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 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, I dont think one can chalk everything up to Diablo. Diablo was hardly the first big impact "real time" game, Command & Conquer, Doom, Dune II, MechWarrior II and many other games did real time gaming and multiplayer before Diablo did with great popular success. Likewise, turn based RPG's continued to be wildly popular for some time even after Diablo (see Fallout 1 & 2).

40k moved to a more "pickup" style with army lists and whatnot because thats how people were already starting to move by the end of RT (when GW first started publishing such material), and because, just like Real Time with computer games, it attracts a wider audience than the more RPG style of original RT play.

2E got a reboot because it ran into the exact same issues 7E is running into, few can keep up with all the available rules through multiple sales channels, balance became nonexistent and the rules became increasingly clunky and awkward for the kinds of things being pushed into the ruleset along with army size beginning to bloat on a ruleset that just didnt handle those sizes well.

That is why I wrote about Diablo "(it was obviously not the first one, but with the largest impact)" - it is mostly a symbolic and not actual turning point. Fallout 1 is 1997, Fallout 2 is 1998 and then Van Burren was cancelled, because at that time, turn based mechanics was considered obsolete. It is perfectly in line with what I wrote previously. If you remember that times, then you should remember also, that Diablo and Fallout 1 were directly compared to each other, because at first Diablo was developed as a turn based RPG, but then Blizard changed it's mind (and that is why we still have Blizzard nowadays and Interplay went near bankrupt in 1998 and done poorly afterwards - because they stick to an outdated philosophy for too long). And yes, huge, turn based RPG games prevailed a bit longer, because of their nature (compare Daggerfall to Skyrim and you'll see clearly why the first one was released way too soon).

And what you wrote is really a reiteration of what I wrote - GW had to adapt to evolving audience it had no controll over. Todays growing market of boardgames and other "physical genres" is due to increasing sentiment to step out the virtual at least for a moment, because we spend so much time online, both at work and at home. You really cannot analyse GW and tabletop games without such social insight and focus solely on internall balance issues of 2nd or 7th ed... To reiterate again: try to understand my previous post not as an answer on "why GW decided to scrap 2nd ed" but on "why they decided in such a rush, that 3rd ed should be a complete, drastically castrated reboot with much faster gameplay and not just release an improved 2nd with ballance restored, that they were working on" - there was simply no time to reengeneer the whole game that fast in such quickly changing and demanding enviroment as the turn of a century was… Back then PC gaming was still a niche (but growing) entertainment, PlayStation was still a quite new thing (it got an upgrade to PS2 in 2000 - things hasn't turned as fast back then as they do nowadays, especially in Europe). And consoles are important to this, because they raised the first "instant gratification" generations (from gaming perspective). Both 8bit and early PC gaming (DOS times) required time to load (especially 8bit from casettes) or knowledge to configure or a mix of both, but consoles were plug&play from the very begining. The whole LotR fiasco was partly because of that shift in mentality...

And to be perfectly clear: I do not think, that those were the sole reasons behind GW choices, but that such perspective matter, both back then and now, and is usually omitted by dakkanauts in such discussions.

7th ed is extremely similar to 2nd ed. The only difference is that it's vanilla, eldar, demons instead of CSM, Tyranids, Eldar.

It's funny. People ask for things and then hate them.

GW had too much rules bloat, so they streamlined everything in 3rd. Then people felt their armies weren't able to have enough options, so they added Chapter Approved. Then people felt like there was too much rules bloat, so they stopped Chapter Approved. Then people thought their armies didn't have enough options, so they released 6th Edition and Escalation. Then people complained about 6th edition, so they added 7th edition, where people are complaining about rules bloat.

How much do you want to bet that 8th Edition becomes streamlined, and then some expansion comes out (or a billion supplements) because people complain that there's not enough options...

... I mean, complaining about having too many rules to keep track of seems a bit silly. Why do people feel the need to memorize every rule? Just memorize your army, and have your opponent memorize theirs. It's like if I was a Fighter in D&D 3.5: I could memorize everything for being a fighter, but if I tried to remember Wizards, Antipaladins, Rogues, and Swashbuckler classes I'd go insane, not to mention the ridiculous number of supplements. I mean hell, look at d20pfsrd.org - that's just the free use Pathfinder rules.

40k really isn't that complex by comparison. My army has what, three rules sources at most?

Because GW makes options that aren't fair.

Martel732 wrote:
Because GW makes options that aren't fair.

Was 3.5 D&D fair? IIRC Wizards and other spellcasters outclassed Fighters and other physical classes by a stupid amount after level 10. It became up to the players of the game to really work out how to settle the issues with the game's rules. The term 'munchkin' came into existence because of people who deliberately broke the game, playing mechanically rather than the way the game was intended, i.e. narratively. To them, the game was something to be won, beaten, or broken.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because GW makes options that aren't fair.

Was 3.5 D&D fair? IIRC Wizards and other spellcasters outclassed Fighters and other physical classes by a stupid amount after level 10. It became up to the players of the game to really work out how to settle the issues with the game's rules. The term 'munchkin' came into existence because of people who deliberately broke the game, playing mechanically rather than the way the game was intended, i.e. narratively. To them, the game was something to be won, beaten, or broken.

D&D is not competitive. 40K is, no matter what people try to claim. There is a winner and a loser and no GM.

Also, 3.5 D&D casters still relied on physical classes to do actual damage, since most attack spells were not effective against high level NPCs.

nou wrote:

That is why I wrote about Diablo "(it was obviously not the first one, but with the largest impact)" - it is mostly a symbolic and not actual turning point. Fallout 1 is 1997, Fallout 2 is 1998 and then Van Burren was cancelled, because at that time, turn based mechanics was considered obsolete.

Interplay being unable to pay its employees and keep the doors open, and Black Isle losing a bunch of the project team, probably had more to do with it than any specific game mechanic.

One will note that Fallout Tactics retained the turn based element for combat, and the Bethesda Fallout first person games attempted to emulate elements of that old turn based gameplay as well, with great success.

It is perfectly in line with what I wrote previously. If you remember that times, then you should remember also, that Diablo and Fallout 1 were directly compared to each other, because at first Diablo was developed as a turn based RPG, but then Blizard changed it's mind (and that is why we still have Blizzard nowadays and Interplay went near bankrupt in 1998 and done poorly afterwards - because they stick to an outdated philosophy for too long).

Fallout did not make or break Interplay, nor did turn based mechanics, Interplay made a huge array of games, from RPG's to flight sims and RTS games. Turn based RPG play didnt kill Interplay, poor business and project management did.

And what you wrote is really a reiteration of what I wrote - GW had to adapt to evolving audience it had no controll over.

Sure, mostly I'm just disagreeing with the source of that evolution.

Todays growing market of boardgames and other "physical genres" is due to increasing sentiment to step out the virtual at least for a moment, because we spend so much time online, both at work and at home.

cant comment there, thats a supposition I just dont know enough to comment on.

You really cannot analyse GW and tabletop games without such social insight and focus solely on internall balance issues of 2nd or 7th ed... To reiterate again: try to understand my previous post not as an answer on "why GW decided to scrap 2nd ed" but on "why they decided in such a rush, that 3rd ed should be a complete, drastically castrated reboot with much faster gameplay and not just release an improved 2nd with ballance restored, that they were working on" - there was simply no time to reengeneer the whole game that fast in such quickly changing and demanding enviroment as the turn of a century was… Back then PC gaming was still a niche (but growing) entertainment, PlayStation was still a quite new thing (it got an upgrade to PS2 in 2000 - things hasn't turned as fast back then as they do nowadays, especially in Europe). And consoles are important to this, because they raised the first "instant gratification" generations (from gaming perspective). Both 8bit and early PC gaming (DOS times) required time to load (especially 8bit from casettes) or knowledge to configure or a mix of both, but consoles were plug&play from the very begining. The whole LotR fiasco was partly because of that shift in mentality...

And to be perfectly clear: I do not think, that those were the sole reasons behind GW choices, but that such perspective matter, both back then and now, and is usually omitted by dakkanauts in such discussions.

Sure, but I also dont think its necessarily a source of what forced changes so much as an acknowledgement that once a certain point is reached, to grow the product has to change. Videogames were the same way. Deep, complicated, and long play time videogames still exist and make their presence felt, but have limited markets.

The market for tabletop wargaming in the late 90's was already firmly and dominantly in GW's hands, and market trends in videogames shouldnt have been any reason to crash-dump a new ruleset on the market. Existing product issues, business cycle concerns, management desires, and other such things would be far more pressing than "videogames make people want stuff *now* so we have to dump everything and put out a totally new ruleset next week!".

I think my main point would be that "Instant Gratification"/ease of use isnt so much a trend forced onto the market and game that it must then adapt to, so much as a market threshold to accommodate growth beyond a certain point, and applies to anything be it videogames or tabletop games or movies or cars or guns or drones or anything else. To grow beyond a certain point you have to reduce the barriers to entry. GW has been moving back towards all the things that restrained 2E's growth such that it required a reboot with 7E, which is why we see the problems we do again.

Martel732 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because GW makes options that aren't fair.

Was 3.5 D&D fair? IIRC Wizards and other spellcasters outclassed Fighters and other physical classes by a stupid amount after level 10. It became up to the players of the game to really work out how to settle the issues with the game's rules. The term 'munchkin' came into existence because of people who deliberately broke the game, playing mechanically rather than the way the game was intended, i.e. narratively. To them, the game was something to be won, beaten, or broken.

D&D is not competitive. 40K is, no matter what people try to claim. There is a winner and a loser and no GM.

Also, 3.5 D&D casters still relied on physical classes to do actual damage, since most attack spells were not effective against high level NPCs.

D&D is as competitive as the players make it out to be. I've heard some GMs and players actually play 'munchkin' campaigns, where the goal really is to 'win' the game, and the GM is trying to kill the players while the players go all-out to be munchkiny (with hilarious results in some cases... I have some stories if you ever want to hear them!)

Similarly, 40k is as competitive as the players want it to be. A game does not have to have a GM to be non-competitive: many co-operative board games do not have GMs. Also, having a winner and a loser does not automatically make it competitive either, if anything, it would be unrealistic if a game depicting battles did not have a way to turn those battles into victories. It'd be like a historical wargame where both the Nazis and the USA won World War II somehow, because to make the Nazis lose makes the game somehow 'more competitive' simply because there's a loser.

Also, I can go into details, but I once had a game where the party wizard (not I) made encounters a non-issue. I can explain it, if you'd like, but it didn't involve the NPCs at all. He simply cast a spell, and the encounter ended, with no one suffering more than 3 damage in the process. Damage wasn't necessary for spellcasters to be OP.

Difference: the GM ALWAYS wins in D&D because they have unlimited resources. I guarantee I can out munchkin any PC group trivially.

Having a winner and loser by definition makes it a competition of sorts. If people don't care if they win or lose, that's different. I think that's what you describing.

Martel732 wrote:
Difference: the GM ALWAYS wins in D&D because they have unlimited resources. I guarantee I can out munchkin any PC group trivially.

Having a winner and loser by definition makes it a competition of sorts. If people don't care if they win or lose, that's different. I think that's what you describing.

You'd be surprised. I once watched a group of munchkins and a munchkin GM, and even things like Nexus Dragons (yes, I know, an AD&D monster, but it's a GM after all) were becoming trivial for the players to deal with.

And perhaps it is a 'competition of sorts' but so are many things we wouldn't consider games. If you broaden you definition of competitive enough, you could include 'survival' as a competitive thing, at which point it's become simply ridiculous. I suppose it depends on where you draw the line. I draw the line somewhere above 40k: for me, to treat 40k competitively is just an exercise in either being upset or making other people upset.

"You'd be surprised. I once watched a group of munchkins and a munchkin GM, and even things like Nexus Dragons were becoming trivial for the players to deal with. "

I make my own NPCs, bro. Often, enemy parties of PC classes are the worst thing for them to face. And templated monsters, like frost giant clerics with anti-magic field.

If 40K wasn't competitive, I'd see Eldar units other than scatbikes, warpspiders, WKs, and fire dragons from time to time.

Martel732 wrote:
"You'd be surprised. I once watched a group of munchkins and a munchkin GM, and even things like Nexus Dragons were becoming trivial for the players to deal with. "

I make my own NPCs, bro. Often, enemy parties of PC classes are the worst thing for them to face. And templated monsters, like frost giant clerics with anti-magic field.

If 40K wasn't competitive, I'd see Eldar units other than scatbikes, warpspiders, WKs, and fire dragons from time to time.

I'm serious. You'd be surprised. I suppose I'll tell you of the one build I personally encountered. I don't know all of the details, of course, but it went something like this: A wizard with two metamagic feats: one which made his spells do like 3 frost damage on demand and one that made all damaging spells teleport every living thing to the outer range of the spell. Then, for encounters, he cast a spell that detected every town within 10 miles and triggered both metamagic feats. All entities in the area, including party members, plants, pets, farm animals, literally 'all living things,' RAW, were teleported ten miles away without saves. The party members had to teleport back of course. And this could happen every round, IIRC, at least until the spell slots were empty. But this was the sort of stupidity that happened.

That's not true at all. Someone can run Scatbikes, Warpspiders, WKs, and Fire Dragons while still being perfectly fluffy - people don't do that because '40k is a competitive game' anymore than munchkins broke D&D because it was a competitive game. Some people break games, and they don't have to be 'competitive' games to be broken by these people. The fact that munchkins exist in both D&D and 40k is evidence for this... else, D&D is competitive, which is just perverse.

"Someone can run Scatbikes, Warpspiders, WKs, and Fire Dragons while still being perfectly fluffy "

If you say so.

"'m serious. You'd be surprised. I suppose I'll tell you of the one build I personally encountered. I don't know all of the details, of course, but it went something like this: A wizard with two metamagic feats: one which made his spells do like 3 frost damage on demand and one that made all damaging spells teleport every living thing to the outer range of the spell. Then, for encounters, he cast a spell that detected every town within 10 miles and triggered both metamagic feats. All entities in the area, including party members, plants, pets, farm animals, literally 'all living things,' RAW, were teleported ten miles away without saves. The party members had to teleport back of course. And this could happen every round, IIRC, at least until the spell slots were empty. But this was the sort of stupidity that happened."

This is child's play, and not terribly difficult to counter once it is scouted by enemy NPCs.

 Vaktathi wrote:

nou wrote:

That is why I wrote about Diablo "(it was obviously not the first one, but with the largest impact)" - it is mostly a symbolic and not actual turning point. Fallout 1 is 1997, Fallout 2 is 1998 and then Van Burren was cancelled, because at that time, turn based mechanics was considered obsolete.

Interplay being unable to pay its employees and keep the doors open, and Black Isle losing a bunch of the project team, probably had more to do with it than any specific game mechanic.

One will note that Fallout Tactics retained the turn based element for combat, and the Bethesda Fallout first person games attempted to emulate elements of that old turn based gameplay as well, with great success.

It is perfectly in line with what I wrote previously. If you remember that times, then you should remember also, that Diablo and Fallout 1 were directly compared to each other, because at first Diablo was developed as a turn based RPG, but then Blizard changed it's mind (and that is why we still have Blizzard nowadays and Interplay went near bankrupt in 1998 and done poorly afterwards - because they stick to an outdated philosophy for too long).

Fallout did not make or break Interplay, nor did turn based mechanics, Interplay made a huge array of games, from RPG's to flight sims and RTS games. Turn based RPG play didnt kill Interplay, poor business and project management did.

And what you wrote is really a reiteration of what I wrote - GW had to adapt to evolving audience it had no controll over.

Sure, mostly I'm just disagreeing with the source of that evolution.

Todays growing market of boardgames and other "physical genres" is due to increasing sentiment to step out the virtual at least for a moment, because we spend so much time online, both at work and at home.

cant comment there, thats a supposition I just dont know enough to comment on.

You really cannot analyse GW and tabletop games without such social insight and focus solely on internall balance issues of 2nd or 7th ed... To reiterate again: try to understand my previous post not as an answer on "why GW decided to scrap 2nd ed" but on "why they decided in such a rush, that 3rd ed should be a complete, drastically castrated reboot with much faster gameplay and not just release an improved 2nd with ballance restored, that they were working on" - there was simply no time to reengeneer the whole game that fast in such quickly changing and demanding enviroment as the turn of a century was… Back then PC gaming was still a niche (but growing) entertainment, PlayStation was still a quite new thing (it got an upgrade to PS2 in 2000 - things hasn't turned as fast back then as they do nowadays, especially in Europe). And consoles are important to this, because they raised the first "instant gratification" generations (from gaming perspective). Both 8bit and early PC gaming (DOS times) required time to load (especially 8bit from casettes) or knowledge to configure or a mix of both, but consoles were plug&play from the very begining. The whole LotR fiasco was partly because of that shift in mentality...

And to be perfectly clear: I do not think, that those were the sole reasons behind GW choices, but that such perspective matter, both back then and now, and is usually omitted by dakkanauts in such discussions.

Sure, but I also dont think its necessarily a source of what forced changes so much as an acknowledgement that once a certain point is reached, to grow the product has to change. Videogames were the same way. Deep, complicated, and long play time videogames still exist and make their presence felt, but have limited markets.

The market for tabletop wargaming in the late 90's was already firmly and dominantly in GW's hands, and market trends in videogames shouldnt have been any reason to crash-dump a new ruleset on the market. Existing product issues, business cycle concerns, management desires, and other such things would be far more pressing than "videogames make people want stuff *now* so we have to dump everything and put out a totally new ruleset next week!".

I think my main point would be that "Instant Gratification"/ease of use isnt so much a trend forced onto the market and game that it must then adapt to, so much as a market threshold to accommodate growth beyond a certain point, and applies to anything be it videogames or tabletop games or movies or cars or guns or drones or anything else. To grow beyond a certain point you have to reduce the barriers to entry. GW has been moving back towards all the things that restrained 2E's growth such that it required a reboot with 7E, which is why we see the problems we do again.

We may have different view on what is a factor and what is a result, because we speak from perspectives of two different regions. '90 in US were very different from '90 in Poland - we had a sort of "accelerated evolution", because being a coutry which tried to "catch up" after decades of communism and we sort of had "everything here and now mixed up" - products and trends from '80 in the west were ported lately and mixed with newest worldwide trends from the '90. So perhaps because of this "compressed" evolution of the market I see some factors differently - some of them shifted in a couple of years, not over a decade or more… And we had massively smaller market here, so catching up on a trend was "to be or not to be" for many companies, so I may have a bit more of "catching a wave" than "create a demand and then provide a supply" POV.

Martel732 wrote:
"Someone can run Scatbikes, Warpspiders, WKs, and Fire Dragons while still being perfectly fluffy "

If you say so.

"'m serious. You'd be surprised. I suppose I'll tell you of the one build I personally encountered. I don't know all of the details, of course, but it went something like this: A wizard with two metamagic feats: one which made his spells do like 3 frost damage on demand and one that made all damaging spells teleport every living thing to the outer range of the spell. Then, for encounters, he cast a spell that detected every town within 10 miles and triggered both metamagic feats. All entities in the area, including party members, plants, pets, farm animals, literally 'all living things,' RAW, were teleported ten miles away without saves. The party members had to teleport back of course. And this could happen every round, IIRC, at least until the spell slots were empty. But this was the sort of stupidity that happened."

This is child's play, and not terribly difficult to counter once it is scouted by enemy NPCs.

Sure. I don't munchkin enough to know anything more. The point is that munchkins exist in D&D, and also exist in 40k. That in no way is evidence that 40k is competitive any moreso than it is evidence that D&D is competitive.

Also, yes, I say so. I can concoct a fluffy reason for all those things to exist in one army:

"Sam-Hainn exists, and has access to Wraithknights which they roll out when the situation is especially dire." Boom. Fluff for a highly mobile army of fire-dragons (in Wave Serpents), Scatbikes, Warp Spiders, and Wraithknights all working together. That army really isn't unfluffy. What it is is unfun. That's something that needs to be talked about between the players involved... then, if the player running the Eldar is unwilling to compromise, the game can not be played. I have a hunch that if they are not a munchkin, they will compromise.

I haven't had an eldar player compromise since 5th ed.

Martel732 wrote:
I haven't had an eldar player compromise since 5th ed.

Then just don't play them, if they are unwilling to compromise. If you'd like, I could even find you another club within driving or even bussing distance of your house, though I hate having to do your work for you. It's just that your meta is so awful that I want to do something to help, and if that something is finding you a group that isn't full of munchkins, then so be it. If you want said help, PM me your address (don't want it up for everyone to see!) though I understand if you don't want to; I'm an internet stranger after all.

There's one other place, but my schedule doesn't sync. Kicking around the ba was novel in 6th ed, but at this point you'd think theyd get bored.

Martel732 wrote:
There's one other place, but my schedule doesn't sync. Kicking around the ba was novel in 6th ed, but at this point you'd think theyd get bored.

Depending on where you live, I could find another place, I bet you, within 45 minutes driving, at least if it's an urban area.

I can ask around. I know two stores quit doing in-store gaming so they are out.

Martel732 wrote:
If 40K wasn't competitive, I'd see Eldar units other than scatbikes, warpspiders, WKs, and fire dragons from time to time.

I play Eldar and I do not like scatbikes (the most bland option in current codex IMHO), I do not own a WK and if I would, I see it's use only in a fluffy wraith army (either Iyanden or Pale Court), I do own Fire Dragons since 3rd ed, but rarely field them, I do not fancy Wave Serpents and I own only a single squad of Warp Spiders (and now use them with a self-imposed s5 nerf). I build my armies with "one of each" philosophy, I often use Wasp Walkers and Wraithlords and ally a lot of Harlies and homebrew Exodites. And I have never used Seer Council based deathstar, even though I own all necessary components. By your logic, I must clearly not exist

Please, do not confuse your "local meta" with the entirety of any faction players...

Martel732 wrote:
I can ask around. I know two stores quit doing in-store gaming so they are out.

Feel free, and I suggest you do ask around. Everywhere I've ever been, there's been at least 3 clubs in the city or its suburbs, and I've been quite a few places.

Wow.....I didn't realize that 40k was only for people who want to spend 1/2 an hour finding the person in your local flgs that wants to play the game the same way you do. I didn't know that my dislike for Facebook and the fact that I don't want to give my number to all of the people at the LGS means that I should be playing a different game (or that it made me utterly anti-social). If I would have known that, I would have simply told my buddy that turned me onto the game 5 years ago "No, this game is definitely not for me. Cool models and interesting fluff be damned." So, the fact that I no longer have a local gaming group between people moving away and the rest completely turned off by 6th/7th edition, means I should pack up my models and quit the game entirely? Why can't I WANT GW to make a better ruleset so that playing the game isn't so much of a chore? Will they? Probably not, but I do really want that. As far as being the one at the store promoting the game and trying to make all of this work, I'm sorry, but most of my hobby time is taken up by my Pathfinder/MTG group, so I get to the store a couple of Saturdays a month and really just want to go there and play the game. Guess I'm an anti-social donkey-cave.....or I should not play this game any more. At least that's what I'm getting from a lot of people on this thread. (Not all, but a lot)

Also, there are a lot of us out here who see that 40k is a game. It's a game with 2 players (the vast majority of the time) playing 2 opposing forces trying to beat the other to some pre-determined objectives (even kill points are an objective). At the end of this, there will be a winner and a loser, no matter how much you want to argue against that. Even if you don't care, there is still a winner and a loser. Why is it so bad to WANT a game that I like as much as 40k for the models and the fluff (not to mention the amount of money I've put into it) to realize that it really is a game. I've said this in the past, but I want to reiterate here, I am not a WAAC player, but I don't want to have to spend x amount of time before a game finding a way to make a game that my army can compete in. That should NOT be up to me or my opponent, that SHOULD be up to the people designing the game. Nobody here is arguing that the ruleset is balanced or good, we are stating that we want it to be. I am shocked that so many people think that's wrong.

 Battlesong wrote:
Wow.....I didn't realize that 40k was only for people who want to spend 1/2 an hour finding the person in your local flgs that wants to play the game the same way you do. I didn't know that my dislike for Facebook and the fact that I don't want to give my number to all of the people at the LGS means that I should be playing a different game (or that it made me utterly anti-social). If I would have known that, I would have simply told my buddy that turned me onto the game 5 years ago "No, this game is definitely not for me. Cool models and interesting fluff be damned." So, the fact that I no longer have a local gaming group between people moving away and the rest completely turned off by 6th/7th edition, means I should pack up my models and quit the game entirely? Why can't I WANT GW to make a better ruleset so that playing the game isn't so much of a chore? Will they? Probably not, but I do really want that. As far as being the one at the store promoting the game and trying to make all of this work, I'm sorry, but most of my hobby time is taken up by my Pathfinder/MTG group, so I get to the store a couple of Saturdays a month and really just want to go there and play the game. Guess I'm an anti-social donkey-cave.....or I should not play this game any more. At least that's what I'm getting from a lot of people on this thread. (Not all, but a lot)

Also, there are a lot of us out here who see that 40k is a game. It's a game with 2 players (the vast majority of the time) playing 2 opposing forces trying to beat the other to some pre-determined objectives (even kill points are an objective). At the end of this, there will be a winner and a loser, no matter how much you want to argue against that. Even if you don't care, there is still a winner and a loser. Why is it so bad to WANT a game that I like as much as 40k for the models and the fluff (not to mention the amount of money I've put into it) to realize that it really is a game. I've said this in the past, but I want to reiterate here, I am not a WAAC player, but I don't want to have to spend x amount of time before a game finding a way to make a game that my army can compete in. That should NOT be up to me or my opponent, that SHOULD be up to the people designing the game. Nobody here is arguing that the ruleset is balanced or good, we are stating that we want it to be. I am shocked that so many people think that's wrong.

You don't have to use Facebook to pre-arrange games. My group in State College used Meetup, you could use Google Hangouts, or you could use Dakkadakka! Just start a thread in the Find a Game forum. If you only have a couple of saturdays a month to plan, then you can use the other 26-29 days in the month to figure something out!

It would literally take less effort than typing the post you just typed. XD

Deadnight wrote:Massive snip...

... ye quaint old Scottish pub.

Irish gastropub or nothing.

Yeah, the person I'm talking about was HelloKitty. They clamored about how great AOS was because of the narrative gaming thing, and they were first to sing Unbound's accolades because of narrative gaming. Then that creature went on a quest to convert the masses, along with anecdotal evidence of the burgeoning scene in its area. The figures were... fluid to say the least, and near the end they were forced to basically admit to fabricating the huge AOS scene. They wound up essentially rage quitting gaming in typical dramatastic fashion, which ended with an eventual ban from Warseer.

Doesn't say much, EVERYBODY got banned from Warseer.





To shorten this to the crux: I believe you are absolutely wrong about 40K being a pick up game. It wasn't in the first two editions, but was indeed a good pick up game in 3rd and 4th. It didn't start to see the time consuming rules bloat until 5th. THAT is why I went back to 3rd Ed. 40K when I game, and 6th Ed. WFB as well. I've never been happier. Well, if I could get my entire gaming club circle from both towns I frequented to follow suit, I'd be happier.

Martel732 wrote:7th ed is extremely similar to 2nd ed. The only difference is that it's vanilla, eldar, demons instead of CSM, Tyranids, Eldar.

To me, 7th (and to a degree 6th) seemed more like trying to stuff 2nd Ed. back into the 3rd Ed. model. There was a reason 2nd was killed. Terminator Librarians with displacer fields, blind grenades, overwatch. the vehicle rules. the laughable percentage system.

 Battlesong wrote:
Wow.....I didn't realize that 40k was only for people who want to spend 1/2 an hour finding the person in your local flgs that wants to play the game the same way you do. I didn't know that my dislike for Facebook and the fact that I don't want to give my number to all of the people at the LGS means that I should be playing a different game (or that it made me utterly anti-social). If I would have known that, I would have simply told my buddy that turned me onto the game 5 years ago "No, this game is definitely not for me. Cool models and interesting fluff be damned." So, the fact that I no longer have a local gaming group between people moving away and the rest completely turned off by 6th/7th edition, means I should pack up my models and quit the game entirely? Why can't I WANT GW to make a better ruleset so that playing the game isn't so much of a chore? Will they? Probably not, but I do really want that. As far as being the one at the store promoting the game and trying to make all of this work, I'm sorry, but most of my hobby time is taken up by my Pathfinder/MTG group, so I get to the store a couple of Saturdays a month and really just want to go there and play the game. Guess I'm an anti-social donkey-cave.....or I should not play this game any more. At least that's what I'm getting from a lot of people on this thread. (Not all, but a lot)

Also, there are a lot of us out here who see that 40k is a game. It's a game with 2 players (the vast majority of the time) playing 2 opposing forces trying to beat the other to some pre-determined objectives (even kill points are an objective). At the end of this, there will be a winner and a loser, no matter how much you want to argue against that. Even if you don't care, there is still a winner and a loser. Why is it so bad to WANT a game that I like as much as 40k for the models and the fluff (not to mention the amount of money I've put into it) to realize that it really is a game. I've said this in the past, but I want to reiterate here, I am not a WAAC player, but I don't want to have to spend x amount of time before a game finding a way to make a game that my army can compete in. That should NOT be up to me or my opponent, that SHOULD be up to the people designing the game. Nobody here is arguing that the ruleset is balanced or good, we are stating that we want it to be. I am shocked that so many people think that's wrong.

If you feel that way then quit because you are not a hardcore fanboy of GW like most people on dakka dakka.

Its not GW's fault that people up and quit wh40k. Its thoses people's fault for getting too smart and realizing all that time, money and effort can be spent some place better.

WH40k is a "beer and pretzel," game according to GW. It isnt ment to be a perfect balanced game for tournament play. Its ment to be a game where you waste an entire afternoon arguing about convuloted rules conflicts. Then you "Forge the narrative " because there is no good answer.

 Just Tony wrote:

Deadnight wrote:Massive snip...

... ye quaint old Scottish pub.

Irish gastropub or nothing.

Considering I'm Irish, that can probably be arranged.

 Just Tony wrote:


Yeah, the person I'm talking about was HelloKitty. They clamored about how great AOS was because of the narrative gaming thing, and they were first to sing Unbound's accolades because of narrative gaming. Then that creature went on a quest to convert the masses, along with anecdotal evidence of the burgeoning scene in its area. The figures were... fluid to say the least, and near the end they were forced to basically admit to fabricating the huge AOS scene. They wound up essentially rage quitting gaming in typical dramatastic fashion, which ended with an eventual ban from Warseer.

Lol yes, I remember... It. Rarely came across a poster so blinkered. I'd have loved to have seen that thread by the way...

 Just Tony wrote:

To shorten this to the crux: I believe you are absolutely wrong about 40K being a pick up game. It wasn't in the first two editions, but was indeed a good pick up game in 3rd and 4th. It didn't start to see the time consuming rules bloat until 5th. THAT is why I went back to 3rd Ed. 40K when I game, and 6th Ed. WFB as well. I've never been happier. Well, if I could get my entire gaming club circle from both towns I frequented to follow suit, I'd be happier.

Mate, I played third and fourth and while the power 'output' of the current game has been vastly increased from where it was then, the 'ratios' of imbalance across the bell curve was just as bad. In other words, it was a broken mess of a game at the best of times. Some builds dominated without trying. And I will happily list them if you wish - I can still remember them all. Others - well you might as well have not bothered turning up. Also bear in mind how towards the end of third, the sheer amount of supplementary material requires to play a game (rulebook, codex,white dwarfs, chapter approved etc etc) was quite similar in a lot of ways to how sixth and seventh have played out in terms of rules bloat.

The evidence speaks for itself. It was never a 'good pick up game'. Maybe you played it that way, I'm presuming that was your introduction and exposure to gsming (please correct me if I'm wrong) and that colours your views, but objectively speaking, third and fourth were not good gsmes for that style of play - even then, you needed a 'gentleman's agreement' to get the most out of it, or you'd be blown of the table.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
You don't have to use Facebook to pre-arrange games. My group in State College used Meetup, you could use Google Hangouts, or you could use Dakkadakka! Just start a thread in the Find a Game forum. If you only have a couple of saturdays a month to plan, then you can use the other 26-29 days in the month to figure something out!

It would literally take less effort than typing the post you just typed. XD

"You don't have to use social media to arrange a game, you just have to use social media to do it" is hardly a convincing reply. You shouldn't have to do any of that to arrange a game. If I want to play a game of X-Wing I don't go on social media and negotiate what kind of game I want to play, I just show up on X-Wing night and say "hey, want to play" to whoever is sitting at an open table. If I can't show up on the appropriate night and play a game without negotiation it's a major flaw.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
You don't have to use Facebook to pre-arrange games. My group in State College used Meetup, you could use Google Hangouts, or you could use Dakkadakka! Just start a thread in the Find a Game forum. If you only have a couple of saturdays a month to plan, then you can use the other 26-29 days in the month to figure something out!

It would literally take less effort than typing the post you just typed. XD

"You don't have to use social media to arrange a game, you just have to use social media to do it" is hardly a convincing reply. You shouldn't have to do any of that to arrange a game. If I want to play a game of X-Wing I don't go on social media and negotiate what kind of game I want to play, I just show up on X-Wing night and say "hey, want to play" to whoever is sitting at an open table. If I can't show up on the appropriate night and play a game without negotiation it's a major flaw.

I mean, you have to arrange D&D games ahead. Is that an awful game?

Think of 40k more like D&D and less like Xwing. It isn't Xwing, as you astutely pointed out.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
You don't have to use Facebook to pre-arrange games. My group in State College used Meetup, you could use Google Hangouts, or you could use Dakkadakka! Just start a thread in the Find a Game forum. If you only have a couple of saturdays a month to plan, then you can use the other 26-29 days in the month to figure something out!

It would literally take less effort than typing the post you just typed. XD

"You don't have to use social media to arrange a game, you just have to use social media to do it" is hardly a convincing reply. You shouldn't have to do any of that to arrange a game. If I want to play a game of X-Wing I don't go on social media and negotiate what kind of game I want to play, I just show up on X-Wing night and say "hey, want to play" to whoever is sitting at an open table. If I can't show up on the appropriate night and play a game without negotiation it's a major flaw.

I mean, you have to arrange D&D games ahead. Is that an awful game?

Think of 40k more like D&D and less like Xwing. It isn't Xwing, as you astutely pointed out.

This. There are a lot of games where you can just show up on the dedicated game night at local game shop and say hey want to play to whoever else is there. Warhammer is not conducive to that style of play, and trying to shoehorn it in is the root of most of these things. I am perfectly content with doing the above for Warmachine which is or was the other game I played. If I played X-Wing or Infinity or any of the other game that are better suited to that approach I would have no problem doing it with them either. But I do not believe that Warhammer is intended or built around or even adequately set up for that sort of thing where you just turn up and ask whoever else is there for a game with little or no other discussion.

The default assumption for Warhammer seems to be that you are part of a gaming Club and while you may have a set day that you meet it's more of a social Gathering that involves playing a game then going specifically for the purpose of the game like you or hypothetical x wing night at the game shop. It's much more like getting together to play D&D where it's an all day Affair and you're going to socialize and talk with your buddies just as much if not more than actually play the game. When I used to play D&D we would spend maybe half the day chatting and eating before we even started to play and we would talk about things we did or things we might want to do it the game or some cool book that's coming out things like that it wasn't it's D&D night let's dive in and start playing.

That's where I feel the disconnect is. GW is wanting/thinking that you're in a social group where Warhammer is your equivalent to bridge or whatever (in fact, I always think of like the Reform Club in Around the World in 80 Days, but with Warhammer instead of whist.), where it's mainly a social venue with a medium that everyone enjoys, rather than a "game" that you simply play for the sake of it being a game. Which makes sense really since it's rooted in the old British "wargaming club" from the days of Bath and Featherstone. The whole "go down to the game shop and see who else turns up" is largely an American thing because we have woefully few actual wargames clubs.