Game Stability, Balance, and Health Over Time

[Special Officer Doofy]

On 6/22/2024 at 9:14 AM, alfred_the_great said:

“I can’t do that (ie go back an edition/homebrew/step out the official rules) because that’s not how we do it around here….”

 

I’ve never seen anything from GW that says 

 

“you can only play this game in this way, else consequences”

 

have you?

 

So would you like to show us where GW sells older rules so that people don't need to buy used from websites like ebay or pirate them off the internet? Because GW only sells the current rules...

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

12 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

So would you like to show us where GW sells older rules so that people don't need to buy used from websites like ebay or pirate them off the internet? Because GW only sells the current rules...

Why do they have to sell old rules?

what’s wrong with ‘pirating’ old unused rules, why can’t people do that?

[crimsondave]

59 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

So would you like to show us where GW sells older rules so that people don't need to buy used from websites like ebay or pirate them off the internet? Because GW only sells the current rules...

If you’re just against eBay that’s fine but most of the rules are available for cheap off eBay except for 1st and 2nd editions which are kinda pricey.

[TheTrans]

Just ran a 3rd ed event down here in Melbourne, 32 player event, but with drop outs and adult-lifing it hovered around the 28-30 point for the two days.

Have recently just went through the feedback and it seems like everyone was quite happy with it. I had probably a 3rd of the field had not played any proper games of 3rd ed before.

They all picked it up in no time, and the fact it wasn't a brain drain I think really helped with that.  I think that probably has a lot to do with the fact, most of your units are really just relying on their statline with maybe a broad 'army' or 'race' buff from the start of the book, that is prevalent across enough units that its not annoying to learn. In addition the fact there is really only 3 types of close combat weapons (At Strength, Ignore Armour. 2x Strength and Ignore armour, or armour reduced to a 4+) and with ranged weapons just rely on on just a handful of types/rules there isn't a whole heap to get your head around.

Not only that I think the game, and this is due to relative simplicity, stops so much MM gaming and second guessing. Like there are no reactions/stratagems, so when you shoot at that enemy unit..thats it.. you shoot at them, the roll some saves..its done. Also the lack of premeasuring (which I love) stops the "oh ok, so I'm just confirming I'm 12.1" away from them, and 13.1" away from them so you can't do X next turn"... nope, in 3rd, just push those models forward up to their 6" and hope for the best in the charge/shooting phase etc. 

Also a lot of my closer group of wargaming mates who have all checked out of 40k properly since the drop of 10th (it was the free wargear and set squad sizes that were the final nail in the coffin) have said if 3rd was the current edition, they'd be all in. Easy to learn, its not shifting around all over the place and you can get away with rocking up with 2 books (3, if you're your playing a sub-faction, and lets be honest, those more more pamphlet than book). 

On top of all that, I feel like when I'm playing 3rd I have to make actually important decisions other than target prioritising. Like due to the lack of running etc, you need to be very particular with your movement, then if you're moving, all of sudden your damage out put is lower, so that move has to be worth it etc. I've even found myself remounting into transports which is almost unheard of in something like HH2.0 where you'll just start running up the board instead of remounting etc. When playing 3rd I feel like its still attempting to be a wargame, especially when you factor in how weird and wonderful some of the rulebook missions are. 

But by and large I wish 40k was, I don't want to say simple as the way the very core mechanics work are very simple, too simple in my taste (I like weapon skill being a defensive stat to some extent), but less labyrinthine, the sheer amount of paperwork I feel you need to go through to get an army working can be problematic at the very least. Factor in (and I honestly don't care if you say 'oh but you can play narrative' or something like that, when we talk about playing, its in broader public sense, we can play anything with some mates at home, so its a moot point), that the entire game has fallen into an e-sport mentality, even for pick up games, with a lack of any real customisation allowable, nor are there also really any list building constrictions. Factor in the 'free' wargear and set unit sizes, it has just gotten so abstract that it honestly makes me question what is the point of the models?

But hey, I'm a cynical old bastard, so is what it is.

Long live 3rd! 

 

[jaxom]

24 minutes ago, TheTrans said:

But by and large I wish 40k was, I don't want to say simple as the way the very core mechanics work are very simple, too simple in my taste (I like weapon skill being a defensive stat to some extent), but less labyrinthine, the sheer amount of paperwork I feel you need to go through to get an army working can be problematic at the very least.

Modern 40k doesn’t have depth, but it has a lot of stacked thin layers.

[TheTrans]

22 minutes ago, jaxom said:

Modern 40k doesn’t have depth, but it has a lot of stacked thin layers.

Great way of putting it mate! 

[ThaneOfTas]

3 hours ago, TheTrans said:

Factor in the 'free' wargear and set unit sizes, it has just gotten so abstract that it honestly makes me question what is the point of the models?

That has put how I've been feeling for a while into words super well, between all of the proxying I have to do if I want to use my models, plus just the general disconnect between the choices that I made when building/painting my models, and what their rules now allow for, I'm just left feeling like I'm playing something closer to a card game or a board game than a narrative wargame. 

 

All of that i might be able to learn to live with and work around the inadequacies of the system if I felt at all confident that it would be worth the effort, but the additional knowledge that everything will get shaken up every 6 months, and the edition will be out of date every 3 years, just completely saps my motivation.

[Helias_Tancred]

On 6/20/2024 at 11:24 AM, jaxom said:

I get the feeling that GW expects players to have jumped on board 40k as a 'lifestyle', like checking updates regularly and watching videos or reading articles to see what they mean; rather than something that can be taken off the shelf, enjoyed, and put away until next time.

 

Agreed. Their whole marketing scheme is to keep you on this massive, fast spinning gerbil wheel. IMO it leads to acute burnout, but hey GW needs to keep their shareholders very happy. Get on it Gerbil!!

 

 

[Special Officer Doofy]

5 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Why do they have to sell old rules?

what’s wrong with ‘pirating’ old unused rules, why can’t people do that?

 

5 hours ago, crimsondave said:

If you’re just against eBay that’s fine but most of the rules are available for cheap off eBay except for 1st and 2nd editions which are kinda pricey.

 

My point to @alfred_the_great was that GW does not support prior editions. They don't need to physically tell you to only play the current edition, they do so with their sales. No newcomer to the hobby is going to start with a 20 year old rulebook to some older edition from a second hand market. They are going to pick up whatever the stores are selling, which is the current edition.

 

[Helias_Tancred]

I've turned into a casual simpleton when it comes to playing 40k, and I'm much happier. I play with 3 good friends. I play about once a month, sometimes twice, usually 1k games. All of us picked up the Pariah Nexus campaign book, but other than that we use our index/or codex, the core rules, and the objective game cards. To be honest we just used the one game scenario that came in the core rules for months now LOL.  all of us have fun and enjoy being casual and easy going with stuff. 

 

I really don't get on the 40k social media train other than I post here and peruse this forum fairly regularly, I watch Auspex Tactics, and usually Blood Angel Commander. Several painting and kit-bashing YouTube channels and thats it for me. The 40k hobby is ripe with toxic social media (YouTube channels) that combined with the massive spinning gerbil wheel GW tries so hard to get everyone on, can really make the hobby ... Suck. The. Life. Out. Of. You. I also play in basements with friends, and that keeps me happier these days with the hobby. 

 

These days "community" is what all the game companies push on their customers, because "community" usually helps sell their products. Besides here, I avoid "community" as much as possible with both 40k and D&D (my two gaming hobbies) and I'm much happier for doing so. That and casual simpleton engagement in terms of rules, etc, and I'm happy with the 40k hobby atm (and a relaxed position on the rules, I use what I have and I don't stress about making sure we have the very up-to-the-minute rules changes). 

 

 

Edited June 28 by Helias_Tancred

[Cleon]

For me the percentage of my games that are 40k has been in strong decline since 6th edition hit, during 5th 90%+ of my games were 40K or WFB, probably 2:1 biased towards 40k, these days it's maybe 1 game in 10 is 40k. For me the main issue is the current force building system just doesn't inspire me to mentally churn through different options until I find one that inspires me to want to organise a game, then the stratagems and command point system has put off a number of my opponents so they prefer other games.

[Ahzek451]

It would be interesting to see what the age demographic for the members here is. I seems to look like the majority of GW sentiment is in the negatives and I would hazard a geuss that most of these people started 40k somewhere between 1st and 4th edition. I just thing that these responses are just a natural result of GW practice burnout. I recall having rose-tinted glasses myself, young and dumb and full of it, getting my feet wet as a teenager in late 2nd/early 3rd, and thinking 4th ed. was the best edition ever. It made sense at the time that GW would release a new edition to address issues. But now...over and over and over, the same business model. Back then I just wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. But as many fraters have already mentioned....it was always mostly just to sell the models. 

The business practice may be old, but the effect we are currently seeing is new and I wonder what the final result will be. And what I mean by new is that now that the game has been out for this many years, this will be the first opportunity to see if those that were here from the first few editions suffer from burn-out and if these hard-core customers start dropping off one by one, and if GW can't sustain enough new ones. 

[Dr. Clock]

18 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

I seems to look like the majority of GW sentiment is in the negatives

Without prejudice, I just get tired of engaging with the negativity. I think alot of important venting happens here, but depending on where I go I also see alot of joy and positivity so I try and focus on that. Certainly - alot of my joy happens in spite of GW's bad practices, not because of them... But I'm honestly pretty satisfied with current game if I set aside the anti-consumer business practices around rules access.

 

My games of 40k are honestly the best they've ever been, and I like the fact that I can never sit on my laurels with a list for more than a couple months. But I'm active in enough of the sub-forums here to know that '40k at 2k using tournament rules' is not everyone's cup of tea (it's not even mine - we use a good few houserules!), and that I gain nothing from trying to convince anyone to play a game that isn't fun for them.

 

31 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

the effect we are currently seeing is new

 

Is it though? Whenever the game shifts, some people will leave. Whenever the game becomes static or solved, some other people will leave. I can't see what's 'new' about any of this other than the creation of a very strong connection between physical and digital rules that forces people to pay for access to both 'spaces', but correspondingly results in the rules portions of the books themselves being quite literally incorrect before they are even delivered. While I like the fact that the app just changes things so I don't have to cross-reference multiple sources and FAQs just to get to the most recent version, I highly dislike having to pay several times the amount for physical books that I barely crack open to use in-game.

 

What's also new, at least to me, is that GW has finally made their digital rules / application vastly superior to free pirated alternatives (I know this is an opinion). I could go back to carrying my laptop around for pdfs or Battlescribe, but the phone app is 40k to me now and it's alot smoother than anything else. I go to wiki from my desktop because it's marginally faster in that context, but I think overall the digital presence has been good enough that I'm buying more rules this edition than last just so I can have the rules in the app. I understand the business case for the physical/digital linkage, but I think they could make more money going full digital subscription model even though it'd potentially mean that the non-rules portions of codexes would kinda... go away.

 

Anyway - I know I claimed this was a positive post, but I don't think criticism as such is negative - it's often an indicator indeed of a high degree of caring and investment. We all want this to be as good as it can be, we just disagree about 'what is good' alot more than one might expect lol.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[phandaal]

If the only thing people ever see of my comments here is the stuff on the news forum, then they would probably think all I do is seethe about Games Workshop all day. Actually I am still doing hobby stuff. Building new armies, playing games, learning new tips and tricks or sharing my own experience with people. And even posting about it sometimes on this very website.  Then there is the fantasy side of wargaming, which I also do but just don't mention here because that is not what this board is about.

 

Is it still the same hobby? It does feel that way to me. The armies in my head are still the same armies they have been for the last 30+ years, and the universe is still the same to me. The important thing is remembering that GW HQ over in Nottingham is not the hobby, and disappointment with the company does not have to sour anyone on the hobby as a whole.

[Ahzek451]

1 hour ago, Dr. Clock said:

 

Is it though?

I'll point back to what I was saying in my first post, it is new in the sense at least from my anecdotal perspective that I have seen more people leaving/diminished interest on one aspect or another than ever before. I know very well what the natural waxing and waning of 40k interest looks like each edition cycle, but recently things appear to be different. And I don't think it's just from one thing. (a lot of it compounds from other factors like the price rises, store policy changes mostly in UK, stock issues, social media flubs, the debatable change in lore quality, etc. ) But from what I have read, experienced, heard from, what I claim to be "new" is what seems like being on the edge of the damn starting to break. 

 

But just to focus on the edition cycle:
-its getting tired of GW doing the same thing under the guise of progressive change. NEW EDITION! NEW BOOKS! Look at how we changed the game for the "better" this edition! Yeah, ok that's cool and you had me convinced the first few times. And yes the app is nifty and faq frequency is ok......But you still have the same small pool of game designers and playtesting resources, day 1 faq's, rushed and unfinished rules, waiting and hoping you get your codex at a decent time during the edition, and then shoving another game changing edition out the door shortly after the last codex drops. After 10 editions its gotten old. GW has technically progressed, but I suppose so it sprinkling glitter over roadkill. There are healthy moves GW could be taking, but this heavily corporatized business refuses to do so, understandably so. I have personally seen a level of gripe with this that I have not before. And hearing a bunch of salty gamers gripe about GW is also something I am also used to. But again, between local hobby groups, online forums, social media, old friends, this is just what I have seen. 

Or hell, maybe I'm just full of it. 

Edited June 25 by Ahzek451
spelling

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

13 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

That has put how I've been feeling for a while into words super well, between all of the proxying I have to do if I want to use my models, plus just the general disconnect between the choices that I made when building/painting my models, and what their rules now allow for, I'm just left feeling like I'm playing something closer to a card game or a board game than a narrative wargame. 

 

All of that i might be able to learn to live with and work around the inadequacies of the system if I felt at all confident that it would be worth the effort, but the additional knowledge that everything will get shaken up every 6 months, and the edition will be out of date every 3 years, just completely saps my motivation.

What do you mean all the proxying you ‘have to do’

who is forcing you to proxy anything?

[Gillyfish]

There are a lot of interesting points here about new editions. Another may simply be that game design has moved into a different era and the gamer-base that the new design appeals to is different to the traditional gamer base, whose tastes may have changed (I am talking rules rather than models here).

 

I used to like lots of crunchy, almost simulationist rules and enjoyed 2nd edition for that reason, but found that it didn't work well for large battles (it was pretty rare to throw frag or krak grenades when you got beyond a certain size game in my circle, for example), but the ruleset was amazing when deployed in the original Necromunda.

 

Similarly 2nd edition Epic was my first wargame (BIG armies, woo-hoo! :D) and I memorised a lot of rules. However, there were an awful lot of special rules to memorise. Now that I am older I find myself gravitating towards simpler rulesets, because there is less stuff to remember and you can focus on the game more. In that respect my tastes (and circumstances) have changed.

 

3rd edition 40k streamlined an awful lot of stuff (no individual stat lines for power axes vs swords vs mauls), but allowed you to do things like purchase purity seals, so there was still some granularity. As a larger scale game, it definitely worked better than 2nd edition and I would say that was true until probably 6th where a lot more of the granularity was added back in, which probably also made it harder to balance units.

 

From 8th onwards I think there has been something of a computer game influence on the game design with power-ups to units and combos being a real thing, plus command points. Individually, these aren't necessarily new concepts (stratagems existed in second edition, chaplains used to grant fearless and re-rolls). What does seem to be new is the sheer number of different combinations and special rules. It seems that almost every unit has some special ability and the same type of model does not provide the same ability consistently, so chaplains appear to do different things depending on their flavour, which I find sort of odd.

 

To an older gamer like me, who has difficulty remembering last week, this isn't ideal and is a bit off-putting. But I can see why people would like it, I can see an appeal to it.

 

In terms of negativity, I can also remember all the negativity that greeted each previous edition; it's actually nothing new and, if anything, seems to be a bit of a consistent through line throughout the different editions. The difference now may be that the pace of change has accelerated, making it harder to keep up.

 

I think this is why, for me, I have moved onto other GW games and other companies' games. They provide something that this version of 40k does not for me. But that is totally fine and I am always glad to see other people enjoying it and producing some amazing content.

[Dr. Clock]

53 minutes ago, Ahzek451 said:

day 1 faq's, rushed and unfinished rules, waiting and hoping you get your codex at a decent time during the edition, and then shoving another game changing edition out the door shortly after the last codex drops. After 10 editions its gotten old.

Knowing that you've been around just as long as me pretty much, some of this stuff is pretty new... Points and rules for some armies literally didn't change at all for multiple editions up until basically 7th. While perhaps some things were not as rushed in the halcyon days of 3-5th, I'd maintain they were often kinda unfinished, but as a community it felt like we were more prepared to take ownership of the problems and fix them.

 

Lack of clarity, precision or balance has ever been a thorn in our side, but we used to wait a LONG time for questions or concerns to be addressed 'officially'.

 

Waiting and hoping to get a codex at a good time in the cycle isn't really a thing anymore (hopefully) because factions can get and are getting near-total rewrites 6 months or less from release (Adeptus Mechanicus came out December '23; Custodes came out very recently and they've just had alot of their spice returned in combination of core and codex changs). I think the anxiety about this is reasonable based on like 6th-9th experiences, but I don't think we can claim that it's necessarily warranted any more as long as we can accept that buying a codex means buying into the ongoing development of the faction within the meta rather than buying some static/stable rules that won't be touched for 3-5 years or longer if you're Dark Eldar ; )

 

Plus, I think we do have to give credit to them actually attempting to keep Index lists alive alongside the codexes. Drukhari anyone? Honestly it's pretty unprecedented to have index lists this relevant even as we're rounding the curve on about half of factions having codexes...

 

To go back to the thread title, I happen to think stability is boring, balance unrealistic, and health largely subjective... Whatever your current level of engagement, 40k right now is successful, and I think the self-conscious instability or iterative cycle they're adopting is a big part of that even though it does create its own special kind of engagement burnout.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

[Ahzek451]

56 minutes ago, Dr. Clock said:

Knowing that you've been around just as long as me pretty much, some of this stuff is pretty new... Points and rules for some armies literally didn't change at all for multiple editions up until basically 7th. While perhaps some things were not as rushed in the halcyon days of 3-5th, I'd maintain they were often kinda unfinished, but as a community it felt like we were more prepared to take ownership of the problems and fix them.

 

Lack of clarity, precision or balance has ever been a thorn in our side, but we used to wait a LONG time for questions or concerns to be addressed 'officially'.

 

Waiting and hoping to get a codex at a good time in the cycle isn't really a thing anymore (hopefully) because factions can get and are getting near-total rewrites 6 months or less from release (Adeptus Mechanicus came out December '23; Custodes came out very recently and they've just had alot of their spice returned in combination of core and codex changs). I think the anxiety about this is reasonable based on like 6th-9th experiences, but I don't think we can claim that it's necessarily warranted any more as long as we can accept that buying a codex means buying into the ongoing development of the faction within the meta rather than buying some static/stable rules that won't be touched for 3-5 years or longer if you're Dark Eldar ; )

 

Plus, I think we do have to give credit to them actually attempting to keep Index lists alive alongside the codexes. Drukhari anyone? Honestly it's pretty unprecedented to have index lists this relevant even as we're rounding the curve on about half of factions having codexes...

 

To go back to the thread title, I happen to think stability is boring, balance unrealistic, and health largely subjective... Whatever your current level of engagement, 40k right now is successful, and I think the self-conscious instability or iterative cycle they're adopting is a big part of that even though it does create its own special kind of engagement burnout.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

 

I don't particularly disagree with anything you have said, I tend to generalize overall with a focus on the more recent editions as I too remember the "dark times" when GW seemed to fall off the face of the earth between 5th and 7th. But IMHO the things you laid out, again is technically an improvement but as I mentioned before, in my tongue-in-cheek reference to glitter and road kill, are bare minimum amounts of effort to improve the health of the game. We know they could have done a lot better, sooner. Credit when credit is due, but also not giving a free pass to easy mistakes or missed opportunities either.

I think the vast majority of reasonable folk think balance unrealistic(vet or newbie alike) nobody expects true balance. What I think is reasonable is not getting something like eldar at the start of 10th. And after discovering that GW wrote the books in separate teams (from ex GW staffers) that had little colab and a short amount of time...I mean...right here case in point of something so simple that GW could have changed to help the launch. It's been an interesting ride these last few years in particular as we have seen an uptick of ex-employees spilling the beans on how the sauce it made. And now that the curtain has been peeled back quite a bit, a lot of these suspicions and opinions make sense. I think GW leadership struggles with the concept of comparative advantage with any talent outside of the modeling/painting dept.

Concerning the stability, maybe so. Everyone enjoys their own flavor, but this iterative cycle and its resulting success comes off more like dumb luck with a heavy dose of relying on the good faith of its fans. As you mentioned, this has created its own special kind of engagement burnout, and unfortunately I dont think this takes into account any long term effects on the overall health of the game and its customers. And I feel that luck is starting to run out. And to reiterate, I think this is not a sole byproduct of GW's game design practices, it also heavily has to do with quote:  "(a lot of it compounds from other factors like the price rises, store policy changes mostly in UK, stock issues, social media flubs, the debatable change in lore quality, etc. )". 

Edited June 25 by Ahzek451

[Helias_Tancred]

7 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

It would be interesting to see what the age demographic for the members here is. I seems to look like the majority of GW sentiment is in the negatives and I would hazard a geuss that most of these people started 40k somewhere between 1st and 4th edition.

 

I'm 52. I've been playing 40k since halfway through 6th edition. I've been into reading Black Library 40k since around 2010, a few years before I bought models and decided to try out the tabletop game. Prior to that, my GW interaction was all Black Library and just the Old World Fantasy stories and popular characters, probably going back to 2007 or so?

 

 

Edited June 25 by Helias_Tancred

[Rogue]

On 6/25/2024 at 12:40 AM, TheTrans said:

Just ran a 3rd ed event down here in Melbourne, 32 player event, but with drop outs and adult-lifing it hovered around the 28-30 point for the two days.

 

I'm curious - how did you accommodate more recent factions that have arrived since 3rd edition? Or did you avoid that by limiting things to just the factions of the time?

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Rogue said:

 

I'm curious - how did you accommodate more recent factions that have arrived since 3rd edition? Or did you avoid that by limiting things to just the factions of the time?

They probably wrote their very own codexes and likely did a better job than GW would have! :P

[TheTrans]

4 hours ago, Rogue said:

 

I'm curious - how did you accommodate more recent factions that have arrived since 3rd edition? Or did you avoid that by limiting things to just the factions of the time?

We didn't actually run into anyone wanting to run.. what.. Skitarri and Votaan (GSC had a semi-official Codex back in 3rd).

If we did have anyone that wanted to do that we probably would have just told them to pick a similar faction and maybe Vehicle Design Rule up the correct vehicles as needed.
 

2 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

They probably wrote their very own codexes and likely did a better job than GW would have! :P

As above, luckily everyone wanted to use existing stuff, or stuff that would easily slot across (Venomcrawler=Defiler etc). But yeah it wouldn't have been hard to whip something up using an existing army as a base! 

[Rogue]

I really thought it would be more factions than that. Fair enough. Sounds like you had a fun weekend :)

[The Unseen]

I thought Tau didn't show up till 4th?

But yeah, not that many factions are actually really "new", as all the CSM and Loyalist specific factions have rules for that era, even if they aren't as focussed.