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 JohnnyHell wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
If you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of what all USRs do then great.

You don't need to. Read the thread to find out why.

Oh a thread USR? Cool. ;-)

No, just common courtesy.

Seriously, every new page starts with someone bringing up "USR are bad because they are in another book", then two people spend half a page to explain why that is not the case.

If you want to join the discussion, you are welcome to, but at least inform yourself before you do.

 Ishagu wrote:
Yes, but if one unit is too powerful as a result of that rule in combination with other things, and the other isn't, changing "It does not die" doesn't affect the less powerful unit with "Indominable"

This is much better for game balancing. Consolidating all the rules into one is far worse for game balancing. It's why the "Monster" rule in 7th edition led to so many broken things in combination with certain units, and nothing at all with others.

Why would GW make it more difficult to adjust individual units? That is crap rule design.

No. Wrong on so many levels. Good game design uses the tools at its disposal and the toolbox is only as large as it needs to be to function. GW might have this obsession with "we want this unit to have a USR, but a better version of it because they're so super-special" but in other game systems that problem simply doesn't exist. The designer looks at the available tools, selects the most appropriate one and assigns a points cost. They don't get to decide to make a unit more super-special. Restricting your design space is good design when done correctly. You can even, as other people have repeatedly pointed out, write the USRs in such a way that minor variation is possible in the rule parameters. Personally, I don't think that's necessary but it's not a problem if you construct the USR that way.

As far as making adjustments go, perhaps you don't remember the first big FAQ 8th got where all the FNP-style rules were changed to only allow a single attempt at such a roll per wound taken. The way GW had to write that part of the FAQ perfectly demonstrates why not using USRs is a bad idea. Instead of saying "you only take one FNP save per wound" they had to write a non-comprehensive list and say something along the lines of "abilities that ignore wounds, such as Disgustingly Resilient, Inured to Suffering and, y'know, other stuff like that..." can only be rolled once. that's bad design and bad future-proofing.

As for the argument that people don't have time to learn all the USRs, that's actually an argument in favour of them, not against them. If I don't have time to learn a bunch of USRs how do I have time to learn a host of bespoke rules that area ll functionally identical but called something different? One is obviously easier and more efficient than the other.

Slipspace wrote:
As for the argument that people don't have time to learn all the USRs, that's actually an argument in favour of them, not against them. If I don't have time to learn a bunch of USRs how do I have time to learn a host of bespoke rules that area ll functionally identical but called something different? One is obviously easier and more efficient than the other.

This is actually a big one. Instead of learning what Disgustingly Resilient, Doc Tools, Cybork, Ghosthelm, Wraithconstruct and whatnot does, they only need to learn FNP or "Ignore Damage".

 Ishagu wrote:
Yes, but if one unit is too powerful as a result of that rule in combination with other things, and the other isn't, changing "It does not die" doesn't affect the less powerful unit with "Indominable"

This is much better for game balancing. Consolidating all the rules into one is far worse for game balancing. It's why the "Monster" rule in 7th edition led to so many broken things in combination with certain units, and nothing at all with others.

Why would GW make it more difficult to adjust individual units? That is crap rule design.

Is that why marines armies that couldn't run Gulliman and didn't even have access to a lot of the weapons or units that were run with him, still got nerfed with the point hikes intreduced to "fix" him. Or how about the changes to armies that were based around deep strike, but didn't have 5 hive tyrants, why were they affected by the changes, when clearly the problem were the wing dakka tyrants or BA smash captins, and not something like a unit of termintors?

A few units were being abused, and the nerf was carried out incorrectly. We've seen that point hikes are terrible for everyone.

They should have imposed limits on spam units, not Inc eased their costs.

Thank you for making my point for me.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
If you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of what all USRs do then great. If not they’re an impediment. They suck when learning. You haven’t proved what you think you have.

If they suck when learning, then they did them badly. As they should make learning far easier. Rather than learning 5 rules that all do the same thing but different, should never be easier than learning one rule.

GW just sucks at it.

 Ishagu wrote:
A few units were being abused, and the nerf was carried out incorrectly. We've seen that point hikes are terrible for everyone.

They should have imposed limits on spam units, not Inc eased their costs.

Thank you for making my point for me.

Thats why I sad you could also decrease the FNP to 6+ and the limit is usable with USRs as well

 Ishagu wrote:
A few units were being abused, and the nerf was carried out incorrectly. We've seen that point hikes are terrible for everyone.

They should have imposed limits on spam units, not Inc eased their costs.

Thank you for making my point for me.

This seems to be a issue, a roller coaster of bad game design. Most games do not have the issues GW does, and most don’t have as much rope when jumping into the river to fail so much.

Most games don't have 20 factions with dozens of units each, most games don't have a new release every week.

If GW is so bad go play those games.

It is perfectly possible to want to play GW games and still be critical of aspects of their game design. "If you don't like it then leave!" is five-year-olds-fighting-in-a-sandbox levels of silly.

Removed - BrookM

 Ishagu wrote:
Most games don't have 20 factions with dozens of units each, most games don't have a new release every week.

If GW is so bad go play those games.

Enough do, and do not suck at it half as much.
And I do play those games, and half a dozen others
I mean, even GWs other games don’t fail like 40k kinda does. There is a lot of reasons for it, GW wants a simple system but overload it with many subsystems and rules.
They want individual characters to shine, and infantry to be important but won’t put in the systems need to make massive units on the battlefield complicated enough to function against them.
This is a system where GW wants a Tyranid player to play a mass battle game against a skirmish game of the knights. At this points it’s not even a rules issue, it’s morons plonking down stupidity for the rules writers to fix.

USRs just another tool that when used lead to better game design, or like 40k has become again. A lot of mess.

Which game has the same model scope and variety of units as 40k and isn't made by GW?

 Ishagu wrote:
All I see is critical topics. Seems like there is a vocal minority of entitled whingers that have taken root on this forum.

I can enjoy a community and still complain about certain aspects of it. Wouldn't you agree?

When you have nothing to say, insult the other posters. I seem to remember you doing this before.

Removed - BrookM

 Ishagu wrote:
Which game has the same model scope and variety of units as 40k and isn't made by GW?

Warmachine comes fairly close, and often has more elements on the battlefield than a lot of the army’s in 40k. With quite a lot of complexity. But even then, I wonder if infinity has more potential elements than 40k, with the potential for even more swings from moment to moment.
There is also of corse a lot of historical games, which I have seen play just fine up to quite massive games. But they are probably a bit out of this threads designation.

But one thing is sorta consistent I fine, USRs don’t really lead to many issues outside of just poor rules as a whole.


Removed - BrookM

Warmachine does not come close to the scope of 40k at all. It was a rhetorical question, 40k has no direct like-for-like competitor, and it cannot be compared directly to other gaming systems. Some credit is due, the sheer speed of expansion itself is very impressive - armies have evolved in scope and ability significantly over the last 3 years.

Apple fox wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
All I see is critical topics. Seems like there is a vocal minority of entitled whingers that have taken root on this forum.

I can enjoy a community and still complain about certain aspects of it. Wouldn't you agree?

When you have nothing to say, insult the other posters. I seem to remember you doing this before.

Yup. Went onto my ignore list pretty sharpish for this kind of thing.

 Ishagu wrote:
Warmachine does not come close to the scope of 40k at all. It was a rhetorical question, 40k has no direct like-for-like competitor, and it cannot be compared directly to other gaming systems. Some credit is due, the sheer speed of expansion itself is very impressive - armies have evolved in scope and ability significantly over the last 3 years.

Lol, yea it does. Warmachine has 17 factions, some with specific theme forces that can change up there army as much as most space marine chapters do.
Warcasters and warlocks can shape a faction around them as well in a great deal.
And when on the table they can have a lot of elements all interacting with each other, often with just as much or even more than 40k does.

The warcasters can often each have a unique set of spells, from 4 to to 7. As well as a bunch of special rules .

They are very different, but 40k is not some special snowflake of impossible variables. It’s actuly a very simple system with a bunch of bloat. And a lot, possibly most do not even have the choices a lot warmachine units do.
When it comes to elements on the battlefield, they are very similar.

Unless you define scope as flyers and knights, at which point. Warmachine has a knights equlivent. And flyer rules have been a joke in 40k, does anyone think 40k flying units have been good in a fun and fluff way. They act like 3 different type of equivalent flying vehicles over there time in 40k
Warmachine also has a working mercenery system, to compare to GW ally system.

Depending on the merc factions warmachine could even get up to 20 factions, are we counting hallie eldar as it’s own faction for this. Are the Ynnari there own, 3 units and stealing everything else is not so much a faction.

 Ishagu wrote:
Most games don't have 20 factions with dozens of units each, most games don't have a new release every week.

If GW is so bad go play those games.

I do play other games, which gives an interesting insight into the problems that 40k has. The idea 40k is some super-special game unique in its scope and grandiosity is wrong, as shown by the poster above me talking about Warmachine (or games like MtG, which have far more themes going on and moving parts than 40k). It's also not exactly a stellar argument to use the number of factions and the rapid release schedule as some sort of reasoning for poor balance when many critics would point to those things being exactly what GW should be looking to correct.

If you have to resort to insulting other people rather than engaging with their arguments that says all anyone needs to know about the strength of your own arguments.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Apple fox wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
All I see is critical topics. Seems like there is a vocal minority of entitled whingers that have taken root on this forum.

I can enjoy a community and still complain about certain aspects of it. Wouldn't you agree?

When you have nothing to say, insult the other posters. I seem to remember you doing this before.

Yup. Went onto my ignore list pretty sharpish for this kind of thing.

I honestly find the passive I did not insult anyone unless they think I did so toxic, and I do feel I step outta line to often on here.

I really do just want to play a good 40k game, without feeling like a second rate customer to GW :(

 Ishagu wrote:
I haven't targeted anyone specifically. Do you feel that an entitled whinger is applicable to yourself?

Either you had certain people in mind when you made the comment, and are therefore insulting them without having the courage to actually call them out, or you don't think anyone on here is an "entitled whinger" in which case your comment was utterly pointless. So instead of your passive-aggressive BS, how about actually engaging with the arguments people make?

Everyone cried that Universal Special Rules made models/units bland and uninspiring. When you realized your Awesome Special Elite Favorite Unit shared the same USR's as half a dozen other units in the game, they weren't so special anymore. It's a psychological thing. Now people want to bring them back... the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round...

 Tamwulf wrote:
Everyone cried that Universal Special Rules made models/units bland and uninspiring. When you realized your Awesome Special Elite Favorite Unit shared the same USR's as half a dozen other units in the game, they weren't so special anymore. It's a psychological thing. Now people want to bring them back... the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round...

I have honestly never read or had anyone bring this up as a reason for not using or liking USRs. And even then when you have USRs that does not remove the need for some form of SRs.
Bringing up warmachine again, it has a bunch of USRs. And loads of Rules unique to factions, units and most warcasters, warlocks and other characters come with a bunch of there own.

 Tamwulf wrote:
Everyone cried that Universal Special Rules made models/units bland and uninspiring. When you realized your Awesome Special Elite Favorite Unit shared the same USR's as half a dozen other units in the game, they weren't so special anymore. It's a psychological thing. Now people want to bring them back... the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round...

Everyone? I've never heard that complaint about USR before either. I've heard, and understand, the complaint about GW's handling of USRs but that's more of a criticism of GW than USRs themselves.

I thought USRs were terrible for the game and was thrilled when they were removed. I am honestly perplexed at why anyone is getting confused about anything in the current game. A single army follows it's own set of rules and that's that.

 Ishagu wrote:
All I see is critical topics. Seems like there is a vocal minority of entitled whingers that have taken root on this forum.

I can enjoy a community and still complain about certain aspects of it. Wouldn't you agree?

Yes, but you didn't, did you? "My way or get out" isn't complaning. It isn't criticism. The only thing it is is an attempt to shut down people who you do not agree with.

Removed - BrookM

 Ishagu wrote:
This topic is 7 pages long and nothing new has really come up for a while. It's just the same people complaining.

there has been plenty of discussion and ideas being brought up as to how would we implement USR's. From where the rules definition would be written to how the USR's would be presented on the datasheet.

The problem of this thread is that every 2 pages, someone that didnt read the rest of the thread shows up and re-starts the whole argument about USR's being bad by bringing arguments that were already debunked.

 Ishagu wrote:
I thought USRs were terrible for the game and was thrilled when they were removed. I am honestly perplexed at why anyone is getting confused about anything in the current game. A single army follows it's own set of rules and that's that.

Kinda the problem. None of the rules are the same so unless you play every faction regularly you are playing in the dark half the time and run the risk of losing just because you misunderstood or forgot a rule since they dont share anything with your army.

I could if I wanted cheat a lot in most of my games since my opponent probably dont know all my special rules and cant be bothered to read through all my stratagems, traits, relics, powers and the FAQs for them everytime I use an unique rule.

I just trust my opponent plays straight with me since there are just too many factions and too many unique rules to know them all. If most of them at least shared the same name when they did the same thing it would reduce the needed tile to learn what the other factions can do by a lot. Then I could just look up the special rules that define that faction instead of wasting time reading rules that should have been USRs

Nothing wrong with faction specific rules. They are great and needed. But common rules not having common names is stupid and just takes a lot of extra work. It makes the game more complex and harder to understand while adding 0 depth. Its really unfriendly to newer players as well since it makes the treshhold higher