3.0: failed or not?

[TheTrans]

6 hours ago, Razorblade said:

Why would the current edition get an unfair metric? 

How is it going to not be skewed? 3.0 is the current edition, which has all the youtubers spruiking it so they can get a drop of milk from GW's teat. People see what ever is being spruiked and go look up whatever sub reddit relates to that. 

It's going to massively skew it and again, the percentage of 'models painted, dice rolled' vs 'I've purchased $1000 of models and am now hobby decision paralysed because I'm agonising over everything online and nothings out of its shrink wrap' is probably going to lead to the latter if people entered through that sort of 'work flow'

Thus I feel an unfair metric. 

[Razorblade]

12 hours ago, TheTrans said:

How is it going to not be skewed? 3.0 is the current edition, which has all the youtubers spruiking it so they can get a drop of milk from GW's teat. People see what ever is being spruiked and go look up whatever sub reddit relates to that. 

It's going to massively skew it and again, the percentage of 'models painted, dice rolled' vs 'I've purchased $1000 of models and am now hobby decision paralysed because I'm agonising over everything online and nothings out of its shrink wrap' is probably going to lead to the latter if people entered through that sort of 'work flow'

Thus I feel an unfair metric. 

If anything that is going to skew in favour of the current edition. The large content creators, which for a lot of people might be most of their interactions with the game, have all switched to 3E. Even if they're not praising it their at least doing tremendous work to normalize it. The fact that so many people still want it gone, not amended, not improved, gone, in spite of that massive public relations advantage is incredible and a testament to just how terrible a product it is.

[sarabando]

As one of those dirty content creators i can tell you that the vast majority of the feedback i get from viewers is that 3rd is simply not great but not bad but there is very little enthusiasm. Those who play it regularly are not blown away with it but have mostly house rules'd their way over any major problems and are just waiting for 4th. 

Those who dislike it however generally have laundry lists of why they hate it and fall into 2 camps either they dont like the rules or the dont like how the property is being handled. 

 

of course these are just the people who I interact with and not indictive of the entire community. 

 

Sure being inflammatory is popular with us "creators" because it gets us views, which we would normally have got from more positive videos like hobby related videos (views have dropped off on these hard), battle reports (same), or discussing new releases and fluff. (surprising lack of both worth talking about). 

So it falls back to community drama and click bait basically. 

 

from a personal POV i can tell you that reading the rule books has not sparked any sort of creativity in me, neither has WARCOMS lack of content, and the new way of building armies as an autistic man with ADHD is next to impossible to wrap my head around which in turn makes my desire to build new lists and then new armies pretty limited. 

[Gorgoff]

3 hours ago, sarabando said:

As one of those dirty content creators

 

You Bastard! 

3 hours ago, sarabando said:

i and the new way of building armies as an autistic man with ADHD is next to impossible to wrap my head around which in turn makes my desire to build new lists and then new armies pretty limited. 

 

I have ADHD as well and hate army building which had been one of my favorite things in the past.

 

[Antarius]

Yeah, the army building is almost the weirdest thing to me. I mean, army building should be a) fun or b) super easy (or, if possible, c) both ). This is neither and it's very hard for me to fathom what advantage they think this new system has. I mean, there must be one that I'm just not seeing, right?

[Brofist]

14 hours ago, sarabando said:

As one of those dirty content creators i can tell you that the vast majority of the feedback i get from viewers is that 3rd is simply not great but not bad but there is very little enthusiasm. Those who play it regularly are not blown away with it but have mostly house rules'd their way over any major problems and are just waiting for 4th. 

Those who dislike it however generally have laundry lists of why they hate it and fall into 2 camps either they dont like the rules or the dont like how the property is being handled. 

 

of course these are just the people who I interact with and not indictive of the entire community. 

 

Sure being inflammatory is popular with us "creators" because it gets us views, which we would normally have got from more positive videos like hobby related videos (views have dropped off on these hard), battle reports (same), or discussing new releases and fluff. (surprising lack of both worth talking about). 

So it falls back to community drama and click bait basically. 

 

from a personal POV i can tell you that reading the rule books has not sparked any sort of creativity in me, neither has WARCOMS lack of content, and the new way of building armies as an autistic man with ADHD is next to impossible to wrap my head around which in turn makes my desire to build new lists and then new armies pretty limited. 

 

Hey thanks for being one of the real ones

[sarabando]

the common thread i see with even (especially) the most negative heresy content creators (like the outer circle etc) is that they WANT to like the heresy and be positive but the state of the system makes it very hard. 

 

For me this has meant that instead of building a game legal army im instead just kitbashing non legal minis that should exist in the setting. 

For example 1st ed would have let me build my current project of a indomnitus terminator army of blood angels assaulting the vengeful spirit, terminis with shields and hammers, assault cannons, reaper autocannons, plasma blast guns, characters, etc but not in 3rd. making a full terminator army seems really hard in this regards too. 

[Valkyrion]

It's officially 'failed' in my house and group. 

It's more like death by a thousand cuts rather than a tantrum exodus.

We liked Heresy mainly because it was 3rd-7th edition in principle but tweaked to fit a marine centric ruleset - the FOC chart, the AP system, blasts, vehicle rules and so on. 

Even though 3rd hasn't changed it wholesale, there's enough now to make it no longer 'historical 40k' and it's now its own beast which ultimately has to compete on an even footing with 40k proper, or AoS, Kill Team, Epic, Necromunda and if the game fails to deliver on its own merits then nostalgia is no longer there to save it.  It's a bit like when Cataclysm came out for World of Warcraft, or the long awaited Diablo 3 being nothing like the two games that made the franchise so famous -  you can still have fun, but it's not the same game anymore. HH2.0 let us still play Diablo 2, just with new toys. HH3.0 means we have to play diablo 3, so we might as well play 40k because it's a better system. 

 

I think 30k could possibly serve as a multi pronged two tier game system - Zone Mortalis and Apocalypse. Let ZM be all about the subtleties with set up moves and reactions and uncommon list building, and let Apocalypse be about all the glorious new plastic super heavies, flyers, all dreadnought lists, and have two distinct rule sets to play with.

I don't think the two systems would step on any other gaming toes - ZM would still be (e.g) 1500 points so markedly different from Kill Team or Necromunda, and there isn't a 28mm scale mass battle system to compete with Apocalypse, only LI, and most 30k players will have an Apocalypse sized force ready to go anyway. 

 

[librisrouge]

I'm currently focusing on HH3.0 because I enjoy painting the miniatures more. However, 3.0 is slowly pushing me back to consider 40k. To put that into perspective, I'm an inquisition player at heart. 40k and I are in a long-term abusive relationship that HH3.0 is driving me back to.

 

I tried to participate in a local HH event and there was just nobody there. I played one game and had to be given a by (so I left), because only three people were left in the RTT after round 1. This was considered more successful than it had been in the last few months. To put that into perspective, the same store had a few tournaments in 2.0 that I attended which had 10+ players in it. No huge itself, but leagues better than now.

[Brofist]

Quote

 

For me this has meant that instead of building a game legal army im instead just kitbashing non legal minis that should exist in the setting. 

For example 1st ed would have let me build my current project of a indomnitus terminator army of blood angels assaulting the vengeful spirit, terminis with shields and hammers, assault cannons, reaper autocannons, plasma blast guns, characters, etc but not in 3rd. making a full terminator army seems really hard in this regards too. 

 

 

Literally me right now. I'm skipping 3.0 entirely and just making art. At this point I mostly hope hobby jesus rises and gives onto us a community ruleset that enough people being to play to keep the old spirit alive. I'm sure 4.0 is going to swing back after all the 3.0 hate, but I think I'd rather stick to a stable community edition than be on the treadmill. 

[Razorblade]

7 hours ago, Brofist said:

 

Literally me right now. I'm skipping 3.0 entirely and just making art. At this point I mostly hope hobby jesus rises and gives onto us a community ruleset that enough people being to play to keep the old spirit alive. I'm sure 4.0 is going to swing back after all the 3.0 hate, but I think I'd rather stick to a stable community edition than be on the treadmill. 

I don't think that's happening while GW supports the game. Blood Bowl survived for decades on the community rules and as soon as gw released official rules again people (and importantly events) jumped ship. No fan Ruleset will ever be viewed as "legitimate" whilst there is an official contender. I think chances would be better with one of the older editions, but even if consensus could be found that this would be the right thing to do, I can guarantee that the community would then be split between 1 and 2E. 

[MARK0SIAN]

On 8/7/2026 at 5:38 AM, Antarius said:

Yeah, the army building is almost the weirdest thing to me. I mean, army building should be a) fun or b) super easy (or, if possible, c) both ). This is neither and it's very hard for me to fathom what advantage they think this new system has. I mean, there must be one that I'm just not seeing, right?

I’ve been saying this since it came out. I just can’t see what benefit this new level of complexity has over the old system in terms of list making. I haven’t found a list I can make now that I couldn’t under the old system other than HQ spam. In fact both skew lists and general tac lists seem harder to make. This system seems like it actively punishes variety in lists by adding in taxes and restrictions if you want to bring a wide array of units. 
 

I’d genuinely love to sit down with the devs and just hear their explanation and reasoning for this system. Or at least for someone to explain what advantage it has over the last one because all I can see is added complexity with no pay off. 

[Gorgoff]

2 hours ago, MARK0SIAN said:

I’ve been saying this since it came out. I just can’t see what benefit this new level of complexity has over the old system in terms of list making. I haven’t found a list I can make now that I couldn’t under the old system other than HQ spam. In fact both skew lists and general tac lists seem harder to make. This system seems like it actively punishes variety in lists by adding in taxes and restrictions if you want to bring a wide array of units. 
 

I’d genuinely love to sit down with the devs and just hear their explanation and reasoning for this system. Or at least for someone to explain what advantage it has over the last one because all I can see is added complexity with no pay off. 

I heard couple of players say that they like the new system more because it allows to take more tanks than three for mechanicum. The old FOC gave us three support slots which could be filled with tanks or whatever but not more so if you wanted to take four different tanks from that slot you couldn't do so.

The new one can and I guess that was the reasoning behind it.

Plus the ability to just take as many allies as you want (50% of your points max but still) which makes people buy more different armies and especially those battle boxes with X units from one faction.

 

That is the main reason I believe why they made the system like that. 

First they made buying lots of troops = lots of models to win the missions more or less mandatory and then they added the possibility to add allies at random.

Both is for sales and sales only. It doesn't add anything good to the game.

 

One person gave me answer that the new system would be a lot easier to understand and that the old chart was way to complicated which was super weird.

But I guess it was one of these "Never had a rulebook in my hand and apps explained the game to me" kind of player which explains their opinion. ;)

 

[kabaakaba]

Idk why so much hatred about list building. As an ex-military it's pretty nice system. Well, with grain of salt of course...

You wanna detachments? Take commander for it(every one know detachments can't work without commander) you need support(tanks, Dread's, more infantry)? Oh, your commander ain't platoon commander but company. Which type(here we select benefit)  and so on.  My main complain we have very small platoons, companies, etc. so 10 hq for 100 ppl is already Soviet army...

Though if you think of your squads as of platoons this looks pretty fine

[Razorblade]

On 8/8/2026 at 11:25 AM, Gorgoff said:

I heard couple of players say that they like the new system more because it allows to take more tanks than three for mechanicum. The old FOC gave us three support slots which could be filled with tanks or whatever but not more so if you wanted to take four different tanks from that slot you couldn't do so.

The new one can and I guess that was the reasoning behind it.

Plus the ability to just take as many allies as you want (50% of your points max but still) which makes people buy more different armies and especially those battle boxes with X units from one faction.

 

That is the main reason I believe why they made the system like that. 

First they made buying lots of troops = lots of models to win the missions more or less mandatory and then they added the possibility to add allies at random.

Both is for sales and sales only. It doesn't add anything good to the game.

 

One person gave me answer that the new system would be a lot easier to understand and that the old chart was way to complicated which was super weird.

But I guess it was one of these "Never had a rulebook in my hand and apps explained the game to me" kind of player which explains their opinion. ;)

 

But you could already take more than three since the krios came in squadrons. Same for space marines, armored breakthrough (and various legion variants) existed if you wanted to spam a bunch of different tanks. And back then you didn't even need to run a bunch of useless characters with them because all you needed to unlock it was a Command tank.

 

On 8/8/2026 at 12:13 PM, kabaakaba said:

Idk why so much hatred about list building. As an ex-military it's pretty nice system. Well, with grain of salt of course...

You wanna detachments? Take commander for it(every one know detachments can't work without commander) you need support(tanks, Dread's, more infantry)? Oh, your commander ain't platoon commander but company. Which type(here we select benefit)  and so on.  My main complain we have very small platoons, companies, etc. so 10 hq for 100 ppl is already Soviet army...

Though if you think of your squads as of platoons this looks pretty fine

Because it heavily incentivizes spam, forces you to remember well over a dozen different detachments instead of one FoC and makes you take a bunch of characters. These than have no in-game link they are supposedly leading and because this is classic warhammer they're all essentially overcosted beatsticks who likely have no place with the units they unlock. 

There are games where chain of command is a huge thing and this kind of force construction would be perfectly acceptable for those, but it is not for heresy.

Edited Sunday at 10:25 AM by Razorblade

[TheTrans]

I think the new army building process is just part of GW's attempts to remove any 'feels bads' from games (read: good decision making, working within limitations, consequences for bad tactics/rolls).

You see it a lot in The Old World. Compared to say 6th or 8th ed fantasy, you find that most armies have a way of slotting a special into core (so you don't has as much 'core tax' so skipped a feel bad there). The miscast table is laughable at best, and there is 3 different flavours of breaking from combat, only one being the good ole fashion 'run them down'. A lot of those to an older player, feel like the 'bumpers' are being put on the game, or training wheels I suppose. Babies first WHFB experience etc. (This is not to say the game isn't full of NPE and balance issues, hideious levels of 'babushka rules' etc, but I account that as more GW's inability to write decent balanced rules, and wanting to sell new models with good rules!).

So to me the army process now is attempting to avoid any 'feels bads' by instead of you needing to make some hard decisions about what models to take (and possibly buy less models in the process), they just remove it and put the arbitrary 'HQ' tax on all of it so people can't just say 'oh but its just take what you want'. But at the end of the day, it is just 'take what you want' with a few annoying hoops thrown in and oh...and enforced extra (probably non-thematic) model tax on top... 

I'm definitely a cynical old bastard at this point, and even though the years feel like they haven't caught up to me in my mid-late thirties, I'd definitely seeing some grognardy tendencies. I feel at my core that GW is terrible at game design at this point (which they kind of admit to when they say they are a model company), and most major decisions made in rules are a vehicle to sell as many models as possible to people, especially if they can get some knee jerk sales through (fomo etc). Not to mention the DLC we're copping when a few short years ago they were essentially the free pdfs we're getting.

But at the same time, too many people I feel are just toxically positive. Oh the DLC journals are great.. its more support for the game... but is it, they are just adding stuff that should have been there to begin with (go look at the 'reduced book' necromunda coming out), or be a free pdf. It's very clear that new plastics are often pretty solid on the power curve moving up to down right broken (Cathay over the in the old world has a lot to answer for). 

I enjoy the worlds/universes that GW created (I may not love their current incarnations), I think they put out some great models and I really enjoy a lot of their older rules systems. 

Hell I want 30k to be great again (#MTGA), but with how much of a sort of wet flop 3.0 landed with, the fear that its now in the 3 year cycle, where they aren't afraid to fundamentally change the game across a variety of areas and savage armies/collections (we saw this with 2.0) doesn't really make me want to invest time or money into building an army that could get rug-pulled pretty easily. It's a maybe 'sit it out to 4.0 and if flops also, try for a 1.0 resurgence' sort of vibe for myself and my group.

I 100% get there are a bunch of negative nellies like myself harping on, but the 'all is well' people maybe need to take a step back and understand that as a company, GW are pretty close to one of the most anti-consumer (non-necessity) companies there is, and many of their decisions are aimed at player churn not retention. 

Edited Sunday at 11:59 PM by TheTrans

[Razorblade]

4 hours ago, TheTrans said:

I think the new army building process is just part of GW's attempts to remove any 'feels bads' from games (read: good decision making, working within limitations, consequences for bad tactics/rolls).

You see it a lot in The Old World. Compared to say 6th or 8th ed fantasy, you find that most armies have a way of slotting a special into core (so you don't has as much 'core tax' so skipped a feel bad there). The miscast table is laughable at best, and there is 3 different flavours of breaking from combat, only one being the good ole fashion 'run them down'. A lot of those to an older player, feel like the 'bumpers' are being put on the game, or training wheels I suppose. Babies first WHFB experience etc. (This is not to say the game isn't full of NPE and balance issues, hideious levels of 'babushka rules' etc, but I account that as more GW's inability to write decent balanced rules, and wanting to sell new models with good rules!).

Between the way heavy/ordnance work, the new morale system and devastating reaction shooting I'm about 99% confident that nothing is about eliminating "feels bad" :D

As for the force Org, I think @Gorgoff was spot on when he suggested that this was about a sort of unified branding between the different scales of heresy games.

5 hours ago, TheTrans said:

I'm definitely a cynical old bastard at this point, and even though the years feel like they haven't caught up to me in my mid-late thirties, I'd definitely seeing some grognardy tendencies. I feel at my core that GW is terrible at game design at this point (which they kind of admit to when they say they are a model company), and most major decisions made in rules are a vehicle to sell as many models as possible to people, especially if they can get some knee jerk sales through (fomo etc).

(...)

I 100% get there are a bunch of negative nellies like myself harping on, but the 'all is well' people maybe need to take a step back and understand that as a company, GW are pretty close to one of the most anti-consumer (non-necessity) companies there is, and many of their decisions are aimed at player churn not retention. 

I know this is an unpopular take among heresy players, because most people here hate modern 40k but the idea that GW is incapable of writing and/or understanding the value of good rules. 40k works great for its intended audience and to their credit they put a ton of effort into maintaining it. 

Most anti-consumer is a bit much isn't it? Like EA/unisoft/epic exist, or, if you want to stick even closer with GW, slop factories like moediphius. 

I don't want to defend them too much but I think the mindset that all is doomed because GW is bad is not very productive. 

They can do better, they have done better in the past, they are currently doing better elsewhere and it is not unreasonable to expect better of them for the future.

[Ahzek451]

14 hours ago, Razorblade said:

They can do better, they have done better in the past, they are currently doing better elsewhere and it is not unreasonable to expect better of them for the future.

Thing is, spraying gold paint on top of a turd is technically better. But a lot of folk that have lived through at least 2nd/3rd ed onwards of 40k can tell you that GW could be doing a lot more better-er-er. They have gotten people so used to their low bars over the course of years that they find any improvement to be acceptable or fantastic,...in general. But when you really step back with a healthy dose of perspective and take note of what GW COULD be doing for the health of a game...yeah...its a model company first for sure. 

[Razorblade]

1 hour ago, Ahzek451 said:

Thing is, spraying gold paint on top of a turd is technically better. But a lot of folk that have lived through at least 2nd/3rd ed onwards of 40k can tell you that GW could be doing a lot more better-er-er. They have gotten people so used to their low bars over the course of years that they find any improvement to be acceptable or fantastic,...in general. But when you really step back with a healthy dose of perspective and take note of what GW COULD be doing for the health of a game...yeah...its a model company first for sure. 

But I'm not talking about slightly better than terrible, I'm talking about good rules which GW has occasionally produced in the past and is currently producing for most of their games that aren't heresy. 

I've only been around since the end of 4th (got started with black reach when it first came out) but I don't think GW has been doing better than currently for game health than currently (for 40k that is)

What exactly could/should GW be doing? I mean heresy is obviously currently stuck in a worst-of-all-worlds situation with the release schedule of a main game and none of the support of the rules-team that 40k/AoS get, but I feel that most heresy players also don't agree with how the main systems are handled so what does that leave?

[TheTrans]

18 hours ago, Razorblade said:

Most anti-consumer is a bit much isn't it? Like EA/unisoft/epic exist, or, if you want to stick even closer with GW, slop factories like moediphius. 

I'd heavily disagree there mate, I haven't put 100s of hours into any of those companies games outside of the time actually spent playing. Unlike GW, where I can spend 100's of hours not playing the game to buy, build, convert and paint up models to play in a game.. and then for instance of 2.0 not recieve rules for said army for most of the edition... If that isn't anti-consumer I'm unsure what is... 
 

 

1 hour ago, Razorblade said:

What exactly could/should GW be doing?

I'd honestly say NOT holding back already written rules, especially for models that already exist and locking them behind a DLC paywall (essentially) is hardly 'doing good'.

Like they created some 'new' (new being reintroducing some rules that already existed and they removed and are now reintroducing) magic changes for TOW, that work for most armies and will more than likely be the way Magic is used in any meaningful waying going forward. They just released an updated rulebook... but a monthish later they release a new Arcane Journal for Warriors of Chaos..oh and the new magic stuff for all armies is in there... I don't really see how that is doing well, except to nickel and dime everyone and withhold rules for cost. 

Hell, during the early 00's, which IMHO is peak GW. If you look at rules, while a white dwarf wasn't free ($10AUD a month was pretty reasonable though) the sheer amount of cool extra armies, rules, missions and everything that came out across a variety of systems for a nominally small price was pretty damn amazing! I think WHFB 6th and 3rd Ed 40k may be the only editions that got if not all, then 90% of the current armies out in a single edition also. 

Not only that, while there where certainly things that where unbalanced across all their systems, they didn't feel so unbalanced it felt deliberate to sell models in that time frame also... 

 

But now, for a 'model company', they monetise rules like its their actual core business model.

In regards to Heresy specifically I'd warrant many Heresy 1.0 players moved across as an escape from the 'main game' cycle and probably a good whack of 2.0 players as well... 3.0 is now becoming all the stuff that Heresy players don't really want (or 'original' heresy players don't want) but they are then lambasted for saying they don't like the way things are heading, or are being handled, but exactly where does one go after your 'escape' has just become an extension of the thing you're trying to escape? 

 

Edited Monday at 11:41 PM by TheTrans

[Antarius]

Ironically, I think the cynical takes on GW tend to not be cynical enough, and so, they miss a fundamental point about GW that is actually cause for keeping one’s pessimism in check. GW fundamentally only cares about selling us stuff*, but that means they want to make us want to buy their products.

Heresy 3.0 is not purposefully bad, it’s a failed attempt at giving us something they think we want. 
 

They’re not anti-consumer (although some of their practices may not be aimed at serving the consumer), their ideas of what we as consumers want/need/will reasonably put up with is just not always the same as the individual consumer’s idea. For all the things they do that I, personally, disagree with, I have very little doubt that their aim is giving (that is, selling) me something I think is awesome. 

 

In some ways, I think a company that cared less about consumers, might make better games. That being said, I also think the idea that GW is bad at making games is vastly overstated. I find 3.0 pretty irredeemable and I fervently hope it fails in a spectacular enough way that it will make GW reverse the direction they’re going with Heresy, but shifting editions and design philosophies aside, most of their games have consistently solid core designs and live far longer and healthier lives than genuinely bad games do. 

This does not mean that there aren’t flaws (and in some cases, quite glaring ones) and troubling tendencies, some/many of which goes back to their business model.
But I don’t think one should forget that, cynically speaking, GW wants our money too much to make us take them elsewhere.
That mean HH 3rd ed is a misstep and if they realise that, it will also end up being an aberration.

 

* Of course, a lot of the individuals working at GW feel quite differently, but GW as a company exists solely to make money by selling us stuff.

[TheTrans]

Honestly they are almost the definition of a corporation using a lot of anti-consumer tactics, I think they are just very lucky that there is a level of sunk-cost fallacy within wargamers that probably doesn't exist as much in other areas. 
 

[Antarius]

I don’t know about that. I have a hard time thinking of wargamers as a group that doesn’t complain enough 

[Pacific81]

I have just got into Konflikt '47 (which is such a well designed game btw) and its amazing how much it feels like GW of old; very friendly and community focused, the rulesets are softer and you don't seem to get the community of min-maxers, its really cheap to collect and play by comparison etc. They even had a store opening recently (the first Warlord store outside of Nottingham, in Wigan) and it had buy 2 get 1 free - straight out of early 90s GW store openings.

I know the game stuff being as it does makes sense as the company is now crewed by the guys who effectively built GWs games franchises (Priestley, Chambers, Thorpe.. I think there are more) but the whole experience feels how GW used to, before it became a publicly floated company & sales managers started directing everything.

 

Know this is very much old man shaking fist at cloud - we can't change market economics and GW becoming a gigantic monolith has brought positives - but getting into Warlord again and K47 in particular has been like being wrapped in a warm, favourite blanket again. Just the almost complete lack of cut-throat market forces and everything that comes with that is so refreshing.

 

 

[Ahzek451]

19 hours ago, Razorblade said:

What exactly could/should GW be doing? I mean heresy is obviously currently stuck in a worst-of-all-worlds situation with the release schedule of a main game and none of the support of the rules-team that 40k/AoS get, but I feel that most heresy players also don't agree with how the main systems are handled so what does that leave?

*takes a big breath in* The following is in regard to the health of the game, I do not have an interest in their marketing strategy, to say they need constant edition turn for profit reasons is a crux and if they wanted to, they could find another avenue to make that money. 
1. Stop adhering to this "change for the sake of change" model. GW is notorious for changing rules when its not needed or wanted because they need to do it to make things seem fresh, new, and exciting for the new edition. Mind, not EVERYTHING is like this, but there are a lot of game mechanics they do this with. 
2. Stop the short edition turn and parade of FAQ. FAQ's are fine, and expected...but to have them constantly speaks more on the inability to not write with polish.

3. I have peeked behind the curtain at GW, they do have some great designers, but they are often under many constraints such as....short windows of time to produce rules, limited number of staff to produce rules, some compartmentalized staff not always talking to the other, etc.
4. Have a stronger connection with the community as far as gauging what the customer wants instead of deciding the majority of how things work in house. I.e. better market research.

5. Going back to 2, actually spend time and resources with a crack team to make the edition whole. Polish the out of it. Other games seem to be able to do this. In essence, what incentive do they have to make it as polished as they can if its all just going to change in 3 years anyway. Thus, the attitude is...make it work just enough and appear more coherent and organized than it actually is. Minimizing the amount of FAQ'ing needed, but in this case...largely ignored.
6. Add more support. 

Funny, if you go back to 1. And stop changing things for the sake of it, we probably wouldn't have such a divided fan base. 
 

Edited yesterday at 05:14 PM by Ahzek451