Thing is that one of the biggest source of feedback was concern about cross compatability (which honestly from a marketing POV is good for FFG too. people'll buy black crusade sourcebooks for their dark heresy game etc) FFG may not have been able to strip some but not everything if they where gonna keep it cross compatable

The irony of this being that it's about as easy to convert DH1 stuff to the DH2 rules as it would have been to convert them to the old beta's rules. This system isn't really that backwards compatible with older ones, as most of the damage values are different, psyker rules are different, talents and skill rules are different, unnatural attributes are different, NPC construction is different, basic skill resolution and degrees of success are different, vehicles are different, and other things I'm sure. Unless someone converting stuff over only really cares about wounds and other stats keeping the same name, this isn't really any different to convert to than the old beta was. There's a reason (other than distancing from older game lines) that this game offers no guidance on how to convert.

Thing is that one of the biggest source of feedback was concern about cross compatability (which honestly from a marketing POV is good for FFG too. people'll buy black crusade sourcebooks for their dark heresy game etc) FFG may not have been able to strip some but not everything if they where gonna keep it cross compatable

The irony of this being that it's about as easy to convert DH1 stuff to the DH2 rules as it would have been to convert them to the old beta's rules. This system isn't really that backwards compatible with older ones, as most of the damage values are different, psyker rules are different, talents and skill rules are different, unnatural attributes are different, NPC construction is different, basic skill resolution and degrees of success are different, vehicles are different, and other things I'm sure. Unless someone converting stuff over only really cares about wounds and other stats keeping the same name, this isn't really any different to convert to than the old beta was. There's a reason (other than distancing from older game lines) that this game offers no guidance on how to convert.

However, Only War and Black Crusade products are almost compatible. The psychic system being the only significant difference that will really matter when porting adversaries over for DH2.

That's not entirely true. They didn't implement changes on the game based on the feedback they asked for. People were criticizing specific parts of the DH2 Beta, not the whole thing by itself. If they'd done it "based on the feedback", we'd have opposed Dodge, the better Fatigue system, and Action Points still in there somewhere.

And what do you base this on?

They asked for feedback, and the feedback they got was enough for them to change it back. It's difficult to imply anything beyond that. You may have liked the Fatigue system or Action Points, and a few people here might have said how much they liked them, but they changed it back. That implies that the feedback was in favour of the old system or not in favour of the new system.

So yeah, I think it is that simple. They asked for feedback, received feedback, and implemented changes based on that feedback.

BYE

Unless you have some way of knowing how much feedback FFG received on things, your opinion on what they got feedback about isn't any more valid than anyone else's. Besides which, you excused yourself from the forums for the extent of the first beta, which would lead one to believe that you weren't paying attention to the feedback being given on the boards. Feedback which was in favor of the things listed above.

FFG usually pays more attention to feedback sent to them directly through the channels they indicate. They are not usually going to follow forum posts, so what arguments flared on them is not an indicator of what they based their decision on.

Thing is that one of the biggest source of feedback was concern about cross compatability (which honestly from a marketing POV is good for FFG too. people'll buy black crusade sourcebooks for their dark heresy game etc) FFG may not have been able to strip some but not everything if they where gonna keep it cross compatable

The irony of this being that it's about as easy to convert DH1 stuff to the DH2 rules as it would have been to convert them to the old beta's rules. This system isn't really that backwards compatible with older ones, as most of the damage values are different, psyker rules are different, talents and skill rules are different, unnatural attributes are different, NPC construction is different, basic skill resolution and degrees of success are different, vehicles are different, and other things I'm sure. Unless someone converting stuff over only really cares about wounds and other stats keeping the same name, this isn't really any different to convert to than the old beta was. There's a reason (other than distancing from older game lines) that this game offers no guidance on how to convert.

However, Only War and Black Crusade products are almost compatible. The psychic system being the only significant difference that will really matter when porting adversaries over for DH2.

People posting on the old boards about backwards compatibility were concerned mostly with DH1 stuff being converted. That and the scope/themes of only war and black crusade don't lend themselves as well to conversion for people concerned about balancing their games.

Unless you have some way of knowing how much feedback FFG received on things, your opinion on what they got feedback about isn't any more valid than anyone else's. Besides which, you excused yourself from the forums for the extent of the first beta, which would lead one to believe that you weren't paying attention to the feedback being given on the boards. Feedback which was in favor of the things listed above.

You're right. You, or me or anyone in this thread can't know exactly what they were thinking or the feedback they received. However, we can take a pretty good guess. I doubt they'd just completely change the rules arbitrarily or on a whim. Occam's Razor means that the simplest explanation (or the one with the fewest assumptions) is usually the correct one, so it's pretty easy to infer that the changes made were done on the basis of feedback received. To imply anything else without actual knowledge would require jumping over too many hoops.

BYE

FFG usually pays more attention to feedback sent to them directly through the channels they indicate. They are not usually going to follow forum posts, so what arguments flared on them is not an indicator of what they based their decision on.

And yet they set up an entire beta forum for people to post on with updates that frequently reflected comments made by people in the forum about minor number changes or mechanics changes. Again, how do you know what FFG pays more or less attention to?

Unless you have some way of knowing how much feedback FFG received on things, your opinion on what they got feedback about isn't any more valid than anyone else's. Besides which, you excused yourself from the forums for the extent of the first beta, which would lead one to believe that you weren't paying attention to the feedback being given on the boards. Feedback which was in favor of the things listed above.

You're right. You, or me or anyone in this thread can't know exactly what they were thinking or the feedback they received. However, we can take a pretty good guess. I doubt they'd just completely change the rules arbitrarily or on a whim. Occam's Razor means that the simplest explanation (or the one with the fewest assumptions) is usually the correct one, so it's pretty easy to infer that the changes made were done on the basis of feedback received. To imply anything else without actual knowledge would require jumping over too many hoops.

BYE

I don't think the simplest explanation would be that the email feedback and Gencon feedback they got would so drastically differ from the majority of forum feedback, though. A couple people on the forum said they'd like to just have dark heresy: only war edition, but that was by no means unanimous. Occam's razor would dictate that forum feedback was not that different from general feedback and that someone on FFGs end decided to scrap everything.

It did seem there was a big call for a spruce up of the Only War system by many, rather than what they had.

I am going to say I didn't like the new system... but then I don't like many of the changes they made in Black Crusade onwards so... The new system, was an interesting departure, but really felt like it would take a lot of work to get it right, not the limited timeframe they had given themselves. It felt more like an alpha test than a beta. My guess is they went "Whoops, this doesn't work and has had a lot of negative feedback, it will take a lot to fix... either we go back to Only War, or we push the release date back quite dramatically." 1) A wish not to miss their date and 2) the financial repercussions I think are the major driving forces.

The "bugs" with narrative combat are easily solved. We have zero problems with first edition in our round, after increasing weapon penetration and adding some minor adjustments that speed things up greatly and minimise the amount of dice rolls. For example, unaimed bursts automatically hit the highest armour value, which rewards being in cover (cover has an assigned armour value). Added pen on most weapons means you can now shoot -through- cover or severely injure or outright kill someone with a single called shot. -> combat is fast and lethal, unless absolutely everyone is in heavy cover and firing full auto, which is both deeply stupid and deeply funny if you're quoting stuff from the A Team.

In other words, I can't really comment on the current rules other than to say that first edition's problems are...fairly easily fixed.

Backwards compatibility isn't really an issue for us ruleswise (fluff wise though, it can be). New system, new round. People die in our games quite a bit as is.

One of the issues I think is your fix has actually departed from the intended direction FFG intended. They seemed to be aiming for combat being 1) more predictable in how long it lasted and 2) less randomly lethal (ok, also include the Critical Tables more frequently). You could not die to the first attack you received, and aside from really killer weapons guns were probably going to take 5/6 hits to kill you (and even the more powerful weapons were likely only to take a couple less hits to kill you. Being able to have someone die to a single called shot kind of departs from this (even if it is in keeping with the brutality of the original).

Personally I wouldn't have minded a less clunky HPless system, if they could have got it to work, but as I have said before I have yet to see a true HPless system that works practically (and even the beta didn't... you essentially had 5/6 wounds with critical effects generated for each one).

Also, need to remove unbalanced from great weapons. Not being able to parry with a greatsword does not reflect RL experience with weapon. At all.

The way great weapons work in 40k is not realistic. They are based on the idea of big strong guys waving round sharp bits of metal in massive arcs, doing huge damage but having little subtlety. Now, realistic two handed weapons are not really used in this way, and made perfectly good parrying weapons (in fact I think some praised them for this, as they have long surfaces to parry with), but this is not how they are used in 40k (or Warhammer).

That's really the thing.

HPless is great for lethal games, bad if you want a nonlethal one (because you need to add artificial buffers, and they work for NPCs, too, unless you run those on a different ruleset entirely).

HP is great for nonlethal systems, because it's an abstract buffer scale. If you want fast, brutal, realistic, scrap HP. If you want epic and grandiose, which sometimes, I quite like myself, HP systems are much, much better.

I don't think the simplest explanation would be that the email feedback and Gencon feedback they got would so drastically differ from the majority of forum feedback, though. A couple people on the forum said they'd like to just have dark heresy: only war edition, but that was by no means unanimous. Occam's razor would dictate that forum feedback was not that different from general feedback and that someone on FFGs end decided to scrap everything.

Firstly, I never said the feedback was unanimous, I said that there was enough of it for FFG to consider (and eventually make) a change. Secondly, you're minimising the feedback; it was far more than "a couple people on the forum". Thirdly, you're assuming that they decided to out-and-out change the entire rule-set based upon a minority/on a whim whilst implying that they ignored feedback that liked the beta. Fourthly, they had a line of communication open that wasn't the forum: the beta E-mail address that could have (and probably did) received a fair amount of feedback. That's a lot of hoops to jump through, and fails Occam's Razor.

The simplest explanation is that the majority of feedback wanted it to be an updated version of the BC/OW rule-set rather than a completely new system, and thus it was changed. To imply anything more than that requires further leaps that we cannot know.

BYE

I don't think the simplest explanation would be that the email feedback and Gencon feedback they got would so drastically differ from the majority of forum feedback, though. A couple people on the forum said they'd like to just have dark heresy: only war edition, but that was by no means unanimous. Occam's razor would dictate that forum feedback was not that different from general feedback and that someone on FFGs end decided to scrap everything.

Firstly, I never said the feedback was unanimous, I said that there was enough of it for FFG to consider (and eventually make) a change. Secondly, you're minimising the feedback; it was far more than "a couple people on the forum". Thirdly, you're assuming that they decided to out-and-out change the entire rule-set based upon a minority/on a whim whilst implying that they ignored feedback that liked the beta. Fourthly, they had a line of communication open that wasn't the forum: the beta E-mail address that could have (and probably did) received a fair amount of feedback. That's a lot of hoops to jump through, and fails Occam's Razor.

The simplest explanation is that the majority of feedback wanted it to be an updated version of the BC/OW rule-set rather than a completely new system, and thus it was changed. To imply anything more than that requires further leaps that we cannot know.

BYE

I had one post get erased by accident, so I'll be brief. The beta forum had 2-3 dozen posters on it, and only about 2-5 people mentioned wanting to just have Only War rules. There were several people (about 2-5) responding to that saying that they would not find a book like that worth buying. In other words, public feedback only had a minority of people wanting to just have Only War rules.

You have to make the same amount of assumptions to conclude that private feedback significantly differed from public feedback as you do for most of the other explanations. I think it's dumb to conclude that the reason for the rules change was done out of spite. However, the idea that FFG was running behind on its beta, concluded that lots of people disliked it, and decided to just scrap almost everything and re-use old assets is more reasonable.

So unless FFG speaks about what kind of feedback they received or how their design decisions were made, this is just going to remain a mystery.

and instead they copy-pasted Only War.

and instead they copy-pasted Only War.

literally; in some places they forgot to use Influence instead of the word Requisition!

I did not meant to be figurative. The copy-pasting is quite literal throughout many of the books. Reading the Horde rules in Black Crusade, you'll see references to "the Space Marine" instead of "the Heretic". Legacy from copy-pasting from Deathwatch.

What happened? FFG was afraid of angering their base by changing too much. They listened to the loudest complainers and took the least risky option. They released a bland copy paste of an existing product with new fluff and had the temerity to charge $60 for this lazy product. Adding insult to injury, they bound it with squig spit.

At Gencon, they realized they had a turd in the bed with DH2e. They treated it like the failure of design and imagination it was, whispering its announcement like a Xanthite invoking his first daemon.

I'll be the first to admit that the char gen and fluff is good. But these are literally the only parts that were not Ctrl+V from other FFG books. It's a shame Huckelbery and Gerber made such a mistake motivated by fear.

I have heard it theorized that since GW is currently looking at another quarter of horrible sales, the entire 40k property is on shaky ground. The FFG license might not survive a GW merger or buy off. It just doesn't make sense for FFG to care about a shaky license that is not that popular when they can rake in the cash star wars and game of thrones.

I bought Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Only War books. I might borrow DH2 from a friend who is foolish with their money.

and instead they copy-pasted Only War.

literally; in some places they forgot to use Influence instead of the word Requisition!

I did not meant to be figurative. The copy-pasting is quite literal throughout many of the books. Reading the Horde rules in Black Crusade, you'll see references to "the Space Marine" instead of "the Heretic". Legacy from copy-pasting from Deathwatch.

The copy pasting is terrible. Yes, consumers notice. No, they won't buy your books because of it. If you're just going to copy paste everything anyway, why not make a single 40k system and release fluff supplements?

You'll piss off less customers like that.

"I have heard it theorized...," often means, "Don't sniff at this because it's pulled straight from my butt."

Indeed. I used to sing FFG's praises once upon a time. They were so afraid of accidentally making d&d 4e that they took no risks and made vanilla flavored corpse starch paste.

And HappyDaze, "The scuttlebutt on /tg/, fueled by people claiming to be anonymously breaking ndas..." is hardly more encouraging than "I've heard it theorized..."

TBH I think that after d&d 4e no company with an establishef market and fan base will ever risk releasing a system that's a significant departure from what currently sells unless the initial reaction is overwhelmingly positive, which AFAIK fir DH first beta wasn't.

Which is a pity, because the problem with DnD 4e was simply...that it sucked

Other system conversions have been fairly successful, though. Locally, The Dark Eye, fourth edition was massively successful in the German market (and the recent strategy game it spawned, blackguards, seems to have done fairly well in sales). Shadowrun fifth is a solid, and much played, departure from its predecessor as well;

But if you're trying something new, you need to hammer out a proper ground work and do it right. I firmly believe, for example, that first beta could have been an excellent, fast game, if the devs had went for a more lethal system. However, this doesn't seem to be what they were going for, so a return to the HP system, for a less brutal experience, was one step I agree with in that regard.

What I don't agree with, well, see above

I don't think D&D 4e failed because it sucked. It could have been a perfect game and it would have still failed because regardless of it's own merits it failed to deliver a lot of what many people viewed as 'core D&D experience'.

Incremental change is safe and game publishing is first and foremost a business.

Hmm... I know plenty of people who were pleased with 4th edition (including several who though 3rd was terrible). The main thing though is that it alienated many existing players, as even though mechanically similar (it was still d20+modifiers to hit a target number) it felt very different.

Personally I think d20 of all types is.... dubious at playing anything well, but I personally don't have an issue with either. They are both very silly mechanically complex games which fail to emulate any setting well at all. However, they work fine if you play them as a kind of board game, where the point is playing the rules themselves, rather than trying to evoke a setting... and 4th edition kind of admitted that.

I genuinely think they didn't realise how much work was required to turn what they had into a workable system, and it only became apparent to them when they released the "beta". I think that with a willingness to put a bit more time into it I think the criticism might have fallen off as people had more time to get used to the new system, and they would have been able to make something that actually worked, that would have been genuinely different enough.

At Gencon, they realized they had a turd in the bed with DH2e. They treated it like the failure of design and imagination it was, whispering its announcement like a Xanthite invoking his first daemon.

Exactly how is not blarring the announcement over the loudspeakers a "failure of design and imagination" It's just an iteration of the established system.

I don't think "different" is a problem in DnD 4th. I know a fair deal of people who absolutely despise it and play the aforementioned TDE 4th, Shadowrun fifth, various Cthulu deriatives, Seventh Sea etc. Their dislike for fourth edition stems from the fact that it doesn't fix the problems third had, f.ex. combat taking eons, and turns the least liked portion of the game for them into its focal point. Different was not an issue so much as that it simply was not an improvement . Fifth, on the other hand, fluff aside, those same people love it. It fixes everything they've been nagging about for three to four editions.

Exactly how is not blarring the announcement over the loudspeakers a "failure of design and imagination" It's just an iteration of the established system.

It's embarrassing in our current game market to charge or pay $60 for a poorly constructed book of copy pasted tripe rules.