10th edition wishlisting/"How do we fix this mess?" thread

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Putrid Choir said:

Weird how the game was more popular and had higher sales then after they got rid of it and large swathes of people (myself and my gaming group included) came back to the hobby because of it.

Wait you mean a game that was growing in popularity continued to grow even after a mechanic was removed.

 

you quit the hobby because of the initiative mechanic? That’s hilarious.

now I’d love to see your source that supports your claim ‘a large swathe’ came back because the mechanic was removed.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

7th edition was close to the end - lots of people stopped playing 40K including myself. 8th edition brought many players old and new back. Dropping initiative was just part of the appeal for many. So there are some here that miss it - it’s in no way indicative of what the majority feel.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Black Blow Fly

[Special Officer Doofy]

45 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Wait you mean a game that was growing in popularity continued to grow even after a mechanic was removed.

 

you quit the hobby because of the initiative mechanic? That’s hilarious.

now I’d love to see your source that supports your claim ‘a large swathe’ came back because the mechanic was removed.

I never said I quit because of it. I said I came back after it's removal, along with the removal of templates, removal of AV and some other changes. It's a forum about toy soldiers, you need to calm down a little. And I don't have to prove anything, large swathes of people did come back in 8th edition, you only need to look at GW's earning reports from 8th edition on and compare it to before.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Putrid Choir

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

12 minutes ago, Putrid Choir said:

I never said I quit because of it. I said I came back after it's removal, along with the removal of templates, removal of AV and some other changes. It's a forum about toy soldiers, you need to calm down a little. And I don't have to prove anything, large swathes of people did come back in 8th edition, you only need to look at GW's earning reports from 8th edition on and compare it to before.

yes, there's a lot of reasons for people to have come back in 8th. i came back in 8th, partially because of covid, partially because i couldn't find another game in a similar scale with any where near the customization.
ok, i got it. you just want to make claims that support your opinion, but you don't want actually have any evidence to support those claims.

well if we're going to have this discussion like that, almost everyone loved initiative, AV, and templates, and were enraged when they were removed! 

[Special Officer Doofy]

12 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

yes, there's a lot of reasons for people to have come back in 8th. i came back in 8th, partially because of covid, partially because i couldn't find another game in a similar scale with any where near the customization.
ok, i got it. you just want to make claims that support your opinion, but you don't want actually have any evidence to support those claims.

well if we're going to have this discussion like that, almost everyone loved initiative, AV, and templates, and were enraged when they were removed! 

In your made up situation it would be weird how people were enraged but spent more money than ever on Warhammer and got more engaged. Like I said the evidence is there if you would like to look at pre and post sales of 8th. Your choice to look or not, I got nothing to prove to a rando on the internet. I'm just saying they removed stuff like initiative, AV and templates, and more people play now than they did then, and their sales have only gone up.

[Lemondish]

Not to really harp on the people that didn't like Initiative, but it did behave more intuitively than the current system with greater opportunity for nuance.

Of course, that's only one way to solve the problem of wordy rules like fights first and fights last and fights in between.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Putrid Choir said:

In your made up situation it would be weird how people were enraged but spent more money than ever on Warhammer and got more engaged. Like I said the evidence is there if you would like to look at pre and post sales of 8th. Your choice to look or not, I got nothing to prove to a rando on the internet. I'm just saying they removed stuff like initiative, AV and templates, and more people play now than they did then, and their sales have only gone up.

so first you equate the two, then you disassociate the two.  good job. sales also have nothing to do with rules considering many people only build and paint, and during the pandemic few people were actually playing due to national, regional, and municipal restrictions on in person activities, but during that period sales skyrocketed indicating interest in the hobby had little if anything to do with any of the rules. again you tried to make a baseless claim in order to support your position, and apparently didnt expect to get called out for it?

oh well, i'm done trying to debate with someone who argues by pulling stuff out of their arse.

[Special Officer Doofy]

2 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

so first you equate the two, then you disassociate the two.  good job. sales also have nothing to do with rules considering many people only build and paint, and during the pandemic few people were actually playing due to national, regional, and municipal restrictions on in person activities, but during that period sales skyrocketed indicating interest in the hobby had little if anything to do with any of the rules. again you tried to make a baseless claim in order to support your position, and apparently didnt expect to get called out for it?

oh well, i'm done trying to debate with someone who argues by pulling stuff out of their arse.

I quit the hobby when my friend group did, they all had their various reasons (lots of hobby butterflies), I had mine but it was mostly they quit and I enjoyed playing with them. With the changes to the core game in 8th and the removal of said stuff, it was enough to get me to come back and my group slowly trickled back as well. So I didn't quit because of it, but I came back because they got rid of it. Hope that clears that part up. 

And you're right, sales going up doesn't directly correspond to any one thing they do. But sales were up in 8th before covid hit, so we can even exclude that (but yes covid + free time = more sales for them). They made changes to the core game and the majority responded positively to the changes. More people joining the game after the changes doesn't mean everyone joined because of those changes obviously, but it shows that those changes were for the better or people weren't that attached to them in the first place.

So hence my original statement. GW put it in the dirt and the game became more popular. Doesn't mean the game became more popular just because of those changes, but it shows those changes didn't negatively affect them and it shows those who stayed on didn't mind the change enough to quit.

So do you have any evidence that supports a majority of players prefer initiative, AV's and templates?

Edited August 22, 2022 by Putrid Choir
Grammar

[Evil Eye]

8th sold well because it moved to a far more accessible/easy-to-learn format, and removing initiative, templates and AV were part of that. Initially I was OK with this, however in retrospect I see now it was a huge mistake. GW saw the sales boost and decided that attracting more immediate splurge sales from new players was more profitable than catering to existing fans. Thus the desire to attract more and more new players regardless of whether they actually stay in the hobby for very long. The problem with this is it's not a sustainable system, as very quickly you run out of new players to attract. GW attempted to course correct but in doing so simply brought back the bloat everyone hated from 7th without actually adding any real depth (because 7th had many flaws but DID have a great degree of customization and depth of mechanics- just not particularly well executed ones). To try and mask over this problem we get the absurd ADHD update cycle and it panders directly to "competitive" players, with stuff like Metawatch giving the illusion of balance and competitive viability when they do not exist. Again, they've chosen this market because their desire to splurge on whole armies when the meta shifts is very profitable, and the more it shifts the more they profit. Again it's short-sighted as these players will eventually wise up and get sick of building an entire army every month as their old one gets rendered "non-competitive" by GW's updates, leaving GW in need of another "splurge" fanbase.

40K 8th onwards was an easy-to-learn system that soon became anything but, and then shifted track onto being a competitive tabletop videogame despite being really bad at doing this. All the while GW focuses on player turnover for maximum profit rather than keeping a dedicated, core fanbase happy, and all the while they try and do thing they're really REALLY bad at- and that arguably 40K itself is not compatible with (spoiler alert, a game based around as many factions, subfactions and units within those factions cannot be particularly simple or competitively balanced without wiping out a lot of what makes it interesting) the game is doomed. Sure they might profit in the short term but that won't last forever. A business can only afford to upset so many customers after all...

[Misterduch]

18 hours ago, Black Blow Fly said:

Like I said using initiative is unfair. I’m glad it no longer exists.

How is it unfair lmao.

That's like complaining about marines being T4 because your guys are T3 or that guardsmen have a worse save then marines. Sure some armies had worse Initiative, but they had other strengths to make up for it.

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by Misterduch

[Misterduch]

8 hours ago, Putrid Choir said:

Initiative can stay in the dirt with AV and templates. Kind of weird to assume people who dislike initiative are the minority. There's a reason it went away.

Let us not pretend that removing AV made the vehicles any better when most of 8/9ed has had them in the trash tier of most armies.

[Special Officer Doofy]

Just now, Misterduch said:

Let us not pretend that removing AV made the vehicles any better when most of 8/9ed has had them in the trash tier of most armies.

Eh that's more the individual codexes faults, which to me is the biggest issue in the game right now. I played death guard and my DG vehicles were doing fine (never bothered with a land Raider or predator cause the models are dated and bad compared to the rest). Don't get me wrong to any decision the company makes there is always pros and cons. I think not having to argue with what side a shot is on a vehicle alone is enough for me to never want to go back to AV and vehicle facings.

[Lemondish]

3 hours ago, Putrid Choir said:

I think not having to argue with what side a shot is on a vehicle alone is enough for me to never want to go back to AV and vehicle facings.

If the power and viability of vehicles is the fault of codexes, then I think this experience is the fault of who you're playing with.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

4 hours ago, Putrid Choir said:

Eh that's more the individual codexes faults, which to me is the biggest issue in the game right now. I played death guard and my DG vehicles were doing fine (never bothered with a land Raider or predator cause the models are dated and bad compared to the rest). Don't get me wrong to any decision the company makes there is always pros and cons. I think not having to argue with what side a shot is on a vehicle alone is enough for me to never want to go back to AV and vehicle facings.

AV, and vehicle facings are two separate subjects.

replacing AV for T, and capping T so low was just a bad idea.

having T stop at 7 and AV start at 8 with some built in rules to make vehicles more durable would make perfect sense.

[Noserenda]

Nah, just reading the new AoD book brought back so many bad memories of the old vehicle rules being a :cuss:show, even if tanks were more viable im not sure it would be worth it even speaking as a big armour fan. I think they are a victim of the current extreme lethality of 9th edition which is particularly dangerous for big lumps like vehicles compared to dispersed infantry and the like, but then there have always been editions where vehicles suffered or thrived, regardless of the rules basis.

[WrathOfTheLion]

The no model/no rules thing they're doing is quite annoying to players as well. You get things like the Chaos Lord with jump pack, who was sold just weeks before the CSM codex, but then gets moved to Legends. All the loadout restrictions, whilst they make subpar kit options to layer on the annoyance. Would love to see that go away. If they're going to do stuff like that, they need to not do things like go skimpy on the weapon options like in the CSM Terminators and then restrict the datasheet to match the barebones options included.

Edited August 22, 2022 by WrathOfTheLion

[Dont-Be-Haten]

I quit playing 7th edition because of faction bias and broken formations. sub 2,000 point lists with 3-4 Wraith Knights or that Codex: Space Marines got excellent formations while the the rest of us got squat, or were so taxed on unit choice it was unfair. And then they did away with that trash and I came back in 8th. It had nothing to do with losing AV, Initiative, or Templates. 

I summarize that perhaps that had much more to do with the swelling of people playing and/or coming back. The people who don't want templates back are those that argue there's 4 dudes not 5 under that template. When clearly there's 5, or it puts them at a disadvantage.

I also see a lot of arguing, but not much insight on what they feel would fix 40k. I do find it interesting that those offering suggestions, and are encouraged by the better rules of AoD are met with such strong negative feedback, yet do not contest how they want the game to play. If 40k goes more Age of Sigmar I think you'll lose a larger following than gaining more or staying the course. Streamlined rules which allows troops to kill elite choices at a lower point mark isn't good for the game, i.e. what 7th edition did, what 9th edition is doing. 

 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Bringing back initiative won’t "fix" 40K.

[Stealth_Hobo]

35 minutes ago, Noserenda said:

Nah, just reading the new AoD book brought back so many bad memories of the old vehicle rules being a :cuss:show, even if tanks were more viable im not sure it would be worth it even speaking as a big armour fan. I think they are a victim of the current extreme lethality of 9th edition which is particularly dangerous for big lumps like vehicles compared to dispersed infantry and the like, but then there have always been editions where vehicles suffered or thrived, regardless of the rules basis.

Yeah, vehicles did fluctuate in usefulness in previous editions. For example, in 3rd ed. rhino-rush was a thing, but in 4th ed. rhinos were considered to be death traps. I'm not sure if GW ever found a sweet spot for vehicles in older editions.

Nowadays, a lot of vehicles are not worth their points for their killyness or survivability. I'm sure their old durability could be emulated with rules changes instead going back to AV. Maybe make it so that weapons with low strength can't wound them (like, strength lower or equal of vehicle's toughness). Or give some weapons anti-armor keyword and they gain bonuses against vehicles, or weapons without the keyword gain penalties against them. I don't know, it's not my job to come up with the rules. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

26 minutes ago, Black Blow Fly said:

Bringing back initiative won’t "fix" 40K.

Alone no, but it will solve one of the many problems. To fix something you need to solve the problems with it.

 

and yet again you’re not actually adding anything productive to the conversation.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

27 minutes ago, Stealth_Hobo said:

Yeah, vehicles did fluctuate in usefulness in previous editions. For example, in 3rd ed. rhino-rush was a thing, but in 4th ed. rhinos were considered to be death traps. I'm not sure if GW ever found a sweet spot for vehicles in older editions.

Nowadays, a lot of vehicles are not worth their points for their killyness or survivability. I'm sure their old durability could be emulated with rules changes instead going back to AV. Maybe make it so that weapons with low strength can't wound them (like, strength lower or equal of vehicle's toughness). Or give some weapons anti-armor keyword and they gain bonuses against vehicles, or weapons without the keyword gain penalties against them. I don't know, it's not my job to come up with the rules. 

I’ve been preaching for a while now weapons with S half a unit’s T should be completely unable to harm them.

if you want weaker weapons to have some sort of effect maybe still use the current methods to wound, but instead of causing a wound, it causes a temporary debuff of some sort, sort of like the old shaken or stunned rules. 
something like this 

If a weapon’s S is half or less than the target’s T, it cannot cause a wound. Instead when rolling to wound, on a 6+ the target is stunned, and on a 5+ it is shaken.

stunned- cannot receive orders, use auras, or be subject of stratagems, -1 to M and and -1 to hit for one turn

shaken- -1 to M and -1 to hit for one turn.

these effects are not stackable.

combined with increasing the T ceiling to at least 10 and I think vehicles will have a much better time in the game.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Schlitzaf]

Those problems imply need to be solved: Also Issue with the Initiative System at Core.

1) Utterly Irrelavent or Bad Feels Relavence. Ie I charge Elder whosehewhatit with my Marines. A few dice god cats sacrificed later: all my marines are dead cause even Gaurdians and Avengers are I5. Or if Orks charged still no I4 so :(. Conversely, if you were I4 it functionally did nothing in alot of cases. As struck same time as opponent AND had annoying bookkeeping “these died but not died”

2) Killing self out of combat. Raise Hand if you killed your power fists out of combat? And by extensjon who enjoyed plauing musical models with sometimes having to mulitiole pile in when squads have varied initiatives?

3) Rules that triggered on initiative had such obscene level variances from worthless to scoop. Jaws being the classic example. But even beyond that, Frag Grenades “I strike at initiative” “oh I am mono power fist or vs aeldari, actually irrelavent”

Initiative supposed to represent “how” fast units/models move. Under his stress situations. Flavorfully it did that somewhat well but created bad feels or poor player experiences. The various abilities and movement stats of 8th and 9th do it just as well. 
 

———

And your solution for vehicles fails to understand why the change happened in the first place. So you don’t have games where folks go “Well, I can do literally nothing”. And in terms for durability? 8th and 9th Ed tanks are vastly surperior to 7th ed counterparts when you compare.

A 9 SM lascannon on average to down a single rhino this edition. (And min 2 shots). 
 

vs 7th ed and earlier lascannons? You need around 6-7 shots on average but min 1 Shot. 

Edited August 22, 2022 by Schlitzaf

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

6 minutes ago, Schlitzaf said:

Those problems imply need to be solved: Also Issue with the Initiative System at Core.

1) Utterly Irrelavent or Bad Feels Relavence. Ie I charge Elder whosehewhatit with my Marines. A few dice god cats sacrificed later: all my marines are dead cause even Gaurdians and Avengers are I5. Or if Orks charged still no I4 so :(. Conversely, if you were I4 it functionally did nothing in alot of cases. As struck same time as opponent AND had annoying bookkeeping “these died but not died”

2) Killing self out of combat. Raise Hand if you killed your power fists out of combat? And by extensjon who enjoyed plauing musical models with sometimes having to mulitiole pile in when squads have varied initiatives?

3) Rules that triggered on initiative had such obscene level variances from worthless to scoop. Jaws being the classic example. But even beyond that, Frag Grenades “I strike at initiative” “oh I am mono power fist or vs aeldari, actually irrelavent”

Initiative supposed to represent “how” fast units/models move. Under his stress situations. Flavorfully it did that somewhat well but created bad feels or poor player experiences. The various abilities and movement stats of 8th and 9th do it just as well. 
 

———

And your solution for vehicles fails to understand why the change happened in the first place. So you don’t have games where folks go “Well, I can do literally nothing”. And in terms for durability? 8th and 9th Ed tanks are vastly surperior to 7th ed counterparts when you compare.

A 9 SM lascannon on average to down a single rhino this edition. (And min 2 shots). 
 

vs 7th ed and earlier lascannons? You need around 6-7 shots on average but min 1 Shot. 

Did you actually read my post?

under my system there’d be no ‘well I can’t use my vehicle now’ moments because no effect would make them unusable(except destroying them)

as for your feel bad moments, the same can be said for most things in the game currently, like leadership. It feels bad when when you have 3 guardsmen survive an attack just to fail a morale test and run away.

the whole game is basically just a big feel bad moment according to that logic.

oh no, I charged but this unit had a fight first/last rule I didn’t know about, so now I don’t get the advantage I expected.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Oh yeah and remove degrading profiles

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

33 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Alone no, but it will solve one of the many problems. To fix something you need to solve the problems with it.

 

and yet again you’re not actually adding anything productive to the conversation.

Honestly I don’t know why you’re so focused on initiative being a problem. It’s really not - this thread is actually the first I’ve seen anyone complain about it. I’d also like to kindly ask that you dial down the vitriol a bit - it does nothing to make your arguments more convincing.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Black Blow Fly