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"Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.

Whats the issue?

 Mr Morden wrote:
"Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.

Whats the issue?

The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.

So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.

People need to realize that theres room for different games for different needs of depth and complexity.

Theres not a "This is the PERFECT level of depth and complexity" for a game. The complexity and depth needed is the one the creators want to their game.

Years ago I tried a Roleplay gaming system that was the most "complete roleplaying sistem ever created". To put an example: To resolve a single shoot from a pistol you could spend 1 hour doing math, because that system taked in account your position, the position of the enemy, your skills, their skills, the strenght of the wind, and hundreds of variables to calculate where the shoot lands, what damages causes, etc...

Is that complexity unnecesary? No for that game system. Is a system made for people that like all of that.

So, the answer is... whats the level of depth and complexity that the creators of 40k want to their game?

What they try to acomplish?

Based in the answers to those questions we can then know how much depth and complexity to the game is needed, in base of what it tries to accomplish.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
"Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.

Whats the issue?

The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.

So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.

There is a small error in the assumption.
There is a meaningful choice, but it's not because you can affect the roll...
but because you're choosing if it's worth suffering Overwatch for the chance of reaching melee.

You don't need agency in affecting the result for it to be a meaningful choice.

 Talamare wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
"Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.

Whats the issue?

The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.

So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.

There is a small error in the assumption.
There is a meaningful choice, but it's not because you can affect the roll...
but because you're choosing if it's worth suffering Overwatch for the chance of reaching melee.

You don't need agency in affecting the result for it to be a meaningful choice.

But that overwatch effect is there regardless of which unit you choose to attempt to charge. And "charge and be shot or not charge and be shot worse" is not an interesting decision for the player.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Talamare wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
"Random" Charge - you assess the risk and reward based on the distance and the likely roll with 7 being average - you then decide if you want to attempt the charge - you make an informed choice.

Whats the issue?

The fact that whilst it appears you have a choice, you do not have a meaningful choice as even if you know the odds of rolling either result, you have zero impact on the actual end result. If the player has no actual agency in affecting the result then it was not a meaningful choice, merely the illusion of one. It is exactly like Snakes and Ladders, as I said before. There's a ladder 7 spaces away and a snake 5 spaces away, I know the odds of each result but I have no meaningful choice which result I actually get.

So lets say you're Rain Man and know all the possible results and their probabilities and know you have an X% better chance of reaching combat with unit Y over unit Z. You then roll snake eyes and fail. Even having complete knowledge of the relative probabilities gives you no actual benefit as you are simply not rolling enough iterations to get the normal distribution bell curve.

There is a small error in the assumption.
There is a meaningful choice, but it's not because you can affect the roll...
but because you're choosing if it's worth suffering Overwatch for the chance of reaching melee.

You don't need agency in affecting the result for it to be a meaningful choice.

But that overwatch effect is there regardless of which unit you choose to attempt to charge. And "charge and be shot or not charge and be shot worse" is not an interesting decision for the player.

You can choose to charge or not - thats the meaningful choice - you assess the situation and decide if you like the odds - thats why we have dice in games!

Charge and be shot on ovewatch - hitting on 6's and much less effective or use cover, move out of LOS, back into a transport - dependng on what unit you are running - there is loads of choice - its just normal risk management.

Legions rules back? No.

3.5 Chaos Codex (Night Lords): All infantry units had access to Stealth and the Raptor units had Furious Charge & Fear. Their usual opponents were Dark Angels and the battlefield was a city.
Well, in all those battles the Night Lords had a tremendous advantage. The Loyalists were shooting with a lot of plasma weapons but their high-tech advantage was cancelled out by the Traitor´s Stealth USR ( 3+ cover save in ruins & buildings vs. AP3 or better). Another great perk for Curze´s sons were the Raptor Champions. These were just brutal on the charge (S6 I5 A4; Spikes, Daemonic Strength: S+1, Power Sword). All their buffs & equipment boni meant that they usually striked first in hth and wounded the emperor´s finest on a 2+. One missed attack could be rerolled due to Spikes equipment. Their foes break test was also modified by 2 due to Fear (Daemonic Gift).
So, in the end my Night Lords were often victorious in those cityfights and I should be glad that it turned out that way. But in retrospect, the victories just felt cheap with all these advantages heaped upon them.
Meanwhile, GW rules department sensed my bad conscience and hit the spiky marines really hard with the nerf bat. The force of that blow sent ripples through the Empyrean which can be felt to this day. The servants of the dark gods shall never recover from that blow and will be tormented with lacklustre codices for all eternity due to the sins they perpetrated with their blasphemous 3.5 Chaos Codex.

I like chunk. As a general rule, I like a rules set I can get waist-deep in. However, those rules should be legible, easy to understand, and pertinent to the purpose of the game. GW has never written rules like that. I (and most of us, if we're honest) play the game because the rules are just good enough and the models are cool - and loads of people play. No one ever picked up a GW rulebook, read through it and thought "Wow...genius!".

I'm fine with rules expecting more of the player. Game going to last 2-3 hours? Suck it up. You're going to have to do some math or modifiers? Cool, suck it up.

If you look at 40K, most of its editions have had some terrible issues. My favourite edition, 2nd, is only playable if you gut and re-do the Psyker phase and close combat...the resolution methods were pretty crap. 7th is a god damn nightmare of garbage. There's no complexity, there's just massed confusion.

While I was initially intrigued by 8th, the reports I've seen are rapidly turning me off of it. That said, I'd play it in a heartbeat over 7th (having watched plenty and played enough games...I can say it's one of the worst wargames I've played in 26 years of gaming). The goals of 8th, however, are contradictory to what I enjoy in a game.

-Speeding up play.
-Wiping units of 20-30-40 models out in a single turn
-Getting into close combat by the end of Turn 1 or early in Turn 2
-Sell a ton of models by providing benefits to 20+ squad sizes

Generally that's not something I'm interested in. I don't need a wam-bam-thank-you-mam wargame. That, however, sells. You can see the same ADD/short game methods in PC gaming currently. This is the generation of 45-90 minutes and I want to move on kind of stuff. That's fine, as it's working pretty damn well for GW lately.

I would gladly take a more complex game (not Infinity complex), but complexity does not equate to ridiculous buffs/special rules/immunities/invulnerabilities/re-rolls/etc.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Talamare wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
I maintain the problem was the players.

Elaborate, because I can't even begin to imagine what you could mean by that.

A large part of it came down, in my opinion, to player attitudes.

Some people chose to take what were fluffy formations in a way that was abusive as hell. See War Convocation with Flesh Tearers taxi service early on.

Could not agree more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elbows wrote:
I like chunk. As a general rule, I like a rules set I can get waist-deep in. However, those rules should be legible, easy to understand, and pertinent to the purpose of the game. GW has never written rules like that. I (and most of us, if we're honest) play the game because the rules are just good enough and the models are cool - and loads of people play. No one ever picked up a GW rulebook, read through it and thought "Wow...genius!".

I'm fine with rules expecting more of the player. Game going to last 2-3 hours? Suck it up. You're going to have to do some math or modifiers? Cool, suck it up.

If you look at 40K, most of its editions have had some terrible issues. My favourite edition, 2nd, is only playable if you gut and re-do the Psyker phase and close combat...the resolution methods were pretty crap. 7th is a god damn nightmare of garbage. There's no complexity, there's just massed confusion.

While I was initially intrigued by 8th, the reports I've seen are rapidly turning me off of it. That said, I'd play it in a heartbeat over 7th (having watched plenty and played enough games...I can say it's one of the worst wargames I've played in 26 years of gaming). The goals of 8th, however, are contradictory to what I enjoy in a game.

-Speeding up play.
-Wiping units of 20-30-40 models out in a single turn
-Getting into close combat by the end of Turn 1 or early in Turn 2
-Sell a ton of models by providing benefits to 20+ squad sizes

Generally that's not something I'm interested in. I don't need a wam-bam-thank-you-mam wargame. That, however, sells. You can see the same ADD/short game methods in PC gaming currently. This is the generation of 45-90 minutes and I want to move on kind of stuff. That's fine, as it's working pretty damn well for GW lately.

I would gladly take a more complex game (not Infinity complex), but complexity does not equate to ridiculous buffs/special rules/immunities/invulnerabilities/re-rolls/etc.

I also agree with this.
Though I am still excited to see where nuhammer goes.
I think that there is potential.
Wargames should make you think. At the table and at the desk. A lot. Not less.

Complexity needs to be differentiated from needlessly sodding about, I got three big issues that drive me up the wall.
Terrain - Most organisers I play through set it up themselves and leave a mudmap at the table that labels pieces as di-difficult, da-dangerous or ip-impassable and rather than bothering with the foliage, rubble, building ect give it a flat cover save or LSB - Line of Sight Blocking.
Set up - I blame all needless sodding about in set-up squarely on the Vanguard deployment. Everybody is "Pretty sure" they know how to measure it up correctly.
Templates - Depends on the opponent, most people I played against were pretty cool, offer them the chance to decide how many models are under your first blast and most will give you an honest answer, if you get an honest answer just save time and let them call the blasts. Very few people I bother arguing with over templates.

6th and 7th were not fun they took 3-4 hours to play at 2k with people that knew the rules well.

That wasn't a game it was a chore.

Being able to Finish a game in 90 minutes sounds great not just for games at home but for tournament players as well.

Depth and flavour vs necessary and unnecessary complexity.
I don't mind complexity as long as it is necessary to support the depth and flavour.
I haven't played yet but I believe 8th is currently missing the depth and flavour that I want from 40k in some areas.

 jeff white wrote:

Though I am still excited to see where nuhammer goes.
I think that there is potential.
Wargames should make you think. At the table and at the desk. A lot. Not less.

It's very much about how people approach the Warhammers, because of how GW approaches making games. As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends. GW give into the demands of the people who insist of playing Warhammer competitively, but their games are not designed in a way that facilitate that.
Titans, exciting turns of fortune and stacking buffs don't help when balancing a game.
I have found Warhammer to be much more enjoyable if not taken very seriously (i.e. seen as a test of your mind).

I do like wargames to make me think, which is why I mainly play other games (KoW and Infinity) and leave Warhammer (either one) for when I want a more relaxed time that is not only about the game, but about the people I do it with too.

 DarkBlack wrote:
As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.

No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.

 Peregrine wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:
As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.

No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.

Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.

 DarkBlack wrote:
Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.

I prefer to call it realism. None of the things that make 40k bad for competitive tournaments make it better at anything else, except maybe being a mindless game for small children. There's no other viable interpretation here, either GW's game designers are blatantly incompetent or they're deliberately making a game on the level of those silly "games" you see on the back of cereal boxes. Or both.

I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.

IIRC GW has stated this openly, no insult required.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:
As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.

No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.

Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.

Can you point to what makes the poor rules writing better for casual games, and why better rules would be worse for casual gaming?

The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.

If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.

 Traditio wrote:
The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.

If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.

That's not exactly complexity, more of depth. Complexity is again, something like soul blaze. Totally worthless, but in the game anyways and something needed to keep track of. Depth is chapter tactics, something that gives meaningful flavor to an army/unit.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:
As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.

No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.

Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.

I in fact remember back in 2004 when they sent out the directives because that week with no warning vets night was cancelled and we were made unwelcome in the store, two weeks later Tim was begging us to start a gaming club and rent space to play.

We told him to fekke off because we'd lost track of people because this was pre Facebook and not everyone had mobiles he'd destroyed our community so we stopped buying gw stuff for a good five years.

Gws decline started when they went for kids over veterans, mainly because kids have no money compared to a grown working man.

Sigh, the progress of the dumbening down of the english language. Here's my contribution to the thread:

The perennial argument was always complication vs complexity. 40k rules have been growing ever more complicated, but they weren't really complex. They certainly weren't beer and pretzels. You can have a simple game that is complex, but you can't have a simple game that is complicated. Having spent a lot of time recently playing skip-bo, i can tell you that the rules are simple (put down cards) but the execution allows for a fair depth of complexity.

Now we're at the stage where complicated means complex, and complex means depth. Please, carry on. :(

Wolfblade wrote:

Spoiler:

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:
As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends.

No, GW wants to make a game where they invest the minimum resources possible to create the idea of "you can play games with your new toys" and add incentive to buy the models, preferably with nice simple rules and lots of randomness so their target market (kids with their parents' credit cards) don't lose too much and stop buying. This has nothing to do with "casual" or narrative games, and the things that make 40k bad as a competitive game do not make it a better game for anyone else. They're just bad game design from an incompetent company.

Depends on how you interpret things. If you prefer cynicism then you can see it like that.
I don't buy the "kids are the target market" thing though. Just sounds like a dismissive insult.

Can you point to what makes the poor rules writing better for casual games, and why better rules would be worse for casual gaming?

The way GW writes is inconsistent, unclear and infuriating; but that is not new.
Not quite what was being talked about, here's all of what I said again.

DarkBlack wrote:
It's very much about how people approach the Warhammers, because of how GW approaches making games. As far as I can tell; GW wants to make an epic battle with great mini's among friends. GW give into the demands of the people who insist of playing Warhammer competitively, but their games are not designed in a way that facilitate that.
Titans, exciting turns of fortune and stacking buffs don't help when balancing a game.
I have found Warhammer to be much more enjoyable if not taken very seriously (i.e. seen as a test of your mind).

I do like wargames to make me think, which is why I mainly play other games (KoW and Infinity) and leave Warhammer (either one) for when I want a more relaxed time that is not only about the game, but about the people I do it with too.

I've played five games of 8th so far.

I'd say there are maybe a handful of special rules I miss, but overall I am loving this game more than I ever have (As a player that started in 5th).

 Traditio wrote:
The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.

If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.

No. As I pointed out on the first page your OP is poorly worded and not asking the question you seem to think it is, and therefore your poll (like every other biased poll you make) is worthless.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
The poll has been up for a while, and thus far, the overwhelming public opinion is that they do not, in fact, want greater complexity reintroduced into the game.

If these people read the OP, I am taking that to mean that most people want passive chapter and legion tactics to stay dead.

No. As I pointed out on the first page your OP is poorly worded and not asking the question you seem to think it is, and therefore your poll (like every other biased poll you make) is worthless.

It's not worthless...at least, not simply speaking.

Is it perhaps worthless when it comes to determining whether or not people want legion and chapter tactics back? Yes.

But it does tell us very straightforwardly:

People do not want a more complex game.

 Traditio wrote:
But it does tell us very straightforwardly:

People do not want a more complex game.

Again, as I said, you're confusing complexity and depth. Nobody (or at least nobody who understands game design at all) wants a complex game, because complexity is always a bad thing. You accept a degree of complexity as a necessary price to get the things you actually want, whether it's deep strategy, realism, whatever. The question you need to be asking is "do you want {design element} in 8th, even if it means increasing complexity", but that's not what your poll asks. So of course you're going to get mostly "no" votes, even from people who might want to see things like chapter tactics return.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Traditio wrote:
But it does tell us very straightforwardly:

People do not want a more complex game.

Again, as I said, you're confusing complexity and depth. Nobody (or at least nobody who understands game design at all) wants a complex game, because complexity is always a bad thing. You accept a degree of complexity as a necessary price to get the things you actually want, whether it's deep strategy, realism, whatever. The question you need to be asking is "do you want {design element} in 8th, even if it means increasing complexity", but that's not what your poll asks. So of course you're going to get mostly "no" votes, even from people who might want to see things like chapter tactics return.

Bird from hell, indeed.
Squawkin' pure troof.
Exalt.

Depth =/= complexity

The game was bloated and I'm glad it's be somewhat resolved. You want depth but not complexity, you need to balance the two in a way that works for the system and keeps the tedium down to make the game more enjoyable for the targeted audience otherwise you end up with the bloated corpse of 3rd ed 40k that was just put down.

 n0t_u wrote:
Depth =/= complexity

The game was bloated and I'm glad it's be somewhat resolved. You want depth but not complexity, you need to balance the two in a way that works for the system and keeps the tedium down to make the game more enjoyable for the targeted audience otherwise you end up with the bloated corpse of 3rd ed 40k that was just put down.

(This only really helps if GW doesn't start stacking rules complexity on 8th the way they did on 3rd, so we don't end up with "the bloated corpse of 8th" ten years down the line that needs to be put down.)

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
Depth =/= complexity

The game was bloated and I'm glad it's be somewhat resolved. You want depth but not complexity, you need to balance the two in a way that works for the system and keeps the tedium down to make the game more enjoyable for the targeted audience otherwise you end up with the bloated corpse of 3rd ed 40k that was just put down.

(This only really helps if GW doesn't start stacking rules complexity on 8th the way they did on 3rd, so we don't end up with "the bloated corpse of 8th" ten years down the line that needs to be put down.)

Which we may just end up with depending on how the codex releases go this time around.