Back to 0 Faith ...

[MegaVolt87]

9 hours ago, alfred_the_great said:

This is your bi-weekly reminder that if you’re commenting on an internet thread about how much better it was back in the day, or how to put stl weapons on another model, you are not GW’s core target. 
 

you are deep in the hobby trumpet/funnel and GW will do stuff that may or may not keep you, but not everything is aimed at you…

 

Outdated mindset, look at GW's current product range there is something there now for a majority of people who engage with warhammer. Its not a funnel anymore its a walled garden. The exit was the exit, but now the exit is into another section of the garden, leading to you guessed it another exit to another section. I would have fallen to a lapsed customer, but now I stay because of HH. Others go to the specialist games like Necromunda etc. While, individually each segment may only break even or in some cases lose money, GW is a monolith, the gains and losses are spread collectively, and GW has been on the rise for a long while now despite lagging segments. If you can swing a paintbrush, assemble a miniature and play a ruleset, I say you are GW's core target regardless how much money you are spending, end of the day its in GW's interest to have you spend something vs nothing. Modern GW has never been better now for customer retention. Also if you are having a bad time in one section of the walled garden and move to another to your liking, the walls remain but you no longer see them, same with the exit....

Edited January 24 by MegaVolt87

[Kastor Krieg]

11 hours ago, alfred_the_great said:

This is your bi-weekly reminder that if you’re commenting on an internet thread about how much better it was back in the day, or how to put stl weapons on another model, you are not GW’s core target. 
 

you are deep in the hobby trumpet/funnel and GW will do stuff that may or may not keep you, but not everything is aimed at you…

2008 called and wanted this mindset back.

11 hours ago, alfred_the_great said:

This is your bi-weekly reminder that if you’re commenting on an internet thread about how much better it was back in the day, or how to put stl weapons on another model, you are not GW’s core target. 
 

you are deep in the hobby trumpet/funnel and GW will do stuff that may or may not keep you, but not everything is aimed at you…

2008 called and wanted this mindset back.

[Borbarad]

GW would solve a lot of their problems if they would finally let go of trying to sell rule books and go digital only. 
 

They inability to write rules would still be there - mind you - but at least they could hide it from the world by being able to tweak the rules until 1 day before release and fit them to the ongoing situation. 

[sarabando]

my faith with GW is bottoming out atm due to their inability to provide required stock levels to 3rd parties both my FLGS have not had the stock for the last two big releases to even bother putting them up for sale online, one has stopped taking preorders entirely due to not getting what their customers request. 

 

until they can fix this basic supply and demand issue i dont think complaining about their rules is worth the photons its typed on. 

 

As for their core audience and "hobby trumpet/funnel" the idea that they have some how rebranded their inability to keep their customers invested is hilarious. 

[Guest]

My faith in GW had been wavering for the last few years but not for most of the reasons here.

 

I don't play so the rules have little to no effect on me, But seeing some of the replies I am glad I don't. From a layman point of view the 3 year cycle is pure murder. 

 

Take 10th for example, they scraped everything to rebuild again, now the next 3 years building back up only to destroy all again in 2 and a half years, what poor bastards are getting the last codex of this edition? 

 

But it was not this that finally just made me flip my metaphorical table... For me the tip of the iceberg was the paint swatches... Most of them are pure lies, as stupid as it sounds that was my 0 faith moment.

 

I have fully embraced 3d Printing, any moral argument I once had is well and truly out the window... I decide my hobby not GW. Does my stance on 3d printing make me a hypocrite? Probably but its a crown I will wear.

[Evil Eye]

13 hours ago, Borbarad said:

GW would solve a lot of their problems if they would finally let go of trying to sell rule books and go digital only. 
 

They inability to write rules would still be there - mind you - but at least they could hide it from the world by being able to tweak the rules until 1 day before release and fit them to the ongoing situation. 

Respectfully (emphasis mine) disagree. If the rules are crap enough that they're not worth printing in books, they're not worth playing. And as someone who actually likes books, it'd suck to lose those. Plus there's no way on Earth GW would do digital-only rules well.

[MegaVolt87]

7 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

Respectfully (emphasis mine) disagree. If the rules are crap enough that they're not worth printing in books, they're not worth playing. And as someone who actually likes books, it'd suck to lose those. Plus there's no way on Earth GW would do digital-only rules well.

 

GW are already doing the digital model for it's 40k rules well though. I exclusively used the app for my custodes in 9th and it was a good experience. I like books as well, but 40k ones just are not with buying. GW needs to either make books worth buying like in AoS, which follows the traditional model, or do a one and done libers style like HH is doing. The way things are for 40k books and rules now just isn't sustainable, it needs to change and improve dramatically. 

[Evil Eye]

5 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

 

GW are already doing the digital model for it's 40k rules well though. I exclusively used the app for my custodes in 9th and it was a good experience. I like books as well, but 40k ones just are not with buying. GW needs to either make books worth buying like in AoS, which follows the traditional model, or do a one and done libers style like HH is doing. The way things are for 40k books and rules now just isn't sustainable, it needs to change and improve dramatically. 

I won't argue with that; the 40K books aren't worth the paper they're printed on, but I'd much rather the books were actually made worth buying rather than switching over to digital. Digital copies as well would be great, but I'd rather the rules were written with paper as the "default" in mind from a perspective of "people should be able to use the contents of their books/PDFs without having to worry about them going out of date". Nothing wrong with having epubs of course, but having published rules be solid and final save for minor FAQs/errata should be the goal and having physical media as a focus helps enforce that.

 

I definitely think having actually decent rules should be the priority, regardless of format; I just feel like keeping books in the spotlight would actually help with that and would discourage GW from going full "wargames as services". The problem definitely seems to be GW's approach to the game, and I fear "just go full digital" is putting the cart before the horse a bit. If GW are doing a crummy job with the game in its current format, they'll do a crummy (if not worse!) job if it went primarily digital.

[Doghouse]

22 hours ago, Brother Captain Arkley said:

Take 10th for example, they scraped everything to rebuild again, now the next 3 years building back up only to destroy all again in 2 and a half years, what poor bastards are getting the last codex of this edition? 

 

I've heard it's Space Wolves so they can bring back Russ as the end of edition reveal. But yeah it's not a game system anymore it's a product cycle for an IP, I refuse to do 40k anymore because of this and ironically less supported games are probably a safer bet. They now make too many armies to support a three year system and the way World Eater and Guard players got dumped on with late edition releases was disgusting.

[phandaal]

2 hours ago, Doghouse said:

it's not a game system anymore it's a product cycle for an IP

 

This really is extra obvious nowadays. "Consume product and get excited for next product."

 

Only, for people who want to do more than buy and store cardboard boxes filled with plastic (and that is a real part of the fan base, to be fair), or maybe play a couple of games with unpainted plastic and then move on, the cycle time just does not work.

[SvenONE]

3 hours ago, Doghouse said:

 

But yeah it's not a game system anymore it's a product cycle for an IP

 

This, while a bit nihilistic, is a really great take, and I wholeheartedly agree. I think GW is taking too much on too soon without infrastructure in place to do it and I also wonder the staff to keep up with the "game system". Their report put their design studio at around 350 or so employees, that's not small but to manage all of these different systems I wonder how much care can really be put into writing, modelling etc. I already feel like some model poses are reskins of some other models as it is. They also have clear factory/supply issues and their website is unable to combat scalpers effectively for customers who actually genuinely care about the product. Warcom was a great change when it launched because it seemed to offer a level of transparency directly from the company, but at this point it also feels barely more than just marketing slop, which also is the same stuff they peddle to influencers who regurgitate the same stuff. Even Warhammer+/TV is starting to really slip with what it offers.

 

I'll still buy models though haha (not as often as they'd like however).

[Tymell]

On 1/21/2024 at 5:20 PM, Rain said:

The models-first approach really sucks. Contrary to popular goodthink it was not always like this either, which is what makes it even more galling.
 

The 5th ed Dark Eldar codex was full or characters that had no model, and inspired conversions. It included the Voidraven bomber which didn’t get a model for years, if memory serves. I think even the Venom took a little while to get a model, but it still had rules immediately in case people wanted to convert Vypers or whatever.

 

I think the lack of Red Butcher Terminators for World Eaters is due to similar “logic” in that they couldn’t make rules without specific models, and they couldn’t give traitors nuscale Terminators before loyalists because loyalists need to be the golden children at all times. Really kills one’s passion for the game to see the creative part of the hobby treated with active scorn.

 

Also feels like the reason the Votann army list is so pathetically tiny and dull for a brand new army. Ancestor cores forbid we create a properly fleshed-out and expansive list for the new army, we can only release so many kits at once, so everyone will just have to wait another two or three editions to actually get a decently varied list (if at all).

[Marshal Reinhard]

I've been really apprehensive about buying books ever since they asked us to get codex space marines twice in an edition.

[TheArtilleryman]

ATM they are running the game like it’s an online MMO. Releasing updates incrementally. Releasing an unfinished game and then releasing patches to fix things.

 

The difference is that if you play an MMO you get all the updates applied live and you don’t have to re-buy the game or have your original purchase invalidated. 
 

The rules balances are based on a “meta” that is set by try-hard tournament players. In an MMO, a good player will make a non-meta build work. In my local group, one guy plays Eldar and has his army built to the “meta.” He loses 90% of games. This is why I would rather they just made the rules once and be done with it.
 

I have more or less stopped buying codexes, partly because they come out too fast for the pace at which I am able to hobby and partly because they get invalidated fast. For now I’m just using BattleScribe because it is very convenient. Just hope they don’t shut it down again.

[Dr. Clock]

8 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

I won't argue with that; the 40K books aren't worth the paper they're printed on, but I'd much rather the books were actually made worth buying rather than switching over to digital. Digital copies as well would be great, but I'd rather the rules were written with paper as the "default" in mind from a perspective of "people should be able to use the contents of their books/PDFs without having to worry about them going out of date".

In counterpoint I humbly gesture at the part of history where there was no internet. We've been there. It was not as good as what is possible using the series of tubes. Deliberately retreating to 'hardcopy only' is not desirable, nor would it be feasible from a business perspective.

 

People can use their books without worrying about them going out of date. They just have to play, compromise from time to time, and not worry so much about points efficiency. Literally nobody has ever written a game rule set of this diversity and complexity without some substantial error or unintended consequence arising somewhere from lack of clarity or simple error/omission. This is why legal courts exist, and probably always will. This is why there are always independent referees for professional sports. Governing and adjudicating competitive human activities is never as straightforward as we might wish: some assembly is always required, language is never so clear as we might wish it to be.

 

Before the internet I think we all maybe more readily accepted that we had to co-create the game with the authors, and with our opponents. Finding the rules exploits or holes took longer when the internet couldn't poke holes from a billion directions at once, and we just had to decide between we two players when things inevitably got too far off keel. It feels like a combination of internet and video games has ended up placing far too much onus on 'the author' to invisibly and seamlessly produce the mechanics and narrative of the game.

 

I suppose this is all to say that I defy you to find an edition of warhammer of any stripe that was not horrifically unbalanced and/or unclear in some way as-written. And the same is true of almost any game with as many options as this, I'd suggest.

 

My understanding is that there are indeed more balanced rules available if one is so inclined. Most of them are not as detailed / narrative as 40k is or has become. I prefer playing this messy game that has all the cool fiddly miniature bits lined up with the rules bits, even though I know that I need to use caution around the most fiddly bits or else I'll just have a bad game.

 

I understand that some people want the game as it's offered in 'official writings' to align more with their narrative or mechanical preferences. To this the answer will absolutely always be to simply change the rules yourself to get the game you want to play.

 

5 hours ago, USNCenturion said:

They’ll never do this, but I wish they’d just release everything they have for the edition within one month.

As much as I would also wish for a complete restructuring of global capitalism, I am conscious that this is only a wish, not a business plan.

 

Also... They literally released all the rules you need to play the game as it existed in its entirety at the same time, for free. I think if there were literally no new releases or changes to any game or associated model lines for three years, most people would have stopped playing it in 12 months or less.

 

8 hours ago, Doghouse said:

the way World Eater and Guard players got dumped on with late edition releases was disgusting.

 

This is definitely the worst part of their cycle to me. I think they'd be well served to telegraph edition changes a bit more and make late edition rules purchases roll forward into the next edition in some way, maybe by putting those rules early in the new edition and then free online to ppl who bought one of those last 3-4 books. All books have individual codes already, so this shouldn't be that difficult. I play WE and am nearing 2k votann painted, but I did not buy those codexes because I knew the rules would be entirely unusable in the upcoming change.

 

I would tend to agree that they are too mercenary and proprietary about their rules, which their mission statement has long placed behind the miniatures. I think it's mostly that we're asked to pay for both the books and the app that bothers me the most. I don't really care that much about the books themselves these days and if there were a way to save some trees and just pay (hopefully a bit less) for the online/app pieces, I'd be plenty satisfied.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

 

Edited January 25 by Dr. Clock

[roryokane]

6 hours ago, SvenONE said:

 

This, while a bit nihilistic, is a really great take, and I wholeheartedly agree. I think GW is taking too much on too soon without infrastructure in place to do it and I also wonder the staff to keep up with the "game system". Their report put their design studio at around 350 or so employees, that's not small but to manage all of these different systems I wonder how much care can really be put into writing, modelling etc. I already feel like some model poses are reskins of some other models as it is. They also have clear factory/supply issues and their website is unable to combat scalpers effectively for customers who actually genuinely care about the product. Warcom was a great change when it launched because it seemed to offer a level of transparency directly from the company, but at this point it also feels barely more than just marketing slop, which also is the same stuff they peddle to influencers who regurgitate the same stuff. Even Warhammer+/TV is starting to really slip with what it offers.

 

I'll still buy models though haha (not as often as they'd like however).

I think you've hit the nail on the head here, and that makes me sad - it feels like the "soul" has gone out of the Hobby. especially for those of us who remember when GW used to encourage us to make our own terrain and convert our miniatures.

[alfred_the_great]

1 minute ago, roryokane said:

I think you've hit the nail on the head here, and that makes me sad - it feels like the "soul" has gone out of the Hobby. especially for those of us who remember when GW used to encourage us to make our own terrain and convert our miniatures.

You still can - literally what is stopping you?

[roryokane]

8 minutes ago, alfred_the_great said:

You still can - literally what is stopping you?

You've missed the point - it's that GW no longer ENCOURAGES it and shows us how. It's also harder to convert stuff when they discontinue the kits you need to make conversions, and also the philosophy of "not in the box so not an option" discourages it and makes it harder and or more difficult.

[Blindhamster]

2 hours ago, roryokane said:

You've missed the point - it's that GW no longer ENCOURAGES it and shows us how. It's also harder to convert stuff when they discontinue the kits you need to make conversions, and also the philosophy of "not in the box so not an option" discourages it and makes it harder and or more difficult.

I convert almost all my models... I kit bash, I use occasional printed parts, i use green stuff.

My thoughts on the attitude about parts in the box, is its typically space marine players (not you specifically, for the record, and I even include myself in that), marines have always had innordinately more options than other factions in their units, whats really happened is that those have been trimmed down, but many still have enough to be fun. Particularly with stuff like power weapons being generic again, make a unit of bladeguard with axes and round shields! would be cool! etc.

GW also absolutely do still encourage converting, they regularly have examples in white dwarf, or on the community site as well as in the battle report videos.

Similar the scenery is often non-standard.

Edited January 25 by Tyriks

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, Dr. Clock said:

I understand that some people want the game as it's offered in 'official writings' to align more with their narrative or mechanical preferences. To this the answer will absolutely always be to simply change the rules yourself to get the game you want to play.

 

This is the best move, in my opinion. And it is important to note that maybe changing the rules means playing a totally different version of 40k or a different sci-fi game altogether. We all have a lot of personal investment in this hobby, specifically the Warhammer 40k side of things, so it has to feel sometimes like we owe it to ourselves to keep bashing our head against the wall to get things to change rather than "giving up."

 

When it comes down to it though, all the good stuff we remember about the hobby is still out there. Maybe it is not in Warhammer 40k 10th edition. Probably it is not.  But the silver lining in all this is that the more things change, the more people are going to be looking for something that reminds them of the thing they used to like. The more people there are, the easier it is to find them and start having fun again.

[Kastor Krieg]

GW should put money where their mouths are and actually be a miniatures company first. Make minis their main product, not the rules and rulebooks.

 

They should run a Wikipedia and an app of rules, accessible for free, or at the very least to anyone who buys a Codex (just like their code works for the Warhammer+ app now). They already have this. It (kinda) works, people are saying their experiences are good enough to actually good. Make the Codex full of art, pictures of models, put the painting and kitbashing guides there, interviews about the army, all the lore you can cram in. Keep the same size and price of the book, leave the rules out.

Now the book is worth the cost we paid for it, forever. Now, we have instantly updated and printable rules at the swipe of your phone app. When a new edition arrives, make a new book about this faction - more art, more interviews, paint guides, updates to the lore, all the stuff we love. We will still buy it - and get the new rules.

Everyone wins. GW just needs to commit. For the Emperor.

Edited January 25 by Kastor Krieg

[roryokane]

53 minutes ago, Kastor Krieg said:

GW should put money where their mouths are and actually be a miniatures company first. Make minis their main product, not the rules and rulebooks.

 

They should run a Wikipedia and an app of rules, accessible for free, or at the very least to anyone who buys a Codex (just like their code works for the Warhammer+ app now). They already have this. It (kinda) works, people are saying their experiences are good enough to actually good. Make the Codex full of art, pictures of models, put the painting and kitbashing guides there, interviews about the army, all the lore you can cram in. Keep the same size and price of the book, leave the rules out.

Now the book is worth the cost we paid for it, forever. Now, we have instantly updated and printable rules at the swipe of your phone app. When a new edition arrives, make a new book about this faction - more art, more interviews, paint guides, updates to the lore, all the stuff we love. We will still buy it - and get the new rules.

Everyone wins. GW just needs to commit. For the Emperor.

This plus reversing the whole "it's not in the box so you can't have rules for it" nonsense, would be the best. Plus, dare I say it, as 3d printing evolves, a back-catalogue of bitz...? :P

[ZeroWolf]

With regards to the last codex of the edition paradigm, I'm sure that back in 40k past there was a codex that was made to be forward compatible as the new edition was being developed at the same time. This led to it being useful in both old and new editions.

This was definitely before the three year cycle but I'm now worried that my memory is playing tricks on me.

 

Either way, that's what they should aim for if they insist on the 3 year cycle. Though given the amount of games that GW are offering, I think they could feasibly move to a 4 - 5 year model, release all codexs in the first 3 years, next 1-2 years is campaign books, like 1 a quarter.

[Sky Potato]

I've been re-visiting the Shield of Baal campaign book series as I plug away at the new Tyranids, which I only started collecting with the release of Leviathan. I genuinely enjoyed re-reading it, and I'm going to replay the campaign this summer if I get the chance. And maybe even the campaign from Imperial Armour 4 - Anphelion Project as well, which I missed the first time around but grabbed the book on eBay.

 

The older style campaign books were way, way better than anything that's come out since eighth. Seventh alone had Shield of Baal and Gathering Storm, to name a few - I know there are more. All big books, tons of lore, with good, playable campaigns, and all in addition to the usual codex cycle. The books that were released for Shield of Baal are infinitely better than anything that came out of Psychic Awakening or Arks of Omen, in my opinion. Psychic Awakening just felt really phoned in, and if truth be told, I never bothered with Arks of Omen.

 

GW could definitely extend the length of an edition by getting more involved with the campaigns. I'd love a return to the older style of campaign books.

[roryokane]

12 minutes ago, Sky Potato said:

GW could definitely extend the length of an edition by getting more involved with the campaigns. I'd love a return to the older style of campaign books.

Another thing I feel that we've kindof lost, and would absolutely love to see again.