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 DarkBlack wrote:
Here I was thinking a wargame was a game using models and terrain on an open table (i.e. you have to measure, rather than having a board with markings on).

Those are important parts of the definition of a wargame, but they're also things GW has been doing their best to minimize in 8th. Movement is largely irrelevant outside of "teleport across half the table to exactly the perfect position", measuring matters very little when everything either has full-table range or deploys within 12" of the target, terrain is purely decorative most of the time unless you add house rules to fix the problem, and the game is determined almost entirely by matching up how powerful each player's list is and then rolling dice at each other until someone wins. The tabletop aspects of the game are less and less relevant.

nou wrote:

Kastelen, you are relatively new here, right? Peregrine doesn't do well in "broad multi-factor analysis of averaged community needs and eventual GW responses to said statistics", he goes by a simple "anything that isn't exactly my point of view is total BS and people who enjoy other things that I do or enjoy them differently are dumb".

Now now, that's not really fair.

 DarkBlack wrote:
I think the simplification is good for Warhammer.

40k isn't simple, it's shallow. The rules are still lengthy, often counter-intuitive, and difficult to fully understand as a new player. For example, in a simple game it wouldn't matter exactly what melee weapon a model is armed with, they'd just have their basic attack or a generic "power weapon" upgrade that represents the entire category of "things that are better than punching with your bare fists". The difference between an axe and a sword would not be something that is necessary to represent in a simple game. But in 40k there are different rules for axes and swords, and you have to care about which one your model is armed with. You might argue that this is a nice detail to have, but it sure as hell isn't simple.

What 40k actually has is shallow strategy. There's very little thought involved beyond creating the most powerful list possible, once you start playing the game it's little more than an exercise in target priority and rolling dice until someone (usually the player with the most powerful list) wins. You put a ton of effort into learning the bloated mess of rules, and in return you get almost nothing.

The rules, similarly, appeal to one type of player; which sucks if you're not it, but it's amazing if you are.

And that player seems defined entirely as "people who are addicted to GW's brand of crack and will buy anything we tell them to buy". The rules that I (and many other people) object to aren't good for any particular element of the community, and make their experiences worse in the same ways. It's bad design, not careful targeting.

 auticus wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

 auticus wrote:

You can get the same results from 40k the card game. Both a CCG and 40k rely heavily on netlisting and listbuilding in general, neither really have any meaningful maneuver, and you just pick a target and roll some dice at it to see what happens.

Is it fun? It can be fun. Is it really a wargame? I'd say no, it stopped being that years ago. Is that bad? If you like board games or CCG style games then you're probably in heaven right now. If you want a wargame, you don't have much left on the market to pick from. Especially in the genre that 40k sits in. Gates of Antares is pretty much the only thing that comes to mind at this point.

Oh gak! Sorry! I didn't realise that the definition of a wargame was whether a game is satisfying to you in particular. Oh great master of the tabletop.
Here I was thinking a wargame was a game using models and terrain on an open table (i.e. you have to measure, rather than having a board with markings on). I really though that some wargames could just have simpler rules, like Kings of War.
Didn't realise that game simplicity or design was the deciding factor, suppose cards are not what make them card games either.

I also forgot to look down on board games, no intelligence required there I guess. Does that make chess a wargame?

Depends on what exactly the genre is, if you mean grimdark science fantasy, no. If you mean SciFi then there's gates of Antares, Deadzone and Infinity.

Oh boy. We took this down to dakka dakka land didn't we.

I don't think anywhere I posted that my *opinion* was the defacto for the world. It is my *opinion*. Also never mentioned anything about wargames and simpler rules not being wargames. So take it down a couple notches there Ultimate Warrior.

But I'll explain for you MY OPINION.

A wargame intuitively creates a battle or war. A card game like Magic could also be called "a wargame" because you are opposed against someone and you are "battliing them". Battleship could also be called a "wargame" for the same reason.

Now a "wargame" has up until very recently involved two key factors that are absent from 40k. That being... maneuvering pieces being crucial, and battlefield management being key (managing terrain). In card games like Magic... or in board games like Battleship... or Dominion, or pick any of the hundreds of board games or card games that have us fighting our opponent, maneuver either doesn't exist at all (like card games) or is very benign (like board games).

40k doesn't have maneuver really. I mean technically you move models. But you can get engaged in turn 1 adn the game is designed to be over by turn 2. Maneuver is largely irrelevant. You can just point at what you want to fight, and your models alpha strike it and then you both roll a bunch of dice. Just like magic the gathering and just like a bunch of board games.

40k's terrain rules are also largely irrelevant.

So you are left with a game that, *to me*, is more similar to a board game or a card game than it is a wargame.

This has nothing, zero, nada to do with simplicity or any of the other straw man points you pulled. Dragon Rampant has a very siimple ruleset and is more of a wargame than AOS is. Kings of War has maneuver and feels like a wargame. Age of Simgar is like 40k, its more like a board game or a card game because *to me* maneuver and battlefield management don't really exist in either system. Its all about target priority (just like magic and board games) and its all about list building (deckbuilding). Gates of Antares is absolutely a wargame that feels like an actual battle being played, and not two people deckbuilding some combos and then playing them out.

Neither 40k nor AOS feel like a battle would actually feel, nor do they really represent the fiction that the Black Library writers write in terms of the battles and how the battles play out, because iin the liiterature maneuvering and terrain do matter (as they would intuitively matter in any battle).

@Auticus: a bit of a sidetrack, but you may want to check out a game called Neuroshima Hex (not Tactics or RPG). This is a small boardgame (like really small, board has only 19 spaces) which is the best wargame-to-boardgame adaptation I ever played. It has meaningfull manouvering, overall strategies, localized tactics, shooting, melee, various distinct factions that each have it's unique playstyle and even something resembling terrain (but this just hinted and only for some factions). It has e-version for mobile phones/tablets, but be warned - it's addictive as hell.

As for the stuff about the size of the game, I've always though a big problem with the game is the 28mm scale on a 6'x4' board. 24" has always felt too short for a boltgun or lazgun, and 72" far too short for something like a railgun, and yet it's still too far on a 6'x4' board. Equally, and this really is a personal thing, but I hate how you can't have a 6'x8' board for a last stand scenario in the centre because your arms just wouldn't be long enough, but the size and rectangular shape of 6'x4' just doesn't support a surrounded on all sides last stand.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
As for the stuff about the size of the game, I've always though a big problem with the game is the 28mm scale on a 6'x4' board. 24" has always felt too short for a boltgun or lazgun, and 72" far too short for something like a railgun, and yet it's still too far on a 6'x4' board. Equally, and this really is a personal thing, but I hate how you can't have a 6'x8' board for a last stand scenario in the centre because your arms just wouldn't be long enough, but the size and rectangular shape of 6'x4' just doesn't support a surrounded on all sides last stand.

28mm is fine on a 6x4, its the sheer number of models and how the rules work that kills any potential strategic depth in 40k.

I played a realistic modern 28mm game with 40k models ported over many years ago, and we played on our club table, which was slightly larger than normal, I think closer to a 5x7. The heavy, vehicle based weaponry could shoot clean across the table, even lengthwise, while infantry weapons could mostly do the same as well. The big difference was that there were less than 30 models on the table total, and there were lots of modifiers to shooting. Infantry weapons had range bands that degraded rapidly, doubly so if they were moving or shooting into cover, or any number of other realistic factors. Tank weapons were similar, though obviously on a larger scale.

You could take your chance and fire your rifles at a target 36" away, but you'd need a 17+ on a D20 to even pin the unit, let alone do any meaningful damage. It was quite enjoyable. Faster, smoother, simpler, more intuitive than 40k, while offering more depth.

What game was that blacksails?

Also anyone who says movement and positioning is unimportant in 40K 8th edition just because vehicle facing is gone is wrong.

sure it's nowhere as important compared to other wargames on the market but it is not non existant.

CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

nou wrote:

Kastelen, you are relatively new here, right? Peregrine doesn't do well in "broad multi-factor analysis of averaged community needs and eventual GW responses to said statistics", he goes by a simple "anything that isn't exactly my point of view is total BS and people who enjoy other things that I do or enjoy them differently are dumb".

Now now, that's not really fair.

Peregrine wrote:

And that player seems defined entirely as "people who are addicted to GW's brand of crack and will buy anything we tell them to buy". The rules that I (and many other people) object to aren't good for any particular element of the community, and make their experiences worse in the same ways. It's bad design, not careful targeting.

@CREEEEEEEEED: is it really? Do I really have to add anything beside this fresh "source" citation?

"Bad game design which addresses noones needs in any good way whatsoever" made GW the most succesfull company on London stock market last year simply because ￡38m sales worth of people are GW addicted crackpots? Is it really the most probable answer? Or did GW hit a nail in the head and addressed the proper audience for it's product and found an close-to-optimal ballance between game complexity/depth/accesibility to reach both new and old playerbase? Of course this is a ballance that cuts out both ends of a bell curve and leaves the likes as myself or Peregrine outside of target audience, but nevertheless 8th ed 40K is a great succes and a whole lot of people are enjoing it. There are other virtues of a tabletop game than just being a uber-realistic, perfectly mathcrunched deep wargame simulation...

Earth127 wrote:
Also anyone who says movement and positioning is unimportant in 40K 8th edition just because vehicle facing is gone is wrong.

It's not just the removal of vehicle facings, it's the ease of alpha strikes in general. You don't have to care about movement or positioning when your entire army either has weapons that can fire the entire length of the table (and LOS-blocking terrain is rare) or fast enough movement (via deep strike or high movement stat) to start the game next to your target and immediately kill it. You don't have a situation like X-Wing, where it's move vs. counter-move trying to set up a shot, you just pick your target and roll dice to kill it.

 wuestenfux wrote:

I feel 8th is a fun game, but should not be taken too seriously (same with all GW games I think, considering how terribly the game is optimized for competitive play.)

Right.
The community would highly welcome a tournament based rule set like Steamroller for WMH. But GW is refusing this from the outset.

Keep in mind Steamroller is 99% just tournament-focused scenarios. There isn't really any rules changes for the game. Technically this is what the ITC Missions are, just it comes from a third party and not from GW themselves. Honestly, I think it's time for ITC to just take it upon themselves to do this and make a set of tournament rules that add extra restrictions and the like on top of the normal matched play restrictions.

Earth127 wrote:
What game was that blacksails?

Also anyone who says movement and positioning is unimportant in 40K 8th edition just because vehicle facing is gone is wrong.

sure it's nowhere as important compared to other wargames on the market but it is not non existant.

I can't remember now. Chances are it was a home brewed game, or a heavily modified game. I remember it being D20 based, using lots of modifiers for ranges, cover, and movement, having 'command points' to rally troops and place them on overwatch, and that hitting a unit rarely resulted in direct casualties, but most often degraded their morale first, then would start piling on wounds.

There weren't any points, not that I knew of anyways. The forces were just similar; a Guard Russ and a few squads of infantry against a Hammerhead, a crisis suit squad, and a pathfinder squad.

I was new to wargaming, and my club was filled with top notch painters, amazing terrain builders, and rules writers (I think one guy is now working on a small rules company).

nou wrote:

CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

nou wrote:

Kastelen, you are relatively new here, right? Peregrine doesn't do well in "broad multi-factor analysis of averaged community needs and eventual GW responses to said statistics", he goes by a simple "anything that isn't exactly my point of view is total BS and people who enjoy other things that I do or enjoy them differently are dumb".

Now now, that's not really fair.

Peregrine wrote:

And that player seems defined entirely as "people who are addicted to GW's brand of crack and will buy anything we tell them to buy". The rules that I (and many other people) object to aren't good for any particular element of the community, and make their experiences worse in the same ways. It's bad design, not careful targeting.

@CREEEEEEEEED: is it really? Do I really have to add anything beside this fresh "source" citation?

"Bad game design which addresses noones needs in any good way whatsoever" made GW the most succesfull company on London stock market last year simply because ￡38m sales worth of people are GW addicted crackpots? Is it really the most probable answer? Or did GW hit a nail in the head and addressed the proper audience for it's product and found an close-to-optimal ballance between game complexity/depth/accesibility to reach both new and old playerbase? Of course this is a ballance that cuts out both ends of a bell curve and leaves the likes as myself or Peregrine outside of target audience, but nevertheless 8th ed 40K is a great succes and a whole lot of people are enjoing it. There are other virtues of a tabletop game than just being a uber-realistic, perfectly mathcrunched deep wargame simulation...

nope and a big nope at that, GW actually takes part in marketing now, reaching out to its customers and actually trying to get new ones, they have a lot of presence on social media too, so when you throw that all together and then release a new edition then of course it will sell, the contents of the rules are largely irelavent (sp?) if you market it well, and GW marketed 8th very very well, this is why you see new and old players coming along, they have also continued this great marketing with the codex's and new units, marketing is the main reason why 8th sold so well, not the rules content.

Heres the thing, the rules department clearly means well and have tried to make this game great again, and they have suceeded on several levels, but they have also failed in several key areas, its too streamlined in some areas and not enough in others, for example, they marketed it as a simpler game than 7th, its not, there are just as many rules and crunch in 8th, its just moved mostly to the datasheet, its a side shift not an upgrade, but most people have bought into the marketing and believe its simpler without actually critically thinking about it, and thats what good marketing does, we all fall for it, but when the shine wares off a lot of people also then look at the rules and wonder where all the cool stuff went.

A good example of this is the WS chart, it was good for imersion and seperated characters quite well, now we have a blob of characters that are basically the same across the board (WS 2+) and all that differentiates them is options, which they also cut down on, so less options on the whole, cookie cutter characters leads to some boring gameplay, now apply this to the game as a whole, too much stuff is too similar.

So finally, if some people like this game thats fine, some dont, also fine, but the ones that like it refuse to see the glaring issues that cause people not to like it or push them to other systems.

Wayniac wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

I feel 8th is a fun game, but should not be taken too seriously (same with all GW games I think, considering how terribly the game is optimized for competitive play.)

Right.
The community would highly welcome a tournament based rule set like Steamroller for WMH. But GW is refusing this from the outset.

Keep in mind Steamroller is 99% just tournament-focused scenarios. There isn't really any rules changes for the game. Technically this is what the ITC Missions are, just it comes from a third party and not from GW themselves. Honestly, I think it's time for ITC to just take it upon themselves to do this and make a set of tournament rules that add extra restrictions and the like on top of the normal matched play restrictions.

As for Steamroller there is no need to provide rule changes or adaptions, since the rule set of WMH is already rather tight and tournament worthy.
In 40k, the situation is different as e.g. can be seen from the contributions to this thread.

nou wrote:

 auticus wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

 auticus wrote:

You can get the same results from 40k the card game. Both a CCG and 40k rely heavily on netlisting and listbuilding in general, neither really have any meaningful maneuver, and you just pick a target and roll some dice at it to see what happens.

Is it fun? It can be fun. Is it really a wargame? I'd say no, it stopped being that years ago. Is that bad? If you like board games or CCG style games then you're probably in heaven right now. If you want a wargame, you don't have much left on the market to pick from. Especially in the genre that 40k sits in. Gates of Antares is pretty much the only thing that comes to mind at this point.

Oh gak! Sorry! I didn't realise that the definition of a wargame was whether a game is satisfying to you in particular. Oh great master of the tabletop.
Here I was thinking a wargame was a game using models and terrain on an open table (i.e. you have to measure, rather than having a board with markings on). I really though that some wargames could just have simpler rules, like Kings of War.
Didn't realise that game simplicity or design was the deciding factor, suppose cards are not what make them card games either.

I also forgot to look down on board games, no intelligence required there I guess. Does that make chess a wargame?

Depends on what exactly the genre is, if you mean grimdark science fantasy, no. If you mean SciFi then there's gates of Antares, Deadzone and Infinity.

Oh boy. We took this down to dakka dakka land didn't we.

I don't think anywhere I posted that my *opinion* was the defacto for the world. It is my *opinion*. Also never mentioned anything about wargames and simpler rules not being wargames. So take it down a couple notches there Ultimate Warrior.

But I'll explain for you MY OPINION.

A wargame intuitively creates a battle or war. A card game like Magic could also be called "a wargame" because you are opposed against someone and you are "battliing them". Battleship could also be called a "wargame" for the same reason.

Now a "wargame" has up until very recently involved two key factors that are absent from 40k. That being... maneuvering pieces being crucial, and battlefield management being key (managing terrain). In card games like Magic... or in board games like Battleship... or Dominion, or pick any of the hundreds of board games or card games that have us fighting our opponent, maneuver either doesn't exist at all (like card games) or is very benign (like board games).

40k doesn't have maneuver really. I mean technically you move models. But you can get engaged in turn 1 adn the game is designed to be over by turn 2. Maneuver is largely irrelevant. You can just point at what you want to fight, and your models alpha strike it and then you both roll a bunch of dice. Just like magic the gathering and just like a bunch of board games.

40k's terrain rules are also largely irrelevant.

So you are left with a game that, *to me*, is more similar to a board game or a card game than it is a wargame.

This has nothing, zero, nada to do with simplicity or any of the other straw man points you pulled. Dragon Rampant has a very siimple ruleset and is more of a wargame than AOS is. Kings of War has maneuver and feels like a wargame. Age of Simgar is like 40k, its more like a board game or a card game because *to me* maneuver and battlefield management don't really exist in either system. Its all about target priority (just like magic and board games) and its all about list building (deckbuilding). Gates of Antares is absolutely a wargame that feels like an actual battle being played, and not two people deckbuilding some combos and then playing them out.

Neither 40k nor AOS feel like a battle would actually feel, nor do they really represent the fiction that the Black Library writers write in terms of the battles and how the battles play out, because iin the liiterature maneuvering and terrain do matter (as they would intuitively matter in any battle).

@Auticus: a bit of a sidetrack, but you may want to check out a game called Neuroshima Hex (not Tactics or RPG). This is a small boardgame (like really small, board has only 19 spaces) which is the best wargame-to-boardgame adaptation I ever played. It has meaningfull manouvering, overall strategies, localized tactics, shooting, melee, various distinct factions that each have it's unique playstyle and even something resembling terrain (but this just hinted and only for some factions). It has e-version for mobile phones/tablets, but be warned - it's addictive as hell.

Cool I'll check it out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Earth127 wrote:
What game was that blacksails?

Also anyone who says movement and positioning is unimportant in 40K 8th edition just because vehicle facing is gone is wrong.

sure it's nowhere as important compared to other wargames on the market but it is not non existant.

Could you give some examples on how movement and positioning matter iin 40k?

I mean ... its not non-existent, but its next to non existent.

If I can alpha my entire army into your face on turn 1, there is no maneuver. The movement is me picking up my models from the table and putting them anywhere on the table that I want. There is no maneuver. There is picking up my models and placing them wherever I want for the most part and then charging and spending easily obtained command points to reroll charges or add to my charge distances or other similar items to make the charge pretty much guaranteed.

I don't have to maneuver to get into that position and my opponent cannot maneuver to combat thiis. He has to just take it in the face like a champ.

nou wrote:
"Bad game design which addresses noones needs in any good way whatsoever" made GW the most succesfull company on London stock market last year simply because ￡38m sales worth of people are GW addicted crackpots?

Why are you ignoring the other factors involved here? You know, the people buying models because of the fluff/rules, or because in the UK GW's retail chain has driven independent stores out of the market and made GW's products the default (and, often, only) choice for people who want to get into tabletop wargames at all? Or the tons of money made from "three purchase" children who buy starter sets and then promptly drop out of the game? Or the fact that the gain is measured on a percentage basis, not total worth, on a stock exchange that doesn't include GW's primary competition?

Is it really the most probable answer? Or did GW hit a nail in the head and addressed the proper audience for it's product and found an close-to-optimal ballance between game complexity/depth/accesibility to reach both new and old playerbase?

Did they? Do you have any explanations of what good game design was involved, and how it benefits these particular people more than a game that fixed the problems I pointed out? Or are you just going to resort to "someone had fun, therefore GW is right?"

PS: after the debacle of 7th edition even a very poor game would look good and draw a lot of people back, simply because it isn't 7th. But that doesn't make it good on its own merits.

A good example of this is the WS chart, it was good for imersion and seperated characters quite well, now we have a blob of characters that are basically the same across the board (WS 2+) and all that differentiates them is options, which they also cut down on, so less options on the whole, cookie cutter characters leads to some boring gameplay, now apply this to the game as a whole, too much stuff is too similar.

It really didn't separate most things in the game - almost everything that was not a character was hitting on 4+ or 3+ - as they do now.

Characters were pretty much the same especially against other characters - now at least a Avatar of Khaine can hit a Gretchin (or say a stationary vehicle) at better than 3+.

@ Formosa:

The inverse of your statement is also true: No poster on dakka can convince me I am not having fun with 8th.
I do see it's glaring issues. But there are a lot of people who see nothing but said issues and are unwilling to look beyond anyhting. They play 1 kind of game, on 1 kind of table and talk about viability as if nothing exists outside the top 3 percent of choices.

 Mr Morden wrote:

A good example of this is the WS chart, it was good for imersion and seperated characters quite well, now we have a blob of characters that are basically the same across the board (WS 2+) and all that differentiates them is options, which they also cut down on, so less options on the whole, cookie cutter characters leads to some boring gameplay, now apply this to the game as a whole, too much stuff is too similar.

It really didn't separate most things in the game - almost everything that was not a character was hitting on 4+ or 3+ - as they do now.

Characters were pretty much the same especially against other characters - now at least a Avatar of Khaine can hit a Gretchin (or say a stationary vehicle) at better than 3+.

To be fair, they could have left WS the same and simply changed the chart such that units with at least twice the WS of their opponent hit on 2s.

Also, I appreciate that the old WS values were rather skewed, but you don't solve the problem by making things even more homogenised.

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
"Bad game design which addresses noones needs in any good way whatsoever" made GW the most succesfull company on London stock market last year simply because ￡38m sales worth of people are GW addicted crackpots?

Why are you ignoring the other factors involved here? You know, the people buying models because of the fluff/rules, or because in the UK GW's retail chain has driven independent stores out of the market and made GW's products the default (and, often, only) choice for people who want to get into tabletop wargames at all? Or the tons of money made from "three purchase" children who buy starter sets and then promptly drop out of the game? Or the fact that the gain is measured on a percentage basis, not total worth, on a stock exchange that doesn't include GW's primary competition?

Is it really the most probable answer? Or did GW hit a nail in the head and addressed the proper audience for it's product and found an close-to-optimal ballance between game complexity/depth/accesibility to reach both new and old playerbase?

Did they? Do you have any explanations of what good game design was involved, and how it benefits these particular people more than a game that fixed the problems I pointed out? Or are you just going to resort to "someone had fun, therefore GW is right?"

PS: after the debacle of 7th edition even a very poor game would look good and draw a lot of people back, simply because it isn't 7th. But that doesn't make it good on its own merits.

I'm not ignoring any factors, I'm just focusing on different than you do as a sort of "counterweight", because YOU are ignoring all non-rules factors (as in psychological, social, visual&tactile appeal, craftsmanship needs etc...) that make a "good game design". Statistically speaking, people don't play games because of those games ideal mathematical model or simulational value. They play what satisfy their particular need for fun and entertainment. This MAY BE a great mathematical ballance (as you may remember I am a quite able tournament Bridge player) or near-real-life tactical depth, but it can also be beer&pretzels actual throwing dice at painted models to see which will fall of the board faster and crash to more pieces... Or anything in between, depending on personal time available, individual levels of conscientiousness, introversion/extraversion, social skills etc... Discussing with you always devolves to talking about a strange "plato cave of ideal game design" without ever accounting for real players and their personalities. True "good game design" accounts for all those layers in a coherent fasion, with size of the assumed target audience being one of the key factors. You also falsely assume, that anyone who doesn't seek "mathematical depth" in 40K is somehow mentally inferior, despite repeatedly trying to prove yourself, that no edition of 40K is trully intelectually challangeing (Which I agree to fully, this is not "mental excercise game" out-of-the-box. It can be made into intelectuall excercise (of various sorts, but you also don't understand that such variety even exists, vide our past Maelstrom discussion), but almost any sandbox game can be made such with right starting conditions).

If you ask me "what good game design was involved" in 8th I can only "backengeneer" it, as I don't work at GW. My best guess was to make a game so stripped of individual tactical input so sheer volume of dice rolled ensures, that results are "statistically fair" and equalize odds of winning between old veterans and fresh players in a casual setting of non-optimised collections of minis this game has high enough win ratio to make players content. You may call it "bad game desig", I call it "catering to as wide target audience as possible". Does this make 40K a good wargame? Definately not as it crashes drastically when you can mathhammer most optimal builds and play in a "tournament" listbuilding fashion. Does this make 40K enjoyable for the largest number of people possible? Probably yes, because as we both saw numerous times at this forum, spectrum of needs that people try to fill with 40K is huge, ranging from beer&pretzels weekend enternainment to "up to teath near professional level of dedication". Even now you have people from both ends, some still complain about how overgrown mess this game is, some how stripped of content, variety or depth is...

I have a question for you - I don't remember any instance of you posting anything constructive on Proposed Rules forum. Like no houserules, no fandexes, no coherent reworks or scratchbuilt ruleset of your own design. None. And yet you seem to believe, that you are the only person here who really understands what good game desing is about. When asked directly what makes a good narrative game or a good fandex you always reply with "there is no such thing as good fandex/houserule" or that reply in broad but unprecise visions of what constitutes a good narrative game, all of which looks increasingly like you don't really play this game since at least 4th-early 5th ed. Am I right? How often do you play? How many games of 40K have you had in the last decade? How much practical experience with actually playing any wargame do you actually have and how much of your arguments are purely theoretical "I think that all of you would be happier if you just listened to what I think is good fun but I have totally no idea how to forge it into actual and succesfull game mechanics"?

The state of 40K is much as it's always been. The state of the company has changed for the better.

To me, 40K is a game played amongst friends...and we're not beholden to tournament rules or meta-lists or strict verbage. If we see something worth changing, we will do so. As such, it's a fun game to play and let's me put cool models on the tabletop. From a balanced, nuanced game for tournament setting? It's as crap as 40K has always been. Even taking tournament organizers opinions into account, the game is still a mess when it comes to balance and the massive issues IGOUGO presents on the table. It will always be that way, I'd imagine.

People have enjoyed all editions of 40K (some people actually enjoyed 7th). People have always not enjoyed editions of 40K and 8th will be no different.

You still need a few too many books, and some models are still terribly priced. You'll still have armies whcih are better than others in a competitive environment. 40K is still 40K. As a platform for creating an enjoyable table top experience with like-minded friends? 40K is also still 40K.

I did not enjoy Warhammer 40K in it's 3rd-7th iteration, so I quit playing at the beginning of 4th. I came back in late 7th to take a peek and hated it, resuming playing 2nd edition. I stated quite blatantly here on Dakka that I was doubtful GW would ever create a version of the game I'd be interested in playing again. So far, 8th is fun to play and it's brought back a good half-dozen buddies of mine who were likewise unenthused with 40K and had ditched it. So, amongst my friends and the way we play - the state of 40K is pretty good. I still prefer our modifications to 2nd edition, but 8th is fun.

The state of 40k is what you make out of it.
We have players in our gaming group who take it too serious. Game-testing every week with slightly modified armies.
Some like me have a more distant view of 40k with all its simplifications that came with 8th edition. And still, the simplifications dont bring new players into the game.
The success of GW has more to do with the overwhelming number of new products that they release every week. Not so much with the rule sets of 40k and AoS. But I must admit that the models are fantastic if you compare it with those of other companies like WMH.

 Mr Morden wrote:

A good example of this is the WS chart, it was good for imersion and seperated characters quite well, now we have a blob of characters that are basically the same across the board (WS 2+) and all that differentiates them is options, which they also cut down on, so less options on the whole, cookie cutter characters leads to some boring gameplay, now apply this to the game as a whole, too much stuff is too similar.

It really didn't separate most things in the game - almost everything that was not a character was hitting on 4+ or 3+ - as they do now.

Characters were pretty much the same especially against other characters - now at least a Avatar of Khaine can hit a Gretchin (or say a stationary vehicle) at better than 3+.

Characters, it separated characters, now all characters hit each other on the same, Kharn is a much better combatant than Azrael for example, but both hit each other on a 2+, same with other characters, and as you say not much changed, so why change it at all?

As for the rest of the stuff, it did separate them, but it didnt go far enough in doing so, personally I would have kept WS the same but made the chart a little more harsh, maybe tie it to the current wound chart, a Grot should have a hell of a time hitting Dark Eldar lord, not the same chance as hitting another grot or conscript, it breaks MY immersion, others are fine with it though.


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Earth127 wrote:
@ Formosa:

The inverse of your statement is also true: No poster on dakka can convince me I am not having fun with 8th.
I do see it's glaring issues. But there are a lot of people who see nothing but said issues and are unwilling to look beyond anyhting. They play 1 kind of game, on 1 kind of table and talk about viability as if nothing exists outside the top 3 percent of choices.

100% agree dude, its swings and roundabouts, this game has some good stuff and bad stuff, I am one of those people that sees a problem and tries to fix it, so we at our club use house rules to get rid of the biggest issues or curb stuff GW hasnt got around to yet.

I have said it a few times over the past few months but i REALLY dislike the direction 8th edition has gone and the games I've played of 8th have been incredibly boring. It feels more like just rolling dice and picking up or shuffling models around instead of making tactical decisions.

Here are a few things that have really dulled down the strategic/tactical complexity of 40k.

1. Cover is largely irrelevant. And no don't give me the boiler plate response of "your just not using enough terrain". I have been a huge proponent of terrain heavy boards for years and in 8th if you play it RAW then you are rarely if ever getting a cover save. Most terrain has little to no impact on movement, charges, or saves so you can play an entire game of 40k and not have terrain come up as a modifier despite having models falling all over the place due to terrain pieces "being in the way". Cover when it does come into play is either LoS blocking (which while good shouldn't be the only function of terrain) or the rare times that you meet all the requirements for a save modifer. If your a low armor model (guardsmen, Boyz, pathfinder, kroot, etc) that cover is not helping all that much because your 5+ or 6+ save is going up one and can still be shredded away by AP. An Ork loota in ruins has a 5+ save and a space marine with a plasma gun will ignore that save entirely while in 7th shooting a plasma gun (or grav as people so loved to spam) was a fairly big waste against a soft armored target in hard cover because cover was a good defense against armor defeating weapons.

2. Weapons are heavily homogenized and somewhat don't fit their purpose on the battlefield. In 7th the factors for a weapon came down to a list of things
7th Edition
-Direct fire or Blast
-Low rate of fire or lots of shots
-Heavy weapon/Salvo or Assault/Rapid Fire (aka heavy vs light weapons)
-The strength of the weapon
-The ability to bypass armor/vehicle damage table impact
-And other utility factors such as ignore cover, pinning, melta, poision, etc
8th
-Number of hits (direct vs blast, rate of fire, and heavy vs light are rolled into this as the sum of these will determine your average number of hits against any target and if you should stand still to shoot or take that -1 to hit when you move)
- Strength of the weapon
- Save negating
- Damage
- Utility
It might still seem like a lot of stuff but weapon Utility has greatly diminished to the point that most weapons don't have any bonus effects or other factors that modify their behavior. The big two changes though is all weapons can wound all targets so strength is no longer keeping your lasguns or bolters from hurting a Battlewagon but instead it just means your hoping for a lot of 5s and 6s if your using low strength weapons against high toughness targets. Also without instant death using high strength weapons against low toughness targets doesn't instagib them if one wound gets through so low toughness but high wound targets aren't as concerned about high strength attacks. Also FNP works all the time so you can't double out a target to bypass any good FNP saves. The other big change is that AP just reduces your save (unless invuln) and without a separate cover save it just means that more AP is always better so target priority of using the right AP for the right target or using ignoring cover weapons against targets that rely on cover is not really a thing.
Ultimately though 8th editions weapons tend to just boil down to either throwing weight of dice at something until it dies or using heavy hitting weapons that do multiple wounds to a target. One fundamental problem with this is that while 30 boyz can somewhat effectively punch anything to death, using a railgun is never going to be effective against a mob of cheap, low toughness, single wound models so it generally pays to have volume of fire and/or ways to negate saves with strength being a less of a concern.

3. Movement is less relevant as now terrain doesn't really factor into things so units are less inclined to hug cover so they tend to either move forward or run away if they suck at melee combat. Adding into movement is charging as now multi charging is almost always the go to strategy for any assault units. Piling into other combats, having giant blobs of units in a massive melee in the center, and just overall an decrease in the importance of positioning makes movement feel less overall important. Removal of blast weapons means that piling into a pile of bodies has little to no impact and it basically starts to come down to either conga-lining to chain a buff aura or piling in close to fit everyone inside an buff aura that needs everyone to be in close or to squeeze out cover for infantry squads. Going back to shooting weapons (particularly blast weapons) having scatter meant that even if you didn't hit your desired target, if your shooting into the middle of an enemy line then its quite likely your blast will end up hitting a completely different unit which gave spacing and areas of unity density a somewhat small but, never the less, impactful feel to the game. In 7th weapons like the Killkannon where not all that reliable due to Ork shooting being horribly inaccurate but if i aimed it into the middle of a cluster of enemy units then its highly likely that its going to do damage to something. It made the opponent think about positioning and it made me think about target selection and weighting target density vs target priority vs the optimal target for my weapon to hurt.

4. Unit types have far less relevance anymore. Use to be that Vehicles played by a very different set of rules (MCs should of done something similar but that is another topic) and needed to be handled differently than you would handle a space marine. Infantry, Jump, Jet, Bike, Jet Bike, Cav, Vehicle, MC, Flyer, Super Heavy, Beast, Swarm, etc all have different properties and things that they did. Granted there are some inherent problems with USRs being baked into unit types (bikes, MCs, and Super Heavies tended to cause problems because of this). Now unit types don't really play too much of a role except for the Fly, Vehicle, and to a lesser extent Infantry and MC. Fly is probably the most impactful because it has rules about moving over enemy units, being able to fall back and still shoot, charging flying units, etc while vehicles generally just have certain things hurt them more such as "melta" weapons or hurt them less such as "poison". This point wouldn't be such an issue but it is with the next point.

5. Lack of any real Universal Special Rules. Rules like Relentless, Melta, Ignore Cover, Fearless, Eternal Warrior, Stealth/Shrouded, Jink, etc where huge factors for how a weapon or unit worked in the game. Everybody used the same USR unless you had some faction specific ones but generally if you said Melta the mechanic is understood if your playing Space Marines with your melta guns, Tau with their fusion blasters, Dark Eldar with their heat lance, etc. Now you have to put these USR on every unit entry and have it written out each version of this rule works. Melta and vehicle explodes are two of the most common entries that gets recycled over and over again but instead of just putting the "Melta" or "Explode d3" wording on it they have the put a unique rule length explanation for how it works for every relevant unit entry. Going back to unit types one of the things thats sorely missing is Relentless as before half the units in the game had some form of relentless (notably vehicles and MCs which should have it and bikes which it shouldn't of been baked into the core unit type rule imo). Those vehicles, MCs, Terminators, etc often had heavy weapons because they could properly wield it without penalty where as something like a Space Marine using a Plasma Cannon/Missile Launcher in a tactical marine squad would need to remain stationary to properly use it. Its bad seeing Grey Knights with almost all their ranged weapons being heavy (a hold over from 7th) but not relentless so unless using stormbolters they are hitting on 4s with their shooting (or standing still which is silly for an assault army). Granted 7th had a ton of fairly irrelevant USR (soulburn anyone?) and too many unit types that flat out ignored others (Pinning could of been good but most units couldn't be pinned).

6. The culmination of all the above changes and GW not redesigning units/weapons/etc to have a proper purpose in this new edition. Yes every unit got a new profile but in general most of the weapons and units have very similar stat lines as they did in 7th but have most of their special rules removed so they went from having utility and different functions to being fairly vanilla with maybe a special rule. Weapons are the real victums of this homogenization with blast weapons and a load of utility weapons being reduced to point and shoot weapons that often have incredibly similar profiles to that of other weapons. Good example of this is the Land Speeder Storm which has a Heavy Bolter and that Launcher weapon (forgot the name). In 7th that launcher was a S4 large blast that had the blind rule which made it quite good at disrupting the enemy to set up your other units to take advantage of a weakened foe (outflank that baby and flash bang clumps of enemies). Now that same weapon which was a utility and decent anti horde weapon now just does D6 shots and and still S4 so its basically like an unreliable (and heavy) bolter or stormbolter. A lot of the way units worked before has been stripped away so many units are just functionally too similar which means that you end up with stuff like Assault Marines vs Vanguard Vets which basically means actual Assault Marines never see play.

All of these changes plus others have taken away from the game but for all that which was removed or "streamlined" we get very little in return. The game was promised to be faster but other than removing template/blast weapons (which where both fun and time consuming...... zog i missed my grotzookas ) the game isn't really all that fast except now it just snowballs in favor of one player or the other quicker. I haven't really seen a game of 8th where objectives mattered because by turn 4 somebody is close to being tabled. Stratagems/Command Points are potentially nice but half the armies don't have proper ones yet and personally they have this...... gimmick feel to them that doesn't seem as enjoyable. Its a mix of reroll dice from Bloodbowl, and Munition abilities from Company of Heroes with a bit of this "gotcha" feel to that just doesn't quite hit the mark for me. Overall the game lacks that depth that made list building and playing the game fun with 7th but now it feels shallow and simplified. I personally loved things like AV on vehicles because it forced you to utilize different tools for different tasks while i generally disliked things like Strength D which made toughness, saves, AV, etc irrelevant. Now it feels like the more versatile and effective strategy is to just throw buckets of dice at the problem until its dead so having 30 boyz punch a tank to death is more effective because they math it to death with a ton of 6s while not being gimped when needing to mulch through 100s of T3 wounds. Everything plays too similar to each other and lacks any feel of variety which can be fine in a game like Bolt Action where its grounded in reality but this is sci-fi fantasy so I would expect some wild and exotic weapons/units.

nou wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
"Bad game design which addresses noones needs in any good way whatsoever" made GW the most succesfull company on London stock market last year simply because ￡38m sales worth of people are GW addicted crackpots?

Why are you ignoring the other factors involved here? You know, the people buying models because of the fluff/rules, or because in the UK GW's retail chain has driven independent stores out of the market and made GW's products the default (and, often, only) choice for people who want to get into tabletop wargames at all? Or the tons of money made from "three purchase" children who buy starter sets and then promptly drop out of the game? Or the fact that the gain is measured on a percentage basis, not total worth, on a stock exchange that doesn't include GW's primary competition?

Is it really the most probable answer? Or did GW hit a nail in the head and addressed the proper audience for it's product and found an close-to-optimal ballance between game complexity/depth/accesibility to reach both new and old playerbase?

Did they? Do you have any explanations of what good game design was involved, and how it benefits these particular people more than a game that fixed the problems I pointed out? Or are you just going to resort to "someone had fun, therefore GW is right?"

PS: after the debacle of 7th edition even a very poor game would look good and draw a lot of people back, simply because it isn't 7th. But that doesn't make it good on its own merits.

I'm not ignoring any factors, I'm just focusing on different than you do as a sort of "counterweight", because YOU are ignoring all non-rules factors (as in psychological, social, visual&tactile appeal, craftsmanship needs etc...) that make a "good game design". Statistically speaking, people don't play games because of those games ideal mathematical model or simulational value. They play what satisfy their particular need for fun and entertainment. This MAY BE a great mathematical ballance (as you may remember I am a quite able tournament Bridge player) or near-real-life tactical depth, but it can also be beer&pretzels actual throwing dice at painted models to see which will fall of the board faster and crash to more pieces... Or anything in between, depending on personal time available, individual levels of conscientiousness, introversion/extraversion, social skills etc... Discussing with you always devolves to talking about a strange "plato cave of ideal game design" without ever accounting for real players and their personalities. True "good game design" accounts for all those layers in a coherent fasion, with size of the assumed target audience being one of the key factors. You also falsely assume, that anyone who doesn't seek "mathematical depth" in 40K is somehow mentally inferior, despite repeatedly trying to prove yourself, that no edition of 40K is trully intelectually challangeing (Which I agree to fully, this is not "mental excercise game" out-of-the-box. It can be made into intelectuall excercise (of various sorts, but you also don't understand that such variety even exists, vide our past Maelstrom discussion), but almost any sandbox game can be made such with right starting conditions).

If you ask me "what good game design was involved" in 8th I can only "backengeneer" it, as I don't work at GW. My best guess was to make a game so stripped of individual tactical input so sheer volume of dice rolled ensures, that results are "statistically fair" and equalize odds of winning between old veterans and fresh players in a casual setting of non-optimised collections of minis this game has high enough win ratio to make players content. You may call it "bad game desig", I call it "catering to as wide target audience as possible". Does this make 40K a good wargame? Definately not as it crashes drastically when you can mathhammer most optimal builds and play in a "tournament" listbuilding fashion. Does this make 40K enjoyable for the largest number of people possible? Probably yes, because as we both saw numerous times at this forum, spectrum of needs that people try to fill with 40K is huge, ranging from beer&pretzels weekend enternainment to "up to teath near professional level of dedication". Even now you have people from both ends, some still complain about how overgrown mess this game is, some how stripped of content, variety or depth is...

I have a question for you - I don't remember any instance of you posting anything constructive on Proposed Rules forum. Like no houserules, no fandexes, no coherent reworks or scratchbuilt ruleset of your own design. None. And yet you seem to believe, that you are the only person here who really understands what good game desing is about. When asked directly what makes a good narrative game or a good fandex you always reply with "there is no such thing as good fandex/houserule" or that reply in broad but unprecise visions of what constitutes a good narrative game, all of which looks increasingly like you don't really play this game since at least 4th-early 5th ed. Am I right? How often do you play? How many games of 40K have you had in the last decade? How much practical experience with actually playing any wargame do you actually have and how much of your arguments are purely theoretical "I think that all of you would be happier if you just listened to what I think is good fun but I have totally no idea how to forge it into actual and succesfull game mechanics"?

Very good points all around

Funnily enough over on the proposed rules forum I suggested a Deathwing Terminator Heavy support squad with cyclones, I was told it would be OP, a few months later Tyrant Siege terminators were published, other rules I proposed was a token system that let you RR things for Tzeench, was told it would be OP, we now have it for all armies, funny how life turns out sometimes.

nou wrote:
YOU are ignoring all non-rules factors (as in psychological, social, visual&tactile appeal, craftsmanship needs etc...) that make a "good game design".

Game design, in this context, refers to the actual rules for the game. The aesthetic appeal of painting space marine models is an entirely separate subject, one where GW's products are far more successful in design.

You also falsely assume, that anyone who doesn't seek "mathematical depth" in 40K is somehow mentally inferior

I do no such thing. And I don't know why you're talking about "mathematical depth", whatever that is. Strategic depth has nothing to do with math, it's about strategy vs. counter-strategy. Do I take the center objective, or attack my opponent's left flank? Is their counter-attack their intended way of winning the game, or a decoy aimed at distracting me from their real objective? Etc. 40k has almost none of that. You build as powerful a list as possible, then roll dice to see if it works. The winner has very little to do with who is the better general, and a lot to do with whose army has more powerful rules, or whose dice rolled better at key moments.

And don't bother telling me that this only matters to competitive players. Casual and narrative players want to take on the fluff role of being a general leading an army, not merely rolling better dice than their opponent. In fact, it's the competitive players who have the least need for this sort of depth, since many competitive players are content to treat the game as an abstract exercise in list optimization.

My best guess was to make a game so stripped of individual tactical input so sheer volume of dice rolled ensures, that results are "statistically fair" and equalize odds of winning between old veterans and fresh players in a casual setting of non-optimised collections of minis this game has high enough win ratio to make players content. You may call it "bad game desig", I call it "catering to as wide target audience as possible".

IOW, "don't make 40k a game, just have each player roll a die and the higher number wins". If the game is reduced to an exercise in rolling dice, where a skilled veteran and a complete newbie are equally likely to win, then you aren't playing a game. You're paying thousands of dollars to build a diorama on the table and then flip a coin to see who wins the "game".

Does this make 40K enjoyable for the largest number of people possible?

Hell no it doesn't. Most of the people who are satisfied by a game where winning is 50/50 and has little to do with player input are not going to spend thousands of dollars and countless hours of painting time on it. What it actually produces is, at best, a situation where as many people as possible are not actively repulsed by the game and the people who get into the hobby primarily for the fluff and models continue to buy those models. They aren't enjoying it as much as they'd enjoy a better game, but the rules aren't so miserable an experience that it overwhelms their enjoyment of the story and art and gets them to stop buying.

I have a question for you - I don't remember any instance of you posting anything constructive on Proposed Rules forum. Like no houserules, no fandexes, no coherent reworks or scratchbuilt ruleset of your own design. None. And yet you seem to believe, that you are the only person here who really understands what good game desing is about. When asked directly what makes a good narrative game or a good fandex you always reply with "there is no such thing as good fandex/houserule" or that reply in broad but unprecise visions of what constitutes a good narrative game, all of which looks increasingly like you don't really play this game since at least 4th-early 5th ed. Am I right?

I haven't posted much on the proposed rules forum, because there's no point in doing so. Good game design requires a ton of time and effort, and it's just not worth doing that for a game where the IP owner will immediately shut down any attempt to get paid for your work, and the overwhelming majority of the community (at least in my experience) has zero acceptance of fan-made rules. If I'm not going to get paid for my work and I'm not going to get to use it in my own games what's the point of doing it?

How often do you play? How many games of 40K have you had in the last decade? How much practical experience with actually playing any wargame do you actually have and how much of your arguments are purely theoretical "I think that all of you would be happier if you just listened to what I think is good fun but I have totally no idea how to forge it into actual and succesfull game mechanics"?

Last decade? Quite a few, most of them of the casual/narrative kind. Last couple of years? Not many, as the poor quality of the 40k rules has resulted in most of my gaming time being spent on X-Wing instead (a game I play several times a week on average). Every game of 40k I've played since 5th edition (or maybe early 6th) has been a miserable experience that was, at best, barely justified by the enjoyment of seeing my fully-painted army on the table.


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Also, can we just laugh at the absurdity of the "PROVE YOU CAN DO BETTER" argument? Do you apply the same expectations to criticism of other things? If your friend says a restaurant burned their food and it sucked do you demand that they become a famous chef before they can give a bad review? If they say a movie sucks do you tell them to STFU until they've made a movie with at least $100 million in ticket sales?

Incognito15 wrote:
Just curious with Chapter Approved being released what peoples perceptions were in regards to 40k.

Personally i was initially loving 8th but hav not played a game since September. Going to give it another shot.

Meh.
I am enjoying the hobby quite a bit, plenty of bits and ideas for conversions. I am having a blast with all the shades and technicals. I really feel creative.

The game.... well. On one hand, a lot of units and builds that were downright unusable can be used now. Even if sub-par, is not a downright suicide to deploy them. Try that in 7th. Also, I appreciate in principle many of the new weapon profiles with the d3 and d6 damage. They removed part of the randumb, Warlord and psychs are more like I wanted them.

OTOH, they over-corrected as always. They removed the blast weapons, and the "d6 for template" is one of the biggest failures in game design I ever witnessed. So big, they implemented hot fixes in itinere so we have Russes, Prisms and whatnot with the double fire. That makes them on-par I guess, but is clunky. Horrible. And balanced around BS 3+. Is another episode of "we playtest only Marines and Eldar".
They removed a big chunk of the randumb, but as Peregrine noted, some of the randomness, especially the one implemented by old designers (deepstrike) was there to determine a risk factor. There should be a middle ground. The design team is incapable of this

Then we have all the "smart synergy" builds with the characters. Some of them is nice and has more than one combination, I appreciate that for my DG (excluded the primarch - I am not going to buy that). But some is just braindead, same-all. Nothing new.
They made the biggest names like RG or Cawl the biggest buff givers so they moved 40k from a "your dudes" game to a more "Warmachine" in which we now, instead enjoying of a setting, we are following the adventures of a group of Mary Sues.
And the tabletop reflects that. Disgusting.

I am ambivalent on the new wounding table. I think is a necessary evil because there is not way we put the super-heavy genie back in the bottle.

Terrain sucks. No other way to tell this.

We are already seeing the -1 penalties going out of hand.

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 MagicJuggler wrote:
you're converging towards a situation where you might as well not play 40k, and simply reduce the whole affair to a coin toss!

This is what they like. They killed WHFB for AoS. A WHFB that changed drammatically from 5th to 8th, to a point that killing it was an act of mercy.

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
YOU are ignoring all non-rules factors (as in psychological, social, visual&tactile appeal, craftsmanship needs etc...) that make a "good game design".

Game design, in this context, refers to the actual rules for the game. The aesthetic appeal of painting space marine models is an entirely separate subject, one where GW's products are far more successful in design.

You also falsely assume, that anyone who doesn't seek "mathematical depth" in 40K is somehow mentally inferior

I do no such thing. And I don't know why you're talking about "mathematical depth", whatever that is. Strategic depth has nothing to do with math, it's about strategy vs. counter-strategy. Do I take the center objective, or attack my opponent's left flank? Is their counter-attack their intended way of winning the game, or a decoy aimed at distracting me from their real objective? Etc. 40k has almost none of that. You build as powerful a list as possible, then roll dice to see if it works. The winner has very little to do with who is the better general, and a lot to do with whose army has more powerful rules, or whose dice rolled better at key moments.

And don't bother telling me that this only matters to competitive players. Casual and narrative players want to take on the fluff role of being a general leading an army, not merely rolling better dice than their opponent. In fact, it's the competitive players who have the least need for this sort of depth, since many competitive players are content to treat the game as an abstract exercise in list optimization.

My best guess was to make a game so stripped of individual tactical input so sheer volume of dice rolled ensures, that results are "statistically fair" and equalize odds of winning between old veterans and fresh players in a casual setting of non-optimised collections of minis this game has high enough win ratio to make players content. You may call it "bad game desig", I call it "catering to as wide target audience as possible".

IOW, "don't make 40k a game, just have each player roll a die and the higher number wins". If the game is reduced to an exercise in rolling dice, where a skilled veteran and a complete newbie are equally likely to win, then you aren't playing a game. You're paying thousands of dollars to build a diorama on the table and then flip a coin to see who wins the "game".

Does this make 40K enjoyable for the largest number of people possible?

Hell no it doesn't. Most of the people who are satisfied by a game where winning is 50/50 and has little to do with player input are not going to spend thousands of dollars and countless hours of painting time on it. What it actually produces is, at best, a situation where as many people as possible are not actively repulsed by the game and the people who get into the hobby primarily for the fluff and models continue to buy those models. They aren't enjoying it as much as they'd enjoy a better game, but the rules aren't so miserable an experience that it overwhelms their enjoyment of the story and art and gets them to stop buying.

I have a question for you - I don't remember any instance of you posting anything constructive on Proposed Rules forum. Like no houserules, no fandexes, no coherent reworks or scratchbuilt ruleset of your own design. None. And yet you seem to believe, that you are the only person here who really understands what good game desing is about. When asked directly what makes a good narrative game or a good fandex you always reply with "there is no such thing as good fandex/houserule" or that reply in broad but unprecise visions of what constitutes a good narrative game, all of which looks increasingly like you don't really play this game since at least 4th-early 5th ed. Am I right?

I haven't posted much on the proposed rules forum, because there's no point in doing so. Good game design requires a ton of time and effort, and it's just not worth doing that for a game where the IP owner will immediately shut down any attempt to get paid for your work, and the overwhelming majority of the community (at least in my experience) has zero acceptance of fan-made rules. If I'm not going to get paid for my work and I'm not going to get to use it in my own games what's the point of doing it?

How often do you play? How many games of 40K have you had in the last decade? How much practical experience with actually playing any wargame do you actually have and how much of your arguments are purely theoretical "I think that all of you would be happier if you just listened to what I think is good fun but I have totally no idea how to forge it into actual and succesfull game mechanics"?

Last decade? Quite a few, most of them of the casual/narrative kind. Last couple of years? Not many, as the poor quality of the 40k rules has resulted in most of my gaming time being spent on X-Wing instead (a game I play several times a week on average). Every game of 40k I've played since 5th edition (or maybe early 6th) has been a miserable experience that was, at best, barely justified by the enjoyment of seeing my fully-painted army on the table.

This is pretty much the answer I was predicting from you, on all accounts. Please, reread my previous post carefully and try for once LEARN something new about the world... Just to clear two things for you:

1.) Strategic depth as you described is pure mathematical depth in context of game theory. Rulesets of all sorts are pretty much camouflaging basic game theory concepts into more or less obscure artificial decision making setup. As long as you cannot invent new actions mid-game, all games are games theory subjects and even if you can invent new actions mid-game you can approach such anvironment from a game theory standpoint, especially if you have any estimation of how likely it is to encounter such non-catalogued actions.

2.) Game design in context of this thread is NOT what you wish it to be - "a POV stripped to just core rules". You try hard to make it so and in the process you fail miserably at seeing the big picture. Game design in context of any-scale commercial enterprise is about all those factors I mentioned. It would be probably less confusing for you if I were to use term "40K experience" instead of "40K game" in my posts. Actual ruleset is only a portion of entire picture that "40K experience" is and even in that portion there are many different "attractors" game designer can choose as a basis for it's foundation, which you repeatedly neglect or call "bad design". And overall, broad picture factors heavily influence or even determine what choices can be made to output most succesfull "end result experience from a game". Football (soccer for those from US) is a terrible set of rules yet it is the most popular sports game on earth, making it a good game design from "total football experience" POV.

Like it or not, 8th ed 40K is thriving because many people like it immensely. We both may not be such persons, there may be a large-but-still-insignificant number of people who loose their interest in this game after codices started coming out, but you simply cannot deny observable fact, that 8th ed is a major success and days of doomsayers have ended. From my perspective this is 3rd ed all over again - a reshuffle in playerbase with more incoming new players stream than quitting old players stream. A couple of years from now there won't be anything left from 3rd-7th "core engine" and post-8th new editions will recreate the cycle of growing complexity, to keep new generation of players hooked. As was with WHFB and AOS, as is with all perpetually updated games undergoing a major shift in paradigm.

nou wrote:

Like it or not, 8th ed 40K is thriving because many people like it immensely.

Sorry to jump in, just an observation about this - an high number of people liking something does not mean that this something is good.
Look, as an example, at the current state of "popcorn" cinema.

 Formosa wrote:

nou wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
"Bad game design which addresses noones needs in any good way whatsoever" made GW the most succesfull company on London stock market last year simply because ￡38m sales worth of people are GW addicted crackpots?

Why are you ignoring the other factors involved here? You know, the people buying models because of the fluff/rules, or because in the UK GW's retail chain has driven independent stores out of the market and made GW's products the default (and, often, only) choice for people who want to get into tabletop wargames at all? Or the tons of money made from "three purchase" children who buy starter sets and then promptly drop out of the game? Or the fact that the gain is measured on a percentage basis, not total worth, on a stock exchange that doesn't include GW's primary competition?

Is it really the most probable answer? Or did GW hit a nail in the head and addressed the proper audience for it's product and found an close-to-optimal ballance between game complexity/depth/accesibility to reach both new and old playerbase?

Did they? Do you have any explanations of what good game design was involved, and how it benefits these particular people more than a game that fixed the problems I pointed out? Or are you just going to resort to "someone had fun, therefore GW is right?"

PS: after the debacle of 7th edition even a very poor game would look good and draw a lot of people back, simply because it isn't 7th. But that doesn't make it good on its own merits.

I'm not ignoring any factors, I'm just focusing on different than you do as a sort of "counterweight", because YOU are ignoring all non-rules factors (as in psychological, social, visual&tactile appeal, craftsmanship needs etc...) that make a "good game design". Statistically speaking, people don't play games because of those games ideal mathematical model or simulational value. They play what satisfy their particular need for fun and entertainment. This MAY BE a great mathematical ballance (as you may remember I am a quite able tournament Bridge player) or near-real-life tactical depth, but it can also be beer&pretzels actual throwing dice at painted models to see which will fall of the board faster and crash to more pieces... Or anything in between, depending on personal time available, individual levels of conscientiousness, introversion/extraversion, social skills etc... Discussing with you always devolves to talking about a strange "plato cave of ideal game design" without ever accounting for real players and their personalities. True "good game design" accounts for all those layers in a coherent fasion, with size of the assumed target audience being one of the key factors. You also falsely assume, that anyone who doesn't seek "mathematical depth" in 40K is somehow mentally inferior, despite repeatedly trying to prove yourself, that no edition of 40K is trully intelectually challangeing (Which I agree to fully, this is not "mental excercise game" out-of-the-box. It can be made into intelectuall excercise (of various sorts, but you also don't understand that such variety even exists, vide our past Maelstrom discussion), but almost any sandbox game can be made such with right starting conditions).

If you ask me "what good game design was involved" in 8th I can only "backengeneer" it, as I don't work at GW. My best guess was to make a game so stripped of individual tactical input so sheer volume of dice rolled ensures, that results are "statistically fair" and equalize odds of winning between old veterans and fresh players in a casual setting of non-optimised collections of minis this game has high enough win ratio to make players content. You may call it "bad game desig", I call it "catering to as wide target audience as possible". Does this make 40K a good wargame? Definately not as it crashes drastically when you can mathhammer most optimal builds and play in a "tournament" listbuilding fashion. Does this make 40K enjoyable for the largest number of people possible? Probably yes, because as we both saw numerous times at this forum, spectrum of needs that people try to fill with 40K is huge, ranging from beer&pretzels weekend enternainment to "up to teath near professional level of dedication". Even now you have people from both ends, some still complain about how overgrown mess this game is, some how stripped of content, variety or depth is...

I have a question for you - I don't remember any instance of you posting anything constructive on Proposed Rules forum. Like no houserules, no fandexes, no coherent reworks or scratchbuilt ruleset of your own design. None. And yet you seem to believe, that you are the only person here who really understands what good game desing is about. When asked directly what makes a good narrative game or a good fandex you always reply with "there is no such thing as good fandex/houserule" or that reply in broad but unprecise visions of what constitutes a good narrative game, all of which looks increasingly like you don't really play this game since at least 4th-early 5th ed. Am I right? How often do you play? How many games of 40K have you had in the last decade? How much practical experience with actually playing any wargame do you actually have and how much of your arguments are purely theoretical "I think that all of you would be happier if you just listened to what I think is good fun but I have totally no idea how to forge it into actual and succesfull game mechanics"?

Very good points all around

Funnily enough over on the proposed rules forum I suggested a Deathwing Terminator Heavy support squad with cyclones, I was told it would be OP, a few months later Tyrant Siege terminators were published, other rules I proposed was a token system that let you RR things for Tzeench, was told it would be OP, we now have it for all armies, funny how life turns out sometimes.

Glad to hear someone agrees with those

I too have some "successes" in predicting and implementing some changes before GW made them officially part of the game, but where I differ/fail to predict is the overall concept of what assures ballanced core game mechanic. This one GW done totally opposite, resulting in prevalent Alpha Strikes and 2nd turn tabling... But I must admit I don't have a clue how to combine quick gameplay, massive model/unit count, faction variation and low enough rate of force decay all into a single game, and "too long gameplay" was one of the most often repeated complaints about 7th ed I have read or heard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

nou wrote:

Like it or not, 8th ed 40K is thriving because many people like it immensely.

Sorry to jump in, just an observation about this - an high number of people liking something does not mean that this something is good.
Look, as an example, at the current state of "popcorn" cinema.

Well, that is a fundamental question to ask really - what constitutes something is "good". What I'm arguing is that in case of commercial enterprises, popularity is the key factor in being "good enough". I tend to exclude personal taste and far ends of normal distribution from all my analysis, as those usually bear no statistical significance. Just to remind you all who read my posts - I do not like and do not play 8th anymore. I "borrowed" bits of it into "my 7.5th" but otherwise it is just not a game that I find entertaining. But I also don't like many other "good games" or "good things" in general and often see virtues in things that are very unpopular. I suppose your and mine POV on "state of popcorn cinema" also vary greatly, judging from the tone of your sentence on this subject...

That's what it all comes down to: taste, imo.

The problem with taste is that it's subjective.

Thus, whether or not a game is good or not is subjective, at least if you abandon "popularity" as the metric by which goodness is measured.

Saying "8th is a bad game" is comparatively meaningless, because someone could equally say "8th is a good game!" and have just as much rationale as the first statement: "My sense of taste is satisfied/not satisfied."

This is normally a good thing, because people naturally gravitate towards things that they believe are good, and repel things that they believe are bad. One might suspect that this would result in the people who participate in a hobby being fairly likeminded.

Unfortunately, however, 40k does not, for whatever reason. Many people who don't play, and who hate the game, still participate on its hobby boards because they "can believe it can be better." Fundamentally, that means that they find the point of view of the people who like it as-is to be so abhorrent that they have to move MOUNTAINS to try to "fix" the game, instead of just being repelled because it no longer matches their subjective tastes.

Either that or you could use popularity as a metric.