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People keep pointing out that units come with with their rules in the box. But even that isn't necessarily helpful - the Goliath truck I bought in October has rules for whichever edition last used hull points and armour facing, which are not much good to anyone in 9th edition.

 

I have the GSC codex, so it's not an issue for me. But if I were trying to play with only free rules, I wouldn't be able to use my new model.

Which is why I admire what they did previously with Age of Sigmar: the free core rules and pdfs were actually enough to play a basic game, and available for download if you bought an older box. I guess they didn’t feel this was enough of a success to roll out for 40k. I’m not even sure if AoS 3 is going with this system.

I’m not even sure if AoS 3 is going with this system.

I can't see PDF downloads on the couple of units I checked on the UK site (one of the new Stormcast boxes, and the Spirit Hosts and Skeletons boxes) - the tab that was there previously is missing. :(

Edited by Firedrake Cordova

The free warscrolls have fallen foul of GWs recent schemes to drive everyone to warhammer+ (The apps in this case) unfortunately, to considerable outrage from that community. Which is a shame because i liked them for planning new armies. Less new armies then i guess.

The free warscrolls have fallen foul of GWs recent schemes to drive everyone to warhammer+ (The apps in this case) unfortunately, to considerable outrage from that community. Which is a shame because i liked them for planning new armies. Less new armies then i guess.

 

The warscrolls are now available in a single place as opposed to hundreds of individual downloads on the website.

 

Otherwise, they were still available in the older AoS app previously too.

The warscrolls are now available in a single place as opposed to hundreds of individual downloads on the website.

If they are available in a single place now (the app) where you have to look at hundreds of individual entries (presumably with data downloading per entry when you do so - unless the app downloads every single unit scroll to your device from the start and never replaces them - as the replacement would require a data download), then it’s the same as it used to be - a single place (the GW AoS page) to get all the entries via hundreds of individual downloads.

 

The change being now is you have to pay for the access (Internet access being paid for remains the same for both, so that hasn’t changed) to those individual downloads.

 

————————————————————

 

The rules being free won’t stop people complaining though - it will just cause a different group of people to complain.

 

Something to consider as well - if the rules are free, GW may consider changing things more readily, whether that’s rules or fluff.  The people that like the “consistency of 40K” and already have an issue with the changes GW has made (game or fluff) should consider that if they are part of the contingent looking for free rules - GW may be prompted to experiment and change things even more if they no longer feel constrained by outdating written rule books in even short (to us) three-four year cycles.  They may also want to charge you for lore books, etc., which may prompt more changes to the lore more quickly so that you need to buy those books to keep current with the lore - which may also prompt more IP actions taken against prominent wikis for housing written data in formats too close to the books’ written content, etc.

 

Being free may also encourage even more bloat - why even worry about streamlining rules or trying to keep them all moderately contained in three or four tomes you might need to play when everyone can access them for free on the ‘Net - then they might as well have you need to access ten plus different locations to get to the rules - can you imagine that for tournament or pick-up game play?

 

“Hold on man, can you show me that rule, I need to see how it interacts with these three things in my rules?”

”Oh jeez - it looks like the store WiFi is running slow…”

”Dang, my IP on my phone is slowing down - we’re going to have to wait a minute or two to look it up.”

(On-looker) “Hey, I’ve got those things downloaded, here, use my device…”

”Wait - do you have the index that tells us where each of these things we need to look up is?  They aren’t linked directly in the downloaded versions.”

And on, and on.

 

The free warscrolls have fallen foul of GWs recent schemes to drive everyone to warhammer+ (The apps in this case) unfortunately, to considerable outrage from that community. Which is a shame because i liked them for planning new armies. Less new armies then i guess.

 

The warscrolls are now available in a single place as opposed to hundreds of individual downloads on the website.

 

Otherwise, they were still available in the older AoS app previously too.

 

 

So a less useful and accessible format and extremely likely to be behind a paywall as soon as it comes out of beta? Oh yeah, definitely better.

 

Something to consider as well - if the rules are free, GW may consider changing things more readily, whether that’s rules or fluff.  The people that like the consistency of 40K and already have an issue with the changes GW has made should consider that if they are part of the contingent looking for free rules - GW may be prompted to experiment and change things even more if they no longer feel constrained by outdating written rule books in even short (to us) three-four year cycles.  They may also want to charge you for lore books, etc., which may prompt more changes to the lore more quickly so that you need to buy those books to keep current with the lore - which may also prompt more IP actions taken against prominent wikis for housing written data in formats too close to the books’ written content, etc.

 

I think the last few years have shown they have absolutely no compunction about making a written book outdated if they need to, you know, because they do that continuously :D 

I think the last few years have shown they have absolutely no compunction about making a written book outdated if they need to, you know, because they do that continuously :biggrin.:

Totally agree!

 

That’s why I’m bothered by the idea that they might feel there are no brakes at all…

 

Right now, GW knows that there’s a limit to what will be tolerated - 40K players continue to tolerate.  What happens when that concern for toleration goes out the window because everything rules-wise is now free?

 

Right now, they’d have to do an entire edition change if they wanted to replace how you calculate a hit on a model - without a need to do that, they could experiment with a new “To-Hit” system every four to six weeks (or faster) if they really wanted to.  Not sure I’d want to be the beta-testers for GW’s gaming experiments.

 

It doesn’t mean they would, but they could…

 

Also, if the rules are totally free, what’s the benefit for the “official rules only” crowd if a superior custom rule comes up and spreads through the community, or if different tournament groups decide to start house-ruling even more of the game system?

 

Again, not saying that will all happen if the rules were free, however, things could shift in ways we don’t even have the capability of predicting right now if GW moved to a totally free rules model (which I think we can rest assured they won’t, since they seem to be going the opposite way).

 

What I don’t think would happen (which I think some folks in the thread are assuming would) is that everything would remain exactly as it is now, except you don’t pay for anything.  There would be benefits and drawbacks, same as now, but they would be different ones - it’s not going to be all positive.

I think you may be worrying about nothing there, they can already make those changes, they DO already make those changes but they are aware they cant be shifting stuff too often if they want the game to be vaguely stable, thus annual/6 monthly patches to the game as a whole and faqs after codex releases typically unless something really egregious crops up.

The advantage of official rules is always reach, exactly the same advantage they have when people pay. 40k is much, much more popular than all its peers, and the "warhammer hobby" is pretty well cut off from "wargaming" to boot for all too many people.  Its a real gamble sometimes even committing to smaller GW games, let alone other systems but you can always find a 40k player or two.

Outside of that bubble competition is rife, there are hundreds of rules sets for popular historical periods, at all kinds of scales, often free. The same is true for generic fantasy or sci fi. Yet the industry does exist ;) 

Realistically, it is entirely possible to get all the rules for 40k and its armies/expansions for free right now, so we are already living in that reality for those with a basic grasp of google, and honestly i think thats somethign GW should embrace rather than futilely fight against, there will still be a market for physical books, if nothing else they are usually easier to actually game with! But if they run them off at cost or small profit and make the rules available cheaply or free online in various formats i think we see the best of both worlds, ultimately options are the best thing for consumers.

(And the entire rules set is just an extension of marketing anyway...)

Not worrying, trying to discuss things I haven’t seen people bring up, but I disagree that they “could” change the basics of the game within a six month period if they wanted to right now - they can’t as new Edition rule books can’t be printed quite that fast (which is where they do those big changes) - so they are limited to what they can get printed out and to market by that factor alone right now (since they now seem to refuse to do digital only rules distribution).

 

GW doesn’t want to right now anyway, and I don’t think they would in the future, after all, they just got back into the big tournament scene, but it would be much easier for their internal rules team to justify overhauls of that scale within a year/two year period over now if they did want to.

 

My point is that there are things that could be done (and more easily than now) that some might find distasteful, just like others find things GW does distasteful now - it won’t be pure sunshine and rainbows just because GW moved to free rules distribution as I feel people make it out to be sometimes.

 

I definitely agree that GW should make rules available at least cheaply online in at least one format - I’m one of those that has basically stopped buying rules from them at all at this point (honestly I’ve stopped buying a lot of things from them at this point).

I mean they actually have changed (Arguably clarified) basics of the game in FAQs, its not a theoretical exercise.

I haven’t seen them do anything like what I’m talking about, but you see things differently.

 

Again, my point is that there are things that could be done (and more easily than now) that some might find distasteful, just like others find things GW does distasteful now - it won’t be pure sunshine and rainbows just because GW moved to free rules distribution as people make it out to be sometimes.

 

 

I mean they actually have changed (Arguably clarified) basics of the game in FAQs, its not a theoretical exercise.

I haven’t seen them do anything like what I’m talking about, but you see things differently.

 

Again, my point is that there are things that could be done (and more easily than now) that some might find distasteful, just like others find things GW does distasteful now - it won’t be pure sunshine and rainbows just because GW moved to free rules distribution as people make it out to be sometimes.

Yeah but that’s sort of just a non-statement. Regardless of who is happy/unhappy with rules changes, having the rules be free would mean that at least collectively we’re not paying for GW’s bad decisions for the rules, and there would be no sunk cost for us players for bad changes.

 

Yeah but that’s sort of just a non-statement. Regardless of who is happy/unhappy with rules changes, having the rules be free would mean that at least collectively we’re not paying for GW’s bad decisions for the rules, and there would be no sunk cost for us players for bad changes.

If the rules changes are that bad, regardless of whether they are purchased or free, isn’t the only solution to not play 40K then though?

 

And as Nosrenda pointed out (and I very much agree)  - the rules themselves are a sort of marketing to begin with - without them, why buy a Heavy Intercessor squad vs. a squad of Boyz vs. a trio of Tyranid Warriors?  The only reason then would be to collect them, or to play them with another rule set, which means why buy from GW?

 

The whole 3D printed models + free rules deal is this weird spiral for everything where people are basically arguing “I’d pay for rules, but not models”, “I’d pay for models, but not rules”, “I’d pay for both, but only if they are quality”, etc.  The fact is that there’s not going to be pleasing everyone, so GW is going to keep doing what they do and people are going to keep paying.  :lol:  The alternative is to figure out some way to get the 40K stuff without paying GW, which as Nosrenda has also rightfully pointed out, you can also already do - so ultimately what’s the incentive for GW as a company?

 

I think the incentive is for them to keep doing what they do right now and people are going to keep paying…

 

 

Yeah but that’s sort of just a non-statement. Regardless of who is happy/unhappy with rules changes, having the rules be free would mean that at least collectively we’re not paying for GW’s bad decisions for the rules, and there would be no sunk cost for us players for bad changes.

If the rules changes are that bad, regardless of whether they are purchased or free, isn’t the only solution to not play 40K then though?

 

 

Bryan maybe I'm misunderstanding you; I just am trying to make the point that regardless of the quality of the rules, having them be free is only a positive for players from a cost perspective. 

 

And if you're saying (correctly, IMO) that people will be unsatisfied by the quality/rate of rules updates when they are free, how is that different than now, except that we are paying for that same situation?  Don't you think that the whole situation would be better if we could just get updates for our armies online at whatever pace? 

 

I would move this discussion past whether rules should be free (they should be) and focus more on how GW could best structure the publication of their rules, and what timetable would be ideal for players on the whole. 

 

Trying to make a profit off of their rules is ALWAYS going to compromise the quality of the game because there is always an incentive to hide rules across multiple purchases and tighten the timeline between editions, neither of which really benefit any of us.   

 

But since GW is a "modelling company" and not a rules company, they fortunately don't have to actually compromise their rules for the models they sell if they chose to prioritize cultivating rules of equal reputation to their models. 

 

And one final note--none of this would actually mean they need to stop selling physical rule books, although they might have to do so a bit more responsibly to coordinate with online updates. 

 

(SNIP)

 

Bryan maybe I'm misunderstanding you; I just am trying to make the point that regardless of the quality of the rules, having them be free is only a positive for players from a cost perspective. 

 

And if you're saying (correctly, IMO) that people will be unsatisfied by the quality/rate of rules updates when they are free, how is that different than now, except that we are paying for that same situation?  Don't you think that the whole situation would be better if we could just get updates for our armies online at whatever pace? 

 

I would move this discussion past whether rules should be free (they should be) and focus more on how GW could best structure the publication of their rules, and what timetable would be ideal for players on the whole. 

 

Trying to make a profit off of their rules is ALWAYS going to compromise the quality of the game because there is always an incentive to hide rules across multiple purchases and tighten the timeline between editions, neither of which really benefit any of us.   

 

But since GW is a "modelling company" and not a rules company, they fortunately don't have to actually compromise their rules for the models they sell if they chose to prioritize cultivating rules of equal reputation to their models. 

 

And one final note--none of this would actually mean they need to stop selling physical rule books, although they might have to do so a bit more responsibly to coordinate with online updates. 

 

 

Thats the problem though. The rules are skewed to prop up sales of the new hotness in X model(s) sales in Y quarter to impress investors. GW feel under no obligation to consistently provide good rules evenly in their game. Older players know this, which is why there is the growing belief that the rules hold no value because they are so throw away. Someone here (can't remember who), said something like "the rules are basically free, as many already pirate them anyway."  When the codexes are so recycled with art + lore, invalidated in months by campaign supplements and even that is trimmed to fit an arbitrary page count limit to make space for when a faction gets new units- its a logical reaction from the community. GW only knows how to double down, then make a scramble at the 11th hour to "fix" something to various levels of success. W+ is a start for meaningful change to rules delivery, it needs to be leveraged better- many ideas already expressed in this thread about it would make it a roaring success IMO

My personal take, (be ready for drama! oversimplifications, and most likely personal viewpoints that may or may not be align with your own! Be warned!) and I'm not sure I've said this before here or in another thread, is that GW is a business, and as a business needs to make money.

 

"Free" things cost money. From a combination of creative and development time (writing, testing etc), printing to paper for books, to creating digital copies (as well as other costs to the company, but I'll stick with these just now).

That's all upfront costs to the business. Costs that need to be make back in some form or another. 

Yes, they could give away the rules for free as other companies do, but then they would be relying on making the money back from other revenue streams. And as we've seen in other threads* people want the other things to be as close to free as possible. We can't have it all our way. We need to pay for something, somewhere. 

 

I'm sure there are probably ways in which we can get what we want (cheaper everything), as well as GW getting what they want (money, and staying in business). But providing everything for cheap or free can't work in the long term. To get to this point would require a complete restructure of how content, minis and rules are provided from the ground up.

 

One possibilty is with WH+ being the first step towards this. They get out into the mainstream with their media which helps pay the bills^ which in turn allows them to provide the rules for free and largely move away from plastic (which I would expect to be a thing soon anyway from an environmental standpoint) which could mean providing a means for 3D printing files. You'd also get all your rules, fluff and lore from your WH+ subscription, but the rules also come with the STL files/box sets that are relevant.

 

It's one way it could be done.

 

 

* - 3D print everything so GW gets nothing from us! Why are GW being so nasty with their IP, they should allow other people to make money from their IP! Pirate all the books! and on and on. I can understand the viewpoints individually, as 40k is an expensive hobby, and it's a strong enough IP that people want to play it. But the sad fact is, most hobbies are expensive. Over the past 10 years I've probably spent as much on guitar/bass stuff as I have on 40k, and probably far more on video games. I like nice things :thumbsup:

 

^ - this boycott of WH+ to me is very short sighted (no, I'm not going into that here as it's not in the remit of this thread), as the potential it can have to the hobby as a whole is massive, even if it has stuttered out the gate. 

My personal take, (be ready for drama! oversimplifications, and most likely personal viewpoints that may or may not be align with your own! Be warned!) and I'm not sure I've said this before here or in another thread, is that GW is a business, and as a business needs to make money.

 

"Free" things cost money. From a combination of creative and development time (writing, testing etc), printing to paper for books, to creating digital copies (as well as other costs to the company, but I'll stick with these just now).

That's all upfront costs to the business. Costs that need to be make back in some form or another. 

Yes, they could give away the rules for free as other companies do, but then they would be relying on making the money back from other revenue streams. And as we've seen in other threads* people want the other things to be as close to free as possible. We can't have it all our way. We need to pay for something, somewhere. 

 

This is always the weakest reasoning, that they have to make money, so they have to structure the rules badly and charge for them.  No, they don't.  You can say "they have to make money somehow!" as a reason to excuse any terrible idea they have. They could still make the game more playable with free rules, and I also already pointed out that they could also sell campaign books, etc. or even just physical copies of the books for people who want them, so it's not like it's an all-or-nothing situation.  It's just that they way they currently do things is waaay behind the curve of other smaller companies, and I like to ding them about that.

 

As for the costs of making the rules, they pay their rules writers next to nothing and profit mightily.  Yet another reason why I really balk at buying their rules any more. 

 

 

 

 

(SNIP)

But since GW is a "modelling company" and not a rules company, they fortunately don't have to actually compromise their rules for the models they sell if they chose to prioritize cultivating rules of equal reputation to their models. 

 

And one final note--none of this would actually mean they need to stop selling physical rule books, although they might have to do so a bit more responsibly to coordinate with online updates. 

 

 

Thats the problem though. The rules are skewed to prop up sales of the new hotness in X model(s) sales in Y quarter to impress investors. GW feel under no obligation to consistently provide good rules evenly in their game. Older players know this, which is why there is the growing belief that the rules hold no value because they are so throw away. Someone here (can't remember who), said something like "the rules are basically free, as many already pirate them anyway."  When the codexes are so recycled with art + lore, invalidated in months by campaign supplements and even that is trimmed to fit an arbitrary page count limit to make space for when a faction gets new units- its a logical reaction from the community. GW only knows how to double down, then make a scramble at the 11th hour to "fix" something to various levels of success. W+ is a start for meaningful change to rules delivery, it needs to be leveraged better- many ideas already expressed in this thread about it would make it a roaring success IMO

 

But they do this with paid rules too, so that's not a reason why they shouldn't be free online.  I totally agree that collectively we have all suggested so many ways they could do a better job, with both paid or free rules models. 

 

Blood bowl was freely available for a long time online. Being left alone by GW it was refined by the fans for over a pretty long period. No game is perfect but its extremely good. The rules really benefited from it.

Bryan maybe I'm misunderstanding you; I just am trying to make the point that regardless of the quality of the rules, having them be free is only a positive for players from a cost perspective. 

 

And if you're saying (correctly, IMO) that people will be unsatisfied by the quality/rate of rules updates when they are free, how is that different than now, except that we are paying for that same situation?  Don't you think that the whole situation would be better if we could just get updates for our armies online at whatever pace? 

 

I would move this discussion past whether rules should be free (they should be) and focus more on how GW could best structure the publication of their rules, and what timetable would be ideal for players on the whole. 

 

Trying to make a profit off of their rules is ALWAYS going to compromise the quality of the game because there is always an incentive to hide rules across multiple purchases and tighten the timeline between editions, neither of which really benefit any of us.   

 

But since GW is a "modelling company" and not a rules company, they fortunately don't have to actually compromise their rules for the models they sell if they chose to prioritize cultivating rules of equal reputation to their models. 

 

And one final note--none of this would actually mean they need to stop selling physical rule books, although they might have to do so a bit more responsibly to coordinate with online updates. 

 

I think the thing you are missing is that it isn’t only about being a benefit to the players, Eisenhorn - any potential situation that has a chance to actually occur is one that also benefits GW.  Making it “only a positive for players from a cost perspective” pretty much halts any discussion as being about something that legitimately may occur - just like my “this could all go south very quickly” scenario I posited earlier does - it’s not likely to just be terrible, so how far does it need to even be discussed.

 

So as you said, “I would move this discussion past whether rules should be free” and start talking about how GW could improve the rules they do issue, because unlike your supposition that the rules “should” be free, then we can talk about the actual issue - the issue isn’t whether the rules are free or not, the issue is whether the rules are good or not.

 

People generally don’t mind paying for things they consider good, and typically have a problem paying for things they consider bad.

 

The one thing I strongly believe that GW won’t consider though is giving away their whole rule set or faction rules for free - they might give away a less than usable version though (which seems to be what they do already).

 

You can already get them for free if you really want to though (you then have to decide if their value as rules is really worth doing that for you).

 

So then we get back to my earlier point “If you want to play 40K, but don’t want to play a bad rule set, isn’t the only thing you can actually do is not play the current 40K rule set by GW?”

 

There are still other options under this concept - you could play an older version of 40K that you do like more.  You could play an alternative 40K rule set by someone else.  You could play with 40K models, but use an adapted Flames of War rule set.  You could play Apocalypse rules, if you think those are better.

 

Let’s not even get into sunk cost fallacies with this if you really don’t want to play 40K any more because you can’t stand the rules that much - you can also recoup money spent on this hobby, like most hobbies.  There’s no “sunk cost” if it’s time to just cut your losses - you’ve had your enjoyment, it’s time to move on to something else and make a little back for it.

 

Regarding your point of how much they pay rules developers in GW - I have no idea what their internal pay is - I’ve never had someone I know personally actually work in that situation to tell me how much they made, so it isn’t a point I can argue one way or another.  Perhaps instead of getting rules for free just because the current situation is bad, maybe the solution there is pay more for better rules because GW is paying the rules developers more?

 

Does any of this mean the rules need to be $60 dollar game books?  No, it doesn’t - I’d definitely prefer cheaper books without color images and paper back covers like we used to get - because I actually like using those more, regardless of how long the rules in the book are good for.  I’d save the hard cover books with full color for only the collector’s editions of things.  They could probably be cheaper as well, and more people would pick more of them up (probably spending more than they do now on hard covers).  This, however, is also probably a non-starter for GW as well.

 

Blood bowl was freely available for a long time online. Being left alone by GW it was refined by the fans for over a pretty long period. No game is perfect but its extremely good. The rules really benefited from it.

I think we can rest assured that the only way GW is going to leave the rules for 40K alone and in the wild without introducing new ones is if the company is defunct and the IP isn’t picked up by any other entity - unfortunately the rules won’t be able to benefit from GW just leaving them alone and letting the players/fans refine it over a decade or more.

Regarding your point of how much they pay rules developers in GW - I have no idea what their internal pay is - I’ve never had someone I know personally actually work in that situation to tell me how much they made, so it isn’t a point I can argue one way or another.  

James Hewitt (of Adeptus Titanicus and Necromunda) said on Twitter that the pay for a games developer was £19,000, although this was before a pay review which saw salaries increase. Dunno if that helps or not. :)

James Hewitt (of Adeptus Titanicus and Necromunda) said on Twitter that the pay for a games developer was £19,000, although this was before a pay review which saw salaries increase. Dunno if that helps or not. :smile.:

I’m not sure, as a base pay that seems low converted to US dollars, but I’m also not sure if that means that’s the only pay they can get and if it’s exclusive of any other monies they can earn.

 

Sounds like pay could be higher (although for that amount, I guess I could understand the rules being in the state they are as well).

 

My personal take, (be ready for drama! oversimplifications, and most likely personal viewpoints that may or may not be align with your own! Be warned!) and I'm not sure I've said this before here or in another thread, is that GW is a business, and as a business needs to make money.

 

"Free" things cost money. From a combination of creative and development time (writing, testing etc), printing to paper for books, to creating digital copies (as well as other costs to the company, but I'll stick with these just now).

That's all upfront costs to the business. Costs that need to be make back in some form or another. 

Yes, they could give away the rules for free as other companies do, but then they would be relying on making the money back from other revenue streams. And as we've seen in other threads* people want the other things to be as close to free as possible. We can't have it all our way. We need to pay for something, somewhere.

 

This is always the weakest reasoning, that they have to make money, so they have to structure the rules badly and charge for them.  No, they don't.  You can say "they have to make money somehow!" as a reason to excuse any terrible idea they have. They could still make the game more playable with free rules, and I also already pointed out that they could also sell campaign books, etc. or even just physical copies of the books for people who want them, so it's not like it's an all-or-nothing situation.  It's just that they way they currently do things is waaay behind the curve of other smaller companies, and I like to ding them about that.

 

SNIP

 

To be fair, nowhere did I said that the need to make money was an excuse to structure the rules etc badly, or that it excuses any poor decision being made.

I was essentially saying that as a business they will do what a business does.

I agree wholeheartedly that the way things are, just isn't sustainable going forward with, on average, decreasing spare cash on the consumers part to spend on little plastic dudes. I even put forward a suggestion for a way forward.

I do like your idea of campaign books! As they could me them something really special, almost like a collectors piece as well.

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