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We all think of GW as a large company with a lot of staff (and it is) but the design teams have always been pretty small and tight knit. A lot of the same people have been there for a long time, as well. Everything they've said publicly about their design process indicates that it is based almost entirely around concepts they think are cool, mainly for what makes a cool model, and they fill in the details from there. So when they say they're a model company first, believe them. Rules come last and are filled in around what the model designers conceive as a given model's role and capabilities from a narrative standpoint. They're really driven by creativity rather than the actual math behind what they're doing, or what is necessary for balance. Imagine someone like Jes Goodwin sketching a cool idea for a character and writing a few notes about what types of things it and its weapons can do, and then some CAD guys turning that into something that can be produced and the rules guys trying to figure out how to represent it using only a d6.

On top of that, the same relatively few people are doing everything for every game and product they produce. Those six rules writers are writing not only all of the codices for 40k but the rules for games like Kill Team, Speed Freaks, Necromunda and whatever else they come out with. That's why you see them constantly reusing and adapting the same ideas in all of their game systems. They're all mainly the same mechanically with varying degrees of complexity.

Obviously everyone keeps busy and they have a system worked out where they can consistently push out products that are pretty popular, and they clearly are very comfortable with it. They would have to really shift their focus away from the cozy, creative workshop environment they have going and put a lot more emphasis on mechanics in order to wrestle everything under control from a balance perspective. It's just not part of their culture, for better or worse.

Them not having teams for each game (or at least enough to properly spread it out so you don't have to cut corners) is totally on them for not seeing that's the main appeal, though. It's been that way for years: GW thinks they are a model company and bases everything around that, but I'd wager that the vast majority of people who buy their miniatures wouldn't buy it if there wasn't a game.

Totally agree, but I have to question how changing things up would affect everything. We all like the weird, distinct aesthetic and setting as well, and that's the creative product of a handful of people. Would we be willing to sacrifice a portion of the style for more substance? I doubt they would be unless they had to.

I really don't get why people think this is some grand conspiracy to sell models. Obviously GW wants to sell models, no one is disputing that, but if you look beyond just CA I think there is a much more likely reason.

GW is afraid that by invalidating peoples armies it will do a lot more damage to their financial future than if they allow various imbalances to continue.

People get mad and complain when there is imbalance, and some of them may even quit.
But people become absolutely irate and downright nasty when they feel as though they have been cheated out of their money regardless of whether the reason is malicious or not. Especially in this day and age where video games get review bombed (mass negative user reviews) because players feel like content isn't being developed fast enough or that a balance patch broke some item that they liked.

Consider the following:
1) The Index releases at the start of 8e (and their continued legal status in matched play)
2) The way in which primaris space marines were released
3) The mainly point reduction nature of CA
4) Age of Sigmar

While they might seem separate they all have one very strong link of logic, they were specifically done in a way to displace the least number of players as possible.

1)While the indexes didn't include literally every option that ever existed, it did cover the vast majority of model-able options from 7e. This meant that anyone playing during 7e should be able to bring their models WYSIWYG into the new edition. However because GW allowed everyone to do this it also meant that new players could have built these units in the time between then and their codex being released. Overall I don't think GW wants to tell either type of player that they can't use those models anymore.

2) Everything about Primaris seems like basically an attempt to not step on the toes of Classic Marines.
* They lack flexibility like classic marines and instead fill very narrow specific niches.
* They can't simply replace classic marines in existing strategies or lists (can't use old transports)
* They share keywords and are integrated into the main SM Codex, giving the impression that they are to be run in a combined force (aka you can buy them to add to your existing marines rather than simply as a replacement for them)
* They are lore-wise distinct from Classic Marines and described as physically bigger meaning that they have a reason to be run alongside one another as well as a justification to wave away the size discrepancy.

Why would GW be scared to simply say that these are new true-scale marine models that you can replace your army with? Because for the past 5 years GW had been selling an entire range of classic scale marines in the form of the horus heresy which they had been encouraging people to kitbash into their 40k army. And only a year before Primaris were launched they released Burning of Prospero which gave people plastic Tartaros and Custodes, both of which were scaled to classic marines and received 40k rules, and also plastic MK3 which they again encouraged people to use in kitbashing their 40k armies.

3) 8e has been built around the idea of soup from the very start. From the lack of mono-army restriction to the way that detachments and even CP work, I don't doubt for a minute that soup was on the menu when GW planned the edition. I do believe it was ultimately done with benign intentions as it should at a cursory level benefit both GW and the players.

* All players can now use models that they like from related ranges which they previously were previously off-limits due to strict force construction rules.
* GW can now sell existing models to previous customers (cross range sales), and new releases have the added benefit of servicing an entire faction rather than a single army. (so Dark Eldar can't complain they got no releases this year becausethere was a Ynnari release, and it is that players choice not to use it)
* GW no longer has to push players to adopt entire new armies (once that player has "completed" their collection) which is a much harder and less friendly sale (because a new army has a large upfront investment in order for it to be usable). They can instead sell small add-ons from other ranges which is easier for a customer to justify since it adds value to their existing investment and costs less.
* Narrative players can now run fluffy mixed faction armies with less/no house ruling compared to previous editions.

The problem that GW forgot to take into consideration is that when you allow more competitive players access to a wider range of tools which were not meant to be utilized together then you end up with very strong instances of imbalance and obsolescence.

However, because GW sold this edition with the allowance for soup it means that quite a lot of people bought models under that assumption. Buffing units to make a mono-dex army work has the potential to make the imbalance even worse if something ends up better than the already skewed competitive lists. And gutting the ally system through tighter restrictions risks invalidating a lot of peoples purchases and leading to mass tournament player outrage.

Even something like restricting CP to the detachment that generated it would suddenly make every "loyal 32" completely obsolete and leave anyone who used it feeling like they wasted their money on something which became a tournament necessity less than a year ago.

4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.

* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.

Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.

tl;dr I think it's much more likely that they're worried they'll have a mini-AoS launch style disaster if they invalidate soup, and that fear is influencing how they do balancing updates. Specifically they are trying to target buff certain bad units to make them more appealing, while not hammering down powerunits if it would mean invalidating peoples purchases. (especially big purchases like the Castellan since the more money someone spends and the more people who buy into it, then the louder the outrage becomes)

 Luciferian wrote:
Totally agree, but I have to question how changing things up would affect everything. We all like the weird, distinct aesthetic and setting as well, and that's the creative product of a handful of people. Would we be willing to sacrifice a portion of the style for more substance? I doubt they would be unless they had to.

I absolutely would if it meant the game was better. I think they should really have the teams properly staffed. One or two creative guys who know the lore, at least 1-2 actual designers with a math foundation. The issues stem from the fact all their guys seem to be creative types, and lack in the actual design/math department (despite them apparently claiming they use formulas). And the fact they seem to be passionate about what they collect, and not so passionate about anything else which is likely why you see Imperium and usually Eldar (thanks Phil Kelly) always getting a lot of love and everything else being sort of phoned in; it's hard to really write good rules for something you aren't really caring about.

Wayniac wrote:

 Luciferian wrote:
Totally agree, but I have to question how changing things up would affect everything. We all like the weird, distinct aesthetic and setting as well, and that's the creative product of a handful of people. Would we be willing to sacrifice a portion of the style for more substance? I doubt they would be unless they had to.

I absolutely would if it meant the game was better. I think they should really have the teams properly staffed. One or two creative guys who know the lore, at least 1-2 actual designers with a math foundation. The issues stem from the fact all their guys seem to be creative types, and lack in the actual design/math department (despite them apparently claiming they use formulas). And the fact they seem to be passionate about what they collect, and not so passionate about anything else which is likely why you see Imperium and usually Eldar (thanks Phil Kelly) always getting a lot of love and everything else being sort of phoned in; it's hard to really write good rules for something you aren't really caring about.

I'm kind of torn about it, because I can really respect and appreciate that the entire company is ultimately driven by this engine of creativity and passion and that they give so much leeway to the lead designers who are in large part responsible for everything we do love about the game. At the same time, they absolutely could find a better balance if they shifted more of their focus to a mechanical approach. I don't think they lack the talent to do that, but they would have to change their design process and work flow quite a bit.

Jack Flask wrote:

Spoiler:

I really don't get why people think this is some grand conspiracy to sell models. Obviously GW wants to sell models, no one is disputing that, but if you look beyond just CA I think there is a much more likely reason.

GW is afraid that by invalidating peoples armies it will do a lot more damage to their financial future than if they allow various imbalances to continue.

People get mad and complain when there is imbalance, and some of them may even quit.
But people become absolutely irate and downright nasty when they feel as though they have been cheated out of their money regardless of whether the reason is malicious or not. Especially in this day and age where video games get review bombed (mass negative user reviews) because players feel like content isn't being developed fast enough or that a balance patch broke some item that they liked.

Consider the following:
1) The Index releases at the start of 8e (and their continued legal status in matched play)
2) The way in which primaris space marines were released
3) The mainly point reduction nature of CA
4) Age of Sigmar

While they might seem separate they all have one very strong link of logic, they were specifically done in a way to displace the least number of players as possible.

1)While the indexes didn't include literally every option that ever existed, it did cover the vast majority of model-able options from 7e. This meant that anyone playing during 7e should be able to bring their models WYSIWYG into the new edition. However because GW allowed everyone to do this it also meant that new players could have built these units in the time between then and their codex being released. Overall I don't think GW wants to tell either type of player that they can't use those models anymore.

2) Everything about Primaris seems like basically an attempt to not step on the toes of Classic Marines.
* They lack flexibility like classic marines and instead fill very narrow specific niches.
* They can't simply replace classic marines in existing strategies or lists (can't use old transports)
* They share keywords and are integrated into the main SM Codex, giving the impression that they are to be run in a combined force (aka you can buy them to add to your existing marines rather than simply as a replacement for them)
* They are lore-wise distinct from Classic Marines and described as physically bigger meaning that they have a reason to be run alongside one another as well as a justification to wave away the size discrepancy.

Why would GW be scared to simply say that these are new true-scale marine models that you can replace your army with? Because for the past 5 years GW had been selling an entire range of classic scale marines in the form of the horus heresy which they had been encouraging people to kitbash into their 40k army. And only a year before Primaris were launched they released Burning of Prospero which gave people plastic Tartaros and Custodes, both of which were scaled to classic marines and received 40k rules, and also plastic MK3 which they again encouraged people to use in kitbashing their 40k armies.

3) 8e has been built around the idea of soup from the very start. From the lack of mono-army restriction to the way that detachments and even CP work, I don't doubt for a minute that soup was on the menu when GW planned the edition. I do believe it was ultimately done with benign intentions as it should at a cursory level benefit both GW and the players.

* All players can now use models that they like from related ranges which they previously were previously off-limits due to strict force construction rules.
* GW can now sell existing models to previous customers (cross range sales), and new releases have the added benefit of servicing an entire faction rather than a single army. (so Dark Eldar can't complain they got no releases this year becausethere was a Ynnari release, and it is that players choice not to use it)
* GW no longer has to push players to adopt entire new armies (once that player has "completed" their collection) which is a much harder and less friendly sale (because a new army has a large upfront investment in order for it to be usable). They can instead sell small add-ons from other ranges which is easier for a customer to justify since it adds value to their existing investment and costs less.
* Narrative players can now run fluffy mixed faction armies with less/no house ruling compared to previous editions.

The problem that GW forgot to take into consideration is that when you allow more competitive players access to a wider range of tools which were not meant to be utilized together then you end up with very strong instances of imbalance and obsolescence.

However, because GW sold this edition with the allowance for soup it means that quite a lot of people bought models under that assumption. Buffing units to make a mono-dex army work has the potential to make the imbalance even worse if something ends up better than the already skewed competitive lists. And gutting the ally system through tighter restrictions risks invalidating a lot of peoples purchases and leading to mass tournament player outrage.

Even something like restricting CP to the detachment that generated it would suddenly make every "loyal 32" completely obsolete and leave anyone who used it feeling like they wasted their money on something which became a tournament necessity less than a year ago.

Spoiler:

4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.

* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.

Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.

tl;dr I think it's much more likely that they're worried they'll have a mini-AoS launch style disaster if they invalidate soup, and that fear is influencing how they do balancing updates. Specifically they are trying to target buff certain bad units to make them more appealing, while not hammering down powerunits if it would mean invalidating peoples purchases. (especially big purchases like the Castellan since the more money someone spends and the more people who buy into it, then the louder the outrage becomes)

How does the saying go, when you find yourself in a hole, you stop digging? With GW it continue like "you lie more" instead:
"Soup is off the Menu" while increase CP generation from Battalion and Brigade at the same time. To my understanding "Loyal 32" is a thing because you get 5 CPs with minimally filled Battalion and there is almost no drawback to doing this.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/04/16/warhammer-40000-big-faq-1-the-low-downgw-homepage-post-1fw-homepage-post-2/

I personally own a Land Raider and the unit feels pretty much invalidated. Got 60 point decrease after 1.5 years from utter garbage to garbage, I'm in love with GW now (I'm actually not). And like I calculated earlier in this thread, less than 30 minute job btw , the Castellan body point cost relative to Land Raider body is ridiculously cheap with far better associated rules. They would not have these problems if they used somewhat consistently a mathematical procedure to generate vehicle and unit point cost from the durability derived from T, W and Save values, and same with weapons. But I guess I just need to suck it up and accept GW has no interest in balancing LR and it's rules are only provided as a gesture of good will, which is weird as they expect me to pay them yearly so I can play with 'balanced' rules.

EDIT: Land Raiders actual point decrease is 60 because of the Twin Lascannon discounts.

In England the Castellion Knight thingy is only £80 from my local game store in town... to me, for a 600+ pts model, this doesn't seem that much. XD It's about double what a codex costs. XD

Anyway, back on target. I find it very interesting how all the vets got made 14pts. Honestly, this is a great price for them... they get better weapons, more attacks and better leadership! All for 1pts more! To me, this was the "marine" change we all wanted... sneaked in to not upset marketing. This is what GW want you to play your marines as! Right now, You can have a squad of 25pts marines all with 2 or 3 S8 attacks with 3++. That's 125pts for an extremely tough unit that does 11 S8 D3D attacks. XD Now that's the marines i want!

Jack Flask wrote:4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.

* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.

Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.

I really didn't see my local community or even several of the online communities tearing themselves apart on AoS' launch. What I saw was that the local WHFB community was just tired of the FB system (heavy amount of rules with little/no balance combined with power striding) and struggling to find reason to play when the End Times books started being released. When AoS did launch, some of the online community did have preferences between favored formats of Mantic and 9th Age, depending on their system preferences, while mocking all the "rules" of AoS.

Ghorgul wrote:

Spoiler:

Jack Flask wrote:
The problem that GW forgot to take into consideration is that when you allow more competitive players access to a wider range of tools which were not meant to be utilized together then you end up with very strong instances of imbalance and obsolescence.

However, because GW sold this edition with the allowance for soup it means that quite a lot of people bought models under that assumption. Buffing units to make a mono-dex army work has the potential to make the imbalance even worse if something ends up better than the already skewed competitive lists. And gutting the ally system through tighter restrictions risks invalidating a lot of peoples purchases and leading to mass tournament player outrage.

Even something like restricting CP to the detachment that generated it would suddenly make every "loyal 32" completely obsolete and leave anyone who used it feeling like they wasted their money on something which became a tournament necessity less than a year ago.

How does the saying go, when you find yourself in a hole, you stop digging? With GW it continue like "you lie more" instead:
"Soup is off the Menu" while increase CP generation from Battalion and Brigade at the same time. To my understanding "Loyal 32" is a thing because you get 5 CPs with minimally filled Battalion and there is almost no drawback to doing this.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/04/16/warhammer-40000-big-faq-1-the-low-downgw-homepage-post-1fw-homepage-post-2/

To be honest, I completely forgot that GW said that given that the net effect was basically 0. The only change was that people started to take more specialized detachments which is something GW themselves even basically suggested in the full FAQ text.
"This means that you can still include appropriate allies, but now they might need to be included in a different Detachment."

Overall though it really isn't lying on GW's part because with the very FAQ article you linked they explained their reasoning. Up to that point people running mono-elite armies had difficulty mustering any significant amounts of CP, so they buffed core (HQ+Troop) detachment output in order to try and help those armies since they likely would likely see most of their points invested into it.

The problem is that GW, on top of not addressing soup hard enough, also keeps trying to make one-size-fits-all corrections to the core rules, which don't help because any rules designed to benefit a less efficient army is still just going to be used to greater effect by a more efficient army.

But the reason I brought up the Loyal 32 is because, exactly as you said, there is no reason not to field it meaning that every tournament grade Imperium army that needs CP to work has no reason not to have one if they are playing at maximum tryhard level. So I could be wrong but my gut feeling is that a targeted removal of CP sharing (or even stricter allies) would leave quite a few people frustrated that they pushed by the meta to buy into it only for GW to remove the reason for their purchase.

Ghorgul wrote: I personally own a Land Raider and the unit feels pretty much invalidated. Got 60 point decrease after 1.5 years from utter garbage to garbage, I'm in love with GW now (I'm actually not). And like I calculated earlier in this thread, less than 30 minute job btw , the Castellan body point cost relative to Land Raider body is ridiculously cheap with far better associated rules. They would not have these problems if they used somewhat consistently a mathematical procedure to generate vehicle and unit point cost from the durability derived from T, W and Save values, and same with weapons. But I guess I just need to suck it up and accept GW has no interest in balancing LR and it's rules are only provided as a gesture of good will, which is weird as they expect me to pay them yearly so I can play with 'balanced' rules.

EDIT: Land Raiders actual point decrease is 60 because of the Twin Lascannon discounts.

It's non-viable due to the units from other codexes that you've been given access to. It has not however been invalidated (in the literal sense that it is no longer a valid choice). I know that may sound silly but look at it this way, which of the following three scenarios would make you the least mad:

a) The land raider is trash compared to the Castellan, so GW removes the land raider from the game and tells everyone to just buy a Castellan
b) You buy a Castellan because the land raider is trash. A year later in an effort to make the land raider more relevant GW makes space marines unable to ally in castellans. You now have a large expensive model you can't field.
c) The land raider is trash.

While all three scenarios suck, I'd argue that c) sucks the least because you can at least still use your land raider if you want (probably in friendly games since its still trash) and if you bought a Castellan than you still can also use that. And I know or have seen quite a few players who added a big stompy robot to their army if only because they though it was awesome to have a big stompy robot.

Charistoph wrote:

Spoiler:

Jack Flask wrote:4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.

* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.

Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.

I really didn't see my local community or even several of the online communities tearing themselves apart on AoS' launch. What I saw was that the local WHFB community was just tired of the FB system (heavy amount of rules with little/no balance combined with power striding) and struggling to find reason to play when the End Times books started being released. When AoS did launch, some of the online community did have preferences between favored formats of Mantic and 9th Age, depending on their system preferences, while mocking all the "rules" of AoS.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:

HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.

Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.

Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?

I don't understand why GW has problems with balancing mono vs soups. Soups give utility of mixing, mono in most cases does not. So if soup exists, and if GW wants it to be so, it is ok. But then mono armies need to get extra rules which activate only if all detachments are taken from the same codex.
If doom is an important tool for CWE eldar, but too OP in DE armies, then why just not make doom a "free" psychic power if all your detachments are taken from the CWE codex.

Flip belts on harlis too OP in Inari. Ok, but in pure Harli lists they work the way they did before the nerf.

BA smash captin a problem when combined with IG and Castellans, No problem, wings etc work only if all detachments are BA.

It really doesn't require genius levels of table top design.

And if one or the other would end up too good, then they could be fixed by FAQs or errata. Maybe mono lists get more CP. Maybe soup has to be more flexible and be less effective by the rule of 3.

If they added to this a scalable unit cost, where units would cost more the more you take of them, the game would be a hell lot of more diverse as unit selection goes.

Karol wrote:
It really doesn't require genius levels of table top design.

Game design and balancing is far more difficult than people realise. It is like having a thousand different levers, all of which affect each other. You change one thing and three other things suddenly need fixing. I'm not saying that there are not ways in which GW has failed to address simple problems, but trying to fix one thing can often lead to unforeseen difficulties.

 Trickstick wrote:

Karol wrote:
It really doesn't require genius levels of table top design.

Game design and balancing is far more difficult than people realise. It is like having a thousand different levers, all of which affect each other. You change one thing and three other things suddenly need fixing. I'm not saying that there are not ways in which GW has failed to address simple problems, but trying to fix one thing can often lead to unforeseen difficulties.

I hope that the same people that quit in the middle of 7th edition will quickly decide to quit again, so GW gives 40k a complete reset. And with complete reset I mean that GW should start 9th edition as Space Marines vs. Chaos Space Marines (or any other pairing) and max. 2 subfactions qeper side. You cannot relaunch a game with 15+ factions and expect it to work.

There is no other way that 40k will ever be on a significantly higher level of playability. After 1.5 years of 8th edition, I think that 7th was the better game if you avoid playing vs. Eldar, Tau and maxed Necrons/Space Marines list. IMO 8th is just boring point & click without much tactical/stratigical depth, just like tournament level 7th.

Trollbert wrote:
I hope that the same people that quit in the middle of 7th edition...

That was me! 7th was pretty bad. They went a bit crazy with all the formations, and certain rules just killed things I liked. 8th, although far from perfect, has some aspects that are better than they have been since 5th came out. The biggest one for me is they have eventually fixed wound allocation. Being able to just remove what you want is far better than 5ths weirdness of the "closest model" system that just killed advancing footguard.

 Stormonu wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:

HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.

Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.

Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?

If they hired more writers the internet rage machine would just change tack to “look they hired more writers and they’re STILL incompetent and lazy and other adjectives”, or “they need MOAR WRITERS 17 isn’t enough” or whatever suits their narrative. A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
The only way to win is not to play.

The only way to win is to take the size of negative opinions into account. A few negative voices is different to large-scale unsatisfaction. It just happens that negative opinions are louder most of the time, as people are more motivated to voice complaints than praise. Then you have to take into account the tendency to attribute a single opinion to a collective. You see this all the time with "Reddit thinks X" or "Dakka hates Y". It is just something you have to deal with though.

Jack Flask wrote:

a) The land raider is trash compared to the Castellan, so GW removes the land raider from the game and tells everyone to just buy a Castellan
b) You buy a Castellan because the land raider is trash. A year later in an effort to make the land raider more relevant GW makes space marines unable to ally in castellans. You now have a large expensive model you can't field.
c) The land raider is trash.

While all three scenarios suck, I'd argue that c) sucks the least because you can at least still use your land raider if you want (probably in friendly games since its still trash) and if you bought a Castellan than you still can also use that. And I know or have seen quite a few players who added a big stompy robot to their army if only because they though it was awesome to have a big stompy robot.

I like this explanation a lot.

First, re Soup, I think this shows either complete ignorance or actual deceit. Their "fix" to soup did nothing at all and wasn't even something that needed to be fixed, because you very very rarely saw anyone taking a mixed detachment (maybe in an Index army at the time) because it meant you lost your faction trait. The entire problem was and still is taking multiple detachments of different armies using a shared keyword. That is what needed the change, not detachments themselves. It should have been for Matched Play you can't have Imperium/Chaos/Aeldari/Tyranid as a keyword for Battleforged, and maybe give a few exceptions for the weird armies that can't fully operate as a mono faction. That would have killed most of the soup problems immediately.

Second, re AOS. The major issue wasn't the change, it was the lack of points. AOS was an experiment to see if pure narrative gaming could be sustainable, and thanks to a community so ingrained in points and balance that experiment proved to be a complete and utter failure. AOS was rejected by a very vocal group (I don't say minority because it's very hard to tell via online mediums) who couldn't fathom having to police themselves and wanted a game that they could use for competitive tournaments, which you can't do if it's entirely on you to balance the game.

In the end, the main issue is GW is addressing a meta that has long since passed because they are using outdated methods of delivery (i.e. print) and either GW not caring nor understanding this or the playtesters not bothering to explain it to them or give the correct feedback (it's impossible to tell due to NDAs that exist even after release whether it's the playtesters not bothering to tell GW or GW not listening) and ITC existing in the way it does being a different type of game and one that GW themselves cannot publicly endorse, so GW's changes have to be made for the entire game while ITC changes just enough to be almost completely separate.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:

HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.

Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.

Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?

If they hired more writers the internet rage machine would just change tack to “look they hired more writers and they’re STILL incompetent and lazy and other adjectives”, or “they need MOAR WRITERS 17 isn’t enough” or whatever suits their narrative. A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

Whatever you say, man. I assume you haven't worked for a large company before, because I can't think of any other large company (yes, GW is not enormous, but it is at the very least large) that relies on literally 6 people for the entirety of the rules/processes that make their product work. I don't have an NDA, so I don't know exactly what GW's process is. But I don't think you need to have all the information to see how few man hours you get from 6 people divided across about a dozen different game *formats*, and then guess that that lack of man hours contributes to stale, samey, sometimes nonfunctional rules.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:
Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:

HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.

Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.

Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?

If they hired more writers the internet rage machine would just change tack to “look they hired more writers and they’re STILL incompetent and lazy and other adjectives”, or “they need MOAR WRITERS 17 isn’t enough” or whatever suits their narrative. A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

Whatever you say, man. I assume you haven't worked for a large company before, because I can't think of any other large company (yes, GW is not enormous, but it is at the very least large) that relies on literally 6 people for the entirety of the rules/processes that make their product work. I don't have an NDA, so I don't know exactly what GW's process is. But I don't think you need to have all the information to see how few man hours you get from 6 people divided across about a dozen different game *formats*, and then guess that that lack of man hours contributes to stale, samey, sometimes nonfunctional rules.

I believe it is only recently (within the last couple years) that they split the teams for the games. AOS has a separate team than 40k, I think the issue is the 40k team is the "old guard" from the bad times while the AOS team are new and seem to have more of a passion for making the game better. The 40k team seems to be the same "forge the narrative" and "this isn't really a competitive game but a collecting hobby" guys (Cruddace, maybe Ward again, maybe Phil Kelly, not sure who else is on the team anymore) and they long ago lost all their creative designer types (Rick Priestly, Alessio, Andy Chambers, Pete Haines etc.) who all went on to design actually balanced games (e.g. Kings of War, Bolt Action/Hail Caesar/etc., I forget what Andy Chambers designed but IIRC it was a dogfighting game, maybe WW1). Since they don't actually say anymore who is on the team, it's hard to tell but from what they've shown of the AOS team in White Dwarf, they are all gamers first (Ben Johnson, for example, is a high-end tournament player with a real passion for making AOS a good game), which is why overall balance in AOS is worlds better than 40k (far from perfect, but much better)

We basically flip-flopped. In the old days, 40k was the newer, progressive game to appeal to new players and WHFB was the old reliable game for the older crowd of gamers, the grognards/veterans. Now it feels in part like 40k is the venerable old game for the older gamers and AOS is the hot new game.

For all the talk about AOS being more balanced, it it because its rules are so simple that everything is really samey.

 Crimson wrote:
For all the talk about AOS being more balanced, it it because its rules are so simple that everything is really samey.

I don't actually think that's true though. It's "simple" in the sense that 40k has a ton of tiny options while AOS doesn't (since let's be honest here AOS points are essentially 40k's Power Levels). But 40k's surface complexity is pretty shallow IMHO, and it doesn't mean that it shouldn't also be balanced. I really do think it's because 40k has the old guard of designers who are more interested in a spectacle and a fun themed game with your mates than really making a solid game, while the AOS team really wants to have both.

AOS is in no way shape or form balanced. Its still entirely about bringing the right list, just like 40k. There is some truth in that there are more viable factions but those viable factions still pretty much operate off of the same core listbuild with some minor differences sprouting off of them.

Wayniac wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
For all the talk about AOS being more balanced, it it because its rules are so simple that everything is really samey.

I don't actually think that's true though. It's "simple" in the sense that 40k has a ton of tiny options while AOS doesn't (since let's be honest here AOS points are essentially 40k's Power Levels). But 40k's surface complexity is pretty shallow IMHO, and it doesn't mean that it shouldn't also be balanced. I really do think it's because 40k has the old guard of designers who are more interested in a spectacle and a fun themed game with your mates than really making a solid game, while the AOS team really wants to have both.

Sorry, but you're completely wrong. Jervis Johnson is the lead designer of AOS, Pete Foley is the lead designer of 40K. Also, AOS has not toughness/strength interaction and as wounds spill over there is no functional difference between multishot and multidamage weapons. IMO, these things make it a worse game, but they sure as hell make it easier to balance. 40K is just a much more complex game.

Isn't AoS like super broken? they killed of a ton of armies, including armies from prior edition that were good, everything else is dominated by a combination of two books, with the rest being bad or old, or both at the same time.

I know that a few months ago when, I think, a new edition came out people were very unhappy about the stuff GW did. Invalidate the whole AoS marine model line, just to replace it by a new one that is just better, while everything old got nerfs, point ups or stayed bad.



Again I don't have much xp with AoS, but from the games I seen being played durning AoS events or on tables next to me. End with anything between one to three mosh pits of models fighting for 2-3 turn, if armies are balanced against each other. And if they are not or two turns back to back happen the better army just win. I doubt anyone would like to see what a knight/IG or inari soup does to an army if it gets two turns back to back to shot and melee in w40k.

I wouldn't consider AOS "super-broken". Its as broken as 40k is. You get the same type of games out of either system. Both boil down to list building carrying you through.

From what I've seen and people I've talked to, AOS is better overall balanced than 40k, but has the same issues (i.e. listbuilding being critical), just they seem to be less pronounced. Like there's a ton of things in AOS that are viable at nearly all levels which is more than can be said about 40k.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

We don't need to do a hypothetical bit of maths focussing only on offensive output in melee because it misses entire swathes of a units' statline that also impact on balance. A PK on a unit with a 4+ save and no access to an invulnerable in melee isn't going to be around as long as a PF on a unit with an inbuilt/easily accessed invulnerable or with a much better save.

Which is why this all falls down. You're making massive assumptions with your maths that don't translate into real game scenarios.

Storm bolters are equivalent to Kustom Shootas. Rapid fire 2 24 range is roughly assault 4 18 range. How much are they on a BS3 model? How much do they cost Orks on BS5 model?

That hypothetical was comparing like for like and clearly demonstrates that attempting to scale base cost with attacks without consideration for the weapon the model will carry does not work. Which is why thunder hammers are more expensive on characters, BS3 models pay more for guns, and why models with higher base attacks pay more for weapons than other models in the game.

I have given you in-game examples that have been continually ignored.

Kustom Shoota can run and gun and gets all it's shots all the time while a storm bolter only gets them within 12". Kustom Shoota with DDD scores 1.6 hits at 18" - the storm bolter scores 1.3 out of rapid fire range.

There is distinct nuance that you've willfully ignored.

From talking to people in my local area it's the opposite; AoS is far more unbalanced than 40k and has several armies that are borderline unplayable even at casual play whereas it's really only until you get to actual competitive stuff that certain 40k armies start to struggle (GK being the exception). Hell, I've crushed Eldar and Dark Eldar lists with Necrons in local games but I've had numerous AoS playing friends tell me that things like Overlords are just impossible to do anything with except lose in 2.0