The 40k rules puzzle me

[Deschenus Maximus]

So as a former 40k player who has embraced a lot of the non-40k GW offerings in the past few years, I keep asking myself why GW seems unable or unwilling to give 40k some actually good rules. 

 

It's a total mystery to me because they have proven they CAN write some pretty good rules:

• Adeptus Titanicus is just a fantastic Big Fighting Robot game that somehow perfectly straddles the line between the depth of classic Battletech and the speed of play of Alpha Strike. 
• Epic: Armageddon serves up some of the best Combined Arms gameplay around. Its current successor, Legions Imperialis, has a lot of balance issues and some clunkyness (looking at you, melee combat!) but is still heads and shoulders above 40k now that we finally got a real FAQ for it.
• Battlefleet Gothic still casts a long shadow over all space fleet combat games in spite of being out of print for nearly 15 years thanks to its awesome rules.
• While I haven't played it, Kill Team 3.0 seems really solid as well.

 

It's just 40k that continues to be hamstrung by legacy game mechanics (IGOUGO, most notably) and a lot of bloat (does every unit really need a special rule?).

 

Is this just due to GW risk aversion? Are they scared that moving away from the original rules might leave to player exodus? And if so, is this fear really justified?

[Schurge]

And, Warcry isn't the best strategy game in the world... but its fun. And Underworlds is both a good game and very fun. (AoS... has been heavily praised for its balance. I couldn't say its more fun than 40k.)

 

There are many people who are afraid of GW messing with the formula too heavily because they've spent so much money on the system... but at this point - especially considering squatting everything ala AoS isn't the only way to rebuild a game from the ground up - I wonder if those people are still the majority?

 

If you play this game long enough you realize that at the end of the day GW's conservatism rarely actually works in the game or our collections' favor.

Edited 4 hours ago by Schurge

[The Yncarne]

better to just move on to a different system or accept it. I don't see GW making 40k a great game in my lifetime. I might settle for good enough again, someday.

[Arikel]

No doubt 10th has some issues, but as someone who only plays a few times a year at the moment, it was much easier to pick up and play than 9th was for my group. It is explicitly more beginner/casual friendly than previous editions.

 

On a sidetrack, for me what seems to be holding the game back from just working better(without a radical redesign of course) is the designer conceit that it must remain d6 based. Moving from d6 to d10 or d12 as the base die would allow for a far greater range of granularity and stat spread. As it stands right now, with everyone and their little dog too wanting bonuses for stuff their faction is good at,  while also requiring every unit to have it’s own unique special rule (many of which are copy pasted anyways), the d6 system is showing up as a bit long in the tooth while also being too small a spread to really show meaningful differences between certain factions and unit types without a big risk of being over or under powered in actual game play. 
 

An example of better design would be kill team from what I have seen of it, where the difference between MEQ and GEQ  is much more pronounced than it is in 40k, with a system that while still hampered by the d6 requirement allows for a lot more difference between factions and units than 40k can right now. Yes, it is meant for squad level as opposed to skirmish/small army fights, but there are still lessons to learn here and bring back to the main game line.

[ThePenitentOne]

I think GW is aware that 40k has a feel to it, and IGOUGO, love it or hate it, is one of the things that makes 40k FEEL different from other games. 

 

I like AA in Kill Team and Necromunda, and I recognize the value of AA systems... But I think I'd hate it in 40. That's a personal opinion, obviously... But to me, 40k is better for the gravitas that moving your whole army at once creates. It's what makes a turn feel like a turn. In Kill Team or Necromunda, we keep track of rounds to measure game length or certain objective or battlefield conditions... But if you're playing 10 models vs. 10 models, you don't FEEL like you've played 5 rounds; you feel like you and your opponent have just played 100 turns... Because it's all just back and forth.

 

There is no "Your Turn" feel. And that's fine for me in KT and 'Munda, because it's individual models, and the yoyo effect I move one, you move one feel emphasizes individuality. But in 40k, your army feels like it fights as an army, rather than a collection of individual units.

 

Now in any of the dozens of IGOUGO vs. AA threads I've seen here and elsewhere, this is where someone points out that there are different forms of AA. One that I found acceptable was that you could activate multiple units at a time, so you could get still get at least some sense of interunit coordination. I'd be willing to try that as a compromise if I was playing against someone who really hated IGOUGO... But I still think I'd personally prefer the feeling of full army coordination that I only get from moving my army AS an army.

 

And again, these are PREFERENCES; neither system is objectively superior to to the other. But I think GW believes (as I do) that the drama and gravitas of fighting army vs. army is better suited to the gothic horror and grandiose scale of 40k than the constant engagement and faster pace of fight unit vs. unit. Afterall, they've CHOSEN to maintain that feel for almost 40 years now. It's not incompetence, and it's not and accident or an oversight, it's a conscious choice.

 

And here's the thing: it was IGOUGO when you started playing. If IGOUGO is a deal breaker... I'm not sure why you started, or stuck with it for any length of time. I'm not sure it's reasonable to start regularly playing a game and expect it to change so that it aligns more closely with your personal preferences. I get it: we all do it- I complain about the 10th edition psychic rules ALL THE TIME, but they've been what they are since the beginning of the edition, and I'm the one who decided to buy 5 dexes (so far).

 

  

[N1SB]

9 hours ago, Deschenus Maximus said:

Is this just due to GW risk aversion? Are they scared that moving away from the original rules might leave to player exodus? And if so, is this fear really justified?

 

What a great framing of the question.  There are absolutely signs it's no longer a hypothetical, but a practical.

 

And the answer is yes, yes and yes, but you're also right...and GW itself has proven your points.

 

 

+++ Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition +++

 

 

I will only speak of it briefly, because/despite another widespread, famous tabletop game being THE case study.

 

Dungeons & Dragons is now in it's 5.5th iteration.  It has a number of problems I will not get into, but the lead designer of 4th and 5th ed has now moved on to another company (Chaosium) and gave a frank, candid, genuine interview about when they saw a mass exodus: D&D 4th ed.  It was mechanically sound, but clunkily mechanical.

 

He was addressing the fanbase criticism that D&D 4th ed was that it emulating online game mechanics, because MMORPGs were popular.  His honest response was they were trying to adopt mechanics from something else, but it was not MMORPGs, it was boardgames.  They were trying to unify tabletop roleplayers and boardgamers.

 

That's not some evil, greedy, corporate goal.  He was JUST trying to make D&D more accessible.

 

What was the actual consequence?  From a player perspective, the base fled en masse to Pathfinder, a partner that were using the modified, older D&D 3.5rd ed rules.  They literally turned their partner into their own competitor.  Pathfinder was not trying to poach D&D players, it was D&D that pushed them away inadvertently.

 

I usually bring financial figures to back me up, but in this case, it's difficult because D&D is under Wizards of the Coast (i.e. Magic: the Gathering), which is itself under Hasbro.  D&D is roughly a $100 million business hidden within WotC's $1 BILLION that's part of Hasbro's $2 to 3 billion.  But we saw the results as players.

(During this period, GW went from a £120 million company...so already bigger than D&D...to a £500+ million.)

 

So how did D&D recover?  In 5th ed that this designer continued to lead, he took 3.5rd ed and streamlined it.  Players came back.

 

That wasn't some benevolent, socially responsible goal.  He was STILL trying to make D&D more accessible.

 

(This was my impression listening to him.  He was always talking about accessibility.  His 1 problem with 5.5th ed was it was less accessible.)

 

Now how does this apply to 40k?  Well, not at all implying GW was copying D&D/WotC at all, but it just happens around that time...

 

 

+++ 40k 8th ed was ALSO just a streamlined version +++

 

 

I remember 8th ed came out.  In retrospect, everything seemed obvious, but at the time I remember people thought the Primaris helmet was just a new Mark IV model, there was a leaked Primaris model and people made actually a pretty good case it was just a true-scale conversion.  I say this to remind ppl it was a bit of a shock.

 

And 8th ed streamlined everything just as D&D 5th did.  It was utterly recognisable but gone were the BS tables and Wound/Toughness tables, etc.  More than that, they made obsolete all the old Codexes, we had to buy those Indices for our armies, we shared them because several factions were in the same book.  Huge shift.

 

(Remember, we were kinda pissed at the time, like GW was trying to force Primaris down our throats.  Now...seems like we want MORE Primaris.)

 

For old players, it was a reset.  For new players, it was much more accessible.  I remember joking with my friends, "They've 5th ed'd 40k!"

 

But what was the actual result.  We already have the financial data, but that year alone GW grew 40%, then I saw this recently:

 

 

In this poll by Auspex Tactics, only 1/3rd of his viewers started before 8th, TWO/THIRDS came after.  That's interesting.

 

(We have to account for skews.  There's also been 9th and 10th ed.  Perhaps more new players watch Auspex Tactics for advice than older players.  But when I see it's not just a slim majority, but a 2/3rds majority...that kinda confirms how we went from a £120m Hobby to a £HALF BILLION one.  It's NOT just returning players!)

 

This is NOT an advocacy for 8th ed.  I'm just pointing out that really seems to have been THE turning point.

 

 

+++ Who's abandoning whom? +++

 

 

This thread is not the 1st time this topic came up, but I like how it framed it about the players, and this recent interview and poll.

 

D&D/WotC/Hasbro knows where the bread is buttered, or more specifically, who's buttering their bread.  So does GW.  It's the players.

 

And it seems they now know it's not so much the players spontaneously abandoning them, as them abandoning their players.

 

That was the lesson D&D/WotC/Hasbro seemed to learn from 4th ed.  People didn't stop playing D&D, they played Pathfinder, which was just using an alternate version of their rules.  They hated 4th ed but loved D&D.  The opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy, your worry isn't when your girl is mad at you, it's when she stops caring.

 

It wasn't even accessibility imho.  Warcry is actually my favourite game, because it's so accessible that literacy is optional.  If you've seen their datasheet cards, they're just symbols.  Yet it's not the most popular GW game.  It's more like the winning move is to take a game ppl like, and just streamline it some more, or something.  I dunno.

 

From professional experience as a product manager (many of you are using a successor to the product I oversaw to read this right now), people do not actually dislike change, or even the speed of change.  It's that they like WHAT THEY LIKE.  They purchased/used your old product because they like it.  A new version might not have what they like.

 

So as not to abandon players, improvement in an existing product is an evolution, not a revolution.  New product?  Revolution is great!

 

And these now (in)famous examples must be going through all game designers' minds, something they have meetings on.  Too big to ignore.

 

 

+++ Final proof in the pudding product +++

 

 

I'll leave with this, sorry for the long post, no time to write a short one.

 

The Horus Heresy/AoD/30k to 40k is kinda like Pathfinder to older D&D.  It used the basic ruleset, that being 40k 6th ed, just added more stuff to it for their setting.  Then they brought back the Old World, which is basically Warhammer Fantasy Battle with minimal changes, just additions like Cathay now.

 

The Old World is a huge admission by GW that it was wrong to discontinue Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  It's a huge thing to admit one's own mistake, it's even greater to make good for that, to make amends, and to make the apology even better than the way things were before.  That should be considered proof of your point, just not in 40k.

 

GW isn't just thinking about these issues, it's thought about them, already acted on them, so much so we do take it for granted now.  Seriously, no one's at fault.  We went from a decade of not knowing what's coming up to drinking from a firehose every Warhammer Preview.  Like I was watching for a new Kill Team, suddenly Cathay!

 

It's not like a "new GW" that gives me hope, it's an old GW...an older, wiser GW that learned from its own mistakes and others' mistake (my favourite kind of mistake, because it costs you nothing).  My hope/cope is that maybe, just maybe, after 30k, there's a new sidegame based on the Scouring that takes a bit more chance, maybe.

Edited 55 minutes ago by N1SB