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 ClockworkZion wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So... not Orks.

Space Marine colour schemes.

I wonder if there is an internet issue at Stu's house or something.

It feels like both Monday and Today were filler. The streams started late and I think Stu was unable to make it in time and thus we had the painting backups.

 Sasori wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So... not Orks.

Space Marine colour schemes.

I wonder if there is an internet issue at Stu's house or something.

It feels like both Monday and Today were filler. The streams started late and I think Stu was unable to make it in time and thus we had the painting backups.

Considering how famously crap internet connectivity is in the UK (and the number of times Stu loses connection) I could see it being technical issues.

It’s famously crap?

Never had a problem myself?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s famously crap?

Never had a problem myself?

I've seen a lot of UK podcasters have regular connectivity issues. It might just be their provider though.

Heck, even Stu Black has been plagued by connectivity drops since they started doing this. He's averaged one an episode at least.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Whilst all will agree, the application of the english language to rules is not the best at times, I also have sympathy for GW, namely if you consider how many units there are in the game, then the special rules, and the keywords, then the special rules that interact with specific keywords, there are going to be a huge amount of unintended interactions, even if rules are written well in the first place.

I think it needs to be accepted to have a much tighter rule set, a hell of a lot of variability needs to be removed from the game, and that probably then includes certain factions in total as well. I doubt many other than the most extreme haters want that, so maybe just some additional rule steps like my suggestion above (and there is probably and even more elegant way to try and fail safe against the issue than my suggestion) is one way tidy things up from the start.

Christ, loopholes happen in the criminal justice system in countries, with laws providing quirky unintended loopholes also, so if that happens at the absolute highest level of 'rule writing' we have in society, then I think GW needs a little break as well.

The wording genuinely is not the best again, but then, do they want to be writing 4x sides of A4 just for one rule?

Well, I don't know about that. MTG has something near 20,000 cards. Sure, many/most have little to no rules baggage, but many explicitly allow or tell you to do things outside the "base rules." And no doubt, there are cases where weird and unintended things come up that must be addressed, of course.

However, to me, the key difference is how there are actually two "different" sets of rules for MTG. There are the "plain language" rules that almost everyone learns/is taught from, and then there are the Comprehensive (formal) rules. Most players never even look at the Comprehensive Rules, but they exist as an arbiter, not as casual reading. That means that almost all rules arbitration can be figured out from that document; very, very rarely does one need to figure out a RAI case (although it does happen in strange cases).

I think the problem here is that GW wants easy to read, common sense, plain language rules and formal, technical rules to be the exact same thing. But that just doesn't work, I don't think. Another part of it though, I think, is that every edition attempts (to some degree) to reinvent the wheel. So, where MTG's rules are fairly static (for the most part) each new edition of 40K reframes many things all over again. This means you can't have an itteratively honed rules set as a bedrock, that then can have things grafted onto/into.

I don't think it has to be like that though, but it just is, seemingly. Again, it is, to me, a loosey-goosey approach to rules though that I wish was handled different. Because strong formal rules don't just make competative gaming better, in my opinion, it helps casual players too (because it can be made clear what the rules say in almost every case).

Wow, what an anti-climactic article to head into the weekend with.

For a show called the #New40k show by Games workshop's own marketing team, there was a severe lack of anything new. These streams really are disappointing. I'm only giving it until Sunday to see a reason to stick with it.

FWIW the New40K email that just went out had an Orks Faction Focus banner, so maybe something did go wrong today because it looks like they were prepared to have Ork material up.

Darsath wrote:
For a show called the #New40k show by Games workshop's own marketing team, there was a severe lack of anything new. These streams really are disappointing. I'm only giving it until Sunday to see a reason to stick with it.

They don't do one on weekends.

On the little designers video for Indomitus that’s now on the community page it says at the end “coming July” so we know it’s at least another two week wait!

 puma713 wrote:
Wow, what an anti-climactic article to head into the weekend with.

There's still time for a faction focus, but I won't hold my breath.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I've seen a lot of UK podcasters have regular connectivity issues. It might just be their provider though.

Heck, even Stu Black has been plagued by connectivity drops since they started doing this. He's averaged one an episode at least.

I think BT have struggled in the last few months with the big ramp up of data demand due to people who were previously "what is the internet" discovering Zoom etc and deciding its the best thing since sliced bread.
Or at least thats the case if they are anything like the company I work for.

Wouldn't say its that crap all the time, although it probably depends where you live.

 puma713 wrote:
FWIW the New40K email that just went out had an Orks Faction Focus banner, so maybe something did go wrong today because it looks like they were prepared to have Ork material up.

They tweeted about it too:

They've since deleted the tweet and offered no explanation.

 H wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Whilst all will agree, the application of the english language to rules is not the best at times, I also have sympathy for GW, namely if you consider how many units there are in the game, then the special rules, and the keywords, then the special rules that interact with specific keywords, there are going to be a huge amount of unintended interactions, even if rules are written well in the first place.

I think it needs to be accepted to have a much tighter rule set, a hell of a lot of variability needs to be removed from the game, and that probably then includes certain factions in total as well. I doubt many other than the most extreme haters want that, so maybe just some additional rule steps like my suggestion above (and there is probably and even more elegant way to try and fail safe against the issue than my suggestion) is one way tidy things up from the start.

Christ, loopholes happen in the criminal justice system in countries, with laws providing quirky unintended loopholes also, so if that happens at the absolute highest level of 'rule writing' we have in society, then I think GW needs a little break as well.

The wording genuinely is not the best again, but then, do they want to be writing 4x sides of A4 just for one rule?

Well, I don't know about that. MTG has something near 20,000 cards. Sure, many/most have little to no rules baggage, but many explicitly allow or tell you to do things outside the "base rules." And no doubt, there are cases where weird and unintended things come up that must be addressed, of course.

However, to me, the key difference is how there are actually two "different" sets of rules for MTG. There are the "plain language" rules that almost everyone learns/is taught from, and then there are the Comprehensive (formal) rules. Most players never even look at the Comprehensive Rules, but they exist as an arbiter, not as casual reading. That means that almost all rules arbitration can be figured out from that document; very, very rarely does one need to figure out a RAI case (although it does happen in strange cases).

I think the problem here is that GW wants easy to read, common sense, plain language rules and formal, technical rules to be the exact same thing. But that just doesn't work, I don't think. Another part of it though, I think, is that every edition attempts (to some degree) to reinvent the wheel. So, where MTG's rules are fairly static (for the most part) each new edition of 40K reframes many things all over again. This means you can't have an itteratively honed rules set as a bedrock, that then can have things grafted onto/into.

I don't think it has to be like that though, but it just is, seemingly. Again, it is, to me, a loosey-goosey approach to rules though that I wish was handled different. Because strong formal rules don't just make competative gaming better, in my opinion, it helps casual players too (because it can be made clear what the rules say in almost every case).

Okay, this is basic maths and not accurate at all...

Roughly 30 factions in the game (including major sub factions, such as specific marine chapters, ynnari etc).

Now let's just say each faction has 3x HQ, Elite, Troops, Fast Attack, Heavy Support.

Now let's say each chapter (major sub factions included) have at least 6x sub faction rule variations (raven guard successor chapter with tweaked special rules etc, or radian regiment, or speed freaks).

That is 43740 unique combinations of units (If you field 3 of each, even more if you take 1 HQ, or 3 of the same Troop, again, super basic mathematics here). Now here's the kicker, let's say only a third of all those combinations have some sort of special rule that interacts with a key word (probably much more).

We now have 637,722,823 different combinations, over 500 million.

And that's not even taking into account weapons.

You want to pay someone to write a comprehensive rule set that takes into account all of the above for competitive play?

And I've been very very very conservative with the amount of units or special rules etc and like I said, I haven't included weapon options on those units.

Basically, it's impossible to balance.

Disclaimer - I've done the maths extremely quickly, it may be wrong, correct if it is please.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 H wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Whilst all will agree, the application of the english language to rules is not the best at times, I also have sympathy for GW, namely if you consider how many units there are in the game, then the special rules, and the keywords, then the special rules that interact with specific keywords, there are going to be a huge amount of unintended interactions, even if rules are written well in the first place.

I think it needs to be accepted to have a much tighter rule set, a hell of a lot of variability needs to be removed from the game, and that probably then includes certain factions in total as well. I doubt many other than the most extreme haters want that, so maybe just some additional rule steps like my suggestion above (and there is probably and even more elegant way to try and fail safe against the issue than my suggestion) is one way tidy things up from the start.

Christ, loopholes happen in the criminal justice system in countries, with laws providing quirky unintended loopholes also, so if that happens at the absolute highest level of 'rule writing' we have in society, then I think GW needs a little break as well.

The wording genuinely is not the best again, but then, do they want to be writing 4x sides of A4 just for one rule?

Well, I don't know about that. MTG has something near 20,000 cards. Sure, many/most have little to no rules baggage, but many explicitly allow or tell you to do things outside the "base rules." And no doubt, there are cases where weird and unintended things come up that must be addressed, of course.

However, to me, the key difference is how there are actually two "different" sets of rules for MTG. There are the "plain language" rules that almost everyone learns/is taught from, and then there are the Comprehensive (formal) rules. Most players never even look at the Comprehensive Rules, but they exist as an arbiter, not as casual reading. That means that almost all rules arbitration can be figured out from that document; very, very rarely does one need to figure out a RAI case (although it does happen in strange cases).

I think the problem here is that GW wants easy to read, common sense, plain language rules and formal, technical rules to be the exact same thing. But that just doesn't work, I don't think. Another part of it though, I think, is that every edition attempts (to some degree) to reinvent the wheel. So, where MTG's rules are fairly static (for the most part) each new edition of 40K reframes many things all over again. This means you can't have an itteratively honed rules set as a bedrock, that then can have things grafted onto/into.

I don't think it has to be like that though, but it just is, seemingly. Again, it is, to me, a loosey-goosey approach to rules though that I wish was handled different. Because strong formal rules don't just make competative gaming better, in my opinion, it helps casual players too (because it can be made clear what the rules say in almost every case).

Okay, this is basic maths and not accurate at all...

Roughly 30 factions in the game (including major sub factions, such as specific marine chapters, ynnari etc).

Now let's just say each faction has 3x HQ, Elite, Troops, Fast Attack, Heavy Support.

Now let's say each chapter (major sub factions included) have at least 6x sub faction rule variations (raven guard successor chapter with tweaked special rules etc, or radian regiment, or speed freaks).

That is 43740 unique combinations of units (I think). Now here's the kicker, let's say only a third of all those combinations have some sort of special rule that interacts with a key word (probably much more).

We now have 637,722,823 different combinations, over 500 million.

And that's not even taking into account weapons.

You want to pay someone to write a comprehensive rule set that takes into account all of the above for competitive play?

And I've been very very very conservative with the amount of units or special rules etc and like I said, I haven't included weapon options on those units.

Basically, it's impossible to balance.

Disclaimer - I've done the maths extremely quickly, it may be wrong, correct if it is please.

Competent technical rules writing should not be beyond a company of GW's size.

 JNAProductions wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 H wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Whilst all will agree, the application of the english language to rules is not the best at times, I also have sympathy for GW, namely if you consider how many units there are in the game, then the special rules, and the keywords, then the special rules that interact with specific keywords, there are going to be a huge amount of unintended interactions, even if rules are written well in the first place.

I think it needs to be accepted to have a much tighter rule set, a hell of a lot of variability needs to be removed from the game, and that probably then includes certain factions in total as well. I doubt many other than the most extreme haters want that, so maybe just some additional rule steps like my suggestion above (and there is probably and even more elegant way to try and fail safe against the issue than my suggestion) is one way tidy things up from the start.

Christ, loopholes happen in the criminal justice system in countries, with laws providing quirky unintended loopholes also, so if that happens at the absolute highest level of 'rule writing' we have in society, then I think GW needs a little break as well.

The wording genuinely is not the best again, but then, do they want to be writing 4x sides of A4 just for one rule?

Well, I don't know about that. MTG has something near 20,000 cards. Sure, many/most have little to no rules baggage, but many explicitly allow or tell you to do things outside the "base rules." And no doubt, there are cases where weird and unintended things come up that must be addressed, of course.

However, to me, the key difference is how there are actually two "different" sets of rules for MTG. There are the "plain language" rules that almost everyone learns/is taught from, and then there are the Comprehensive (formal) rules. Most players never even look at the Comprehensive Rules, but they exist as an arbiter, not as casual reading. That means that almost all rules arbitration can be figured out from that document; very, very rarely does one need to figure out a RAI case (although it does happen in strange cases).

I think the problem here is that GW wants easy to read, common sense, plain language rules and formal, technical rules to be the exact same thing. But that just doesn't work, I don't think. Another part of it though, I think, is that every edition attempts (to some degree) to reinvent the wheel. So, where MTG's rules are fairly static (for the most part) each new edition of 40K reframes many things all over again. This means you can't have an itteratively honed rules set as a bedrock, that then can have things grafted onto/into.

I don't think it has to be like that though, but it just is, seemingly. Again, it is, to me, a loosey-goosey approach to rules though that I wish was handled different. Because strong formal rules don't just make competative gaming better, in my opinion, it helps casual players too (because it can be made clear what the rules say in almost every case).

Okay, this is basic maths and not accurate at all...

Roughly 30 factions in the game (including major sub factions, such as specific marine chapters, ynnari etc).

Now let's just say each faction has 3x HQ, Elite, Troops, Fast Attack, Heavy Support.

Now let's say each chapter (major sub factions included) have at least 6x sub faction rule variations (raven guard successor chapter with tweaked special rules etc, or radian regiment, or speed freaks).

That is 43740 unique combinations of units (I think). Now here's the kicker, let's say only a third of all those combinations have some sort of special rule that interacts with a key word (probably much more).

We now have 637,722,823 different combinations, over 500 million.

And that's not even taking into account weapons.

You want to pay someone to write a comprehensive rule set that takes into account all of the above for competitive play?

And I've been very very very conservative with the amount of units or special rules etc and like I said, I haven't included weapon options on those units.

Basically, it's impossible to balance.

Disclaimer - I've done the maths extremely quickly, it may be wrong, correct if it is please.

Competent technical rules writing should not be beyond a company of GW's size.

I'm with you on that, the english wording is poor, all I'm suggesting is, unintended interactions are bound to happen, due to the variety.

No excuse for how the Look Out Sir is worded to be honest, it should be split into bullet points, but the weird interaction with DP's whilst fairly obvious is a quirk within the keywords, which is almost impossible to avoid unless you are prepared to write pages and pages just to completely and accurately divulge that one rule.

Players aren't lawyers (well some may be), they don't want to have to learn 500 pages of rules (or more probably).

 JNAProductions wrote:
Competent technical rules writing should not be beyond a company of GW's size.

Technical writing is a skill, and for the game to work better for it, they'd need to redesign it from the ground up to better support a more technically written ruleset.

Said ruleset might turn people away from the game by being too dense though.

9th seems like it's trying to strike a balance between dense and technical, and easy to read but loose rules writing.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Competent technical rules writing should not be beyond a company of GW's size.

Technical writing is a skill, and for the game to work better for it, they'd need to redesign it from the ground up to better support a more technically written ruleset.

Said ruleset might turn people away from the game by being too dense though.

9th seems like it's trying to strike a balance between dense and technical, and easy to read but loose rules writing.

Good rules writing is a skill, and a pretty rare skill at that. I will concede that it is very, very hard to find someone who can write rules that are functional, clear and intuitive all at the same time. The lucky few who CAN do all of this, as well as be able to re-write someone else's rules in them same manner, deserve more recognition than they receive by both the community and the companies they typically work for (PS this isn't just about Games workshop at this point).

Darsath wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Competent technical rules writing should not be beyond a company of GW's size.

Technical writing is a skill, and for the game to work better for it, they'd need to redesign it from the ground up to better support a more technically written ruleset.

Said ruleset might turn people away from the game by being too dense though.

9th seems like it's trying to strike a balance between dense and technical, and easy to read but loose rules writing.

Good rules writing is a skill, and a pretty rare skill at that. I will concede that it is very, very hard to find someone who can write rules that are functional, clear and intuitive all at the same time. The lucky few who CAN do all of this, as well as be able to re-write someone else's rules in them same manner, deserve more recognition than they receive by both the community and the companies they typically work for (PS this isn't just about Games workshop at this point).

Heck the guy who wrote the Underworlds ruleset did his best to write a dense, technical ruleset that could work as a competitive format and he admits he still couldn't nail it down perfectly and he had the advantage of starting from scratch.

We can still ask they do a better job though.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Basically, it's impossible to balance.

Disclaimer - I've done the maths extremely quickly, it may be wrong, correct if it is please.

What part of my post mentioned balance? Please point it out, so I may correct it. I was not discussing balance at all. I was talking about how the rules function, not how balanced they are or not.

I am not going to bother to enumerate how many possible permutations and combinations there are, because it is totally outside the point. If the formal rules foundation is set, it really doesn't matter how many combinations you have, because the foundation is set to work and any almost all interactions need only rely on that foundation to arbitrate what happens. I think it is a little absurd to imagine that every permutation would require a rules instance to arbitrate it would be my point. Interestingly enough, that is how "math" works. You don't need rules instance for every number, or combination there-of. Nor do you need instances for every possible permutation of operations. You have formal orders of operations, preformed in a formal manner. That is just how it works. Can and will unique corner cases need further clarifications? Sure, but the more sound your formal structure is, the less common such cases would be.

For example, a formal rule of "applying pluses before minuses." You don't need an instance for every plus, or every minus, or every possibly permutation or combination there-of, you have a formal rule to address the category of interaction.

However, it seems you were out to straw-man my position though, so I hardly see any point in discussing it further if that is your aim. I can do math, thanks, but the rules being either formal or not, using technical formal language or not, has nothing really to do the "basic math" or your seeming insinuation that I either can't, or won't, grasp that it does. If I was not clear, then I apologize, however, it seems to me that you either deliberately misconstrued my point, or are out to "prove" something outside of what I was even attempting to address by adding in some notion of "balance" (which, again, I had no intent of addressing, or mention of).

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
We can still ask they do a better job though.

And no one is saying that they shouldn't do better, but we should also recognize when they are doing better than before as well as admit that there are limits to how good any ruleset with so many moving parts can be.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
We can still ask they do a better job though.

Completely agreed. The new "Look out Sir!" rule is an example of a poorly written rule. There are examples of well written rules too, of course.

I don't play magic the gathering, and I was talking about balance as that is usually the main issue with GW in regards to rule writing, where they skew the balance. Which was what I was referring to in terms of skewed rules in my original comment about tiers of keywords. The double DP would quite literally skew balance, that is the problem. Poor rules writing it one thing, the impact of it is the real problem though.

There is also far more interaction with the unit, it isn't just drawn form a deck and played. How many interacting rules does each card actually have? Because how many combinations of rules is absolutely important, because that influences rule writing, if you take into account stat lines as well with units, it must be pushing billions of different potential interactions in the game when using all rules, and all weapons etc. And this isn't even taking into account how a different table can change the game also.

Talking of straw manning arguments, how about not bringing in a game that is actually nowhere near as complex, and has nowhere near as many variables of situations and interactions with other units in the game to make your point that rule writing should be more concise, because concise rule writing to take into account all possible variations is something we won't have until AI is competent enough to write the rules.

It's chalk and cheese as a comparison to prove your point.

Rule writing should be better, perfection is almost impossible though, so a having a separate concise rule set is a moot point, because it wouldn't be worth reading, let alone remembering.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
I don't play magic the gathering, and I was talking about balance as that is usually the main issue with GW in regards to rule writing, where they skew the balance. Which was what I was referring to in terms of skewed rules in my original approach.

There is also far more interaction with the unit, it isn't just drawn form a deck and played. How many interacting rules does each card actually have? Because how many combinations of rules is absolutely important, because that influences rule writing.

Talking of straw manning arguments, how about not bringing in a game that is actually nowhere near as complex, and has nowhere near as many variables of situations and interactions with other units in the game to make your point that rule writing should be more concise.

It's chalk and cheese as a comparison.

Have you played Magic? It's a pretty flipping complex game. I know you don't CURRENTLY, but with 20,000+ cards, even if they only interact with each other ONCE, that's 400,000,000 combinations.

And there's a lot more interaction than that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s famously crap?

Never had a problem myself?

I work tech support for both the US and the UK. Your internet makes our internet look like South Korea's internet.

Ork article is live:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/19/faction-focus-orksgw-homepage-post-4fw-homepage-post-4/

 JNAProductions wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
I don't play magic the gathering, and I was talking about balance as that is usually the main issue with GW in regards to rule writing, where they skew the balance. Which was what I was referring to in terms of skewed rules in my original approach.

There is also far more interaction with the unit, it isn't just drawn form a deck and played. How many interacting rules does each card actually have? Because how many combinations of rules is absolutely important, because that influences rule writing.

Talking of straw manning arguments, how about not bringing in a game that is actually nowhere near as complex, and has nowhere near as many variables of situations and interactions with other units in the game to make your point that rule writing should be more concise.

It's chalk and cheese as a comparison.

Have you played Magic? It's a pretty flipping complex game. I know you don't CURRENTLY, but with 20,000+ cards, even if they only interact with each other ONCE, that's 400,000,000 combinations.

And there's a lot more interaction than that.

I understand it is complex, and has many variables, it doesn't in comparison to 40k though.

It's like comparing the possible combinations in a 2D world, to a 3D world, quite literally actually.

The new terrain rules will also be appreciated by all Orks players. With terrain having clearly defined features, you don’t have to worry about your opponent seeing through a crack in the wall to shoot your entire Boyz squad. You can even give your squads a -1 modifier to be shot! This is a big advantage to Orks (and any army that likes to get stuck in) as it means you can seriously limit your opponent’s ability to stop your advance with their shooting.

Without stacking modifiers, that kind of helps, but at the same time it doesn't really.

* As it’s a Blast weapon, the rokkit kannon can’t be fired at Engagement range, but your other weapons can.

Well that's another known Blast weapon.

Guys GW is only a small £2 billion company, you can't expect them to hire people with Qualifications in Technical Writing.