TheVoidDragon
Member
Yeah, these days it's easy to get confused over how to even write a list properly - I mean, it's not just a simple force org chart any more, right out of the gate you're looking at unbound, bound, battleforged, primary detachments, combined arms detachments, allied detachments, codex detachments, battlefield roles, formations, dataslates etc, what is and isn't a legal combination, and what the requirements and special rules are. That's already enough to make newcomers go cross-eyed, without even playing yet.
The game is currently collapsing in on itself due to the sheer amount of rules - too many rules brings unnecessary complexity, drags out games making them less fun, and adds extra barriers of entry for newcomers. They need to get back to having a solid, straightforward core set of rules.
On the lore side of things, it's already expanding, but I doubt they'll blow up the universe and build a new setting with some old faces like they did with Fantasy. Instead, I think they'll push a bit closer to complete doom, and I think it'll be fun - I'm pretty excited about the rumours of loyalist primarchs returning for instance.
I really, really hope none of the loyalist primarchs make a return. I think that would be a terrible choice that would let down the whole setting in some ways.
The Primarchs are great characters, and they obviously would have a huge impact on the setting, but that is why bringing them back would be bad. At the moment, the Primarchs are interesting to 40k because you don't know where they are, what happened to them, or even if they're still alive. Once you decide what actually happened, that mystery to them is lost and it becomes just another storyline. Whatever ideas and theories players have come up about the primarchs and what would happen if they returned would be rendered obsolete and that aspect of the setting would be gone entirely. Imagine if Roboute was suddenly perfectly fine and woke up. Maybe he'd lead the Imperium into greatness again, maybe he wouldn't. From an in-universe perspective he would be likely 'better' than pretty much any other character, but to us, he becomes just another plot-forwarding device, now with the mystery to him taken away. Their return would be fun to see for a while, but then eventually it won't be enough and people will just keep wanting more. They eventually become just a typical part of the setting, no different from any of the other characters to us.
The "Things are really bad and look like they're going to get worse" thing is the point of the 40k setting. It's not a story, there is no need to advance things You don't know what's going to happen to the Imperium, or Tyranids, or the Tau, or the Emperor, or the Primarchs or any of these other things, there's a constant dark, grim, hopelessness to it all and keeping that there is what makes the setting interesting. Telling new stories or something like a new campaign is fine, but this whole "they should advance the timeline" (especially with ludicrous things like bringing back the Emperor i've seen some suggest) some people seem to want goes against the whole thing and the reason for it in the first place.