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Tyranid Horde wrote:Can you explain why the idea of Legends is utterly ludicrous and insulting?

Quite happily, it's pretty straightforward to be honest... and sorry if I missed your post before.
Legends are static rules promoted as a long-lasting solution when they depends from a dynamic ruleset. That's it.

I can make an example, anyway.
Imagine a software house, that has something like "SOFTWARE 3.9", which includes a module called "MODULE 1.2".
The software house decide to go legacy with the specific module, meaning it won't be updated anymore: it will remain 1.2 forever.
BUT, at the same time, the company decide to release "SOFTWARE 3.10". Then, they roll it out to all its customer, including those who use the module 1.2. It will broke.
That's the reason why, when you go legacy (in software, but the reasoning is general), you either have to keep (for those who want) a insular installation of the legacy version, or you entirely retire the unsupported component.

So: GW release Legends during 8th, with the explicit claim to "let this model live forever" (or, for a long time. Maybe they were less dramatic, but that's the general idea).
Then, they change the underlying system (the core rules and point value, still during 8th), instantly breaking the compatibility between Legends and the ruleset DURING THE SAME EDITION. Then, they release 9th, and by pure chance (meaning: the point increases across the board) maybe Legends in 8th may be use again?
But it's a fluke, not a plan or a planned structure.
Now, another example, this time a practical one. Take any Legend SM Bike Character (say, a Librarian). He now has an old point cost (and that's ok: I mean, that was the deal since the beginning... so we can't fuss about it).
But it also have a less Wound. And to further aggravate it the bespoke rules on the datasheet ensure that (for example) now also its equipment is wrong (not in term of point: in terms of rules and stat).

The Legend idea COULD had worked if either one of the following was true:
A) the Core Rules stays the same for a very long period of time (the so-called "live rulebook"). Yes, point cost will be a little fuzzy, but at least there is some uniformity. BTW, that was the original plan: it's pretty easy to know that when you check the announcement: GW explicitly said that "ONLY" the point cost won't be updated (so no tournament) but the model will remain legit. Pristine bollocks if there are any.
B) the Legends will be applied to a legacy version of Warhammer 40K. For example, the model gone to Legends this week would have had rules for 8th edition: since that is a closed editorial lines hence forever compatible with the aforementioned rules.

As usual, GW try to have the cake and eat it, with the predictable result of smearing us all in the process, dropping a lot of cake on the floor and then hide everything under the carpet.

But, I want to be clear on this: it's not a failure of game design, or a failure from business perspective, or from an economic point of view. It's not something somehow technical, that falls under one department or another.
It's a failure at logic of the first order, nothing more and nothing less.

Personally, it felt somehow similar to that final battle scene in the first G.I. Joe movie: an undersea base destroyed by sinking ice that falls all over it. No, I'm not making this up. They really shoot and produced this scene. Worth repeating: ice sinking underwater like rocks.
At that point in the movie I immediately thought about the countless technicians, producers, VFX artists and anyone else that worked on it... and none care (or had self-esteem) enough to go to the executive producer (or to the director, or whoever) to shout out "listen to me you fething moron ice do not sink in water".

My irritation towards the "Legends solution" for old datasheet is of the same cloth, magnified by another consideration.
To have to remove a product while some customer is still using it is a situation that countless companies in any markets (not only software) face worldwide every day. Everyone get it, but not GW.

 Lance845 wrote:
What 40k needs is a clean slate and a game written from the ground up to be balanced.

They did that. It was called 8th Edition.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
What 40k needs is a clean slate and a game written from the ground up to be balanced.

They did that. It was called 8th Edition.

No they didn't. 8th was a new rule set but they bought ALL the baggage with them. Or did you forget about the index flow chart? And they continue to do it in 9th. Legends hasn't put nearly enough into legends for them to build anything from the ground up.

The Indices existed because GW redid 40K from the ground up. How else would people play the game if it didn't launch with rules for everything that existed?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The Indices existed because GW redid 40K from the ground up. How else would people play the game if it didn't launch with rules for everything that existed?

By launching with NEW rules for all the armies. I don't know if you are aware of this but it's pretty much only GW who does this trickle feed codex release over years after the launch of a new edition. Generally when ANY other game launches a new edition they do so with the rules for everyone for the new edition all on launch day.

And it's really just the big flagship games GW does it with. Again, Apoc released with every datasheet for every army available on day 1. GW could have done that. Write all the codexes. Test them. Balance them. Release them on launch. They just don't.

Oh, and BTW, what I said wasn't the index. I said the index flow chart. Because what I meant was how the codexes didn't remove jack gak and instead they decided to build a LITERAL flow chart for how to keep all the old crap going in the new edition.