40k is a pre-existing universe with a lot of assumptions and pre-set approaches that should work within a ruleset. The WH40kRP ruleset shouldn't be wholly adaptable; it exists to portray a pre-existing universe, and when people play WH40kRP, they do so because they want to RP in the WH40k universe.

The entire purpose of the ruleset is to support this one objective. Roleplaying in 40k.

That's why things will never be truly "balanced", for example; nevermind that balancing the players against the world they play in is a meaningless objective - because it's not set in a fair universe. This is also why balancing other species' will be a lesson in futility and it is why people are reacting to the new, ridiculous rules for untouchables - it's not meant to be fair. There is no way that a human scrub could ever even compare to an ork or eldar with a similar level of life experience.

Furthermore, there's no inherent merit in doing so.

I may be a grognard. But you, cbs, you are That Guy.

I wholeheartedly reject the argument that any game should be unbalanced because of reasons. You're weakly equivocating balance with equality. Player characters should all be able to contribute to the game so that the game is fun for everyone. Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit is an unfun game.

What balance does not mean is that orks and eldar and humans are all the same - that would be equality, which I would never argue for (for reasons of it also being unfun). You can have a balanced game where some enemies are objectively better at killing than the player characters - this is balanced by rating their effectiveness against the assumed effectiveness of the player characters (which the beta at least attempted, 4E does very well, and 3E/PF does a crap job of).

I don't even know what "gameification" means because DH is already a game. Do you not think it is a game? Your whole first paragraph (or rather, sentence, as it's all one run-on) after your list makes very little sense to me.

...Newness is important because that's how game design grows and develops.

-Or hits a dead end and nearly tanks the franchise because they disregard the desires of the established fan base, like D&D4E ...

4th really is a great example of the two sides of the debate. I would argue that 4th had fantastic game design and was enjoyable for a minority of older fans of D&D as well most of the people who were new to D&D. The problem with D&D4E was not that the game design was bad, the problem was that the majority of the fanbase wouldn't let go of 3.5 -- thus the rise of Pathfinder.

I went the Pathfinder route myself. D&D4E wasn't really my thing. I'm not trying to convince you to agree with me and prefer the Beta. I'm trying, perhaps poorly, to explain why some of us feel so frustrated and express my admiration for one of my favorite gaming systems, DH 2.3. When I see people taking potshots at something I love, I feel compelled to defend it.

Alas, it's probably too late for that.

Personally, I liked D&D 4e. Far from my favorite kind of game, but it was good for what it did and sheared off lots of dead weight from previous editions. I also never could sell my group on it, as the necessity of using a grid map was too much of a deal-breaker. We tried playing without the map, but lots of rules were rendered useless in the kind of narrative combat we prefer, and it made the game rather bland and unfun. Still, a solid system for what it tried to do.

It was also a complete marketing disaster, as for the first time in the history of D&D it actually had to compete for the position of the best selling RPG. To add insult to injury, it's main competitor became Pathfinder, a shameless clone of 4e's predecessor. I don't think it's an experience anyone in the RPG business wants to recreate.

Not liking 4E is totally fine. If you sat down and played it and found that it wasn't your thing, that's totally okay. 4E does grid-based tactical combat very well but that's not everyone's cup of tea.

What isn't okay is decrying it (or the DH beta) as 'change for the sake of change', a feeling of personal betrayal by the game makers, and an unyielding insistence that the new game be a backwards-compatible iteration of prior games, or, worse, having only read the rules without playing before crusading against the new rules (as a lot of 4E detractors do). Fear of change is not a reason to advocate for minimal change.

How was 4E a marketing disaster? The gnome thing? I wasn't paying attention during the lead-up to 4E but all of the ads I've seen on youtube have been pretty innocuous.

They failed to make a solid dungeon tool and many other features they promise for their online part of the game. All they had a character gen and still wanted 15 dollars a month. I don't care if they shoved in two magazines with it. It was a rip off and people know it. It was also a rip off to the people who made 3.5 dragon magazines which was run by... Oh the guys who made Pathfinder. Gee... I wonder how they feel about no longer being able to make magazines and WotC made magazines with name similar to theirs?

They took out all the books they own from DriveThru RPG. That made me stop buying 4th edition period right there. That was a horrible move and made a lot of pdf buyers angry. Though not as angry as DriveThru RPG I would bet.

There GSL was nothing compared to the wonderful OGL. It made it hard for third party publishers to use 4th edition and many just gave up and stuck with 3.5 for that reason. If WotC had stuck with OGL for 4th edition it might had saved them trouble, but I doubt it.

Finally OGL finally bitten WotC right in the ass when the people behind Pathfinder made their game. A alternative game that kept much of the old system that many people love. Just with updates of minor tweaks here and there. Slightly better than 3.5, but without the drastic changes of 4.0. Not surprising many people flock over to that game in a heart beat which left WotC with less customers.

Need I add more?

I can cut them some slack considering the circumstances around their lead developer. I found Insider was a great deal - $15 got you the offline character builder and all the rules published up to that point, so there wasn't a real need to have the books if you were just a player.

I'm really confused by your advocacy for the OGL - in the first paragraph you say WotC should have published 4E under it, then in the next you give the exact reason they chose not to: another company took their work and published it (as the OGL allowed). It also opened the door for schlock like the BoEF, which I'm sure everyone wishes never existed. The whole point of the OGL was to saturate the market with d20 products so that RPG meant d20. It failed to do that (White Wolf was publishing around the same time) and opened them up for other publishers to use their work whole-cloth.

So yeah, I'm still not really getting it. I asked about how their marketing was a disaster (but I'll give you the vaporware thing).

Point is WotC piss off everyone and every thing they could. It made a lot of people want to screw over WotC for all the screwing around that company had done to others. Also I might add 3.5 books made by WotC were still the highest sold 3.5 books even with OGL. OGL did not harm WotC when they were making books for 3.5 edition.

If 4th edition was OGL sure they would had lost the 3.5 edition market, but with so many people that would had supported 4th edition it might had survived. If they had not screwed over Paizo and let that company just make their dragon magazines things would had been different. For all we know Paizo might had switch over to 4th edition and just stick with dragon magazines. That is a lot of mights, but it would had been better than GSL.

I see plot thickening here

I don't know what exactly caused the sales disaster, but the fact remains that D&D4 was the first ever edition of D&D that had to compete for the position of number one biggest selling roleplaying game (and according to some sources, ultimately lost that battle to PF). Seeing how I can count people who like 4e better than 3.5 on my fingers, I'd venture a guess that some fundamental change made in the game turned out misaimed and the game ultimately failed to suck in the new players in the place of the disenfranchised ones.

That's a whole lot of [citation needed]. I'd love to see any of these claims backed up by numbers instead of personal anecdotes (and user polls from grogardrpg.com don't count). Even if it is the case that 4E had to compete for market share, it is a fallacy to attribute that solely to WotC's marketing as it discounts the fact that the RPG landscape had changed dramatically since 3E was released, to say nothing of the fact that Paizo's marketing department was exceptionally good at fanning the flames of discontent.

Snowman your post is particularly unhelpful because I asked, "Why where fans mad at 4E marketing?" to which you answered, "Fans were mad at 4E." Every answer I've gotten to that question has been some variant of "I liked 3E."

No I didn't say fans were mad at 4E. Try to read next time. What I did say was fans were mad at WotC and posted a number of reasons why they were mad at them. The game itself wasn't the problem. The problem which I will add that your completely failing to get is that WotC's actions did the 4E killing for them.

When a company goes out and piss off people, then that company doesn't get to sell a lot. It is human nature in its basic form. If you sale me fresh apples, but treat me like crap I am going to the guy who treats me with respect even if that guy sales older apples.

Since my interest in D&D is marginal, I didn't follow the problem enough to provide you with links at the moment. Anyway, this tangent is taking us far, far away from the matters of Dark Heresy, and it's been at least the second time it arose in this very thread. I suggest we just let it die down.

No I didn't say fans were mad at 4E. Try to read next time. What I did say was fans were mad at WotC and posted a number of reasons why they were mad at them. The game itself wasn't the problem. The problem which I will add that your completely failing to get is that WotC's actions did the 4E killing for them.

You gave precisely zero reasons. You made unsupported statements. What actions by WotC, specifically?

When a company goes out and piss off people, then that company doesn't get to sell a lot. It is human nature in its basic form. If you sale me fresh apples, but treat me like crap I am going to the guy who treats me with respect even if that guy sales older apples.

"I will literally eat garbage if you smile at me while giving me it"

Morangius, the reason this keeps coming up is because the DH2 beta has a lot of parallels with the 3e/4e split. A lot of the arguments against the more novel changes introduced by the beta echo criticisms of 4E. The backlash against FFG dropping backwards compatibility is very reminiscent of it. All FFG needs now is a tongue-in-cheek ad featuring an inept ratling and the fanbase will go into full on apoplexy.

Now now cps. Don't put words into other peoples mouth. You seem now to keep flame going for fun.

Let's all wait and see what the future will bring from FFG and their game development.

I gave you plenty. You just choose to not accept them. In fact reality pretty much made it clear. 4E flop which is a shame cause I enjoyed the system, but it still flop. It flop by the poor decisions that WotC had made. Decisions that Fantasy Flight choose to learn from and avoid it. At least they gave a beta to test the waters first.

I gave you plenty. You just choose to not accept them. In fact reality pretty much made it clear.

My bad, you're the same poster who posted stuff about the 4E vaporware, PDFs, and subscription-based service. Those are valid complaints (even if I don't necessarily agree with them). I intended to ask about Morangius referring to 4E as a 'marketing disaster' and the waters got a bit muddied. All of the points you made are from after 4E was released, but the 3e/4e split was happening before the game even came out. That is what I want to know about.

4E flop which is a shame cause I enjoyed the system, but it still flop. It flop by the poor decisions that WotC had made. Decisions that Fantasy Flight choose to learn from and avoid it. At least they gave a beta to test the waters first.

WotC has published a mountain of material for 4E. They wouldn't do that if the game was a flop. Again, not liking the game is fine, but making statements like this is disingenuous.

Now now cps. Don't put words into other peoples mouth. You seem now to keep flame going for fun.

Putting words in his mouth would be editing what I quoted, which I didn't do. How else would you interpret what he wrote?

It flop because they stop developing for the game for two years and been working on DnD Next. No game edition last that short of a time. They tried to make it work without a doubt. That mountain of books is proof of that, but it still flop. If it had not flop at all they would not be making DnD Next. Instead they would be making more 4e books.

Once again since you are not grasping this. I like 4E. I thought it was a much better edition than 3.5 could ever be. I just don't like WotC because they made a lot of stupid moves that made their game flop. All my posts had been directed at the company and not at the game. You can like games despite not liking the company you know.

I was probably imprecise calling 4e a marketing disaster. It was a sales disaster - as in, it failed to sell as good as Wizards predicted, and had to fight for it's share of the market with what's essentially a 3.5 retroclone.

I think the only real important lesson we can take from that is, it's the market that truly decides whether change is good or bad. For Wizards, change turned out... not so well, at the very least. Apparently, FFG decided, for reasons we'll never exactly learn, changing things up too much wouldn't turn out good for them.

i just hope they keep the new wound and combat system, i found it very cool. The AP was good too, in this version at least you see a very good diference between using a chainsword and a warhammer.

i think ill keep the old version if they redoo all that xD

God-Emperor, I hope this infernal abomination that was beta's combat engine dies in fire. It's basically the dealbreaker for me and my group.

The amount of people liking it seriously scares me. It's as if people had no sense of right and wrong. Well, that, or it's that "opinion that isn't my own" thing I keep hearing about, but can't quite grasp

The amount of people liking it seriously scares me. It's as if people had no sense of right and wrong. Well, that, or it's that "opinion that isn't my own" thing I keep hearing about, but can't quite grasp

Don't joke about this. It's a serious affliction that too many people suffer from.

While there are a lot of similarities between D&D and DH, two key differences stand out to me:

1. Fantasy Flight Games aren't being morons about releasing 2e. Sure, people might think the ruleset is bad for reasons, but I don't think anyone's saying FFG are acting maliciously
2. The Intellectual Property of Warhammer 40,000 ultimately belongs to Games Workshop and only they decide who gets to publish content for it. To date, FFG's track record with the IP has been pretty good ^{[citation needed]} and I can't see GW deciding to let a second company run a competing game against FFG.

Personally, I generally like what FFG have done with 2e, with a few exceptions. I don't agree that there should be change for the sake of change; however, I also don't agree that FFG should simply release Only War: Dark Heresy edition. Like others have said, why would I purchase something I've already got? Much of the debate as to whether the current 2e rules are successful come down to personal preference, and much of that personal preference comes down to whether you like the idea of change or not.

Derp, that'll teach me not to only half read a comment before posting.

That's a whole lot of [citation needed]. I'd love to see any of these claims backed up by numbers instead of personal anecdotes (and user polls from grogardrpg.com don't count). Even if it is the case that 4E had to compete for market share, it is a fallacy to attribute that solely to WotC's marketing as it discounts the fact that the RPG landscape had changed dramatically since 3E was released, to say nothing of the fact that Paizo's marketing department was exceptionally good at fanning the flames of discontent.

There are numbers from ICv2. Certainly not a perfect, but with PF consistently in the top spot season after season it's enough to show that DnD was far from the dominant position it once held.

As for WotC, they definitely made some serious mistakes, though I wouldn't say it was solely down to WotC's 'marketing'. That said, the marketing did fail. It's job was to retain customers and spur growth, it failed to do that. Whether that was the marketing departments fault, or simply due to being given an impossible task...

Because I already have the setting information I require for DH games in DH, and the rules in Only War, and have been using them that way for a while. I wanted to get DH2e because of the new systems in it that I liked and preferred to the old systems (wound system, AP system, etc). Without those, I might as well stick with using Only War with DH background, and save myself buying into a line without enough changes in it to justify the purchase.

I'm honestly not sure I can justify buying Dark Heresy with the OW rules in it. I already have Only War, and have already used it to run a unit of Inquisitorial Acolytes. Why would I need a new book for £40 for that? I would have spent that on a new set of rules that actually changed things, though.

........

Guess this is probably the end of me buying the 40k RPG core books, or at least a non-purchase of DH2e for me, which is a shame given I own every single 40k RPG book released up until now.

It seems to me that the argument that DH2 will now just be Only War with the Inquisition is like saying Rogue Trader was just DH with spaceships, or Deathwatch was just RT with Space Marines, or Black Crusade was just DW with Chaos, or Only War was just BC with Guardsmen. Each game system has apparently included enough new background and rules to justify your purchase of each of them; how is DH2 now the magical cut-off point?

So basically you want changes for the sake of change so you can justify to yourself buying the new system? Sorry, but.... ok. If FFG would follow this marketing tactic I would say that they are just ripping of people.

In addition: If you make the argument that the system does not sell because there aren't enough changes, I counter that people don't buy it because of the changes, making their already owned material useless and forcing them to spend money on books just to upgrade rules on content they already own.

I have loads of books for DH, RT, DW, BC, OW... did I leave one out? I was looking forward to paying good money for a new edition of DH that gave me a seriously improved system to use with my old material. I have no intention of buying DH 1.5.

Much of the debate as to whether the current 2e rules are successful come down to personal preference, and much of that personal preference comes down to whether you like the idea of change or not.

I don't think it's really an accurate analysis of the problem. Personally, I'd give up on backwards compatibility without much fuss if it meant playing a better, slicker game. The problem is, instead of that, I was offered something that looked like FFG found it scribbled on the napkins of a deceased Rolemaster writer and hastily put together into a semblance of a game. Exact opposite of "better, slicker game" if you ask me, and they still expected I give up backwards compatibility for that. No can do, sir, I'm not giving up everything for nothing.

If FFG comes up with a new engine that I find good, I'll gladly play it, even if it means my previous collection of 1e books become nothing more than shelf decoration. Since they don't seem to be up to the task, I'd much rather play the game I know is good for me and my group.