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 Thursday at 11:45 PM 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 Friday at 03:09 AM by N1SB

[N1SB]

+++ TL;DR/Conclusion +++

 

Why Brother Maximus's question is framed so well is this: is the main thing the rules, or is it the playerbase?

 

GW is not failing to innovate rules.  His examples of AT and LI shows GW can write new rules (my meta LOVES LI now)!

 

But GW also IS successfully preserving the playerbase.  My examples are elevating 30k and bringing back The Old World.

 

GW might well be erring (in fact, I think agree with Brother Maximus), and all the criticisms are fair, but I'm actually glad they seem to be actively erring on the side of preserving the playerbase by keeping these legacy rules they're familiar with.  It's a trade-off, and I think each time, GW puts the playerbase before the rules, the customer over the product.

 

It wasn't always so.  AoS replacing WhFB was putting the product over the customers.  GW learned from such mistakes, is my point.

[Karhedron]

At the end of the day, it is about money. I loved BFG, various incarnations of Epic etc but 40K outsells all the other games GW produces put together (and then some I expect). As long as 40K continues to sell well, they probably don't want to upset a winning formula. Evolution rather than revolution. The main reason that WHFB was scrapped and changed into AoS was that FB sales had been falling for a long time.

[Doghouse]

I personally think that given the way that GW marketing works they don't really gain anything by making the perfect system because it paints them into a corner for future editions which is their sales model. All the updates and tweaking keeps people's eyes on the game.

 

I think the shift to 40k being an actual game focused hobby rather than just build and paint has intensified significantly in recent years but it's probably what sells the most product these days. I sorely miss the old days of the hobby for it's creativity and imagination but they are a huge business now and not a few guys printing their own fanzines and making games left right and center on a whim. It was more of here are some cool miniatures, here are some rules for you to play battles with them or make your own.

 

Like I have said many times in the past if we don't like the state of the rules there are older editions we can still play.

[Mandragola]

I agree there's a problem with 40k and I don't play it any more myself. There are many better ways to spend the time it would take to build an army and play a game.

 

40k does a job for GW: it brings people into the hobby. Actually you could argue that it brings people into wargaming full stop. I know a lot of people who now play only historicals, specialsit games or whatever, but for the vast majority of them their first wargaming experience was with 40k.

 

What's odd to me is that there isn't then more of an attempt to retain 40k players. Instead they work on the idea of the "leaky bucket", where they have to keep adding new customers as old ones leave. If playing the game was more fun then you'd imagine more people would carry on playing it, which has to be in GW's financial interest.

 

One of the real disadvantages 40k has compared to other games is that, as the flagship product, it has to constantly release new models and rules. And given the lack of investment GW puts into rules design, the result is that it's kind of impossible for the game to be balanced. Countless times now we've seen the meta disrupted by a new release with huge mistakes in. GW does eventually fix those mistakes but generally not until someone has rushed an army to a tournament and won it. And then by the time the next event rolls around you have another set of mistakes and another person using them to their advantage.

 

Another problem this creates is that there are now quite a lot of members of the tournament circuit who get advanced knowledge of the rules, as either playtesters or content creators. When a broken set of rules arrives and only has a shelf life of a few weeks, having access to those rules a month or so in advance (or much more for playtesters) is a huge advantage. There’s absolutely now a two-tier environment based on whether or not you know what’s coming in advance.

 

Content creators like myself do get this benefit for other games, but it doesn’t matter as much as they're  generally not so competitive - there certainly aren't big cash prizes on offer. I write about Heresy, Legions Imperialis and Kill Team. I wouldn’t go to a tournament of Heresy or LI but for Kill Team it probably helps a bit. There were people turning up for tournaments with Sanctifiers (probably the most broken Kill Team release yet) on the day of release, because they’d been sent preview copies. That’s just not a fair environment.

[MARK0SIAN]

I think (as others have said) it’s a case of ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’ 
 

Whether you like the rules or not, you can’t argue that 40k hasn’t been a huge success and has seen huge growth over recent years. From a financial point of view the current rules aren’t holding it back so why risk changing them. 
 

They can experiment with the other games if they want to try something new but there’s no real need to change 40K dramatically, even though some people might prefer it. 

[Redcomet]

GW is afraid to change 40k too much, in case the cash cow looses its luster. It is saddled with having to appease long time fans, who also seem reluctant for things to change too much.

 

 

[MARK0SIAN]

It does want to appeal to long term fans but it also seems clear that the rules are not putting off new fans either given how much the hobby has grown. 
 

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but I’ve never met anyone who got into 40k just because they wanted to give wargaming a go. They’ve always been drawn in by the universe and/or the models. If you’re getting into something for the first time, particularly if it’s your first go at a particular type of game then you don’t know enough to know whether the rules are actually good or not, only experienced players tend to be put off by particular rules in a game. 
 

So you’ve got a situation where new players aren’t put off or clamouring for a different rules approach and an established player base who probably fall into 3 categories.
 

1) They like or don’t mind the current rules

2) They’d prefer a different approach but they’re still willing to play the traditional rules

3) They won’t play the game because they dislike the rules

 

Of those, the last group are the only ones who are affecting GW if they stop buying models but even then, they may still be buying models or moving to one of the specialist games like LI in which case GW is still getting their money. If they do move away from GW completely then I think GW just accepts that they’ll lose some people and replace them with new customers which, to be fair, seems to have worked well for them.

[N1SB]

Just a chart for data supporting our Frateri rightly making the profit motive point:

 

 

Basically, every 40k edition EXCEPT 7th was a spike.  WhFB, despite being our sempai, was kind flat.  AoS is compared to 40k.

 

GW is selling everything every year, of course.  But I remember putting an early version of this almost a decade ago...oh my cog, we've been doing this for almost a decade now, many of you have had children since we started looking at these financial reports...but I did notice this trend where every fantasy launch was a down year.  So I understand why GW made the mistake of discontinuing WhFB before bringing it back as The Old World like Classic Coca Cola.

 

The GW Design Studio isn't corporate greed...but they know the bosses' eyes are on 40k.  I'm convinced by your thesis.

 

Very interesting point you guys are making on how 40k is what drew people to miniatures.  Because this kid, one of Timperial Guard's former students...aw no another reminder of our wizened age...joined our roleplaying group and he's played RPGs before, but he never saw anyone using models for it.  For us, it was so natural to the point our Dungeon Master was like "gimme 4 zombies and 1 flesh golem" and I fish out some Nurgle Blood Bowl figures to count as.

 

What other people find extraordinary about The Hobby of ours is extra ordinary to us.  They're like "YOU painted this!?" XD

 

Another fascinating thing is that Lord of the Rings used to bring people into The Hobby, but it Brother Xenith who pointed out LotR's years corresponded with the Eye of Terror campaign and the long-awaited 4th ed.  Now, it's just 40k by itself, but I do want to credit Space Marine II the video game, credit where it's due.

[sairence]

2 hours ago, Mandragola said:

I agree there's a problem with 40k and I don't play it any more myself. There are many better ways to spend the time it would take to build an army and play a game.

 

40k does a job for GW: it brings people into the hobby. Actually you could argue that it brings people into wargaming full stop. I know a lot of people who now play only historicals, specialsit games or whatever, but for the vast majority of them their first wargaming experience was with 40k.

 

What's odd to me is that there isn't then more of an attempt to retain 40k players. Instead they work on the idea of the "leaky bucket", where they have to keep adding new customers as old ones leave. If playing the game was more fun then you'd imagine more people would carry on playing it, which has to be in GW's financial interest.

 

One of the real disadvantages 40k has compared to other games is that, as the flagship product, it has to constantly release new models and rules. And given the lack of investment GW puts into rules design, the result is that it's kind of impossible for the game to be balanced. Countless times now we've seen the meta disrupted by a new release with huge mistakes in. GW does eventually fix those mistakes but generally not until someone has rushed an army to a tournament and won it. And then by the time the next event rolls around you have another set of mistakes and another person using them to their advantage.

 

Just to preface that I in no way mean this in a dismissive way...but this is the kind of take that is quite often accompanied by "I don't play 40k (anymore)" and it often puts me in mind that the person might work with outdated assumptions. I play 40k weekly and regularly go to events and I think it's in the best place it's been since I started mid 7th ed.

 

The player base has massively grown since the 8th ed reset, as N1SB has already discussed, which makes it a bit odd to see criticism about not doing enough for player retention.

 

And since 8th GW has become better and better at balancing the game. Yes, there was a lot of messy stuff happening when the switch to 8th happened, which was not great, but GW has gotten better and better at a) releasing rules that are not insanely over the top and b) are quickly adressed to avoid a situation where something is just stupid. It still happens ocassionally, but with much, much less frequency than it happened. At the same time they made it much easier to pick the game up and start playing.

 

Compare this to when we had nothing of the sort pre-8th, where if something was broken stayed that way for months and years.

 

The current state of 10th is the most balanced I've ever played 40k in and this has been consistently true for a good while.

 

I'd argue GW has made a huge amount of changes, both to the core of how 40k is played and to how they interact with their community. They might not be the changes you (in the general sense) are looking for, but that is far from the same thing as them being scared to make any changes.

Edited Friday at 01:07 PM by sairence

[Deschenus Maximus]

Thanks all for your thoughtful inputs!

 

Addressing some specific points:

 

@Arikel I am 100% willing to believe you 10^th is better than 9^th but that’s not really my point. You’re comparing 40k to 40k. Compare 10^th to completely different systems and the picture isn’t quite as pretty.

 

@ThePenitentOne Even if GW wanted to retain IGOUGO, they could still make some improvements that would be a big step up from how the game plays now. Off the top of my head, simultaneous casualty resolution would alleviate the oft grumbled-about alpha strike issue.

 

Also “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.”

 

Because 40k was literally my first wargame. I wasn’t even aware there were other mechanics at the time. I’ll also say this about earlier editions of 40k, though: IGOUGO was not as much of an issue because the game was far less lethal. It’s why BFG still works fine in spite of being IGOUGO too – it takes a lot of effort to kill a ship (escorts excluded) so you rarely run into situations where player 2 will lose a significant portion of their fleet before getting to fire.

 

@N1SB thanks so much for your detailed response. One consideration that is worth pondering: is the 4^th ed DND vs 3^rd ed a fitting comparison? I am not a DND player so I don’t know but did 3^rd ed have good rules? If they did, I can see why people might have been upset with 4^th. On the flipside, with how much people tend to complain about 40k’s rules, maybe a radical redesign wouldn’t be met with the same hostility?

[Captain Idaho]

Regarding the OP, it's interesting to me how messy and poorly done the 40K rules are, yet sells hard.

 

I suspect less people play casually game, let alone competitively, but then GW are focusing so much on competitive rules in their presentation (I've not bought into the rules are in the slightest competitive but work well for the competitive community) that maybe they really are internally focused on that.

 

Whatever the reasoning, the design of 40K is sticking to its focus. Painfully so for some.

 

I do suspect the customer base is not expanding, rather the average customer has increased their spending budget. I say this because my children, plus that of my friend's children and witnessing the community demographic on YouTube, Facebook and this site... well the young 'uns just ain't buying into it.

 

Can't convince the kids to engage. I just can't, my boys aren't interested and this story is repeated locally too.

 

But there was a massive increase of 40K fans when 8th hit. I attended many a community and tournament and even met the dude from Vanguard Tactics at an event. Does this contradict what I've said above?

 

Not sure. They aren't younger audiences for sure, mostly event attendees and community newbies. Speaking to them, most of them played many moons ago or when were youngsters yet lost intersest before finding their hobby feet again.

 

it would take a separate thread and topic focus to evaluate why 8th hit so hard and well, but touching upon it I dont think that growth in customer base is continued in 40K. Sales yes, but more numbers? Nope.

 

I know more people who can't be bothered with 40K and the tournament and event scene has dropped off somewhat too. Sales of 40K has happened, not just myself (I've sold all my 40K Ultramarines) but friends and local gaming clubs.

 

So where am I going with these questions and observations? Well I suspect Games Workshop hasn't engaged well with replacement games workshop customers and this is supported by the observation of @N1SB's that the company has used side games such as The Old World, Legions Imperialis and Age of Darkness Heresy rules to maintain engagement with those of us who don't like the direction of the mainline games of 40K and I suppose we should count Age of Sigmar in that.

 

(AoS is a funny one and I think it sits between HH and 40K in the company view though @N1SB did mention previously it sold poorly, worse than HH so it is basically a side game in economics really)

 

I think it's worked to keep us engaged. I've worked on Necromunda, Adeptus Titanicus and HH as well as some Old World. That's kept me keen.

 

Biggest question... how will things progress? I have my reservations that 11th edition won't turn things around for the rules as Games Workshop is solidly sticking to their trend with AoS and 40K aping each other. I don't like that and to be honest many old school gamers feel similar. (Note I'm not saying it's a majority who feel that way)

 

More of the same just different coloured ties for the same uniform, essentially. 

 

And GW will double down on what is making money now, even if it isn't long term as sensible.

Edited Friday at 02:19 PM by Captain Idaho

[Deschenus Maximus]

4 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Can't convince the kids to engage. I just can't, my boys aren't interested and this story is repeated locally too.

 

Same. I've tried every wargame I know, even the extremely dull, watered-down bore that is Alpha Strike and my son just feels like it's too slow and boring. :/

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

20 hours ago, Deschenus Maximus said:

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?

The original rules? They scrapped original rules like 8 years ago…

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

47 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Regarding the OP, it's interesting to me how messy and poorly done the 40K rules are, yet sells hard.

 

I suspect less people play casually game, let alone competitively, but then GW are focusing so much on competitive rules in their presentation (I've not bought into the rules are in the slightest competitive but work well for the competitive community) that maybe they really are internally focused on that.

 

Whatever the reasoning, the design of 40K is sticking to its focus. Painfully so for some.

 

I do suspect the customer base is not expanding, rather the average customer has increased their spending budget. I say this because my children, plus that of my friend's children and witnessing the community demographic on YouTube, Facebook and this site... well the young 'uns just ain't buying into it.

 

Can't convince the kids to engage. I just can't, my boys aren't interested and this story is repeated locally too.

 

But there was a massive increase of 40K fans when 8th hit. I attended many a community and tournament and even met the dude from Vanguard Tactics at an event. Does this contradict what I've said above?

 

Not sure. They aren't younger audiences for sure, mostly event attendees and community newbies. Speaking to them, most of them played many moons ago or when were youngsters yet lost intersest before finding their hobby feet again.

 

it would take a separate thread and topic focus to evaluate why 8th hit so hard and well, but touching upon it I dont think that growth in customer base is continued in 40K. Sales yes, but more numbers? Nope.

 

I know more people who can't be bothered with 40K and the tournament and event scene has dropped off somewhat too. Sales of 40K has happened, not just myself (I've sold all my 40K Ultramarines) but friends and local gaming clubs.

 

So where am I going with these questions and observations? Well I suspect Games Workshop hasn't engaged well with replacement games workshop customers and this is supported by the observation of @N1SB's that the company has used side games such as The Old World, Legions Imperialis and Age of Darkness Heresy rules to maintain engagement with those of us who don't like the direction of the mainline games of 40K and I suppose we should count Age of Sigmar in that.

 

(AoS is a funny one and I think it sits between HH and 40K in the company view though @N1SB did mention previously it sold poorly, worse than HH so it is basically a side game in economics really)

 

I think it's worked to keep us engaged. I've worked on Necromunda, Adeptus Titanicus and HH as well as some Old World. That's kept me keen.

 

Biggest question... how will things progress? I have my reservations that 11th edition won't turn things around for the rules as Games Workshop is solidly sticking to their trend with AoS and 40K aping each other. I don't like that and to be honest many old school gamers feel similar. (Note I'm not saying it's a majority who feel that way)

 

More of the same just different coloured ties for the same uniform, essentially. 

 

And GW will double down on what is making money now, even if it isn't long term as sensible.

Both my niece and nephew now play, and while I don’t regularly see kids playing at any store, when kids are in store while I play, they either show a lot of interest in the game as a potential new player, or they show a level of interest that does indicate they’re involved in the hobby somehow.

 

[Captain Idaho]

26 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Both my niece and nephew now play, and while I don’t regularly see kids playing at any store, when kids are in store while I play, they either show a lot of interest in the game as a potential new player, or they show a level of interest that does indicate they’re involved in the hobby somehow.

 

 

Little off topic but whatever you did to get them into I'd like to steal and use on my kids too!

 

It does promote the hobby long term so I guess it is kinda linked!

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

40 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

 

Little off topic but whatever you did to get them into I'd like to steal and use on my kids too!

 

It does promote the hobby long term so I guess it is kinda linked!

I think it was mostly my brother, but I know they just really look up to me for some reason.

[Mandragola]

2 hours ago, sairence said:

 

Just to preface that I in no way mean this in a dismissive way...but this is the kind of take that is quite often accompanied by "I don't play 40k (anymore)" and it often puts me in mind that the person might work with outdated assumptions. I play 40k weekly and regularly go to events and I think it's in the best place it's been since I started mid 7th ed.

 

The player base has massively grown since the 8th ed reset, as N1SB has already discussed, which makes it a bit odd to see criticism about not doing enough for player retention.

 

And since 8th GW has become better and better at balancing the game. Yes, there was a lot of messy stuff happening when the switch to 8th happened, which was not great, but GW has gotten better and better at a) releasing rules that are not insanely over the top and b) are quickly adressed to avoid a situation where something is just stupid. It still happens ocassionally, but with much, much less frequency than it happened. At the same time they made it much easier to pick the game up and start playing.

 

Compare this to when we had nothing of the sort pre-8th, where if something was broken stayed that way for months and years.

 

The current state of 10th is the most balanced I've ever played 40k in and this has been consistently true for a good while.

 

I'd argue GW has made a huge amount of changes, both to the core of how 40k is played and to how they interact with their community. They might not be the changes you (in the general sense) are looking for, but that is far from the same thing as them being scared to make any changes.

This is probably fair. In my case I've played 40k since 1st and 10th is the only edition I haven't played at all. There have been times when I've enjoyed it and times when I haven't.

 

Right now I hear kind of mixed things about 40k. Some people say it's better than ever and others that it's pointless to engage with. For me personally I think that it comes down to not being good enough compared to other games I could be playing instead, which I currently enjoy more.

 

I'm sure it's a better game than LI by the way. I do prefer AA to IGOUGO in general, but not when you have 35 units activating multiple times in a turn. Where 40k can be non-fun is when the lethality is dialled up too high, meaning one player can cripple their opponent in a single turn without (much) reply. That does still sometimes happen, though perhaps not as much as during late 8th and 9th editions.

 

I should probably give the game a go instead of throwing stones from the sidelines - though to be honest I don't do that too often. I do share the OP's confusion with all of GW's games, that they invest vast amounts in models but far, far less in games design. But as many of us have said, it seems to work for them.

[Bouargh]

9 hours ago, N1SB said:

 

But GW also IS successfully preserving the playerbase.  My examples are elevating 30k and bringing back The Old World.

 

I would not say that bringing back fantasy battle 9 years or so after axing it down is preservation of player base. Player base for rank and file is away already. I would rather consider it as a cheap and lazy way to reinstall a game at zero dev cost or almost. Cathay will be the new stuff for AoS... Every thing else is recooked old stuff. It benefits of nostalgy effect too.

 

Yet multiplication of settings may contribute to résilience of the player base or rathr customer base: if you are involved in différent games you are less likely to bé definitively affected and phased out in case of dramatic changes such as end of times, primaris stuff and all story line moving forwaerd as an excuse ton revamp on a high frequency the minis we buy.,.

 

But in general it might be my only point of small disagreement with all that has been said.

Edited Friday at 04:41 PM by Bouargh

[Deschenus Maximus]

8 minutes ago, Bouargh said:

 

I would not say that bringing back fantasy battle 9 years or so after axing it down is preservation of player base. Player base for rank and file is away already. I would rather consider it as a cheap and lazy way to reinstall a game at zero dev cost or almost. Cathay will be the new stuff for AoS... Every thing else is recooked old stuff. It benefits of nostalgy effect too.

 

Bit of a tangent but here's another thing I don't understand: even if GW is not going to support out of print games like Mordheim and BFG, why not continue to make the rules for those games available to digitally purchase? The development costs have already been paid, and people are still playing them, even if the community for them isn't big enough to warrant a full tilt effort/full plastic release spread. You could even dabble in STL-making/selling!