HoP Idol II; "Guys, Can We Quit it with the Criticism"

Hey there folks, it's time for the next challenger up in the challenging challenge round of the challenging challenge that is HoP Idol.  Here come's TKE to drop some knowledge on you or make you angry about something or whatever.  Regardless, we're happy to have him here taking a break from his regular musings over at "Mind War, FTW!"

"Guys, Can We Quit It With The Criticism:

 

With 6th Edition 40k literally hours away at the time of writing, it’s become apparent to me there is a sizeable gap at the heart of the 40k playerbase.  It’s something I had not been wholly ignorant of before, I saw it expressed in discussions about 8e WFB, but not having been a regular forum user or Blogger when 4e 40k bit the dust, I couldn’t say if it was something that was unique to WFB players - not playing any of the alternatives like Infinity, Warmachine/Hordes, or Flames of War also hampered me in this regard...but there is a clear distinction between players who are happy with the new edition, and players who are...less so.


A lot of things seem to be changing in this new edition of the game.  A hell of a lot.  I would go so far as to say that it’s probably the biggest overhaul since 2nd Edition went and took most of the RPG elements from the game in an effort to streamline, speed the game up, and to increase the scale of engagements in order to sell more toy soldiers.

Some of us, myself included, are pretty unhappy with a number of rumoured changes - especially since a lot of those have been rumoured so often and so loudly...more importantly, despite the pathetic and shoddy nature of the ‘Designers Notes’ that White Dwarf presented the other week, we now know a number of changes that HAVE been implemented, for a fact.

Those of use unhappy with these are criticising either the idea or the execution of the idea (occasionally both) and coming under a significant amount of flak from the ‘laissez-faire’ brigade - those players to whom either change is a good thing, irrespective of consequences, as it keeps things fresh...or to whom a ruleset is a sancrosanct holisitic entity which cannot be discussed in part and especially not criticised element by element without having the entire document in hand, and several hundred or even thousand hours of playtesting to validate our opinions.

This is, frankly, bizarre.  I’ve played Warhammer 40,000 for 18 years - that’s longer than the amount of time I spent in SCHOOL, for fuck’s sake.  The game system isn’t THAT complex that I can’t understand the ramifications of individual rules within the framework of existing ones, within the rumoured ones presented as likely for 6th, and indeed on their own merit, irrespective of other considerations.  Is it impossible that there will not be some as-yet-unknown factor that makes the random selection of psychic powers from the generic charts more balanced than the ‘traditional’ 40k manner of choosing them?  Of course not.  But the fact that it MAY be the case doesn’t mean that it WILL be the case - or that I haven’t actually considerd that possibility and consider it so unlikely that my article does not need to acknowledge its presence when discussing the problems with taking that direction in games design.

Some players will inevitably prefer 6th.  Perhaps even a majority.

But in an oft-fractured and frequently self-divisive community, perhaps hurling personal insult because someone can see criticisms of the new rules that you perhaps don’t agree with, or don’t think is giving the designers due credit [designers, I should point out, that the majority of these people have slagged off for years, most notably Mat Ward] for creating a balance in the game system [something GW is commonly considered to be terrible at...]

If you’re one of the people who has no problem with the confirmed new rules, or has no ability to study rules purely on their own merit - then fine, great.  But there are a number of us to whom this is not considered constructive or rational.  I’m as emotionally tied to this game as anyone; and if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t care enough to pick apart bad rules for what they are, and to analyse the direction the game is heading.

PS - That will be easier, since I’m reading a PDF of 6e now instead of redrafting the article.  In reference to earlier, the psychic powers seem better balanced than I suspected, though not all are readable - and the greater randomisation compared to the WFB system is a bad thing since they aren’t all equally useful. "