be a sentence...

GW used to have their own forums which had volunteer moderators. They closed them in late 2006.

The basic problem was that the purpose of a company forum is to allow the company and customers to communicate each other, however GW simply isn't interested in communication.

Thus, complaints, requests for information, rules queries and suggestions were banned, ignored or sometimes answered haphazardly when someone at GW felt like dipping in.

RoperPG wrote:

Gharak wrote:
GW customers are more than keen to engage with them bit they just seem to be stuck in the wrong era.

Have a quick read through the Dakka forums for GW systems to get an idea on the sort of person that might approach GW via social media.
Being GW's social media team wouldn't be a job, it'd be a sentence...

Fun fact, companies that use child labor, have spilled oil all over the ocean and done things a LOT worse than GW have social media teams.

As bad as one might think 'nerd rage' is, anyone actually competent with customer interactions and is being paid to do just that should have no problem with any of it.

Swaying public opinion is literally the entire point, if GW never closed themselves off there would be a lot less unhappy people now and opening up now might seem daunting but five years down the line will certainly have payed off.

I do not think very long at all, they just cut out a lot of stuff.
I think the artist who designed the models and pictures took a longer time then the rules team

Couldn't have been longer than the production time of the new Total WARhammer video game. Otherwise they would have used the new AoS and not gone about selling the old world after they get rid and are now trying to make AoS work. I know GW cares little abotu video game titles but it does give an indicator that AoS is no more than two years old in terms of development start to finish.

They took a lot more time than anyone has spent trying to comp it.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Swaying public opinion is literally the entire point, if GW never closed themselves off there would be a lot less unhappy people now and opening up now might seem daunting but five years down the line will certainly have payed off.

I used to run a forum of some size (around 40k-50k registered users) and it was not a job I would wish on my worst enemy. In today's climate of perpetual offense, I can't imagine what a nightmare it must be to manage a community now. It is time consuming and personally costly, and often times, your moderators can be even worse than the users. In a commercial setting, you end up having moderators who just can't give answers and the community ends up turning against them. You've got cases where beloved community managers end up saying something stupid (or getting fired like at Reddit) and it creating a consumer revolt. You ban a poster and you've lost a customer, even if they deserved the ban.

In my opinion, and only my opinion, I would not fault anybody or organization that wanted to stay the hell out of the community management business. They don't need, and probably shouldn't want, any place where customers can post their opinions in public. They can gather opinions easily enough without giving disgruntled players and idiot trolls a platform to reach their customers too.

You know how the saying goes, "it's better to keep your mouth closed and look like an idiot, than open it and remove all doubt".

Concept to release was 3yrs. That isn't a glib statement, that is how long it actually took. Whatever your opinion of the game is, a huge amount of work has gone into streamlining it.

If that's true that GW's design studio have completely lost the plot. 125 people working on AoS for three years and this is the best they could do?