8e - Live Q&A Takeaways

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Ynneadwraith wrote:

That means you either get to the point where you have to do a ground-up reset of the rules which is risky, or do a rolling process of nerfs which is unpopular (and worse when you only get halfway through the process and then ramp things up again, which is what happened with us).

History has shown that it's not that risky to reset the rules. GW has released a new version of the rules every 3 years on average, and several of those have been big-time remakes of the rules. Only a couple have been small incremental changes.

Ynneadwraith wrote:

Power creep is a short-sighted boom strategy to shift new releases which only works for so long.

Yet it's been working for them for 30 years. Power creep, power creep, power creep, edition reset, rinse and repeat. It's what GW does, and I doubt that will change much since it has worked so well for them so far. I suspect they'll have to reach the brink of failure before changing course.

Fair points, but from what I understand it's been pretty much incremental changes to the same system since 2nd. It was risky of them to reset the rules (and fluff) so hard with AoS. There were times in the early days when I thought they had thoroughly screwed the pooch with that one and that it would just drive away so many players that it wouldn't be viable.

It paid off, but any significant change is still a risk. A risk worth taking in my opinion, but a risk nonetheless.

While the internet tells me that they're out there, I do not know a single Fantasy player who plays AoS. Moreover, AoS is a different kind of game with a different setting. There's not exactly continuity there.

(It was also one of the most monumentally stupid things I've ever seen a company do. They alienated one group of players in order to create another, when they could have had both. There was no reason for Fantasy to die for a game like AoS to exist.)

2nd and 3rd edition 40k both had fundamentally different rules systems from their predecessors, but the setting and game concepts remained. This seems like it will at least retain that much, which is a good thing.

I'll have to wait and see if 8th ed 40k is a game I want to play or not.

Everyone I know now who plays AoS is a 40k player who picked up a Fantasy army off someone who was looking to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Personally I would love to play some Fantasy, I just need the appropriate books. I already have over a hundred High Elves myself.

As for the system, it'll be okay. The game will be playable and I expect our power level will be insane. If for no other reason than Dark Eldar players, after 3 years of having to deal with the worst codex in the game, have by and large either jumped ship to other armies or become tactical geniuses to ward off the curse of the L's. Just a level playing field would be tactically advantageous enough.

Heh.

My point was that not every player will grudgingly buy into the next edition, but it occurs to me that AoS probably has another problem. Often players who quit the game years before will get back into it with memories of how much fun they had playing (before they stopped having fun). Age of Sigmar breaks that cycle. It cannot capitalize on the nostalgia from that game when your brave Empire army desperately tried to slow the Tomb Kings' march towards Altdorf, or when your scouts baited the enemy spearmen out of position, exposing the regiment's flank.

Also, it's probably relevant that any discussion about wargaming eventually devolves into ranting about Age of Sigmar.

Like I'm doing now.

Sorry.

People think I'm eccentric for lining all my High AELF bowmen and spearmen up when I deploy and move them. It just feels wrong to have a bunch of square bases of line infantry just scattered around the battlefield.

TeenageAngst wrote:

People think I'm eccentric for lining all my High AELF bowmen and spearmen up when I deploy and move them. It just feels wrong to have a bunch of square bases of line infantry just scattered around the battlefield.

I was used to it due to Beastmen, for me its nothing new.