3.0: failed or not?

[Antarius]

2 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

3. I have peaked 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.

Yeah, this is the big one, I would say.

It would definitely help all of their games if they fixed this, but HH3 in particular seems like it's so bad because of lack of a shared vision or a vision changing halfway through and not enough time to properly follow through. I don't know this, of course, but it would definitely be my guess.

[Lathe Biosas]

It would also help if the Warhammer stores supported it. When I asked about learning Horus Heresy I was told that I could find a game at another FLGS, that's a couple towns over from where I live.

 

No demos, no help all. Guess that's why I never bought anything.

[Brofist]

14 hours ago, Antarius said:

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

 

idk, can you imagine the storm what GW would get if they were a video game company and pulled their 'normal' sort of stuff in that space?

 

Edited August 11 by Brofist

[kabaakaba]

49 minutes ago, Brofist said:

 

idk, can you imagine the storm what GW would get if they were a video game company and pulled their 'normal' sort of stuff in that space?

 

But they ain't video game company. You could get bunch of enthusiasts good idea and kick starter and make video game(vampire survival is a good example, or maincraft). And the moment you start listen loud minority in the internet you are doomed. DOOOMED. 

You can't go same way with miniature game. You need produce plastic/resin it's not same like make another render. 

Once GW go listening people who want something outside THEIR course they just loose money and a lot of people who don't like thas changes. 

Don't like 3.0, then play 2.0. no one to play around cause everyone moved to 3.0? Congratz, You loud minority. 

 

And again we see endless references to 3ed 40k and fb and common guys,  those roles are great at THAT time. Because there is nothing this cool. Yet. Now they looks like bloated hell. We just getting older and don't like changes out of nostalgia. Current rules for every GW systems are way better then we have from very start.

[TheTrans]

1 hour ago, kabaakaba said:

But they ain't video game company. You could get bunch of enthusiasts good idea and kick starter and make video game(vampire survival is a good example, or maincraft). And the moment you start listen loud minority in the internet you are doomed. DOOOMED. 

You can't go same way with miniature game. You need produce plastic/resin it's not same like make another render. 

Once GW go listening people who want something outside THEIR course they just loose money and a lot of people who don't like thas changes. 

Don't like 3.0, then play 2.0. no one to play around cause everyone moved to 3.0? Congratz, You loud minority. 

 

And again we see endless references to 3ed 40k and fb and common guys,  those roles are great at THAT time. Because there is nothing this cool. Yet. Now they looks like bloated hell. We just getting older and don't like changes out of nostalgia. Current rules for every GW systems are way better then we have from very start.

What happens when the move to 3.0 just completely kills the community in ones local area? What do we do then? Are we a silent minority now?

As someone who plays a lot of 3rd ed 40k (and played a lot of WHFB6th before ToW nixxed it) as well as Mordheim, all rules of a similar time frame. While I'll agree that yes, the rulebook does have more pages of rules than current 40k or AoS (Not HH3.0 or ToW which are massive tomes!), I don't know how you could consider said rules bloated compared to the stuff we have nowadays. Most Codexs (sans 3.5 Guard and Chaos) had maybe 15..maybe 20 pages of rules including characters, units and gear. Most units of that time do what they say on the tin without relying on whatever weird bespoke rule each unit has nowadays. Same with weapons, most weapons profiles did the work as well, instead of Lethal X or Mortal Y or whatever happens nowadays. 

So I do find it wild you think GW is less bloated now.... 

[Antarius]

Like I said recently, if they released N95 now, I am 100% certain that it would be criticised for being “dumbed down for the kids”. Some of their games are definitely more complex/bloated now than they were in earlier editions. Sometimes this has obvious reasons (Blood Bowl being basically the same game with a ton of little extra details added over the years), sometimes it’s more of a mystery (HH3 being, well, whatever it is that it is). In general I think there’s more mental load involved in playing a modern GW game (some of this is about age too, of course, but still).

 

That being said, I don’t think any game designer or company should be listening too much to random complainers on the internet. Be aware of the reception of your products and solicit feedback on specific things? Definitely. Backtrack if something turns out to be wildly unpopular? Sure. But if you want to create something, you need to trust your own vision. You can’t design by comittee, especially not in a field such as this, because GW gamers have complained about everything for at least the 33 years I’ve been in the hobby. Sometimes these complaints are justified, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’re all worth listening to, let alone acting on.

 

At the end of the day, GW wants your money. It’s up to you whether you give it to them or not. If you think they’re basically an evil empire, I would highly suggest not giving them your time and money. This is not “if you don’t like it, move to Russia” btw, it’s an honest, well intentioned piece of advice. I’ve dropped Heresy because I think it sucks and I’m concentrating on aspects of the hobby that bring me enjoyment; it’s a lot more fun (and likely cheaper) than it was back when I was complaining about everything. And if I felt GW was basically my enemy, I’d definitely be using one of the many, many alternatives instead. 

[Rusted Boltgun]

Who would be the designer who is told 'change the game - we need it to sell X in order to stay viable now it is on the top tier. Also, start thinking about how you'd change it in three years. And sell more models.

[Antarius]

32 minutes ago, Rusted Boltgun said:

Who would be the designer who is told 'change the game - we need it to sell X in order to stay viable now it is on the top tier. Also, start thinking about how you'd change it in three years. And sell more models.

I remember an interview with Jervis Johnson, after he had retired, where he said they were rarely told to do specific things (AoS 1st ed was an exception), but that they were generally pushed to change things in ways that were easy to "sell" as big, important changes, rather than "we've really fine-tuned the magic phase" or similar incremental improvements.

I think it would be naive to believe that the designers were not beholden to marketing in some ways (which I think is lamentable, but also probably unavoidable, at least to some degree), but I think the biggest problem is probably the perceived need for change for change's sake (if you've been following GW games for long enough, you will probably have laughed at the way some things are reintroduced as great innovations after being taken out a couple of editions earlier) and time constraints.

[kabaakaba]

It's horrible but... But how many amazing rulesets and miniature games just collect the dust in the shelf of history because there is no marketing guy who told creators what could be sold and what is not. Yeah, sometimes I wanna hit hard gw's marketing team but without them there is no hobby how we used to see it. It would be another napoleonica/fantasy/scale modeling parts. the guys who really love setting and game maybe play constantly, but they doesn't buy all the time. Many people drop the game from time to time. And in fact, without constant injection of fresh blood(thank you marketing team) we barely have a chance play random pick up in FLGS. 

Almost no one whom I started to play 40k in 2002 still playing.  But if I drive FLGS I'll easily find someone to play. But for any other game system without stronk marketing? Barely. 

[SlickSamos]

21 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

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. 

The number 1 example of them not changing much, and the game still being successful is the LotR/Hobbit/ME SBG.  If you learnt from the when the first movie came out, didn't do much, then picked it up today the key differences are: different list building, better missions and more Heroic actions.  

[MoriyaSchism]

6 hours ago, kabaakaba said:

It's horrible but... But how many amazing rulesets and miniature games just collect the dust in the shelf of history because there is no marketing guy who told creators what could be sold and what is not. Yeah, sometimes I wanna hit hard gw's marketing team but without them there is no hobby how we used to see it. It would be another napoleonica/fantasy/scale modeling parts. the guys who really love setting and game maybe play constantly, but they doesn't buy all the time. Many people drop the game from time to time. And in fact, without constant injection of fresh blood(thank you marketing team) we barely have a chance play random pick up in FLGS. 

Almost no one whom I started to play 40k in 2002 still playing.  But if I drive FLGS I'll easily find someone to play. But for any other game system without stronk marketing? Barely. 

This just seems like a reflexive defense of the company. I fail to see how you can't have good marketing and make a game that doesn't rugpull you every 3 years or release a game with a bunch of broken and untested mechanics. Warhammer 40,000 has some third party licensed on-ramps to the hobby but no such thing exists for the Horus Heresy and the way the Heresy is promoted, it might as well just be a novel series. They were working on a Horus Heresy video game and they simply cancelled it without telling anyone. 
 

8 hours ago, Antarius said:

That being said, I don’t think any game designer or company should be listening too much to random complainers on the internet. Be aware of the reception of your products and solicit feedback on specific things? Definitely. Backtrack if something turns out to be wildly unpopular? Sure. But if you want to create something, you need to trust your own vision. You can’t design by comittee, especially not in a field such as this, because GW gamers have complained about everything for at least the 33 years I’ve been in the hobby. Sometimes these complaints are justified, but let’s not kid ourselves that they’re all worth listening to, let alone acting on.

 

At the end of the day, GW wants your money. It’s up to you whether you give it to them or not. If you think they’re basically an evil empire, I would highly suggest not giving them your time and money. This is not “if you don’t like it, move to Russia” btw, it’s an honest, well intentioned piece of advice. I’ve dropped Heresy because I think it sucks and I’m concentrating on aspects of the hobby that bring me enjoyment; it’s a lot more fun (and likely cheaper) than it was back when I was complaining about everything. And if I felt GW was basically my enemy, I’d definitely be using one of the many, many alternatives instead. 

Who should they be listening to? The people who rely on them for free products to keep their channels afloat? On the topic of soliciting feedback I can't even remember the last time we had any sort of survey from GW for Horus Heresy or anything really. How would feedback even be collected? Nailing a list of complaints to the door of your nearest flagship Games Workshop store or genuflecting in front of the Rhino at Warhammer World? To play Devil's Advocate, why should they even backtrack? If the focus is player churn and conning newbies out of their money, why would they care if something proves unpopular with the old guard? If the Saturnine box sold well no matter how bad the rulebook that came with it was and they already got that money there is no reason to backtrack, just fire up the hype for the next box and hope it sells again. 

As for creative vision, that's a bit generous. They are currently managing someone else's legacy vision and they don't seem to be doing that well of a job if they are trashing whole sections of it, redesigning everything without a care in the world and turning it into a DLC booklet assembly line. I don't see how accepting feedback from the internet compromises this "vision". For the sake of transparency I didn't buy a single 3.0 product apart from two disintegrator sprues, but I do own the old black books and every book released for 2.0.  

 

[Valkyrion]

The edition cycle should be 4 years, with the first two years given over to new rules and models (i.e codexes, faqs, erratas, MFM, balance etc) and the latter 2 years given over to playing the game in its final state with no further interference. That way you get two years of live testing and two years of the finished product whilst GW can focus on making the next edition. 

 

 

[Ahzek451]

3 hours ago, MoriyaSchism said:

As for creative vision, that's a bit generous. They are currently managing someone else's legacy vision and they don't seem to be doing that well of a job if they are trashing whole sections of it, redesigning everything without a care in the world and turning it into a DLC booklet assembly line. I don't see how accepting feedback from the internet compromises this "vision". For the sake of transparency I didn't buy a single 3.0 product apart from two disintegrator sprues, but I do own the old black books and every book released for 2.0.  

 

Pretty much.  I will refer to my older post which I feel is appropriate to point to again:

Very vocal Horus Heresy fans: "We want blue triangle, and make red circle better, we like red circle".
GW: "We know better and know what you really want, here is yellow square and we eliminated red circle and added wavey purple lines". 

I would like to give credit for the time they brought back all the additional rules they cut and put into a large PDF document. But I can't bring myself to do it after their horrid comment, paraphrasing here: "We intended to do this anyway, don't worry". I'm sure....
Don't pee on my head and tell me its raining. 

Edited August 12 by Ahzek451

[Brofist]

imo you can't in good faith look at the rules for apothecaries/medic/FNP in 3.0 or the number of steps as part of the shooting phase and say this is somehow super streamlined compared to older editions. Hell, the unit profiles now have what, 3 new attributes since 1.0? Running the language through what seems to beChatGPT didn't help either. One of the main complaints has been inconsistent application of design goals and how its all presented. Things got clunky in some places and too simple in others. 

   

16 hours ago, Antarius said:

That being said, I don’t think any game designer or company should be listening too much to random complainers on the internet. Be aware of the reception of your products and solicit feedback on specific things? Definitely. Backtrack if something turns out to be wildly unpopular? Sure. But if you want to create something, you need to trust your own vision.

 

This was covered up thread, but we're in a world today where many of the people working on these products don't actually play or understand them. This leads to bizarre disconnected product decisions and strategies (if you can even call them that). That's been a growing problem for years and its reflected in business decisions globally. Just today I was debriefing about candidates for a games company and I was the only person out of 5 that said a hard requirement was knowledge and experience playing games. Its mental. I feel most people itt would be really surprised at how little thought and strategy goes into product development in the modern corporate world of games. Not everywhere is like that, but that's the exception from my experience.

[TheTrans]

6 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

I would like to give credit for the time they brought back all the additional rules they cut and put into a large PDF document. But I can't bring myself to do it after their horrid comment, paraphrasing here: "We intended to do this anyway, don't worry". I'm sure....
Don't pee on my head and tell me its raining. 

Oh anyone that honestly thinks that document was originally going to be that many pages before the community outrage is huffing some crazy levels of copium haha. 

I think my biggest issue with all the modern GW games (except old world, it weirdly isn't as anal about it) is the no-model, no rules (or if the weapons aren't in the kit for Model X, no bueno). If it existed 'before' the new edition it'll be put into Legacies to go die a slow death of generally being crap.. unless it was Fulmentarus in 2.0.. jaysus christ.... apparently (and legitimately) an Ultramarine Player wrote those rules... 

But yeah that Legacies document I think showed the writing on the wall to a huge degree, customisability is so low nowadays and its reflected so aggressively in the rules. (No the 'hey try mooshing GW Kit A and GW Kit B together, in this DLC you just purchased' hardly counts..). 

 

[Antarius]

15 hours ago, MoriyaSchism said:

As for creative vision, that's a bit generous. They are currently managing someone else's legacy vision and they don't seem to be doing that well of a job if they are trashing whole sections of it, redesigning everything without a care in the world and turning it into a DLC booklet assembly line. I don't see how accepting feedback from the internet compromises this "vision". For the sake of transparency I didn't buy a single 3.0 product apart from two disintegrator sprues, but I do own the old black books and every book released for 2.0.  

I think maybe you're mistaken about my view of HH3 - I think it's horrible and I'm not out to defend it nor to say that GW does everything right. I hope HH3 ends up a cautionary tale in the GW studio, because I think it's very, very bad and absolutely not the direction they should be taking the game, whether we're talking rules or release model (I am not opposed to the journals in principle, but I really think they should be done differently).

It's just that I think some of the criticism of GW in general both misses the mark and goes too far. Like I said, I think they should solicit feedback, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to listen to all our complaints, because wargamers complain about everything and always have. If you compiled all the stuff people complained about, I am 100% positive that it's be wildly inconsistent. So anyone who wants to take feedback from the community will need to be able to sift the good from the bad somehow.

Also, and this is not so much a defense of their current approach as a partial explanation, GW has had some pretty extreme experiences with community interaction. They had to shut down their webpage back in the day because people were unable to behave in a remotely appropriate manner and back when individual designers' names where on the codices, people wrote absolutely vile stuff about them over unit costs or fluff blurbs (Mat Ward is probably the prime example here, but he was not the only one - I've seen people wish Robin Cruddace dead on public forums, because Tyranids weren't good enough in their estimation). Part of this is "just" the internet of course and it was years ago, but I can understand if the team as a whole is a bit hesitant about asking people on the internet what they think. At the end of the day, it's a pretty small team that's going to have to read what people write them personally, and I get why there might still be some lingering unease there.
Again, this is not to say that they shouldn't find some way of soliciting relevant feedback, it's just an acknowledgement that there is a certain history there, which might be part of the explanation.

Edited August 13 by Antarius

[Antarius]

12 hours ago, Valkyrion said:

The edition cycle should be 4 years, with the first two years given over to new rules and models (i.e codexes, faqs, erratas, MFM, balance etc) and the latter 2 years given over to playing the game in its final state with no further interference. That way you get two years of live testing and two years of the finished product whilst GW can focus on making the next edition. 

I'm not sure about the exact timing or how hard the cap should be on updates/errata, but yeah, something like this would be a very good idea for the health of the game (and, probably, for the health and job satisfaction of the game designers).

[Antarius]

7 hours ago, Brofist said:

This was covered up thread, but we're in a world today where many of the people working on these products don't actually play or understand them. This leads to bizarre disconnected product decisions and strategies (if you can even call them that). That's been a growing problem for years and its reflected in business decisions globally. 

I definitely think it would be a lot better if they let the designers design the game and/or gave them better working conditions. I don't know what the specific situation for HH is in the studio (I guess sometimes, the people working on a game aren't necessarily working on their dream project), but GW designers definitely play and love games by all accounts (not saying you're implying anything else, just to be perfectly clear).

I honestly don't know what's up with HH3. It seems very much like a botched project as far as I can tell. But I think it also pays to remember that even under ideal conditions, game designers might completely disagree with me and you about what should happen with any specific game (and I also think it pays to hold onto your previous editions, but that's another story).

[Ahzek451]

It is an unfortunate truth that tabletop games have always had a group of angry nerds willing to complain about everything, often a minority but largely vocal. Its also unfortunate that muddies the water for the rest of us with legitimate complaints and concerns. Often the case on forums or social media when the opposition just automaticlly lumps any naysayers along with the permanent naysayers. 

[Valkyrion]

That's true of every hobby, to be honest.

I follow my local football team and have done for decades and the ire directed towards them online never transfers to the terraces.

Same with music - I'm a huge Metallica fan and I'll never listen to St Anger but watching them doing it live and I know all the words like it wasn't nearly 25 years ago and bang my head against the stage like I never did before. 

When you're actually playing the game, 9 times out of 10 you're a bit of a kid again, just like at a concert or just like at the football. 

 

I'm not a huge part of it, but the best 'community' I've come across for positivity is the Baldurs Gate 3 lot - sometimes they are too enthusiastic for my British sensibilities, (why give the the helpful undead skeleton dude a massive set of breasts?!) but it's my experience that the computer game fandom is very often the worst. 

This website does well for not becoming an echo chamber of doom, and at the very least we are usually positive towards each other.

[N1SB]

On 8/4/2026 at 3:24 PM, Brofist said:

I mean we're mostly just reading tea leaves. A public company is going to try hard to avoid saying anything negative to investors and we're not getting any specific breakdowns. Not to minimize some of your pretty solid observations. IIRC AoS 1.0, which they admitted was a flop, had pretty lightly wording in their financials. Makes you wonder how big a flop something has to be to warrant any real press. Maybe none in today's world.

 

You're right, and I had made a point that the 1st half of GW's financial year when HH 3.0 came out was better than the 2nd half of GW's financial year when a REAL WAR that raised everyone's costs so they're probably buying less Warhammer in general.  So that indicator is at least probably a little bit skewed.

 

Since it was 10 years ago, I had been re-reading GW's full-year financial report when AoS 1.0 came out.  It had a line that AoS at least did better than Warhammer Fantasy Battle...said in a way like "it's better than a poke in the eye."  It was the most lukewarm praise, especially ever year since then has been gangbusters.

 

Finally, ppl could've bought HH 3.0 miniatures for use in 40k.  The same could be said for HH 2.0 and 1.0 though.  Regardless, HH 3.0 was definitely not the standout this fiscal year.

[Pacific81]

4 years still feels a bit fast for me, especially as a new edition is likely to invalidate at least parts of armies that cost £hundreds and took years to finish.

 

I've checked and Bolt action was 4 years for first edition, 8 years for second. And importantly the changes are refinements are fairly minor rather than turning things on their head (although, I guess people would ask questions if Shermans were written out of WW2 and replaced with Prime Shermans or similar).

[Valkyrion]

4 years feels fast for me too, but there's no way GW extend an edition further than that. I mean, they won't go to 4 years in the first place.

 

[Cleon]

It really depends for me, if it's a tidy up/tweak edition change to fix things that aren't working and don't necessitate a full libre refresh I don't mind a new edition when needed, if it's a hard refresh thatinvalidates all rules and some builds, six years is the minimum that doesn't imply the previous was a failure.

[Captain Idaho]

Interesting discussion from all parties.

 

Here's a catchan devil amongst the guardsmen - I read on Reddit (soz) that Legions Imperialis is considered a failure and is potentially being left to obscurity through natural selection over time rather than cancelled.

 

I can't help but see parallels here with Heresy 3.0. The support of Legions Imperialis has decreased in recent months but had a reasonable lot of stuff "completing" the range mostly (breachers and Destroyers notably absent, as are Legion specific troops or even Primarchs)... so we transfer that to Heresy 3.0 which has a more recent release schedule but notably NOT Legions specific releases and lots of things that should have been released were flushed down the Legacies toilet.

 

Could GW being potentially deciding to throw less "good money after bad" with regards to these games and even leaving them to just quietly go away?

 

Horus Heresy is a little stuck being a faction mirroring game despite many recent releases that might suggest otherwise. The Legions will be what people lean towards. GW is a business and unfortunately, like our society economically speaking, only believes in growth.

 

Is there growth? I'm not so sure beyond FOMO and whales sales, particularly in the HH universe. What happens when it dries up, do we get what happened with Fantasy?

 

Lots of questions because I don't have definitive answers and it certainly shouldn't be read as my forthright opinion. I just don't know for sure what they're gonna do.

 

I CAN see Games Workshop dropping Heresy for next edition ready for a rewrite of a new game, for those big excited sales. Possibly an "old school" 40K with Scouring or Crusade or both that can include the Heresy miniatures but allow to wash them away and start again. Like AoS.

 

I don't think it's definitely true of course, but I can see it. Most likely is all ahead full and damn the torpedoes and release a 4.0. However, without the Heresy novels to tie in, the draw to the game I suspect will be much reduced in the next couple years. So maybes we will see a washing away and AoS relaunch. We have precedent with an even bigger game in Fantasy.