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 Gert wrote:
Complete tripe. You can still absolutely kitbash, you just can't swap Marine torso and legs anymore which is apparently the only thing that counts as kitbashing.

Speaking of complete tripe....

 Gert wrote:
Complete tripe. You can still absolutely kitbash, you just can't swap Marine torso and legs anymore which is apparently the only thing that counts as kitbashing.

Well done for once again not reading what was written as you come in swinging wildly again... No one said you cannot convert nor kitbash. Try again.

Sure, they said GW actively discourages it, which I call bull.

Conversion articles are in WD, converted armies are featured on WarCom and in Battle Report.
Most Infantry kits for 40k armies are still easily able to swap heads, arms, and assorted gubbins (pads, packs, accessories).
Upgrade kits are plastic rather than resin or metal.

Just because there aren't conversion guides in the Codex like 3rd Edition or whatever doesn't mean GW is trying to stop people from doing it.

The only reason I could even partially agree to the idea that GW isn't encouraging kitbashing is NMNR but that is so haphazardly applied to ranges and models that I don't view it as such a drive.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
People who think Dakka is a cesspool of negativity have lived a very sheltered life on the internet.

Right?

And, stranger still, are the people who hang around here to continue telling everyone how negative it is.

ccs wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Complete tripe. You can still absolutely kitbash, you just can't swap Marine torso and legs anymore which is apparently the only thing that counts as kitbashing.

Speaking of complete tripe....

I sat down to build the new Terminators a few weeks ago, got through 2 (of 5) and haven't gone back to them since. They have 5-piece legs, but only go together one way, and only fit with one specific torso.

GW infantry models just aren't fun to build anymore. They're a jigsaw puzzle with too many parts for not enough customisability.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I sat down to build the new Terminators a few weeks ago, got through 2 (of 5) and haven't gone back to them since. They have 5-piece legs, but only go together one way, and only fit with one specific torso.

GW infantry models just aren't fun to build anymore. They're a jigsaw puzzle with too many parts for not enough customisability.

Oh absolutely.
I hate building most modern infantry.

If you think the termies are bad? Avoid building AoS Fyre Slayers. I joke that it should be a crime to cut a Dwarf into that many pieces.
One Dwarf you'll be gluing his toes on. The next you'll have to assemble a left but cheek vaguely connected to the right armpit.... WTF??


And while alot of this stuff only goes together 1 way? That does NOT mean you can't kitbash it (not even the worst examples).
You just have to pretty much fully assemble it 1st, THEN cut it back apart as you please.
After that it's just cutting trimming & greenstuff work same as its always been.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
People who think Dakka is a cesspool of negativity have lived a very sheltered life on the internet.

Right?

And, stranger still, are the people who hang around here to continue telling everyone how negative it is.

ccs wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Complete tripe. You can still absolutely kitbash, you just can't swap Marine torso and legs anymore which is apparently the only thing that counts as kitbashing.

Speaking of complete tripe....

I sat down to build the new Terminators a few weeks ago, got through 2 (of 5) and haven't gone back to them since. They have 5-piece legs, but only go together one way, and only fit with one specific torso.

GW infantry models just aren't fun to build anymore. They're a jigsaw puzzle with too many parts for not enough customisability.

Putting together infantry models used to take a few minutes per model for me and it was great to be able to clip out all the bodies, legs, etc, glue them to bases or put the two body halves together while you got on with cleaning up the other bits, then experiment with different options for posing, equipment, etc. Now it just takes so long because you have to treat every single model individually, finding the right parts on the sprues and deciphering the instructions. No two models ever seem to go together the same. That alone has led to build times more than doubling for me. Then there's all the tactical rocks and "dynamic" poses, that mean your models ironically end up looking much more uniform than they previously did. For example, the new JP Intercessors are all jumping off rocks or surging forward in distinctive poses. That's fine(ish) for the first 5. Want more than that? They're all going to look really, really obviously the same. Combine that with the difficulty in making major adjustments to those poses, and I find many newer GW armies look less interesting than older ones where the individual models may have been more restricted in posing, but the overall effect was much, much better.

As a practical example of the annoyance of the modern models, I was "converting" the new Gravis Apothecary to a Deathwatch one, which is just a simple shoulder pad swap. I did it with the 8th edition Intercessors who had moulded pads attached to the arms and it wasn't too bad - a few minutes with a knife to carve the old pad off was all it took. The new Apothecary? Hell no. His arm is attached at the elbow to the main body, then the shoulder pad sits precariously on top of that lower arm assembly, attached by a small strip of plastic, so it can be slotted over the should joint on the main body. So I had to glue the whole thing up, wait for it to dry, then carefully carve away without removing too much of the support post beneath and being careful that the weird elbow joint remained intact while avoiding damaging the cable that goes from the specimen jar he's carrying to his backpack. (Aside: why is that jar attached to his backpack? Isn't that a really bad idea in combat?) It wasn't too bad, but every single part of the procedure just left me wondering what the hell was going on with the build design on these things. I know it's all done by computers now, but at some point some human intervention might be good. The computer that decided Mephiston's cloak needed a tiny sliver of extra material to be separate at the back needs its hard drive reformatted and consigned to a life of monitoring the office coffee machine.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
People who think Dakka is a cesspool of negativity have lived a very sheltered life on the internet.

Right?

And, stranger still, are the people who hang around here to continue telling everyone how negative it is.

ccs wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Complete tripe. You can still absolutely kitbash, you just can't swap Marine torso and legs anymore which is apparently the only thing that counts as kitbashing.

Speaking of complete tripe....

I sat down to build the new Terminators a few weeks ago, got through 2 (of 5) and haven't gone back to them since. They have 5-piece legs, but only go together one way, and only fit with one specific torso.

GW infantry models just aren't fun to build anymore. They're a jigsaw puzzle with too many parts for not enough customisability.

My understanding is the weird pieces and combinations were done to make it harder for recasters and 3d printers to copy the GW product. but in all honesty most good 3d print designers have better designs than GW has now anyway.

Slipspace wrote:
The computer that decided Mephiston's cloak needed a tiny sliver of extra material to be separate at the back needs its hard drive reformatted and consigned to a life of monitoring the office coffee machine.

Must be the same computer that did the first lots of Ten Thunders for Wyrd and had Yan-Lo's beard be a separate piece...

To answer the OP :

Dakkadakka follows exactly the same path as another dedicated forum in my country (it's the french equivalent of Dakkadakka). I've been present on this forum for over 15 years and I hardly ever go there anymore. Why ? Because it's become a nest of boomers (not in age, but in terms of mentality, it has).

Discussions have become sterile because they all revolve around the modern direction taken by GW games. Not that GW games are free of flaws, quite the opposite, and I have plenty of criticisms of my own. But the criticisms I read sound old to such an extent that I don't recognize myself in them. Most of the people I talk to think that scenarios with objectives are abominations, I don't. Many of them miss the days of the 2nd edition, which had a more "role-playing" feel to it, not me (not only am I too young to have experienced it, but I don't see the point of it compared to a real role-playing game). They regret that GW follows its games much more actively (dataslate, metawatch, etc) because it changes "too often", not me. They vilify tournament players (I'm not one, mind you), which for them is a catch-all term encompassing both real competitors and players looking to optimize their list (with comments almost identical to those of the author of the mind-boggling topic "Worried about tournament players at my store").

I've even read on this forum that Youtube (they're fixated on Youtube as a social media which already shows the old man mentality) was absolute evil because it made netlisting very easy (and that Youtube only encouraged optimization which ruined their childhood hobby). Needless to say many of them hate Goonhammer with passion. Come.on.

I'm even more puzzled because a sizeable proportion of its aging population attribute all these ills to the Americans and their influence on the game, and to the toxicity of the American spirit, which is said to be naturally oriented towards competition (whereas, as I still hang around Dakkadakka, I can see that the criticisms levelled at GW games are largely identical and are also voiced by many Americans).

And Dakkadakka follows the same path. Slowly but surely. But why ? Because it's simply a generation gap.

When we disagree on what GW games, miniatures, etc should be, something so fundamental, what meaningful discussion can we have together ? Dakkadakka is negativity incarnated, as is the other forum I'm talking about. But that's to be expected since many, many of its users dislike the modern direction taken by GW games.

But I'm tired of that because I don't share this sentiment. So I decided to look elsewhere, to find other communities that would better meet my expectations.

 aphyon wrote:
My understanding is the weird pieces and combinations were done to make it harder for recasters and 3d printers to copy the GW product. but in all honesty most good 3d print designers have better designs than GW has now anyway.

If that's the case, it hasn't worked.

Dakka has become a home for old people hating on a game the don't even play anymore.

Most regular posters here are so far detached from the game that they can't even play armchair-general anymore.
A good number of them are blatantly lying about their experience with newer editions, unaware that anyone with any real experience can tell easily.
They never get tired complaining about both the things that change and the things that don't change, repeating the same pet-peeves over and over like a broken record.
Rejecting all change, they instead hate those willing to adapt as traitors.

A small hand full happily plays old editions, Horus Heresy or homebrews, but not the same ones, so there is little to nothing to talk about for them.
They are joined by a bunch of bitter ones which also like old editions, but are unable to find games for them, despite being great people to play with (according to themselves).

Many pillars of the community have been driven out by people dog-piling on them for actually liking the thing they do in their free time.
Rumor mongers were called frauds and accused of faking until they stopped posting.
Thinly veiled personal attacks, gaslighting, arguments in bad faith and rampant racism have driving out pretty much all people generating worthwhile content, as well as many others. Real discussions have disappeared from dakka years ago.

With content being reduced to the same three discussions going in circles, new players have no interest in wasting their time here when lots of interesting and new content is easily available on other platforms.

Speaking of, some of the most toxic people never tire to claim how great and perfect dakka is and how all new platforms are terrible, failing to reflect upon themselves to understand that the self-moderations mechanisms of those platforms are punishing them for good reasons.

The one remaining mod who actually cared for the 40k forums in the last couple of years never stood a chance and instead struggles to punish trivial violations of the ancient forum rules which today sound just as ridiculous as woman's rights from the 50s.

There also is zero drive from the page owners to invest anything into dakka beyond the bare minimum. Web standards like easy image uploads, sharing media and mobile compatibility would greatly enhance the page, but are missing.

For all these reasons, dakka is slowly but steadily dying. And despite me spending years here, I will honestly and truly rejoice on the day dakkadakka.com will offline for good. The only thing missed will be the ork emojis.

Congratulations, denizens of dakka, you killed your own hobby.

Oh, yeah really? Old and bitter and racist too?

Don't pull your punches, because you come across as really well rounded and not at all bitter cheering for the death of the website.

 Jidmah wrote:

Thinly veiled personal attacks, gaslighting, arguments in bad faith and rampant racism have driving out pretty much all people generating worthwhile content, as well as many others. Real discussions have disappeared from dakka years ago.

Pardon?

Unless you're referring to racism against Xenos, I think I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for that one.

I actually think the moderation has improved on dakka, just thin and a small team.

I would probably chat with them more on issues if I didn’t feel bad for how much work it must generate.



On to 40K honestly I think some of the issues is they take so long to catch up to modern standards, that it is still stagnating a fair bit.
They barely touch any of there interesting themes or ideas, and settle for rather boring tropes and fantasy.

40K has a lot of words saying nothing, and when they have some good ideas they often leave them for years. Waiting for a mini team to get a idea to sell.

Apple fox wrote:
I actually think the moderation has improved on dakka, just thin and a small team.

I would probably chat with them more on issues if I didn’t feel bad for how much work it must generate.

We are woefully understaffed and yes, coverage right now is spotty to put it generously, but I'd rather people keep on filing reports and sending in what ails them if they feel they need to say something instead of letting things fester.



On topic, 10th edition has killed my interest in 40k for the time being, though this is coming from a Guard player, so yeah. 😓

 vipoid wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Thinly veiled personal attacks, gaslighting, arguments in bad faith and rampant racism have driving out pretty much all people generating worthwhile content, as well as many others. Real discussions have disappeared from dakka years ago.

Pardon?

Unless you're referring to racism against Xenos, I think I'm going to have to ask for some evidence for that one.

I don't know about "rampant" but there was a thread recently about model diversity that had some uh, phrenologists, explaining that yes, at 28mm scale, there would be pronounced facial differences between different races and just painting models with varying skin tones would be the ACTUAL racism.

Selfcontrol wrote:
To answer the OP :

Dakkadakka follows exactly the same path as another dedicated forum in my country (it's the french equivalent of Dakkadakka). I've been present on this forum for over 15 years and I hardly ever go there anymore. Why ? Because it's become a nest of boomers (not in age, but in terms of mentality, it has).

Discussions have become sterile because they all revolve around the modern direction taken by GW games. Not that GW games are free of flaws, quite the opposite, and I have plenty of criticisms of my own. But the criticisms I read sound old to such an extent that I don't recognize myself in them. Most of the people I talk to think that scenarios with objectives are abominations, I don't. Many of them miss the days of the 2nd edition, which had a more "role-playing" feel to it, not me (not only am I too young to have experienced it, but I don't see the point of it compared to a real role-playing game). They regret that GW follows its games much more actively (dataslate, metawatch, etc) because it changes "too often", not me. They vilify tournament players (I'm not one, mind you), which for them is a catch-all term encompassing both real competitors and players looking to optimize their list (with comments almost identical to those of the author of the mind-boggling topic "Worried about tournament players at my store").

I've even read on this forum that Youtube (they're fixated on Youtube as a social media which already shows the old man mentality) was absolute evil because it made netlisting very easy (and that Youtube only encouraged optimization which ruined their childhood hobby). Needless to say many of them hate Goonhammer with passion. Come.on.

I'm even more puzzled because a sizeable proportion of its aging population attribute all these ills to the Americans and their influence on the game, and to the toxicity of the American spirit, which is said to be naturally oriented towards competition (whereas, as I still hang around Dakkadakka, I can see that the criticisms levelled at GW games are largely identical and are also voiced by many Americans).

And Dakkadakka follows the same path. Slowly but surely. But why ? Because it's simply a generation gap.

When we disagree on what GW games, miniatures, etc should be, something so fundamental, what meaningful discussion can we have together ? Dakkadakka is negativity incarnated, as is the other forum I'm talking about. But that's to be expected since many, many of its users dislike the modern direction taken by GW games.

But I'm tired of that because I don't share this sentiment. So I decided to look elsewhere, to find other communities that would better meet my expectations.

Oh hey, salut l'ami! Happy to have french references here.

Never was much on french forums, only read it way back for modelling and tacticas but they were already mostly old and offline
S
@Jidmah why are you even posting in here in that case? I lmean, if you're THAT bitter about this forum, that sounds at least somewhat masochistic.

My guess is that people went looking for echo chambers as overall user sensitivity can't handle dissenting opinions

I will agree that this website is near impossible to read and write on a phone, so I typically don't.
And also, yes a lot of people play old editions and their own homebrews but there's enough crossplay that they chime in on the main game. After all, if GW does finally have a great idea, I'm sure many would want to add it to their homebrew.

I'm not going to dispute the claims of a vet with almost 20k posts but being doom and gloom about the forum is just as bad as being negative or cynical about the hobby. The difference is that GW is the evil empire and we are the peasants.

Some people like a healthy dose of cynicism, some don't, takes all sorts as they say. If forums are just here for cynical ol grognards harking back to their day then I'm for it.

 Jidmah wrote:

Congratulations, denizens of dakka, you killed your own hobby.

Only if your hobby is bitching about a game you don't play....

MY hobby? Is playing miniatures games. I don't need Dakka for that.

 kingpbjames wrote:
I will agree that this website is near impossible to read and write on a phone, so I typically don't.

I don't find that to be the case at all. I do most of my interaction with dakka on my phone. It's clearly not optimized for mobile, but it's still usable, at least for me.

Dakka works on phone, not flawlessly, but good enough.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Congratulations, denizens of dakka, you killed your own hobby.

Only if your hobby is bitching about a game you don't play....

MY hobby? Is playing miniatures games. I don't need Dakka for that.

Plus its not like GW is the hobby by itself. Most true wargamers will have some sort of interest in besides 40k. In fact, maybe if the wargaming scene was less GW centered it would probably be way more cheerful, and not in the cringe fashion.

True Wargamer is anyone who wants to be part of the war gaming hobby, if just playing 40K or lots of other games.
I don’t think it makes someone less legitimate within the hobby.

But I do think 40K and GW itself being so dominant in the hobby is a big detriment as a whole.

For anyone having issues with the site on a mobile device I highly recommend not using the dakkalite/mobile friendly theme but one of the others. Ironic I know but it works better for me, no tiny text.
If you do not know how to change theme, its a button on the second header called 'switch theme', should be the extreme right hand one.

Hope that helps.

 aphyon wrote:
My understanding is the weird pieces and combinations were done to make it harder for recasters and 3d printers to copy the GW product. ...

While admittedly not having access to the inner workings of the GW design studio, I would be confident in saying that's not the reason. For one, it doesn't do that. For two, the real reason for it is apparent from looking at the models themselves... They stopped sculpting for a specific parts count in plastic, and instead started designing models to be as detailed as possible and then cutting them up into as many pieces as is necessary to cast the end result in plastic. The huge number of parts and weird join lines are a side effect of that. The end result is plastic models that look as good as metal models... but that are fiddly to build and less simple to customise.

Although it's possibly worth pointing out that fiddly plastic models are still easier to kitbash than the metal models that many of us started with.


I wonder if part of the problem there is that many of the current community are new enough to have missed the metal conversion period, and so the skills needed to do those sorts of conversions aren't showcased as much, leading to people just not knowing it's actually a thing. Maybe it's time to start boosting threads in the P&M section featuring green stuff work...

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:


Oh hey, salut l'ami! Happy to have french references here.

Never was much on french forums, only read it way back for modelling and tacticas but they were already mostly old and offline

Salut à toi également

There's still one which is a quite a bit active. But the community hardly ever renews itself.

 ingtaer wrote:
For anyone having issues with the site on a mobile device I highly recommend not using the dakkalite/mobile friendly theme but one of the others. Ironic I know but it works better for me, no tiny text.
If you do not know how to change theme, its a button on the second header called 'switch theme', should be the extreme right hand one.

Hope that helps.

I would second this. I use the regular Dakka 2012 theme on my phone.

IIRC, the mobile theme wasn't a complete mobile site build, it was just the regular theme with a lot of the extra bits and pieces stripped out or tucked behind links to increase screen real estate and boost loading time, as that was the best that Lego had the programming time for, and it's always been a little buggy.

 ingtaer wrote:
For anyone having issues with the site on a mobile device I highly recommend not using the dakkalite/mobile friendly theme but one of the others. Ironic I know but it works better for me, no tiny text.
If you do not know how to change theme, its a button on the second header called 'switch theme', should be the extreme right hand one.

Hope that helps.

I concur, I used to struggle but some day randomly put on the orange dakka theme and suddenly it got better

The younger of us (including me) just got done with college finals. Older generations are looking to their families.